The Science of Near-Death Experiences • Hacker News Board

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#31

Post by kijin » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

Cybernetic wrote: post #30

up_and_up wrote: post #11

Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your body somehow and you were looking down at your physical self. One experience was while awake meditating and the other was while sleeping. No drugs involved etc. While these were not technically NDE's, it definitely opened up for me the possibility that an NDE…

About 10 years ago, I had an experience that felt like I was out of my body. It occurred during the night while asleep. I woke up to find myself floating over the bed, just below the ceiling and against the wall opposite the bed. I remember looking around the room and I could see myself and my wife asleep. It didn't register to me at that time, that I was looking at myself from outside my body. It felt like a dream a…

> at which point I woke up immediately.

Could the whole thing have been a dream?

Even if you remember waking up before it happened, that doesn't mean that it was not a dream. You can have a dream within a dream, or have two consecutive dreams that make you feel like you dreamed within a dream.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#32

Post by Cybernetic » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #31

Cybernetic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 10 years ago, I had an experience that felt like I was out of my body. It occurred during the night while asleep. I woke up to find myself floating over the bed, just below the ceiling and against the wall opposite the bed. I remember looking around the room and I could see myself and my wife asleep. It didn't register to me at that time, that I was looking at myself from outside my body. It felt like a dream a…

> at which point I woke up immediately. Could the whole thing have been a dream? Even if you remember waking up before it happened, that doesn't mean that it was not a dream. You can have a dream within a dream, or have two consecutive dreams that make you feel like you dreamed within a dream.

It definitely could have been a dream. It was a strange combination of the physical sensation of floating and falling, but also observing myself in the third person that was very unusual.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#33

Post by jacel » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 2:51 AM UTC

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe DMT can be produced in the pineal gland? I can't read this paper from 1976 but that's what the title says http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-4159.1976....

DMT is hallucinogenic, similar to LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms), and these NDEs sound quite similar to the results of medical psilocybin trials http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment. I'm surprised the author didn't mention this aspect (or if they did, it was very brief).

As the author alluded to, the disappointment for me is with this false dichotomy - mystical and wonderful or scientific and mundane. Isn’t the idea that a bunch of neurons can produce these incredible experiences wonderful enough? How great is it that we can produce a drug to make the last moments of our life beautiful? Aren’t we lucky that sometimes we get a second chance, and our brain can rewire so dramatically we change the way we live our life? And just think how it will change our understanding of consciousness when we figure out how all of this happens! I think that’s a much more fulfilling explanation than the intangible mind/soul argument. But maybe that’s just me.