If NDE are real and not hallucinations, why doesn't everyone experience it?

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip

Originally posted by Logarock

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
reply to post by chelle21689

 

Interesting story, thanks for sharing.


I think we can only gauge situations like these on probabilities, i.e. what is more likely? Is it more likely that someone is stepping into the afterworld and conversing with dead souls? Or it more likely that the brain is under duress and causing visual phenomena?

I can't claim to know either way, but I usually lean on what is more probable.

Just some kindly advice......dont put to much stock in this brain stress/visual explaination.

Some kindly advice... arguments help get points across.

Well I didnt want to agrue about this topic. We have folks with very bad injury for example, telling us they died or started to drift over. Saw some things heard some things. We should pat them on the head and say "now now Dorothy you just took a hit on the head"?

Now from a scientific point of view, if brain stress visual/audio......whatever.... were worth considering then there would be a large body of evidence of it producing like conditions in folks under great stress but not death, maybe near it.....but theres not.

reply to post by ValentineWiggin


I love your recounting of your NDE on your thread!

You all should read it!



I must correct myself on something, I did die once, but it was a vision and not my death, someone else's.
I was in the mind when it was freed from the brain. From that perspective, the spirit energy actually exploded outwards and left the body in a flurry of some sort of electrical impulse, much like lightning,it even smelled like burning wires. Kind of a different perspective, but one that you all might not get anywhere else about the spirit energy when it leaves the body.
It was jolted and forced out immediately because it was a traumatic death and the entire visual perspective became energy so vast that it overtook the sky/field of awareness. This person did not return to their body, however I would think that NDE's would almost experience the same thing when they leave, it becomes a very vast area of awareness.

Reading your NDE reminded me of this, because of the mention of the white light that took over the entire field of awareness.

Now that I think about it, that would be a weird NDE of some sort, just not in the classical sense.

Originally posted by moniesisfun
The answer is obvious: the people who don't have them are demonic incarnations who must be terminated from this plane of existence immediately!!

Really though, it's because it's just a funky brain experience. I think it does serve a purpose. It creates an illusion of a greater reality...those who "come back" can help us to be more at ease with existence, and our inevitable demise. The groups who had these experiences could cope better, and be more resilient to stress...giving them an evolutionary advantage.

I'm not that weak. No need for hocus pocus here.

Its not the NDE you need to worry about. Its that final death total failure of life functions.......and you hear that chain draging the stairway, the heavy footsteps, the creaking of the iron gate......and someone calling your name that sound like they have gravel in their mouth.....and that stinking foul stench...isnt you craping yourself......

reply to post by Logarock


No thanks!

My beliefs are quite different

Did you know that the experience of NDE depends on the culture, and/or religious beliefs or lack there of from the individual?


hmmm, I wonder what we can conclude

reply to post by moniesisfun


Its an idea...put like I told the other guy....watch out for these cut and dry, boxed up, pat explainations on this subject.

What we can conclude is that people are saying they were alive when they were flatlined and some for a good while. You are much more than a computer that dumps developed concepts into you brain as some sort of final enzyme overload.

reply to post by Logarock


It seems reasonable to assume that the equipment used to observe brain activity was not sensitive enough to register the experience of the NDE.

At least, that's what I'm going to go with until I have reason to believe otherwise.

I'm not a computer, no, but I'm also not sure that I'm a spiritual being having a physical experience.

In my youth I loved to ponder and believe these types of things, but that's mostly faded out over the last several years.

Why doesn't everyone have a nde? Well if everyone did, it would be pretty odd to have everyone almost die and come back. Plus you might have too many Neals around. You might think everyone was crazy if lots of people could manipulate the Matrix and could walk on water or other things you didn't believe were possible. I wouldn't expect someone with a nde to be able to alter reality but they may have a different perspective on reality.

Note, The end of The Matrix was playing when I read this thread. Made the idea more interesting. There was one time when I thought I might die and I either had a vision or a dream and I saw a figure I'll call Death but I never left my body. Years later I have on a few occasions with the help of a little alcohol experienced massive time slow downs where I could move much faster and or think much faster than my surroundings. I know this without a doubt from playing arcade games and easily beating the games scoring over a million points on one. Unfortunately, I don't always experience this effect from a certain amount of alcohol.

I once used to lucid dream all the time. I do not remember when this started. I never wondered if it could be related until now. As far as time slowing down with a little bit of alcohol with everyone and everything occasionally moving in slow motion except for me, I had the thought what if that was my normal fast speed and the alcohol temporarily removed something blocking or inhibiting me from thinking and moving much faster than most? The only other time I remember experiencing everything in super slow motion I had no alcohol but only had one hour of sleep. I was annoyed because I was moving super slow like everyone else. I only mention this because I experienced altered perception on a few different occasions.

When I dreamed or saw a vision of Death, it was real. A tornado almost killed me. The large trees directly above me were gone or destroyed about two feet above the roof I was under. I did not want to die. I had no warning it was a tornado. I was sleeping or trying to. The wind woke me up and for some unknown reason, I thought I was going to die. I felt like I was spared. After that not much has been able to scare me. Horror movies are like comedies to me. The supernatural doesn't even seem to affect me very much. Well that can be interesting.

Originally posted by Logarock

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip

Originally posted by Logarock

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
reply to post by chelle21689

 

Interesting story, thanks for sharing.


I think we can only gauge situations like these on probabilities, i.e. what is more likely? Is it more likely that someone is stepping into the afterworld and conversing with dead souls? Or it more likely that the brain is under duress and causing visual phenomena?

I can't claim to know either way, but I usually lean on what is more probable.

Just some kindly advice......dont put to much stock in this brain stress/visual explaination.

Some kindly advice... arguments help get points across.

Well I didnt want to agrue about this topic. We have folks with very bad injury for example, telling us they died or started to drift over. Saw some things heard some things. We should pat them on the head and say "now now Dorothy you just took a hit on the head"?

Now from a scientific point of view, if brain stress visual/audio......whatever.... were worth considering then there would be a large body of evidence of it producing like conditions in folks under great stress but not death, maybe near it.....but theres not.

Point taken. Although, there isn't any body of evidence to the contrary either.

People dream when they're unconscious, sometimes vividly. It's more likely, but not certain, that something along those lines were happening in the brain.

We don't need to argue the topic. I'm unconvinced either way.

Originally posted by ValentineWiggin
All I know is in the Journey Through an NDE link in my signature. Yeah yeah a plug, but its on topic.

Plug away! I just went over there and read your "Journey Through an NDE" thread, and all I can say is Wow! I have experienced an NDE also, and know people who have. All seem to be different, and the OP is right, not all have them. I tend to think Soul Age may have a bearing on this, and deeply held beliefs may also be a factor. Ever since mine, every once in awhile, I see a tunnel in my inner vision, and at the end of the tunnel is a particular place in time, I have seen several events in my own early childhood in the manner. I am left to wonder what this phenomena is, exactly, and what does it mean?

I'll answer this question with a question .....


If parkinson's disease is real, ..... why doesnt everyone have it ???


I will also follow up with ........ deerrrrrrrrr

There was actually an ATS debate about this recently. One I argued the "pro" side of, as I have had an NDE. One aspect that I did not discuss in that debate, however, was that I suffered a side effect of my near death called transient amnesia. I can remember bits and pieces of the experience - but nothing for the hours prior to the cardiac arrest that cause my NDE ( I have filled in those gaps because I was around other people, and was told what I'd been doing in the hours leading up to my event. ).

But as for the 20 to 30 days after it? I can only remember very few fragments.

I was in the hospital for at least two weeks before I even realized that being in a hospital wasn't normal or customary.

So, from my own experience... this concept of disorientated thinking and amnesia might not be something localized to my own experience and offer that it might be universal to the experience. IE many people who say they didn't have one simple don't remember it.

Plausible but not definitive.

~Heff

reply to post by chelle21689


To be honest, I hope that NDE's are real. But the problem is there are too many things that must be accounted for. For the most part, we are assuming there is a "spirit" that leaves the body upon death. We assume this spirit can "see" and "hear" and basically maintains sensory contact with the world of the living. In fact, while the spirit is absorbing all this physical stimuli, it somehow beams it back to the dead brain in the form of memories. When the person reawakens, they then can recall themselves in spirit form while they were dead. This is just too much of a stretch. My problem is mainly with the ability of the spirit to be able utilize the senses designed for the physical body while also being able to form memories (and without a brain). If that is possible, then why do people with severe brain damage lose their sense of self, or how they certain forms of brain damage can ruin a person's ability to speak, remember, comprehend, etc. if their spirits can do this for them?

One other thing to note is that NDE's resemble too much the Christian belief of life after death (probably mixed in with American folklore) -- in fact, most cases I heard about were those in which people saw Jesus or a Saint. Other times they see a deceased loved one. There's usually a "light" and this message of "it's not yet your time to leave". How do people of other cultures and religious beliefs experience NDE's? Do Muslims or Jews report seeing Jesus? Do Atheists see Saint Michael or visions of hell?

I'm very interested in this subject, but have only seen some doctors, psychologists, neuroscientists, etc. address this in a scientific way. I did buy a book that may be of interest, though. It's called the Irreducible Mind. I haven't really got around to reading it yet (it's a BIG book), but by what I can tell it is an attempt by doctors and psychologists to revise what we know and don't know about the mind and brain. Apparently, they seem to be hinting at evidence for what can be interpreted as a soul or spirit. It's filled with case studies and such.

Originally posted by Hefficide

So, from my own experience... this concept of disorientated thinking and amnesia might not be something localized to my own experience and offer that it might be universal to the experience. IE many people who say they didn't have one simple don't remember it.

Plausible but not definitive.

~Heff

That's actually an interesting theory and a very, very plausible explanation. I know someone who had two NDE's but remembers nothing from either one. She said all she remembered was blacking out, not being aware, etc. It could very well be that the shock to the brain blocks these memories from establishing themselves. While I still consider myself a skeptic for the most part, I am open minded to this and would be interested in learning ways in which NDE's are possible.

Originally posted by moniesisfun
reply to post by Logarock

 

No thanks!

My beliefs are quite different

Did you know that the experience of NDE depends on the culture, and/or religious beliefs or lack there of from the individual?


hmmm, I wonder what we can conclude

I didn't even read your post, but this is an excellent point (one which I questioned in my own post). For me this is one of the most obvious signs that this is merely belief and not factual. But who knows? It'd sure be nice to find out.

reply to post by chelle21689


A tunnel with a light at the end surely seems more likely to be hell than heaven right?
Its not a hallucination, just like dreaming isn't hallucinating, its chemical reactions in the brain. So yeah it will seem 100℅ real.
Its like the whole "alien abduction phenomena"
Everyone who gets "abducted" already seems to be interested in the whole idea of aliens.
So an intense dream crossed with sleep paralysis will cause you to believe you've been abducted, and to you it will seem completely real.
I kinda like to think that when you die, whatever you believe you will dream so yeah maybe it is worth believing in an afterlife cos you may just dream one.
It would be interesting seeing how an atheist reacts to an NDE.

Our brain can do some pretty amazing things, and people don't tend to give it the credit it deserves.
Especially if it turns out we are all part of one consciousness.

Originally posted by moniesisfun

In my youth I loved to ponder and believe these types of things, but that's mostly faded out over the last several years.

Yes, knowledge and critical thinking tends to do that as one gets older, sometimes I mourn the ignorance of youth.
Will there be a time when we sort of start sorta believing this stuff again?

Nobody wants this stuff to be truer than me, but I cannot believe simply because I want to.
I think some people believe the unknowable, simply because the alternative is not attractive to happy thoughts.

I want to believe, but I have logic block.

DAMN LOGIC

Originally posted by Hefficide

There was actually an ATS debate about this recently. One I argued the "pro" side of, as I have had an NDE. One aspect that I did not discuss in that debate, however, was that I suffered a side effect of my near death called transient amnesia. I can remember bits and pieces of the experience - but nothing for the hours prior to the cardiac arrest that cause my NDE ( I have filled in those gaps because I was around other people, and was told what I'd been doing in the hours leading up to my event. ).

But as for the 20 to 30 days after it? I can only remember very few fragments.

I was in the hospital for at least two weeks before I even realized that being in a hospital wasn't normal or customary.


~Heff

That is very interesting. Sounds like the thread, if you will, to this relativity was broken for awhile. Sounds like whatever happened to you was so great on your mind that it took a while to sink back into this world, your mind ect.

reply to post by chelle21689


I have a theory. This is a really quick overview that I published a couple years ago. It's long, but it does lay out exactly how I see the NDE phenomenon and why some experience it and others don't. *Hint - this is a very unique theory, and I know that you have not been presented with it before (unless I presented it to you, of course)

Human Consciousness and the Personality Trajectory

The notion of the dynamic hybrid (event and information) trajectory that I refer to as The Personality is central to the entire process that differentiates what constitutes a corporeal human being from all other forms of life that are equipped with a brain. While it may be easy enough to assert that such a trajectory exists, what is more difficult is proving that The Personality hybrid trajectory exists. In fact, it may ultimately be impossible – given our present technological capacity to perceive such a thing – to prove the physical existence of The Personality trajectory by way of specifically identifying it and separating it out from the overall system that includes it and the process that it enables as a result of its inclusion.

Still, that process can be examined, and there may be ways of inferring its existence if we examine this process from a perspective that allows for its (The Personality’s) existence. Of course, this can’t be offered as definitive proof, but it might go a long way toward increasing the plausibility that such a dynamic process does exist, and possibly even allow us to further identify relatable aspects of The Personality and how these aspects might provide their own level of inferred verification that this process does, in fact, exist regardless of the specifics concerning how the process itself is accomplished.

The first part of this examination focuses on the creation of consciousness as a brain process, with a look at one theory concerning how this event happens. I’ve chosen this theory due to the fact that it is fairly indicative of a strict materialist concept where the brain itself manufactures the consciousness stream as definite bursts of information events. My affinity with this overall concept is due primarily with its obvious alignment with other established tenets concerning the nature of physical reality involving the event unit as a basis within any development arrangement – specifically Planck’s Constant, in this case.

Professor Susan Greenfield (Oxford University) has proposed that the mind may arise from the activity of brain cells at the level where the cells are connected together (the synapses). Rather than arising from a single isolated region of the brain, she suggests that consciousness arises diffusely from the brain-cell connections.

The reasoning, Greenfield argues, is that there is no single complete function that takes place in one region of the brain. As mentioned above, it is known, for example, that vision is divided up into many separate components that are connected together to give rise to the conscious experience of seeing, such as color, motion, and form processing, and the function of vision can preoccupy over 30 brain regions. So brain regions are smaller parts of a wider brain stage and not units that work alone. Thus we know that conscious experience arises from the actions of many different parts of the brain.

However, when we break each area of the brain down into its smaller constituents, we see that each area is a complex circuit that is ultimately reduced down to the connections between the cells, or synapses, or in other words, to the individual wires of the circuits themselves across which electrical signals are passed. This signaling is dependent on a series of different biological products, or proteins, which are themselves products of genes. Therefore, Professor Greenfield has proposed that the neuronal correlate, and in effect, the physical substrate of the "mind" is a process that occurs at the level of the brain connections, or synapses, which are not only highly dynamic, but which also reflect experience through their strength and extension of connections.

According to this theory, consciousness, or our sense of self-awareness, is thought to arise from the interaction of assemblies of neurons involving up to tens of millions of neurons all connected together. It is proposed that at any one time, there may be many neuronal assemblies present; however, the largest assembly will dominate and determine that moment of consciousness.

The degree to which cells are recruited, and hence the degree of consciousness, will be determined by a variety of factors, such as the strength of the input coming into the brain - for example, from the eyes and the fingers, as well as preexisting connections and the degree of competition, as shown by the smaller assemblies starting to form. (excerpt - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE: Sam Parina MD)

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So, it's the word competition that catches my eye here. Is Parina suggesting that Greenfield's theory rests upon the idea that these sub-assemblies actually compete for primary influence within the corporeal brain's function as the generator of human consciousness? Maybe, if I read on, his interpretation of Greenfield's theory will reveal that choice of "competition" as an operative description to be a quick slip, and not integral to this specific theory concerning the brain's actual configuration of conscious awareness per specific instant within a defined chain of causation.

So, let's imagine that we're standing on the street holding something in one hand. An assembly of brain cells related to "touch" is active, so we're aware of what we're holding. Then, suddenly, we see something that interests us - for example, an accident. We then stop feeling what we're holding and just experience what we're seeing. At that time, the activity of the assembly of brain cells related to touch would be overtaken by the new assembly of cells, which would have become active in relation to what we have seen.

The activity of these cells is in turn determined by the activity of various proteins, which may change in response to other signals, including events taking place in our body, such as hormone changes, immune changes, or changes in the levels of neurotransmitters. So in the same scenario, if we had the flu and were feeling very ill, certain chemicals and hormones would be released by our body and immune cells that would also interact with the brain cell networks, so we would feel "unwell" while seeing an interesting event.

It has thus been suggested that the subtlest influences either from outside or inside the body modulate consciousness at the level of cell synapse in the brain, and hence, lead to differences in consciousness, and that there’s always a competitive process going on between different assemblies of cells.

Okay, so it does seem to be Dr. Parnia's interpretation that this process is the result of cell assemblies winning within a competitive environment, with external impetus launching a literal scramble for assembly dominion within a theater of many such assemblies poised at the ready for their chance to take the helm. As this excerpt is taken from a traditionally published work of non-fiction, I'm going to assume that Prof. Greenfield's theory has been accurately described by Dr. Parnia, including his own use of that theory as the basis of the specific vignette he offers as further clarification of how Greenfield's theory translates to real world moments. I generally find that rephrased presentations (if allowed by the theory's original author, of course) give me a slightly better view of the theory itself, so I'm going to use Dr. Parnia's interpretation of Prof. Greenfield's consciousness theory in this examination. Especially since it's probably not absolutely critical that I deal with every minute aspect of that theory here. In fact, my issue with it focuses on not what's been stated here, but what has been neglected. In that sense, the minute specifics of Prof. Greenfield's theory are not even germane to this examination at all, and Dr. Parnia's broad overview will serve nicely to set up the premise.

Managing the Initiation of Perception

What we have here is a biological process that is a reaction to an event chain that impacts the bio-logical holon that is being managed by the brain and the ultra-sophisticated neural functionality that comes together to be that brain as a functional whole. Now, while I have to agree that the connection (synapse) network reaction (as a definite event involving concurrent and consecutive exchanges of in-formation signals) is very likely the "burst" of intellectual response that we're seeking when looking to define the emergence of consciousness, what is missing here is the means by which response requirement is presented to the brain's entire assembly community, and the management process involved in the brain's choice of which assembly will be activated to the level of dominating the sentient experience and for how long that dominance will last.

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What is clear is that consciousness - intellectual self-awareness - did not evolved casually as a capacity within the corporeal brain. Descriptions of the depth and breadth of complexity and precision involved in the simplest of structural responses to mundane events suggests that the sentient brain evolved as a result of specific requirement. After all, nothing just emerges within the material realm. Opportunity can explain how something developed, but it can't explain why it developed. Requirement is the impetus for what comes into material existence, and when examining requirement, if you dig down deep enough, what you're left with is survival, and that's all your left with. Whatever else you find is directly associated with survival and filling the role of defining specific expressions of survival (or the most effective and efficient means of achieving survival). When addressing the development of something as epitomical as the human brain (for instance), the fact that survival of the identified whole is the primordial driver involved in that development infers that certain criteria be met while achieving that development. It also infers that some specific aspects integral to the developed end product be avoided, since survival itself is the achievement being sought.

Abraham Lincoln once wrote that "a house divided against itself cannot stand", and he was correct about that observation as it pertained to the Union. Within the corporeal whole that is the body, this observation is also correct. In fact, the destruction that such a schism creates is much more immediate within the corporeal body than it could ever be within the union of states that Lincoln was addressing with his statement. More immediate and much more impossible to unwind as progressive ramification that will continue as more and more of what results, reacts to what has been initiated. If the human brain's response to external and/or internal stimuli was actually based on a free competition between cell assemblies that (as any brain/mind researcher will admit) are completely incapable of independent sentience (let alone human judgment) then the survival imperative could not have been the driver that led to its development. To even suggest that simple chemical triggers and hormones make the decisions concerning what the conscious mind will perceive as not only significant, but even apparent, is to grant these chemicals and hormones a level of intellectual capacity that no one is willing to acknowledge.

So, what is the management activity involved in the triggering of conscious awareness as a survival response to the issue of corporeal existence within a competitive environment? For that, we need to take a look at the nature of information as a physical reality, and the possibility that there are more versions of information than raw data that simply represents the occurrence of activity and being.

What we do know is that DNA provides survival directives within each cell of virtually all living things. I say virtually because of what’s known about specific pseudo-organisms called prions which appear to accomplish dynamic existence without DNA, but that’s another issue entirely. DNA provides default protocols that have been established by a process of progressive development specific to the organism and its species’ history. Successes and failures have established the unique precedence chain, with the DNA itself as the informational account concerning what succeeded and – by its absence – what failed to succeed. In the brain-equipped organism, this information is what the brain translates into specific and detailed action items to be divided out and delivered to the assemblies and sub-assemblies that make up the corporeal whole that is the whole body of the organism itself.

So, basically, the management function is fairly simple and somewhat apparent, and species behavior is relatively consistent even among the more sophisticated organisms that employ this basic management system. We have labeled this system natural instinct, and even the most sophisticated of brain-equipped mammals are largely driven by natural instinct. The truth is that even if personification can bring out unique personality traits as apparent to human perception, in the end, a dog will always resort to breed, and this is the point. Natural instinct, the impact of DNA as the primary management driver, is what generally governs the generation of dynamic information “action items” within the corporeal brain. The sophistication and nuance capacity – regarding the translation of the DNA’s broad directives – provides the only real differentiation between one species intelligence and the next.

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