Comment on the brain, NDEs and consciousness

Written in response to a question posted here.

We need to bear in mind than many people report enhanced states of awareness during near death experiences, when brain function is reduced to sometimes unmeasurably low levels.  That is, they feel their experience is more real during the NDE, when brain function is minimal, that during daily life when it’s functioning normally.

This suggests the brain may be more of an inhibitor to awareness than its creator.  This supports the view of many spiritualists, who hold that we are more conscious when the spirit leaves the physical body than when it’s ensconced within it.

Death: an exciting new life or nothing at all?

Abyss (film)

Going to the light upon death

The question to me isn’t whether we go to the light upon our death, the question is: what happens next?

Sharka Todd

Visits to heaven (book)

For those interested in reports of spiritual experiences, may I recommend this book.  It contains a wide variety of unique spiritual experiences, many of them near death experiences, had by a number of individuals.  It is very fascinating and uplifting reading!

SHARKA Todd

Are we judged after death?

It is common among monotheistic religion believers to expect to be judged by a God after their death.  This God is believed to be one who rules the heavenly world with an iron fist, ruling our fate and determining our destiny, independent of our own will.

 I'm here to tell you that this isn't the case at all.  God is a loving God who allows us to determine our fate forever!  We will be where we choose to be and where we focus ourselves to be.  If we feel punished it is only because we punish ourselves because we believe we are unworthy and deserving of punishment.  The reality we experience is an outcome of our mental processes and the beliefs we hold about the world and our place in it, during this life and in the world to come.

Many humans project their fears onto God, who they view as a demanding tyrant, but by all accounts this view is wrong and he truly is the loving father that we would wish him to be.

Sharka Todd

Sources of knowledge of the afterlife

There is a common belief that nothing can be known about the afterlife by living humans.  This assumes that those who have died have no way of communicating with the living and that the living have no way of visiting after death realms.  Both of these assumptions I believe are false.

There is a large body of literature written by those who claim to have communicated with people existing in "afterlife" realms.  This information lies under the heading "spiritualism".  A list of some worthwhile spiritualist books (mostly available as free ebooks) dealing with the afterlife can be found here.

Some- having paid cursory attention to spiritualism- make the claim that it is all fraudulent.  This idea seems to be based on the reports of a small number of cases where individuals were shown to fake such things as table tipping and the like in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  Like all fields containing a  wide variety of people not everyone within it acts with integrity.  But this doesn't mean all reports are fraudulent.  In fact, there are a considerable number of serious-minded and believable accounts in existence which are worthy of the scrutiny of anyone truly interested in this topic.

The next source of human knowledge of the afterlife comes from people who have had a "near-death" experience.  These vary widely in content though many have common themes.  Some are incredibly detailed while others seem simpler, but most seem to have great significance to those who have experienced them. Although there are those rusted-on materialists who claim these experiences are all the work of the dying brain there are plenty of reasons to take these accounts seriously and to study them in detail.

The third category of human knowledge of the afterlife comes from mystics, those who have visited after death realms while in altered states of consciousness, and those who have experienced out-of-body experiences (OOBE's).  Such people, some of who are serious-minded and well respected people (such as Robert A. Monroe), have written some quite detailed accounts of the non-physical worlds they have visited in altered states of consciousness, including interacting with those believed to be "dead" (discarnate).

Other sources of knowledge of the afterlife come from common people who have had personal experiences that lead them to believe they have connected with loved ones who have died.  Most of these experiences are confirmations that their loved ones still exist and are happy where they are rather than detailed accounts of the afterlife, itself.

Of all these sources of knowledge the most detailed accounts come from spiritualist sources, particularly in the many accounts written in the earlier parts of the 20th century.  Some of these accounts are incredibly detailed and are fascinating reading.  For those interested in these accounts there is quite a good list of mostly free ebooks here.

I understand that there are some who base their ideas on the afterlife on what is written in the bible but my own understanding is that these scant accounts not only lack detail but are often factually wrong.  For example, the widely promoted idea of an eternal hell for non-believers is false.  While some will create a hell for themselves after death due to their own ignorance and unsavory character such a state is not permanent and help is always available for those who ask for it.

Sharka Todd

AJ Miller (Jesus) discusses love and the various spiritual dimensions.

Enemies of religion still seem to love it!

I find it odd that many of those who dislike religion the most still seem to think it has the last word about God, the afterlife and such matters.  Religion has attempted to "own" spiritual views but there are many alternate perspectives, many of which are based on the eyewitness accounts of NDErs, OOBErs, mediums, mystics, psychedelic drug users, etc., which are far more convincing that those put forward by any religion!  However, atheists who are supposedly damning of religion still do most of their arguing against the limited and partisan view of religion as if those views meant something!

God cannot be owned by any religion and the belief in a supreme spirit is certainly not limited to Christianity, Islam or Judaism.  The idea that the Christian concept of the afterlife, which is very vague, must be taken as the last word on what happens when we die is absurd.  There is a great body of information that deals with the afterlife from the viewpoint of experiencers (see above), rather than the partisan view of priests who wish to control people's actions on earth by the use of fear, and yet it it the priestly view that "atheists" spend all their time talking about.  Talk about a "straw man"!  We all know religious views are contrived to suit the institutions themselves, so why not look where the truth can always be found- in people's experiences!

Sharka Todd

Peter Fendwick and the NDE

From Peter Fendwick's Wikipedia page (my comments below):

Near-death research

Fenwick's interest in near-death experiences was piqued when he read Raymond Moody's book Life After Life. Initially skeptical of Moody's anecdotal evidence, Fenwick reassessed his opinion after a discussion with one of his own patients, who described a near-death experience very similar to that of Moody's subjects.^[10] Since then, he has collected and analysed more than 300 examples of near-death experiences.^[11]

He has been criticised by the medical community for claiming that human consciousness can survive bodily death.^[12] Fenwick argues that human consciousness may be more than just a function of the brain.^[8][13]

"The plain fact is that none of us understands these phenomena. As for the soul and life after death, they are still open ques­tions, though I myself suspect that NDEs are part of the same continu­um as mystical experiences."^[14]

Fenwick and his wife are co-authors of The Art of Dying, a study of the spiritual needs of near-death patients. The Fenwicks argue that modern medical practices have devalued end-of-life experiences, and call for a more holistic approach to death and dying.^[15] In 2003, Fenwick and Sam Parnia appeared in the BBC documentary "The Day I Died". In the documentary Parnia and Fenwick discussed their belief that research from near-death experiences indicates the mind is independent of the brain. According to Susan Blackmore the documentary misled viewers with beliefs that are rejected by the majority of scientists. Blackmore criticized the documentary for biased and "dishonest reporting".^[16]

Fenwick and Parnia have claimed that research from NDEs may show the "mind is still there after the brain is dead". The neurologist Michael O'Brien has written "most people would not find it necessary to postulate such a separation between mind and brain to explain the events," and suggested that further research is likely to provide a physical explanation for near-death experiences.^[17] Robert Todd Carroll has written that Fenwick has made metaphysical assumptions and dismissed possible psychological and physiological explanations for near-death experiences.^[18]


My comments:
"He has been criticised by the medical community for claiming that human consciousness can survive bodily death."

What a terrible thing to claim!  That there may actually be some hope for the dying!  Doctors and scientists, it would seem, would prefer people bought into their own dogmatic view that there is no soul and that death of the body equals death of the consciousness!

Of course, there is plenty of evidence (but not the kind most scientists and believers in scientism are interested in) to support the contention that the human being is primarily non-physical and that they only take on a physical body for a short period of experiencing on Earth before returning to the spirit world.

Why so many scientists and so-called "skeptics" are emotionally attached to the idea that there is no non-physical element to the human being (or life in general) and that life can only be understood by appealing to what can be observed with the 5 senses I find strange to conceive.  What kind of happiness or comfort they derive from this belief, which doesn't correlate with the evidence, I do not know.  When somebody, particularly a scientist, makes the claim that many people's experience points to the existence of a "non-physical" aspect to the human they are rigorously attacked.  It will not do for a scientist to suggest that the prevailing materialist dogma may be incorrect!

For physical things there is physical proof and for spiritual things there is spiritual proof. And for the physically focused scientist this is usually seen as no proof at all! But for those who research widely, comparing human experiences, a worldview is built that is able to contain all of it. And that worldview, for many, includes the belief in a spiritual dimension, similar to this one, but just more subtle in character!

Sharka Todd

A cosmic near-death experience

by Mellen Thomas Benedict

In 1982 I died from terminal cancer. The condition I had was inoperable, and any kind of chemotherapy they could give me would just have made me more of a vegetable. I was given six to eight months to live.

I had been an information freak in the 1970’s, and I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. So, since I did not have a spiritual basis, I began to believe that nature had made a mistake, and that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. I saw no way that we could get out from all the problems we had created for ourselves and the planet. I perceived all humans as cancer, and that is what I got.

That is what killed me. Be careful what your world view is. It can feed back on you, especially if it is a negative world view. I had a seriously negative one. That is what led me into my death. I tried all sorts of alternative healing methods, but nothing helped.

So I determined that this was really just between me and God. I had never really faced God before, or even dealt with God. I was not into any kind of spirituality at the time, but I began a journey into learning about spirituality and alternative healing. I set out to do all the reading I could and bone up on the subject, because I did not want to be surprised on the other side. So I started reading on various religions and philosophies. They were all very interesting, and gave hope that there was something on the other side. I ended up in hospice care.