The topic of NDEs is a recurring one at RfM. I haven’t had much to say on it until the latest discussions cropped up on several threads this week.
Here are two examples:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,256834http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,255640,255640#msg-255640I figure it’s one of those things we can’t really know and I don’t have a strong opinion about it either way. It doesn’t matter that much to me what people choose to believe. I do hope, though, that conclusions and opinions are based somewhat on reality. If you want to believe in NDEs, that they occur and that they signify life beyond mortality, go ahead. But please, apply some critical thinking skills to the “evidence” on which you base your belief (unless you don't care about rational back-up for your opinion?). I think a lot of examples of apparent NDEs can be easily explained by existing medical knowledge. I hope people at least consider the realities behind the “evidence” they put their faith in to uphold their belief in NDE/existence post-death. (Note: I differentiate near death experience from a religious belief in an afterlife). Both may exist and be significant but that's a different question than the "evidence" people use to claim that NDEs are real and that they signify life after death.
On a previous thread of mine, I responded to some of the “evidence” and questions about NDE, as re-posted below for context.
Also, I recently read an interesting article about perception and how the brain tries to make sense of the sensory input it’s receiving, excerpted below.
[A poster said in a previous thread] “What if a person who was undergoing surgery saw signs saying "STOP or "YIELD" on top of very tall cabinets inside the operating room, which they had never been in before during their cardiac arrest period?
"How could an oxygen starved brain "see" that?????”
[I replied] I’ve been in a lot of ORs and have never seen very tall cabinets therein nor any signs resting atop one. Of all the signs to have in an OR, if any, why would they have stop and yield signs? Directions for porters bringing patients in and taking them out? Communication between the surgeon and the scrub nurse? I think not.
That is where I would start with analyzing a supposed “NDE”. I’m struck by how often visions and NDEs etc don’t seem to make a lot of sense or offer anything of value. (As in the visions in Fatima, for instance, where the messages from Mary seemed to consist entirely of criticism and forebodings, at least from what I have read about it). Likewise, I’d ask why if one were so fortunate as to glimpse the eternities and be reassured of ongoing life, the only “proof” they get is a coupla traffic signs? I’d rather see an angel or hear a choir than something so utilitarian as a stop sign. What does it mean I wonder: Stop breathing? Stop dying? Stop looking for (at) signs?
After a down-to-earth analysis like that, I’d then think about the state a person is in when they find themselves inside an OR as the patient. If it’s a planned procedure, they are likely under the influence of at least a sedative, soon to be anesthesia of some sort. Sedatives and anesthetics affect the brain, in ways known and unknown, affecting its chemistry, and can change levels of consciousness, decrease awareness, cause grogginess, induce sleep, produce dreams and affect perception and cognition. In this state, the affected person cannot rationally analyze and realistically interpret their perceptions, thoughts, memories, feelings and experiences.
Patients who have been sedated (so they feel drowsy but are not yet “anesthetized” and are either drowsy or sleeping lightly) are considered to be no longer capable of signing a “fully informed consent” for a surgical procedure as they are too cognitively impaired (sedated). Woe betide the nurse who forgets to get the paper signed before she administers the sedative – surgery has to be cancelled, at least in my experience. In a person who is cognitively impaired, I’d be careful how I interpreted their perceptions of anything. Sedation affects thinking and memory processes, which affects perception.
Too, there is abundant medical evidence of patients under anesthesia waking up during surgery and interpreting their current situation as a dream (a very bad one!) when it is, in fact, reality (ironic eh?) or patients not under deeply enough, seeing and hearing and feeling everything that is going on while seeming to be unconscious. This type of experience is known to be traumatic to patients after-the-fact, whether they were deeply or lightly asleep. Still, they cannot be relied upon to accurately remember events that occurred during this time.
If the person in the OR is there due to injury, stroke, heart attack or imminent or recent “death”, those conditions also affect cognition in a major way, obviously. Perception and memory are vastly influenced by such events, due to pain, shock, insults to organs and systems, fear, stress, confusion, panic, medications, oxygen starvation and many other factors.
Knowing all this, I am skeptical of NDEs that occur in ORs after sedation/anesthetics have been administered and when patients are in extremis (i.e., cardiac arrest). I think there are abundant down-to-earth explanations for a person having dreams and visions and altered perceptions and mistaken interpretations of it all.
(Excerpted from this thread):
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,246758,246758#msg-246758From an article in the magazine Scientific American MIND:
“…mirrors can reveal a great deal about the brain, with implications for psychology, clinical neurology and even philosophy. They can help us explore the way the brain puts together information from different sensory channels such as vision and somatic sensations (touch, muscle and joint sense).”
[It gives instructions for setting up a mirror].
[It gives examples of actions to take that create optical illusions].
Eg: Place one hand on either side of a table in front of the mirror. Looking into the right side of the mirror, the reflection of your right hand will be optically superimposed in the same place where you feel your left hand to be.
Moving your right hand will look in the mirror like your left hand is moving, but your brain perceives it to be still. “The conflict creates a slight jolt; it feels spooky, sometimes mildly uncomfortable. The brain abhors discrepancies.”
If you do the opposite, keeping the right hand still and moving the left hand, the left hand will look like it’s still but feels like it is moving. Again, this causes a jolt.
“Why the jolt? The answer resides in the right superior and inferior parietal lobules (located above your right ear), where signals from your various senses – visual, somatic – converge to create your internal sense of a body image. Stand up now and close your eyes. Either raise your arms or let them dangle by your side. Obviously you have a vivid sense of being “anchored” in your body except under special circumstances (such as ketamine anesthesia).”
(Note the fact that a certain type of anesthesia is known to produce "out-of-body" experiences).
The article goes on to explain in more detail exactly how the brain perceives your body’s position and sensations and how the brain tries to make sense what is going on. It states that your perception (of touch in this case) is “unaffected by your higher-level intellectual knowledge of the optics of the situation. Your perceptual systems integrating vision and touch are on autopilot, …, applying their own statistical rules.”
The article describes an out-of-body experience (illusion):
“Have a friend sit behind [a]…writing desk. In front of the desk, place a mirror so that it covers it completely and you can see only your friend’s torso behind the desk. Now stand at a distance of 20 feet from the desk, look at her and carefully align her torso with the reflection your lower trunk and feet. Now walk toward the desk, and you will see your friend “walking toward you” with her feet moving in perfect synchrony with your own. …you will have a spooky sensation of an out-of-body experience with “you” out there inhabiting your friend’s body, presumably because this is the only way your brain can interpret the perfect synchrony of her legs and yours."
“Perception is a multilayered phenomenon – hence, it is prone to endless paradoxes in contrived situations."
(Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran, Reflections on the Mind, Scientific American Mind, July/August 2011: 18-21)
I work with a neurologist who sees a lot of patients with epilepsy and other types of "spells". One recent patient had powerful experiences of abrupt awakening due to loud, frightening noises. One night she was convinced that a construction crew was doing demolition on a building next door but when she got up and looked out the window nobody was there. Another night she thought she heard several gunshots outside. Again, there were no gunshots. It turns out to be a case of apparent seizures/partial seizures or some other abnormality within her own brain. She went with her observations that the sounds she was hearing were not based in actual occurrences and rather than insisting that something had happened, even though she was the only one hearing it, she sought medical attention (which to me is the most rational first reaction). With accurate diagnosis and possibly drug therapy to get the "spells" or seizures under control, she will likely no longer hear the noises. This to me is a good example of how the brain is susceptible to misperceptions due to the many sensory, chemical and other influences upon it.
So-called visions, visitations and miracles, such as the Virgin Mary appearing to young girls in Portugal in 1917, are seen by some to foretell the continuation of life after mortal death.
One article describing the first vision states:
"After the first visit to the children by Mary, "[t]he children subsequently wore tight cords around their waists to cause pain, performed self-flagellation using stinging nettles, abstained from drinking water on hot days, and performed other works of penance and mortification of the flesh. Most important, Lúcia said that the lady had asked them to pray the rosary every day, repeating many times that the rosary was the key to personal and world peace. This had particular resonance since many Portuguese men, including relatives of the visionaries, were then fighting in World War I."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_F%C3%A1timaThis reflects the same criticisms we hear about NDEs in that what people see and hear is what would be expected given the culture and circumstances of the person(s) involved. In Fatima, the people were strongly religious and the instructions given in the vision reflect their Catholic faith (rosary, penance) rather than, say, Buddhist rites.
This parallels to me the out-of-body type experiences people have in ORs, under anesthesia and/or in the midst of a physical crisis where the brain misperceives sensory input. This can be explained simply as oxygen deprivation, effects of anesthesia, side effects of medications, and any number of other explainable physical phenomena. In Fatima, there were other factors at play but they can be explained by down-to-earth factors, imho.
Some posters have mentioned people's experiences of hearing conversations in other rooms as being proof on the side of NDEs and/or afterlife. I don't know why this happens, or if it really does, but it in no way convinces me of anything to do with life after death. A person in crisis (near death) apparently develops super-ears and that signifies the reality of an afterlife? I don't get it.
My abiding question is why such visions and enhanced experiences end up being so mundane. Mary, the Sainted Mother of the Saviour of the World returns to earth to instruct young girls to say their rosary? Hello? That's the message from the eternities? That indicates there's life after death? One could hope for a more straightforward statement.
On one of Steve Benson's recent threads about NDEs, Dagny asks:
”What is more likely: that an elaborate attempt to explain why we don't really die using descriptions that defy physics might be true, or that the brain is reacting in reasonable ways to stimuli, oxygen, electrical firing, injury or physiology?”
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,256834,256834#msg-256834I go with the science/medicine on this one. As long as there is a physical explanation for what we perceive I don’t attribute it to a supernatural or miraculous occurrence.