Shared Death Experiences: Consciousness as a Field Phenomenon

Language: en

Overview

A woman sits at her husband’s bedside in the final hours of his life. He has been unconscious for two days, breathing shallowly, his body shutting down. She holds his hand and prays. Then something happens that she will never forget: she feels herself being pulled upward, out of her body. She sees a brilliant light. She sees her husband — young, whole, radiant — moving toward the light. She sees what appears to be his entire life unfolding simultaneously, as if watching a panoramic film. She feels overwhelming love and peace. Then she feels herself being gently returned to her body, still holding his hand. He has stopped breathing. He is gone. But she knows — not believes, knows — that he is not gone. She was with him as he crossed.

This is a shared death experience (SDE) — an NDE-like experience reported by a person who is not dying but is in the presence of someone who is. The experiencer is healthy, conscious, and not in any medical crisis. Yet they report the same phenomenological features as a near-death experience: out-of-body perception, tunnel, light, encounters with beings, life review, and a profound sense of peace and love. The difference is that they are not the ones dying. They are witnessing — and apparently participating in — someone else’s death transition.

Shared death experiences challenge the standard model of consciousness more radically than NDEs themselves. An NDE might be explained (however unsatisfactorily) as a hallucination produced by the dying brain. But a shared death experience occurs in a brain that is not dying, not oxygen-deprived, not flooded with endogenous DMT. If the experience is a hallucination, it is a hallucination produced by a healthy brain — with no known neurochemical trigger — that just happens to match the phenomenology of dying. The more parsimonious explanation may be that consciousness is not confined to individual brains and that the dying process involves a field phenomenon that can be shared across conscious observers.

Raymond Moody: The Original Documentation

From NDEs to SDEs

Raymond Moody, the physician who coined the term “near-death experience” in his 1975 bestseller “Life After Life,” first began documenting shared death experiences in the 1990s. He published his findings in “Glimpses of Eternity” (2010), presenting cases collected over decades of research.

Moody’s initial resistance to SDEs is instructive. Despite having spent his career studying NDEs, he was initially skeptical of SDE reports — they seemed to push the boundaries of credibility beyond what even NDE research supported. But the reports kept coming, from credible witnesses (nurses, physicians, family members with no prior interest in the paranormal), with a consistency that demanded attention.

Moody classified SDEs into several categories based on the experiencer’s relationship to the dying person and the specific features reported:

Co-living the life review. The SDE experiencer witnesses the dying person’s life review — a panoramic, simultaneous display of the person’s entire life. The experiencer sees events from the dying person’s life that they had no prior knowledge of, events that are later verified by other family members.

Co-traveling through the tunnel/light. The experiencer feels themselves being drawn into the same tunnel or toward the same light that the dying person is approaching. They may travel part of the way before feeling themselves returned to their body.

Shared out-of-body experience. The experiencer leaves their body and observes the death scene from an elevated perspective, just as NDE experiencers report during cardiac arrest. They may see their own body sitting by the bedside, see the dying person’s body in the bed, and simultaneously perceive the dying person’s consciousness as a separate, luminous presence.

Room changes. The physical environment appears to transform — the room seems to expand, the lighting changes, a mist or fog appears, or geometric shapes and lights are visible. These room changes are sometimes reported by multiple people present at the death.

Encounter with deceased. The SDE experiencer encounters deceased persons — often people who were known to the dying person but unknown to the experiencer. These encounters are sometimes later verified (the experiencer describes the deceased person accurately despite never having met them or seen a photograph).

William Peters and the Shared Crossing Project

Systematic Research

William Peters, a psychotherapist and researcher, founded the Shared Crossing Project to systematically study shared death experiences. Peters’ research, culminating in his 2022 book “At Heaven’s Door,” represents the most rigorous and comprehensive treatment of SDEs to date.

Peters’ methodology includes structured interviews, independent verification protocols, and systematic categorization of SDE features. His database includes hundreds of SDE cases from around the world, reported by hospice workers, nurses, physicians, family members, and chaplains.

Key Findings

Peters’ research has identified several consistent patterns:

Frequency. SDEs are more common than previously recognized. In Peters’ surveys of hospice workers and end-of-life caregivers, approximately 30-40% report having had at least one experience that meets the criteria for a shared death experience during their careers. This suggests that SDEs are not rare anomalies but a relatively common feature of the dying process — one that is underreported because experiencers fear disbelief or ridicule.

Proximity. SDEs most commonly occur when the experiencer is in physical proximity to the dying person — at the bedside, in the same room, or (in some cases) in the same building. However, Peters has documented cases where the SDE occurred at a distance — the experiencer was in another city or country and had the experience at the moment of death, without knowing that the person was dying.

Emotional bond. SDEs are strongly associated with the strength of the emotional bond between the experiencer and the dying person. Spouses, parents/children, and very close friends are the most common experiencers. However, SDEs have also been reported by professional caregivers with no personal relationship to the dying person — suggesting that emotional openness and willingness to be present may be as important as the specific relationship.

Multiple witnesses. In some cases, multiple people present at the deathbed report shared death experiences simultaneously. These multi-witness cases are particularly compelling, as they provide independent corroboration and reduce the likelihood of individual hallucination or confabulation.

Verification. Peters has documented cases where the SDE experiencer acquired information during the experience that they could not have obtained through normal channels — descriptions of the dying person’s life events, appearances of deceased persons unknown to the experiencer, and accurate perceptions of events occurring outside the experiencer’s sensory range.

Case Examples

The Vietnam Veteran. A hospice nurse was present at the death of a Vietnam veteran with whom she had no personal relationship. As he died, she experienced herself being transported to a jungle environment — humid, noisy, terrifying. She saw soldiers, explosions, and a specific event involving a helicopter crash. After the death, she described the experience to the veteran’s family, who confirmed that the helicopter crash she described was a real event from his service that had traumatized him for decades. She had no prior knowledge of his military history.

The Two Sisters. Two adult sisters were present at their mother’s death. Both independently reported seeing a luminous mist rise from their mother’s body and move toward a brilliant light. Both reported feeling a sense of overwhelming love and peace. Both reported seeing their deceased father, who had died years earlier, appear in the light as if to welcome their mother. They did not discuss their experiences with each other until days later, when their descriptions were found to match in specific detail.

The Distant SDE. A woman in California experienced a sudden, overwhelming sense of her father’s presence, accompanied by a vision of brilliant light, a feeling of peace, and the sense that her father was saying goodbye. She called her mother in New York immediately. Her mother told her that her father had died minutes earlier, while she was calling. The timing of the SDE matched the time of death.

Consciousness as a Field Phenomenon

The Individual Brain Model vs the Field Model

The standard neuroscientific model treats consciousness as an individual phenomenon — produced by and confined to a single brain. Under this model, the only way to share a conscious experience is through communication (one brain tells another brain about its experience). Direct sharing of experience — without any communicative channel — is impossible.

Shared death experiences violate this model. Two or more individuals share a conscious experience simultaneously, without any known communicative channel. The dying person is unconscious and unable to communicate. The experiencer is healthy and not in an altered state (prior to the SDE). Yet they share an experience that, in some cases, includes veridical information that neither party could have communicated to the other.

The field model of consciousness offers an alternative: consciousness is not produced by individual brains but is a field — a non-local, extended phenomenon in which individual brains participate. Under this model, the dying process involves a local perturbation of the consciousness field — a disturbance, like a ripple in a pond, that propagates beyond the dying person’s brain and can be perceived by other conscious beings in proximity.

This is a metaphor, not a mechanism. We do not have a physics of consciousness fields. But the metaphor is consistent with the data — shared death experiences, the Global Consciousness Project, telepathy research, and the contemplative traditions’ universal description of consciousness as non-local and shared.

Morphic Resonance Revisited

Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of morphic resonance — that natural systems are connected by fields that transmit information non-locally — finds some support in the SDE literature. The SDE suggests that the dying process creates a kind of resonance between the dying person’s consciousness and the consciousness of those emotionally bonded to them — a resonance that transmits experiential information without any physical channel.

Mainstream science rejects morphic resonance as unfalsifiable and mechanistically implausible. But the SDE data, if taken at face value, requires some form of non-local connection between minds. Whether this connection is called morphic resonance, entanglement, field effect, or simply mystery, the phenomena it describes — shared experience without physical communication — are consistently reported by credible witnesses.

The Shamanic Perspective: Soul Companions

Psychopomps and Death Guides

Shamanic traditions worldwide describe the role of the psychopomp — the soul companion who guides the dying person’s consciousness from this world to the next. In Greek mythology, Hermes Psychopompos led souls to the underworld. In Egyptian tradition, Anubis weighed the heart of the dead. In Celtic tradition, the bean sidhe (banshee) accompanied the dying. In indigenous American traditions, specific animals (owl, raven, wolf) serve as guides for the departing soul.

The shared death experience may be the experiential basis for these traditions. If people regularly had experiences of accompanying the dying person’s consciousness on part of its journey — seeing the light, entering the tunnel, encountering deceased beings — they would naturally describe themselves (or be described by their community) as psychopomps. The SDE is not a violation of the natural order. It may be a fundamental feature of the dying process — a built-in mechanism for soul companionship that ensures the dying person is not alone in their transition.

The Community Death

In indigenous cultures, death is typically a community event. The dying person is surrounded by family, tribe, and spiritual practitioners. Songs are sung, prayers are offered, and the community holds space for the transition. This communal container is not merely emotional support for the dying person. From the shamanic perspective, it creates a field of consciousness — a shared space of awareness — that supports and guides the dying person’s transition.

The SDE literature supports this view: SDEs are more common when the experiencer is emotionally present, open, and holding space for the dying person. The quality of attention matters. The relationship matters. The field of consciousness that facilitates the shared experience is co-created by the dying person and those around them.

Modern hospital death, by contrast, is typically a solitary, clinical, and emotionally sterile event. The dying person is surrounded by machines, not people. The emotional field is fear and helplessness, not love and presence. The conditions for shared death experiences — and, perhaps, for conscious dying itself — are systematically undermined by the modern medical death.

Implications

For End-of-Life Care

If shared death experiences are real — if the dying process involves a field phenomenon that can be shared with those present — then the quality of human presence at the deathbed matters profoundly. The dying person is not simply a body shutting down. They are a consciousness in transition. And the consciousness of those around them may participate in that transition — for better or worse.

This has practical implications: ensure that dying people are accompanied by loved ones, not left alone with monitors. Encourage silence, presence, and emotional openness rather than frantic medical intervention. Create an environment of peace rather than panic. And take seriously the reports of those who share in the dying person’s experience — they are not hallucinating. They are perceiving something real.

For Bereavement

SDEs consistently produce a dramatic reduction in grief and death anxiety in the experiencer. People who have shared in a loved one’s death transition report: certainty that the person continues to exist, peace with the death, reduced fear of their own death, and a sense of ongoing connection with the deceased. These effects are permanent and do not diminish over time.

If SDEs are common (as Peters’ research suggests), then facilitating conditions for SDEs — encouraging physical presence, emotional openness, and contemplative awareness at the deathbed — could be a powerful form of bereavement support. Not grief counseling after the fact, but soul companionship during the transition.

For Consciousness Research

Shared death experiences provide perhaps the strongest evidence that consciousness is not confined to individual brains. The dying person’s experience is shared by a healthy person with no known neurochemical trigger, sometimes including veridical information, and sometimes corroborated by multiple independent witnesses. Any explanation that attributes the SDE to hallucination, wishful thinking, or confabulation must account for the verified information and the multi-witness cases.

The SDE suggests that consciousness is more like a field than a product — that it is shared, extended, and participatory rather than isolated, bounded, and individually generated. This aligns with the contemplative traditions’ description of consciousness as the ground of being — a universal awareness in which individual minds participate.

Conclusion

Shared death experiences represent one of the most challenging phenomena in consciousness research. They cannot be explained by the dying brain hypothesis (the experiencer’s brain is not dying). They cannot be explained by neurochemical triggers (the experiencer is not in any altered physiological state). They cannot be explained by expectation or cultural conditioning (many experiencers have no prior knowledge of SDEs and are profoundly surprised by the experience).

What shared death experiences suggest is that consciousness, at the moment of death, behaves like a field — extending beyond the individual brain, communicating information non-locally, and drawing nearby conscious beings into a shared experience. This field phenomenon aligns with the contemplative traditions’ universal description of consciousness as non-local, shared, and fundamental — not produced by brains but channeled through them.

The practical implication is clear: be present with the dying. Not merely physically present but consciously present — open, aware, emotionally connected. The dying person may be opening a doorway that you, if you are present and attentive, can briefly perceive. And what you perceive may transform your understanding of death, consciousness, and the nature of the love that connects all beings.

In the Digital Dharma framework, shared death experiences are clinical confirmation of the most fundamental spiritual truth: consciousness is one. Individual minds are waves in a single ocean. And at the moment of death, when the wave dissolves back into the ocean, those nearest can feel the current — can sense, for a moment, the infinite depth from which all waves arise and to which all waves return.