No religious context, though. I knew enough about neurology and psychiatry to understand what was happening, but I imagine that someone that does not might be alarmed or seek some type of religious/spiritual explanation for what they were experiencing.

that the seemingly brief aura before the seizure was really kind of pleasurable. A kind of bright white haze (visual) and an odd sense of general well being. Then, of course, the falling down, seizing and coming to disoriented, not sure how long I'd been "out". Later, I saw the aura for the red flag it is.

I gladly trade the meds, which are effective, for the dangers seizures hold, but they were really unique events.

and, while not entirely convinced that he had really discovered anything, I found his analysis interesting and thoughtful.

The brain is an amazing thing that we will probably never fully understand - much like religion.

from a coma.

He's out to make money from this story and he's going to take advantage of those who believe in NDEs.

I don't feel i'm being taken advantaged of simply because I believe in NDEs. If he writes a good story, what's the big deal?

... ...
I must admit that the moment I saw that this was written by Shermer that I didn't bother to read even the excerpt here. I feel one can be too skeptical, and he fits the definition in my view.

... .. .
(My phone doesn't seem to do paragraphs here, thus the added dots. And I'm still out of town so I'm not really here )

He may seem too skeptical simply because the facts and the science do not support any other conclusion.

I urge you to give him another chance. His book The Believing Brain is eye-opening in how it explains, in terms that all can understand, just how the brain works and where our beliefs come from.

He could be a fantastic neurosurgeon and still believe in nde's.

The brain's synapses rapidly fire, creating the "white light" and "views of heaven" as a person is about to die.

about the similarity of experiences.

The neurosurgeon who wrote the book that this article critiques made a decent case for differentiating brain from mind. I'm not sure I buy it, but he did have some very interesting theories about this.

Here is another reiview of his book:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2013/01/reality-and-religion.html

is that the similarity of experience stems from the similarity of brain function, not because our brains are discovering something "out there" and independent of our own nature. Very simple, in fact. We have many, many, many examples of the similarity of brain functioning.

under the SOP, that non-believers are welcome to post here on topics of interest to them, and that within the guidelines of the SOP, vigorous and open debate and discussion are welcomed.

Thanks.

I've posted here on topics that are being discussed publicly and openly, in a spirit of tolerance. There has been nothing personal in any of my posts in this group, towards you or anyone else, nor will there be.

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that I never comment on one of your posts again, I can't make that promise. I do promise that anything I post will conform to the rules of the group.

As I read posts 8 and 9 above, it looks like one person stating one thing, and another person responding by directly contradicting them, rather than supporting them. Please clarify for me whether such a thing is permitted in this group or not.

It is also my understanding that this room is about new beginnings, and tolerance from all, not just some. Am I incorrect?

Last edited Sun Mar 31, 2013, 08:49 AM - Edit history (1)

As far as I can tell, the only past antagonism in this thread is what you just posted. If you'd like to discuss that post and and its context with me privately, I'd be more than happy to, but I won't do it here, as it's not appropriate for this group. Nor (I thought) are insults of the kind you've directed at me.

My post #16 was intended to explain and clarify something that seemed to be confusing another poster, (and seemed to me less contentious than what it was replying to). So I'll ask you again for a straight and simple answer...is that permitted in this group or not?

If someone here wishes to avoid my posts, they are certainly free to put me on ignore. I suggest that as a reasonable compromise that would keep them from being exposed to anything I say, while allowing me to post within the rules of the room for the benefit of anyone else who might wish to read. I would certainly be agreeable to that.

But not "debate". You appear to be confusing us with the Religion group, where debate (or the more accurate label of "fight&quot is used.

So, here's the SOP to help you out before we give you a sabbatical from the group:

it says that debates about the existence of higher power(s) (i.e. whether god(s) exist or not) are not appropriate. Am I reading and interpreting that correctly? If so, I don't believe I've initiated any such debate. If not, please correct my interpretation.

the part about discussion overrides your particular definition of the debate portion of the SOP. This group is about the discussion of these topics, and not the nitpicking debate you and the other disruptors revel in over in Religion (and, so far, in this thread.) Trust me, it's not welcome here.

That's a part of what is talked about in the review that you cite. No one can even explain our experience of color.

understanding the brain, but there are functions that remain so mysterious and baffling.

I think given enough time, much more will be understood. But I'm not sure it will all be explained in the terms that we currently understand.

The entire video runs for about 25 minutes. I watched the first 15 minutes, I think the rest of the show is on the Newton Connecticut massacre. There are some commercials on the video. The video portion of the show was scrambled on my lap top, but the audio was clear. Here's the link.

and never experienced the visual aura. I did, however, see flashing lights and hear bizarre noises for a couple days after being stuffed into an MRI for more than an hour.

Otherwise, we Native Americans consider visions normal. No reason why this doctor shouldn't have one, too.

(aside) Clueless to what "vision" means outside of Abrahamic religious traditions. It's such a broad term. Unsure what it means in Asiatic or Native American cultures.

is loosely definable as the sensory perception of spiritual beings and in some cases the reception of knowledge not available by ordinary sensory means. (Which is nothing official, just my attempt to get it into orthodox Western categories, and my academic knee jerking.)

Every NA nation has one or more ceremonies for seeking a vision, and those do occur within a religious context. Two of the most common are the vision quest and the shaking-lodge ceremony.

The vision quest is a rite of passage for young people. Its purpose is to open communication between the seeker and the spiritual being who will become her/his patron and helper, usually for the rest of his/her life. This spiritual being may be in human or other animal form, or may appear as something Western culture doesn't recognize as sentient--a tree, for instance, or a stone. The vision quest may also be used in to seek a solution to a specific problem.

The shaking-lodge ceremony is less common and more intense. It can be used for healing and for finding lost persons or objects. (In the case of a plane crash, for instance.) In this ceremony, the shaman undergoes sensory deprivation by being wrapped and tied into a covering, now usually a star quilt. There are prayers and drumming by the group attending for the intention of the ceremony. A fairly universal feature of this ceremony is the entry of the spirits manifested as blue or green sparks and sometimes the sound of the spirit animal who is the shaman's patron or who has been explicitly invoked for the purpose of the ceremony. At this time, the lodge and rattles placed on the lodge floor will shake. All this takes place in darkness. When the shaman has received the answer that is being sought, the spirits depart and the shaman is untied.

Hallucinatory plants are not used in these ceremonies.

Visions also occur spontaneously, sometimes in the course of another ceremony, sometimes completely out of ceremonial context. Those tend to be prophetic or what is usually regarded as clairvoyant--the person sees or hears an event happening at a distance or in the future or past.

Off to the ceramics studio to throw things now but please feel free to ask other questions.

From Medical Xpress:

The book is called "Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death"

There was a very interesting interview with the author on NPR a couple months back. The author is a critical care doctor and director of resuscitation research and thus hears "near death" stories from patients.

Some excepts I liked (from the link above):

could be relating their experiences to him. If they're alive now, it means they never actually, objectively died. They may have met some arbitrary and subjective clinical criteria for being "dead", but that simply tells you how fuzzy those criteria are in practice.

As a wise man once said, "There's a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead"

but what he is saying is that a body could not be any more dead in terms of the shutdown of critical bodily functions, most notably blood circulation and the brain. I think this is not subjective, but an objective and scientific measure.

Presumably at this point you have experienced everything a person who really died would have experienced, which is why it is so interesting.

I think it is unfortunately this thread is in a religious forum, because people assume it is some kind of religious argument, when it really shouldn't be.

and what he's able to measure. Clearly, someone CAN be more dead than a person who eventually comes back to full consciousness and normal functioning (Napoleon would fall into that category). There may simply be cases where we can't tell the difference between mostly dead and all dead with the techniques we currently have for measuring brain activity.

And even if this particular person claims that there is no religious component to this, he has to know there is. You can't work as much as he apparently has in this area of research without knowing that many people look to it for scientific validation of the existence of an afterlife. He himself may or may not be trying to provide that validation (explicitly or subtly), but he has to know that it's what a lot of people need to hear, and that NDE research that concludes or even implies that there is something unknown "out there" is going to get more attention and more funding.

Last edited Fri Mar 29, 2013, 10:58 PM - Edit history (1)

and I welcome scientific research into it.

And a relevant (?) song from the Beatles...

It is called the Aware Study and is lead by the author the book I just posted about.

If there were no brain activity, people wouldn't be breathing, either, and could not experience any sensation. To the extent that this is true, it probably says more about his measurement tools and understanding of the brain than it says anything profound about life and death. He seems to be trying to draw some deep meaning from a contradiction that doesn't actually exist.

And not exactly sure how he thinks he would "objectively verify" such claims, since that would mean gathering evidence for them apart from the personal accounts of the subjects, i.e. detecting brain activity in a brain where, by his own account, there is no detectable, measurable activity.

My understanding is that current scientific understanding says this is not the case - that if the brain is operating than neurons must be firing and we would see that. Because so many people have this experience, he says he cannot ignore it (as mentioned in my other post).

As I also mentioned in my other post, he does not claim any religious connection to this phenomena, although naturally people link the two (which is why it is in this forum I guess).

There are no other possibilities. It's unclear why he's drawing any conclusion from this other than that the brain can function and produce sensation in some manner that he can't detect.

Exactly. What we can say is that brain activity has stopped in the view of the medical/neurological community. The measurement techniques are not his invention.

that there is brain activity and that the medical/neurological community can't detect it.

we hear from patients experiences that would typically imply brain activity but the medical/neurological community can't detect it.

Who knows, the experiences they tell of could have popped into their brain seconds before they talked about them. Of course that would bring up more questions, but the point is we really don't know.

(arggh-- sorry about that)

Neither depend much on what we consider rational thought confined to the senses or the scientific method of thinking, but upon inspiration and non-rational thought processes. Not irrational, although some of our favorite artists may have been quite mad, but primarily emotional and not exactly normal or common sensory inputs.

Does that make sense? Probably not.

In the millenia since we became sentient, humans have enjoyed sunsets. Until recently, no one knew exactly how those colors appeared but our ancestors sat in awe in an almost religious experience. Now we know exactly why those colors happen, but we still sit in awe of a good sunset in an almost religious experience.

It's an emotional experience as real as out-of-body experiences, hallucinations, visions, or anything else approaching the religious experiences many of us have had. Art, very simply, has the same primal effect on us as a good sunset, a session of convinced prayer, the death of a loved one, the birth of a child, or any other highly emotional experience. It's more than that, of course, and there is art in science, too, but art and religion come from the same source, and may even be the same thing.