What is your take on this sort of NDE's?

[MRC_Hans]

The problem with all these cases is that the verification is always problematic. This is because the situations come unprepared, are typically investigated by people (like doctors), who are not necessarily qualified to investigate such cases, and, of course, because they involve seriously ill persons, so you are naturally reluctant to interrogate them very hard.

Such a situation will invariably leave a lot of blanks, which are then filled in by the involved parties, or by those reporting them. Also, many of the reports involve people reporting things that anybody would expect to go on around you in a hospital, and which of course, upon investigation, are indeed found to have gone on. I mean, seeing people in white coats, instruments, worried relatives, people in beds, etc is sort of par for the course in most hospitals.

The lady who reported to have entered a baby: She might well have known that her friend was in the hospital, expecting. Even if you believe in reincarnation, the notion that a child receives its soul immidiately before birth is absurd. We know that fetuses react to stimuli and are very much alive, quite early in the term.

Having NDEs or OBEs during a period of no brain activity: There exists at least one such report. It has been discussed here before. A patient had some radical brain surgery, with an experimental procedure where the brain was drained of blood, or something, and subsequently reported an NDE. The problem with this, and indeed with any other NDE is that it is impossible to time the event. All we know is that the patient reports it after waking up, but it could have happened at any time from they lost consciouness till they wake up. Thus, it will never be possible to show that it happened during the time they had a straight-line EEG.

... Oh, and I second Stimpy's statement that the fact that something is difficult, or even impossible, to test should not make us accept it without documentation.

Hans

 

[pdw709]

I thought that the whole NDE had been disproved anyway - NASA astronauts were recorded to experiance NDE at the moment of black out when undergoing G force tests. Lots of research has been done on this and it appears to be an inbuilt brain defensive mechanism.

As to the question that these so called NDE being are sometimes supported by family members etc then this must surely be due to sample bias, selective thinking & confirmation bias.

Phil

 

[MRC_Hans]

To me, one of the more interesting (if mundane) aspects of "this sort of NDE" is something it shares with most other examples of paranormal phenomena: the phenomenon grows in the telling. An anecdotal account of someone looking down on their body becomes a highly controlled situation where the doctors, who verified that there was no brain activity, could not explain how the patient listened in on a highly detailed conversation that was taking place 3 doors down, looked into her file and can report a 13-digit random number accurately, and popped down to the cafeteria where she sampled the soup du jour and found it too salty. Explain that, mister skeptic!

Hans

 

[Unalienable]

And you have since stopped using, right??

Thanks for your concern. Without boring you with my personal history, let me say that was not the last time I used, in fact not even the last time I overdosed, but no, I'm not using now.

 

[The_Animus]

She did not say the child was stillborn.

No she did not specifically say it was stillborn. She did say she felt she was going into the other womans womb to be reincarnated as her child, but that before she was able to do so she was brought back. The idea behind this is that because she didn't die and was brought back, there was no "soul" or whatever inside the womans baby, which is why it died and was stillborn instead of being healthy. So while she didn't specifically say it was stillborn, because she didn't see that part actually happen, her story implies the reason it was stillborn.

A quick question - did she actually state all of this prior to being told about the stillborn labour?

Yes. It was after regaining consciousness before she talked with anyone else about anything. She told this to the people around her upon waking up.

If this woman knew the other family, she must have known the woman was near delivery time. It's also possible she had a history of difficult childbirth and the "womb watcher" knew this. We can't really know whether she lied about the whole incident or just reached some conclusions subconsciously.

This is true. I would assume she had to know her friend was pregnant and was close to delivery time. As such it is completely reasonable to assume she hallucinated and it was just a coincidence that her friend went into labor during the period of her NDE. As I've said, the coincidence of her friend going into labor and having a stillborn child are not proof of anything. It is interesting though, and I think there needs to be further study done on NDE and child reincarnation experiences.

It's the claim made by those who believe OBEs are paranormal. They claim that they see the room as though floating around outside their bodies, and this claim can, and has been, tested. It really doesn't matter if they can control what they see. If they can see the room while unconcious, why can they only see things they already know about, but not things that change? If you want to come up with a different claim, feel free, but the claims that are actually made are easily tested.

I understand what you mean. I would agree completely that the people who claim the standard NDE experience of floating outside themselves and seeing the room they are in would be perfectly subject to the test you proposed. I will also take your word for it that no one has passed this test. I'm sure if someone had I would have heard about it as it would be quite an amazing story. I think you have to make a distinction here that there doesn't have to be an absolute to an NDE. It doesn't have to be that either all NDE's are hallucinations, or all NDE's are real. It could be that a high majority of NDE's are simply hallucinations, while a small few are authentic.


As I've said I just think there should be more research done on it. Maybe a small group of scientists could stay at various hospitals and be in the room when near death patients are brought in or being operated on. Then they can take all statements from the person immediately when they wake up before they get a chance to talk to anyone else. This will prevent someone giving them information about what has happened while they were unconscious. After taking all their statements about what they saw or experiences the scientists can then work on checking whether the statements are true or false. Then you just do this a few thousand times.

 

[chillzero]

No she did not specifically say it was stillborn. She did say she felt she was going into the other womans womb to be reincarnated as her child, but that before she was able to do so she was brought back. The idea behind this is that because she didn't die and was brought back, there was no "soul" or whatever inside the womans baby, which is why it died and was stillborn instead of being healthy. So while she didn't specifically say it was stillborn, because she didn't see that part actually happen, her story implies the reason it was stillborn.

It's an important distinction.

The only reason you come to the conclusion that her story implies the child would be dead, is because the child was dead. Had the child been born alive, I am certain the story would still be touted as evidence. This detail would have been overlooked, or the assumption made that some other soul stepped in before the child was born, or that the child already had its correct soul which is why she was rejected.

In any case, to assume that this 'getting a soul' does not occur until birth is silly, as was explained above.

 

[MRC_Hans]

The idea behind this is that because she didn't die and was brought back, there was no "soul" or whatever inside the womans baby, which is why it died and was stillborn instead of being healthy. So while she didn't specifically say it was stillborn, because she didn't see that part actually happen, her story implies the reason it was stillborn.

No it does not imply such a reason. That being deprived of a "soul injection" just prior to death should cause a child to be still-born is pure speculation.

Yes. It was after regaining consciousness before she talked with anyone else about anything. She told this to the people around her upon waking up.

How do you know this so certainly? Were you there?

This is true. I would assume she had to know her friend was pregnant and was close to delivery time.

She might even have known there was a problem. Some cases of stillbirth do come entirely unexpected, but very often there are indications that not all is as it should be.

As such it is completely reasonable to assume she hallucinated and it was just a coincidence that her friend went into labor during the period of her NDE. As I've said, the coincidence of her friend going into labor and having a stillborn child are not proof of anything. It is interesting though, and I think there needs to be further study done on NDE and child reincarnation experiences.

"Needs"? Now, I hate to sound negative, but we have a phenomenon that is well known, with a parsimonious explanation. The fact that there exists less parsimionous explanations as well, does not create a need for further study.

If somebody wants to make further study, fine, but for all practical purposes, till they do so and find something new, we are allowed to consider the case closed.

It could be that a high majority of NDE's are simply hallucinations, while a small few are authentic.

That could be, yes, but why should we assume so? It is like saying that the majority of cars on the highway are just cars, but a few might be astral projections of cars.

Then they can take all statements from the person immediately when they wake up before they get a chance to talk to anyone else. This will prevent someone giving them information about what has happened while they were unconscious.

Uhm, we are talking about seriously ill people who have just come back to another chance for life. Do you really think the first thing they should be confronted with should be an interrogation team? Is this theory that important?

Hans

 

[Dr B]

I thought that the whole NDE had been disproved anyway - NASA astronauts were recorded to experiance NDE at the moment of black out when undergoing G force tests. Lots of research has been done on this and it appears to be an inbuilt brain defensive mechanism.

.

I don't think this is enirely true. There are some published reports of GLOC on airforce pilots (Whinnery circa 1997). Many experienced the 'tunnel' part of the hallucinatory imagery involved in NDEs - but it would be incorrect to say that GLOC induces NDEs.

GLOC has been reliably associated with tunnel imagery which is part of the NDE - but it is not an NDE in and of its self.

However, if you have some other references showing that OBE-perspectives and other NDE-type sensations also occurred in GLOC experiments then I would be delighted to read about that.

The crucial thing is, irrespective of the nature of the manipulation, the rate, range, and intensity of neural disinhibition. In GLOC it is induced by an intermediate rate of blood / oxygen loss to the brain. If this rate is too fast - people simply black out and have no memory of the event. If it is too slow, they just get confused and dazed.

Tom Troscianko and Sue Blackmore also have a computational model for tunnel experiences based on the biased distribution of cells in the eye / central vision region etc. Jack Cowan has some really nice and detailed stuff on the structure of early visual centres in the brain (V1) and patterns of breaking activity which underlie a whole host of low-level hallucinatory imagery forms - one of which is a tunnel (but there are some problems with his stuff as applied to NDE).

Its been a while since i read the GLOC stuff - so if new experiments have shown more complex imagery - that would be very interesting indeed!

 

[Dr B]

There has been increased interest in NDEs / OBEs of late. van Lommel published a high-impact survey based study in the Lancet in 2001 and Same Parnia and Peter Fenwick are publishing (unchallenged) quite a bit in the journal Resuscitation

All these authors are survivalists - in that they claim the mind survivies brain-death. I disagree.

The most famous case that survivalists like to draw upon is that of Pam Reynolds - which was hinted at above. Here, the brain was cooled and blood drained for an operation. She also reported a vivid and striking NDE. Survivalists link the NDE to a period of flat EEG - something which Hans rightly questions above (no evidence for a link in time for these two factors).

The detail from her OBE imagery was also not that accurate on closer inspection.

It's the old case of a nice story - but not that surprising after closer inspection.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

The Animus,

She did have knowledge about something she shouldn't. I said this was going from memory and as such I did not include every little detail about this particular incident. I'm not trying to prove anything. This isn't my own thread, and I'm not making any claim.

If memory serves, the woman did not know the other family's wife was in labor before she got in the accident and had her NDE. The woman said she felt like she was being reincarnated as that woman's baby, but was brought back before she was able to. So she had two potential pieces of knowledge that she shouldn't. One being that the woman was in labor, and two that the child was stillborn.

Not really. This is very similar to issues with cold reading. The "psychic" says something vague, which could be interpreted many different ways, and the mark interprets it as the psychic having knowing something he could not have known.

In this case, it is not at all clear from your description of the event that the woman knew anything at all that she could not normally have known.

Look at it this way. Before she found out that the woman in question had gone into labor, and that the child was stillborn, would the assumption that her experience was real necessarily lead her to conclude that the woman had gone into labor, and that the baby was stillborn? It is certainly not clear from your description of the event that this is the case.

For example, her experience being real would be perfectly consistent with the baby being born healthy (in this case she could just conclude that another soul took her place). It would also be consistent with the baby not having been born yet (maybe the soul enters the baby a while before birth?). In fact, if instead of finding out that the woman had the baby and that it was stillborn, she instead found out that the woman had a particularly bad stomache ache that day, she would probably regard that as a hit too. And of course, if nothing unusual had happened to the woman at all, that would not imply that her experience was not real.

Therefore even if I were to accept that this event actually happened as you describe it, I cannot accept it as an example of somebody learning something that they should not know while they are temporarily dead.

Again, I am not saying this is my personal belief. I am simply recounting incidents I have read about.

I understand that. My point is that it is pointless to argue about what we should conclude if we had hundreds or thousands of examples of people learning facts that they should not know while they are temporarily dead, when nobody can even provide one.

I am in favor of more research in the area of NDE and reincarnation experiences though.

I probably would have been in favor of such research, if I had been around 50 years or so ago. But the fact that it has been researched extensively for decades, and that nobody has ever been able to produce any reliable evidence that such phenomena even exist, combined with the fact that our scientific understanding of how the world works indicates that such phenomena are simply impossible, leads me to conclude that further research into such areas is a complete waste of money and resources.

Of course, people are free to waste their money any way they wish. I just don't consider it to be useful or productive research to do. At some point you just have to accept that you're looking for something that probably is not there.


Dr. Stupid

 

[thoth108]

Because OBE is JUST LIKE A DREAM.

Actually, there have been experiments. Something is placed on the top of a cupboard in an operating theatre where no-one can see it. If people claim to have an out of body experience and see the whole room they should be able to read it. So far not a single person has passed this kind of test.

Reports of OBEs are always very similar. Things which are known or expected, such as the position of furniture or the presence of a particular person and a specific time, are often very accurate, while things that are unexpected or change are usually completely wrong. If OBEs were real, why would they have no more information than a memory or dream?

In a dream you also fail to notice many detail. In fact, in real life you fail to notice a lot of detail around you >>> your mind filters out information that it considers unimportant. Your "intent" decides what is/isn't important.

I've had many OBE's, and continue to perfect the art of soul-flight. There is no doubt in my mind that it exisits. Can I bring back details? Yes. But it is similar to a dream in that the details are fuzzy; this is because OBE's explore a dimension that CAUSES reality to be, but is not yet CONCRETE reality. Our reality here is a shadow of the dimension you explore during OBEs, and is the cause of this reality.

Read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and DMT-The Spirit Molecule. The latter is a modern scientific study of near-death or religious-experiences, and the former was written so long ago that in contrast the two books should help you understand the phenomenon is a real experience. If you'd like to have an OBE right now, and skip the studying I know of ways to induce that as well, but I can't speak of them here.

Dreams are OBE's of sorts. We are wondering through other dimensions in our dreams using a separate body.

Namaste.

 

[The_Animus]

As I said previously my posts weren't to debate the topic of Reincarnation or NDE's. I was simply supplying a story to add to the conversation of the OP. So I won't be debating this any further, as I have no interest in doing so. I would also have to check some books out at the library I have previously read to provide further accurate detail and research concerning this topic, which I also have no interest in doing. As such this will most likely be my last post in this thread.

But the fact that it has been researched extensively for decades, and that nobody has ever been able to produce any reliable evidence that such phenomena even exist, combined with the fact that our scientific understanding of how the world works indicates that such phenomena are simply impossible, leads me to conclude that further research into such areas is a complete waste of money and resources.

We will have to agree to disagree here. I think the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson on reincarnation is reliable and provides supporting evidence. It doesn't prove anything, just supports the possibility. Now obviously not all of his case files are reliable and provide supporting evidence. Some are poor, others are much better. But it's not like he can just throw out the bad ones and only report on the good ones. That wouldn't be very scientific would it

If you haven't already I'd suggest you read some of his work, or books about his work such as: "Old Souls: The scientific evidence for reincarnation" by Thomas Shroder.

Though it seems to have an alternate title on amazon. "Old Souls: Compelling Evidence from Children who remember past lives".

Have a great day everyone.

 

[This is The End]

If you'd like to have an OBE right now, and skip the studying I know of ways to induce that as well, but I can't speak of them here.

Poisons make you hallucinate.... big find.

 

[thoth108]

Quick response to Hallucinogens being poinson.

Poisons make you hallucinate.... big find.

The hallucinogens used as sacred plants in shamanistic cultures are seldom, if ever, toxic in any way. The molecule or chemical which causes the effect is not toxic in most of the plants/mushrooms that I've researched. A lot of them are similar to anti-depressants in molecular structure, and behave similarly when ingested, bonding with the same receptors. The idea that they are poison is an outdated "belief" based on ignorant scientific experiments decades ago, which were mostly driven by political aims(use fear to outlaw what we can't explain). What poisonous hallucinogens were you talking about ?

 

[sthomson]

I've had many OBE's, and continue to perfect the art of soul-flight. There is no doubt in my mind that it exisits. Can I bring back details? Yes. But it is similar to a dream in that the details are fuzzy; this is because OBE's explore a dimension that CAUSES reality to be, but is not yet CONCRETE reality. Our reality here is a shadow of the dimension you explore during OBEs, and is the cause of this reality.

If OBEs are fuzzy, like dreams, how do you differentiate between the two? I'm not trying to be hostile, I'm just curious.

Dreams are OBE's of sorts. We are wondering through other dimensions in our dreams using a separate body.

Ah, I see. How can we prove an assertation like this?

The hallucinogens used as sacred plants in shamanistic cultures are seldom, if ever, toxic in any way...The idea that they are poison is an outdated "belief" based on ignorant scientific experiments decades ago, which were mostly driven by political aims(use fear to outlaw what we can't explain). What poisonous hallucinogens were you talking about ?

Peyote and mushrooms (genus Psilocybe) may not be poisonous, per se, but they certainly make people very sick in hallucinogenic doses.

 

[Dr B]

Occam's razor anyone???????