The eternal human obsession with death explains our intense interest in the experiences that come as close to it as possible. I also think it's obvious that, even if death "feels like" something, these experiences are probably nothing like it. There's a huge difference between rotting in the ground and having your heart stop for a minute.
One of my relatives had a near-death experience quite a long time ago. While he was unconscious, he says he met Jesus, who offered him the choice to rise to Heaven then and there, or stay behind with his children. He chose the latter and (somewhat miraculously, actually) recovered and is still alive today. It probably goes without saying that he's a devout Christian. Now, I don't believe he actually met Jesus, but I do believe that's what he experienced. It's interesting, and somewhat comforting, that the brain can have these intensely emotional and personally meaningful experiences in the moments before death. Maybe his "choice" even had some bearing on his recovery.
I read an account of a near-death experience a couple of years ago from an atheist man. When he "died", he went out of his body and saw Jesus in the room with him. He asked Jesus if he was real, or just an illusion/dream.
The image of Jesus then transformed into a ball of light. This ball of light communicated to the man that it initially appeared as Jesus because the man had a Christian upbringing and was familiar with the character of Jesus. It was essentially to make him feel more at ease.
But how confusing that we might bring our human thought processes to an after life where we'd need to see Jesus to make us feel comfortable. Wouldn't it make more sense for an afterlife to be so different from our human experience that it's almost undescribable?
I'd like to think that young children who pass away aren't trapped in an adolescent mindset after death. Growing up in heaven is equally unbelievable.
Instead I think it's highly probably that these near death experiences are more similar to deep meditation where we explore our innermost selves.
If I remember correctly, the man said that he eventually went to another "realm" or "dimension" that was beyond words, but that he needed a sort of transition between the two level of consciousness. It's probably similar to how deep sea divers cannot go to the surface too rapidly.
>It's interesting, and somewhat comforting, that the brain can have these intensely emotional and personally meaningful experiences in the moments before death.
Instead of our mind saying plainly, "we're soon to be fertilizer," its perspective on the world is one of obsessive self-importance--such an inconvenient reminder that we will recycle our carbon is manipulated into a motivational and awe-inspiring event to help us pass on our DNA in a time when we are clearly likely to die. Maybe it is both comforting, and absurd, in the same way as our other daily experiences? We're not the most important thing in the universe, but our mind can sometimes treat us as such, and it seems this leads to entirely strange experiences all the time, they just don't seem particularly absurd, compared to meeting Jesus, because they're so common.
Think about all of the injustice in the world. One's mind typically isn't going to get worked up about "I really should do something about getting off this planet, or what about that Gulf of Tonkin incident, if I don't do something that kind of awful thing could happen again in the universe (like maybe in Iraq)." But when your time comes, yes of course, the Universe and God have concern about You.
> The eternal human obsession with death explains our intense interest in the experiences that come as close to it as possible.
You could argue that "existential crisis" is the fundamental bedrock on which we all stand. From eating to sex/procreating to jobs to addictions to sports to escapisms to you know name it, existential crisis lingers over it all.
And it's been posited that this all derives from a fluke of the brain/consciousness. The consciousness's mistaken assumption that the "I" exists ( aka Illusion of the self ).
"(And given the centrality of Christianity in all this, where are the return reports from hell?)"
Well, that's easy; five seconds with Google with the obvious search will answer that question. (Intended as a comment on how deep the article actually grapples with the problem, not as endorsement of anything that search may pull up.)
The strangest NDE I've heard of was a woman in Seattle who had been totally blind from birth. During her NDE she could see, but she had no concept of how to "see". She reported that it took her awhile to understand what she was seeing, how to understand and distinguish colors, that that blob was a person and she now knew what people looked like, etc. After her NDE she was still totally blind (of course) but was able to describe things that only a sighted person could know. Freaky.
Interesting, but the skeptic's argument seems to boil down to: the authors and the person that experienced the NDE were religious, therefore this doesn't need to be taken seriously.
I remember hearing about a study where they placed placards on top of cabinets and such in the operating room. When a person said they had a near-death experience during surgery and saw themselves from above, the experimenters asked them what the letter was on the placard. Not surprisingly patients didn't know.
Not sure why that study needed to be done, as it proved nothing. You can imagine yourself from above without actually having a camera 8 feet over your head.
Can you imagine how interesting the results would've been if they HAD known the letter? A lot of scientific studies seem stupid, sometimes they have unexpected results.
Some people think the out-of-body experience is actually them floating outside of their body in the real world and seeing reality happen in real time from a third person point of view. It disproved that.
the point of the study was that people claim these imaginations of floating about the table were 'proof' of near death experiences, or out of body exp., but inability to read the cards was to show they probably were not really doing that, they were just imaginging that. It's a way to counter the 'how could someone imagine that'. thing.
I once ate 10 mg LSD by accident. It was a dilution error. The peak lasted ~10 hr. At some point, I saw the top of my head. But hey, maybe it was just an hallucination ;)
That reminds me of this thread where user chinacat describes taking a thumbprint. He calls it a "beyond death experience". Very interesting stuff and I recommend reading his posts.
Also, reading about a few NDEs, they sound quite similar to a DMT trip, and they seem to have similar effects in terms of how a person completely changes afterwards. The range of possible conscious experiences is really something extraordinary and most humans only ever experience a miniscule fraction of it.
Oh yeah, Shpongle! Simon Posford and Raja Ram. Dancing to them in Amsterdam was my first exposure to trance. Also Younger Brother. And damn, Bassnectar! Plus An-ten-nae, PANTyRAiD and other trance and acid crunk.
Yes, or more in line with it not being a real phenomenon. Instead it might be possible that certain blood loss or panic induces an almost meditative state and that those occur more often when close to death. Tons of people have had similar experiences meditating, taking hallucinagens or on vision quests. My guess is that those experiences are related in some way rather than our souls not sure if they're really dead or not.
How would that evolve, when the only selection pressure would be just before death? What would be the reproductive advantage? Wouldn’t such a system ultimately be an energy cost, reducing fitness?
I think we agree, but I think you misinterpreted what I said. "Mystical experiences" isn't the problem. It's that the things commonly described in "near death experiences" are overtly contradictory with Judeo-Christian teaching about the afterlife.
There isn't a lot of agreement on what the 'afterlife' is in Christianity, and Judaism has a different idea altogether.
To traditional Christians (Orthodox and Catholic), it involves the soul departing the body, experiencing a good, bad or in between afterlife, then the resurrection of the dead where they're reunited with their body at the end of the world to either live in paradise or be chucked into a fiery lake. Some mystics also describe a period where the soul wanders or is 'lost', and various traditional prayers support such theories. There's also the concepts of Hades/Sheol, Abraham's bosom, toll-houses or purgatory, and so on. Quite a bit of room for experiences roughly equivalent to some near-death experiences.
To most evangelicals, it's an instantaneous journey to heaven/hell. Protestants range from more traditional beliefs to soul-sleep to instant judgement.
For Jews, it's more of a nebulous existence in Sheol (roughly equivalent to the Greek Hades), which isn't particularly great nor horrible.
And then of course, the possibility that what every religion describes is allegorical and not literal.
2) You can reliably induce near death experiences with high g-forces and drugs, for instance the experiences commonly happen to fighter pilots during training when they are subjected to high g forces in training.
The reason for the white light and tunnel and floating above your body, is that's how the brain shuts down due to loss of blood. We know this now. No need to speculate. "Hell" is a less common motif, because that's a less common brain state under those circumstances.
One of my relatives had a near-death experience quite a long time ago. While he was unconscious, he says he met Jesus, who offered him the choice to rise to Heaven then and there, or stay behind with his children. He chose the latter and (somewhat miraculously, actually) recovered and is still alive today. It probably goes without saying that he's a devout Christian. Now, I don't believe he actually met Jesus, but I do believe that's what he experienced. It's interesting, and somewhat comforting, that the brain can have these intensely emotional and personally meaningful experiences in the moments before death. Maybe his "choice" even had some bearing on his recovery.