The presence was described as brighter than anything the person had ever encountered.
Recounting a near-death experience (NDE), the individual described encountering “one massive entity” and feeling “total unity” with it — a sense of connection that appeared to encompass everything around them.
The account was one of 50 examined by researchers studying the unusual spaces people report entering during near-death experiences.
“What interests me is the transformation of the person’s experience of space and self,” lead researcher France Lerner, of the University of Haifa’s Contemplative Neuroscience and Neurophenomenology Lab in Israel, told the Daily Mail.
“The usual distinction between the observer and the surrounding world appeared to dissolve. This is an extraordinary lived experience, regardless of whether the participant interprets it spiritually, religiously or otherwise.”
Some participants reported landscapes filled with extraordinarily vivid colors, while others described immense fields of light, dark passageways or scenes from their lives unfolding at astonishing speed.
One participant said the experience began in darkness, followed by images from their life appearing on the surrounding walls in vivid color and sound, “like a movie.”
The person also described encountering a being made of “pure light” and an enormous garden featuring rolling hills, tall grass, playing children and roaming animals.
A study of 50 near-death experiences found that participants reported encountering some similar visual forms during the events
The researchers suggested that the participant may have glimpsed the next scene before fully entering it.
One person recalled seeing white light beyond a dark corridor and said entering the space felt like opening the sun. Others described being surrounded by light in every direction.
“I was in the center of an immense bubble of light,” one participant said. “It enveloped me completely; I can say that I was part of it.”
The researchers said descriptions of total connection were similar to “ego dissolution,” a state in which the usual feeling of being separate from the surrounding world seems to disappear.
However, Lerner emphasized that the findings neither prove nor disprove the possibility that consciousness survives death.
“What they offer is a new way of investigating the structure of these experiences,” she added.
Published in Frontiers in Psychology on October 15, the study examined whether drawings could capture aspects of near-death experiences that participants found difficult to describe in words.
The researchers recruited volunteers through the International Association for Near-Death Studies website and assessed their accounts using two established questionnaires.
The 50 participants generally recalled NDEs — which can occur during life-threatening events or severe physical or emotional trauma — from approximately 15 years earlier. Forty-two said their experiences occurred in life-threatening circumstances, while eight did not.
Because the researchers did not independently verify medical records, they could not determine exactly how close the participants had come to death or when the experiences occurred in relation to losing or regaining consciousness.
Each participant took part in a session lasting up to three hours, answering questions and drawing the spaces they remembered. The researchers reconstructed 112 separate stages to demonstrate how the scenes changed, using geometric outlines from a catalog or drawings created by the participants themselves.
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Of those 112 stages, 108 fell into four categories: 28 cone-shaped spaces, 31 partial circles or ovals, 20 gently curved spaces that appeared almost flat, and 29 complete circles or ovals.
Four stages did not fit these categories or contained no spatial representation and were excluded from the comparisons.
A participant’s map of a near-death experience, showing encounters with family, a life review and visions of past and future lives, along with their perceived position and movement through the space
A participant’s reconstruction of a tunnel-like space experienced during a near-death event
A participant’s reconstruction of a near-death experience showing a vast space divided between darkness and light, with a cross marking their perceived position
“Imagine looking through a narrow passage, with your field of vision limited by two boundaries,” Lerner said.
“This is one example of what we describe as a cone-shaped configuration. Other participants described spaces with curved boundaries, rather like looking across part of a dome or a wide panorama.”
Lerner stressed that the shapes represented how participants experienced their visual field, rather than necessarily depicting physical tunnels, rooms or landscapes.
“We are investigating the visual field itself: the shape, extent and organization of what a person experiences seeing.”
Twenty-two of the 28 cone-shaped spaces were described using black, gray, white or light textures. By comparison, 27 of the 31 more strongly curved, partial-circle or oval spaces included color.
The cone-shaped configurations also resembled the dark tunnels with a distant light that are frequently reported in near-death experiences.
The drawings indicated that the spaces could appear to change as participants shifted their attention.
The researchers also analyzed reports of feeling separated from the physical body, distinguishing movement away from the body from movement back toward it. These memories often involved opposing directions, although the study instructions explicitly defined the phases as separation and return.
After statistical adjustments, the researchers found no reliable relationship between a specific shape and the overall intensity of an NDE. Differences in color among the other geometric categories were also less consistent.
The team noted that some tunnel-like descriptions resembled visual changes associated with fainting, reduced oxygen or restricted peripheral vision. However, these similarities do not establish what caused the experiences reported by this group.
The team’s MIST project, or Mapping Interface for Altered States of Consciousness, is creating an interactive three-dimensional environment to reconstruct these experiences, with planned comparisons involving meditation and substance-induced states.
“As a researcher working in phenomenology, I do not need to decide whether an NDE reveals an afterlife or results entirely from brain activity in order to investigate it,” Lerner said.
“What matters is that people report extraordinarily vivid and emotionally significant experiences, often involving complex spatial and perceptual characteristics that we are only beginning to describe systematically.
“The strongest conclusion supported by our study is that some of these characteristics can be reconstructed, quantified and compared across individuals.”