Edge of Consciousness, with Jeff Olsen
On Near Death Experiences: Time, Information & Meaning
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
- Max Planck
In her tribute to Steve Jobs, his sister Mona described being present with him in his final moments before death. She wrote that he looked at each of his family members and gazed beyond them, as if looking into some ineffable space. She didn’t embellish or speculate on what he was seeing, but she did emphasize that his final expression was one of wonder:
“Steve’s final words were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders, past them. Steve’s final words were: 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.'”
His final utterance has been interpreted by some as a brush with the numinous—the kind that many liken to that of a near-death experience (NDE); it’s marked by awe and a dissolution of egoic boundaries.
More importantly, it metaphysically reframes existential perspective for those who come out of it alive.
It’s at this intersection of life and death that we see a powerful convergence of subjectivity and objectivity - physics break apart amidst neurochemical firings that prompt consciousness to unbind itself and, well, do whatever consciousness does when our body goes offline.
Because despite our ability to poke around in the subatomic realms of existence and surf the cosmic tides of the macrocosmic oceans, we don’t exactly know too much about our own consciousness.
Regardless, we understand some baseline elements of its function, extracted from the edges of its subsistence.
For one, there’s a definitive and instantaneous transition into an altered state of consciousness. Neurochemical deployments of serotonin, dopamine and DMT transport the brain into a completely different frame of existence.
With this, visual or emotional recognitions of something awe-inspiring - something beyond the physical and immediate - set in and there’s often reported to be some measure of an encounter with something wholly transcendent.
The liminal state between life and death is curated, either by an internal mechanism or an external source; many will call it God, others call it hallucination.
But in countless documented experiences, there are common denominators worth exploring. Time is said to be distorted, information is communicated instantaneously and agency is dismantled amidst a generation of profound meaning to the whole enterprise.
Jeff Olsen, who lost his wife and son in a severe car accident that also brought him to the precipice of death, has spent the majority of his life riding the reverberations of the tragedy that fundamentally redefined his existence.
Below is an interview with Jeff, conveying the insights he brought back from the edge of consciousness.
PART I. TIME DISTORTION
Time Is Not a Constant, But a Construct
In both NDE reports, the whole concept of time bends or completely vanishes.
Einstein famously noted, “The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Likewise, experiencers return with a passionate focus on the present, insisting that living in the now is the only true way to live —that time, as we know it, collapses under higher perception.
Could consciousness, like light, transcend time when freed from bodily constraint?
Many NDE experiencers, including yourself, describe time as fluid or nonexistent in the afterlife. How has this altered your perspective on time’s role in our physical reality, or the role of consciousness relative to 'linear' time?
Jeff Olsen: There is only NOW! All my pain seems to be rooted in the past. All my worries live in the thoughts of future. If I say in the NOW. I can find peace. Even in challenging times and thoughts, if I stay grounded in the present moment, I can breathe and find my way to the next breath until I create peace within myself.
From a perspective of physics, it almost seems like the NDE allows you to move through space and time without the limitations that govern us on a general basis. Time delinearizes, information is downloaded instantaneously; there's no need for a conservation of energy or principles of relativity. How did this state 'feel' - how did your perceptions work, and how would you compare it to daily existence?
J.O.: I realized that my thoughts are creation. That I am the creator of my reality. Therefore I am completely accountable for my experiences here. I am divine and am experiencing myself in new ways that expand my soul. All that exists in the higher realms is wisdom. Everything in my daily existence is for the expansion of my soul.
PART II. INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & CONNECTIVITY
Modern physics toys with the idea that consciousness may not be confined to the brain, just as quantum entanglement implies connection beyond space.
And many quantum gravity theories and cosmological models suggest that an increase in entropy over time could be seen as paralleling an increase in information; the increasing complexity in high-entropy systems leads to an increasing rate of time (or the subjective sense that time is moving faster).
More information, more instantaneity.
Thus it’s fitting that many NDE accounts describe the sense of tapping into a universal stream of awareness and experiencing a sudden influx of knowledge, information and meaning.
You mentioned receiving a “download” of insights during your NDE - instantaneous knowledge. This is an experience reported by many others. In no other can way we generally experience such instancy - how did this feel to you / what did it mean / what lasting impression did it make on you?
J.O.: All things were before me. I became part of the 'all of it.' The I AM that I AM resounded with a personal meaning. In other words I AM all of it. I AM connected to all of it.
I embody all of it. I AM a manifestation of all of it.
During your NDE, what form did the communication (or the transfer of information) take? Were you a more passive recipient or did you have some ability to act and discern? What did your agency feel like inside of that experience in comparison to how it feels outside of it?
J.O.: Communication was spontaneous, clear and seemed to come in at once. I experienced both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. However it was felt beyond simply being heard.
Can you elaborate on this communication - what if felt like, where it came from?
J.O. The information spontaneously coming through was as if I was remembering it all. Like I already knew it but temporarily had forgotten it. It was not just communicated verbally but energetically. As if my whole soul was hearing it and taking it in, not just audibly, but spiritually.
PART III. AGENCY AND MEANING
In a state seemingly liberated from thermodynamic limitations or the speed-of-light barrier, the experiencer will typically report instant manifestation through thought—suggesting that intention is creation.
From this premise, there’s a clean slate for the potential of meaning.
Introspection typically follows, taking years to crystallize, but the one take away is the thirst for meaning, one tied to the whole of reality.
What if our daily consciousness is simply a low-bandwidth version of this principle? NDEs point to a reality where agency isn't just reactive, but causative—echoing some interpretations of the observer effect in quantum mechanics.
The ego dissolves as agency is felt to be not separate, but intrinsic to the fabric of everything.
In your recovery, you chose to focus on love and purpose; of creating something out of the ashes rather than letting them destroy your potential for a meaningful existence. What advice would you have to convince people that this approach - a constructive one - is the better option and what did it take for you, personally, to find the motivation to do it.
J.O.: Asking the "why" questions was a losing battle. Only when I shifted to asking "what" questions did I begin to heal. What good can I make of this? What and how can my soul expand from it? How do I transform this and what can I learn to assist and support others?
How has this changed your relationship with the seemingly inevitably tragedy of existence - of entropy and dissolution / what has it taught you about our inspirational ability to reverse/overcome devastation?
J.O.: The purpose of life is to learn. We learn from our experiences. In fact experience may be the only true teacher. Life offers the breadth and depth of a 'human' experience. That's why we came to this realm, to experience all of it. Joy, sorrow, grief, bliss, light, dark... Love provides us with what we can here to experience for the expansion of our soul.
In terms of purpose and meaning, what is one proposition or piece of advice that you can convey/extract from your NDE to those of us who have not experienced something like it, or those who seem too distracted by the trivialities to experience [non] existence the way you have?
J.O.: Simply know you are loved. You come from and are a manifestation of pure, unconditional love. Nothing you have done, nor anything that has been done to you can change that fact that you are an eternal, divine being simply having a human experience.
If the universe is fractal and consciousness is nonlocal, then the NDE experience may not be a hallucination—but a revealing of deeper structures we are otherwise tuned out from.
Life, then, is not the beginning of our awareness, but a particular lens of it.
Obviously, this is just one view amongst many when it comes to the phenomenon that is death.
But where so many competing perspectives bounce around, it’s often best to get clarity from the particle collisions of those theories and, fortunately, there are many to work with on this topic.
Primarily, death doesn’t seem like it’s a termination point so much as it is some kind of expansion or convergence point; it doesn’t seem to feel like it anyway.
Just as matter never truly dies, but changes form, the soul—as described by experiencers—may not so much as end but unravel or unfold.
The entropic “death” may simply be the release of consciousness into a greater field, not unlike energy returning to the quantum vacuum.
Jobs' final “Oh wow” and the repeated emphasis on unconditional love and universal connection may thus be less poetic and more ontological than we’d like to think.
Awe, in both physics and philosophy, often arises at the boundary of comprehension. If awe is the fingerprint of the sacred, then perhaps NDEs offer a glimpse beyond the veil of what spacetime allows.
Follow along Jeff Olsen’s work at www.EnvoyPublishing.com or check out his works:
KNOWING and WHERE ARE YOU?
