The End-of-Life Co-Experience
On entering a relational field at the end of life
There are moments, reported quietly and often hesitantly, by people who have been present at the end of someone’s life…
Moments where something shifts.
Time slows.
The atmosphere changes.
These moments are rarely spoken about.
Not because they are insignificant—but because they are difficult to explain.
I’ve come to call this:
The End-of-Life Co-Experience.
Twenty years ago, I experienced something I couldn’t explain. At the time, I didn’t have a framework to understand what had happened.
Over time, that experience led me to study consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology, and to listen to the accounts of others who’d had similar experiences.
My mum died of cancer. It moved quickly in the end—into her bones, then her brain. Within weeks, we were told there was no more treatment.
She didn’t want to be in hospital, so we took her home.
That final week was disorientating, exhausting and confusing. Mum had moments of lucidity that came and went. We did what we could, but it felt like it wasn’t enough.
We didn’t know how to be with death. There was no shared understanding to draw on—only a sense of trying to awkwardly find our way through something we were totally unprepared for.
Eventually, she was moved to a hospice.
We stayed with her day and night for 3 days, then left for a few hours, which is when she chose to die.
When the call came, we rushed back.
I didn’t want to go into the room. I’ve always avoided seeing death where I could. But the nurse gently encouraged me, saying I might regret not going in.
So I did.
At first, she looked as though she was sleeping.
But as I got closer, I could feel the difference. The body was there—but she wasn’t.
I moved towards her and said, “I’m so sorry, mum.”
I didn’t fully know what I meant. There was just a strong sense of something unfinished, something I hadn’t been able to give or say.
My brother and I sat on either side of the bed. Not talking, not crying, just sitting.
And after a little while something shifted.
The silence in the room deepened in a way I’ve never experienced before.
Not just quiet—but as if the air itself had changed.
Her body was clearly lifeless.
And yet, there was a life in the room, a presence that didn’t belong to me or my brother
It felt like her. It was her.
Not as a person in the usual sense, but as something lighter.
Almost playful.
A kind of essence of her, when all of the machinations of earthly life had thankfully and gratefully been left behind.
If I had to locate this presence, I would say it was somewhere behind us, near the ceiling.
If I had to describe it, I would struggle—but perhaps something like light, or fine particles in the air.
There was no message.
No voice.
Just a very clear sense of joyful presence.
And something else—
a feeling of deep unconditional acceptance and love. The type of love that I hadn’t experienced from her while she was alive.
Time became difficult to track.
We sat there, not speaking, not moving, maybe for an hour.
At some point, something changed again.
There was a sense of movement— of the presence receding, of something leaving.
Then, at exactly the same moment, my brother and I both lifted our heads and looked at each other.
And we said, in unison:
“She’s going now.”
I spoke to my brother later, and we had no explanation for why we would suddenly turn to each other and say that mum was leaving, two hours after she had died. At the time, there was no framework in which to understand what had happend.
At the funeral, I felt a total disconnection with the whole process. Driving behind the hearse which carried her coffin, felt almost ludicrous, as if her coffin contained one of her old coats she now had no need for. I knew for sure, really for sure, that she had left her shell behind without a thought and expanded into some other form of consciousness.
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We don’t know how to recognise or hold experiences like this.
The problem seems to be that we have two dominant ways of understanding death.
The first is biological.
The body stops. Systems shut down. Consciousness ends.
The second is religious.
The soul continues. The person moves on.
But increasingly, many people find themselves between these frameworks.
Not fully held by science.
Not fully held by religion.
And yet—still having experiences.
People describe:
knowing something without being told
feeling deeply connected without speaking
sensing a presence that was not confined to either person
Not observing.
Participating.
We tend to assume that if something unusual happens at the end of life, it belongs to the person who is dying.
But what if that assumption is incomplete?
What if, at certain moments, awareness is no longer organised individually?
Not “your experience” and “my experience.”
But something… shared.
This is the central distinction:
An End-of-Life Co-Experience is not something one person has while another watches.
It is something that arises between people.
It would be easy to explain this as empathy.
A heightened sensitivity.
A deep emotional attunement.
But that explanation doesn’t quite hold.
Because many people describe something different.
Not “feeling into” the other person.
But a quieting of themselves.
A reduction in:
internal commentary
effort to understand
sense of separation
And from that quieting…
Something opens.
Some have tried to describe this as a “shared field.”
Not a physical field.
Not something measurable.
End-of-Life Co-Experience does not suggest that the witness prevents the dying person from feeling alone—on the contrary. Many witnesses report that the dying person appears absorbed in their own process, often described as a form of relational engagement beyond those physically present, including a sense of communicating with those who have already died.
Rather, it points to the possibility that the dying process is already relational—and that, at times, the witness is able to enter into that relational field.
This isn’t something we can prove.
But it is something people consistently describe.
The descriptions are often simple:
Stillness.
Calm.
A sense of peace that doesn’t come from reassurance.
Sometimes:
a feeling of love
a sense of “knowing”
a softening of time
And afterwards, a quiet but lasting change.
The question is not whether these experiences are “real” in an objective sense.
That question tends to close things down too quickly.
A more useful question might be:
What do these experiences do?
Many people report:
reduced fear of death
a sense of continued connection
a shift in how they understand life itself
Not because they adopted a belief.
But because something was experienced directly.
We don’t currently have a language for this.
Medical frameworks tend to overlook it.
Scientific frameworks struggle to hold it.
Religious frameworks no longer hold everyone.
So these experiences fall into a gap.
Felt deeply.
Rarely spoken.
Perhaps nothing “mystical” is required to begin exploring this.
Only a shift in attention.
From:
what is happening inside a person
To:
what might be happening between people
Especially at the edges of life.
Perhaps death is not only a biological ending.
And not only a spiritual transition.
Perhaps it is also a relational threshold.
A moment where, under certain conditions,
the usual boundaries of experience soften…
And something shared becomes possible.
Not something we can create.
But something we might, occasionally, be able to recognise.
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For many years, I have had the privilege of listening to accounts from people who have experienced this end-of-life phenomenon.
More recently, I have begun working with these individuals using an integration approach that allows them to return to the experience itself. As they do, further detail often emerges—subtle aspects that were not initially recognised—and with this, a deepening of meaning.
A question I am often asked is:
How do I experience an ELCE?
A more precise question might be:
How do we support the conditions for relational presence at the end of life?
Because an End-of-Life Co-Experience cannot be induced.
However, there are ways of not interfering with the conditions under which such experiences may arise.
This is something I will return to.
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ELCEs are not easily explained.
They are subtle, relational, and often felt more than understood.
And yet, when people encounter them—whether directly or through another’s account—something shifts.
Not always intellectually.
But perceptually.
It’s less about what we think,
and more about how we begin to sense the world differently.
Film offers a way into that.
Not as an explanation, but as an experience.
A way of working with:
atmosphere
silence
presence
image and sound
In a way that can evoke, rather than define.
The film I’ve created explores grief, altered states of consciousness, and the possibility that the boundary between life and death may not be as fixed as we tend to assume.
If you’d like to explore it further, you can visit:
End-of-Life Co-Experience Project - ELCEP.org
The site includes a short trailer, which offers a sense of the tone and direction of the project.
We are also beginning to hold screenings, details of which can be found on the website.
Diane