Prof. Dr. Dr. Godehard Brüntrup SJ is a philosopher at the Munich School of Philosophy, specialising in philosophy of mind (the mind-body problem, panpsychism) – and himself someone who has had a near-death experience. In a lecture for the grenzfragen series, he approaches the phenomenon philosophically: what strategies does reason have for dealing with a puzzling phenomenon of this scale? Below is a summary of the central ideas. The original lecture is in German; this article makes it accessible for English readers.
The phenomenon: what experiencers report
Brüntrup starts with a phenomenology of what is reported, strikingly similarly, across cultures, religions, ages and educational backgrounds: after a brief phase of fear, an entry into another dimension experienced as more intense, clear and coherent than ordinary waking consciousness.
"The mental processes unfold with such inner clarity, presence and intensity that ordinary waking consciousness looks pale and sluggish in comparison."
Typical elements: out-of-body perception, tunnel, light, encounters with the deceased and light beings, life review, the decision to return. Important for Brüntrup's argument: the experience is not delusional, but shows inner coherence and a clear dramaturgical arc.
The puzzle of veridical perception
One of the toughest philosophical problems: experiencers later recall details (devices, conversations, clothing of medical staff) that they could not have perceived during cardiac arrest or general anaesthesia. Even blind people report detailed visual impressions.
"The reports are repeatedly so finely detailed that random hits through mere confabulation can be ruled out."
Brüntrup formulates carefully: not every such case is unassailably proven – but a single fully convincing case would shatter the world picture of standard neuroscience. Because there the principle of neural supervenience holds: no change in consciousness without a corresponding change in the brain.
Two patterns hard to explain in evolutionary terms
Brüntrup highlights two observations as philosophically striking because they are hard to accommodate on a purely random-neuronal reading:
- Selection on the deceased. Reports almost exclusively feature relatives who have already died – hardly ever living ones. A mechanism that systematically filters only the deceased out of the entire memory store has no obvious functional meaning.
- The ethical focus of the life review. It is not an arbitrary parade of memories but a moral balance sheet: where have I loved, where have I hurt. Often transpersonal – the effect on others is experienced empathically. Brüntrup asks: why should the "bedtime story" of the dying brain put precisely the question of ethical responsibility at the centre, in all individuals?
Lasting change – the van Lommel finding
Methodologically important: the long-term study by Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel showed that the personality change after an NDE is persistent – and that it does not occur in a comparison group (same cardiac arrest, but no NDE). So it is not the trauma of the medical emergency that transforms people, but the experience itself.
"Love, personal relationships and the acquisition of wisdom move to the centre. Money, career, shallow pastimes lose their attraction decisively."
Distinguishing NDEs from dreams, ketamine, LSD, lab simulation
Brüntrup works through the usual objections:
- Dreams / delusions are bizarre and incoherent – NDEs are coherent.
- Ketamine produces tunnel-like elements, but without inner meaning, without verifiable perception of the outside world, and often as a "horror trip".
- LSD produces illusory, delusional imagery without inner coherence.
- Direct neural stimulation (Blanke) induced a partial OBE in one single case – but not reproducibly.
- VR headsets and similar lab setups are misleading (complex sensory illusions like the "Rubber Hand Experiment").
His conclusion:
"There is so far no laboratory situation in which the near-death experience can be reproduced in its phenomenal richness and coherent semantic content. We stand before a puzzling phenomenon."
Five philosophical strategies
The actual philosophical core of the lecture is Brüntrup's typology of possible responses to a puzzling phenomenon:
- Deny existence – the phenomenon does not exist.
- Declare irrelevance – a meaningless curiosity.
- Known science – fully explicable within the existing paradigm (oxygen deprivation, NMDA receptors, endorphins, DMT).
- Paradigm shift – a new theory is needed (Hameroff/Penrose quantum consciousness, Tononi's integrated information theory, van Lommel's quantum-based theory of consciousness).
- Limits of reason – the puzzle fundamentally exceeds human cognitive capacity (Kant, Thomas Nagel).
Brüntrup's assessment: strategy 1 is out (the phenomenon is well documented). Strategy 2 also (the significance for experiencers and for consciousness theory is too great). Strategies 3, 4 and 5 all remain open.
The hard problem: perception on a flat line
The hardest objection to strategy 3 (conventional explanation): in documented cases people report perceptions from a phase in which the EEG showed a flat line – i.e. no measurable brain activity. Brüntrup formulates the paradox with a simple image:
"You don't expect a car to drive particularly well precisely when it has run out of fuel. Why does the brain work so much better when it is no longer getting oxygen?"
Mystical experience – Brüntrup's constructive proposal
After surveying the strategies, Brüntrup advocates a stance that cuts under the usual camp fight (materialism vs. proof of the afterlife): listen to the experiencers and take the experience itself seriously. In content, the NDE – independent of specific religions – is a mystical experience: safety, forgiveness, universal love.
Brüntrup recalls an old Christian criterion for genuine mystical experience: does the brief, intense experience lead to a lasting positive transformation of character? This is exactly what the studies on NDE experiencers show – increased capacity for love, more empathy, loss of the fear of death, loss of interest in superficiality. His conclusion:
"We do not have to solve the riddle of consciousness first in order to appreciate the beauty of a symphony – or the depth of a near-death experience."
Context
Brüntrup is methodologically different from neurologists like Wilfried Kuhn or Walter van Laack: he argues not empirically but systematically-philosophically. His contribution lies in cleanly structuring the debate – and in the reminder that a premature closing of the question in either direction is not epistemically justified. Together with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's children study and the flat-line cases cited by van Laack, a bigger picture emerges in which the standard assumption "consciousness = brain function" is at least under justificatory pressure.
Source:Brüntrup: Philosophisches zur Nahtoderfahrung, grenzfragen (YouTube, in German), youtube.com/watch?v=sqRKYyUyerc. Quotations from the lecture are translated by us and rendered in quotation marks; the remainder is a paraphrased summary.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – it links to further material from NDE research (among them Walter van Laack, Wilfried Kuhn, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Markolf Niemz).