Can Near-Death Experiences Prompt ESP?

Credit: Greg Rakozy, Unsplash

The space between human consciousness and what’s “beyond” has been a point of fascination since humans learned to ponder. Those who’ve had a near-death experience — akin to getting a glimpse beyond — often return with a greater understanding of the universe, a new direction for life, and even, as a recent study indicates, the ability to foresee the future.

The study, published in the American Psychological Association journal Dreaming, focused on the effect that NDEs can have on dreams, and found significantly higher instances of out of body experiences, lucid dreaming (where individuals recognize they are dreaming and can often influence the dream), and precognitive or clairvoyant dreams. These experiences tend to feel like one is somewhere in between typical human consciousness and the spiritual realm.

Nicole Lindsay, one of the study’s authors, told PsyPost, “Near-death experiences provide insight into how consciousness operates under extreme conditions, including potentially, in the absence of a functioning physical body.” Fascinatingly, Lindsay found parallels between the apparent cognitive expansion of NDE-ers and that of spiritual practitioners who make a life’s work of probing realms beyond the body.

Credit: Tim Mossholder, Unsplash

Lindsay shared, “I noticed that many of the dream experiences people reported, such as increased lucid dreaming, are very similar to experiences described by long-term meditators and other practitioners of extended states of consciousness.” She’s interested in further research, to include brain imaging technology, that can determine if neurostructural changes that occur after NDEs compare to changes found in advanced spiritual devotees.

Acknowledging the challenges of studying a phenomenon like near-death experiences, Lindsay and the other researchers are some of the first to find empirical evidence to support what are typically considered anecdotal claims. The researchers compared the dream habits of people who’ve had an NDE to those of people who haven’t been close to dying, as well as those who had a life-threatening experience without a “beyond-consciousness” event common within an NDE.

Indeed, the occurrence of lucid dreams, sleep-based out-of-body experiences and precognitive dreams were significantly higher among those in the near-death experience group than the other two.

As science and spirituality appear to converge ever closer, the research done by Lindsay and others seems like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gaining greater understanding about the nature of consciousness, and reality itself. Let’s just hope we all don’t have to have a near-death experience to benefit from the insights.