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Awareness at Death

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Re: Awareness at Death

#21

Post by mike_hock »

myheadasplode wrote: post #8

I encourage everyone interested to check out Dr. Bruce Greyson's book After. It's a scientific look at various NDE cases. This study mentions patients being unable to identify images on an ipad, but the book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe. I find NDEs to be a real frontier of science, no matter what's actually happening - whet…

> book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe

Quite an extraordinary claim, any evidence of this?

Re: Awareness at Death

#23

Post by jdthedisciple »

hyggetrold wrote: post #3

I had an English teacher in high school who had a near death experience during a surgery. His description of the experience tracks with what's in the article - floating above the body, a tremendous feeling of peace and acceptance, and the feeling of being drawn towards a bright light. I can't say I'm not afraid of death but it's nice to hear stories like these from folks that help lessen that fear. :)

Well - not to increase your fear of death - but, presumably your English teacher is still alive, so his experience is wholly distinct from actual death.

Re: Awareness at Death

#24

Post by taberiand »

surfsvammel wrote: post #7

The brain is a strange thing. Perception and experience is very difficult to wrap one's head around. I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Often in medical settings but also in other settings. Often when I wake up I am in a state where I feel like I’ve been gone for hours, it feels like I’ve been basically dreaming the equivalent of a full length movie, when in reality I’ve been out for maybe a minute.…

It's not necessary to have an experience that lasts hours in order to have a memory of an experience that lasted hours, even less necessary if it's just the feeling of an experience that lasted hours.

Our memory is highly fallible and easily manipulated, at least compared to how much people tend to believe it's a flawless record of the past.

All memories exist in the present, a memory created a minute ago about an experience a year ago would feel just as real as the memory created a year ago - probably even more so, given how fresh it would be.

Everything I read about near death experiences suggests to me that it's a brain making things up, coupled with more stimuli being processed by the "dead" patient's brain than people assume is possible - accounting, I think, very well for the "things the patient could not have known".

There is no life after death, and there is no existence separate to the body - before our birth we were not; now we are; at some point, we won't be again.

Re: Awareness at Death

#25

Post by verteu »

DougN7 wrote: post #15
surfsvammel wrote: post #7

The brain is a strange thing. Perception and experience is very difficult to wrap one's head around. I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Often in medical settings but also in other settings. Often when I wake up I am in a state where I feel like I’ve been gone for hours, it feels like I’ve been basically dreaming the equivalent of a full length movie, when in reality I’ve been out for maybe a minute.…

I experienced the “life flashing before my eyes” once. It was a situation where I thought I was about to die. It was like a very high speed real of all my memories playing. I was amazed (while it was happening) that it was happening just like I’d heard about - so at least in my opinion it wasn’t an invented memory later. Of course I might say that even it was. My theory is the mind was desperately trying to find a si…

Amazing -- could you describe it a bit more?

Re: Awareness at Death

#26

Post by elil17 »

>First, most of the 53 survivors initially flat-lined on the EEG, but, with continued CPR, recovered brain activity up to 60 minutes later.

Good lord that's a long time. Does this mean that if I'm performing CPR, I should keep going for 61 minutes? Longer?

Re: Awareness at Death

#27

Post by tasty_freeze »

hyggetrold wrote: post #3

I had an English teacher in high school who had a near death experience during a surgery. His description of the experience tracks with what's in the article - floating above the body, a tremendous feeling of peace and acceptance, and the feeling of being drawn towards a bright light. I can't say I'm not afraid of death but it's nice to hear stories like these from folks that help lessen that fear. :)

Obviously, I can't say what your teacher experienced. But think about this. His brain was going through a traumatic experience of some kind, presumably at least low oxygen and a accumulation of cellular waste products, such as CO2, due to lack of blood flow. After he was resuscitated, his now functioning brain was left to make narrative sense out of what it had experienced.

How much of that was was after the fact reconstruction and how much was actual experience? In the same way, our brain doesn't notice the visual blind spot and just assumes that whatever is there is consistent with its context, even though there is nothing it can experience there.

Re: Awareness at Death

#28

Post by dheera »

hyggetrold wrote: post #3

I had an English teacher in high school who had a near death experience during a surgery. His description of the experience tracks with what's in the article - floating above the body, a tremendous feeling of peace and acceptance, and the feeling of being drawn towards a bright light. I can't say I'm not afraid of death but it's nice to hear stories like these from folks that help lessen that fear. :)

I've had a couple of near death experiences and I can say yes to everything turning bright and white but not "being drawn towards" it.

Re: Awareness at Death

#29

Post by Zee38484 »

> As patients underwent CPR, a tablet computer displayed one of ten visual images

> During 5 minutes of the CPR, patients also were repeatedly exposed through the headphone audio to the names of 3 fruits

I think this type of experiment could be harmful to patients.

Human brain consumes oxygen at varied rate. It consumes more oxygen under stress. Natural body reaction is to pass out, to preserve limited oxygen reserves in blood and tissue. Interfering or preventing person from loosing consciousness, will deplete oxygen supply faster, and may cause permanent brain damage sooner.

I have no evidence for this claim, just experience from yoga and diving.

Re: Awareness at Death

#30

Post by aradox66 »

mike_hock wrote: post #21
myheadasplode wrote: post #8

I encourage everyone interested to check out Dr. Bruce Greyson's book After. It's a scientific look at various NDE cases. This study mentions patients being unable to identify images on an ipad, but the book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe. I find NDEs to be a real frontier of science, no matter what's actually happening - whet…

> book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe Quite an extraordinary claim, any evidence of this?

The Parnia study is the most systematic effort to date to establish highly rigorous evidence for this phenomenon.
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