Consciousness without end by Pim van Lommel ISBN 978 90 259 5778 0 Reviewed by David Boadella Pim van Lommel was for 26 years a cardiologist at a hospital in Arnhem, Holland. In 2001 he published a study in the renowned medical journal, the Lancet, on a research study he made of 344 patients with heart failure, 62 of which reported neardeath experiences. His new book on “Consciousness without end” seeks to clarify whether such experiences are authentic, or are some kind of fantasy. His conclusions are that consciousness is not produced by the brain, but acts through the brain, and is trans-somatic, in the sense that it is not locally dependent on the life processes of the body. The book has seventeen chapters. In the first chapter he discusses different paradigms of science, and the sharp conflicts which exist between reductionistic materialism, and a more open-ended form of scientific enquiry. He quotes an article in the journal Science, which lists 25 questions which science cannot yet answer. In the second chapter he gives a detailed case-study of a typical neardeath experience. In chapter three he quotes research by Raymond Moody on twelve general characteristics of near death experiences, which are common to all, in spite of individual or cultural differences. Research from the USA and Germany estimates that some 25 million people world wide have had such experiences. He quotes studies by Kenneth Ring on five phases in the course of a near death experience, He then refers to the work of Michael Sabom, also a cardiologist, who was initially extremely sceptical about the validity of consciousness beyond the body, but was finally convinced by his own careful researches. Sabom distinguished between transpersonal experiences, which could not be verified independently, and “veridical” reports of events happening in the room during the near death condition, which could be independently confirmed. In the fourth chapter he quotes several studies on the life changes induced by the near-death experience, many of which lasted for years after the event. One of these was the great reduction in what Lommel calls “fear-death” : the normal deep human anxiety at the thought of dying, is replaced by a sense of deep connection to a dimension beyond the physical, which had been contacted during the out-of-body experience. In the fifth chapter Lommel reports on a study of 12 children with heart-failure and coma, who were re64 Book Review vived. Eight of these children reported out of the body experiences. Other studies looked at out of the body experiences which were found in 22 percent of a group of psychology students, none of whom had near-death experiences. Other causes had led them to such special states of consciousness. The sixth chapter looks at fourteen different conditions which can induce an out of body experience: in over half of these the brain was temporarily out of action. Lommel overviews the different neurological and psychological theories that seek to explain the experiences, and points out the difficulties many of them have in explaining the veridical reports on events that definitiely took place, which were later described accurately by near death patients who were in states of coma or deep unconsciousness. The seventh chapter reports in detail on Lommel’s own research on 344 patients with heart failure, which was published in the Lancet. 62 of these reported near death experiences when they returned to consciousness. Lommel then goes on to quote other medical studies by Bruce Greyson at a University Hospital in America (1595 patients) and by Dr. Peter Fenwick at a hospital in Southamapton (243 patients). All these studies conclude that the special states of consciousness took place precisely during the time of the heart-failure and the absence of brain function, and were not taking place before, or after the emergency, These detailed medical studies, all published in scientific journals, lead Lommel in his eighth chapter to look at what actually takes place in the brain, when the heart stops. Here his medical knowledge goes into great detail to show that experiences of states of consciousness that are higher, wider, or deeper than normal are occurring when the normal measurable brain functions associated with any form of consciousness, are showing no signals whatever of any activity. The brain is temporarily, but not irreversibly, dead. In the ninth chapter, Lommel goes deeper into the functioning of the normal brain. He looks at the functioning of the milliards of neurones, and the electromagnetic wave characteristics of the brain. He shows how consciousness research has failed to reduce the qualities of our experience to the quantities of excitation in the brain. He suggests that consciousness is not produced by the brain, and is not reducible to it, but functions through the brain (in a
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