The Light ??

What do you all think about the stories of people having near death experiences and seeing a great bright light? Are they really seeing/experiencing something ? hallucinating? My Dad right before he passed was talking about seeing a little boy in his room with him watching over him.


Manny

Originally posted by menace71
What do you all think about the stories of people having near death experiences and seeing a great bright light? Are they really seeing/experiencing something ? hallucinating? My Dad right before he passed was talking about seeing a little boy in his room with him watching over him.


Manny

When the brain is deprived oxygene, and various parts of the brain is shut down, we experience things out of ordinary. It is produced in the brain, has nothing in common with anything real.

These experiences can be made artificially. Nothing religious with it at all.

Originally posted by menace71
What do you all think about the stories of people having near death experiences and seeing a great bright light? Are they really seeing/experiencing something ? hallucinating? My Dad right before he passed was talking about seeing a little boy in his room with him watching over him.


Manny

im not gonna get into it much because others r about to shred this post up w/sarcasm i am sure.I have first hand experience w/ this and it is as real to the one who experiences it as anything. If you have not been through it is natural to be a skeptic as I once was ,but all I will say is" this" is not all that is.

Originally posted by menace71
What do you all think about the stories of people having near death experiences and seeing a great bright light?

In his 1975 book Life after Life, psychiatrist Raymond A Moody outlines nine elements that seem to occur generally but not universally in the NDE experiencers:

1. Hearing a buzzing or ringing noise while having a sense of being dead.At this initial stage of the NDE,the experiencers are confused and try,unsuccessfully,to communicate with other people at the scene of their death.

2. Peace and painlessness. While people are dying they may be in intense pain, but as soon as they leave the body the pain vanishes and they experience peace.

3. Out-of-body experience. NDEers often have the experience of rising up and floating above their own body surrounded by a medical team, and watching it down below, while feeling very detached and comfortable. They experience the feeling of being in a spiritual body that looks like a sort of living energy field.

4. The tunnel experience. The NDEers then experience being drawn into darkness through a tunnel, at an extremely high speed, or going up a stairway (or some other symbol of crossing a threshold) until they achieve a realm of radiant goldenwhite light.

5. Rising rapidly into the heavens. Instead of a tunnel, some NDEers report an experience of rising suddenly into the heavens and seeing the earth and the celestial sphere as if they were astronauts in space.

6. People of light. Once on the other side of the tunnel,or after they have risen into the heavens, NDEers meet people who glow with an inner light. Often they find that friends and relatives who have already died are there to greet them.

7. The Being of light. After connecting with these beings, NDEers meet a powerful, spiritual Being who some have referred to as an angel, God, or Jesus. Also, although NDEers sometimes report feeling scared, none feels that they either were on the way to hell or that they fell into it.

8. The life review. This higher Being presents NDEers with a panoramic review of everything they have done. In particular, they experience the effects of every act they have ever done to other people and come away feeling that love is the most important thing in life.

9. Reluctance to return. The higher Being sometimes says that the NDEer must return to life.In other experiences,the NDEer is given a choice of staying or returning. In either case,NDEers experience a reluctance to return. The people who choose to return do so only because of loved ones they do not wish to leave behind.

What about the people that don't report an NDE? Does anyone have reliable statistics? My father told me that he experienced nothing after his heart stopped (more than once.) I had an experience when very young of falling down a long flight of stairs and landing on my feet - I swear I saw my life pass before my eyes - was that an extraordinary experience or just normal brain function? What about those who strive for out-of-the-body experiences, have they ever read the words hidden on top of furniture? The description of the NDE sounds like alien abduction or a visit by a spirit. How would you know the difference? If you are experienced (in some things) you know that reality itself can be extremely plastic thru your perceptions and that you can easily see what is not really there. We don't smell like dogs or see like hawks but all animals perceive. What makes something real versus it just being an artifact of perception (or is everything real to you?)

Thanks for the responses. In my Dad's case he was under the influence of Morphine he was terminally ill with cancer. However he seemed to be reviewing his life in the stuff he was talking about. I did see a funny shirt that said the bright light you see in that tunnel is not heaven or God but a freight train rushing towards you. 😉 I was just curious because I've heard about this before. I've had those crazy dreams where you can't move or scream or wake up.


Manny

I do not accept the “Brain is deprived of oxygen” theory. Many thousands of people from across the world have had similar experiences. This means that a brain deprived of O2 sets off the same thoughts in all these people. Thats a big stretch.

Originally posted by menace71
What do you all think about the stories of people having near death experiences and seeing a great bright light? Are they really seeing/experiencing something ? hallucinating? My Dad right before he passed was talking about seeing a little boy in his room with him watching over him.


Manny

The most interesting case I heard of regarding NDE was a man who was blind since birth and nearly died. Then when he came to he said he could see for the first time as he left his body and described his surroundings to a tee.

Originally posted by Thomas Lavery
I do not accept the “Brain is deprived of oxygen” theory. Many thousands of people from across the world have had similar experiences. This means that a brain deprived of O2 sets off the same thoughts in all these people. Thats a big stretch.

Have they ALL seen the same thing? Seeing a "light" doesn't really count since well, we all see lights. If everyone saw a white bearded man saying "I am god, who are you? Would you like a chocolate chip cookie?" ...then that would be the same thought.

The thing is, they've reproduced these near death experiences by depriving people's brains of oxygen - i.e. in a centrifuge used for training for air force and astronauts.

The fact that similiar effects are seen in similar conditions is somewhat expected since different human bodies will respond similarly.

Originally posted by utherpendragon
im not gonna get into it much because others r about to shred this post up w/sarcasm i am sure.I have first hand experience w/ this and it is as real to the one who experiences it as anything. If you have not been through it is natural to be a skeptic as I once was ,but all I will say is" this" is not all that is.

I doubt that most people reporting such experiences deliberately make them up. I do not doubt that to you it was very real. The question is whether or not your experience was some sort of psychological phenomena or some thing else entirely (such as an actual experience of seeing heaven or God for example).

I guess some insight could be gained by checking whether there are cultural elements (ie different religions or cultures having different experiences) if there are, I think this would point towards it being at least in part a psychological phenomena.

It might also be interesting to compare it with other phenomena such as people claiming to have been abducted by aliens. If you dismiss such reports then it would be interesting to see whether your argument against aliens can be applied to near death experiences or not.

When I was young I fell out of a tree and was knocked out for a few minutes. I found my self in the house (had been carried in by my father) and had no memory of what had happened. It was hardly a 'near death experience'. However after a week or so I started to recall some of the events leading up to the fall. Interestingly the memories were to some extent from a third party perspective (out of body) - but they were of events leading up to the fall. I never recalled events soon after the fall. I also get the same effect for some other events in my life where my memories are vague and I try really hard to remember and eventually I remember them but in my minds eye I see them from a third party perspective. I believe these are to some extent created by the mind.

I believe these are to some extent created by the mind. - twhitehead

That is why I brought up so many different experiences that are ultimately similar. The thing that they share is that they all depend on people reporting their experiences without any possibility of outside confirmation. I likewise don't necessarily question their truthfulness. However since there is no way to verify (unlike reporting that an alien ship landed in your backyard or a bigfoot creature chased you out of your house) there is ultimately no way to determine what actually happened.

Also, what about my father's case? He did not report a bright light. Certainly the people who do report a bright light are more likely to have their stories collected so how often does a bright light get reported versus all the NDEs? No one knows!

In controlled experiments no one has ever had an Out of the Body experience and been able to read a note placed on a piece of tall furniture so it doesn't seem reasonable to just believe someone's report on that without further confirmation.

If you report to me that you are Napoleon I could reasonably infer that you were crazy because Napoleon is a known subject. If you report that you are Zapdap from the planet Glug I can't absolutely discount that possibility (tho your behavior may provide further clues.) You can't just say, "someone experienced this so it must be true." (I'd surely question your sanity after that!) Has everyone who reported alien abduction actually been abducted? Have any? I don't know.

We all have experiences. That is a condition of life. We also have to make judgments. I'd advise caution in these cases.

I strongly suggest you read some more in depth articles. There's some interesting research out there into the neurological causes of several of the more common components of NDE's, including 'seeing the light' and such.

Try here for a start: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=381

"The sensation of floating outside one’s body can be reliably induced by suppressing that part of the brain that makes us feel as if we possess our bodies .... This experience can be replicated by drugs or magnetic stimulation. There are even reports of people who have a typical NDE experience during seizures. The bright light can be explained as a function of hypoxia (relative lack of oxygen) either to the retina or the visual cortex. Any everything else is simply the culturally appropriate hallucinations of a hypoxic brain.

It is likely that some or all memories formed when the person was waking up and their sense of time is as distorted as all their brain function. Unlike in the movies, people do not wake up fully conscious and lucid .... After minutes of CPR the brain has taken a hit due to the hypoxia. People typically wake from this event slowly - taking hours or even days. They will necessarily pass through a phase where they are what is called encephalopathic (their brain is functioning but not well), which is a type of delirium. It is common to have bizarre thoughts and perceptions, hallucination, and illusions during this period."

Originally posted by FabianFnas
When the brain is deprived oxygene, and various parts of the brain is shut down, we experience things out of ordinary. It is produced in the brain, has nothing in common with anything real.

These experiences can be made artificially. Nothing religious with it at all.

You seem so sure of that huh ?

Originally posted by menace71
What do you all think about the stories of people having near death experiences and seeing a great bright light? Are they really seeing/experiencing something ? hallucinating? My Dad right before he passed was talking about seeing a little boy in his room with him watching over him.


Manny

Curious and not terribly trustworthy.
I would not put any confidence in things like this.

I would put my trust in what the Bible says.

"I almost died. I saw a light at the end of a long tunnel."
" I had a near death experience. I saw myself floating and watching my body on a bed."
"I was clinically deceased for a while. I saw my moms and my dad."
" I was almost dead. I saw a fire at the end of a tunnel."
" I saw a beautiful cloud."
" I saw a man in a white robe smiling."

Curious, but not reliable. I would not pay attention to these things. I would trust the Bible to inform me of what I should know. No more and no less. That's safe.

I knew a kid who stepped off of a window ledge to his death. He was the son of a Christian and he was probably a Christian himself. But he was on drugs. He thought he saw Jesus and stepped off a ledge to his death and to the tragedy of his parents.


"I see the Lord" were his last words before he fell to his death !
He should not have been high on drugs. And he should have taken more heed to the Bible rather than sensational visions.