The near-death experiences occupy a strange niche in the contemporary life: they are discussed in a hushed tone, analyzed in hospitals, and recalled by the experience takers as clearer than memory traditionally can make them. The case of what they are is controversial to argue over soon, whether it is a brain in a crisis, or a window into something more, but the descriptions themselves will not fit into either of those categories.
What prevents the subject matter from becoming a folklore is not only the recognizable nature of the images, light, tunnels, reunions, but also the repeated argument that certain perceptions become verifiable later against the reality. Such an assertion is being no longer regarded as a punchline but as a measurement problem.
In 2025, scientists have written about the creation of a systematic instrument to measure the evidential power of these reports: the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale). It is not to pronounce PHYSICALLY, but to individuate an interesting narrative, a story supported, without toing down what men are claiming to have experienced.
1. Light that is called love, not illumination
There is a brightness described by many experiencers, which is not hurtful to gaze upon, and which does not act as a lamp or the sun. It is stated as responsive a mood with will experienced as unconditional acceptance not just observed. One of the regularly quoted facts is the light appears to know the individual providing a feeling of recognition which is emotional, prior to being visual. A description of one of the experiences after the cardiac arrest was as follows: “The light appeared to know me, to greet me home.”
2. Getting out of the body and observing the room
Out-of-body experiences are often described as observational: the individual states he or she is seeing the attempts to revive, clinicians move, objects are placed, words are being said. The controversy starts at the point at which the details can be tested. The vNDE Scale was calculated in such a way that cases were rated partially based on third-person confirmation and partially based on whether the ordinary access of senses could plausibly explain the reported cases or not, based on the feeling of the narrative.
3. The perceptions that require receipts
Veridical perception is used in NDE studies to denote the reports which are subsequently confirmed by someone who is not the one having the experience, such as medical personnel, records or other observers. According to the 2025 scale-development paper, criteria included timing of investigation, medical condition, number and clarity of verified perceptions, and erroneous perceptions. The scale was firstly tested with 17 published cases and the patterns of agreement were summarized by the authors as 82.3% agreement under the combination of adjacent levels of evidence.
4. A life review that seems to be collective emotion
Experiencers tend to tell of a recreation of their lives that is not more of a montage, but rather of a simulation. The peculiarity is empathy: the individual experiences what other people experienced following their actions. However it works, whatever its mechanism, what is reported in the aftereffect of both clinical and anecdotal writing is a change of attention (less status preoccupation, more impact).
5. The encounter of the dead, even those with whom there would be no prior knowledge of death
Reunions are usual, yet the fact that bothers pure explanations is that they have met a person whose death was not known then, but across the board. In the 2025 research overview, there are examples that were discussed in the literature, such as encountering a dead person that one had not known had died, but discovery of the death later. Such episodes are the main ones in the discussion as they are based on facts instead of symbolism.
6. Suffering must be overcome by calm that follows
Most narrations highlight sudden loss of pain and fear, and in its place, a vast feeling of wellness. In a single criticism of the low oxygen theories, a writer opined that agitation and confusion are more commonly caused by hypoxia, but that NDErs usually claim to have felt increasingly clear and calm. That does not prove causation but an expression of why the experience is not readily categorized under the ordinary delirium.
7. The tunnel as a sense of being pulled in
The tunnel theme is more of a cross-cultural and cross-decade trend, characterized by speed or sometimes pull. An independent body of inquiry has started to investigate drawings of NDE spaces, applying graphic reconstructions and stories. One of the preprints mentioned a questionnaire-and-drawing method, which is a hybrid, and proposed that the change in the depictions made by people would follow predictable patterns as the experience goes on, but researchers framed this possibility as related to the variations in the visual field, as the brain shuts down.
8. A border that is used as a decision point
Rather than a free-form pilgrimage, most NDEs involve a boundary: a wall, a gate, a bridge or a portal. The individual claims to have known, without being informed, or even after being informed, that the exit means the impossibility of returning. To some, it is the moment of being sent back; to others, it is a matter of making a decision to be responsible. In any case, it provides the story with a moral and practicalism and not a cinematic structure.
9. Collapsing time into meaning
NDE narratives tend to make time less of a length than of a density: a feeling of eternity within a short medical period. The experience is recalled as ordered even in the face of the lack of clocks, and sequences are simultaneous and coherent. This changed time-sense is also presented in other altered states, but it is often referenced by NDErs as the cause of the experience of the episode being more real than waking life.
In all these patterns, what we see is the combination of sameness and difference: these are repetitive elements that are common, intertwined with the image created by personal language, culture, and anticipation. The combination of the two causes NDEs to be abnormally resistant to single-cause narratives.
Thus the very point of power shifts. It is not so much a question of whether or not it is all true, but rather of which among them can be assessed, and in what ways. Such instruments as the vNDE Scale do not domesticate the mystery, but shift the debate around the belief-versus-disbelief to standards and documentation and what can be considered a corroborated human report.
