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More NDE madness
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
There's not much new in this article for those who are familiar with the arguments, but its pretty thorough and turns the skeptical eye on various brain based hypothesis. Commenters after the article provide debunking links for those interested and there's even debunking of the debunking links for even more madness.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/21/near_death_explained/singleton/
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/21/near_death_explained/singleton/
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Comments
Its fairly unclear as to what is actually happening but to me it suggests that consciousness can operate and exist independent of the physical brain.
linking it to the experience of jhanas.
(for example, senses shutting down, therefore not feeling weight anymore could equal a sense of floating, narrowing visual field could = tunnel etc..., quickly learning what we are and aren't.)
Hence the usual deep spiritual transformation in people who experience those...
Now experiencing this at will while understanding what is happening obviously could be very beneficial... makes me want to get serious about concentration meditation again
I am still slightly skeptical, but I try to be open to new ideas. A few thoughts I had: In the article, the part where they were describing the woman's knowledge of the way they shaved her head, the tools used, etc... I realized that although I am not a doctor, because of TV and all that, I had a very clear image of what they were describing. In this day and age, I think our mind absorbs so much information and I frequently learn in dreams that I take in a lot more details than I thought. I wouldn't have thought that I knew what the saw that is used to cut through a scalp looks like, but my memory sure seems to. The bit about the quote (regarding the femoral artery in her leg being too small), now that, however... I cannot explain. That is the sort that you simply hope that nobody is fudging details to support something untrue (which we all know people do from time to time... like that guy living on sunshine).
You don't have a soul.
You have a body.
You ARE a soul.
Similarly, we are not equipped with consciousness.
We are consciousness, neatly packaged in 5 skandas.
when we are done with them, we dispose of them.....
To add to the debate, remember we had a video posted here a few months ago, about a neuroscientist who had had an NDE, and he was convinced his consciousness had left his body. He said the experience contained elements that were not present in other phenomena ("G-forces") used to explain the experience.
The difference is Hinduism tells there is Atman and Buddha said there is no-self as everything is conditioned. But both tell to look inside and realize the truth directly, rather just to believe in these things on a theoretical level. So both tell a journey inside - again because of conventions the names of this inward journey are different - Hinduism says Self-Realization and Buddha said directly experiencing the unconditioned or Nirvana.
Till now, I have not experienced anything with direct experience, so the above is based on my theoretical understanding only.
Fortunately, two doctors were present and one was an anaethetist who had at hand all drugs and equipment needed, including an AED (Automatic External Defibrillator ) which back in the late 1980 was very unusual, as only intensive care units had them and special training was needed to utilise them ( he was the medical director of the leading ICU in the state here ).
My heart had stopped beating and I had stopped breathing. As I have always understood it, CPR with the advanced resuscitation methods were employed almost instantly by the 2 doctors. I would have died if no intervention had occured ... but clearly I didn't die, maybe for a few seconds I was clinically dead.
I have always thought that this was a NDE - and possibly says little about the what happens to conciousness after actual death.
For me it was the beginning of quite intense anxiety symptoms.
I experienced it as my conciousness being ripped out of my body and then pulled back in abruptly.
One minute we were partying, drinking and having fun as teenagers at a party and the next it was dark, apart from field of light - like being at the end of a very long narrow tunnel, I was weightless, deaf apart from a faint buzzing sensation.
Then I was aware of great movement and shadows as the light disappeared and the buzzing was like an evil laughter getting increasingly louder and intense. It was unpleasant to say the least.
I woke up briefly in the hospital emergency, although I do not remember this and awoke next the next day in hospital.
I have had no physical health effects from the experience - I was very lucky, as were the two foolish young friends who spiked my drink.
I certainly have had a worsening and returning of such experiences in meditation since.
( I did a 10 day Goenka Vipassana early in my meditation practice which was intense and helped me understand and begin the work through my anxiety).
I have never been particularly anxious about death or dying - having been a nurse since I was 17 years old and having deaths of family members from a young person.
I think my experience is what appeals to me about traditions which place value in and explore ideas about caring of and for the dying and preparation for death.
By the way, i thought you are a male and now when you said that you have been a nurse since 17 years old, it seems you are a female.
I am female - there are many male nurses though ... I guess fewer back 30 odd years ago but there were some male nurses even then. Yes, my name is very gender neutral.
In the case of the woman on the operating table, I already noticed her experience was supposed to have started right after she was shot full of drugs but long before her body was cooled down. Someone loaded up with mind altering drugs having strange experiences? Go figure. Also earbuds certainly do not block out all external sound like the story wants you to believe and a series of clicks certainly don't block hearing. Given that, I expected the story to be mostly exageration and that's what investigators found.
The famous shoe on a ledge I figured would turn up to be equally exagerated, and investigators who put a shoe on the exact ledge discovered-wait for it-that the shoe could be easily seen through the woman's hospital room window. Also her room was right over the emergency room so how strange was it that she could describe the outside area of the emergency room? She had only to look out the window!
These stories always fall apart when actually examined with a skeptical mind, because they're treated as stories where little details are less important than the message. It's fascinating how the mind works to fit reality into our beliefs.
Well, if we leave these NDE, OBE etc , then also there are questions whose answer are not known - for example - What is consciousness? how does consciousness arise in matter when a child is born?
These indicate there are things about consciousness, which are not known.
To give an analogy its like if you were to take a trip, in this metaphor you are the mind. Say you leave your house (your current body), get in your car (subtle bardo body), drive 50 miles and finally end up in a new home (next rebirth). This is a different mechanism than say walking on your own to the next house. Of course this is only an analogy and I can't say that this is what happens but the two concepts are different and aren't simply different labels.
@zombiegirl Another way to think about the difference is that atman in rebirth would be like the string in a necklace holding the individual beads of each life together. The Buddhist concept would be more like a stack of blocks, each new block depends upon the last one for its support but they aren't tied together.
I have a question on the topic of drug induced NDEs. I actually had this topic come up recently with some friends. One of the people present had overdosed on heroin and experienced what he described as a NDE. His experience was rather horrific and still sounded like 'a bad trip' of a sort to me. So my thought was... okay, so you died in the technical sense... but wouldn't the drug STILL alter your perception? To a skeptic that says that NDEs take place in the mind, this isn't very good evidence since the mind would still be effected by the drug.
@person I do like your analogy of the blocks. I suppose this is something like what I believe, although really, I would be hard pressed to put my words down in any concrete way. I'm sort of living in the gray area of indecision based on the fact that it doesn't matter too much to me outside of intellectual discussion. I do know that I don't like the effect that the believe in a soul/direct rebirth based on karma has in some Buddhist nations. I don't like to follow the train of thinking that those with poor circumstances in this life are a result of their own doing from a past life and therefore should not be pitied (this is the extreme). I guess I just prefer to focus on this life.
I prefer the word "spirit" because the word soul carries connotations of something created and controlled by a God. But that's not necessarily part of someone's belief in a soul. For Tibet Buddhists, I believe a much better term than "subtle body" would be astral projection, something I learned from my Dr. Strange comic books.
It's a fascinating subject to watch people explore, though. So what do people believe the subtle body or spirit or soul or ghost is composed of? Spiritualists and people with perhaps a bit too much time on their hands have argued about that since we got the notion that everything is composed of something. We've had people claim they actually weighed the spirit as it left the dying body. The writings describing the Tibet Buddhist belief I find on the websites say "energy" as if that explains anything. The people who translate foreign religious writings into our language do the best they can, but I can guarantee the old monks had no concept of energy, no word for it, and since their science was stuck at the level of alchemical elements (earth-wind-fire-water) they added consciousness as a fifth element of the body.
So let's be clear about one thing. Tibet beliefs are that consciousness is a separate element from the physical body. To them, consciousness is not composed of something, but instead is a basic element with its own existance.
That is a soul by any definition. But Tibetan Buddhism is a highly mystical version of our faith so we can expect that.
"'A person has six properties.' Thus was it said. In reference to what was it said? These are the six properties: the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, the wind property, the space property, the consciousness property. 'A person has six properties.'
I am always wonder, don't these two means the same thing? Both are non physical.
What's the difference between consciousness and soul?