Near Death and Out of Body Experiences

[Navigator]

No, I don't think your OBC and EP are valid constructs,...

In what way are these not valid?

They are not random at all, they are the results of multiple parallel unconscious processes; maintaining & updating knowledge, executing skills, searching, pattern matching, mapping, comparing, finding analogies, recognising metaphors, finding causal connections, generating answers, spotting incongruities, etc., all filtered for context & relevance and presented for conscious access.

Yet here you are describing processes which are known skill sets of consciousness...

1: maintaining & updating knowledge
2: executing skills
3: mapping
4: comparing
5: finding analogies
6: recognising metaphors
7:finding causal connections
8: generating answers
9: spotting incongruities
10...: etc


...and claiming they are not, in this manner at least, produced through consciousness.
They are, so you claim - "non-conscious processes (NCP)"

Have you ever wondered how these so labelled 'non-conscious processes' are able to do things which are conscious processes?

Some of the outputs of these non-conscious processes become consciously accessible, i.e. we may become consciously aware of them.


The bulk of what the brain does (the multiple parallel 'background' processes) is not conscious, there appears to be no reportable awareness of that activity.

What does "no reportable awareness of that activity" mean?

Our conscious awareness is the way we represent ourselves as an entity with a sense of self, sense of agency, etc.; but that representative is an somewhat of an abstraction.

An abstraction of what?

I like the analogy of a large company, where all the departments get on with the business, and department heads flag up important issues to the board for consideration. The boardroom is where information enters conscious access for the company; the CEO can act of it and coordinate with the departments to make his long term plans, and the company representative & marketing manager sit in on meetings to keep abreast of developments.

Our conscious self is like a combination of the company representative & marketing manager speaking on behalf of the company, but with limited information. If the company does something they are unaware of, they'll get the publicity team to write a plausible story to explain it.

Again, your analogy here is indicative of conscious processes. This includes everything which happens in the board room etc. The whole process is a conscious one.

Consciousness (i.e. that which can report being aware of events)...

Consciousness is not just something which can report being aware of things. Report to what? (Why other individuate consciousnesses of course )

There will exist aspects of consciousness which are not able to 'report' their awareness, or in which this is very difficult to achieve, or there is no particular need to do so, etc.
What I have said regarding ideomotor is one such process whereby that which cannot otherwise directly communicate its being aware, is enabled to do so.

...is part of a collection of cognitive facilities, including a 'scratchpad' means of hooking together the output & inputs of non-conscious processes into extended sequences of computation, i.e. deliberative thinking. Using abbreviated internal models of self and others, we can run what-if scenarios to plan our activities. I'm suggesting it is this abbreviated model of self that is the basis for our conscious self-awareness and our social face (i.e. it is not an accurate or detailed representation of the whole, but a simplified summary of how we like to see ourselves).

That is a wonderful theory, quite attractive to those who find it difficult to comprehend anything more wonderful than the brain.

Sure I understand you have simplified things to do with how we 'like to see our SELVES.'


Let me ask you this. Do you think consciousness even needs to exist? Yes, I realize that it does exist and thus this can be interpreted as there thus being some necessity for it, but I am interested in why all this 'non conscious processing' not only exhibits conscious processing, but cannot accomplish anything much without consciousness inheriting that (so called) NCP. However, there cannot have been a need if indeed it was the result of NPC, as non consciousness can not have needs. Then again, NCPs should not be able to exhibit conscious processes.

NCPs are more likened to how the ocean behaves.

Oceans do not exhibit these things:

1: maintaining & updating knowledge
2: executing skills
3: mapping
4: comparing
5: finding analogies
6: recognising metaphors
7:finding causal connections
8: generating answers
9: spotting incongruities
10...: etc

 

[Navigator]

What you say, believe, and apparently have worked out for yourself is unfortunately largely contradicted by the facts. See below.

Yet you will not be able to repeat what you claim I say, believe and have apparently worked out for myself, since I have barely shared any details in regard to my investigation and content of my communication through ideomotor.

"Your own communication {with yourself}" is exactly useless as a source of valid information.

Useless to you. Which is one reason why I have not bothered to say much about it.
It has not been useless to me. The data has been valid.

The world of mainstream psychology, and neuroscience,

Oh - you mean the self proclaimed experts! And I should value their interpretation over and above any and all the the data I receive through the ideomotor processes and regard their opinionated observations as more valid than any direct interaction I have! Just because?

...is well aware of the influence of unconscious brain activity on the consciousness (your EP).

'Well aware!" They don't even realize what they are observing is conscious! How is that 'well aware'? That is ignorance really. How many of these experts have even bothered to utilize ideomotor and determine in that way whether indeed their combined opinions are actually valid?
It is unlikely they have not done so because it is impossible to conduct such investigation scientifically.
It is more likely though that the research they are enabled to do is sponsored through investors who have profits in mind, and as such, ideomotor is irrelevant because there is no profit in such research.

It is easy to demonstrate this influence and it is being studied (using scientific methods, not introspection) by numerous serious researchers around the world.

Laughable. So call it 'introspection' rather than examination, interaction and communication with consciousness.

You are attempting to re-invent the wheel by your own introspection without ever resorting to proper hypothesising and testing of your ideas. You are "investigating" essentially like an alchemist from the dark ages, and your results will be equally useless.

No they are not useless. Sure they won't generate any capital, so from that materialistic point of view they are 'useless'. Perhaps that is really what you mean.

The world would be a better place indeed if honest self evaluation were further up the priority list of individual human action (and its translation into the social structuring) was invested in.

If you will read just a few pages of this (I'm sure you won't bother), you might begin to grasp the vastness of research you appear to be unaware of:

I will take a look. I hope they are written in a style most folk can understand.

There are plenty of layperson books on the subject as well.

I hope the books are freely available.

You have a lot of reading to do before what people here say will make sense to you. You appear to be simply ignorant of the research in brain science and psychology which covers these topics.

It seems to me that 'people here' are also at a lose as how to exactly convey these concepts to the layperson. They also appear to embrace certain concepts as valid and viable based upon their preferences, much the same way as other types of believers in other types of things do.

It is not so much that what 'people here' say doesn't make sense to me but more so what they are trying to pass off as evidence etc is like the analogy of being given an onion and told to believe it is an apple, but I don't believe it is an apple because it looks, feels and smells like an onion. This in turn has the audience frowning and complaining because I am in their 'temple' and thus should believe as they believe. So then they find some way in which to give them the impression they are being entertained - usually involving subtle (and not so subtle) disparage, which only further convinces me things are not altogether well with them and they should not necessarily be taken seriously.

Fortunately not all 'people here' are behaving as such. They tolerate it from their peers though, so in that sense they endorse/encourage.

All in all I don't see such behavior as being any different from what Christians and Spiritualists etc display.

All in all it is water off a ducks back as far as I am concerned. This largely has to do with my own understanding and acceptance of my self, inclusive of my relationship with that erroneously labelled 'unconscious' to which I commune with. It is good to witness how effective and important 'introspection' is in this regard.

By your own description of your thought experiments

I have given barely any description regarding the data. Nor do I call the process 'thought experiments'. But...do go on...

...you are interrogating your own mind...

I am interacting with an aspect of my consciousness of which I was previously unaware as to the nature and purpose of. In the course of this interaction I have discovered very valuable and useful data. There was/is no 'interrogation' involved although admittedly in the earlier days of this process I did display moments of impatience, very occasionally being demanding, angry, bitchy, sulky,presumptuous and quite often misunderstanding - all part of the communication process.
Eventually I got to a point where such expression was seen by me to be unnecessary and somewhat childish/immature and ceased with that.

...and receiving answers which you are taking at face value without checking yourself against the experiences of anyone else.

My you do assume a lot based upon very little information. Perhaps you are projecting here?
I did my best to seek and find people who also use ideomotor. Unfortunately the majority of these were stuck on the 'we are communicating with dead relatives etc' and so could/would not relate to my saying there was more to it than that.
There is not one person that I have found who has done this and whom I can thus compare data etc. People are busy lving their EP lives.

Most egregiously you have not bothered to inform yourself of established facts regarding the nature of your own mind and brain, yet persist in arguing with those who have.

I have absolutely no doubt that if YOU were to sincerely involve yourself in the study and application of this process, and stick to your guns re these 'established facts regarding the nature of your own mind and brain' you will be extremely surprised by what you might learn, even that the process may compel you to eventually let go of some those prior things you believed in as fact.

 

[Jodie]

The problem is that this assertion isn't just not supported by the evidence, but is directly contradicted by it.

If consciousness is the signal, then, aside from the fact that there would be some means of detecting said signal entering the brain and we haven't despite hooking that thing up to all sorts of scanners, why does altering the brain alter consciousness itself? It isn't just garbled reception. We can eliminate the sense of self, make you believe you are dead, or any number of other things.

The receiver doesn't alter the signal, so why can we?

How is it contradicted if there is no means to measure or observe it? Most of physics is mathematics that demonstrate possibilities, not something we actually gaze upon.

We don't have the means to find the missing mass in the universe because obviously we don't know how to locate it, measure it , or observe it yet. If we can't find that do you really think it's inconceivable that we might have missed something when you talk about energy that might reside within one human being?

There are several cases of people walking around with half a brain literally and metaphorically and it doesn't alter their sense of self.

 

[Jodie]

Since consciousness is not a thing in itself, but an inseparable part of us, and is simply a word to label and enable us to discuss that aspect of us, then nothing can 'happen' to that 'part'. We refer to 'it' as if 'it' is a thing, but as 'it' is not, we should constantly remind ourselves of 'its' inseparability.


ETA to make sure ' ' marks around 'it'!

Why do you think nothing can happen to the part that animates us? What evidence do you have for consciousness being inseparable from the human brain? How will that same consciousness be redefined once we learn to download "it" into a mainframe?

 

[Jodie]

But you can't ascribe it to anything else without evidence.

We know that hypoxia causes neural disinhibition. We can test it. We can make predictions and see them carried out. In fact, every man and woman who has ever flown a plane for the air force or navy (in the last 40 years) has been forced to experience hypoxia first-hand as a part of training. That's evidence.

"Um ... but it could also be something else" is not evidence.

Sure I can, it's called "belief". Yes, we know all of those things, but not what happens after the fact when the event has gone further than the body can recover. Until we have a way to test or review what happens at the point of death, my guess is as good as yours.

 

[Jodie]

Okay so I can assume that whatever is involving itself in the holodeck (as an experience of being an individual on a planet in a universe) is something other than human?

From what I have read in relation to this theory, these layers are a way for consciousness to dummy down. At the point of this physical universe simulation it has dummied down sufficiently to have totally forgot any prior existence so it is thus able to experience a beginning.

Have you read up on OOBs? They align with your theory more than NDE although that tunnel of light might be synonymous with moving back up through the layers.



There are all sorts of stories regarding 'what to expect' even from the non religious sector.
The Egyptian's seemed to be very familiar with OOBs.

Have you investigated Tom Campbell?

In answer to your first question, yes, because organic bodies are finite things. Think of our bodies as clothes that we put on to exist down here and experience 3D world with our limited 5 senses.

No I haven't read anything on OOB's, it was the NDE experience that interested me the most. Every culture has a different expectation of what happens after death but none of them match what people report experiencing during NDE's.

 

[Jodie]

Nope. Your fervent inner imaginings are not facts.

What facts and knowledge that I personally have matter not: I am not making a claim that exceeds the known.

Your argument sounds like this "Gravity is illusion, I believe we fail to fall because our legs are exactly long enough to reach the ground. I think it, so may it be!"



Science is more than an opinion, more than a belief. The hypoxia hypothesis is well supported by many minds, many eyes, many observers of the fact.



If you agree with his wise words, why do you end-up disagreeing?

Bottom line, a well-heeled maxim: You are welcome to your own opinion, but you are not welcome to your own facts.

Same goes for Navigator.

And I readily admit that, haven't claimed otherwise.

I don't think comparing gravity to consciousness is a good analogy to use, it's a strawman argument used to discredit what I've posted about the limitations that science has in this particular case.

The hypoxia hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, for what might be happening at the brink of death. It doesn't address many factors involved in the NDE experience so the conclusions are limited. I'm sorry if you can't recognize that fact.

And neither are you when the facts are missing.

 

[Jodie]

Perhaps you should stop thinking of reality in fictional terms.

Is not all science simply science fiction until proven otherwise?

 

[dlorde]

In what way are these not valid?

They don't appear to correspond to what the experimental data tells us. The description was rather vague, so it may just be a difference in terminology, but it didn't sound like it.

Yet here you are describing processes which are known skill sets of consciousness...
...and claiming they are not, in this manner at least, produced through consciousness.
They are, so you claim - "non-conscious processes (NCP)"

Yes; processes of which an individual is not consciously aware (though he/she may become aware of their results).

Have you ever wondered how these so labelled 'non-conscious processes' are able to do things which are conscious processes?

Well if they occur without the subject being aware of it, they aren't conscious processes. I'm not saying we can't apply conscious deliberative thought to such activities, but that would be very much the exception.

What does "no reportable awareness of that activity" mean?

It means that when asked, the subject reports that they were not aware of doing that activity. It's know as Type 1 or System 1 thinking, subconscious, fast, effortless, and intuitive. As opposed to Type 2 (System 2) thinking, which is conscious, slow, effortful, and, although it monitors System 1, tends to be 'lazy' (tends to accept System 1 responses by default).

An abstraction of what?

An abstraction of the whole individual as a thinking entity; it appears to function at a level of indirection from the whole system, as a model or representation of it, with mostly indirect information about its activities. It spends a fair bit of time generating plausible explanations for these activities.

Again, your analogy here is indicative of conscious processes. This includes everything which happens in the board room etc. The whole process is a conscious one.

It's a rough analogy, but the boardroom represents the information accessible to consciousness, the departments are the subconscious processes that take information from there (and elsewhere), process it, and return selected results for further consideration. The CEO is the lazy executive (System 2) that, when necessary, will coordinate the departments to work things out and make plans for the future direction of the company. Most of the time, boardroom just rubber-stamps what it hears about what the departments are doing. It's unclear how much of the boardroom activity is explicitly conscious, and how much is delegated. But the CEO, together with the company representative and marketing manager, generally claim they are in full control and are responsible foe everything the company does (except when things go wrong)

Consciousness is not just something which can report being aware of things. Report to what? (Why other individuate consciousnesses of course )

When neuroscientists do experiments exploring the boundary of conscious and unconscious thought, they use whether the subjects can report awareness of an event as an indication of conscious awareness of that event. For example, they will present a stimulus and then ask the subject if they noticed it. If they say they did not, that is taken as a lack of conscious awareness of the stimulus. If they say they did, it is taken as conscious awareness of the stimulus. The results are generally very consistent and there are large and characteristic differences in brain activity following events that subjects report being aware of and those which they do not.

There will exist aspects of consciousness which are not able to 'report' their awareness, or in which this is very difficult to achieve, or there is no particular need to do so, etc.
What I have said regarding ideomotor is one such process whereby that which cannot otherwise directly communicate its being aware, is enabled to do so.

The Ideomotor Effect is a canonical example of unconsciously directed activity.

It seems you have a radically different description of consciousness to the scientific community working in that field (and just about everyone else I know who takes an interest).

Sure I understand you have simplified things to do with how we 'like to see our SELVES.'

I have necessarily simplified, but by 'ourselves' I mean the whole person; in other words, the conscious self is to some extent an idealised version of the whole person, generally not a full and accurate representation. I expect this is because, ironically, it is so dependent on Type 1 thinking, which is biased and stereotypical.

Do you think consciousness even needs to exist?

Yes. The unconscious processes appear incapable of the extended sequences of processing necessary for what-if modelling and planning of activity; an introspective self-model is necessary for this, particularly in a social context, where a flexible and adaptive facade is an advantage. Consciousness and sense of self are how this is achieved.

NCPs are more likened to how the ocean behaves.

Oceans do not exhibit these things:

1: maintaining & updating knowledge
2: executing skills
3: mapping
4: comparing
5: finding analogies
6: recognising metaphors
7:finding causal connections
8: generating answers
9: spotting incongruities
10...: etc

I have no idea where you got this 'ocean' simile, but it doesn't appear applicable in this context.

For much more detail about thinking (especially Type 1 & Type 2 thinking), see Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' (he also has some YouTube videos on this), and for details of experiments distinguishing conscious from unconscious processing, see Stanislas Dehaene's 'Consciousness and the Brain', both excellent reads.

Although ISTR recommending these to you already...

 

[dlorde]

How is it contradicted if there is no means to measure or observe it? Most of physics is mathematics that demonstrate possibilities, not something we actually gaze upon.

Sean Carroll had a nice analogy here. When you know the basic rules of chess, it doesn't make you a chess player, and it doesn't mean you understand how to play positions, but you do know which moves are valid. If someone tries to move a rook diagonally, you know the move is illegal.

Disembodied consciousness is like a rook moving diagonally. We know enough about the physics of human scale interactions to know it's not a valid move.

We don't have the means to find the missing mass in the universe because obviously we don't know how to locate it, measure it , or observe it yet. If we can't find that do you really think it's inconceivable that we might have missed something when you talk about energy that might reside within one human being?

Well we have located the missing mass, and we have measured it (indirectly, through its effects); we just don't know what it's made of.

Given the way you use the word, you don't seem to understand the concept of energy - can you explain precisely what you mean by it?

There are several cases of people walking around with half a brain literally and metaphorically and it doesn't alter their sense of self.

Yes, you can function with one brain hemisphere. It may well generate a sense of self, and seem relatively normal (at least for the verbal hemisphere), despite some limitations.

But I'm curious to read about these single hemisphere cases that have an unaltered sense of self - do you have a link or reference to the studies?

 

[dlorde]

What evidence do you have for consciousness being inseparable from the human brain?

If you'd like to describe what functions of consciousness you feel are not dependent on the brain, we can address why we think they are dependent and the evidence for that.

For example, is personality independent of the brain? morals? tastes? emotions? attention? recognition? memory? sense of self? identity? focus? any others come to mind?

 

[dlorde]

The hypoxia hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, for what might be happening at the brink of death. It doesn't address many factors involved in the NDE experience so the conclusions are limited.

I think the original hypothesis was neural disinhibition leading to excitability; the hypoxia hypothesis is just the most likely cause of such disinhibition (in the absence of drugs, seizures, etc).

 

[Navigator]

In answer to your first question, yes, because organic bodies are finite things. Think of our bodies as clothes that we put on to exist down here and experience 3D world with our limited 5 senses.

No I haven't read anything on OOB's, it was the NDE experience that interested me the most. Every culture has a different expectation of what happens after death but none of them match what people report experiencing during NDE's.

I would recommend that you do some research on OOBs - visit forums which are specifically for the purpose of sharing and discussion of experiences.

Also I meant to ask you what is your belief and why you feel it necessary to have a belief?

 

[Nonpareil]

Think of our bodies as clothes that we put on to exist down here and experience 3D world with our limited 5 senses.

You are your body.

The hypoxia hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, for what might be happening at the brink of death. It doesn't address many factors involved in the NDE experience so the conclusions are limited. I'm sorry if you can't recognize that fact.

Hypoxia does happen at the brink of death. That is not a hypothesis. That is a fact. Hypoxia can result in hallucinations. That is also not a hypothesis. It is a fact.

And yes, "hallucination" does address pretty much everything about NDEs. That you don't like that fact does not alter it in any way.

There is also the matter that hypoxia is not all that happens when the brain begins to die. There are any number of things going on, all of which might contribute to the experience, but absolutely none of which require any sort of supernatural mechanism to occur.

Is not all science simply science fiction until proven otherwise?

The problem is that it hasn't just failed to be proven. It flies in the face of everything that we do know.

 

[Nonpareil]

I would recommend that you do some research on OOBs - visit forums which are specifically for the purpose of sharing and discussion of experiences.

That is not research.

 

[Navigator]

They don't appear to correspond to what the experimental data tells us. The description was rather vague, so it may just be a difference in terminology, but it didn't sound like it.

Well EP was what I was referring to as the ego personality and OBC the overseeing background consciousness.

Yes; processes of which an individual is not consciously aware (though he/she may become aware of their results).

Thus the EP is that which is not conscious of the processes of the OBC. The processes of the OBC however are conscious processes.
That is to say they are deliberate and purposeful.

Well if they occur without the subject being aware of it, they aren't conscious processes. I'm not saying we can't apply conscious deliberative thought to such activities, but that would be very much the exception.

No. The processes are conscious regardless of the 'subject' (EP) not being aware of them, or for that matter, believing (as you and so many obviously do) that the processes (going on within) are not conscious processes.

It means that when asked, the subject reports that they were not aware of doing that activity. It's know as Type 1 or System 1 thinking, subconscious, fast, effortless, and intuitive. As opposed to Type 2 (System 2) thinking, which is conscious, slow, effortful, and, although it monitors System 1, tends to be 'lazy' (tends to accept System 1 responses by default).

So your "type 1" = my "Overseeing Background Consciousness" OBC and your "type 2" = my "Ego Personality Consciousness." EPC

An abstraction of the whole individual as a thinking entity; it appears to function at a level of indirection from the whole system, as a model or representation of it, with mostly indirect information about its activities. It spends a fair bit of time generating plausible explanations for these activities.

Sweet.

However, if you -the EPC type 2 actually cared not to be lazy and learned to commune with the OBC type 1 you might discover from that interaction that:

1: EPC is not necessarily a model representation of OBC type1 even that it is assumed to be so by the type 2's observing and consigning verisimilitude onto the type 1 processes.

2: The data from such communication is direct. There will still be room for type 2 misunderstanding, assumption etc, but this can be fairly well eliminated through persistence, patience and other things which type 1 will assist type 2 with accomplishing over time.

It's a rough analogy, but the boardroom represents the information accessible to consciousness, the departments are the subconscious processes ...

Subconscious Processes = type 1 conscious processes.

...that take information from there (and elsewhere), process it, and return selected results for further consideration. The CEO is the lazy executive (System 2) that, when necessary, will coordinate the departments to work things out and make plans for the future direction of the company.

Type 2 would be wiser to stand down as CEO and accept direction.

Most of the time, boardroom just rubber-stamps what it hears about what the departments are doing. It's unclear how much of the boardroom activity is explicitly conscious, and how much is delegated. But the CEO, together with the company representative and marketing manager, generally claim they are in full control and are responsible foe everything the company does (except when things go wrong)

What could possibly go wrong, right?

It is not the greatest of models but understandably so, since it is conceived primarily through type 2 assumptive interpretation. Often far too lazy and opinionated to get the facts.

When neuroscientists do experiments exploring the boundary of conscious and unconscious thought, they use whether the subjects can report awareness of an event as an indication of conscious awareness of that event. For example, they will present a stimulus and then ask the subject if they noticed it. If they say they did not, that is taken as a lack of conscious awareness of the stimulus. If they say they did, it is taken as conscious awareness of the stimulus. The results are generally very consistent and there are large and characteristic differences in brain activity following events that subjects report being aware of and those which they do not.

Righto.

The Ideomotor Effect is a canonical example of unconsciously directed activity.

It seems you have a radically different description of consciousness to the scientific community working in that field (and just about everyone else I know who takes an interest).

Certainly I do have a different understand of consciousness in relation to ideomotor. I am the only one I know of who has taken it to the lengths I have...that is because I was willing and attentive among other things. OBC is fascinating and intelligent beyond anything I have ever encountered. How could I not?

I have necessarily simplified, but by 'ourselves' I mean the whole person; in other words, the conscious self is to some extent an idealised version of the whole person, generally not a full and accurate representation. I expect this is because, ironically, it is so dependent on Type 1 thinking, which is biased and stereotypical.

Type 1 (OBC) thinking is bias and stereotypical? Are you sure you are not meaning type 2 (EPC)?
Please explain further.

Yes. The unconscious processes appear incapable of the extended sequences of processing necessary for what-if modelling and planning of activity; an introspective self-model is necessary for this, particularly in a social context, where a flexible and adaptive facade is an advantage. Consciousness and sense of self are how this is achieved.

Yes. If a group of type 2s are community orientated and peaceful, self sufficient and nurturing they are easily overcome by a group of type 2s who think nothing of killing, raping, pillaging, destroying and becoming CEO.

Type 1s appear to be incapable because they are not understood, appreciated, consulted etc. by either groups of type 2s.

Survival of type 2 depends upon facade.

 

[Navigator]

That is not research.

You quibble.

Of course it is.

 

[bruto]

If we define the unconscious as a kind of consciousness are we even speaking a common language?

 

[steenkh]

Because OOBs, and to a lessor degree, lucid dreaming are far more clearer experiences than dreaming is.

Weasel words. How do you determine that one experience is clearer than another? I would say that all experiences are equally clear as they happen, but some are remembered with more details afterwards.

And you assume from this that it must be so for everyone? Or perhaps we are not speaking about the same things?

Difficult to say. Can you assume that this is not the same for everyone? If some out of body experiences are real, and others are not, how do you determine which ones are real?

A process is not a 'thing'?

I am surprised that you even ask this question. My answer is a clear "no".

Flowers.

Give an example of conscious flowers. Moving with the Sun, or catching a fly does not imply consciousness.

 

[Donn]

And I readily admit that, haven't claimed otherwise.

Non sequitur. What am I to make of it? I'll have to say: yes you do claim otherwise.

I don't think comparing gravity to consciousness is a good analogy to use ..

I was not comparing the two. I was showing you how you sound. You invoke magic and deny doing so in the same breath. You wish and then you invent ways to prop your wish in place.

The hypoxia hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, for what might be happening at the brink of death. It doesn't address many factors involved in the NDE experience so the conclusions are limited. ..

It's a hypothesis. What you have is not even a crayon drawing. You have been shown by more skilled posters in this very thread how wrong you are about it.

How about listing these "many factors" that hypoxia* does not address? (I'm feeling deja vu, it's disconcerting.)


(* ETA: I mean Neural disinhibition - not only by hypoxia, but the larger process of dying.)

And neither are you when the facts are missing.

Non sequitur again. We all ask you for facts, we get assertions: magical imaginings transmuted into base desire and adored as real.

There aren't two equal sides here. You are simply wrong.