NDE article with physicalist interpretation, feelings discussed

Maybe , many of us visit other sites , and it’s the same people, talking in other places , other nde blogs or forums , but this place seems to be quiet . 

I saw the following article on Friday , the 17th, and see dialogue about it , as the AWARE blog , but thought it was interesting .

One thing I notice about articles like this , that I’ve posted about and commented on previously , is that it seems I am moving my own “goal posts” to try to support what could be , contradicting evidence , to what I want to believe .

If the following article proves accurate ; that those with NDE’s have more complex stuff going on in their brain… I know we can argue , “when did NDE happen?”, does it correlate with when OBE occurred , etc … but bottom line for me … I assumed these things happened with NOTHING happening in the Brain, essentially , but now things r happening, maybe .

Not sure why it bothers me . We know experiences like this are not just at clinical death. Fear death experiences , feeling out of body while still alive like those who practice OBE stuff, for example . So I don’t know . 

Just sharing thoughts and feelings in real time … hoping to generate some dialogue :

https://nautil.us/the-new-science-of-the...ce-1279957

Not sure why it bothers me . We know experiences like this are not just at clinical death. Fear death experiences , feeling out of body while still alive like those who practice OBE stuff, for example . So I don’t know . 

You're correct in mentioning these other physical circumstances under which such experiences can take place. I've always seen the positive side to this, such that for example oxygen deprivation or other factors such as drugs cannot be a proper explanation of NDEs.

I know others tend to prefer the 'ideal' of a completely non-functioning brain, though a problem I see with that is the formation of memories seems to usually require some brain function. Having said that, memory is strange, people can experience memory loss where several hours can disappear from someone's recall, again this may occur in a normally functioning brain too. But when it come to NDEs, sometimes a person initially remembers little or nothing, and then the full recall can happen days or weeks or much longer after the event.

Personally I have no answers, I don't know where or how memories are stored, though past-life recall would imply that it cannot be simply a function of the physical brain.

I think part of the problem is simply the inability to understand or have language for . Like my Labrador trying to understand algebra . The couch I’m sitting on while I write this , is solid to me ; I’m sitting on it .  But really it’s “empty space” with a bunch of molecules spinning around it at insane speeds or whatever quantum physics would say … 

When “we” die , and “travel” thru a tunnel .. to me it’s like a “lighter” or “see thru” or more “ethereal” version of me .. but what if I’m “love” or energy or “awareness”, what does that even mean . I think of it as “floating eyeballs” but the reality may be something I can’t understand . To me , I wanna watch football with my dad in the afterlife when I’m dead , but maybe I’m just “energy”, a “ball of consciousness “… what does that “mean?”

Looking again at the article referenced in the opening post, researcher Charlotte Martial of the University of Liege takes a minimalist approach to the phenomena. For example "When you meet entities or when you feel as though you’re out of your body, those are non-ordinary states of consciousness caused by disturbed perception."

By restricting the area under consideration it is possible to ignore evidence which is 'out of scope' for the study. For example Shared Death Experience are omitted from consideration, as is most evidence that the experience might be more than just an abnormal mental state. Though in fairness, the issue of precognition is mentioned,

Some features of NDEs are still difficult to explain, such as precognition. Some people seem to report future events that are later confirmed. But so far, this hasn’t been properly tested.

I think in practice, laboratory type studies just don't capture this sort of detail, a rich set of experiences occur in the wide variety of real-world situations. Those real-world events tend to be reported one way or another because of their outstanding and inexplicable characteristics. Studies under controlled conditions as in this case, hit the problem of small sample sizes, 180 patients in total, 12 NDEs reported. That's a fairly good success rate, relatively speaking, but we don't know whether the other 168 patients might have all had NDEs but just don't remember. It comes down to the problem not of what physical circumstances correspond with an NDE but instead, what circumstances cause memory loss.

One other thought, triggered by a loose chain of thought responding to the mention of researcher "Rick Moody". I'm guessing that 'Rick' may have been derived from a mangling of George Ritchie, who described his own NDE. But returning to Raymond Moody, author of the influential "Life After Life", I can't help but wonder whether there may have been a disservice in that choice of book title. It has led to people spending time and energy speculating about an afterlife. While it seems to me that the overwhelming message conveyed through numerous NDEs is to reconsider and evaluate how we are living in THIS life.

As someone who has reason to consider past (and by extension future) lives to be real, the one thing it has emphasised to me is that dwelling on the past or speculating on the future has its place, but how we live now, today is the real message.

Maybe , many of us visit other sites , and it’s the same people, talking in other places , other nde blogs or forums , but this place seems to be quiet . 

I saw the following article on Friday , the 17th, and see dialogue about it , as the AWARE blog , but thought it was interesting .

One thing I notice about articles like this , that I’ve posted about and commented on previously , is that it seems I am moving my own “goal posts” to try to support what could be , contradicting evidence , to what I want to believe .

If the following article proves accurate ; that those with NDE’s have more complex stuff going on in their brain… I know we can argue , “when did NDE happen?”, does it correlate with when OBE occurred , etc … but bottom line for me … I assumed these things happened with NOTHING happening in the Brain, essentially , but now things r happening, maybe .

Not sure why it bothers me . We know experiences like this are not just at clinical death. Fear death experiences , feeling out of body while still alive like those who practice OBE stuff, for example . So I don’t know . 

Just sharing thoughts and feelings in real time … hoping to generate some dialogue :

https://nautil.us/the-new-science-of-the...ce-1279957

I'm definitely more quiet nowdays, I found the constant discussions about NDEs for me to driven more by a compulsive type of thinking than genuine interest. Definitely feel more healthy now that I don't give the whole topic as much attention. 

I think it's important to be conscious about the way we think and approach NDEs on the whole. I know that certainly my ideas about them have changed much over time, but the things that have most difficult to explain mostly still seem as difficult to explain. Things like fear death experiences have been known about in the literature for a long time, as well as people who practice OBEs. There's certainly differences between these types of things and regular NDEs so I don't give them much attention. 

I like the AWARE blog but it can be a bit much sometimes. I do think it did a good job at poking some holes in the article, but it'd be interesting to see what it actually is when it comes out. I've found Martial to be one of the better physicalist NDE researchers, but I still think that she's a bit off-centre just because she doesn't like to account for the weirder parts of NDEs. 

Just some things I personally noticed in the article:

- Her thanatosis model is still extremely out there for NDEs. It's been discussed by Greyson and I think Parnia in the past and I don't think it's very realistic. Evolutionarily it doesn't make much sense and practically it doesn't even account for things like unpleasant NDEs. She admits this which is cool, but I wonder why she sticks with the theory when there seems to be such a glaring hole in it. 
- Their hypothesis that NDEs happen right before cardiac arrest is just so old and is proven not to be true. We have NDEs with timestamps from things like the AWARE study DURING cardiac arrest, we have NDEs during things like anaesthesia that completely eliminate any consciousness or memory recall. I don't know why she would be trying to push this idea. 
- And then the discussion of changing recollection of events doesn't seem to go along with established literature either. It will be interesting to see if the recollection actually changed, or if the reports seem to be more just being able to think and comprehend the experience they went through better. 

I'm not one of the people who is just hoping for Martial to switch around to the other side, but I do think that she's retreading a lot of old ground for no reason when she could be coming up with new more interesting ideas.