NDE - Near Death Experiences

[vh_chick]

Got this off my Yahoo!News.

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/yeah...ath-experience

Near Death Experience
Posted by David Romanelli
on Fri, Nov 03, 2006, 2:29 pm PST


“Mystery is another name for our ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain.” – Tryon Edwards

The near death experience is very much in the mainstream. There have been related movies, bestselling books, and TV specials. With modern techniques of resuscitation, near death experiences (NDE) occur with increasing frequency. In fact, 13 million Americans or 5% of the population have reported having an NDE.* The term was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody, who along with spiritual author Elizabeth Kubler Ross, plugged the concept into the collective consciousness back in the 70’s. NDE’s are reported by those who’ve been revived from cardiac arrest or other similarly fatal conditions. They are generally characterized by “a feeling of serenity, floating out of one’s body, a journey through a dark passageway to a warm light, and encounters with a supernatural presence or a meeting with dead relatives.” **

There are those who dismiss the phenomenon with a scientific explanation. Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting DMT research in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico, suggested that Dimethyltryptamine from the pineal gland released prior to death or near death created the visions and hallucinations typical of an NDE.*** Maybe they’re real, maybe they’re not. As Deepak Chopra said, “In the India of my childhood, the hereafter wasn’t a place, but a state of awareness.”*

Here are some mysterious facts about NDEs that will give you the chills:

1. 1. Brain Dead NDEs

NDEs occasionally occur in people who register flat brain scans. This means it would have been impossible for their brain to imagine anything yet these people have vivid mental experiences of an afterlife.**

In December of 1981, Owen Thomas was badly injured and by the time he arrived at the New York Infirmary, he had no pulse, no blood pressure, no breath, nothing. With punctures to the heart, liver, intestines, and one lung, Thomas was described by an ER doctor as very dead and “cold to the touch.” After vigorous CPR, he was miraculously revived. The ER doctor said it was “the most wondrous thing we’ve ever experienced.” Thomas recalled a rich, vivid NDE.**


2. Atheist NDEs

One might think NDEs occur in the failing imaginations of more religious folk. But a nationwide Gallup pole found no connection “between religious devotion and the likelihood of paranormal vision during severe medical trauma.”**


3. The NDE Posse

IANDS stands for the International Association for Near Death Studies. A member of this group, Dr. Pim Van Lommel, discusses implications of NDE’s for the future of science and medicine and poses this question: “How is consciousness related to the integrity of brain function?” In many well-documented cases, people have died with their bodies turning cold yet they are revived and can vividly report specific details about their resuscitation. Will modern medicine one day proove that while the body ceases to function, a certain part of the brain continues?

“Is there a start or an end to consciousness?” – Dr. Van Lommel


Sources:

* "Life After Death" by Deepak Chopra

** "Time" magazine (special edition: Exploring The Unexplained) currently on newstands

*** Wikipedia

**** iands.org

----

I absolutely think NDEs are legit. Discuss.

Shari

[Van Squalen]

Of course they're legit. There's far too much evidence to discount them as mere brain farts at the end. Countless cases illustrate the victims' knowledge of things they could not possibly ascertain while unconscious, much less brain dead.

I still remember the story - it might have even been in one of Moody's books - of a tourist in New York who'd just arrived in the city for the first time ever, had a cardiac arrest five minutes after stepping off the bus, was rushed to the nearest ER, had an out of body experience where he floated up through the floors of the hospital to the roof, saw a red Converse Hightop with the word Mickey scrawled on it in magic marker hanging from a satellite dish mounted on the roof. Told the docs about it when he woke, they checked, there it was.

Then you hear about the people who can word for word recount the conversations happening around them while they're 'brain-dead.'

I have a few associates who've had NDEs.

Three frequent aspects of them - no matter what culture, upbringing, or beliefs one is raised in, similarities of the experience across the board globally are remarkable - tunnel, light, peace and love, passed on loved ones, etc, etc...more often than not, they NEVER wanna come back to plain old planet Earth, exceptions often being women who want to continue caring for their earth-bound children. It seems feelings, colors, smells, and sensations in general in the next room make our dimension look and feel like fuzzy black and white TV.

The second is how reluctant they are to talk about the experience. Not only do they claim there aren't really 'words' to describe it, they're often afraid that people won't understand, will claim it was simply the dying brain's last metabolic gasp, and will ridicule.

The third is how they insist it was absolutely reality, not 'dreamlike' or hallucinatory in any sense, that it was as real - and in many cases, 'more' real - as anything they'd ever experienced while awake.

I suspect someday, presuming we don't kakk ourselves first in idiotic bouts of sparring over world resources, that science and spirituality will mesh and find a way to breach that barrier. Science has already proved the existence of dimensions beyond our ability to perceive.

[ziggysmalls]

Man this is the second time I think in a month where I have agreed with VS. The world maybe ending.

I don't know of anybody who has had one but my mother did when she worked in a hospital. This women knew exactly what was in the adjacent room when she came back to life. Freaked my mother out.

I have had friends who astral traveled and could tell what I was doing at the time when they were 400 miles away. I can't do it for the life of me but wish I could. Anyway I guess I have seen or witness too much paranormal activity to believe science is 100% correct.

Heck how many times have scientists have been wrong. In the 30's I believe the Bohr model of the atom was accepted as fact. Now they have found holes in the theory and have expanded on it.

[Darby]

My cousin had a near death experience. She was in a really bad car accident. In the ER she went into cardiac arrest for a couple of minutes. They had to use the defibrullator on her. They were able to revive her. After she regained conscienceness she told her doctor about her NDE. She told them she was floating above her body watching the doctors work on her. She was able to describe in detail all of the doctors and nurses in the room at the time of her resuscitation. She also described what they were doing and saying. She told them it was an extremely comfortable and warm feeling and when they shocked her with the paddles, she felt that she was "sucked" back into her body. The docs were amazed she could recall anything because she was medically unconscience and flatlining. She's fine today and says before the accident she had a normal fear of dying but now she has zero concern about death.