I wrote this article summary for THETA, the quarterly journal of the Psychical Research Foundation in Durham. Noyes’ work is part of a growing literature about people who have nearly died.
Russell Noyes, Jr. The Experience of Dying. Psychiatry. Vol. 35. May, 1972. 174-184.
Russell Noyes, Jr. Dying and Mystical Consciousness. Journal of Thanatology. Vol. 1. January-February 1971. 25-41.
Russell Noyes, Jr. and Roy Kletti. The Experience of Dying from Falls. Omega. Vol. 3 1972. 45-52. (a translation of Albert von St. Gallen Heim’s study, “Remarks on a Fatal Fall,” first published 1892)
Although — with the possible exception of mediumistic communications — no one has returned from the dead to give an account of his experience, reports of people who have nearly died suggest that it is a profoundly transcendent experience.
These articles are an overview of accounts of mystical dying experiences from persons who, in a state of good health, were suddenly threatened with death. Victims of drownings, falls, automobile accidents, even suicides, regularly have these experiences. The only prerequisite seems to be the perception of imminent death; as long as escape is possible, energy will be devoted to survival.
The accounts are divided into successive phases: resistance, life review, and transcendence. Where even a slight possibility of survival remains, there is enhanced alertness. Physical and mental activity may be enormously increased.
But this upsurge is countered by a powerful urge to surrender — hence, a violent inner struggle. At the point of surrender, fear subsides and the event of death is faced with calm. Poe relates this to the losing of hope. In “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” a drowning sailor recounts, “having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first.”
The next phase, review of life, often encompasses the entire past. “Unusually vivid scenes of some or many of the events of his life flash through his mind in rapid succession. Occasionally, he will gain the impression that all his memories are laid out at once before him.” Because of this unique perspective, Noyes says, “a man’s existence becomes complete and unalterable with his death — not before it. At this moment a life, while stripped of potentialities, is rescued into the actuality of the past. In the existential sense, it is saved from being transitory. Once an actuality it remains one forever. Through the ages, death has been recognized as a climactic moment for this very reason — it represented a last opportunity to attain or defend the aim held highest. In a final judgement review the dying man, in a passionate affirmation of the transcendent meaning to his existence, thoroughly integrates it into the universal order which he embraces.”
A typical review phenomena is the split of the self from its body representation, and fantasies of events which might follow death. The subject may view his body as near death but, being outside of it, witnesses the scene with detached interest. Albert Heim, a Zurich geology professor who collected the accounts of survivors of mountain climbing accidents — after having nearly fallen to his own death off a cliff — found that in 95 per cent of the cases “no grief was felt . . . There was no anxiety, no trace of despair, no pain; but rather calm seriousness, profound acceptance. . . . In many cases there followed a sudden review of the individual’s entire past; and finally, the person falling often heard beautiful music and fell in a superbly blue heaven containing roseate cloudlets.”
Finally, the individual moves beyond this perspective, and experiences himself in a new manner, entering a region he finds foreign. He may feel outside of time, in eternity. A related characteristic is transcendence of space and individual identity. A sense of unity with the entire universe develops.
The transcendent phase is typified by Jung’s account of how he “hung on the edge of death” after a heart attack.
“It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during these visions. They were the most tremendous things I have ever experienced. I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a nontemporal state in which present, past and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought together into a concrete whole.”
The author notes that the complete LSD experience is similar to the mystical dying experience, and that mystical consciousness is generally expressed in terms of death and rebirth. In fact, LSD has been administered to dying cancer patients, with the result that the overwhelming majority experienced changes in their attitude about dying — including a reduction in fear and depression, and greater tranquility.
Dying, the author finally suggests, may offer an enormous opportunity for personality growth. If, in our last hour, we are able to take a more detached and humble view of our lives, and see the futility of what we once thought to be important, we might become more tolerant and achieve a harmony never before realized.
