why denying the existence of The Light and The Tunnel among academia?

[Soul_of_Shu]

In his book "After" Bruce Greyson goes into detail about cases with veridical aspects including a man who saw his own body with chest open and his doctor making strange unexpected motions that were later verified. Bruce had his own experience with veridical elements early in his career.

For the record, Greyson's own compelling initial anecdotal account, as a young intern first encountering a patient's veridical 'OBE'—at that time taking physicalism for granted by default—begins with him having a meal in the hospital cafeteria, and spilling some sauce on his tie, which he covers up by buttoning up his lab coat due to feeling embarrassed by it. Afterwards he then goes to check in on a patient in the ICU for the first time who he finds comatose and unresponsive. From there he goes to meet the patient's roommate in the waiting room, where they have a conversation, during which, due to the room being very hot, he reluctantly opens his lab coat, exposing the embarrassing stain on the tie. The next day he returns to check in on the patient again, who is now awake and responsive, and no sooner does he introduce himself, the patient immediately interrupts to say, "I know who you are. I saw you talking to my roommate yesterday" (the roommate having gone home, and not yet returned, as no visitors were allowed in the ICU) and proceeds to recount precise details of the conversation, describing the furniture in the room, the location of a floor fan in relation to where Greyson was sitting, and most intriguingly of all, mentioning the stain on his tie. Greyson, after initially dismissing this event has having to have some plausible, rational explanation that would fit his physicalist model, eventually has to concede that whatever the explanation might be, the physicalist medical model he had taken for granted could not account for it, starting him on further investigation into similar accounts over many decades.

[Jim Cross]

Eugene,

I've thought about this AWARE study by Parnia some more and actually think that many conclusions Parnia seems to draw are not really supported by the actual study of the data.

This was a four year study with over two thousand cardiac arrest and with ORs specifically designed with information hidden that could only be seen from a position outside of the body.

Not a single instance of a patient having knowledge of that information was found.

Only two people even claimed to have any experience that might correlate with cardiac arrest. Only one could be interviewed and the claim as best I can tell almost totally relies on a chunky bald man in blue scrubs that patient met the day after the event.

All in all, I think the study is strong evidence demonstrating that any sort of veridical experience is impossible during a period when the brain is shut down.

https://www.neardeathexperience.us/wp-c ... _AWARE.pdf

Yes, I know about that study. I think when you are having a cardiac arrest and experiencing leaving your body and having some extraordinary experiences, the last thing you are interested is looking at some signs placed on top of some shelves in the room

Still remember the numbers:

1- 2000+ cardiac arrests
2- 350 or so survivors
3- 2 cases of possible veridical experience but neither with clear cut evidence

[Jim Cross]

This was written several years ago and contains what I think to be a very even treatment of the topic. You get a few articles a month if you aren't a subscriber.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... es/386231/

Some quotes:

Most of the NDE studies have been retrospective, meaning the researchers looked for people who’d had such an experience to come forward and be interviewed. That poses a couple of problems, scientifically speaking. It means the subjects were self-selecting, so they might not be representative. For instance, people who’d had scary NDEs might have been less eager to tell their stories than people who’d had uplifting ones. (One of the arguments you hear for why NDEs are not hallucinations of the dying brain is that so many of the stories contain similar features; but it’s notable that, while some studies indeed report only the well-known positive experiences, unpleasant NDEs account for a combined 23 percent of reports across a dozen different studies. They get far less attention, and certainly don’t seem to sell nearly as many books.) Most of the interviews took place years after the fact, so memories might have been faulty. And most important, retrospective studies make it pretty much impossible to obtain reliable data on what was actually happening to the subjects’ bodies and brains while they felt their souls were elsewhere.

To get the kind of evidence for a disembodied consciousness that would satisfy a scientist, you need a good study protocol. Turns out, it’s not hard to devise one. In The Handbook, Janice Holden outlines it:

In a place where NDEs are likely to occur, plant some perceptual stimulus and then interview everyone who survives a near-death episode in the vicinity of that stimulus to determine whether they perceived it … Place the stimulus so that it is perceivable by an NDEr but not by other people in the area; in fact, to rule out the possibility that an interviewer or others might intentionally or unintentionally convey the content of the stimulus to the NDEr through normal—or even paranormal—means, arrange it so that the stimulus is not known even to the research team or associates.

To date, six studies have tried some form of this method, mostly on cardiac-arrest patients, and all have failed to find an ironclad case of veridical perception.

It’s well established, for instance, that an oxygen shortage (hypoxia), which is a common result of a cardiac arrest, can lead to disorientation, confusion, or hallucinations. A glitch at the temporoparietal junction, a part of the brain that acts as a kind of integrator of data from all your senses and organs and plays an important role in assembling them into your overall perception of your body, can produce an out-of-body experience. It’s been suggested​ ​that too much carbon dioxide (hypercarbia) ​may​ give people a feeling of separation from their body or of being in a tunnel​ (though there’s not much evidence of this)​. Neurochemicals might play a part in triggering hallucinations or creating a sense of peace. And so on.

What’s more, it’s hard to see how there can be enough data, at least when the experimental method is to look at records of cardiac-arrest cases. Parnia’s Aware study turned up just nine patients with NDEs at 15 hospitals in four years. A Slovenian prospective study published in 2010, which did find a correlation between NDEs and hypercarbia in heart-attack patients—though no correlation with hypoxia—had only 52 patients in the sample, and only 11 of them reported NDEs.

[Eugene I]

Still remember the numbers:

1- 2000+ cardiac arrests
2- 350 or so survivors
3- 2 cases of possible veridical experience but neither with clear cut evidence

46% had memories with 7 major cognitive themes: fear; animals/plants;
bright light; violence/persecution; deja-vu; family; recalling events post-CA and 9% had NDEs, while 2%
described awareness with explicit recall of ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ actual events related to their resuscitation.

[Jim Cross]

Still remember the numbers:

1- 2000+ cardiac arrests
2- 350 or so survivors
3- 2 cases of possible veridical experience but neither with clear cut evidence

46% had memories with 7 major cognitive themes: fear; animals/plants;
bright light; violence/persecution; deja-vu; family; recalling events post-CA and 9% had NDEs, while 2%
described awareness with explicit recall of ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ actual events related to their resuscitation.

All of those percentages are based on the number they interviewed which was just a little more than a 100. It's not entirely cleared what happened with the other 200+ survivors. A big drop off in the sample raises some suspicions already. Did they simply not having anything whatsoever to report? Did they all decline to be interviewed? Why did they decline? Because they didn't have any recollection of anything?

The 2% represents just 2 cases because it is 2% of the ones they interviewed. But it is still is 2 out of 300+ survivors which actually is less than 1% of survivors.

When one of the "themes" is remembering events post-CA the 46% number (of those interviewed) isn't surprising. Among the others were fear, violence/persecution? What conclusion can we draw from that? That we really are descending into nothingness when we die and we should be afraid?

[Eugene I]

When one of the "themes" is remembering events post-CA the 46% number (of those interviewed) isn't surprising. Among the others were fear, violence/persecution? What conclusion can we draw from that? That we really are descending into nothingness when we die and we should be afraid?

There is a certain percentage of NDE cases with negative experiences, it's a known fact and they are open for interpretation. But if you look at the number of cases logged at the NDERF.org or on youtube, it's in thousands, and most of them are consistently showing common features. I can't imagine all those people synchronously lying.

Here is another reference: Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality. Abstract:

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are reported by about 17% of those who nearly die.1 NDEs have been reported by children, adults, scientists, physicians, priests, ministers, among the religious and atheists, and from countries throughout the world.

While no two NDEs are the same, there are characteristic features that are commonly observed in NDEs. These characteristics include a perception of seeing and hearing apart from the physical body, passing into or through a tunnel, encountering a mystical light, intense and generally positive emotions, a review of part or all of their prior life experiences, encountering deceased loved ones, and a choice to return to their earthly life.2

Some observations from the article:

The high percentage of accurate out-of-body observations during near-death experiences does not seem explainable by any possible physical brain function as it is currently known. This is corroborated by OBEs during NDEs that describe accurate observations while they were verifiably clinically comatose.12 Further corroboration comes from the many NDEs that have been reported with accurate OBE observations of events occurring far from their physical body, and beyond any possible physical sensory awareness.13 Moreover, NDE accounts have been reported with OBEs that accurately observed events that were completely unexpected by the NDErs.14 This further argues against NDEs as being a result of illusory memories originating from what the NDErs might have expected during a close brush with death.

Near-death experiences with vision in the blind and supernormal vision
There have been a few case reports of near-death experiences in the blind. The largest study of this was by Dr. Kenneth Ring.15 This Investigation included 31 blind or substantially visually impaired individuals who had NDEs or out-of-body experiences. Of the 31 individuals in the study, 10 were not facing life-threatening events at the time of their experiences, and thus their experiences were not NDEs. There were 14 individuals who were blind from birth in this study, and nine of them described vision during their experiences. This investigation presented case reports of those born totally blind that described in NDEs that were highly visual with content consistent with typical NDEs.

Other near-death experience investigators have reported NDEs occurring while under general anesthesia. Dr. Bruce Greyson, a leading NDE researcher at the University of Virginia, states:

“In our collection of NDEs, 127 out of 578 NDE cases (22%) occurred under general anesthesia, and they included such features as OBEs that involved experiencers’ watching medical personnel working on their bodies, an unusually bright or vivid light, meeting deceased persons, and thoughts, memories, and sensations that were clearer than usual.”20

Conclusion
The combination of the preceding nine lines of evidence converges on the conclusion that near-death experiences are medically inexplicable. Any one or several of the nine lines of evidence would likely be reasonably convincing to many, but the combination of all of the presented nine lines of evidence provides powerful evidence that NDEs are, in a word, real.

[Jim Cross]

When one of the "themes" is remembering events post-CA the 46% number (of those interviewed) isn't surprising. Among the others were fear, violence/persecution? What conclusion can we draw from that? That we really are descending into nothingness when we die and we should be afraid?

There is a certain percentage of NDE cases with negative experiences, it's a known fact and they are open for interpretation. But if you look at the number of cases logged at the NDERF.org or on youtube, it's in thousands, and most of them are consistently showing common features. I can't imagine all those people synchronously lying.

Here is another reference: Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality. Abstract:

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are reported by about 17% of those who nearly die.1 NDEs have been reported by children, adults, scientists, physicians, priests, ministers, among the religious and atheists, and from countries throughout the world.

While no two NDEs are the same, there are characteristic features that are commonly observed in NDEs. These characteristics include a perception of seeing and hearing apart from the physical body, passing into or through a tunnel, encountering a mystical light, intense and generally positive emotions, a review of part or all of their prior life experiences, encountering deceased loved ones, and a choice to return to their earthly life.2

What should we make about the common features?

We all have a common physiology with similar brains. Most of the online reporters probably come from similar Judeo-Christian background. It isn't surprising people report similar experiences.

[Eugene I]

What should we make about the common features?

We all have a common physiology with similar brains. Most of the online reporters probably come from similar Judeo-Christian background. It isn't surprising people report similar experiences.

Because we never observe such consistently and distinctively common features in dreams, hallucination or psychedelic experiences. If NDE is caused by oxygen deprivation or some neurochemical release in the brain, why would it be so different from other psychedelic experiences, dreams and hallucinations? (Hallucinations are also caused by neurochemical disbalances in psychiatric patients). Also, same features are found in NDEs of religious people and atheists. I've never heard of any "lifer review" occurring in a dream, hallucination or psychedelic experience.

I remember reading an NDE account at NDERF of a guy who was an experienced psychedelic tripper as well as NDE experiencer and he described how fundamentally different his NDE was from all his psychedelic trips.

[Soul_of_Shu]

When one of the "themes" is remembering events post-CA the 46% number (of those interviewed) isn't surprising. Among the others were fear, violence/persecution? What conclusion can we draw from that? That we really are descending into nothingness when we die and we should be afraid?

There is a certain percentage of NDE cases with negative experiences, it's a known fact and they are open for interpretation. But if you look at the number of cases logged at the NDERF.org or on youtube, it's in thousands, and most of them are consistently showing common features. I can't imagine all those people synchronously lying.

In this interview, at the 36 minute mark, Greyson talks about such negative/traumatic experiences, with some interesting findings about the mindsets of those who've had them ...

[Eugene I]

Some other relevant material:

In the BBC doc see at 53:00 about the blind's person NDE