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Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

newscientist.com

81–90 of 223 posts

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#81
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If tiny chemicals can do that to you, because you ingested them, what about all of the other things you ingest, including sound, which cause chemicals in your brain to make reactions?

I am not sure what you mean, but sensory inputs can obviously affect you. Hearing a bear roar right behind you will probably change you state of mind pretty quickly.

"Probably" seems like a massive understatement.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#82
post #10

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPBwFFWz_k Some children can remember exact & verifiable details of their prior life they never could have come to know in this their current child life. These details can be objectively and independently confirmed. Remarkably & quite biologically enigmatic: Some of them have birth marks and birth defects at very same locations as the lethal injury causing their often abrupt and violent…

If reincarnation is real, I guess the afterlife faces a crisis due to the impending demographic crash here. The lines of souls awaiting reincarnation are about to get real long, as lots of people die of old age without people having children to ensure a fast return.

I don't believe in reincarnation but sometimes I like to think that my "outie" is playing a video game (https://youtu.be/szzVlQ653as?t=25)

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#83
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If tiny chemicals can do that to you, because you ingested them, what about all of the other things you ingest, including sound, which cause chemicals in your brain to make reactions?

I am not sure what you mean, but sensory inputs can obviously affect you. Hearing a bear roar right behind you will probably change you state of mind pretty quickly.

From my own experience, "only" deep and intense breathing for not more than 5 minutes can alter state of mind drastically.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#84
post #14

It's a final upload to the cloud, with checksum checks...

Sounds funny but... I had a near-death experience and this is exactly how it feels - data recollection before departure. The weird thing is that you understand that it's not a totally new feeling - it seems that you are already got familiarized with it some time in the past but just forgot it while you was living your current instance of life.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#85
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately many things in western culture that get close to mysticism are disregarded as hallucinations or random neurological firings. Same goes with dreams and such. It’s the ‘religion of science’ defaulting to the ‘god’ of deconstructionism. Just hallucinations, nothing more. I understand why, there’s certainly many things which were once said to be mystic, but ended up less so. However, anyone who has done res…

I’ve done plenty of psychedelics. I have no idea why you would imply dreams and near death experiences are in the same boat, and much further than that, why you’d combine them with the concept of an afterlife. The pineal gland isn’t a third eye. Dreams are blatantly not random neurological firings, but have no inherent relation to death or the concept of life after death at all. Near death experiences are similar. Th…

> Pretty much all of what psychedelics taught me is that the human brain is soooo fucking primed to see patterns and make sense from anything.

Or was this the pattern you were primed to see?

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#86

Near-death brain activity and any confirmation of near-death experience does not necessarily imply an afterlife .

I consider that the best argument against any kind of afterlife is the sheer banality of any claimed conversations with ghosts/deceased. I'd imagine that someone that has taken the final(?) journey would have incredible insights to pass on, yet they always just mumble on about something mundane.

Of course there are also stories of people who claim to have left their body and seen the operating theatre from above and to have noticed some unexpected object on top of a cupboard or in some other location visible only from on high ... and later, when someone checks, the object really is there ... [spooky music] ...

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately many things in western culture that get close to mysticism are disregarded as hallucinations or random neurological firings. Same goes with dreams and such. It’s the ‘religion of science’ defaulting to the ‘god’ of deconstructionism. Just hallucinations, nothing more. I understand why, there’s certainly many things which were once said to be mystic, but ended up less so. However, anyone who has done res…

perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. We observe the world through our senses, which can impact our state of mind. Our state of mind impacts our senses, through which we observe the world. We are always unreliable narrators.

> perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other.

That’s a good way to put it. Belief systems are fascinating in a way that resists being easily categorized. At least by me. Or such is my belief…

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#88
post #14

It's a final upload to the cloud, with checksum checks...

Sounds funny but... I had a near-death experience and this is exactly how it feels - data recollection before departure. The weird thing is that you understand that it's not a totally new feeling - it seems that you are already got familiarized with it some time in the past but just forgot it while you was living your current instance of life.

I can’t speak to near death experiences but I have been in a couple… for lack of a better term… “pre-death” experiences where for a split moment it’s like you’re experiencing all possible paths and none of them at the same time. Very Schrödinger’s cat / multiversey.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. We observe the world through our senses, which can impact our state of mind. Our state of mind impacts our senses, through which we observe the world. We are always unreliable narrators.

> perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. That’s a good way to put it. Belief systems are fascinating in a way that resists being easily categorized. At least by me. Or such is my belief…

Yes. The older I get the more open minded I try to be about these things.

I find some of my friends who are the most dogmatically anti-religion or anti-spirtuality, really just replace it with some other tribal thing like politics.

There are questions we won't ever have an answer for, and we've been asking the same questions since as long as philosophers could record their writings.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#90
post #66

> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as halluc…

On the other hand, it's the definition of solipsism to interpret any experience you don't personally share as "hallucinations."

I hadn’t considered this before. Brilliant.
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