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NDEs have been recorded throughout history. For example, in the 8th Century the monk Bede told of a man who had died in the night. But came he back to life in the morning with a tale of having left his body. This tale contained all the details we’ve come to recognise as being NDE related.
It’s really only since the mid 1970s that modern NDEs have come into the public consciousness. They were named as such, (Near Death Experiences), by Dr. Raymond Moody in the first book he published on the subject back at that time.
In the revised 2005 edition of his book entitled: The Light Beyond he interviews Dr. Michael Grosso, a Columbia University trained philosopher. Dr. Grosso suggests that, in biological terms, there is no point in experiencing an NDE once death draws near. However, there is a reason for it on a spiritual evolutionary level. And he continues by saying that: “I think it’s this risk of massive self-destruction through incredibly sophisticated weaponry that is forcing the global psychic phenomenon that seems to be taking place now.” He sees spiritual experiences as having a common thread in that they might be expressions of the “collective transformation of consciousness,” fuelled by the possibility of total nuclear destruction. He points out that: “There are some interesting relationships between certain deep NDEs and prophetic NDEs. And there are links between some UFO contact cases and those amazing patterns of collective apparitional experience called Marian visions, in which the Virgin Mary becomes visible on walls or other objects in towns.” He also adds that an interest in Ufology began in 1947, just a few years after the detonation of the first atomic bomb. If you have, or can obtain a copy of, the book you can read the whole interview in the Chapter entitled: The Near-Death Researchers (pp. 139-141).
Those who are UFO abductees also sometimes report such visions. Often they are of an apocalyptic nature in that they contain information about global catastrophes caused by major earth changes. Interestingly, it seems somewhat incongruous that NDE subjects mainly feel the experience was a good one, whereas UFO abductees feel the opposite, especially where they tell of their fear during abduction and medical examination events.
On the web you can find a very interesting article about NDEs, which comes from a cardiologist practising in The Netherlands, and is called: About the Continuity of Our Consciousness. Part of the first few paragraphs read: “Does brain death really means death, or is it just the beginning of the process of dying that can last for hours to days, and what happens to consciousness during this period? Should we also consider the possibility that someone who is clinically dead during cardiac arrest can experience consciousness, and even whether there could still be consciousness after someone really has died, when his body is cold? How is consciousness related to the integrity of brain function? Is it possible to gain insight in thisrelationship? In my view the only possible empirical approach to evaluate theories about consciousness is research on NDE, because in studying the several universal elements that are reported during NDE, we get the opportunity to verify all the existing theories about consciousness that have been discussed until now. Consciousness presents temporal as well as everlasting experiences. Is there a start or an end to consciousness?
In this paper I first will discuss some more general aspects of death, and after that I will describe more details from our prospective study on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest in the Netherlands, which was published in the Lancet. I also want to comment on similar findings from two prospective studies in survivors of cardiac arrest from the USA and from the United Kingdom. Finally, I will discuss implications for consciousness studies, and how it could be possible to explain the continuity of our consciousness.” You can read the rest of the article here:
http://iands.org/research/vanLommel/vanLommel.php
At the following link you can read a scientific paper that examines the relationship between NDEs, OOBEs and UFO experiences. It is entitled: From Lucid Dreaming to Pure Consciousness: A Conceptual Framework for the OBE, UFO Abduction and NDE Experiences, written by Jayne Gackenbach, Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/fromlucid.htm
This scientific paper is very long indeed; the equivalent of around 25 pages on my computer screen, but it is highly detailed and well worth the read if you have the time to study it.
About ten years ago I read the book The Omega Project by the eminent psychologist Dr. Kenneth Ring. It’s a study of the similarities between NDEs and UFOs, and one of Dr. Ring’s conclusions is that these may be the start of a shift in humanity’s consciousness to the extent that, eventually, we’ll all be able to live in two worlds at the same time, i.e. the physical world, and that of the imagination.
Dr. Kenneth Ring, Ph. D. has also written articles about NDEs and UFO Encounters. 
This one is entitled: Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations Some Conceptual and Evolutionary Implications. But he includes a couple of caveats at the beginning: “Before setting out on the first of these conceptual journeys, I need to enter a couple of caveats. First, in stressing certain linkages between NDEs and UFOEs, I make no claim that all varieties of these two phenomena are thus entwined. UFOEs especially cover an extraordinary range, and therefore no one model is likely to do even nominal justice to them all. In this instance, however, I will be dealing with a particular and nowadays increasingly well-known type of UFOE, the nature of which I will specify shortly.
Second, the kind of integrative model I will offer here attempts to join these experiences only in terms of their archetypal patterning and functional significance. At the phenomenological level, NDEs and UFOEs are of course quite dissimilar, but it is in their deep structure, as it were, rather than in their surface contentual manifestations that important commonalities can be discerned.” You can read the whole article here:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/articles011.html
In the preface to another article by Dr. Ring, co-authored with C. J. Rosing, entitled: UFO and Near-Death Experiences (NDE), the authors suggest that: "There are wide-ranging and powerful, psychophysical changes following either a UFOE [UFO experience] or NDE. ………. Both involve "an increase in energy currents in the body, mind expansion, information flooding, and psychic abilities."
Ring and Rosing suggest that UFOEs and NDEs appear to be "functionally equivalent" and that "psycho-physical changes reported in connection with UFOEs and NDEs reflect some sort of psychobiological transformation" similar to kundalini energy. "Kundalini activation is much more likely... to be reported afterward by experiential respondents than controls, and, as before, this is equally true for NDErs and UFOErs alike.
These experiences reflect a purposive intelligence... they are part of an accelerating evolutionary current that is propelling the human race toward higher [occult] consciousness and heightened spirituality.
What repeatedly struck us most forcibly was the undeniable overall similarity between our two experiential groups, UFOErs and NDErs.... We should now consider that despite the differences in the nature of these experiences, they many have a common underlying source--whatever that source may be." You can read the article itself, about half way down the page, at this link:
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/spirituality/aliens.html
Of course, Dr. Ring isn’t the only person to research NDEs, but most researchers agree that these experiences do seem to have many characteristics in common. Some who have undergone an NDE tell of just having experienced one of these traits, while others will have had more. Amongst them are:
- Floating along a tunnel towards a bright light at the end of it.
- At least half report the feeling that their consciousness and their bodies have separated.
- Being met by either angelic beings or members of their family who have already died.
- Looking down on their own body from a great height, and in the case of those undergoing some vital medical intervention they are often able to describe not only the procedures, and the instruments, that the doctors are using but also the conversations that took place between the doctors and the nurses.
- Being extremely disinclined to return to their body.
- Having what’s called a Life Review and, occasionally, seeing visions of the future.
- Most return from such an event with a heightened spiritual awareness. They often report that as a result their personal view of life, their values, beliefs, etc: have been entirely changed.
- And some return with psychic abilities.
Many studies also show that both religious and non-religious people have very similar NDEs. And, most tellingly of all, people who have undergone an NDE, or even an OOBE, will maintain that the memory of it is as clear to them years later as it was on the day that it happened.
It is quite possible that all of these types of experiences are liminal. The Limen is the stage of consciousness where a certain stimulus starts to create sensations that are otherwise imperceptible. It is also worth noting that many of these occurrences might be classified as falling into the Realm of The Trickster.
Throughout history we have been aware of those who held a belief in magic, mysticism, shamanism, et. al. Such “Other Realms” were always entered either by an altered state of consciousness, or at the soul level. And many of these regions were populated by entities that ranged from Higher Beings to daemons and nightmarish monsters.
Two eminent UFO 
researchers also seem to incline towards the idea that Aliens are visitors from Other Realms. Jacques Vallee, in his book Passport to Magonia, calls it a Multiverse that the “information theory” might help us to grasp. And the late John Mack undertook his research into UFO abductees because he believed that most of the people who reported such experiences were quite sane, and it might be that the scientific opinion concerning reality was incomplete.
Over the last decade or so some neuroscientists and physicists, especially quantum physicists, are starting to seriously examine the idea that consciousness does not necessarily reside within our body, but is able to leave it during certain situations, such as an NDE or UFO encounter. It may be that both types of experience are, from the consciousness point of view, two sides of the same coin. And, if this is possible, then how is it done?
Matter, as we know it, appears to be solid. But the more science examines it the more it becomes clear that this substance is not solid, and in fact is simply made up of interacting energy fields. It may even be that, at the basic level of consciousness, matter and space are made from the same stuff, and it’s just that they’re configured differently in the physical human body. If this should prove to be the case then, for the most part, consciousness appears to stay within the body, but under certain conditions it may separate from it. Science also tells us that the laws of physics and those of mathematics seem to be autonomous in relation to space-time.
Dr. Peter Fenwick, and his wife, have also closely studied the NDE, and they too conclude the brain and the mind can function separately at times.
David Fontana, is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and Past President and current Vice President of the Society for Psychical Research. In his book “Is There An Afterlife?” (Published 2005 by O Books) he takes a very comprehensive look at all aspects of the paranormal.
Writing about Dr. Peter Fenwick’s research he notes, (pp 396-403), that around twenty UK hospitals are undertaking studies into the NDEs reported by their patients. The Horizon Research Foundation of Southampton General Hospital, in association with Dr. Fenwick, is undertaking the survey. To date it has found that from a one thousand sample ten percent have reported an NDE. In these their consciousness seemed to be located outside their body, and some of these were not actually at the point of clinical death, neither were fourteen percent receiving any drugs at the time of the occurrence.
Fontana adds that: “the hallucinations experienced by patients losing consciousness due to drugs are reported as chaotic and disorganized, where as NDEs are vivid and coherent. In dismissing anoxia, Fenwick and Fenwick point out that the condition is regularly induced in airline pilots as part of their training and at one time was also a feature of the training of medical students, yet none of those concerned appears to have reported an NDE. In addition anoxia, like drugs, leads to brain disorientation and confusion. Fenwick and Fenwick accept that a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood (hypercarbia) of patients can lead to dream-like experiences that sound similar to NDEs, but point out that no Hospital Intensive Care Unite would allow hypercarbia to occur in the blood of those for whose lives they are responsible. In addition, hypercarbia produces convulsive muscle movements, in some cases so violent that the patient seems to be acting out their dream-like experiences. However, no such convulsions have ever been reported in the case of patients claiming to have undergone NDEs.”
One explanation for the NDE is that it is due to the release of endorphins by the brain. However, people such as athletes release endorphins that help to kill the sensation of pain whilst undergoing their continuous physical activity. But this doesn’t make them have an NDE. The same is true for those who suffer from epileptic seizures.
Another explanation is where scientists have found that stimulating a particular area of the brain with electric currents can induce an NDE type sensation. But these experiences tend to be fragmentary and disorganised, whereas the NDE is no such thing. And those who report a real NDE are not those who are being stimulated in such a way.
Further explanations include the use of psychedelic drugs, and the theory of the dying brain. As far as the drugs are concerned they can induce vivid hallucinations, but they don’t have the lucid characteristics of the NDE. For example, it has recently been claimed that ketamine can replicate the traits of an NDE, but as Fontana states: “… drugs do not “reproduce” NDEs or any other mental states. They may facilitate the conditions under which these states can occur, but this is not the same thing as “reproducing” them.” He contiues: “…….. we do not as yet know if the experiences reported by those who have taken ketamine are real or imagined. That is, do they, as in NDEs, sometimes produce information about the environment that could not have been obtained if the consciousness had remained within the body? If they do not, then they would appear to be due only to imagination, and thus have no relevance to NDEs. If they do, then the analogy with the NDE would become a real one, as would the possibility that ketamine inhibits those brain processes that normally prevent the mind from leaving the body. It is said that ketamine may allow sufficient input for those under its influence to allow them to obtain normal knowledge of what is going on around them even when they are seemingly unconscious, but there is evidence that both in the NDE and the OBE (out-of body experiences unconnected with imminent risk of death) accurate information is sometimes acquired of physical realities that are too remote from the from the individual to be reached by his or her normal sensory awareness.”
Addressing the theory of the Drying Brian hypothesis Fontana tells us: “The dying brain theory can however be faulted for several reasons. Firstly, if the brain is dying, one would expect the experiences generated by it to become increasingly chaotic. However, this is not the case. In fact in many cases the individual emerges from the tunnel, recovers full imagery, and enjoys visions of paradise conditions and of deceased relatives and friends, and the experiences become increasingly coherent. Secondly, if the brain is dying, one would expect each person to have highly personal chaotic experiences. But as we have seen, this is not the case in the NDE. Thirdly, many people do not report the tunnel effect during the NDE, but have full imagery immediately after apparently leaving their bodies. Fourthly, some report experiencing the tunnel effect on return to their bodies and not only on exit from them. We cannot suppose that the dying brain, having lost the ability to create peripheral imagery then for inexplicable reasons regains it as the dying process continues and the tunnel is left behind, then once more loses it again as it returns to the body. Fifthly, if the NDE is produced by the dying brain, it is strange that this dying brain then miraculously recovers once the NDE is terminated. This supposes that brain cells, once dead, are able to regenerate.”
On the opposite side of the argument we have the well-known psychologist Dr. Susan Blackmore. She believes the ‘symptoms’ of NDEs are nothing more than the result of a lack of oxygen to the dying brain.
If consciousness can exist outside the body this must change our view of reality. There is a theory that consciousness pre-dates matter, known as panpsychism, in which, in metaphysical traditions, consciousness, (or the Divine Consciousness of God), came first and was then responsible for the creation of matter. Even some scientists have proposed this idea, including the mathematician and astrophysicist Sir James Jeans, who was a Gold Medallist of the Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Medallist, President of the British Association, and Fellow of the Royal Society. Before World War II Jeans was a pioneer in the area of stellar structure, and the origin of the solar system. He also made contributions to the development of the quantum theory. To quote David Fontana again, (pp 406-408), Jeans said in 1932 that: “Today there is a wide measure of agreement … that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality, the universe begins t look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter …”
With both the NDE and the OOBE they beg the question as to whether the brain creates the mind or if the mind is able to exist quite separately. And, if both the NDE and the OOBE are real experiences it shows that you don’t have to be close to death to experience one. On a very personal note I can attest to this as I’ve had two OOBEs, and on neither occasion was I close to death, involved in a serious accident, or in any way ill or in danger. They both happened many years ago, at least five decades, and I can remember them as clearly as if they only happened yesterday.
So, what about the true nature of reality?
At the following link:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Nick Bostrom, PhD was quoted, under the heading: Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? The Simulation Argument. The following was written:
Philosophy Faculty, Oxford University
This website features scholarly investigations into the idea that you
might currently be literally living in a computer simulation, running on
a computer built by some advanced civilization. Films like The Matrix
and novels like Greg Egan's Permutation City have explored the idea that
we might be living in virtual reality. But what evidence is there for or
against this hypothesis? And what are its implications? The original
paper featured here, "Are You Living in Computer Simulation?", presents
a striking argument showing that we should take the
simulation-hypothesis seriously indeed, and that if we deny it then we
are committed to surprising predictions about the future possibilities
for our species.
The page then contains Abstracts and links to .pdf files in support of the argument being made. And the page ends with a list of background reading. You can also find Nick Bostrom’s site here:
http://www.nickbostrom.com
In November 2004 another scientist, Professor Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, also suggested that we might be living in a computer simulation: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1358588,00.html
Whilst stressing that this is still only a theory he says: “Over a few decades, computers have evolved from being able to simulate only very simple patterns to being able to create virtual worlds with a lot of detail. If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we think we’re living in. This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves be in such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense we could be ourselves the creations within this simulation.” Rees adds that other prominent cosmologists and physicists are now talking about the idea, one of whom points out that the universe is so finely tuned that it makes it safe for living organisms. And such fine-tuning might be seen as support for an intelligent designer.
I’ll leave the last words on consciousness to Fontana, who says: “We are a very long way from establishing the nature of the relationship between consciousness and matter, either at the macro level of the universe or the micro level of the individual, and the hypothesis that matter is primary to consciousness is subject to increasing assault even from within science itself. The implications of this for the survival of consciousness after the death of the physical body are not hard to seek.”
For a truly sceptical viewpoint about NDEs read this article by Keith Augustine:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html
Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences (2003) (Revised 2006)
It’s extremely long and the first sentence reads:
“Even if we disregard the overwhelming evidence for the dependence of consciousness on the brain, there remains strong evidence from reports of near-death experiences themselves that NDEs are not glimpses of an afterlife.” You can visit Keith Augustine’s site here:
Keith Augustine
Part of the above article dismisses the idea that those who are blind can really have an NDE in which they can see clearly. To return to the words of David Fontana, he, (pp 406-408), maintains that: “Professor Ken Ring, mentioned earlier for his work on NDEs with those who are born blind, also investigated OBEs in the blind. Using the same methods that allowed him to identify a group of those born blind who had experienced NDEs, he found a sample of ten people (four blind from birth, two adventitiously blind, and four seriously visually impaired) who reported OBEs. Nine out of ten of this group claimed to possess what seemed to be normal sight during the experience, and the reports of their sighted experiences were similar in important respects to those of the NDE group (Ring and Valerino 1998). If the reports of Ring’s two samples are accurate, then we can assume that, at least in terms of sensory awareness, those aspects of consciousness that leave the body during NDEs and OBEs are essentially the same.”
NDEs are becoming progressively more accepted in the medical profession. Amongst counsellors, and those in the psychology professions, UFO abductee experiences are becoming more accepted as being very real for those who believe that they underwent them.
Towards the end of July 2006 there was even a report from China that said Chinese psychiatrists are using the experiences of those who underwent an NDE around thirty years ago, during the massive earthquake in Tangshan that killed around two hundred and forty thousand people. The psychiatrists say that knowing about such experiences is helpful to those who have suffered a trauma such as a natural disaster, or an accident, and shows them how to conserve their energy rather than to panic. You can read the whole article here:
http://english.eastday.com
On a final note, it occurred to me not very long ago that many archaeological ancient burial sites have very narrow entrances. Were you inside one of these and looking outwards you would see a long tunnel with a light at the end. The archaeologists like to tell us the orientation of such light is to do with a summer or winter solstice, or some astrological event. That idea may well be true, although the experts are always telling us that. In the same way they always tell us that some ‘find’ they can’t classify or explain must be something to do with ritual, usually religious ritual. For them it’s probably an easy option, rather than admit they don’t know!
But how about this for an idea? Perhaps, just perhaps, the ancient builders of such tombs were trying to show that they also knew about the NDE, and that it was part of the dying process.
Regrettably, all of these experiences are still categorized as being unrelated. The time has come to treat NDEs, OBBEs, UFOs, ghosts, cryptids, etc as all being in some way connected. Then, perhaps, we’ll eventually come to understand what lies behind them.