Meditation-induced near death experiences

[Ninshub]

Apologies if someone has posted this already.

New study suggests existence of meditation-induced near-death experiences

March 27, 2018, University of Derby
 
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-m...death.html

New research by the University of Derby into near-death experiences (NDEs) has shown that they can be induced through meditation, with wider implications for our understanding of the phenomena and our ability to examine what happens to an individual during an NDE.

In the first study of its kind, Dr. William Van Gordon, from the University's Centre for Psychological Research, followed 10 advanced Buddhist meditators from eight different countries over a three-year period. He compared meditation-induced NDEs to other regular meditation practices and assessed their defining features to ensure they met the criteria of a conventional NDE.

Participants reported that during the meditation-induced NDE, they visited non-worldly realms, experienced what happens during and after death, and experienced a state of existence known as 'emptiness'. Compared to regular forms of meditation, the meditation-induced NDE led to a five-fold increase in mystical experiences and a four-fold increase in feelings of non-attachment. Findings also demonstrated that the profundity of the meditation-induced NDE increased across the three-year study period, suggesting that the experience can be learned and perfected over time.

Apologies if someone has posted this already.

New study suggests existence of meditation-induced near-death experiences

March 27, 2018, University of Derby
 
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-m...death.html

Courtesy of the Daily Grail - this now seems to have been published in a different journal (Mindfulness) and is available online:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...018-0922-3

Here are some comments on the paper at the PsyPost website:
https://www.psypost.org/2018/12/study-of...cted-52732

If it's meditation induced how is it near death? Are these people stopping their hearts or something?

I guess I'll just have to read to find out.

If it's meditation induced how is it near death? Are these people stopping their hearts or something?

I must say I can't find a definition in the paper of what the authors actually mean by a meditation-induced NDE. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Ninshub]

Another notable Tibetan Buddhist text is Delok: Journey to the Realms Beyond Death (Drolma 1995) that recounts the author’s experience of being a delog. According to Tibetan Buddhism, delogs are individuals that experience (sometimes lasting hours or even days) NDEs and subsequently share their experiences as a means of assisting other spiritual practitioners (Baily 2001). In line with the content of each of the aforementioned Tibetan Buddhist works, the Dalai Lama (2006) asserted that at the moment of death, a state of consciousness briefly manifests in all human beings which has the properties of being subtle, spontaneous, and without self-grasping. The Dalai Lama (2006) also asserted that experienced meditators can deliberately induce this state during meditation such that when it naturally occurs at death, they can recognise and sustain it.

Based on this paragraph, I think they're alluding to NDEs that were not caused by actually being in a state of clinical death. The literature around NDEs usually does not use the term to mean that it includes only actually-near-death conditions (see IANDS' definition: A near-death experience, or NDE, is a profound psychological event that may occur to a person close to death or who is not near death but in a situation of physical or emotional crisis), although some scholars differentiate the latter and label them with another acronym, I forget what actually.

I wonder how this compares to the experiences of OBE practitioners who embark upon visits to the post-mortem realms (thinking, in particular, of Jurgen Ziewe). Obviously, those experiences too are not actually near-death though bear some similarities.

I wonder how this compares to the experiences of OBE practitioners who embark upon visits to the post-mortem realms (thinking, in particular, of Jurgen Ziewe). Obviously, those experiences too are not actually near-death though bear some similarities.

That’s funny, because I was thinking about Jurgen Ziewe too while pondering Mediocre’s post. 
I get the feeling that he’s somewhat defensive about talking of NDEs and NDErs, as he has no doubt experienced something similar during OBEs. I get the strong impression that he’d like to think they’re the same, but I think there are differences. As far as I know he hasn’t written about developing psychically as many NDErs experience.

"Participants reported that during the meditation-induced NDE, they visited non-worldly realms, experienced what happens during and after death, and experienced a state of existence known as 'emptiness'. Compared to regular forms of meditation, the meditation-induced NDE led to a five-fold increase in mystical experiences and a four-fold increase in feelings of non-attachment. Findings also demonstrated that the profundity of the meditation-induced NDE increased across the three-year study period, suggesting that the experience can be learned and perfected over time."

It seems that anything can be called a near death experience these days, someone performing a high risk 'activity', some volunteers experimenting with 'substances' or an important business that nearly goes into liquidation. What exactly were these mystical experiences reported ? And a four fold increase in non attachment (interest in worldly things) ? What's the big deal with that ? And anyway, some people that are actually dead are still very much interested in worldly things, relatives out in the hallway, shoes on window ledges, post it notes...

I believe (I might be wrong) that it's a cynical attempt to downgrade the importance and the unique nature of the real experience (because the implications are not welcome) which by and large is something of a vastly different magnitude to what is alluded to above. And that grade of experience usually only occurs when people have actually died (cardiac arrest).

Another good example of the limitation's of the Greyson scale perhaps...?

Self-score 16 questions... get a total score of 7 or more and you had an NDE, get a total score below 7 and you didn't have an NDE. A researcher gets to compare pears with pears (mediators), on the basis of 16 questions, but then suggests similarity between pears (meditators) with apples (everybody else with a score over 6).

Possibly more meaningful, as you say, to compare a known physiological state (i.e. cardiac arrest) - so one can compare apples with apples, and ensure *all* experiences recalled following cardiac arrest are relevant, even if they would have scored less than 7.

The Greyson Scale may have it's uses, when used appropriately to select a sub-group of experients to compare, for example Pim van Lommel 2001, it may for instance, show some correlation with the severity of cardiac arrest. But honestly, it doesn't say whether one had an NDE or not (doesn't even count distressing experiences)... and is often used inappropriately by researchers.

Maybe Max but it doesn't really matter (does it?) if the scale is not quite perfect. People know when they've had one.