A question about near-death experiences

[bonzo2]

Excuse the old joke, but I thought denial was a river in Egypt.

lol, could argue the same regarding your perspective

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Isn't this akin to the question of why some people remember dreams and others don't?

 

[Pixel42]

Interesting perspective but I would argue that is science's way of explaining the unexplainable.

So even though you do now have an explanation, you're just going to handwave it away?

You should know that people who make unsupported assertions, and who reject standard scientific explanations without making a case for why they don't apply, tend to be given a pretty hard time on this board.

I know what I experienced and it had nought to do with any confusion between sleep and being awake.

How can you possibly know that? Have you spent a lifetime studying sleep, as those who did the work you just handwaved away have done?

It was profoundly spiritual in nature and I am thankful for the experience.

Lucky you. I suffered from sleep paralysis and the associated hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations for most of my twenties, and they were mostly quite unpleasant.

 

[Halfcentaur]

When I was a teenager in the 90s, it was popular with kids to pass each other out by pressing on each other's necks up against a wall, because it gave you a euphoria similar to "huffing".

One of the last times I remember doing it, I had a vivid vision of myself as an old man with a long white beard surrounded by children,... and I was passing a bong around to them.

That was strange. But I think the common experience of NDE's is more than just oxygen, it's a panic mode reserved probably for when the brain experiences severe trauma.

My father had an NDE when he was in his 20s and hit a tree on a motorcycle going near 90 MPH, he was in a coma for 3 days and died on the operating table for almost 60 seconds or so.

He broke it down, being more like a dream of sorts utilizing common experiences in his life, he says it felt like he was on an escalator going towards a peaceful light, and there was a presence he said that reminded him of being a child when visiting Santa Claus, some mirthful great alpha male there to stand judgement over him.

My father recalls demanding he had not yet lived, being fresh out of college, and it seemed to do the trick.

He woke up 3 days later in his hospital room, he also recalls seeing his body in the hospital bed before the "tunnel". It still wasn't enough to convince my father that any of it actually existed, he was always skeptical of the experience.

 

[godless dave]

Interesting perspective but I would argue that is science's way of explaining the unexplainable. I know what I experienced and it had nought to do with any confusion between sleep and being awake.

How do you know that?

 

[Tacita]

Bonzo, I've experienced the same thing as you, all my life. I've had demons and/or aliens in the room with me on multiple occasions. I've been paralyzed in the bed with someone sitting down behind me. It's as explained above in the link and brief quote. It's not real.

Seriously, why do people come to a skeptic board and say these things?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Bonzo, I've experienced the same thing as you, all my life. I've had demons and/or aliens in the room with me on multiple occasions. I've been paralyzed in the bed with someone sitting down behind me. It's as explained above in the link and brief quote. It's not real.

Seriously, why do people come to a skeptic board and say these things?

And even someone ignorant of night terrors and how commonplace they are lacks critical thinking skills if he or she leaps to the conclusion that the experience is of something objectively real.

The inability to explain something is no evidence of anything.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

[Anecdote]
On the one occasion on which I was strangled unconscious (with the WW2 British commando "Japanese strangle hold" technique) I distinctly experienced the "looking at a light down a dark tunnel" thingy before I went sleepy-byes.
[/Anecdote]

Wow, that's fascinating.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Today, I had a discussion with one of my co-workers about some paranormal stuff. He had a passing statement about NDEs that got me thinking:

"If the most widely-accepted explanation for near-death experiences is that the brain itself produces the images because of the lack of oxygen, then why don't people who faint report the same experiences?"

... he wondered, obviously thinking about that oxygen deprivation is the common denominator in both cases (fainting and clinical death).

I tried to google this, but no luck, so I thought I will ask this here: what other factors could contribute to triggering the NDE?

Post #13 covers this best. Essentially people do have the same experience under a number of hypoxic conditions. Hypoxia from fainting is probably too brief for the experience to occur.