Several Near-Death Experience researchers such as Dr. Kenneth Ring, author of “Life at Death,” have pointed out that the Holographic Universe model offers a way of understanding these experiences as ventures into the more frequency-like aspects of reality. For instance, many patients describe their experiences as entering a realm of “higher vibrations,” or “frequencies,” where everything is made of light and sound. The sounds are described as “celestial music” more like a “combination of vibrations” than actual sounds, and the lights are described as “more brilliant than any on Earth,” but despite their intensity do not hurt the eyes. Dr. Ring believes these and other observations provide evidence that the act of dying involves our consciousness being shifted away from the ordinary explicate world of appearances into the implicate holographic reality of pure frequency.
“Ring
is not alone in his speculations. In the
keynote address for the 1989 meeting of the International Association for Near-Death
Studies (IANDS), Dr. Elizabeth W. Fenske, a clinical psychologist in private
practice in Philadelphia, announced that she, too, believes that NDEs are
journeys into a holographic realm of higher frequencies. She agrees with Ring’s hypothesis that the
landscapes, flowers, physical structures, and so forth, of the afterlife
dimension are fashioned out of interacting (or interfering) thought
patterns. ‘I think we’ve come to the
point in NDE research where it’s difficult to make a distinction between thought
and light. In the near-death experience
thought seems to be light,’ she observes.”
-Michael Talbot, “The Holographic Universe” (246)
Another decidedly “holographic”
feature of NDEs is the commonly repeated notion that, in the afterlife realm,
time and space as we know them cease to exist.
NDErs have reported that, “it has to be out of time and space. It must be, because the experience cannot be
put into a time thing” and “I found myself in a space, in a period of
time, I would say, where all space and time was negated.” It seems inside this 4 dimensional holographic
universe our consciousness experiences the explicate movement of space and the passage
of time using a holographic physical body to navigate. Outside the hologram, however, consciousness
experiences the implicate at-one-ment of all space, time, and matter. Many have reported that in the afterlife
realm they didn’t even have a body unless they were thinking. One NDEr said, “If I stopped thinking I
was merely a cloud in an endless cloud, undifferentiated. But as soon as I started to think, I became
myself.”
“In addition to those mentioned
by Ring and Fenske, the NDE has numerous other features that are markedly
holographic. Like OBEers, after NDEers
have detached from the physical they find themselves in one of two forms,
either as a disembodied cloud of energy, or as a hologram-like body sculpted by
thought. When the latter is the case,
the mind-created nature of the body is often surprisingly obvious to the
NDEer. For example, one near-death
survivor says that when he first emerged from his body he looked ‘something
like a jelly fish’ and fell lightly to the floor like a soap bubble. Then he quickly expanded into a ghostly
three-dimensional image of a naked man.
However, the presence of two women in the room embarrassed him and to
his surprise, this feeling caused him suddenly to become clothed … That our
innermost feelings and desires are responsible for creating the form we assume
in the afterlife dimension is evident in the experiences of other NDEers. People who are confined in wheelchairs in
their physical existence find themselves in healthy bodies that can run and
dance. Amputees invariably have their
limbs back. The elderly often inhabit
youthful bodies, and even stranger, children frequently see themselves as
adults, a fact that may reflect every child’s fantasy to be a grown-up, or more
profoundly, may be a symbolic indication that in our souls some of us are much
older than we realize.” -Michael
Talbot, “The Holographic Universe” (246)
Perhaps the most holographic aspect
of NDEs is the life review. Dr. Ring
calls it “a holographic phenomenon par excellence.” Many NDErs themselves have used the term
“holographic” to describe the experience. “It was an incredibly vivid,
wrap-around, three-dimensional replay of my entire life,” said one NDEr, “It’s
like climbing right inside a movie of your life,” said another. “Every moment from every year of your life
is played back in complete sensory detail.
Total, total recall. And it all
happens in an instant. The whole thing
was really odd. I was there; I was
actually seeing these flashbacks; I was actually walking through them, and it
was so fast. Yet, it was slow enough
that I could take it all in.” Thus
the experience is holographic both in its panoramic three-dimensionality and
also in its incredible capacity for information storage. NDErs lucidly re-experience every single
thought and emotion of not only their lives, but the thoughts and emotions of
everyone else they ever came in contact with!
They feel the joy of people who they treated kindly and the pain of
people they treated poorly. No thought
or emotion, theirs or anyone else’s they ever knew remains private.
“In
fact, the life review bares a marked resemblance to the afterlife judgment
scenes described in the sacred texts of many of the world’s great religions,
from the Egyptian to the Judeo-Christian, but with one crucial difference. Like Whitton’s subjects, NDEers universally
report that they are never judged by the beings of light, but feel only love
and acceptance in their presence. The
only judgment that ever takes place is self-judgment and arises solely out of
the NDEer’s own feelings of guilt and repentance. Occasionally the beings do assert themselves,
but instead of behaving in an authoritarian manner, they act as guides and
counselors whose only purpose is to teach.
This total lack of cosmic judgment and/or any divine system of
punishment and reward has been and continues to be one of the most controversial
aspects of the NDE among religious groups, but it is one of the most oft
reported features of the experience.
What is the explanation? Moody
believes it is as simple as it is polemic.
We live in a universe that is far more benevolent than we realize. That
is not to say that anything goes during the life review. Like Whitton’s hypnotic subjects, after
arriving in the realm of light, NDEers appear to enter a state of heightened or
meta-conscious awareness and become lucidly honest in their self-reflections. It also does not mean that the beings of
light prescribe no values. In NDE after
NDE they stress two things. One is the importance
of love. Over and over they repeat this
message, that we must learn to replace anger with love, learn to love more,
learn to forgive and love everyone unconditionally, and learn that we in turn
are loved. This appears to be the only
moral criterion the beings use. The
second thing the beings emphasize is knowledge.
Frequently NDEers comment that the beings seemed pleased whenever an
incident involving knowledge or learning flickered by during their life
review. Some are openly counseled to
embark on a quest for knowledge after they return to their physical bodies, especially
knowledge related to self-growth or that enhances one’s ability to help other
people.” -Michael Talbot, “The
Holographic Universe” (250)
“Many dying
individuals have reported encounters with other beings, such as dead relatives
or friends, ‘guardian spirits,’ or spirit guides. Particularly common seem to
be visions of a Being of Light, which usually appears as a source of unearthly
light, radiant and brilliant, yet showing certain personal characteristics such
as love, warmth, compassion, and a sense of humor. The communication with this
Being occurs without words, through an unimpeded transfer of thoughts. In the
context of this encounter or outside of it, the dying individual can experience
a partial or total review of his or her life, which almost always involves
vivid colors and a three-dimensional, dynamic form. The message from this
experience seems to be the realization that learning to love other people and
acquiring higher knowledge are the most important values in human life.” -Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax,
“Human Encounter with Death” (154-5)
People on their death beds will often speak
of seeing angels, deceased friends/family, seeing bright warm lights of love,
or having their entire lives flash before their eyes. These visions begin to reconcile traditional
notions of “heaven” and the “afterlife” with the actual experiences of current and historical near-death experiencers.
It appears the seeming finality of death truly is a physical phenomenon
only and consciousness lives on forever.
“I
would like to commence this section by emphatically stating an extremely
important truth which everyone should know and understand beyond any possible
doubt: There really is no such state as ‘death.’ What many people believe to be the finality
of ‘death’ is in fact no more and no less than the transition from one state of
life and reality, that of the physical matter, to a state of life of a vastly
finer density of the Universe.” -Adrian Cooper, “Our Ultimate Reality”
(145)