Happenings Newsletter
25Q4V7
December 2025
Dr. Jeffrey Long
IANDS Conference 2026
Near-death experiences (NDEs) that follow suicide attempts will be discussed at the IANDS Spring Symposium 2026. I shared summary information with the organizers based on accounts submitted to NDERF.
I reviewed 984 NDEs, including 42 linked to suicide attempts and 942 from NDEs due to all other causes. Overall, the two groups described very similar experiences, which suggests that suicide-associated NDEs are not a separate type. There were a few small differences that likely reflect the circumstances and emotions at the start of the event.
Compared with other NDEs, people with suicide-associated NDEs were less likely to report peace, pleasantness, and joy, and more likely to mention encountering a boundary or seeing scenes from the future. On 30 other survey questions, there were no statistical differences. These findings can help guide post-experience counseling and inform future research.
This is another great example of how NDERF keeps helping researchers and the worldwide NDE community. We share carefully curated summaries, anonymized accounts, and simple, usable stats so people can ask better questions and find clearer answers. We also respond to requests from conferences and study teams, connect interested readers with reliable resources, and keep the focus on respectful collaboration across cultures.
Important Note: Research on suicide attempts that resulted in NDEs showed a marked drop in subsequent overt suicide risk compared with what might otherwise be expected. The enduring psychological and value changes following the experience, including increased sense of meaning, responsibility, and connectedness likely play a major role. While this does not imply causation or replace mental-health care, it strongly suggests that NDEs may function as a powerful protective factor against recurrence and deserve careful clinical consideration.
Jody Long
What the Latest Near-Death and Related Experiences
Are Still Telling Us in 2025
Over the past few months, from August to November 2025, NDERF.org has published the fifty most recent accounts to the website. These submissions include classic near-death experiences as well as shared-death experiences, medically induced out-of-body states, profound meditation breakthroughs, deathbed visions, and spiritually transformative events that occurred without any clinical death.
You may be wondering why we now include experiences beyond strictly near-death cases. This broader approach offers a much clearer picture of near-death phenomena by placing them within the full spectrum of human spiritual experience. It also allows us to study consciousness more deeply and understand how it can detach from the physical body, expand dramatically, and return profoundly changed, whether or not the heart ever stops. After twenty-five years of focusing primarily on NDEs, we continue to ask an important question. How do we classify and
understand the entire range of human experiences that do not require physical death yet share the same core elements as near-death experiences? When we read these newest fifty accounts side by side, the answer becomes unmistakable. The same foundational patterns appear repeatedly, no matter whether the person was clinically dead for minutes, collapsed from illness, sat in deep meditation, or simply held a dying loved one’s hand. The most frequently reported element remains an overwhelming, unconditional love that far surpasses anything known in ordinary life. Experiencers describe it as the very ground of existence. They instantly feel they have come home to pure peace and belonging. Fear, guilt, shame, and loneliness dissolve the moment this love envelops them. Separation from the physical body occurs in the majority of accounts. People float above their bodies, observe medical efforts with calm detachment, and several report verifiable details later confirmed by witnesses. The body feels like a temporary garment that consciousness can lay aside at will. Encounters with radiant beings of light are extremely common. These beings are frequently recognized as Jesus, angels, spiritual guides, or deceased relatives. Communication happens instantly through thought, without spoken words. When life reviews take place, they are never judgmental. Instead, the person experiences every moment of their life simultaneously and feels the emotional impact of their actions from the perspective of everyone they affected. Almost everyone receives the clear message that it is not yet their time to stay. They are sent back, often with great reluctance, because of children who still need them, lessons yet to be learned, or a specific purpose waiting to be fulfilled. Upon return, fear of death completely disappears. Many state that coming back to the limitations of the physical body was far harder than leaving it. Another top commonality is that the returning consciousness can bring back vivid memories of unearthly beauty. Colors appear more vibrant than any on Earth. Landscapes possess indescribable splendor. A profound sense of oneness with all that exists emerges. Separation, they realize, is the true illusion. Everything and everyone is interconnected at the deepest level. Life after these experiences is rarely the same. Intuition and psychic sensitivity frequently increase. Most individuals feel a strong inner call to live differently, to embody more kindness and authenticity, and to share the truth that consciousness survives bodily death and that love is the ultimate reality. Some readers have asked whether including accounts from people who were never clinically dead or dying weakens the significance of these patterns. The answer is the exact opposite. The consistency is actually strengthened. The same ten core elements appear with virtually identical frequency and emotional intensity whether the doorway was cardiac arrest, a suicide attempt, severe blood loss, deep meditation, or simply sitting at a loved one’s bedside as they passed. The trigger changes. The destination and the message do not. This remarkable uniformity across widely varied physiological and psychological states makes the evidence far more robust than if we only examined classic NDEs. It effectively rules out the common skeptical explanation that these experiences are merely the by-product of a dying brain under extreme stress. Many experiencers in this latest group were physiologically stable with heart beating and brain oxygenated, yet they accessed the exact same non-local domain of love, light, and expanded awareness. What we are witnessing is a natural capacity of human consciousness that can be activated in multiple ways. The near-death experience is simply one dramatic portal among many. By studying the full continuum of NDEs, shared-death experiences, meditation-induced states, and spontaneous spiritual awakenings, we see that consciousness is primary, not secondary to the brain. The brain appears to act more like a filter or reducing valve than the producer of awareness itself. These latest fifty submissions, both NDE and non-NDE, continue to mirror thousands of earlier reports across every culture, religion, and decade. By studying the full continuum of exceptional human experiences, we see clearly that near-death phenomena are not isolated anomalies of a dying brain. They are natural expressions of consciousness that can transcend physical limits at any moment. The message remains consistent and urgent as we move toward 2026. Death is not an end but a transition. Love is the fabric of existence. Each of us is eternally held in that love.
NDERF Spotlight
This quarter, we’re honored to spotlight Bud Carlson.
Bud’s professional career began in the beauty industry, where he developed exceptional client relations expertise, a strong service-first mindset, and a reputation for building long-term professional partnerships. Later, as co-founder of an imaging and design firm, Bud delivered high-impact visual media and design solutions that combine intuitive insight with advanced digital craftsmanship. His integrity, interpersonal skills, and passion for excellence were noticed.
In his five years with the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), Bud has brought his talents here and is actively contributing to support NDERF’s global mission to foster meaningful dialogue about the nature of consciousness and the afterlife to others. His responsibilities include contact relations, newsletter design, and much more as a very active member of our team.
Outside his work at NDERF, Bud enjoys retirement as the founder and lead singer of the band STRATA, where he brings his musical depth, creative direction, and people skills to deliver energetic performances for his community.
Another Testament to the Power of NDEs
Focusing on the
Transformative Nature of NDEs
Question: What was your religion prior to your experience? Answer: Unaffiliated- Atheist
Question: Have your religious practices changed since your experience? Answer: Yes I know that religion is of man and not of God
Question: Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? Answer: Yes, I know that God, Jesus, and heaven exists.
NDE Summary Below
or Click Link for Full Narrative
NDE Summary
By Joseph Khasho - Luis’s near-death experience occurred unexpectedly during sleep, when he found himself struggling and unable to breathe. Raised with no exposure to religion, what followed was a familiar yet inspiring account of exceptional lucidity, clear memory formation, and the recall of self-consciousness apart from the body during a life-threatening event. This deeply ingrained transcendent experience instantly reshaped his previously atheistic worldview. What he encountered, using terms often found in Christianity, was experienced as an immediate and internally coherent reality outside any learned institutional or religious teaching. When viewed alongside thousands of similar accounts, such experiences often both affirm religious teachings by revealing unseen dimensions of reality in a modern evidenced-based light that such traditions point toward but do not fully contain. For those willing to engage it, this represents a rare moment in which understanding of a reported afterlife is informed not only by ancient texts and tradition, but increasingly by modern, evidence-based research drawn from thousands of independent accounts representing millions of experiences. This expansive expression of a felt eternal love is a classic example of how such unique and lasting transformations occur with no known external physical input. The all-encompassing light and love that he encountered were so ineffably profound that it dissolved fear at its root. In that divine realm and presence, Luis understood himself, his life, and reality itself in an entirely new, non-earthly, non-physical way, one that is repeatedly affirmed in similar accounts. One of the most striking transformations following his experience was the complete disappearance of a habit that had once partly defined him: alcohol. Luis explains that he did not try to stop drinking, nor did he apply effort or discipline to resist it. Instead, he describes the change as a “reset.” He states that after his NDE, it felt “as if that part of me never existed... as if I never drank.” There was no struggle, no craving, no sense of loss, almost like this part of him, the memory and desire, was "erased." It was a recognition that the part of him who once drank no longer existed while emphasizing that the most important thing that was removed from him was "the fear". His transformation extended far beyond the impressive change in habitual behavior. The loss of fear enabled Luis to emerge from the experience seemingly with a new identity, a renewed sense of childlike wonder and purpose that drove a deep desire to live in alignment with the love he encountered in the afterlife. The fear that once shaped his thinking was gone, replaced by clarity, gratitude, and motivation that continue to guide him daily in most everything he encounters. Again, this is a familiar story, one that needs to be heard, shared, and internalized vicariously from the tens of millions who, statistically, have had similar deep spiritual encounters emphasizing a universal ethic of love, where respect serves as its fundamental expression. There are few human experiences capable of producing such immediate, lasting, and effortless change with no known external physical input. Luis’s account reflects a pattern seen repeatedly in NDEs: profound and persistent inner transformation that does not necessarily rely on willpower, practice, self-improvement, or formal belief systems, but arises naturally from a direct encounter with what experiencers describe and know to be life after life. These experiences do not merely alter behavior; they reshape identity itself in ways that deserve serious clinical attention in hopes of improving outcomes in psychological well-being. Today, Luis offers some of his time as a volunteer with NDERF to help those who are searching, struggling, or simply curious. NDERF plans to host a Q&A event in January featuring Luis, facilitated by board member Joseph Khasho, to discuss how his NDE infused life with meaning and purpose. If you are interested in learning more or participating, please let us know by clicking [Contact Us] below or by emailing us at contact@nderf.org
NDE 101
The Ineffability of Near-Death Experiences
One of the most consistent features reported in near-death experiences (NDEs) is what researchers call the ineffability of the experience—the profound difficulty people have in putting parts of their NDE into words. When reading or listening to NDE accounts, experiencers often pause, search for language, or openly acknowledge that what they encountered cannot be fully described using ordinary terms. Many say there is simply no adequate real-world comparison. Experiencers frequently rely on analogies to communicate this limitation. Some describe it as trying to explain color to someone born blind, or attempting to describe a three-dimensional object—like a sphere or cube—to a being that can only understand flat, two-dimensional shapes. The issue is not a lack of intelligence or imagination, but a mismatch between what was experienced and the tools we have for describing everyday reality. NDERF research has consistently shown that this struggle with language is not random or rare. Across thousands of accounts collected and analyzed by Dr. Jeffrey Long and the NDERF team, experiencers independently report this same limitation, even when they come from different cultures, belief systems, and educational backgrounds. The recurring nature of ineffability suggests that NDEs involve aspects of reality that lie outside ordinary sensory experience. This raises an important insight: the absence of adequate language does not indicate confusion or fabrication. Instead, it points to an inherent limitation in how human consciousness normally accesses and processes reality. Just as our senses are limited to a narrow range of sound and light, our conceptual frameworks may be limited when encountering realities that are fundamentally different from everyday physical life. In NDEs, the ineffability itself becomes meaningful data. It strongly suggests that these experiences are not merely vivid imaginations or dreams, but encounters with something genuinely unfamiliar—something that does not map neatly onto earthly categories. In this way, the ineffability of NDEs is not a weakness of the accounts, but one of their most telling and consistent features.