Talking over the last couple of weeks to a TBM about NDE's.

It appears to be an important subject to them. Accounts of dying, floating above the room, going through some sort of darkness, going toward the light, getting hugs from Jesus.

I know people personally who have had this.

Okay.

Leaving aside the fact that the phenomenon lacks scriptural support, I find that after being exposed to a few of these, the awe sort of wears off and the whole thing seems a bit trivial.

I wasn't there, so I can't say it didn't happen. Regardless, it doesn't seem to serve much good, other than to lower one's sense of concern about the afterlife.

I haven't been to this site in months. Hello, everyone. Hope you're having an immense and beautiful Fall.

I had one 1 month before my sister and mom died within a month of each other and ...it was truly some kind of spiritual event. I was not dieing then but it occurred early in the morning as I slept and breifly woke up. Perhaps it was only a hypnopompic (waking)dream but if it was I am astonished at how real they can be because I have never experienced that kind of reality or progression of dreming ever... before or after.

Not proof either way but I recall a TV program on the subject of NDEs, specifically those in hospitals who reported floating above the hospital room and seeing everything below them. The researchers placed large signs on the tops of cabinets and such in hospital rooms. The reported floating above reports continued...not one person claiming the experience recalled a single sign.

I saw this earlier today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X3HbndmpfE

The problem is that I have no less than 4 books which are devoted entirely to LDS NDE experiences, where they went to the Celestial Kingdom and were told that yes indeed, the Church was true.

This is why I have a problem with these things. Well, one reason I have a problem with them anyway.

Something's not quite consistent there.

I think like any subject that is religious/spiritual, you are going to have a group of crazy liars, a group of those that believe something but report falsely on accident, and those that report what they really saw. I think the truth lies somewhat in the middle.

There's a video from the BBC called "Today I Died" and it explains both sides. One story talks about a lady who recalled whole conversations while brain dead and having no pulse. Makes me think, but certainly isn't proof.

People tend to see the experience, whatever causes it, in terms of their own religious views. If the person has an NDE where he sees a being of light or whatever, he will interpret that being as his own God. A Christian will see Jesus, Mary an angel , a Muslim will see Allah etc. It doesn't necessarily mean they are lying. They are making assumptions. Of course some of them are likely lying too.

I've had them many, many times, although nothing recent. Oh wait. . . . that's the little death! No, I haven't had any near death experiences.

When I was very young I had my tonsils out. I recall floating around the room above the operating table and then flying out of the hospital and over the tops of the train cars along the train tracks that ran by the hospital.

Even at that young age I put it down to a dream. I didn't "die" on the operating table and didn't have to be revived, but what if I had?

What if I had the floating and flying dream when they put me under and then half an hour later my heart stopped and I had to be revived for some reason? Then I would have had a reason to think that my "dream" was part of that experience and qualified as a NDE.

I wonder how many things that would be called "dreams" got upgraded to NDE because someone had to be revived at a different time than the dream occurred.

I was a true believer in NDE until I came across this article. Then my heart sank.
http://near-death.com/experiences/triggers06.html

turnonthelights Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was a true believer in NDE until I came across
> this article. Then my heart sank.
> http://near-death.com/experiences/triggers06.html

Same here. I had a lot of books about them and read everything I could. I'll still watch an occasional YouTube video, but it's not very often.

I watch it with a critical mind now though.

The one that turned my thinking around was a show about NDEs. In one of the incidents, a young boy had been found frozen to death.

They didn't think they could save him, but decided to try anyway. NDE researchers were excited because they described him as the person most deeply into death that had ever been revived and they were waiting to see what he would say about the afterlife.

When the boy finally awoke, he was asked what he had experienced. He said, "Nothing. It was like being in a sleep that I didn't know I was in."

That's when my heart sank and I realized that I really needed to be studying the workings of the brain, instead of following spiritual things.

I heard that pilots experience similar symptoms. Its a medical phenomena. Think about it. You know how dreams can seem real. that's why I don't trust visions in dreams.

Oops turn onthelights. That is the same pilot article I was talking about. Hehe. Thanks for the link.

steve benson +100,000

NDEs are not supernatural or empirically reliable, not even slightly. They are eyewitness accounts of pseudo-knowledge or pretenses of knowledge that can be scientifically explained as not true just like mormon testimonies.

Being a qualified engineer and always needing to know HOW and WHY things happen , I have had 3 NDE and OBE experiences and can explain none of them ..

Please go on line and research the book 'Hello fom Heaven" and try to explain how all these people, from judges to scientists, to teachers and also all the common folk, supposedly received nothing in your mind, yet so clearly recalled and put down in writing all the details of their experiences.

I think we really can't say definitely and catagorically refute ""OTHER PEOPLE'S experiences.

JB

If you have not experienced an NDE, you have no business explaining or interpreting one.

Yeah the old "I know how you feel" Not!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2012 02:42AM by hellonwheels.

When people simply refuse to accept the cold reality of death, many of them desperately latch on to the celebrated (but not cerebral) case of Dr. Eben Alexander III--a formerly comatose patient who is also a neurosurgeon and associate professor at the Harvard Medical School.

Alexander came out of a bad seven-day-blackout bout with meningitis and claimed he met God in a vision.

Red meat, no doubt, for the metaphysical-feat crowd, but not so fast. Not all professional neurologists are impressed:

"Like much of the scientific community [ya think?], Dr. Wendy Wright, a neurologist from Emory University, believes that near-death experiences are purely a function of endorphin release in the brain. 'So when these chemicals are released, these different type of phenomena can occur: a person might see a light, or experience a sense of peace or calming. Feel that they're surrounded by loved ones." Such visions, although potentially comforting to the individual, are little more than tricks of the brain,' she says."

"Four Theories On What Happens When We Die," in "The Huffington Post," under "Nothing 'Fantastic' Happens," p. 4, 23 June 2011, at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/what-happen-when-we-die_n_882738.html#s296717&title=There_Is_An)

I also recently saw a video where they were describing a patient who had epilepsy. She was awake as they probed certain parts of her brain, in order to determine what parts of her brain controlled different bodily functions.

As they hit one part of the brain, she suddenly saw herself floating over her body, looking down at herself. She was fully awake, so she and the doctors knew that she hadn't actually gone anywhere.

What they had stimulated was a part of the brain which controlled basically our sense of boundaries. Where does my arm begin and where does it end? When she was no longer sure where her body was, she thought she was above it.

The study of the brain is really quite fascinating.