NDEs - brain or non-brain products

Let me be clear, I still think that the vast majority of NDEs effects support some sort of surivival. Like Pam Reynolds, loyd rudy's patient, dentures man and many other cases are pretty clear that the people having the experience were pretty much dead. Clinical death, at least. But after consciosness trascends what happens? Is it afterlife like a heaven of sorts or something else shaped by our own mind? Is light always gonna be there, and in what shape? If our afterlife is based on our disembodied mind projections we could meet captain marvel there after all ?

It seems to me, after reading both NDE reports and other sources such as mediums and channels, that the appearance of those who meet the newly deceased can be a guise in order to put the person at ease. So they might appear as someone familiar such as a relative or they might adopt the guise of a fictional character or some religious icon such as Jesus Christ. Additionally, it seems there are some spirit helpers who are there to ease the transition and that these are often the spirits of people still living in physical terms. 

What I'm trying to point out is that we don't really understand the process because we don't understand our spiritual nature beyond our physical perceptions. We tend to look for something objective and permanent - something or someone we can identify as "real". However, the nature of things beyond this limited reality may be significantly different. An environment or the appearance of a person might change according to the beliefs and expectations of the person who perceives. A dead relative might be who they appear to be or might not. And even if they are that person, they might appear as they were when last seen or as a much younger version of themselves. 

Skeptics are so eager to dismiss, they fail to consider these possibilities. She said she saw Uncle Joe but Uncle Joe is still alive - must be an hallucination: case closed. Not so fast, buddy: look a little deeper.

I'm not questioning the personal importance the obe has for some. What skeptics question is the one and only rightful conclusion that something left the body. There are no hard supportive facts for that. What you think of as truth is best described as personal truth which is never to be confused with factually universal truths, such as water is wet, dry ice is cold, some germs cause human disease... .

I can understand what you mean, but I suppose you start from a flawed logic. First of all, we aren't obvesrving anything that can be felt or touched, so we have to rely on witness testimony and anectodes, a bit like what you would in an investigation. Police question witnesses and their accounts are very important in court and for the case, although they aren't hard factsbecause we are dealing with something that can't be evaluated only with hard facts. We have to use evidence.

Secondly,skeptics are unwilling to study the phenomenon and rely on handwaving it away or resort to older idea like anoxia, which have been proven false. Most of the skeptics idea are hypothesis at best, yet they conduct no studies on the subject because they think those hypothesis do not need validation. Look at dying brain, or neurons flaring, nothing of that is a hard supportive fact, nothing has been verified. Paradoxically, there are more verified OBEs than skeptics ideas on the subject.

Then, we have the number of verified accounts. Pam Reynolds has been explained by skeptics with anesthesia awareness, but it is flawed for several reasons:

1. Anesthesia Awareness is generally a very disturbing experience, sometimes so horrible it leads to PTSD or suicide. In a few rare cases it isn't very distressing, but purely pleasurable or even paradisiac anesthesia awareness is nearly impossible. There is a reason as to why you can sue the hospital if it happens, after all. In this weird, nearly unique case of heavenly anesthesia awareness she had fully functioning hearing but no sens of touch, not even pressure. She basically had the senses outside of her body, but no awareness of anthing happening to her physical body.
   
2. Pam witnessed may hidden objects, as her eyes were taped. The idea is she reconstructed it all "daredevil style" from sound alone, and it looks already a very difficult task. She had to do this while being heavily sedated and in some form of anesthesia awareness not being registered on the EEG and, also, in hypothermia. It sounds like a feat no human could ever do, doesn't it?
   
3. Then she understood conversation and music, while having the loud clicks playing in her ears through molded and taped earbuds. Could she listen to conversation around her? Probably. Could she totally ignore those loud clicks, loud enough to actually be a horrible experience after less then a minute (you can try it yourself with a free program) originating directly inside her ears? I'd say not. If she "neurologically filtered" out the noises in some way, she would have recalled at least a form of background noise, and a pretty strong one too. After all, if you listen to a conversation on trafficked street you are aware of the noise around you, and that noise isn't originating inside your ear, making everything much more difficult to ignore. So, she totally ignored loud clicks in her ears while perfectly understanding voices and music coming from outside, with molded and taped earphones on. Odd, really odd coincidence for her to not register the only thing noise that was originating inside her body, the only noise that sombody outside her body couldn't hear.
   
4. The EEG must have malfunctioned all the time, as her awareness lasted fro a long time and in two different occasions.
   
5. She witnessed her own resuscitation attempt before the first shock. Was it a false memory? So accurate as to recall precisely the two shocks needed, no more no less. At that time, she was at 27 degrees celsious a temperature at which consciousness or awareness is probably impossible to have. Even if it wasn't for the severe hypothermia, she had no blood flow to brain, no pulse, no vital signs as the resuscitation procedure had yet to start.
   

And, that's it. To believe that the "truth" lies in gerry/skeptical explaination means that you believe an horrendous amount of coincidenses happened, and even with coincidence the report is so accurate that it can't be explained without a very accurate investigation. Skeptics never spoke to her surgeons, for some weird reason, while proponents did. Her surgeons, and basicallyat BARROWS, where pretty sure she couldn't be awake during that kind of operation.

This is just one case, but there have been many others strong nearly as much as Pam's one. There is no truth of any kind in skeptic propositions, their answers are just coded into whatever they think more appropriate to describe the phenomenon without wanting to take a deeper look into it. It just isn't science at this point. If a phenomenon is happing frequently and doesn't fit your medical or scientific fundamentals, you have to take a deep and very accurate look at it. You can't just hand wave it all away and tell people that you have "the truth", whatever the truth even really means. Just think about antidepressants, do they work? Maybe, it depends on the subject. We dont even know how they function properly, some psychiatric drugs such as lithium we don't understand at all. We just know that they give marginal, yet usually significant, better results than placebo. But it surely isn't a hard fact that they work, in many cases they don't and sometimes placebo performed as good or even better than them. Yet they are totally accepted, widely used and included in our medical paradigm, without any hard fact for them. Hard facts are really, really rare when it comes to whatever includes the mind in it.

EDIT: just look here for anesthesia awareness facts. not even once something like what Pam experienced is mentioned, and not in her operations which features the deepest possible sedation. Anesthesia Awareness is usually also very short, lucky for us (but unlike Pam's case), but even in brief cases it is stated:
"Patients who experience even minor awareness can still be disturbed by the experience and may experience nightmares and flashbacks. More severe cases can result in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therapy is often recommended for patients who experience traumatic anesthesia awareness, and should be sought as soon as the patient is physically able." (avaiable at https://www.verywellhealth.com/anesthesi...on-3157014)
Doesn't sounds like Pam's experience at all.

Again, on the subject read this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1217310176 and it states "Most respondents reported feeling pain and/or burning and other tactile feelings such as pressure (72%) or feeling something in their mouth or throat(44%, Fig. 1, Table 3). Most also experienced anxiety, fear and/or panic during their anaesthetic. Less common experiences included seeing lights or light (38%), or sensations of taste or smell (21%). Assessment of the awareness experience using the Michigan classification, indicated that 75% experienced pain and paralysis, and 93% experienced distress (Fig. 2).
Further down, you'll some actual reports of anesthesia awareness. It doesn't sound like heaven at all, it sounds like hell, a terrible man made hell. And it's very, very far from what happened to Pam.

I can understand what you mean, but I suppose you start from a flawed logic. First of all, we aren't obvesrving anything that can be felt or touched, so we have to rely on witness testimony and anectodes, a bit like what you would in an investigation. Police question witnesses and their accounts are very important in court and for the case, although they aren't hard factsbecause we are dealing with something that can't be evaluated only with hard facts. We have to use evidence.

Secondly,skeptics are unwilling to study the phenomenon and rely on handwaving it away or resort to older idea like anoxia, which have been proven false. Most of the skeptics idea are hypothesis at best, yet they conduct no studies on the subject because they think those hypothesis do not need validation. Look at dying brain, or neurons flaring, nothing of that is a hard supportive fact, nothing has been verified. Paradoxically, there are more verified OBEs than skeptics ideas on the subject.

Then, we have the number of verified accounts. Pam Reynolds has been explained by skeptics with anesthesia awareness, but it is flawed for several reasons:

1. Anesthesia Awareness is generally a very disturbing experience, sometimes so horrible it leads to PTSD or suicide. In a few rare cases it isn't very distressing, but purely pleasurable or even paradisiac anesthesia awareness is nearly impossible. There is a reason as to why you can sue the hospital if it happens, after all. In this weird, nearly unique case of heavenly anesthesia awareness she had fully functioning hearing but no sens of touch, not even pressure. She basically had the senses outside of her body, but no awareness of anthing happening to her physical body.
   
2. Pam witnessed may hidden objects, as her eyes were taped. The idea is she reconstructed it all "daredevil style" from sound alone, and it looks already a very difficult task. She had to do this while being heavily sedated and in some form of anesthesia awareness not being registered on the EEG and, also, in hypothermia. It sounds like a feat no human could ever do, doesn't it?
   
3. Then she understood conversation and music, while having the loud clicks playing in her ears through molded and taped earbuds. Could she listen to conversation around her? Probably. Could she totally ignore those loud clicks, loud enough to actually be a horrible experience after less then a minute (you can try it yourself with a free program) originating directly inside her ears? I'd say not. If she "neurologically filtered" out the noises in some way, she would have recalled at least a form of background noise, and a pretty strong one too. After all, if you listen to a conversation on trafficked street you are aware of the noise around you, and that noise isn't originating inside your ear, making everything much more difficult to ignore. So, she totally ignored loud clicks in her ears while perfectly understanding voices and music coming from outside, with molded and taped earphones on. Odd, really odd coincidence for her to not register the only thing noise that was originating inside her body, the only noise that sombody outside her body couldn't hear.
   
4. The EEG must have malfunctioned all the time, as her awareness lasted fro a long time and in two different occasions.
   
5. She witnessed her own resuscitation attempt before the first shock. Was it a false memory? So accurate as to recall precisely the two shocks needed, no more no less. At that time, she was at 27 degrees celsious a temperature at which consciousness or awareness is probably impossible to have. Even if it wasn't for the severe hypothermia, she had no blood flow to brain, no pulse, no vital signs as the resuscitation procedure had yet to start.
   

And, that's it. To believe that the "truth" lies in gerry/skeptical explaination means that you believe an horrendous amount of coincidenses happened, and even with coincidence the report is so accurate that it can't be explained without a very accurate investigation. Skeptics never spoke to her surgeons, for some weird reason, while proponents did. Her surgeons, and basicallyat BARROWS, where pretty sure she couldn't be awake during that kind of operation.

This is just one case, but there have been many others strong nearly as much as Pam's one. There is no truth of any kind in skeptic propositions, their answers are just coded into whatever they think more appropriate to describe the phenomenon without wanting to take a deeper look into it. It just isn't science at this point. If a phenomenon is happing frequently and doesn't fit your medical or scientific fundamentals, you have to take a deep and very accurate look at it. You can't just hand wave it all away and tell people that you have "the truth", whatever the truth even really means. Just think about antidepressants, do they work? Maybe, it depends on the subject. We dont even know how they function properly, some psychiatric drugs such as lithium we don't understand at all. We just know that they give marginal, yet usually significant, better results than placebo. But it surely isn't a hard fact that they work, in many cases they don't and sometimes placebo performed as good or even better than them. Yet they are totally accepted, widely used and included in our medical paradigm, without any hard fact for them. Hard facts are really, really rare when it comes to whatever includes the mind in it.

EDIT: just look here for anesthesia awareness facts. not even once something like what Pam experienced is mentioned, and not in her operations which features the deepest possible sedation. Anesthesia Awareness is usually also very short, lucky for us (but unlike Pam's case), but even in brief cases it is stated:
"Patients who experience even minor awareness can still be disturbed by the experience and may experience nightmares and flashbacks. More severe cases can result in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therapy is often recommended for patients who experience traumatic anesthesia awareness, and should be sought as soon as the patient is physically able." (avaiable at https://www.verywellhealth.com/anesthesi...on-3157014)
Doesn't sounds like Pam's experience at all.

My argument is about how you reason your conclusion is the one and only correct conclusion. You start with a conclusion and mine the "facts" that support it. Many do this.

Oh no wait, I don't have a conclusion otherwise I would not have a pretty strong existential anxiety.  I'm absolutely not sure that what is happening is people souls (consciousness, whatever) are getting out of their bodies. What I know is that there are thousands of similar accounts and skeptics answers to this phenomena have been terribile. They either outright deny it or warp medical facts for their agenda, such as claiming that Pam had anesthesia awareness while most medics would know that AW produces totally different effects from what Pam Pam experienced.

I really don't know what is going on, but the response from the medical community seems much reductive. Cases like these should warrant attention and deep investigation by all of the medical community, not just fringe elements that get mocked by pseudoskeptics.

And of course, I talk about NDEs only. The problem is that parapsychologists also dabbled with stuff like telekinesis and so on that has never been proved and usually have been well debunked. NDEs and some mediumship accounts, in my opinion, are the only serious aspects of parapsy investigation with verifiable elements, but this lead to a lack of credibility and then mocking by the scientific community at large.

Secondly,skeptics are unwilling to study the phenomenon and rely on handwaving it away or resort to older idea like anoxia, which have been proven false. Most of the skeptics idea are hypothesis at best, yet they conduct no studies on the subject because they think those hypothesis do not need validation. Look at dying brain, or neurons flaring, nothing of that is a hard supportive fact, nothing has been verified. Paradoxically, there are more verified OBEs than skeptics ideas on the subject.

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. Millions of people every day have experiences while they are near death or deeply comatose, which they remember and report upon when awake. And neuroscientists, neurologists, nurses, other physicians, etc. have been investigating these experiences for years. These are the same experiences which NDE parapsychologists start with in their search for NDEs. What is different between the two groups is that neuroscientists look at all the experiences - they look at what information from the environment becomes incorporated into these experiences, what themes are present, what the experiences feel like, autoscopic components, long term sequelae from the experiences (positive and negative), physiological factors associated with the experiences, etc. What they find is that there are a variety of conditions which lead to these experiences, some of which includes anoxia and some which doesn't. What they don't find is a set of experiences which are different from the rest - that can't be characterized as hallucinations or dreams. That is, what parapsychologists call the "Near Death Experience" isn't distinguishable from all the other experiences parapsychologists are happy to call "hallucinations".

Instead of looking at all the experiences, NDE parapsychologists apply an unblinded filter to the experiences, asking only whether or not they can fit the 16 factors on the Greyson scale to any of the experiences, and then reporting on the "presence" of those factors. It should be no surprise that if you take a tiny, highly biased sample from a large pool of experiences, that they will superficially appear to be "different". However, if you try to find a way in which they are different, other than by the selection process, there isn't any way to distinguish them. You can find experiences which incorporate ("veridical") information from the environment, that feel realer than real, that are rich in detail and feelings, that have long-term emotional effects, that occur while there is seemingly little to no brain function, etc. amongst the non-NDE "hallucinations". And the same kinds of physiological upsets that led to the coma in the non-NDE experiences are the same kinds of physiological upsets that led to the NDE.

Then, we have the number of verified accounts. Pam Reynolds has been explained by skeptics with anesthesia awareness, but it is flawed for several reasons:

1. Anesthesia Awareness is generally a very disturbing experience, sometimes so horrible it leads to PTSD or suicide. In a few rare cases it isn't very distressing, but purely pleasurable or even paradisiac anesthesia awareness is nearly impossible. There is a reason as to why you can sue the hospital if it happens, after all. In this weird, nearly unique case of heavenly anesthesia awareness she had fully functioning hearing but no sens of touch, not even pressure. She basically had the senses outside of her body, but no awareness of anthing happening to her physical body.

There are different kinds of awareness while under anaesthesia - the kind you describe (full consciousness) is rare and the description does not fit what Pam experienced. I agree with you that she likely did not have that kind of anesthesia awareness. But there are other kinds of awareness which are fairly common, where implicit memories are formed during anesthesia (for example, "dreams" in which words are remembered) without explicit memories of being awake. And these memories have been recorded even during burst suppression. And typically, things like physical pain are not remembered.

1. Pam witnessed may hidden objects, as her eyes were taped. The idea is she reconstructed it all "daredevil style" from sound alone, and it looks already a very difficult task. She had to do this while being heavily sedated and in some form of anesthesia awareness not being registered on the EEG and, also, in hypothermia. It sounds like a feat no human could ever do, doesn't it?

Please note that none of what Pam recorded could be timed to a flat EEG. Her BAEPs and SSEPs (which are a form of EEG based on her sensory inputs (hearing and touch)) would have been unaffected by barbiturate induced burst-suppression. And there's no reason to suspect that she witnessed hidden objects, given that her description of the object (the bone saw) was inaccurate. A mental model (which we commonly produce from sound) for something similar, but inaccurate in the details, is what we'd expect if she only heard, but did not see the saw. 

1. Then she understood conversation and music, while having the loud clicks playing in her ears through molded and taped earbuds. Could she listen to conversation around her? Probably. Could she totally ignore those loud clicks, loud enough to actually be a horrible experience after less then a minute (you can try it yourself with a free program) originating directly inside her ears? I'd say not. If she "neurologically filtered" out the noises in some way, she would have recalled at least a form of background noise, and a pretty strong one too. After all, if you listen to a conversation on trafficked street you are aware of the noise around you, and that noise isn't originating inside your ear, making everything much more difficult to ignore. So, she totally ignored loud clicks in her ears while perfectly understanding voices and music coming from outside, with molded and taped earphones on. Odd, really odd coincidence for her to not register the only thing noise that was originating inside her body, the only noise that sombody outside her body couldn't hear.

It's hard to say what sensations she may have accommodated to. After all, even people with memories from anesthesia have failed to register pain. The music she reported on was playing after the operation (no need for the clicks at that time). 

1. The EEG must have malfunctioned all the time, as her awareness lasted fro a long time and in two different occasions.

I haven't heard a suggestion that the EEG malfunctioned - I suspect that's unlikely. The only reported awareness of her environment was brief. We have no idea when her experience was formed and how long it took. We only know that it incorporated a couple of potential environmental memories. 

1. She witnessed her own resuscitation attempt before the first shock. Was it a false memory? So accurate as to recall precisely the two shocks needed, no more no less. At that time, she was at 27 degrees celsious a temperature at which consciousness or awareness is probably impossible to have. Even if it wasn't for the severe hypothermia, she had no blood flow to brain, no pulse, no vital signs as the resuscitation procedure had yet to start.

I think you're misremembering something. She did not report on witnessing her resuscitation. 

And, that's it. To believe that the "truth" lies in gerry/skeptical explaination means that you believe an horrendous amount of coincidenses happened, and even with coincidence the report is so accurate that it can't be explained without a very accurate investigation. Skeptics never spoke to her surgeons, for some weird reason, while proponents did. Her surgeons, and basicallyat BARROWS, where pretty sure she couldn't be awake during that kind of operation.

This is just one case, but there have been many others strong nearly as much as Pam's one. There is no truth of any kind in skeptic propositions, their answers are just coded into whatever they think more appropriate to describe the phenomenon without wanting to take a deeper look into it. It just isn't science at this point. If a phenomenon is happing frequently and doesn't fit your medical or scientific fundamentals, you have to take a deep and very accurate look at it. You can't just hand wave it all away and tell people that you have "the truth", whatever the truth even really means. Just think about antidepressants, do they work? Maybe, it depends on the subject. We dont even know how they function properly, some psychiatric drugs such as lithium we don't understand at all. We just know that they give marginal, yet usually significant, better results than placebo. But it surely isn't a hard fact that they work, in many cases they don't and sometimes placebo performed as good or even better than them. Yet they are totally accepted, widely used and included in our medical paradigm, without any hard fact for them. Hard facts are really, really rare when it comes to whatever includes the mind in it.

I agree that these stories are interesting. The well-recognized problem is that these stories are coming to us after the fact - after the case has been muddied with feedback and Chinese Whispers. It would be very helpful to document stories prior to any feedback, and by people blind to the events (plus drop the unblinded leading questions from the Greyson scale). That kind of documentation would go a long way towards getting the attention of the neuroscientists and other researchers who look at these experiences. Sartori did this (sorta) in her study - she wasn't blind to most of the events, and she provided specific feedback to the subjects, sometimes misattributing it to the subject. But at least she was transparent about it.
Linda

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. Millions of people every day have experiences while they are near death or deeply comatose, which they remember and report upon when awake. And neuroscientists, neurologists, nurses, other physicians, etc. have been investigating these experiences for years. These are the same experiences which NDE parapsychologists start with in their search for NDEs. What is different between the two groups is that neuroscientists look at all the experiences - they look at what information from the environment becomes incorporated into these experiences, what themes are present, what the experiences feel like, autoscopic components, long term sequelae from the experiences (positive and negative), physiological factors associated with the experiences, etc. What they find is that there are a variety of conditions which lead to these experiences, some of which includes anoxia and some which doesn't. What they don't find is a set of experiences which are different from the rest - that can't be characterized as hallucinations or dreams. That is, what parapsychologists call the "Near Death Experience" isn't distinguishable from all the other experiences parapsychologists are happy to call "hallucinations".

Instead of looking at all the experiences, NDE parapsychologists apply an unblinded filter to the experiences, asking only whether or not they can fit the 16 factors on the Greyson scale to any of the experiences, and then reporting on the "presence" of those factors. It should be no surprise that if you take a tiny, highly biased sample from a large pool of experiences, that they will superficially appear to be "different". However, if you try to find a way in which they are different, other than by the selection process, there isn't any way to distinguish them. You can find experiences which incorporate ("veridical") information from the environment, that feel realer than real, that are rich in detail and feelings, that have long-term emotional effects, that occur while there is seemingly little to no brain function, etc. amongst the non-NDE "hallucinations". And the same kinds of physiological upsets that led to the coma in the non-NDE experiences are the same kinds of physiological upsets that led to the NDE.



There are different kinds of awareness while under anaesthesia - the kind you describe (full consciousness) is rare and the description does not fit what Pam experienced. I agree with you that she likely did not have that kind of anesthesia awareness. But there are other kinds of awareness which are fairly common, where implicit memories are formed during anesthesia (for example, "dreams" in which words are remembered) without explicit memories of being awake. And these memories have been recorded even during burst suppression. And typically, things like physical pain are not remembered.




Please note that none of what Pam recorded could be timed to a flat EEG. Her BAEPs and SSEPs (which are a form of EEG based on her sensory inputs (hearing and touch)) would have been unaffected by barbiturate induced burst-suppression. And there's no reason to suspect that she witnessed hidden objects, given that her description of the object (the bone saw) was inaccurate. A mental model (which we commonly produce from sound) for something similar, but inaccurate in the details, is what we'd expect if she only heard, but did not see the saw. 




It's hard to say what sensations she may have accommodated to. After all, even people with memories from anesthesia have failed to register pain. The music she reported on was playing after the operation (no need for the clicks at that time). 



I haven't heard a suggestion that the EEG malfunctioned - I suspect that's unlikely. The only reported awareness of her environment was brief. We have no idea when her experience was formed and how long it took. We only know that it incorporated a couple of potential environmental memories. 


I think you're misremembering something. She did not report on witnessing her resuscitation. 

I agree that these stories are interesting. The well-recognized problem is that these stories are coming to us after the fact - after the case has been muddied with feedback and Chinese Whispers. It would be very helpful to document stories prior to any feedback, and by people blind to the events (plus drop the unblinded leading questions from the Greyson scale). That kind of documentation would go a long way towards getting the attention of the neuroscientists and other researchers who look at these experiences. Sartori did this (sorta) in her study - she wasn't blind to most of the events, and she provided specific feedback to the subjects, sometimes misattributing it to the subject. But at least she was transparent about it.
Linda

Sorry, but you are wrong on many topics. First of all the bonesaw description wasn't inaccurate, it just had a minor inconsistency. If you saw something for the first time and at a distance, would you describe it as 100% accurate?

Second, she witnessed two electrical shocks being given to her. She witnessed her own resuscitation while being at 27 degrees celsious.

Third, the song was played during the operation, not after it.

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. Millions of people every day have experiences while they are near death or deeply comatose, which they remember and report upon when awake. And neuroscientists, neurologists, nurses, other physicians, etc. have been investigating these experiences for years. These are the same experiences which NDE parapsychologists start with in their search for NDEs. What is different between the two groups is that neuroscientists look at all the experiences - they look at what information from the environment becomes incorporated into these experiences, what themes are present, what the experiences feel like, autoscopic components, long term sequelae from the experiences (positive and negative), physiological factors associated with the experiences, etc. What they find is that there are a variety of conditions which lead to these experiences, some of which includes anoxia and some which doesn't. What they don't find is a set of experiences which are different from the rest - that can't be characterized as hallucinations or dreams. That is, what parapsychologists call the "Near Death Experience" isn't distinguishable from all the other experiences parapsychologists are happy to call "hallucinations".

Instead of looking at all the experiences, NDE parapsychologists apply an unblinded filter to the experiences, asking only whether or not they can fit the 16 factors on the Greyson scale to any of the experiences, and then reporting on the "presence" of those factors. It should be no surprise that if you take a tiny, highly biased sample from a large pool of experiences, that they will superficially appear to be "different". However, if you try to find a way in which they are different, other than by the selection process, there isn't any way to distinguish them. You can find experiences which incorporate ("veridical") information from the environment, that feel realer than real, that are rich in detail and feelings, that have long-term emotional effects, that occur while there is seemingly little to no brain function, etc. amongst the non-NDE "hallucinations". And the same kinds of physiological upsets that led to the coma in the non-NDE experiences are the same kinds of physiological upsets that led to the NDE.



There are different kinds of awareness while under anaesthesia - the kind you describe (full consciousness) is rare and the description does not fit what Pam experienced. I agree with you that she likely did not have that kind of anesthesia awareness. But there are other kinds of awareness which are fairly common, where implicit memories are formed during anesthesia (for example, "dreams" in which words are remembered) without explicit memories of being awake. And these memories have been recorded even during burst suppression. And typically, things like physical pain are not remembered.




Please note that none of what Pam recorded could be timed to a flat EEG. Her BAEPs and SSEPs (which are a form of EEG based on her sensory inputs (hearing and touch)) would have been unaffected by barbiturate induced burst-suppression. And there's no reason to suspect that she witnessed hidden objects, given that her description of the object (the bone saw) was inaccurate. A mental model (which we commonly produce from sound) for something similar, but inaccurate in the details, is what we'd expect if she only heard, but did not see the saw. 




It's hard to say what sensations she may have accommodated to. After all, even people with memories from anesthesia have failed to register pain. The music she reported on was playing after the operation (no need for the clicks at that time). 



I haven't heard a suggestion that the EEG malfunctioned - I suspect that's unlikely. The only reported awareness of her environment was brief. We have no idea when her experience was formed and how long it took. We only know that it incorporated a couple of potential environmental memories. 


I think you're misremembering something. She did not report on witnessing her resuscitation. 

I agree that these stories are interesting. The well-recognized problem is that these stories are coming to us after the fact - after the case has been muddied with feedback and Chinese Whispers. It would be very helpful to document stories prior to any feedback, and by people blind to the events (plus drop the unblinded leading questions from the Greyson scale). That kind of documentation would go a long way towards getting the attention of the neuroscientists and other researchers who look at these experiences. Sartori did this (sorta) in her study - she wasn't blind to most of the events, and she provided specific feedback to the subjects, sometimes misattributing it to the subject. But at least she was transparent about it.
Linda

Just making a note of Linda's bullshit.

Sorry, but you are wrong on many topics. First of all the bonesaw description wasn't inaccurate, it just had a minor inconsistency. If you saw something for the first time and at a distance, would you describe it as 100% accurate?

I don't think we disagree - different words which refer to the same thing. 

Second, she witnessed two electrical shocks being given to her. She witnessed her own resuscitation while being at 27 degrees celsious.

In Sabom's interview (3 years after the experience) she said, "I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing.... It was like diving into a pool of ice water.... It hurt!" which isn't a description of her watching her resuscitation or of 2 electrical shocks. The story has changed in her last interview (almost 20 years after the experience) where she says, "Then I heard the defibrillator on two occasions. The first time, I did hear that, but the second time I saw them." It's part of a story whose details have changed considerably from when she first told it, and after she has been made aware of all that went on during the operation. This is an example of what I was talking about with respect to feedback and Chinese Whispers. Now, rather than what she said originally (which was never recorded) or what she said in the first few years (Sabom's interviews), the story you pass on to others is the one where the story has changed to include more specific details than she originally claimed to experience. Please note that I don't think you or Pam made these changes to deliberately deceive. These processes are unconscious (and all the more insidious for it).

Third, the song was played during the operation, not after it.

After the part of the operation where she was on standstill (as far as I can tell).

Linda