Above All, Listen: Studying the Experience of Death
How the study of dying deepens our understanding of everyday presence.
Posted November 15, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Sergei Rachmaninoff lies dying in his Beverly Hills home. Family and friends surround him, the room suffused with that particular stillness that often accompanies life's final hours. Then something unexpected occurs. The composer opens his eyes and asks those present: "Can you hear this beautiful melody? The enormously beautiful music?"
The response from those at his bedside is immediate: "No, there's no music here."
Rachmaninoff insists: "Yes, but can't you hear this beautiful melody? It's so..."
They maintain: "No, no, there's nothing here."
Finally, Rachmaninoff concedes: "Very well. Then the music is only in my head."
He lies back and dies.
What We Might Have Learned
This moment has remained with me throughout my years researching the psychology of death and dying. Not because of what Rachmaninoff heard—we'll never know that—but because of the missed opportunity it represents. What would it have cost those present to ask: "What kind of music are you hearing? Can you describe it? Could you hum it for us, and we'll transcribe the notes?"
On multiple levels, this scene encapsulates a challenge we face constantly in our research: When someone reports an experience that doesn't match our own perceptions, our first impulse is often to correct rather than to explore. Yet in this particular research field at life's boundaries , these anomalous experiences might be our most valuable data. And if not data, then at least opportunities for a gentle human encounter.
I share this story with all those who wish to participate in our work as mandatory reading, simply because I want to prevent us from making the same error—saying "No, there's no music" instead of asking "What do you hear?" This doesn't mean we take everything our informants tell us at face value, as objectively or ontologically true and correct. Sometimes, not even the informants themselves do that. Rather, they say: "This is what I'm experiencing" or "This is what I experienced." But that alone is sometimes sufficient to confront us with veritable questions.
The Phenomenological Stance
When we study what dying patients experience, or those exhibiting terminal lucidity, or individuals reporting near-death experiences , we occupy a peculiar position. We're attempting to understand states of consciousness we haven't experienced ourselves.
Our encounter with these states lies in the future; none of us can speak from experience and tell the affected person: "I know exactly what you mean, I've experienced that too." At most, we can say we've observed or heard it before—but it's an experience that can only truly be grasped from the first-person perspective. David Hume articulated it thus: You will never know how a pineapple tastes until you've actually eaten one yourself. Consider that for a moment. It's simultaneously obvious and profound. So how can we share what we experience when the other has not yet experienced it?
The people we're studying have access to something we can only approach through their reports—and even this is difficult because our everyday language was scarcely created for, nor is it equipped with, the vocabulary to describe unusual experiences near death. That's one challenge.
Language is barely adequate, and one encounters this repeatedly when speaking with people who've experienced something so extraordinary. Again and again, they tell us: "I can try to describe it like this, but the description is somehow incomplete. The essential element is missing because I lack the words for it."
The other challenge is that even what we can nevertheless understand is frequently extraordinary in itself. I'll never forget how a near-death experiencer once told me, radiant—literally radiant—that during her NDE she had seen four colors—she was a painter and said she had "discovered" that these colors exist—"that we don't have on Earth," or rather, "that our eyes cannot see 'here.'"
This creates a methodological puzzle. What to do with things, states, and events we can't directly observe or verify? The answer, I believe, lies not necessarily in verification (though in some cases this can be an important concern) but in careful, open documentation. When a patient with advanced Alzheimer's suddenly speaks coherently hours before death, the least productive response is to explain it away. The scientifically interesting response is to document everything: What do they say? How do they say it? What seems different about their consciousness in that moment?
The Practice of Listening With Systematic Curiosity
What I've learned over these more than 20 years of research into the psychology of death and dying—and what I hope to share with anyone who intends to join our research—is the value of what might be called systematic curiosity.
In other words: When someone reports hearing music no one else can hear, or experiencing unexpected clarity, we still have choices about how to respond. We can dismiss these as hallucinations, medication effects, or oxygen deprivation to the brain. But this helps the affected person little and contributes even less to maintaining dialogue with those who saw or heard something others so far have not (yet). Or we can document them carefully, completely, without premature interpretation.
Consider how the interaction with Rachmaninoff might have gone differently:
"Can you hear this beautiful melody?" "I don't hear it, but tell me—what does it sound like?" "It's magnificent... like nothing I've composed, but familiar somehow..." "Are there instruments? Voices?" "Both, but not quite either... it's hard to explain..."
Such an exchange would have given us potentially valuable data about the phenomenology of dying consciousness—and perhaps even another masterwork from the composer (if the music really existed only in his head) or a musical piece of "unknown origin" (if the music was indeed "somewhere" out there). More importantly, it would have allowed Rachmaninoff to share his experience rather than being isolated within it.
The Scientific Value of Anomaly
Thomas Kuhn wrote about how scientific paradigms shift—usually forced by accumulating anomalies that existing theories can't explain. In our research, deathbed experiences are rich with such anomalies. Every time we encounter these anomalies, we can force them into existing categories—or we can let them exist as what they are: phenomena that challenge our understanding and invite deeper investigation.
The history of medicine is full of phenomena that were dismissed before being understood. Physicians once ridiculed the idea that tiny invisible organisms could cause disease. The notion that ulcers could be caused by bacteria was considered absurd until Barry Marshall proved it by infecting himself. What seems impossible often becomes obvious—but only if someone takes the anomaly seriously enough to investigate it.
Practical Implications for Our Work
Beyond Method: Being Gentle
There's another dimension to this that goes beyond methodology, yet has everything to do with respect and human dignity. When someone is dying and tells us about experiences that seem impossible or even just improbable, they're sharing something profound—perhaps the most significant experience of their life.
A rather good guideline for how to respond can be developed by asking ourselves what we would wish from others if we were the one having such experiences at our deathbed and sharing them with another person.
The dying have access to states of consciousness that the rest of us can only study secondhand. They are involuntary explorers of territory we all will eventually enter. The least we can do is listen carefully to their reports from that frontier.
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Alexander Batthyány, Ph.D., is a Professor of Theoretical Psychology and Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna, where he explores the mind, meaning, and dying.
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