Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands
Pim van Lommel, Ruud van Wees, et al. · 2001 · The Lancet, 358(9298), 2039–2045
This source is used as supports evidence across 3 linked claims and 4 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Multi-centre prospective study of 344 cardiac-arrest survivors documenting the incidence, timing, and reported content of NDEs after resuscitation.
How this source is used on the map
First major prospective NDE study in a peer-reviewed general medical journal, central because it moved the debate beyond retrospective anecdote.
Citation record
- Authors
- Pim van Lommel, Ruud van Wees, et al.
- Year
- 2001
- Publication
- The Lancet, 358(9298), 2039–2045
- Source type
- Study
- Map role
- supports
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- 10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
A panoramic, often empathic re-experiencing of one's life — common in NDE samples, with strong moral aftereffects.
A handful of veridical NDE cases are striking. The leap from 'unexplained by current models' to 'proof of afterlife' is large.
A consistent core experience — peace, light, life review, OBE — reported across cultures and prospective hospital studies.
Related evidence hubs
Evidence around dying, near-death experience, and what (if anything) continues.
The nature of subjective experience.
Whether anything of mind continues.
Structured experiences during cardiac arrest and crisis.
Related research reports
A comparative guide to the strongest survival-adjacent evidence: NDEs, terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, past-life memories, mediumship, and after-death communication.
What NDE studies support, what they do not prove, and why the phenomenon remains one of the strongest spiritual-adjacent evidence clusters.
A balanced synthesis of the strongest and weakest evidence across afterlife, consciousness, reincarnation, mystical, psi, and practice claims.
Related sources
The institutional home for serious empirical work on past-life memories and survival-related anomalies.
Modern follow-up to AWARE that keeps the page current and helps distinguish reported awareness during resuscitation from stronger afterlife interpretations.
Most-cited rigorous attempt at empirically testing claims of conscious awareness during clinical death.
Adds a second medical-cohort anchor beside van Lommel and AWARE, useful for showing that NDE research is not based only on retrospective anecdote.
Standard reference body for NDE-related claims; archives many first-person accounts and links to peer-reviewed work.
Direct background for any claim about whether something of the person survives death, and a useful guardrail against treating survival as a single simple proposition.