Near Death and Out of Body Experiences

[greybeard]

Most of the people here are no neuroscientists.
And we know that a neurosurgeon (Eben Alexander) experienced an NDE
and all his modern scientific knowledge about the brain told him that his experiences were impossible.
This is convincing, because it's from an expert of the brain. Almost no one on this forum has his expertise.

What about the expert who was actually treating him and put him in an induced coma? She contradicts his story and his conclusions. So who is more convincing? The person actually treating him or the person in a coma at the time who has written a book about his experience which has made him very rich?

 

[MaartenVergu]

Fact is that scientists do not fully understand the brain yet. So, every final conclusion about consciousness is speculative.
One little bit of new information in science, can introduce a whole new paradigmeshift. So, there is no final conclusion possible yet until you fully understand consciousness and how the brain generates it.

 

[MaartenVergu]

What about the expert who was actually treating him and put him in an induced coma? She contradicts his story and his conclusions. So who is more convincing? The person actually treating him or the person in a coma at the time who has written a book about his experience which has made him very rich?

The person who has knowledge of both sides: the experience and the science.

 

[greybeard]

The person who has knowledge of both sides: the experience and the science.

So even though the person treating Alexander contradicts key statements in his book. For instance

"Alexander writes that he slipped into the coma as a result of severe bacterial meningitis and had no higher brain activity, while a doctor who cared for him says the coma was medically induced and the patient was conscious, though hallucinating."

And even though he has made a lot of money out of making these claims you are still willing to take what he says as fact?

 

[MaartenVergu]

I don't know.

 

[zengirl]

Most of the people here are no neuroscientists.
And we know that a neurosurgeon (Eben Alexander) experienced an NDE
and all his modern scientific knowledge about the brain told him that his experiences were impossible.
This is convincing, because it's from an expert of the brain. Almost no one on this forum has his expertise.

.....people who aren't neurosurgeons know what they have experienced.......I've met several doctors who are very dense about their existence and about understanding human beings....they are often like robots and have no business being doctors...

 

[zengirl]

ETA: Whoooooops! I thought I was at the end of the thread. It seems I've been Ninja⁴ed.


Verified by whom? Whitley Striebr? You do know who Strieber is, don't you? The guy who writes horror stories and who's been in contact with ET and is a self-described ufologist? This is like using Edgar Cayce as the verification of Bridey Murphy. There's a category we need for such "evidence". It should be over there in the PMSU section (People Making **** Up). And it falls on gullible eyes and ears, and we get to have you entertain us with delusional nonsense.

Oh, and could you channel Strunk and/or White? Even over here at TGR (The Grammar Resistance), your posts are painful to read/parse.

Cayce was involved with presidents...and Strieber is a human being who wrote of his experiences...sorry you people can't follow...the woman friend he visited verified that she knew he was there and gave details...gullible ones are the ones who have no understanding of their existence beyond the physical...-------skeptic---someone who denies anything they have no understanding or experience in....

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I don't have the dates....he didn't say he was a monarch....

The only person approximating a King Arthur in the middle ages was Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII. And he both lived after the middle ages and died before he was in a position to inherit the throne of England.

Of course the legendary figure of King Arthur of the Britons was created by medieval fictional author and monk Geoffrey of Monmouth who took some older Welsh legends (being Welsh himself this was easy enough) of a semi-devine (in the old Celtic pantheon) protector of the Celtic Britons who was called Arthur the Bleesed and spun him together with other legends of a remnant Roman Kingdom lead by Ambrosious Aurelanius (who was probably real) and created the King Arthur mythos with which we are so familiar today. Oh, and I notice that the "OBE" was from a period when Arthurian legends were at their highest point of general knowledge, due to Hollywood and other popular media. That is a common sigil in all these hallucinatory "visions".

Edit: Forgot one point, the "medieval" King Arthur you talk about never existed. The original legends described a tribal king who lived shortly after the Roman withdrawal, c.450CE. The idea of a "medieval" Arthur comes straight out of Hollywood's mangling of the time period, simply because men in 15th century and later plate armour serenading women and being polite when bashing each other was more photogenic than groups of men in chainmail and leather armour bashing each other in a swamp. If James Cromwell actually had such a vision and Arthur were real, he woudln't have experienced the Errol Flynn version.

 

[MikeG]

.....people who aren't neurosurgeons know what they have experienced.......I've met several doctors who are very dense about their existence and about understanding human beings....they are often like robots and have no business being doctors...

So you judge doctors by how in touch they are with their imagination, their makey-uppey side, rather than by how good they are at........you know...........curing people. Errr, righto.

It might be handy for the rest of us if you would let us know which doctors you visit, so that we could organise our medical lives accordingly.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

verified obe------ "Transformation" by Whitley Strieber---he tells of visiting a friend who lives far away while out of body--------"On the night of March 14, 1988, I was talking to writer
Barbara Clayman when I realized that she could give a certain
man a type of information that he appeared to me to
need very badly. I realized that I had to go to Barbara on
the nonphysical level in order to prepare her for her encounter
with this individual. I told her nothing of my thoughts,
and concluded our conversation lest I even subliminally reveal
my plan to her.
At four-thirty in the morning I found myself at her bedside.
She lives about a thousand miles from New York.-------------I projected my voice into Barbara's ear. I do not hear
myself when I do this. It is a form of thought. My experience
is that it sounds to the listener like a small speaker or
radio in his or her ear. I said, "It's me, Whitley. Barbara,
it's Whitley. " Her eyes flew open. A flush of fear went
through her and she appeared to me to start yelling . This
startled me and I told her rather frantically to quiet down. I
am a leaf in the wind at moments like that, and if her husband
woke up, I would not be able to maintain my presence.
Barbara then became silent and I felt myself give her the
material that she needed about the man, who is involved in
making a policy decision of fundamental importance.-----------------The next evening Barbara called. She left a message that
it was "important. " I did not allow myself even to hope
that she had remembered our meeting.
To my everlasting delight, when I returned her call I
found her full of amazement. She had remembered our encounter
vividly and in detail, right down to the words I had
"said" to her."

Here is what a belatedly candid Mr. Streiber had to say about the period when he had is soi disant OBE, while living in a cabin in upstate NY:

I was regularly drinking myself to sleep when we were there. I would listen to the radio until late hours, drinking vodka

Yes, he has basically admitted that this vision and other such similar goings on were hallucinatory results of alcaholism.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Fact is that scientists do not fully understand the brain yet. So, every final conclusion about consciousness is speculative.
One little bit of new information in science, can introduce a whole new paradigmeshift. So, there is no final conclusion possible yet until you fully understand consciousness and how the brain generates it.

...I see. You will simply ignore this:

Which makes a lovely story, except...

People who do, in fact have the expertise (and were actually involved in treating Alexander during his crisis), have, in fact, pointed out that many of the things in Alexander's book did not happen as he describes them.

As a minor example, during what he reports as his pivotal cri de coeur, he was, in fact, intubated, and the NGtube would have kept him from anything resembling the clear speech he reports.

Another example is the fact of the discrepancy with the weather he "reported" and the actual almanac weather recorded for those days; and the list continues.

At most, Alexander's book serves as a lesson that embracingwoo! will, inevitably, mean scorning the truth in service of a compelling story.
http://www.today.com/books/proof-heaven-claims-questioned-new-report-6C10512930

...and this:

What about the expert who was actually treating him and put him in an induced coma? She contradicts his story and his conclusions. So who is more convincing? The person actually treating him or the person in a coma at the time who has written a book about his experience which has made him very rich?

And pretend that Alexanders' riddled-with-holes exciting story represents some "higher truth" than reality.

Fact is that scientists do not fully understand the brain yet. So, every final conclusion about consciousness is speculative.

Except for, for instance, the fact that Alexander could not have "cried out" as he reports, with clear words, around the intubation.

And his "confusion" about the nature of his coma. And so on.

Since he feels free to invent, or distort, so small (but apparently significant, at least to whoever or whatever is running the "other side"), why is any other "detail" of his story any more believable?

I mean,at least nothing "threw" him "20 feet" into a "5-foot fire ring" that wasm't there, but still.

One little bit of new information in science, can introduce a whole new paradigmeshift. So, there is no final conclusion possible yet until you fully understand consciousness and how the brain generates it.

Except for all of the things discussed in Rich Savage's thread, about the effect physical trauma to the brain works on the mind...

And the utter lack of any indication of a mechanism that would support a mind independent of a brain.

"Paradigm shifts" are not engendered by self-contradictory ghost stories.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Cayce was involved with presidents...and Strieber is a human being who wrote of his experiences...sorry you people can't follow...the woman friend he visited verified that she knew he was there and gave details...gullible ones are the ones who have no understanding of their existence beyond the physical...-------skeptic---someone who denies anything they have no understanding or experience in....

Still misusing words, i.e. "verified", "experiences", "gullible", and, of course, "skeptic".

No surprise.

 

[Slowvehicle]

The only person approximating a King Arthur in the middle ages was Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII. And he both lived after the middle ages and died before he was in a position to inherit the throne of England.

Of course the legendary figure of King Arthur of the Britons was created by medieval fictional author and monk Geoffrey of Monmouth who took some older Welsh legends (being Welsh himself this was easy enough) of a semi-devine (in the old Celtic pantheon) protector of the Celtic Britons who was called Arthur the Bleesed and spun him together with other legends of a remnant Roman Kingdom lead by Ambrosious Aurelanius (who was probably real) and created the King Arthur mythos with which we are so familiar today. Oh, and I notice that the "OBE" was from a period when Arthurian legends were at their highest point of general knowledge, due to Hollywood and other popular media. That is a common sigil in all these hallucinatory "visions".

Edit: Forgot one point, the "medieval" King Arthur you talk about never existed. The original legends described a tribal king who lived shortly after the Roman withdrawal, c.450CE. The idea of a "medieval" Arthur comes straight out of Hollywood's mangling of the time period, simply because men in 15th century and later plate armour serenading women and being polite when bashing each other was more photogenic than groups of men in chainmail and leather armour bashing each other in a swamp. If James Cromwell actually had such a vision and Arthur were real, he woudln't have experienced the Errol Flynn version.

It reminds one of the MJ/HJ kerfuffle.

 

[Biscuit]

I don't know.

Finally some truth. We don't know but anyone makinga claim had better have the science to back it up.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

It reminds one of the MJ/HJ kerfuffle.

Bit before my time, explain please?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Bit before my time, explain please?

Mythical Jesus/Historical Jesus

 

[Mister Earl]

Haven't read the thread (slaps own wrist) but to me it looks like one issue. People are taking information from an oxygen starved brain that historically returns very wrong information when provided with a lack of oxygen, and then for whatever religious reason, treating it as accurate. Your brain is DYING. It's gonna throw weird things at you in the vague hope you make the dying stop.

 

[jaydeehess]

Since everyone else is telling anecdotes, I choked when swallowing a drink once, and went unconscious. My peripheral vision narrowed, and I saw bright lights and heard a loud buzzing sound just before passing out. As an atheist, I figured these experiences were just my body shutting down and dying in a most unpleasant way, but then again, I don't concern myself with afterlife fantasies.

Speaking of anecdotes,, and those who have tired of mine should skip to the next post by whomever posts it:
I often experience a flash of light and/or a loud noise just as I fall asleep. It wakes me up with a start. However it never wakes my wife who is right beside me.
Its very annoying, I would prefer to stay asleep.
The only conclusion to reach is that this is generated within me and is not real. For some unknown reason my brain 'wants' to remain awake and generates this hallucination to force me awake. Probably a reaction to stress, imho.

 

[Kid Eager]

Cayce was involved with presidents...and Strieber is a human being who wrote of his experiences...sorry you people can't follow...the woman friend he visited verified that she knew he was there and gave details...gullible ones are the ones who have no understanding of their existence beyond the physical...-------skeptic---someone who denies anything they have no understanding or experience in....

No need to apologise.

I'm sure all evidence is rendered invalid by somebody's retelling of alcoholic hallucinations, and that anecdotes are much more credible than evidence - at least in your odd little worldview.

One day when you reach a stage where whole sentences can be strung together with punctuation, the accompanying evidence to support the assertions made thus far will be forthcoming... won't it? Otherwise what's the point of posting here:
- there's no evidence of learning taking place (by you)
- there's no evidence to sway people to your point of view

 

[zengirl]

So you judge doctors by how in touch they are with their imagination, their makey-uppey side, rather than by how good they are at........you know...........curing people. Errr, righto.

It might be handy for the rest of us if you would let us know which doctors you visit, so that we could organise our medical lives accordingly.

never said that...doctors just need to learn how to listen to people and take time with them...