If a severely autistic person has an NDE, are they autistic during this experience or do they process information as a neurotypical would?
Now this really – and I mean REALLY – fascinates the dickens out of me.
Let’s take a young man with severe or even profound autism – we’ll call him Kolton.
Kolton finds himself in water, unable to stay afloat, and goes into cardiac arrest.
He’s pulled out and given CPR, but not before his heart had been stopped for, say, nearly two minutes – after which the rescuer gets his heart beating again, and Kolton coughs up water and has resumed breathing.
What happened to his consciousness during those two minutes of clinical death?
There are many typical people who, after being resuscitated, report having had the most spectacular, profound experience while their heart had been stopped.
We’ve all heard about these near death experiences, or life after life.
Now, this isn’t about whether or not you believe there’s an afterlife, or whether or not these experiences occurred externally or inside the individual’s brain.
But one thing’s for sure: All of the people who report having had a near death experience (meaning, their heart was literally stopped, requiring CPR or an electric shock to restart it) all explain that during the event, their understanding of existence was the most crystal clear it had ever been.
Even decades after these events, they’ll tell you they can remember every micro detail as though the experience had occurred yesterday.
So one must wonder how a person with low functioning autism would experience an NDE.
Would they still be low functioning autistic during the NDE?
Or, would they be experiencing this intense realm through a neurotypical lens?
Suppose they’re nonverbal. In an NDE, people will report that there’s no verbal communication, that it’s all via telepathy.
So a nonverbal Autistic wouldn’t be speaking during an NDE simply because, according to subjective reports by thousands of NDE’ers, nobody talks in these realms.
All communication is done via mind reading or telepathy.
But what if, in their life experience, that nonverbal Autistic can’t formulate thoughts, either?
Though there are nonspeaking autistic people who can spell out their thoughts on a keyboard or by pointing to letters – without the use of a “facilitator” physically guiding their hand – there are more severely affected autistic individuals who can’t communicate at all with any form of typing or spelling, or even a picture board.
It’s tempting to deduce that they’re not capable of forming audible words inside their mind. This would especially be true if they had a profound intellectual disability aside from the autism.
If this describes Kolton, then is he capable of making thoughts inside his head during his NDE?
Suppose during the near death experience, he’s neurotypical.
Then wouldn’t this mean that once he’s revived and regains consciousness, he’ll know how to think neurotypically?
How could Kolton be thinking severely autistically once he’s conscious while being able to remember having an experience through a neurotypical lens?
One of the common features of NDE’ers is exceptionally vivid recall of every moment, every nuance, of the event.
Thus, if a severely autistic person has an NDE, we can conclude that they have pinpoint recall of it – because that’s the nature of being an NDE’er.
So if they experienced the NDE with a neurotypical mind, then it just seems that they should be able to not only recall the entire event with precision, but be able to verbally describe it.
But maybe when back in his physical body, Kolton is unable to transfer words in his brain to his vocal cords and out through his mouth.
If he was never able to read and write, due to a significant intellectual handicap, then he wouldn’t be able to just magically print out the experience on paper with a pen.
The speculation on this is all over the map.
Here’s what I’m inclined to believe: Autistic people experience NDE’s through whatever form of autism they have when in their body.
Thus, a profoundly autistic man will be profoundly autistic during an NDE.
Likewise, if a four-year-old neurotypical has an NDE, they’ll experience it through the lens of a four-year-old mind, not an adult mind.
One day, we’ll know precisely how this all works – when it’s our turn to cross over!
