Near-death experience is not a figment

It seems that a group of scientist believes that NDE experiences are not figments people with near dead experiences al seem to have one thing in common , they leave their bodies ,being embraced with warmth and light and often travel through tunnels

Also some have experiences to see bright beings and lost relatives or friends. Some have to turn back to their bodies and others . They're many studies around this subject and many things are unclear of what they mean.

But according to Charland-Verville the theory that false memories are the cause of this aberration can be tossed to the trashcan..

Since the dawn of time, Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have intrigued and, nowadays, are still not fully explained. Since reports of NDEs are proposed to be imagined events, and since memories of imagined events have, on average, fewer phenomenological characteristics than real events memories, we here compared phenomenological characteristics of NDEs reports with memories of imagined and real events. We included three groups of coma survivors (8 patients with NDE as defined by the Greyson NDE scale, 6 patients without NDE but with memories of their coma, 7 patients without memories of their coma) and a group of 18 age-matched healthy volunteers

PLOS ONE

Peace

I'm not sure if this is related to the subject but when i was really sick one time. I was laying down and it was bright and sunny in my house and when I closed my eyes for like 5 seconds i opened them and my whole room was blue. ANd when i say blue I mean blue! I couldn't see outside it because it was blue and white mixed. I dunno but i couldn't move to directly see out my window next to my bed. I started to panic and I closed my eyes and when i opened them everything was normal. weird...

Don't know if we can really discuss NDEs without violating ATS T&C's. The reason why people all have similar experiences during NDEs is that they are all tripping on the same hallucinogen, '___', which is flooded into the brain from the pineal gland during the death process.

Some food for thought, your brain stays active for a few minutes after your heart stops. A '___' trip usually lasts around 10 minutes.

Again, however, we cannot discuss the effects of mind altering drugs on ATS. A near death experience is simply a very powerful hallucination.

Originally posted by DestroyDestroyDestroy

A near death experience is simply a very powerful hallucination.

And the word 'hallucination' is simply a very powerful Trojan Horse. Out leaps hidden philosophical premises.

Thanks for sharing this study - NDEs are one of my favorite topics. The majority of stories I have heard of NDE, people say the experience is "more real than reality" - or something to that effect. It isn't surprising to me that this study found that memories of NDE are more vivid that memories of real events, and of course much more vivid than memories of fake events.

I don't think this study is really breaking any new ground, but I'm always glad to see NDEs being taken seriously. With the improvements in modern medicine, we can expect to be hearing more and more stories from people who have seen the other side and then came back. What I always find interesting and curious is why some people have memories of the NDE and others do not. I presume that everyone has an experience after death (because my belief and bias is that the soul/spirit/consciousness continues to exist even after the body dies.) Of course, some people remember dreams and some don't. Even people that remember their dreams don't remember them every night... Oh, but I'm getting off on a tangent here.

My criticism of this study is that the n is so small. Only 21 people, divided in 3 groups. Makes the stats much less significant.... but these are difficult studies to do on a large scale, depending on the sort of data you want to get. Retrospective studies can have much larger databases but they come with all the issues that are inherent in retrospective studies.

Thanks again sharing this!

Many of these people having NDE's are coming back with proof.

Colton Burpo is one example of this.

Four year old Colton Burpo met his mother’s miscarried child in Heaven that he didn't even know existed. He also met his grandfather there, who he had never known on Earth.

"Colton, still 4 years old, told his mother “you had a baby die in your tummy didn’t you”, which completely shocked them both because they had never told him about their miscarriage. They asked him how he knew and he said that he met his sister in Heaven and she told him what happened."

"Well he’s 7 years old now and it took a couple of years for his parents to really understand what happened, but when Colton Burpo was four years he was having surgery in the hospital for a burst appendix. While he was in surgery he apparently had some sort of out of body experience and could see what his parents were doing. He witnessed that his dad was praying and his mom on her cellphone. Both parents say they have no clue how he knew that, but that it’s absolutely true. And the story just gets more interesting from there.

Apparently during the same surgery Colton went to Heaven where he recounts how he met his grandfather who he had never known, who he later recognized in photos. The interesting thing is that he didn’t recognize photos of his grandfather as an old man with glasses, which is how everyone knew him, but rather as a young man. Colton’s father literally had go find a photo of ‘Pop’ as a young man before Colton was able to recognize him. Now that’s pretty wild.

Link

There is another post on this NDE here.

reply to post by 0bserver1


This is a good post, I had a nasty car crash, side impact and I just heard the big crash of steel next I was going down a tube with nice bright colours in, blue, reds greens etc, then next thing I dropped out of the end plus I could hear noises like people talking under water, next I was in a room or cave more like the way it looked, and a man shouted GO It's NOT YOUR TIME YET then I come round I was in hospital looking up at lots of peoples faces which were Doctors etc.

George Rodonaia is another person who came back with proof that his NDE was very much real.

He was assassinated by the KGB and spent three days in a morgue freezer.

"Dr. Rodonaia was a vocal Soviet dissident killed by the KGB, pronounced dead, taken to a freezer vault in the morgue for three days and returned to life during his own autopsy. He was a scientist trained in historical materialism and did not believe in God." Of all the cases I have investigated in my 26 years of work in the field, his is the most dramatic, the longest, the most evidential, and the most soul-stirring.

"George Rodonaia underwent one of the most extended cases of a near-death experience ever recorded. Pronounced dead immediately after he was hit by a car in 1976, he was left for three days in the morgue. He did not "return to life" until a doctor began to make an incision in his abdomen as part of an autopsy procedure. Prior to his NDE he worked as a neuropathologist. He was also an avowed atheist.

LINK

reply to post by DestroyDestroyDestroy



I'm glad you brought this up because it is one of the most common, and probably compelling arguments, against NDEs being proof of an afterlife. I'll try to tread lightly since I don't want to violate any of the ATS rules.

My best understanding of good counterarguments against this idea is is that...
(1) Hallucinations are usually disorderly or hazy events, whereas NDEs are clear (clearer than usual) events with order.

(2) NDEs leave people profoundly changed, almost every single time. Their world view changes, everything changes in a very clear and major way. Hallucinations don't generally have the same effect.

(3) Verifiable information can be obtained in an NDE that would not be possible to obtain with a hallucination. There are many examples of this. Here are a couple of them:

That NDEs are not hallucinations is also evident from the factually accurate information given by many NDE subjects, information that could never have been obtained through hallucinations. Dr Michael Sabom, an American cardiologist who started his NDE research in the late 1970s as a skeptic, gives many such cases that dissolved his skepticism in his books like Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. Here are two of them:

A retired Air Force pilot who had suffered a massive heart attack recounted the resuscitation procedure in rich detail. He even described the motions of the two needles of the defibrillator, which is an electronic device used to administer electric shock to attempt to restore the normal functioning of the heart. How could a person who was (1) in the middle of a cardiac arrest (2) about to be jolted by an electric shock (3) while being almost certainly unconscious (4) not in a physical position to observe the defibrillator meter (5) methodically observe the motion of the needles on its dial?

A woman provided a medically accurate and detailed description of her lumbar disk surgery which was performed with the patient in supine position. She reported that her surgery had been performed, to her surprise, not by her surgeon but by the chief resident in neurosurgery, a detail that was correct but had not been divulged to her.

from: www.thespiritualscientist.com...

ETA: Murgatroid gave beautiful, and much better, examples of this above.


Here are some more arguments against this idea, with some cited studies:

Are there any medical or emotional explanations for NDE, such as lack of oxygen to the brain or images produced from fear chemicals of a dying brain?

The van Lommel study cited in the Lancet, can be cited for major NDE scientific findings, the largest being that NDEs are not medically explicable. pg. 2039. Van Lommel proved under rigid methodology that the occurrence of the NDE was not associated with “duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death prior to the cardiac arrest.” Near Death Experience In Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands, Pim van Lommel, et al, THE LANCET • Vol 358 • December 15, 2001.

Given the similarity in physiological make-up of the sample population, one would expect that most of the 344 patients should experience an NDE. pg. 2039 This would take into account the skeptic argument of cerebral anoxia (dying brain cells). However, that is not the case. The findings were that 18% of the 344 cardiac arrest patients had an NDE, with 12% of the 18% reporting a “core experience.” Id. Therefore, NDE is not correlated with physiological causes of death. However, the study did find that age might play a factor in the occurrence of NDEs in that younger experiencers were more likely to have an NDE and more likely to have a core experience. Id. at 2043. Near Death Experience In Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands, Pim van Lommel, et al, THE LANCET • Vol 358 • December 15, 2001.

The same argument pertaining to physiological make-up could be made for those in the sample population who were psychologically afraid of death right before the cardiac arrest. However, there was no difference between those who were afraid and reported an NDE as opposed to those who were afraid and did not report an NDE. Id. at 2039. Therefore, NDE doesn’t appear to be caused by emotional make-up such as fear. Near Death Experience In Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands, Pim van Lommel, et al, THE LANCET • Vol 358 • December 15, 2001.

source: www.nderf.org...

reply to post by DestroyDestroyDestroy


If your talking about a natural drug the body produces in the course of normal operations it's Not against the T&C.

To the Op, we KNOW some chemicals released in the brain do cause hallucinations. The NDE experiences can be triggered under controlled conditions with simulated death and have been studied. No, there are not false memories but new visual thoughts created by the drugs. As a Christian I would like to think the nice white light is a sign from God but God also calls for me to use my brain and discern the truth. There are No NDE's mentioned in the Bible nor are they any part of any Christian doctrine. This coupled with the above controlled study on NDE's tells me science is right about this one.

Ian McCormack's is one of the most incredible NDE's I have ever studied.

He was stung by five box jellyfish while diving, one sting is usually fatal.

Ian was night diving off the island of Mauritius when he was stung multiple times by Box Jellyfish, which are among the most venomous creatures in the world. His testimony relates how he clung to life while getting to hospital, was declared clinically dead soon afterwards, and how during this time he had an encounter with Jesus, which radically changed the direction of his life. Link

reply to post by JohnPhoenix

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
There are No NDE's mentioned in the Bible nor are they any part of any Christian doctrine.

Incorrect...

Paul is one example.

FYI: ATS isn't mentioned in the Bible either...

reply to post by DestroyDestroyDestroy


And blind people whom never had seen in their lives and experienced NDE are supposedly all on powerful drugs that can see every person in the room and even recognize their voices, and tell afterwards how they looked like etc..

Blind people and NDE

Can you tell me what powerful hallucination they were experiencing?

reply to post by Alternative4u


You were blessed my friend to experienced something that beautiful , I hope you didn't had severe injuries that will trouble you in life?

Have you ever been there when someone is dying of cancer? I was when my mom was in her last days and I believe she was visited frequently by those who had gone before her.

She would point to the ceiling or high in the room and say the persons name (who i can't recall at this time) and say 'what are you doing there'? I think she was being visited and prepared her trip back 'home'.

She went downhill very quick. I have no doubt that there is life after death in some form and hope that I will see my mom again when that time comes for me.

To think there is 'nothing' and that these bright lights are the process of the body dying would be to final for this life journey to end there. I hope this earthly existence is a place to learn from and reflect upon for when we really return 'home'.

reply to post by whatnext21

Have you ever been there when someone is dying of cancer? I was when my mom was in her last days and I believe she was visited frequently by those who had gone before her.

I did, my best friend from whom I made a Thread around him, spoke of the same experience.. Its really beautiful to hear tell them their experience and it gives you some sort of relief that they will be surrounded by loved ones after their life...

reply to post by 0bserver1


I read your thread on your friend, you paid him the ultimate tribute that a friend could do. The story of the pigeon and his birth date on the tag on the pigeons foot was truly a touching moment and shows that some things are bigger than we are. I wish I could have given my mom the same eulogy. But I know she is in my heart and will be as long as I am on this earth.

reply to post by whatnext21


Thanks he was one of a kind...

“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean” – David Searls.

My late father died three times. Here's what he told me:

www.delusionalinsects.com...

Namaste, and much love and light to you.

David.

Originally posted by DavidBourke
My late father died three times. Here's what he told me:

I just read the testimony that David mentioned above about his father.

That is incredible David, thanks for sharing it here.

I encourage everyone here to look at it.

Below is a quote:

"And suddenly, I found myself frozen in place and I could go no further. Then I heard the most gentle and kind voice I've ever heard say: 'John, this is what you have done.'

"I found myself somehow both looking at a high-speed replay of my whole life and in it as well, stopping every now and again at points where I had hurt people, through deed, thoughtlessness, or omission.

"Each time this happened, I found myself experiencing all of the pain I'd inflicted on them, exactly as if I WAS them as well as myself. Then we arrived at the day I died, and I could move again. So I started back up the hill once more.

"Then I heard the voice say: 'John, if you go to the top of the hill, you cannot go back. It is your choice. Remember, you have young children who depend on you. And you have more work to do. You must decide. All are welcome here. This is your true home. And it will be waiting for you when you return.'

I share my father’s story with you all so that you can be sure and certain that those who have wronged you in any way, through deed, thoughtlessness, or omission - and I specifically include doctors, dermatologists, and medical researchers - WILL suffer ALL of the exact same pain they caused you.

www.delusionalinsects.com...