There’s been quite a bit of discussion going on about near death experiences (NDEs), so here’s another article to add into the mix. “At the Hour Of Our Death” talks about some of the research going on with NDEs.
My question is: how do people know if NDE’s actually occurred at the time the brain was shut down? Couldn’t it have happened right before or after? In those few seconds the entire NDE could have happened.
NDEs are nothing. Once you’re not only nearly dead, and you’re really most sincerely dead (h/t to The Wizard of Oz/E.Y. Harburg) — let’s say 1 year dead — then there’s no doubt, you ain’t coming back, and the husk that was formerly you will never reanimate.
When you’re dead, you’re dead (and if you’re not dead, you’re alive).
“I’m not dead!”
“I’m getting better!”
Grammar nitpick: “Couldn’t it of happened” probably should read “Couldn’t it have happened”.
Create grammar I.
LOL! You sir, win one Intarwebz.
Technically that syntax is. Can interwebz too have I?
Only if the cat was from Sardinia.
They thought he was a goner!
Great to see the cartoon again.
NDE experiences certainly happen. What they are, when they happen (dreams occur in moments and appear to last hours), and why they happen are all mysteries left to be solved. One of the most interesting points is why don’t they happen to everybody. In the time article linked it says “between 4% and 18% of people who are resuscitated after cardiac arrest have an NDE.” Why is it so low? More than 18% of the population have souls, and likewise more than 18% of the population have brains. I would say the first step in understanding would be to figure out the link between those who have NDE’s that separates them from those who do not. While holding to the naturalistic philosophy we believe that NDE’s must come from the brain. However, as we have yet to be able to replicate it we cannot claim to know that it comes from the oxygen deprivation of the brain. I would say that this makes a perfect area of study for both naturalists and supernaturalists. Both could try to discover a reason why it happens. You know, this leads me to an interesting thought.
Let us assume, for arguments sake, that NDE’s are actually the soul leaving the body, going to whatever afterlife, and then being returned. How would one go about proving this? One of the flaws with naturalistic philosophy is that it also can fall into the trap of unfalsifiability. This trap, for naturalists, simply states: There is no supernatural. Any phenomena that we can’t explain happens in a naturalistic way that we haven’t discovered as opposed to a supernaturalistic way. Now I know this may seem like a little bit of rationalist blasphemy, but what would evidence of supernaturalism actually look like.
Back on the topic at hand, sure, NDE’s almost certainly happen right at the moment of dying (but not truly death). I’m pretty sure that even supernaturalists would agree with that.
“More than 18% of the population have souls”
Excuse me???
“This trap, for naturalists, simply states: There is no supernatural”
Let’s see… define supernatural. Anything that happens by no natural means? Ok. Any evidence that this is a non-void set?
okay fine, if any one has souls, then more than 18% have them. Way to nitpick.
I’m just posing a simple question, if supernaturalism were true, how would one go about determining this?
There is a distinct problem with finding evidence for supernaturalism. The problem is that naturalism is most often defined at believing only in that which can be observed/measured. If the supernatural exists it would have to be unobservable or unmeasurable. So my question was, assuming hypothetically that supernaturalism is real, how would one determine it was real unless it became natural?
The question is, an unobservable and unmeasurable effect, is it happening? If it hasn’t any consequence in the real world, it matters? What’s the difference between anything unobservable and unmeasurable and anything wich doesn’t exist?
If it has an effect in the real world, it can be studied by its indirect consecuences. For example: dark matter.
Its my understanding that NDEs and OBEs have been closely associated with activity in the temporal lobes as well as other areas of the brain.
This is the only link I could find in short time (I have to give a final in three minutes:)
http://www.shaktitechnology.com/obe.htm
“However, as we have yet to be able to replicate it ….”
Am I just reading you wrong? NDSs have been replicated using drugs. See here, for instance: http://www.lycaeum.org/leda/docs/9260.shtml?ID=9260
Uh, I meant NDEs, of course. Simple incompetence.
Okay, I did not know we had replicated them. If that is the case then as the replication was chemical in nature then we have pretty much proven that NDE’s are simply an odd state in the brain.
As to the supernaturalism. The main claim of supernaturalists is that the supernatural can affect the natural. So how would one determine this. What is the difference between a supernatural cause and a cause that we can’t perceive but is fully natural (i.e. germs or quantum particles in the 12th century)
This is classic God-of-the-Gaps stuff. Those who are attempting to make over-arching claims have the burden of proof which, characteristically, they don’t yet have. Until the evidence comes clear, ask yourself why someone has a hard time remaining skeptical (both sciency concluders and god jumpers).
The science appears to be plodding along nicely.
I think it’s funny that the people who argue for NDE’s as evidence for heaven don’t take into consideration that, basically, God is allowing people who he knows aren’t going to stay dead to get a glimpse of Heaven, when you’re only supposed to go to heaven when you’re actually dead.
Do they think it’s a loophole? That God somehow “forgot” that people who aren’t actually dead are able to see Heaven? Seriously?
Not all reported NDE’s experience heaven. There are those who report hellish experiences
i had an NDE which was completely unrelated to spirituality, and i’ve got a lot of inspiration since then from Dr. Jill Dolte Taylor, who had a surprisingly similar experience.
It’s probably clumsy for me to try to explain this, but I think some points in the article do ok. I think there is so much to the brain and the mental processes yet to be discovered, and certainly a scientific explanation for what happens as we approach death, a lot of which is unanswerable until we get a lot better at curing people of almost dying. This is a curious subject because we can’t ask the dead what happened there.
I used to be fascinated with out of body experiences and have tried to have one when I was younger. Without believing in the supernatural, I technically feel that there is… not a soul, but the relative experience of being me is not identical to your relative experience. I was not surprised to read in the article that not everyone has NDEs, but I was surprised that someone else was surprised, if the brain is deprived of oxygen, this always should result, but doesn’t. Why, I don’t know, the brain has a general scientific “organ-ness” about it, but not everyone is afraid of spiders, not everyone has vivid dreams, not everyone can tell the difference between a greenish blue and a bluish green, not everyone is susceptible to OCD or depression or psychosis. Why should everyone report the same thing when they are brought back from the brink of death? How come none of these people took a trip to the beach or their childhood home while they were out? One last ski trip before I die, pleeeeaase?
If someone’s brain is measured to stop functioning, and therefore can’t be hallucinating, I can either choose to believe there is activity where machines are not fine yet enough to measure it (I don’t know enough about science, admittedly, to know if this sounds plausible or ridiculous), or that NDEs are compressed into that last surge (like it said, as a panic function possibly) before the brain is measured to be OFF. It might seem like a bit longer, like dreams. Where do you go that you can be brought back? Where does the information in the hard drive of your computer go when you turn off the power?
If need be, I will look up sources, but it’s my general understanding that dreams seem to take longer while we’re having them, but that in sleep clinic studies, the activity only remains a short while – that is, the story we tell ourselves in dreamland may seem an hour or two long, while it is only going on a few minutes. We didn’t leave our body for an adventure, pretty obvious.
I can go very far away in my imagination and recognize that it’s my imagination taking me, so realistic and indescribable. When someone tells you what they dreamed last night, the telling of it is so much more mundane than actually it felt, there doesn’t seem to be a “plot” that interests anyone but the dreamer unless they invent parts upon waking; a consciously made-up story is almost always more interesting. What credence of realism does a NDE have that elevates it above a created dream fiction? Why do we dream, how do our brains decide what to dream about; why don’t some of us dream or remember our dreams?
I think the brain stresses and responses are not “automatic,” they are perhaps likely and common, such that there are common themes in dreams that used to be studied for psychological meanings/diagnoses: teeth falling out, being chased, etc. that now sound a lot like tea leaves and horoscopes; that some people report NDEs and others don’t, and those who do have similar themes, “and what does that mean”? (See: dream analysis). People who don’t report them either don’t have them, or experience something to the effect of not remembering one’s dreams or either, or something nondescript and unamazing.
Sorry for the long post again, but this is an interesting topic.
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I suspect the difference is between the “lucid dreamer types” and everyone else, i.e., the threshold of awareness in dream states, and memory recall. Preliminary research has shown strong similarities in experience in between the NDE and lucid dreaming. I’m a lucid dreamer myself and became quite interested in the subject (though I’ve never had a near death experience, even if sometimes I’ve seen my life flash before my eyes – I used to be a stunt rider). As someone who has had been subject to nightmares, sleep walking, night terrors and all manner of strange dream states, activities and seemingly entire existences, I can attest to the power of the mind in determining experience. I’m sure if I almost kicked off I’d have one of those NDEs with all the bells and whistles – I’d be surprised if I didn’t. Once I saw God: he was a jovial fellow wearing a sleeveless undershirt and drinking a can of beer, standing there at the foot of the stairway to heaven, greeting everyone…it wasn’t a near death experience, but it was a pretty cool dream.
Sorry – I was just responding to this: I would say the first step in understanding would be to figure out the link between those who have NDE’s that separates them from those who do not.
Don’t know where the fancy dan italics came from – really, I’m not that cool.
Ah… they’re only MOSTLY dead.
Seriously though, I’m not surprised by NDE’s at all, and consider them a dream-like experience. I’ve had dreams which integrate external sensations, from sound, to physical position. Way back when I had an radio alarm clock, when it once went off, my mind created a music video in real-time to the music playing on it. The veil between external sensory reality and internally generated reality is not as disconnected as we think it is. OBE’s, related to NDE’s, are actually one aspect of “woo” that I figured I could test myself, as opposed to things like ESP, etc. I only recently had a “real” OBE experience. I have no doubt that it was all in my mind, but it was definitely different than a simple dream, or a lucid dream, and very hard to qualify. I can understand how the less-skeptical would apply woo to the experience.
I’m a firm believer that people who’ve had near-death out-of-body experiences should be given the opportunity to take an heroic dose of lisurgic acid (under controlled conditions, of course) in order to compare the experiences. Leaving your body and seeing a white light? Is that all? Clearly they aren’t getting the good stuff…
Agree about the dreaming thing:
The night before last I had a dream that me and a friend were hugging, a big warm lovely hug. Woke up straight after to remember I’d slept with a t-shirt on, which I don’t normally do, and so had an unusually warm torso.
Seems totally feasible to me that NDEs and OBEs are dream-like.
I once passed out drunk on a jetty and dreamed I’d had my arm cut off. When I woke up, my arm was in the water and had gone numb :-)
Gotta love the unconscious brain!
If NDE are real then why do 100% of the scientific tests all fail?
Why can no one with a NDE tell the scientists what they saw hidden from view from the floor but not hidden for someone floating what was on that picture?
Maybe they are studying it wrong. Likely, the NDE is not an OBE, but if people are reporting being above themselves during one, perhaps they are not as close to the ceiling as they remember, so they wouldn’t see anything posted near the ceiling. I’m just thinking laterally, as if they could be OBE – if they are reporting things that could be dreamlike (what god looked like, a dark hallway with a light at the end of it), that seems all well enough determined to be contained in the head. If they are reporting being outside their body, knowing things they could not know unless conscious, it is difficult to know for sure they didn’t hear and deduce what they “saw,” or saw something before they were unconscious (which they might not recall but which emerged during the NDE as a significant detail), which doesn’t prove they also saw it while unconscious and out of body.
Rather than posting notices and pictures up near the ceiling, they should have Ronald McDonald on call (or variety of costumed characters nobody can predict: Donald Duck in a pirate costume, or a 6 foot human mariachi hot dog person). The character is summoned through the door by a signal on the instruments that the person is not conscious and has a strong possibility they could become a “near-death” instance. Ronald walks in silently and nobody acknowledges him, and he’s not carrying any french fries to tip off by sense of smell. That’s kind of big to miss and in the same perspective as the surgical team and the patient on the table.
I mean, if they are looking for something that’s not real, try something that can’t miss. I think if we are really interested in this for science, I can’t say they don’t exist because people might have altitude issues and those signs may be subtle. I can say they don’t exist as OBE after they fail to report a literal elephant in the room.