NDE facts
an NDE is a powerful event of consciousness; it is not mental illness
a sense of being outside one’s physical body, sometimes perceiving it from an outside position
4 to 15 % of the population have had NDEs
18% of people who suffered a cardiac arrest and were clinically dead had later reported an NDE
lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function
A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain
Aren’t NDEs hallucinations? No. Hallucinations are usually illogical, fleeting, bizarre, and/or distorted, whereas the vast majority of NDEs are logical, orderly, clear, and comprehensible
NDEs often lead to profound and permanent transformations in personality, attitudes, beliefs and values, something that is never seen following hallucinations
People looking back on hallucinations typically recognize them as unreal, as fantasies, whereas, people often describe their NDEs as “more real than real."
Further, people who have experienced both hallucinations and an NDE describe them as being quite different
Aren’t NDEs the result of anoxia (lack of oxygen) in a dying brain? No. Physicians have compared oxygen levels of cardiac arrest survivors who did and did not have NDEs and their findings discredit the anoxia hypothesis
In fact, in one study, the NDErs had higher oxygen levels than non-NDErs
Haven’t locations in the brain been found to produce an NDE? there is no empirical evidence that any one of these, or a combination of them, manufacture the NDE. Every perception we have will be associated with activity in a specific part of the brain, but that doesn’t mean the activity caused the experience
Millions of people from all over the world have undergone a Near-Death Experience. In 1983 a major American survey by George Gallup Junior reported that about five per cent of the adult population had experienced one
Studies in many different countries have shown that people are having the same experiences all over the world
People see what’s happening to their body while they are unconscious
A huge percentage of near-death experiencers are able to describe exactly what happened to them while they were unconscious
They know who was present, what people were talking about even at a distance
Many of the patients who have been revived have been able to describe in great technical detail exactly what went on in the operating room
It doesn’t take a Near Death Experience to make you aware that you are a soul having a human experience here on earth, but the evidence certainly makes the case that there is life beyond our human existence
One in 10 people have near-death experiences, according to a new study
What it can do though is give you good reason to believe in the possibility that bodily death is not the end, and provide some scientific evidence that supports this view
They do not seem to be culturally motivated nor do they have bias when it comes to age or gender
The International Association for Near-Death Studies says: “Every day in the U.S. 800 near-death experiences occur.”
Around 85% of the people who experienced near-death states say that their lives were forever changed by the experience
Psychological changes include no longer having a fear of death
Did you know that nearly 85 percent of children who undergo cardiac arrest have a near-death experience (NDE)?
NDEs Absolutely, Positively NOT Caused By Malfunctioning Brains
While many skeptics continue to suggest that malfunctioning brains produce near-death experiences, the evidence is now overwhelming that this is not the case
“After decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious — how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, subjectivity — has emerged unchallenged: We don’t have a clue!”
— Alva Noë, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley
The most reasonable neuroscientific explanation of NDEs, the one that accounts best for all the data, is that NDEs are not a product of brain activity at all
They result, instead, from the removal of the brain’s filtering activity
In fact, some NDErs spontaneously use the filter metaphor to describe feeling free from their brains during an NDE
The brain filters out everything and doesn’t help our thinking, but hinders it, slows it down
While clinically dead, a person witnesses events, sometimes in distant locations, that are later confirmed to be true
Groups of dying people share the same NDE
People born blind can see during an NDE
People with large portions of their brains missing can still be fully functional
People that have been clinically dead FOR DAYS return to life with stories of the other side
NDE memories are more real and remembered more accurately than ordinary memories
Atheists and materialists abandon materialistic world views when they personally encounter spiritual realities
it has been verified that an NDEr accurately perceived an event that occurred precisely during the period when the NDEr’s heart was stopped and normal brain function had ceased
Out-of-body experiences support the reality of spiritual, otherworldly domains
An 82-year-old man had an NDE in which he floated out of his body in the hospital trauma room. From a position up above the goings-on there, he saw a quarter sitting on the right-hand corner of the eight-foot-high cardiac monitor, a quarter dating from the year 1985. After he was resuscitated, he asked Lerma to go and check whether the quarter was really there, so he could know whether his very affecting spiritual experience was real. Lerma took a ladder and climbed up to look, and there indeed was the 1985 quarter, just as the patient had seen it
A patient described having an NDE in which she was pulled upward through the floors of the hospital until she came up out of the roof. From there, she noticed a red shoe lying on the roof. A skeptical physician later went onto the roof to check and indeed discovered the red shoe she’d described
During cardiac arrest, the brain activity of the cortex is shut down within an average of about 15 seconds to such an extent that, according to materialists, no complex conscious experiencing can occur after this point
Survival of consciousness after brain shutdown has now been proven by a four-year international study of 2,060 cardiac arrest cases across 15 hospitals around the world
50 percent of individuals who experienced an NDE mentioned an awareness of being dead
Some observers claim that NDEs display a rift in current neuroscientific theory, and that the experience shows another, more esoteric facet to our existence
OBEs are commonly a part of NDEs and sometimes include autoscopy – seeing one’s body from above
40% of cardiac arrest survivors interviewed described “awareness” during the time they were clinically dead and no brain function was possible
86% of these patients recalled having heightened cognitive function: increased speed, logical reasoning, and clarity of thought; overall visual and auditory clarity
