Thanks for this mass of reactions. Let me react to a few common points that emerge from the many posts.
1. I never claimed that my little book in itself provides the evidence. I never claimed that I performed meta analyses, or carried out independent research. I have written an introduction to the subject of survival citing anecdotal, empirical and experimental evidence proposed by others, particularly focussing on what I described as the
collelctive weight of the evidence. As to "selective picking" of evidence, I would really be most interested if somebody could cite studies that
disprove some of the evidence. I don't mean studies saying that the evidence is generically impossible.
2. I have taken NDEs as a field of research strongly indicative that the mind can function independently of the physical brain, and suggestive of an afterlife. There are others, and - perhaps next year...
- we may come to some of them. I do not have an "explanation" for the data, spiritual or scientific. No akashic records, God or zero point field. I think it is enormously interesting to try to find one, rather that trying to explain the data away with age-old theories which have been dealt with by those who research this by profession.
3. Many posters take the position that the conscious experience owes to the fact that the brain is not "dead" and there is some residual activity. Professionals in this field, who do this for a living and are not related to NDE research, say that this is categorically impossible. There may be residual activity but not even the most basic, survival-related functions of the brain stem shut down. People don't even
breath autonomously, but are supposed to have a structured conscious experience, generally described as "more real that everyday reality"? And produce long-term memory?
4. Other arguments are recursive. How can you have consciousness when there is no brain? Well, that is
my question!
5. Fantasy, fear of death, hallucination, CO2, hypoxia and drugs have been dealt with in the landmark 2001 Lancet paper by Pim Van Lommel et al.
http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archiv ... et_NDE.htm6. We have indications that people are conscious at the moment when they are being resuscitated from a long series of well documented anecdotes. But we agreed that we will leave them aside. (Still, it would be interesting to understand why people would invent such elaborate stories, lie, and involve others in their well-orchestrated deception...). But then:
Recollections of death: A medical investigation (New York: Harper and Row, 1982). Cardiologist Michael Sabom reports on his careful and systematic work. The first part of the research consisted of collecting data: Sabom used detailed protocols to interview patients who reported visual experiences while undergoing cardiac surgery or in connection with cardiac arrests. He then went on to consult with members of the medical teams and other witnesses, and also examined the clinical records of these patients, in order to determine to what extent these perceptions could be verified. In most instances, Sabom was able to provide compelling evidence that these patients were reporting precise details concerning their operation, the equipment used, or characteristics of the medical personnel involved, which they could not have known about by normal means.
The second part of Dr. Sabom’s investigation consisted of a control procedure, devised to further test the reality of what the patients reported. He identified 25 chronic coronary care patients who had never been resuscitated, and asked them to imagine what the procedure would be like as if they were a spectator of their own resuscitation, much like the NDEers experience. The results from this control group were intriguing, to say the least. 22 of his 25 control respondents gave descriptions of their hypothetical resuscitation that were riddled with errors; their accounts were often vague, diffuse, and general. According to Sabom, the reports from patients who had actually been resuscitated were never marred by such errors and were considerably more detailed as well.
The procedure was replicated by Penny Sartori in her 2008 PhD dissemination,
The Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients: A Five Year Clinical Study, with exactly the same results.
And, critics have to explain the continuity of experience described by NDErs. I have to rush out to work now and will come back to this.
7. Vision in the blind:
Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision http://www.pdfdetective.com/pdfs/269424.pdfI have to go to work now and then travel. I will come back tomorrow with more selected references.
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