Exploring the real of NDEs
Way back in 1990, the movie Flatliners explored the realm of near death experiences (NDEs).The film is about four medical students who experiment with themselves, inducing their hearts to stop and reviving it only after minutes have elapsed. In effect, they try to capture what it feels like to be dead or near dead. As the story goes, after going through the experience, the medical students (played by Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin) begin having flashes of childhood nightmares, of sins committed or those committed against them. The flashbacks intensify as they continue on with their experiments.
According to Kevin Williams, author of Nothing Better than Death and webmaster of www.neardeath.com, a flashback is just one of the things people undergo in near death experiences or NDEs. Williams says that dying people usually experience a separation of their soul and physical body and even witness their physical forms being resuscitated or hear someone declare them dead. They may hear and feel the thoughts and emotions of the living people around their physical body. They may even get to be sucked into a vortex or tunnel that appears to connect the physical realm to another realm.
Williams accounts that they may come into contact with a being made out of extraordinary light emanating tremendous love. This brung knows everything about them yet holds no judgment at all They may be reunited with loved ones, too or friends who have already died.
People who have experienced NDEs, informs Williams, may have their entire life instantaneously replayed–every thought, feeling, and act, Then, they may find themselves before some kind of a barrier that may be a point of no return. They may then be told their mission is not complete or their time to die has not yet come or some variation of this. Eventually, they will find themselves back in their body.
But to this day, a lot still remains unexplained. The curiosity on NDE has led to a number of studies to understand the mystery behind it. Dr. Susan Blackmore in her book Dying to Live, has populanzed the Dying Brain Theory wherein it supposes that neurotransmitters in the brain shut down, creating lovely illusions for all who are near-death.
On the other hand, an UCLA psychology professor. Or, Ronald Siegel. claim NDEs can be reproduced in his laboratory by giving LSD to volunteers. Still other researchers claim that although drug-induced hallucinations may have some resemblance to NDEs, they are not the same. For one thing, drug induced hallucinations often evoke fearful and paranoid experiences which are not generally found in NDEs. Drug-induced hallucinations distort reality while NDEs have been described as “hyper-reality.”
Meanwhile, the Temporal Lobe Theory imply that by electrically stimulating a human lobe, some elements of NDEs such as leaving the body behind and memory flashback may be replicated.
“A near-death experience is a subjective experience. It can be felt and reported only by the person who has had it. For this, among other reasons, some people claim that the near-death experience cannot be scientifically ‘real’,” William notes.
Conversely, other scientists consider near-death experiences as scientifically valid as any other intense personal experience. The difference may be that some scientists demand physical proof of reality, while others are less
troubled by ambiguity in any event, tens of thousands of near-death experiences are being reported from all parts of theworld. Something d o e s seemtobe happening, whether or not everyone agrees that it is scientifically understandable.
Many people, such as myself, believe it is only a matter of time. NDE researchers do not have to prove anything. The circumstantial evidence is in their favor. But science has a lot of explaining to do if it tries to claim that consciousness does not survive death,” Williams ends,