Update on the AWARE study 2012

[Kamarling]

Originally Posted by Bailer

Just makes me angry, especially because I think most of them are frauds. A lot of new agers are easy to manipulate, and con artists realize this.

Hold on a minute there. Are New Agers any more easy to manipulate than any other group? I know hard nosed atheists who will queue up all night for the latest iPhone on the day it is released. I know savvy businessmen who will spend more than I earn in 5 years on a car. I know nurses who will spend a big chunk of their monthly pay on a diet plan because they have heard a well known doctor promoting it.

I detest people who take advantage of the sincere beliefs of others but just because you have no respect for the people who hold those beliefs doesn't make you the expert who can judge their competence to make choices.

[Bailer]

Originally Posted by Kamarling

Hold on a minute there. Are New Agers any more easy to manipulate than any other group? I know hard nosed atheists who will queue up all night for the latest iPhone on the day it is released. I know savvy businessmen who will spend more than I earn in 5 years on a car. I know nurses who will spend a big chunk of their monthly pay on a diet plan because they have heard a well known doctor promoting it.

I detest people who take advantage of the sincere beliefs of others but just because you have no respect for the people who hold those beliefs doesn't make you the expert who can judge their competence to make choices.

Well, I believe a lot of the "new age" concepts, but a lot of new agers are easy to manipulate.

Why? Because people looking up NDE stories are doing it for a reason. Myself? I am scared of death and want to believe these accounts. I try to be as skeptical as possible, but a lot of people aren't that way and are desperate for someone to tell them there is something more to this life. Death is such a sensitive subject, and a lot of people gain interest in NDEs when something bad happens. Such as a parent dies. When everything is going well, people would probably not be as likely to look into these topics.

Just look at psychics. Mediums. How many of them promote new age beliefs? Why do people seek them out? They're looking for answers that can't be provided, and thus go to these overpriced frauds to tell them everything is ok.

Maybe it isn't quite right for me to list new agers as a whole, but rather say that a lot of them looking for this information are going through hard times, and thus are easy to manipulate.

[Kamarling]

Originally Posted by Bailer

Why? Because people looking up NDE stories are doing it for a reason. Myself? I am scared of death and want to believe these accounts. I try to be as skeptical as possible, ...

And that was my point too ... I too have that fear of death and, like you, I read NDE accounts and other material in an effort to discover whether they might be the real thing. But, as you suggest, I am probably more - not less - skeptical because my need for it to be true is great and gullibility would be the last thing I would want to be guilty of. That is precisely why I read skeptical posts here - to counter any wishful thinking.

I suspect that New Agers - I don't really count myself as one but I am in agreement with some New Age beliefs - will find out in their own way what works for them. Again, other "groups" are just as gullible (or not): just look at all those skeptics who think of James Randi as a paragon of truth.

[happyknownothing]

Originally Posted by Kamarling

And that was my point too ... I too have that fear of death and, like you, I read NDE accounts and other material in an effort to discover whether they might be the real thing. But, as you suggest, I am probably more - not less - skeptical because my need for it to be true is great and gullibility would be the last thing I would want to be guilty of. That is precisely why I read skeptical posts here - to counter any wishful thinking.

I suspect that New Agers - I don't really count myself as one but I am in agreement with some New Age beliefs - will find out in their own way what works for them. Again, other "groups" are just as gullible (or not): just look at all those skeptics who think of James Randi as a paragon of truth.

I guess fear of death is the motivation for both sides in this debate. It is the uncertainty about what happens when we die that makes this such a difficult topic to deal with. Most of us humans need certainty in order to cope with life - this is why both sides of the debate become so deeply entrenched. Few of us have the courage to accept that we just don't know and live with this uncertainty.

During my twenties I went through an extremely difficult few years. I was an atheist at the time. I became suicidal at one point, and I yearned for nothingness. I had no real fear of death because I believed it would be the end of me. It was just this tiny niggle that I might be wrong that kept me from doing something stupid. I couldn't cope with the idea that there might be something more after death. What I'm trying to say here is that I wanted to believe that there was nothing after death, and I devoured all the books and believed all the prophets who told told me there was nothing. My need to be certain made me gullible, and I ended up believing a great deal of nonsense.

I've had experiences that have convinced me that materialism is wrong, but my life is full of doubt about what it all means in regards to an afterlife. Of course I continue to search for an answer, but I strongly suspect that doubt is just part of the deal with trying to understand reality. It is my belief that the more people know about the truth the more full of doubt they become. In my experience the path of the new age seeker is far more likely to lead to doubt than the path of scientism - therefore the average new age seeker is probably less gullible than the staunch materialist.

[Pollux]

Originally Posted by Draugar

You don't think that they might have a point though? If nobody sees the targets thats one thing but if the other methods (interviews for example) prove inconclusive we could have a problem. However I still have a problem as to how when somebody has a cardiac arrest they have increased mentation, it defies logic.

How would you rebutt the skeptics?

First we will have to see what the study presents, how many, if any, NDE's were recorded, the circumstances, what kind of method they used for the identification targets, etc.
Regardless this study the field of NDE still have many cases of veridical accounts, not to mention the cases of blind NDE's.
As you said, a dying/dead body and its mind should not work at an heightened and enhanced level giving impressions of an environment and situations that surpass their own accord of how their normal living reality feels like. On top of that we have the huge amount of correlations in their stories that have no reference-points other than that this actually happened to them.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I don't know why anyone would deny the experiences altogether. But if some people do, it's not going to stop scientists from studying NDEs.

~~ Paul

The onslaught of defamation of people studying this by the skeptic organisations, the demands of not wasting time, money and resources on this area, and the eagerness to just dismiss this as a brain-fart is a never-ending struggle for the skeptics. So YES, they will do the "voodoo-dance" when they get their hands on this report and nail it as a hood ornament on their truck of skeptical bile and dismissal, and steam on through the night.

[shahz]

Ugh I wish the study would come out already! Lol.

[gattino]

On 16th October the neardeath website, NDERF.org posted, amidst many others, an excerpt from a personal testimony, by an auto accident victim called "Christopher M", which may, inadvertently, have let the cat out of the bag.


"The closet was a cabinet (a wardrobe) by the window. It stood away from the wall and was maybe six feet tall. With two doors in the font and a drawer in the bottom. As she was helping me into my shorts I remembered that someone had left an L. E. D. sign on top. I could tell it shocked her when I told her about it. She ask. “What did it say?” I explained it was not turned on so it was dark. Then she helped me back into bed and said she would be right back. She returned with a doctor that questioned me about the sign. The sign was twenty four inches long by four inches wide. It had a dark color (black or gray) plastic face with red L.E.D’s. It was not turned on so it had no message. The doctor stood on a chair and lifted the sign up so I could see it. Then explained that it had been left in the room to help with a study for Out Of Body Experiences."

Unfortunately the excerpt is all that's visible on the page as the link to the full account doesn't appear to work Current NDERF Near Death Experiences so it's not made clear where or when this took place or any other info to confirm it was part of AWARE, but it is intriguing, no...?

If nothing else - assuming it is part of AWARE - it's interesting that he percieved and had confirmed that an LED display was the means used for the experiment as I think most people have, naturally, assumed something essentially in the nature of piece of paper or photograph was being employed.

[Hjortron]

Originally Posted by gattino

On 16th October the neardeath website, NDERF.org posted, amidst many others, an excerpt from a personal testimony, by an auto accident victim called "Christopher M", which may, inadvertently, have let the cat out of the bag.


"The closet was a cabinet (a wardrobe) by the window. It stood away from the wall and was maybe six feet tall. With two doors in the font and a drawer in the bottom. As she was helping me into my shorts I remembered that someone had left an L. E. D. sign on top. I could tell it shocked her when I told her about it. She ask. “What did it say?” I explained it was not turned on so it was dark. Then she helped me back into bed and said she would be right back. She returned with a doctor that questioned me about the sign. The sign was twenty four inches long by four inches wide. It had a dark color (black or gray) plastic face with red L.E.D’s. It was not turned on so it had no message. The doctor stood on a chair and lifted the sign up so I could see it. Then explained that it had been left in the room to help with a study for Out Of Body Experiences."

Unfortunately the excerpt is all that's visible on the page as the link to the full account doesn't appear to work Current NDERF Near Death Experiences so it's not made clear where or when this took place or any other info to confirm it was part of AWARE, but it is intriguing, no...?

If nothing else - assuming it is part of AWARE - it's interesting that he percieved and had confirmed that an LED display was the means used for the experiment as I think most people have, naturally, assumed something essentially in the nature of piece of paper or photograph was being employed.

Yes, but it works now (here)

It says "In August of 1996", so it's not about AWARE, but it does give indication that the design of AWARE may be promising.

[MaxPower]

Originally Posted by Hjortron

Yes, but it works now (here)

It says "In August of 1996", so it's not about AWARE, but it does give indication that the design of AWARE may be promising.

Interesting... do we know of anyone doing this in August of 1996? I haven't heard of a mid-1990s Near-Death study using L.E.D. signs, or someone seeing one.

[Draugar]

Still nothing?