‘I knew I was dead but I felt nothing but peace’: Survivors of near-death experiences reveal haunting beauty of the ‘other side’, as landmark study offers first proof of what becomes of the human soul

Soaring up to heaven, watching your life flash past or hovering over your own body laid on a surgeon’s table. People who’ve been revived from the precipice of death frequently report such astonishing events.

Known as near-death experiences (NDEs), they are increasingly the focus of high-tech medical studies.

However, scientists are deeply divided over what these events – on the border between life and death – actually represent. Are NDEs basically hallucinations caused by our brains collapsing? Or are they, as some researchers argue, intriguing evidence that consciousness might exist beyond our physical bodies, perhaps even proof of some kind of afterlife?

What scientists do agree on is that NDEs are comparatively common.

As many as one in five patients resuscitated after a cardiac arrest – when the heart stops beating normally – say they’ve had one, according to a report published in January by Dr Pim van Lommel, a retired cardiologist and NDE researcher, in The Psychologist (the magazine of The British Psychological Society).

As a result of the success of modern medical resuscitation techniques it’s thought that more patients now experience NDEs – when someone is brought back from the brink after medical crises such as cardiac arrest, shock from blood loss or near-drowning, the body reaches the point of physical death, but their brain does not suffer irreversible brain death.

Indeed it may produce unusually large bursts of electrical activity that scientists believe to be the cause of NDEs (more on this later).

And now new research, presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has found that consciousness can continue for up to 90 minutes after the brain stops working. In a review of dozens of studies on what happens when people die, 20 per cent of survivors of heart attacks recalled experiences during the time when their brains had stopped working.

Modern medical interest in NDEs only began in 1892, when Albert Heim, a geologist in Switzerland and a mountaineer, compiled the first properly scientific accounts of near-death experiences from 30 climbers who’d survived near-fatal falls.

His report said that, in many cases, the climbers saw their whole lives flas before their eyes or heard beautiful music. One survivor said they ‘fell in a superbly blue heaven containing roseate cloudlets’.

But people have reported their experiences of leaving their bodies – and encountering otherworldly spirits before returning to their earthly flesh – for centuries.

For example, the Tibetan Book of the Dead (a Buddhist text), believed to have been written in the 14th century, warns that such vivid near-death experiences are essentially delusions that come when you are dying.

Could the ancient text be right? The idea that NDEs are basically produced by a dying brain is now being championed by Dr Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist at the Coma Science Group based in the University of Liege, Belgium.

In June 2025, she co-authored a review of clinical evidence in the highly respected journal Nature Reviews Neurology.

This proposed that NDEs are caused, fundamentally, by the brain being starved of oxygen – while at the same time trying to boost its cognitive powers as a last-gasp survival strategy.

Charlotte Martial’s review suggests that a brain receptor called 5-HT2A plays a crucial role.

This receptor is associated with thinking, learning and memory.

It is also considered a key player in the psychedelic experiences people have taking drugs such as LSD. During the brain crises that cause NDEs, Charlotte Martial suggests our 5-HT2A receptors become ‘hyper-activated’ and may create the vivid near-death memories.

A person’s personality and beliefs may also play a role, too. In another study by Charlotte Martial’s team – published in the journal Critical Care in 2023 – 19 intensive-care patients who reported having NDEs were compared with more than 100 patients at the same unit who’d had similar medical crises but not an NDE.

The only difference that marked the NDE group was their higher level of spirituality and propensity for dissociating (i.e. feeling disconnected from thoughts, feelings, sense of self or surroundings) before their experience.

The University of Liege researchers are currently conducting a large brain-monitoring study in a hospital resuscitation room to examine what happens in surviving patients’ brains at the precise time they report having NDEs. Charlotte Martial told Good Health she already knows what basic mechanisms are involved.

‘Studies have already shown that when the brain is deprived of oxygen, this triggers a chain reaction that makes areas involved in perception and consciousness – such as the occipital and temporoparietal regions – much more active.’

She says each brain area may play a role in NDE, which may explain the variety of experiences reported, such as feeling peaceful, seeing vivid images and feeling detached from the body.

Additionally, she says, the dissociation experienced in NDEs ‘can be seen as a defence mechanism to cope with extreme, life-threatening situations’.

‘To me, these experiences suggest that human biology is remarkably adaptive,’ explains Charlotte Martial.

‘Even when the brain is severely compromised, individuals may report vivid and often transformative experiences that could play a role in psychological coping.

‘In this sense, NDEs illustrate both the resilience of the human mind and the ingenuity of biological systems.’

Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Michigan, has also witnessed a remarkable surge in human brain activity at the brink of death.

She led a study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023, that used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to observe electrical signals in four comatose dying patients as their mechanical breathing-support was switched off.

Two of the four patients’ brains exhibited what Professor Borjigin calls ‘a kind of hyperdrive’ – a rapid surge of high-frequency EEG electrical-activity signals called gamma waves, along with significant interconnected brain activity across both hemispheres of the brain.

Brain activity levels were up to 12 times higher in the seconds or minutes after life-support was withdrawn than before the ventilators were switched off, her study found.

In particular, parts of the brain that Professor Borjigin calls a ‘hot zone’ for human consciousness became dramatically alive for around six minutes.

Activity in this ‘hot zone’, called the temporo-parieto-occipital area, is seen in healthy human brains during waking and dreaming, and in seizure patients during visual hallucinations and out-of-body experiences.

Because both of the patients studied died, Professor Borjigin cannot be sure they experienced NDEs. However, she’s confident the EEG signals are evidence of vivid conscious activity where science previously believed there to be none.

‘NDE survivors say that this experience is “realer than real”,’ she told Good Health.

‘They will fight with you if you say it is a hallucination.

‘It is a life-changing experience. For many civilisations, the idea of heaven must have originated from someone’s NDE.’

She adds: ‘To me, an NDE is the brain’s effort to survive an ordeal.

‘It is frantically scrolling through its toolbox, using much faster thinking and recall than normal. It’s all part of the brain’s self-rescue effort. The level of brain activation we see is out of this world.’

She believes that NDEs may have much in common with another strange phenomenon in dying people, called terminal lucidity – where those who’ve been deep in comas or lost to dementia for months suddenly rally, briefly able to recognise and talk happily with loved ones, shortly before dying.

Professor Borjigin believes research into NDEs could ultimately lead scientists to solve an earth-shattering mystery: the nature of human consciousness.

Determining how our human brains physically create our experience of consciousness is called the ‘hard problem’ in neuroscience because it has so far defied explanation.

What if NDE research pointed to the fact that consciousness could exist beyond the physical brain – perhaps even like a soul?

This zone of research is so potentially controversial, says Professor Borjigin, that the American government’s scientific funding body, the National Institutes of Health, is no longer funding studies in this area.

‘I am moving to a new university in China because there is huge resistance to this line of work,’ she explains. ‘This area of investigation goes into murky and ambiguous territory, and touches religious sensibilities.’

Professor Borjigin adds: ‘One day we will establish what consciousness is. But it may be so strange that it will take time to convince the general public.’

To Dr van Lommel, NDEs may even be evidence of an afterlife.

‘I believe NDEs may be considered a state of consciousness that continues in spite of a non-functioning brain, in which memories, identity – and aspects of emotion, cognition and perception – function independently from the unconscious body,’ he says.

This is what many people who have NDEs end up believing.

In 2001, Dr van Lommel led a study published in The Lancet that monitored 40 heart attack survivors who had NDEs.

These patients subsequently underwent dramatic personal transformations – they were less afraid of death and had a stronger belief in an afterlife.

‘We saw in them a greater interest in spirituality and questions about the purpose of life, as well as a greater acceptance of and love for oneself, in combination with a feeling of oneness with others and with nature,’ explains Dr van Lommel.

These personal transformations ran so deep it frequently alienated them from the people they were close to.

‘There is hardly any acceptance [of their near-death experiences] by partners, family members and friends,’ Dr Van Lommel says.

‘Among these survivors we saw a divorce rate of more than 70 per cent post-NDE.’ (This compares with an increase in divorce rates of 6 per cent after one partner has suffered serious illness such as cancer or stroke, according to a 2015 study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.)

‘An NDE during a cardiac arrest of only a few minutes’ duration can change people permanently,’ Dr van Lommel stresses.

‘It is an authentic experience which cannot be reduced to imagination, fear of death, hallucination, psychosis, the use of drugs, or oxygen deficiency.

‘Based on these NDE experiences, I suggest that there will be a continuity of consciousness after death [i.e. life after death].’

But how could science ever prove (or disprove) this? Charlotte Martial might soon produce a crucial clue, thanks to a practical experiment she is conducting on out-of-body experiences.

Out-of-body experiences are common in NDEs, with more than 60 per cent of survivors reporting them, according to a 1990 study in The Lancet by the University of Virginia.

Numerous reports have been recorded of patients saying they could see things in operating rooms – things they couldn’t possibly have seen from their physical position on a surgeon’s table.

None of these claims has, however, been rigorously tested scientifically.

Charlotte Martial aims to change this. In a new study, she will compare patients’ reports of what they saw happening in the operating room during out-of-body experiences with CCTV footage of what was actually occurring at that precise time.

If patients do reliably report things that only a ‘helicopter view’ could show, then mainstream brain science might be forced to rethink its entire foundation.

Alternatively, the study might show that they are only vivid hallucinations.

Are NDEs real or illusory? Perhaps an out-of-body experience can finally provide us with a down-to-earth answer.

I saw myself from above as a female doctor gave me CPR. I was half-dressed and seeing that I felt embarrassed 

Lorna Harris, 52, is a PR director from Kent.

The crushing pain that woke me in the early hours of July 2023 was like nothing I’d experienced: I could scarcely breathe, let alone stand up.

I collapsed down the side of the bed and grabbed my phone to dial 999. I managed to crawl to my front door to let the paramedics in.

They did an ECG [an electrocardiogram, which monitors the beats of the heart] then their faces changed. ‘You’re having a heart incident,’ one of them said.

It was a shock as I’d never had heart problems and the pain had been in my lower abdomen [heart attacks can sometimes present differently in women].

My hands and feet were by now numb and I was stretchered into the ambulance. The last thing I remember is the paramedic telling the driver ‘There are still 17 minutes to the hospital, we need to go.’

Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by a wall of beautiful, glittering white sparkles around me, bathed in light.

I saw myself from above, as if I were a drone hovering over the action, being hurried from the ambulance and wheeled fast down a corridor.

Next, I saw a female doctor in scrubs on top of me giving me CPR. Then a surgeon came in. He was wearing a brightly coloured jazzy bandana and Vans trainers. I saw myself half-dressed on the table and felt embarrassed.

The surgeon mentioned my bright pink pyjama bottoms which had been stripped from my body and told the nurse to bag them up for me.

I can still see every inch of the room, the colour of the walls, what the doctors looked like.

Then everything went dark. It was the most peaceful sleep I have ever had. I knew I was dead. Yet, despite this, I felt nothing but peace.

I came to in cardiac care. I’d been unconscious for two hours, which felt like minutes.

A nurse told me I’d had a clot removed from my heart that had caused a massive heart attack and two cardiac arrests, during which I’d ‘died’ for several minutes.

During the three weeks I spent on the cardiac ward, I explained to another cardiologist – not my surgeon – what I’d seen.

‘It’s one of the last mysteries,’ he said. ‘We often hear people saying they have seen things – even on the highest shelves in our room they couldn’t possibly have seen themselves.’

Months later, a friend had to see the same surgeon who’d operated on me. I told him he was the man who saved my life and to ask him if he’d worn a jazzy bandana.

He called me after his appointment. ‘Lorn, he does wear colourful bandanas and has a different colour and design for each hospital he works at,’ he told me. ‘And he does wear those shoes!’

Recovery wasn’t easy at first. I suffered mentally with a sense of depersonalisation – where I felt as if I was not real and people around me were not real; I saw a counsellor who said I had post-traumatic stress and it was the brain’s way of protecting itself.

But now I’m doing well. I know some people might think I just saw the things I can remember, but my last true memory is in the ambulance.

I died twice and what is amazing is I never felt afraid. I felt peaceful, as if watching someone else.

It gives me hope about the afterlife – and the one good thing that has come out of it is this: I am no longer afraid to die.

bhf.org.uk

Interview: JULIE COOK