THey just numb the brain and since I have had eye surgery twice they also just numb the eye I felt nothing and was not put to sleep; and the doctor had me look in different directions as he operated.
Monavis
I was told by a doctor that even though the brain waves may register flat there is a short time that the brain stem is not dead just so low that it is not registered and there are times when a person can be brought back from what is really just near death, once truly dead you can not be brought back. Just as the blood pressure can be too low to register. I can not verify this but it makes sense to me.
Years ago on TV there was and Indian Swami who they showed that closed down all his system so he registered nothing on the scale, they had him buried covered him with dirt and made sure ther was no air except for what he had in the box they used, then 3 days later they uncovered him and he came out slowly from his self induced system shut down. I believe it was in the 60’s but perhaps Cecil would have some information on this.
Monavis
The NDE claims for an OBE combination are not made for the “light at the end of the tunnel” experiences, but at the claims where a person is still in the room but outside the body, watching their own body from some other point in the room, (hence “out of body experience”).
This, not the light at the end of the tunnel with lots of people talking to the subject, is the point under discussion in this thread.
The principal claim that lekatt holds is that when the brain shuts down, completely, there cannot be a natural explanation for the subject recognizing and relating conversations, medical tools, and events that occurred while the brain is “dead.”
The principal response from those who have not been persuaded is that the conversations and clothing and tools that the subject mentions are all available to the person on being brought into the operating room or during the initial phases of anaesthesia, before the brain has been “shut down.”
So far, neither side has provided evidence that unequivocally demonstrates their point. One classic case included a subject, Pamela Reynolds, who underwent an operation that lasted hours, but the period during the operation when the body was dead appears to have lasted a very few minutes. (Since the operating team was much more interested in completing the operation and saving Ms. Reynolds’s life than in recording events to be compared against a later OBE claim, the timeline is vague enough that each side can claim “SEE! I’m right!”)
As to swamis who get buried and resurrected on TV, I will note only that that event occurred about the same time that Uri Geller was getting publicity for his fabulous feat of psychokinesis.
One thing to consider (not that I expect lekatt to actually consider it, since it doesn’t support his beliefs) is that memory doesn’t work like a video recorder. Our current memories are narratives constructed after the fact; they’re malleable and may not represent true happenings at all. There’s no reason to think that the current memories of somebody who had been clinically dead are an accurate record of his mental experiences at that time.
Research shows that the brain stem can remain active only 11 to 20 seconds past heart stoppage.
The research being done has considered those things. They are studying those people that go out of their body during a time when no brain activity is registered. Then return later to tell what happened while they were clinically dead. Their events have been verified by those in attendance. These are called veridical OBEs. I have shown links to these studies and displayed situations when they happened. There are many doctors now involved in this research. These studies are being taken seriously and more work will be done in the future. The main item is these studies show a separation of brain and consciousness. This research has convinced many doctors that consciousness lives after the death of the body. Now this will be discussed and debated for many years before it is accepted by main-stream science. But I see no reason that it won’t be given the research evidence.
This is the problem. Every one of your purported links has been to second-hand anecdotes or clipped phrases or similarly indirect claims. Every one.
It is entirely possible that what you claim is happening; I really do not know. However, you have not one time provided anyrthing that was more than a reconstructed commentary or guess, even though you claim to have provided solid evidence.
Look at the timeline provided in the Wikipedia article on Pam Reynolds. There is enough slop to let people on both sides of the issue claim victory, but it is simply not what you claim it to be regarding a documented case of perception during brain death.
Below is a link to the comprehensive studies of OBEs, and NDEs. There are 53 links within the link showing research that has been done or is in progress. Actually this link is only a part of the link I provided earlier on the subject.
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html
While one is considering this research it would be good to test it against the evidence science has that the brain produces you, your personality. So far as I can determine there is no physical evidence at all that the brain produces you.
Wow, I didn’t know the St. Jude thing was snide at all. I thought he was talking about St. Jude’s children’s hospital in Memphis, a free hospital for kids all over the world with tough diseases. My ex-girlfriend had cancer when she was six and they treated her for free.
Just rambling. The stuff I just don’t read sometimes.
Sweet jesus, people, why must you tell me these things. Medicine just got a lot more scary.
What you say is true. I just don’t see how actual evidence can be supplied for something like this. It’s the same with God. It almost doesn’t even seem debatable. Just an opportunity to disrespect each other. It’s tiresome.
And it startrs out with Sabom’s claims about Reynolds (although it does not name her). I then went through the first dozen studies. Not one of them provides any evidence (in the form of a verified timeline) that demonstrates that the patients might not have had their experiences at the last moments following brain death of the first moments following brain death.
Not oner–including the Sabom piece noted in the Wikipedia article on Reynolds.
I am not claiming that NDEs canot occur–although, I do note that you have now changed the discussion from OBEs, the point of the OP, to NDEs even though the two are not congruent. I am simply pointing out that no one has yet provided any verifiable evidence that the events occur during brain death. Since OBEs can occur without brain death, (as several posters have testified, here), the relationship between OBEs and NDEs is not one for one. Therefore, all the anecdotes in the world regarding NDEs are only marginally tangential to a discussion of OBE. And, to repeat, *ad infinitum, there has not yet been any evidence that an OBE occurs at a point where the brain has ceased functioning. There are anecdotes galore that a person experiencing brain death may sometimes have an NDE and may, at times, have an OBE, but still no direct evidence that the OBE occurs while the brain is stopped.
Maybe it does, but it still has not been shown.
Sure it can. Place a pad of paper above a surgical room facing the ceiling with a word or sentence or figure on it. Have it placed there by a person who is not a member of the surgical team who does not speak to the team. If any patient comes back and describes the drawing or words on the paper, it will be a very strong indication that they were out of their body looking around.
As to the tedium of the discussion, that originated when one poster interrupted the thread to claim that the researchers in the OP were being dishonest even though the poster had no information regarding their tests or intentions.
Hijacks do tend to get tedious when they are repeated enough times.
tomndebb
Thanks for the quick explanation you gave. On the topic of OBEs, aren’t there people who claim to be able to do this at will? If so, it sounds easy enough to test. Your suggestion of a drawing or whatever on a paper would work well. At the risk of spawning another pit thread, I wonder if James Randi gets any of these people.
Regards and thanks
Testy
Sorry, tom. I wasn’t trying to slip an insult in there, I was just trying to demonstrate that, “Are you X?” and “You are X,” are functionally the same thing, when X is something derogatory.
I understand, but given the context of the preceding posts, your question easily provided a subtext that implied the insult. No one is in trouble; I would just like to reduce the hostility rather than increase it.
Gentlefolk, we’re wasting our time with trying to explain the concept of scientific inquiry to lekatt. His thesis, his one and only thesis, is that he’s not the ultimate, but rather the only arbiter of what constitutes both NDE and OBE. If scientists manage to recreate, as they just did in the news story in the OP, what those who purport to have undergone OBE, then lekatt shouts from the rooftops, “Those scientists are liars! They cannot have done that! It’s not for real!”
He then turns around and pretends to provide scientific discourse to support his self-appointed authority. He uses the catchwords “research has shown.” Yet, he doesn’t provide links to any actual authority, just links to his own stories.
At the end of the day, a few facts remain:
[ol][li]People purport to have undergone OBE and have described what they believe their experiences to have been.[/li][li]Actual scientists, those who know what science is and how to conduct research, have managed to recreate those experiences–as described–in other people.[/li][li]lekatt attacks those scientists without any basis in actual fact.[/li][li]lekatt remains a stranger to real science.[/li]This particular news story was destined at birth for lekatting.[/ol]
While you may set up something like you state there are problems with it. One is when one is given the opportunity to have true understanding of life (though a very small and incomplete part of it, the part God wants to show us at that time for His purpose, not ours) things like reading some pictures on the ceiling seem very unimportant. The second reason, which is the reason why this won’t happen is that God has already stated He will frustrate such efforts.
Cite? (Direct quote from God, please, not hearsay.)
lekatt remains as reliable as Sisyphus’ boulder.
My body lies over the ocean,
My body lies over the sea,
I’m no good at astral-projection,
So bring back my body to me.
While taken alone reading a word off a bit of paper that someone could just take down and look at isn’t very important, the potential consequences of sigificant evidence for the existence of OBEs overall would be pretty big, i’d wager. It would be essentially sacrificing true understanding for yourself in order that it might be more easily brought to everyone as a whole.
[QUOTE=Monty]
Gentlefolk, we’re wasting our time with trying to explain the concept of scientific inquiry to lekatt. His thesis, his one and only thesis, is that he’s not the ultimate, but rather the only arbiter of what constitutes both NDE and OBE. If scientists manage to recreate, as they just did in the news story in the OP, what those who purport to have undergone OBE, then lekatt shouts from the rooftops, “Those scientists are liars! They cannot have done that! It’s not for real!”
He then turns around and pretends to provide scientific discourse to support his self-appointed authority. He uses the catchwords “research has shown.” Yet, he doesn’t provide links to any actual authority, just links to his own stories.
At the end of the day, a few facts remain:
[ol][li]People purport to have undergone OBE and have described what they believe their experiences to have been.[/li][li]Actual scientists, those who know what science is and how to conduct research, have managed to recreate those experiences–as described–in other people.[/li][li]lekatt attacks those scientists without any basis in actual fact.[/li][li]lekatt remains a stranger to real science.[/li][li]This particular news story was destined at birth for lekatting.[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Monty, what does the SDSAB stand for under your name? Just curious.