Physical identifiers of consciousness

I hope this is the correct forum to post . It’s more NDE related but an anecdote and discussion of related phenomena as well but anyway..

Years ago, a loved one passed away in an accident . At the time, my uncle, the boy’s father, mentioned that he saw him smile, when later looking at his body. 

I think this was at the hospital, after death,  within hours , but I can’t be more specific , because I don’t know .

But for the point of my question, let’s by pass the possibility it was imagined or whatever , and just for the sake of argument assume it happened .

Wouldn’t that lend more support towards NDE’s and similar experience r brain based?

I guess I am making an assumption that If my cousin actually smiled , he was having an NDE , experiencing happiness or something positive , and his body reacted .

After all this latest research with Sam Parnia, reading aware of aware blog , latest articles ; etc … about how the body has signs of Eeg Potentially , or maybe Parnias theory is “on the right track,” either way …

I’m combining various things in my memory. Articles about people In coma having more awareness than previously thought , and other related phenomena that just make me wonder if , when looked at combined , it paints to a physical cause …or maybe the physical is just the intercessor

Who knows

Just trying to generate some thoughts and dialogue . 

Bill,

Thanks for posting this incident.

Peter Fenwick was discussed very recently, and I think a lot of what he discusses is relevant to this subject:

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-p...-phenomena

I have only seen two dead bodies, and neither was smiling - so I don't people would get this impression by mistake. However note that a lot of the death-related phenomena reported by PF seem to defy normal logic.

BTW, It would help if possible, if you could avoid posting formatted text. Raw unformatted text works best. I had to copy/paste your message into a text editor to read it because the front was so small!

David

Bill,

Thanks for posting this incident.

Peter Fenwick was discussed very recently, and I think a lot of what he discusses is relevant to this subject:

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-p...-phenomena

I have only seen two dead bodies, and neither was smiling - so I don't people would get this impression by mistake. However note that a lot of the death-related phenomena reported by PF seem to defy normal logic.

BTW, It would help if possible, if you could avoid posting formatted text. Raw unformatted text works best. I had to copy/paste your message into a text editor to read it because the front was so small!

David

I hope this is the correct forum to post . It’s more NDE related but an anecdote and discussion of related phenomena as well but anyway..

Apologies for a very belated response.

The event described:

Years ago, a loved one passed away in an accident. At the time, my uncle, the boy’s father, mentioned that he saw him smile, when later looking at his body. I think this was at the hospital, after death, within hours, but I can’t be more specific, because I don’t know.

And some thoughts on it:

But for the point of my question, let’s by pass the possibility it was imagined or whatever , and just for the sake of argument assume it happened . Wouldn’t that lend more support towards NDE’s and similar experience are brain based? I guess I am making an assumption that If my cousin actually smiled, he was having an NDE, experiencing happiness or something positive, and his body reacted.

My first thoughts are mixed. The story was remembered and repeated afterwards because it had an impact, something did occur. Though there isn't much to go on in terms of timing or physical/medical circumstances.

From my own experience of being present at the death of a loved one, some minutes after we noted that breathing and all signs of life had stopped, there was some movement of the mouth, an actual physical movement. We wondered whether there had just been a brief pause in breathing and life was returning, but no, that was all. The timing here, I'm talking no more than about five minutes after death.

But more generally, there are cases of spontaneous return to life after much longer periods, and maybe in the case discussed in this thread there was some physical life there, briefly. What that would mean, I don't know, since there is not enough information to go on.

Another, rather different thought occurred to me, a speculative one. It's possible that there was more of a telepathic connection, we might assume for the sake of argument that something non-physical continues, at least for a while. It may have been a telepathic message passing between son and father, a kind of message of reassurance that all was well. Whether or not this was accompanied by physical movement or was visualised internally "in the mind's eye" I don't know.

What we do know is that those who are close to the end of life do see and converse with apparently living people, who are unseen by anyone else. That is there are spirit visitors present, usually visible only to the dying person, but in shared death experiences they may be visible to others who are present, usually those who are very physically or emotionally close at the time of passing. Possibly this may have been more of an SDE rather than NDE.

So, a lot of speculation based on an occurrence about which there are few details, not really any conclusions.