That is essentially the root of the concept of Hell, the gathering of souls. (It should be noted that Christians, Buddhists, Greeks, etc. have all had near-death experiences with their own religious figures and this is a purely natural phenomenon.)
Quote:That is essentially the root of the concept of Hell, the gathering of souls. (It should be noted that Christians, Buddhists, Greeks, etc. have all had near-death experiences with their own religious figures and this is a purely natural phenomenon.)
Interesting as I'm a bleiever of NDE. I have always felt that NDE is the root of all religions. It is what tells us we have a soul and something akin to a God does exist.
I'm not sure, logically, that I can believe in either - at least not as Christianity would have it. The Bible tells people that they are sent to heck for eternity for not believing in a certain doctrine (namely the divinity of Christ), as well as for sin. Now, last time I checked, the average human life was around 74 years. Assuming that every second of that life is spent in sin (not counting sleep, eating, pooping, etc), then even so, that prescribed eternal punishment is infinitely disproportionate to the crime. The whole notion is utterly illogical, and a perfect picture of injustice. If anything, it conjures fear in us, which, incidentally, is a powerful social and political tool. Just read up on your history - it's had many uses.
And since we're by nature somewhat selfish, doesn't that mean the traditional Christian God sets us up to knock us down? And this whole Jesus thing... believing in a doctrine makes us clean in his eyes? Isn't that rather counter-intuitive, and an unnecessary, elaborate run-around for a relationship that ought to be simple and intuitive?? Judaism and Islam have far simpler methods of having a relationship with God and avoiding hell.
Regardless, I am inclined to believe that hell and Satan are just the tools and methods of fear-mongers.
The out of body experience is caused by electrical sensations in the right angular gyrus. Glutamate is released in abundance when brain cells die and will cause other cells to die so the brain releases an NMDA receptor blocker to stop the spread of glutamate and this causes the vast majority of visions (the visions usually consist of a prominent figure in their lives whether real or imagined: beings of light, God, Jesus, Buddha, family members, pets, etc.) It is also believed that DMT and agmatine are key factors in explaining the rest of the experiences (agmatine is a neuro-transmitter and may be the real cause of the out-of-body experiences that were created by the electrical sensations I mentioned earlier.)
Quote:The out of body experience is caused by electrical sensations in the right angular gyrus. Glutamate is released in abundance when brain cells die and will cause other cells to die so the brain releases an NMDA receptor blocker to stop the spread of glutamate and this causes the vast majority of visions (the visions usually consist of a prominent figure in their lives whether real or imagined: beings of light, God, Jesus, Buddha, family members, pets, etc.) It is also believed that DMT and agmatine are key factors in explaining the rest of the experiences (agmatine is a neuro-transmitter and may be the real cause of the out-of-body experiences that were created by the electrical sensations I mentioned earlier.)
No, dead wrong on this one. Most OBE are people viewing themselves from above watching what is going on around their body. They see and relate after the event in great detail what is happening to them and around them. They relate details no unconscious person can see. You should get a good book on the subject. There are a lot of misconception about what NDE and OBE is.
One of the more interesting aspects of this is the ability of blind people to see events that they could never see even if conscious. This can't be passed off as delusions or visions.
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence03.html
Blackmore, in my opinion, ignores the research and takes a tortuous route into pure speculation of a most tenuous nature. She speculates the only 'I' is a mental model, and the reason we apparently get out of the body is tied in with why we think we are in it, namely:
"Part of the answer is that building a model from eye-level view is the most efficient way of making use of the information coming in from our predominant sense." And, "It can only be a guess, but I imagine that dogs are more inclined to feel they are inside their noses than we are."
Time to stop for a chuckle, then on with her suggestion that these models (who we really are) dissolve under various conditions such as drugs. Blackmore writes:
"I shall never forget my own ketamine experience, the extraordinary sensation of watching the floating parts of the body that seemed to have nothing to do with 'me' coming in and out of vision as 'I' seemed to drift about away from them."
She says "I shall never forget" but, according to her hypothesis, the "I" should have been dissolved. Incapacitate the model maker, and the model should disappear. Yet there is this stable sense of "I." The "I" that "shall never forget." She is unable to live her own theory.
Skeptics claim Blackmore provides scientific proof that NDEs are merely brain phenomena, proof spirit does not exist. This is simply false. Dying to Live presents conjecture, assumptions, speculation, but no proof. Furthermore, her conjecture does not match the evidence she presents.
The skeptics' second claim, that she has explored both hypotheses as an unbiased researcher is also false. The major shortcoming of Dying to Live is a failure to explore or present the Afterlife Hypothesis. It is propped up on false legs in order to be knocked down.
Every time the evidence and the reports clearly support the Afterlife Hypothesis, she makes a non-sequitur leap to the Dying Brain Hypothesis. Should we blame her for not understanding the Afterlife Hypothesis? No. This is not her area of expertise.
What is perhaps most needed in the field of NDE studies is a clear statement of the Afterlife Hypothesis so authors, like Blackmore, will be forced to address the actual hypothesis, not straw man versions.
The out of body experience is caused by electrical sensations in the right angular gyrus. Glutamate is released in abundance when brain cells die and will cause other cells to die so the brain releases an NMDA receptor blocker to stop the spread of glutamate and this causes the vast majority of visions (the visions usually consist of a prominent figure in their lives whether real or imagined: beings of light, God, Jesus, Buddha, family members, pets, etc.) It is also believed that DMT and agmatine are key factors in explaining the rest of the experiences (agmatine is a neuro-transmitter and may be the real cause of the out-of-body experiences that were created by the electrical sensations I mentioned earlier.)
She'ol, the Hebrew word for hell, does not refer to a place of eternal punishment. The concept of eternal punishment is a perversion of the original texts. Many of the references to graves and pits are translations of the same word that is used for Hell. Hell refers to the gathering of souls after death. The root of the word She'ol (and thus Hell) is Sha'al, which essentially refers to "a questioning," or less poetically the near-death experience. Deut. 32:22 and Psalm 116:3 talks about near-death experiences of burning while Job 14:13 refers to a near-death experience of comfort and rest. Have you ever heard about the "tunnel" that people experience when they are dying? That is essentially the root of the concept of Hell, the gathering of souls. (It should be noted that Christians, Buddhists, Greeks, etc. have all had near-death experiences with their own religious figures and this is a purely natural phenomenon.)
The most damning concept of death is what many refer to Hell as the fire and brimstone. This originates from the Hebrew word Gei Himmon, the valley of Hinnom (Joshua 15:8, 18:16; II Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31; Nehemiah 11:30), a place where children were sacrificed to the Canaanite god Moloch. Over time this was eventually called Gehenna in Greek. They kept their pit on fire by adding brimstone to it. In Matthew 23:33 it is typically translated "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" but that is a bad translation because Jesus said gehenna. Jesus was asking the societal outcasts (Pagans ruled at this time) how they expected to not be thrown into the pit of fire in the valley of Hinnom. Over time the Greek concept of Hades was adopted and abominated. The early Christians related Gehenna to Hades in an attempt to scare current Christians away from possibly conversions to Paganism and perhaps convert a few Pagans to Christianity. It is essentially a political/scare tactic and nothing more.
Edit: It needs to be known that I am an atheist and don't believe anything in the Bible. The above is merely my understanding of the texts and culture at the time.
Those who support the afterlife hypothesis have provided no knowledge so the fact that you consider me unknowledgable on the subject is not surprising. The best they have been able to do is argue from a culture or philosophical perspective and their entire hypothesis relies on anecdotal evidence, nothing of substance or worth in science.
Dr. Michael Sabom is a cardiologist whose latest book, Light and Death, includes a detailed medical and scientific analysis of an amazing near-death experience of a woman named Pam Reynolds. She underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that threatened her life. The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neuro-surgical techniques. She was referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest. It allowed Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.
Dr. Bruce Greyson documented perhaps one of the most compelling examples of a person who had a NDE and observed events while outside of his body which were later verified by others. The only way that these events could have been observed by the experiencer was if in fact he was outside of his body. Al Sullivan was a 55 year old truck driver who was undergoing triple by-pass surgery when he had a powerful NDE that included an encounter with his deceased mother and brother-in-law, who told Al to go back to his to tell one of his neighbors that their son with lymphoma will be OK. Furthermore, during the NDE, Al accurately noticed that the surgeon operating on him was flapping his arms in an unusual fashion, with his hands in his armpits. When he came back to his body after the surgery was over, the surgeon was startled that Al could describe his own arm flapping, which was his idiosyncratic method of keeping his hands sterile.
Addressing the frequent rejoinder that such events can be accounted for as hallucinations, Dr. Greyson notes that if NDEs are hallucinations, then how is it that such incredibly accurate and verifiable information is resulting from the NDEs? People on drugs who have NDEs see fewer deceased relatives when they travel out of body. This suggests that people who do see relatives are clear-minded, not hallucinating. In some cases of children, they see dead relatives whom they had never met or seen pictures of. This begs the following question: How could they hallucinate accurately the visual images of someone they have never met? When assessing the surmounting data as a whole, Greyson said that the survival hypothesis is the most parsimonious explanation for the growing database of NDEs.
In order for the afterlife hypothesis to have any chance of not being thrown in the recycling bin the spirit must be made of some substance. They have tried to detect it materialistically and energetically. According to the weight experiments the spirit cannot be made of matter. According to the infrared, ultraviolet, and electromagnetic detection experiments it also cannot be composed of energy. (It should be noted that mass is the result of gravity pushing down on stabilized forms of energy called matter, so all of them tested energy.) These facts tell us that the spirit, if it does exist, is immaterial. Or, in other words, "nothing of substance."
And do you honestly believe the skeptics have ignored the stories? I do not. Furthermore, I have not ignored such stories either. Many years ago I was a Christian and I studied many of the different things that Christians are interested in. After I stepped away from Christianity I began searching for different religious beliefs that I felt were worth value. I read a few things about Buddhism but the only thing of value was the principles of Karma. I also studied various other things like out of body experiences, astral projection, theosophist materials like the Stanzas of Dzyan and The Secret Doctrine, etc. I am now an atheist because through my studies I have come to realize that there are way too many people in this world trying to deceive others. Practically all of the "genuine" out of body experience stories told by "believers" have way too many control problems that make them absolutely useless.
18. Science and the Near Death Experience
'There seems little doubt that NDE's occur in all cultures and have occurred at all times through recorded history ... the NDE happens to young and old, to people from all walks of life, to those whose life has a spiritual dimension and to those who profess no faith at all ... there are many examples of people who have a NDE at a time when they did not even know that such a phenomenon existed.'
Dr Peter FenwickFifteen common elementsThey saw while unconscious
Dr Sabom, a Georgia cardiologist, interviewed 100 hospital patients who had narrowly escaped death. Of these 61 per cent reported experiencing classical NDE of the type closely corresponding to those published in 1975 by Moody.
Many of the patients who had been revived were able to describe in great technical detail exactly what went on in the operating room while they were supposedly unconscious or dead. Dr Sabom, investigated the hypothesis that these patients were merely using their creative imagination, or knowledge that they had subconsciously picked up through earlier exposure to emergency care.
He interviewed a group of seasoned cardiac patients who had not undergone Near-Death Experiences and asked them to imagine watching a medical team reviving a heart attack victim and to describe in as much detail as possible the steps being taken. To his surprise 80% of them misdescribed the procedures. On the other hand none of the group which claimed to have witnessed their resuscitation while out of their bodies made an error about the procedure (Sabom 1980: 120-121).
A common experience
There are now literally millions of people from all over the world who have undergone a Near-Death Experience. In 1983 a major American survey by George Gallup Jr reported that eight million Americans, approximately five per cent of the adult population, had experienced one (Gallup 1982). A 1989 Australian survey by Allan Kellehear and Patrick Heaven found that ten percent of 179 people claimed to have experienced at least five typical elements of a NDE.
Studies in widely differing geographic locations have produced remarkably similar findings eg. Margot Grey's study of NDEs in England (Grey 1985), Paola Giovetti's study in Italy (Giovetti 1982), Dorothy Counts' study in Melanesia (Counts 1983), Satwant Pasricha and Ian Stevenson's (1986) study in India. More studies are coming out from different countries on a regular basis, and historical examples show that the experience has been remarkably consistent over time (see Plato's example of Er's NDE in The Republic reprinted 1973).
Yet while these experiences have been happening throughout human history, in western culture it is only in the last twenty years that people have felt free to talk about them and the effect that they have had on their lives.
Coming back with unexplained information
There are many accounts of people having near death experiences returning with factual information which they had no prior knowledge of. These include being able to identify ancestors from pictures, learning about siblings who had died before their own birth, learning about family secrets etc. Others were able to document information they had learned about future events (see for example Eadie 1992, Brinkley 1994).
Common after-effects
Cherie Sutherland, an Australian researcher, interviewed 50 NDE survivors in depth and found that the effects on the lives of survivors had been remarkably consistent and quite different from the effects of drug or chemical induced hallucinations. She identified many effects which have been substantiated by other studies eg. Ring (1980 and 1984) Atwater (1988). These included:
a universal belief in life after death
a high proportion (80%) now believed in re-incarnation
a total absence of fear of death
a large shift from organized religion to personal spiritual practice
a statistically significant increase in psychic sensitivity
a more positive view of self and of others
an increased desire for solitude
an increased sense of purpose
a lack of interest in material success coupled with a marked increase in interest in spiritual development
50% experienced major difficulties in close relationships as a result of their changed priorities
an increase in health consciousness
most drank less alcohol
almost all gave up smoking
most gave up prescription drugs
most watched less television
most read fewer newspapers
an increased interest in alternative healing
an increased interest in learning and self-development
75% experienced a major career change in which they moved towards areas of helping others.
An independent American study by Dr Melvin Morse found that NDE survivors have three times the number of verifiable psychic experiences as the general population, were frequently unable to wear watches and often had electrical conduction problems such as shorting out lap top computers and erasing credit cards (Morse 1992). He also found that adults who had near-death experiences gave more money to charity than control subjects, volunteered more in the community, were more frequently involved in helping professions, did not suffer from drug abuse and ate more fresh fruit and vegetables than control populations (Morse 1992).
Alternative explanations.
Naturally, the near death experience cannot be taken simply at face value without examining alternative explanations. These include:
Are they making it up?The Pharmacological Explanation?
Some suggest that NDE's are caused by drugs administered to the patient at the time of his crisis. Drugs such as ketamine and morphine have been suggested. Moody investigated this hypothesis and rejected it (Moody 1975: 160-161). This was because many of the patients who experienced NDE's had not been given drugs, that drug-induced visions were markedly different from each other and from genuine NDE's in content and intensity and had no profound long-term effects.
LSD?
Some investigators including R K Siegel reported that some of those who have taken hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD have experiences similar to NDEs. But we are also informed that there are distinct differences between the effect of LSD and the NDE. This has been effectively dealt with by Moody and others.
Oxygen Deprivation?
It is sometimes argued that the NDE is caused by oxygen starvation and is a normal response of a 'dying brain'. However many people have experienced Near-Death Experience before there was any physiological stress and in some case when there was no physical injury at all (Moody 1975: 163). Sabom, consistent with Dr Fenwick, noted that in genuine cases of oxygen deprivation there is a 'progressive muddling and confusion of cognitive abilities' which is in direct contrast to the clarity and expansion of consciousness reported by those having a NDE (Sabom 1980:176).
Psychological Explanations?Neurophysiological Explanations?
Moody considered parallels between the past life review of NDE patients and the flashbacks experienced by people with neurological abnormalities. He concluded that both were essentially different in that whereas the flashbacks were random and of trivial events not remembered after the attack, in the life review typical of a NDE the events were in chronological order and were of highlights of the life. They were all seen at once and constituted a 'unifying vision' which gave the person insight into his life's purpose (Moody 1975: 166).
The dying brain?Physical explanations insufficient
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