I've written several times about the "Near Death Experience" (NDE) and how scientists are unlocking the physical and psychological mechanisms that they believe cause it. The eerily similar experiences of what people saw and how they felt during an NDE have led researchers to conclude that NDEs are an "altered state of consciousness."
Unlike psychedelics or other drug-induced altered states of consciousness, NDEs follow a distinct narrative.
- A feeling of peace and relief from pain
- An out-of-body experience (OBE) where the person views his own physical body
- Moving through a tunnel toward a bright light
- Enfolding love, meeting deceased loved ones or spiritual figures
Drug-induced states are highly variable and unpredictable. The experience depends heavily on "set and setting," including who you're with and the user's mindset and expectations.
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Far less common is the "Shared Death Experience (SDE)." Popular Mechanics explains an SDE as "an experience that happens to a physically and cognitively healthy person who has a strong bond with a dying patient and, essentially, goes through an NDE with them," writes Jordan Smith.
People who have sat next to a person who dies describe that "transition" from life to death in spiritual terms. "One second she was 'there,' the next she was 'gone,'" my sister told me after being at my mom's bedside when she died. She described it as very peaceful and cathartic, given my mom's long illness.
People who experience an SDE actually go through that transition with the loved one. William Peters, a licensed psychotherapist, was at his dad's bedside when he "found himself in a different dimension where he saw loved ones such as his deceased grandmother, aunt, and his grandfather—whom he’d never met," relates Smith. "Peters asked his grandmother and aunt, “Why isn’t he dying?”
Peters says his dead relatives directed his attention to over the top of his father’s body. "The moment Peters moved his focus there, he locked onto a presence," writes Smith. “I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, that’s the conductor,’” Peters said. “The power of this being let me know it was in charge of the transition, and it just wasn’t quite the right time yet, but we were getting close. In a matter of a few moments [my father] died and transitioned.”
Peters is the founder of the Shared Crossing Project and director of the Shared Crossing Research Initiative (SCRI). In partnership with the Family Therapy Institute of Santa Barbara, SCRI is a nonprofit organization that seeks to research SDEs and inform end-of-life work. There, Peters frequently speaks with individuals who claim to have experienced SDEs. In fact, Peters and his organization have spearheaded the vast majority of SDE studies that do exist. SCRI has conducted hundreds of interviews with those who have reported shared death experiences.
When people experience NDEs and SDEs, their reports are functionally similar, Peters says. The sensory experiences that individuals report all seem to boil down to this: “At the moment of human death, our consciousness, our soul, our spirit, or whatever you want to refer to it as, departs the human body and enters into another existence,” he says.
The religious aspect of SDEs cannot be ignored. For many religious observers, SDEs serve as powerful anecdotal evidence for the existence of an independent soul or consciousness that survives bodily death. Bystanders often report seeing a light, a mist, or an energetic form leaving the physical body at the moment of death, which aligns closely with religious concepts of the soul departing the physical vessel. Those who experience an SDE frequently describe stepping into a heavenly, radiant, or non-material realm filled with unyielding peace, directly mirroring descriptions of the afterlife or paradise found in various religious traditions.
The profound effect on someone who experiences an SDE is also noted by researchers. Seeing a loved one safely "escorted" into a peaceful state fundamentally removes the terror of dying. Those who experience an SDE often become significantly more spiritual, compassionate, and focused on transcendent values, even if they move away from strict institutional or dogmatic religious rules.
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There are skeptics, of course.
There may also be biological and physiological reasons for the experiences. For instance, some scientists hypothesize SDEs may occur due to delirium, medication effects, fever, unstable clinical conditions, or neurological dysfunction associated with the dying process, explains Oliveira da Silva. On the psychological front, different types of end-of-life experiences (ELEs) have been attributed to misperceptions, expectations, and emotional needs, she adds. However, research—like Olivera da Silva’s own work, published in the International Review of Psychiatry—excludes people with delirium to help distinguish this altered awareness from true ELEs, since the condition affects up to 88 percent of patients in palliative care.
While there are many holes in the research on SDEs and NDEs, scientists continue to try to fill in the gaps. The Neurophysiological Evolutionary Psychological Theory Understanding Near-Death Experience (NEPTUNE) model attempts to explain NDEs, suggesting they may be caused by changes in blood brain gases, endorphins, or other chemical or electrical activity in the brain. And, the study suggests the out-of-body experiences described after an NDE or SDE are due to activation in the temporoparietal junction of the brain. However, some researchers say that these single-sense hallucinations don’t match up with reports of vivid experiences reported by people who experience SDEs or NDEs.
It should be noted that until the 1990s, NDEs were dismissed out of hand as the brain being in a dreamlike state to deal with the trauma that brought an individual to the brink of death. But when people from all over the world, from every culture and religion, began to describe remarkably similar experiences, NDEs became the subject of serious scientific inquiry.
It appears that groups like SCRI are forcing the scientific community to re-evaluate some of their earlier skepticism of the reality of SDEs. “Psychological interpretations, such as anticipatory grief or the religious and spiritual needs of family caregivers confronted with impending loss, may explain some cases,” Oliveira da Silva says. “But they do not appear sufficient to account for the full range of reported experiences.”
Eventually, as with NDEs, there will be serious efforts of inquiry about what SDE's are, and what causes them.
