Near Death Experiences

RedRose · May 31, 2010

backslashbaby said:
I get sleep paralysis where I can see things in the room with my eyes closed, still asleep. I thought it had to be my imagination (I did it a lot as a child, and then so often when I was sick with a disease) but my Ex was astonished every time he saw it. I'd know what time it was because I'd seen the clock. When the clock was wrong, so was I. If he put a book, etc. down while I was doing it, I could tell him what book it was, even though he knew I couldn't see it.

Unfortunately, it still was sleep paralysis, so I was always terrified that I couldn't get back in my body and wake up. I always tried to scream and couldn't for a long while.

Dunno. I don't do it any more, although I do get rare bouts of run-of-the-mill sleep paralysis. I don't get how it would work, but a lot of folks who know me would swear to it.

I used to get sleep paralysis. After years of misery, I eventually tried an alternative therapist and it's all gone. My mum bought me a dream catcher too. lol

My paralysis was as soon as I'd fall asleep, my brain would suddenly wake up. I could hear pins and needles in my head, the sound of numbness. It was like a radio turned on the loudest it could go with static. My arms, voice, legs wouldn't move. I couldn't even open my eyes and it was TERRIFYING. The roar in my ears made me panic even more.

My muscles were asleep, but I was awake.

I haven't had it in about a year now.

GeorgeK · May 31, 2010

benbradley said:
I once experienced the presence of God yet I'm now an atheist.

Atheist or areligious? One of the things that I learned from God was that Man made religions, not God. It may sound stupid, but it took death for me to learn it. Was yours just an acid trip or was it something else? For me it was anaphylaxis, twice.

Julie Worth · May 31, 2010

GeorgeK said:
Atheist or areligious? One of the things that I learned from God was that Man made religions, not God. It may sound stupid, but it took death for me to learn it. Was yours just an acid trip or was it something else? For me it was anaphylaxis, twice.

Way back in the thirties, Dr. Ladislas Meduna was employing a method of breathing carbon dioxide that fooled the brain into thinking it was dying. He had success with neurotics and schizophrenics, and many reported experiences that were similar or identical to psychedelic experiences, or to NDEs.

As one who experienced it reported: ...then the colors separated; my soul drawing apart from the physical being, was drawn upward seemingly to leave the earth and to go upward where it reached a greater Spirit with Whom there was a communion, producing a remarkable, new relaxation and deep security.

There seems to be some real phenomenon behind these experiences, whatever the source, something that has served through the centuries as the basis of religions, even though religions quickly loose any connection to it.

Mac H. · May 31, 2010

kaitiepaige17 said:
The doctors lowered her body temp to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and drained all of her blood. She had absolutely 0 brain function. She was dead.

But she wasn't dead.

That's the problem with these stories - they get exagurated until people start believing the myth.

This is the kind of surgery it probably was:

"The aneurysm was very large, which meant the risk of rupture was also very large," Spetzler says. "And it was in a location where the only way to really give her the very best odds of fixing it required what we call 'cardiac standstill.' "

It was a daring operation: Chilling her body, draining the blood out of her head like oil from a car engine, snipping the aneurysm and then bringing her back from the edge of death.

"She is as deeply comatose as you can be and still be alive," Spetzler observes.

If you read the account carefully, at the point that she was imagining the out of body experience, her brain hadn't been chilled yet. She hadn't been drained yet. They were looking for groin artery to START the procedure !

So all the bits that happened when she was collecting information about the surgery was when she wasn't 'dead' at all.

At the time she thought it was a hallucination. The hallucination seems totally consistent with putting together snippets of information about surgery from sound. So the only question is whether she could hear with the headphones on.

One interesting thing about out of body experiences, is that I've noticed all of my dreams are actually out of body experiences - my dreams are always shown from the POV of slightly behind me - so I can see myself.

I wonder why that is ?

Mac
PS: There's a discussion of the case here:

http://www.unholylegacy.woerlee.org/pam-reynolds.php

And I say "supposedly under general anesthesia", because what she described was a typical period of conscious awareness under general anesthesia. This is something familiar to all anesthesiologists ... She felt no pain, but was clearly able to able to hear and describe what happened to her. How was this possible?

She felt no pain because of the effects of powerful painkilling drugs.
She was unable to move, breathe, or speak, because all the muscles of her body were paralyzed by a muscle paralyzing drug. This was why she was attached to a respirator which performed her breathing through a tube inserted into her windpipe.
She was conscious because the concentrations of drugs used to keep her unconscious were quite evidently insufficient to do so.
She could hear clearly because of bone conduction of sounds which directly stimulated her cochlea. The vibrations of the sounds of speech and other sounds in the operating room presumably vibrated the thin metal sheet of the surface of an instrument table clamped to the metal side rails of the operating table (a common neurosurgical practice at the time), or the large metal under surface of the operating table itself, and conducted these sound vibrations to the bones of her skull through the metal clamp directly fixing her skull to the operating table. This was how it was possible for her to hear the "natural D" of the pneumatic bone drill or saw, and this was how it was possible for her to hear speech. I know for certain her head was attached to the operating table with a Mayfield clamp, or a similar device (see pictures of clamp system above), because this is standard neurosurgical practice when using an operating microscope to clamp aneurysms. The simple examples of the Rinne hearing test, as well as the Weber hearing test clearly illustrate how someone with tightly closed ears can hear by means of sound-induced vibrations of a metal operating table to which their skull is affixed by means of a metal clamp attached to the table, as was the case with Pam Reynolds. N.B. the drawing on page 40 of Light & Death of the setup in the operating theatre is inaccurate in several aspects, among which is the absence of the Mayfield, or other head clamp, as well as the small instrument table near the head being free instead of clamped to the table, both of which features were, and still are normal neurosurgical practice (see Mayfield Clinic patient information sheet).
The combined effects of these anesthetic drugs caused her to be calm and indifferent, as well as removing any pain from the operation.

...
She had decidedly abnormal mental function at this time, as is proven by the fact that she said she should have told the cardiothoracic surgeon about the small blood vessels in her right groin before the operation. This is truly weird. I don't know the sizes of the blood vessels in my groins, and I certainly don't expect other people do either. This is one of the most glaring examples of the ways the anesthetic drugs administered to Pam Reynolds altered her mental function

PPS: It also seems that her description of the drill didn't fit the drill used, either. (Except in the vaguest way) So it seems more and more likely that it was a scenario that she pieced together by sound.

TMA-1 · Jun 2, 2010

Hallucinations and brains acting up from oxygen deprivation and such is not evidence of life after death, or the immaterial soul, or any other way for your consciousness to exist without a body. Even if someone claims to have had an unexplained experience, that does not mean that just because it is unexplained you get to pick and choose from a range of possibilities (and impossibilities). Someone experienced something weird? I have no idea what it was, so I'm going to say it was something fantastical, which involved things like "life essence", "immaterial soul" and "life after death".

Albedo · Jun 2, 2010

I've had OOBEs, but like several people here mine were clearly associated with other connected sleep phenomena such as lucid dreams, hypnogogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis. I'm not willing to attribute them to the supernatural when the natural brain is such a thing of weirdness itself.

Julie Worth · Jun 2, 2010

TMA-1 said:
that does not mean that just because it is unexplained you get to pick and choose from a range of possibilities (and impossibilities)

Impossibilities? Many things used to be impossible. Meteors were once impossible because it was impossible for rocks to fall from the sky, and if anyone saw one, they were deluded or lying. It's the same today; science has only made a dent in our vast ignorance. We don't understand consciousness. We don't even know the most basic facts about our existence, like how many dimensions we live in. So to say something is impossible is rather presumptious.

Rhys Cordelle · Jun 2, 2010

TMA-1 said:
Hallucinations and brains acting up from oxygen deprivation and such is not evidence of life after death, or the immaterial soul, or any other way for your consciousness to exist without a body. Even if someone claims to have had an unexplained experience, that does not mean that just because it is unexplained you get to pick and choose from a range of possibilities (and impossibilities). Someone experienced something weird? I have no idea what it was, so I'm going to say it was something fantastical, which involved things like "life essence", "immaterial soul" and "life after death".

Well said.

Julie Worth said:
Impossibilities? Many things used to be impossible. Meteors were once impossible because it was impossible for rocks to fall from the sky, and if anyone saw one, they were deluded or lying. It's the same today; science has only made a dent in our vast ignorance. We don't understand consciousness. We don't even know the most basic facts about our existence, like how many dimensions we live in. So to say something is impossible is rather presumptious.

Not as presumptious as claiming knowledge about what out of body experiences are.

Anyone back then who saw a meteor fall would attribute it to gods wrath, or any number of supernatural explanations. It's a perfect example of why people shouldn't be so quick to claim an out of body experience is proof of the supernatural.

small axe · Jun 2, 2010

As probably has already been suggested: "near death" experiences aren't full death experiences, and are thus are not evidence of each other, neither for nor against "life after death."

If we are indeed "spirits in a material world" then in an only "near" death experience we are still bound to our physical bodies, and thus doubters can always (and fairly) question what part the physical still plays in the spiritual experience. ("the mis-firing brain, the jumbled chemical memory or experience, the starved brain's halucinations, the loosing of the conscious mind's control" etc, etc)

Because in "near" death, they come back. :Hug2:

it's like Columbus sailing out to find the New World, but then hitting mid-ocean and going home to spain! "No New World to be found there," says the turned back Columbus, and the naysayers are reinforced in their nays (or their neighs!)

Even if the neardeather could tell stories of flying off to China in the spirit from his operating room in New York, and tell us events that happened to the little girl Ling Hsu as she saved her puppy from falling down a well ... that still may be attributed to TELEPATHY and not the spirit existing free from the physical body in New York!

It's a big Universe, and no single explanation (materialist or spiritual) need be cookie-cuttered to always apply! :Sun:

However, failure to "prove" near death experiences can often be seen to be FACT hitting the limitations of what materialist sciences currently can show about human Awareness ... and not the non-existence of spirits existing outside physical bodies (or outside materialist assumptions).

FACT is FACT, and what happen't ... happen't.

Truth precedes "proof" and happily exists independent of mundane 'proving' ... and if others lag behind, awaiting mundane proof, then that is their calling in this life, while others are still free to explore where some do not, if they are called to explore 'the road not taken' by others(as the poem goes)

Near Death Experiences

RedRose

By any other name...

GeorgeK

ever seeking

Julie Worth

What? I have a title?

Mac H.

Board Visitor

TMA-1

Albedo

Alex

Julie Worth

What? I have a title?

Rhys Cordelle

small axe

memento mori