'There’s certainly an afterlife': Doctor who studied 5000 near-death experiences makes spooky conclusion

Dr. Jeffrey Long recently wrote an essay for Insider, in which he detailed his career trajectory and how his interest in the afterlife developed. 37 years ago, he was working as an oncologist resident when he stumbled across a medical journal that detailed several examples of patients dying and coming back to life.

How could this be? Through all his medical training, Long had always been told you were either one thing or the other: there was no in-between life and death. Well, his experience and research have now convinced him otherwise.

The Near-Death Experience Research Foundation

Dr. Long founded this association in 1998. Here is his definition of a near-death experience (NDE):

Someone who is either comatose or clinically dead, without a heartbeat, having a lucid experience where they see, hear, feel emotions, and interact with other beings.

Long has dedicated his life to finding people who have had NDEs and documenting what they experienced. He then compares what all sorts of different people witnessed and says, ‘in the face of overwhelming evidence, I’ve come to believe there’s certainly an afterlife’.

What the afterlife is like

Long says that everyone experiences different things, just like in life. However, he has remarked some strikingly consistent patterns.45% of people say they had an out-of-body experience. Just like you see in films, people report witnessing what is going on, often after having risen from their physical body. Others claim they go to another realm, like this man who died for 7 minutes before coming back to life.

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So, how do we know people aren’t just creating this dream-like narrative because they have seen movies where this is what happens? We often create stories in our heads as a coping mechanism for experiences we don’t understand. It seems reasonable to conclude that dying, even only briefly, would push people to scramble for the sense in it all.

However, Long has considered this.

It turns out that children, who are too young to have seen the movies that give us a read-made template of near-death experiences, still reported similar experiences.

Some of the stories seem eerily watertight: one woman has riding a horse when she had a NDE, and while her unconscious body fell to the ground, ‘her consciousness traveled with her horse as he galloped back to the barn’. Afterwards, she could describe exactly what had happened at the barn even though her body was not physically there.

So, has Dr. Long convinced you?

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Sources used:

Insider: I've studied more than 5,000 near death experiences. My research has convinced me without a doubt that there's life after death.

New York Post: I’m a doctor who studied 5K near-death experiences — there is life after death