Some of the narrative descriptions by Ring’s subjects are of interest. One subject’s sister worked as a nurse in the hospital in which the subject had an ndE during treatment for a heart attack. during the ndE, the subject saw a vision of her sister coming to the hospital. “She walked in shortly after the alert was sounded and got to the emergency room where she worked and someone told her what was going on and she came ripping upstairs. I could see her doing it, I could see her coming up the elevator.” The subject’s sister later confirmed to her that her vision represented exactly what had happened (Ring 1980, p. 51).
Ring also included in his book a case originally reported by British psychical researcher f. W. H. Myers in his classic book Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. The subject, dr. A. S. Wiltse, was a medical doctor. In 1889, he came down with typhoid fever and almost died. As he entered a coma, he recalled feeling drowsy and then losing consciousness. dr. S. H. Raynes, the doctor who was attending Wiltse, said that for four hours he showed no pulse or heart beat. It was during that time that Wiltse had the following experience: “I came again into a state of conscious existence and discovered that I was still in the body, but the body and I had no longer any interests in common.” He felt that he, the living soul, was “interwoven” with the bodily tissues. But then the connections with the bodily tissues began to break, and he came out of the body through the head. “I seemed to be translucent, of a bluish cast and perfectly naked,” said Wiltse. “As I turned, my left elbow came in contact with the arm of one of two gentlemen, who were standing at the door. To my surprise, his arm passed through mine without apparent resistance, the severed parts closing again without pain, as air reunites.” Wiltse then gazed upon his own dead body. But then the body’s eyes opened and Wiltse found himself once more inside that body and said to himself, “What in the world has happened to me? Must I die again?” (Ring 1980, p. 230)
Ring (1980, p. 232) said that the near death experience is best explained as an out-of-body experience. Something separates from this body, but he prefers not to use the word soul, which for him does not function well as a scientific term because of all the different meanings attached to it by various religions. This could be avoided by giving a good definition for the term soul. But I have no objection to Ring’s solution. He says (1980, p. 233): “I would content myself with saying that out-of-body experiences provide us with an empirical referent for the possible origin of the concept of soul. As such, I favor restricting its use to religious contexts. On the basis of the separation hypothesis, however, I do endorse the proposition that consciousness (with or without a second body) may function independently of the physical body.”
In Heading toward omega (1984), Ring documented the results of further research. The results yielded more confirmation of his interpretation of the ndE as an out-of-body experience. Ring gave more accounts of ndEs, including ones in which the subjects entered into the light as “pure consciousness” and found themselves communicating telepathically with friendly spiritual beings who gave them messages of enlightenment. A subject identified as Mr. dippong said that the last thing he remembered before entering into the ndE was praying to God. Then he found himself entering another state of consciousness. “I was in a heavenly pasture with flowers. It was another place, another time, and perhaps it was even another universe.” His ears filled with otherworldly music. Everything that happened was beyond anything he had previously experienced, and yet was somehow familiar. Like many other subjects, he said the experience was really beyond words. In the midst of beautifully colored light he encountered a radiantly beautiful being that he felt could have been his creator. The golden-hued creature, who seemed strangely familiar to dippong, was emanating light and love. He also became aware of other living beings. He felt that all living things were part of the light, and the light was part of them (Ring 1984, p. 61–66).
A subject named Ann described an ndE that occurred during the delivery of her second child in 1954. during a medical crisis, she felt herself being taken up swiftly toward a distant light. She left her pain behind and entered into feelings of peace and love. In this state, she felt that a being would soon approach her. When the being came, she felt she had met her dearmost friend. The being telepathically communicated that he had come for her child. Ann was happy, but soon became dejected when she realized she did not have a child. “He patted my hand in sympathy and reassured me that I was a mother, and I did have a child, but the child must have been delayed somehow,” recalled Ann in a letter to Ring. “Then he waved his hand across the space in front of us and the haze cleared. I could see the nurses and doctor, and my baby, back in the delivery room.” The being communicated to Ann that her child would live only four days. When Ann learned there was nothing she could do to prevent this, she said she did not want to go back. The being told her that she must go back. It was not time for her to go. He had come for her child, and would return for the baby in four days. Hearing this Ann was pleased, and willingly returned. She awoke to find a nurse slapping her face and calling her name. She learned she had given birth to a daughter, whom she called Tari. She felt there was something she wanted to tell the staff, but she could not quite remember what it was. On the second day, Ann’s doctor learned that Tari was suffering from cerebral hemorrhaging and would most probably soon die. On the fourth day, the child did die. The physician told the nurses not to tell Ann, because he wished to break the news to her himself. But somehow this did not happen quickly enough. It came time for Ann to be discharged from the hospital, and at this time a nurse said, “Oh, God! Your doctor should have been here by now! I’m not supposed to tell you, but I can’t let you go on believing Tari is alive. She died early this morning.” At that time, Ann remembered her ndE (Ring 1984, pp. 77–84).
Ring used the Greek word omega for his study because it is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and can be taken to mean the end of life, or, more positively, the goal of life. Ring (1984, p. 252) took this goal to be the evolution of consciousness. Ring (1984, p. 255) considered the ndE to be “only one of a family of related transcendental experiences” that were contributing to this evolution, characterized by “unlocking spiritual potentials previously dormant.”
Another prominent researcher into ndEs and OBEs is Michael B. Sabom. When he was in his first year of cardiology practice at the University of florida in Gainesville, he heard psychiatric social worker Sarah Kreutziger give a talk about dr. Raymond Moody’s book life after life. Sabom (1982, p. 3) recalled, “My indoctrinated scientific mind just couldn’t relate seriously to these ‘far-out’ descriptions of afterlife spirits and such.”