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Awareness at Death

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Re: Awareness at Death

#91

Post by darkteflon »

_nalply wrote: post #71

Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned. I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things. In o…

Absolutely no disrespect intended to your beliefs (and I agree with your second two paragraphs) but there mere fact of your brain experiencing something is not proof that it is “real”, if that word means anything at all.

Re: Awareness at Death

#92

Post by sebastianconcpt »

I happen to had a lot of Out-Of-Body Experiences. They are anything but similar. There is like a gradient of lucidity and the most common are the ones where you're very low on that. Like super-sleepy, feeling heavy and lazy to think or do anything. The ones that usually people remember and find remarkable and (sometimes deeply) influential are the ones that have your consciousness super lucid. As much as when you're awake (vigil) or more.

Nothing will convince you more that you are way way more than the matter that composes your body than having these experiences a bunch of times.

A long time ago I wrote some details about this here:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-out-of-body-experience/answ...

Re: Awareness at Death

#93

Post by Liquix »

mike_hock wrote: post #39
fhqwhgads wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally a thing! https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploa... https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/do...

It's interesting that the neuroprotective chemicals also happen to result in a pleasant feeling, as there would have been no evolutionary pressure whatsoever to make a physiological state that's almost exclusively experienced just before death feel like anything in particular. Anything from bliss to agonizing pain to nothing would have been equally viable.

In fact there may be an evolutionary advantage in doing the opposite - flooding the system with stress/fear chemicals at the time of death. Predators would likely prefer to avoid tense, stringy meat reeking of primal panic and feces.

Re: Awareness at Death

#95

Post by Buttons840 »

whatshisface wrote: post #90
MPSimmons wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I have grounds to argue against this take. I think the definition of death changes over time as medical technology advances in its ability to return someone to "life".

If your brain is working well enough to have thoughts about its experiences, I don't see how you could call that death when people whose brains are not working that well at all, are alive.

It's also important to remember that we don't know what we experienced in the past, only what our fallible memories of the past are. This applies to more than just near-death experiences.

Re: Awareness at Death

#96

Post by myheadasplode »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #13
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…

Can you say more about how advaita / nonduality are related to this? Still struggling to get my head around those ideas.

Me too, my friend (although a hardcore nonduality person would say you don't get your head around the ideas so much as experience them directly).

This is all anecdotal but a lot of NDE/OOB experiencers describe feelings of oneness and a singular connection with all matter and beings that they gain upon "leaving" the body and lose upon re-entering it. A lot of modern day non-dual seekers similarly describe their locus of perception post-awakening as being distributed through the entirety of the room that they're in as opposed to just the spot behind their eyes. Even MPSimmons' description of his experience in another comment mirrors what teachers like Angelo Dilullo (himself an anesthesiologist) describe.

In other words, nonduality says that there's just one consciousness/point of view that we falsely interpret as fragmented (ie mine, yours, the surgeon's, the table's, the chair's). People who report NDEs/OOBs use language that suggests the same.

In a very non-woo way, I think nondual perception and this line of experience is truly fascinating and I wish there were more scientific resources devoted to its study.

Re: Awareness at Death

#97

Post by ShamelessC »

_nalply wrote: post #71

Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned. I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things. In o…

> It was an unknown and completely new thing for her.

My priors tell me that your wife simply had some sort of chemical induced dream or hallucination due to the extreme stress of being near death. Why are you so quick to assume something supernatural occurred?

Re: Awareness at Death

#98

Post by demondemidi »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #48
demondemidi wrote: post #2

Whew, glad this dodged the "woo". I've seen similar reports like this, that fail to detect any parapsychological assertions. I often wonder if people who have these experiences have ever done hallucinogens. I have a feeling that if someone has previously experienced the flimsy nature of perceived reality, they wouldn't be so quick to ascribe near-death experiences to something supernatural.

Considering that a popular hallucinogen today, DMT (with or without the ayahuasca ritual), commonly leaves users with the conviction that the drug really opened a portal to another dimension inhabited by godlike entities, and didn’t just scramble their synapses like e.g. LSD – I think that the experience you suggest wouldn’t necessary dissuade people from reaching for a supernatural explanation.

Ahh good point. I'm from a much older generation and the new drugs are outside my experience if they really provide that kind of vibe.

Re: Awareness at Death

#99

Post by demondemidi »

thelittleone wrote: post #49
demondemidi wrote: post #2

Whew, glad this dodged the "woo". I've seen similar reports like this, that fail to detect any parapsychological assertions. I often wonder if people who have these experiences have ever done hallucinogens. I have a feeling that if someone has previously experienced the flimsy nature of perceived reality, they wouldn't be so quick to ascribe near-death experiences to something supernatural.

I've had several NDEs and also worked with plan medicines (facilitating and dieting in the amazon) for close to 10 years. In my experience there's a very different feeling between a perceived reality and an NDE vision (or similar visions that cut through the illusory nature of reality).

I had three NDEs well. I found my NDEs to be more like dreams. Very relaxing dreams.

Re: Awareness at Death

#100

Post by wolverine876 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #68
wolverine876 wrote: post #54

How do they obtained informed consent for human experimentation? If I understand, the researchers are summoned to the hospital bedside of someone undergoing cardiac arrest. If they came into a loved one's room, or mine, I would be very angry. Any risk or distraction is too much. But that's my perspective. Maybe they obtain permission from next of kin?

It’s increasingly clear to me as a group, people who practice real science as a discipline, are an odd bunch that don’t necessarily fit into the social categories that would be bothered by these kinds of things I know nobody in my close friends or limited family that would bat an eye if someone came into my hospital room to do this

Perhaps that is true on a social level, but informed consent is an institutionalized, strongly enforced rule of research.
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