Light lessons

Since NDEs have been on my mind lately, I found myself rereading Kenneth Ring's Lessons from the Light (1998). On pages 97-98, I came across a case that, while not an NDE itself, is obviously relevant to this subject and to some recent speculation of mine.

Ring reports that he "received a letter from a mother who wanted to share with me a baffling conversation she had had with her young son. At the time it occurred, she told me, by way of introduction, that she had had only a passing familiarity with NDEs, but what happened to her that day was to lead her to want to know much more about the subject."

The woman wrote:

The incident concerning Steven occurred when he was two years and two months old. (He is now two years and ten months old.) I was framing a picture of my grandmother and grandfather, who have been dead since before Steven was born. Steven was sitting nearby playing with a toy, and asked me what I was doing. I told him and explained that it was a picture of his grandma and grandpa, who were now dead. No one had ever discussed death with Steven before, and all of a sudden I found myself faced with doing just that, with no prior preparation....

I began by saying that they were no longer here with us and that they had gone to be with God.... Before I could say more, he said in a very matter-of-fact way: "When you die, it's a tunnel."...

I asked if there was anything in the tunnel. He replied that there was light in the tunnel. I asked what color the Light was, and he replied, "White." I asked if, when you die, you go through the tunnel. He answered affirmatively. I asked what you do when you come to the end of the tunnel. He said, "You go to the Light." He also volunteered that grandpa (pointing to the picture) was there with "a light on his head."

In her letter to Ring, the mother added:

I thought it was significant that several of your NDErs mentioned a feeling of homecoming, a familiarity, a feeling that they had always known everything they experienced. Is it possible that very young children retain some memory of having been there? Is it possible that by the time most of them have adequate verbal skills to express it, the memory is gone?

This small incident dovetails rather neatly with the speculations I presented in my last post.

Ring uses this letter as the springboard to a brief examination of NDEs in children. On pages 100-101 he recounts Melvin Morse's investigation of an NDE reported by a seven-year-old girl who nearly drowned. (In what follows, material in square brackets was written by Ring.)

Morse saw her for a follow-up examination. As a physician, he was interested in such matters as brain tumors and childhood leukemia, and had no interest whatever in NDEs....

After Morse introduced himself, but before starting his examination, Kristle turned to her mother and said, "That's the one with the beard. First, there was this tall doctor who didn't have a beard, and then he came in." [Correct, thought Morse.]

She then went on spontaneously to describe several other procedures that were performed on her, including a nasal intubation -- all of which statements were again accurate. Morse, who had been there during all this time, knew that her eyes had been closed and that she had been profoundly comatose during this entire period....

Intrigued, he asked, "What do you remember about being in the swimming pool?"

"You mean when I visited the Heavenly Father," Kristle replied.

Nonplussed, Morse encouraged her to say more, but all Kristle would say that day was "I met Jesus and the Heavenly Father." Then, she got very shy or embarrassed and said no more.

However, when Morse returned the next week, he tried again, and this time he succeeded in prying out Kristle's full story. Here it is.

She remembered nothing of the drowning. However, in her words: "I was dead. Then I was in the tunnel. It was dark and I was scared. I couldn't walk."

She then told Morse that a woman named Elizabeth appeared, and that the tunnel then became bright.... They entered heaven. "Heaven was fun," she said. "It was bright and there were lots of flowers." She said there was a border around heaven that she could not see past.

Kristle reported to Morse that she met many people there, including her dead grandparents, her maternal aunt, and "Heather and Melissa," two souls waiting to be reborn....

Kristle then found herself able to see home and observed her mother cooking and her father, who was sitting on the couch, as well as her brothers and sisters playing. [According to Morse, when Kristle later described this scene to her parents, they were astonished that she accurately described their clothing, their positions in the house, and even the food her mother had been cooking.]

Ring also reports the case of Nina, a nine-year-old girl who had an NDE during a surgical operation. Raymond Moody reported Nina saying:

I heard them say my heart had stopped but I was up at the ceiling watching. I could see everything from up there. I was floating close to the ceiling, so when I saw my body I didn't know it was me. Then I knew because I recognized it. I went out in the hall and I saw my mother crying. I asked her why she was crying but she could not hear me. The doctors thought I was dead.

Then a pretty lady came up and helped me because she knew I was scared. We went through a tunnel and I went into heaven. There are beautiful flowers there. I was with God and Jesus. They said I had to go back to be with my mother because she was upset. They said I had to finish my life. So I went back and woke up.

The tunnel I went through was long and very dark. I went through it real fast. There was light at the end. When we saw the light I was very happy.... The light was very bright. [p. 102]

Then there is the case of a nine-month-old baby boy who suffered a cardiac arrest during an emergency surgical procedure and was without a pulse for 40 minutes. Afterward he was in a coma for three months. Ring reports:

Two years later, when he was five, he was having lunch one day with his father and spontaneously brought up the time "when he had died."

As the mother observed before she related this event to us, neither parent had ever heard this story before. She went on to say, "He had never, ever, been told that he had died. He was never told the things that happened to him."

In any case, as the mother recalled a conversation, it went like this:

He sat down besides his dad, and he said, "Dad, do you know what?" And his dad said "What?" "You know I died." "Oh, you did?" And he said, "Yeah." His dad said, "Well, what happened?" And he said, "It was really, really dark, daddy, and then it was really, really bright. And I ran and ran, and it didn't hurt anymore." And his dad said, "Where were you running, Mark?" And he said, "Oh, Daddy, I was running up there [pointing upward].... And he said he didn't hurt anymore, and a man talked to him. And his dad said, "What kind of words did he say?" And Mark said, "He didn't talk like this [pointing to his mouth], he talked like this [pointing to his head]." Because he couldn't tell you with his little vocabulary that it was through the mind. And he said, "I didn't want to come back, Daddy, but I had to." [Pp. 108-109]

This event occurred before the publication of Raymond Moody's Life after Life, which first popularized the idea of NDEs, so there is little chance that the child or his parents had been exposed to this concept.

Finally Ring gives the example of a pediatrician named David B. Herzog who "reported a case in a medical journal [Critical Care Medicine] that involved a little girl who was only six months of age when she may have had an NDE."

The infant suffered renal and circulatory failure and barely survived. Herzog reports:

Some months after her discharge, she had a panic reaction when encouraged by some siblings to crawl through a tunnel at a local store. The cause of this reaction was not obvious but the "tunnel panic" was seen again on a number of occasions. According to her mother, during these episodes the patient would talk very fast, be unduly frightened and overwhelmed, and would seem as if she knew the tunnel quite well. At the age of 3 1/2, when her mother was explaining the impending death of her grandmother, the child replied, "Will Grandma have to go through the tunnel to get to see God?" [p. 112]

One thing I learned from rereading the opening chapters of Lessons from the Light is that I was mistaken in my objection to the AWARE study currently being carried out. I had argued that someone in the grip of an an NDE would probably not focus on extraneous details such as pictures taped to the top of shelves. However, it is clear from the cases Ring reports that at least some NDErs do notice extraneous details, such as dust and cobwebs on top of light fixtures.

This being the case, I would expect that some patients in the AWARE study would observe and remember the pictures. If a significant number of NDEs are reported by this pool of patients -- NDEs that include the OBE component -- and if none of the patients can remember or describe the hidden pictures, then this would constitute significant evidence that the experience is at least partly hallucinatory, though, in itself, it would not explain the veridical perceptions that have already been established in some earlier cases.

Many of the accounts cited by Ring make it clear that the subject's perception is not limited to any one particular object of interest, but is closer to an omniscient perspective. Take the case of Craig, who had an NDE when he nearly drowned. Describing the event, he wrote:

All of a sudden, I noticed a floating sensation, as if I were rising. I was shocked to find that I was floating upwards into the open air above the river. I remember vividly the scene of the water level passing before my eyes. Suddenly I could see and hear as never before. The sound of a waterfall was so crisp and clear that it just cannot be explained by words. Earlier that year, my right ear had been injured when somebody threw an M-80 into a bar where I was listening to a band, and it exploded right next to my head. But now I could hear perfectly clearly, better than I ever had before. My sight was even more beautiful. Sights that were close in distance were as clear as those far away, and this was at the same moment, which astounded me. There was no blurriness in my vision whatsoever. I felt as if I had been limited by my physical senses all these years, and that I had been looking at a distorted picture of reality. [p. 35]

A similar report of enhanced perception was made by an actor who had an out-of-body experience (not an NDE) while dancing on stage.

Suddenly, without a moment's warning, I found myself in steel rafters near the ceiling of the room. I was aware of the gloom of the girders rising up through the shadows, and looking down on the spectacle below, I was startled to see that my vision had changed: I could see everything in the room -- every hair on every head, it seemed -- all at the same time. I took it all in, in a single omnipresent glance: hundreds of heads arranged in wavering rows of portable chairs, a half-dozen babies sleeping in laps, hairs of many different colors, shining from the light on stage. Then my attention shifted to the stage, and there we were in multicolored leotards, whirling about in our dance, and there I was -- there I was -- face-to-face with [his dancing partner]. [p. 57]

Compare this to the case of a woman who lost consciousness after being rushed to the hospital with pneumonia:

I was hovering over a stretcher in one of the emergency rooms at the hospital. I glanced down at the stretcher, knew the body wrapped in blankets was mine, and really didn't care. The room was much more interesting than my body. And what a neat perspective. I could see everything. And I do mean everything! I could see the top of the light on the ceiling, and the underside of the stretcher. I could see tiles on the ceiling and the tiles on the floor, simultaneously: three hundred degree spherical vision. And not just spherical. Detailed! I could see every single hair and the follicle out of which it grew on the head of the nurse standing beside the stretcher. At the time, I knew exactly how many hairs there were to look at. But I shifted focus. She was wearing glittery white nylons. Every single shimmer and sheen stood out in glowing detail, and once again, I knew exactly how many sparkles there were. [pp. 62-63]

Very clear visual perceptions are common in NDEs. Ring mentions a questionnaire distributed by Janice Holden, a professor at the University of North Texas, to people who had experienced OBEs near death. She received 63 replies. Ring writes:

79% of her sample reported having clear visual perceptions, and a comparable percentage also stated that it was distortion-free, in color, and involved ... a panoramic field of vision. Furthermore, 61% of her cases claim that they had a complete and accurate memory of the physical environment, and a like percentage even said they could read during their OBE! [p. 58]

Addressing the issue of the veridical NDEs, Ring first recounts the well-known story of Maria's shoe, which I covered in detail in an earlier essay. Then he gives us a couple of other stories involving shoes.

A 1985 case involved a woman who had been resuscitated. The nurse who investigated the case reported:

She told me how she floated up over her body, viewed the resuscitation effort for a short time, and then felt herself being pulled up through several floors of the hospital. She then found herself above the roof and realized she was looking at the skyline of Hartford. She marveled at how interesting this view was, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a red object. It turned out to be a shoe ....

I was relating this to a resident, who, in a mocking manner, left. Apparently, he got a janitor to get him onto the roof. When I saw him later that day, he had a red shoe and became a believer, too. [p. 67]

Ring says he asked the nurse whether she had ever heard of the case of Maria's shoe. She had not.

In 1982, Ring tells us, a nurse named Joyce Harman

returned from work after a vacation. On that vacation, she had purchased a new pair of plaid shoelaces, which she happened to be wearing on her first day back at the hospital. That day, she was involved in resuscitating a patient, a woman she did not know.

The resuscitation was successful, and the next day, Ms. Harmon chanced to see the patient, who volunteered, "Oh, you're the one with the plaid shoelaces! ... I saw them," the woman continued. "I was watching what was happening yesterday when I died. I was up above." [p. 68]

Another case comes from the 1970s. A clinical instructor named Sue Saunders

was helping in the emergency room to resuscitate a sixtyish man who was flatlined. Medics were shocking him repeatedly, with no results. Ms. Saunders was trying to get him oxygen, using a "bag-without-mask" apparatus. In the middle of the resuscitation, someone else took over for her and she left.

A couple of days later, she encountered this patient in the cardiac unit. He spontaneously commented, "You looked so much better in your yellow top."

She, like Joyce Harman, was so shocked at this remark she got goosebumps, for she had been wearing a yellow smock that day (and had not worn it since).

"Yeah," the man continued, "I saw you. You had something over my face, and you were pushing air into me. And I saw your yellow smock." [pp. 68-69]

Perhaps even more intriguing are cases of blind patients who reported visual perceptions in their NDEs. Ring wrote a whole book on this subject, Mindsight. Lessons from the Light summarizes a couple of the better cases, including that of Vicki Umipeg, who was blind from birth. She had two separate NDEs, one at the age of 20 after an attack of appendicitis, and the second at the age of 22, following a car crash.

She says, "Those two experiences were the only time I could ever relate to seeing, and to what light was, because I experienced it. I was able to see."

She described her second NDE to Ring. (Material in square brackets was written by Ring.)

The first thing I was really aware of is that I was up on the ceiling, and I heard this doctor talking -- it was a male doctor -- and I looked down and I saw this body, and at first, I wasn't sure that it was my own. But I recognized my hair... It was a very long ... and it was down to my waist. And part of it had to be shaved off, and I remember being upset about that.... From up there on the ceiling, I could tell they were very concerned, and I could see them working on this body. I could see that my head was cut open. I could see a lot of blood [though she could not tell its color -- she still has no concept of color, she says].

I went up through the roof and then. And that was astounding!... It's like the roof didn't ... it just melted. [last ellipsis in original]

From that vantage point she saw "lights, and the streets down below, and everything." Her experience continued as she entered some other dimension of reality. Ring summarizes:

Now finding herself in an illuminated field, covered with flowers, she sees two children, long deceased, whom she had befriended when they were all in a school for the blind together. Then, they were both profoundly retarded, but in this state, they appear vital, healthy, and without their earthly handicaps. She feels a welcoming love from them and tries to move toward them. She also sees other persons whom she had known in life, but who have since died (such as her caretakers and her grandmother), and is drawn toward them, too.

Ring asked how her NDE compared to her dreams.

VU: No similarity, no similarity at all.

KR: Do you have any kind of visual perception in your dreams?

VU: Nothing. No color, no sight of any sort, no shadows, no light, no nothing.

KR: What kinds of perceptions are you aware of in your typical dreams?

VU: Taste -- I have a lot of eating dreams. And I have dreams when I'm playing the piano and singing, which I do for a living, anyway. I have dreams in which I touch things ... I taste things, touch things, hear things, and smell things -- that's it.

KR: And no visual perceptions?

VU: No.

KR: So that what you experienced during your NDE was quite different from your dreams?

VU: Yeah, there's no visual impression at all in any dream I have. [pp. 75-78]

Notice a few of the common denominators in the above material.

Vicki Umipeg said, "I looked down and I saw this body, and at first, I wasn't sure that it was my own. But I recognized my hair."

Nine-year-old Nina said, "I was floating close to the ceiling, so when I saw my body I didn't know it was me. Then I knew because I recognized it."

Seven-year-old Kristle said, "I was dead. Then I was in the tunnel. It was dark and I was scared." Then a lady appeared and took her to heaven. "It was bright and there were lots of flowers."

Nina said, "The doctors thought I was dead. Then a pretty lady came up and helped me because she knew I was scared. We went through a tunnel and I went into heaven. There are beautiful flowers there."

A three-and-a-half-year-old asked, ""Will Grandma have to go through the tunnel to get to see God?"

There are many other commonalities, of course. Though some details vary, the basic experience seems to be remarkably consistent, whether reported by young children, adults, or people born blind.

Comments

[Kris]

Of course none of this should happen at with a dying brain.

When I cut the power to my lamp , the bulb doesn't become super bright it goes off.

If I reduce the power to my lamp the light is less dim, not brighter.

I will challenge the procurement of one thing that becomes more functional when you reduce or remove power to it.

Common sense would state when a body is shutdown the brain should stop being conscious. The fact that NDErs are clearly conscious, in their words super conscious, and can describe what is going on around them accurately ought to be a strong hint this isn't happening in the brain, but what do I know?

[Michael Prescott]

In all fairness, there is some evidence that the brain does light up in the instant before dying:

http://snipurl.com/shbrq

I don't think this explains the whole NDE phenomenon by any means, but there may be some connection.

[Mark]

I enjoyed the post Michael. I'd already seen that link to the "dying brain lights up" article and it intrigued me. Primarily because that kind of finding could just as easily prove that the "mind" is going somewhere as the brain dies, as it could disprove it.

[Ronnie Lee]

The 360 degree vision in some NDEs intrigue me. Has anyone conducted studies on enhanced cognitive senses during NDEs? I remember reading an NDE on a public forum long ago where someone who lost their sense of smell in the physical world retained it during the experience, and I have read a few NDEs where people could apparently hear sounds and notes unheard of from this world.

[Bruce Siegel]

That's funny, Michael—I'm in the middle of re-reading Lessons from the Light too. It's one of my favorite books, and almost certainly my favorite book on NDE's—and I have a lot!

I particularly like the way Ring stands back for long stretches and allows the experiencers to have their say without interruption.The chapters on the life review are particularly compelling.

Though I understand that Ring stopped writing about the subject because he felt he ran out of new stuff to say, it makes me a bit sad.

[steve wood]

Great post, Michael.
I'm familiar with all of these cases and they never fail to impress,second,third,fourth time around.
I remember an episode of the Phil Donahue show in the mid eighties I think it was,devoted to NDErs. There was Jackie Nink Pflug(shot in the back of the head on the hijacked Egyptian airliner.) Tom Sawyer,crushed under his own truck when the tarmac gave way on his drive.Violet Horton,collapsed during gall bladder complications. There was a vietnam vet(can't remember his name )shot in the chest..real nice guy,as they all were.He couldn't find anyone to believe his experience,so he went to the bookstore to look for Moody's book,and couldn't find it,until it fell off the top of a shelf and hit him on the head.
Then there was Kristle Murzlock who Morse resustitated in Pocatelle(I think).While she was recounting her story I remember being impressed with how convincing she was.She's been interviewed several times subsequently, as most of them have.The recollections never change.

[sbu]

Here is an interesting post on CNN about the brain:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/woman.brain/index.html

This is off topic and I'm sorry if it was mentioned elsewhere I haven't been keeping up lately but...

Nobel prize winner Brian Josepheon has joined SCEPCOP (the anti-pseudo-skeptic site).

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/

Does csicop have any Nobel prize winners?

Michael Prescott, have you considered joining too?

[Michael Prescott]

I'm not much of a joiner, I'm afraid. But congratulations to them for acquiring the support of Prof. Josephson.

[dmduncan]

Does anyone know what Ring's current position on the NDE is?

[Michael Duggan]

Michael, I really enjoyed your post. Personally I'm not that convinced anymore of the evidentiality of NDE/OBE phenomena. Of course the data from AWARE will be a significant contribution, but recent developments in neuroscience, for example, the study that revealed 30 seconds of intense brain activity before death, alluded to above, and recent well argumented cases for the Dying Brain hypothesis (see link), all appear to weaken the evidence, or at least take the shine off somewhat. Much better evidence comes from mediumship and reincarnation research.
The link is here:
http://www.ukskeptics.com/pdf/dying-brain.pdf

[Kris]

Hey Michael

If I was you I would read Sabom's Dying to Live and the more recent Irreducible Mind. They discuss the arguments used by Braithewaite and show why they are flawed. In particular I would recommend Sabom's book cause it will show that these arguments are nothing really new and have been throughly debunked. Braithewaite is quibbling and nothing more. Okay lets say some brain activity remains, is it enough to be conscious in any meaningful way. No it's not. In the same way some cells in a corpse don't die immediately we do not consider the person to be alive anymore.

In the end has the author explained how people can accurately describe their surgery? No

Has he explained why the blind have visual based NDEs? No

I think you get my point. Nothing wrong with reading skeptical stuff such as Braithewaite and Augustine but don't let them trick you into losing sight of the big picture of NDEs. Talk with people who have had the experience.

I do agree with you though, I think reincarnation is the best way to go. You cannot play quibble games with it.

[steve wood]

Michael,for goodness sake,what has thirty seconds of second or fifth rate brain activity got to do with witnessing the events of one's own grisly heart operation.
Your not convinced. That's okay.
Where was the study on the dying person conducted by the way,and how did they know when he/she was dead?

[Kris]

I forgot to mention. I loved how Braithewaite himself nearly became dead from a stroke at the idea of dualism. The guy is worse then a religious fundy.

[Jeff]

One thing interesting to me about the case of the nine month old boy is that at nine months, he wouldn't know how to say much of anything. But during the NDE, he was apparently able to communicate and understand what was being said to him. Not only that, at five, he was apparently able to translate that understanding into words.

Another thing of interest to me are the NDErs who describe how vivid everything was during their experience. I think that is more evidence that the spirit self is our highest self. It seems our brain's interpretations of what we see and hear around us is restricted to the limitations of our eyes and ears. Our spirit self probably soaks up all the vivid information we see and hear, but humanity doesn't seem to know - or has forgotten - how to access all of this detailed information. During an NDE though,it seems that spirits no longer confined to the limitations of body are able to fully experience a larger spectrum of reality. I don't know if I would go so far as to say that we are spirits 'trapped' in human bodies; I think it may be that experiencing life in a human body is an intended part of development, or we may have just forgotten how to access the full spectrum our spirit self is able to observe.

I sometimes wonder if the bio-magnetic energy fields around us are either our spirit selves, or an effect given off by our spirit selves. I also wonder if the 'electrical' currents flowing through our brains are not the result of 'brain activity' itself, but the result of our brain being operated by those 'electrical' currents. In other words, perhaps the brain is like a set of buttons, and the 'electrical' currents are like a set of fingers. If so, then it makes sense that the physical body would cease to operate once the 'fingers' move away from the 'buttons'.

[Bruce Siegel]

"Does anyone know what Ring's current position on the NDE is?"

As far as I know, dm, Ring no longer writes on the NDE nor is he even active in the NDE community. In fact, he wrote an update for the 2006 softcover edition in which he completely dismisses the entire phenomenon.

Just kidding. As of that update, he was as enthusiastic as ever.

[Bruce Siegel]

That should have read: 2006 softcover edition of Lessons from the Light.

[sonic]

Last time I saw Moody he was trying to come up with someway of trainning people so that they would be better able to communicate the experience of an NDE (if they were to have one)
Does anyone know what I'm referring to? What has come of this?

[Zerdini]

This is the latest on his website:

New Message from Dr. Moody

People at the bedside of the dying often report extraordinary spiritual experiences. The bystanders feel that they empathically co-live the dying experience of the person who passes away. I am working on a research project on these empathic or shared death experiences, for future publication. If you would be willing to share your experience with me,please email me at [email protected]. I would be deeply appreciative. Please include your phone number,so I can call you. Strict confidentiality is assured.
With kind regards,
Raymond Moody, MD, Ph.D

[steve wood]

Some years ago, I read a press release describing a Raymond Moody, Paul Perry,book Reunions(visionary encounters with departed loved ones)as a groundbreaking must read. So I eagerly bought it and then discovered that Moody had actually built a psychomanteum and was offering grieving relatives the chance to mirror gaze(Ancient Greek Style)until their loved ones 'appeared.'
That's okay though, I thought. I'll give it a chance.
Moody duly reported that deceased relatives had indeed popped out of the mirror,but infuriatingly,instead of revealing some golden nuggets of wisdom,all they said was.."I'm fine,just fine...don't worry I'm fine.
I liked Life after Life,it was what got this aspect of the paranormal rolling, but not much else has been forthcoming.

[Michael G.]

Regarding NDEs in the blind, I really enjoyed his book, 'Mindsight'. I consider it a classic amongst my NDE book collection. There are stories of NDEs wherein the blind born that way since birth have veridical visions in which color is "perceived." Fascinating.

[Bruce Siegel]

"Moody duly reported that deceased relatives had indeed popped out of the mirror,but infuriatingly,instead of revealing some golden nuggets of wisdom,all they said was.."I'm fine,just fine...don't worry I'm fine.""

Steve, if someone you loved died, and life seemed unbearable at times because you felt you'd never see them again, what message could be possibly be more meaningful?

Or, if you were just afraid of your own death, as we all are to some extent, it's still a pretty cool thing to hear.

I think Reunions WAS a groundbreaking book because it presented actual steps one could take to facilitate contact with the dead, no special psychic talents required. (And neatly tied in Moody's present-day attempts with ancient historical techniques, which made it even more interesting and plausible.)

Induced After-Death Communication, which Michael discussed here, is quite similar in many ways

[steve wood]

Bruce,
The book was trumpeted as a groundbreaking connection into the secrets of the afterlife. But no secrets were revealed.

If my dead Father...and the fourteen dead members of his/my family strode out of a psychomanteum and 'only' told me...that they were just fine, I truly believe I would attempt to join the Internet Infidels. Fortunately,I'm sure they wouldn't have me.

[Kris]

Um Steve

I think the dead reporting they are fine is pretty momentous so why get upset that is all they had to say.

[Art]

"There was no blurriness in my vision whatsoever." - excerpt from Craig's NDE

It's common for near death experiencers to relate that what they percieved was "realer than real". I've often wondered how it was that person's perception could be "more real" or "more consciousness than normal? I believe I've figured out what is going on. There is an inherent blurriness in a holographic projection. We live in the holographic projection, and near death experiencers are able to percieve the holographic film from which our reality derives. If you know how a hologram is generated this will make perfect sense to you. Compare the above quote to this comment from a recent article in New Scientist about the holographic nature of the Universe.

"Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry," says Hogan."
www.crystalinks.com/holouniverse1.html

And by the way, being able to focus on the entire picture or image, and seeing each thread, and things far away appearing just as clear as close up are more connections between the holographic nature of the universe and near death experiences. There is no way that the average person that has an NDE would know this, but it appears over and over again in NDE descriptions. There is a connection or parallels between NDEs and quantum physics and the holographic universe theory that can not be easily explained away and I find this to be very evidential, just as much if nor more so then the evidential material.

[Michael Prescott]

Hi, Art! Good to have you back!

[felipe]

Art -

you would probably really enjoy reading the Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.

It's a really good book - and it's got lots and lots of stuff about holograms, too.

[Michael Prescott]

I think it's possible Art may have already read that book.

Just a guess.

[Art]

I think it's possible Art may have already read that book. - Michael Prescott
----------------------------

ROFLMAO! The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot is my Holy Bible! I have read all three of Talbot's books, Mysticism and the New Physics, Beyond the Quantum, and The Holographic Universe twice. I have "studied" the Holographic Universe like it was divinely inspired!

[Art]

"The 360 degree vision in some NDEs intrigue me." - Ronnie
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In a holographic piece of film each piece contains the whole, everything interpenetrates everything, and everything is infinitely connected to everything else. After the soul leaves the body it enters into some kind of strange "holographic" universe where the soul literally feels like it fills the whole universe. Whatever the soul focuses it's attention on is what it experiences. If you think of the Civil War you will be there in 1860's, at the battle of Gettysburg or wherever you wish to go. If you think of Neandertals and the glacial times in Europe you will be there watching and experiencing what it was like to be a Neandertal 50,000 years ago. Or I suppose you could even think about the Cretaceous and dinosaurs and you would be there absorbing all the information about that time period. Once the soul leaves the body it is no longer limited by time or space. It's a holographic universe thing.

NDE's and Time:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research13.html

[Zetetic_chick]

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot is my Holy Bible!

Art, do you know if other researchers have continued the works of Talbot, or refined or modified his conclusions?

[Art]

Art, do you know if other researchers have continued the works of Talbot, or refined or modified his conclusions? - Zetetic_chick
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Recently there was a really neat article in New Scientist online magazine about this static these scientist found who were looking for gravity waves or something. But it didn't exactly fit that but this other guy (Hogan?) had done some calculations and it fit perfectly with some stuff he was working on. He said it he thought it could be proof of the holographic nature of our universe.

“It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan. He adds: “”If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

http://www.inquisitr.com/15460/scientists-claim-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram/

It's like everything else in life some people think Michael Talbot was a prophet and other people think he was a quack. Some people hate The Holographic Universe and other people think it was incredibly profound. "Duality" (and separation) seem to be inherent and inescapable properties of the physical universe.

For me it's not any one piece of evidence that make me a believer, it's the sum total, or aggregate that point me in the direction that this universe and this life isn't quite what our senses tells us it is. It's like a puzzle framed by quantum physics and the holographic universe theory on the edge and filling in the inside you got pieces of the puzzle like near death experiences, death bed visions, EVP, and the work of some Mediums. I don't know if you've ever seen George Anderson give a reading but he's pretty dad gum amazing. I've seen him a few times in TV and he's even better than John Edward.

I am continually blown away by the connection between NDE's and quantum physics an the holographic universe theory. It's the parallels between the two that I find so evidential for both of them. I am also a huge fan of death bed visions. They fill me with so much hope. They make death seem so compassionate. No one dies alone.

We had a little boy at our Church, Chase, with lymphoma that was dying who at one o'clock in the morning saw angels in the room. Some of his relatives were in the room and Chase said to them "do ya'll see all the angels in the room?" A couple hours later at 4:00 am he died.

[sonic]

Moody was talking about the 'shared NDE' as well when I saw him. Thanks for the update- I wasn't aware of his website.
Odd...
He also talked about the psychomanteum. As I understand it, one of the problems was (is) that people go expecting to visit one person, and often it's someone else that shows up--

[Ronnie Lee]

Add shared NDEs (the ones where at least two people are experiencing an NDE at once and are able to communicate or remember the experience) to my list of interesting aspects of the experience. I think some of these bits of the NDE are often overshadowed, and I'd really like to see more research on these. Granted, attempting to research something like a shared NDE would be really difficult, as they don't seem to happen that often.

[steve wood]

Kris said..'I think the dead reporting they are fine is pretty momentous so why get upset that is all they had to say'

Kris,I didn't get upset,I just didn't finish the book. If you went to a medium to get some information about your dead relatives,would you be happy with,"There telling me there just fine,just fine."

Of course it's impressive if a dead relative walks out of a mirror, but the reader only has the authors word that had actually happened. Surely if there was genuine contact made, the spirits would give us ittle more information to help our cause.

[Kris]

Does anyone have any shared NDE accounts?

I think I would be happy if it was clearly them telling me through the mirror. I think we both had something else in mind.

[Sandy]

I’m often amazed at how ordinary my experiences with ghosts seem sometimes. They don’t typically say anything really enlightening. But then again, most people I meet on the street don’t either. Think about what your last conversation with your best friend or mom was like. It is the very mundane stuff of life that seems to connect us with our families. It isn’t so much what ghosts have to say that seems important, it almost seems like what they make us feel is the big deal.

Sometimes when I talk to my Grandma, I wonder why we talk about ordinary stuff going on in my life when she could tell me about where she is. She says that words don’t work any better to explain her experience than they work to explain my NDE. The best she can do is to help me meet her part way to get a taste of her way of being. I’ve never been able to carry that back here very well. I understand it when I’m there, but not when I’m here. The only part that really makes it back is some of the feelings. Really peaceful, and bigger somehow. And so loved.

[Art]

Sometimes when I talk to my Grandma, I wonder why we talk about ordinary stuff going on in my life when she could tell me about where she is. - Sandy
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The physics of the Spiritual Universe may be so different in kind from this physical universe that we may not be able to understand it (or believe it) even if they were to tell us what it is like.

We only understand that which we have some experience with. If someone from the distant future came and started explaining to me how trans-dimensional warp drives in Star ships work I'm not sure I'd be able to understand it because I have no basic knowledge in my brain about it.

And that concept may have a whole lot to do with "why we are here." It may simply be impossible for a soul or spirit to grasp what it is like to live in a physical universe or a universe where time and space and sepation exists without first having spent some time living in it.

"The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - J.B.S. Haldane

[Zetetic_chick]

He also talked about the psychomanteum

I tried the psychomanteum as explained in one of Moody's books for a few weeks and it didn't work.

I seem to be recalcitrant or resistent to having direct experience any kind of paranormal phenomena.

I'd like to have a direct experience of something like that, specially of phenomena suggesting survival.

I guess that "spirits" don't appear to me because perhaps they know I have a long list of questions (some of them technical: philosophical, scientific, spiritual, etc) to make them!

So they will have to think it twice before of "visiting" me.

Lol.

PS.
1-Has anybody here attempted the technique of psychomanteum with positive results?

2-For Zerdini, and as an off-topic question, have you had direct experience with so-called "Psychic Surgeons"?

I tend to be very skeptical of psychic surgeons, it's hard to believe they can to make elaborate and "major" surgeries (like extirpating a tumour) and don't leave any scar on the skin, specially when they're manipulating biological tissues.

As they're supposedly doing a mechanical operation (supposedly, mediated by spiritual means) one would expect some evidence of mechanical surgical-like after-effects on the patients' bodies.

But this is a field that I haven't studied in depth, so perhaps my opinion is ill-informed.

Perhaps Vitor knows or has researched something about it too, because some famous psychic surgeons are from Brazil (like Ze Arigo)

[felipe]

What I find really fascinating about reading the comments on this blog, are the rich diversity of experiences, and most probably....the various levels of "belief", or comitment to the idea that we really do survive physical death.

For example - I LOVE reading Zerdini's accounts of the spiritual stuff that he's encountered through the years, yet.....I don't believe that there were actual physical manifestations of ethereal beings that were procured through the mediumship of alec harris....or really any medium out there anywhere..:-)

It becomes a difficult hurdle to high jump at some point - what sort of speaks to you on a gut level and rings true...and what, all respect aside, sort of compels you to believe that something else a bit equally as odd - but not quite as advertised - was taking place.

I guess we all have our boggle threshold..:-)

I'm curious where others draw the line that they WANT to cross, but for some odd reason can't make the leap?

FWIW - I tend to believe in the authenticity of the narratives - or the stories so to speak from everyone who comments on here regularly.

But while I certainly believe that there are FAR more than "one white crow" out there in the wild, I tend to think that most of the stories on here, especially the ones that tend to "define" the life experience of those leaving the comments, are far more easily explained by more ordinary, or even textbook style answers than those emanating from ethereal realms..:-)

[sonic]

ZC-
There are a few places near where I live that use the psychomanteum set-up. Apparently the success rate is good (they continue and most people are satisfied) I don't know they publish exact results.
Moody did not claim that these were visitations from dead people, only that they often helped people overcome grief. That is the purpose he suggested they were useful for- overcoming grief in the living.

I have had 'paranormal' experiences too numerous to remember- reading "Irreducible Mind" was like a homecoming for me.
But they never come when I try...

[Sandy]

Hi Art! Nice to see you back.
=)

[Zetetic_chick]

Moody did not claim that these were visitations from dead people, only that they often helped people overcome grief

It's true, sonic.

I read Moody's book on psychomanteum several years ago. As far I remember, he said it was to overcome grief, but his book seemed to me somehow ambiguous... in some parts he writes as if real, external spiritual phenomena is the basis of the experiences or of some of them.

In any case, it was with that intention that I tried to test the psychomanteum. I didn't have any grief, only curiosity.

Perhaps I need to read again that book, or newers ones on psychomanteum.

I have had 'paranormal' experiences too numerous

Can you share some of the most impressive ones? Some of them pointing out to survival?

Thanks

[Zerdini]

ZC asked:" For Zerdini, and as an off-topic question, have you had direct experience with so-called "Psychic Surgeons"?"

It has been mentioned on here before. The most impressive was George Chapman who was controlled by a former eye surgeon, William Lang.

[Zerdini]

Felipe wrote:

For example - I LOVE reading Zerdini's accounts of the spiritual stuff that he's encountered through the years, yet.....I don't believe that there were actual physical manifestations of ethereal beings that were procured through the mediumship of alec harris....or really any medium out there anywhere..:-)

Thank you for that but frankly I am not bothered whether people believe it or not - personal testimony constantly contradicts theory!

I would probably be in the same situation as you if I hadn't seen it myself.

I have not even the slightest doubt we survive the death of the physical body and that it is possible to communicate with our loved ones who have preceded us.

[Zetetic_chick]

It has been mentioned on here before. The most impressive was George Chapman who was controlled by a former eye surgeon, William Lang.

Thanks, Zerdini. I didn't remember that you have already commented about it before. Now I remember it, it was some months ago.

I'll search more information about Chapman.

Most cases of "psychic surgeons" I've read are from Brazil and Philippines, and it seems to me they're not very reliable.

I remember only one of them (a philippine man) who was tested in well-controlled conditions, but I didn't remember his name right now.

[Art]

Hi Art! Nice to see you back. =) - Sandy
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Thanks, I was taking a break. All of the "life after death" and NDE blogs drew me back. I couldn't help myself. I'm still singing the same old tune though. I am still me. I am sorry to say though that the truth is that I really don't have anything new to add.

It's the same song I've been singing for the last 9 years. This is one of my favorite songs.

Your Still You - Josh Groban

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVHNHvkf0Ss

Josh Groban sounds like how I imagine how angels must sound. I think this song has spiritual implications, like after we die "your still you."

[Ginny]

Hi, Art! Don't forget Josh's "To Where You Are" too! A very beautiful schmaltzy afterlife tearjerker.

I do swoon for that boy. :-)

[william]

“But while I certainly believe that there are FAR more than "one white crow" out there in the wild,”

This is not what James meant by the one white crow story. One paranormal phenomenon that has valid evidence is the one white crow that makes materialism ancient history like the flat earth belief.

[Art]

Hi, Art! Don't forget Josh's "To Where You Are" too! A very beautiful schmaltzy afterlife tearjerker. I do swoon for that boy. :-) - Ginny
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It's so weird. When I hear Josh Groban sing I get tears in my eyes. His voice is incredible. It's perfect. It's like an incredible gift. When I hear his voice I honestly think that must be how angels sound when they sing? I wonder what kind of person he is in real life? I've seen him interviewed on different shows and he seems to be a really nice guy. Anyway, Whew! What a voice!