Two points about the “feelin’ real” issue. One, if there were a significant number of people saying, "I had an NDE, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (i.e., I know it was just a dream/hallucination), then skeptics would say, Hey, even people who have these experiences don’t necessarily ascribe any meaning to them–and skeptics would be right to point this out. The fact that experiencers are so darn consistent in this regard is an interesting point in itself–whether you feel that NDEs are proof of an afterlife or not.
Second point. What does it mean, in the case of an NDE or other unusual experience, that it is marked “real” in the mind of the experiencer? I personally am extremely curious about this point and think it has great import for understanding consciousness itself.
Re your direct question: I would say that NO, if someone experiences something that we cannot verify through typical means, we have no way of knowing if it was real–especially if the experience transcends the physical universe. Even if that person is able to produce information that they cannot otherwise have gathered, we cannot know if, on the whole, their account of the experience is “true.” We may be compelled to admit, in certain cases, that their ability to produce said information conflicts with our worldview, but whether we decide to take in the whole of their account is a matter of personal preference.
Ultimately, it comes down to fantasy–projecting oneself into the story told. Nothing can make one go there.
Wrong again Joe, Pam Reynolds was monitored for brain stem activity and none existed. After all, she had no blood in her head for approx. two hours.
There are dozens of others who were brain dead and came back to life and knew what happened while they were brain dead.
I find no advantage in discussing the issues with you because you have not read the research or the information. You wield assumptions and conjecture as if they were reality. Sorry you are wrong.
Go get caught up on near death experience research.
Love
Not really. Humans are one species and their brains function in the same way. They are also exposed in essentially similar human cultural contexts. Nothing terribly interesting about the similarity.
Two points:
1)The experiencer isn’t aware of any ‘cause’ until the experience has already commenced. In other words, you don’t know you will experience a NDE, until you start experiencing it. This makes it rife with speculation.
2)The experience is very intense. The subject loses their bearing on normal reality, and thus can’t compare and contrast.
A lot has been made out of the reporting that these individuals can see things/events around them that they shouldn’t have seen. One aspect that has to be kept into mind is that consciousness is a receptacle. The sensory processing occurs subconsiously and the results are then “passed on” to conscious awareness. There are many psychological experiments that have verified this. The books, Synaptic Self and Phantoms in the Brain deal with this. You don’t have to be consciously aware of what sensory processing is happening, in order for your brain to process it.
Science has no way of knowing whether NDEers are mistaken or not. It is just an assumption, and like all assumptions, worthless.
I have never heard of any individual having an hallucination and saying that it was real after the experience was finished. I have never heard of anyone confusing dreams with physical reality. Near death experiencers know what they experienced was real because they can test the knowledge gained from NDEs in the physical world. I don’t know of a single experiencer who believes he had a hallucination. Millions have had NDEs, only a small portion of this number talk about them due to the arrogance, and ignorance of the detractors. No one likes to be ridiculed or belittled. If science continues to look upon NDEs as lies, it will be science that loses.
Of course, the experiencer is aware of a cause, they are dying, that is the cause.
You don’t lose your bearing, for once you can see who and where you really are in respect to the reality of all things.
Your assumption about gaining new information is totally false also. These people are brain, brain stem, heart dead, there is no activity of any kind going on in their dead bodies. I suggest reading some NDE research done by doctors who are not skeptics but want to know the truth.
This procedure is often called “stand-still” (IIRC) and while brain activity is reduced to very low levels that are undectectable, the brain does still work. If it did not, there would be no way to revive the patient (you can stimulate a stopped heart into starting again, what are you going to do witht he brain? Squeeze it? If the brain was actually made “dead” then this procedure would be murder.
Furthermore, there are other problems with the PR case. She was already in a NDE study and most fo the things she described were not uncommon in surgery.
I foresee this thread reaching 10 pages with lekatt and company not conceeding any of their points despite overwhelming evidence or argument. I know this because my brain stopped working for a few minutes and I astrally projected into the future.
You are saying the brain can function at low levels without blood, too low to measure.
OK, just how do you know this, if it can’t be measured?
Let me guess, because Pam knew what went on while she was dead, that proved the brain was functioning even without blood and the body cooled to 60 some degrees.
Assumptions, conjecture and the like is not science, and Pam is not the only example.
This guy went into cardiac arrest and died, the doctors called his parents and told them to come to the hospital immediately. The guy came back to life, he told the nurse he had floated over to his parents house and watched as they rushed around to leave the house (he didn’t know where they were going because he didn’t hear the doctor call). Being a sharp nurse she wrote down all the things he said about the experience, things like what TV program they were watching, what they said, who got in the car first, etc.
Now when the parents arrived at the hospital the nurse stopped them before they saw him and asked what they were doing before they came down.
She found that what he said was an accurate description of what they had been doing.
The parents house was miles away from the hospital. This case was posted in one of the NDE research books I read awhile back.
Since then I have read many other such cases. Scientists are in a state of denial about these experiences and with good reason. It will stop or change a lot of
brain research if taken seriously.
lekatt, I know that you believe in your explanation of NDEs with every fiber of your being, just as I disbelieve your explanation with every fiber of my being. But this…
… demonstration of paranoia and suspected conspiracy does little to help your cause.
I don’t expect you to admit that there is no credible evidence, but conspiracy theories are used by every raving lunatic as a reason why their “pet” belief is not universally accepted as fact. Do you really want to lumped together with raving lunatics?
I wasn’t using a dictionary definition, I was using Alexandar Slugin’s definition, as seen in PiHKAL. He invented MDMA, 2c-b, 2c-t-7, and hundreds of other psychedelics, and tried them on himself (unheard of). I’ll take his word over a dictionary.
“HALLUCINATION, n. An extremely rare phenomenon, in which a completely convincing reality surrounds a person, which his eyes open, a reality that he alone can experience and interact with. The inducement of hallucinations is a property that is commonly attributed to psychedelic drugs, it in reality is virtually non-existent in the use of such materials. In almost all psychedelic experiences undergone by normal, healthy people, there is an awareness of real surroundings. Visual distortions are common, but they are not confused with objective reality by the subject; they are known to be visual distortions and appreciated as such. The delusional anesthetic drugs, such as scoplolamine and ketamine, on the other hand, can and do produce true hallucinations.”
The nature of DMT is that it all seems very real. That level of intensity is quite rare among drugs. With 95% of psychedelic drugs, you know what you are seeing is fake - not DMT.
Schizophrenics think many things are “real”, but people have no problems dismissing those claims. I don’t see how this is any different.
I’ve never done N,N DMT. But, I have dived into the world that its much-less-visual cousin, 5-MeO-DMT, has to offer. It was the most amazing, intense thing I have ever experienced. It cannot be well described using language - that is how completely alien it is.
We’re not talking marijuana or alcohol. Those are NOTHING. Just because you’ve done those, dont fool yourself into believing you know what altered states of consciousness are like - don’t you dare compare them to DMT or 5-MeO-DMT. Think along the lines of 1 milligram (10 hits) of LSD, or 10 grams of magic mushrooms.
It seems to me that some of you underestimate altered states of consciousness, is all I have to say. Keep an open mind as to the states of consciousness your brain can produce.
Watch me. I’m in no way implying that DMT trips are “nothing”. But, I believe that looking to NDE’s as an existence of an afterlife is rediculous and merely wishful thinking.
It could not be measured by any instrument available in at the surgeon’s station. However, if one were to be unethical and toss Reynolds cooled body into a CAT scan or similar machine there would be signs of activity. Calcuations of brain activity vs. temperature and work on lab animals has confirmed this. The brain is not dead, merely at low activity.
Either way, her account is still not that impressive. The “big hit” is her description of the instrument used on her and a snatch of conversation from what would have occoured early in the procedure.
Aeschines, I can’t find anything I disagree with in your post #221. In fact, I would be proud to have written it under my name. So I wonder why we are at odds elsewhere in this thread?
I will not contradict anything you said, but I would like to elaborate a bit. Unlike most of my posts, this will not be filled with cites; I have opinions on these matters that match others’, but they are only opinions. Why not hard cites? Because we are in a field where there are some very good hypotheses about how the brain works, but fewer facts. We know a lot about how people think, but not everything; the brain is probably the biggest mystery part of the body.
This by no means that we need supernatural explanations to explain various phenomena. Perhaps this is where we diverge? I am more likely to look for a chemical/electrical/physical explanation of phenomena X, which is science, yet others gravitate to the supernatural, which is not.
I would postulate that the consistency is likely due to what I like to call “a common wiring defect” – when our brains are operating under reduced capacity, they lapse into somewhat, but not entirely, random actions. Perhaps the “light at the end of the tunnel” effect so common in NDEs is what naturally happens to the optic nerve when shortchanged from oxygen. Personally, I experienced the identical effect when given ether for an anesthetic as a kid.
I think the amount of “intensity” to a non-real experience makes humans determine what is real. Harvard Professor John Mack was willing to accept that his patients had actually been physically abducted by aliens, in spite of the total lack of physical evidence otherwise, merely because the patients felt so strongly about it. That makes no logical sense unless you can first prove that intensity = reality. Hogwash.
Consistency can often be explained by things common to our culture. When little green men were created by Hollywood, people saw little green men. When Hollywood shifted to reptilian monsters, aliens looked like lizards. If people have heard about the light at the end of the tunnel, it is likely they will experience it under stress. This is psychology, not the paranormal.
Why is an experience so intense? I don’t know, but I’ll bet there is a physiological reason that may be found eventually.
Certainly. I choose to require just a little more proof than some. The more fantastic the claim, the more proof I want. And magicians/performers regularly provide information that it seems they could not know otherwise, so the possibility of trickery, lying or fraud is omnipresent. If we want to know the truth, we must be aware of such techniques.
You have no proof of anything, you don’t know whether there would be signs of activity or not, all just talk. I can see you haven’t read the account if you think the instrument is her big hit. I guess it was in the media, and on TV. Her surgeon was on TV explaining about how she knew about the operation and their conversations. Your conjectures are not impressive to me. Please actually read the material and learn about NDEs. I am talking about the real NDE research material, not the media and skeptical stuff.
Just a note, remember she described the instrument as she saw it. She also described other events that took place. Does this mean her eyes were also working and moving about under the level of detection, and not really closed, or did her brain “see” in some unknown way that us unscientific people just wouldn’t understand.
I could go on for days describing the colors, appearances of doctors, etc., that NDEers never saw before death, yet described perfectly when they returned to life, but I won’t. Read the material.
Please don’t think this is all NDEs have to offer, we have not even touched on other very important parts of the near death experience. I have spent 16 years researching them, the media and skeptics usually talk about only a tenth of what actually happens during the experiences. Read the material.
Love
Funny, because people see “instruments” and “other beings” on DMT.
DMT is also probably the cause of alien abductions. Notice the similarities between alien abductions and near-death-experiences? Other beings? A loud noise? Being lifted up? Bright Lights?
Your attitude towards drugs disturbs and offends me. Its painfully ironic that your very basis for believing in God is drug based. You imply that all people who use hallucinogenic drugs are ‘addicts’, when in fact hallucinogens are hardly addicting.
DMT and methamphetamine are the same thing to you, evidently.
DMT will definitely not kill you, or cause addiction, but it will cause the most intense moments of your life. It saddens me to see somebody of your age so ignorant of something that has been a part of human history since its very beginnings.
