Thread: NDE-like Experiences

I have a very strange experience sometimes, it feels a bit like a near death experience.

It happens when I am contemplating the mind and what consciousness is, how our consciousness is beyond the mind and body, that kind of thing ...

And then, I wake up. Whilst I am talking suddenly I get the feeling of waking up. Wow, it's frightening. Like a near death experience. Bang ! I am awake, and aware that I am awake. Thinking about it kind of makes it happen.

And I can't believe it. I can't believe my own consciousness awareness. What am I doing here ? What am I ? Why am I awake ? Suddenly I feel awake and aware, looking out through these animal eyes - what am I doing here ?

It's strange, suddenly I get the feeling of being really aware of myself and the strangeness of being conscious.

I mean, I understand that there is a biped species on a planet somewhere and evolution etc.. that's fine.

But why am I awake ? Where does the consciousness come from ? It's fu**ing strange.

Its very strange. Strange that I was googling and wikiing this several times not a few minutes ago and here it is.

Its like when you think of someone and then they call... Woooo.

What about when your not thinking about them and they call? Is that like really freaking wierd as well?....

I'm thinking of no-one AND NO ONES CALLING!

Only joking, you could be spiritually awakening. Apparently there is a big awakening going on pretty soon in arouund 2015 or something so thats probably it. Either that or your either:

A. Drinking.
B. Drugging.
C. Hormone malfunctions.
D: Dreaming.

Its all very interesting, infinite consciousness its called. Remember that although it is very fascinating and I'm sure it feels real to you, as it did me. But your mind will make it real, just as they say in the matrix. I find for a healthy mind and life its best to be skeptic, sarcastic and make humour at these wierd things because humans will need a lot of time drinking, drugging and all of the above to just get their heads around it.

Odd to find near death experiences in this forum after so much research and studies show that consciousness does live on after the death of the brain and body.

Yes, well I put it in General Discussion but by some unknown power it materialised in 'pseudoscience' ... I guess someone has pronounced JUDGEMENT.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Odd to find near death experiences in this forum after so much research and studies show that consciousness does live on after the death of the brain and body.

What studies have shown this? As far as I am aware, there has never been any good evidence to differentiate experiences such as near death OBE from delirium or dreaming. Attempts to test the veracity of near death OBE as an actual external experience tend to fail on some important details. Namely, the subjects can only recall with detail things which they may have been able to pick up unconsciously such as conversations between surgeons and such. I seem to recall an experiment- I will try to find the reference later- in which a hospital fit a screen, facing upwards above one of their operating tables at a height that ought to be visible to someone experiencing OBE, but not visible to surgeons or someone on the table. Whilst the subjects could recall things that would have been explicable by imagination or by subconscious sensing from their location on that table, they were not able to recall the randomised symbol displayed on the screen.

Do you have data which might serve as a good test of this sort of thing?

Originally Posted by TheBiologista

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Odd to find near death experiences in this forum after so much research and studies show that consciousness does live on after the death of the brain and body.

What studies have shown this? As far as I am aware, there has never been any good evidence to differentiate experiences such as near death OBE from delirium or dreaming. Attempts to test the veracity of near death OBE as an actual external experience tend to fail on some important details. Namely, the subjects can only recall with detail things which they may have been able to pick up unconsciously such as conversations between surgeons and such. I seem to recall an experiment- I will try to find the reference later- in which a hospital fit a screen, facing upwards above one of their operating tables at a height that ought to be visible to someone experiencing OBE, but not visible to surgeons or someone on the table. Whilst the subjects could recall things that would have been explicable by imagination or by subconscious sensing from their location on that table, they were not able to recall the randomised symbol displayed on the screen.

Do you have data which might serve as a good test of this sort of thing?

While you can't test near death experiences completely since they are personal experiences, you can test some elements of them. There are about a dozen universities doing research on NDEs at the present. They have found the experiencer can recall seeing and hearing an operation in progress while they are clinically dead. The most famous example of this is Pam Reynolds. Her surgery was taped and documented. While she was clinically dead she could see and hear elements of the operation. The head surgeon verified her state of being and the accuracy of her observations.

http://www.aleroy.com/blog/2009/01/the-aftereffect-pg2/

I am aware of the skeptical assumptions and theories regarding this surgery, but no evidence has ever been put forth.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Originally Posted by TheBiologista

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Odd to find near death experiences in this forum after so much research and studies show that consciousness does live on after the death of the brain and body.

What studies have shown this? As far as I am aware, there has never been any good evidence to differentiate experiences such as near death OBE from delirium or dreaming. Attempts to test the veracity of near death OBE as an actual external experience tend to fail on some important details. Namely, the subjects can only recall with detail things which they may have been able to pick up unconsciously such as conversations between surgeons and such. I seem to recall an experiment- I will try to find the reference later- in which a hospital fit a screen, facing upwards above one of their operating tables at a height that ought to be visible to someone experiencing OBE, but not visible to surgeons or someone on the table. Whilst the subjects could recall things that would have been explicable by imagination or by subconscious sensing from their location on that table, they were not able to recall the randomised symbol displayed on the screen.

Do you have data which might serve as a good test of this sort of thing?

While you can't test near death experiences completely since they are personal experiences, you can test some elements of them. There are about a dozen universities doing research on NDEs at the present. They have found the experiencer can recall seeing and hearing an operation in progress while they are clinically dead.

That's not much of a claim. Clinical death means cardiac arrest and cessation of breathing. Your brain is still viable and therefore capable both of recording real sensations as well as hallucination.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

The most famous example of this is Pam Reynolds. Her surgery was taped and documented. While she was clinically dead she could see and hear elements of the operation. The head surgeon verified her state of being and the accuracy of her observations.

http://www.aleroy.com/blog/2009/01/the-aftereffect-pg2/

I am aware of the skeptical assumptions and theories regarding this surgery, but no evidence has ever been put forth.

Unfortunately, given that there are 6 billion humans alive today and many more who have lived in recorded history, the odds of one person somewhere hallucinating some accurate details during clinical death as Ms. Reynolds did is actually reasonably high. She may have been able to hear during the experience, in which case the comment she heard would be real. If she could hear the pitch of the bone saw that might also have lead her to re-consider its size and shape. It's also quite possible that her memory was compromised by later prompting or her own research. Essentially, this is anecdotal evidence with a sample set of 1. In scientific terms, this is essentially meaningless.

The many problems with forms of anecdotal evidence (poor or reconstructed memory, selective memory, confirmation bias etc) are part of the reason why the scientific method was developed. Anecdotal evidence has consistently been found inadequate.

What I was really asking for are studies with control groups, blinding, some sort of randomisation and of course as large as sample set as possible.

I figured you would say that. There are hundreds of veridical NDEs in print and many studies with large examples. I just test the water with Pam's surgery, if it is summarily dismissed I know there is no interest in the subject. Minds are made up.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

I figured you would say that. There are hundreds of veridical NDEs in print and many studies with large examples. I just test the water with Pam's surgery, if it is summarily dismissed I know there is no interest in the subject. Minds are made up.

I'm asking you for something, asking you to convince me, not telling you how it is. I certainly didn't dismiss this example- I pointed out that what you've given me is a story. It may be true or false, but science is not done based on stories, because they're demonstrably unreliable. I have no idea how to explain NDEs, so my mind is most certainly not made up. At this point, the most I have done is suggest some plausible explanations for what you have told me thus far, which is practically nothing.

You think this thread is misplaced, that it should be in a science forum. If you want to show me that this thread should not be in pseudo science, then show me that you've got more than stories. If you want to make that case, the burden of evidence is upon you. You can take that up, or leave it be if you wish. Dismissing your detractors as closed-minded when you present no evidence is not going to get you anywhere.

I presented solid evidence, not a story, but a documented surgery. That has been a TV special, the center of books, and many articles. If you see only a story, then there is no point continuing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_384515.html

Lekatt, before the thread descends into ingemination, please familiarize yourself with anecdote and why it is not admissible as scientific evidence. The story you have presented is documented, yes, but not in accordance with the scientific method.

Second, popularity does not determine validity. Santa Clause is likewise the center of TV specials, books and is believed to be real by millions.

If a room full of 20 doctors, surrounded by the latest surgical monitoring equipment, is not scientific documentation then nothing is, forget it. Just too complicated for me, huh. bye

Sure, the procedure was well documented, but no one contends that it took place. The troublesome thing here is the patient's ascertations, after the fact.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

I presented solid evidence, not a story, but a documented surgery. That has been a TV special, the center of books, and many articles. If you see only a story, then there is no point continuing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_384515.html

And if you have trouble understanding why this is inadequate as evidence then I agree, there is probably little point discussing this. I would suggest that you do some reading on the scientific method and fair testing. Ben Goldacre's Bad Science is a great and easy to read primer. I suspect you will not take the suggestion on board. It's a shame as without skepticism, open-mindedness is just credulousness.

What a load of balls. Read something about the Philosophy of Science and you will discover that Science is not as concrete as you think it is.

It's quite pathetic that so many on this forum talk as if Science is some concrete thing with no holes in it, when a quick review of the ground rules lists a large number of gaping holes in it.

The automatic 'belief' in Science is as frightening as any preacher's.

Originally Posted by rideforever

What a load of balls. Read something about the Philosophy of Science and you will discover that Science is not as concrete as you think it is.

It's quite pathetic that so many on this forum talk as if Science is some concrete thing with no holes in it, when a quick review of the ground rules lists a large number of gaping holes in it.

The automatic 'belief' in Science is as frightening as any preacher's.

I see no issues with the philosophy and method of science, based on my familiarity with the basic philosophies of Kuhn, Popper and Feyerabend. Gaps in our knowledge, sure. But the core philosophy is sound and is validated because it is producing results. Are there some other works in the philosophy of science to which you were alluding? If you want to discuss the philosophy of science, perhaps you could start a thread on it. But this is a science forum, and so if you post here we're going to approach any new topic from a scientific standpoint. That means we tend to be skeptical of new assertions and it means that we'll ask for good evidence. Most of all it means that we expect the evidence to be as strong as the assertion. Your assertion is not actually all that strange- I've actually experienced something very much like what you are describing for myself. But Lekatt's assertion is a whopper. Lesser claims have had to be backed up with far stronger evidence than what he is offering.

Now, if you really consider science to be on such shaky ground, I'm rather confused as to why you posted here at all? Do you often seek validation from communities you hold in low regard?

Let's actually look at your first post though. What you've experienced I cannot really explain, though as I say I think I've had similar experiences several times. A sort of hyper-awareness of the moment, of the reality of my being. It feels very much like waking up from a dream. It tends to last just a few minutes and if it lasts long enough, I tend to find myself becoming uncomfortably aware of my frailty and my finite nature. To dwell in that state further becomes very upsetting. Does this sound something like what you have experienced? I'm sure there are many plausible explanations for the experience, but this is far from my area of expertise and I could not even speculate as to the root cause or the science of it.

They were open minded IMO.


Lekatt I hope you've returned and read what TheBiologista forgot to mention about anecdote vs. scientific method: That if Newton said an apple dropped upon his noggin, that would be anecdotal. If Pam recalled "nothing", that too would be anecdotal, not experimental, evidence. Pam's hypothetical "nothing" would be an unsubstantiated claim scientists strictly can't believe.

Originally Posted by Pong

They were open minded IMO.


Lekatt I hope you've returned and read what TheBiologista forgot to mention about anecdote vs. scientific method: That if Newton said an apple dropped upon his noggin, that would be anecdotal. If Pam recalled "nothing", that too would be anecdotal, not experimental, evidence. Pam's hypothetical "nothing" would be an unsubstantiated claim scientists strictly can't believe.

Pam's "claim" was substantiated by the doctors present, especially the lead surgeon. Otherwise no one would find it interesting. Millions of people have had near death experiences, and on record at the University of Virginia are hundreds of substantiated "claims" by doctors who experienced similar circumstances. Dr Bruce Grayson, M.D. of UV spoke to the United Nations on the subject. There are hundreds of doctors involved in the on-going research here and abroad. Skeptics are closed-minded individuals who believe the scientific method is the equivalent of God. They wouldn't bother to read or study anything that goes against their sacred beliefs. Fortunately most people can look at a duck and see a duck without having a scientist examine it for duckness. In the future all will know near death experiences are real because of the reseach being done now.

I'm sorry, I don't think you get it. Science is not about the beliefs of authorities, be they surgeons or whoever. If every scientist on Earth believes something that does not make it true. We have to test our beliefs by experiment, preferably many experiments and ones conducted by sceptics.

So, can you think of an experiment testing a claim of near death experience? Preferably an experiment that gives true-or-false result.

When someone witnesses an event up-close and personal, that is not a belief, that is a knowing. It is by experience that we gain knowledge, there is no other way.

"Without experience there is no knowledge."
Albert Einstein


You can't logic yourself anywhere, and your scientific methods, principles, and doctrine, are not infallible. Skeptics tend to be skeptics only with things not understandable to them. Once they witness the event, or have a near death experience, their skepticism fades like yesterday's newspaper.

All of the researchers of near death experiences started out skeptics, all are now believers. You need to actually read the material or watch the videos all the way through so you can discuss this subject intelligently, instead of automatically rejecting something you know nothing about.

The link below was written by a friend of mine. It is very long and contains almost a hundred other links. I don't expect anyone to read it all, unless they really have an interest in near death experiences. The lead in is enough to get to drift of the reseach being done and by whom. It is not a game, it is very real and very important to our world.

http://www.aleroy.com/blog/2007/10/q-a-28/

Originally Posted by Lekatt

If a room full of 20 doctors, surrounded by the latest surgical monitoring equipment, is not scientific documentation then nothing is, forget it. Just too complicated for me, huh. bye

I'm usually the one to speak favorably of pseudo-scientific claims, if only out of interest, but the other posters are right on this.

Suppose you're rolling dice in a Casino, and you roll "snake eyes", two ones, twice in a row. You would think that, because the odds of that happening are one out of 1,296 that the dice must be loaded. The only way to be sure is to pick them up and roll them several more times. If it happens 10 times in a row, then we know it probably wasn't a coincidence.

Repetition of experiments is how we rule out flukes. It's never enough for something to happen just once, and when you're repeating you need to be able to demonstrate identical results. There must be some narrowly defined criteria for comparison between outcomes.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Pam's "claim" was substantiated by the doctors present, especially the lead surgeon. Otherwise no one would find it interesting.

The doctors only had the power to verify that Pam was in this or that medical state for this amount of time. They could verify that what she claimed to experience had some similarity to what occurred during the surgery. Beyond that anything they could say on the matter would be speculation. The surgery was not designed to test the claim being made.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Millions of people have had near death experiences, and on record at the University of Virginia are hundreds of substantiated "claims" by doctors who experienced similar circumstances.

Nobody is doubting the existence of NDEs- we're skeptical about what those experiences actually constitute. Nor does anyone deny that doctors have accepted that something has happened to their patients, but nowhere in all of these claims has there been a test or result which backs up the claims that "consciousness does live on after the death of the brain and body". Even in the example you have given, there was clinical death but no brain death. So even if we are generous and concede that it tests the survival of consciousness despite clinical death (which is already well accepted) it is not a test of the survival of consciousness after brain death.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Dr Bruce Grayson, M.D. of UV spoke to the United Nations on the subject. There are hundreds of doctors involved in the on-going research here and abroad.

So kindly direct us to some data. Incidentally, this business of stating "Dr. X M.D/PhD of the University of Somewhere says that..." is not evidence of anything other than the opinion of that person. It is what is called an appeal to authority. It is not helpful because I can simply respond with my own list of names and qualifications. Opinion versus opinion gets us nowhere, nor does measuring those opinions by the number of qualifications after the name.

This is, incidentally, a tactic much beloved of many kinds of pseudo-scientist including creationists. I'm quite sure you'd rather not follow the format of their argument, as it has not succeeded in gaining them scientific acceptence despite decades of trying. Scientific evidence is not delivered from a podium. It is printed in the peer-reviewed journals.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Skeptics are closed-minded individuals who believe the scientific method is the equivalent of God. They wouldn't bother to read or study anything that goes against their sacred beliefs.

Please watch this brief YouTube video. It counters that argument better than I could in writing.

Open-Mindedness

To summarise though, if your claim about scientists were true, we would never make any scientific advances at all. New ideas and entirely new ways of thinking are what allowed scientists to create the very system you and I are now using to communicate. This would have been unimaginable to most people even a century ago.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

Fortunately most people can look at a duck and see a duck without having a scientist examine it for duckness.

But we're not arguing over the existence of the metaphorical "duck" here. We're actually trying to ascertain its nature, it's composition, behaviour and so forth. But what you seem to want to do is glance at the duck and pronounce that it is a mallard, that it flies south for the winter and subsists on a diet of goats. Some of these things are not trivially knowable, but must be examined more closely. The stranger the claim, the more rigorous our examination must be.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

In the future all will know near death experiences are real because of the reseach being done now.

Which you are still, after several posts, not providing for us.

From a previous post.


Link deleted.

id just like to say something that i have experienced personally myself, i can give no credit to what anyone else says on this subject. i would also ask to here me out till the end.
i have opened my eyes from being blacked out. i have also been high off mj and experienced similar things. my explanation for the aforementioned events is only that in those states your brain goes into an emergency re-boot, and just like a computer you get to watch on screen the process of your computer setting up essential operating systems and such. thats why the first thing you do when you wake up is stare blankly for a couple seconds then you start asking questions like where am i and what did i do to myself last night. (probably something that killed alot of brain cells and subsequently caused some memory loss)


but what you're describing i have only experienced once when i was 13, i have pondered it many times and never came close to the same feeling ever again
i would say what you experienced is your brain performing what computer language would call a full system restore. your brain has the ability to pretty much fully start over without actually losing any of your childhood memories. in this case the first thing you do is simply regain consciousness. I guess i don't mean this in the normal sense. by this i mean that you become aware that you are not just a formless blob, you realize that you can perceive things, once you realize this you realize that you now have a reference point for your brain to perceive time to begin, your mind realizes that moments ago it was not doing these things. Next you realize that you can see, this builds on the knowledge that you aren't a formless blob and that you are only seeing because you have eyeballs that allow you to see, which you know are attached to your brain... by the time you reach this point your brain has pretty much fully recovered and everything comes back. the thing is it all comes back so naturally and subtlety that you barely realize you were without it for the briefest of moments with the confusion gone the experience becomes a distant memory something you can barely say actually happened.

i think you should recall that humans ARE animals. humans before speech, capable and intelligent as the were would definitely be categorized in modern day thought as wild animals. your brain obviously understood that you had limbs and basic instincts like hunger and respiration but wasn't fully recovered enough to understand the concept that they are Yours as opposed to some "things"

any of this hitting home with your experience?, The reason i was kinda freaked out when it happened was that the concept of having a face was weird to me???.?- ive just put some thought into it and cant accept some half imagined answer like i was being re-incarnated mid life or some bs like that. have you remembered anything else about it?
who knows, maybe you are just remembering the instant the chemical change occurred in your brain to begin puberty, i only say that b/c i was around that age at the time.. were you anywhere near that stage in live at the time you experienced this?

i feel i should mention just for clarity that i was under no influence of any drugs or alcohol at the tender age of 13

Originally Posted by RAWasFCK

i feel i should mention just for clarity that i was under no influence of any drugs or alcohol at the tender age of 13

I wish you had told me more about your experience and less about what you thought caused it. I could not determine what was your actual experience from the account you posted.

I know that the brain has been compared to a computer, and I sometimes do that myself, but the brain is nothing like a computer. It is only a biomechanical interface between your consciousness and your body. You are consciousness.

Now what you described is nothing like a near death experience. There is interaction in NDEs between the experiencer and spiritual beings. Very few people, especially the skeptics, know what a real near death experience contains and the outcome of that experience. I suggest you read a few hundred of the experiences so to have a grasp of what they are.

Link deleted.

The link above points to a few hundred near death experiences.

Lekatt, if you have a specific point to make that would be supported by a link to that website then please make the point, give the link and explain how it supports you. Otherwise all you're doing is funneling traffic to another website without fostering discussion here.

Can I also remind you that this thread is not actually about near death experiences, despite the thread title. It's about an experience the OP had which merely resembles what he imagines an NDE might be like. So once again, if you insist on posting your off topic views here, I will be forced to split the thread.

Originally Posted by TheBiologista

Lekatt, if you have a specific point to make that would be supported by a link to that website then please make the point, give the link and explain how it supports you. Otherwise all you're doing is funneling traffic to another website without fostering discussion here.

Can I also remind you that this thread is not actually about near death experiences, despite the thread title. It's about an experience the OP had which merely resembles what he imagines an NDE might be like. So once again, if you insist on posting your off topic views here, I will be forced to split the thread.

My foolish mistake to believe a thread named near death experiences was actually about near death experiences. I will stop posting on it. I never am right in posting on "science" forums. Sorry

Originally Posted by Lekatt

I never am right in posting on "science" forums.

And you've demonstrated precisely why by failing to understand what "science" even means.

Originally Posted by Lekatt

My foolish mistake to believe a thread named near death experiences was actually about near death experiences. I will stop posting on it. I never am right in posting on "science" forums. Sorry

Grow up. Cut the sarcasm. Read the original post. The thread title is not the topic of the thread, the content of that post is the topic.

In fact, to save you the effort of understanding that very simple concept, I will fix the thread title.

i didn't feel i needed to explain my experience. the op's matched mine to the T except for the parts that i specifically mentioned about my face.

re⋅search  [ri-surch, ree-surch]
–noun
1. diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications

the underlined are the key words in the definition, which all fail to apply to your example of "research".

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/research

when you dive into a science forum pretending to know what you're talking about, it is inevitable that you are going to be proven wrong because you're talking to a bunch of scientists who actually know what they're talking about.

sci⋅ence  [sahy-uhns]
–noun
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/science

Originally Posted by RAWasFCK

i didn't feel i needed to explain my experience. the op's matched mine to the T except for the parts that i specifically mentioned about my face.

Similar to an experience I have had myself. The only phenomenon I have read about which resembles what we have experienced is somewhere on the borderline between existential angst and an anxiety attack.