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Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos  What sort of NDE are you referring to? The fancy flashes, tunnels of light, and so forth? I suspect that's just the brain playing tricks when deprived of oxygen and other nutrients. |
But oxygen deprivation producing tunnels actually strengthens the case for a Near Death Experience being due to an external consciousness! .... Here is why .....
(1) Let us assume oxygen deprivation causes tunnels (as in air pilot training due to anoxia) why do the tunnels stop during Near Death Experience then full field vision return for people to very vividly 'hallucinate' meeting dead relatives, scenery, beings of light or whatever. If the brain is heading towards inactivity due to oxygen deprivation, why do the tunnels suddenly stop and full field visual clarity beyond the capacity of normal dreams increase? Why should an oxygen deprived dying brain hallucinate more vividly than a normal healthy brain state?
(2) Now by agreeing the tunnels could be oxygen deprivation. We have a timing marker of the state of the brain in relation to the Near Death Experience reported. We know the oxygen deprivation must come before the brain becomes electrically dead (about 14 seconds after cardiac arrest). So what occurs after the tunnel is leading to brain inactivity. Yet now a very vivid hallucination follows on!
(3) Some people report returning back through a tunnel i.e. That means the oxygen is returning to brain after electrical inactivity? The vivid sequential hallucinatory experience is jammed between two markers –during which the period the brain is electrically dead, yet hallucination continues more vividly than dreams?
Hello external consciousness, skeptics don't believe you exist 
(4)Air pilots during oxygen deprivation (anoxia) see tunnels, but they do not report dying or vivid, coherent hallucinations. It is more confused, unpleasant and unclear. Therefore it is arguably more coherent to believe that the vividness is due to an external mind freeing itself from brain.
This is the whole point of this topic ......Can you prove the brain generates hallucinations? If not we have to seriously consider that so called 'hallucinations' (during brain electrical activity) are virtually real experiences of a non material source. Dream telepathy and Ganzfeld experiments suggest that when brain function moves towards dreaming, telepathy becomes stronger than during more wide awake hours. If telepathy becomes even stronger during brain death (and yes telepathy with other 'virtual' beings, is a feature in many NDE reports) well a virtually reality arguably has already evolved and we are evolving non physically as well as physically.
In otherwords what NDE patients see during NDEs do NOT need to match our physical reality perfectly to be considered virtually real and survival of brain death could indeed be true. If what is witnessed during NDEs is not knowable by normal means yet still matches our physical reality to *any* degree beyond statistical chance we still seriously need to consider that such experiences survive brain death.