Near Death Experiences

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Nearly dying is not the same thing as really dying. Humanists and atheists believe that no one ever returned from the dead, not even Jesus. Doctors only record anybody as being dead when all brain-stem activity ceases. Though your heart may stop, you are still alive while your brain is still functional. In some modern heart surgery, medics deliberately stop the patients heart while some surgery is performed and then restart it. This is not killing the patient. The Light At The End Of The Tunnel is easily explained as dreamscape & pineal brain activity. If you’re concussed or knocked unconscious you see such lights (Hence the familiar phrase, seeing stars). The following is fairly typical of the description of many Near Death Experience stories. (NDE's). It is a composite story, not a quotation from any specific source. " I was dying. I was outside myself seeing the doctors trying to save me. There was a buzzing noise. I saw a blue, warm light. It took me to Heaven. Family and friends who had already died were there happily waiting to greet me. My life passed before me again, and Jesus came with words of comfort and love and then I got better." This typical though sincere belief is wrong. EXPLANATIONS - You would think from the literature available, that Near Death Experiences are very common events. Not so. Most people who have been close to dying recall nothing whatsoever of the experience of nearly dying. It is indistinguishable from dreamless sleep or unconsciousness for the vast majority of people. 60% of those survivors surveyed by NDE investigator, Ken Ring, only experienced a sense of ‘peace’. Just 37% saw the tunnel of light. A mere 23% believe or imagine that they went into or along the tunnel. Only 10% saw the Heaven within or beyond the tunnel. A measly 5% had a flashback of their life experiences. Children who have almost died don’t see dead friends and relatives on the other side, but live ones. They haven't lived long enough to know too many people who have died. Older people have more experience of bereavement, generally speaking. The evidence is highly inconsistent. It’s all dreams and hallucinations, I’m afraid. You often See tunnels of light in dreams, and meet people who have died. Dreams have the same surreal vague feel as the anecdotes of Heaven received from people brought back from near death. False Memory Syndrome (FMS) also plays a part. We can vividly recall experiences we never actually had. People surviving a NDE try to make sense of a confusing series of images and vague memories. FMS is inevitable. We fill in the gaps in our memory with idealized images. GOD, JESUS & HEAVEN? No! This is a cultural experience. Few see these at all and some Hindus see Krishna instead. We see what we believe. FMS again. FLASHBACKS? You won’t see your whole life in the few minutes between nearly dying and becoming conscious again, especially if you’ve lived 73 years. You may see edited highlights, but not everything. After a prolonged illness my Grandfather died preoccupied in trivial thinking of a neighbour’s dog he only saw a few times in life. There was no thought of immediate loved ones or talk of tunnels, lights, or meetings with God. When the brain is starved of blood and oxygen, as happens when the heart stops beating, our thoughts can become erratic, random, and vague. See the Rosebud references in the film, Citizen Kane for a classic fictional example of this. In trying to make sense of NDE’s after recovery, we think of the light, and glimpses of people we recall seeing in the dreamy state we found ourselves in. That‘s all that happens in an actual NDE! Death itself is absolute. No one comes back from that. No one! When people who have had an NDE describe seeing Jesus and given a glimpse of Heaven, where loved ones already abide, they are seeing something that actually contradict the Bible. According to The Book Of Revelations, no humans inhabit Heaven yet at all. Everyone dead simply languishes in the grave. It is only when God, via the archangel Gabriel, signals for the raising of the dead that the souls will arise and go to the Pearly Gates, where we have to queue up and be judged one by one, to see if we get sent to Heaven, Hell or Limbo (Purgatory). NDE champions don’t wait for judgement day, but have the dead ushered into Heaven as soon as they die. "Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting." Bertrand Russell. Some mystics believe and even teach their converts how to have out of body experiences, at will, or in states of high oxygen starvation, drug induced trance states, deep meditation, etc. Tests under medical condition using Ketamin style drug have shown that such state of mind can be artificially created. This induced kind of NDE is known as Astral Projection. The comic hero Dr Strange uses it as his major super-power. It is sadly a a mis-perception or outright nonsense. People who claim to be able to float out of their sleeping / unconscious bodies at will have been tested by having them try to read notes or look at pictures hidden in rooms and wards that they could float over to and inspect. No one has ever successfully reported what the pictures or messages say on being woken up again. SOURCES; Interview with Susan Blackmore (NDE investigator) The Skeptic, (U.K) Vol.. 7 #3. The Encyclopaedia Of The Paranormal, Edited by Gordon Stein. Keith Augustine - The Case Against Immortality (Skeptic (US) Vol. 5;7 1997. Arthur Chappell