Here's a repost of an entry from December 2007, concerning a book by geologist-turned-psi-investigator Robert Crookall. I was rereading this book last night and came across some of these passages again.
Crookall's books are all highly worthwhile. His writing style is dry, sometimes excessively so, but at least he avoids any whiff of sensationalism. The organizational scheme he developed for the dying process is consistent with what we know from more recent NDE research. He made a serious, concerted effort to bring order and structure to the mass of reports he'd collected on OBEs, NDEs, channeled commendations, deathbed visions, and related phenomena. His work ought to be more widely known.
Incidentally, I just noticed that with this repost, I've published 1600 entries to this blog. Yikes! That's a lot of bloviating.
My original post follows.
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Lately I've been reading The Supreme Adventure: Analysis of Psychic Communications, by Robert Crookall. In it, Crookall collects many accounts of the dying process from a variety of sources and examines them to see if they tell a more or less consistent story. His idea is that if the details of the story are consistent and cannot credibly be explained by collusion or coincidence, then there's good reason to believe that these details are true.
One particularly interesting detail is the well-known "tunnel" through which the spirit is said to travel after leaving the body. This imagery became famous in the 1970s when the term near-death experiences was coined by Raymond Moody, but Crookall's book precedes Moody's by 14 years and contains the same imagery.
Crookall writes,
A common symbol used in describing the act of shedding ... the Physical Body is that of passing through a 'tunnel' (or a 'door', 'passage', 'tube', 'shaft', 'hole', 'funnel', etc.): this is clearly related to the 'momentary coma' [experienced upon separating from the body], though lasting somewhat longer and, perhaps, with some dim consciousness, of existence if not of environment. There are many considerations which strongly suggest that in this symbol a genuine experience of a surviving soul is indicated.
He then lists a number of statements "by people who left the body other than by death and who use identical symbols" -- that is, by people who had out-of-body experiences (astral projection) or, in some cases, what we would now call near-death experiences. (Where possible, I have given the date of the published account.)
"I seemed to float in a long tunnel. It appeared very narrow at first but gradually expanded into unlimited space." (1952)
"Suddenly there appeared an opening, like a tunnel, and, at the far end, a light. I moved nearer to it and was drawn up the passage." (1950)
"A constant preliminary to the loss of consciousness is the symbolic passing through a pitch-black tunnel." (1953)
"I was falling ... down a dark, narrow tunnel or shaft ... Sometimes the speed is so tremendous that one gets the effect of tumbling through a hole into a new sphere."
"I find myself going down a long dim tunnel ... At the far end is a tiny speck of light which grows, as I approach, into a large square, and I am there!"
"In one of my own experiences I seemed to pass through a tunnel in a dream-like state and emerged through the opening at the end into a scene of bright sunlight." (1956)
"I was hurried off at great speed. Have you ever looked through a very long tunnel and seen the tiny speck of light at the far end?... Well, I found myself... hurrying along just such a tunnel or passage." (1935 near-death experience)
Crookall includes a 1946 mystical experience:
"I closed my eyes and watched a silver glow which shaped itself into a circle with a central focus brighter than the rest. The circle became a tunnel of light proceeding from some distance on in the heart of the Self. Swiftly and smoothly I was borne through the tunnel."
And a number of statements from people who had an out-of-body experience under anesthesia:
"I was in a long tunnel with a light at the end... I knew that if I could only get to the light at the end I should understand everything." (1935)
"I seemed to float down a dark tunnel, moving towards a half-moon of light that was miles away."
"On being given ether I was moving, at a terrific rate, through what seemed to be a tunnel."
"I found myself in an avenue of trees, slowly moving farther and farther from my body... I continue to advance along the avenue towards a brilliant light at the end of it." (1955)
"I found myself proceeding along a straight black tube with hardly any room to move." (1894)
What is most interesting is that these statements agree with communications through mediums.
"I remember a curious opening, as if one had passed through subterranean passages and found oneself near the mouth of the cave... The light was much stronger outside."
An alleged discarnate who said he helped people make the transition said he tried "to make this passage through the tunnel as happy as possible." (1931)
Another communicator said he traveled through a "dark tunnel" while leaving his body. Yet another spoke of "traveling down a tunnel".
A 1926 communicator said: "I saw in front of me a dark tunnel. I stepped out of the tunnel into a new world."
These ostensible communicators also seem to agree that returning to the physical body can require going through a tunnel. This is true even if the discarnate entity is trying to temporarily enter the body of a medium.
"Do not look at me too critically: to try to transmit through the organism of a medium is like trying to crawl through a hollow log." (George Pelham, communicating through Mrs. Piper to Richard Hodgson)
Another discarnate compared entering a medium's body to getting into "a sort of funnel" (1948).
One would-be communicator failed to get through: "He was able to see the light in the darkness of a long funnel. But he doubted so much that it went out. He was frightened for fear he would never find his way back." (1936)
Interestingly, Crookall notes that the tunnel symbol "is also used for describing the experience of reentering the Physical Body" in what we would today call near-death experiences. "This also is felt as a brief coma, 'blackout', or passage through a 'tunnel' (depending on the duration of the experience)."
One NDEr said, "I turned away from the bright light... and entered a gloomy tunnel. I fought my way back to a tiny light in the distance... When I got back to the light, I found myself back in bed."
Crookall even quotes an account given by Plutarch in A.D 79 (On the Delay of Divine Justice) in which a certain Aridaeus suffered a severe fall and was momentarily startled out of his body. Surviving the fall, he felt himself reenter his physical shell. "Then, as though he were suddenly sucked through a tube ... he lit [i.e., alit] in his body."
However, Crookall notes that most people appear to have only a momentary blackout, rather than the full tunnel experience, when they reenter their bodies. He cites a 1923 study of out-of-body experiences in support of this statement. Modern studies of NDEs also find that the tunnel phenomenon is more commonly remembered when leaving the body than when returning, and that the return is often much more rapid.
It appears, then, that the tunnel phenomenon is not easily explained as a neurological quirk. Neurology might explain the experience of the tunnel in NDEs, when the brain is presumably shutting down. It does not explain the tunnel imagery in more routine out-of-body experiences, such as astral projection experiments, when there is no physical damage to the brain. Nor does it explain the persistence of this imagery in mediumistic communications ostensibly originating from the deceased, who are describing their own passage - either their passage out of the body upon death, or their passage into the medium's body for purposes of the séance.
And remember that all of the above quotes were collected prior to 1961, the publication date of The Supreme Adventure. This rules out the conjecture that the tunnel with a bright light at the end is merely a meme originating in Raymond Moody's 1975 bestseller Life after Life and popularized by the media.
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Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 02, 2019 at 01:54 PM
48,113!
I never had a tunnel experience during OBEs - nor has Robert Monroe to the best of my knowledge (read some of his stuff, but by no means all). Rather the experience was one of literally being rocked or vibrated out of the physical shell. So maybe that takes the place of the imagery of the tunnel.
Still a great post showing that the tunnel phenomenon is well documented and, if not a mandatory feature, certainly a common one.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | January 02, 2019 at 03:46 PM
I've gotten a lot of good "life after death" information from this blog and also quite a few links for life after death sites. I appreciate all of it. I don't know why I find it so interesting but the older I get the more I want to know about where I might be going? I always was a planner. When we'd be going down to Florida on vacation I'd be planning when I was going to go fishing and when I'd be taking one of those snorkeling trips. That's just how I roll I guess?
Posted by: Art | January 02, 2019 at 08:50 PM
"What is most interesting is that these statements agree with communications through mediums." Really? Where? Who? When? I have known, read and watched many of them and never heard any of them say anything about the tunnel. Clarify that statement, please.
By the way, science doesn't say the tunnel is a neurological quirk. They state the loss of blood to the retina is what causes the tunnel effect. Whether or not that's true, I don't know.
Posted by: Goldie | January 02, 2019 at 11:47 PM
I've been reading this blog for 13 years. It feels like an old friend. I ran across a Seth book when I was 15(I'm 61)and have been interested in all of that stuff ever since. I'm just taking this opportunity to say thank you. I look forward to the next 16,000!
Posted by: Susan | January 03, 2019 at 09:20 AM
You can clearly see the theme of the tunnel in Hieronymus Bosch's painting Ascent of the Blessed from the 1500s.
Posted by: Kris | January 03, 2019 at 12:09 PM
Goldie wrote, "I have known, read and watched many [mediums] and never heard any of them say anything about the tunnel. Clarify that statement, please."
It’s in the post. Whenever I say a "discarnate" communicated, I’m talking about a message relayed by a medium.
"Science doesn't say the tunnel is a neurological quirk. They state the loss of blood to the retina is what causes the tunnel effect."
There have been various hypotheses. The retina hypothesis is one of them, but others include a memory of traveling throigh the birth canal (Carl Sagan suggested this), loss of oxygen to the brain, and a last-minute surge of electrical activity in the brain.
Eric wrote, "The tunnel phenomenon is well documented and, if not a mandatory feature, certainly a common one."
No, not mandatory. In fact, the majority of documented NDEs don’t include it. But it’s common enough to be present in a significant minority of cases.
Crookall suggests that the death experience occurs in stages. In his rather elaborate formulation, a person consists of three bodies nested like a Russian doll. There is also an aura, which he calls the vehicle of vitality, surrounding the three bodies. At death, the soul body and the spiritual body, corresponding roughly to the psychic and pneumatic selves of gnostic thought, separate from the physical body. The aura goes with them. As long the aura enshrouds these bodies, perception will be limited and distorted. Hence the confusing, dreamlike quality of many death experiences (and initial communications).
After a while, the aura is cast off in what Crookall calls "the second death." This permits a new clarity of awareness, much greater than what we know while incarnated.
The aura may be tightly or loosely attached. If tight, it may limit perception so completely that you think you’re in a void. If somewhat less tight, it allows perception of a tunnel or other barrier around you. If loose, it allows you to see through this barrier altogether, and you will see a dreamlike or nightmarish landscape — what he calls the Hades environment, because it is a transitional stage similar to limbo or purgatory.
This, anyway, is his scheme. It’s not necessary to accept his entire conceptual framework. The collection of data alone is enough to make the book worthwhile.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 03, 2019 at 02:51 PM
I taught 9th grade physical science for a year and a half. In the 9th grade textbook it describes how a hologram is made using laser light.
Laser light is coherent light meaning all the photons are going in the same direction. It forms a sharply focused beam that is used in producing holographic projections from the holographic film. The beam of light is shone on the holographic film and then the beam is split and then crossed over. At the point where the two beams cross over the holographic projection is produced.
I have sometimes wondered if the the tunnel is actually that coherent light leading back to that original holographic film? The soul or consciousness travels down that beam back to that original holographic film that our universe is projected from? What is interesting is that is how many near death experience descriptions describe the physics of the place they went to, everything being connected and one, time and space not existing, saying things like "I literally felt like I was the Universe" or "me and the Universe were one" and "time and space didn't seem to exist in the same way it does here", "I had access to all knowledge", "I could see 360 degrees all at once", etc. Very similar to what one might expect if one were living on a giant sheet of holographic film?
The tunnel could be that coherent laser beam leading back the original holographic film?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/01/30/universe-hologram-illusion/97249856/
Posted by: Art | January 03, 2019 at 06:19 PM
Hey, just a heads up.
I’m not sure if this guy is another desperate materialist or correct.
On a forum called Unexplained Mysteries,
he posted something interesting:
“The big news here is that it is possible, our earlier estimates of death are crude by comparison and as anyone can see wrong. We are understanding the brain better, not supporting myths. The brain seems to shut down in stages. From the most complex to the most rudimentary functions. Some genes stay alive for days in the body after death, this is the consciousness version of that process. It seems it may take several hours for consciousness to entirely shut down. It does not happen with brain death as we have suspected. That's big news.”
Brain Activity Has Been Recorded as Much as 10 Minutes After DeathScienceAlert › brain-activity-
After you die, your brain knows you're dead, terrifying study revealsNew York Post › 2017/10/19 › a...
Just in general, the user seems to think that this proves that NDEs, and all other spiritual experiences, are brain based and due to a “sick and diseased brain”.
Posted by: Kamo | January 04, 2019 at 01:41 PM
What a blessing that the creator of the Universe allows the soul or consciousness to exit the body before it becomes "good and dead" or putrefying stiff rigor mortis dead. I have read NDEs that even before an accident sometimes a soul will fly out of the body even before the point of impact. They see the whole accident from above so they don't really feel the accident itself.
I see that as a blessing. Our souls are only loosely bound to body and easily exit upon the very hint of death of the body. Some people only have to be under anesthesia, even without actually being clinically dead, and they float around the operating room watching what is going on.
Think of how horrifying it would be if we were required to stay in our bodies till the hyenas were consuming it, or until it is rotten and decomposing? Or until it was in a coffin in the grave? Gives me the shivers to think about it. I consider it a blessing that Creator of the Universe, "God", allows the soul to slip out of the body easily.
I have read NDE descriptions that say leaving our body is as easy as walking through a doorway, and in fact that is common metaphor for death. My SIL, who is a fundamentalist Christian, had a dream about her father two days after he died and in her dream she is in the hospital room with her father, looking down at him, and says "Daddy you're alive! We need to ring the nurse and tell her you're alive". At that point she turns and sees her father and another man walking through the doorway into the brightly lit hallway and disappearing.
Now this was interesting to me because my SIL is not really interested in all my "life after death" stories nor is she really a believer in NDEs or deathbed visions. She takes my stories with a grain of salt. Most fundamentalist aren't real big on NDE or deathbed visions. So the fact that she is the one that had the visitation from her father (that is what I believe) was very interesting to me. I think he was telling her "I'm still alive and it was as easy as walking through a doorway."
Posted by: Art | January 04, 2019 at 11:45 PM
"Incidentally, I just noticed that with this repost, I've published 1600 entries to this blog. Yikes! "
For the benefit of newcomers, tagging your top 100 entries under the heading "Favorites" or "Start Here" would be helpful. (I shouldn't say this, because you rejected my similar suggestion a few years ago, but I've forgotten why.)
Posted by: Roger Knights | January 05, 2019 at 03:48 AM
"Still a great post showing that the tunnel phenomenon is well documented and, if not a mandatory feature, certainly a common one."
Thanks, Eric, for putting the comma where it belongs!
Posted by: Roger Knights | January 05, 2019 at 03:54 AM
Posted by: Kamo | January 05, 2019 at 09:51 AM
I doubt that a small, residual amount of electrical activity would be enough to support conscious awareness. All neurological models that I know of require global (brain-wide) activity at a pretty high level.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 05, 2019 at 10:48 AM
Roger, it’s a good idea, but I’m not sure how I would pick the top 100 (or 50, or 10). I’d have to go through all 1600 posts, cull the best, and create links to them. It’s doable, but sounds like a chore.
I’m in the preliminary stage of writing a nonfiction book on the afterlife; if I manage to finish this, it will serve as an intro.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 05, 2019 at 10:51 AM
Kamo commented that "Just in general, the user seems to think that this proves that NDEs, and all other spiritual experiences, are brain based and due to a “sick and diseased brain""
Well, we need to inform that user that it takes a lot of hard evidence to actually 'prove' something. That is the inherent problem with psychic or spiritual things. They are very difficult and probably impossible to actually prove.
The dying brain theory as an explanation for NDEs is an old one. It has been around for a long time but it hardly proves that "all other spiritual experiences are brain-based and due to a sick and diseased brain." It certainly does not explain reincarnation cases, out of body experiences, apparitions, direct voice communication, communications by way of mediums, automatic writing, synchrony, déjà vu, psi, electronic voice phenomena, transplant phenomena and other para-psychological phenomena.
NDEs are interesting and may provide additional support for survival of consciousness but I don't think that they provide the best evidence for alternate realities of a spiritual nature. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | January 05, 2019 at 02:39 PM
Goldie said: "By the way, science doesn't say the tunnel is a neurological quirk. They state the loss of blood to the retina is what causes the tunnel effect. Whether or not that's true, I don't know."
Let's dispense once and for all with this silly idea that the tunnel experience is actually an experience of tunnel vision caused by loss of blood (and, therefore, loss of oxygen) to the retina. Even the most basic application of common sense rules out this explanation.
Anyone who has done their research knows that NDErs report moving THROUGH a tunnel towards a bright light. And it's not simply a case of hallucinating a sense of motion - in many cases, they describe emerging from the tunnel and into the light. Anyone experiencing only tunnel vision due to lack of blood flow (and, therefore, oxygen) to the retina would report a different experience. They would describe a loss of peripheral vision and, if their condition worsened, they would report the 'tunnel' closing in on them and eventually loss of vision. Unconsciousness would result.
Posted by: James | January 06, 2019 at 05:21 PM
And another thing.
I also vow to never visit that forum again. It raises my blood pressure.
The reason why is because it used to be like Skeptiko years ago, now it’s more like the Randi forum.
Every time someone starts a thread about having an NDE, astral projection, psychic ability, or ADC,
a few “skeptics” jump on the OP, telling them that “it was just the brain misfiring, hallucination, mental illness, wishful thinking, and psychosis.
There’s nothing paranormal about the experiences, because consciousness can’t exist beyond the brain. There is no real evidence for it.
And if you think otherwise, you’re living a fantasy, severely afraid of death, and can’t accept the fact that this life is all there is. The only afterlife is the memories of you from others and your legacy.”
They even called a person, who was new to the forum, working towards becoming a doctor of metaphysics, and even offered FREE readings, a woo crackpot looking for attention, because “that stuff is nothing but a fantasy and delusion”.
Now it’s not that I don’t like skeptics, it’s good to look at both sides.
It’s when they dismiss and say “That’s not real, it’s fantasy.” the second they see or hear the word paranormal, afterlife, ghosts, or lucid dreams. That, I do not care for.
However, I do agree with some of the things skeptics say. Like “You should look for natural explanations first before thinking about paranormal ones.”
And “Some people are too quick to accept things that confirm their cherished beliefs. They readily accept confirming evidence, but ignore and even twist contrary evidence, or facts they don’t like.”
But that last saying goes for materialists as well, not just believers.
Thanks for reading. I just had to get that off my chest.
Posted by: Kamo | January 07, 2019 at 10:14 AM
We know that we need 'global' brain function to be able to function even at a basic waking state level, so it's hardly likely that a small amount of residual electrical activity in a dying brain can produce the most profound, expansive, coherent and meaningful experiences of the individual's entire life.
Posted by: Douglas | January 07, 2019 at 11:02 AM
MP: "I’d have to go through all 1600 posts, cull the best, and create links to them. It’s doable, but sounds like a chore."
You could do it a bit at a time, say five or ten a day, starting with the oldest. You could defer posting any to Favorites until you'd done them all and had a chance to review them. Or you could post them as you went, reserving the right to make deletions and additions later.
Posted by: Roger Knights | January 07, 2019 at 11:33 AM
>Just in general, the user seems to think that this proves that NDEs, and all other spiritual experiences, are brain based and due to a “sick and diseased brain”.
Well someone would have to change that, as for example, Bernardo Kastrup: following his approach, if all NDEs are caused by the nervous system, then only a small neural activity would be necessary to cause complex experiences, but then why do we have such complex nervous systems? It has no sense. What makes sense is that the neural activity is not the cause of the experience, but only its public image, observable by others, so that the experience can continue although it lacks an image, where the NDEs are a kind of evidence about an afterlife as apparitions, mediumship and memories of past lives.
Posted by: Juan | January 08, 2019 at 01:23 PM
"Incidentally, I just noticed that with this repost, I've published 1600 entries to this blog. Yikes! That's a lot of bloviating."
That's a lot of deeply interesting, informative, thought-provoking bloviating.....thank you very much Michael. ..long may it continue!! Thanks also to all the wonderful commentators, I've deeply enjoyed silently reading it all over the years.
Here's to the next 1,600 blogs and 50,000 comments, cheers!!
Manjit
Posted by: manjit | January 13, 2019 at 11:56 AM