Hello,

In my previous thread, I said that I believe that we survive bodily death. There were a number of excellent anti-survival arguments raised and questions asked, all of which I intend to treat with the greatest seriousness in the future. I found one poster's likening of my proposition of survival with the testimonies on lds.org particularly charming and humorous. I also found nihilist prophet, seer, revelator, and court jester Steve Benson's ad hominem attacks against Ray Moody, PhD, MD, slightly amusing. (Incidentally, my collaborator and I have pet names for a wide variety of members of the NDE "community." We refer to Ray as "Sugar" Ray.)

While Sugar Ray's scrying experiments are very odd, they're legitimate attempts to induce an altered state of consciousness, which was always his goal in order to facilitate mystical experiences. It's interesting that so few people seem able to have them. I'm quite sure that much like Richard Dawkins, who tried it, I'd stand no chance of having one in Mike Persinger's "God helmet," nor can I imagine mirror gazing and seeing an apparition in Sugar Ray's psychomanteum. I suspect that only those who are easily hypnotizable would see any result, and even then, it wouldn't prove or disprove anything.

My collaborator has reviewed the messages posted here and written a response, which I'm including below (edited to remove expletives). While I don't agree with my collaborator about everything, the details are technical and don't make sense for this forum. However, he's both quite adamant and passionate that those here who believe that researchers such as Sue Blackmore have somehow disproven the veracity of the NDE are radically mistaken, and on that, my collaborator and I are in full agreement.

Let me also mention that although my collaborator is a scientist, and I'm a philosopher, I'm highly critical of his beliefs. He believes that we survive death. One would think that this would put us in agreement, but I'm absolutely hostile to what he considers to be valid evidence, and the tendentiousness of his conclusions, which always end with, "Therefore, we survive bodily death," much like, "I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen." There are always alternative explanations that are possible. Survival should only be accepted if every other possibility proves itself inadequate and can be ruled out. Even then, we should be highly reluctant to accept survival, in the same way that experimental psychologists try to rule out every possible proximal cause for human behavior before looking to Darwinian explanations.

At best, I believe that my collaborator can show that current hypotheses about the NDE are inadequate. This does not mean that we survive death by any stretch of the imagination. Also, I'm opposed to some of his ideas such as that memory may be stored (and retrieved) non-locally, which is to say, outside of the substrate of the brain. As an ex-researcher in (human) neuroscience, to me, memory = encoding, storage, and retrieval of information through the mechanism of long-term potentiation, period. No one is more aware of what needs to be explained in order for us to survive death, and I've been at pains to explain these things to my collaborator, who I feel has been bewitched by the emotional potency of the endless NDE accounts that he reads and watches videos of, to the point of uncritical acceptance and, less charitably, gullibility. The accounts can be moving, but they prove nothing. I'd go so far as to say that the best evidence to suggest that we're annihilated at death is NDE accounts! Contrary to my collaborator's interpretation of them as uniform and consistent, I only find differences: tunnel, no tunnel; light, no light; dead relatives, no dead relatives; life review, no life review; etc. I've pointed out to my collaborator that apparently the Chinese don't have NDE's. We shall see where all of this goes. I mention these things to you to point out that if you think that you're a skeptic, I promise you that the most dedicated annihilationist here can't hold a candle to my philosophical cynicism about the possibility that our consciousness should survive bodily death. At the same time, quite begrudgingly, I have no choice but to admit that the evidence appears to converge on survival, and therefore, I believe it. Should irrefutable evidence to the contrary come to light, I will, of course, adjust my belief. Right now, survival is a matter of faith, which is, of course, predicated on no small measure of hope (and desperation).

More than once (a day), I've wanted (and still want) to backhand my collaborator. But enough about that. Let him speak for himself:

There seems to be a general cluelessness on this message board pertaining to the controversies surrounding the NDE, and why intelligent rational-minded people find them intriguing for the possibility of the survival of consciousness. This is not uncommon. In fact, almost every message board I peruse on this subject is full of people who believe they’ve been “explained away” because of Susan Blackmore’s book in 1993, which has since been shown not to fit the data concerning NDEs. Since most people don’t read anything about the subject, they apparently are not aware of this. There are something around 20 current neurological theories for NDEs. This is because nobody is satisfied with any of the theories. In the “howstuffworks” article on NDEs there is a particularly apt statement that for every theory on NDEs there seem to be five cases that refute it. I’d say there are far more than five contradictory cases for each theoretical neurologic model of the NDE. But then, how do we know that unless we actually read lots of NDE accounts and listen to lots of experiencers?

Someone here had pooh-pooed the value of “testimonies.” In religious terms this is often true. However, with NDEs, the accounts have been researched and picked apart for decades and the similarities are so clear and robust that even skeptics agree these people are not making the stuff up. The purpose of listening to people tell their accounts is to avoid the debunking tactic of straw-manning the experience. These experiences are not dream-like. They are typically “realer than real.” The level of consciousness is not foggy. It is generally crystal clear and often clearer than ever before. These facts are important when examining the physical states within which NDEs occur. How can a perfectly clear consciousness, with full ability to think clearly, remember and experience, often beyond the usual levels of cognition occur when the cortex of the brain is in a dysfunctional state? Moreover, how can the same clarity of consciousness and the same narrative of experience occur across a wide variety of physical insults to the brain? If identity theory were true, we would expect to see the NDE accounts modified or tainted by the specific types of drugs or other causes of brain insult (and there are a wide variety of them from bacterial meningitis to cardiac arrest to electrocution to drowning to not being near death at all). Despite a wide ranges of triggers for NDEs, and a lot of effort by skeptics to show some sort of difference caused by the spectrum of physical insults to the brain, nobody has found one. The same NDE narratives can occur simply by being afraid you are about to die, even when your brain is not deprived of oxygen. In fact, it is NDE 101 that many NDEs clearly happen when the brain is not deprived of oxygen. Oxygen deprivation is not THE explanation, even according to skeptics. This does not seem to fit the identity theory. I should be able to predict the differences between the NDE accounts based on the brain insult received. The only thing we know is that the closer you come to death, the more likely you are to have a more transcendent NDE. However, this is precisely what the survival hypothesis would predict. And not being close to death does not preclude one from having the same transcendent NDE, which suggests the possibility that consciousness can “detach” sometimes no matter what the physical state.

Someone here mentioned the pineal gland releasing large amounts of DMT during death as if it were a scientific fact. There is no evidence whatsoever that this occurs. It is just conjecture. I recently browsed through a message board of DMT users and the general consensus was that the DMT experience was not like the NDE--this coming from people who had dozens of DMT trip experiences. Some actually had experienced both the NDE and many DMT trips and said they were not the same. In addition, the neuroscientist Eben Alexander, who had a cortex full of puss with a glucose level of 1 in his CSF [editor's note: cerebrospinal fluid] had a profound NDE while in a coma in which his state of consciousness and clarity of thought were enhanced beyond anything he had ever experienced before. Before this experience, Alexander was virtually certain that consciousness was extinguished at death. After the experience, and after examining various neurological explanations and models of how it could have happened under the specific neurologic circumstances he was in, he came to an absolutely certain conclusion that he was “outside” of his brain and that consciousness is not a product of the brain. He even goes so far as to say that the “neuroscience of consciousness” is an oxymoron. One thing he looked at was the theory of DMT dump. According to Alexander, the specific receptors for DMT to operate could not possibly have been functional during his coma due to the extent of the bacterial infection.

Some people seem outraged at the suggestion that someone can sense the environment without eyes, ears, olfactory bulbs, and so on. I think this stems from a profound lack of imagination. Whenever someone talks about information traveling through the optic nerve into the occipital cortex for “interpretation,” do you know what they mean by the term “interpretation?” Nobody does. The term “interpretation” is the same as saying, “and then, a miracle occurred, and you can see.” We have NDE accounts from those blind from birth who experience sight for the first time. They had classic NDEs: Vicki Umipeg and Bradley Burroughs, for example. Kenneth Ring has published a book called “Mindsight," exploring the cases of some 30 blind people. Among those were amazing things like a completely blind man being able to see the color and design of a tie his caregiver was buying for him without any prior knowledge. Vicki and Brad had transcendent classic NDEs and saw for the first time. Their impressions were described just like any other NDEr. Interesting, isn’t it? That a brain which has never seen a shape or a light before can suddenly churn out the same perceptual impressions as other NDErs who can see. Consider also that neither of these people dream visually, either. They dream in darkness, with sounds, smells and tactile stimuli only. The REM intrusion theory of NDEs doesn’t do well to explain why their NDEs weren’t like their dreams.

There are, of course, hundreds of anecdotal claims of out of body perception, some of them extremely compelling: Maria’s shoe, someone else’s shoe, Pam Reynolds, dentures man, the surgeon flapping his arms, the doctor with the scar, the woman with the weird socks, the cobwebs on the OR lights, Charles Tart's "Miss Z" supposedly reading a 5 digit number, and many more that have not been popularized. On the NDERF website (www.nderf.org), there are approximately 2500 NDE accounts. I have just started reviewing them systematically and in the first 200 accounts there have already been 28 involving claims of veridical perception, some reportedly verified. So at the very least, this is not uncommon. Whatever is happening seems quite convincing to the experiencer.

There is no scientific evidence that consciousness exists.

Consider that fact for a moment. Here we are trying to understand consciousness using science, and making demands for scientific evaluation of conscious experiences when in fact there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that consciousness even exists. The information goes to the brain for “interpretation.” Right, and that explains everything.

The following is a list of mysteries involving the NDE that have not been explained.

1.) Cardiac arrest NDEs- Within an average of 12 seconds after arrest, the cortex of the brain goes flat. Maximum in research studies is 30 seconds, and consciousness starts getting messed up almost immediately after it begins (they typically fall on the ground and go black). Every neuroscientific theory of consciousness anyone takes seriously insists that the brainstem, cortex and thalamus be functional for any conscious experiences to occur. People who have cardiac arrests have lengthy, involved experiences that seem to last way past the 30 second mark where everyone agrees that any type of consciousness should be impossible. We know this because people accurately perceive what is happening well after this 30 second period with third party verification. Take Renee Pasarow for instance, who was declared death about 10-15 minutes before getting to the hospital. Her NDE started long before that and lasted throughout. In the case of Pam Reynolds, her brainstem activity was being monitored throughout. She was not having a temporal lobe seizure or any such heightened cortical activity at any time that some people say explains the NDE. If she was it would have been noticed. Another myth shattered.

2.) Verified out of body perceptions

3.) No significant change in the qualitative experience no matter what the physiological state the experiencer is in. Even overdoses of powerful CNS depressing drugs result in heightened consciousness and full awareness during NDEs. I would like to see how the identity theory explains that. There is also no association between drugs administered and likelihood of having an NDE or quality of experience. That is NDE 101.

4.) The ability to remember the experience. During anoxia, the most sensitive part of the brain is memory. Anoxia impairs memory. However, NDEs that occur during anoxia involve stunningly sharp memories, leading people to speculate that memory is not “stored” *in* the brain, but accessed by it. Studies done over many years to test whether experiencers change their stories show that they do not significantly alter their stories over time.

5.) Panoramic life reviews. Debunkers love to ignore these. There are two types of life reviews. One where everything just flashes before your eyes, and one where you relive events from 3 different perspectives simultaneously in a controlled narrative manner. Skeptics only regard the first type because they think it can be explained easily. The second type is inexplicable. Multiple people have this experience described the same way, experiencing all the harm and all the care they gave to others as if it happened to themselves from the perspective of living as the other person. This experience is highly organized, and not what would be expected from a random jumble of memories from a discombobulated brain. I’ve seen one account where someone had both types of life reviews in one NDE. We also have astonishing stories of future life reviews that came true, such as David Bennett’s and Kim Sharpe.

6.) Extraordinary ignorance of skeptical arguments. You can listen to entire podcasts of skeptics like Brian Dunning’s skeptoid on the NDE and never once does he even mention the most powerful mysteries of the phenomenon, namely that heightened consciousness is experienced during states which current neuroscience says are incompatible with *any* consciousness, let alone heightened consciousness. Nobody can even take a stab at this one. Even if the NDE turns out to be a brain only phenomenon, it reveals the deep inadequacy of current neuroscience to understand consciousness. But the fact that materialism is so powerless to explain why cells would generate experiences at all, combined with all these other elements suggests to me that consciousness is a more fundamental part of nature that evolution likely designed itself around like a scaffolding, instead of generated through increasing complexity. And I do not believe in intelligent design btw. The remarkable ignorance among those on this message board can be given as an example.

7.) The experience is considered by many to be more real than daily reality. Experiencers say things like, “that was home”. Why would such a strange experience that few people have be more natural than every day reality while they are on the threshold of permanent death?

8.) The Light. The light is not described (as many wish us to believe) as if it were merely a tweaking out of retinal or occipital cells creating brightness. It is continually described as a living thing full of unearthly love, wisdom and knowledge. It attracts and beckons the experiencer toward it. Neural theories of lights and tunnels do a piss poor or non-existent job of addressing this fact. There is absolutely no reason why dying retinal cells should be associated with breathtaking unconditional love, wisdom and knowledge. And a person’s proximity to this light seems proportional to the feelings they experience. One can experience pain (from a bad life review), intense joy, sadness and so on within the light also. So chalking these feelings up to some flood of endorphins doesn’t work because all the emotional states are fully experienced within it and the light itself seems clearly to be the source. If the pleasant feelings of NDEs came from a flood of endorphins, the experience would not be immediately back in pain upon returning to the body because the effects of these endorphins last hours. What experiencers say again and again is that the pain ends *immediately* upon exiting the body, and despite whatever pleasure they experience during the NDE, the pain returns in full *immediately* upon returning to the body. This is not compatible with Blackmore’s speculative guesses about endorphins. In fact, skeptics have made very little attempt at even explaining what NDErs actually describe in the light.

9.) Timing of resuscitation. NDE accounts are very often timed with the decision to return. Once the decision is made to return the person very quickly comes back. You can read the accounts and see this over and over again. I find it interesting that a person can choose to be revived right when they are revived. If they really are dying from something as severe as a cardiac arrest or some other trauma, why would they have a choice about whether and when they are revived? There are some accounts where the experience ends abruptly. But if the whole NDE were a brain generated experience caused by being near death, we would expect almost all of the experiences to end abruptly and irrationally as soon as the shock paddles started the heart. The other interesting thing is how people are told again and again in these experiences that they have to go back, it is not there time, they have work to do, they have to help others.. What you never hear (as far as I am aware of), is people being told that they can stay and then abruptly being back in their body when revived. I have seen several accounts where people are told they can stay and then they argue that they have to go back to raise their kids, and they are allowed to go back. I never see accounts where people are told to stay and then suddenly revive. If NDEs were hallucinations, I would expect many people to be frolicking around in “heaven” only to return abruptly to their body out of the blue. I would expect the majority of these accounts to have tremendously silly discrepancies. But they don’t. One could argue that there is selective reporting and that these weird accounts exist.

I know that GP has solemnly pledged to ignore my posts (giving all kinds of personal-attack dog reasons why, as poster Nightingale has previously pointed out to him in a point-by-point recitation that GP said he would respond to but who conveniently has yet to follow through on).

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,246758,246758#msg-246758


That oversight duly noted, GP just can't seem, despite his stated determination, to stop directing attention to my views which dare to diverge from his own on The Woo-Woo View of the Eternal You.

Well, OK, if he insists, here we go.

Speaking of "odd," GP insist that Moody's goofy dabblings are "very odd but legitimate." (Now, that's a rousing endorsement). Really, GP? Hugged a dead relative lately by doing the Moody Mirror trick--sitting, while staring peacefully and caffeine-free, into one (while also wearing loose clothing and munching serenely on fruits and vegetables)?


--Raymond Moody and His Mindless Myths

With a straight face, the disembodied-mind minions of "Raygun" Raymond tout the Miracle Moody Tour as somehow being legit because, GP argues, Moody (drum roll, please) is “well known.” (Gosh, P.T. Barnum and his "there's-a-sucker-born-every-minute" traveling circus were well-known, too).

In the meantime, what follows is a description of what the Marvelous Moody does, as breathlessly described by his followers (and which peep-stoner Joseph Smith would no doubt endorse). Follow the Marvelous Moody's instructions precisely--take off all your jewelry, don't drink any coffee, find yourself a large mirror to plop yourself down in front of, etc.--and you, too, can enter the Wonderful World of Woo-Woo:

“Would you like to have a word with your long-departed mother? How about experiencing a hug from your deceased grandfather?

“The world's foremost expert on the near-death experience says he experienced a hug from his deceased grandfather. Dr. Raymond Moody developed a technique that involves gazing into a large mirror, an ancient technique to receive visions. For example, the great seer Nostradamus used a reflective device to have out-of-body travels to see into the future. . . . “

("The Trigger of Mirror-Gazing: Dr. Raymond Moody's ADC Research," at: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/triggers18.html)


Examine the Magnificent Mood Swing's post-dead creds and read how he conducts his “science” on selected guinea pigs:

“Moody has a mirrored room where guests come to scry, hoping for a visit from a dead loved one. ABC reporter Diane Sawyer tried it out for about 45 minutes but didn't have any visitors. Maybe she didn't have a strong enough desire to see a dead loved one. Maybe she didn't have a strong enough belief that gazing into mirrors can induce an altered state of consciousness. Maybe she should have stayed in the room for a day or two.”

("From Abracadabra to Zombies: Raymond Moody." at: http://www.skepdic.com/ticrypto.html)


This stuff would be entertainingly hilarious if it wasn't so primitively pathetic.

In a succinct debunking of Moody-ite NDEs, entitled "Maria's Near-Death Experience: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop," authors Hayden Ebbern, Sean Mulligan and Barry L. Beverstein of Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, B.C, Canada) aptly describe belief in NDEs as nothing more than dualistic spiritualism bordering on the occult--which, in the final analysis, is religiously-rooted in faith, not factually-footed in science. The authors describe NDEs as "so-called 'near-death experiences" that are essentially "comforting beliefs" which their faithful adherents hold to "as evidence for survival of the soul"--a belief, the authors say, "is perhaps the most comforting belief of all."

They explain what is meant by the term "NDE," as defined within the context of the public frenzy these episodes have stirred in the hearts of believers yearning for human immortality:

"Since Raymond Moody ('Life After Life,' 1975, New York: Bantam) coined the term 'near-death experience' to describe a reasonably consistent set of experience recalled by about a third of those who are resuscitated after near-fatal incidents, such descriptions have been welcomed with enthusiasm by a large segment of the public.

"The NDE typically begins with a sense of serenity and relief, followed by a felling that the self is leaving the body (the 'out-of-body experience,' or OBE). From this vantage point, the disembodied self sometimes feels that it is observing attempts to revive its lifeless body.

"A subset of those who reach the OBE stage further reports being propelled through a spiral tunnel toward a bright light. For some, the light eventually resolves into a significant religious figure, deceased relative or friend, vista of paradise, etc. As rescue procedures begin to take effect, these patients often report feeling great reluctance at being pulled back into the painful, uncertain everyday world. . . .

"Although reports of NDEs have accumulated over the centuries, the rate seems to have increased dramatically in recent times. This is likely due to vast improvements in emergency medicine, coupled with a resurgence of religious fundamentalism worldwide. The spiritual interpretation of NDEs is reinforced by the mass media which prosper by pandering to public longings of all sorts.

"The concept of personal immortality is, in the final analysis, a metaphysical proposition that can only be accepted on faith . . . . While faith alone used to be sufficient to bolster such convictions, the growing prestige of science has left many more sophisticated believers uneasy in the absence of more solid proof of an afterlife. In response, a field of 'near-death studies' has emerged with the thinly-veiled agenda of providing a scientific gloss for religious views of an afterlife.

"About the same time, there emerged another field known as 'anomalistic psychology'. . . . It accepts that experiences such as NDEs and OBEs can seem exceedingly real to those who have them, but offers many reasons to doubt their reality outside the mind of the percipient . . . . Anomalistic psychology seeks naturalistic explanations for various seemingly supernatural states of consciousness based on sound psychological and neurophysiological research."

The authors then commence a successful logical duel against the post-death notion of "dualism":

"To accept notions such as survival after death, disembodied minds and a host of other parapsychological phenomena, one must adopt some form of the philosophical doctrine known as dualism . . . . Dualism asserts that mind is fundamentally different from the physical body, essentially equivalent to the religious concept of any immaterial soul. If dualism is correct, it is possible, some say, for mind or consciousness to disengage temporarily from the body but still retain self-awareness and the ability to gather information and interact physically with the environment. Many dualists also believe that their spiritual selves are immortal and that they will eventually abandon their physical bodies and assume a separate existence in some other realm. All of this is impossible from the standpoint of material monists who assert that mind is equivalent to and inseparable from the functioning of individual brains."

The authors then link NDE belief to devotion to doctrines of both the occult and religious fundamentalism:

"Not surprisingly, NDE accounts are welcomed by many occultists because they appear to be a major impediment to the materialist worldview they find so distasteful. Likewise in fundamentalists circles, NDEs are hailed as a vindication for various spiritual teachings. Materialists readily concede that the subjective experiences of the NDE FEEL compellingly real. Indeed, they contend that NDEs helped suggest the concept of the immortal soul to our ancestors in the first place. Despite the subjective realness of the NDE, however, modern neuroscience offers not only a wealth of reasons to doubt the possibility of disembodied minds but it also provides much evidence that the compelling subjective phenomena of the NDE can be generated by known brain mechanisms . . . . Believers counter that the NDE seems too real to have been a dream or hallucination but they forget that what we MEAN by the term 'hallucination' is an internally-generated experience so detailed, emotional and believable that it is indistinguishable from ordinary perceptions of reality . . . ."

The authors further note that so-called "near-death experiences" are "always reported by people who have not really died [as in the case of Betty Eadie, whose claims are coming up for dissection and disposal]. . . . With the advent of modern resuscitation techniques, . . . it [has] bec[o]me possible in some cases to restore breathing and pulse, often as long as several minutes after they have died. During CPA [cardiopulmonary arrest], the brain undergoes several biochemical and physiological changes but by relying on its limited back-ups of stored oxygen and metabolic fuels, certain aspects of consciousness can be sustained, albeit in a somewhat degraded fashion. Thus, if the resuscitation is successful, it is not surprising that there might be some residual memories from the time one was dying, but not yet dead.

"That there should be some overlap in the recollections of the minority of revived CPA patients who recall anything from the interval tells us more about how the brain ordinarily creates our sense of self and the feeling that there is an external reality than it does about the possibility of an afterlife. Much can be learned from studying the orderly fashion in which these internally-constructed models shut down when the brain is traumatized but because those who have been revived did not reach the irreversible state of brain death, any experiences they recall cannot be said to have come from 'the other side.'"

The authors also point out that NDEs are hardly unique to claims of near-death "proofs" of after-death "reality":

"Furthermore, the subjective contents of the NDE are anything but unique to the onset of death. The basic elements of the NDE are common to hallucinations of various sorts; i.e., they are also found in psychedelic drug states, psychoses and migraine and epileptic attacks . . . . Similar experiences have been reported in a surprisingly high proportion of those who panic during natural disasters, when they are psychologically traumatized but in no real physical danger . . . .

"If, as is indeed the case, the components of the NDE have plausible roots in brain physiology, this undermines the argument that they are a glimpse of the afterlife rather than a rich and very believable hallucination. It is for this reason that accounts of NDEs that contain elements that are logically incompatible with the hallucination hypothesis assume special importance. One attempt to gather objective evidence of this sort, rather than the usual anecdotal, after-the-fact accounts, has been initiated by the British psychiatrist, Peter Fenwick . . . . . He has had messages placed on ledges, above eye level, in the operating theaters of the hospital where he works. If a surgical patient should have an NDE/OBE, then his or her free-floating mind should be able to read the otherwise inaccessible message and recall it upon re-awakening. As yet, no one has been able to provide this kind of objective evidence, which would admittedly create serious problems for the materialist view of mind. In the absence of such strong proof, the spiritually-inclined must fall back on the next best thing: those cases where it seems highly unlikely that the revived person could have known certain things unless his or her fully-conscious spiritual self had been observing from outside the body."

In light of lack of compelling evidence for NDEs and OBEs being supposedly real experiences occurring outside the realm of the physical body and/or brain, the authors conclude with this cautionary reminder from Demosthenes, offered some two millennia ago:

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit, for what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true."

(Hayden Ebbern, Sean Mulligan and Barry L. Beverstein "Maria's Near-Death Experience: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop," pp. 1-4, 11, original emphasis; reprinted in "Skeptical Inquirer," Vol. 20, No. 4, July/August 1996, at: http://records.viu.ca/www/ipp/pdf/NDE.pdf)
_____


--Mormonism, Magic and Enduring Ex-Mo Visions of a Free-Floating Mind

Why is it that some folks can leave the folk magic of Mormonism but just can't seem to shake its kissin' cousin of extra-cranial kookiness?

(see RfM thread, "Continuing closed thread, 'there is only life,'" posted by "DMK (Divine Mind King per Steve Benson," on "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 26 July 2011, 2:32 p.m., at: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,256056,256056#msg-256056)
_____


--Enter Eerie Eadie

I mean, for gawd's sake, we've recently witnessed on this board from the same ex-Mo "philosopher" king an enthusiastic embracing of notorious huckster/baptized Mormon author Betty Eadie, of "Embraced by the Light" fame.

(see RfM thread cited above).


Yes, that same eternally-earnest Eadie who insisted on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" that she's actually "hugged" Jesus.

Yes, really. Like Raymond Moody has really and truly hugged his dead/undead granddad.

Even some tub-thumping Mormons have commendably acknowledged that Sister Eadie is, well, completely nuts.

(Douglas Beardall, "Embarrassed by the Light: The Unauthorized Biography of Betty Eadie and a Critical Expose' of 'Embraced by the Light,' An Investigative Probe of a New York Times Bestseller!" [Provo, Utah: LDS Book Publications, 1995], 172 pp.)


Admittedly, Brother Beardall, as a true-believing Mormon, has his own handicapping blind spots but at least when it comes to poking holes in the non-scientific NDE-related superstitions of Eadie and her easily-swayed, well-paying followers, he's both spot-on and dead-on.

Referring to Eadie's bizarre appearance on "Oprah," Beardall confesses that Betty's lack of appropriate Mormon missionary zeal and what he sees as her spreading of devilishly false doctrine really upsets him, even to the point where he admits he kicked up a household ruckus by "yelling at the television"):

"Betty Eadie had some colorful, visual computer graphics which coincided with the questions Oprah was asking--psychedelic montages which looked like the lead-in to a 'Star Wars' movie and scenes of flowers and waterfalls and stars in the universe.

"Admittedly, it was entertaining. However, what made me so indignant and furious was when Betty Eadie stated two separate times, in very plain and direct language that: 'Jesus told me (Betty) that it didn't matter what church a person belonged to, that as long as you have love, that's all that matters. Oprah Winfrey agreed with Betty and said, 'That's what I've always believed.' . . .

"Betty never did admit on the 'Oprah Winfrey Show' that she was a current, baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She refused to admit, stand up and be proud that she was a Mormon. . . . Why would anyone want to talk to a [Mormon] missionary when they had just witnessed Betty Eadie says she 'hugged' Christ and He told her that it didn't matter what church a person belonged to as long as they had love?"

Beardall is particularly upset that the "many, many years she spent as a baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . . . is purposely and conveniently left out. Why would Betty not proudly proclaim that she has been a Mormon for most of her life? What has she to hide? What is she ashamed of? Is she embarrassed to be a Latter-day Saint? . . . [Her] egotistical reasoning behind . . . publishing . . . . . . the 'Embraced' book of fantasy is serious enough but the $20,000,000 in book sales [in its first two years of marketing] is still no reason to preach and publish Christian heresy."

Having vented on matters of faith dear to his latter-day heart, Beardall then complains that "Eadie and her 'ghost writers' have used and abused the basic tenets of the Mormon religion "to develop a fantasy, near-death experience which did not actually happen."

Beardhall's case against Eadie's beyond-the-veil post-mortem magic-making is as follows:

"In nationwide broadcast talk show interviews and public relations news releases, Betty has refused to reveal and document her medical hospital experience. She refuses to submit to a polygraph examination or to ever reveal the name[s] of the doctors, nurses or hospital to verify even the hint of an actual death experience. If her death actually happened there should be no reason to refuse a quick and simple verification.

"Upon interviewing and questioning a number of physicians and anesthesiologists as to what physically occurs at the time of death, the following truths emerge:

"After physical death, all of the essential bodily organs die. The brain dies. The heart and lungs and all of the other vital organs cease to function. Morbidity occurs. The circulatory blood system becomes rigid and incapable of being revived. Betty claims to have actually been dead, not near-death, but dead for over four hours. Resuscitation and revival is medically impossible. Lack of oxygen causes brain damage. . . .

"Betty was not in intensive care and she was not electronically monitored by unknown medical staff of the unknown hospital. This is according to Betty's own written testimony. There were no professional medical personnel to assist her in the event of sudden death. Her operation was a serious matter. Hysterectomies are a great concern for all women but hysterectomies do not usually cause death as Betty reports. I am not minimizing the seriousness of this elective surgery but I am stating that Betty was not in the intensive care of any medical staff, nor were there any family, friends or [Mormon] priesthood brethren with her at the time of her alleged death. There was also no one there when she claims to have returned to life four hours later.

"It must be noted that Betty Eadie's alleged death was originally written in a small letter until it was picked up and embellished by a couple of ghost writers, almost 20 years later. Betty admits that there is much of the experience that she has forgotten and could not remember until this later date; almost two decades later."

Beardall further complains that Eadie, in making up her death-defying experience, nonetheless based it on bedrock truths of Mormon Church doctrine:

"Betty's final manuscript was enhanced and further embellished by her ghost writer, Curtis Taylor, who substantially integrated much of the Mormon doctrine and Gospel truths found within the teachings and beliefs of the LDS Church. . . . What is so very disconcerting to the many millions of Mormon members is that Betty Eadie and Curtis Taylor and Jane Barfuss have purposely refused to admit that 'The Book of Mormon,' 'The Pearl of Great Price,' 'The Doctrine and Covenants' and the inspired version of the King James translation of the Old and New Testaments is the foundation of their writings in the book, 'Embraced by the Light;' then they changed the Gospel!"

Indeed, Mormon ward Gospel Doctrine teacher Beardall claims that there was no way Eadie was ever really dead in the first place, noting that such a "rais[ing] from the dead" cannot be accomplished "without a priesthood blessing."

(Eadie, "Embraced by the Light," in "Introduction," pp. viii, ix, xii, and "Chapter One: Did Betty Really Die?" pp. 1-3)

Say it ain't so, Joe!

(Enter, on cue, that good ol' God-of-the-Gaps character of convenience to "explain" what the anti-science types 'round here mystically insist is the supposed immortal wonder of it all).

How silly. How superstitious. How sad.



Edited 31 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 04:57AM by steve benson.

All I see is claims, NO PEER REVIEWED RESEARCH TO BACK IT UP.

No reason to believe anything you say.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 07:00AM by steve benson.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 01:37PM by MJ.

Surely full page messages should have the designation "LONG" after each heading...Neither side on this thread can ever PROVE their case to the other's satisfaction... So give this thread a miss, unless you want more anesthetic or a verbal sleeping pill...

JB

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 01:58AM by steve benson.

Until they do, there is no reason to believe that claim. In fact, in science, the assumption is that a claim is false until there is empirical evidence that supports the claim.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 01:58AM by MJ.

"This is the same argument creationists use for the origins of life and the universe. . . .

"[It] is a straw argument. I've not seen Steve or anyone else assert that neuroscience FULLY ACCOUNTS for awareness and behavior. In fact, Steve has argued the opposite. Setting up an assertion that hasn't been made, then knocking it down by calling it faith is as ridiculous as Young Earth Creationists asserting that science hasn't fully accounted for the origins of life and therefore a supernatural explanation is preferable . . .

"One giant argumentum ad ignorantium."

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,258824,258898#msg-258898



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 02:07AM by steve benson.

(nyuk, nyuk). While others find it to still be quite alive and vibrant. ;o)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 03:03AM by steve benson.

The testable evidence all reaches a dead end, or the end of the line, right there at the flatline. As far as I know, every case of someone "coming back" has always been a case involving a still fully functional brain. So the whole experience is being told to us by a brain.

Some of the stories told are quite fascinating. But they all have a First Vision "you had to be there" quality to them. There's no way for me to get into the mind of the storyteller in order to evaluate what, if anything, they actually experienced or whether they're pulling a Joseph Smith on us. I wouldn't take it on myself to tell someone who sincerely claims to have had an experience with disembodied consciousness what it means. I wasn't there. C'est la vie, c'est la mort.

You can include the warning 'long' in your sub line and then you get someone asking why did you say 'long' in your sub line. Just more evidence that you can't please all the people all the time.

Then you get some people who write 'long' in their sub line when their post is only a couple of paragraphs in length. I file them under 'young', 'new to posting' and/or tweeter/texter to whom a paragraph is like unto a treatise.

Whether a post truly is long - or not - depends on each reader's perception of long/short as well as the writer's milieu, among other influences.

Then there is always the scanner technique - when you open a post you can see length by a quick glance and/or an exploratory scroll-down.

Some like it short, some want it longer, there is no universal approved and correlated word count for posts here. It pays us to develop the scanning/scrolling technique in order to experience RfM posts in the way most likely to inform, entertain, elucidate, invigorate or otherwise impact us.

I like the breakfast-length posts myself. One long post can get me through a big bowl of cereal and two cups of tea, minimum. I prefer that to post-hopping through an abundance of two or three-liners.

Each to his/her own, in terms of OP length, volume, content and tone, and regarding reader preference, interest level, enjoyment and appreciation.

Too, some topics and tales require more space, understandable in most instances.

If God didn't expect length, why did He give us a scroll bar, I wonder? :)

The information presented would be compelling (or at least worth considering) if we knew it were peer reviewed, without that however it may just amount to pure conjecture on the part of this "Collaborator". Whoever this "Collaborator" is he seems to be intelligent and knowledgable on the subject and his points 1-9 appear sound, if they can infact be verified. Without that verification (again I need peer reviewed articles) I will only say the information provided was interesting and thought provoking.

Points 1-9, while interesting (as are parts of the main body of the text), are paled when one considers the information Steve Benson provided against your Ph.d/MD Moody. Please explain how his mirror experiment can be considered legitiment science? The fact that Nostradamus used this technique to "divine the future" (i.e. mutter a bunch of nonsense) seems to speak volumes.

One further question...what are your friend's credentials? You said he was a scientist but that tells us very little about his ability to speak with authority on this subject. Unless he is a neurologist or psychologist he probably isn't qualified to make some of his above assertions.


As adamant as I was the other day that science could not definitively tell us one way or another if we survive death, it may seem odd that I would question you or your friend at all, but I think its only fair that I challenge your weaknesses if I am going to claim to be unbiased and fair.

In a cranial shell, it's not as fantazmic as GP would like folks to believe.

First of all, there's no unassailable proof that Reynolds was actually dead:

". . . [I]n 2006 scientists demonstrated brain activity in someone in a vegetative state, which is not identical to a flat EEG but which indicates that some machines might detect brain activity while others do not.

"Thus, those researchers who claim that their patients have memories of experiences they had when they were dead (as Dr. Michael Saborn does of musician Pam Reynolds) may be mistaken. Just because their machines don't register anything cannot be taken as proof positive that a person is dead, nor can it be taken as proof positive that the patient isn't aware, on some level, of what is going on around her. Unconscious patients may hear what surgeons and nurses are saying, even if the hospital machines aren't registering any brain activity."


Moreover, Saborn doesn't exactly come off as professional:

"Furthermore, NDE stories are now known to a large audience. Thus, when new stories are told about going into the light, etc., one has to be concerned that these stories may have been contaminated. They may reflect what one has heard and what one expects. Such experiences are still subjectively real and may have profound effects on a person, but they should not be taken as strong evidence of separation of body and spirit, much less of life after death.

"(In any case, making extraordinary claims that can't be disproved won't hurt Dr. Saborn's book or Reynolds's record sales, a fact that has not escaped the attention of the webmaster of the near-death.com page promoting the sale of Saborn's book and Reynolds's CDs. Granted, the page is not on par with the unseemliness of Kübler-Ross's turbaned man standing in for the spirits of dead husbands, but the page doesn't do anything to encourage belief in the professionalism or reliability of Saborn's reports)."

("From Abracadabra to Zombies: Near-Death Experience (NDE)," at: http://www.skepdic.com/nde.html)
_____


Perhaps GP has forgotten the following scientifically-grounded and -referenced examination of the bogus Reynolds "NDE"/"OBE" authored by Keith Augustine. For the record, it was brought to his attention sometime ago on this board and he never has substantively dealt with it:

"As Michael Sabom recounts in 'Light and Death,' in August 1991 a then 35-year-old woman he called 'Pam Reynolds' (a pseudonym) underwent an innovative procedure to remove a brain aneurysm. The procedure—inducing hypothermic cardiac arrest or 'standstill'—involved lowering Pam's body temperature to 60°F, stopping her heart and breathing, and draining the blood from her brain to cool it and then reintroduce it. When her body temperature had reached 60°F and she had no electrical activity in her brain, her aneurysm was removed. About 2 hours after awaking from general anesthesia, Pam was moved into the recovery room still intubated (Sabom, 'Light' 46-47). At some point after that, the tube was removed from her trachea and she was able to speak. She reported a classic NDE with a vivid OBE, moving through a 'tunnel vortex' toward a 'pinpoint of light' that continually grew larger, hearing her deceased grandmother's voice, encountering figures in a bright light, encountering deceased relatives who gave her "something sparkly" to eat, and being 'returned' to her body by her deceased uncle (Sabom, 'Light' 42-46).

"The case was quickly celebrated because of the lack of synaptic activity within the procedure and Pam's report of an apparently veridical OBE at some point during the operation. But it has been sensationalized at the expense of the facts, facts which have been continually misrepresented by some parapsychologists and near-death researchers.[14] Although hailed by some as 'the most compelling case to date of veridical perception during an NDE' (Corcoran, Holden, and James), and 'the single best instance we now have in the literature on NDEs to confound the skeptics' (Ring, 'Religious Wars' 218), it is in fact best understood in terms of normal perception operating during an entirely nonthreatening physiological state.

"Two mischaracterizations of this case are particularly noteworthy, as their errors of fact greatly exaggerate the force of this NDE as evidence for survival after death.[15] First, in their write-up of the first prospective study of NDEs, van Lommel and colleagues write:

"Sabom mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG [electroencephalogram] of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat. After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep NDE, including an out-of-body experience, with subsequently verified observations during the period of the flat EEG . . . (van Lommel et al. 2044).

Second, in his 'Immortal Remains—an assessment of the evidence for survival of bodily death'—Stephen Braude erroneously describes the case as follows:

"'Sabom reports the case of a woman who, for about an hour, had all the blood drained from her head and her body temperature lowered to 60 degrees. During that time her heartbeat and breathing stopped, and she had both a flat EEG and absence of auditory evoked potentials from her brainstem.... Apparently during this period she had a detailed veridical near-death OBE . . . (Braude 274).'

"But anyone who gives Sabom's chapters on the case more than a cursory look will see two glaring errors in the descriptions above. First, it is quite clear that Pam did not have her NDE during any period of flat EEG.[16] Indeed, she was as far as a patient undergoing her operation could possibly be from clinical death when her OBE began.[17] Second, she had no cerebral cortical activity for no longer than roughly half an hour. Both of these facts are nicely illustrated in Figure 1 below.

"Fig. 1. Timeline of Pam Reynolds' general anesthesia. The colored areas represent changes in body temperature: Green indicates a life-sustaining temperature; yellow, the mechanical cooling or warming of blood; red, the constant temperature of her deepest hypothermia. Most times marking events or temperatures are derived from Michael Sabom's account of Pam Reynolds' procedure provided in Chapters 3 & 10 of 'Light & Death.'

"Despite accurately reporting the facts, Sabom himself has encouraged these misrepresentations.[18] Though he informs the reader that Pam's experience began well before standstill, he reveals this incidentally, so that a careful reading of the text is required to discern the point. For instance, just after describing Pam's recollections of an operating room conversation, he notes, almost as an afterthought, that '[hypothermic cardiac arrest would definitely be needed' . . . (Sabom, "Light" 42). He then goes on to assert that the very features of her experience which cannot be timed happened during standstill. At first, Sabom only implies this by describing the cooling of blood leading to standstill prior to describing the remainder of Pam's near-death experience (42-46). Then Sabom turns to a discussion of whether Pam was 'really' dead during a portion of her standstill state:

"But during 'standstill,' Pam's brain was found 'dead' by all three clinical tests—her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the 'deepest' near-death experience of all 'Atlanta Study' participants. . . .

"With this information, can we now scientifically assert that Pam was either dead or alive during her near-death experience? Unfortunately, no. Even if all medical tests certify her death, we would still have to wait to see if life was restored . . . (Sabom, 'Light' 49).

"Of course, the issue of whether Pam was 'really' dead within standstill is an extraordinarily misleading red herring in this context. And it is blatantly irresponsible for Sabom to explicitly state that her NDE occurred "while in this state." As Sabom's own account reveals, her standstill condition had absolutely nothing to do with the time when we know that her near-death OBE began: A full two hours and five minutes before the medical staff even began to cool her blood, during perfectly normal body temperature![19] (Again, see Figure 1.)

"Unlike the other elements of her NDE, we can precisely time when Pam's OBE began because she did accurately describe an operating room conversation. Namely, she accurately recalled comments made by her cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Murray, about her 'veins and arteries being very small' (Pam's words) (Sabom, 'Light' 42). Two operative reports allow us to time this observation. First, in the head surgeon's report, Dr. Robert Spetzler noted that when he was cutting open Pam's skull, 'Dr. Murray performed bilateral femoral cut-downs for cannulation for cardiac bypass' (185). So at about the same time that Dr. Spetzler was opening Pam's skull, Dr. Murray began accessing Pam's blood vessels so that they could be hooked up to the bypass machine which would cool her blood and ultimately bring her to standstill. Second, Dr. Murray's operative report noted that 'the right common femoral artery was quite small' and thus could not be hooked up to the bypass machine. Consequently, Murray's report continues, 'bilateral groin cannulation would be necessary: This was discussed with Neurosurgery, as it would affect angio access postoperatively for arteriography' (185). And although Pam's mother was given a copy of the head surgeon's operative report (which she said Pam did not read), the report did not say anything about any of Pam's arteries being too small (Sabom, 'Shadow' 7).

"Many have argued that Pam's accurate recall of an operating room conversation is strong evidence that she really did leave her body during the procedure. But there is at least one peculiar fact about Pam's recollections—in addition to the timing of her experience—which makes a physiological explanation of her OBE much more likely.

"General anesthesia is the result of administering a trio of types of drugs: sedatives, to induce sleep or prevent memory formation; muscle relaxants, to ensure full-body paralysis; and painkillers. Inadequate sedation alone results in anesthesia awareness. Additionally, if insufficient concentrations of muscle relaxants are administered, a patient will be able to move; and if an inadequate amount of painkillers are administered, a patient will be able to feel pain (Woerlee, 'Anaesthesiologist' 16). During a typical surgical procedure, an anesthesiologist must regularly administer this trio of drugs throughout the operation. But just prior to standstill, anesthetic drugs are no longer administered, as deep hypothermia is sufficient to maintain unconsciousness. The effects of any remaining anesthetics wear off during the warming of blood following standstill (G. Woerlee, personal communication, November 8, 2005).

"About one or two in a thousand patients undergoing general anesthesia report some form of anesthesia awareness. That represents between 20,000 and 40,000 patients a year within the United States alone. A full 48% of these patients report auditory recollections postoperatively, while only 28% report feeling pain during the experience (JCAHO 10). Moreover, 'higher incidences of awareness have been reported for caesarean section (0.4%), cardiac surgery (1.5%), and surgical treatment for trauma (11-43%)' (Bünning and Blanke 343). Such instances must at least give us pause about attributing Pam's intraoperative recollections to some form of out-of-body paranormal perception. Moreover, for decades sedative anesthetics such as nitrous oxide have been known to trigger OBEs.

"Sometime after 7:15 AM that August morning, general anesthesia was administered to Pam Reynolds. Subsequently, her arms and legs were tied down to the operating table, her eyes were lubricated and taped shut, and she was instrumented in various other ways (Sabom, 'Light' 38). A standard EEG was used to record activity in her cerebral cortex, while small earphones continuously played clicks[20] into her ears to invoke auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), a measure of activity in the brain stem (39).

"Sabom considers whether conscious or semiconscious auditory perceptions were incorporated into Pam's OBE imagery during a period of anesthesia awareness, but dismisses the possibility all-too-hastily:

"'Could Pam have heard the intraoperative conversation and then used this to reconstruct an out-of-body experience? At the beginning of the procedure, molded ear speakers were placed in each ear as a test for auditory and brain-stem reflexes. These speakers occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing' (Sabom, 'Light' 184).

"But is this last claim really true? Since Sabom merely asserts this (and has an obvious stake in it being true), we have little reason to take him at his word—especially on such a crucial point. What is the basis for his assertion? Does he have any objective evidence that the earphones used to measure AEPs completely cut off sounds from the external environment?

"Since Sabom does not back up this claim in 'Light and Death,' I did a little research and discovered that his claim is indeed false. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, as a matter of procedure, a patient who is monitored by the very same equipment to detect acoustic neuromas (benign brain tumors) 'sits in a soundproof room and wears headphones' (NINDS). But a soundproof room would be unnecessary, of course, if the earphones used to measure AEPs 'occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing.' It is theoretically possible that the earphones used in 1991 made physical hearing impossible, whereas the earphones used today do not. However, it highly unlikely, as it would be far cheaper for medical institutions to continue to invest in the imagined sound-eliminating earphones, rather than soundproofing entire rooms to eliminate external sounds. As Gerald Woerlee points out, 'earplugs do not totally exclude all external sounds, they only considerably reduce the intensity of external sounds," as demonstrated by "enormous numbers of people . . . listening to loud music played through earplugs, while at the same time able to hear and understand all that happens in their surroundings' (Woerlee, 'Pam').

"After being prepped for surgery, Pam's head was secured by a clamp. By 8:40 AM, her entire body was draped except for her head (the site of the main procedure) and her groin (where blood vessels would be hooked up to the bypass machine to cool her blood). In the five minutes or so to follow, Dr. Spetzler would open her scalp with a curved blade, fold back her scalp, then begin cutting into her skull with a Midas Rex bone saw (39-41). At this point, about an hour and a half after being anesthetized, Pam's OBE began (185). She reported being awakened by the sound of a natural D, then being 'pulled' out of the top of her head by the sound (41).

"'But,' Sabom asks, 'was Pam's visual recollection from her out-of-body experience accurate?' (186). That is indeed the question to ask regarding the veridicality of her report.

"Pam reported that during her OBE, she was able to view the operating room from above the head surgeon's shoulder, describing her out-of-body vision as 'brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision' (41). In her report of the experience, she offered three verifiable visual observations. First, she said that 'the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not.' Second, she reported that the bone saw 'looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't.' Finally, she noted that 'the saw had interchangeable blades . . . in what looked like a socket wrench case' (41). Subsequently, she only reported auditory observations—hearing the bone saw 'crank up' and 'being used on something'—but most notably the operating room conversation initiated by Dr. Murray.

"Given such vivid "perceptual capabilities" during her OBE, we would expect there to be no confusion about what Pam saw during the experience. So her visual observations provide an interesting test of the notion that her soul left her body while under general anesthesia during normal body temperature. Let us look at each of these in turn.

"First, there is the observation that only part of her head was shaved. Perhaps she could have guessed this at the time of her experience, but there is no need even for this in order to account for the reported observation. Surely Pam would have noticed this soon after awaking from general anesthesia—by seeing her reflection, feeling her hair, or being asked about it by visitors. And she certainly would have known about it, one way or the other, by the time she was released from the hospital. Indeed, if her hair had been shaved presurgery, or at any time prior to her general anesthesia, she would have known about it well before her OBE. And patients undergoing such a risky procedure are standardly given a consent briefing where even the cosmetic effects of surgery are outlined—if not explicitly in a doctor's explanation, then at least incidentally in any photographs, diagrams, or other sources illustrating what the procedure entails. So Pam may have learned (to her surprise) that her head would be only partially shaved in a consent briefing prior to her experience, but 'filed away' and consciously forgot about this information given so many other more pressing concerns on her mind at the time. That would be exactly the sort of mundane, subconscious fact we would expect a person to recall later during an altered state of consciousness.[21] And although we are not given the exact date of the operation, Sabom reports that the procedure took place in August 1991 (38). He later tells us that he interviewed Pam for the first time on November 11, 1994 (186). That leaves over three years between the date of Pam's NDE and Sabom's interview—plenty of time for memory distortions to have played a role in her report of the experience. So there is nothing remarkable about this particular observation.

"Second, there is her description of the bone saw. But the very observation that provides the greatest potential for supporting the notion that she actually left her body during her OBE actually tends to count against that hypothesis. As Sabom recounts,

"Pam's description of the bone saw having a 'groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle' was a bit puzzling. . . . [T]he end of the bone saw has an overhanging edge that [viewed sideways] looks somewhat like a groove. However, it was not located 'where the saw appeared to go into the handle' but at the other end.

"Why had this apparent discrepancy arisen in Pam's description? Of course, the first explanation is that she did not 'see' the saw at all, but was describing it from her own best guess of what it would look and sound like (187).

"Precisely! Except that, of course, Pam didn't need to guess what the bone saw sounded like, since she probably heard it as anesthesia failed. An out-of-body discrepancy within Pam's NDE prima facie implies the operation of normal perception and imagination within an altered state of consciousness. Indeed, this explanation is so straightforward that Sabom considers it before all others. And it is telling that the one visual observation that Pam (almost) could not have known about other than by leaving her body was the very detail that was not accurate.

"Let us turn to the report of Pam's final visual observation during her OBE, her comment that the bone saw used "interchangeable blades" placed inside something 'like a socket wrench case.' This detail was also accurate; however, one need not invoke paranormal perceptual capabilities to explain it. As Woerlee notes:

"'[S]he knew no-one would use a large chain saw or industrial angle cutter to cut the bones of her skull open. . . . Pneumatic dental drills with the same shapes, and making similar sounds as the pneumatic saw used to cut her skull open, were in common use during the late 1970s and 1980s. Because she was born in 1956, a generation whose members almost invariably have many fillings, Pam Reynolds almost certainly had fillings or other dental work, and would have been very familiar with the dental drills. So the high frequency sound of the idling, air-driven motor of the pneumatic saw, together with the subsequent sensations of her skull being sawn open, would certainly have aroused imagery of apparatus similar to dental-drills in her mind when she finally recounted her remembered sensations. There is another aspect to her remembered sensations—Pam Reynolds may have seen, or heard of, these things before her operation. All these things indicate how she could give a reasonable description of the pneumatic saw after awakening and recovering the ability to speak' (Woerlee, 'Anaesthesiologist' 18).

"And, predictably enough, the dental drills in question also used interchangeable burs stored in their own socket-wrench-like cases.

"During anesthesia awareness, and as far from standstill as a person under general anesthesia can be, Pam could have heard her surroundings, but not seen them, since her eyes were taped shut. And the facts of her case strongly suggest that this is exactly what happened. Information that she could have obtained by hearing was highly accurate; at the same time, information that was unavailable to her through normal vision was the very information which was inaccurate. More precisely, her visual descriptions were only partially accurate: accurate on details she could have plausibly guessed or easily learned about subsequent to her experience, and inaccurate on details that it would be difficult to guess correctly.

"In other words, OBE imagery derived from hearing and background knowledge, perhaps coupled with the reconstruction of memory, fully accounts for the most interesting details of Pam Reynolds' NDE report. After awakening from inadequate anesthesia by the sound of the bone saw revving up, her mind generated a plausible image of what the bone saw used during her operation looked like, rendered from her prior knowledge of similar-sounding dental drills. But her best guess about the appearance of the bone saw was inaccurate regarding the features of the bone saw that only true vision could discern: whether there was a true groove in the instrument, and where it was located.

"Moreover, the fact that Pam's NDE began during an entirely nonthreatening physiological condition—under general anesthesia at normal body temperature—implies that there was no particular physiological trigger for the experience (such as anoxia/hypoxia). Rather, it appears that her NDE was entirely expectation-driven. Before going into surgery, Pam was fully aware that she would be taken to the brink of death while in the standstill state. Awakening from general anesthesia by the sound of the bone saw appears to have induced a fear response, which in turn caused Pam to dissociate and have a classic NDE. Indeed, this makes sense of her otherwise odd report of being pulled out of the top of her head by the sound of the saw itself.

"At least five separate studies (Gabbard, Twemlow, and Jones; Stevenson, Cook, and McClean-Rice; Gabbard and Twemlow; Serdahely, "Variations"; Floyd) have documented cases where fear alone triggered an NDE. As Ian Stevenson, Emily Williams Cook (now Emily Williams Kelly), and Nicholas McClean-Rice conclude, 'an important precipitator of the "near-death experience' is the belief that one is dying—whether or not one is in fact close to death" (Stevenson, Cook, and McClean-Rice 45). They go on to label those (otherwise indistinguishable) NDEs precipitated by fear of death alone 'fear-death experiences' (FDEs). Physiologically, such NDEs might be mediated by a fight-or-flight response in the absence of an actual medical crisis. In a case reported by Glen Gabbard and Stuart Twemlow, an NDEr dislodged the pin of a dummy grenade he thought to be a live one, producing a classic NDE similar to the one Pam experienced:

"A marine sergeant was instructing a class of young recruits at boot camp. He stood in front of a classroom holding a hand grenade as he explained the mechanism of pulling the pin to detonate the weapon. After commenting on the considerable weight of the grenade, he thought it would be useful for each of the recruits to get a 'hands-on' feeling for its actual mass. As the grenade was passed from private to private, one 18-year-old recruit nervously dropped the grenade as it was handed him. Much to his horror, he watched the pin become dislodged as the grenade hit the ground. He knew he only had seconds to act, but he stood frozen, paralyzed with fear. The next thing he knew, he found himself traveling up through the top of his head toward the ceiling as the ground beneath him grew farther and farther away. He effortlessly passed through the ceiling and found himself entering a tunnel with the sound of wind whistling through it. As he approached the end of this lengthy tunnel, he encountered a light that shone with a special brilliance, the likes of which he had never seen before. A figure beckoned to him from the light, and he felt a profound sense of love emanating from the figure. His life flashed before his eyes in what seemed like a split-second. In midst of this transcendent experience, he suddenly realized that grenade had not exploded. He felt immediately 'sucked' back into his body (Gabbard and Twemlow 42).

"Gabbard and Twemlow conclude that 'thinking one is about to die is sufficient to trigger the classical NDE' (42). After comparing experiences that occurred in nonthreatening conditions with those where subjects were actually close to death, they also concluded that no particular elements were 'exclusive to near-death situations,' but 'several features of the experiences were significantly more likely to occur when the individual felt that death was close at hand' [emphasis mine] (42). That expectation alone can trigger NDEs in certain individuals, then, is well-documented.

"If Pam had truly been out of body and perceiving, both her auditory and visual sensations should've been accurate; but when it came to details that could not have been guessed or plausibly learned after the fact, only her auditory information was accurate. Moreover, it is significant that as her narrative continues beyond the three visual observations outlined above, the remainder of her reported out-of-body perceptions are exclusively auditory. Finally, it is interesting that Pam reports uncertainly about the identity of the voice she heard when her OBE began: 'I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure' (Sabom, 'Light' 42).

"These facts strongly imply anesthesia awareness, and tend to count against the idea that Pam's soul left her body during the operation. If her soul had left her body, the fact that her account contains out-of-body discrepancies doesn't make much sense. But it makes perfect sense if she experienced anesthesia awareness, particularly when one looks at which sorts of information that she provided were accurate and which were not. Pam Reynolds did not report anything that she could not have learned about through normal perception, and this is exactly what we would expect if normal perception alone was operating during her OBE. It is little wonder that Fox concludes that 'the jury is still very much out over this case' (Fox 210)."

(Keith Augustine, "Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences," under "Pam Reynolds," originally published 2003, updated 2008, at: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html#pam; see also, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/keith-bio.html)



Edited 16 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 01:35PM by steve benson.

You constantly use the word annihilation, and use negative terms in reference to no life beyond death.

You previously said:

"I don't believe, however, that an attitude of hopelessness can ever help us in living life meaningfully, if that's our goal, and it certainly is mine. I view your evangelism of annihilation at death as a contributor to hopelessness. There's too much suffering in the world and too little pleasure. We're inundated with atrocities and bad news every single day. CNN.com is a window into the bleeding wound that is our world. Why would you continue to repetitively declare that we should hold out no hope in an afterlife when you have no such knowledge, and such declarations can, in my view, serve little, if any, purpose other than to upset many people?"

No afterlife does not equate with hopelessness. You contradict yourself in advocating living life meaningfully, yet requiring hope for life to continue, because apparently there has to be something better than this. How does looking beyond the horizon make life more meaningful? You only miss the point of living. Desperate people who cannot appreciate this life will to cling to the idea of something better post-morg(ue).

The "evidence" sounds like the usual abnormal brain activity to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 04:04AM by atheist&happy:-).

He was so negative, dreary, hopeless and pessimistic that reading his posts made ME want to go slit my wrists.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 04:33AM by steve benson.

It all seemed too good to be true (the endorphins) until he was coughed up like a fur ball from a great celestial cat, a heavenly reject returned to his lone, and dreary world; the alleged good afterlife was really his brain on its own drugs.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 05:08AM by atheist&happy:-).

And it's hardly compelling evidence for an NDE:

". . . [T]his case, often touted as the best in the area of near-death studies, is far from unassailable, as its proponents assert. [There are] several factual discrepancies and plausible ways that Maria's supposedly unobtainable knowledge could have been gained by quite ordinary means.

"On delving into this issue, we were first disappointed, then amused, that such a weak case should have achieved the importance it has been accorded.

"Ring and Lawrence (1993) certainly must have spoken in haste when they issued their challenge, for rather than '. . . arresting the skeptic's argument in mid-sentence . . .' investigation of Maria's story merely reveals the naivete and power of wishful thinking in the supposedly scientific area known as 'near-death studies.'"

Try reading it, GP--for once:

(Hayden Ebbern, Sean Mulligan and Barry L. Beverstein "Maria's Near-Death Experience: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop," under the subhead, "Maria's NDE," pp. 4-11, reprinted in "Skeptical Inquirer," Vol. 20, No. 4, July/August 1996, at: http://records.viu.ca/www/ipp/pdf/NDE.pdf)



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 04:37AM by steve benson.

"Out of Beer Experience"

Good thing the beer store is a mere five blocks away!

Timothy

but seriously.... I have heard about a professor at the U of A@Tuscon that is the Director of Consciousness there anybody know about him?
there may in fact be a "universal consciousness"....there have been some really interesting views on this matter(nde's) and consciousness in general lately.....me check it out.... i have not experienced and NDE's or paranormal stuff so i dont really know too much about this subject...but there have been some interesting threads here lately!!

GP, you need to hang your tesitcles on the wall next to mine....When you debate, or discuss with Steve and you disagree just deposit your testicles for mounting on the nearest wall. I had brass once, but not now....You two argue both sides so well. You two should have been attorneys. I see Steve a good prosecuter and you Perry Mason. Reading you two is more fun than blue collar comedy.

Well, other than all the arguments Perry Mason made were pure fiction.

Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14.
JournalofCosmology.com, 2011
Near Death Experiences and the
5th Dimensional Spatio-Temporal Perspective
Jean-Pierre Jourdan, M.D.
IANDS-France President - Director of medical research, International Association for Near-Death Studies, 28 Av. Flourens Aillaud, 04700 Oraison, France,

Abstract

The cognitive and perceptive characteristics of 70 cases of Near Death Experiences have been studied. The detailed analysis of the unusual modes and characteristics of spatial and temporal perception during these experiences reveals a "hidden" logic for which I propose a model where the point of perception would be in an extra dimension. The appropriateness of such a model is analyzed and shown to be consistent with the NDE accounts in the study. In contrast, those interpretations of such perceptions as being purely hallucinatory are undermined. Whatever its meaning, the underlying logic shown in this study suggests that NDEs seem to follow precise rules. Since these experiences can be viewed as an unusual but consistent behavior of consciousness, they deserve further pluridisciplinary study.
KEY WORDS: NDEs; consciousness; perception; information; modelling; large extra dimensions; 5D; space-time.



12.1. Past, present, future, all confused If we walk on a lane, one part of the way is behind us, another is ahead. But if we see this lane from above, no more walking on it, not only are we nowhere on it but also, as they were relative to us, the notions of behind and ahead logically disappear. In the same way, if we are "out of time" we are no more subject to its arrow. Thus the notions of past, present and future can disappear or merge together. In fact, almost every feature we are about to review seems to translate a spatialization of time:

Past, present future are merged in a single concept, that's what I experienced (X.S.) Time no longer existed, past, present, future, all confused. (M.O.)
No sensation of duration, neither of waiting. No sense of past, present, future, as if all that was away from me. (F.E.)

During NDEs, frequently following the OBE stage, most patients describe a "life review". They report having been able to "see" or sometimes "live again" some moments or only significant scenes of their life, in chronological order or in reverse order. During this stage some additional anomalies and perspective effects concerning time will appear, strengthening the hypothesis that our universe could be perceived from an external vantage point.
12.2. Flying over time The non-locality of the observer in relation to the observed universe, which has helped us understanding the spatial 4D perspective effects appears to concern also time: to be "outside" the space-time would give the same impression of "being" everywhere at once compared to the latter. The expressions are various, but translate the same strange feelings of perceiving time from outside or flying above it:

I had access to both past, present, future and any place in space. (M.Z.)
I had no access to the future, I don't think so, but to the past yes, exactly so, as well as to present since I was seeing myself. It seems to me that I could move around. (P.B.)

I felt I could fly over time. (J-M.M.)

It seems to me that the time is no longer valid. That is, I don't take place within time. There is no longer any past neither future, everything is within the same plane. I got out of the timeline and I can contemplate it AS A WHOLE. But thirty years later, I am still unable to define accurately, using common words, this perceived lack of time ... and both its presence. When you move from one place to another in a flash, when one sees multiple views of the same situation, physically and temporally, that’s not "every day life."

Jourdan: "Have you had the impression of "flying over" time, as one can fly over a landscape, or see it from above?"

Yes, in some ways, move forward or backward at the same time. "Time" no longer appears as fragmented, but as a one and single moment: a "continuum" related to will and free will. (D.S.)

There, the time does not seem to unfold as here. I would say it's "above", a place from where you can "govern" the events and the destinies of the earthly world. Neither was there any space. (A.T.)

I wonder about the word "time". I had the impression of "flying over" a certain portion of time, to fly so quickly but the time seemed at once long and short. That's funny. I felt able to move in time. (F.N.)

When I saw my life, it was like an accelerating videotape, somewhat as if I could fly over it, it goes fast enough to review one's life and yet it lasts forever, I can't explain. (Be.N.)

13. Spatio-temporal Perspective
What could be the predictable consequences of a hypothetical perception from outside our spatio-temporal continuum? Within the framework of this 5D model, everything happens as though NDErs were able to take enough distance to see in perspective not only the immediate vicinity of their body, but also their whole life. Then we could now expect some precise temporal perspective effects.

In our everyday experience, the concepts of time and space are fundamentally different. It is surprising to find several accounts of a uniqueness that has nothing natural nor intuitive for us. Even if he finds it difficult to explain (what we will readily admit), J-Y.C briefly summarizes relativity with some expressions that would have pleased Einstein. Even better, the way he watches his own life as what we could call a "4D spatiotemporal object" is amazing : a 3D form under his eyes, with an "integrated time" which doesn’t unfold, a life he can see from every angle, get more or less closer or change his angle of view, focusing on one part or another… exactly as we do in our everyday life when examining a banal 3D object.

Indeed, at the time I receive this new form of intelligence, I find before me ... my life. I look at this 3D thing that is my life and which does not unfold. The time is integrated in it, it is no more linear. All of one’s life is visible and this "global" intelligence can read it, understand it. (…)
I saw my entire life, in relief, with all the details, people, situations. But in a time that does not unfold, life being seen from every angle with this universal or global understanding. My life was a form under my eyes, which contained everything and that I consulted.

(…) My whole senses were concentrated or condensed in a single understanding concept. The ability to understand and develop ALL, in its wholeness and in its detail. Should I have watched a car, I had known in one thought its mileage, fuel quantity, the wear of spark plugs, how many times it had turned left or right, the condition of all its parts, etc.. It is very difficult to share the encompassing of the three dimensions with the fourth, which merge in a concept that can be easily read when one gets this form of over-intelligence.

(…) Time is no longer linear. Your own life is in 3D and the fourth dimension is fully integrated. At that time, if I had watched a man, I could have known everything about him. His age, height, blood type, his siblings, the amount of all his taxes, his diseases, etc.. etc.. ALL in a single concept.

Jourdan: "Did you feel yourself moving?"

Yes

Jourdan: "When?"

To get closer to my life.

Jourdan: "How did it happen?"

A sort of sliding, zoom displacement.

The only "thing" that I was able to contemplate was my own life. An oblong shape, threedimensional pink-orange hue (always "metallic" as having its own light). I could see inside, seeing-through my entire life course, including time without unfolding time. To see another part of this life I just had to change my angle of view. (J-Y.C.)

This second example is less spectacular, but we find again a "frozen time", a "whole life spread before (the NDEr’s) eyes, its slices being seen instantly":
Totally calm and in a state of unimaginable bliss, I continued to float in a world of breathtaking clarity where the notion of time, that seemed frozen, defies understanding. In tune with this inexplicable timelessness the slices of my life were seen instantly, without any sense of duration. That's quite difficult to explain with "earthly words." My past life did not just appear to me like images following one another in a reverse chronology, as might be suggested by my previous comments. The events unfolded in accordance with the original script, but their succession went backward over the course of my life. Sometimes, and here it's even more difficult to explain, I felt like my whole life was spread before my eyes, undifferentiated in its stages, and still without the sequence of events being linked to time. I know it's crazy, totally incomprehensible, but that's the way it happened. (M.N.)

14. Discussion

NDE are frequently viewed as hallucinatory experiences. Indeed, in spite of numerous confirmed accounts reporting precise details and scenes in the immediate vicinity of unconscious patients, for the time being we have no irrefutable proof about AVPs.

On another hand, the hyperdimensional model I propose allows to understand very simply every seemingly strange perceptions, implying that these experiences could follow definite rules.

So we are faced with several possibilities. The first one is an "inner" hypothesis : NDE are purely subjective experiences, the AVPs being the result of brain activity, this latter having "rebuilt" scenes and details very close to the reality from various elements gathered after the experience. Joseph (1996, 2001) provides evidence which he believes demonstrates it is the hippocampus which is responsible for the hallucinations of floating above the body. As detailed by Joseph (2001):

"The hippocampus contains "place" neurons which are able to encode one's position and movement in space. The hippocampus, therefore, can create a cognitive map of an individuals environment and their movements within it. Presumably it is via the hippocampus that an individual can visualize themselves as if looking at their body from afar, and can remember and thus see themselves engaged in certain actions, as if one were an outside witness (Joseph, 1996). However, under conditions of hyperactivation (such as in response to extreme fear) it appears that the hippocampus may create a visual hallucination of that "cognitive map" such that the individual may "experience" themselves as outside their body, observing all that is occurring. In fact, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that hyperactivation or electrical stimulation of the amygdala-hippocampus-temporal lobe, can cause some individuals to report they have left their bodies and are hovering upon the ceiling staring down. That is, their ego and sense of personal identity appears to split off from their body, such that they may feel as if they are two different people, one watching, the other being observed."

If this hypothesis proves to be the correct one, that would at least lead us to explore the hypothesis of some 5D-like brain organisation, which could present some interest for cognitive neurosciences, neurology, psychology, and all those disciplines which generally seek to explore the nature of consciousness and the functioning of our brain. Like radioactivity at its very beginning, what appears to be only an oddity can conceal major avenues of research.

Another possibility is that of an "outer" hypothesis. Nobody, at present, can clearly define consciousness. We can at the very most safely say that it is part of our world, follows the laws of nature and has been for a long time our only tool to try to puzzle over it. Could it, in some unusual circumstances, show us the first evidences of additional dimensions?

14.1. Four or five dimensions? It is important to clarify some potential confusions if we envisage an extra dimension. We have seen that the first proposals about this subject date back several centuries. At that time, scientists reasoned within an Euclidean space -which comprises only spatial dimensions-, envisaging a fourth spacelike dimension that was a virtual mathematical or geometrical concept. Nowadays, the mathematical setting of relativity is a Minkowski space comprising three spacelike dimensions and a timelike fourth dimension. Then, as our visible universe is a 4D space-time continuum, and considering the multiple accounts reporting spatio-temporal perspective effects, the extra dimension giving an accurate background to the model I have set out would be a fifth one.

14.2. Recent extra-dimensions theories The first proposal of a fifth dimension, in order to unify electromagnetism and gravity, comes from the German mathematician Theodor Kaluza (1921) and the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein (1926). This theory was abandoned, but after a few decades appeared superstrings and strings theories, largely initiated by Peter Freund (1982,1985), who introduced extra dimensions of space in physics and found the mechanisms by which these extra dimensions curl up. These theories involve 10, 11 or up to 26 extra dimensions, which are compactified, curled up at each point of our universe with a finite minuscule size (about the Planck length, i.e 10-33 cm in the K.K. theory). Obviously, this tiny size does not offer a sufficient distance to allow the perspective effects that we have reviewed.

Derived from string theories, which concern essentially particle physics, brane cosmology is based upon brane theories, which attempts to understand the weakness of gravity within our visible universe. In brane theory, a string is a 1-brane, a "membrane" is a 2-brane. In general a p-brane (p is the number of spatial dimensions, therefore a p-brane is in practice a (p+1) space-time) is viewed as a slice inside a (p+1) brane. Thus, according to this theory, our four-dimensional universe is confined in a 3-brane within a 4- brane, a "super"universe endowed with (4+1) dimensions.

Following a first proposal (Antoniadis & al 1998, Arkani-Hamed & al 1998, 2000), Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum established in 1999 two models of brane cosmology. In the first one (Randall and Sundrum 1999-1), the size of the extra dimension is finite, about 1mm, which is far better than the Planck length but still insufficient.

On the other hand, in the second one (Randall and Sundrum 1999-2) the extra-dimension might be infinite, which is perfectly suitable for the extradimensional modelling that I propose.

Another model, elaborated by Laurent Nottale (Nottale 1993, 2010, Nottale and Timar 2008), is scale relativity. Within it appear two interesting characteristics: a fifth topological dimension and a spatialization of time, which could explain the particularities that we have reviewed about the perception of this latter.

14.3. The Time issue During NDEs, our universe seems to be perceived not only as spatial but indeed as a whole space-time. Several testimonies seem to report some sort of time spatialization, and the main issue is to understand how that could be possible. Saying "our (3+1)D universe is a subset of a (4+1)D universe" implies that we have merely added a spacelike dimension, the time dimension remaining the same. Concerning this particular point, the status of time within extra-dimensional theories is not clear and above all I am not qualified to go further.

At the very most, I could perhaps say that we might understand the particularities described by NDERs such as "no time", "eternal present", "being out of time" by remembering that, according to relativity, an object or particle is subject to time – and therefore has a duration of its own - only if it has a mass, and therefore suppose that "that which perceives" during an NDE is massless.

Be that as it may, I hope one more time that qualified scientists will accept to think about that according to the accounts we have reviewed.

14.4 A predictive modelling? The modelling I propose, like every self-respecting model, must be predictive and lend itself to experimentation. We have seen that, to an observer whose vantage point is situated in a (n+1)D universe, nothing can be hidden within a (n)D universe. Thus a very simple test could be proposed, consisting of a hidden target (for example a colored drawing enclosed in a sealed envelope) put in the vicinity of places where NDEs are likely to occur (ICUs, surgery, etc.). Provided it is unusual and interesting enough, this target could attract the attention of an NDEr, who would be able to describe it after resuscitation.

15. Conclusion

In this short paper, I hope to have given the reader enough information so that he or she can make up his or her own mind about the hyperdimensional interpretation of perceptual particularities in NDEs. The fact that the perspective effects concern time as well as space, and that some patients without any training or education in physics were able to describe with their own words a spatio-temporal continuum seems to me particularly interesting.

To summarize, the particularities that we have reviewed could lead one to suppose that consciousness could be the result of some interactions between 4D and 5D phenomena and/or universes, an hypothesis we cannot simply dismiss and that is considered very seriously by some neuroscientists (Smythies 1994, 2003) and cosmologists (Carr 2008) as well as philosophers (Droulez 2010).

The look we have on a screen, a sketch, a painting or any 2D-like universe allows an instantaneous global information. Waiting for further research and results, the analysis of the perceptual particularities in NDEs in terms of global perception/acquiring of information, a concept that is coherent with our model, should allow us to conduct research calmly and in a purely scientific way. In addition, it should be free from all metaphysical a priori and use concepts which are already within our reach.

Whether the logic revealed by this analysis reflects a particular cerebral function, a new phenomenon or a combination of both, it casts doubt on purely hallucinatory interpretations of these experiences and constitutes an argument in favor of scientific research into NDEs, justifying a multidisciplinary approach gathering physicians, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, and now maybe, mathematicians, physicists and cosmologists.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: It is a pleasure to thank the editors of the Journal of Cosmology for inviting this paper, hoping that the evidences set out in it will represent some food for thought for its readers. I am grateful to the confidence NDErs graced me with, and for the time they spent answering my numerous and sometimes strange questions. Without them this study would never have seen the light. I am also eager to thank John Smythies and Thomas Droulez for their encouragements and for a careful proofreading of this paper.




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It couldn't be that common experiences are simply the way brain and the "soul" dies. No, that would be way to easy and uncomplicated.