death: nde---near-death-experience

Near Death Experiences, otherwise known as N.D.E.

Typically this is defined as being clinically dead, then somehow being brought back to life. Many people vary on their definition of this phenomena because we don't always agree that someone was "really" dead. When someone is truly dead, meaning no detectable brain activity, (see Death) there is rarely any coming back. When people say they died on the operating table, they are usually referring to their heart stopping, and are brought back quite typically with CPR.

Is it real?

Sadly, in many documented cases it is not. Why? Because when the heart stops beating, and you stop breathing, the brain gets starved for oxygen. Also, the brain instinctively senses it is dyeing, and goes through an acceptance. This leads to the old saying of your life flashing before your eyes. The tunnel with the light at the end of it has been repeated in the laboratory as well, it is a product of the brain dyeing.

What does science say?

The Near-Death Experience recently gained an increased scientific respectability by the publication of an article in The Lancet authored by Dr. Pim van Lommel of the Rijnstate Hospital at Arnhem (the Netherlands) and his collaborators (Lommel, et al. 2001). Their prospective work with cardiac patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest, resembles similar research by Dr. Sam Parnia at the University of Southampton and his colleagues (Parnia et al., 1998).
Both Van Lommel and Parnia have concluded that NDEs are real and that they cannot be explained by physiological or psychological causes (alone). Moreover, they have both accepted the implication that consciousness is not destroyed when our brain activity ceases, but that there is a continuity beyond brain coma and therefore probably after brain death as well. Consciousness does not ultimately depend on brain activity for its very existence, which makes it downright irrational to take for granted the idea that it would be obliterated after the brain ceases to exist as a physical system.

The above is not hard fact, but rather theory, and does not mirror the opinion of the entire scientific community, in fact it is a minority, I mention it here because it is interesting that at least some of the scientific community gives it merit.

On the other side of the argument

It is a fact however, that scientists and doctors have been able to duplicate many of these experiences through the use of drugs or electronic stimulation of the brain. The tunnel, the sense of floating out of the body, even in some cases, thinking they are seeing a guide, or other spiritual being. They claim that these near-death experiences are simply physical phenomena that may occur in the body when it is under trauma, lack of oxygen to the brain, or such. Since they ARE able to duplicate the NDE effects, at least to a certain extent, they certainly have a good argument.

Are none of the documented experiences real?

Some may be. Because there are things that cannot be explained away. These things include seeing dead relatives, (in some cases the NDE did not know the person was dead). Also the out of body experiences that pin-point details that the person could not have known, like a red pencil on top of a cabinet and so forth. There are enough cases out there with bizarre unexplainable circumstances that makes it impossible to write all experiences as fake. Perhaps it is because simply stopping your heart and breathing is not truly death, maybe the genuine ones had actual cessation of brain activity, at least for a moment.

Explore for yourself

Feel free to explore the sites listed below and make up your own mind. Be aware that these sites are not controlled by spiritandsky, merely listed here. Even though they have been visited and cleared as relevant to the category, it does not mean we agree with what they say, make up your own mind.

Below is a listing of categories in the SKR pertaining to death: nde---near-death-experience