My brother passed away suddenly of a heart attack at age 44 in 2003. Recently I have been having dreams in which I am on the other side of a river, impossible to cross for all the huge flat, angular slabs of rock and the mighty current. My brother is on the other side with a plank that was made for him by the pet hamster he had as a child and mourned deeply when it passed. When the hamster knew he was coming through the body farm on the other side of the river...a place where some people will spend eternity living off the dead...she chewed a plank for him to cross so they could be together. Now, all the animals use the plank to cross. There is no ‘rainbow bridge’. But the plank is just a little too short. My brother was able to swim the short distance. Now, he has fashioned the second plank and he will lay it down for you if you have ‘the knowledge’. What is ‘the knowledge’? ‘The knowledge’ is that this place is the animal’s kingdom. You can only enter by becoming conscious of what animals have suffered in earth life....that the vast majority have ended up on the dinner plate. This goes for insects, fish, and fowl, too. This afterlife is not a comfortable place. Your pets, if you did right by them, defend you tooth and nail against animals with grievances against you. Did you love porterhouse steaks? Your pets will help keep you from getting gored! Did you eat a million shrimp? Your cats will battle thousands coming for you. Not heaven by any means. So wise up! Get pets.
11
I don't know why anyone would want to go to Heaven. Eternity is a long gosh-darned time. Is there anything good to read? Can I stream Misdomer Murders up there?
11
So far none of my deceased relatives have provided any information about before life or after. We only have awareness of our current life. I conclude that heaven, hell and all other similar beliefs are mere inventions of man. Likewise, so-called near-death experiences that are reported are also just figments of the person’s imagination. I am against all religions which I believe were invented by some humans to control others. But I have no objection if others wish to practice their beliefs peacefully and without harm to others.
8
Rather than dwell on whether the afterlife involves heaven or hell, both concepts rooted in religious dogma, I'm more curious about whether atheists also have NDEs and if so, how their experiences differ.
27
Is the subtitle "But their argument is weak." an editorial decision to solicit comments? Or is it just rude?
5
Do other animals have an NDE? What about bugs? Or insects?
Entire discussion is dumb.
Accept it y’all. When your dead. You are DEAD!
L’Chaim
6
Such a long article but no mention of the Tibetan book of the dead. Nor mention the fact that Buddha himself encountered thousands of his lifetime on the eve of his attaining enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Granted Buddha was raised in a culture tradition where reincarnation and steam of consciousness were the norm, not a fantastical notion. Similarly ancient Indian yogis were known to have attained samadhi at will deciding when where and how they would exit the earthly realm. To this day there are meditation techniques that help us transcend and then navigate planes of consciousness.
All things considered earth is hell, every human being, every sentient being suffers. It is a hard journey.(despite beauty all around us). Even those who are born wealthy healthy cannot escape sadness despair melancholy. Turn on the news and you hear of murder wars refugees humans treating each other with atrocities, then avenging that treatment and on and on. We constantly feed the world in ways that keeps it going round and round. So one wonders if earth is hell, is there a place where our awareness (each individual awareness is part of that ONE) experiences peace tranquility serenity bliss unconditional love?
10
It is amazing that this deep in the 21st century, anyone is still writing about heavens, hells, gods and other such mythology and folk tales. We live in an age of science.
We know the age of the universe (13.799±0.021 billion years within the Lambda-CDM concordance model). We know the age of our solar system (4.571 billion years). Our earth is 4.543 billion years old. We know that the earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans (H. Sapiens) are from the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago.
Knowing all this, why do people persist in their believing in myths of "gods" and "creators" and "afterlife"? Is it that it is so much easier to gullibly believe in a man made religion or cult, than to intelligently grasp the realities of science?
12
utter nonsense. people who want to believe in fairy tales and sky kings will do so. the rest of us ask only to not be compelled to bow to their delusions.
8
NDE's are real; I have experienced it two times; once accidentally and the other in being hit (in the head) by a pickup truck. Each was a different experience. #1) Following extensive dental work I was on prescribed pain pills for a couple of days. By the afternoon of the second day I kind of forget I was "on" them and fixed myself a cocktail w/a double shot of tequila. Almost immediately I felt the effects and realized, terrified, what had happened. I started to cry and walked to the bathroom to try vomiting. But, there was a beckoning tunnel of seductive golden light embracing me. I am non-religious. #2) In a downtown crosswalk one sunny afternoon a Dodge Ram roared through, striking me dead-on at the left side of my head. As it did, the sun glinted off the shiny hood ornament and I knew it was my last living image.
Your story presumes NDE to be a religious experience. It isn't.
7
Most of the commenters report blissful NDEs; it was the opposite for me. When I was 20, I underwent a cardiac catheter study using a tilt-table to investigate my constant fainting. Three times in a row, when they tilted the table, I lost consciousness; my doctors told me I had no blood pressure at all while I was vertical. All three times I was unconscious, I had terrible and overwhelming hallucinations of rocketing through space with flashes of harsh lights all around me. All three times I returned to consciousness panting, shaking, and terrified. By the standard mythology, these hallucinations indicated that I would be going to Hell. But at that time I was a devout Christian, and so I rejected the idea that I was going to Hell. The experience caused me to conclude that NDEs were simply hallucinations caused by an oxygen-starved brain.
8
All of these NDE's and OBE's don't scare me, and actually give me some hope, which is becoming a rare commodity.
And as of yet, nobody seems to have reported that they died and went straight to hell, as so many fire-and -brimstone preachers have predicted for me during my many years of chronic misbehavior.
Therein lies another little kernel of hope for us all.
4
I've not had an NDE. But I was holding my mother's hand when she died in 1995. Her last breath was a struggle, and then she stopped. At that moment, I heard and felt what seemed a palpable "whoosh" sound. As if her spirit was sucked upwards; with it, my eyes automatically looked up toward the ceiling. I don't believe she was entering death in a dream-like state. I believe she left her body and rose up to wherever heaven pulled her.
11
Does anyone have visions of hell?
1
Quick answer: "Are near-death experiences real?" No. Next question, please.
3
A "Near death experience" appears to be one of many on the bucket list.
We spend so much time groping for God, we’ve lost our sense of how to humbly revel in humanity…
Why the focus on near-death-experiences – inadvertent or deliberate…
Because they break the boredom of our continual consciousness, which is no more or less than a cauldron of our life experience, both near and far in time – a writhing archive that is constantly re-indexing itself, supporting a model of a universe in which we’re hub…
In low-light or low-blood-pressure situations, the continuum of what we see begins to granulate…
At somewhere between 8K TV and IMAX resolution, we become conscious of patterns in the dots – that match what we recall when the lights were on or when we felt less faint…
Notice something about that low-light model…
Tilt your head – you can easily have a sense that the table has tilted opposite, instead…
Now, think of watching TV…
Now matter how inclined or upright you’re sitting or slouching, you have a sense of a screen fixed in place in a room that’s fixed in place…
Paradoxically, that full-lit model of where your TV – and you – are located and oriented in the room is actually a superbly and efficiently data-reduced model, informed as much by your recall as your senses…
If you’ve ever glitched – where the model’s still crystal-clear, but seems to have moved or rotated a bit awry…
That may – just may – be a wisp what you’re experiencing and calling NDE…
Not near to death – but less than a half tank away…
Are we there yet???
Soon enough…
1
Share number three - and I could keep going but don't have time. However, my first experience of being above my body looking down - was after paying $75 dollars for a TMI session. In this time I experienced the blissful looking down from above and thought OMG! this is neat! But it ever happened again. Although in my life I have many experiences that persuade me of transit among living and dead and that's just the beginning.
Really dont know why JMF and others have a problem with what seems to me blaringly clear -
1
methinks this tends to happen whenever I am in the analogue or digital proximity of anything close to maga
1
Really this can’t be that difficult to figure out. All we need is a black box in a few old people’s brains to record the death experience. Mystery solved.
“A free man fears death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
Baruch Spinoza
4
i've had one NDE. i overdosed on 100 grams of psilocybin mushrooms and had a hallucinogenic vision of Four Astral Beings in Green Light. i also asked out loud if Jimi Hendrix was still alive and had a brief feeling of seeing an ancient man limping up a hill.
3
So interesting that the Times has an article like this. Fascinating subject and comments. Thank you.
7
After losing my Mom, I will be forever grateful that I stumbled upon the NDE account of an American orthopedic surgeon published on the National Library of Medicine – National Institutes of Health website. After reading it, I found and listened to interviews of the doctor on YouTube. No one will ever persuade me that his experience wasn’t ‘real’. I think he took the leap, eventually going public despite possibly putting his practice and life’s work at risk, so that people would open their minds (a little).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179462/
5
It’s called NEAR death for a reason. The visions produced by an oxygen deprived and stressed brain are probably not unlike those experienced by auto erotic asphyxiation, from what I’ve heard of course.
7
Don't walk toward the light mom.
My Grandmother died at the age of 52 from cancer. She was a very religious person and my father her son only issue a physician took care of her devotedly till the end. Grandmother died cursing everyone calling Pishachi meaning Flesh eating Demon of Hindu mythology. Needless to say we are vegetarians as we are Brahmins. Still I can’t figure out what did she actually see or reacting to just before she expired. Clearly her end was not happy to her soul. This was in 1952 in Mysore India. She died surrounded by members of her family Sriranga Pudupakkam MD
2
When you are dead you are dead, that you have 'come back' just means that you haven't been dead.
There is no good evidence that anyone who has really died has ever 'come back'. Ashes to ashes, enjoy your one and only life here and now.
6
Everybody's wonderin' what and where they they all came from
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
When the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain
And so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be
--Iris Dement
This is absurd.
NDE's don't tell us anything profound at all, anymore than the weird letters that used to appear briefly on CRT's when you pulled the power plug.
When the brain is deprived of oxygen, it malfunctions. That's it. Anything more is claptrap.
2
Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAu_N5_PvCE&list=PLz-OpoYNxyAIV7sZ7EjRXSgzT64_Tvw51&index=34&t=0s
How does this not constitute brute assumption in the fact of data that is prima facia support of the thing to which the NDE witnesses claim to have experienced?
Thanks,
Ray
1
Houdini's wife had a gaggle of charlatans insisting they knew Houdini's thoughts after he died. After many years of trying, she reluctantly came to the conclusion it was all poppycock. Let me guess: the same people who believe in an afterlife also believe a man put seven of every kind of animal on a boat.
3
The kingdom of heaven is within you. So said Jesus.
I glimpse heaven on a daily basis. No death or near death experience required!
5
An Angel saved me at least once
However I believe we are Stardust
Nothing is wasted in any Universe
See ya later
4
In a reply to another post I mentioned a double-blind study from the University of Virginia in 2006. In an OR used for cardiac device implants, they put random pictures, facing up, in a spot that could only be viewed from a vantage point high up in the room. As part of the normal implant procedure, patient's hearts are stopped briefly. From the abstract: "In a series of 52 induced cardiac arrests, no patient reported having a near-death experience, and none reported a sense of having left the physical body...". The article is titled "Failure to elicit near-death experiences in induced cardiac arrest". Source: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/NDE47.pdf
3
One of the most brilliant physicists alive today, Nima Arkani-Hamed, now argues, based on the results of the LHC, that space/time is not fundamental.
Einstein's relativity equations posit the possibility of a singularity where, as ANY physicist would acknowledge, the laws of physics break down (you mean it's, ohmigod, "supernatural"?).
Because of a fealty to Einstein's equations, there are a boatload of mainstream physicists who claim that 95% of the universe is composed of something they call "dark" matter and "dark" energy (in other words they don't have a clue).
Honest neurological scientists acknowledge that they, too, have no clue as to how consciousness arises from the actions of neuro-chemicals (i.e., matter) in the brains and, moreover, there is a respected philosophical approach called Idealism which posits that consciousness is fundamental.
In other words, we ALL don't have a clue and that includes John Martin Fischer and the best ANY of us can do is to guess. Let me invite Mr. Fischer and any interested reader of the Times to check out the YouTube videos of Bernardo Kastrup who is about as good a modern proponent of the Idealist approach to philosophy as any. Then let me also recommend Professor Donald Hoffman for as good a proponent of the scientific approach as to why Idealism may be a better paradigm for human understanding that the current dogma of materialism which, clearly, Fischer ascribes to.
8
If N.D.E.s are generated by some natural biochemical response in anticipation of imminent death then they could also be induced pharmacologically, no? Sounds dangerous.
But, this poses an interesting evolutionary question, if there is a biochemical response to imminent death, then exactly what purpose does it serve? Unlike the pleasure rush from sex or food, what is the point of inducing euphoria upon the imminent end of an organism? Is it kin-selection, like, you get caught by the lion and death is almost certainly imminent, rather than fight and remain injured you relax and drift off euphorically while the lion gets its meal and doesn't hurt anymore of your kin? There is a whole lot of kill or be killed out there.
2
I seem to remember a story that Castaneda related. He asked don Juan about these pleasant NDEs and the shaman explained that yes this was a common experience that was followed, he clapped his hands together, by “oblivion”.
Professor Fischer states:
"Many of the most visible proponents of the idea that N.D.E.s prove the existence of an afterlife are doctors...It is important to emphasize that their conclusions are not medical but philosophical."
I don't think the observations of Pim van Lommel can be simply dismissed as 'philosophical'. A previous believer in materialistic explanations, he has come to question those same materialistic explanations.
Dr. van Lommel, retired cardiologist and author, says that in his experience NDEs have been reported by patients who have been clinically dead, with no brain stem activity, and with flat EEGs! No evidence of consciousness at all, using our modern technological measuring instruments ! And, yet, afterwards, upon recovery, these same patients exhibit a clear consciousness.
It is too soon to come to a conclusion as to whether consciousness survives death, and excessive skepticism about this subject needs to be avoided.
A lengthy article by Dr. van Lommel, "Medical Evidence for NDEs can be found at: @ https://www.nderf.org/NDERF/Research/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm
3
Well-packaged nonsense - no different than all the fairy tales we hear as kids. The belief in God or anything beyond our life here is simply a way for people to remain sane while trying to deal with awful finality of death.
5
....transfixed; I nearly died while reading it!
1
It seems from all this that NDEs could be more accurately characterized as Not Dying Experiences. It's not clear at all whether they have anything do with death itself, much less with the nature of an afterlife. The only thing that appears to be everlasting here is this eternal return of NDEs as a topic of discussion, resurrected over and over again without anything new to say.
My 7 year old son was hit by a car and thrown 30 ft. He broke his leg and his arm and was hospitalized for a week. After he came home, he asked where he would go if he had died. I asked him why he wanted to know. He said when he was lying in the road, a man asked him if he wanted to go with him or stay with his family. He said the man had shining light all around him. My son said he wanted to stay with his family. We are not a religious family. Nor am I aware of any prior experiences that would have caused him to experience this.
12
Ah, the endless human insistence on being something more than the other animals and knowing something special...there is nothing after death and we live in a quaking fear of the awaiting abyss that devours us all. In our human conceit we have constructed and elaborated on concepts to make us feel special and safe in the face of oblivion. These become religions that some use to control the behavior and income of others to their detriment. But oblivion remains our inescapable collective fate...
3
I don't think the observations of Pim van Lommel can be simply dismissed as 'philosophical'.
Dr. van Lommel, retired cardiologist and author, says that in his experience NDEs have been reported by patients who have been clinically dead, with no brain stem activity, and with flat EEGs! And, afterwards, these same patients exhibit a clear consciousness.
Maybe it is too soon to come to a conclusion as to whether consciousness survives death, and excessive skepticism needs to be avoided.
A lengthy article by Dr. van Lommel, "Medical Evidence for NDEs (A Reply to Shermer) can be found at: @ https://www.nderf.org/NDERF/Research/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm
1
We can always hope, but see "Failure to Elicit Near-Death Experiences in Induced Cardiac Arrest", a study done at the University of Virginia.
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/NDE47.pdf
The study involved 52 patients whose hearts were stopped intentionally as is standard during implantation of defibrillators.
From the abstract:
"This study was designed to investigate the accuracy of out-of-body perceptions during NDEs that occur during these induced cardiac arrests. A computer in the operating room displayed quasi-randomly-selected unusual visual targets so that they were visible only from above eye level, from a visual perspective looking down upon the body of the unconscious patient... In a series of 52 induced cardiac arrests, no patient reported having had a near-death experience, and
none reported a sense of having left the physical body or observing from an out of-body visual perspective"
Mine was very unpleasant, so I read your positive message from most others' experience wryly. I came up too fast scuba diving at 15 and got the bends. The pain blacked me out momentarily, and in that moment, a disembodied skull with a lupine cast (like a werewolf skull halfway through its transformation) flew out of the darkness straight for me. It got to my face and snapped at me twice, me dodging it, at which point I regained consciousness. I imagine my head must have been jerking back and forth in the water. The image is seared in my brain 35 years later. I've never heard of anyone having an NDE like mine; it's like I know something everyone else doesn't.
1
Yeah, this is why nobody cares if you have a PhD in philosophy. It's because only these folks think they're smart. The rest of us know better, but we are too polite to say so.
1
PART 1:I had what I have come to think of as a mini-NDE, a few months ago. I have been choking on liquids slightly more than usual lately. I’m 57. I may need that checked out. Anyway, I have also had asthma all my life, and an intense fear and hatred of any sort of impediment to breathing, including claustrophobia, which I connect with my asthma. Normally, if I choke, I retch and gag, like most people do.
This time was eerily different. I had taken my young-adult children out to eat at a local diner, a late-night treat. We were having a good time, laughing and talking—no alcohol, though— and I started to choke on water. It may have caused a throat spasm, because I was completely unable to breathe. But I felt very calm, at peace. My field of vision narrowed. I was still sitting upright, and I know I wasn’t making a sound. I wasn’t worried or afraid. I was at peace. I’m pretty sure I was starting to lose consciousness. But with my narrowed vision, I could see one of my sons looking at me, and he looked very afraid. He was saying, “Mommy, are you ok? What’s wrong? What’s going on?” He seemed far away. I remember consciously thinking, well, he needs me, I can’t leave him, and I started hacking and gagging and got the water out.
. . . To be continued (comment too long)
2
Allow me to explain something. Before you are born, you don't exist. There is nothing. No thing. Conception organizes all of the atoms and molecules that allow "you" to live, and you exist. That is something. When you die, your atoms and molecules disassemble. You no longer exist. There is nothing. No thing.
Sorry, that's just the way it is. Get over it.
4
I am a neuroscientist who had what might be termed an NDE when I was 11. I had been kidnapped and raped repeatedly, the police caught up with us, took us into custody, and the courts blamed me. I fell into a catatonic state due to the stress, they used electroshock to bring me out of it, but it stopped my heart and I had an NDE in which I saw God. God told me to go back to my mother. I woke up. She was there. It is critical to realize that all cells in our brains transmit information to other cells in our brain. We have about 100 billion cells in our brains (https://www.livescience.com/32311-how-many-cells-are-in-the-brain.html). When all of those cells die, we are dead. Until that happens, some are still signaling. We are unaware of the signaling that occurs beneath 'normal' consciousness. Those cells that are still alive when we are unconscious after a gross insult to the whole brain, still signal and they signal what they have mapped during our lives. I am a deeply spiritual person (my mom conditioned me in that way), so it is no wonder that my functional cells during my NDE signaled God and Mom. Even electroencephalography of the brainstem is not sensitive enough to pick up a small number of cells still firing, but our brains can. Thus, anyone who has had an NDE has had the real experience of perceiving these cells in action. Further, these few signals might act as a match to reignite the cells stunned into silence by whatever insult to our brain has occurred.
30
I don't believe in an afterlife, period. When you die you simply stop existing. However, there are enough of these stories to convince me that some type of hallucinatory euphoria can occur when death is imminent. I find this very encouraging because, while I am at peace with death, the actual process of dying causes me some little trepidation. Anything that makes that final transition process less unpleasant is welcome news. Maybe Mother Nature has bequeathed us a sweet little farewell gift.
5
This is a terrific article. I, too, find the arguments for supernaturalism unpersuasive. But it is the reasoning that I find particularly problematic. How can supernaturalists distinguish between vivid dreams and NDEs? It seems to me that ultimately a supernaturalist can only appeal to the content of the NDE -- the "ultra reality" of it, as it were -- to attempt to explain how it is different than a vivid dream. (And very often, the stronger epistemological claim is made: that one KNOWS it wasn't just a dream!) But I don't see how an appeal to content does, or could explain that one still WASN'T vividly dreaming in what we are calling a NDE. Is it not possible that I could dream I visited heaven?
There is yet another factor that supports that NDE’s are real and depict another truly existing “after death” reality: many documented cases where deceased loved ones visited family or friends after death. This includes visits by the deceased to a loved one prior to any knowledge of the deceased death. Another powerful affirmation of its genuineness is the cases where individuals born blind or deaf have fully experienced those senses for the very first time in their NDE.
5
I would like to know if the people who report near death experiences were born via vaginal delivery or c-section. If people are experiencing a life review at the end of life then approaching that light at the end of a tunnel may correspond with the way they came into the world.
3
Not sure where the following falls within the NDE spectrum, my
7-year-old daughter’s “journey.” I was a single student mom with two kids (age 6 and 7) in the mid1970s, living in university family housing. Across the walkway was another single mom with two little girls about same age as mine. Elder of the two, Lisa, had been diagnosed with leukemia and was being treated with chemo, lost her hair, etc. This was a very ill child, but over a year or so the community continued on with family stuff, e.g. sleep overs, school events, potlucks.
My 7-year-old daughter came happily to me one morning about the wonderful dream she had last night. She and Lisa we’re flying together down a shiny golden tunnel with a shining bright light at the end. “Lisa had her pretty blond hair again, Mom!” “Wow, what happened next?” “We were flying together, then she said she had to go the rest of the way by herself. I couldn’t go with her. Then I woke up.”
I understood the imagery and was chilled. I went out the front door and found a campus police officer in front of their door. “A child died last night.” No deity, just a journey with a little friend. Reel ahead 20 years and my daughter had a daughter of her own and confronted me, “Did you know what that was?”
35
@Patricia Hi Patricia,
These sorts of experiences are quite common. If you are interested in these things, I would recommend the books "The Flip" and "Changed in a Flash" by historian Jeffrey J. Kripal who specializes in extreme religious experiences and has had one himself.
3
Given that they’re post-facto accounts of what are, by any reasonable definition, hallucinations, the answer is clearly NO.
1
I am an atheist. I had a near death experience at 31—I’m now 79. I became seriously and painfully ill. Laying on a sofa, next to my husband in a chair...I could hear the television but I felt myself move out of my body...head first... into a darkness ...until I saw the light. Moving into the light seemed like melding into the energy of life itself...my euphoria was interrupted by a force that said I couldn’t stay...it was not my time. I moved out of the light...returning with a message to “experience life”....within a few years, I divorced, sold my house, quit my job and started life over with no constraints. My near death experience was the catalyst for a rebirth.
5
I’m just curious—what about that kept you an atheist?
3
Look for "Dr. Lloyd Rudy, NDEs" on YouTube. In an interview, a renowned cardiologist recounts remarkable clinical experiences.
1
The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia has been studying experiences suggestive of survival of consciousness after death for over fifty years. Until his retirement, the division was headed by psychiatrist Bruce Greyson, whom even Fischer would admit is the world's leading authority on Near-Death Experiences. Greyson has come to the conclusion that consciousness survives the dissolution of the physical body. He is at present writing a trade book on NDE's, but those interested in what Fischer calls the "supernaturlist" interpretation would do well to read the more scholarly tomes "Irreducible Mind" and "Beyond Physicalism" that make a rigorous argument for a non-physical consciousness.
4
Should also add that all the research projects submitted to the Templeton Immortality grant by the division were rejected despite the faculty's stellar academic credentials and the publication of their research in mainstream journals. However much Dr. Fischer might protest the characterization, it appears to me that his mind is already made up on the topic. How else is one to explain why projects looking into cases of the reincarnation type, all aspects of NDEs, deathbed visions, etc. where denied funding while, among other examples, Fischer's UC Riverside colleague Eric Schwitzgebel was paid to write short fiction about " simulated universes, full-body replication and pervasive artificial intelligence"?
@Troy ...But Dr. Greyson also published results of his double-blind study: "Failure to elicit near-death experiences in induced cardiac arrest", which seems like a well designed study with results counter to the position you describe. Source: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/NDE47.pdf
Do you know of other controlled studies he conducted that support the existence of NDE? I would be interested in reading them.
Thanks for the thoughtful piece, John. I agree with your analysis of NDEs, and I think that the definitions that Charles Peirce (1839-1914, founder of the philosophical tradition called Pragmatism) provided of some basic metaphysical terms might allow an even more precise description of these experiences.
Peirce defined "real" as that which is independent of what anyone thinks about it and "external" as that which is independent of what anyone thinks, period. So something outside of all minds (e.g. the tree outside my window) is both real and external. An event that occurs in someone's mind (e.g., a pain, or a daydream) can be real even though it is "internal": it DOES depend on what someone thinks, in a very broad sense of "thinks." Peirce defined "fictional" or "fictive" as that which does depend on what someone thinks about it, e.g., Hamlet has the traits he has only because Shakespeare imagined him that way. So while Shakespeare really did imagine Hamlet to be a certain way, Hamlet himself is fictional person, not a real person.
Using these terms to describe an NDE, we can say the following. An NDE is real and internal: it's an event that occurs whether or not anyone thinks that it occurs, and its occurrence depends on someone's thoughts. But the contents of the NDE -- the things and events depicted in it, like a bright light or crossing a river -- might well be fictive rather than real: they might depend exclusively on the NDE subject's imagining them in a certain way.
3
Anyone who has taken DMT understands that the mind can create experiences that profoundly challenge our usual understanding of reality. In my opinion, these experiences are just that - emanations of a brain/body whose normal functioning has been severely disrupted - and nothing more.
3
Very good piece. Thanks for this. Sadly few will read it and fewer will understand the points made in it. Most will criticize because it contradicts what they already believe (or want to believe).
Carl Sagan had the best line about this: NDE show us that there's an afterlife, but we don't know whether it lasts longer than 10 minutes.
3
@Robbie
So let’s bet that it doesn’t? Why?
2
NDEs may show us the gateway to an afterlife, or not. That's the gist of the argument here. So what's the point of this essay? The author doesn't know anything more than the doctors he cites as believers, or the ultra-rationalists who dismiss NDEs as purely psychological defense mechanisms. He hasn't had a personal NDE. So I ask again, what's the point of the essay?
6
||Are N.D.E.s, interpreted literally, accurate depictions of an external reality?||
There's another question we should consider first. And that is, do our everyday observations of the world give an accurate depiction of the way physical reality really is? We know the answer is no. Our prior expectations, beliefs, what we are used to seeing, mould and shape what we actually perceive. Perceptual illusions nicely illustrate this. See my blog posts here and here. So, if it's the case that even in this physical reality our expectations etc shape and mould what we perceive, should we expect any difference in our perceptions of an afterlife realm? And, if not, then we could scarcely expect accurate depictions of an afterlife realm together with its insinuation that people from differing cultures should all expect to see precisely the same thing.
2
Pretty easy to solve the out of body experience. Put a unique identifying mark, number or picture or symbol on the back of every overhead light in operating rooms and see if people who claim astral projection can identify them correctly. Then you'll have scientific proof rather than anecdotal evidence.
4
I am a graduate student in religious studies and am researching a particular form of NDE, which is known as an empathetic death experience. In these events, people become aware that someone close to them is dying and they let someone else know about this feeling. That is, the experience is verifiable!Sometimes the person even undergoes their own journey to the light, even though they are in no danger of passing. This version seems to happen mostly with children.
If you have had, or know anyone who has had, an empathetic death experience, I would very much appreciate corresponding with you for my research. Please respond to this post and I’ll send you contact information. Thank you!
6
I was ten when my grandma died. I am
Not a particularly religious person but I KNOW that at 5am that morning she came to me in my sleep, gave me a kiss, and told me to be a good girl. At 7am the phone rang. It was the hospital calling to tell us grandma had passed at 5. They had a policy of waiting till 7 am before notifying families about overnight deaths. Dad came into my room to tell me and I said “ I know. It was 5 :00.”(I briefly woke up when she said goodby and had glanced at the clock). This happened over 30 years ago but I’ll never forget the look on my fathers face when I told him I knew she died and at what time.
12
My experiences as a caregiver to an elder family member resulted in a number of things. This includes making me afraid of growing old in our depraved American medical system. And it took away my fear of death.
I used to be terrified of dying and no longer am. This partly has to do with the way this person ended up passing and events before and after, which included being visited.
It also has to do with conversations with nurses and aides, both theirs and others who ended up being willing to talk to me.
And it has to do with conversations I've been able to have with people who work in funeral homes.
There's no doubt for me that we go beyond this existence. Exactly how it's structured I don't know. There are those who relay experiences that they feel give us answers, at least an idea. I think really it's not important to know exactly how it works and to live our lives here while we're here. At least that's where I am with it now.
11
Having had two N.D.E.s--one, when I was electrocuted, burned very badly, and in an ICU for several days followed by recovery in a burn unit--I can report that these (or at least my) experiences have a reality that cannot be conveyed or "proven" to other people but is personally undeniable. For years, additional experiences followed, some pre-cognitive, which cannot be easily explained. No matter. The author is correct in noting that a near-death event can be transformative (it was for me, and continues to be 40 years later), and on many levels (attitudes toward life, death, purpose, and other people). For me, my experience(s) confirm the mysterious network of life and consciousness that exists in the universe, alleviate any fear of death, and prompt me to be of service each day, knowing that I am an integral element in that network of connection. I would finally add that an N.D.E. is substantially different from a drug/herb-induced experience in at least one important aspect--that others have witnessed and confirmed your non-life state, for however long that took place in this reality. Perceptions or visions of death are not the same as having been dead for some period of time.
10
I love to watch the funny academics showing their extreme bias and resistance to anything they can't see, touch and prove with data. How many patients have nearly died on operating tables and come back to describe exactly what the doctors were doing to save them, and yet some poor doctors still feel compelled to put something on a top shelf in the operating room to find out whether any dying patients reported it. A doctor's eyes and ears can't believe anything if they are closed. Fortunately, some distinguished doctors are different. But the others — what next? Maybe putting a book on a top shelf to see if their patient read it while their heart was being rescued?
3
If you check it out, patients being resuscitated either in OR’s or ER’s are either very lightly anesthetized or not at all and intermittently conscious thus the “recall” of conversations, etc. The placing of an object on a shelf that only could be seen if a “self” left a body is a valid test and has never occurred in a controlled environment. The “mind” is just what the brain does as “digestion” is what the gut does. The brain is all there is till proven different beyond subjectivity. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
5
@Anne Sherrod Dr Sam Parnia has some interesting ongoing research. Check it out.
2
I've never had a NDE, though this doesn't mean I haven't had an experience I cannot explain. I'd bet most of us have a moment along their life's course. For me it comes to this.
Your future comes at you primarily through the medium of your understanding. If there is a commonality in the NDE, regardless of the society in which you have been raised and lived, it seems it is that the event always comes in the way best suited to your comprehension. It does not come in a ball of confusion.
To me this seems an indication of intelligent intent. Christians would call it guardian angels, or God. Others would call it something else. I will simply think of it as a guiding force, a teacher patiently leading an ignorant child towards an enlightening moment. I'll leave it at that. I will not insult further by presumption. I know I will have my own experience with it soon enough.
John~
American Net'Zen
7
I agree with Mr.Fischer that NDE don't really proof the existence of afterlife. But they don't deny its existence, either. I think that we are all going to know the real truth only when the time comes.
3
In 1969 I was in a car accident that should have been fatal. As the car I was driving skidded off the highway and into a deep ravine because a tire had blown out in the midst of a blizzard, I thought "Now I am going to die." Instead, I left my body. When I looked down on it, it seemed to be little more than a dust mote. I entered a place of infinite light and love and peace. It filled me with inexpressible joy.
When I came back to my body, the car was totaled, but I felt wonderful. People were standing at the top of the ravine who had witnessed the accident. They could not quite believe that I was alive, and not only alive but not injured.
I have never forgotten the light, the love, the peace of that experience. I always tell people whom I know are experiencing what could be a fatal disease about the NDE I had and tell them not to be afraid.
When you have an experience like this, you know you are more than your physical body, and that there is another realm that is always there.
27
I don't think anyone can "reason" themselves to understanding an NDE. There are other ways of sensing what is "real." The brain is not only a reasoning device; it is a feeling device. It also enables human animals to do things that are completely unique and mysterious, such as formulate math problems, replicate in detail visual stimuli, compose music, etc. We see this in savants.
One should not try to find out if an NDE is "accurate" in terms of science. No one will ever authenticate an afterlife via reason, logic, or empirical means.
One can accept different kinds of truth, however. What the feeling, sensing mind accepts as "real" is true. What science isolates from the chaos of everything else in order to determine the accuracy of its existence and operation is limited to the reasoning mind and is "accurate," also "true."
Why insist on confusing the two truths? Accept them both.
Human beings flourish from the truth of myth as much as from the truth of empiricism. We cannot exist as fully human and sane without the truth imparted by the feeling brain. This is axiomatic in my field of study--that bizarre realm of phenomena called "religious."
4
When humans aren’t killing them directly, or destroying their environments, we recognize that other species live long, emotionally complex lives. Do those other animals have N.D.E,s? Do their minds live on in some afterlife? If not, why would ours?
So much hubris we have. We are a product of evolution, our journey to here no different than that of the whales or beetles we are driving to extinction. They’re not going to some mystical afterlife and neither our we.
9
@hey nineteen the Buddha saw flashes of his prior existences many of them in the animal form. These stories now form the basis of the Jataka Tales. Each time the Buddha as an animal performed wonderful deeds to benefit other animals which enabled him to accumulate good “points” progressively.
4
I've always been afraid of dying in an instant, such as an explosion. I very much want to experience the process of dying in a way that allows the remarkable architecture of my brain to go through whatever process we go through as we die.
Personally, I suspect at the moment of death we are forced to let go of the illusion of our separate-ness, and whatever mysterious energy makes us up transforms back into the all, like a wave breaking and flowing back into the ocean. That's where I've landed after many years of pondering.
8
As a child I had countless NDEs as a sort of bedtime “game” until my pre-teen years when one night I had difficulty “returning” to my body and that panic made me stop altogether, I may have picked up the technique when, as I child I sat by my dad’s side in the audience of a lecture by a hypnotist who may have given out the technique for self-hypnosis.
4
I had an N.D.E. almost 2 years ago. I had emergency surgery and almost died. Twice.
This is a "real" experience. Whether or not it's the body and mind shutting down, or it's just a perception of that process, the feeling of connection to everyone and everything else is very real and quite profound.
It did change me in many ways. I no longer fear death and I understand that there's something larger than myself going on in the universe.
Why is it necessary for us to analyze everything? Can't we just leave some things to chance and go on with our lives?
An N.D.E. is a priceless gift.
22
I had an out of body experience many years ago. My year old old son woke me up in the middle of the night. I was walking down the hallway to his room when I realized I was floating up above my body and looking down at it. I could see my legs walking , but I was totally disconnected from them, in fact they seemed like wooden tree trunks not alive. I remember feeling a bit alarmed, but I also felt more alive, more conscious of something that was far greater than me that I was a part of. I remember also being aware that I needed to get to my son to care for him, so I forced myself back down into my body. This happened about 40 years ago but I will never forget it.
15
The point is that these NDEs or other similar experiences (including of course sleep) is that they are ‘inner’ phenomena - the Great Subjective exists hand in hand with the Great Objective.
Until this ‘marriage’ of realms, if you will, this ground of being ‘fact’ is comprehended, & its profound implications, it is arguing about the shell rather than perceiving the kernel. Like in unified field theory, first & foremost, simplicity.
5
I never had an NDE, but I've read a lot about them since March 6, 1990, when I was meditating and suddenly was aware of the presence--the rather angry presence--of someone who was telling me I didn't know anything about him. I had read a gossip-column item that night claiming that the recent death of the teenage son of one of my favorite celebrities had been caused by cocaine, and I'd been so angry about his foolishness that brought his family such grief that I had had to take time to calm down before I could begin meditating. So I knew who the presence was--and that he had been dead for weeks. And it seemed that he was as surprised as I was by our connection. I apologized and he seemed grudgingly accepting, but I couldn't find out any more about his situation; it was almost as if he didn't realize he was dead. But for several weeks after that, I tried to meet him again during mediation, and sometimes succeeded. One night I awoke suddenly after dreaming that a young man on a white horse had handed me a tarot card, the Knight of Cups, and a few days later I found a tarot reader in the Village who read a layout for me and told me that the Knight of Cups was my brother. I didn't have a brother, but now I feel I do. (There's more I could tell, though nothing I can "prove." I only tell friends I know will believe me about this; many readers won't, but that's okay.)
6
I was willing to go along with the "NDE are some form of hallucination" argument, but then someone commented to me that, if these are hallucinations, why are the experiencers always running into departed friends and relatives and never people who are still living? In hallucinations, it would be quite natural to bump into a friend who is, in fact, still alive. Yet, this doesn't seem to happen in NDEs.
11
@Thomas Also, good points! Also, not a single person who has had a NDE ever even suggests it might be a hallucination. In fact, many say their experience on the other side was more real than their experience in this world.
4
There are many lovely and exotic hopes and beliefs that blink out to meaningless if one doesn't believe the human spirit is anything other than a type of materialism. The materialistic view makes bleak sense if you picture perception as atoms bouncing off atoms; feelings and thoughts as chemical and neurological stuff. Look at the catastrophic damage our self-aggrandizing, lofty beliefs suffer if we deconstruct "free will." That is quite easy. Did you actually generate your current thought from nothing? Wasn't there some impulse preceding it? Did you generate that impulse?
No, you didn't.
2
I've had an NDE during 12.5 hours of surgery at UCLA, and I've discussed it with Dr. Fischer, the author of this piece. What he says here is very similar to my own thinking about the experience, which has been extensive. Central aspects of it seemed absolutely lucid vivid lived reality, with me in surgery, heart and lung stopped, but, in the NDE, a conscious awake state of mind, witnessing with astonished wonderment -- but how? When I came out of the surgery, I remembered it immediately, as if it had really happened. Though I am cynical, skeptical, empirical and aspriationally rational, what happened in the NDE remains inexplicable, mysterious, rich with detail and imagery that suggested communication with an entity, which was intelligent, outside of language. The sense of "revelation" was palpable and continues to compel considerable reflection. It was unlike anything ever, before or since, and resonated with me as deeply meaningful and significant. I had a sense of transformation. What happened to me? I don't know. It might have to do with the chemical stew, the sedation, the anesthetic, that made the surgery possible. Or was it something else? At a conference put on by Dr. Fischer, which I attended, I exchanged thoughts on my experience with others. The stories were individuated, but all were variations on a theme. We all felt the same way.
15
@Louis Vandenberg
Hi Louis, it's good to hear from you and know you survived.
We are in Honolulu and you can remember when you held a forum at UCR about the Iraq war and I presented a paper. Will try to get in touch.
JR
Its very simple really. John Fischer's position, claim, and attitude is pure materialism. There is simply no physical, material evidence for the existence of anything that is not physical, i.e., made of matter. Nor could there be. His assumption settles the question from the outset.
The fact that his article is the product of his immaterial consciousness (using his brain to interact with the physical world) directly contradicts his assumption. But the assumptions of modern materialists are not questioned. That would be the end of science as we know it because the inquiring mind is only permitted to investigate matter.
5
@Jim Hindes You're right about Fischer's position but I don't think that's true about the end of science. It's science that has shown us that there could be more but the evidence in favour of a nonmaterial foundation is very limited but people are working on it. I'm sure you're aware of all the physics and consciousness research that is occurring and I think that's the fundamental question: is consciousness derived from a material source (the brain/body) or not? If it is, then Fischer is correct. If not, then there could be more or he could still be correct but we don't know.
Where do you think consciousness is housed if not in the brain/body?
4
@Jim Hindes
Yep, which is why you need a different method to investigate phenomena that are not material. It's called the phenomenological method and its instruments are empathy and suspension of disbelief. It opens the mind to the idea of different kinds and functions of "truth."
It's the only method so far of exploring these types of
questions. Empiricism is not a good fit for understanding NDEs. We just think we can investigate everything the same way. Doesn't work. Fischer takes
a responsible position and does not claim overmuch for his study of NDEs. Yet, they seem to be quite generically human and serve a definite purpose. Why question them?
1
@RamS
The body may, in certain situations, be able to access something like expanded consciousness, that we wouldn't be usually able to access.
5
Not only did I experience a N.D.E but have photographic evidence.
Mine occurred on the NYS Thruway during a snow storm two winters ago. It was a terrible night and suddenly it appeared I was about to enter a long dark tunnel at the end of which was shining a bright white light. Before I was able to make sense of it, my car threw itself into reverse and the right front side slammed into the guard rail. The crash brought me out of the dream-like state.
My seat belt had prevented any serious injury. I was just a little shaken and though the wheel housing and fender were bent and the car pulled to the right, I was able to drive to the next rest stop. Called a tow and the thruway police were alerted.
Weeks later I noticed that my phone camera though closed up inside a fanny pack around my waist at the time, had snapped a picture at the exact moment of impact. It appears to be capture close to what I had experienced visually.
It shows a gray striated band of white light, and some bending abstract forms parallel. Then what appears to be a brilliant display of exploding meteors fill two thirds of the frame. The picture properties shows the time, points of longitude and latitude at moment of impact.
(Will gladly make available the photo to any interested party.)
12
You say that "N.D.E.s show not that there is an afterlife, but that it is possible to die well, surrounded by loving companionship. We can die in sterile, cold hospitals — alone. (There are negative N.D.E.s.) Or we can die in a more humane setting, surrounded by loved ones."
But many people who have reported undergoing overwhelmingly positive near-death experiences -- in which they felt loved and surrounded by caring beings, in beautiful other-worldly environments "on the other side" -- were precipitated into these NDEs in often horrific circumstances, such as traffic accidents and ER emergencies, and often alone. On the other hand, people have reported having had dark, frightening NDEs, while surrounded by caregivers and loved ones in an optimum hospice setting as they "crossed over."
Going by the data, there isn't a correlation between the quality of an NDE and the circumstances in which it takes place.
Providing humane settings and supportive companionship for end-of-life care is an excellent goal. But there are no controls for directing what comes after. (Except maybe good karma.)
6
I look at NDE's from a mystical perspective. The NDE is an experience of the soul and the inner planes that are beyond the physical realm. It is a glimpse into what we will experience when we die. We are not the body we are soul. If you don't believe that then what is it in the body that we love but when the body dies it is no longer there? My beloved father died, but I didn't keep his body in my house. Because the body is not important - it is the soul - which is love and bliss that is important. The mystical paths teach dying while living; that it is possible to experience the inner light and sound of God by focusing the attention at the eye focus. Check out the path of Sant Mat, the mystical writings of St Theresa of Avila, Blake the poet's mystical experiences. There is actually a Science to spirituality. If you focus attention at the third eye you can experience yourself as soul. I don't have the intellect to debate the pros and cons of your arguement, I just love mysticism and want to share it.the
7
I have not had an NDE, but my uncle did when he was 40 and suffered a massive heart attack. His was fairly typical -- a light, a group of dead family members, telling him or gesturing him to go back. He told me it felt like they were on the other side of a glass wall.
I had asked him about this because I lost someone dear to me suddenly and though I'm not religious, I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing him again. When I asked my uncle whether the thought it meant there was life after death, he said no, that he thought it was a biochemical thing that happens and sets off certain synapses. It did, however, relieve him of his fear of death. He went on to live 59 more years of a morally exemplary life.
4
There are NDE experiences in which the patient describes
the appearance (or numbers) on the upper surface of the
reflector of the operating room lamp observed by the
unconscious patient on the table and other ER or OR
item descriptions that would be totally impossible for
her or him to know. One account of a NDE patient "greeted"by a relative whom she thought still alive--though she had a hospital admission and recent (hours before) death unknown to that patient. And so many other utterly
inexplicable stories.
Biochemical explanations can go only so far. Better for
professors of philosophy (or anything else) not to try so
hard to rule out a actual soul that long survives its body.
7
Not sure what I had, but when I was very young, I contracted measles with extremely high fever. This was in India, and the doctors told my parents there was nothing they could do for me. I have vague memories of lying on my mother’s lap while she sobbed. They tried to make me eat antipyretic crushed and mixed with honey, so they tell me. In any case, the only surreal thing I remember clearly was that I happened to be flying over the city of Bombay, alongside a goddess in red. It was an altogether fantastic experience and the wires below, as were the houses, buildings, greenery, are distinct in my mind. NDE? Who knows, as a kid, my idea of heaven might clearly have been my home city. In any case, I survived and thankfully no NDE’s to date.
6
Although I cannot cite the reference, I recall reading of a neurosurgeon reporting an experiment (during the course of brain surgery) of stimulating a section of brain tissue. The patient reported that during the stimulation the patient experienced an out-of body sensation of floating above and looking down at their corporeal body. One hypothesis given was that this sensation was related to the brains proprioception ability. May not other aspects of NDEs also have physiologic explanations?
3
I had an NDE in 1992. I was a teenager, climbing mountains, and jumped off a tall cliff into what I thought was a 15' deep pile of snow, but there was no snow. I brushed an inch of powder off on the rock slab beneath me with my hand, and then after seeing the hard fact of my fate, and without losing consciousness at all I slowly rose up and out of my body, in total peace. There was no pain, or remorse, I simply observed my sad looking, crumpled, unmoving body below. Then when I was about 25-30 feet above my physical self, I heard my best friend burst out laughing from the cliff top. I was then rapidly thrust back into my body, and straight into the pain of it all. I hadn't breathed yet, and still couldn't. I forced myself over on my side, the shock lasted a couple more seconds, then I took a huge breath and began to slowly recover. My friend was still laughing, and eventually I learned both my heels were broken.
I was surprised that my spirit had left my body and re-entered it so seamlessly, all the while my conscious self continued to think outside of my body. I appreciate how this article acknowledges the difference between what I know to be a lived authentic experience to me, and my own (or others) attribution of the meaning behind what happened to me. It is a mystery. And I sure am glad I still have a healthy body to contemplate it from now 30 years later. Maybe, just maybe, we will begin to understand how things work in these realms within my lifetime...
12
I can’t say I have had an NDE, but i have always wondered if a series of recurring nightmares I had as a young child were pre-birth experiences.
2
@Jen you might try regression therapy such as Dr Brian Weiss’ guided meditations. It might help resolving recurring nightmares. If nothing, these meditations are very deeply relaxing and one emerges refreshed and energized.
1
All this shows is the power of the human imagination, and the complexity of the brain that makes it possible.
People report being abducted by space aliens. People have been talking with gods and hearing voices since the dawn of recorded history (and probably before).
When a responsible theorist posits a mechanism, and a responsible experimenter brings forth evidence, then I’ll consider taking this stuff seriously.
The problem with articles like this is that they redirect people’s sense of awe away from Nature, which is truly awesome, and towards cheap theological trickery, which isn’t.
2
I have never had a NDE, though I believe others have. I think it is all in their heads, a natural mechanism that allows those whose time has come to exit this world serenely, without panic or dread.
What I have had is dreams of friends or close relatives who have died suddenly without any prior notice that this would occur. These dreams have been very vivid and real.
The most memorable one was my best friend since high school. We spent a lot of time together into our mid thirties. But he had demons of alcohol and manic depression. Before they were as treatable as they are today. And, I found out after he died, he harbored a number of dark secrets that he never told anyone. He was a suicide.
In this dream, my deceased friend suddenly appears at my door. I am elated that he is alive. We spend the day riding motorcycles and doing all the things we loved to do together. It gets late in the afternoon, and he tells me he has to go back to where the dead are. I ask him, "why did you do it? Why?" He tells me it was a sudden impulse, which he regrets, but there is nothing he can do about it now. We say goodbye, he starts walking away, and vanishes.
I know he did not really come back to me to say goodbye, that this entire scenario was fabricated by my mind, but it seemed so real. And comforting.
11
The mind is a function of the brain.
NDE are probably the brain's perceptions when the brain's blood flow is restored after some illness transiently decreased it.
2
@turbot in ancient India and Tibet, the word for mind is not the same as brain. The mind is a much bigger awareness that our tiny brain cannot fathom. The English language cannot capture this aspect of awareness or consciousness and western medicine has bizarrely overlooked it because it cannot be measured by current scientific tools. fMRIs don’t catch the phenomenon of “mind”.
Meanwhile ancient Buddhist psychology or abhidharma has explored this mind extensively. They inherited it from previous Vedic teachings. Compared to those explorations, western understanding is barely at pre school or kindergarten level. Sigh
1
I’ve come to think those whirlwind questions were like zen koans, not to elicit an implied “No, I wasn’t,” but, rather, “Yes, of course I was, if anything is, I, too, am.”
The voice continues to invite us into the created universe as an intricate and intimate presence as that universe.
2
Let us try to distinguish between a Near Death Experience and a much more accurate No Death Experience. The difference between the two is that a No Death Experience is a verification of immortality - the physical body is revealed as both an insubstantial but important vessel in a human's aspiration for inner or spiritual growth. Death is an illusion for an ascending soul.
What is not apparent to the vast majority of people is that the preparation for such a fundamental truth requires, first, an extremely strong and sincere desire to understand our position as humans on Earth. The second and even more daunting realization is that this Work, to create an immortal Soul, requires an immense amount of effort that cannot be accomplished in one lifetime.
Anyone who sets out on this Journey needs help from those who have traveled this Path. They include remarkable men who played remarkable roles in history. Shakespeare, Lincoln, Bach, Plato, Christ, Buddha. All shook and unlocked the bonds of earthly life.
Our age offers the Teachings of G I Gurdjieff, P D Ouspensky and Robert Earl Burton. The system they espouse is called the Fourth Way. It is an ancient and simple Path to consciousness based on Self-Knowledge acquired through observation of one's moment-to-moment reactions to our lives.
Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous" is a good starting point for study. Robert Earl Burton's "Self-Remembering" and
"Awakening" are invaluable in providing added clarification.
3
There seems to be an unearned assumption that links the good death surrounded by loved ones, to positive NDE's, and the unfortunate death in the chaos of a hospital room, to negative NDE's. Does it really work this way? Most of the NDE's I've heard of take place in operating rooms: certainly surrounded by loving and supportive people, but they are masked strangers carving you up, not exactly the conventional family gathering around the death bed...
5
All of these experiences can be explained by the changes in the brain when near death. It is biochemistry and electrical connections not some god. Religious people try anything they can to prove their religious beliefs. As a registered nurse from the ICU, I have one question: If there is a loving caring god, why does he give babies and children cancer?
9
@Molly Ciliberti Aren’t you mixing up two unrelated things, namely the existence of a god and the existence of an afterlife?
2
I had a near-death experience at the age of nine, during an all-night operation to detect the cause of unbearable pain and subsequently remove internal gangrene. By the time it was decided to undertake this hospital procedure I was weak and debilitated from the prevailing condition, as well as days of extreme pain; the entire surgery was touch-and-go as my life hung by a thread. During this N.D.E., which now at the age of 78 I still remember clearly, I lay prone on a low truck of the kind used in railway repair work. I travelled slowly, feet first, somehow looking down at myself as the truck moved autonomously along shiny rail tracks, through a dark winding tunnel and past an old mortuary platform with which I was familiar. After what seemed like an eternity, the tunnel and platform were left behind and the truck began a steep descent towards a great wide river flowing with light. My final vision was of a boatman in the middle distance, punting across the water in my direction.
Because of the brilliance of the surgeons and the exhaustive efforts of the hospital nurses, I was spared. However this N.D.E. remains possibly the most important pivotal event of my life, as it set the direction of my entire experience from then onwards. Every important personal decision, even today, is measured against it - with the assurance of knowing that whatever is to happen to me eventually, death is the opening to something new and gentle instead of one to dread.
24
Yes, "It is important to emphasize that their (the doctors) conclusions are not medical but philosophical."
Also, it is important to emphasize that your (the author, Mr. Fisher's) conclusions are NOT SCIENTIFIC but philosophical. There are no scientifically authenticated measurements of subjective experience.
8
It's also important to remember that science is not necessarily the only route to truth. Science cannot prove that any creature has any experiences, but we all know we do. Likewise, science is unable to prove or even describe the flow of time, something we are all familiar with.
6
This line of thought is always trotted out as “you can’t disprove God” (or Santa), etc. Science isn’t about proof. It’s about probabilities. Is the claim of a NDE more probable, in the light of the evidence, to be a product of the brain or the “supernatural”? There are no ultimate proofs. This is what separates a true skeptic who desires to be as objective as possible from a biased believer and the desire for the supernatural.
1
I had a non-death experience exactly like the near death experiences reported. In medical school I was the volunteer to experience hypoxia breathing 10% oxygen. (Air is 21% oxygen.) During the experiment the other med students monitored my vital signs, state of consciousness etc. Most people do not lose consciousness. I did. I felt like I was floating away to the ceiling and looking over the scene. Everything was very peaceful and pleasant. There was a glowing light in the room. Then I regained consciousness when I was given oxygen to breathe. I had this experience in 1965. I did not read about near death experiences until the 1970's when I recognized that NDEs are simply brain malfunction during hypoxia. I also had a very similar experience at age 5 when undergoing ether anesthesia for tonsillectomy.
8
For want of a better label I am a secular humanist, and I was also non-theist in 1972 when I had what is called “a near death experience “. I was not aware of that concept at that time. I recorded it briefly in my journal, among the more mundane postings about my job , relationships, etc. I didn’t tell anyone about it, nor was I excited about it until seven years later when I read about the markedly similar experiences of others, as recorded in Raymond Moody’s Life After Life. Halfway through the Introduction, I was overwhelmed with amazement, set the book down and tore through my old journals until I found the reference.
My theory is that the spectacular and wonderful experience results from a hormonal flood developed in humans over millennia as they/we face two painful realizations: That we permanently lose beloved friends and relatives through death, and that we ourselves will die. The hormonal rush eases those who experience it through the transition to death with truly beautiful visions, assurances of cosmic love and endless moral evolution, and intimations of immortality. But if these experiences do point to an objective reality, that would be very good news.
3
@Eleanor Smith Why would evolution develop something that eases the difficulty of dying? How would this help someone's genes to propagate?
I don't think this is too complex -- you see weird stuff when your brain isn't working normally.
1
@Eleanor Smith I they are due to a hormonal flood, what is the evolutionary purpose of this hormonal flood? Or the experiences are real.
1
I experienced an NDE when I was 19 - anaphylaxis-induced IVP procedure. I witnessed the actions taken to revive me, from above. I experienced excruciating pain beyond description, veins collapsed, paddles were used in an attempt to restart my heart, etc.. I was in a miserable room, the unkind technician ignored my plea when the solution entered my bloodstream, I was on fire. Time didn't stand still, it just didn't exist. I turned away from the ‘event’ and entered a liminal space. The turning away not physical, rather an essential leave-taking. I 'felt' a hand gentle on my arm and there was a woman wearing a calico dress (and I will leave out the rest of her absolutely legible features - I did not recognize her). She did not speak but I heard her. The pain had long since dissolved into something else, no less potent. She was not ethereal, but something else, tangible matter. It felt less like a coming back from somewhere and more like love. To conflate or explain NDE with philosophy or pharmaceuticals is flawed, akin to problem-solving, hoping for meaning, or the measurable. One thing that I am quite sure I took away from this rupture and dwelling in between (besides a few of the cliched epiphanies promulgated in sentimental reports by witnesses or the self-absorbed) was that we know very little at all - that reason is the most unnatural and most artificial course one can take to explain the ineffable. Holderlin, Primo Levi, and Luce Irigary have come closest.
11
@catherine There is no way to relate this experience in so few words. I have had several surgeries under full anesthesia since - there is no comparison. Also 'calico dress' was not in my repertoire of objects or patterns in memory. I was raised Catholic but left the church during my early adolescence. I have used mushrooms and LSD once and, though these drugs amplified, distorted, revealed, the experience of taking them did not come even close to the NDE. I did die. I sent my mother to find the woman and there was no one seen who matched that description. The arm that was touched was not the arm handled by the 'code' staff. I did not hallucinate, have hormonal surges, I did not experience all the other 'explanations' offered. I hardly tell anyone about it because it was an extraordinarily private and intimate thing. Anonymity and invitation allowed me to do so in this instance.
10
@catherine
Thank you so much for sharing your account. After losing my Mom, I will be forever grateful that I stumbled upon the NDE account of an American orthopedic surgeon published on the National Library of Medicine – National Institutes of Health website. After reading it, I found and listened to interviews of the doctor on YouTube. No one will ever persuade me that his experience wasn’t ‘real’. I think he took the leap, eventually going public despite possibly putting his practice and life’s work at risk, so that people would open their minds (a little).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179462/
This article does not do justice to the exquisite uniqueness of the near-death experience. Nor does the author take into account the experiences of an entire segment of the population who have had one and have little or no religious background or pre-conceived notions about death: children. He might want to check out Dr. Melvin Morse's work with kids.
Also, people undergo NDEs at every stage of their lives, not just at the end. Therefore I contend an NDE is less about the last part of our lives or that its primary value is to teach us how to die well; what does that even mean? An NDE is about life and living. Those who've had them say the same thing over and over again: they are changed in deep, profound ways. They no longer fear death. The petty concerns of life that once bothered them no longer do. They seem to see "the bigger picture." You can argue all you want about what happened to them when they "died", or where they went, but to me, this is the most significant and beautiful aspect of the NDE.
13
I not only had a NDE, I had an actual death experience. I apparently died twice on the operating table during a quad bypass. My experience was vast nothingness. It was just black for days until I regained consciousness. My lesson was to live each day as fully as I was able, because there ain't nothin' more ahead.
13
@Robert I don't think you died, man. You're writing a comment in the NYT - you're alive!
2
When I was 9 or 10, I almost drowned in a lake. I was unconscious and was revived by a lifeguard. As I was losing consciousness underwater, my life "flashed before my eyes".
It was like viewing a film reel in black and white.
5
There are multiple realities. There are realities we can measure, describe with math and model with physics. And then there are realities beyond what our current understanding of measurement, math and physics can describe. You take a rather simplistic approach to the topic and do not leave open the possibility that there is something involved that we currently cannot access through our technological means. Just because we know very little about NDEs does not mean they are less real. Those who've experienced them are drawn out of their positivist realities.
9
@David If there is a reality we cannot access through technology, we certainly couldn't access it through our brains / minds. That's the point of building sophisticated scientific equipment after all, to enhance our ability to know and observe the world around us. So, measurement, math, and physics actually expand the knowable and observable world; they don't compress it as it seems you're implying.
I think perhaps what's tripping you up is the distinction you see between one's own observations and technical observations. They're really the same thing -- Scientists are just humans who pay close attention to their observations about the world, and sometimes use technology to enhance their ability to observe.
1
Neurological research has established that, when one’s heart stops and the person is lucid, one knows that one’s heart has stopped for a short while before the brain loses consciousness.
The experience of losing consciousness gradually is like the experience of sudden low-glucose fainting: White light phenomenality, as if one is going into the light, when actually the light of waning consciousness is engulfing attention.
Together, the two are—in retrospect (when one is revived)—the experience of seeing oneself leave life by going into the light.
The phenomenology is simply that. If you already have a story of expectation about death, which the experience serves, then the experience gets so interpreted.
Near-death experience is real and quite “secular.”
8
The belief in God's existence is directly related to what we refer to as the "afterlife." If there is no afterlife and there is a finality about death, then the belief in God would not exist. Professor Fischer has the right to question the existence of both God and the after-life. So forgive me for venturing into the 'supernatural' realm but many miracles have been reported throughout history. These miracles continue to defy logic and science.
Just like NDEs, these miracles cannot be dismissed. It is possible that NDEs are strictly a mental reaction and have nothing to do with after-life. But that does not necessarily mean God and an after-life do not exist.
3
@Nav Pradeepan Of course. The existence of God and an afterlife do not hinge on a weird brain phenomenon. The article is simply saying that NDEs having nothing to do with God and the afterlife.
1
Clinical trials of the drug DMT, which is naturally produced in the pineal gland of the brain, have produced warm fuzzy feelings, visions including those of alien abductions and near death experiences (complete with the tunnel and light) in recipients of those trials. I find a natural explanation - for what are undoubtedly very real experiences - much more satisfying than those that point to an afterlife or spiritual explanation. Having said that - the commonality of the visions is extremely interesting and worthy of further study.
5
A Hobbesian philosophical view. The flaw in Western culture that is driving our lemming like demise. A proponent of NDE’s that Fischer doesn’t mention and has written some very interesting books on the overriding subject is Rupert Sheldrake a microbiologist/philosopher. In a recent book, Science set Free, he traces the history of philosophers from Hobbs in the 1600’s to present day. The overriding and persistent message is that all comes from matter, hence the ‘belief’ in materialism. Consciousness is a product of the brain (matter). I say ‘belief’ because we are now educated to exclude that which can’t be ‘proved’. Three hundred years ago the electromagnetic field was unknown and observed phenomenon (think the compass and magnets) wasn’t attributed the the electromagnetic field. The concept of an electromagnetic field was unimagined until Faraday. The concept of field of morphic resonance that Sheldrake expands upon is a fascinating idea. The premise is that there is a field (morphic resonance) that is the realm of an intelligence that infuses the life force and that our consciousness is connected to this field hence dreams, NDE’s unexplainable visions etc. He argues that our brains are like radio or tv receivers but at a level that in our every day life we tune out.
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@Tom C Great, what is the evidence for morphic resonance? There is a ton of evidence for electromagnetic fields, which tells us it's real. If there isn't evidence for an idea, eventually you have to discard it, or at least not bring it up in comments sections.
3
@Graham
Actually, there is some, (at least a bit of), evidence for Sheldrake's hypothesis of a morphic field.
I recall an interview in which Sheldrake mentioned a contest with a monetary prize for the best idea for testing this idea. As he had no idea how to test it.
One prizewinner came up with the idea of nursery rhymes in a foreign language that had been chanted by Moms for centuries. (That way the words would be imprinted into the field).
The test was: would people, unfamiliar with that language find it easier to memorize the ancient rhyme than 2 similar rhymes in that same language, one of nonsense words/meanings and the other of a modern nursery rhyme, both created just for the test.?
Sheldrake said the generations old rhyme won out definitely over the 2 alternatives. To his credit, he did not claim this as a final proof, but said the morphic field hypothesis was open to further investigation, as I recall.
I do not recall who gave this test, but investigate his website for more info.
1
NDEs are pretty well explained as symptoms of oxygen deprivation. I had two such experiences under anesthesia, with all the elements of looking down on my own body, traveling through a tunnel towards a bright light, etc. Both experiences were terrifying.
4
All we have about the subject are opinions.
Each age redefines what reality is based on the status of knowledge and a hunch. Think of the ancient Greeks and Descartes.
I give the author his due, but he is no more authoritative about the metaphysical than those he surveys. We'll know, or not know, when we get there. God---god---bless us all and good luck.
2
I had a death experience when very small; a prolonged drowning/immersion in cold water. (Nowadays they call it "near drowning" even though you actually drowned.) I was thought to be gone. Resuscitation efforts were not working. I was so cyanotic my father described me as " navy blue". My heart was not beating. I had been unseen and not found for more than 20 minutes. I was 2 and the water was icy. Survival at that age under those conditions is possible though not likely. I was in a coma for a week after they got my heart and breathing going again. There were a lot of worries about what functions I might have left if I did wake up.
I can't recall anything except falling in. But it has affected me. For one thing even when very sad or difficult things happen I think : " Well, but think, you could have missed it all." And the " all" has been mostly truly lovely. The other thing I would say is that for me the veil between worlds is thinner. I don't invite those moments. But I'm sure there is another side and that some essence of one's former self is retained there. Both my parents came by for a visit after their deaths, Their lives had not been that easy; far from it. But both were wreathed in smiles and said it was great. For what it's worth...you asked.
23
Even Alexander and his stories and publicity-seeking personality strike me as very unpleasant, and untrustworthy. There are many more people like this, but that is not all there is to say about nde’s.
I often find attempts to explain the similarities between them (seeing oneself from above, the famous tunnel, all-around vision, communication without speaking) as the result of the brain shutting down unconvincing. A bit childish even, sometimes. People can have these experiences in moments of great fear, for instance, when there is no lack of oxygen, or opiates involved and their brains are completely functioning. Why then these similarities?
Nowadays this is simple: they could have read about it online. But to my surprise ‘the tunnel’ is already there in a painting by Jeroen Bosch, and I came accross a description from a girl who almost drowned in the 18th century once that had a lot of the famous elements.
As long as we cannot fathom undeniable aspects of the world we live in, such as that time and space have I beginning and no end, I see no reason to reduce consciousness completely to a function of the brain.
We figured out a lot about the laws of nature, but we are more like a bunch of toads who figured out how the pump in the terrarium works. They now think they know everything, and those silly toads who claim they see things move on the other side of the glass walls are being superstitious and unscientific!
7
@Elisabeth I think, if you're motivated to believe something, you will find a way to believe it. The secular approach is to start with next-to-nothing and see what you arrive at by looking at the evidence. It doesn't mean there can't be something outside the terrarium -- it only means that there's no reason to think there is. If it makes you happy to hold a belief, the secular approach won't stand in your way. In fact, if we're looking at the evidence, humans believe all sorts of crazy things, so your belief is not out of line with normal human behavior. Just, if you find yourself asking, "What is?" instead of "What do I beleive?" there is another approach that has consistently found no evidence for anything supernatural.
1
Even if one almost dies, isn’t an NDE still just another ‘life’ experience? Like dreaming, the body does what it does and sometimes it feels fantastical. But as for after the body has actually given out? No one knows. Except for me, that is. And I promised I wouldn’t spill the beans.
4
There is a broader context that I do not see discussed. There are several dimensions to this issue that have been reported, and reliably investigated to the point that they cannot be falsified.
There are verified past life experiences, to mention just one, that of James Huston, the WW II pilot who died in action and who has returned as James Leininger today. There are others. Dr. James Tucker at the University of Virginia medical school discusses these.
The many reported "foot of the bed" accounts of dying individuals who carry on conversations with dead family members. Hospice nurses regularly report these.
The case of the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who met and conversed with a dead former patient in her office at the University of Chicago.
My own mother saw a vision of her sister before she knew that she committed suicide. My brother saw a vision of his son before he knew that he had died in an auto accident. They clearly had returned to say goodbye.
What is the broader context? Dr. Pim von Lommel makes it clear: consciousness is continuous: before we are born, while we are here, and after we die.
Modern neuroscience clings to the paradigm that consciousness is a physical manifestation of the brain. It yet does not have another model.
17
I recently had a near-death experience with an ice-cold vodka martini.
2
I have never had an out of body experience, but many out of money experiences.
8
Many of the unusual N.D.E.'s described by Raymond Moody and others may tell us important things about the phenomenon of consciousness. These should not be cavalierly dismissed as "illusions" because experiences per se cannot be illusions: they are what they are. The oceanic experience described by many who have had N.D.E.'s is comparable to "the mystical experience" described by William James in his book "The Varieties of Religious Experience." What these experiences tell us about consciousness is profound, and the profundities have barely begun to be plumbed.
4
OBE and Conservation of Energy
I've never had a NDE and I'm thankful. But, I have had an OBE. I was alone in a quiet, high-ceilinged study hall in college. There were a handful of other students sitting around studying, quietly chatting. I was in a very relaxed and tranquil mood. Suddenly, I realized that I was looking down at my physical self from about 6 feet above. I peered around and saw the same setting and people, but just from a higher perspective. When it dawned on me that I was floating above myself, I got frightened and then my ephemeral self kind of just got sucked back in (rushed back in?) to my physical self. I sat there stunned. Once the strangeness and fear subsided, I was beyond curious at what had just happened. I have since used meditation to try to recreate the relaxed state I was feeling which led to this OBE, but without any luck.
I'm not religious and don't believe in heavens or hells. But it was then that I realized and accepted that there was a soul or spirit or energy or life force within me that was not tied to my physical body. And as I learned more about the Law of Conservation of Energy as well as multi-verse theories, I came to accept that after my physical death, the energy within me will continue onwards. In what form? To what end? With a sense of myself? All unknown. The benefit of this experience is that while I fear suffering, I don't fear my physical death and the mystery that awaits intrigues me.
8
@Mike Bonnell look up the teachings of Sant Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj
It is so telling that almost universally NDEs are what the participant can understand. We don’t read or hear of undefinable experiences that are totally foreign to our worldly sense. NDEs provide some wishful thinking for a subject when we seem to be untethered to reality. But our experienced reality sets the stage for the movie. And notice how each culture produces experiences similar to others except for their local hue, and we respect those experiences while criticizing, damning or rejecting their beliefs when awake on earth.
Can anyone honestly and demonstrably say what their experience in the universe was before those two gametes formed a zygote and were off to the races? Why would we think or believe the next stage would be any more understandable?
1
This essay is typical of physicalist commentary on human experiences that call into question their metaphysics of choice. Ignore the most interesting cases that provide veridical evidence that is impossible under materialism. Ignore the number of common experiential elements across thousands, if not tens of thousands of cases. Ignore numerous emergency room cases in which people report the most intense experience of their lives, ie more real than real, while under full anesthesia or full cardiac arrest with no brain activity. If such experiences are possible in non-existent or greatly compromised brain states why is a normally functioning brain required for merely real experience? Make believe labeling the experience a "hallucination" is actually an explanation, rather than just hand-waving. Show your ignorance of the data by saying something simply wrong. There is no common element of going to a "guarded realm" in NDEs. One wonders if Mr. Fischer displays this level of motivated reasoning and willful ignorance of the data in his academic work? This kind of "keep moving nothing to see here" arguing from authority is no longer tenable now anymore than the Catholic Church could prevent the Reformation after the invention of printing.
4
My first time to the ocean beach and my parents setting up with my older half brother - I ran down to the shore unseen and the first wave knocked me down and after several more waves I inhaled the water and all was peaceful - felt the rocking motion but was having visions/dreams of my family and it wasn't bad or scary at all - then I'm throwing up on the beach - my half brother had pulled me out. I didn't get to the light at the tunnel part but have read up extensively as I could on NDE experiences. I go with the side that says your brain chemicals put you in sort of an LSD experience where you regress back to earlier childhood memories. Like Stanislav Graf LSD experiments which got people back to the tunnel experience which may just be the passage through the vagina and out into the first light and a doctor/nurses.
5
Until one is dead, not just unconscious, but truly dead, the experience of being dead is impossible to know. Anything which we think that we perceive is imaginative, including what we recall from near death experiences.
We can imagine approaching heaven, hell, or purgatory according to what we believe already. We can imagine nothingness according to what we believe as well. None of it is proof of anything except our gift of imagination.
2
If you have an NDE you are still alive and can have any variety of mental experiences. When you are dead you are gone. There is no proof of any kind of life after death. People believe in all kinds of nonsense because of a fear of death.
4
@Jack depends on what you define as “mind”. We are temporary residents in our bodies but our awareness is a constant stream, because life just wants to be. All of our awarenesses download or upload to ONE motherboard of Awareness who simply delights in the multiplicity plurality diversity of experiences. It doesn’t matter we on earth experience everything from pain suffering discontent jealousy attachment depression elation joy happiness and the entire spectrum of experiences because this here on earth is where that ONE can experience is Through you and me physical beings who are basically recycled stardust.
1
I’ve read most of the comments. I’m a 62 year-old “executive.” I’m credible. I’ve had dozens, and dozens, of outer body experiences. I don’t know if they were NDEs, but “I” or my “soul” or my “consciousness” has left my body many times. I rise above my bed and feel as though I’m being sucked away into some type of vortex. I cannot move a muscle, or voice my absolute fear, because I have lost my motor skills. Am I dying? It is fascinating, but very scary because I feel I can’t get back to my body.
My wife can tell when it happens and shakes me vigorously, which brings me back. Back in my youth, in braver times, I could actually induce this OOB experience, thinking that, if I could control it, I could travel anywhere. But it was just too harrowing. I do this less frequently now, perhaps because my fear is protecting me somehow. But it still happens. It’s real, and if I could harness it, it would be spectacular, I think. But I always want to come back more than I want risk exploring the limits.
I know there are others out there who have similar experiences. It doesn’t make me more religious (I’m kind of a slack Catholic). It does convince me, absolutely, that we can travel outside our bodies, and maybe it’s a sneak preview of a real death experience.
I’m not sure what it means, but I am sure it’s real.
9
@Ed I've had similar experiences too and I'm a hard core scientist and it's scary and exhilarating at the same time. It definitely feels like your "spirit" has left the body and is exploring the surroundings. In one experience, I was seemingly given the choice by the universe to either leave my body and join the universal consciousness or return back to my family. So I hurried back. It's like a waking dream but very vivid, etc.
IF you buy into materialism, then it is all a sophisticated hallucination. If you think there's more to consciousness than your brain/nervous system, then there could be something going. I tend to prefer the former explanation but until the consciousness problem is sorted out, we won't know for sure.
3
Oh go ahead, explore.
The author presupposes naturalism as an explanatory framework for the phenomena he seeks to understand, so of course he comes to naturalistic conclusions. There is nothing surprising about this, but there is also nothing informative about this. It is as inevitable as multiplying a prime number by 2 and discovering that the product is even. We learn nothing new about the phenomena he is seeking to understand, except what his previously existing explanatory framework permits.
6
If, "The big question is: Do N.D.E.s provide a proof of heaven? Or hell?" Then I would say that the big answer is, it doesn't really matter.
Whether or not peoples experience of religious or spiritual events is concrete, in the kind of terms defined by the author, is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is how it affects those people, and those around them. Particularly if it's in a positive way.
Speaking of ultimate reality, as far I can tell, there is only one undeniable truth, and it comes in the form of Cogito Ergo Sum from Descarte's Meditations. This phrase is often translated as "I think, therefore I am". However, I don't think of it that way. To me, the true end result of the Meditations is this - that something is happening.
The contents of our thoughts and/or senses is not guaranteed. We've all had dreams that we thought were real. Our senses can be deceived, etc, etc. But, the fact that "something" is occurring cannot be denied - period.
So, if this is the only real certainty, which it is, then the nature of a "reality" beyond that remains in question. And each person is free to choose what that means to them.
That, however, does not mean that all definitions are equivalent in their ability to describe and predict what's actually happening. Science, logic, reason, mathematics, physics, etc, give reality a more "solid" feel, because they're consistent.
And knowing that has lead me to the belief that "reality" is, essentially, a probability matrix.
2
Years ago, I was a passenger involved in a head-on car collision — impact speed: 100mph.
My date and I were thrown into the windshield of his convertible (thankfully, the top was up) and seriously injured.
While unconscious, I felt a different kind of consciousness, a magnetic pull toward darkness — the undertow of death, I suppose. Taking deep breaths, I pushed myself free of it.
'
When I came to on a stretcher, I heard a calm and loving voice speak to me from above. "Jennifer, you are a very, very good person," it said.
Even stranger, the divine voice I heard was my own. I felt at peace and understood that God is in all of us.
The experience was a gift I accepted with open hands and an open mind.
I don't have answers. I have reasonable doubts about NDEs, an afterlife, even God's existence sometimes. I root for the unfathomable anyway. If the mystery of faith helps me move through life a lighter person, I'll take it!
There's a great line spoken by Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
When asked if she's marrying for money, she replies,
"Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?"
6
This author assumes that "accurate" equals "external." He says that if an experience cannot be proven to have "external" existence, it isn't real, even if the reality of the experience to the experiencer cannot be denied. This argument only works if you can agree with the author's assumption about reality, namely, that what is outer has an existence separate from the inner.
It's not surprising that an argument of this nature would be published in a newspaper, but if you are open-minded and interested in exploring the topic further, this YouTube channel has a number of moving and beautifully produced videos about NDEs:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Po06059DOMqDCItQBz7SA/
5
Ah, yet another issuance of the classic ignorant academic scientific naturalism that has been poisoning the world for at least three centuries now! Of course our author bypasses dealing with the actual evidence for NDE's by distracting us with his largely irrelevant neurophysiological, psychological, and philosophical musings about the unreality of heaven and hell. As if that were central to the issue at hand.
How much more helpful it would have been had Fischer dared examine the abundant evidence for the reality of near death experiences, especially in relation to associated out-of-the-body experiences. It is now thoroughly well-documented that the consciousness of some hospital patients at the threshold of death becomes reoriented from inside their body to a vantage point outside of it, from which viewpoint they subsequently observe doings in the room by hospital staff that could not possibly have been seen from the patient's closed-eye bodily position. When, after recovering normal bodily awareness, those patients report their observations to hospital staff in some instances the staff confirm the very specific factualities presented to them. This has been clearly documented on numerous occasions.
Of course, once you critically review the evidence for NDEs, OBEs, synchronicity, and the many other direct disproofs our the dominant scientific reductionism, you have to confront the fact that you-and our entire culture--has been deeply deceived for a very long time.
2
@Citizen Bill Great, what is the evidence? What are the specific things the patient couldn't have observed while lying on the table? How was this information recorded and verified? Who conducted the experiment and where was it published? If your claim is true, it is revolutionary, and there are entire PhDs and scientific careers, entire university departments even, to be had. Your claim is an academic goldmine. Unless, of course, it's not true. But the great thing about science is that it steadily finds the truth. So if you're right, someone will make a career out of proving it. I'm still waiting...
2
Why are we fixated on the proof of a heaven or hell in NDE's which only shows our Christian bias? As a hospice volunteer for several years i have experienced often the energy of a dying person leaving the body. Where that energy goes and what happens to it I do not know, but there is a mystery in death which we will all experience sooner or later. But somehow I sense that there is more to fear in living our lives sometimes than what may await us in our dying.
4
I have an N.D.E. every day.
Or should I say every night.
It's called falling asleep.
3
Strong scientific evidence that the 'tunnel' effect often reported in so-call near death experiences is related to oxygen deprivation:
https://www.livescience.com/11010-death-experiences-linked-oxygen-deprivation.html
3
I have often wondered if NDEs are simply neurological happenings in the brain as one's body goes through the throes of death.
2
"They are interpreted as showing (or “proving”) that the mind is not the same as the brain and can continue after the brain stops functioning,..."
Perhaps the"mind" here is actually the soul.
At 62 years old I was raised Roman Catholic, and am now what one might say is a recovering Catholic. I believe one's soul never dies, so to speak. Primarily based on the religion I was raised and educated in.
When discussing an everlasting soul, a few of my Jewish friends have communicated to me that when you pass, your soul ends then and there. There is no afterlife. None of us will know until our time comes. My thoughts are live life to the fullest in our universe in the time God grants you. I really enjoyed this article.
2
NDE's may not prove there is an afterlife, but they may indicate that there is something in us--call it a soul, consciousness--that can be separated from our body and continue to perceive and think. This in turn would indicate to me that there is more to life than what we experience on this earth.
6
Magical thinking
2
I had NDE in 1999. I careered off a mountain while hiking and was (for a period of ~30 seconds) facing almost certain death, or catastrophic injury. Despite every sinew in my body keeping me upright and alive (an intense fight-or-flight response in itself is a biological marvel) as I lost control my “final” 5-10 seconds were out-worldly. As an agnostic, I’ve explained away my experience as my brain preparing me for the inevitable. As I neared my “end” I went through the following: 1) I realized intellectually that I no longer had any say in whether I was going to live or die, 2) this “certainty” was a tremendous relief I literally felt the weight of life come of my shoulders. 3) My life flashed past me and I had the experience that I had indeed no regrets 4) I felt this tremendous “purity” 5) then suddenly, I no longer existed as a separate entity “in” the world. I no longer felt distinguishable from the grass and rocks around me. I tell people I had the experience of “dissolving” into the space around me like in The Matrix. I can relate to the TED talk neuroscientist who had a stroke who talks about tapping into the world’s collective energy, 6) I stopped struggling as I felt the vessel that was my body no longer contained me and I had already begun to move on from the physical world 7) before i hit the ground I experienced tremendous euphoria/peace. I can’t say the experience was life changing but I have made a point to tell my loved ones not to fear their final moments.
74
@F O Ceirin Your comment tends to confirm my gut feeling that it is difficult to judge whether NDE's are accurate depictions of an external reality because we really have very little scientific understanding of the nature of our own consciousness -- how it arises and why it exists at all.
I remember vividly a New Year's Eve gathering the year my wife died; somehow in the conversation I said my one big question was whether or not I would, in some way, see her again. Another guest there, of East Indian descent, said, "I'll answer that question as soon as you can explain to me what YOU are."
I confess I had and have no persuasive answer.
10
@F O Ceirin
Thanks for sharing your experience.
I had a powerful dream of dying once, the dream did not stop at the time of the imaginary death and move on to an outer body experience, the light, the tunnel, sense of multiple presences and voices. It was kind of beautiful for an instant.
The journey did not stop there though it continue with the sensation of an awareness stretching over fantastic distance but "diluting" and deeming into infinity between the stars.
I remember thinking NO, I can't be going right now into a trillion pieces, I have things I can do here that matter. It was not fear, just an absolute declaration of will from every cell and atoms in my body. It woke me up very shaken. The primal NO got seared into my memory deeper than any other experience.
For someone never absolutely sure about anything it was a very foreign feeling. The dream reminded me that I needed a purpose to live, and I need reminding that I care.
7
I've had two NDE's. It was like the flash and shrinking dot that extinguishes and disappears when you turn off an old-style vacuum tube television. Extinction. Oblivion. There was nothing spiritual about it - except the profound realization that everything is temporary.
2
Mr. Fischer writes, after stating that Christians have different N.D.E.'s from Buddist, Hindus, etc., ''it does not follow from this sincerity and certainty that the religious beliefs are true, literally interpreted. How could they all be, given their radical differences? So too with N.D.E.s.''
That a Hindu might have more than six hundred variations of attributes of divinity and a Jew one does not make either of their beliefs untrue-or true. It is illogical to have that conclusion. It is true to them. It is the adherents' cultural link to something greater than themselves.The N.D.E.'s of all of the different religions/cultures are all the same-an experience that there is more. That is the similarity of their experiences. The Native American's Great Spirit, even when personified in the wolf of the forest or the bison of the plains, has the exact same experience as the monotheist. And that is that there may be something more.
An excerpt from Kahlil Gibran; You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
6
I "died" on an exam table when I was 24 years old during an electrophysiology exam on my very sick, dangerously arrhythmic heart to see if there was a drug that might correct the problem. My heart went into ventricular fibrillation, causing my heart and breathing to stop. It took some time to revive me, I was later told, as multiple shocks with defibrillator paddles did not work. What I experienced was like going to sleep at night without dreaming: you are there, and then you are not. When you wake in the morning, the last thing you remember is lying down to fall asleep. There was no light, no tunnel, no relative or holy figure to greet me. Just nothingness. Black. Not good. Not bad. Just absent. Was it near death? I think it was more than near. And, sorry folks, it's not as we would wish. When I tell people this, they grasp for reasons why I might be mistaken: "It wasn't your time." "Maybe you just don't remember." But I know what I didn't see. I pull back a bit, to be kind, telling them, "Well, I know I'm not going anywhere after this life—but, who knows, maybe you are." That does the trick.
3
For those who practice Bardos, NDE is nothing special. And Bardo Thodol can certainly be a user manual. More than a language game though, since different religions (including atheism, if you like), may prescribe different ontologies to similar phenomenon but Bardo Thodol describes multiple phenomena but only subscribe to one path per its adherents
2
When you want something to be true, you'll go to almost any length to believe it.
1
Oh come on. Nobody has died and come back. Dead is dead - the electrical activity of the brain has stopped. The animating presence doesn't live on ....dead is dead. And what hope are we talking about - dead experiences? Comforting beliefs in the afterlife? Nahh - just let dead be dead. We and everyone we love is going to die and be forgotten. That's the beautiful thing!
3
In 1973, when I was in the recovery room
after emergency abdominal surgery, I definitely had a NDE. I floated up into the ceiling corner of the room where my deceased adored grandfather and a young dear friend who had died were greeting me with warm smiles on their faces. At the same time, I could feel a very strong pull from my two very young and crying-for-me children to come back to be with them. I have never felt such extraordinary warmth as I was being drawn into the arms of death/afterlife, and every detail is as clear to me today as it was then. I think about it often, and it gives me a lot of hope.
Sincerely,
Dorothy Dundas
Newton, MA
617-510-0336
10
I can believe that i had that experience. I had an IV in my arm and one part was potassium. I do not remember what part two was. What ever it was, it was not flowing. The attending nurse forgot to turn it on before she left the room. I was mostly asleep, just waking up from my operation. The pain was searing. I could not move but i did scream. Several people came running into the room, as i remember. I was then calm. They, were yelling and screaming. i watched this all happen for, it seemed, like hours. Watching from far above the scene. Not at all religious. No angels or trumpets. I know it was part of an awake dream.
1
Now that they have a name for my autism it has me questioning the reality of day to day "reality". I don't believe in anything supernatural, I only know a universe far wider than the natural I can comprehend.
The 18th century Jewish mitnagdic philosopher Elijah of Vilna said math and science came be religious study. Maybe we must study reality before imagining it. How do we know all the Europeans spoke an Indo-European language that originated in a single European Valley. It seems more preposterous than the Tower of Babel. Four and half billion years is a long long time.Maybe the two mole rats are still around from Noah's ark and we can learn to communicate.
2
When I was a child I was extremely sick I had an abscess in my throat that was suffocating me to death. It took along time for doctors to identify how sick I actually was. One night at home I almost suffocated to death in my sleep. I distinctly remember having a vivid dream where 2 elderly and kindly women stood over my body and in muffled voices pitied me and said I was not ready. Soon after I woke up and my parents rushed me to the hospital.
I have never really processed what I think of my near death experience. Was it just a kids dreaming brain trying to cope with dying, or was it a spiritual experience?
I have never really been able
3
Carl Sagan said it best. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"
The so called NDE has been explained by Science. It has nothing to do with an imaginary afterlife.
1
@David
....And what, please, is the scientific explanation for a "so-called NDE"??
1
@David
Is an NDE experience such an "Extraordinary claim" when a multitude of persons report it?
Sure, there is room for critical thinking and even a moderate dose of skepticism, but don't we have to be mindful that a Demand for "Extraordinary Proof" can easily veer into close-mindedness???
Just Askin.
1
I had an extremely realistic dream last night that I was eating a giant marshmallow.. when I awoke, my pillow was gone.
2
The universe acts without will or desire.
@YIOTTA
Why?
NDE what an extraordinary moment. But it’s just like the many little tricks the brain plays. Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? It’s scary but causes no harm, although your body is rigid for several moments unable to move a muscle. Then there is exploding head syndrome. I suffered from it for a few years. Just as you are about to fall asleep a detonation rattles your entire being as if you happen to be standing next to a howitzer at the wrong moment.
It’s a very strange organ. NDE is one of those little tricks it plays on you, and since it’s your brain, it’s you.
3
Why are near death experiences so important to us? perhaps we crave a second chance or we can not face that life as it is is all there is. Maybe we just want to hang on to our conscious egos, the art of us that experiences this life.
But all we have really is really this moment and if we live in fear of what may be we may lose the chance to love what is here. Buddhism teaches this, but in Tibetan Buddhism there is a concept called the Bardo, a period after death wen you learn the way you have lived in all its joys, sorrows and fears. Still even if you do not believe in this the importance of life right now is most important.
I believe with my experiences as a hospice volunteer that the esense of our lives continues whether with our egos intact, in heaven or hell or in a Bardo state I do not know, but we will all find out soon enough, but how to live my life right now without fear is still the greatest question.
2
Seems quite possible the "nature' involved is a reduced amount of oxygen as we near death. As we dream, typically it's at a time when our breathing is slow, reducing oxygen in the brain. The rest is "nurture."
Sorry, but there is no god, no afterlife, and this is the only heaven. All the phenomenon described herein is the biochemistry of trauma. Live life now, don’t waste it hoping for some miracle. Now is your only opportunity.
56
Mr. Lauren, I'm curious, have you read, listened or spoke to anyone who has had a NDE experience? Also, can you provide any evidence of your claim that there is no afterlife and that NDEs "the biochemistry of trauma"? Thank you.
12
@Darrel Lauren sure if you say so! If every human knew and understood that as truth we would not have wars famines destruction genocides murders gun shootings cursing name calling bullying. Every individual would treat the other with kindness generosity equanimity respect dignity.
But it isn’t so, is it? Messiahs come and go, they preach by example, they sacrifice themselves, yet humans do not learn. Do you know why? Because the followers of these messiahs misinterpret their teachings, weaponize them to proselytize forcibly convert and then cleanse the world based on some barrow definition of purity.
If anything human beings are inherently sweet kind generous but they are “conditioned” by society to turn into monsters. Today in 2020 cynicism rules!
3
Couple of points are off here. First off, this reality is occurring in consciousness, this is an experiential fact, you are conscious of this article as you read it, and also conscious of yourself. Hence your primary state of being, the foundation is consciousness. The mistake, or the bias is that we think we are bodies with consciousness.. There is only one consciousbess, it is a plane of awareness outside of time and space, in fact time and space occur in it, hence the relativity and even non existent nature of everything when examined closely. We are not bodies with consciousness, we are consciousness to which a body appears. String theory, quantum physics and unified theory speak for this. The content of the experiences of NDE’s are relative, illusory, and imagined, as well as our lives. Welcome to the dream of your higher self, the good news is that you are divine, always have been and always will be, and your perceived human experience is just that, a dream.
5
Worked in ICU for years. My best guess is that the "near-death experience" has something to do with hypoxia, that is, not enough oxygen getting to the brain.
4
In-between all the 'akshually what you are describing is' there are some fascinating NDEs recounted here. Gives me hope.
3
My father was sick and in the hospital for several weeks. He had heart issues, breathing issues, organs were failing. I live in NJ, over 60 miles from the hospital where he was in PA. I was thinking about him, worried, pacing but all of a sudden felt a strong, strange feeling like a release. I called my brother in PA but no answer. The reason I couldn’t get him on phone was he was calling to tell me our dad had just passed.
6
Let’s get real. There is no heaven. There is no hell. It doesn’t bother me a bit.
I don’t fear death.
Please don’t promote superstition.
Mike
6
After an emergency Caesarean section to deliver my first child, by all accounts both from attending doctors and nurses at the hospital, I nearly died. Following the birth, during another emergency surgery for advanced peritonitis, I experienced the following: I was looking down upon my own, "lived" experience as the spoke in a wheel, whereupon the wheel abruptly stopped and I then, horrified, recognized the visage of my attending obstetrician. Of course I was anesthetized at the time. And of course, this experience was damned eerie. But near-death experience? What do you think?
These comments are utterly depressing. What century are we in anyway? What's that Galileo guy looking at through that tube of his? Got any leeches, doc?
The most compelling argument to believe in NDE as proof of the afterlife seems to be that it doesn't hurt anyone, so why not?
Because it degrades the actual miracle that is this life. One of our biggest mistakes ever occurred after the Reformation when both Catholics and Protestants took the focus off this life and started arguing over who could guarantee your entry into a fantastical afterlife. Sheesh.
39
This is Tom, Eileen’s Vietnam veteran husband. I experienced what I consider to be at least a partial NDE. While serving as a Hospital Corpsman in a marine infantry company the Spring Of 1969 and at night in the mountains north of Khe Sanh. NVA sappers got right up on top of us and throwing satchel charges( plastic explosives), no shrapnel but severe concussions coming from right to left eventually bracketing my fox hole. There became a period of time when I no longer experienced my body, and as I say my short “life review” , said goodbye to my family loved ones, my girlfriend who is my wife today and then a sense of calm that I was leaving. The critical moments past, I did not die and I began to try and do my job. It takes decades to ponder and reflect upon such a thing. If it had been my end I was no longer terrified like I had been when the assault began and how it ensued. So the duality of conscious living breathing life and my existence and the sense that my soul will transcend and ascend is not abstract. For these now many years, conscious of the fragility of life and my mortality each day I try and some times fail to cherish every breath and every day, my family, precious friends and God’s great green, brown and blue earth.
6
I nearly died 15 years ago from a pulmonary embolism. If my partner had not been in bed with me, I would have slipped away. I did not see loved ones, lights, or angels, or anything else. I just felt profoundly exhausted. However, for some reason I am much less afraid of death now.
3
Not sure why the term "supernatural" has come to exclude the "natural" part of the word.... the fringes of nature are still nature.
3
Look, it seems to be a deep fact about the world that anything that happens to anyone in it admits of some scientific explanation. So I assume some day there will be some neurophysiologic explanation of NDEs. I actually don't think that means that they aren't accurate--in the same way that the fact that there's a satisfying evolutionary explanation of the origins of life on earth doesn't mean that God (or whomever) didn't create life.
If there a divine, personal being, he/she/it clearly prefers to work *through* entirely lawful forces.
4
I have been researching NDEs (not N.D.E.s) for over 30 years. Having read Dr. Fischer's piece and the responses, I notice that both contain errors. For example:
- NDEs do not always occur during unconsciousness.
- Approximately 80% of people who survive a close brush with death remember nothing noteworthy; the absence of an NDE in their cases does not negate the reports of NDEs by the other approximately 20%.
For people interested in "getting up to speed" on what is known about NDEs, I recommend two books:
- The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation (2009). Includes my chapter on veridical (verified) perception in NDEs, including hospital studies attempting to "capture" this phenomenon.
- The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena From Near-Death Experiences (2016). Over 100 cases of veridical perception, including cases in which the perception appears to have occurred during cardiac arrest and no measurable brain function. Dr. Fischer claims that in each case, the experiencer simply does not remember having gotten the information through normal means. I encourage readers to read the entire book carefully and come to their own conclusions. My own conclusion is very different from Dr. Fischer's.
In my view, NDEs are of value not only as an indication of a possible afterlife but, perhaps more importantly, as a guide to the values most NDErs say are most important in life itself, including compassion for and service to others (and self).
7
@Janice Miner Holden Of course, I am familiar with your excellent work and appreciate your interest in my little piece, and your thoughtful reflections. I respectfully disagree with you about the cases of alleged non-physical acquisition of data. Yes, the data is confirmed, but not the putative non-physical acquisition. I don't claim it is simply the experiencer's forgetting; rather, there is a range of ways in which people can get information, such as data registering in the brain during low levels of consciousness. Further, I strongly believe that we should assume a scientific worldview as the default, and require strong evidence to overturn this presumption. I haven't seen this evidence (yet). Further, I never said that the 80% negate the 20%; I emphasize: the 20% sincerely report real experiences. The only issue is how to interpret them. Again, thank you, Janice, for taking the time to consider my little piece.
3
I've always thought of NDEs as being dream-like states induced by ones imagination during sensory deprivation/fatigue - quickly composed fabrications to explain 'off-stage' noises and environments. And yes, helping to avoid a fear of death is a prime mover, and there's more than good reason to encourage such fearlessness. Best way I know is to read and re-read Whitman, but the nearest fairy tale is often the first clutched at. We all really do need to know that it's about to end - that destination we feel ourselves approaching is the edge and there is no way over, around, or through. Dying well is the correct choice.
1
Dr. Fischer does short shrift to the theory of NDE's as reported by neurologist Kevin Nelson. Dr. Fischer does give a mention to Dr. Nelson's theory in his book, but doesn't fully explain its implications. What Dr. Nelson emphasizes is that NDE's are linked to the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep during which emotionally charged dreams are most likely to occur. Dr. Nelson mentions that during a death crisis, blood flow to the brain becomes compromised. When this happens, the brain switches into what he calls the "REM intrusion" stage, resulting in a vivid dream experience, many times featuring an encounter with an intense energy source: the famous "tunnel of light," reported by numerous individuals who have experienced a NDE. When the body begins to recover from the death crisis, the individual experiences a pulling away from the intense energy source. Dr. Nelson intimates that such experiences illustrate how the body is preparing the individual for the next stage of existence. It is only because the individual recovers from the death crisis that he or she is pulled back from this energy source--perhaps the source of life?--and revives into this realm of existence. In my opinion, Dr. Nelson presents the most convincing evidence of a reality that exists beyond the physical realm, and those who have experienced a NDE have briefly encountered this realm.
2
@Jim Kline Well, you can only do so much when you have a strict length constraint. As you mention, I refer to Dr. Nelson's work, which I respect greatly. I interpret him differently, though: in my view, he is offering a neurophysiological explanation of NDEs.
1
Near death experiences?
I've never had one, never known anyone who had one, and don't know what to make of them other than basic evidence for them I have been told about: It seems you are more likely to have a near death experience if you have been close to death, are an average person (no outstanding artistic, intellectual abilities), and if you are likely to describe your experience according to a pack of cliches.
It seems you are not favored to have these experiences the more artistic and intellectual and capable you are of giving an account of these experiences. In fact plenty of artists and other intellectuals (such as writers) are capable of giving outstanding accounts of what it's like to undergo any number of experiences including dying without actually dying.
Plenty of artists in fact in their sensitivity to life seem to be undergoing all through life a long near death experience, their work a trajectory which culminates in a wonderful final period, such as Beethoven's string quartets or Cezanne's Bathers or the religious outlook of a Tolstoy. A lot of the average near death experiences of people resemble just a taste of what plenty of artists experience all throughout life.
Maybe you can take some of the people who have these experiences to a good museum and ask them if their experience was like a Turner painting or an El Greco Pentecost experience to see if there's some connection between art and these experiences, if death makes artists of us all.
1
Sigh. Another intellectual interpretation of experiences of others that transcend the mind. Fischer says some of the people who did experience it are: "Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon; the cardiologist Pim van Lommel; and the oncologist Jeffrey Long. It is important to emphasize that their conclusions are not medical but philosophical. "
I'll take their opinion, thank you very much, and note that what they report is not philosophical but experiential.
11
It's kind of annoying, in a way, to read an article like this. I know next to nothing about what life is like in remote Siberia, but I will believe what the people who have been there say about it.
There is current thinking about "materialism" vs "consciousness" realities, and a lot of this concerning the "consciousness" reality is actually based on quantum physics (as if anyone really understands that). The"consciousness" reality actually quite clearly explains NDEs, as do the "holographic"and "virtual reality" theories of our existence. Reality might not be what it seems - and what comes next might be the actual reality.
I'm not going to go into my NDE in detail, but let's just say that I was in a post-surgical coma (for three days) and my experience gave me the peace and love I needed to continue to fight to just live. It was real. More real that this shadow of reality.
10
@Lynn Taylor I totally believe that people who report NDEs had those experiences! The only question is how to interpret them, and that is not a matter of just what they say. People have dreams; they have hallucinations; they experience mirages. They really, really have these experiences, and sincerely (and presumably accurately) report their contents. Hello, remote Siberia. But if our Siberian friend says, "This rock shows the meaning of life," we may disagree with her.
2
@John Fischer - I've had dreams - lots of them, of course, every night. And I remember some of them when I wake up. None of them have ever been this coherent, this truly indescribable and beautiful, this memorable, this, frankly, so much like what so many other people who have NDEs experience (and I had no idea, at the time, what that was). And I rarely remember the details of any dreams like this.
I've never felt my life was changed from any dream, nor has any dream given me the stuff I needed to just go on living during an extremely challenging time in my life.
That experience was much more real than this life. Not sure how to explain it in any other way. Interpreting such events (in a broad way) is surely open to discussion - but I think the materialists need to open their minds to other possibilities, other realities, other dimensions, other interpretations...
We all interpret "reality" in our own individual way, of course. But it's probably better to let the individual define his own interpretation of such events - other people should maybe just let it go at that.
I guarantee that if ever you have an NDE you will finally understand what we're talking about.
8
Having been given the gift of life, I'm happy to conclude that the afterlife does not exist, being a man of science.
I'm happy to conclude that after death there is nothingness, just like before I was born. There shouldn't be fear of it, as I wasn't disappointed prior to my existence.
8
Dr. Fischer, I wonder if you have read "Application of Impossible Things" by Natalie Sudman, whose NDE narrative might be unique. (Others might be interested as well.)
5
Professor Fischer,
Do you believe the mind/consciousness is a manifestation of purely physical/chemical/neurological events? Could it be that you have it backwards? That the physical world is a manifestation of mind/consciousness. I know that in the current zeitgeist this sounds like “woo” but the idea that consciousness is primary has been around for a LONG time and has never gone away. Perhaps we’re on the cusp of another Coperican moment where the present paradigm is about to shift. If you look at it from that viewpoint, a non-materialistic one, it does explain a lot of problems that the materialistic viewpoint can’t seem to resolve.
4
Quantum physic studies have yield much field data that has no plausible explanation, when analyzed using the standard rules of physics, which is the World we humans spend our lives in.
Yet through careful 'out of the box' reasoning and testing, our understanding of these 'little things' has grown into full fledged scientific theories.
What is real about so many of the people who have a NDE, is that they change how they behave and/or act toward our living things after the experience.
I have witnessed the power of that 'positive-belief' in life, that allows a person to reach deep into the souls of those who need to be reached, and start friendships and hope, where none existed before.
And that my friend, is as real as it gets.
You don't have to know the answer, to know the right way to solve the problem.
I choose kindness and compassion. Even without absolute proof of God.
7
Before we discuss the reality of NDEs we should ask ourselves how much is really real of our so called reality. With a closer look into the functioning of our fascinating mind we will see that we ( is locked down inside a extremely good simulation created by our brain. Parts of it are "occasionally" updated to match more or less an outside "reality". So we will not bang our heads to often or get run over by something etc. Other parts of this reality are complete internal creations of our mind. That is very efficient in terms of data processing. Evolution perfected it to an extend that our species could survive up to now. And the illusion of reality is so perfect and immersive that we take it for the real world. But it is not!
Do you know a way to verify the perception of scent, taste or color in the mind of another person. I do not mean the neural, electrochemical or what so ever effects but how the person perceives. Our very personal perception of the world is the only reality we really have. An experience like the taste of a strawberry can be described but not transferred to another mind.
So it is with NDEs too. They are a part of a personal reality but will be nearly impossible to proof. I think they need as little proof as the experience of a beautiful sunset or the taste of a delicious meal. For the individual who had the NDE a proof does not matter because he knows how it was and for us it is a mysterious question mark.
6
With the aid of giant telescopes and other tools of technology, we can peer into the cosmos farther than humans have in history. We have not found God living in the sky above the earth, or on any distant star or planet as our species has surmised. If God exists (and I personally think God does) he/she/it does not seem to be located in our dimension of space-time. I suspect that the prophets and poets are right when they suggest that God lives in eternity. I think our dimension of linear time is to the dimension of eternity what line is to a plane and a plane is to a cube, i.e., reality cubed, if you will.
I respect the testimonials of people who have had near- death experiences and other spiritual phenomena in their lives. These are too subjective to constitute scientific proof of an afterlife, but I think they add up to a universal message: consciousness (or spirit, if you please) is a phenomenon that may be able to transcend the confines of space-time. It is the part of us that belongs to eternity and resides with God if any part of us can. To comprehend such an existence, we must actually experience it. Once we've experienced it, there is (mercifully I imagine) no going back. Perhaps our best handle on a such a phenomenon is just the faith of a child that signs point to something and that they are meant to bring us comfort.
6
@CallahanStudio This is very interesting. I don't know however about your "universal message." Why not say that we can have special kinds of consciousness--kinds that allow us to appreciate the wonder and awe-inspiring beauty of our natural world, perhaps in new ways? Why think we transcend space/time, rather than take a different perspective on our world. As Huxley following Blake wrote, certain psychelic substances (and perhaps spiritual practices) "open the doors of perception." Do they open the doors to a different world, or a different and special perspective on this world?
@John Fischer Surely both occur from these experiences. I'm not sure why you lean so heavily toward this world being the sole beneficiary vs the other-dimensional. Those who have NDEs and out of the body travels can place this life and their existence in a much broader context.
2
This article is consistent with the reality that science shows us: that the human entity is a brain first and foremost; everything else in our bodies is a mechanism to support the brain. The concept of brain vs mind is a dive into the supernatural. Science can only define and measure the brain; it does not care about the mind, which is a concept of wishful thinking. Our biochemically controlled brains seek patterns, meaning, and purpose.
It is not surprising that a recurring theme of many of the comments is a defensive reaction to this rational claim. People who are convinced of a supernatural realm or afterlife are naturally resistant to the notion that this is all there is, and the possibility that the NDE or similar experiences are nothing more than chemical processes of an extremely complex--but not supernaturl--organ: the brain.
2
I've been under anesthesia in a hospital setting, one second your here the next nothing and a second later, really a bunch of hours, with absolutely nothing in-between, no memories, nothing. I don't gainsay people who have NDEs, it just hasn't happened to me. My conclusion at least for me, is that as biological entities we still have not come to a satisfactory realization and reconciliation with death. If you think about it for a second, it's hard to imagine not existing when all you have ever done is existed. My experience with being under anesthesia leads me to believe that when we die we die the real death and go into the great void as the oriental cultures believe and then the second law takes over.
2
The brain can “experience” some awfully odd “experiences” under unusual conditions. That doesn’t make them real or prove anything.
Indeed, our brains can experience some awfully odd experiences every night when we sleep and dream. (Or take illegal substances...). Again, that doesn’t make them real.
What HAS been proven, over and over again, is humans’ great ability at self-deception, particular when it comes to wishful thinking. And the great human fear of death.
5
What is “reality,” exactly? That’s the big question. It isn’t possible to define what is real if you don’t understand the nature of reality. People mostly believe the universe is purely material, and yet when we examine the nature of matter, its substance eludes us. All we have is our subjective experience in the end.
2
This question will sound facetious, but it's not, really. Is anyone studying Actual Death Experiences? That is, the experience of a person who dies, stays dead so far as the living world can tell, but whose consciousness makes the transition to another world, or another phase of this world, and (somehow) reports back on what it's like. As I recall, William James spent a lot of effort trying to find evidence of life after death. Is any serious scholar doing so currently? And what would such research look like in contemporary science or philosophy?
@Curious That's the problem: how do glean that testimony out of someone who is dead? I think the author may disagree with me, but in my view there are really no NDEs, there are only DEs. I suspect these hallucinatory experiences happen throughout our lives; it's just that the ones that happen "near death" get attention because they have meaning for those anticipating an outcome.
@Curious Not that I know of. But Sam Parnia, M.D., uses the term "Actual Death Experiences" for those that occur while an individual is "dead" in the sense that her heart and brain have stopped functioning (in the relevant ways) for a relatively extended period. When brought back to wakeful consciousness, Parnia says they died and came back to life. They thus had an ADE.
Does it really matter if there is an afterlife or not? It is a rather selfish view in my book. The only afterlife I contemplate is that the universe will go on and that the "I" who writes this has been part of it, is part of it and will continue to be part of it. That people experience NDE's is a wonderful gift bestowed on our sentience. However, I wish I were not so trapped by my ego that I could approach death with less trepidation and enjoy as much as I can a near life experience. After all, we live in heaven; let's get acquainted with the neighborhood before we dream of other journeys.
3
As I read other responses and commentaries to Professor Fischer I am more convinced than ever that Prof. Fischer is indeed very depressing. He may be a good professor of philosophy however he is not a doctor, or psychologist or worker in a hospital ER. I
don't believe he has ever spent time in a hospice or nursing home. Nor has he spent time with catastrophically and terminally ill children. There is little human emotion and warmth in the professor's philosophy or understanding of death and near-death experience. He is devoid of the capacity of empathy and he certainly does not understand the human capacity for hope. He has a paucity of human experience.
I don't know what philosophic agenda Professor Fischer adhere's to but it is not one that offers compassion. He has reduced human feelings to semi logical, ill-contrived conclusions. If the professor doesn't have proof of something it doesn't exist. If he can't see it or experience something, it doesn't exist. He believes our minds play tricks on us and oxygen deprivation is a cause of hallucinations of a non-existent world of nothingness.
I can't accept that. I wrote earlier of my father's experience immediately following his heart attack. Dad was an exceptionally
brilliant man, a graduate of Stuyvesant with many awards and honors. He also went to NYU before he was drafted into the Army January 1942. He wasn't on drugs or hallucinating. Dad knew there is a god. Science and philosophy do not explain everything.
13
@Jack Frost Oboy. You glean all of this from a 1000 word essay written for a general audience? Wow. How would you know that I've never been in a hospice or nursing home or with very ill people--say, people I love dearly? What you say is absolutely false. How do you know about my personal life or empathy? Why would anyone jump to these conclusions based on my little thought-piece? Here's a little empathy: I feel sorry for you.
So many events happen that we cannot fully understand. A friend’s grandmother was in assisted living. In the middle of the night, clothed in a nice dress and a hat, she left her room. The night attendant told her that it was too early to be up and said she had to go back to her room. She said that her room was incredibly crowded with people and that there was not even standing room. He did persuade her to go back, although she continued to protest that her room was too crowded! They found her dead the next morning, still dressed in her hat and good clothes, hands folded, on top of her neatly made bed.
9
For the individual human "reality" resides in the function of the organ called the brain; therefore, what we experience of fear, hope, love, hate, etc., is to us "real". The process of my death will be "real" until my brain ceases to function and my awareness of any "reality" will be null and void as it was before my birth. Other "realms" that people speak of are the shadows that offer philosophers new raw material to work with. You can't build a wall from it's shadows and you can't create an afterworld from the shadows of fear that come to us from the knowledge of our eventual death.
2
I had a near death experience when I was 11 years old. I did not see a white light. I did see myself from high above myself and I also saw/perceived my parents in their home. I experienced communication with a force or person who I believed at the time to be "our lady." I was a Roman Catholic girl being punished for the consequences of a sex. I didn't know what intercourse was. I was told certain things by a voice that seemed to be me, a male and a female and all at once. I believe that we are surrounded by energy we can't measure in our laboratories. Near death experiences are the experience of separating consciousness from sensation. What we don't understand or find mysterious we label in religious/spiritual terms. It's all energy. I recommend the film "The Hereafter."
3
When I was 15 years old I was struck by a car. I felt the impact of the vehicle as it violently threw me to the ground. I instantly let go then felt profound peace and love, like I had never known, wash over me. It felt like unconditional love. I came back a few minutes later, opened my eyes to observe the front tires of the vehicle inches from my head. The ambulance took me to the ER where the ER docs patched me up. I was a mess, but by some added miracle, I did not or would I ever feel any pain from my injuries. At the time, I was not particularly religious and found the post-accident events baffling. Many years later, after reading about NDE, I believe that is what happened to me.
8
This experience of what is real when someone's has visions of something more, perhaps for a short wile we are able to use 2% more of our brain and reach a new level of understanding. Would only touching something make it real? Which makes me think of the words Hope and Joy real or not.
One late afternoon a few years ago, I took a nap - unusual for me ever to nap. The experience I had is this: I was out of my body in a place filled with light, comforting, pleasurable. I wanted to stay but was told (do not know by whom/what force) I had to go back. I awoke, peace filled.
4
At the age of 10, I experienced an approximate 50 foot fall down a stone quarry. It was a straight drop, not a slide, onto solid rock. By some miracle, I survived with only a few broken bones.
That night, in deep shock and recovering from an operation to reset my bones, I had the most powerful vision which I recall vividly.
I was walking, somewhat confused, down a long straight hospital corridor. It was straight with no turnoff, but there were doors into rooms on either side. As I proceeded, the light darkened behind me. It was unnerving, but none of the doors would open - besides, there was no light in any of the rooms.
There was an opening at the end of the corridor - a round space. The shape was rather like a thermometer, with the bulb at the far end.
As I approached, I saw there was a maypole in the centre of this space. The corridor ended there, but there were doors all around the circle.
There were children dancing and chanting around the maypole, but in very slow motion. Only they were not holding ribbons from the top of the maypole as they slowly danced and sang, but bandages. Hospital bandages.
I knew at once that these were all dead children.
There was a bandage floating around free, that one was for me. A nurse approached, urging me to take the bandage and dance and sing with the other dead children. I kept backing away, trying door handles which would not open. She followed me, insistent that I take it.
Out of comment space.
6
I'll ask one question - Do you remember anything,anything at all before you were born? Be honest. After death will be the same as before you were born. Most of the vivid memories in a NDE must come from everything that was experienced/absorbed through life. And morphed through the situation at hand. And now there are so many books on the subject, how can this now not be an influence on the experiences. Finally, you weren't really dead yet!
7
I've lived too long and seen too much to disagree with Hamlet's advice:
"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome,
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
A closed mind is like a fist; it is ill prepared to receive a gift.
16
@Kirk Bready Shakespeare also pointed out that death is a land from which no man returns (to put it rather less elegantly than he did).
I have a friend who had a massive heart attack. He was revived with CPR and a defibrillator. The last thing he remembered was feeling tired and the next thing he remember was being under the rotor of a helicopter. He told me that prior to that, he had been exploring religion and spirituality. But after his NDE, during which he experienced absolutely nothing as if he had been anesthetized, he concluded that the lives we are now living is all we are going to get. "We are just machines," he said. Instead of producing a spiritual epiphany, his NDE left him sobered.
I saw these words written somewhere years ago and have since carried them in my back pocket:
The past is but a memory and the future but a dream. But this moment is a gift. That's why they call it the present.
6
I had a NED a few years ago.
I was in a car crash - a drunk driver slammed into my parked vehicle at the back.
I clearly remember everything going black and I felt cold. Then suddenly I was floating into bright warm sunshine type light and felt airy light and warm. I was more of a weightless spirit than any resemblance to my human form. I was aware of others present but not who/ what they were. Just as suddenly there was this voice that I should not be there. Everything went black again.
I obviously survived.
I was driving and alone in the car.
I’m also not religious.
I’ve never known what to make out of this but it’s definitely an experience that has stayed with me and changed me.
7
In November, 2018, my small intestine spontaneously ruptured, setting loose a torrent of blood. I was conscious enough in the ambulance to know that I was bleeding out. The sensation was of a dark curtain being slowly drawn across my world until I was in total darkness. It was not frightening, just the opposite. It was predominantly a feeling of being wrapped in a warm cocoon, comforting, even alluring in its way. To the surprise of my ER surgeons, who had to massage my heart to keep me alive, I survived.
That was not the end, however. The hospital twice sent me home without any instruction regarding medications or what I was to do. On both occasions, my potassium levels collapsed, causing me to be "coded out", technically dead. Again. The same experience followed both of these episodes. My nephrologist later told me that in her 17 years of practice, no patient of hers had ever survived numbers as low as mine.
The bottom line for we, the living: there are no answers. Death is simply something we can't know until it happens, and maybe not even then. Although I obviously didn't die, I was, per several doctors, as close as it's possible to get without crossing over the line that separates life from death.
What the experience did offer was freedom from fear of death, at least from bleeding out. There was np pain, no fear, no anxiety. It did give me a profound love of life and its experiences.
6
Based on my experience covering the paranormal beat for a major U.S. tabloid, NDEs tended to spike when an author had a book to sell. But that was way back in the 20th century. I'm sure things are different now.
4
Dear Professor Fischer,
Perhaps our time here is but a flash of light bracketed by oblivion, or perhaps not, yet if oblivion is our destiny we will never know it, and if it isn't we're in for the surprise of our lives, but one thing for certain is that just as we will never know the source of the vital spark that powers existence, likewise we can never rule out that the spark may prove eternal for every one and every thing, stardust not simply in the literal sense but also in the divine.
Panentheistically yours,
S.A. Traina
6
If believing that there is an afterlife is calming to anyone, I don't see any harm in believing whatever you like.
For those of us who believe otherwise, NDE's are interesting manifestations--but, at this point, nothing more.
6
In November, 2018, my small intestine spontaneously ruptured, setting loose a torrent of blood. I was conscious enough in the ambulance to know that I was bleeding out. The sensation was of a dark curtain being slowly drawn across my world until I was in total darkness. It was not frightening, just the opposite. It was predominantly a feeling of being wrapped in a warm cocoon, comforting, even alluring in its way. To the surprise of my ER surgeons, who had to massage my heart to keep me alive, I survived.
That was not the end, however. The hospital twice sent me home without any instruction regarding medications or what I was to do. On both occasions, my potassium levels collapsed, causing me to be "coded out", technically dead. Again. The same experience followed both of these episodes. My nephrologist later told me that in her 17 years of practice, no patient of hers had ever survived numbers as low as mine.
The bottom line for we, the living: there are no answers. Death is simply something we can't know until it happens, and maybe not even then. Although I obviously didn't die, I was, per several doctors, as close as it's possible to get without crossing over the line that separates life from death.
What the experience did offer was freedom from fear of death, at least from bleeding out. There was np pain, no fear, no anxiety. It did give me a profound love of life and its experiences.
1
Your opinion piece affected me personally. My father, who died last year at 91, was obsessed with NDEs. When he was a young man, he nearly died on a dentist's chair and saw... nothing. Blackness. The experience terrified him and caused years of depression, eventually leading to him becoming a minister. He said he wanted to study Theology but increasingly he was obsessed with finding objective proof of life after death (or "life after life" as he insisted on calling it). After reading books by Raymond Moody he went all-in on NDEs. I never found them to be a source of comfort, for him or for his children. On the contrary, they became a barrier between him and honest dialogue about death. The more evidence he gathered, the more he needed. I have never seen a man who was more informed about NDEs and yet so fearful of dying. When my sister was dying of cancer, he could barely talk to her. He tried to pray the cancer out of her body two days before her death. Afterwards, he claimed to have conversations with her, the kind he never seemed able to have while she was still alive. My experience has left me with the belief that NDEs are anything but hopeful. By refusing to accept the finality of death, you cut yourself off from the fullness of life. My father died alone with his laptop. The book he had struggled for decades to write, the one that was supposed to contain his final proof of life after death, lay unfinished. All that was on his screen was a game of solitaire.
4
I was with my mother on her last night on this planet. She had been dealing with issues she had over many issues. Her sister was bipolar and manic. I could see at the end of her life she was dealing with this. On her last night, she had an aura and was apparently at peace. She had anguish for along time before this, saying things like "my sister", but could not finish or say more. This appears to have been an NDE as in this article. You think?
It would be interesting to know what percentage of medical doctors make such wildly unwarranted claims about what the NDE evidence can credibly tell us about the supernatural, which is by definition supernatural.
Surely their medical training taught them reason a little more rationally from evidence to theory, even outside their field of professional competence?
Is it only doctors who write populist books who seriously believe that there are souls floating around with some undetectable but real connection to our objectively actual physical selves, including brain activity? Does the interaction between the natural and the supernatural take place in the pineal gland, or do the physicians propounding these interesting metaphysical speculations have a better locus in mind than did Descartes?
1
Several months ago I experienced what I would describe as an NDE in an ambulance on my way to the hospital. I am agnostic. No one was "guiding me," but there was a wonderful warm golden tunnel of light and I was quite tempted to let myself fall into it. In fact it took an act of resistance on my part to remain where I was, in the ambulance. I was experiencing extreme physical discomfort and still don't know whether the NDE was a hallucination, that is, my brain or body releasing some chemicals to ease my suffering or something else, say, the afterlife.
1
I’ve had 2 NDEs, at ages 5 and 18, both in water. While comforting to know that the near-dying processes I had involved a peaceful letting-go, I know that I did not die. I’ll know about death when I die.
1
The article speaks of the mind as though it were a separate thing and so asks whether the mind is the same as the brain; and can the mind separate from the body after death. These are nonsensical questions since the mind and the brain could not be the same. For a start the brain weighs 7 lbs but the mind has no weight at all. In fact expressions referring to the mind all turn out to be statements about intellectual capacities. So what ever else NDEs may be they are not cases of the mind separating from the body
The closest I've come to a NDE is when I got a serious concussion, and, as they say, saw the light. But that was the reaction of a traumatized brain, not a deity deciding it was too soon to let me through the gates.
When my father was dying he asked me if I believed in an afterlife. Couldn't answer, but he sadly nodded and said, "Me neither. But if there is, it will be a welcome surprise."
3
From my experiences using powerful psychedelics, I’ve undergone complete ego (self) dissolution and become one with the universal consciousness. Although perhaps not an NDE by definition, I’ve learned that in the realm of the infinite, all is possible. In other words, our reality is experienced only by the mind that perceives and that the mind can create whatever vision it wants once the brakes (i.e. conditioning) is removed. Like in our dreams, the mind creates matter - not the other way around. This is the true nature of our existence, though we’re mostly blind to it. Very simply, the mind creates the NDE, the question you want to answer (through experience) is what creates the mind...
3
On the 4th of July, 2019, I had an emergency open heart. But doctors couldn't stop the bleeding and my heart pericardium and lungs thus could not function. So, a second chest opening operation to save me.
My wife was allowed to see me as I was being taken again to the operating room. . Twice she said 'I will be with you always'.
I was unconscious for four days and during that time I was passively watching crazy scenes and hearing weird music.
Then the hallucinations stopped. Instead of watching something I entered the scene as I separated from my body. Before me was an unlighted tunnel opening into a black stone wall.
I knew this was death and I was absolutely at peace... an ineffable peace. The sweet calm I experienced transcended any feeling I had ever experienced in 76 years on this earth (as a lawyer for 50 years).
I was not unhappy, I was not frightened, but simply knew this was my death. As I started to enter tunnel opening I stopped. I heard my wife's words calling me back. Her exact words were "I will be with you always".
My wife's words made me realize that if I entered death, she would be devastated. I pulled myself back into my body and contently waited to regain my consciousness.
I told this story to a golf friend who is a hospice counselor. His first question was "were you at peace during your experience. That is the hallmark of a real N.D.E." I told him: 'All the called back are at peace'
9
A week before my mother died I saw my deceased father in a dream. He said the relatives were preparing a party to welcome my mother home but that I was not invited. He was in good spirits and looked like he had looked a few decades earlier. He hustled me out, saying that it was good to see me but that he had lots to do before the guests arrived. When I told my mother the dream, she said that it meant she was going to die. Five days later she died unexpectedly. But she was already 87.
11
@Brenda so true! Many many times in the past decade I have deeply loved ones come to me in a warm blanket embrace. Whispering lovingly. Hours later I get the news, they are gone, thousands of miles away. When they come to me it’s as though they are right here physically and sometimes we have a tearful heart tugging conversation. Just recently I had one loving aunt who lives far away in Asia, tease me about your president Trump he is gonna ruin your country, and then completely vaporize into this cocoon of love. I was left scratching my head when just couple hours later I read my email from my sister that auntie so and so is in the ICU, on the brink, doctors don’t know she will make it, but she did! So why did she come and declare her love to me? Maybe to send a message that no matter our ideological religious cultural differences, when on the brink, all our superficialities vanish and what is left is pure untainted love.
2
Years ago in New York I went for a Shiatsu massage. I was lying face down on a table being trod on by a small Japanese woman while soothing shakuhachi flute music filled the room. The pain was intense and I silently argued with myself about asking her to stop but told myself that that would seem both cowardly and uncool (I was much younger then and cared). No longer able to take the pain, I left my body, floated up and looked down at my nakedness and the straight, clean part on the top of my torturer's head. I was lying on the music, which had stretched out and formed a second, lower, ceiling. I was gently joyous and felt no pain. I stayed there looking down until she stepped off my body and it seemed safe to return. My body felt wonderfully relaxed and powerful, more so than ever before.. It produced a voice that resonated through every muscle and bone, a great gift for the actor I was then. Did I /would I repeat the experience? I don't think so, but who knows?
3
One evening myself and 2 other family members were sitting around the kitchen table talking. All of a sudden a plastic coaster flew off the table. No one was touching it! It didn’t fall, as it was not near the edge. It flew with force! We kind of looked at each other in disbelief.
There are things we don’t understand. Our understanding of the world around us is based on our senses and the ability of our brains to reason. Both of these are limited.
Death is an end. Even for those who believe that it’s a transition, it is still an absolute end of our earthly existence. A border that can only be crossed once.
Several family members, who were in the last months of their lives, have told me about seeing people who preceded them in death. Their descriptions have been very vivid and each one has seemed quite certain about what he/she saw. There never seems to be any communication just visual observations. I'm wondering how these types of experiences may relate to a NDE where the line between life and death is blurred? Medicine refers to these experiences as hallucinations but are they?
4
@Connie S. Yes, because those dead people aren't roaming around.
Thank you for your excellent piece. I had a NDE where I hemorrhaged internally and was dead for about 5 minutes. I knew I was going to die and told my love ones "goodbye." It didn't hurt...it just was something I was compelled to do. I did not have any of the experiences that are reported by others. I simply was not there...and then I was back. My guess is that I am an atheist and expected nothing and saw what I expected to see, namely nothing. I believe I was flooded with endorphins, making the passage easier. I also believe that said endorphins also aid people experiencing NDEs to see what they hope to see (including religious figures based on their belief structures). After this experience, I did make major changes in my life. I stopped being and attorney and went to nursing school at age 40; becoming an oncology and hospice nurse. I do not fear death; my own or others. While I would never wish what I went through on anyone, for me, personally, death was certainly a life changer.
11
Yours is the second or third comment I’ve read in which a near death experience caused someone to cease being an attorney. Is being a lawyer a cause and or contributor of death that necessitates the issuance of warnings by law schools and bar associations?
4
Thank you, Dr. Fischer, for this discussion of NDEs. I have had an experience you don't describe, a Near Death-Like Experience, or NDLE, which is known to people who study NDEs and Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs), a larger category that includes these two. People with NDLEs tend to experience similar after-effects, but my intention in this comment is not to focus on that or on me. Those who write popular books about NDEs get a lot of attention. However, NDEs and STEs are studied academically by scholars like Drs. Janice Miner Holden and Bruce Grayson, who are two editors of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences, an excellent introduction to the history and breadth of near-death studies. There are organizations that study the experience and offer support. There is the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE), where I helped support clinical training and served on the board in the recent past. Both of these organizations have websites where they can be contacted. Attending ACISTE meetings and interacting with its members was a matter of supporting each other and trying understand how to integrate such an experience into one's practical and emotional life, and how to make resources known to the general public. The NDE is potentially very transformative and can also be disruptive or traumatic, so it is good it is becoming better known.
3
I believe physicians actually are in a unique position to have more expert knowledge of NDE’s. They are in close contact with the people who have them. Often people who experience NDEs report episodes of conversations or things they saw while out of body. Physicians are in a position to understand if it was possible for that person to hear or see when their heart was stopped or whichever particular medical emergency was occurring. From experiences I have read, it often sounds impossible that the patient’s senses were operating enough to take in such information yet are able to report it from a position floating above.
1
Your author obviously has never had a near-death experience. I too was once a skeptic. Then I had what was supposed to be a routine same-day surgical treatment.
I was taken into a room divided by a curtain. The doctor performed the procedure, with me conscious and awake, then left the room. My next awareness was that I was floating above my body. I distinctly saw the nurse with her back to my body, which was still on the surgical table. I saw my body in seizure, with arms and legs contracting and jerking into my trunk. The nurse turned, and seeing my contortions, shrieked. She fled from the room, hollering the doctor's name. From my vantage, I could see what was on the other side of the curtain---a counter laid out with very distinctive medical apparatus including an array of scapels and a funnel-like instrument. They lay upon blue towels. The counter top itself was a dull yellow. The cabinets were deep brown. The doctor entered the room and I realized that what was happening was serious and a voice told me to return, it wasn't my time. I flowed into my body. When I'd recovered enough to stand, I insisted on seeing what was on the other side of the curtain. There were the yellow counter, the blue towels, the deep brown cabinets, the exact medical equipment. Unlike dreams or hallucinations, these images have never faded in my mind's eye.
I'm a believer.
49
The miracle of Versed.
“Real” can be defined as “actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.” The tree in front of me is “real,” but the image that appears in my mind is created based on a limited sensory perception. The image does not include atoms, electrons, quarks, roots, or empty space within the tree. My stigmatism, near sightedness, and color perceptions contribute to the image.
My NDE included: a sense of being far above my body; seeing my unconscious body as well as the body of my friend who had been thrown from the car during the accident; a review of all that had occurred in my entire life; a sense of calm warm clarity; a sense of time passing slowly; a bright light that was drawing me toward it; a decision to return to the body; and a greater interest in social issues after recovering. We cannot prove that this experience in my mind was more or less “real” than an image of a tree that arises in my mind.
It could be a natural process related to shutting down the human nervous system, including the brain. It could involve something more that is harder for me to understand like quarks, consciousness, or life itself. The similarities among NDE experiences are interesting.
Since I experience much of my life like a dream (perceptions heavily influenced by many factors, especially my mind, and not necessarily entirely accurate), I prefer to just accept the NDE as something that I experienced without labelling it as “real.”
8
I don't care if NDEs are real or another function not only of our brains , our beliefs whether spiritual or not , or the organic process of dying . I think they are beautiful ; I look forward to seeing my parents , siblings and those relatives I did not get to meet . Perhaps all is revealed in that moment of the final breath . What a journey and adventure . I don't think a dying person is aware of being surrounded by their loving family ; they are too busy seeing those that have gone before . It is simply another reality , not a finality .
13
Plato's Myth of Er isn't meant as an account of a near-death experience as we use that term now. It is a "Platonic myth," a story intended to illustrate reality (as conceived by Plato) by portraying something "very like" that reality in concrete terms. Plato's "forms," the basis of his metaphysics, are not physical but supra-sensuous, not concrete but universal.
Plato uses similar myths elsewhere, notably in the Symposium, where one of the speakers relates the tale that human beings were originally created with both male and female traits. This (for some reason) made them strong enough to alarm the gods, hence Zeus split the female from the male, and ever since our halves have been trying to reunite. (As a matter of fact, I did that just last night.)
4
As I approach sixty there is one thing I've learned with certainty. Shakespeare was right, there are more things in heaven and Earth, than are dreamed of in our philosophy. Is there life after death, and if there is what is it like? I'll find out soon enough...or not.
11
Then there's the good old grade school scientific facts that matter can neither be created or destroyed, and energy can neither be created or destroyed. So, whereas we have no idea what shall become of us, it’s clear in one way or another we're not going away.
16
I have not had an NDE but my search for clues about the afterlife has led me to spiritualism and channelled material, and I have grown confident that death is a transition in what appears to be a long life that we are each now beginning.
I think of NDEs as the rare conscious recollection of an experience that we'll all go through at one time or another, except that those who complete the transition and actually pass over will have a different outcome.
I don't believe that NDEs "prove" heaven but they show life does continue in other realms. That NDEs are not to be feared is suggested by the love that is felt and by the presence of mentors, whose existence does suggest "heaven" to me. That an NDE can be negative suggests there are causes and conditions we don't yet understand; I believe that our spiritual condition (have we been generally loving or unloving in our lives) plays a role in what we experience, and the fact that we return to this life with knowledge of the NDE suggests that it is a provision of a benevolent Creator so we may learn from the experience and make changes in our lives or continue full-steam.
I appreciate that the author, Mr Fisher, is monitoring comments and responding.
4
As a thrill sport athlete in my younger years, I had a few close calls. But my life didn't flash before me; rather, the periphery of my life vanished in deference to the singular goal of extracting myself. That I'm here writing this comment is proof that I was successful.
The source and meaning of NDEs is not an interesting question to me. Biology is poorly understood. And the human brain, the most complicated piece of biology that we know of, is even less well understood. Speculating on the sensations that occur as the rest of the body fails, is meaningless.
But here's a question: Is there a single documented case where all brain function has ceased, and then the person has been brought back to life with enough cognitive function to recall the experience? If not, then this debate is simply entertainment. It's neither science nor philosophy.
1
After reading many of the comments, it’s clear that this is an important and emotional topic.
One interesting side of the story not addressed is that scientists have been able to replicate NDEs in controlled experiments by stimulating specific regions of the brain.
The test subjects often reported peaceful and euphoric experiences.
Also, Air Force pilots placed in spinning g-force capsules can pass out.
When they regain consciousness, they often report peaceful and euphoric experiences.
Lack of oxygen to the brain is the culprit.
A PBS show about NDEs said that they would be better described as PDEs: Partial Death Experiences.
The people involved didn’t get to “full” death, so they can’t accurately report on it.
Perhaps NDEs are evolutionary adaptations that are designed to take the sting out of the transition from on to off.
(One side note: I personally had an out of body experience as a child.
The dentist gave me waaaaay too much nitrous. I remember flying above the room and feeling great.)
Not to bum anyone out, but I personally think that we are similar to batteries.
Our hearts are the batteries that keep the brain functioning.
The brain is responsible for our concept and perception of our selves.
When the heart stops working, the brain stops working.
Then we are no more.
It’s not inherently sad, it’s just the absence of physically “being” or existing.
2
My brother was not at all spiritual and I doubt he even knew what the term 'NDE' meant so he was stunned when he encountered my parents in dreams in the weeks before he died of cancer. They assured him he would be "all right" and that he even had his 'whole life ahead' of him. I was as shocked as he was, but also greatly comforted by what he told me . I've since learned that it's a common phenomenon for dying people to speak to deceased loved ones in their last days. People might argue that these dreams, visions, and conversations are defense mechanisms that help humans cope with the stress of dying, but one could also deduce that a consciousness that wired us this compassionately transcends whatever we can logically speculate or imagine.
27
I recently had two Code Blue episodes where I was resuscitated by CPR. The first time, I had been asleep when I went into cardiac arrest and woke up to see anxious people around me. The second time, later that day, I could feel myself losing consciousness. No out of body experience. No relatives or deity to be seen. I think people have a NDE because they want to believe in an afterlife.
3
I almost made it out of the burning engine room on my ship, the Coast Guard Cutter Barataria. I tried to fight the fire without success. There was an exit, a tiny scuttle hatch above the throttle stand - I pushed my oiler through it, then got halfway through myself. I knew it was over. The smoke and the burns got me. I saw no spirit guide or ancestors, just a beautiful mountain valley in spring, fruit trees in bloom, a cabin ... I realized it was a vision and it became transparent, replaced by a field of the most irridescent, glowing blue. It was good. I was basically dead.
Then I got rescued, dragged out of the smoke-filled compartment over my engine room. I slowly came to - drifting in and out of consciousness the next 24 hours and ending up in the burn ward at Fort Sam Houston. That was fifty-two years ago, come March.
After that the only fear I have is for my loved ones. You never know fear until you have children. I am coming to the end of my circle. I hope it is as easy as that last time.
28
my nde occurred when I was hit by a car at the age of 7. I guess that I was laying on the side of the road and I recall seeing a light in my 'mind eye' that I was approaching. A dark figure pushed my back. I had several apparently 'out of body' experiences such as seeing myself on a cart in a corridor and on an operating table and visions of the operating room. I was apparently a DOA.
1
Wonder if anyone that has experienced this phenomenon, has ever described anything that their body could not have seen on the ground level? Specifically, something that was too elevated for them to have seen from where their body was situated. That would get me interested in NDEs.
3
I would welcome a conclusion to this existence as described by N.D.E.ers. My quandary is this: Think about existence before you were born. To me that time is extremely similar to the existence one encounters under general anesthetic. One goes under, one is unaware, one wakes up. How does one's "existence" before birth compare to one's existence under general anesthetic, and how do they both compare to one's "existence" after death? I'll take my answers on the air.
4
The mind is amazing. I’ll never forget the dream I had the night my mom died. I was at college 400 miles away. My dad was a doctor, he and I and my mom were in communication almost daily and I knew mom was approaching the end due to cancer, but the family kept saying she was strong and hanging on and comfortable. I had been caring for her, but went back to college to catch up as she seemed to be doing fairly well. So there really was no sense or reason I needed to come home immediately - however I had planned to travel home again for the weekend to visit and was going to leave in a day or so. She passed before I could get home - and the night she died I had the most vivid dream that I remember to this day. A silver train pulled up next to me, the door slid open and mom got out, looked at me, waved and smiled, the door closed and the train left in a cloud. I woke and knew she was gone. Dad called a short time after to say she had died that night. I said “I know”. Was it just a dream because I was expecting her death?- or some other connection? Are our minds linked in ways we don’t understand? Who knows. I read the NYT best-seller “Dying to be Me” - a really interesting story - it makes you wonder if we really are all connected. I think we are.
41
@Chris Kennison - there are so many of these stories, and one wonders what we might learn from it if we put our minds and funding to it. If you’re interested in reading more, Deborah Blums’ Ghost Hunters: William James and the Scientific Proof of Life After Death is a fascinating book on nineteenth century research and documentation.
2
@Chris Kennison I’m a physicist and neuroscientist, and what I can tell you is we really don’t understand anything about how the mind works, the nature of life and consciousness and the true nature of reality. If our brains are not merely classical machines and if quantum mechanics plays any role in the function of the brain at all, it would by default mean that the mind cannot be thought of as anything other than a part of the fabric of reality itself, at a very minimum. As you hinted, we may be far more connected than we realise. I’m a deeply religious person and everything I’ve ever learned as a scientist has only deepened that spiritual understanding. I have no doubt that the ‘real’ life is the one that will come after we die. Like a foetus who thinks the womb of her mother is the whole world, just piercing the thin membrane of the amniotic sac and traveling through the tunnel of the birth canal brings her into the ‘real’ world and a reality she could have never imagined. Such is the nature of death.
14
No,
"a Buddhist would see Buddhist figures"
Please read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There are no figures, there is a transition, and it is quite a journey, and the whole purpose of existence, is to remain awake during that transition.
Death has no immediate staircase to heaven.
8
Many years ago, over a period of two nights, I had two experiences. I won't call them dreams because they were vivid beyond anything. The first was a sense of being surrounded by total and complete love. There were people but none that I recognized. I never wanted to leave. The second night was an experience of falling in a gray tunnel, and with it feeling of a complete absense of love. It scared me. I took both as a message and a warning, perhaps, about how I was living life and the choices and consequences ahead. Did I learn from it, yes. Am I a better person as a result? I'll find out at some point, I imagine.
10
When I was a first year university student, I did a basic philosophy course. My prof thought I had a clear understanding of the theories covered, wrote interesting essays and had a philosophical bent of mind. The next semester I did another course with him. By the end, I realized he was steering me towards changing my major from English Lit to Philosophy. I was tempted, but didn’t.
Forty years later, I did a non-credit philosophy course in a university continuing ed program. I was curious to see if I still had that philosophical bent of mind. I wondered how my life would have been different if I had changed to philosophy instead of continuing my studies in English Lit and modern languages.
Long before the end of the course, I got my answer. Like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, my eyes were opened. I was struck by the truth that philosophy is nothing but theories of the nature of knowledge, reality and existence thought up by men to explain the unexplainable, to prove the unprovable and then argue about it. Endlessly. Now we can add near-death experiences to the long list of unexplainable, unprovable phenomena that philosophers can use as grist for their slowly grinding mills.
7
@P. Maher Except NDE's are based on experiences people from many different religions and countries experience that have many similarities, including evidence they can describe in detail what people are doing and saying while they are being operated on. That is more than just a philosophy.
@Joseph B Sorry, I wasn't trying to define NDE's as a philosophy or anything else. I just don't think that a philosopher would be the best person to solve he question of what NDE'S are and whether they are real. I would prefer science to tackle those questions.
I was having a severe asthma attack and, even with O2 and treatments, I knew I was suffocating. I also knew I was delirious, because I had just had a thought of trying to open the nearby window to get more air, while was sitting at the edge of my bed with my O2 cannula on my face. But nonetheless I had a very real experience of the head of the hospital bed melting away, and I experienced myself walking outside into the night. It was pitch black, and there was an impenetrable mist around my lower legs: I would have to shuffle my way forward, feeling my way. I had a sense that I was on a high mesa and the edge was somewhere near. As I turned to explore the edge, a voice in a raspy whisper said: "Turn back! Turn back! That way lies death!" So I did turn back and "returned" to the edge of the bed. No, I didn't feel anything cosmic at all. But I did notice later that I had ended all of my more superficial relationships.
8
Any subjective experience might be claimed real by the person who experienced it. I define objective experience as that which has been verified by other people who experienced the same thing at the same time. From time to time there has been interest in reports of flying saucers and alien abductions, which have also resisted independent verification. For the time being we can't consider those to be real, either. Both N.D.E. and alien abduction experiences are parallel, which is different than independently verified. It is interesting, though, that so many people have reported similar emotions, thoughts, and sensory perceptions when near death, just as those who claim to have been abducted by aliens also give eerily similar accounts of their experience.
My question would be, if you are a young child, say three years of age, and you go under for surgery, how would you interpret the NDE, without the spiritual initiation offered later in life?
4
@Vin In 1969 as an 11 year old I had open heart surgery. A few years later when my grandmother was dying she said that the angels were talking to her. I know exactly what she was talking about. In 1994 when I was visiting my dying father in the hospital I saw the angels in the room with him. Although I don't recall having an NDE, I am quite certain that I had one when my heart was disconnected and repaired.
11
@Vin - scroll down a bit and see the comment from dark brown ink, who describes such an experience at age three.
It's been documented by multiple fighter pilots that trained in high G-force conditions that they also have similar experiences. Seeing themselves outside of their bodies,floating, or walking down a long hallway. It may be that the brain having oxygen starvation has very peculiar effects such as this. As a believer in science, I need to take their first hand accounts very seriously. Without any other theory that can be tested, I have to take the dying brain's behavior as the likely explanation.
6
“Oh, wow. Oh, Wow. oh, wow!”
Steve Jobs last words.
1
Respectfully, Dr. Fischer relies on unsupported assumptions here. Not all such experiences are the result of having hallucinations or being unconscious. Moreover, he does not credit the subject that experiences this as having the ability to perceive an unmeasurable phenomena, or one that has yet to be measured.
Case in point: As a result of a significant car accident, I had an experience of communicating with another entity. After the crash, observers reported that I did not loose consciousness. In fact, I continued to talk with good samaritans and first responders during the hour it took to cut me out of the car. I was not given any drugs. I was not unconscious or hallucinatory. At the same time, I perceived another entity being present and verbally communicating with me. (There was no physical presence.). As a doctoral student in psychology and linguistics at the time, I experienced and observed this as having all the indicia of a real communicative interaction. There was a shared symbolic system. There was an exchange of meaning. Almost like a non-verbal interaction.
As a result of my faith, I understand the entity to be spiritual. That being said, that does not detract from what I perceived at time was akin to the interactions I had been trained to study. Scientific inquiry is replete with examples where we are not able to measure some phenomenon that we suspect are there. See Einstein. Perhaps such NDE-like experiences deserve the same consideration.
14
I have pretty severe epilepsy and have had my heart stop a few times during seizures. But I have no memory of the events.
What I have had for the last three years are dreams of what life is like after this one. And I can't wait to get there. Picture a place where everyone lives in a nice big home. And no bugs. No one locks the doors because no one would ever dream of taking anything that does not belong to them.
But best of all? The water heals you of anything and everything. Just sit in a stream, a pool, or a tub of water and you stay healthy, young, and vibrant forever.
I have woken up many a morning in tears over the beauty of what I have seen. Oh, and kids study outside sitting under a beautiful tree instead of in drab old buildings.
9
Logically, near-death experiences MAY give hope for an afterlife. However, this is HIGHLY unlikely. Neuroscience has largely explained their phenomenology. In fact, what people with near-death experiences report is exactly what a person with understanding of neuroscience would expect to be the experience of a brain that is waking up from oxygen deprivation or from partial "shut down" due to other causes. Given that science and neuroscience have explained an enormous multitude of other previously "mystical" and mysterious natural, social, and psychological phenomena, a reasonable person would have to assume with 99% certainty that near-death experiences are simply are neuropsychological phenomena.
7
@Paul Read Proof of Heaven, by neurologist Eben Alexander who believed like you until he experienced his own NDE. He debunks the dying brain theory in stating his encephalitis was so severe, it would have been impossible for his brain to function.
1
The possibility of an afterlife doesn't give me hope. Quite the contrary. When I'm finished I want to be finished. One life is plenty.
10
I had a NDE many years ago when I was in college. I was neither sick nor injured; I was being raped by a man holding a loaded gun to my head. I was convinced I was going to die and then it happened. Everything: my life flashing before my eyes like snapshots, then stillness, mind draining of all thought, then the tunnel, then the blinding light in the distance. Then I snapped out of it. Somewhere a little voice in my head said you might as well resist this guy. Then the spell was broken. So sorry, no proof of God, just a program that got switched on.
“What was That all about.”
Anthony Hopkins favorite epitaph (Playboy interview)
2
When I was younger, I was more susceptible to fanciful ideas of what such experiences might mean. Now, I think the fact that our tissues (meat, basically) generate some sorts of neurological or other effects while decaying, is entirely unremarkable. Consciousness ending seems understandably a longer-than-instantaneous process, but that doesn’t lead me to any more spiritual imaginings than anything else. I think it’s also common for people to worry more about all this as they approach old age themselves, but unless you’re the one dying, you have no idea how “good” or bad it was. It’s going to happen. Why make much of it, or try to make death all sorts of things it isn’t? Perhaps this is a way to deny its ordinariness and inevitability, somehow.
5
Three days before Thanksgiving, two and half years ago, I was cycling along and my lights went out. I have no memory of pain, clutching my chest or tumbling to the pavement. Six days later I awoke in an ICU. I had experienced a sudden cardiac arrest. It took three very focused EMTs to get my heart pumping again. I have no visions to report. God did not reveal himself to me. When my lights flickered back on, my daughter was at my side with other family members, friends, nurses and doctors To this day I have no recollection of my collapse. The six dark days were simply that – I was no longer present. It was like it happened to someone else. The only profound difference I have repeatedly felt is an outpouring of emotion for my caregivers. I have visited the EMTs who revived me many times. While I have gotten a little better, it is still difficult for me to maintain my composure. Part of me wants to attribute this accentuated sense of appreciation to a N.D.E. Maybe labeling it is not important. All I know for sure is that is powerful and all consuming. I honestly hope this feeling stays with me until my lights go out for good. Let's hope that is later rather than sooner.
13
@Jim It has stayed with me for 41 years.
I was three and dying of pneumonia, which was only explained to me later on, when I was eight or nine. What I told no one was that I had left my body, was looking down at it lying on my parents's bed, where my mother was taking care of me, waiting for the doctor to come. Then I was somewhere else, a place I can only describe as having no up or down, no ground or sky or anything else. I was wandering there when my mother's grandfather, who had died before I was born and who I only knew from pictures, came up to me and said, "It's not your time to be here yet." And suddenly I was back in my body on my parents' bed, my desperate mother sitting beside me holding my hand. And I have been in versions of that body for 66 more years. And I think about that experience a lot now, in the last chapter of my life, wondering who will come to see me then and what they'll say.
36
Another perhaps related take.
A number of spiritual or metaphysical traditions have taught for millennia that the world we experience is created in the mind.
And the world each of us experiences has common elements, the same mountains, oceans, cities, people, flowers and birds, etc.
And yet each of us have unique experiences of those elements, and unique reactions to them. Creating unique memories and feelings from our experiences.
Who knows then in each of us what will arise into the mind from the substratum out of which the mind itself emerges.
Whatever arises in the subtlest level of the mind is projected instantly into the world of our experience...including loved ones long passed, or the deities or holy ones we deeply believe in.
No one can prove this objectively or by western scientific methods of course, but through meditative or spiritual practices we can in time experience this aspect of "reality" for ourselves.
In the end we know things, but we might say we don't really know how we know them, we just do. And what the ultimate truth is...is the greatest mystery of all.
In my view these NDE's are just as real as any other. They reflect what arises from a universal layer of consciousness deep within all of us, and some for reasons we don't fully understand have this experience.
None of this of course can be proven scientifically, but if we're interested we can investigate and discover the truth for ourselves. In my experience, it always lies within, deep within.
8
The origin of any life is an undiscoverable mystery. Or, for those religious, a miracle. Every life experiences degrees of consciousness in its own unique way. Exchanging stories of our experiences bonds us in our shared humanness. There is experience but there are no ‘answers’.
5
Thank you for this interesting article. The timing is great -- I am currently half-way through Dr Alexander's book "Proof of Heaven". Like you, I believe his experience was real, for him, and it may offer some meaning or hope to the rest of us. However, so far it has not convinced me he has proof of heaven. That's not to say there isn't one, but I think his experience is his own.
Two weeks before my closest friend died in surgery, she told me that "the strangest thing" happened. She was sleeping and woke to see her (deceased) mother standing by her smiling and she said she was overcome by a sense of peace. I was sick with grief as I knew this was indicative of her imminent death. I believe religion is a man-made construct and that NDE's are brain chemistry working to prepare one for death. I firmly believe there is nothing beyond this life and for those who believe in eternal life, I would think if life is eternal then one existed prior to this life as well. Sorry, but we live and die and no matter how one wishes to console oneself, it is a delusion that the "soul" is eternal.
9
@Eli How can you be so sure???
1
I agree with the author that N.D.E.'s are a subjective experience and are not proof of transcending to an "afterlife." To put it clumsily, N.D.E.'s represent the hallucinogenic neurochemistry activity of the brain as it shuts down in the last moment of life. For whatever reason, the lucky individual who does not physically die retains an imprint of what the mind "saw" in those final seconds. It is undeniably convincing for the person who experience it.
None of this discounts the "reality" of what the individual experienced. Not should anyone be mocked -- especially those who "report back" from an N.D.E. -- if they believe N.D.E.'s represent transcending to an afterlife.
Of course, I can't prove my view on N.D.E.'s is true any more than someone else can prove the existence of God is real. I just believe that most of us, whether we admit it or not, are terrified of death and we cope with its inevitable prospect with mechanisms that have proven effective since our species first evolved advanced consciousness. Belief in God and an afterlife is our species' successful time-tested mechanism.
But for those who fear death I have good news: We can not experience or know not-being. All we experience is our own mortal consciousness and being. We are, *from our own perspective,* effectively immortal because we can not have self-knowledge or self-awareness of not-being,
Still, I understand if people are not comforted by my "effective immortality" theory. I struggle with it myself.
12
A lot of references about flying around the room. Many of us have and were not near death but under the influence of a strong hallucinogen. Not all surprising that someone under severe stress can have such an experience. The mind does have some tricks.
1
I have had near death experiences twice. The first was in Vietnam in 1965 while spinning around in a Marine Corps helicopter that was about to crash. The second was in Chicago in 1980 while spinning in an out-of-control taxicab that was about to crash. In both cases, dozens of memorable moments from my past life appeared in my conscious mind, including some from early childhood. They appeared visually in milliseconds--so fast they flashed by like still pictures. They were accompanied by a strong physical sensation of pleasure and comfort. In neither case did I conclude later that the NDEs suggested an afterlife, only that in moments of extreme stress when I thought I might die my brain produced a feeling close to euphoria along with memories I thought had been forgotten but had been stored there for decades. The first experience (in the helicopter) is described more fully in my memoir of the Vietnam War, "The Cat from Hue."
15
@Jack Laurence
Mr. Laurence, I love your book! As someone who for some reason became obsessed with the Vietnam War (I was a child when it was being fought) I have read countless books about the war, and yours is way, way at the top. Glad you survived to tell about it.
7
I think this a wonderfully abstract and out-of-this-world piece given everything else in the darned news. I'm sorry some people see controversy or disagreements here, but at least it's nothing like the divisiveness and polarity the whole country is suffering from.
For me, the resounding point being made is that what happens after we die is simply not documented scientifically and proven empirically. This doesn't mean people don't have experiences, knowledge, theories or all manner of understanding. But, for whatever reason, we simply do not have that pure and fluid awareness of what happens after we die. Some may feel they do, and if so, they are free to believe that. I don't discount the supernatural or ultra-real or whatever ya wanna call it.
All I do know is that we muddle our way around this consciousness, on Earth, as homo sapiens and there is a massive and greater unknown that we have almost no handle on in this life Simply writing and thinking about it and posing theories and pondering is perfectly reasonable and a lotta fun frankly.
If a piece like this gets everyone thinking about that 'other' than it is a good thing as opposed to commenting on some of the other nonsense in the news.
5
Nderf.org has a fascinating and ongoing registry of NDEs. One thing that’s really interesting is how common the experience transforms formally religious people into non- religious people. The take away is not religion, but consciousness itself, lives on past material life.
11
Yes, a near-death experience is real. Surviving this at whatever age in life it happens is a miracle. Coming into the tunnel of death and turning back because it isn't out time yet shows us that death and rebirth come after human (and animal) life.
7
There is interesting, scientific investigatory work of NDEs being done by Susan Blackmore. She had an NDE decades ago and has since taken a skeptical, careful approach to investigating them. Listen to the Point of Inquiry Podcast of April 18, 2019 for more.
3
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Dr. Fischer's philosophy.
Not long ago electromagnetic radiation (radio, television!), x-rays, quantum states were similarly dispatched as pure imaginings by other learned men.
There's no 'proof' or 'disproof' in science, only our current best knowledge.
Abstract philosophers who don't actively dig into nature aren't helping know, or even guess, the truth about anything.
7
Respectfully, why put words like "real" or "authentic" in quotes? Intentionally or not, it gives the impression of bias -- that the author just doesn't believe these NDEs are real experiences, no matter his disclaimers.
My mother's story: she was raised in one of the most rural areas of Ireland, without electricity and, obviously, no access to Plato, or Giglamesh, or even the Bible. Her father died when she was three months old and she was shipped off to be raised by her maternal grandparents. She never saw a picture of her father (in fact, until a teenager, she thought her grandparents were her parents). Her daughter was born three months premature and my mother was pronounced dead upon delivery. She told a story of floating above the room, then walking down a long tunnel toward a light, where a man told her to go back. It was, of course, her father, which she realized years later when she saw a picture of him.
What does this mean? I have no idea... and I think that's the point. Educated people want to feel like they understand what is going on, but when it comes to the mind, we know so, so little. It can be very frustrating -- but I have no doubt this uneducated, rural woman was describing what she had experienced and could not have been influenced by things she heard, or television, or popular culture, or myth.
One final point: I don't think it is primarily doctors who believe this... I just think the author hangs out with a lot of doctors.
16
@J The experience was as real as real can be, perhaps, but any interpolation of a supernatural nature into the experience is highly suspect and dubious.
@Glenn Thomas
... no more dubious than any interpolation that rules it out, given our shallow understanding.
1
The thing about an NDE that could never be explained to a non-believer (in the NDE experiences) is that the vividness is somewhat overwhelming. Imagine an infinite number of pixels per square millimeter. An NDE can seem way more "real" than waking life. And usually it alters one's perception of life and their way of living. Many do not want to be back in the body and life becomes very difficult. What is not spoken about much is the "hellish" types of NDEs. They are more common than reported. Most likely people do not want to talk about them because in doing so they re-experience it. They can be very unpleasant and distressing. And it has not been shown that "bad" people in life experience distressing NDEs. Actually there is no correlation between one's actions during life and their NDE.
4
When I was four, my grandfather died, my family and I were awakened at 2 am in our farmhouse by our doors banging and our windows going up and down. It lasted ten minutes before my father told us that my grandfather was bidding us goodbye. The visitation stopped. We didn't believe. Outside, it was eerily calm. We called the police who could find nothing wrong.
When I was twenty, my friend and I were in a car wreck. I remember walking on what I thought was the moon's surface and I could see the bones in my feet. I also saw my grandfather as he was as a young man. He talked to me but I don't remember what he said. I woke up in a ambulance with my dead friend beside me. This was not an N.D.E.
Later I worked in geriatrics and with Aids' patients and came to understand that death could be so much easier than life, but it was all worthwhile, and what experts say doesn't matter. My grandfather is always with me.
15
I saw a fantastic film in which numerous people who had had near-death experiences described what they saw and went through. The people interviewed were from different parts of the world and had no connection to each other. They all described a summary of their life (as a slide show or film), and the most striking aspect was the good deeds and how they treated people as far more important than money they had made or achievements in their lives.
10
When I was little, I had a profound out of body experience that even today is as real as my hands typing this. It brings me comfort when I need it. I was reminded of it when a few years ago, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and went from diagnosis to death in less than a month. I sat by her bed nearly every day and slept in the rollaway in her hospice room at night. The weekend before she died, we were talking quietly as she came in and out of awareness. Every time her eyes met mine, I’d say, “I love you. Thank you for being my mother.” She’d close her eyes and drift off again. The morning she died, I said, “I love you. Thank you for being my mother.” And, this time, I said, “Say hello to Rick for me.” My husband had died 10 years before. My mother turned to me and said, “Tell him yourself. He’s standing at the foot of my bed.”
57
I cared for both of my parents in the last week of their lives. My father was home in his own bed when he passed. The morning before he died I was shaken by a story the hospice nurse who was present told me. I was out of the room when this happened. She said for a few moments my father, who had been unconscious, opened his eyes looked up at the ceiling and said “I’m not going with him.” He then closed his eyes and became unconscious again. He died 24 hours later.
2
I have severe sleep apnea and refused to use a CPAP for a while. One night I was dreaming I was walking down a country road when I came upon a large choir singing the most beautiful hymn I'd ever heard. I thought, "Wow, this is some dream!" Then I felt something grab me around the waist and hurl me into the air like a sky hook. I flew high above the earth for a while. I could feel the air blowing around me and I thought, "This is REAL!" I suddenly appeared in a home I'd lived in as a small child and was confronted by a female figure who told me that I needed to take better care of myself. Then I woke up gasping for air. It definitely made me change some things about my life (including the CPAP).
11
Perhaps rather than a supernatural explanation, there is a hard materialist one: that the brain is a quantum device, and very much like the way light can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, there are multiple levels of consciousness dependent on their quantum state. Since we know one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe is information, perhaps in an NDE consciousness is moving from one quantum state to another, perhaps from the temporal and personal to one universal. perhaps a collective consciousness underlying existence.
15
@AF I’m actually a physicist and neuroscientist who studies the physics of the brain. I do believe that quantum mechanics may play some role in neural information processing, although there is no evidence of that yet. What I can categorically say though is quantum mechanics will _never_ explain consciousness. Consciousness is inexplicable and qualitatively different to anything we know of in the universe. Quantum mechanics is just physics. It sounds fancy to people who don’t know physics, but it isn’t magical and it is just a description of the way the world works. Materialists with no real knowledge of physics or neuroscience like to invoke the ‘quantum brain’ as some sort of explanation of consciousness, and to feed into their view that everything can be explained by science. The reality is though quantum physics has nothing to do with consciousness, and no one understands how brains work, what life is or the nature of the mind.
I'm fairly well convinced that the only reason we think of these things are "supernatural" is because we have a long, long way to go in understanding the nature of reality, even our immediate reality. There is no scientific consensus on what gives rise to a sentient being's sense of "self." Consciousness is called "the hard problem."
People have believed in more expansive interpretations of reality for thousands and thousands of years. Whether you go back to the Vedas, ancient Egyptian beliefs, or Pythagoras and the line of Western philosophers he and his followers gave rise to, one thing in common to all of them is that this "material" reality is simply not all there is to reality.
For folks interested in an interesting hypothesis I would recommend looking into Hameroff and Penrose's "Orch OR," which postulates that neuronal microtubules acting in concert may act as more of a "quantum antenna" for consciousness, than the brain being a purely generative device. Also note, some of quantum physics' key scientists including Schödinger were quite into Advaita Vedanta, and in Schrödinger's case he thought there could be something to the notion that there is one universal consciousness everything taps into, and it is this which collapses the waveform function.
24
Innumerable examples of near-death experiences do not prove the experience is anything more than dreams.
Being consistent with their fear of death, the religious will interpret them as glimpses of the afterlife in much the same way that they view "miracles."
Nothing wrong with that if it helps them over the bar.
As yet, however, I haven't seen an objectifiable test that distinguishes them from dreams or other internal mental imaging.
Why are things that we simply don't yet understand presented as impossible. There is much documentation that our "mind" or "soul" may leave our body but we don't know what it means or how it works because scientists, philosophers, neuroscientists, etc. don't even know yet how reality or consciousness works.
Too often people insist something is false just because they haven't yet understood what reality is and how it works.
16
Why are things that we simply don't yet understand presented as impossible. There is much documentation that our "mind" or "soul" may leave our body but we don't know what it means or how it works because scientists, philosophers, neuroscientists, etc. don't even know yet how reality or consciousness works.
Too often people insist something is false just because they haven't yet understood what reality is and how it works.
5
I had one and it was so profound that it literally, as the writer says, changed my life. It was actually what they call an FDE, or fear death experience. I don't know that I was actually on the edge of death, but was convinced I was and then the experience occurred. No Christin, or Buddhist, figures appeared, but a guide did and I recall getting every question I had -- and I had many -- answered. Of course when I returned I could not remember all the answers. Just knowing there were answers, and that I was granted them, was enough.
10
I wonder how close these experiences are to REM sleep; a heightened dream state while near consciousness causing the NDE.
5
I have a genetic heart condition and a built-in defibrillator. I've had a few full-on cardiac arrests where it would have been over but for the internal shock. It takes 10 to 20 seconds to kick in. So for that time I'm gone. What happens is absolutely nothing. It's fine. There's no light, no floating, no others. Just nothing.
Life formed 4 billion years ago, managed to complexify around 2 billion years ago, and has been on a tear for the last 500 million. Bacteria don't really have to die, they only get killed or divide clones. Death (and sex) became a thing when eukaryotes evolved. Without death we don't evolve. So individuals disappear, but through offspring genes carry on.
That's all there is. Religions may have formed to organize society, but they appeal to us because we hate it when our loved ones die. Life after death provides solace. Like when you tell a child that everything will be alright, even if there's no guarantee.
But it's time for adults to see life as it is. I know my "death" experiences have galvanized me. I try not to waste a minute of life. It's precious.
7
I had a NDE-like experience with Ayahuasca. I went in saying to myself that no matter what happens, there's no way I would be able to say it wasn't just my brain, a dream. I came out knowing, as a matter of first hand knowledge, that there's no way that was just my brain, that I tapped into something real, outside myself. I can't defend that intellectually, but I don't have to. I know it. I lived it. A scientist can deny love exists too. That doesn't make it so.
13
I"m a great fan of the NYT but I am underwhelmed by this piece. I've been reading about NDEs for years and John Martin Fischer does not touch upon many important NDE claims.
For example, some NDEs purport to be of blind people who have sight during their NDE. Their visual perceptions, they say, align with objective reality. That is, they saw an event, and that event really occurred as they describe it.
Some NDEs include encounters with departed souls who provide information unknown to the experiencer, and that information is later shown to be accurate.
Some NDEs include information that a person declared dead could not know. In one instance, an experiencer saw a shoe on a rooftop or a window sill. Someone climbed up to that area and verified that a shoe was there.
Either these accounts and others like them are accurate or they aren't. If they are accurate, they present NDEs as being more challenging than this author describes.
12
@Danusha Goska These accounts are accurate. I worked in geriatrics and several patients with NDE's would describe staff conversations outside of the room. One woman described events happening two counties over which non one knew about and it was later verified.
1
There is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of near-death experiences, or paranormal activity of any kind. Emily Williams Kelly, Ph.D., and other reputable scientists, have studied these “phenomena” for decades and have never found any scientific support for them.
People will basically believe whatever they want to, no matter the hard evidence to the contrary.
5
I don’t understand your position. There are many studies of NDE’s because they exist. The studies are trying to understand them. What you are saying is that they don’t exist. Ok.
6
@ALB
All that proves is the limits of science. And I say that as someone who has worked with scientists for close to 30 years now.
4
@Dan
People claim to have gone to heaven when near death (claims of having gone to hell . . . not so much). But heaven and hell are man-made constructs.
Obviously, some people who are near death do recover. But that doesn't mean that their tales of seeing angels floating around, etc., are true, or that there is reputable scientific evidence to support their claims. And the NDE anecdotes by commenters here are just that -- anecdotes.
Our brains are remarkable instruments, and they will absolutely make us see, hear, and believe things that have no basis whatsoever in fact. (See, e.g., "Thinking, Fast and Slow," by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahnemann.) This is why eyewitness testimony is so notoriously bad, for example. Our brains want, and need, to construct frameworks in various circumstances that makes sense to us, and so our brains do just that, even though those frameworks can be, and often are, completely wrong. Brains under stress are no different.
Show me the hard science on heaven and hell, and you'll make a believer out of me. But I'm not holding my breath.
I agree that these are experiences based in the mind. But what never gets addressed in articles like this is why the unconscious would choose these specific images? If our unconscious is trying to help us die well, isn’t that a significant finding? Wouldn’t that be “spiritual” enough, to think that we have something in us, larger than our ego, that gives those dying this experience? For a scientist, you’d think that the discovery of an unconscious programmed to help us die well would raise all sorts of intriguing possibilities. Why would our minds evolve this way? How would it even be possible for natural selection to work with brain events that function only at death? Clearly this would have implications for other unconscious events, such as dreams. If NDE’s are meaningful, how is it that dreams are not? Just asking.
12
This is not explained because we believe we have individual localized body consciousness. Consciousness is universal, and outside the body. Consciousness views the body, the body does not produce consciousness but produces phenomenal experience, which feeds into consciousness, the base reality, and what you truly are.
6
I had an experience like this in my mid-30s. I'm 66 now. I swung between a hellish dark experience straight up into a light expansive experience of love, light, and timelessness. What was immediately apparent was that the light end of the experience could not be translated to this side of reality, and it felt more real that the reality we experience day to day. It was a hope I needed badly at the time.
My life changed radically after that. I went through a prolonged and painful period of healing that resulted in a personal transformation I can't credit to myself. There are other ways to look at these kinds of experiences that are not so much about life and death. Gopi Krishna had an experience like this that caused him to spend his entire life writing about it. As a Hindu, he emphasized his learned ability to control his access to this light realm at wil. There are also many accounts of shamans going through a similar experience and coming back to the community to heal others.
There are more things in heaven and earth and so forth, you know?
25
Fascinating topic.
Certainly, NDEs do not "prove" anything, except that something profound happened to the experiencer. But if, as the professor seems to state, they can't be "real/authentic" because they happen within or are mediated by the brain, then ordinary everyday life itself can not be "real/authentic," since it too is experienced with the brain.
It's like saying a mother's love for her child isn't "real/authentic" because an fMRI would show that in "reality" it's merely that her brain is dumping large amounts of chemicals and hormones into her body when she is "feeling" love. An evolutionary biologist would add that those chemicals exist only to ensure she protects her offspring. Shoot me now.
So I appreciate the professor ending his essay with a call to interpret NDEs, these life-altering, hyper-real, often reported as "more real than real life" events.
Ultimately all of life, and how we respond to it, is about interpretation. Are we just electrified meat trying to avoid pain and experience pleasure until the lights go out? Or are we really something infinite, just passing through this mortal plane? And what interpretations give us the most passion and joy and make us the kindest?
6
We are pure consciousness experiencing being a human being.
18
@dan. Strange synchronicity here. I quoted Teilhard de Chardin the other day. And your post here is strongly similar to another quote of his—“You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience.”
3
@Dan
You said it! Short and sweet.
1
Life is either one long N.D.E. or a series of N.D.E's that ends with death. To die well is a nice concept, but certainly such wisdom can be found in other safer places along life's journey--perhaps someone else's N.D.E.? One's family, friends and finances would likely make a big difference in one's ability to die well but not guarantee it.
1
Oh, well. As nice as it sounds, all these reports are the results of membrane or receptor instability caused by trauma, lack of oxygen, drugs, etc. In 1955, the famous Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield reported on an "out-of -body" experience in a patient whose brain was stimulated. Similarly, using intracranial electrode implants (used for finding an epileptic source), when stimulating the angular gyrus, produced "out-of-body" experiences. These findings are all published in serious scientific journals. Unfortunately, many people prefer to believe in something supernatural or transcendent. But the nice thing about science is, it is true whether you believe it or not. The whole discussion reminds me of a film critique I read in the New Yorker decades ago. The film's title was "Meetings with Remarkable Men"; some hermits or monks in the Himalayas. The author then concluded: "depending on your viewpoint, these men either communicate deep wisdom or complete nonsense". Some of us believe that everything ends when ion currents stop flowing, others believe that we exist beyond the physical limits of our brains. In my viewpoint, membrane biophysics explains it all.
2
What you are saying is that there is correlated brain activity with BDE’s. But what of brain dead individuals? Why do you think there are studies of this phenomena right now? Because it is totally misunderstood. The mistake is that we believe the brain produces consciousness, it does not. Consciousness produces the human experience, and it is cosmic, not local to matter, in fact, please enlighten the world as to how natter produces consciousness and show us the consciousness measuring devices that can prove it exists.
I read about a hospital OR that has a display facing towards the ceiling and mounted high above the operating table. It is there so that patients who claim to have experienced a NDE might be able to recall the images they saw on the display while floating above their body on the operating table.
Humanity has always loved a good story. It is ingrained at our mitochondrial level. Thus, when we go out, and the cell lysing begins, we give ourselves one last marvelous story. Note: instantaneous trauma to the brain does not allow the creation of a happy ending. Anyway, we have, as a species, been working on this story (of redemption, of a savior) since we first started to think. And when we go? We have a tremendous amount of memory that will, in seconds, be useless. Thus, we make the absolute most of everything we know or knew.
1
For eons people knew there was a spiritual side to them, for a long time people knew they were spirits.
But that flew on the teeth of organized religion. How can you have terrified citizens paying tithes to the church or face eternal damnation, if they know that once dead they simply pick up another body? So the church set out to rid them selves of the competition, and any one not believing (and paying tithes), was a heretic tortured to dead.
Still the spiritual side of men remained.
Then came Otto Von Bismark, and the doctors at Leipzig, starting by Pabvlov on down the line. Bismark wanted his soldiers to do inconceivable acts of cruelty, but those with a heart in them would not do them. So he recruited psychiatry to remove the spiritual side of men, and now that every one was an animal, it was ok to butcher each other in new ways only he could dream of. By WWI this was in full display, the horrors of which are still in our minds.
But yet humanity retains a tini sliver of spiritualism to them.
Of course that goes against psychiatry who claims we are animals and nothing but a walking talking chunk of meat, who needs their pills to be acceptable in society.
Humans are spirits. No matter who wants to kill that, they have not been able to. I hope they never win.
1
The word "spiritual" is used to describe N.D.E.s and other deep experiences, but no where is any insight provided in what this term means in general or, in specific, to the author. I find this word far too often misapplied and misunderstood. I'm waiting for someone to be insightful and use this term meaningfully.
3
Imagine going to all the trouble of becoming an academic philosopher only to expend your talents on such a non-issue.
(1) NDEs are meaningful for those who have them.
(2) There isn’t a whisper of a prayer that NDEs tell us anything about reality.
Done. That’s it. Finis. There is not a single thing worth adding that is of any philosophical interest. (Indeed, even these two claims are of no philosophical interest.)
4
The author is asking us to believe that the thousands of people who have had NDEs are unable to distinguish a real experience from an hallucination. I've read hundreds of accounts of NDEs, and the people who relate them don't seem irrational to me. When a sane, rational person tells me that she or he had an experience and that the experience was not a dream or hallucination, I should respect what that person tells me. It would be quite arrogant if I, a person who did not have an experience, would tell the person who did have the experience that I understand their experience better than they do. If NDEs make a philosophy professor feel uncomfortable, that's no reason for that professor to disrespect the people who share these experiences with us. These folks, many of whom are very well educated, often face ridicule from people who think that a PhD makes them better able to understand the experiences of others than the people who actually had the experiences. I respect people who have had NDEs and share them with us even though they know they will face ridicule from the "learned" who know better than others what reality is.
15
@Kenneth One of the main points of the piece: NDEs are real, but their "proof" of other-worldly phenomena is not so real. In the meantime, I'll settle comfortably in the knowledge that I have never heard of anyone coming back to complain.
3
@Glenn Thomas O you just aren't listening, honey.
2
I think that the bigger question is whether consciousness exists separate from the mind and body and if consciousness is eternal. Answering that question gives insight to the questions of NDEs and reincarnation. Amanda Gefter's " Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn" has help me in my spiritual quest for the true meaning of reality. HINT - Amanda summarizes all of the quantum physicist's theories into one book and draws a conclusion that "We are each the author of our own universe"
There is compelling hard science evidence that consciousness is the only thing fundamental in our know universe. I highly recommend the book for truth seekers.
2
Even after having one, it cannot be proven that it was not a dream. Just as one cannot prove that this so-called waking state is not a dream. What if mind is not bound by the human experience? Of course there is the personal mind with identity and thoughts about the person and the personal life story and such. But what if the brain is not a creator of consciousness, but the tool for interpreting consciousness? People talk about states of expanded consciousness. Yet, what if consciousness is constant and cannot expand? Maybe it is the mind that expands. Maybe NDEs are expanded mind experiences - the personal mind is absorbed into universal mind. Since all experiences are subjective, nothing can be proven to the objects perceived by the subject (other people). How does one know that this "reality" is not a simulation of some kind? Or that one is actually a brain in a vat? Self-realization has been pointed to by many as a path to Truth and the true nature of the Self. Then there is complete understanding and no more questions.
1
The author seems to be asking the question: what is reality?
He says that experience of NDE cam be real but the reality of the experience does not prove the reality of NDE. But would the author make the same argument if the experience in question is eating an apple? Would not most people say that both the experience and the apple are real? This shows our cultural bias about reality. In truth, neither can be proved.
In fact, the only provable reaity is experience itself.
"We can die in sterile, cold hospitals — alone. (There are negative N.D.E.s.) Or we can die in a more humane setting, surrounded by loved ones."
the truth of the matter is there are people who will die comfortably surrounded by loved ones and there will also be those that will die alone in some cold sterile environment- if they are lucky enough that it's not worse than that.
our goal should be for everyone to have as good a death as possible no matter who you are or where.
6
When I was flown to hospital in the middle of what they called a "massive heart attack" that needed a 5 way bypass I didn't feel a thing. I looked out at the night from the helicopter and enjoyed the 45 minite flight. When I got to hospital, was checked and put to bed, a priest came around. I told him to go away; "This is a time for man's medical miracles," I said."I don't need your nonsense. If I die, I die, if I live, I live and it's all to do with how good an operation I have and hqw well I can take it. I survived, had 5 way and was home 10 days later. No, near death may be an experience, but no different from any other we may have;certainly there no angels, or Gods , other fairy , magical beings.
6
Well of course NDEs are "real" in that many folks nearly die, but then don't, and retain some memory of the experience. A brain under extreme duress (lack of blood flow, lack of oxygen, or subject to other extreme toxic-metabolic derangement) can generate all sorts of images, sensations, thoughts, and feelings .... some of which may be recalled later in some cases. I'm shocked that any physician would be believe in a "supernatural" etiology of NDEs.
8
I completely agree. I was beckoned toward the light following a gastric bleed. It was beautiful and calm and yet those around me encouraged me not to go. I chose to return. To me, this portends the possibility of a good death when the time is right.
9
I’m reluctant to comment because to those who have experienced NDE’s, they are the most real and true experience they have ever had. Those who have not, can’t possibly imagine the experience.
There is another experience – what I’ve learned is sometimes called a “shared” death experience. The experience of a death of a loved one who may be physically close of distant.
Forty years ago, when my father died in the middle of the night, I found myself suddenly sitting straight up in bed, “knowing” that someone was at the foot of the bed. I was completely enveloped in love and JOY. The message I felt was that everything was fine, my father had died, and he was fine – more than fine – and I should just go back to sleep.
My father did not have a near death experience – he had a death experience. My experience may be inexplicable, but it was very real. Love and comfort may be expected at the death of a parent, but joy?
Not only do I "know" that my experience at my father’s transition to death was real, I think it may be the ONLY real thing I know. It was a profoundly life-altering experience that I wish for those who haven’t experienced it.
But I also believe that skepticism and doubts won’t matter - it’s a good thing to question and doubt after all. We’ll all eventually experience a joyful transition to death and whatever lies beyond. And if we are lucky enough to have had and NDE or shared experience, it can help us to be more loving while still living
41
This is really interesting. If you read Marie Louise von Franz work, “On Dreams and Death,” you will find other examples of dreams where those facing death dream they are on a train. The unconscious seems to use the journey as a metaphor for dying. As Jung would say, this doesn’t prove the existence of an afterlife, but it does point to the fact that our unconscious has evolved to believe in an afterlife. And if this is how Nature has made us, wouldn’t it be simpler just to go with it? At any rate, I realize your dream was of the death of a loved one, but I think the unconscious dynamic still works. Thank you for sharing that!
1
I find the author terribly depressing. Dying is a part of life that comes to all of us. I would not discount or dismiss what I believe is the reality of near death. In 1969 my father suffered a massive heart while at his doctor's office. According to the doctor, Dr. R. Stanley Bank, a very well respected physician in Harrisburg, PA, and also from the observations of my mother, dad died. He was gone. They rushed him to Harrisburg Hospital working on him as they made the 3 mile trip to the ER. Dad made it. Later in the ICU when I briefly visited with him he looked at me and said "I see you survived!". I felt better after that remark and knew that he would go on to a full recovery. But, that's not the end of the story. Later he would relate to mom and us kids what happened on the way to the hospital. He could recall everything. Yet, he was gone. His hear stopped. His breathing stopped. His eyes were closed. But, he detailed every moment of the trip and everything that happened in the ER. He remembered being lifted onto the gurney in the doctors office and everything that else.
Yes, I survived. And so did dad for two more years until a second heart attack struck in September 1971. Dad always believed there is a god and that god is the creator of everything. His heart attack affirmed that. I'm 72 now and I miss my dad everyday. I also know beyond doubt that he lives with god in heaven and watches over us. Dad did not have a near death experience. He experienced new life.
25
A lot of these experiences sound much like what people experience after taking high doses of hallucinogens. Check out the Harvard Psilocybin Project.
Anyway, it's a simple question: Are you a monist or a dualist? If you're a monist, these experiences exist only in the brain. That's not an insult. All perception exists there. Phenomenology has its limits. If you're a dualist, realms unfold beyond the limits of perception and existence. It's a question of individual culture, temperament, and as the author states, philosophy.
34
@Locho
5-MeO-DMT (as found in Cane Toad venom, but best approached thru the synthetic compound) is the hallucinogen _par excellence_ in this regard.
My reflection on the experience (once was enough) is totally down with the authors take... this is a real, maybe HYPER-REAL experience, the "shut down sequence" of a dying mind/brain, but not evidence of supernatural realms.
5-meo delivers NDE, death experience, "soul travel", and resurrection.
As Terrance McKenna held, you may die of astonishment. But then you don't. Then you must live with it. Until you die.
4
@Bemused
"If you're a monist, these experiences exist only in the brain. "
I suggest that you look up the definition of the word "monist". It does not necessarily imply a materialist explanation. In fact, historically, most monists have not been materialists; rather the opposite.
1
@Bemused Thanks for contributing here. Hopefully the philosopher of this piece will do a piece next where he covers the evidence that our daily lived lives are "accurate," in the sense he uses that word for assessing NDEs. I'd be curious to hear your take on that, post-toad!
I suspect, as many commenters have stated, that NDEs are the result of brain hypoxia. I say this because having had general anesthesia several times, without hypoxia, I experienced no NDE, just a total gap in the timeline of my consciousness.
2
Well, " for we now 'see' through a glass, darkly" or something like that. One does not have to be dying in order to have a N.D.E., but most of us don't talk about it and I am NOT about to talk to the wind. There's a vast void between what we think we are while here and what we really are! There are a lot of experts about this world and maybe they think they know the "reality" of it but haven't even scratched its surface. The world will continue as is, with us coming and going. Most not knowing where from, or where to. There is an eternal caravan of consciousness in the Cosmic and this moment now is just a grain of sand!
6
The author did not really say anything that we did not know already. NDEs remain a mystery and their nature is still mostly unclear, but for those who experienced them they are real. These experiences are like love that is intangible but is no less real because of it and manifests itself through its transformative force. Not everything that is real is physical in nature. Has the author thought of that possibility?
3
It seems you have set up a straw man argument by referring to proof of the existence of heaven and hell. Most of the literature on NDE's does not mention either. You are correct that those who have NDE's put NDE's in a relevant spiritual context because they have no other language available for them.
Also, it would have been useful if you had fairly represented the arguments of neuroscientists who have experienced NDE's and then rebutted their arguments.
But all of this is peripheral. As someone who has had a NDE I can tell you that describing it to someone is like having a discussion about Paris with someone who has never left their hometown. Forty years later it remains the most important event of my life and has made me a better husband, father, and person. I wish it was possible to share what I experienced.
55
@ThirdWay...
Thank you for your extremely sensible comment.
My hypothesis is that people should be very careful about reaching conclusions much less judgments regarding experiences that they have never personally experienced.
Especially if those experiences seriously threaten the excessive tyranny of Western Science.
"To insist that the only reality are phenomena that can be submitted to the paradigm of classical science is itself a religion."
Dietrick E. Thomson
Senior Editor
Science News
12
My sister and I met a ghost at a hotel in South Carolina, some years ago. The ghost was called half head. He was a cadet at the old citadel and he (accidentally?) blew half his head off. The other was a woman who had the high hair and clothes of the 1700s. Half Head bear-hugged my sister in bed in the middle of the night. The same night I awoke to feeling someone's hands around my throat. The second night Half Head was in my sister's bed again, but I was left alone. The third night, I complained to housekeeping and they admitted there was a ghost, but he'd never harm anyone, although there were a lot of incidents in the kitchen with cabinets opening and slamming and things being thrown across the room. I told her he tried to choke me. That night Half Head came into my bed and bear-hugged me, brought me out into the hall and introduced me to the 1700s woman. She was the one who tried to choke me. I awoke and told my sister not to worry because the ghost had already come. I showed her how he pinned me with this arms and she confirmed that was what happened to her.
And I told her about the woman. At the same time there was a sickly sweet smell in the room and I knew it was her, but my sister couldn't smell anything.
I've seen people die and I believe in Heaven and NDEs. We wondered why these ghosts couldn't (or wouldn't) go into the light and decided they must be in hell. Living forever without being seen in a world based in reality.
3
@Geraldine Griffin WOW. That is some story. In the 1990s me, my wife and children lived in a house that neighbors said there was murder in a long time ago. When my son was born we used a bassinet my grandmother obtained many years ago, for my son to sleep in. The bassinet was in our master bedroom and I remember one night waking to hear the bassinet swinging as though it was being pushed. I do believe in spirits, ghosts.
2
Prof. Fischer seems rather "sure" of his conclusions. He has clearly never had an NDE so how can he even presume to make such absolute statements such as "shows not there there is an afterlife". It is all conjecture on his part. One commenter, Joseph B., below states quite accurately: "Just because medical science can not prove NDE'S is more a reflection on the limitations of medical science rather than disproving NDE's aren't real." I have had an NDE and I can assure you they are real. The bliss that awaits is too narrow a term. That may sound hokey, but our experience on this physical plane cannot begin to grasp it. That said, the skeptics will always be skeptic. Their loss, but to be open minded is much more enriching and rewarding.
15
@Joanne Klein...
Doesn't String Theory support the concept of alternative dimensions other than our own?
1
@Joanne Klein Being a skeptic and being open-minded are not mutually exclusive. Who was it who said that it's good to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out?
Weak. Any commentary on NDEs must be left to those who have experienced them. They are something science must continue to stay in awe of.
10
Uh. There is no evidence that the supernatural exists. But interestingly enough, those that have claimed to have one thinks, in many cases, that it confirms their religious beliefs whether they are Christian, Muslim, or Hindu.
@David Bible...
If NDE's are the result of a human soul or higher self or consciousness... something which is still unable to be measured by our kindergarten level of science and technology... then why wouldn't it make use of the spiritual vocabulary of the individual's current incarnation.
I learned a long time ago that when one communicates it is important that one does so in a way that one will be able to be understood.
1
@TOBY
That's perspective. However it does not address the complete lack of evidence that any supernaturalness exists. Experiment after experiment after experiment has failed to prove the supernatural. So any claim of a NDA confirming a spiritual experience faces the problem that the rest of us must give the experiencer crediblilty for yet another belief in something not seen which seems to be the point, those that believe in the unseen and the unprovable others must be treated as if that belief is true inspite of all evidence to the contrary.
Call me when you have a R.D.E. ( Really Dead Experience).
No, not the kind Jerry and the band gave you.
5
For a daily near death experience., try a drive on the 405 in LA Country on any given morning.
10
@jmilovich :) For added flavour, try it on a motorcycle.
Agree completely with NYT’s choices. If you haven’t experienced a NDE, pontificating is rather a priori.
2
For those who cannot believe that such experiences are "real," I would suggest that maybe you have not worked in hospitals with the dying, you have never listened to someone who coded describe to you what outside ledge of what floor of the hospital you can find where a discarded shoe lies or what was being said in the hallway outside the room where they almost died, etc. Sadly, you most likely have overlooked the supernatural you have encountered thus far. My guess is that you'll just have to wait.
194
It seems to me that you and numerous others have missed the point here. The author says the NDEs ARE real insofar as the person did experience the “dream”. What he is trying to say, and does, in my opinion, is that this person’s or that person’s NDE does not prove anything.
I think people clinging to religion, paying fealty to an invisible giant in the sky, have a vested interest in believing “there is more”. Otherwise all that time spent on religion is wasted.
22
@Charlotte You have to experience death or near death to understand it. I'm not sure one should even call it an afterlife. it's not dramatic. It's more like a continuum.
12
@Charlotte I have no doubt that these experiences are “real” in that they actually occur. The question is do they reflect an external reality pointing towards an “afterlife existence,” or an internal reality marking the manner of the extinction of our ego centric self? That question is not answered by any of the descriptions of the experiences, and in a scientifically based world that is the bottom line question that we need to answer.
2
I have not had a near-death experience, but I have a deep spiritual life. One can travel any time, not only as death approaches. It is said that our soul travels as we sleep. Yes, I have. Also, I believe that all religious beliefs are valid (read David Bentley Hart, for clarification). Maybe read about the astral plane. There are other levels of existence (than our own).
Finally, "heaven" is beyond these experiences, another existence altogether.
1
These experiences should not be referred to as NDE's. They don't necessarily have anything to do with being near death.
I had one when I was 20 and I was driving a car when I began to feel something I could not explain come over me. Long story short, I felt as if I were moving at the speed of light and the last thing I remember was checking the speedometer which said I was only going 10 mph. In the next instant, I found myself about 5 feet above the car looking down at it. I somehow realized what was going on and felt that I could be anywhere just by thinking about it. Then I found myself several hundred feet above the car. I then remembered I was driving a car with a passenger in it and, instantaneously found myself back in the driver's seat. Although I tried to hold on to the feeling that precipitated this experience, by the time I arrived home about 10 minutes later, it was gone.
I didn't think about it again until my early 30's when I told the woman who would soon become my wife about it. Another long story short, she suggested I get back into meditation. I did and had one very brief experience of floating just above my body (after months of trying).
I didn't think much more about it until after my wife died and I began to think about the afterlife. I tried to analyze every nanosecond of that experience and concluded that what we call our spirit is nothing more than the quantum material our consciousness consists of. So, it's something natural we all have.
6
Some years ago, at an ICU, I was dead for almost two minutes. That's what my doctor told me. And there was nothing supernatural about it
1
Dreams are all different, while these experiences share similar traits.
I’m agnostic on all this, but I can report my mother’s experience at a major, reputable hospital here in Manhattan, some 30 years ago:
She suffered a morphine overdose when her drip malfunctioned, 2 days post surgery. She became unconscious. A team rushed into the room and gave her a narcon like injection. It was in the middle of the night, so she had no visitors. She survived.
She said she saw herself down below, as though she was floating near the ceiling. She was able to accurately describe everything they did to her, including where they injected her. AND, she freaked out the nurses the next day when she asked for, and accurately pointed out, the male nurse (who had never been assigned to her, so she did not know him previously) as the one who gave her the injection.
She said she felt peaceful as she floated, watching her body below. Since then she never feared death, she had a hilariously relaxed attitude about it (some jokes, but I’ll spare the readers). She lived lightly and happily afterwards, until she passed away in her sleep in her beloved Manhattan apartment last year, at a ripe old age.
290
@Lily
Excellent description- and more or less matches that of my dad, after a sepsis and bp drop and before he was shocked and hydrated back to awareness in a major hospital ER. He reported a sense of floating above, accurate recall of who was around him, sense of peace, and of loving connection to his wife (who had followed the ambulance to the ER) and family members. He survived, was very interested in the experience, read about NDEs, talked to his minister. He was always religious, and interested in the mystery of faith. This experience, he concluded, led to a stronger perception that “it is all about love” - not a very precise, original, or theologically based conclusion, but one that did help him feel more joy and connection in life, and less concern about death, through his eventual widowerhood and final illness. That NDE was a blessing for all of us who loved him, too.
32
@Lily
As a young boy I often had dreams where I was floating above myself and looked down to see I was sleeping.
I also had pneumonia and a fever of 104.6 and experienced floating above myself as the room twisted and turned and I saw sparkling lights in the air of my bedroom.
Hardly a near death experience. Just a brain doing it's thing when under physical duress.
6
Lily, there is a operating room somewhere that has a random word generator that cannot be seen from the floor or the table. Not one person that had a “near death experience” there has been able to identify the word, even when they experience the “floating above my body” syndrome.
Most likely you mother was not dead and the hospital workers comments and actions were picked up by her subconscious.
3
I was paralyzed and unconscious and experienced nothing. That's as close to dead as I'd like to get.
1
Easy answer, No. Your brain has been taught you over your life span , what you want to believe in and what you personally want to believe in. My mom before she passed had dreams of being together with my father. All that white light stuff is what you taught your self to believe. All after life was in invented by religions and people who wanted an afterlife, period! Thru the ages people have thought about after life. There is none, when it's proven, I'll look into it!
Recommended reading to be found at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, especially the "Exceptional NDEs" section. nderf.org
5
How do people see things after they've left their bodies since they've left their eyes behind?
5
On September fourth, 1962, I was hit by a train, in Lawton, Oklahoma. On that day, I left this world, but, I came back, unhappily.
I was dead (I didn't know that, then), I had no history. I was headed toward a yellow and blue ark. I didn't know what it was, but I was so excited to be moving toward it, that I didn't care. The speed, in which I was traveling kept increasing, with every second. I had never been so happy, in my entire 22 years of Earthly life. I didn't think of the family, I had left behind. All I wanted to do was reach the Yellow-blue ark.
My speed kept increasing, I was ecstatic. I was getting closer and closer to my destination. Then, it was I hit a wall. The next thing I recall, I opened my eyes. It was very bright. I closed my eyes, again, and reopened them. Iwas in a hospital, with people dressed in white with masks, hovering over me. I knew where I was. Instantly, I became very depressed.
My skull, jaw, shoulder, ribs and other parts of my body where sending signals of extreme pain.I didn't care, I wanted to go back from whence I was brought. Oh, the pain and sorrow I felt from having been, forcibly, brought into the emergency room and back to this wretched existence.
Pain or no pain, sorrow or no sorrow, I hated where I was. I missed the peace and joy, I had, previously, been experiencing.
The road in front, was long and full of problematic issues, but with my newly learned sense of metaphysics, forget the pain my life changed. Today, I am a believer
17
Might as well argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Those who know for sure ain't talking, and sooner or later you'll be one of them.
1
If the moment of death is anything like the anesthesia I had in surgery, it's click, lights out. Which really doesn't seem that bad even though a MGM movie of my life with me as the star would fun to see also but please no religious stuff.
6
Christian publishers, speakers, and ministers promote doctors who believe in the theological reality of NDE's because they want to connect the science and the belief and thereby give the beliefs more standing. A doctor certainly can speak from medical experience that it's a real phenomenon, and speak philosophically that the theological reality is possible, but they can't prove it any more than can anyone else.
As for whether the visions are "real," as a Catholic Christian I believe God can communicate a message to an individual through images, but given that throughout history the images have been different it's the overall meaning not the specifics that matters. What does heaven or hell look like exactly? Not at all the point.
1
They are a natural function of the brain in times of duress. Communing with “the old long haired man who lives in the sky and created the universe” is not what they are.
3
Just my hypothesis: NDEs are neurological (electrochemical) activities in a dying/distressed brain.
"Spiritual" explanations are whistling past the graveyard.
6
From a more orthodox Christian viewpoint, NDEs are pretty much meaningless. When you die, you're dead. For the Christian, the hope is in the resurrection.
I'm a healthy 46 year old male, raised Catholic although mostly agnostic these days. A year ago during a dinner party i had an overwhelming feeling that a friends deceased mother was near her as she described how much she was missing her. I tried to simply ignore the feeling. The result was a physical pain that would not subside until I blurted out "your mother is next to you". At that point the physical pain and feeling simply vanished.
What came next were a series of medical exams(CT, MRI, Aura or other Epilipsy test, Neuro eval) that came back as clear with a clean bill of health.
What I have experienced since has made me question everything.
The feeling of "heaven" or the darkness where we reconcile for the challenges we had in our lives. Not a Hell per se, more of a contemplative purgatory. Knowing that there is a pure love on another plane that simply exists as a layer that we are not to see or experience yet. This and many other visions( although I hate to use that word) have made me not fear death. The experiences have changed my outlook on life and beyond. I have always lived my life to the fullest of my ability. I now see that I(we) should be helping others do the same.
So my question is(coming from a fairly skeptical person): What happens when you have the "near death experience" without experiencing a physical NDE?
5
Can you get Eban Alexander’ to reply to this opinion article???
5
I believe it is impossible for someone who hasn't had an NDE to fully understand. I experienced one back in 1974 after a violent collision.
The best I can say is that as I looked down from above at myself in the emergency room, I had an immediate sense of being surrounded by the most indescribable sense of peace and love possible (or impossible). I also felt immediately that I had returned "home" and recognized this remarkable peace and love as "home".
There was far more to it than that, but I've given up talking about it much. It was the most important, mind-boggling event of my life.
The author or anybody else doesn't need to accept or believe what I say. I fully understand. I never would have believed it either if it hadn't happened to me.
Love to you all.
140
@JMS You missed the point: the author is saying that an NDE is not evidence of an afterlife. Death = dead.
The local NBC affiliate in St. Louis did a feature on this (inevitably) in the early 1980's, with amusing results.
They began with the usual story of a patient in an 'end of life' crisis, who explained she had died, and was rushing toward a series of lights, before being revived by doctors at the large non-profit hospital here.
The ER doctors chuckled to explain the patient was semi-conscious and they rushed her through a long underground tunnel to the appropriate branch of the building for recovery.
4
My experience taught me the body has a unique way it shuts down. My body lost all sense of weight and there was a "wall of white" my mind perceived. It was gentle, it was calm, it was peaceful. It was not however, in my perception at the time or after the event "heaven". It was an amazing experience of another way of "being".
11
I told my wife the other day that I had an out of body experience , she told me next time I have one to come back with a different body . Sorry , I just can 't help myself .
22
Not to be picky, but in what senses does the word "real" apply to even the most common of internal experiences? That is a question that could be debated all day. "Real" like most common useful words has a necessarily vague meaning. English is, thankfully, not scientific jargon. Extremely anomalous events are rare, but do occur. Anyone who lives a very long life will have experienced a few. What they "mean" depends on what meaning we give to them.
2
Near death experiences are real. I nearly drowned swimming in a gorge after an Autumn storm. I couldn't make it back to an exit point against the current. I was borderline hypothermic by the time I pulled myself back onto rock. I was sick for weeks afterwards.
Near death, yes. A few minutes difference and I was done. My friends on the ledge would have unwittingly watched me drown. Not that they could have done anything about it.
Awe inspiring, no. No dream state. No outer body experience. Not even panic. Cold hard mental calculations all the way down. I'm in trouble. What do I do?
The solution was alternating elementary backstroke with short freestyle sprints. You reserve energy with the first. You gain ground against the current and keep your heart beat going with the second. I could have ended up on the bottom of a gorge troubleshooting the problem. I'd still be thinking about the problem the whole way down though.
My only reflections in hindsight: Wouldn't that be a dumb way to die? I've got this stinking cold to prove it.
4
They are quite real for the people who have them. What else matters?
14
@wintersea -Thank you for that! The simplest way to explain it.
I've never had a near death experience, but I have experienced manifestations of the Holy Spirit, in the Christian Pentecostal tradition. It seems to me that these experiences must be similar, as they both relate to a divine contact. According to the article: "In popular literature, N.D.E.s are almost always interpreted supernaturalistically.'"
The interpretation of divine experiences will always depend upon your personal beliefs, or those of whatever group you associate with. Pentecostal groups might see the Holy Spirit, New Age groups might see Pleadians (aliens from the Pleiades), and Ouija board players might see a dead relative.
Secular psychology has their own interpretations. It modern vernacular it might be called 'psychological agency'. In the depth psychology of C.G. Jung and others, it is called the 'God image'. As pointed out by Edinger (1996), products of the unconscious often seem to come from outside, even though they come from within. And we often attribute them to supernatural beings.
If a healthy and well-adjusted brain can experience God, then we can only image what a brain might experience if starved of oxygen, or on a cocktail of drugs, or subjected to the electric shock of a cardiac defibrillator, or a person on severe mental stress might experience.
Cite:
Edinger, Edward F. The New God image : A Study of Jung’s Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God image. Chiron Publications, 1996.
2
No they are not real. Its the mind working overtime. Are dreams real? No. Humans want to believe in something supernatural. I don't understand why. Nor do I care. What you see is what you get. Enjoy reality while you have it. The way to enjoy it is to be a good guy. Your conscience will be good to you and so will other humans.
1
Before it was illegal I took some pure Sandoz labs LSD.
Laying in bed, I looked down to where my body should have been and it wasn't there on the bed. I could tell from my view of the room my head had to be on the pillow, but couldn't see my body at all. And I panicked--what happened to my body? Where was my body? I NEEDED my body! And then suddenly I calmed down realizing this was death. This is what death is--losing the body. I'd lost my body--yet I was still there. My body was separate from who I AM. Just another suit of clothing to take off when no longer needed.
Later I read in the journal reports of those studying LSD (when that was still possible) that something like 40% of those who took LSD had this "death" experience.
If the body is just a suit of clothing for the being inside then racism makes no sense at all. There are no physical differences under the skin. And if we can go on without it then there HAS to be something else after. We don't get to KNOW what, but there is something. Because losing our bodies isn't the end.
7
@calannie I certainly had a few out of body, one with the Universe experiences with LSD back in the day, especially the Orange Sunshine I had once. I still wonder about that feeling.
I have repeatedly had these sorts of experiences under intense experimentation some of which were indeed true NDEs (i.e., my wife called 911, etc.) and most of them were a bit more under control. The experiences are so extreme (disassociatives + psychedelics + disassocative psychedelics at high doses---this is not your typical recreational tripping) that it's hard, even impossible, to distinguish them from any reality.
That was more than a couple of decades ago. It's a distant memory now. As a scientist I agree with the reductionist review - there is no evidence for anything external beyond one's mind but man, the feelings and choices I had.
I've seen a few other weird things that involve multiple people (synchrony) but these too have been explained as illusory effects. There's this episode of the Animatrix that gets at this. I was in Bangkok and I had met this guy from Australia...
2
@RamS Back to synchrony again, in addition to coincidence (our brains are all the same, etc.) read up on the power of suggestion. I didn't realise how powerful it could be but in an altered state it is even more powerful and this can easily explain collective reactions. It almost feels like telepathy when it happens.
Again, I'm a scientist but even I can't deny we all have this need to think about a creator/god/etc. Every culture has a god-like figure. Every human has thoughts about it. Jungian archetype stuff. Where does this universal portion of our consciousness come from?
1
When my mother-in- law was dying in hospital, I witnessed an unusual experience when she appeared to have died. She flatlined for what was several minutes, the monitor tape showed no heartbeat, and the attending nurse could not detect a heart beat. Then, her heart would begin to beat, and she regained consciousness. She spoke with her husband, daughter, and myself about her being aware of us standing around her. bedside holding hands saying a prayer while she was thought to have died. This experience happened twice while in ICU. The nurse told us she had never witnessed an experience like this and asked us if she could retain the monitor tape. We agreed to let her take the tape. The attending doctor had her disconnected from the monitor and moved to another room where there was no monitor. She died after having two additional experiences similar to what we witnessed in ICU. My mother-in- law and her husband died over twenty years ago. My wife and I have no explanation for what we witnessed.
4
My husband suffered a massive heart attack in September 2016. He went into cardiac arrest, VFib five times and had to be defibrillated every time. He told me later that when he was unconscious, he saw a white light and a tree. There were two people and they were whispering something. He couldn’t see them though as the light was too bright.
3
The experience around death (and coming back from it) means little in regards to what is out there, or not.
For all we know, "we go back" into "the oneness" essence and then from there ..... a lack of solid evidence for a "life" beyond doesn't refute that or all of the other possibilities.
The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it was quite a trick to create a Universe (at least one) out of complete nothingness and then provide the building blocks for crazily complex life to evolve.
I don't even need my own little soul to be pretty pleased about that.
10
As a physicist I can assure professor Fischer that the concept of “reality” is as abstract as NDE. I find you patronize those who have experienced alternative realities but science is not on your side. We already know that matters pop in and out of existence but have no idea where it comes nor where it goes or how this happen. All evidence suggest that we live in a holographic universe; perhaps NDE is the closest we are to true reality.
98
@Marc Exactly. Let someone prove that reality is "real". Is it
true that when examined up close that matter is essentially almost entirely nothing?
7
@Peter Well, not nothing, but merely an ‘instruction’ or ‘law’ to exist, if I can put it that way. This is the quantum field theoretic description of not just matter, but even space and time itself. The field is the most fundamental description of reality. And a field is just a law for a particle to obey in some part of spacetime. For example, every object on the Earth will obey the field law of gravity and will fall with exactly the same acceleration if dropped. In quantum field theory not just the forces, but even the particles and spacetime itself can be described by this field concept. Everything is just a ‘command’ to exist. From a religious perspective, God says ‘Be’ and it is.
7
@Marc
Thank you for your cogent response. The limited viewpoint of the logicians are driving me crazy!
2
Life after Death is a trivial question since all alive were once born. The NDE is interesting for other reasons and can be scientifically examined.
Just not very well by philosophers. They use consciousness to study consciousness - like using the eye to see the eye; you end up nowhere.
Daniel Dennett believes if you know synapses, you've got it all, that's it. A. J. Ayer was a disbeliever, until he had an NDE. But then he walked it back, saying he was just rather more flexible in his disbelief.
MDs deal with death and see things philosophers do not. They're in the other camp, that there's a life after death. That's a stretch, but they absolutely say consciousness can survive, at least for a while. The Tibetan Book of the Dead agrees, after which the soul fades and individuality disappears.
Shamans use plants to escape the confines of the everyday body and return with supra-physical knowledge that's practical and real; they might determine who stole what or return with a cure that works. NDEs on the operating table commonly know what's happening in the other room and what people were thinking while they were clinically dead.
Those who collect NDEs scientifically conclude that mind and brain are separate. You can have one without the other. This is our common experience with dreaming.
Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's theory is that undifferentiated consciousness arises within the brain from quantum states in the microtubules.
Sounds good to me.
3
There are instances where people around the bedside of a dying person also experience the NDE. They see what the patient sees. How do you explain that? They are not having oxygen deprivation.
15
I was hoping the author of this Opinion was going to address the countless reports of unconscious patients reporting details of events and procedures taking place in the room - from vantage points physically impossible for the patient to witness - while close to death.
These are hard to explain, regardless of their conscious state, without some kind of out-of-body phenomena taking place.
I'm not saying NDEs are "real" in both senses described by the author. But something is going on in these reports that's beyond a mere dream (or delusion). Insisting otherwise is silly.
FWIW, two (unrelated) members of my family insist they had deeply moving episodes of NDE while being resuscitated. The details of these events (decades apart) are strikingly similar even though they'd never met. Their sincerity and deeply-felt life-changing effects are hard to dismiss.
Color me: Open-minded on NDEs.
47
I had a cardiac arrest a few years ago where my heart stopped for two minutes. Fortunately, I was at a medical clinic hooked up to a heart monitor so I was revived by defibrillator. There was no white light; no out of body experience. It was like before I was born: nothing. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.
18
@Frank Fortunato You quoted the Bible in your last line.
It also says God knew us and all the days we would live before we were born (Psalm 139:16 & others).
And that to be absent from our body (read: we are not just a body) is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8)
I’m betting my soul on what the Bible says. It proves too many things beyond a doubt.
@Frank Fortunato Ummm - before your birth, nothing. I assume you are Pro-Choice, then?
I had a motorcycle accident in 1981 and suffered multiple fractures, including back, neck, hip, & pelvis along with massive internal bleeding, suspected ruptured spleen, concussion and amnesia. I had a NDE in hospital, lying on a bed waiting for X-Rays when I saw myself looking down at me at the same time I was looking up at myself. There was no distinction, for I was both at the same time. I ‘knew’ I had the choice to ‘stay’ or ‘go’.
It was not a religious experience for me, but transformed how I thought about death. For a period of 10 years or so following the accident i experienced almost déjà vu moments and often found myself somewhere where I had no recollection of how I got there.
I consider my experiences to be the result of my accident where I was highly traumatized both physically and mentally with the severe concussion. I came to accept my NDE as my brains mechanism of self-protection, but that didn’t explain the powerful, almost daily déjà vu occurrences. I got into religion, since I thought ‘that must be it’, but after a while came to the conclusion that finding God was all too simple and convenient and eventually became an atheist.
I no longer have any such moments, but feel changed forever by my NDE.
62
Of course people will describe their experience differently! We each use the language and symbols we are familiar with to describe all sorts of things, why would this be any different?
A variety of descriptions for a shared experience of phenomena are standard unless all parties agree to precise terms beforehand as, for example, do mathematicians communicating with one another in the course of solving a problem.
That said, whether NDE provide "evidence" of consciousness and individual identity after death is not answerable. But I appreciate Professor Fischer's assertion that they are "real experiences" to most who report them.
4
Here's an interesting monograph (available from Amazon) on the matter under discussion:
Illusory Souls
G. M. Woerle
The gist of his argument is that the "soul" is a construct of the living brain and has no separate existence of its own. He concludes the same for "out-of-body" experiences.
3
Unfortunately I suffer from frequent vasovagal reactions, otherwise know as fainting. Since I was a teenager I have probably fainted at least 15 times and every time I have had N.D.E.s in that I've had an "out of body" experience, seen the bright light, seen high speed images of my life, seen close friends and family, etc. As Fischer notes, N.D.E.s are real and people "really have these experiences, just like people really dream. So N.D.E.s are real in the sense of 'authentic' — they really occur." Are they evidence of an afterlife? No. They are simply incredibly deep and intense dreams caused by a physical and chemical reaction when a person loses consciousness. I'm guessing that if I were a deeply religious person, I might see something divine like many people do when they have N.D.E.s. But religion is not a part of my life and therefore doesn't become part of my dreams or N.D.E.s.
24
@Rob me too! I have weird "dreams" when I am in a faint.
1
As a critical care nurse, I was involved in many resuscitation efforts. I was always interested to listen to patients who wanted to describe the experience afterwards. Often they saw deceased friends and relatives, or religious figures. Sometimes there was the experience of the tunnel and a light. Some people said they had watched resuscitation efforts from above or through a window. Every once in awhile a patient would ring to tell me they had just seen a long dead relative in their room, and go into a cardiac arrest a short time later. I hold open the possibility that these experiences are as real as any other part of our existence. With the physicists talking about parallel and mirror universes, defining reality gets a bit more difficult.
232
@CSB what an interesting comment. I read about how science predicts many different dimensions existing simultaneously so these near death experiences surely are a mystery and I'm glad they still are TBH.
17
@CSB
The Tunnel is fairly common in Western NDEs but much less so in Asian experiences, where they're more likely to cross a river.
18
@CSB
Your experiences are very interesting, and a good reminder that even though another may not have experienced some of these mysteries, they are out there--and not to be discounted.
15
I tend to agree with assertion that NDEs are symptomatic of a dying brain. I don’t think most of us realize the extent to which the body can behave independent of our consciousness. I began to think this way after an extended fasting diet. That period was unbearable. I thought about food constantly. Food smelled better, stronger; I read cookbooks all the time and I don’t like cooking. I thought I was just weak, that I should control my thinking better.
At some later point I read a book about a man who survived at sea on a life raft for maybe 3 months. (My memory is hazy on that). He also thought about food constantly.
It dawned on me that our brains are wired to encourage us to eat when the body is starving. The enhanced food aromas, the food obsession have nothing to do with conscious thought. They are symptoms of a starving brain, acquired through millions of years of human evolution. Perhaps we should consider what the purpose is of the NDE phenomenon. Does it somehow stimulate a return to “life?” Our will to survive, including the innovations and solutions that arise in dangerous situations, also may arise from something older and stronger than human consciousness.
6
@Gabrielle Rose - An interesting thought, thanks!
It also makes me sad to think that you, or anyone, would be in a position of doubting yourself because, during a long fast, you thought about food all the time! I mean, duh! We all need to better trust that our own feelings and body sensations are OK.
What people describe is the hallucination induced by the trauma of near-death. It is real, as in they indeed had the hallucination, and if they survived he N.D.E., lived to tell about it, which is how we know about it.
It is quite possible that death is just a step in an eternal journey, or in an eternal cycle of births and deaths. It is equally possible that death is the end, with nothing beyond it.
But those hallucinations, while fascinating and mystical, provide no evidence of anything eternal.
In a Sunday NYT Magazine story a few months ago there was a lot of information about brain activity work being done at Yale, I believe. It was only briefly noted, however, that there is possibly some cognition even after the rest of the body ceases to function. Perhaps, briefly, we can actually "know" we have died, but only someone who is miraculously saved would remember it as an N.D.E
1
@John B I think I know the answer to the question, "Can the brain continue to function briefly after the loss of all medical and external indications of life?" It would appear to be entirely plausible. I have had dreams of, "out of body," experiences but that is not proof of life after death. However, it may well be the same for NDEs.
As my father once put it when I had my first inkling of the finality of death, "I don't know what happens for sure, but have you ever seen anyone come back to complain!"
4
Another bad take in the NYT unfortunately. The piece presents a a simple case of closed mindedness and limited thinking; it certainly does not somehow disprove NDEs are not accurate and real depictions of an external reality. Furthermore, there is no actual basis for the supposition that a reality beyond our normal living experience is not "plausible". It's a little depressing to see the pure materialist takes elevated in this way...
40
@Jp
I equally have no actual basis for the supposition that my room is currently not filled with miniature, invisible, flying pink elephants.
But I am on *very* solid logical ground in making that supposition and it is the job of someone else to prove the rather fantastical truth that those elephants exist.
I can not prove a nonexistence nor am I logically required to do so. However, all reports from the after-life are understandable as the functioning of or resilient brains in near death stress moments, most particularly in situations of reduced oxygen/blood flow.
There was a fascinating piece on RadioLab some years ago about research pilots in a centrifuge experiencing clearly reported "out of body" experiences as a result of loss of blood flow to the brain. The pilots absolutely had those experiences. They absolutely did *not* "leave their bodies" and then return.
So, yes, there *is* a basis for the supposition that a reality beyond normal living experience is not plausible. A very sturdy basis, in fact.
(this comment is aimed at the lack of logic from Citizen Bill equally)
7
@Paul Fisher explanations such as "functioning of or resilient brains" and "loss of oxygen/blood flow" weight materialist hypotheses very heavily relative to the experience of the individuals who have NDEs. Given the minuscule degree to which we understand how consciousness emerges from, or relates to our brains, believing these biology based explains without question is foolhardy.
In the case of the pilots who did *not* leave their bodies, how was that determined definitively? The question in that scenario is "where" the consciousness of the pilot was at a given point in time...difficult to determine empirically to say the least.
Which brings me to my final point; it sounds like "prove" to you means some type of demonstration consistent with our very limited materialist understanding of reality, or with your "normal living experience". I'm arguing that this is a limiting viewpoint that potentially cuts humanity off from explanations and information that could be of immense value.
There very well may be aspects of reality that fundamentally fall outside materialist explanation. Believe it or not, I have a PhD in molecular biology, and continue to have success in academic science, where, to my frustration, I see the scientism perspective prevailing daily. Clearly biology and science in general is a powerful way of knowing for what it can know, but I believe for humanity to progress, we can't be unnecessarily limiting the scope of the reality we are willing to accept.
7
@Jp
Thank you for this reply to the materialists!
3
Ah, yet another issuance of the classic ignorant academic scientific naturalism that has been poisoning the world for at least three centuries now! Of course our author bypasses dealing with the actual evidence for NDE's by distracting us with his largely irrelevant neurophysiological, psychological, and philosophical musings about the unreality of heaven and hell. As if that were central to the issue at hand.
How much more helpful it would have been had Fischer dared examine the abundant evidence for the reality of near death experiences, especially in relation to associated out-of-the-body experiences. It is now thoroughly well-documented that the consciousness of some hospital patients at the threshold of death becomes reoriented from inside their body to a vantage point outside of it, from which viewpoint they subsequently observe doings in the room by hospital staff that could not possibly have been seen from the patient's closed-eye bodily position. When, after recovering normal bodily awareness, those patients report their observations to hospital staff in some instances the staff confirm the very specific factualities presented to them. This has been clearly documented on numerous occasions.
Of course, once you critically review the evidence for NDEs, OBEs, synchronicity, and the many other direct disproofs our the dominant scientific reductionism, you have to confront the fact that you-and our entire culture--has been deeply deceived for a very long time.
49
Everything is supernatural until we figure it out.
Then it is ordinary.
I assume the same will be true of heaven if it exists.
30
We gosh, if NDE's are real to the person having them (your words), and not provably real (or not) to everyone else (obvious to everyone), then,
why bother forming the hypothesis, in this article, that they are not provably real, since, it is impossible to prove they are not real?
Seems like a waste of time time and energy.
I always figured I would let other people believe whatever they want to believe, and, then, they would leave me alone to believe what I want to believe.
Because, as long as the conversation is in belief space, as this entire article is, then, anyone can believe anything that they want.
Correct?
16
I'm glad to see this article because the topic is important. I have studied Near Death Experiences for over 20 years. This article claims that NDE's are "clear, vivid dreams and hallucinations". This is absolutely false and is not supported by any facts. He also says that NDErs "depict a journey towards an imagined guarded realm"- again this is absolutely false. The article presents long-ago debunked assumptions and prejudicial biases as facts, which is a bit frustrating. There is so much more evidence that NDE accounts are real as told than there is evidence against them (eg. dreams/hallucinations/or whatever other excuse) . Why believe the viewpoint of an armchair philosopher rather than people who have actually had the experience? Yes, there is absolutely life after death; we will all discover this soon enough. However, NDE experiencers also offer significant insights and important lessons. It's really worth watching some first-hand accounts on YouTube. I recommend Nancy Rynes, Jane Smith and Mary Neil. Enjoy!
51
@Kristina Pelletier Thank you! I just knew the article would be a waste of time. So I have scanned the Reader Picks. And made a few notes. Yours is the only one I have responded to, though I consider many others worthy as well. I'll check the names you recommended. I recommend Gurumayi.
Also recommend The Afterlife of Billy Fingers.
1
@Kristina Pelletier Thank you! I just knew the article would be a waste of time. So I have scanned the Reader Picks. And made a few notes. Yours is the only one I have responded to, though I consider many others worthy as well. I'll check the names you recommended. I recommend Gurumayi.
@Kristina Pelletier Near death experiences offer no actual insight into what happens when we die; they offer a view of what it's like to be almost gone, to almost enter the total, closed finality of death. I think there may in fact be an existance beyond this one, but near death experiences don't describe that. For all we know, the gates of hell lie just beyond the out of body phase.
It's a ridiculous conclusion to conclude that NDE's show us we can die well. There is a much larger and more important question to face. It is a revolutionary thought on a Copenicun scale to wonder if the brain creates consciousness. To avoid wanting to find a way to look deeper seems short-sighted. It is an extraordinary claim, but science is not a religion it is a tool that points in the direction of truth. The evidence, anecdotal and statistical, says there is something more to uncover.
24
The word to consider here is "near." You can be near a lot of things, without actually understanding or experiencing it. Worse, pseudoscientists and new age mystics have many techniques to obscure definitions, and make unfalsifiable, idiosyncratic claims that can't be tested. Often, they hide behind advanced degrees. If anyone besides a physicist uses the word "quantum", be very suspicious.
5
Two experiences reported to me by friends: The first was not a NDE, but floating out of one's body. My friend fell asleep in a room at the end of a hallway. She floated "out of her body," and her spirit, or whatever one would call it, floated into the room at the other end of the house where two people were having a business discussion. When she woke up, she went down the hall to the room where the discussion was going on and to their astonishment, repeated, almost word for word, what the other two had been saying. The Second is more dramatic: as a desperate teenager, a friend had driven 100 mph into a cement wall to kill herself. Her body was taken to the hospital, she was pronounced dead, body taken to the morgue, toe tag. Meanwhile, she woke up to discover herself surrounded by beings of light who were so loving and kind, told her many things that she later could not recall but for the one instruction that she had to return to earth, she wasn't done yet, she had responsibilities to fulfill including children to bring to earth, and things would go well. The beings would watch over her. They finally convinced her to go back to earth. She woke up. At first she was furious at having to leave that loving place, and only partly recalled what the loving beings had said. But she was never suicidal again, her fear and depression vanished, She went on to recover from alcoholism, have a career, marry and have the two children.
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@Jim
I'm still trying to fathom someone who drove "100mph into a cement wall" could possibly survive.
3
"Choice" is an aspect of the divine. While the future isn't set, the probabilities are. And the probability that all souls reach their divine-self is 100%." ... Paul Selig
5
Many of those who have recently lost someone close will hear them calling especially in the middle of the night. They are correct in saying that they heard their loved one calling but they are fooling themselves if they believe that the call came from anywhere outside their own brain. Realizing this can be very comforting since it speaks of the great importance the relationship had for them
1
of course. science and faith can never agree. this article is dumb. he might as well have written an article proving that Moses didn't cross the Red Sea or that Jesus isn't the literal Son of God.
7
The author obviously hasn't had this experience. I am not religious, but I went to what could only be described as 'heaven,' and then I had a choice, and I chose to come back. I will go there/pass through that experience one more time when I die for good. There could be a biological explanation - hormonal surge or something - but I don't care. I just know that the experience of death is joyful. I am just very glad to know it is waiting for me. What most people would view as a miserable hospital experience, was for me the best day of my life. Erased my fear of death.
303
@George
Would that we could all lose our fear of death, but life provides more fear than consolation while conscious and walking around for the rest of us.
7
@George I hope life can provide you that same joy.
12
@George I also had a choice.
11
If the experience is real, it's real. And science is not the be-all and end-all. So near death experiences, like faith, do not require scientific proof.
5
@David Actually, science is the be-all and end-all. NDEs and faith may not require scientific proof, but I do.
1
So if you have an experience you require scientific proof that you had that experience? Fair enough.
1
I had the experience as a child. I seemed disembodied, I floated toward a light. I communicated with a spirit or something saying my parents would be very sad if I left them and I really should go back. It was quite vivid but I never took it as real. I was a vivid dreamer and I just thought of this as dreamlike. I was an adult before I heard of other people with these experiences. I didn't then and do not now take any hope from it for an afterlife.
75
So you're basically saying Santa isn't real, but he's real to countless children and their parents who embrace the Christmas spirit.
I'd rather just live a life trying to do my best, help others and die peacefully if possible. That's enough for me.
40
@Mixilplix
I think BHC is saying we can't assume Santa is real because, like everyone else who's had an NDE, he/she didn't quite make it to the North Pole.
6
Someday science/medicine will figure out how to do this and bring us back safely and then it will be commercialized.
1
@Monty
LOL, yep, if pharmaceuticals can sell it, they will.
Transient severe lack of oxygenated blood to the brain will produce the most interesting memories (assuming the deoxygenated organ is not too damaged for too long a time, and that it can recover its full functioning after the episode during which time memory development was still able to be accomplished).
If you wish to anthropomorphize a physiologic reaction to transient poor oxygen levels, so be it.
But it ain't supernatural.
14
I already had premonitory dreams. I already had a "Dejavu" (something that has already been seen). I had experiences of dying and having returned. And it was an intriguing experience, I'm a Catholic, I'm a Christian, I don't know anything about "spiritism", and today I value life a lot, vivier is good, but this experience outside the body I didn't have, but there's something that protects us, a good energy, I can say that it is God, I liked reading your article, it is a subject that undoubtedly generates a lot of controversy, because it goes against the belief of each one.
I thought I was going to die in a car crash I saw coming at me once and time slowed so that I could think and remember. I think our minds sometimes take control under extreme circumstances and we "see the light."
4
This is always a very interesting topic. Perhaps most interesting is the meaning behind these events. From a theological perspective I find myself asking if there is a reason the God/Gods chose to allow these specific individuals a glance of heaven, hell, or anything in between. The rarity of these events in comparison to the vast amount of near death experiences that must occur on a daily basis around the world suggests that the God/Gods have a very specific criterion that must be fulfilled to be granted such a privilege. Thus the question of meaning is most interesting to me. Now departing from a theological perspective in pursuit of an agnostic one; I find myself pondering upon the credibility of these individuals and their stories. since one particular N.D.E seemingly cannot be determined to be more real or credible than another, what implications might this bring to an inquiring agnostic? Is an agnostic to believe that all of these experiences may be "real" in the second sense? Might this lead one to a religious hodgepodge of syncritism? These questions as well as many more only have me interested in learning more about N.D.Es Great article!
5
I prefer to approach the world with wonder than with cynicism. Why? Because the improbability of me being born alone, in the 20th century, in North America is pretty damn crazy as it is. The vastness is the infinite universe and the infinite timeline are crazy enough as well. Trees “communicating” to each other via chemicals as reported in this very paper is crazy. Men in the moon, photos of Mars, the enduring one sick in the dryer mystery.....
It’s too much.
How NDE are happening can perhaps be described but they can’t fully be explained because everything is genuinely subjective. Who knowa the nature of reality?
I don’t.
2
Interesting that Hindu gods never appear to a N.D.E. Christian and announce "Buddy, are you in for a surprise."
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@LJB Okay I'll report my dream/vision was of Elephant Ganesh telling me that this was a figure of meaning for my daughter, not available to me, from my position in culture and generation. Im a Henry James Psychology of Religion fan, by the way. His daddy had a vision of Evil and became a Swedenborgian. I was raised in Ethical Culture Society. Just saying.
2
i think it is trivializing the experience written about in this article to make an acronym an use it blithely throughout. i am P.A.B.T. I don't have a reason to jutify tht i am profoundly nnoyed by this, it just seems disrespectful.
1
@kate
What the heck is PABT? Are we to be impressed with this? I do not understand your comment.
1
@Ellen A. i made so many typos you can be excused for now seeing it in the comment.'profoundy annoyed by this'. sorry.
This article demonstrates why philosophy cannot reason its way to understanding an experience that is beyond the conventional, conceptual mind. First, the author, who apparently has not had any NDE or any other out-of-body experience, argues that the experiences of others do not accurately depict the reality they describe. That's like someone who has never fallen in love saying that no one else's experience of love is evidence that love actually exists. Second, he relies on the fact that there are so many differences in their descriptions of the afterlife. Why presume that the description would be uniform? If you compared most people's descriptions of life on earth, you would find enormous differences. Does that mean that this world doesn't exist? Of course not. Perhaps what should be compelling evidence is how consistently those who have NDEs or other spiritual experiences describe a state of unity and love, but that commonality is given short shrift. Third, he complains that NDEs describe coming close to the afterlife without successfully entering it. Yes, that's the very definition of a NDE -- "near" death, but not death itself.
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@Paul Thanks for your thoughtful engagement. I do indeed take it that NDEs accurately report their contents; it is just that I contend that their primary contents are about a journey in the last part of our lives. They show that this journey can be guided by loving mentors; in short, they point to the possibility of a more human way of dying--a possibility of increasing interest to many. I do not give short shrift to the importance of “unity and love”--I think this is the lesson of NDEs! They are stories of hope and love. But they are not like a Hollywood love story in which we live happily forever after. Rather, they depict solidarity and love in facing the unknown.
44
@Paul
A man once showed me how to swing a small object attached to a string in a figure eight by my thought alone. I held the string but did not move it with my body, I just imagined that it moved, and it did. At home, I tried it again. Funny, I could not do it without my finger touching the string. Funny. I moved the string, very slightly and imperceptibly but I moved it.
NDE are from the living brain perceiving sensations while alive, that;s all.
12
@Casual Observer my view, casual, is that this view (the biochemical view) has not been proven, and is just as much about faith as regarding NDE's as actually occurring. We simply don't know, in a scientific sense There has been some evidence that Neuro activity continues in a "dead" brain for some time, but it is as big a leap to say that is what "causes" NDE's at to say that NDE's are actually occuring.
13
My spouse had a heart attack--a block in the left main artery, the mother of the widow-maker. When the paramedics arrived, there was no heart beat. CPR started the heart again, then failed again. They had to apply shock there in the kitchen then rush to the hospital.
According to my spouse, being dead was incredibly easy. Everything in life is done. Just done. There is nothing to fear about the end of life.
8
@DC having no heart beat isn't the same as being lifeless IN a medical setting people can go for rather extended periods with a flat EKG.
The physical body, including the brain, is the vehicle through which the spiritual soul operates in this life. We know this because, even in these modern times, no scientist can explain what consciousness, or self awareness, is. When we procreate we only produce the physical body. God supplies the soul. When we die the soul returns to God.
17
@Aaron Adams
That is your theology. It is no more true or real than the theology of the Ancient Egyptian who believed death is a journey on which he would need sustenance.
8
@Aaron Adams Just because scientists are still trying to understand consciousness does not prove the existence of a soul. That is an argument from ignorance: if we can't explain it, it must be supernatural.
@rlschles How do you know what is true or what is not true? How does anyone? All I take issue with is the statement “is no more true or real than the theology of...”. Everything stands or dies on the basis of evidence and reasoning. What is the evidence to your assertion? All I can tell you authoritatively is you used to be dead. You were then created out a squidgy despised bit of goo into a thinking, feeling and living human being. You will live for a very short time and then die again, your body decaying back into dead stuff. This is the base nature of even the most powerful and arrogant Trump’s of this world. You are one of the most complicated machines in the known universe, intricately created out of infinitesimally tiny lego bricks. You weren’t created by another human being, but you were definitely designed, created and assembled. Everything seems to have been. When we try and make even really poor copies of living things, like robots, we have to design, create and assemble them. They never just occur spontaneously, so we know that is the basic process by which complicated things like ourselves come into existence. Those are the facts. And as Aaron Adams correctly pointed out, no scientist can explain what consciousness is and no one can replicate it (including this physicist and neuroscientist). I’ve spent my whole life learning, and the more I learn the more I am humbled and realise I know nothing.
2
Looking forward to reading Professor Fischer's take on a more important topic -- solving the environmental crisis.
4
Oxygen deprivation narcosis.
What happens to astronauts when they nearly run out of O2? It's trippy, man.
12
If NDE's are caused by ingestion of psychedelic substances why do they apparently occur only in situations in which one's life is in jeopardy? NDE's sound terrific. Why should someone's life have to be placed in jeopardy in order to enjoy them? Or do some people have NDE's that are actually horrible and we just don't hear about them?
12
@Jay Orchard Thanks, Jay. Some NDE researchers do indeed call spiritual experiences with the same structure as the experiences that take place in “near-death contexts” NDEs. That is, they use the term “NDE” broadly to include spiritual experiences, such as those induced by ingestion of psychedelic substances, such as LSD. There is an interesting report of such an LSD-induced experience reported by Oliver Sachs, in his book Hallucinations (not his experience, but one reported to him). I would prefer to call these “near-near-death experiences,” or “quasi-near-death experiences,” or something like that. But the terminology is not crucial. What is important is that experiences very much like “standard” NDEs can be induced by psychedelic substances. This at least calls into question the view that the only explanation for NDEs is supernaturalism.
12
@John Fischer I have experienced regressing to childhood one time and forward to my funeral,in another experience after drinking Ayahuasca. While not a classic NDE, it certainly eased my fear of death. The boundary between life and death was very fluid and veiled in my experience. I didn't see relatives and friends yet I could sense their presence and knew exactly where I had traveled to in time. It was comforting yet mind blowing simultaneously.
13
@Jay Orchard The author didn't say all NDE's are caused by psychedelics. I have had out of body experiences and don't know if they were "real" or hallucinatory, but I was not near death at the time not had I taken any substances. Are these experiences merely neurological artifacts or do they indicate something spiritual and an indication of things beyond our temporal plane and our understanding in "this life?" I don't know and I like not knowing.
5
I have had one. I appreciate your analysis. You may contact me for details if you wish.
3
Having almost died a couple of times it’s almost definitely lack of oxygen. That’s not to say it’s not spiritual. Some not so bad memories.
10
Well, gosh, if the NDE's are real to the person (your words), and, not provably not real to everyone else (obvious to everyone),
why bother hypothesizing that DE's are not provably real without being able to prove it?
Seems like a waste of energy and time.
I always figured I would let other people believe whatever they want to believe, and, then, maybe they give me the freedom to believe what I want to believe.
Since, all the discussion in this article is outside provable reality, then, we might as well all just sit around and chat and be friends.
8
As a geologist, I've been faced many times with confronting individual beliefs that are not supported by science (evolution as a real process, the age of the Earth, etc.) and I long ago learned to let others have their beliefs without having to hear any grousing from me. What does it matter, anyway? Thomas Jefferson, a Christian, said “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Another thought: If the afterlife is in another dimension that we cannot see or feel or measure, perhaps that's the whole point. It is the 96% of the universe we don't know and for which we can only have faith that it exists. Were we designed that way? Again, I would consult TJ.
19
@Greg W Jefferson was a deist. He even edited out all the miracles in the Gospels, ending with Jesus dead in the tomb. You can call him a Christian if you like, but he didn't believe in the resurrection or any miracles, so not exactly what modern people think of when they think of "Christian".
1
@Greg W -
Unfortunately, believers in religion almost always want to FORCE everyone else to practice the dictates of their particular religious dogma. From abortion restrictions to blue laws to alcohol prohibitions to contraception restrictions to cow protection to same-sex marriage to veganism to the allowance of slavery to ...
Religion ruins everything.
P.S. An “afterlife” is just wishful thinking on the part of the masses and a very useful fiction for those in power. Sorry.
They are as real as dreams.
5
@Remarque and dreams are clues...ask jung..
1
Mr. Fischer doesn't understand neuroscience like Dr. Eben Alexander nor has he had an NDE. Dr. Alexander's book makes one less of a skeptic about NDE's but no one knows the secret until they do.
30
@Jacquie Yes, but I don’t think Dr. Alexander understands philosophy like I do! Granted, I don’t have answers to the existential questions, such as what happens after we die. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous. But these are not questions in neuroscience or medicine; they are metaphysical questions, and scientists and doctors do not have special training in these questions. I’ve read Dr. Alexander’s two books carefully, and they do not convince me that he ever rode on the wings of a butterfly. I’m sure he is sincere, and he did have that experience; but I think it is most charitable not to interpret it literally. His work has offered hope to many, and that’s important and welcome. But I also think that many of us want genuine hope, not false hope, and thus we want to evaluate his and others’ stories and conclusions with care.
35
@John Fischer Eben Alexander explained how it would be impossible for his brain to be functioning, yet he had a very vivid experience. He also described meeting a woman he never met who turned out be his biological sister that he recognised after his NDE when he met his biological parents. How does your philosophical studies explain that?
5
@John Fischer
I remember arguing that Berkeley in reference to his idea that there was no reality beyond what can be experienced in the moment was a matter of his attempt to inject a faith element into the philosophical realm. Then along came quantum physics and I had to rethink my critique.
3
NDEs are so outside the norms of normal waking experience that much of what is perceived cannot be communicated, only hinted at. If you haven't had one, you're never going to understand. They're simply outside your level of perception.
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@CB This is true to an extent. It is true of all spiritual experiences that they are to some degree “ineffable”. Granted. But the literature is filled with descriptions of these NDEs--with supernatural contents, when interpreted literally. My project has been to give an interpretation of these experiences which is faithful to the reported contents, but emphasizes the “journey” part, and not so much the destination. In my view, they are indeed “real” in the sense that people really have these beautiful experiences. They are, in my view, not fundamentally about contact with other realms, but getting a different perspective on ours--specifically, the last part of our lives. People think of them as the trip of an afterlifetime. I give priority to the “trip” part, rather than the “afterlife” part. They are primarily stories of a voyage from the known to the unknown, guided by a loving mentor. This kind of story resonates deeply with human beings, and can point to a more humane way of dying--surrounded by loved ones.
20
@CB For that matter, any experience of any kind had by any conscious living being is outside the ability of any one of us to perceive and understand. You can only speculate what it is like to be me, and vice versa. And who can fathom the experiences of a rhino, crow, fish, or beetle? We each have only one conscious life through which we perceive reality, and our perception likely wildly distorts what is actually going on and completely omits all sorts occurrences we are actually capable of perceiving as well as a vast amount that is beyond our perception. So in reality, none of us is no more or no less well positioned to contemplate the experiences of others. My point is that people's NDE's vary as much from each other as their actual life experiences. Just because you've had an NDE does not put you in an exclusive club that only fellow NDEers can relate to.
12
@John Fischer I wonder if the tunnel people describe could be the Birkeland Currents that enter and exit our polar regions. Electromagnetism and the living-like qualities of plasma seem like a more plausible direction to explore than a supernatural one. I remember hearing Dr. James Ryder, former VP of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and head of a space tech R & D group, speaking in 2017 (before his death). He said when astrophysicists gather in homes, away from the press, they talk about consciousness, reincarnation and other mystical ideas because of their growing understanding of energy, frequency, vibration and magnetic fields in space. Even DNA is influenced by electric fields. And there was that wonderful video of the flash of light at conception from a couple of years ago.
12
Years ago I read an article about NDEs and a doctor/researcher attempt to prove whether it was real. He wanted to determine if people really floated above their bodies and looked down upon themselves in a hospital setting.
He had small high shelves put just below the ceiling on top of each platform was a picture or words. The concept was that if you were high enough you could see these pictures or words. He thought that when you returned to your body and woke up and described what happened and what you saw at least one of these items would be in the individual’s description of what they saw.
I thought it was a clever study design. Unfortunately, I could never find the results.
I wonder if anyone has read about this study or seen the results
20
@##A. Seeker Thanks for the question. Sam Parnia, M.D. (N.Y.U.), is doing similar research. He places screens in hospital wards (intensive care wards) where the patient cannot see them from the bed. The screens flash numbers, and the patients (who wake up!) are then asked whether they saw numbers (and what they were). This study is called the AWARE study, and it is still ongoing. The Templeton Foundation’s Immortality Project, of which I was the Project Leader, provided financial support to Dr. Parnia for this research (as did many others). It is fascinating, and we’re looking forward to the results. I cannot speak for Dr Parnia, but I’m unaware (sorry--pun intended) of definitive positive results (yet), but we’ll see..
27
@John Fischer Haha! I mean if you believed in the accuracy of NDEs, you'd surely believe that this was in immoral way to intrude upon a meaningful experience with a trivial task. (Imagine if I went up to my father on his deathbed and said, "Dad, there's something I always wanted to ask you--will you take this n-back test?")
3
@##A. Seeker I don't think anyone saw the object because as some NDE'ers explained, they are drawn to look at their bodies, not an object on the ceiling. Many do accurately described what loved ones and hospital staff are doing while they have flatlined.
7
How do we know that this is supernatural? We don't even know what's natural. I've had out of body experiences since I was a child. I view these as neither routine nor inexplicable. I don't believe in god and don't hold these incidents to be divine, especially considering that I've had some corroboration of events from others. I still don't know enough to speak with conviction, and arguments pro and con both leave me dubious.
5
Whether N.D.Es are real and a glimpse into the after life or a manifestation of the physical brain is just not known or even knowable. There is much we don't understand about our bodies, time, space and the universe around us.
10
@Bear Lass
It is as knowable as anything in our universe though that knowledge may not be as comforting as you would like. knowing that our losses are real should awaken us to the value of even the meanest among us.
By nature, any experience is subjective and can be claimed for real only by the individual going through it.
What my own glimpse on the 'beyond' (due to being hit by lightning) revealed, twisted my understanding of space and time. I did see my whole life pass by in less than a second; but time was not the measure, and 'after-life' seemed to have meaning only in a physical time-space context.
Back in familiar space and time, I added a big grain of salt on what we call reality.
16
Subjectively, all death is near death experiences because of quantum immortality. We all just go on and on, being eliminated into ever more improbable alternate worlds until we have had so many close calls that the only world we can still be in must be a simulation. So if you want to do real things in the real world do them early.
2
@Robert David South
That sounds like physics babble from a non-physicist.
What is "rational" to someone who has undergone a life transforming experience is different from what is rational to someone who hasn't. Spiritual experiences are like secret pieces to life's puzzle that show us that the puzzle is far richer and more wonderful than we previously realized. What's frustrating to science is that those pieces get handed to us as individuals for our personal benefit and they are non-transferable to others. Science can't stand is that these puzzle pieces get handed out unevenly, almost as though there were a conscious intent to take into account a person's particular needs and merit rather than by agency of an impersonal physical or biological law.
The bottom line is that these experiences all have the character of a "privileged encounter" with the divine and the inability of science to force that encounter in a laboratory inevitably leads to scientists declaring that those spiritual grapes -- grapes they've never tasted -- are sour.
57
You’ve reminded me of William James’ thoughts as expressed in “The Varieties of Religious Experience “. He envied those that had mystical experiences but though he hoped for one, never had one. He was not skeptical but remained respectful and open to questioning. As a physician and scientist myself, I think that’s a wise choice.
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I have watched many Youtube video's of people who have experienced NDE's and have concluded they are real. All these people who have no connection to each other all describe very similar experiences. Many describe details of what the people around their dying body are doing that is later verified. In the case of Eban Alexander, he saw his biological sister whom he never met in life who passed away, but recognised her photo when he reunited with his biological parents. Anita Moorjani experienced who was hours from death experienced a miraculous healing. Many meet deceased relatives.
There are too many of these stories that are consistent to assume they are not true. Just because medical science can not prove NDE'S is more a reflection on the limitations of medical science rather than disproving NDE's aren't real.
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@Joseph B
the number of cases and their similarity to each other may just as well speak to the fact that we all have what is in most aspects a human brain which cause us to experience all sorts of nonsense which can be comforting or terrifying as the circumstances demand. I can recall when I was two years old looking out of my bedroom window and seeing a 1/4 size train coming around the corner of the house. I was likely coming down with some childhood illness but the "reality" of the hallucination was convincing and made me feel very special indeed.
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@Joseph B People are terrified of death, and they seek comfort. Supernaturalistic interpretations of NDEs are part of a terror-management strategy. And there’s strength in numbers. But unfortunately just adding more and more (similar) reports does not establish that the contents are literally true. There is a much more plausible explanation of the patterns in NDEs: we human beings have similar biologies and psychologies. I believe that most of the reports are absolutely sincere. The question is how to interpret them, and in my books I give an interpretation that offers hope and captures the beauty and transformational power of NDEs. The mistake, in my view, is to think that only supernaturalism can do this.
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@John Fischer I am a logical person who has never experienced an NDE. However, In the case of Eben Alexander, as he points out his physical brain was essentially not functional, yet he had very vivid experiences including meeting someone he never met who turned out to be his biological sister.
How does medical science explain how people can accurately describe what medical staff and family members are discussing while their hearts have stopped? This is more than a hallucination and no I do not think this is supernatural, but reality that consciousness exist outside the brain for which our medical science currently can not explain.
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The explanation for N.D.E's is pretty obvious: It's nothing more than a thunderstorm in the brain, electrical signals wildly firing in an extreme situation for the individual.
They are no different from a very vivid dream. But the affected person will forget such an ordinary dream after a few minutes, hours, or days. The N.D.E is not forgotten because of its extreme context that makes it appear uniquely meaningful.
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@GS
Sorry, this rationale does not explain why so many people who have NDEs from different cultures have almost identical experiences.
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@GS You seem to be unaware that many NDEs are reported as occurring when there is no detectable brain activity. So, where do you get the "thunderstorm?"
Try reading up before making judgment.
I have personally never had anything like an NDE, but I've reading many viable convincing accounts that are not at all invalidated by arguments like these.
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@calannie They don't have almost identical experiences. This is just part of the story around this. Some people see family or friends. Some people see religious figures. Some see fictitious creatures like gnomes or elves.
I had a similar experience as a child and experienced a heavenly football game. When I came to, a football game was on a nearby tv.
I also had a dream once as a child where my mother appeared bathed in white light, and gave me the distinct feeling that everything would be ok. I felt so safe and secure knowing she was in a better place. As I slowly woke up, she slowly disappeared...and I realized my mother wasn't dead. She was asleep in the adjacent room. That was 40 years ago, and mom's still kicking.
If she had been dead and I had that dream, or if I had been a terrible accident and then had the dream, I'd be on here adding my voice to how real it all is. And yet it wasn't real. And I know this because my experience was random and immediately subjected to falsifiability due to the fact that she was not dead, and I remembered that fact upon waking.
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This philosopher is ignoring the many cases in which people going out of their body have reported verifiable things in the nearby or distant physical world that they could not have witnessed in their bodily state on the operating table or in intensive care for example. He may be in for a big surprise when his time comes, but it will be too late to issue a retraction, or will it?
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@Horace Tellingly, you offer no specific examples. This is because none of them hold up to scrutiny. If remote viewing was real the world would be very different.
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@Horace Stories are not evidence.
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@Horace I don’t ignore these. Please have a look at my more comprehensive discussions of these issues in the books I link to in the article. In short: there are many veridical reports, but there is always the question of whether the (accurately reported) information could be acquired ONLY via non-physical or supernatural means. Just because the reports are accurate does not in itself imply that the individuals flew around the rooms, leaving their bodies. Each case has to be evaluated, and often one discovers perfectly mundane ways people acquire the relevant information.
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There are, simply put, no empirical answers to such questions. But what we all need, when facing that final day, is the belief that there are answers. And that there is someone to walk with us that final lonely mile . . .
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Professor Fischer refers throughout the piece to the "arguments" for a supernaturalist interpretation of NDE's, which he says are bad, but I don't see much presentation (let alone charitable presentation) of the arguments in question. I agree with him that the arguments aren't great, but interested readers might look at section 4 of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the "Afterlife," in particular the discussion of "the evidential aspect of NDEs":
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/afterlife/#ParNeaDeaExp
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@JDB Once you have experienced it, you don't need to argue for it. You know you were there. In my case, I don't even talk about it too much, because I feel bad for those who have not experienced it. They are just fearful humans who think that death will be horrible.
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@JDB I had a strict space limit! But please see a more thorough, and I hope charitable, exposition and discussion of the arguments of the supernaturalists in my two books with Oxford University Press (linked to at the bottom of the article). I appreciate your interest.
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@John Fischer please tell is where consciousness resides, how it arises and how it is measured. What kind of instrument measures and detects it? What property of matter creates it?
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I have heard a number of sincere and interesting descriptions of "life after death." However, if you come back from "death" to report on it to the still living, you have not, in fact died. Rather, you have had a near-death experience, fueled in part by physiological biochemical processes, some in response to powerful medications. People who might have reliable reports about what happens after we died don't come back to tell us about it. Because they are dead.
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@Galen Tinder Thank you for putting this side of view about NDE out there. No one has ever come from the dead to tell us if there is an afterlife or anything for that matter, except if you talk to charlatans who will tell you one of your loved ones knows where you left your car keys (sic). It is comforting to many to go about their lives thinking this but I am not one of them. I live for today and enjoy as much of this short life as I can.
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We don't know how, exactly, the dying experience or process their final moments of brain activity. A blissful eternity could be perceived in those moments, at least by some (anecdotally, those with guilty consciences and/or certain physical conditions do not appear to have had that experience). I like to think that's a possibility.
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Mr. Fischer is a skeptic, so is right to be skeptical about the “reality” of NDEs in the second sense. However, to truly validate his skepticism, he must train it in equal share on his implied conclusion that death means oblivion, the death of the individual consciousness. He can no more prove that than the believers in NDEs can prove their own beliefs. In the (literal) end, there can be no proof of either.
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@Dennis Smith
There is extensive evidence that our thoughts are generated in our brains, which are physical organs that cease showing activity and start to decay after we die. There is also incontrovertible evidence that changes in physiology and chemistry in the brain lead can lead to extreme changes in a person's thought patterns and personality.
It is certainly possible to go on believing that "something else" happens after death and our personalities go rolling on after we die. It's possible to believe almost anything if we choose to ignore evidence. But the huge weight of evidence says brain death is final.
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@Dennis Smith Is there evidence that everything about our perceptions, personalities, feelings, and mental functioning is directly related to the physical processes within our brains? Say, if we are sleep deprived, starved, or dehydrated, do all of those functions change?
Can our mental functions be changed or impaired with drugs?
Does brain damage change our personalities, perceptions, memories, etc? Does certain damage cause certain predictable impairments?
Are there neurological diseases that damage the brain in specific ways that cause specific outcomes?
Is there evidence of anyone ever demonstrating personality, memory, etc., without a brain?
All of this is very clear cut evidence against the claim of NDEs. That is not to say NDEs could somehow still be true. But every time they have been tested using falsifiable methodology, they fail.
Stories are not evidence.
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@Dennis Smith Fischer nowhere says he is skeptical about an afterlife. He is skeptical that near death experiences are experiences of the afterlife or explained by there being an afterlife.
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Interestingly, some (perhaps all, but I don't know) Buddhist philosophy talks about the "subtle body", neatly sidestepping the mind-body problem when it comes to after-death experience. In other words, it isn't claimed that the mind separates from the body, which would be philosophically philosophically. Personally, I'm agnostic on this.
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@TMJ Oops. Should say "which would be philosophically problematic".
What a great article! Professor Fischer distilled a lot of thought provoking substance into an entertaining short piece, all while being even-handed in his approach. Where may I find more from him on this and other topics?
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@David Moyer Thanks! Interested readers should check out the links to my books at the bottom of the article. I appreciate the interest!
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Thanks for the article! I have a similar question/comment to Travis's. Suppose someone, for antecedent reasons, is relatively sympathetic to some kind of supernaturalistic picture - they think some of the arguments for God, the soul, heaven, etc., are fairly plausible, but perhaps not decisive. Would someone in such a position be rational in thinking N.D.E.s provide evidence for an afterlife? Perhaps even enough additional evidence to convince them there's an afterlife?
(As a Bayesian would put it, such an individual assigns a relatively high "prior" probability to God, the soul, heaven, etc., and then conditionalizes on N.D.E.s to get a high "posterior" probability.)
Thank you for a wonderful article Professor Fischer. Do you take N.D.E.s. to ever provide any evidence of an afterlife? Or can they provide some evidence of an afterlife that just isn't decisive?
Also, you mentioned "negative N.D.E.s." toward the end of the article. Are there ever N.D.E.s. (perhaps negative ones) that don't have the positive consequences you've identified? If so, do you know how (in)frequently those occur?
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@Travis Timmerman Thank you for your kind words. You ask a good question about the evidence. Frankly, I don’t think they provide any evidence of an afterlife, but I wouldn’t “go to the mat” on this. Does widespread experiences of “miracles” provide a little evidence, or none, for the alleged miracles? I think it is zero, even if there are patterns in the reported experiences. I believe this in part because we can explain the nature of the experiences and the patterns by reference to the experiencer, i.e, the subject, rather than the “object.” The patterns in the content reflects the similarities in the biology and psychology of human beings. Or at least this is a much more promising way of explaining the contents of the experiences--more plausible than positing a shared experience of an afterlife. And, very importantly, there is a wide variation in the reports of the nature of the afterlife; some report contact with Jesus, Eben Alexander is flying on a winged creature like a butterfly, Hindus see Hindu gods/goddesses: how could they all be right? And given their incompatibility at least in details, how could they provide evidence of an afterlife?
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@Travis Timmerman The term for negative NDEs in the literature is actually “distressing” NDEs. They have a similar structure, but different valences, to pleasurable NDEs. They provide similar lessons. One could say that the pleasurable NDEs are the carrots, and the distressing ones the sticks. Of course not everyone learns the lessons…
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@John Fischer "some report contact with Jesus, Eben Alexander is flying on a winged creature like a butterfly, Hindus see Hindu gods/goddesses: how could they all be right?" I personally had such an experience in my late teenage years. To specifically answer this question though, people are approached by the Divine in ways that are comfortable to their upbringing and belief system. I remember reading a couple of such accounts as described on a fascinating web page: http://www.nderf.org/Archives/exceptional.html. In one account a women describes an incredibly beautiful nature scene as her entrance scene to heaven, but adds the profound remark, that it may have just looked this way to her since this is what she finds quite attractive. In another account, a person describes a childhood experience where "God" takes various forms to the child including a large furry dog, until the child settles on the form that is most compelling! I hope that may answer this question and I heartily recommend the above website. SMA
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