Life review
Encyclopedia
A life review is a phenomenon widely reported as occurring during near-death experiences, in which a person rapidly sees much or the totality of his or her life history in chronological sequence and in extreme detail. It is often referred to by people having experienced this phenomenon as having their life "flash before their eyes". The life review is discussed in some detail by near-death experience scholars such as Drs. Raymond Moody
, Kenneth Ring
, and Barbara Rommer. A reformatory purpose seems commonly implicit in accounts, though not necessarily for earthly purpose, since return from a near-death experience may reportedly entail individual choice.
While experiencers, who appear to number into many thousands according to NDE studies, sometimes report reviews took place in the company of otherworldly beings who shared the observation, they also say they felt unjudged during the process, leaving themselves their own strongest critics. Although rare, there are also a few accounts of life reviews or similar experiences without a near-death experience such as the simpler out-of-body experience
or under circumstances of intense threat or duress. Some scientists discount near-death experiences themselves or stigmatize their study. Further it is claimed there is evidence for cultural differences in the near death experience, and there is also evidence that the NDE is hallucinatory.
's widely read account, in which she described the life as her best conception of hell, also described the life review as extending to ripples of one's life and acts out into further degrees of separation. Some believe this extension to have limitations.
The term 3D is employed to approximate the inclusion of different physical perspectives onto a scene; the intensity of a life review was described by one individual as enabling him to count every nearby mosquito; but equally common is the description of feeling the emotional experience of the other parties, including in one case virtually everyone in a room. While some accounts appear to describe scenes as selected, others more commonly narrate the experience as including things they had, probably naturally, long ago entirely forgotten, with "nothing left out." Experiencers commonly describe the intense vividness and detail as making them feel more alive than when normally conscious:
. The Tibetan Buddhist understanding can be found in The Tibetan Book of The Dead, and is known as The Bardo Thordul (the stage between life and afterlife).
Experiencers often report a sharp drop in materialistic
outlook (both acquisitive and philosophical), an intensified compassion for others and sense of interconnectedness, newfound altruistic activities, personality changes (though occasionally entailing divorce), a new interest in self-education and spirituality, and so on. Dannion Brinkley
as one instance described himself as putting off previously deep-rooted sociopathic traits ingrained from a difficult childhood through his work as a sniper in the Vietnam War
. A frequent comment by experiencers is that they later strongly avoided unethical or inconsiderate actions because they wanted to avoid painfully reliving the receiving end of the action which they knew would await them.
The transformative effect is in fact so statistically uniform in comparison with other areas of demographic study that some near-death experience investigators point to it as much as to experiencer accounts' detail as evidence for the empirical reality of the phenomenon itself. Kenneth Ring's book Lessons from the Light includes numerous accounts of a near-death experience permitting people hitherto blind, including cases from birth, as enabled to see (and interpret) vision during the experience.
held that one engages in a life review process after dying, with the lessons learned from this review becoming part of one's intuition in subsequent incarnations: "The truths absorbed by the mind in the life after death become in the next incarnation a part of the inborn wisdom. Developed intuition is consolidated and compressed understanding distilled through a multitude of diverse experiences gathered in previous lives."
Raymond Moody
Raymond Moody is a psychologist and medical doctor. He is most famous as an author of books about life after death and near-death experiences , a term that he coined in 1975. His best-selling title is Life After Life.-Life:...
, Kenneth Ring
Kenneth Ring
Kenneth Ring is Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut, and a researcher within the field of near-death studies...
, and Barbara Rommer. A reformatory purpose seems commonly implicit in accounts, though not necessarily for earthly purpose, since return from a near-death experience may reportedly entail individual choice.
While experiencers, who appear to number into many thousands according to NDE studies, sometimes report reviews took place in the company of otherworldly beings who shared the observation, they also say they felt unjudged during the process, leaving themselves their own strongest critics. Although rare, there are also a few accounts of life reviews or similar experiences without a near-death experience such as the simpler out-of-body experience
Out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body ....
or under circumstances of intense threat or duress. Some scientists discount near-death experiences themselves or stigmatize their study. Further it is claimed there is evidence for cultural differences in the near death experience, and there is also evidence that the NDE is hallucinatory.
Duration
The perception of time appears to be subjective and has been described as from lasting less than a few seconds to instantaneous, though at least one experiencer described it as feeling like half a minute. Accounts differ as to what phase of a near-death experience in which a review might take place.Scope and clarity
Subjects frequently describe their experience as panoramic, 3-D or holographic. During a life review, the subject's perception is reported to include not only their own perspective in increased vividness, as if they were reliving a given episode itself again, but that of all other parties they interact with at each point being reviewed. Betty EadieBetty Eadie
Betty Eadie is a prominent American author of several books on near-death experiences . Her best-known book is the #1 New York Times bestselling book, Embraced by the Light . It describes her near-death experience. It is arguably the most detailed near-death account on record...
's widely read account, in which she described the life as her best conception of hell, also described the life review as extending to ripples of one's life and acts out into further degrees of separation. Some believe this extension to have limitations.
The term 3D is employed to approximate the inclusion of different physical perspectives onto a scene; the intensity of a life review was described by one individual as enabling him to count every nearby mosquito; but equally common is the description of feeling the emotional experience of the other parties, including in one case virtually everyone in a room. While some accounts appear to describe scenes as selected, others more commonly narrate the experience as including things they had, probably naturally, long ago entirely forgotten, with "nothing left out." Experiencers commonly describe the intense vividness and detail as making them feel more alive than when normally conscious:
Effect
The effect of a life review is often a strongly transformative experience. Experiencers describe them as extremely unpleasant from the perspective of the unhappiness they had inflicted on others, including feelings they had never dreamed of as resulting, and equally pleasant from the perspective of the good feeling they had brought to others' lives, extending to the littlest forgotten details. To some extent, this experience resembles purgatoryPurgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
. The Tibetan Buddhist understanding can be found in The Tibetan Book of The Dead, and is known as The Bardo Thordul (the stage between life and afterlife).
Experiencers often report a sharp drop in materialistic
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
outlook (both acquisitive and philosophical), an intensified compassion for others and sense of interconnectedness, newfound altruistic activities, personality changes (though occasionally entailing divorce), a new interest in self-education and spirituality, and so on. Dannion Brinkley
Dannion Brinkley
Dannion Brinkley is an American author who described two near death experiences in his 1994 book Saved by the Light. He is also a hospice volunteer, speaker, and prominent figure in the New Age and New Thought Movement....
as one instance described himself as putting off previously deep-rooted sociopathic traits ingrained from a difficult childhood through his work as a sniper in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. A frequent comment by experiencers is that they later strongly avoided unethical or inconsiderate actions because they wanted to avoid painfully reliving the receiving end of the action which they knew would await them.
The transformative effect is in fact so statistically uniform in comparison with other areas of demographic study that some near-death experience investigators point to it as much as to experiencer accounts' detail as evidence for the empirical reality of the phenomenon itself. Kenneth Ring's book Lessons from the Light includes numerous accounts of a near-death experience permitting people hitherto blind, including cases from birth, as enabled to see (and interpret) vision during the experience.
Popular culture
- The life review is suspected to be the source of the expression "I saw my life flashing before my very eyes".
- In Blackadder: Back and Forth, the Life Review is used as a plot device. When BaldrickBaldrickBaldrick is the name of several fictional characters featured in the long-running BBC historic comedy television series Blackadder. Each one serves as Edmund Blackadder's servant and sidekick and acts as a foil to the lead character...
forgets the correct placement for a series of unlabelled dials, Edmund BlackadderEdmund BlackadderEdmund Blackadder is the single name given to a collection of fictional characters who appear in the BBC mock-historical comedy series Blackadder, each played by Rowan Atkinson. Although each series is set within a different period of British history, each character is part of the same familial...
half-drowns him, hoping that, when his life flashes before his eyes, he'll be able to remember the correct positions. - Ford PrefectFord Prefect (character)Ford Prefect is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. He is the only character other than the protagonist, Arthur Dent, to appear throughout the entire Hitchhiker's saga.-Name:Although Ford had taken great care to blend into Earth...
experiences a life review when apparently plummeting to his death in Mostly HarmlessMostly HarmlessMostly Harmless is a novel by Douglas Adams and the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It is described on the cover of the first editions as "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy"...
, a book of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy". As in Blackadder, Ford hopes it'll provide him with some sort of useful information to help him in his predicament. - In Terry PratchettTerry PratchettSir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
's DiscworldDiscworldDiscworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....
series, the character Death points out that a person's life does indeed flash before their eyes before they die, and that the process is called "living". - In Richard MathesonRichard MathesonRichard Burton Matheson is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, all of which have been...
's novel What Dreams May ComeWhat Dreams May ComeWhat Dreams May Come is a 1978 novel by Richard Matheson. The plot centers on Chris, a man who dies and goes to Heaven, but eventually descends into Hell to rescue his wife...
, a newly dead character sees all the events of his life unfold in reverse, then later experiences the same thing much more slowly, in a self-evaluation process that the novel equates with purgatoryPurgatoryPurgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
. - In the short story 'Bullet In The Brain' by Tobias WolffTobias WolffTobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American author. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life , and his short stories. He has also written two novels.-Biography:Wolff was born in 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama...
, the character Anders has a minor life review, seeing a particular memory from his childhood after being shot. Wolff also draws attention to that which he did not see in his review. - In the movie American BeautyAmerican Beauty (film)American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela...
, at the end, we can see an example of a life review, more based on emotions and sensation than in a "full review" of the main character's life. - In Charles Dickens'sCharles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
book, A Christmas CarolA Christmas CarolA Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
, Scrooge is shown moments from his past by the Ghost of Christmas Past, and sees how his greediness and selfishness turned him into a cold person and how this affected his girlfriend and others. - In a Calvin and HobbesCalvin and HobbesCalvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...
comic CalvinCalvin (Calvin and Hobbes)Calvin ' is a fictional character, and one of the two principal characters in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Calvin demonstrates a level of wisdom, vocabulary and humor unusual for a six year-old boy...
was falling through the sky, He then thought if his life would flash before his eyes. As he is 6 years old, he reflects that it will not take long to watch. He wonders if he can get slow-motion replays of the time he smacked Susie Derkins with a slush ball. - In Chicken RunChicken RunChicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films...
, Babs says "my life flashed before my very eyes", but states it was "really boring". - In an episode of The SimpsonsThe SimpsonsThe Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, Homer sees his life as a YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
video. - The story of the third game of the Sly CooperSly CooperSly Cooper is a series of platform stealth video games for the Sony PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. The series was developed by Sucker Punch Productions for the first three games, and then it was passed on to Sanzaru Games while Sucker Punch continued work on the Infamous series...
series follows a life review of the title character. - Bill CosbyBill CosbyWilliam Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...
stated that he had a life review just before a tonsilectomy at the age of six. He joked that he called for a rerunRerunA rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. There are two types of reruns—those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Reruns can also be, as the...
because at that age he didn't have much of a life to flash before him and he missed most of it. - In the mangaMangaManga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
NarutoNarutois an ongoing Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. The plot tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires to become the Hokage, the ninja in his village who is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of...
, Kakashi Hatake receives a life review from his father when killed, before being revived.
Analogous concepts
The spiritual teacher Meher BabaMeher Baba
Meher Baba , , born Merwan Sheriar Irani, was an Indian mystic and spiritual master who declared publicly in 1954 that he was the Avatar of the age....
held that one engages in a life review process after dying, with the lessons learned from this review becoming part of one's intuition in subsequent incarnations: "The truths absorbed by the mind in the life after death become in the next incarnation a part of the inborn wisdom. Developed intuition is consolidated and compressed understanding distilled through a multitude of diverse experiences gathered in previous lives."
Further reading
- Lessons from the Light (Kenneth RingKenneth RingKenneth Ring is Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut, and a researcher within the field of near-death studies...
, Ph.D.; Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino): ISBN 0-9661327-8-5 - The big book of near-death experiences: the ultimate guide to what happens when we die (P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D.P. M. H. AtwaterP. M. H. Atwater is an American writer and researcher on subjects related to Idaho promotions, life and death issues, and spirituality from a New Thought point of view.-Life:...
): ISBN 978-1571745477 - Impact of the Near-Death Experience on Grief and Loss, Bruce Horacek, Ph.D. and IANDS, 2003, Grief and Loss
External links
- http://www.iands.org NDE website including accounts with mention of life reviews
- http://www.iands.org/research/important-research-articles/43-dr-pim-van-lommel-md-continuity-of-consciousness.html?start=3 Description of the LR in a medical discussion of the NDE.
- http://www.scribd.com/doc/19084665/PANORAMIC-MEMORY-A-RESPONSE-TO-THE-THREAT-OF-DEATH Noyes, R., and Kletti, R., "Panoramic Memory: A Response to the Threat of Death,". Omega, 1977, 8, 181-194