You funny.
It’s the central nervous system shutting down the peripheral nervous system in a bid to conserve itself and survive. Native American Ghost Dancers brought themselves to the same state of hallucination by deliberate exhaustion, hunger, dehydration and pain. They saw a white bison because that’s what they were told they’d be seeing. I’d go through a white tunnel and see my childhood pet because that’s what I’ve been told I’ll see. I hope I don’t take the wrong tunnel, because I’m not scooping up that bison’s shit.
Same reason most of us have the same sort of weird dreams-- the showing up naked at a party dream, the big test that we are completely unprepared for, etc.
Sometimes, when I’ve eaten a big meal, and then gone to a bar, and drank three beers, and then walk outside, I’ve gotten a dizzy feeling and the world becomes very bright. Is this a near stomach capacity experience?
I realize this is not the Pit so I will keep my criticisms tame, but may I ask what kind of contribution your namby-pamby statement makes to the debate?
It is NOT about what you choose to accept. There is true and untrue.
It is NOT true that the world is flat, and it is true that the world is a sphere (or almost, if you want to split hairs).
Different people accept different things to be sure. The ones who accept untrue things are what we call “wrong”. The acceptance of untrue things is usually the result of stupidity, misinformation, sloppy thinking, or a desire to believe something that makes you feel good (like religion). The ones who accept true things are what we call “right”.
I read about a “test” that is used by a doctor in a hospital somewhere (sorry I can’t be more specific, but I DO remember reading this – any links would be appreciated) to debunk claims of patients that their spirit was “floating” around the operating room while they were in surgery.
Since these patients always claim they could see the room from up above and could look down on their own body, the doctor has hidden some visual “target” on top of a cupboard in the operating room, placed in such a way that anyone floating around near the ceiling would have to see it.
The doctor refuses to say what the target object is, but it cannot be seen by someone standing on the floor or lying on an operating bed. It is apprently something quite noticeable and impossible to miss.
As soon as a patient starts to recall floating around and looking down on their own operation, he asks them what else they could see.
- The doctors and nurses?
*-- Oh yes! *
-The whole of the operating room?
–Oh yes!
-And what do you remember seeing on top of the cupboard near the door?
– Huh???
I am certain I read about this guy, and it was not an out-of-body experience. Can anyone find the story?
So do I, but I do not see them as proof of the supernatural or extraterrestrials.
My two cents:
I’ve been dead on an operating table (aortic dissection). No light, no love, no relatives.
Plenty of people have been medically revived while in a state of clinical death, but not all of them have come back to report life-changing NDE’s. I wonder why that is?
And that’s okay.
Makes sense if your sister was a bird.
Zep Tepi, what was the significance of the feather?
Because they came back…as soulless undead abominations!!! They went into the light…and something else came back!
<insert creepy music>
Different people will have different hallucinations.
I hadn’t heard from someone in a few days and had an awful feeling that something had happened to her; just a haunting intuition that something was wrong. Then she called me and I found out there was nothing wrong after all.
The experiment you describe is similar to something tried by Parnia and Fenwick about 10 years ago.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10856683&postcount=233
It probably means you were driving a red van. I’ve noticed that most people who notice confirmation bias seem to be driving red vans.
Great. Now I’ll start seeing red vans like I started seeing Mustang IIs a few months back.
Brother wanted to buy one. We debated the wisdom of it long enough that someone else bought it, but now I see every damned Mustang II that goes by. Fortunately, that’s not many because they were crap cars 35 years ago and haven’t improved with age.
I kinda like the idea of seeing a white light and your deceased loved ones welcoming you to cross over to the Great Beyond. But you never hear about the opposite.
This happened to me: a friend of mine lived with his elderly father. One night I dreamed that his dad died. The dream was incredibly powerful: I woke up crying. I wrote him and he replied that everything was fine. Then his dad died - ten years later.