Do NDE's Really Demonstrate Survival?

Did you know that Stevenson actually wrote a piece expressing his disdain about "past life regressions" in adults? He made it a point to keep his work away from it. With good reason if you ask me... None of these children recall being Marie Antoinette or Napoleon, they seemingly always remember being someone very obscure.

Actually, I would be interested to learn if anyone has validated information derived from a past life regression.
 
"Seemingly" is the operative word here. How about all the individuals (my sister included) who have had past life memories of Marie Antoinette? How would you explain that?
How many credible reports exist about people reporting a past life as Marie Antoinette?
Can you cite references of well studied cases? I ask because we need to separate the wheat from the chaff. People like Stevenson and Tucker seem to have done such job.

Generic claims of previous past lives without an in depth analysis cannot be compared to the type of evidence provided by the two aforementioned researchers,imo.
 
I have a lot of problems with the issue of linear reincarnation, to be honest. Now if it is not sequential, and it's not a choice...some kind of grinding karmic wheel on the caboose of a cosmic runaway train, then fair enough, but if it is sequential and if it is a choice...

...how redundant of a process would that be? Learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to use a toothbrush, to tie your shoelaces, learning all the same basic stuff the first few years of school...not just twice, or twenty times, but who knows how many times...how god-awful redundant. And then think of the other end of life...how many times demented and incontinent in a nursing home before the person "gets it" (whatever it is meant to be). Overall, it's an abominable, inhuman picture. Maybe it would have something going for it if "souls" chould choose when to enter or leave...join a life at age 20 say, or leave at age 50. Again, I make no assumption of that being possible, but at least it would be a vehicle of some rational structure.
 
By the way, it also makes for a weird juxta with multiple reality concepts.

Now I find it hard to envision millions or billions of slightly different (and eventually less than slightly) copies of me kicking about in an insane card deck of alternate "universes." But then, who knows? Maybe that's just a restraint on my imagination. Maybe "reality" really is that weird?

I think there's an issue, though, with respect to those millions of "mes". Are they all atoms of some "supersoul" of mine? If so, then reincarnation as such would seem pointless, because I am already, somewhere in infinity, living every single life that could possibly be described (at least under an "all possibilities are actualized" scenario). Even if those aren't all atoms of a super-me, but are somehow independent selves, it still seems kind of redundant for reality to bother with both multiple realities AND reincarnation? If reality is somehow the sum of all possibilities, I'm not sure I see why the same "possibility" would need to be fed back in, over and over.
 
I think what also needs to be asked and further investigated is, is the human brain capable of producing more vivid, intense experiences than the average experience, while functioning at less than average capacity?

I mean, my life is average, I think, but if I get in a car accident, and I'm mangled, why would my brain produce, in its last moments of structural integrity, an experience of me being out of my body, meeting Jesus, meeting dead relatives, flying out of the galaxy, etc., when it never had before? This could not be an evolutionary trait, could it? because human nature appears to be to automatically reject anything outside of the personal worldview (imo), does it not? What caveman was clawed to death by a tiger, rose back from the dead twenty minutes later, walked up to his tribe and said, "hey, you'll never believe what I saw! Now bear my children." Think about how resistant we are to change the status quo now, imagine what we would have been like 50,000 years ago!
 
I think what also needs to be asked and further investigated is, is the human brain capable of producing more vivid, intense experiences than the average experience, while functioning at less than average capacity?

It certainly seems capable of producing very vivid experiences when energy compromised.

I mean, my life is average, I think, but if I get in a car accident, and I'm mangled, why would my brain produce, in its last moments of structural integrity, an experience of me being out of my body, meeting Jesus, meeting dead relatives, flying out of the galaxy, etc., when it never had before? This could not be an evolutionary trait, could it?

Earlier simple organisms navigate, communicate, process information and apparently display intelligent behaviour without any neurons at all.

It seems reasonable to consider that in an energy compromised state, some similar (earlier) mechanism in the brain becomes exposed when power (from neuronal firing) drops in the experients brain. Resulting in the NDE OBE etc...
 
I think what also needs to be asked and further investigated is, is the human brain capable of producing more vivid, intense experiences than the average experience, while functioning at less than average capacity?

I think it pretty unlikely, for a number of commonsense reasons.
 
It certainly seems capable of producing very vivid experiences when energy compromised.



Earlier simple organisms navigate, communicate, process information and apparently display intelligent behaviour without any neurons at all.

It seems reasonable to consider that in an energy compromised state, some similar (earlier) mechanism in the brain becomes exposed when power (from neuronal firing) drops in the experients brain. Resulting in the NDE OBE etc...

Hmm. Then it seems the only salvation for NDEs and OBEs lies in veridical and peak-in-darien cases.
 
It certainly seems capable of producing very vivid experiences when energy compromised.
Yes, but I think the only evidence you have for that is NDE's themselves - therefore your argument is circular!
Earlier simple organisms navigate, communicate, process information and apparently display intelligent behaviour without any neurons at all.
They do indeed - and what do you deduce from that?
It seems reasonable to consider that in an energy compromised state, some similar (earlier) mechanism in the brain becomes exposed when power (from neuronal firing) drops in the experients brain. Resulting in the NDE OBE etc...
Well you could suppose anything you like, but it doesn't seem a useful way to attack the problem. But NDE's aren't just about energy, you have to consider:

1) The fact that these seem to involve content that is relevant to potential death. Even kids report relevant NDE experiences!

2) The fact that people often report details of the resuscitation as viewed from above.

OK - you can pile up a few more arbitrary hypotheses to cover those matters too, but it is possible to 'prove' absolutely anything at all using that sort of reasoning!

David
 
I think the real issue is that compromised systems don't improve. You would pretty much have to argue that the system wasn't "really" compromised at the time of NDE, but that's pretty hard to believe in many cases where the person was very ill at the time of their experience, therefore organic systems were by definition compromised.
 
Hmm. Then it seems the only salvation for NDEs and OBEs lies in veridical and peak-in-darien cases.

Veridical NDE OBE's during cardiac arrest in a monitored environment are definitely one area we should concentrate.

I'm uncertain whether seeing those not known to have died is necessarily significant... a good chunk of those relations often seen later in the NDE are still alive, so it's quite possible some of these so called peak-in-darien cases could just be overlaps... Somebody who actually appeared in the imagery as alive, but upon recovery, the experient, found that the person had died, and only then giving this overlap heightened significance...
 
Last edited:
Veridical NDE OBE's during cardiac arrest in a monitored environment are definitely one area we should concentrate.

I'm uncertain whether seeing those not known to have died is necessarily significant... a good chunk of those relations often seen later in the NDE are still alive, so it's quite possible some of these so called peak-in-darien cases could just be overlaps... Somebody who actually appeared in the imagery as alive, but upon recovery, the experiment, found that the person had died, and only then giving this overlap heightened significance...

It's pretty rare for someone seen in an "otherworld" context of the NDE to still be alive, though it has happened. It would seem that the person has tacit knowledge concerning who is alive and who isn't.
 
Yes, but I think the only evidence you have for that is NDE's themselves - therefore your argument is circular!

They do indeed - and what do you deduce from that?

Well you could suppose anything you like, but it doesn't seem a useful way to attack the problem. But NDE's aren't just about energy, you have to consider:

1) The fact that these seem to involve content that is relevant to potential death. Even kids report relevant NDE experiences!

2) The fact that people often report details of the resuscitation as viewed from above.

OK - you can pile up a few more arbitrary hypotheses to cover those matters too, but it is possible to 'prove' absolutely anything at all using that sort of reasoning!

David

The NDE is absolutely the evidence that the brain is capable of having a very vivid visual experiences in an energy compromised state. How else do you want to explain these classic veridical NDE OBE's which appear to be recalled from periods where the experient was being resuscitated?

That early simple organism's navigate, communicate, organise, process, and appear intelligent, and that such behavior appears linked to the centriole, suggests that larger organisms evolved with neurons that relayed sensory data to a centralised processor, built of similar centriole type tubular forming proteins. The point is that the neurons are mainly acting as in input/output mechanism, and when they become energy compromised, the patient 'appears' behaviorally unconscious... but these low powered, efficient, tubular sensory processing structures can keep 'reading' and 'processing' fields that intersect them for short period.

The fact that kids have NDE's is particularly interesting, because those that have NDE OBE's often state that they felt bigger than a child.

That classical veridical NDE OBE's during cardiac arrest in a hospital environment often unify visual imagery, and very often locate 'self' above is really quite obvious. I honestly don't know why people don't get this aspect of the NDE OBE. There have been lots of studies showing that it's possible to relocate the sense of 'self' in the normally functioning brain using alternative sensory information. That is all that is happening here too... it's just that the sensory input is from third parties... Which if they are looking down... then the experient feels they are located higher, to logically integrate multiple data sources... I mocked up this picture some time ago to help people understand what I was getting at...

obe_nde_diagram2.jpg


My reasoning is quite solid I think...
 
Last edited:
It's pretty rare for someone seen in an "otherworld" context of the NDE to still be alive, though it has happened. It would seem that the person has tacit knowledge concerning who is alive and who isn't.

It's not rare at all... Penny told me the % was quite significant.
 
The NDE is absolutely the evidence that the brain is capable of having a very vivid visual experiences in an energy compromised state. How else do you want to explain these experiences which appear to be recalled from periods where the experient was being resuscitated?

That early simple organism's navigate, communicate, organise, process, and appear intelligent, and that such behaviour appears linked to the centriole, suggests that larger organisms evolved with neurons that relayed sensory data to a centralised processor, built of similar centriole type tubular forming proteins.

The fact that kids have NDE's is particularly interesting, because those that have NDE OBE's often state that they felt bigger than a child.

That classical veridical NDE OBE's during cardiac arrest in a hospital environment often unify visual imagery, and very often locate 'self' above is really quite obvious. I honestly don't know why people don't get this aspect of the NDE OBE. There have been lots of studies showing that it's possible to relocate the sense of 'self' in the normally functioning brain using alternative sensory information. That is all that is happening here to... it's just that the sensory input is from third parties... Which if they are looking down... then the experient feels they are located higher, to logically integrate multiple data sources... I mocked up this picture some time ago to help people understand what I was getting at...

My reasoning is quite solid I think...

Not really Max, because typically the viewpoint is not one from which anyone in the room is positioned. Rather, it's simply an informational vantage from which everyone and all proceedings can be perceived. It doesn't come from a "third party" except in your imagination....
 
  • Like
Reactions: tim
Back
Top