NDE Question

[sr332603]

Is it all that surprising that people envision loved ones and relatives when faced with such a traumatic event as near death? Of course not! You will naturally reflect on your life and consider the possibilities of life after death, people you have lost, people you long to see again, etc. This is all par for the course.

At the very least, we can admit that in the hours / days / weeks surrounding a traumatic near-death event, a person would have dreams about relatives and loved ones that feel real and sentimental and meaningful even if consciousness is purely physical. From our knowledge of psychology and the way memories are stored, we can also admit that the exact timing of each of these dreams / hallucinations will be almost impossible to pin down. The closest we would be able to meaningfully get is to ask the patient upon waking each day / after surgery if they had any hallucinations or dreams. We could never pinpoint the exact time of those dreams without invasive techniques.

On to the white light. Taken on its own, in the absence of emotionally powerful visions of dead relatives, the white light is not difficult to imagine from a purely physical perspective. In the transition from consciousness to unconsciousness, something has to take place, and a white light does not seem to be that unreasonable. You are right that the chances of remembering the white light are admittedly low, which is why not everyone who "dies" and is resuscitated reports an NDE experience. The thesis that it is simply the process that the brain goes through as it shuts down, just as in the pilot scenario, seems the be most reasonable here as well.

The only impressive quality of NDEs left is the purported timing. I'm the first to admit that if the white light hallucination occurred along with lucid and accurately remembered encounters with relatives and loved ones, there would be something interesting going on, at the very least.

The problem is, there is nothing to base the timing on! Believers want to take people at their word that the hallucinations happened simultaneously or right after each other, but from our knowledge of the brain and the way memories are stored, there is no compelling reason to accept this. Without proof of overlap in timing, as I've shown above, there is quite literally nothing interesting or compelling going on in NDEs.

[hoggworks]

What about concussions? If you have a concussion, you see a bright white light. Now, granted, it's very fast (when I suffered a concussion it was indeed a flash, not a sustained experience), but that's a result of trauma to the brain, and that's a consistently reported experience.

That's also a personal experience, which seems to be enough to rate it as "empirical" by many participants here on the forum.

Seriously, though, that's a clear effect of trauma to the brain. If I were to suffer that, then pass out or fall asleep very shortly after (there is a *strong* desire to do that, by the way) and have a dream about dead family, I could easily construct that into a NDE narrative.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Dogmatic

Why would the brain 'crash' in a way that renders the body of the person unable to survive anything during these times of high stress? Why would the material during that 'crash' be so consistent and described by these people as 'realer than real'? Why would lingering effects of this 'crash' be so profound as to change the person's values so much? What exactly is crashing since the brain is not impaired after the NDE? And wouldn't the brain show intense activity during these moments if it was enforcing such a vivid hallucination?

If it were some chaotic dream-like experience that was completely different for each person I might buy that.

Why shouldn't the experiences during shutdown of the brain be consistent? It's always a human brain, after all. Also, I think you've bought into the "complete consistency" story a bit too much.

Why near-death experiences are different

If people are going to spend so much energy analyzing the nuances of the term crashing, why don't we stop using it? It's just a word.

~~ Paul

[Dogmatic]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

It would imply a consistency, yes, if the hallucination is the result of physical effects. Do you consider it remarkable if the same physical force is applied to the same spot on each of our legs that they'd break the same way? Or that if you run a number of the same model of cars into a wall that they'll crumple in the same way?

Those aren't equal comparisons. You're comparing strictly physical much more mechanical comparisons to something happening in the mind. And again, while the person is dying they suddenly get a very, very real experience. Your explanation is dubious at best, you could use the same criteria for any experience whatsoever. Went to the doctor? It was just in your head, the brains of people are the same, you'd typically see a guy in a white coat, etc.

NDEs being a brain-death hallucination doesn't seem to imply a commonality between ALL hallucinations; that's a false comparison. Why do you think that I'm implying that ALL hallucinations would need be the same for the brain-death notion to be correct?

You're implying that brain structure is similar therefore the experiences are going to be similar. If this 'crashing' of the brain is throwing similar hallucinations on people than why doesn't the similar brain structure throw similar hallucinations on all people during any hallucination? Also, if you're resorting to a purely physiological explanation than why does the brain structure not necessitate that all people have an NDE?

As to why it's profound, perhaps that has to do with the fact that we humans have pretty big hang-ups about dying, and if you have a hallucination where you witness the effects of your greatest fear and you find out that everything's going to be hunky dorey, it would make you feel better. That's not a brain-death thing, but a psychology thing, presumably.

A desire or belief does not make an experience more vivid or real. A desire to live does not mean that they are going to force an incredibly real experience on themselves, an experience so real that they feel fully conscious. Again, even if you want to say that the brain is doing all this, you'd have to show increased activity in the brain in order to sustain that. It doesn't happen.

Because once we latch onto an explanation for thing, we assign less value and authority to those lines of thought which contradict our beliefs?

So you're saying all NDE's are in denial essentially? Why is it such a common theme that 'skeptics' assign people with self-deception when their explanations contradict the skeptics? When you have to resort to saying people are delusional or hallucinating or deceiving themselves over and over again in various aspects of 'paranormal' reports your explanation probably isn't worth much.

As I said before, if they believe that they will survive after death, why be as afraid?

Most people believe in life after death. People who have NDE's are much more comfortable in their skin than anyone else.

Are you suggesting that a lack of replication of a brain-death conditions (assuming such hasn't happened) means that the theory is false, rather than, say, ethical limitations preventing doctors from nearly killing their patients?

I'm saying that if its purely physiological than why can't this full experience be induced? If its just in the brain and its structure implies that its a normal experience for all brain structures than we should be able to induce this.

I'm not exactly sure why you or anyone else would think that the erractic death-throes of the brain suggests a survival mechanism in any way. That seems like discounting the idea that the steering in your car broke because the skid marks you left on the road prior to flying off a hill were pretty.

No, with everything else developing as means of better survival this seems to be one of the only mechanisms developed to essentially insure that the person will die since the brain begins showing itself a movie reel while its body is in trouble.

I think that if you think this, then you don't know as much as you might about the way the brain operates.

People go on LSD and report religious experiences; many are profoundly altered by such events. Does that mean that people on LSD actually see god, or merely that a drug which messes with your brain chemistry has the ability to mimic those feelings? Which seems more likely?

I'm just not willing to blame hidden functions of the brain that can't be induced with a full explanation of something we don't understand against the passionate testimony of the many people who actually experienced it.

Stan Grof would like a word with you btw.

Ah, the old "if science could only open its mind" gambit. This fails utterly, as it presumes that science is some static thing, ignoring completely the constant flow of revision in scientific thought and, oh yes, innovation only made possible by accepting new things.

I'm not saying science is closed minded. I'm saying people are throwing out absurd and half-assed explanations of the material as if its just obvious that its purely brain function. The stronger cases hint otherwise as well as the hugely coincidental nature of the experience as it relates to a more theistic view of the natural world. Maybe they were right?

Also, who cares if someone has a subjective experience? If I eat some mushrooms and hallucinate that I'm on the back of a 30 foot dog just because I really really felt like it was real? Should the cryptozoologists start looking for my dog? Does my insistence that it actually happened make it any more likely to have happened?

Its the 'realer than real' nature of the experience combined with the life changing effect it has. No one changed their lives from top to bottom based off a hallucination ever before. You're ignoring the profound impact of the experience because that suggest its much more.

[sr332603]

Originally Posted by Dogmatic

Its the 'realer than real' nature of the experience combined with the life changing effect it has. No one changed their lives from top to bottom based off a hallucination ever before. You're ignoring the profound impact of the experience because that suggest its much more.

Completely and totally wrong.

This this study at Johns Hopkins, where they administered magic mushrooms to test subjects. The majority of the subjects reported "mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries" and:

The resulting experiences apparently prompt positive changes in behavior and attitude that last several months, at least.

Only several months, you may ask? That doesn't seem consistent with NDE experiences, which effect people for years, does it?

A follow up survey, found that the mushrooms:

produce substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

Isn't it weird how we can duplicate your "spiritual" experiences using purely material means? Sort of casts doubt on your entire hypothesis, doesn't it?

[hoggworks]

Dogmatic, you seem to be under the impression that what I and others am suggesting is that the full experience of the NDE, what gets reported in detail well after the fact, is what's REALLY happening at the time of near death. I don't think anyone else is saying it, and it's CERTAINLY not what I'm suggesting.

My sugggestion is this:
Near brain-death, as an artifact of the brain starting to shut down, we have a vague visual hallucination, which is the bright light.

If we survive this near-death, then during the recovery period we attempt to make sense of this, and we adorn this white light with the imagery we believe corresponds with an NDE. We remember the white light, realize that's what an NDE is, and dress up the memory with the rest of the stuff, because if we saw the white light, then the rest of it must have also happened. I'm not suggesting this is an intentional misrepresentation, but just an effect of the way our memories change (we routinely do this, looking at memories again and again, changing them in ways we don't perceive as being changes).

You don't need to explain away how vivid the experience is as the brain shuts down because that's not when the vast majority of the experience happens.


Also, dismissing a skeptical view of this because it relies on "unknown" functioning of the brain when you yourself are trumpeting far more and unlikely unknowns is pretty ridiculous (ignoring the fact that we don't need to invoke unknown brain functionality to explain it).

[Dogmatic]

Originally Posted by sr332603

Completely and totally wrong.

This this study at Johns Hopkins, where they administered magic mushrooms to test subjects. The majority of the subjects reported "mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries" and:



Only several months, you may ask? That doesn't seem consistent with NDE experiences, which effect people for years, does it?

A follow up survey, found that the mushrooms:



Isn't it weird how we can duplicate your "spiritual" experiences using purely material means? Sort of casts doubt on your entire hypothesis, doesn't it?

Again, why don't you ask Stanislav Grof about the nature of those experiences? Or transpersonal psychologists.

And btw, The Lancet: Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest

Several theories have been proposed to explain NDE. We did not show that psychological, neurophysiological, or physiological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest. Sabom22 mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG 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.

Odd, a full blown 'realer than real' experience during no brain activity.

Couple other parapsychology research such as psi research and even the nature of consciousness from a physics standpoint and there is zero reason to posit that its all in the brain. No one is saying the brain doesn't play a part or that its not strongly correlated with the mind, but its not enough to explain all the available data. Period.

[Dogmatic]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

Also, dismissing a skeptical view of this because it relies on "unknown" functioning of the brain when you yourself are trumpeting far more and unlikely unknowns is pretty ridiculous (ignoring the fact that we don't need to invoke unknown brain functionality to explain it).

I dismiss it because you are giving the brain functions you can't prove it has alone, you're dismissing people's own recollection of their memories as if they can't at all be trusted, and you can't explain the stronger cases.

There is plenty of reason to believe that the brain is not an epiphenomenon of the brain and because of that (as if it wasn't ludicrous in the first place) we don't need to blame self-deception and hallucination on something we don't understand yet. You can attempt to explain anything you want by using a hallucination cop-out and then ignoring all information from that person as memory issues.

[sr332603]

Originally Posted by Dogmatic

Odd, a full blown 'realer than real' experience during no brain activity.

Again, Dogmatic, the only thing that would make these events compelling is if they actually happened during no brain activity, which you have not established. When did this woman report the occurrence? How many hours / days / weeks went by before she gave her account?

Are you so uncritical of your theories that you have neglected to even consider the fallibility of memory, especially after such a traumatic event? Do you honestly believe that NDE experiencers are able to correctly identify not just the day of the memories, but the exact moment?

How difficult is it to have a dream the night following the surgery and confuse it as occurring during the surgery? In my view, not difficult at all. And yet, it would explain away 100% of the non-material component of every NDE claim. In spite of this (or, more probably, because of it) you seem to not even consider it as a possibility!

You have a lot more faith in the reliability of memory than I do.

[sr332603]

Originally Posted by Dogmatic

Again, why don't you ask Stanislav Grof about the nature of those experiences? Or transpersonal psychologists.

Unfortunately, Stanislav Grof does not post on this board, so I would appreciate it if you elaborated on his views instead of randomly throwing out his name every time someone brings up the similarity between drug-induced events and "natural" events.

What are his arguments? How do they fit into your views on NDEs? Why, in your above comment, did you claim that drug-induced hallucinations can never bring about positive life changes, and yet research has been done to show just such a thing? Finally, when confronted with such research, why do you simply reference Stan Grof and be done with it?