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 their 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 MoodyRaymond 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 RingDr. 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. Interestingly, 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 experienceAn 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. While some scientists discount near-death experiences themselves or stigmatize their study, the large body of accounts, when set under scrutiny, tends to defy dismissal as hallucination or cerebral effect, by virtue of its unusual detail, volume, consistency,
verisimilitudeVerisimilitude—or truthlikeness—in the philosophy of science is trying to articulate how a false theory could be closer to the truth than another false theory. This usage was mostly popularized by Karl Popper. He assumed that science was interested in the informative content of a theory because...
, narrators' credibility, and its insistent recounting of vividness and panoramicity. The near-death experience and its derivative phenomena as a result tend to lie more in the realm of the
paranormalParanormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
and
parapsychologyParapsychology is a controversial discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method...
, though that does not argue against their scientific study or reality per se.
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 a review might take place in.
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 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 conscious and 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. See
Impact of the Near-Death Experience on Grief and Loss, Bruce Horacek, Ph.D and IANDS, 2003, http://www.iands.org/grief_and_loss.html To some extent, this experience resembles purgatory. 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
materialisticThe philosophy 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. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the...
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 BrinkleyDannion Brinkley is an author who described two extensive near-death experiences in his 1994 book Saved by the Light. Brinkley told his story to near-death researcher Raymond Moody shortly after it occurred, but details of his account have been questioned by his doctor and various journalists...
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 WarThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
. 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.
Life review in popular culture
- The life review is suspected to be the source of the expression "I saw my life flashing before my very eyes", and some have speculated it might be connected to details like records of life in Revelation
The Book of Revelation, also called the Revelation of St. John, the Apocalypse of John, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ, is the last book of the New Testament. It may be shortened to Revelation but never Revelations...
20:12 in the ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
BibleThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
.
- In Blackadder: Back and Forth, the Life Review is used as a plot device. When Baldrick
Baldrick is the name of several fictional characters featured in the television series Blackadder. Each one serves as Edmund Blackadder's servant and sidekick. They are all portrayed by Tony Robinson...
forgets the correct placement for a series of unlabelled dials, Edmund 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 Prefect
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.-Biography:Ford is a good friend of the main character, an ordinary...
experiences a life review when apparently plummeting to his death in Mostly 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 Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett, OBE , more commonly known as Terry Pratchett, 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 DiscworldDiscworld is a comedic fantasy book series by the British author 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 Matheson
Richard Matheson , is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres...
's novel What 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 purgatoryPurgatory is the condition or process of purification in which the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven. This is an idea that has ancient roots and is well-attested in early Christian literature, while the conception of purgatory as a geographically situated place is...
.
- In the short story 'Bullet In The Brain' by Tobias Wolff
Tobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff, III is an American author.He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels .-Teaching:...
, 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 Beauty
American Beauty may refer to:*Rosa 'American Beauty', or "American Beauty rose", originally named "Madame Ferdinand Jamin" *"American Beauty Rag," ragtime composition by Joseph Lamb*American Beauty , a 1931 novel by Edna Ferber...
, 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's
Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most memorable characters. His novels and short stories have never gone out of print...
book, A Christmas CarolA Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens about a curmudgeon and his secular conversion and redemption after being visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve...
, 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 Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes was a syndicated comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and sardonic stuffed tiger. The pair are named after John Calvin, a 16th-century French Reformation...
comic CalvinCalvin may refer to:People with the surname Calvin:* John Calvin, theologian, founder of Calvinism* Idelette Calvin, wife of John Calvin, founder of Calvinism* Melvin Calvin, American chemist* Susan Calvin, fictional robopsychologist* William H...
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 an episode of The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated television 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 eponymous family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie...
, Homer sees his life as a YouTubeYouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google...
video.
Further reading
- Lessons from the Light (Kenneth Ring, Ph.D; Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino): ISBN 0-9661327-8-5
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Near-Death Experiences (P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D.
P. M. H. Atwater is an American writer on subjects related to spirituality from a New Age point of view. Born in Twin Falls, Idaho, Atwater is one of the original researchers in the field of near-death studies, having begun her work in 1978, and is the author of a number of books on subjects...
; David Morgan): ISBN 0-02-863234-6
External links