I’ve come to believe as you seem to, that it’s the misfires of a dying brain. What I wonder is, if they are your last moments of thought, do you then, from your perspective, perceive that you spend eternity there? Is this, in effect, an, “afterlife”? If so, I need to get to work on creating mine, in hopes that I can stay focused on it as I pass, so that I can have a really kick-ass hereafter.
Perhaps I need to watch Machetea bunch more times.
No; the brain has a finite processing speed, therefore it’s simply impossible for it to provide you with an eternal experience in finite time.
But it could be an illusion of eternity, followed by death.
Understood and agreed. Since there is no way to perceive non-existence, though, your final thoughts might have the feel of ‘forever’ to them, without providing many day-to-day details - you’d essentially be stuck in those last few seconds, without really noticing, because you’re dead. It IS the product of a misfiring mind, I would imagine most of it is nebulous and generalized anyway. Hmm, sounds like I’m heading down a whole weird road of perception and semantics. I think I’ll just back slowly away from myself now. . .
I’m just spitballin’. Random thoughts I never really get the opportunity to talk about, for fear of those looks I so often get. 
Just watched a movie on this and they pointed out that astronauts in training in the centrifuge thingy would black out and experience some of the same things that people in near death experiences reported,leading doctors to think it was all brain related. They did cite one case where a man said he was hovering over the operating table and reported things accurately that they could not explain him knowing.
Being unconscious on an operating table doesn’t mean that your brain still isn’t taking in information. It’s a bad idea to for example comment on how “boy, that’s really going to hurt when he wakes up” because the patient then probably will hurt more when he wakes up thanks to the power of suggestion. He may have been unconscious, but his brain was listening.
As for “hovering over the operating table”, as I said that’s a common feature of memories and imagination, we often picture scenes as if viewed from the side and up in the air a bit.
What about people who wind up in hell? Do they have truly terrifying NDEs? I’d like to read about these!
It wasn’t just that. The operation required that his head and face be covered and yet he described things he couldn’t have seen or known without seeing.
Only a report, doesn’t prove anything.
I’d like to see a cite on this particular case.
Just went and looked it up. It was from National geographic, called, The Moment of Death. It was made in 2008 and looks like it will air on their channel again Jan 21
National Geographic TV Shows, Specials & Documentaries You can watch a brief clip.
It was pretty interesting. Most of the show was about what we’ve learned about cells and the brain concerning death. Hypothermia Comas, etc. It’s fairly scientific and that particular case is offered at the end as something they can’t quite explain.
I went back and watched it again. The guy’s name was Al Sullivan and he was having a multiple bypass. He was behind a drape and his eyes were taped shut. The surgeon had a habit of holding his hands in and pointing with his elbows as he instructed his assistants. Al said he saw this actions and other things from outside his body. It’s the only mention in the show of something they have no explanation for.
I did a quick Google on the “Near Death Experience” and came up with this from The University of Virginia Health System; it seems relevant to many of the questions being discussed in this thread:
(how do I do quotes?)
Aruvqan, I had an experience much like yours. Dead for 7 minutes and I only knew about it because I was told afterwards. I felt cheated.
The most amazing thing I’ve seen in the beautiful desert skies was a bright, bluewhite object about as big as my little fingernail suddenly flew out of the sky at incredible speed, got to about 80 degrees above the horizon then exploded into 5 - 7 fragments. I am so lame that I never considered that it was anything but a metorite.
I think that most of the time they don’t bother telling people, though I would be more than willing to bet that once some people are told, they retro imagine something happened because they can not conceive of not having a NDE.
I never thought it was anything except a meteorite =) I just like yanking peoples chains because technically I do not 100% know it was a meteorite because I never bothered finding out so by the technical definition of the term it is an actual no shit UNIDENTIFIED flying object. Not all objects in space have to be ships =)
I do remember that the day after surgery, there was a HUGE earthquake. I woke up and everything was shaking. I could hear things falling off shelves and people falling. Scared me to death because I knew I should get into the doorsill and I couldn’t get up.
That didn’t happen. Drugs and physical trama can do some really interesting things to the mind.
I have now deceided that what I saw was a UFO that had been shot down by Home Land Security. Of course the media was blacked out by the evil government. Don’t try to confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!
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You are not alone, but you are using what we expect from this world which is order, rules, repeatable results. It doesn’t work that way, nor are we designed to operate that way. We are loved children of God, God has designed our eternal (after) life based on how we are made on a personal level. You will not experience the same thing as anyone else, though there may be similarities to some, differences to others.
From what I know I would expect very different experiences.
And yet we are told we will meet relatives who died before us. How does that work, if our experiences are very different?
I’ve had NDE-style experiences where I met my relatives who haven’t been born yet. Which makes sense, in a way, if you’ve read Stephen Hawking. 
How do you know that the dream isn’t actually reality? Many faiths, esp. Hinduism, believe exactly that.
Thank you so much!