BEYOND THE VEIL

JEREMY RENNER AND THE SCIENCE OF EXTRAORDINARY NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

- STORY: MAGGIE ASTOR / NYT

A little over two years ago, actor Jeremy Renner was run over by a 7-tonne snowplough.

In a new memoir, he wrote that as he lay near death, he experienced something extraordinary.

He could see his entire life at once, and felt an “exhilarating peace” and a connection to the world. He also saw family and friends arrayed before him, telling him not to let go.

“What I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy,” Renner wrote. “There was no time, place or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy, like the whipping lines of cars’ taillights photographed by a time-lapse camera.”

What Renner described is “classic for near-death experiences”, the term researchers use for such events, said Dr Jeffrey Long, the founder of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.

Long’s foundation has collected more than 4,000 accounts similar to Renner’s. Some people who have come close to death have recounted a sense of energy, peace and absence of time, as Renner did. Some have also described watching their body from above, moving through a tunnel towards a light and even meeting God.

The general public may be familiar with these events through a genre of memoirs that present near-death experiences as proof of a Christian afterlife. But they have been reported across countries, demographics and religions, as well as by atheists, and have been a subject of scientific research for decades.

There is no scientific consensus on what causes near-death experiences. But whatever their cause, they can change people's lives. Some lose all fear of death; others change careers or leave relationships. The reactions to near-death experiences seem to outstrip what researchers have seen in people who nearly die but don’t have such an experience.