Is there life after death? For American radiation oncologist Dr. Jeffrey Long, this question can be asked not only philosophically but also empirically. In his bestseller "Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences" (2010, co-authored with Paul Perry), he presents the results of one of the world's most extensive studies on near-death experiences (NDEs).
The NDERF Study and Its Methodology
Dr. Long founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) in 1998. The core of his work is a standardised questionnaire with more than 100 items, which experiencers complete on nderf.org – now available in many languages. The database today contains more than 5,000 analysed reports, making it the largest collection of its kind worldwide.
This combination – 100 questions × 5,000 reports – produces a dataset that is statistically exceptionally meaningful. Recurring patterns can be identified with high reliability, and differences across cultures, religions, and age groups can be compared systematically. This sets Long's study clearly apart from most NDE research, which works with significantly smaller samples or shorter questionnaires.
As in psychology, social research, and large parts of medicine, this work is based on structured self-reports – a method long established in these disciplines. Conscious experiences cannot be reproduced in a laboratory; within this type of research, Long's dataset stands out for its size and consistency. The 2010 book is based on the first ~1,600 cases; in 2016, "God and the Afterlife" (HarperOne, also with Paul Perry) followed as a theological-spiritual sequel.
The 9 Lines of Evidence
At the heart of Evidence of the Afterlife are nine lines of evidence whose convergence points to a single conclusion: consciousness continues to exist independently of the body. Any individual line might be explained otherwise – but their consistent recurrence across thousands of reports cannot.
"Near-death experiences provide such powerful scientific evidence that it is reasonable to accept the existence of an afterlife." – Jeffrey Long
- 1. Crystal-Clear Consciousness during Clinical Death: Despite cardiac arrest or deep unconsciousness, NDErs report a clarity and alertness that is often more intense than in their normal waking state.
- 2. Realistic Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs): People observe events from a perspective outside their body. These observations were often later confirmed by doctors or relatives as absolutely precise.
- 3. Heightened Senses and "Seeing" in the Blind: Many report supernatural vision or hearing. Particularly impressive are reports from people blind from birth who had visual impressions for the first time during their NDE.
- 4. Consciousness under General Anesthesia: Orderly experiences occur even when patients are under deep anesthesia – a state in which consciousness should medically be impossible.
- 5. The Life Review: Experiencers see their entire life play out like a movie, often feeling the emotions that their actions triggered in others.
- 6. Encounters with Deceased Relatives: In NDEs, people almost exclusively meet relatives who have already passed away – often including those whose death they were unaware of at the time.
- 7. Experiences of Children: The reports of very young children, who do not yet have cultural or religious concepts of death, are identical to those of adults.
- 8. Worldwide Consistency: No matter what culture, religion, or region a person comes from – the core characteristics of NDEs are remarkably consistent worldwide.
- 9. Lasting Life Changes: An NDE changes people fundamentally. They often lose all fear of death and develop a significantly increased capacity for empathy and compassion.
Conclusion: Science and Spirituality
Dr. Jeffrey Long emphasises that conventional explanations (such as oxygen deprivation or brain chemistry) fail to account for the precise out-of-body observations or the hyper-real perceptions. For him, the convergence of these nine lines of evidence – backed by one of the largest datasets ever systematically collected on this subject – is a compelling argument for the reality of an afterlife.
Outlook: NDE Research in the Age of AI
Long's study is methodologically a product of its time: structured questionnaires were the best available tool for making large volumes of subjective reports comparable. With the rise of powerful language models, a new possibility opens up – near-death experiences can be collected as free-form narratives and then analysed by AI for recurring patterns, metaphors, and sequences. This makes it possible to recognise structures that no one thought to ask about beforehand.
The two approaches complement each other: the questionnaire ensures statistical comparability between studies, while AI-driven text analysis reveals what lies between the items. Long's NDERF database is an ideal starting point – every report contains both the structured answers and an extensive narrative. A re-analysis of his 5,000 narratives with modern language models would not refute what Long has already shown, but add a layer of depth. Early steps in this direction already exist, for instance at the Coma Science Group of the University of Liège (Charlotte Martial, Steven Laureys), where NDE reports are examined for typical experiential sequences using text-analytical methods.
Sources:
• Jeffrey Long & Paul Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, HarperOne 2010.
• Jeffrey Long & Paul Perry, God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience, HarperOne 2016.
• NDERF – Near-Death Experience Research Foundation: www.nderf.org.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – the extensive interview with Jeffrey Long is linked there as well.