Certain drugs make me feel warm - does that mean that feeling warm from the sun is a hallucination? IOW, just because an experience can be reproduced from taking a drug, does it follow that it false? In order to experience something we need a mechanism to experience it - and that mechanism might be triggered from more than one stimulus.
I have taken DMT and smoked silvia which are very different that LSD, etc. I guess what I’m trying to convey is that this experience had no contexual framework, no previous point of reference like any drugs I’ve taken, including DMT. To use words like limitless, overwhelming vastness, infinity, etc. don’t work because they are concepts that come from the contexual framework of being human and having a shared, consensus reality as our mutual and tacitly agreed upon road map.
What I experienced was not within that contextual framework, it was incomprehensible and ineffable. I can say I saw the Totality, or say I exprienced Infinity, but, again, these are only words which are only symbols of what we are trying to convey.
Sorry, but that’s the best I can do.
To be fair you did say:
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
- I had no way of knowing when you took the bulk of them from your OP, and that still leaves open the possibility that you took some before.
- I wasn’t being sarcastic-I was entertaining a very real possibility.
- For someone who doesn’t want anyone to make any adverse assumptions about their experiences, you sure made a big one about mine. I nearly died twice on the operating table a year and a half ago during emergency surgery to relieve swelling in my brain, and had one doozy of a dream. I attributed it to the fact that my brain wasn’t working properly at the time(which is certainly within the realm of possibility when you are near death, wouldn’t you say?), and I have no way of knowing when precisely this dream took place during the course of the operation, or even if it took place during the operation, because I wasn’t conscious at the time and nobody currently has a machine that shows what people are dreaming while they are dreaming.
But we do have machines that can tell when we are dreaming and if they were routinely used during operations, we might better determine when these events occur.
Yes, I did. And what I mean by that is that I actually died in the classical sense, i.e. loss of life force, and was brought back. The common definition of death is that it is permanent.
I never gave NDEs much thought before I had one. I put them in the category of ghosts, elves and tooth faries. But having had the experience of something extraordinary and ineffable I view it very differently. It was not a drug. I have taken DMT, et al and this weren’t it…so help me God.:smack:
Now my understanding of death is that in most cases it is permanent but in some cases people cross the threshold of life/death and somehow cross back.
No one knows absolutely for sure whether it’s an hallucination or the real deal. Just because a drug can produce something that appears to be the same thing doesn’t mean it necessarily is.
While the Scientific Method is touted to be the greatest thing since Mother’s milk, it is, at its current state, woefully inadequate when attempting to explain every aspect of life/death, the universe and everything. It makes progress every day but has many light years to go.
I think the classical sense would involve a lack of brain activity.
No, but if there are simpler ways of achieving the same result it suggests that NDEs might not be caused by [your soul flying around or whatever]. Here, Cecil discusses explanations that make more sense. This has been discussed on the board before, many times, and it’s much more plausible to conclude that NDEs are caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain, for example.
Define ‘life force’, and the means by which it can be measured and quantified.
Sorry about misreading what you said. I try to never rule out anything including being drug induced or related. We both had what appears to be, at first blush, the same experience. Yours was intensely personal as was mine. But neither one of us can prove or disprove either way. I respect your interpretation of your experience as being real to you. I respect mine as being real to me.
I’ve had two.
I drowned when I was 12, under water for about 6 minutes, no pulse nothing when they fished me out. CPR, vomit river water, woke up choking. Remembered Nothing, nada.
At 32 I had a wreck that threw me out of the car and onto a road at -17 degrees F. EMTs applied cpr, shocked me 3 times then gave up, told my wife I was gone. Jumped up on the way to the hospital, scared the shit out of the emts. My wife was very happy, yes she was in the ambulance too with some broken bones. Again…Nothing, no light, no nothing, just woke up.
For me nearly dying was kinda boring.
Suggests is the operative word in that sentence. Suggests means to mention or imply as a possibility, that’s all. It doesn’t mean that it’s the only possibility. No disrespect to Cecil, but I’ve already read about other interpretations of the NDE. In fact, that was the first thing I did. Just didn’t fit my situation in a way I felt I could get context. That’s just me.
jakesteele, it would be hard to prove your experience wasn’t caused by your soul flying around because souls are usually described as things we can’t measure, which puts them squarely outside the realm of proof. (Very convenient given the fact that nobody’s proved they exist either, but “you can’t prove they don’t exist” is good enough for people who are already convinced.) The fact remains that there are simpler explanations for what you’re talking about.
But it still beats dream interpretation when it comes to gathering accurate information and drawing accurate conclusions.
I will respect that you had a real dream(i.e. you didn’t make it up for this thread), but when it comes to “prove or disprove” it just makes more sense, until evidence shows otherwise, to stick with the more real interpretation.
Not an NDE, but I’ve had an out-of-body experience. I’ve never done hallucinogenic drugs (unless you count gas at the dentist’s office), so I can’t compare my experience to those.
Still, I don’t believe it was an objectively “real” experience. Just a trick of my primitive monkey brain. A very cool and fun trick though it may be.
There is no reason not to believe him. Many people have had these NDE’s. It’s also related to OBO’s (out of body experience), which often can be tested. What they experience is very real. What actually is happening is an entirely different matter, however.
Susan Blackmore is a premiere researcher into all of this, and I’m sure googling will turn up a great deal of her work into this.
The word “false” has no application here. I never said the experiences don’t happen. It’s all just brain chemistry, though. The out of body sensation is an anasthetic effect which can be acused by ketamine.
The experience can also be caused by electric stimulations of the frontal lobe. There are people who have had both the classic “NDE” experience and the frontal lobe stimulations, and they say it’s exactly the same. Obviously, whatever’s going on has a natural explanation. Clearly there isn’t actually a magic spirit leaving the body. That’s patently absurd and impossible. Whatever’s happening is happenng in the brain. The fact that we can induce the identical hallucination with stimulation and chemicals pretty much eliminates the need for fantastic explanations like “souls” leaving the body.
I’ve had the OBE sensation myself. I wasn’t that impressed.
There’s no such thing as “life force.”
Dying in “the classical sense” means dying permanently. You “died” in a figurative sense.
I think you’re referring to Ocaam’s Razor - simplest explanation is usually the best. Great starting point, but again usually is the operative word. It means most of the time, more often than not, but it doesn’t mean always. Ocamm’s Razor is a blade that cuts both ways. For fun, I’ll create Ocaam’s Beard, which states: While the simplest solution is usually the best, it is not always the best. A murdered wife is killed by her husband in more cases than not, but sometimes it is an itinerant drifter, one of the least likely possibilities.
Marley23 quote:
(Very convenient given the fact that nobody’s proved they exist either, but “you can’t prove they don’t exist” is good enough for people who are already convinced.)
Mirror Image quote:
Very convenient, given the fact that nobody’s proved they don’t exist, either, but you can’t prove they do exist" is good enough for people who are already convinced.