Extraordinary states of consciousness can arise under different conditions. The best known among these is the near-death experience. People report leaving their own bodies, perceiving otherworldly beings or environments, completely transcending time and space, as well as a feeling of deep peace, intuitive insight, a sense of unity with everything, or paradoxicality (“I am nowhere and I am everywhere”).
Experiences at the threshold of death lead to profound changes in the beliefs, values, and behaviors of those affected. These changes include increased self-esteem, greater compassion and love toward others, a stronger appreciation for life, a more pronounced sense of the meaning of life, a greater interest in spirituality, a deeper appreciation for nature, as well as a diminished interest in personal material wealth and social status.
However, there are also altered states of consciousness that are not triggered by life-threatening situations. The changes mentioned above can also occur during intensive meditation. Meditation is usually associated with inner calm, mindfulness, and stress reduction. Yet, with intensive and long-term practice, states of consciousness can occur that go far beyond normal relaxation: the reduction of bodily awareness, an altered perception of space and time, a deep sense of connectedness, intense emotions such as peace and bliss, profound insight, and the impression of encountering another reality.
Intensive meditation also leads to lasting changes in people’s character and values. Many become more compassionate and calmer in their interactions with others and in dealing with everyday events, and they develop a greater appreciation for nature. Interestingly, the near-death-like phenomena can also occur when the relaxed state normally associated with meditation is disrupted. Profound emotional stress or a strong sense of impending doom are the triggers in these cases.
Certain meditative techniques, such as Fire Kasina meditation, can produce profound changes in subjective experience when practiced at an advanced level. In addition to the aspects mentioned above, people report a feeling of being held or embraced. In particularly deep states, even paradoxicality can occur, and the sense of one’s own body can disappear completely. Some individuals even seem to see behind the “matrix” and sense the world as physical elements: “I no longer perceive reality as something solid […] all the matter that we see is actually some kind of vibrating particles.”
A particular connection to meditation can be seen in people who have had a near-death experience. They often report that spirituality takes on greater importance in their lives afterward. Many begin meditating and, in doing so, encounter individual aspects of their original experience again. Anna from our book Where the Light Begins puts it in the following words: “I passed through it [the light] to carry it with me.”
Some meditators recognize the same infinite space again, together with the feeling of overwhelming peace and all-encompassing insight. The infinite space can also be accompanied by the same darkness or void that some perceive during the first phase of their near-death experience. Others even encounter beings or people from their original experience. They see the angel, Jesus, or the old friend. In addition, they often notice a strong presence of a force or energy, of beings of light, and/or of God. It is a feeling of not being alone or of someone standing behind the meditating person in the room.
From a neuroscientific perspective, such changes are interesting. Studies of advanced meditators point to changes during deep meditation in the activity and functional connectivity of the Default Mode Network, a network of brain regions associated with self-referential thinking and mind-wandering. Reduced activity could be related to the feeling that the clearly bounded sense of self temporarily weakens. Furthermore, reduced filtering activity of this network could lead to expansive states of consciousness and enable more comprehensive perceptual experiences.
Changes in neural activity patterns have also been observed during Vipassana or “open monitoring” meditation. Research findings show that people who practice Vipassana over a long period of time have increased gamma activity in a specific area of the brain, namely at the junction of the parietal and occipital lobes. In contrast, activity in the prefrontal cortex decreases.
Among other things, the brain areas mentioned are involved in visual processing and self-perception. Long-term meditation can be associated with increased awareness of the present moment, greater meta-awareness (conscious awareness of one’s own thoughts and emotions), and a weakening of the narrative self. The self, which is usually perceived as stable, increasingly appears as something dynamic that can change, weaken, or reorganize itself — as in a near-death experience. The state of death might also cause a brief increase in gamma activity across the frontal, parietal, and occipital cortices of the brain as studies in rats on cardiac arrest suggest.
In some Buddhist traditions, meditation is deliberately used to attain states of consciousness that are similar to the dying process. This is intended to reinforce the understanding that such experiences represent normal dimensions of the mind and reality, while also providing insight into the state of consciousness that manifests after death.
In contrast to near-death experiences, many meditators retain at least a partial awareness of their physical body and know that they are in a meditative state. While near-death experiences usually occur spontaneously and those affected cannot consciously control their course, advanced practitioners can deliberately induce the state and partially control its beginning, duration, and certain contents.
Near-death experiences and meditation show that consciousness appears to be considerably more changeable and multifaceted than our ordinary everyday perception would suggest. Maybe this is precisely where the scientific significance of meditation lies, because it provides rare access to states of consciousness in which bodily awareness, self-perception, space, and time are perceived in fundamentally different ways.
Read true stories of children’s near-death experiences and how they responded to them in our book Where the Light Begins: Stories of Near-Death Experiences and After-Death Communications by Children and How They Experience Them Differently Than Adults.
Ralph and Daniela Klose are German authors and long-term collaborative partners in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and consciousness research. Their book Where the Light Begins explores near-death experiences in children.
Ralph is a retired neuropsychologist with over three decades of clinical and academic experience, and Daniela is a medical writer and translator specializing in neuropsychology and transpersonal psychology. For many years, they worked as ghostwriters for researchers across Europe. They now write under their own names, connecting scientific expertise with years of hospice and end-of-life care experience to explore near-death-experiences and liminal states of consciousness. https://drklose.com
