SKEPTIC'S
QUESTION: "Something amazing happens during
a near-death experience. There are still profound
questions, like, why doesn't everyone who comes
close to death have a NDE? And, is the NDE the brain's
final fantasy?
Autoscopy
(being out of body, looking down) is the SOLE trait
of the NDE amenable to empirical validation. But
even here, we must be careful. I must categorically
reject out of hand anything that an experiencer
says describing his environment, what people have
said, what they were wearing, and so on. This isn't
enough! What I personally insist on is an accounting
of what's happening elsewhere, in a physical place
far removed from the physical body of the experiencer.
After all, one cannot rule out that sensory pathways
are still active in the brain of the experiencer,
accounting for their ability to hear and see and
smell some things from their immediate physical
environment. The only truly compelling proof of
being out of body comes from very
remote viewing."
DR. SUSAN BLACKMORE
(NDE Skeptic):
"Yes, and this we do not have." (Susan
Blackmore)
DR. KENNETH RING:
"These are cogent objections, but there are in the
literature on both remote viewing and NDEs many
cases of the sort ... where people appear to know
things at a distance. (That is, demonstrate clairvoyance).
I also consider some of these same objections in
my book,
Lessons From The Light,
and
Sabom treats
them as well in the book of his I previously mentioned.
As for why some people have NDEs whereas others
don't, I explored this question in depth in my book,
The Omega Project
(Quill, 1993)." (Kenneth
Ring)
DR. JEFFERY LONG:
"A number of experiencers describe out-of-body experiences
(OBEs). These experiences frequently include visualization
of their body from a vantage point outside their
body. Much less commonly reported are visualizations
of earthly events geographically far removed from
their body.
Michael Sabom,
M.D, conducted an excellent study of OBE among experiencers.
Dr. Sabom identified a group of thirty-two patients
who had a cardiac arrest, experienced a NDE, and
visualized their own resuscitation efforts during
the OBE stage of their NDE.
"He found a group of twenty-three
patients who had a cardiac arrest and did not have
a NDE. Both groups were asked to describe their
resuscitation. The NDE group was uniformly accurate,
including correctly recalling readings on medical
machines outside their potential line of vision.
Twenty of the twenty-three patients who did not
have a NDE were highly inaccurate in describing
their resuscitation. This is verifiable and potentially
reproducible validation of the OBE component of
the NDE. Other researchers should attempt to replicate
this important study. Anecdotal accounts continue
to surface of experiencers with OBE experiences
involving visualization far geographically removed
from their body. Formal study of these accounts
would be an important future area of research. For
more information about an example of
a verifiable OBE observation
during a NDE, click on the link provided." (Jeffery
Long)
DR. ROBERT JORDAN:
"The fact that some people who come close to physical
death recall NDEs and others don't could have several
explanations that are either physical or nonphysical.
Perhaps they are amnesic of the experience. Perhaps
the physical process of the brain ceasing to function
occurs too quickly or in the wrong sequence for
a memory of the experience to be retained." (Robert
Jordan)
DR. P.M.H. ATWATER:
"As long as you discount verifiable evidence that
could not have been accessed through the regular
senses and was indeed obtained remotely, you bias
your own demands and outcomes. However, if you want
to explore scientific proof of remote viewing, I
suggest you contact
Joe McMoneagle
through his website. Joe just returned from Japan
where, live and on television, he successfully demonstrated
the validity of scientific remote viewing. Joe,
by the way, is an experiencer." (P.M.H.
Atwater)
KEVIN WILLIAMS, B.SC.:
"I know of one event that came very close to providing
scientific proof of autoscopy. The only reason it
did not qualify as scientific proof is because the
proper controls weren't used at the time it occurred.
Dr. Charles Tart
was experimenting with a subject who would have
spontaneous out-of-body experiences. A remote five-digit
number was placed out of view of the subject. She
had an out-of-body experience and successfully read
the five-digit number. The subject was then able
to return to her body and successfully tell Dr.
Tart what the number is. This provides strong
circumstantial evidence that consciousness can transcend
the physical body.
"Dr.
Stanislav Grof, another consciousness
researcher, theorizes that consciousness may not
even be localized in the brain as so many scientists
assume. He theorizes the brain may be merely acting
as a reducing valve for which our five senses can
process the vast amount of information that bombard
our senses and influences our consciousness.
"It may be asking too
much of researchers to gather data that proves,
beyond any doubt, that consciousness survives death.
Science may never develop the tools necessary to
quantify many aspects of the NDE. However, there
is currently available a mountain of circumstantial
evidence suggesting that consciousness does indeed
survive death." (Kevin
Williams)
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