John C. Gibbs, PhD
The Ohio State University
From the Journal of Near-Death Studies, Volume 43-1
Alternative Link: https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2025-43-1-p4-30
ABSTRACT: In describing their transcendent or comprehensive near-death ex periences (NDEs), many people recollect feeling that they were “home,” indeed, had returned home. In this article, I explore the question of whether the “return ing home” impression implies that humans reincarnate. I address the topic of reincarnation not as a religious doctrine but as a hypothesis amenable to scien tific inquiry. The reincarnation hypothesis finds support from convergent lines of evidence pertaining to terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, and, especially, past-life memories. Paradoxical issues and problematic content challenge the ordinary conception of reincarnation as journeys in linear time. Challenges not withstanding, I conclude that “I was home” in NDEs points to death and birth as ontological transitions and to a spiritual—interconnected souls—reality under lying human bodily existences.
KEYWORDS: deathbed visions, near-death experiences, past-life memories, reincarnation, terminal lucidity
The year was 1980, the spring semester of my first academic year as a psychology faculty member at The Ohio State University. Shortly after a lecture I gave on the topic of near-death experiences (NDEs), an undergraduate named Scott approached me; his quick gait indicated urgency and excitement. Six years ago, Scott told me fervently, he had nearly died from a violent assault. While close to death, he experienced precisely the phenomenon I had described in my lecture. Scott kept a personal journal, which he subsequently shared with me. I found his entries fascinating:
After I lost consciousness [from the assault,] I was looking down from the upper right corner of the room, I could see a figure kneeling over someone [my body] on the floor. . . . I was moving away from it. . . . I sensed I was in some sort of a tunnel. . . . Ahead I detected a faint glow. As I approached it the light became stronger, more brilliant. I felt more comfortable the closer I came. It was a good, warm, wonderful feeling—nothing like anything I have had before or since. I felt calm, peaceful, totally at ease, . . . The light seemed to be everywhere. It was brilliant, pure, clean. . . .The brightest light I have ever seen but it didn’t hurt my eyes.
I had no sense of being enclosed, the space felt limitless. I did sense some sort of barrier ahead of me, . . . I sensed that there was someone or something else there. . . . The sense of being in the presence of the “being” was incredibly wonderful, calming, peaceful. I felt total acceptance and love. . . . The “Being” knew everything I had done, said, or thought. . . . I sensed that the “other” spoke to me (I heard it in my head). It said, “You should go back, it’s not your time.” I perceived the voice as associated with the light. . . . I felt that the decision to return was mine but that there was an insistence to the “should” . . . I had things to accomplish, people that would need my help. . . . I really didn’t want to leave but I felt I had to. At this point I felt a quick tug and it all ended. The next thing I recall was a nurse asking me if I knew my name and where I was.
For years I told no one about the experience. . . . I tried to dismiss it but it would not go away. The feelings associated with it were too strong—the acceptance, the love, the sense of purpose to my life. . . . [how] I appreciate little things [and] don’t fear death. . . . I couldn’t explain it so it would be impossible for anyone else to understand.
It wasn’t until I took a class from Dr. Gibbs at OSU that I finally understood. The course was developmental psychology and covered the whole life span. The last lecture dealt with the Near-Death Ex perience from Moody’s book [Moody, 1975]. As Dr. Gibbs described the [elements] I stopped writing after the third one. It was like being struck by lightning. Out of the [15 elements], I had gone through 10 or 11. I finally had my “answer,” and it was such a good feeling! . . . After class, I went up to him and told him briefly about my experience.
In later entries, Scott described entering the light as “like going home”—and his “strong feeling” after his NDE that we “come back to this [earthly existence] at some future point.”
In this article, I explore the ontological and spiritual significance of NDEs—also termed recalled experiences of death (REDs) and charac terized as “lucid dying” (Parnia, 2024). My focus is on the impression that entering the realm of light is—to quote Scott—“like going home.” “Home” has been defined as a familiar “place or environment natural or dear to one because of personal relations or feelings of comfort and security” (Funk & Wagnalls, 1974). If one is “at home,” one is “at ease or in one’s element,” indeed, “at the very heart or root of the matter” (Oxford University, n.d.). What might impressions of “going home”— and even being “back home again”— another phrase used in NDE accounts—imply about the nature of reality, human existence, and the meaning of life and death? Why does the “place or environment” of light feel familiar to so many near-death experiencers (NDErs)? Do we humans leave and return to the realm of light more than once? As Scott put it, do we “come back . . . at some future point”? Do we have a non-material essence—a soul—that embodies with other souls in an interconnected journey of successive earthly lives?
The Reincarnation Hypothesis and NDEs
The belief that humans have a continuing spiritual essence across temporal earthly lives has found advocates throughout religious doctrinal and philosophical history. Reincarnation as a doctrine has been thematic in Eastern religions, including Hinduism, Jainism, and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in ancient Egypt, various tribal traditions, first century Gnostic sects, Jewish mysticism, Norse mythology, and spiritualist literature. Reincarnation beliefs have also found expression in the works of philosophers, theologians, and mystics. The third-century Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus posited that humans have souls that originate from and return to a timeless, unitary realm of light.
The focus of this article is on reincarnation not as religious doc trine or philosophical postulate but, instead, as a hypothesis amenable to scientific investigation (cf. Tucker, 2005). Can studying NDEs and cognate phenomena lead to evidence-based insights into the nature of reality and human existence?
The context for the “I was home” impression is NDEs. “When some people come close to death,” wrote psychiatrist and NDE researcher Bruce Greyson (2017), “they go through a profound experience that may include a sense of leaving the body and entering some other realm or dimension” (p. 19). Various typologies for classifying and studying core elements or broad features of NDEs have been proposed (see, for example, Greyson, 2014; Holden, 2009, 2017; Parnia, 2024). The most elegant of these typologies is cardiologist and NDE researcher Michael Sabom’s (1982) tripartite classification of NDEs as (a) autoscopic— literally, self-visualizing; clearly perceiving from an elevated vantage point one’s physical body and its surrounding earthly situation), (b) transcendental (moving through a dark region or tunnel to an otherworldly yet familiar realm of light; encountering and mentally communicating in that realm with one or more beings or deceased loved ones; reliving [from others’ as well as one’s own perspective] events of one’s earthly life; and reaching some border, limit, barrier, or juncture point), and (c) combined or comprehensive, such that “the transcendental portion of the experience [typically] followed the autoscopic portion in a continuous, unbroken sequence” (Sabom, 1982, p. 52).
NDEs of all three types are intriguing. Can such experiences— especially, the “I was home” impression in transcendental or com prehensive NDEs—reveal anything about the nature of reality and human existence? Or are they merely a composite of “hallucinations, imaginings, and mental constructions” (Blackmore, 1993, p. 4). Sabom (1998) cautioned that, although “the NDE carries a powerful, spiritual imprint of God,” near-death experiences by definition do not necessarily inform spiritual or religious questions concerning death per se (pp. 98–99). Other cardiologists, however, have noted the intimate continuity from dying to death, especially in cardiac arrest cases. Cardiac standstill, brain nonfunction, and sensory shutdown constitute “the closest model [we have] to the process of dying” (van Lommel, 2006, p. 136; cf. Batthyány, 2023). The border between dying and irreversible cessation of bodily function, is tenuous (Parnia, 2006, 2013, 2024); in deed, “biologically and medically speaking,” cardiac arrest is virtually “synonymous” with death (Parnia, 2013, p. 23; cf. Parnia 2006, 2024).
Although controversy continues, research reviewers (Egnor & O’Leary, 2025; Gibbs, 2019; Long, 2017; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; cf. Greyson, 2010b, 2014, 2021a; Parnia, 2013; van Lommel, 2010) have generally concluded that NDEs, despite culturally or religiously based projective content and individual interpretations, do have significant implications for an understanding of reality, life, death, and mind. Autoscopic, comprehensive, and transcendental NDEs are generally evident across personal, situational, cultural, and historical contexts. The experience is more likely to occur, as well as to be more extensive or profound, for those who are closer to physical death (see Gibbs, 2019, p. 251); indeed, “the more severe the physiological crisis, the more likely are NDErs to experience (or report experiencing) complex cognitive functioning” (Batthyány, 2023, p. 172). Experiencers recollect heightened awareness and perceptual clarity while out of body. They typically insist that their experience was reality, neither a dream nor a hallucination (Parnia, 2024, pp. 259–277). Most notably:
Some [autoscopic] experiencers report accurately seeing events at some distant location from their unconscious body, such as in another room of the hospital; or an experiencer [in the transcendental NDE] might meet a deceased loved one who then communicates verifiable information that the experiencer could not have known through normal sensory or rational means. (Greyson, 2021b, p. 213, emphasis added; cf. Egnor & O’Leary, 2025, p. 100; Greyson, 2010a, 2021a; Par nia, 2024)
Heightened awareness, perceptual clarity, accurate autoscopic per ception, and meeting deceased loved ones—during documented clini cal death—are illustrated in the widely noted surgery case of Pamela Reynolds Lowery (Egnor & O’Leary, 2025; Sabom, 1998). On August 15, 1991, Lowery underwent surgery to remove a brain aneurysm. The surgery is radical, often requiring body hypothermia to induce cardiac arrest.
Preliminary procedures prepared Pam for surgery. Her eyes were taped shut. Instruments were inserted or attached first to anesthetize Pam intravenously and then to monitor many vital signs: her blood pressure, pulmonary pressure, heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen level, body temperature, and brain—cerebral cortex, brain stem—electrical activity. To confirm
that her brain would be dead, molded earplugs were inserted into both of her ears. They emitted 100 dB clicks every second that would continuously stimulate her hearing nerves and thus be recorded in her brain waves. The sound of the clicks was about as intense as the noise generated by a loud hair dryer on the highest setting, blowing into each ear. When she stopped responding to these loud clicks, medical personnel would know that all of the brain activity had ceased. The loud clicks also meant that even if she were conscious, she could not hear conversations in the operating room (Egnor & O’Leary, 2025, p. 86)
Pam’s comprehensive NDE began as neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler opened her skull with a cranial saw; she was already “under deep anesthesia,” though the hypothermia procedure had not yet begun (Spetzler, personal communication, July 2, 2002). Pam recounted:
The next thing I recall was the sound. . . . I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got the more clear the tone became. . . . I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. I was the most aware that I think that JOHN C. GIBBS, PHD 9 I have ever been in my entire life. . . . I was metaphorically sitting on Dr. Spetzler’s shoulder. (Sabom, 1998, p. 41)
The neurosurgeon was cutting through Pam’s skull. Through a cranial opening, a microscope was inserted into Pam’s brain to inspect the aneurysm deep in her brain. The aneurysm’s giant size meant that its excision—following induction of hypothermic cardiac arrest—would be necessary. A cardiovascular surgeon prepared access to Pam’s blood vessels. The vein and artery in Pam’s left groin area were connected to a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, so that her blood could circulate through the machine and be cooled by it. The machine lowered Pam’s body temperature to the point that her heart stopped beating and her brain ceased electrical activity. Her blood was then drained from her brain and body and temporarily stored in the cylinders of the machine. Her NDE continued:
There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. . . . It was like a tunnel but it wasn’t a tunnel. At some point very early in the tunnel vortex I became aware of my grandmother calling me. But I didn’t hear her call me with my ears. . . . It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. I trust that sense more than I trust my own ears. The feeling was that she wanted me to come to her. . . . there was this very little, tiny pinpoint of light that kept getting bigger and bigger. The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a light bulb,
The “incredibly bright” light “was real warm and real comfortable and real loving” (Benz, 2001). Pam
began to discern different figures in the light . . . they were all covered with light, they were light, and had light permeating all around them . . . they began to form shapes I could recognize and understand. I could see that one of them was my grandmother. I don’t know if it was reality or projection, but I would know my grandmother, the sound of her voice, anywhere. . . . I recognized a lot of people. My uncle Gene was there. So was my great-great-Aunt Maggie, who was really a cousin. On Papa’s side of the family, my grandfather was there. . . . They were specifically taking care of me, looking after me. They would not permit me to go further. . . . It was communicated to me—that’s the best way I know how to say it, because they didn’t speak like I’m speaking—that if I went all the way into the light something would happen to me physically. . . . So they wouldn’t let me go anywhere or do anything. I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had children to be reared. (Sabom, 1998, pp. 44–45)
With the aneurysm sac drained of blood, the neurosurgeon was able to excise it. Then the machine began to warm Pam’s blood and reintroduce it into her body. Pam’s brain and heart began to resume electrical activity. She “returned” to her physical body and “regained consciousness” (Sabom, 1998, pp. 46–47).
Recall that throughout the surgery, Pam’s eyes were taped shut, her ear canals occluded, and her body and brain deeply anesthetized. Nonetheless, she reported numerous idiosyncratic visual and auditory details, such as the pitch and shape of the cranial saw, her partially shaven head, and surgeons’ comments—all of which were corroborated by the medical staff (cf. Bachrach, 2014, p. 35; Egnor & O’Leary, 2025, p. 92–93; Rivas et al., 2023, p. 115).
These and other noted features common to NDEs—including accurate and clear autoscopic perception despite brain neuronal shutdown, telepathic communication in the light with a being and/or deceased loved ones, deeper NDEs in proximity to physical death—have impressed most NDE reviewers. Oncologist and NDE researcher Jeffrey Long wrote: “Multiple lines of evidence point to the conclusion that near-death experiences . . . cannot be explained by known physical brain function” (Long, 2017, p. 76). Neurophysiologist Wilder Penfield (1975; cf. Eccles, 1994) concluded from his studies of neuronal stimulation that “the mind has [independent] energy [and] the form of that energy is different from that of neuronal potentials that travel the axonic pathways” (quoted in Sabom, 1982, p. 183; cf. Greyson, 2021a, p.117). Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor (Egnor & O’Leary, 2025) concluded that, although “the mind generally depends on the function of the brain . . . it can also, at times, function independently” (p. 67). As Greyson, cited in Batthyány, has suggested,
what holds for the role of boundary conditions for physics might also help us understand the role of death and dying in TL [terminal lucidity] and the NDE. . . . death undoubtedly is an extreme condition of and for the organism (and the person), and thus represents another case in which extreme conditions reveal new insights about nature— in this case: about our nature. (Batthyány, 2023, p. 154, emphasis added)
Might “some element of the human organism (the mind?)” be separating from “physical determinants of consciousness” (Sabom, 1982, p. 181; cf. Parnia, 2024, p. 104)? Once separated from the brain, might the mind—self, consciousness—transition to a deeper reality? Might we humans return to a primary realm whence we came—and do so more than once?
Lines of Evidence, Past-Life Memories, and the Reincarnation Hypothesis
The multiple lines of evidence for mind or consciousness as distinct from brain—and hence for the possibility of reincarnation—extend from NDEs to end-of-life phenomena and past-life memories. “Terminal lucidity” refers to “the unexplained return of mental clarity and memory shortly before death in patients who had suffered years of chronic schizophrenia or dementia” and even lifelong mental disabilities (Greyson, 2010a, p. 38; cf. Batthyány, 2023; Nahm, 2009; Nahm & Greyson, 2009; Nahm et al., 2012). “Long thought lost to the ravages of dementia, unable to recall the events of their lives or even recognize those closest to them,” patients in these cases “suddenly wake up and exhibit surprisingly normal behavior, only to pass away shortly thereafter” (Egnor & O’Leary, 2025, p. 69). The patient “expresses gratitude [to close friends or family members], maybe takes care of unfinished business, makes peace, is ready to take leave”—as if the loved one is “back with us, and at the same time [is] moving on to another plane” (Batthyány, 2023, pp. 82, 115). Witnesses
tell us that they had an encounter with the preserved self or soul of their loved one—the very soul or inner self that for so long had been “hidden” or rendered inaccessible by dementia or a similarly devastating brain disorder. (p. 57)
Particularly pertinent to “I was home” is the case of Katharina (“Kathe”) Ehmer. Kathe was a severely disabled woman who had never spoken a single word during her entire life. Moreover, she was said to have suffered from repeated and severe attacks of meningitis, which were thought to have destroyed much of the brain tissue required for intelligent reasoning. Yet shortly before her death, Kathe
sang songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, “Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!” For half an hour she sang. . . . Then, she quietly passed away. (Nahm & Greyson, 2013, p. 78, 83; cf. Batthyány, 2023)
Besides studies of NDEs and terminal lucidity, another line of evidence pointing to mind as distinct from brain is noteworthy: an end-oflife phenomenon that has been variously termed deathbed visions (Osis & Haraldsson, 1977), nearing-death awareness (Callanan & Kelley, 1992), and, more broadly, approaching-death experiences (Fenwick, 2005; see E. F. Kelly et al., 2007). Deathbed visions have been reported across age, gender, nationality, religious tradition, and culture (Barrett, 1926; Osis & Haraldsson, 1977). The core features of deathbed visions—otherworldly visions of light, vivid or bright landscapes, and deceased loved ones or other figures—resemble those of transcendental and comprehensive NDEs. It might be possible “to explain some of these death-bed visions,” acknowledged past-life researcher Ian Stevenson, “as deriving from the wish of the dying person to be reunited with loved persons who died earlier” (Stevenson, 2001, p. 230)
“Why is my sister with my husband?” she asked. “They are both calling me to come.” “Is your sister dead?” I [Callanan] asked. “No, she still lives in China,” she said. “I have not seen her for many years.” When I related this conversation to the daughter [Lily], she was astonished and tearful. “My aunt died two days ago in China,” Lily said. “We decided not to tell Mother-her sister had the same kind of cancer. It was a very painful death; she lived in a remote village where good medical care wasn’t available. We didn’t want to upset or frighten Mother, since she is so sick herself.”… When Lily tearfully told her mother about her sister’s illness and death, Su said, with a knowing smile, “Now I understand.” Her puzzle solved, she died three weeks later, at peace and with a sense of anticipation. (pp. 98-99).
Multiple lines of suggestive evidence-from NDEs, terminal lucidity, and deathbed visions-notwithstanding, the reincarnation hypothesis has remained an issue in NDE literature. Raymond Moody, the pioneering researcher who popularized the term “near-death experience,” was neutral on the question in his landmark book Life After Life (1975). Moody did note that, in his sample of 50 cases, some respondents used “analogies which portray death as a transition from one state to another.” Transitioning to the state or realm of light was often analogized as coming “home”-a loving, comfortable, and secure realm encompassing, as in the dictionary definition, “personal relations.” Similar to Su’s deathbed vision of her deceased husband and sister “calling [her] to come” is that of a woman in Moody’s sample “whose deceased relatives were there to greet her at her death.” Recollecting her NDE, the woman compared death to a ‘homecoming” (Moody, 1975, pp. 96-97; cf. pp. 55-56). Left open was the question of whether one comes and leaves “home” more than once; that is, the issue of reincarnation. None of Moody’s 50 cases reported a past-life memory or a subsequent increased belief in reincarnation.
Larger samples entailed in more recent NDE studies enable revisitation of the “homecoming” impression and further exploration of evidence consistent with the reincarnation hypothesis. These studies have reported emphatic impressions among NDErs of having entered a familiar and comfortable place; impressions of “home” are also found in NDEr autobiographies such as those of Eben Alexander (2012), Betty Eadie (1992), and George Ritchie (1978). Some experiencers explicitly attribute their sense of familiarity to having returned home or to having been home again. But do such attributions necessarily imply reincarnation? Could not the round trip, as it were, instead be a singular event? Christian author John Burke (2015) posited the self as eternally embedded in the mind of God to account for NDErs’ feelings of having returned to a familiar realm of existence “I feel like I’d been here before” or “I feel like I had always existed.” Burke wrote: “You did exist in the mind of God eternally. In Heaven, we get clarity on who he intended us to be before we were born” (emphasis added, p. 75). Human pre-existence, in other words, does not necessarily imply reincarnation.
Nonetheless, the reincarnation hypothesis has gained explicit support in the larger, more extensive investigations conducted since Moody’s pioneering contribution. Cardiologist Pim van Lommel and colleagues’ (2001) prospective longitudinal study of 344 cardiac arrest survivors included 62 NDE cases. “Some [of these] NDEs,” van Lommel reported, “involve the experience of what appear to be previous lives cut short by a violent death” (van Lommel, 2010, p. 333). Му student Scott’s post-NDE reflection and “strong feeling” that we “return at some future point” was corroborated in psychologist Kenneth Ring’s (1980, 1984) aftereffects studies, each entailing over 100 cases. Whether NDEs lead directly to a belief in reincarnation, however, has been questioned (Greyson, 2021b; Sabom, 1998, pp. 138-141; cf. Wells, 1993).
By far the largest case collection for investigating questions such as reincarnation in NDEs was established in 1998 by Jeffrey Long (2010). Long created a website database, the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF; www.nderf.org), that enables NDErs to recount their experiences using a standard, highly structured, and extensive survey protocol. The NDERF database currently includes over 5,000 entries from individuals across diverse cultures. Indeed, NDEs in this database and elsewhere have been “reported by children, adults, scientists, physicians, ministers, among the religious and atheists, and from countries throughout the world” (Long, 2017, p. 63). Consistent with van Lommel’s and Ring’s studies, the NDERF database includes numerous entries with recollections not only of an ethereal “home” but also of one or more past lives. As of February, 2025, the “I was home” impression-for example, “I knew I was in my real home;” “I felt more at home there than I do here;” “This was where I was from [and] I was home;” felt “happy to be home again,” was evident in nearly 300 of the extant 3,598 NDE entries (J. Long, personal communication, February 22, 2025). Over 50 transcendental or comprehensive NDE cases entail not only “home” content but also explicit reference to having lived one or more previous lives. Although 50 or 300 cases count for little percentage-wise in a large database (Miller, 2023), a content feature-such as “home” or past-life memory-can gain validity status insofar as it meaningfully embeds in an organic, rather than purely empiricist, approach that identifies themes and subthemes in a core narrative (see Parnia, 2024; Parnia et al., 2022).
A case illustrating both “I was home” and past-life memories in a core narrative is that of Richard L. (Richard L NDE, n.d.). Richard’s comprehensive NDE occurred in connection with his near-fatal bicycle accident when he was eight years old. “The last thing I remember,” wrote Richard, “was the sound of screeching tires:”
The next thing I remember was the sensation of floating about twenty feet up in the air. I looked down and saw some kid lying in the middle of the road. He looked familiar.. I watched this scene for what seemed like about a minute, then I noticed a bright light shining above me. I looked up and saw light streaming out of what looked like a pinhole in the sky. The hole was slowly getting bigger…. It [the light] was very beautiful and very bright, yet I could see it clearly… . I felt myself being pulled up towards it…. The sensation was like speeding down a tunnel of light…. I passed through some kind of dividing line, a barrier of sorts. I was surrounded by light. Misty shapes began to form as I looked around. At first, they were just moving swirls of light, but they took the shape of human forms… One of them spoke to me, “You’re not supposed to be here, yet. You have to go back. You know what you agreed to,” he said. I told him I didn’t want to go back. I liked it here. It felt like home” “You must go back, you have work to do. We’ll send you back, soon.”
Richard asked one of the forms, “Why do I feel like this is home?” He was told: “Because it is home. All begin and all return here. It is the starting point for all journeys and lessons” (emphasis added). In the light, Richard “looked around” and “saw familiar faces:”
These were friends, family, enemies, people I had known before, but I couldn’t remember from where or when. Some of them I knew I had known for a very long time. Many lives, many places, many times. I flashed on visions from those lives and events. There was a continuity and connectedness about all of it, a sense of purpose and order that spanned the centuries.
The “this is home” and past-lives content in Richard’s NDE recollection are noteworthy. The realm of light in his NDE is specified as a primary reality where “all begin and all return… the starting point for all journeys and lessons.” Across the journeys-spanning “centuries” was a “continuity and connectedness, a sense of purpose and order.” Richard recognized deceased relatives (“family”) as well as friends-even “enemies” and people he “had known for a very long time” (cf. Parnia, 2024, p. 201). His spiritual journey or successive journeys to and from “home” -had entailed “many lives and events” in “many places.” “Somehow I comprehended,” another NDEr reflected, “that the current life that I was living was just a continuation of a very long existence” (Parnia, 2024, р. 200). Yet details are typically scarce. Richard could not recall “from where or when” he knew persons in the light, perhaps because he merely “flashed on visions from those lives and events” (emphasis added). Gregg S (Gregg S NDE, 2016) recalled only “echoes of many past lives” (emphasis added). Joschua B (Joschua B NDE, n.d.) “knew I had lived before but not the specifics.” Yet another NDEr, cited by Parnia (2024), “was shown various clips from past lives” (p. 199, emphasis added). Some NDErs reported that they at least briefly experienced past identities, for example: “Hans” in old Holland (Bob M NDE, n.d.); a soldier marching in the Roman army, then an indigenous person in pre-Columbian Mexico (Vinnie G NDE, n.d.); a man in Kansas in the 1800s (Kitty W NDE, n.d.); a woman in Eastern Europe (Joschua B NDE, n.d.); and “some sort of scullery maid . probably in France” (VNDE, n.d.). Without specifics, however, such recollections cannot be investigated for empirical veracity.
Even elaborated past-life recollections may not be researchable. Greyson (2021b) provided an example. As she drifted in and out of a coma, Anita Moorjani
saw a glimpse of my [older] brother and me and somehow seemed to understand that it was a previous life where I was much older than he and was like a mother to him…. I was very protective towards him [in] a very underdeveloped rural setting, in a time and location I couldn’t identify. We were living in a sparsely furnished mud hut, and I looked after him while our parents went out to work in the fields. (Greyson, 2021b, p. 216)
Although a “glimpse,” Moorjani’s past-life memory is more elaborated than Richard L.’s “flashes” on past “lives and events.” Yet the details are not researchable. The “underdeveloped rural setting” was “in a time and location I couldn’t identify”. As Greyson (2021b) noted, NDE flashes, echoes, glimpses, clips, or even elaborated memories of past lives, although “quite compelling” to the experiencers, typically include “no specific details that could be corroborated by independent investigators and, therefore, considered evidential” (p. 216). Greyson did note a researchable and hence evidential-NDE case: that of 48-year-old David Moquin, who, as he drifted in and out of a coma, repeatedly experienced in his NDE an empirically specified past-life memory of having burned to death in an airplane crash as a combat pilot during World War II. Moquin’s details of his identity and the crash were specific enough to allow corroboration by his daughter through historical investigation.
A line of evidence pertaining especially to the reincarnation hypothesis is past-life memory field research. Although past-life memory content in NDEs is noteworthy and, in a few cases, detailed enough to investigate, greater numbers of specified and hence researchable- past-life recollections have been found in cases of young children spontaneously claiming to remember a past life. As Greyson (2021b) noted, extensive investigations have been conducted of young children’s past-life claims often resulting in empirical verification:
Researchers at the University of Virginia and other universities around the globe have studied more than 2,000 cases of very young children-before they were of school age who claimed to recall details of a past life (Stevenson, 2001; Tucker, 2013). In about two-thirds of those cases, they have been able to identify the person the child claimed to have been in that past life, based on the child’s memories matching specific details of the claimed past life. These cases of young children are too consistently verified by independent means to be written off as fantasy and wish fulfillment and must be regarded as evidence supporting a belief in [or hypothesis of] reincarnation. (Greyson, 2021b, pp. 217-218)
One such case, extensively investigated and corroborated by past-life memory researcher and psychiatrist Jim Tucker (2013), is that of young James Leininger (Leininger & Leininger, 2009; Taylor, 2004; see also Gibbs, 2010, 2017; see a critique by Sudduth, 2022; and rejoinders by Matlock, 2022a, 2022b; and Tucker, 2022), whose past-life- like that in Moquin’s NDE-pertained to a World War II plane crash. James had begun having nightmares about a plane crash when he was two years old. By the time he was three, he told his parents that before he was born, he was a pilot who flew from a boat: His plane was shot in the engine, he crashed in the water, and that’s how he died. Tucker and James’s parents were subsequently able to verify many of James’s references to the death over 50 years prior of a World War II pilot, James Huston, who was killed as his plane was shot down near Iwo Jima.
When James was two years old, his mother gave him a toy plane and commented that it had a bomb on the bottom. James corrected her, saying accurately that it was a drop tank. Before James even turned two, his father, Bruce Leininger, had taken him to an air museum. James kept begging to return to the World War II exhibit and persuaded his father to buy him certain toy vintage World War II fighter planes. At home and in play, James would repeatedly crash the planes onto the living room coffee table, saying, “Airplane crash on fire.” James’s nightmares began several months after the museum visit. His mother, Andrea, would find James thrashing around and kicking his legs up in the air, screaming, “Airplane crash! Plane on fire! Little man can’t get out!” When his father entered the bedroom and asked who shot his plane, James appeared exasperated and exclaimed, “The Japanese!” (Leininger & Leininger, 2009, pp. 47, 56). He would refer to the little man in the plane as “me.” On the advice of past-life therapist and researcher Carol Bowman (1997, 2001), Andrea began to reassure James after his nightmares that he was “safe now.” His nightmares began to subside.
Nonetheless, James started talking more about his nightmarish memories and engaging in repetitive play. James said that his plane was a Corsair-a World War II fighter plane, one that was not on exhibit at the museum-which he had flown off a boat called the “Natoma” the name, Bruce subsequently discovered, of a Corsair- laden escort carrier on which the Navy pilot named James Huston was stationed. James mentioned that the Corsairs got flat tires-a correct statement according to a military historian: The Corsairs tended to land hard and thereby flatten a tire. When asked if anyone else was in the dream, James referred to a friend and fellow pilot, Jack Larsen. On another occasion, upon seeing an aerial photo and map of the island of Iwo Jima, James pointed to the island and exclaimed, “Daddy, that’s when my plane was shot down” (p. 91). Following his third birthday, James began drawing pictures of scenes with ships and planes. He mentioned his plane had been hit in the front of the engine and that the impact “took off the propeller” (Leininger & Leininger, 2009, p. 222). Intriguingly, “none of James’s toy planes still had their propellers on the nose, as James had apparently crashed them all until the propellers broke off” (Tucker, 2013, p. 74; cf. Leininger & Leininger, 2009, p. 222). The investigation-initially by James’s father and subsequently by Tucker-continued. Bruce discovered that precisely such a veteran pilot named Jack Larsen was still alive; contacted, Larsen “remembered well the day that Huston was killed” (Tucker, 2013, p. 76). Other veteran pilots from a WWII reunion event specifically reported having seen Huston’s plane take a direct hit to the engine.
Young James’s past-life recollections included content relevant to the “homecoming” recalled in one of Moody’s NDE cases. As five-year- old James played with toy soldiers, Bruce asked, “Hey, how come you named your G.I. Joes Billy and Leon and Walter?” James replied: “Because that’s who met me when I got to heaven.” Billie Peeler, Leon Conner, and Walter Devlin were among James Huston’s squadron mates; their deaths shortly preceded his on March 3, 1944 (Leininger & Leininger, 2009, . 158). After age five, James’s apparent past-life memories faded. They were no longer evident by the time James was 12 years old, when he identified himself solely as James Leininger.
Corroborated past-life memories such as young James’s constitute a direct line of evidence-beyond suggestive evidence from NDEs, terminal lucidity, and deathbed visions for the reincarnation hypothesis. As noted, young James’s past-life memory of meeting deceased close friends when he “got to heaven” would seem to follow in a core narrative from the incipient “homecoming” reported in some NDEs, or from perceived loved ones “beckoning [the experiencer] to come” in some deathbed visions.
Also sometimes amenable to investigation are past-life memories induced in patients undergoing hypnotic regression psychotherapy. The contribution of such work to scientific inquiry into the reincarnation hypothesis has been questioned, given patients’ tendency to produce fantasy material under hypnosis. Nonetheless, Tucker (2005) acknowledged that “some adults may be able to discover [past-life] memories through the use of hypnosis” (p. 226). Empirical validation is important if hypnotically induced past-life memories are to contribute to the scientific investigation of the reincarnation hypothesis. Although, like Tucker, Ian Stevenson (2001) was skeptical of the scientific value of regression therapy, he acknowledged some instances in which hypnotized and regressed subjects narrated obscure but accurate historical information and/or spoke in foreign languages they apparently had not known previously (p. 46). Similarly, psychiatrist and regression therapist Brian Weiss claimed that he has
seen patients remember a name during a recall of a recent lifetime and subsequently find old records that validate the existence of that past-life person confirming the details of that memory. Some patients have even found the graves of their own previous physical bodies [and] speak portions of languages that they have never learned, or have never heard in their current lifetimes. (Weiss, 1996, . 15)
Weiss (2004) noted the case of a patient who experienced a comprehensive (“almost classic”) NDE as she regressed to the life of a
Great Plains farm woman in the nineteenth century. At the end of her long lifetime she floated above her body, watching it from afar. Then she felt she was being drawn up into a light, in her case a blue one, becoming distanced from her body and going toward a new life, one that was as yet unclear. This is a common, almost classic near death experience except that Andrea was describing the experience of someone in a past life herself-who had been dead for more than one hundred years. (p. 11)
Greyson (2021b) found the convergence between the two chief lines of evidence for mind as distinct from brain impressive: “Both NDES and… memories of past lives bear on the mind-brain relationship and on whether the mind can continue to function after death of the brain” (p. 220). “Data from the two phenomena,” he wrote, “might actually complement” and “shed light on each other” and thereby “form a bridge to a new understanding of mind” or consciousness as distinct from physical brain function (p. 220). In particular, the convergence of NDE past-life flashes or identities with corroborated past-life memories-whether spontaneous cases in field research and or induced cases in therapeutic practice-“may provide compelling evidence that people live more than once” (p. 217). Especially when the evidence from kindred phenomena such as terminal lucidity and deathbed visions is included, Greyson’s complementarity point is well taken: “The convergence of several lines of evidence builds a much stronger case than only a single line of evidence” (Long, 2010, p. 4). As Miller (2018) noted, “conclusions based upon a convergence of evidence from different methods”-such as self-reports, survey protocols, hypnotic regressions, and archival investigation- “can be held with greater certainty than conclusions based on one approach alone” (p. 118). Terminal lucidity cases, for example, complement and corroborate the NDE phenomenon (Batthyány, 2023, p. 191). Despite this impressive convergence, Greyson (2021b) qualified his conclusion that NDEs and past-life memory research may provide compelling evidence for reincarnation. He described problematic content in the University of Virginia past-life memory case collection as well as paradoxical aspects of NDEs. In some past-life cases, for example, two or more children seemed to be recalling (cf. Keil, 2010; Matlock, 2019, pp. 266-267; Matlock, 2022c; Mills, 2001) the same past life- prompting speculations of “soul-splitting,” a notion that at least would reconcile the reincarnation hypothesis with human population increases (Tucker, 2005, pp. 198–199).
Additionally, NDErs’ references to their spiritual existence as “timeless” or events as “all happening at once” would seem to contradict the ordinary linear-time conception of reincarnation as a spiritual journey (or journeys) entailing successive temporal embodiments:
Rather than conceptualizing it [reincarnation] as a series of incarnations over linear time the normal perception of time in Earthly life it may involve incarnations that occur simultaneously in a state of timelessness in which everything is happening all at once the perception of time that experiencers report during their NDEs. Especially for the majority of people who have not experienced the timelessness of an NDE, this paradigmatic shift in thinking about the nature of time can be challenging. (Greyson, 2021b, p. 224)
Accordingly, Greyson suggested, researchers “need to be flexible in their understanding both of time and its apparent passage” (p. 224). The point is well taken. Physicists for many decades have had to be “flexible” in their understanding of light, given their discovery that light paradoxically displays both wave and particle properties. Could time paradoxically display both linear and “timeless” properties? This paradox relates to another quandary pondered by Greyson (2021b): NDErs’ recollections of “home” as often including reunions with deceased loved ones raises “the question [of] how it might be possible for deceased people to continue existing in some otherworldly realm after death if they have been reborn into a new Earthly life” (p. 222). Greyson speculated:
Given the claim of many near-death experiencers that time as humans typically know it doesn’t exist in the otherworldly realm, then it might be possible both to be reincarnated into another body on Earth and also to persist simultaneously in a non-Earthly realm or dimension” (p. 222).
Challenges notwithstanding, empirical verifications of detailed past-life memories spontaneous as well as induced along with other lines of evidence do encourage further investigation of “I was home” and the reincarnation hypothesis. Perhaps a deeper reality provides a “home base,” as it were, for earthly existence(s).
The Light, Interconnected Souls, and Reincarnation
[It was] another of those moments that left Bruce and Andrea [Leininger] agape. While Bruce and James were raking leaves and gathering the fallen branches from the yard [after a hurricane], Bruce had a sudden impulse to hug his son. He picked him up and kissed him and said how happy he was to have him as a son. James replied, in a tone that seemed eerie to Bruce, “That’s why I picked you. I knew you would be a good daddy.” Bruce did not know what he had heard. “What did you say?” “When I found you and Mommy, I knew you would be good to me.” This was not the voice of a child, although it came out of the mouth of a four-year-old. “Where did you find us?” asked Bruce. “Hawaii,” James replied. Bruce said that James was wrong. They had gone to Hawaii just that summer, when they were all together. “It was not when we all went to Hawaii. It was just Mommy and you.” Although profoundly shaken, Bruce managed to ask where he had found them. And James said, “I found you at the big pink hotel.” Bruce remained dumbfounded as James added, “I found you on the beach. You were eating dinner at night.” In 1997, Bruce and Andrea had gone to Hawaii to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. They had stayed at the Royal Hawaiian, the landmark pink hotel on Waikiki Beach, and on their final night, they had a moonlight dinner on the beach. It was five weeks before Andrea got pregnant. (Leininger & Leininger, 2009, pp. 153-154; cf. Tucker, 2013, pp. 86-87)
The moment does leave one “agape.” Whose voice was speaking, if not that of a child? Tucker (2005) considered and rejected a “possession” explanation of children’s past-life claims (pp. 46-47). Rather, the “voice” of young James may have been that of a “larger self” (Stevenson, 2001), non-material essence, or soul that had journeyed to-and from-a deeper reality in a “continuity of consciousness” (van Lommel, 2021, p. 264). Did the previous earthly self, James Huston, really-at his material death- “[meet] in heaven” his deceased close friends? While still in the light, did young James really “find” and “pick” Bruce and Andrea Leininger as the hosts for his conception-and leave “heaven” to begin his new earthly life because he “knew they would be good” parents to him? Had he even been presciently aware that they would help him to resolve his post-traumatic stress from his violent death as James Huston?
At least, it can be noted that young James’s comments to his father are not atypical among children expressing past-life memories. In past-life memory research, Tucker (2013; cf. Sharma & Tucker, 2004) reported that “about twenty percent of the children say they remember either observing earthly events such as the previous person’s funeral, going to another realm, or having experiences related to conception or gestation to begin their current life” (p. 198; cf. Matlock & Giesler-Petersen, 2016; Rivas et al., 2023; Sharma & Tucker, 2004; Wade, 1998; Weiss, 2000, pp. 11, 44-45). Young James’s conception-related “experience” was proactive: He said that, while still in the light-perhaps with help from one or more “beings” he had found and “picked” his prospective parents.
Although journeys from the light to a new earthly life are generally remembered as voluntary, as indicated in Long’s database, some NDErs reportedly felt ambivalent or even resistant. Scott and Pam reported that they-more or less willingly-decided to return, whereas others, such as Richard L., were finally and simply told that they would be sent back: “You must go back; you have work to do.”
“I was home” in the realm of light is not a solipsistic experience. The NDEs and deathbed impressions reviewed herein have exemplified the dictionary definition of “home” as a “place or environment natural or dear to one because of personal relations.” “Personal relations” in these accounts refer to one or more transcendent “beings” and/or familiar deceased individuals in the light. My former student Scott met a loving and accepting “Being” who “knew everything [Scott] had done, said, or thought.” Richard L. met multiple “forms” -one of whom, curiously, reminded Richard that he had “agreed” to leave “home.”
Besides the “Being” or beings, other entities are those with whom the experiencer has been emotionally connected. Dying 94-year-old Su saw her deceased husband and sister “calling her to come.” Pam Reynolds met “a lot of people,” including deceased relatives she recognized, who were caring and “looking after” her and would “not permit her to go further” into the light. James Huston met his deceased squadron mates “in heaven.” In transcendent or comprehensive NDE life reviews, some NDErs recall reliving events of their earthly life not only as themselves but also as the other persons in those events (Lorimer, 1990; cf. Long 2010, 2017, p, 71; van Lommel, 2010)-an experience that can be positive but also “very devastating” in the multi-perspectival reliving of events in which one harmed and wronged others (Farr, 1993, pp. 29-30; cf. Gibbs, 2019, pp. 263-266; Moody, 1977, p. 38-39; Parnia, 2024, pp. 159-165, 173-180, 290, 311). Although “unpleasant or frightening,” “distressing NDEs can also result in insight and personal growth” (Egnor & O’Leary, 2025, р. 96).
It is important to note the impression of some NDErs that not every soul was yet spiritually “home” indeed, that the deeper reality of light includes darker regions. Jean R (Jean R NDE, n.d.; cf. Parnia, 2024, pp. 204-206) entered “a place filled with love” but
was also shown a much darker place where people did not seem to know that they had moved out of their bodies and continually fought each other…. Above them were also a legion of beings waiting. Whenever someone looked up and asked God for help, they were whisked away to. a place [home?] more peaceful and tuned to God and God’s love. But many seemed lost in this [darker] place, never looking up and never asking for help.
NDEr Carl D (Carl D NDE, n.d.) recalled in his transcendental NDE that “everything there” (a realm of “love” and “peace”) “was made up of light…. it was HOME, my real HOME.” Yet Carl was also “shown grey places [and] grey beings” who had “less light;” they “were sad, and all alone.” In a follow-up to his classic Life after Life, Moody (1977) reported some NDErs’ “glimpses” of a “dull, grey… realm of bewildered spirits” (pp. 19-22).
Besides much darker places or dull, grey regions of fighting, sad, or bewildered spirits, images of malevolent and violent creatures have been described in distressing NDEs (Bush, 2002; Bush & Greyson, 2017; Rommer, 2000). Some distressing NDEs entail idiosyncratic hellish imagery, leading Weiss to question the reality status of frightening, malevolent creatures (cf. Parnia, 2024, pp. 79, 290). In one case, Weiss (2000)
regressed a policeman who had been injured in a car accident while on duty. He described a “terrible” NDE in which his body had been pushed and probed and pierced by malevolent beings. In truth, as the regression proved, he had partially awakened while being transported by ambulance to the hospital emergency room. During the trip, the paramedics were administering emergency medical treatment, inserting intravenous lines for fluid replacement, injecting necessary medications, monitoring blood pressure, creating an airway to assist his breathing, and so on. In actuality, the “malevolent beings” were the emergency personnel who saved his life. (p. 156)
Personal relations or emotional connections populate past-life memories as well. As noted, NDEr Richard L. “looked around” in the light and “saw familiar faces” of “friends, family, enemies, people I had known before,” some of whom he had known across “many lives, many places, many times [and] events… There was a continuity and connectedness about all of it.” As noted, Anita Moorjani in her NDE glimpsed a past life in which she was “very protective” of her brother- who, in that life, was younger than she. Weiss even declared that, despite circumstantial changes, “we come around in [interconnected] groups [of souls], over and over” (Weiss, 1992, p. 86; cf. Parnia, 2024, p. 157) and that earthly “relationships are the soil of our [spiritual] growth” (Weiss, 2000, p. 62),
A common impression of NDErs is that their return has some reason or purpose, typically involving a spiritual journey of growth or learning “lessons”. This growth entails learning “to express and receive love, to forgive, to help, and to serve” (Weiss, 1992, p. 86), sometimes extending to global concerns (e.g., Weiss, 2004, p. 193). Another NDEr (Jean R NDE, n.d.) was told that “the Earth is like a big school, a place where you can apply spiritual lessons” (cf. Stevenson, 2001; cf. Parnia, 2024, p. 176). The key “lesson” to master is “to help each other and help those in need.” The “emphasis should be on the golden rule: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Jean R NDE, n.d.).
My former student, Scott, provided a case in point. Scott “heard” from the Being “associated with the light” that he “should go back, it’s not your time.” “There was an insistence to the ‘should,” Scott recalled, because he still “had things to accomplish, people that would need my help.” Scott wrote in his journal that he returned from his NDE with a deeply spiritual “awareness” central to his earthly existence:
That unseen voice from my NDE is in me it is the thing I listen to and can rely upon. I strive to touch a part I have labeled as my “center.” It is that place where there is the balance between my two “realities,” the point where they meet and connect. It is here that I find peace. It is also the point where my “awareness” originates. It is from my “center” that I can still “feel” the presence of the “being” of my NDE. The contact is never direct but rather through that part of me [that is] still in that other existence.
Scott attributed to his “awareness” from “that other existence” or deeper reality an uncanny knowledge of the thoughts and concerns of others. For example, Scott kept sensing that a co-worker was contemplating suicide: “At first, she wouldn’t admit it but finally broke down and said that she had thought about it for several days.” Scott helped her work through her suicidal ideation and enabled her to restore, before it was too late, her mental and spiritual health. Intriguingly. Scott reflected that in the process of helping others, he himself was helped in his spiritual growth.
Conclusion
In this article, I have explored NDEs and cognate phenomena to advance the understanding of reality and human existence-essentially, the deeper meaning of life and death. “I was home” led to a review of convergent lines of evidence in studies of terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, and, especially, past-life memories consistent with the reincarnation hypothesis that at least some humans live an earthly life more than once. Paradoxes and challenges notwithstanding, reincarnation means that deaths and births are not finalities but instead transitions-exits and entrances of mind, personhood, or consciousness to and from a deeper reality. This primary realm of light has been described by some NDErs as “realer than here” (Sabom, 1982, p. 16; cf. Long, 2010, 2017; Parnia, 2024). “I was home” in the light-dark regions are sometimes seen-refers to a familiar environment of love, a place “at the very heart or root of the matter,” populated by interconnected souls.
In comparison to “the reality of the Light,” according to NDEr Thomas Sawyer, “the reality in which we are currently existing is in fact a lesser reality” (Farr, 1993, p. 51; cf. Parnia, 2024, p. 159). In this lesser reality, it can be “difficult to remember that we are souls and not just physical bodies.” We are constantly distracted by “illusions and delusions” such as “money, power, prestige, material possessions, and other tangible accumulations and creature comforts” (Weiss, 2001, p. 112). Other delusions or distractions include “denial. fatigue, rationalizations, mental escape,.. and all the other businesses of the mind” (Weiss, 1996, p. 147). Some readers have asked Weiss: “Why don’t we just stay on the other side, in the heavenly dimension, and learn there, where we do not have all the burden, all the pain, of physical existence?” (Weiss & Weiss, 2012, p. 64). Earlier noted was Richard’s plaintive plea in his NDE: “I like it here I told him I didn’t want to go back… It felt like home.”
Yet we don’t grow by staying home. There is a meaning and purpose, a continuity and connectedness, to journeys from “home” to the “lesser reality” of bodily existence(s). As Richard L. was told, “home” in the light is the “starting point for all journeys and lessons.” Whatever “learning” may take place in the light (Moody, 1977, p. 17) may be preparatory to a journey. Although often rife with burdens and pain (even tragic loss; see Gibbs, 1999), this earthly existence is the dimension in which souls can grow. “Who we are today,” one NDEr stated, “is the result of all our previous lives combined” (Parnia, 2024, p. 199). Besides burden, pain, and loss, we may also experience in earthly life “incredible beauty, physical love, unconditional love, soul mates, pleasure for all our senses, [and] kind and compassionate people” (Weiss & Weiss, 2012, p. 18). NDEs and cognate phenomena may impart the life-changing insight that we are all “connected at a deep level which is occasionally experienced by those who transcend the boundaries of ordinary perception” (Lorimer, 1990, p. 104). This insight often entails “increased awareness or spirituality, decline in materialistic worries, the development of a more loving, peaceful nature, a dramatic lessening of the fear of death [and] the new and certain conviction that love is what really matters” (Weiss, 1992, p. 51; cf. Batthyány, 2023, p. 11; Ring, 1984)-even purpose and order, “a sense that we are all part of something greater” (Greyson, 2021a, p. 172). In the course of our interconnected spiritual journeys to and from home, let us hope that we progressively learn how to live and love.
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