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[[[[Professor Blackmore doesn’t specifically address the issue of meeting dead relatives, but I don’t see that it presents any great challenge to the it’s-all-in-your-head theory. People occasionally dream about the dead during ordinary sleep, but no one regards that as proof of an afterlife. Why should similar dreams during a near-death experience be viewed any differently? On the other hand, if Grandma tells you next week’s winning lottery number, I’d be inclined to take the phenomenon a little more seriously.
–CECIL ADAMS]]]]]
Why do you think Grandma should know about the future and especially about lottery tickets. Besides, even if she know why she must tell us about it!??
Is it possible that people have similar near death experiences that are very similar, because that is the kind of experience they expect to have, based upon others’ published NDEs? This is similar to the idea that most Americans have the same mental image of an alien (green, bug-eyed, humanoid shape, but gigantic balloon-shaped head) because that is the picture we have all been shown so many, many times.
Meh… I drowned once as a kid and didn’t see a light, lost relatives or any of that jazz. I did see a bearded man who I thought was going to give me a beating for getting too close to the river, but he turned out to be my dad’s doctor-friend and since he didn’t die until a couple of years later, it was a fairly dull encounter once he had breathed the life back into me. Good times, though.
It is possible, but one of the few Doctors who have studied this, claims that he has interviewed hundreds of children much too young to be influenced by our adult preconceptions.
My cite is Febuary’s article of the Reader’s Digest. They are quoting Dr. Melvin L. Morse (and perhaps others.)
I am not arguing for the veracity of his work, simply informing from the article that I read.
I’ve always found it curious that the common conception of an alien’s appearance arose more or less at the same time as the advent of in-the-womb fetal photography. I suppose it could be a coincidence that our extraterrestrial hobgoblins should bear such a strong resemblance to horribly mutated fetuses, but it seems like a stretch to me. Maybe there’s a hardwired-phobia-related-to-ontogeny-recapitulating-phylogeny thing going on. Or not. I’m just sayin’.
Several years ago I read an explanation of the common factors in Near-Death Experiences, e.g. the tunnel, the light, the feeling of peace. This article explained why these would be perceived while the brain was starting to shut down. I found it convincing, and therefore I discount this as a prediction of what actually happens after death.
What is more interesting is the Out of Body Experiences, e.g. when people who nearly die in hospital operations sense that they are floating out of their body and looking down on the operating theatre. They see details of the surgery that they would not know about if simply awake in their body. When recovered they are able to recount the details of the procedure to the surgeon, who confirms them but has no explanation for how the unconscious patient could know them. This happened to a friend of a friend and I could ask for consent to post personal details here, if required, but there are multiple accounts along these lines already on the Internet.
These accounts do not prove anything about life after death, but are they at least evidence that the soul exists, i.e. that we are more complex beings than a mind existing only in the body?
As far as NDEs are concerned, I doubt they come from reading about other’s. I remember it being quite a surprise, when these studies came out, that NDEs were all so similar. One might argue that their ubiquity inspired religious thought.
All such accounts are purely anecdotal. All attempts to verify the phenomenon in a scientific manner have failed. One such experiment involved placing a programmable LED sign displaying a word or number face up on top of a tall cabinet in an OR, where it was impossible for a person standing on the floor to observe. Despite several claims of OBEs during surgeries, no one ever correctly described the sign.
But if they’re too young to understand human speech, how does one interview them?
As to NDEs in an operating room, well, I’m not a medical professional. Even if I were hovering above an operation in the flesh, say, in an observation balcony, I’m not sure I’d be able to describe the surgery in any more detail than “They cut the guy open, did something inside of him, and sewed him shut again”. And if the purportedly out-of-body patient reported that, I don’t think I’d be particularly impressed.
My daughters could have been interviewed when they were 1. He doesn’t say too young to speak to, he says too young to have been influenced by adult preconceptions about NDEs. My kids would not have known about NDE descriptions until around middle school age.
I remember not knowing anything about them until some guy published a book. It made a bit of a stir at the time, and I can remember some kids and teachers (High School) arguing that it proved an afterlife existing. Some of the rest of us, including at least one “good Catholic” argued that maybe it was just what happens when you pull the plug on the human mind. IIRC, many of the Christian kids felt that an all knowing God could hardly be fooled into thinking you were dieing, so it must be a biological/psychological reaction. At any rate, I find it hard to credit the idea that the experience is common, because we have heard the stories before. If roughly 1/3rd of people experience these, then some could not have heard the stories before, at least not in the 70’s. Heck, there are still people who haven’t heard of OJ.
I believe the out of body experience is also a physiological reaction. Some years back, there was a Sci Am article on how people respond to high (atmospheric) pressure. Many of the test subjects had out of body experiences in the pressure chamber.
How do you think kids are influenced by adults? Largely (and indeed, for something like this, almost exclusively) by being talked to. Are you telling me that kids can be old enough to be interviewed, and yet never have been exposed to any sort of religious belief? Because even the most rudimentary exposure to religion would include the concepts that Heaven is all glowey and there’s a big nice guy waiting for you there.
I have nothing factual to add, but for those who find this topic interesting, Connie Willis wrote a pretty good book on the subject, called Passage. It’s fiction, but her information about NDEs is very well researched, and she also deals with a lot of the pitfalls of this type of research (the antagonist is an NDE researcher who leads his interviewees into telling him what he wants to hear.)
One thing really struck me in this article: the light/tunnel. I think this may be a simple side effect of unconsciousness or lightheadedness. The reason I say this is because of an experience I’ve been having over the last year or so. In the morning, the first thing I do is get out of bed and into the shower. Not every day, but a significant portion of the time, after a minute or two I get an almost blinding circle of light right in the center of my vision. It is often doughnut shaped, and slightly larger in my field of vision than the showerhead when I’m standing about foot away. It completely blocks out anything “behind” it - I can still see peripherally but it is very difficult. After reading Cecil’s article, I think it is probably the effect of light-headedness bordering on unconsciousness - either that or I’m having a NDE every other day.
Ghanima, may I have the honor of being the first on the board to suggest seeking advice from a qualified medical professional? That sounds pretty scary to me …
Concepts of Heaven and what’s been reported to happen during NDEs are not necessarily related. One kid that Dr. Morse interviewed mentioned being fed honey by a bee. What sort of religion has friendly honeybees in heaven?
Definintely see a doctor - without delay. What is happening to you is not normal. I’ve been knocked out once (football game), and fainted twice (once when standing before anesthesia had worn off and once from a really bizarre set of circumstances), neither time did I have the optical affect you are talking about, nor have I heard of it before.
