Commentary thread for tim's "NDE's" thread

Well, lucid dreaming isn't quite a fair comparison with these types of cardiac arrest NDEs. But there are plenty of instances where the veridical details observed during the NDE were taking place in a different room or somewhere at a distance, and there would be no way those things could be mentally reconstructed from overheard or half-glimpsed fragments.

The problem as I see it is not the lack of conventional explanation, but the continued charade of pretending that there is. When one is having a dialogue but there is an inability to call a spade a spade, to just simply state "I don't know", there's no debate possible. Is it really so hard to just say "I don't know"? Why would a charade which makes the speaker look foolish, a pretence be better?

Well, lucid dreaming isn't quite a fair comparison with these types of cardiac arrest NDEs. But there are plenty of instances where the veridical details observed during the NDE were taking place in a different room or somewhere at a distance, and there would be no way those things could be mentally reconstructed from overheard or half-glimpsed fragments.

The problem as I see it is not the lack of conventional explanation, but the continued charade of pretending that there is. When one is having a dialogue but there is an inability to call a spade a spade, to just simply state "I don't know", there's no debate possible. Is it really so hard to just say "I don't know"? Why would a charade which makes the speaker look foolish, a pretence be better?

Precisely, Typoz ! Even some of the sceptics on the Skeptics society forum adopted that stance.

Re: Dr. Lloyd Rudy Cardiac Surgeon - Tells Two NDEs 

 Shen1986 There is also a problem with false memories. It happens all the time. If I did not read about it I would also have never noticed that there are false memories to begin with. Now that I know I can even see it in my own recalls when I actually see the real thing for example I bought a collection edition PC game that I remembered as a child that I played back then and now I realized that many things I remembered wrong or mixed up with another PC game.

Post by Cygnus_X1 » Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:50 pm
It's quite right to be sceptical, but equally one ought to also be sceptical of scepticism that is just throwing out any 'It might be....' that one can think up in an attempt to appear sceptical. There does come a point where the scepticism is clutching at straws even more than the original story and one is at the level of 'swamp gas' ( which even Hynek later admitted was stretching explanations too far ).

Surely the point of scepticism is not a stance of ' I am not going to believe in this under any circumstances ' that simply expresses a desire to find any alternative explanation even if it makes even less sense than the original, but is very simply a case of demanding 'where is the evidence ?'. To me that is all one needs to say about these cases. It's not for sceptics to prove that this isn't life after death, but for believers to prove that it is !

 Poodle » Wed Sep 16, 2015 2:05 pm

Cygnus_X1 wrote:... is very simply a case of demanding 'where is the evidence ?'. To me that is all one needs to say about these cases. It's not for sceptics to prove that this isn't life after death, but for believers to prove that it is !

To the point. Succinct. And absolutely correct.

 Shen1986" There could even be a more better explanation then the anesthesiologist and that means they all were in a shock because a person is going to die by them and this could screw your nerves and you start to believe in strange things and even a hallucination with a feeling of a presence:"

Cygnus_X1Wed Sep 16, 2015 2:53 pm
This is an example of what I mean by the scepticism clutching at even more straws than the story.
The guy is a professional surgeon who has done loads of operations and had loads of people die on him. There's no particular reason why this case should be any different. It's highly unlikely that a professional medic with many years experience would experience 'shock' at the very regular occurrence of someone dying on the operating table. Nor does it explain why two trained medics would both experience this alleged 'presence'.

Also, once you start arguing that even the medics ( as well as the patient, one assumes ) are having hallucinations then you really do enter 'swamp gas' territory...as you could simply respond 'hallucination' to practically anything. How do I know my wife sitting next to me now isn't a hallucination ? Maybe the fly on a wall over there is a hallucination.

To my mind, the essence of science and scepticism is that the sceptic doesn't have to actually prove anything. The entire burden of proof is on the person claiming that these incidents provide evidence for life after death. And none of these anecdotal stories really prove anything of the sort. They are interesting, but inconclusive. That's all a sceptic really needs to say.

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=22188

Some of that I agree with Tim, but not all. For one thing, there's the tag 'believers' which has been discussed many times here and at Skeptiko. I take it as somewhat as a derogatory term myself, though I don't insist that others agree with me, I do have some quirky opinions, and I acknowledge that.

Then there's the whole "it's up to someone else to prove it" when science itself is not based upon proof (that belongs in the realm of mathematics), but of falsifiability. I'd also ask, does no-one have any curiosity of their own? If something turns up which is considered to be "inconclusive", then why not investigate the phenomenon, conduct research, rather than waiting to shoot down everyone else's findings? If the whole thing is so deeply uninteresting, why even comment at all? I don't know, I find there is something which is being left unsaid, the 'reading between the lines' meaning, which I think tells a somewhat different story of what is really happening in these types of discussions.

I don't see why its so absurd to speculate that deep brain structures may still be active enough to construct some experiences, some of the time

The problem with that is, it means radically changing the current scientific understanding of how the brain works. I'm a layperson (not an expert) but this information is available to us all and apparently, in order to create lucid well structured thought processes with reasoning and memory formation, the brain needs to work in totality (the whole brain together, particularly the cortex).

After cardiac arrest, blood flow ceases in one second and 10-20 seconds later, there is no measurable electric activity. The brain stem also ceases to function as can be demonstrated by loss of the gag and eye reflexes. So when does the NDE occur ?

When a person has a cardiac arrest, they flop/drop down dead. They don't have time to start constructing elaborate scenarios (of out of body experiences and dead relatives). The experience therefore can't occur just before the arrest, so does it occur after the heart has been re-started ?

The problem with this is that patients can recall sequences of events that occurred during the period when their heart was stopped... and when they come to after a few minutes (occasionally) or more often hours later (apparently), they are confused with loss of memory about what occurred...but with the exception of a very clear memory of their NDE (in 10-20% of patients ) 

So when does the experience occur ? And this puzzle has lead to desperation amongst sceptics because they know the games up. But in order to continue to hold onto their world view, they're now open to basically anything at all as demonstrated by the recent excitement amongst their ranks, when brain researchers demonstrated that brain cells can still be viable after an hour or two hours of no blood flow.

Nothing to do with consciousness; the patients were brain dead (with devastating head injuries) and the researchers had being given consent to put probes deep into their brain to test the viability of cells (timewise) after life support was withdrawn.

That's it...but lo and behold, this was then hailed as the latest possible explanation for NDE's. And so it goes because
for science in general, it's institutions and the materialists that control it, the notion that we have a soul (a separable mind) is simply abhorrent.

Some of that I agree with Tim, but not all. For one thing, there's the tag 'believers' which has been discussed many times here and at Skeptiko. I take it as somewhat as a derogatory term myself, though I don't insist that others agree with me, I do have some quirky opinions, and I acknowledge that.

Then there's the whole "it's up to someone else to prove it" when science itself is not based upon proof (that belongs in the realm of mathematics), but of falsifiability. I'd also ask, does no-one have any curiosity of their own? If something turns up which is considered to be "inconclusive", then why not investigate the phenomenon, conduct research, rather than waiting to shoot down everyone else's findings? If the whole thing is so deeply uninteresting, why even comment at all? I don't know, I find there is something which is being left unsaid, the 'reading between the lines' meaning, which I think tells a somewhat different story of what is really happening in these types of discussions.

Again, I agree, Typoz.

I've posted this Italian documentary before but the producer has subsequently (very kindly) provided English subtitles. The translation is not perfect (nor should we expect it to be). There are instances where he should be she for example but it's perfectly good enough to get the drift. 

All in all, a good documentary with some very pleasant scenery. I personally found the information provided by Anna Siboni, very compelling and David Vaccarin's subsequent "conversion" but others, of course may disagree.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0flr8aZo7A

Very interesting as an italian I can understand it perfectly. DR Davide Vaccarin published a book in which he writes some experiences and, maybe most importantly, compares them with hallucinations happening under the effect of different drugs. He points out similarities, but also notes that many elements are different for sure, so he comes to the conclusion that NDEs aren't caused just by chemicals.
I also like the docomuntary as there is nothing "pacchiano" as we say in italy, nothing graphically exagerated.

Very interesting as an italian I can understand it perfectly. DR Davide Vaccarin published a book in which he writes some experiences and, maybe most importantly, compares them with hallucinations happening under the effect of different drugs. He points out similarities, but also notes that many elements are different for sure, so he comes to the conclusion that NDEs aren't caused just by chemicals.
I also like the docomuntary as there is nothing "pacchiano" as we say in italy, nothing graphically exagerated.

Hi, Raf

I've got a David Vaccarin interview (amongst others) translated into English (somewhere) but I can't post it (Forum rules). I think it's heartening to see that these experiences are just the same (more or less) everywhere. It should make us realise that language, although a barrier, is of no importance. Anna Siboni is no different from Penny Sartori ….David Vaccarin from Jeff Long...etc (obviously)

Your English is excellent BTW !

Well, the eye explanation fails pretty badly in that specific case.. (see below - https://www.dailygrail.com/2014/02/heart...n-science/) but I can see how it might explain some other phenomenon, some of the time. As a lucid dreamer and out of body explorer, one experience I had while in bed was the experience of leaving my body and traveling into the home next door, I saw clearly the neighbor had several women over which was unusual and they were talking. I woke myself up after some time, and saw a woman just where I had left her, on the front step of our duplex. However my first explanation of the event was not that it was a veridical experience but rather in the heightened sensory period of waking sleep I may have constructed from idle chatter the experience.


I don't see why its so absurd to speculate that deep brain structures may still be active enough to construct some experiences, some of the time - though I agree it does not appear credible in that specific case.

From the article.
"…This was not a hoax, no way, this was as real as it gets. We were
absolutely shocked that he would come back after 20 or more minutes,
we had pronounced him dead on the operating room table and told the
wife that he had died.
…we thought all along his description was quite accurate regarding things he said he saw or heard. Patients’ eyes are always shut during surgery, most of the time they are taped so they do not open since this can cause injury to the corneas."

There still can be a good few minutes of potential firing available, nothing that would necessarily be picked up by medical EEG. But medical EEG is only measuring the post synaptic potential anyway, it can’t measure the actual firing, and it needs the post synaptic power from something over 1/4 million neurons to be able to measure anything anyway.

The classic hospital NDE /OBE on the operating table during anesthesia, seems to have recollections from around the time of the cardiac arrest/resuscitation... which is difficult to explain using conventional ideas about how the brain works, but we don’t understand how consciousness works, or how anesthesia works on it either.

What’s even harder to explain conventionally in these cases, is how colours, textures and patterns are apparently recalled, because it seems unlikely that auditory stimulus alone could convey this information.

As Typoz says, this becomes incredibly hard to explain where recalled information apparently comes from locations that are out of both visual and auditory range of these patients.

That said, I don’t think for one second that something is leaving the body, that too is just another conventional attempt to explain these recalled experiences.

We’re going to have to reach much further for a satisfactory explanation. There are glimpses of what may be going on in lots of different scientific studies, and from other anomolous human experiences.

The world that we experience seems to be processed into existence, but the raw stuff that has been processed is not the world, it’s something else, something information-like, that is stored very differently from the world we experience.

It seems pretty clear that this is a shared world that we experience, and that it is processed into existence by sharing as well. It’s the little malfunctions and anomolous experiences which keep giving this away. People getting access to information, that they really shouldn’t have access to, using conventional explanations.

I think the implications are profound, and it seems clear to me that these ideas have been guessed at (and probably understood in many different ways), by some, for many many years.

Hi, Raf

I've got a David Vaccarin interview (amongst others) translated into English (somewhere) but I can't post it (Forum rules). I think it's heartening to see that these experiences are just the same (more or less) everywhere. It should make us realise that language, although a barrier, is of no importance. Anna Siboni is no different from Penny Sartori ….David Vaccarin from Jeff Long...etc (obviously)

Your English is excellent BTW !

Thank you Tim! I'm graduating in foreign languages, but to be honest I just had a natural gift for the English language I never had to study much for it... I wish that had been the same for other subjects of study

Indeed, although rarer some NDE research is going on also in Italy. I would have liked Anna Siboni to conduct some work like Penny, but she mostly just kept a diary of what happened in the hospital. Still very interesting.

If you ever need something translated from or into Italian just let me know