lekatt's recent hijacks (removed from original threads)

[tomndebb]

@lekatt

For years science has called these experiencers every name from ignorant to mentally ill. The time has come for the experiences to “come out” and stand for what they know is real and true. Science will find it harder and harder to censor these experiences, to suppress the data, and ignore the facts by using doctrine and other “made up” reasons why they are not acceptible. In the meantime honest scientists are hard at work with research and studies.

“Science” has not called the experiences anything, at all. Some scientists have provided speculation that the events might be due to a range of possible sources from true spiritual awakenings to simple anoxia. You do this discussion and your own position no good by making statements that are clearly not in accord with the facts.

“Science” has never censored the anecdotes about NDEs and has no power to do so. “Science” has never “suppressed” any facts about NDEs and has no power to do so. If you believe that some sort of censorship has occurred, please point to the occasion when the New York Times (or the Podunk Cage Liner) or CBS (or the local cable access channel) has been prohibited from producing an article discussing NDEs (particularly with a citation that it was some body of scientists that prevented the publication). You do this discussion and your own position no good by making statements that are clearly not in accord with the facts.

You do yourself no good when you just make stuff up to throw into this discussion.
I am not calling you a liar or suggesting that you are deliberately making false statements. My guess is that you are simply a True Believer who has a need to express your beliefs as though they were facts and that you do not even realize how far away from reality your claims are.

Note, again, that I have made no claim that NDEs or OBEs do not occur. They may very well happen in exactly the way you describe. What I am pointing out is that your claims never occur in accordance with the information you provide to support them.

If you simply declared that you believe NDEs and OBEs to occur in the way that you portray them, it would remain the matter of faith and the number of posters who challenge you would fall to a very low number. However, when you post that they are factually true events that have been “proven” by “science” and then turn around to claim that “science” is trying to suppress or ignore the evidence, you are so clearly contradicting yourself as to encourage large numbers of posters to challenge you to figure out why you keep interrupting other threads to post beliefs while claiming to be posting “proven” facts.

[DiggitCamara]

Lekatt, just a couple of pointers in the “right” direction:

1. This is an *article *in “The Lancet” (apparently a very respected medical journal). It requires registration, but it’s a very simple process. In it you’ll find oodles of references to actual NDE research (no anecdotes, Czarcasm)

2. One of the references of the *article *pointed to this paper (no registration required).

It’s easy to do and, moreover, it shows clearly that “Science” has no actual bias for or against NDE’s. Its very nature, however, stops it from proclaiming anything about NDE’s as wild and “profound” as your numerous statements about their explanations. Most of the actual NDE research I’ve found speaks about the need for further study. Which may actually be the problem: there is not much money available for research grants on NDE’s… but that’s a different matter.
(BTW, tomndebb, it seems that the protocol you proposed to corroborate OBE’s–or verify them, if you will, has already been used at least once

@The Lancet

Parnia and colleagues had hidden targets on boards suspended from the ceiling of the wards used in their study, in the hope that if any patient reported an OBE during their cardiac arrest, they would subsequently be able to identify the targets. Unfortunately, none of the four patients who experienced an NDE in the study experienced an OBE as part of the NDE.

)

[tomndebb]

@DiggitCamara

(BTW, tomndebb, it seems that the protocol you proposed to corroborate OBE’s–or verify them, if you will, has already been used at least once)

Well, I am pleased to see that someone is attempting to apply science to this subject.

(I also draw no conclusions regarding the current results. If only 18% of the respondents to interviews previously mentioned claimed to have had OBEs, then finding one in a population of four is going to be difficult.)

[Cervaise]

@lekatt

Everything I say is ignored.

You think you have it bad, I’ve mentioned Carla Gugino’s fabulous breasts like four times, which are way more important and interesting than anything else going on in the thread, and the subject just keeps getting overlooked. The only explanation is that I am being ignored.

[Guinastasia]

lekatt, not to be nasty, but have you ever considered that some of the people sending in their stories are yanking your chain? Just sending some phony story in just for shits and giggles?

Hell, it’s the kind of thing my friends and I would have done back in high school.
Case in point:
I was about eleven or twelve, and my friends and I were goofing around with a Ouija board. We heard from someone named “Gena”, who died in a car accident, with her boyfriend, and about her family and blah blah blah.

Later, one of my friends 'fessed up to pushing the planchette.

So you can’t tell me that you don’t have people sending you bullshit stories, or at least considered the possibility.
(BTW, one of the links you posted awhile back to a NDE site (not your’s) was on Crank Dot Net.

[DiggitCamara]

@tomndebb

Well, I am pleased to see that someone is attempting to apply science to this subject.

(I also draw no conclusions regarding the current results. If only 18% of the respondents to interviews previously mentioned claimed to have had OBEs, then finding one in a population of four is going to be difficult.)

Not only is someone applying science to this, but my searches on the subject (prompted mostly by this thread) have yielded interesting results, lekatt notwithstanding.

1. This study (only the abstract, as far as I can tell) details the experiences under the drug Ketamine. Interestingly enough, the author also experienced NDE’s himself, so it seems he is someone who can actually compare the two experiences first hand.

@Lycaeum

The present author has experienced several NDE’s and has also been administered ketamine as an anesthetic and within experimental paradigms. The NDE’s and ketamine experiences were clearly the same type of altered state of consciousness.

2. This journal seems to be focused on NDE’s from a scientific point of view. To be honest, it’s a bit short on actual papers, but some information about research can be found.

And, to address your point, I only mentioned the study because it seemed similar to your idea. It’s completely inconclusive, though, since none of the four subjects who actually had an NDE had an OBE. It seems (again, from the first link) that NDE’s have been classified on a 5 stage continuum:

@Lycaeum

Ring (1980) classified NDE’s on a 5 stage continuum:

1. feelings of peace and contentment;
2. a sense of detachment from the body;
3. entering a transitional world of darkness (rapid movements through tunnels: ‘the tunnel experience’);
4. emerging into bright light; and
5. ‘entering the light’.

and only 10% get to the last stage.

[lekatt]

At his bidding I reviewed Karl Jansen book about Ketamine, he was not happy with my review. Since his position has changed a bit, the quote is below.

Erowid Ketamine Vault : Ketamine and Quantum Psychiatry, by Karl Jansen

Where do these experiences originate? I have written at some length about the physical basis for them in the past. In this article I will consider more speculative suggestions that the brain can act as a transceiver, converting energy fields beyond the brain into features of the mind, as a television converts waves in the air into sound and vision. Advances in quantum physics suggest that certain drugs, and the conditions which produce NDE’s, may ‘retune’ the brain to provide access to certain fields and ‘broadcasts’ which are usually inaccessible. This retuning is said to open doors to realms which are always there, rather than actually producing those realms, just as the broadcast of one channel continues when we change channels.

Another survivor, to laugh at and make fun of in the name of science.

Dying and Living.

I´m what I would like to call a NDE-survivor, since my NDE, which I had as a five-year-old changed the course of my whole life. This is the story of my experience.
This event occurred in Russia, (where I was born), on a holiday trip to the Black Sea where I was with my mother and grandparents. On this particular day the sea was rough, and my mother was standing in the water, holding me in her arms, since I was only five and couldn´t swim. I remember feeling happy and secure, even though the waves were huge, and feeling exitement as they came crashing over my mother and me, one by one.

Then a particularly big wave came rolling towards us, and as it hit us my mother lost her balance, lost her grip, and I was swept away by the wave. For a second I felt the agony of death, my body instinctively sensing this being a life-threatening situation. I struggled to find something to hold on to, but since there was only water all around, I finally surrendered to what ever was about to happen to me, and let go.

Next thing I remember is feeling totally and utterly at peace, and feeling enveloped and protected by a kind of presence which I can only describe as complete and unconditional Love. I had no fear, I had no worries, and felt like I could´ve gone on being wherever I was and feeling the way I was forever. I was also strangely aware that the thing we ordinarily call time now was suspended, and did no longer exist.

Next I felt being drawn away by some unknown force, and I started moving at an enormous speed, which felt like a lot faster than the speed of light, and travelling an enormous distance, literally travelling “beyond the world.” I was moving toward a brilliant light, and as I came closer to it my only desire was to get there. When I reached the light there was a male figure standing in the midst of it, the light radiating from him, and I was embraced by this being of light, who loved me completely and unconditionally, with a Love that no words can describe. I found myself in a “world of light,” where everything was made of, and radiated light. And I remember feeling that this place I found myself in, and not the earth I´d left behind was my real home.

I also remember meeting beings, or people, that I felt I had known forever, but sadly I have no clear memory of them now. After meeting these people I found myself in the presence of the being of light I´d met first, and he told me I had to go back.

When I came to, I was crawling up the beach coughing, because I´d swallowed a lot of water, feeling like I´d been away forever, on the longest journey. When I, many years later, recounted the experience for my mother she told me only two or three minutes could have passed during the whole incident.

For many years I repressed the memory of my experience, unconsciously feeling I´d been forced from that beautiful place that was so dear to me, to return to this sorrowful earth. I didn´t remember anything until many years later. But still, even unconsciously, the insights from my NDE had changed the way I looked at life.The most important things I learned was the meaning of unconditional love, which is our true nature and the innermost nature of life itself, and I learned not to fear death. As long as we are afraid of death, we will also be afraid of life, and we won´t be able to comprehend or express our true selves, which is just as loving and beautiful as the beings I encountered in my experience.

Good luck to you all!

[tomndebb]

@lekatt

Another survivor, to laugh at and make fun of in the name of science.

You have already been warned about this sort of *faux-*condescension. You can knock it off or stop posting to the board.

[ /Moderating ]

[DiggitCamara]

@lekatt

At his bidding I reviewed Karl Jansen book about Ketamine, he was not happy with my review. Since his position has changed a bit, the quote is below.

Where do these experiences originate? I have written at some length about the physical basis for them in the past. In this article I will consider more speculative suggestions that the brain can act as a transceiver, converting energy fields beyond the brain into features of the mind, as a television converts waves in the air into sound and vision. Advances in quantum physics suggest that certain drugs, and the conditions which produce NDE’s, may ‘retune’ the brain to provide access to certain fields and ‘broadcasts’ which are usually inaccessible. This retuning is said to open doors to realms which are always there, rather than actually producing those realms, just as the broadcast of one channel continues when we change channels.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_journal5.shtml

Interesting.

All this time I took your lack of response to links, quotes, questions by other posters as a sign that you’re not actually reading other people’s posts and just were espouting your own ideas.

Are you actually just evading difficult questions and weaving and dodging all the time? That would make you a pretty dishonest debater (instead of an ignorant one).

About the doctor: even your last link seems to indicate his ongoing research with the drug. And, as far as I can tell, he still thinks it’s very interesting because it gives us an altered state of consciousness, close to an NDE (and by extension, seems to think that an NDE causes some kind of physiological alteration which changes our brain… and thus our mind). However, this little quote is far more interesting to me

@Lycaeum

Exciting new discoveries include the major binding site for ketamine on brain cells, known as the phencyclidine (PCP) binding site of the NMDA receptor (Thomson et al., 1985), the importance of NMDA receptors in the cerebral cortex, particularly in the temporal and frontal lobes, and the key role of these sites in cognitive processing, memory, and perception. NMDA receptors play an important role in epilepsy, psychoses (Jansen and Faull, 1991), and in producing the cell death which results from a lack of oxygen, a lack of blood, and from epileptic fits (excitotoxicity).

because it links the whole experience to specific receptors in the neurons of our brains.

This research might actually get us somewhere.

[Guinastasia]

@DiggitCamara

Interesting.

All this time I took your lack of response to links, quotes, questions by other posters as a sign that you’re not actually reading other people’s posts and just were espouting your own ideas.

Are you actually just evading difficult questions and weaving and dodging all the time? That would make you a pretty dishonest debater (instead of an ignorant one).

Exactly. We’ve asked him for cites for various claims (the Bigfoot one), I’ve asked him several questions about mental illness, and hallucination. sighs in disgust

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@lekatt

All the evidence you or anyone else needs to start their own study of near death experiences is in post no.425.

That post does not contain the sort of evidence that you said you would provide. Do you agree, then, that you have not kept your word, that you have not provided the sort of evidence that you said you would provide? Are you retracting your stated intention to provide that sort of evidence? As long as we’re both clear that that’s what you’re doing, we can move forward and discuss this entirely different sort of evidence.

Daniel

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Incidentally, Here’s post 425, for those that want to verify for themselves that it does not answer my repeated request for cites of peer-reviewed research supporting the contention that those experiencing NDEs can perceive things through some nonphysical means (I should write a macro to type that for me). I’ve already responded to that post in post 446; lekatt, did you forget that we already discussed that post, or did you hope that I forgot?

Daniel

[lekatt]

@DiggitCamara

Interesting.

All this time I took your lack of response to links, quotes, questions by other posters as a sign that you’re not actually reading other people’s posts and just were espouting your own ideas.

Are you actually just evading difficult questions and weaving and dodging all the time? That would make you a pretty dishonest debater (instead of an ignorant one).

About the doctor: even your last link seems to indicate his ongoing research with the drug. And, as far as I can tell, he still thinks it’s very interesting because it gives us an altered state of consciousness, close to an NDE (and by extension, seems to think that an NDE causes some kind of physiological alteration which changes our brain… and thus our mind). However, this little quote is far more interesting to me

because it links the whole experience to specific receptors in the neurons of our brains.

This research might actually get us somewhere.

You didn’t get that the quote I posted was later, after Jansen had a change in attitude.

[lekatt]

@Guinastasia

Exactly. We’ve asked him for cites for various claims (the Bigfoot one), I’ve asked him several questions about mental illness, and hallucination. sighs in disgust

Should I answer such obvious shames. Attempts to call NDEers mentally ill.

[lekatt]

@tomndebb

You have already been warned about this sort of *faux-*condescension. You can knock it off or stop posting to the board.

[ /Moderating ]

Absolute truth, do you want a few hundred quotes.

[lekatt]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Incidentally, Here’s post 425, for those that want to verify for themselves that it does not answer my repeated request for cites of peer-reviewed research supporting the contention that those experiencing NDEs can perceive things through some nonphysical means (I should write a macro to type that for me). I’ve already responded to that post in post 446; lekatt, did you forget that we already discussed that post, or did you hope that I forgot?

Daniel

I can’t help you, I posted what the researcher thought, and I showed the best I could. I gave a link to many more studies. Just color me stupid like everyone else.

[tomndebb]

@lekatt

. . . do you want a few hundred quotes.

No. I want you to debate the issues logically without dragging your hurt feelings into the thread and trying to play martyr. No one had criticized the person you were quoting; you simply threw out a quotation and acted as though you were offering up a sacrifice to wolves. Since the personal anecdote has no bearing on the discussion of scientific inquiry, it was off topic yet you offered it as something to “laugh at and make fun of in the name of science.” The claim is bullshit and has nothing to do with this thread.

Stop it.

[DiggitCamara]

@lekatt

You didn’t get that the quote I posted was later, after Jansen had a change in attitude.

… and “ongoing research” means what, exactly?

In other words: I did get that the quote you posted “was later”. However, Jansen’s research still has the same tendency to speak about the physical effects of the drug even if now he speaks about how it “tunes” the mind to different frequencies.

I don’t know the doctor himself and he might have an honest change of heart, but from where I see it, he still thinks like a scientist. If he doesn’t… well, he won’t be practicing science anymore, will he?

[Guinastasia]

@lekatt

Should I answer such obvious shames. Attempts to call NDEers mentally ill.

That’s not what I said. I was pointing out that personal experiences are not necessarily reliable. I also pointed out to you that it’s possible that some of the stories sent into you could be people trolling.

I’d also like a cite for the claim that they have found Bigfoot’s DNA.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@lekatt

I can’t help you, I posted what the researcher thought, and I showed the best I could. I gave a link to many more studies. Just color me stupid like everyone else.

Okay. That was the best you could do. Now we can make progress.

You said you would and could post links to the sort of peer-reviewed research I asked for. In reality, the best you could do was to pose an editorial written by one of the researchers, which was NOT was you said you would and could do. It appears, although I don’t want to assume, that you genuinely cannot see the difference between a peer-reviewed research study and an editorial, as long as they’re written by the same person.

Your lack of distinction between the two makes it impossible, apparently, for you to keep your word about what you would do.

And post 425 contained zero links. If you’re referring to your original list of 53 or whatever links, I was only able to find one peer-reviewed study among them, and then only by digging three layers deep into one of the links. If you’re referring to your repeated anonymous anecdotes, those are not studies.

So we’re on the same page at last. You cannot provide peer-reviewed studies that support your claim. As I stated a long time ago (and I believe you agreed), that seriously weakens your assertion that mainstream science is increasingly accepting the nonphysical nature of consciousness.

Daniel