Dr Kenneth Ring, then
based at the University
of Connecticut, and
Sharon Cooper, then a
PhD candidate from the
University of New York,
performed a two-year
study of near-death
experiences in the blind,
with amazing results.
These were published in
their book
Mindsight (1999), which
provided strong evidence from 31 blind
people who describe the
experience of seeing for
the first time in their
lives, giving details of
medical procedures on
the operating table, for
instance.
Jeffrey Long, MD, an
oncologist, directs the
Near Death Experience
Research
Foundation
(http://www.nderf.org),
which has collected
more than
2,500
case
studies
worldwide of people who
have had near-death
experiences.
the scientific method in
his research, we decided to contact him to
find out more about
his work. In our e-mail
interview with him in
August 2011, he
stated: “My area of
expertise is in neardeath experiences.
NDEs provide, in my
opinion, the strongest
scientific evidence of life
after death.”
In his book Evidence of
the Afterlife: The
Science of Near-Death
Experiences (2010),
Dr. Long gives a summary of the nine
lines of evidence that
point to the
reality of NDEs and their
consistent message of
an afterlife:
Because Dr. Long applies
54
1.
Crystal
Clear Consciousness
The level of consciousness andalertness during near-death
experiences is usually
evengreater than that
experienced in everyday
life, even though NDEs
generally occur when a
person is unconscious
or clinically dead.
This high level of consciousness while physically unconscious is
medically inexplicable.
Additionally, the elements in NDEs generally follow the same
consistent and logical
order in all age groups
and around the world,
which refutes the possibility that NDEs have
any relation to dreams
or hallucinations.