Near-death experiences and the afterlife

[crimethinker]

I wasn't too sure where to post this, but I guess “Science” will do.

I'd like to talk about near-death experiences. If you've ever had one, or know someone who has, I welcome you to share them, or any other information you might have.

Two months ago I had my own. Actually, I wasn't “near” death, I medically died twice and had to be resuscitated (hence the two-month gap in my posts).

Anyway. I didn't see a white light, nor did I go to Heaven or Hell (are you not supposed to go to one of those when you die, religious folks, or is there a certain time after which your soul is discharged?). Instead, I had two “hallucinations”. In one I was tortured by some women in China to be saved by my uncle in his jumbo jet (he's not a pilot), in the other I time-traveled to the future, and then again, much further, to see that Earth was being consumed by giant blue grizzly bears. (Let's hope that that's not prophecy.)

From Wikipedia,

The parapsychologist H. H. Price had also developed his own hypothesis about what the afterlife may be like. According to Price after death the self will find itself in a dream world of memories and mental images from their life. Price wrote that the hypothetical "next world would be realms of real mental images." Price however believed that the self may be able to draw upon its memories of previous physical existence to create an environment of totally new images. According to Price, the dream world will not follow the laws of physics just as ordinary dreams do not. In addition, he wrote that each person will experience a world of their own, though he also wrote that the dream world doesn't necessarily have to be solipsistic as different selves may be able to communicate with each other by dream telepathy.

The most common criticism of HH Price's afterlife hypothesis has come from the religious community as his suggestions are not consistent with traditional Christian teaching, nor the teachings of any other monotheistic religion.

We know how creditable Christian teaching is.

Patterson (1995) has proposed a form of afterlife equivalent to a collective dream but concludes that the individual will still have subjective consciousness.

Thus, my disbelief in God is reinforced.

Thoughts? Anyone else?

[barts]

In support of crimethinkers OP, this is something that I experienced that might add to the debate. This piece is part of a longer essay about my experience,

My third and last epiphany visited at Bad Bay, a good place to learn to die. It’s a place, ships’ captains are warned, is “rocky and dangerous, affording no shelter to vessels”. Bad Bay is on the coast of Labrador, at the northern end of the 18 kilometre wide Strait of Belle Isle. The strait separates Labrador and Newfoundland. I was returning by helicopter to St. Anthony from Mary’s Harbour. Our helicopter was a Bell 47G, the sort made famous by the M*A*S*H television series. The other two people in the helicopter were the pilot and my second cameraman.

Bad Bay is the departure point—last land—before the strait. We were flying VFR, visual flight rules. It was a night flight, made possible by the full moon and clear sky. Leaving Bad Bay, our flight would be over water—salt water so it was colder than 0°C—in a single-engine aircraft. It was legal for us to fly under those conditions, but worrisome enough that most pilots wouldn’t. If there was an engine failure and we had to ditch, even though the Bell was fitted with pontoons, survival would be unlikely, such was the sea state and temperature.

The 47G cruises at an airspeed of 73 knots, 134 kilometres per hour. The pilot flight planned 20 minutes to get from Bad Bay to landfall at Savage Cove, Newfoundland. Flying at 5,000 feet, we’d never be out of sight of land, particularly given a moon so bright we could read the charts by her. In the event of engine failure, save for the middle 14 minutes of the flight, we’d be within glide-autorotation distance of land. We wouldn’t be holding our breath for those 14 minutes; it would just feel like it.

All was normal, then Bad Bay. We began climbing to 5,000 feet to safely cross the strait. Before the pilot could finish, ”What the fuck!”, the wind speed exploded from less than 5 knots to 115, the speed of a category 4 hurricane. This was no hurricane. It was katabatic wind, the aerial equivalent of a flash flood. Katabatic winds sink ships. A 47G’s rate of climb is 860 feet per minute. The pilot was applying full collective and maximum power to climb, every instrument deep in red, and we were falling at 3,000 feet per minute—down to a freezing sea that frothed in sheeting foam. The pilot gained control of the helicopter a metre from the water, saved by the rotors’ ground effect, and there we hovered: rolling, pitching, yawing above a sea surface invisible in spume and spray, a half kilometre from shore. The VNE—never exceed speed—of a 47G is 91 knots. The airspeed indicator read 115, and we weren’t moving, nor could we. We couldn’t turn left or right, descend, climb, or back away. Bank or climb and let the tail or main rotor blade touch the water, unleashed torque would tear the helicopter apart, and snap our necks and spines at multiple vertebrae, dead before the sea received us. Briefly, the pilot warred the wind to stalemate, but I knew it was the wind’s to win.

With the knowing—a knowing absolute—all fear and all death’s terror vanished. I welcomed, longed for what was to happen. Peace, calm, and a mental clarity I had not experienced before nor since overwhelmed me. Sights, sounds, and sensations that a heart beat earlier wreaked terror were music.

With no escape, but to wholly and without reservation accept your death, and then welcome it, all fear of it is vanquished. Death itself is, I know, a comfort, as you too, perhaps, might find--no God or Heaven required. Friend Death is also cathartic. Few of what we have convinced ourselves are our most sacred values survive imminent death’s scrutiny, in particular fearing death more than cherishing life.

[Peter]

With no escape, but to wholly and without reservation accept your death, and then welcome it, all fear of it is vanquished. Death itself is, I know, a comfort, as you too, perhaps, might find--no God or Heaven required. Friend Death is also cathartic. Few of what we have convinced ourselves are our most sacred values survive imminent death’s scrutiny, in particular fearing death more than cherishing life.[/I]

That's beautiful.

[LostInThought]

Anyway. I didn't see a white light, nor did I go to Heaven or Hell (are you not supposed to go to one of those when you die, religious folks, or is there a certain time after which your soul is discharged?). Instead, I had two “hallucinations”.

As I understand it, (my immediate family is catholic/christian; i personally am daoist and daoism has no teachings or focus on death), the christian belief is that there is a breif period of time where you wait outside the "pearly gates" for your judgement. It implies that there is some mini-trial before god as he decides weather or not you deserve to go to heaven or hell. I suppose this lapse of time would be the place to have such hallucenations.

My mom claimed to have a near death experience (she rrefferes to it as NDE rather than legitemetly dying because she survived with no long term medical effects) when she was giving birth to her first child. As the story goes, she flatlined, and then went into a dream where she was walking down a path which she knew ended at heaven. halfway down the road, a giant boulder suddenly appeared and blocked her way. she then heard her mother's voice from the boulder asking her to go back.
She tells me often that her mothe has an iron will, and takes the "hallucination" to mean that her mom willed her back to life/refused to let her die/what have you.

[DragonFly]

OBEs and NDEs

NDE tunnels of light and such
can be explained by neurology,
and OBEs by a condition called sleep paralysis.
They can also be chemically induced,
resulting in full blown episodes.

Neither, then, are proof of a beyond,
but of an altered brain state.

I had several OBEs.
In the first one,
I noted that the scene
looked as real as real could be,
but I did nothing further
than to float around the bedroom,
full of amazement.

I figured that the dream model of reality
is the same one that is employed
when we are awake.

During the second OBE,
I rearranged the items on my end table,
even knocking one item off.

All still felt totally real to the touch and all that
and I was sure that I would see the evidence
of the end table results later when I fully awoke;
but when I really awoke
I saw that nothing had been moved.
I also found that I could awake
from dreams anytime
by clenching my whole body,
and so during the third OBE
I luckily found myself in a kind of halfway state
in which my dream-arms
were seen to be fiddling with the end table stuff
while I could also see my real arms
yet lying beside me, unmoving.

Another time,
I kept dream music playing after I awoke.
I guess the moral is that
sometimes a virtual dream reality
cannot be told apart from real.

I was so sure that I was out of my body,
but one must also remember
that memory and imagination
often images scenes from above (try it).

It is also the case that people of different religions
see different religious symbols during NDEs,
an indication that the phenomenon
occurs within the mind, not without.

OBEs are easily induced by drugs.
the fact that there are receptor sites in the brain
for such artificially produced chemicals means
that there are naturally produced chemicals
in the brain that,
under certain circumstances
(the stress of an trauma
or an accident, for example),
can induce any or all of the experiences
typically associated with an NDE or OBE.

NDEs are then nothing more than wild trips
induced by the trauma of almost dying.
Lack of oxygen produces
increased activity
though disinhibition—
mental modes that
give rise to consciousness.

What about the experience of a tunnel in an NDE?
well, the visual cortex is on the back of the brain
where information from the retina is processed.

Lack of oxygen, plus drugs generated,
can interfere with the normal rate
of firing by nerve cells in this area.

When this occurs
‘stripes’ of neuronal activity
move across the visual cortex,
which is interpreted by the brain
as concentric rings or spirals.
These spirals may be ‘seen’ as a tunnel.

[DragonFly]

NDEs and such

If death is instant, more or less,
as some deaths may be,
then one is really really dead and gone

Those reporting NDEs were not dead, obviously,
but only near death, since they are alive now.
it may sometimes take a while to fully die.

Near death experiences can be like OBEs
and/or with the extreme added effects
of what dying contributes,
such as the seeing of nonhuman beings
and/or tunnels
and bright lights of otherworldly scenes.

OBEs and NDEs are accepted,
via many credible reports,
to be quite believable
as a realm of human experience;
however, they are just visions
made by the brain.

NDE tunnels of light and such
can be explained by neurology,
and OBEs by a condition
called sleep paralysis;
they can also be induced,
resulting in full blown episodes;
neither, then, are proof of a beyond,
but of an altered brain state.

I found that I could awake
from dreams anytime
by clenching my whole body,
and so during an OBE
I luckily found myself
in a kind of halfway state
in which my dream-arms
were seen to be fiddling
with the end-table stuff
while I could also see my real arms
lying beside me unmoving.
another time, I was able to
keep some dream music
playing after I awoke.

Sometimes a virtual dream reality
cannot be told apart from the real;
I was so sure that I was out of my body,
but, one must also remember
that memory and imagination
often picture scenes from above (try it).

It is also the case that people of different religions
see different religious figures during NDEs,
an indication that the phenomenon
occurs within the mind, not without.

OBEs are easily induced by drugs.
the fact that there are receptor sites in the brain
for such artificially produced chemicals
means that there are naturally produced chemicals
in the brain that, under certain circumstances
(the stress of an trauma or an accident, for example),

Can induce any or all of the experiences
typically associated with an NDE or OBE.

NDEs are then nothing more than wild trips
induced by the trauma of almost dying.
lack of oxygen produces increased activity
though disinhibition
mental modes that
give rise to consciousness.

What about the often reported experience
of a tunnel in an NDE?
well, the visual cortex is
on the back of the brain
where information from
the retina is processed,
lack of oxygen,
plus the drugs generated at the time of dying,
can interfere with the normal rate of firing
by nerve cells in this area.

When this occurs,
‘stripes’ of neuronal activity
move across the visual cortex,
which is interpreted by the brain
as concentric rings or spirals.
these spirals may be “seen” as a tunnel.

Some saw scenes, yes,
but they were just made
by a mind in extremus;
They only seemed to go elsewhere.