Professor Walter van Laack is a physician, scientist and author – and one of the most prominent German-language researchers on near-death experiences (NDE). In an interview with Netzwerk Nahtoderfahrung e.V., he explains why, as a scientist, he is now convinced that consciousness continues after death – and why, in his view, the standard physiological explanations for NDEs "fall short across the board". Below is a summary of the key points.
His personal position
Van Laack says that almost 40 years ago he was a convinced materialist and assumed that death was the end. Today his position is the opposite:
"I personally have no fear of death. […] Today I hold the completely opposite conviction. For me, life continues after death on a personal level – meaning with my personality preserved – and it does so without pause or comma."
He arrived at this view over decades of scientific engagement with NDE reports – not from a religious premise.
Why the standard explanations fall short, in his view
In the neuroscience literature three physiological explanations are typically invoked against NDEs: oxygen deprivation, drug or anaesthesia effects, and hallucinations. Van Laack does not dispute that these mechanisms can account for isolated aspects – but he considers them insufficient as a whole, both qualitatively and quantitatively:
- Not all NDEs involve oxygen deprivation. A clear example: reports under controlled surgical conditions in which no oxygen deprivation is measurable.
- Not all NDEs involve drugs. Many people experience NDEs in accidents, without any medication or drug effect.
- Hallucinations presuppose a functioning brain – at the level of abstract thought. Precisely this is absent in a series of documented cases.
The flat-line finding
From van Laack's perspective the strongest objection to the hallucination hypothesis is the so-called flat-line cases: patients whose EEG during surgery shows no brain activity whatsoever – and who nevertheless report detailed near-death experiences afterwards, comparable to those of other NDE reporters.
"We have several patients who, during surgical conditions, have no brain activity anymore – demonstrably no brain activity anymore – and who nonetheless have a near-death experience, with all the details that others describe."
If the brain is the "abstract thinking machine" we need for any kind of structured inner experience, then a structured experience during a measurable flat-line EEG – van Laack argues – itself calls for explanation.
What those affected report
Van Laack cites figures drawn from several studies:
- Over 95 % positive experiences. Up to roughly 5 % are experienced as negative – often linked to a tunnel phenomenon perceived as frightening, or to a confrontational "life review".
- Life review from the other person's perspective. NDE experiencers often see their lives not as passive observers, but experience the impact of their actions from the perspective of the people they interacted with.
- Loss of the fear of death. "The most beautiful gift" of this experience, says van Laack: NDE experiencers consistently no longer believe that death is their end.
- Life change. Many NDE experiencers become more spiritual, less materialistic and less "elbows-out". The central feeling they describe: a deep sense of being loved.
Why NDEs are not dreams or drug visions, in his view
A common objection runs: NDEs are simply dreams or drug-like visions. Van Laack counters with a methodological argument: dreams are individual – each person dreams something different, and the same person dreams differently each night. NDEs, by contrast, show the same core patterns across all eras, cultures and age groups: tunnel, light, life review, encounters with the deceased, a deep sense of being loved. For him, this "common thread" is the decisive argument against the hallucination claim.
He also addresses the second typical counterargument – that NDEs are nothing more than drug experiences – with a concrete example from his work: a heavily drug-dependent man from Berlin whom he interviewed after his own NDE put it this way:
"This has nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with what I experienced during years of drug abuse."
Why more people report NDEs today
The fact that more people report NDEs today than three decades ago is explained by van Laack with a simple observation: modern resuscitation has far better success rates than before. So more people return from the borderline zone – not because NDEs are new, but because there are more returners. The phenomenon itself is old and has been documented across all eras and cultures.
Context
For us at Heaven Connect, van Laack's position is interesting because it reveals a pattern we see repeatedly in mediumistic practice as well: the same core motifs – being received by the deceased, a sense of safety and love, the loss of the fear of death – appear in NDE reports, in historical sources (see our article on Andersen's Little Match Girl), and in the work of mediums and trance mediums. Van Laack offers no spiritual argument, but a scientific one: the standard explanations simply are not enough to account for these patterns.
For the full interview we link to the original YouTube video by Netzwerk Nahtoderfahrung e.V. below.
Source:Zwischen Diesseits und Jenseits – van Laack im Interview, Netzwerk Nahtoderfahrung e.V. (YouTube, in German), youtube.com/watch?v=DSGY_8rXHJI. Quotations from the interview are translated by us and rendered in quotation marks.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – it links to further material from NDE pioneers (among them Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the physicist Markolf Niemz).