Surprisingly, unreligious people get "the beyond"

The New York Times has a particular attraction to "over the edge" near-death stories

One of the most effective ways astronomers demonstrate the vastness of space is to take a roll of string and stretch it out at scale between the earth, represented by a one-foot diameter beach ball, and the moon, a baseball. I saw astronaut Clay Anderson do this, and kids just naturally get it when the string is like 30 feet—the moon is about 30 earth diameters distant at apogee.

Photo by Kenny Orr on Unsplash

Similarly, I have heard many preachers give an effective demonstration of eternal life by taking a string and marking the first inch in red—our lives—and the rest stretching out as far as the roll takes it. It takes some imagination to form the mind-picture of eternity, but not really much more than it takes to think about the massive distances in space.

None of this is surprising, because the human mind has trouble incorporating the infinite into our thoughts. Our imaginations can capture, fleetingly, the concept of eternity, or the endless bounds of near-vacuum that measure space in billions of light-years, but we fail to really comprehend the implications, unless they are supported with actual data and first-hand reports. This is why astronauts can connect so well with young audiences, because they have been in space, and also why preachers have a difficult time, because nobody returns from death (except a few reports that are either ancient or told third-hand).

What is surprising to me is the regularity with which the New York Times returns to the subject of “near-death experiences” and what lies beyond, including the nature of consciousness.

I was also very surprised reading a fairly rigorously written long-form piece in the New York Times Magazine documenting dementia patients who “return” soon before their deaths. It’s not a crackpot subject. It’s been researched by credentialed psychologists, psychiatrists, palliative care specialists, and trauma doctors. The experiments almost defy my belief: putting headphones on patients undergoing CPR which repeat particular words, then asking the patients (the ones who survive) if they heard the words while clinically dead; capturing hours of video of dementia patients in the last stages of life to catch the “spark” as they become lucid, then return to their impaired state, frequently within days or hours of their deaths.

I’ve heard firsthand reports (including family) of people witnessing dying relatives who had not spoken in months, and before that could not carry on a normal conversation, having the light return to their eyes, recognize everyone in the room, and speak candidly. Then they mention seeing relatives who had passed on years before, and some talk about angels. Most of these stories involve the person recognizing they are about to “cross over” or leave this life.

What gets me is that researchers and medical professionals say that the model of the mind we have doesn’t support this possibility. Once, say, Alzheimers, damages the brain and its synapses, the brain should not be able to “return” the mind to a lucid condition. But there is enough data to challenge that view, the “reductionist” view, or the structure and nature of our brains, or the impossibility of consciousness apart from the firing of neurons.

Another surprise is how many non-religious people, including those who write articles for the New York Times, connect with these stories, and do not dismiss the data or the researchers collecting it as crackpots. It’s almost as if there’s a plug-in port in our brains, and our minds, connecting directly with a place in our imaginations, that understands the nature of mortality and the knowledge of what happens when our earthly, physical bodies, die.

I believe most animals know when they are dying. Dogs will instinctively go off by themselves to die, after saying goodbye to their humans. But they will also gladly accept the companionship of our love at the end. Comfort is a universal value among creatures with intelligence. People also would rather die with the comfort of loved ones. However, I’ve been told by medical people who have attended many deaths, that the presence of some relatives speaking to a dying person will delay death, because hearing is the last sense to fail, and hearing the voice of a loved one keeps the will to take another breath alive.

Countless nurses talk about how they left the room and within seconds, the dying person passed. There is clearly something that separates us at the last moment of life, looking forward to what is next.

And if what is next is nothing, that is a hard thing for our imagination to swallow. It’s easy to test this. If you want to induce insomnia, just think about dying in your sleep and wonder if there’s nothing after death—just non-existence of the mind. It’s not a comforting thought, at least not to me.

What is comforting to me is that so many individuals see something worth going into at the moment of death. The “near-death” stories are very similar: a feeling of warmth, comfort, peace, a tunnel with light, seeing friends and family who have passed on, a welcome. There are also stories, which have no rational explanation, of those who had out of body experiences, with memories of details their clinically dead bodies could not have possibly captured.

Of course, it can be rationalized that these stories are either exaggerated, or the people were influenced by their interviewers, or that they overheard things, and given their brains had not truly died, they retained those memories and the mind made them into visions. But that rationalization depends on holding the conclusion that the mind is the reductionist view of a collection of neurons, and that there is nothing after that organ dies. It’s a matter of begging the question—beginning with the conclusion.

There is no real explanation—a medical explanation—of why some dementia patients suddenly become lucid, with full knowledge of their impending deaths, but many are comforted by that, the end of their suffering in this life. Perhaps researchers will find some aspect of our brains that can heal dementia, and that might itself lead to a cure. Or perhaps our physical ideas about the nature of the mind and consciousness don’t stand up.

Maybe we do have souls, spirits, and bodies which operate together but are separate things.

What I do know is that even non-religious people get it when that concept is presented. They may choose not to believe that particular model of life, death, and eternity, but they do understand it, as if by instinct.

The string stretching out beyond our existence is a real concept, and to be human is to grasp it. What we have trouble grasping is the consequences of our actions here, and how that affects the rest of that eternal string.

Of course, there is an answer that the Christian knows: Christ arrived from that eternity, lived a sinless life, bought our lives and forgave our sin (which is simply separation from God), died and returned to life, to bridge that chasm for us. And when we pass from this life, we will be with him so instantaneously that there is no gap in consciousness. In fact, the veil is partially pulled back before we go, as a comfort, so nobody really dies alone.

That, to me, as a Christian, is the most comforting part. Even non-religious people get it that there’s something beyond, and at that moment when the veil parts, just before death, there is the possibility of redemption, of acceptance, of friendship with God through belief in the Son. All the people we believed died in sin may have, at that moment, experienced grace and repentance.

In 1 Corinthians 3:14-16, the Apostle Paul wrote:

If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

What has been built is our lives—our earthly existence—our legacy, what we’ve done, and taught to our children. If that survives, we get a reward, for the impact we’ve had on other lives. But if there’s nothing but chaff to burn, the dying can still enter heaven, and be saved, “as one escaping through the flames.”

Paul asked as if it’s a given: don’t you know? Even non-religious people know. The greatest comfort at death is that grace is bigger than death. And in life, that comforts me as a Christian.