# Astral Projection **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 28, 2004, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542 "2004-04-28T19:10:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/441 "2004-05-27T17:09:18Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > I am sorry, I don’t have a clue what you are talking about. > > She was brain dead, gathered info in spiritual form, brain came back on line and she delivered info. > > If you don’t understand this start from scratch. > > Love ``` If the brain was dead and came back "on line" I assume you mean "came back to life.'" How did the "brain c[o]me back online? Specifically, what mechanism or agent brought the brain back? It cannot have been the spirit because "The spirit can not communicate in the physical without the brain." The brain would already have to be functioning for the spirit to resume an interface and transfer the details of the operation. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/442 "2004-05-27T17:47:16Z")
> [@trandallt](#): > > If the brain was dead and came back “on line” I assume you mean “came back to life.’” How did the "brain c[o]me back online? Specifically, what mechanism or agent brought the brain back? It cannot have been the spirit because “The spirit can not communicate in the physical without the brain.” The brain would already have to be functioning for the spirit to resume an interface and transfer the details of the operation. No, because when the brain revved up again, the spirit was able to access it. Like when you change a burned out tube on on an old radio. Not that brain was old. Not that it has tubes in it either. But you get my meaning, right? ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/443 "2004-05-27T18:10:40Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > No, because when the brain revved up again, the spirit was able to access it. Like when you change a burned out tube on on an old radio. Not that brain was old. Not that it has tubes in it either. But you get my meaning, right? What revved up the brain? What brought a dead brain back to life? ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/444 "2004-05-27T18:16:59Z")
> [@trandallt](#): > > What revved up the brain? What brought a dead brain back to life? Medical intervention, natch. Remember, she was surrounded by docters. In fact, the whole thing sounds _awfully_ expensive. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/445 "2004-05-27T18:21:43Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Medical intervention, natch. Remember, she was surrounded by docters. > > In fact, the whole thing sounds _awfully_ expensive. 😉 How can doctors bring the dead back to life? ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/446 "2004-05-27T18:30:46Z")
> [@trandallt](#): > > How can doctors bring the dead back to life? I don’t know, but can you imagine the bills for an NDE? Whoosing through a tunnel… 500.00 Life review... 12,500.00 Seeing GOD $1,450,000.29 P: But Doctor Tex, why does seeing GOD cost so dern much? D: That’s an _anecdote_, son–this here bill’s fer **real!** ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/447 "2004-05-27T19:20:16Z")
> [@trandallt](#): > > How can doctors bring the dead back to life? They don’t. There’s no equivelant to the heart massage that you can do on rthe brain. She was never actually ‘dead’ at all. Lowered brain activity does not equal being dead. I said this a few pages back and Lekatt just complained, but the fact is this: If you have a patient whose brain activity is low due to being frozen, they are not dead, they can be revived by careful treatment. A patient who’s brain is truly ‘dead’ is never going to have it restarted. ---
**Author:** ![SnakeSpirit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snakespirit/32/7271_2.png) [@SnakeSpirit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnakeSpirit)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/448 "2004-05-27T20:23:55Z")
Brain death. Death. Interesting concept. Now, no definition explanations… OK. Animals have been frozen for a period of time (days) and later brought back to 'life." We can probably assume for all intents and purposes that brain activity had ceased. We define that as “brain death.” No oxygen, no blood flow, no life. So, we can have brain ‘death’ and restoration to a living condition. If the brain is like a hard-drive, without damage, memory should be intact. However, I assume that during the time the brain is frozen, no consciousness can exist, and this would be our (what is it they call a test of reliability? I forget). Anyway, let’s freeze someone and see if they have a NDE, AP, memories or whatever. Any volunteers? SS¬ ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/449 "2004-05-27T20:25:13Z")
> [@Mr. Miskatonic](#): > > They don’t. There’s no equivelant to the heart massage that you can do on rthe brain. She was never actually ‘dead’ at all. Lowered brain activity does not equal being dead. > > I said this a few pages back and Lekatt just complained, but the fact is this: > > If you have a patient whose brain activity is low due to being frozen, they are not dead, they can be revived by careful treatment. > > A patient who’s brain is truly ‘dead’ is never going to have it restarted. Well I really didn’t think so. I was hoping for a response from Lekatt. It appeared to me I had caught him in a contradiction. I did so in a post on another thread and so far have not heard from him about that one either. ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Joe\_Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Random)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/450 "2004-05-27T22:27:38Z")
Some of this may have been covered by other posters, but I just got in and haven’t had time to read all the responses. > [@lekatt](#): > > It is backed up by hundreds of veridical near death experiences, and many studies done by research scientists as the one in my last post. NDEs _may_ indicate that there is some form of consciousness that survives the body. Notice that I say “_may_”. I don’t believe that there is enough evidence for it, but I’m open to the possibility, given some decent, testable evidence and a good theory on how of how such a phenomenon would operate (neither of which have been provided). However, NDEs do **not** require that the soul be some controlling entity with the brain as a “receiver”. It could be the other way around, with the _brain_ being the main player which, by some unknown mechanism, creates a soul when it dies. Or the whole notion of souls and spirits could be total bunk. The point is, even if your evidence for NDEs were useful for proving their existence, they _still_ say **nothing** about whether or not the this “spirit” is controlling the brain. In fact, they say **nothing** about what this “spirit” is or what it’s function may be. So your whole “the brain is an antenna for the soul” is backed by no evidence at all . . . not even your own cites. > [@](#): > > You are right, the spirit is capable of storing and retreiving memores independently of the brain, hence NDEs. But it is not capable of bringing this information into the physical without a fully functioning brain. Why not? That makes no sense. Let me assume that NDEs are real for a moment. Now consider the following: [ul] [li]People who have NDEs – and are, according to you, brain dead at the time – can remember the NDEs when they are revived. This means that the soul can store memories separate from the brain.[/li][li]During a NDE – again while brain dead – people sometimes see dead relatives. This means, of course, that they must remember what the relatives look like, which means that the soul can retrieve memories separate from the brain. In fact, according you one of your earlier posts, memories are stored in the soul and not in the brain.[/li][li]From the first two points, we have the soul as the location of memories (or at least a backup location). That people can think during NDEs means that the soul must also be the location of consciousness.[/ul][/li] What do you get when you put that all together? You get a soul which both stores and recalls memories independently from the brain, and which also contains the consciousness. This means that the human consciousness and memories are **in the same place**. If this were true, then **amnesia would be impossible**. If the brain is like a television, and the soul is like the control room at the local television station, then amnesia would be like having the TV station employees being unable to view the TV programs that they have stored in the building with them because their TVs back at their homes are broken. Oh, but if you destroy the TVs altogether, they can suddenly watch the programs back at the station. That makes no sense whatsoever, and thus _something_ in the above bullet list must be wrong. However, all of the bulleted items are consistent with NDEs. So the only conclusion a reasonable person can draw from this is that NDEs are not what you think they are. They aren’t the soul leaving the body while the brain is dead, because that creates a contradiction (e.g. that the soul needs the brain to recall memories, but it also _doesn’t_ need the brain to recall memories). Something else must be going on, then. I posit that the whole thing is a hallucinatory experience created by a brain that is operating under extreme conditions. What is your new theory, now that your old one is shown to be self-contradictory? > [@](#): > > As for amnesia, this is two part. Much of amnesia is cause by a denial of the personality to remember traumatic events. This could be valid when the damage done to the brain caused the individual to block out the terrior of the event. However, based on my above conclusion, _all_ amnesia must be based on denial of the mind. Even when the person doesn’t know that they’ve suffered any brain trauma at all. Do you have any cites to back up that claim? > [@](#): > > The brain does not have a brain of its own. Only an intelligence greater than the brain would be capable of assessing the damage and rerouting functions. The functions are not rerouted by an intelligent force at all. It’s a natural response in any damaged neural net. Even artificial neural nets can reroute connections if a node is destroyed, and they do so with no human intervention and with no “reroute” program controlling them. It’s just a natural function of neural nets. > [@](#): > > This excerpt is from a brain researcher: > > “This is a project born of frustration, basically. For many years, all of us who study brain structure and function have struggled with the fact that no two brains are the same – not in shape or size and certainly not in function,” said Dr. John Mazziotta of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. > > Be sure to notice he says no two brains are alike in functions. What he means – and this is quite clear from reading the whole article – is that no two brains have their functional areas in exactly the same locations. Compare brains to faces; No two people have the same face, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t map the areas of the face and figure out what areas do what. The brain is a bit trickier since it is much more homogeneous, but we can _still_ map out which areas do what in an individual brain, and most (probably all) functional areas are in the same general location in every person, with just small differences in location. The visual cortex is always in the frontal lobes, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/451 "2004-05-27T22:47:20Z")
> [@Snakespirit](#): > > Anyway, let’s freeze someone and see if they have a NDE, AP, memories or whatever. No need, Dude. I live in northern Wisconsin, and we’re frozen half the year anyway. Never affected my memory yet. Dumdeedum… What? What are we talking about? Beer, yeah. I NDE another beer. ---
**Author:** ![Atticus\_Finch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ec9cab/32.png) [@Atticus\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atticus_Finch)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/452 "2004-05-28T00:02:48Z")
**Snakespirit** , on your frog example, the wood frog may be frozen but it’s not dead. The outer layers of its flesh are frozen, but the frog itself is in a torpid state. That is, some of its core functions are still going, including its heart and its brain, though of course they’re not working as hard. You might say they’re in a death-like state, but it isn’t death or brain death. Are you postulating that frogs have souls? ---
**Author:** ![IWLN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5ac83/32.png) [@IWLN](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IWLN)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/453 "2004-05-28T04:10:33Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > No need, Dude. I live in northern Wisconsin, and we’re frozen half the year anyway. Never affected my memory yet. Dumdeedum… What? What are we talking about? > > Beer, yeah. I NDE another beer. Deja vu? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/454 "2004-05-28T06:00:31Z")
> [@trandallt](#): > > Well I really didn’t think so. I was hoping for a response from Lekatt. It appeared to me I had caught him in a contradiction. I did so in a post on another thread and so far have not heard from him about that one either. No,　not a contradiction! ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/455 "2004-05-28T07:18:02Z")
Some animals are able to lower body temperature and reduce metabolism when hibernating, in some cases dramatically so. The vast majority of animals are not able to tolerate internal freezing temperatures, because formation of ice in an organism ruptures blood vessels and causes dehydration and cell damage (which is what frostbite is basically). As far as I know frogs and turtles do not freeze solid, rather their livers release anti-freeze when they sense ice forming outside their body. The anti-freeze is normally glucose or similar sugar, which protects cells from freezing and deformation. These critters also channel water away from inside their cells and organs, and store it where ice may safely form without causing life-threatening trauma. Some arachnids and insects are so efficient at packing their bodies with sugar that they can survive without freezing solid in weather well below zero C. So what happens when a human freezes and when a frog or a spider is exposed to freezing temperatures is completely different; given enough time one necessarily dies because freezing is simply too traumatic a process, the other just survives in cold storage because it does not actually _freeze_. What humans may survive is a _gradual_ and _partial_ freezing process, such as that you experience in icy waters, described here quite nicely: > [@](#): > > from [http://popularmechanics.com/outdoors/outdoors/2000/4/He\_Fell\_Through\_Ice/print.phtml](http://popularmechanics.com/outdoors/outdoors/2000/4/He_Fell_Through_Ice/print.phtml) > > The first sign of hypothermia is an intense needlelike pain throughout the submerged part of your body. This lasts a few minutes and then you become numb. Then you actually begin to freeze: Your flesh hardens and your blood thickens. It’s difficult to move your arms and legs. You no longer can tread water. Your speech slows and you become confused. You may not be able to comprehend or follow rescuers’ instructions. > > **Asleep in the Deep** > > In the next few minutes you lose your ability to hold onto the ice and you slip below the surface - asleep. At this point something incredible happens. Rescuers call it the “golden hour.” You’re actually sleeping underwater and not breathing, so water hasn’t entered your respiratory system. The air in your chest keeps the water out and the cold slows down your metabolism and prevents brain damage from lack of oxygen. This reprieve from death lasts for about an hour. If you’re brought to the surface in time you have to be handled very gently en route to the hospital in order to survive. Rough handling will cause the cold blood, that would otherwise remain in your extremities, to enter your heart and brain, likely causing cardiac arrest and brain damage. No doubt some wit will now make the case that people undergoing this process actually have their soul leave the body etc., and to that I reply: you’ve got a lot more work ahead of you before you can draw such wishful conclusions. Anyway, spend any more than an hour or so without rescue, and you are dead, dead, dead, because your brain will cease to function at even its most basic level, and you ain’t coming back. Apparently there is a 50% chance of a successful rescue for victims in the “golden hour”, which I think is as close to human cryogenics as we have ever got. This process, as you can see, has nothing to do with the stream of repetitive unsupported claims of NDEs as supernatural, for which, yep, not a single item of unequivocal evidence has yet been presented. If only we could progress beyond the misunderstod studies, bad science, and anecdotes of NDEs… ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/456 "2004-05-28T07:24:42Z")
My pardon, I misread one important tidbit: the rescue rate for “golden hour” victims is not 50%, that is in fact the success rate for ice rescues in general quoted in my cite above. I caught an interview with a woman who spent 40 minutes trapped under the ice and was then successfully rescued. She had no memory of the experience at all, and, most horrifying, the after-effects were quite severe: nerve damage, her mucosa fell out, ugh. ---
**Author:** ![Xiphos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/48db29/32.png) [@Xiphos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xiphos)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/457 "2004-05-28T09:48:28Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > You are right, the spirit is capable of storing and retreiving memores independently of the brain, hence NDEs. But it is not capable of bringing this information into the physical without a fully functioning brain… > > …Also the damage could have severed the connection used by the brain to recall memory from the spirit. The spirit can not communicate in the physical without the brain. Usually this connection is rerouted by the spirit and slowly the individual regains memory… > Love No, no, no. The spirit doesn’t interface directly with the brain! There are individual fairies for each of the brain cells. There are motor neuron fairies for moving you about and cognition fairies to help you think. They carry messages from the spirit to each of the cells. But if you don’t believe in fairies they get unhappy and refuse to ride their little pink unicorns and you stop thinking properly. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/458 "2004-05-28T10:31:03Z")
For a non-flippant, scientific treatment of this issue, see _Phantoms in the Brain_ by neurological researcher, VS Ramachandran, particularly the chapter titled “God and the Limbic System”. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/459 "2004-05-28T15:07:38Z")
> [@Xiphos](#): > > No, no, no. The spirit doesn’t interface directly with the brain! There are individual fairies for each of the brain cells. There are motor neuron fairies for moving you about and cognition fairies to help you think. They carry messages from the spirit to each of the cells. But if you don’t believe in fairies they get unhappy and refuse to ride their little pink unicorns and you stop thinking properly. Thank you. It is this kind of post that keeps me going, Fighting Ignorance, but it is taking longer than we thought. Love ---
**Author:** ![SnakeSpirit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snakespirit/32/7271_2.png) [@SnakeSpirit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnakeSpirit)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542/460 "2004-05-29T04:50:34Z")
> [@lambchops](#): > > **Snakespirit** , on your frog example, the wood frog may be frozen but it’s not dead. The outer layers of its flesh are frozen, but the frog itself is in a torpid state. That is, some of its core functions are still going, including its heart and its brain, though of course they’re not working as hard. > > You might say they’re in a death-like state, but it isn’t death or brain death. > > Are you postulating that frogs have souls? I just can’t resist you, **chops**. Maybe cause your name is my favorite food??? No, don’t say it… Anyway, back to frogs. I’m not familiar enough with the experimens that have been carried out. I have a vague recollection of a “dog, frozen in lake four days, brought back to life” from the entirely reputible ‘National Enquirer’ or some such. My point is that at some time in the freezing/suspended animation process there is a point where electrical activity is not possible, i.e., ‘brain death.’ So, do these frong remember how to eat flies? Well, memory s/b preserved, and instinct, but consciousness??? That is the question. And that is the experiment we need. Is this your way of saying you are a volunteer?? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astral-projection/242542.md?page=24)