NDE Multimedia Resource Thread

[Ninshub]

Is there any way to see that Burnside account without signing up to the BBC website? I gather the answer is no, but just checking in case it's available in fashion somewhere else.

Is there any way to see that Burnside account without signing up to the BBC website? I gather the answer is no, but just checking in case it's available in fashion somewhere else.

Sorry, Ian, I don't think there is. It's not a long report. He was naked lying on a hospital gurney in terrible discomfort because he couldn't breathe (I think the medics thought he was already as good as dead) and then his heart stopped (he said and I think it did) and he then saw himself as "this big, huge slab of meat" and he felt detached from it 

"That was me lying there, but I looked at that thing I was seeing. as it were, from the outside. This (my) body lying  there. I'll never forget it. It was kind of gross to me, like this piece of meat is dying" (he later desribed it as a larval mass, moist)

Then he was surrounded by light etc and became part of it (which is familar to us all on here). This short piece is from the New Statesman but includes a larger telling of the story (in a moving essay for this magazine <- click on the link below) 

In the spring of 2020, the poet, novelist and New Statesman writer John Burnside found himself struggling to breathe. As many might have done, Burnside assumed this was Covid-19 – in fact, it was heart failure combined with a lung infection. When he became increasingly confused, Burnside was rushed to the nearest hospital’s “red zone”, where staff told his wife to “prepare for the worst”. Burnside wrote about these days in a moving essay for this magazine. It was not so much a near-death experience, as an experience of death and return to life, Lazarus-like.

More than two years on, Burnside is reflective. In John Burnside: From the Other Side, he explains how he felt he was surrounded by light. “Not in it, but with it, or part of it. The light was as much as me as I was – there was no differentiation… and it seemed to be everywhere, going on forever.” At the same time, he felt calm and at peace – and willing to leave the world of the living behind. He felt he was “on the point of becoming the light – dissipating into the light. I was upset that my children wouldn’t be able to see me… But it was almost like: that’s his problem. The old me.”

This remarkable programme is more than one man’s experience. Dr Penny Sartori, a senior lecturer at Swansea University who was a nurse in intensive care for 17 years, has spent much of her career researching near-death experiences (NDEs). She explains that many people describe sensations like Burnside’s. Mothers who have NDEs in childbirth report feeling acceptance about leaving their child behind – leading to strong sensations of guilt in the aftermath. Many people report a new sense of serenity that stays with them for months, even years, afterwards. These accounts have significant implications – possibly contradicting the widely held scientific belief that our consciousness exists in brain activity. To make sense of what happened to him, Burnside turns to visual art, fiction and poetry – from Emily Dickinson to William Burroughs. Still, it is his own words on the experience – in both poetry and speech – that are the most powerful.

How near-death experiences change people - New Statesman

Just as an aside, if this is just a retrospective confabulation, based on the need to fill in information gaps in the brain, as sceptics like to believe, why did he refer to what he saw in such a derogatory way with such revulsion. Surely a brain based confabulation would have been "dressed up" a bit nicer ? 

Without going back to check exactly what he said, I agree, that is what I remember. But...I contacted him (not to lobby him, and try to change his mind) and had a really interesting exchange and he sent me a link to a paper from Italian professor and NDE researcher, Professor Enricco Facco, who I was already very familiar with. But of course, I didn't tell him that. 

Burnside still works in academia and you can't say you went to the afterlife or "heaven".. believe me (or I would hope you believe me but you are of course not obliged to) or not.

I think it is possible that Burnside's continuing to disbelieve in any possibility of there really being an afterlife even after having a transformative NDE-like experience is due to the phenomenon of continued closed-minded stubborn denial of the paranormal even after a normally life-changing transcendental NDE, something that has apparently happened with a few totally dedicated materialists. They apparently will deny any significance to such an intense personal experience because of a combination of dedication to intellectuality over any other sides of mental life, and fear of having made a drastic mistake in dedicating their life to materialism. Such a person's intellectual side is so strong and dominant that they can apparently dismiss even an intense personal NDE as pure hallucination. It might be seen as extreme aversion to cognitive dissonance - it's just too painful to believe that they have wasted their life.

[Ninshub]

Sorry, Ian, I don't think there is. It's not a long report. He was naked lying on a hospital gurney in terrible discomfort because he couldn't breathe (I think the medics thought he was already as good as dead) and then his heart stopped (he said and I think it did) and he then saw himself as "this big, huge slab of meat" and he felt detached from it 

"That was me lying there, but I looked at that thing I was seeing. as it were, from the outside. This (my) body lying  there. I'll never forget it. It was kind of gross to me, like this piece of meat is dying" (he later desribed it as a larval mass, moist)

Then he was surrounded by light etc and became part of it (which is familar to us all on here). This short piece is from the New Statesman but includes a larger telling of the story (in a moving essay for this magazine <- click on the link below) 

In the spring of 2020, the poet, novelist and New Statesman writer John Burnside found himself struggling to breathe. As many might have done, Burnside assumed this was Covid-19 – in fact, it was heart failure combined with a lung infection. When he became increasingly confused, Burnside was rushed to the nearest hospital’s “red zone”, where staff told his wife to “prepare for the worst”. Burnside wrote about these days in a moving essay for this magazine. It was not so much a near-death experience, as an experience of death and return to life, Lazarus-like.

More than two years on, Burnside is reflective. In John Burnside: From the Other Side, he explains how he felt he was surrounded by light. “Not in it, but with it, or part of it. The light was as much as me as I was – there was no differentiation… and it seemed to be everywhere, going on forever.” At the same time, he felt calm and at peace – and willing to leave the world of the living behind. He felt he was “on the point of becoming the light – dissipating into the light. I was upset that my children wouldn’t be able to see me… But it was almost like: that’s his problem. The old me.”

This remarkable programme is more than one man’s experience. Dr Penny Sartori, a senior lecturer at Swansea University who was a nurse in intensive care for 17 years, has spent much of her career researching near-death experiences (NDEs). She explains that many people describe sensations like Burnside’s. Mothers who have NDEs in childbirth report feeling acceptance about leaving their child behind – leading to strong sensations of guilt in the aftermath. Many people report a new sense of serenity that stays with them for months, even years, afterwards. These accounts have significant implications – possibly contradicting the widely held scientific belief that our consciousness exists in brain activity. To make sense of what happened to him, Burnside turns to visual art, fiction and poetry – from Emily Dickinson to William Burroughs. Still, it is his own words on the experience – in both poetry and speech – that are the most powerful.

How near-death experiences change people - New Statesman

Just as an aside, if this is just a retrospective confabulation, based on the need to fill in information gaps in the brain, as sceptics like to believe, why did he refer to what he saw in such a derogatory way with such revulsion. Surely a brain based confabulation would have been "dressed up" a bit nicer ? 

Thanks for all that tim!

[Ninshub]

I think it is possible that Burnside's continuing to disbelieve in any possibility of there really being an afterlife even after having a transformative NDE-like experience is due to the phenomenon of continued closed-minded stubborn denial of the paranormal even after a normally life-changing transcendental NDE, something that has apparently happened with a few totally dedicated materialists. They apparently will deny any significance to such an intense personal experience because of a combination of dedication to intellectuality over any other sides of mental life, and fear of having made a drastic mistake in dedicating their life to materialism. Such a person's intellectual side is so strong and dominant that they can apparently dismiss even an intense personal NDE as pure hallucination. It might be seen as extreme aversion to cognitive dissonance - it's just too painful to believe that they have wasted their life.

I don't know if that's an accurate description of what explains Burnside's reaction and pronouncements, nb, and I wouldn't be in a place to know that, but I think you've articulated there a very eloquent and intuitively convincing of what explains such pronouncements in others.

I think it is possible that Burnside's continuing to disbelieve in any possibility of there really being an afterlife

That was exactly how I interpreted his statements, but after he sent me a couple of emails, I knew I had interpreted them wrong. Obviously I can't produce them here but to paraphrase just a little of what he wrote :

We should be accepting of near death experiences and not just reject them as anecdotal. He believes consiousness is prmary. 

(my two cents) Belief in an afterlife is considered to be the most contemptible nonsense in academia. You are simply not allowed to invoke anything supernatural, religious or spiritual. Science is what they believe in, nothing else.

That was exactly how I interpreted his statements, but after he sent me a couple of emails, I knew I had interpreted them wrong. Obviously I can't produce them here but to paraphrase just a little of what he wrote :

We should be accepting of near death experiences and not just reject them as anecdotal. He believes consiousness is prmary. 

(my two cents) Belief in an afterlife is considered to be the most contemptible nonsense in academia. You are simply not allowed to invoke anything supernatural, religious or spiritual. Science is what they believe in, nothing else.

It looks as if based mainly on his personal NDE he might really consider spirit and an afterlife as probable, but if he is in academia he knows he has to tread extremely carefully in order to protect his career. This means endorsing the least threatening (to the religion of scientism-istic materialism) philosophy of mind beyond materialism (coming into some limited acceptance in academia - what could be interpreted as panpsychism), and on NDEs only making remarks vaguely favoring their being at least something beyond mere hallucinations, with no mention of the possibility of actual "soul" or "spirit" experiences. This of course carefully avoids directly mentioning any of the forbidden taboo words like "afterlife" and "spirit" or any mention of the obvious major spiritual/paranormal implications of the reality of NDEs, and his stratagem limits use of the loaded word "NDE" as much as possible. Leaving his position on this issue as seen by his potentially hostile colleagues as ambiguous as possible and triggering as few "heresy alarms" as possible while avoiding any outright lies.

but if he is in academia he knows he has to tread extremely carefully in order to protect his career.

I don't think John Burnside (in particular) is that bothered about his career prospects now, he's already right at the top, nbtruthman. He's recently just achieved something unprecedented (award wise). For anyone interested just google his name, it'll come up. I take your point about the rest of it, though.

I (relatively) recently contacted two well known academics, both of which have written books offering materialist physiological explanations for near death experiences. One of them was quite surprised to learn the facts about the Pam Reynolds case for instance and the denture case (he had written about them I believe in his book and had reproduced all the incorrect sceptical objections). I felt I had to contact him because of what I'd read which I knew to be incorrect. 

I won't go into detail but he did accept what I was telling him and was sort of bemused (not knowing what to say, I guess). His book was already out and he can hardly put in a caveat admitting that he's written a load of nonsense. A well known anaesthesiologist had influenced him, sadly.

The other academic was also interested enough to have a long email exchange and I got to the bottom of where he was, how he could justify his immovable materialist, mind equals brain and that's it, position.

Every single case study I sent him he said he was intrigued by. However, his position was that they are all still anecdotal and he will not accept them as evidence as we have been (historically) fooled before, he said. I pressed him further, explaining that the case of the 57 year old man in the aware study (for instance) was not an anecdote, as it was collected during a clinical trial looking for that effect.

He said the man hadn't seen the target in the room, so unfortunately it's still only an anecdote. I said the man didn't have his arrest in a room with a target in place. so how could he. He replied that he didn't know about that and then challenged me to a public debate at a university. Right, yeah, lol, that's really likely to happen. Anyway,  he was quite charming and polite but that's what the bottom line is with these guys.

I don't think John Burnside (in particular) is that bothered about his career prospects now, he's already right at the top, nbtruthman. He's recently just achieved something unprecedented (award wise). For anyone interested just google his name, it'll come up. I take your point about the rest of it, though.

From the BBC Radio programme linked in a previous post, it seemed to me that Burnside was a poet and writer. I don't think a poet's career path is constrained in the way that that of a scientist might be. I think his views are simply his views.

He replied that he didn't know about that and then challenged me to a public debate at a university. Right, yeah, lol, that's really likely to happen. Anyway,  he was quite charming and polite but that's what the bottom line is with these guys.

I always think that a public debate is more of a spectacle, like a boxing match or maybe a theatrical play. At the end, it is necessary to dig out the research and study it in depth - which is what you had been doing, step-by-step in an email exchange.

Well done for having the enthusiasm and knowledge of the cases to engage people like that.