Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience

Dr. Pim van Lommel, a renowned cardiologist, was so inspired by the stories his patients told of their near-death experiences that he became the first medical practitioner to risk his reputation with a full, systematic clinical trial into the phenomenon.

Van Lommel interviewed hundreds of heart patients at his hospital who had all clinically died, some for five minutes or longer, before being resuscitated. Of these, a significant percent reported an ongoing experience after the medical monitors had pronounced them to be dead. Half were aware they were "dead," and some had out-of-body experiences in which they witnessed the actions of the hospital staff around their bodies. The startling results of this study have created a worldwide sensation and serve as the basis for this book.

"The evidence supports the validity of `near-death' experiences and suggests that scientists should rethink theories on one of the ultimate medical mysteries: the nature of human consciousness."---The Washington Post

"This research will be seized on by academics who believe that the mind can continue to work after the brain has stopped. Church leaders will cite it as evidence for the existence of a soul."---The Sunday Telegraph (London)

"[A] provocative study, and we can only hope there will be more."---The Toronto Star

"Dr. Pim van Lommel's study of cardiac patients is one of the most talked-about works of recent years."---The Herald (Glasgow)

As a Cardiologist, Pim Van Lommel was struck by the number of his patients who claimed to have near-death experiences as a result of their heart attacks. As a scientist, this was difficult from him to accept: Wouldn't it be scientifically irresponsible of him to ignore the evidence of these stories? Faced with this dilemma, van Lommel decided to design a research study to investigate the phenomenon under the controlled environment of a cluster of hospitals with a medically trained staff.

For more than twenty years van Lommel systematically studied such near-death experiences in a wide variety of hospital patients who survived a cardiac arrest. In 2001, he and his fellow researchers published his study on near-death experiences in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. The article caused an international sensation as it was the first scientifically rigorous study of this phenomenon. Now available for the first time in English, van Lommel offers an in-depth presentation of his results and theories in this book that has already sold over 125,000 copies in Europe.

Van Lommel provides scientific evidence that the near-death phenomenon is an authentic experience that cannot be attributed to imagination, psychosis, or oxygen deprivation. He further reveals that after such a profound experience, most patients' personalities undergo a permanent change. In van Lommel's opinion, the current views on the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists are too narrow for a proper understanding of the phenomenon. In Consciousness Beyond Life, van Lommel shows that our consciousness does not always coincide with brain functions and that, remarkably and significantly, consciousness can even be experienced separate from the body.

Pim Van Lommel is a world-renowned cardiologist and medical expert on near-death experiences. For more than twenty-five years he worked as a cardiologist at an eight-hundred-bed teaching hospital in the Netherlands where he began studying near-death experiences in patients who survived a cardiac arrest. In addition to his sensational study published in the distinguished British medical journal The Lancet, van Lommel has authored chapters in several books about near-death experiences and also published many articles about the subject. Over the past several years, van Lommel has been lecturing all over the world on near-death experiences and the relationship between consciousness and brain function. In 2005, he was granted the Bruce Greyson Research Award on behalf of the International Association of Near-Death Studies. In 2006, the president of India awarded him the lifetime achievement award at the World Congress on Clinical and Preventive Cardiology in New Delhi. Visit the author online at www.pimvanlommel.nl.