Shoot Them Later
New Blood
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OK.
I'm new to this forum, so if this has already been done, I'll be pleased to delete it and vanish without trace. But here is my conundrum.
I was having an argument with someone about Out of Body experiences, and they copied a HUGE list of sources and "evidence". I was wondering if somebody could tell me how reliable these sources are, and if there is actually a case for OBEs?
And yes, I'm sorry about this being ridiculously long!
I'm new to this forum, so if this has already been done, I'll be pleased to delete it and vanish without trace. But here is my conundrum.
I was having an argument with someone about Out of Body experiences, and they copied a HUGE list of sources and "evidence". I was wondering if somebody could tell me how reliable these sources are, and if there is actually a case for OBEs?
Because of the co-operation of some gifted OBE experiencers the phenomenon has come within the ambit of science.
• Dutch scientists succeeded in weighing the physical body before, during and after exteriorization (OBE). They found a weight loss of 2 1/4 ounces during exteriorization (Carrington, 1973).
• French researchers including Professor Richet spent many years having the exteriorized body move material objects, produce raps at a distance and affect photographic plates and calcium screens. They photographed exteriorization.
• Other experimenters including Robert Morris at the Psychical Foundation of North Carolina spent two years investigating OBEs. A volunteer subject Keith 'Blue' Harary, who claimed to have been having Out of Body Experiences since childhood, was able to lie down in a sealed laboratory room and project himself to another house twenty yards away. While there he was able to read letters and report accurately on which experimenters were sitting there and where they were sitting.
• In the United States, Karlis Osis and Boneita Perskari spent several years doing scientific research with an excellent OBE subject, Alex Tanous, and were able to achieve significant results. One particular test involved Tanous travelling astrally to a different place miles away to visit a particular office to see what was on the table then report back. What Tanous did not know was that at this office a psychic, Christine Whiting, was waiting to see if she could see anyone coming to visit. Sure enough, not only did this medium. with her clairvoyant sight, see Tanous come into the office but she described in detail the position, the location in space, the shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the corduroy pants he was wearing. So the record showed in this experiment that there was independent identification of Tanous during an OBE (Williams 1989: 35-36).
• In 1965 Dr Charles Tart, a psychologist at the University of California, conducted controlled experiments with Robert Monroe, a highly gifted Out of Body Experiencer. A former vice-president of Mutual Broadcasting Corporation, Monroe was president of two corporations active in cable-vision and electronics. He has produced over 600 television programs. During the years of his reported OBEs, Monroe has continued to lead an active business and a rewarding family life.
He has also founded a non-profit Institute 'The Monroe Institute’ which has taught tens of thousands of people both in residence and through distance learning, to experience them. So useful was his program that it was adopted by the American Military as part of the standard training of remote viewers.
• Dr Dean Sheils analyzed over 1,000 studies of OBE's in 70 non-Western cultures. His conclusive results showed that whereas it was expected that there would be significant variation in the OBE, he found that there was absolute consistency. Dr Sheils claimed that the results were so universal that the phenomenon had to be genuine (Lazarus 1993: 167).
• Many of the literary giants of this century publicly stated that they had an OBE: they include Ernest Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tennyson Edgar Alan Poe, D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf (Lazarus 1993:166).
• A most highly credible scientist, Dr Robert Crookall analyzed over 700 reports of OBE's. He found that 81% of those who had experienced them had a firm conviction of life after death owing to their personal experience. What astounded Crookall, a meticulous scientist, was the consistency of the reports of OBE's coming from all over the world with near death experiences and with the communications coming from high level mediums (Crookall 1970).
They saw while unconscious
• Sir Oliver Oyston, a most distinguished British soldier recorded an OBE when he was very sick in hospital with typhoid during the Boer War. Sir Oliver's astral body fully conscious of the surroundings, floated and went through walls noticing particularly one young 'surgeon undergoing death agonies from typhoid.' The next day, fully recovered, Sir Oliver told the medical staff in detail what happened. The medical staff later confirmed everything Sir Oliver had stated to them.
• Professor Kimberly Clark of the University of Washington reported a case, now internationally known, where a woman patient who was suffering from cardiac arrest in hospital had an OBE. Her duplicate, invisible body went for an astral journey on the higher floors of the hospital ending up in a storeroom she obviously had never been into before. She saw an old tennis shoe on top of the lockers. Returning to her body and on coming into consciousness related the information to the Professor. Stunned by the information the Professor set out to check her story. Everything to the very last detail was confirmed, even the tennis shoe's manufacturer.
• Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross stated that in her research that she came across instances where a blind patient was able to see certain events during an OBE which were later confirmed (Kubler-Ross 1997:175).
• The Society for Psychical Research has a great number of cases of OBEs on record.
Dr Sabom, a Georgia cardiologist, interviewed 100 hospital patients who had narrowly escaped death. Of these 61 per cent reported experiencing classical NDE of the type closely corresponding to those published in 1975 by Moody.
Many of the patients who had been revived were able to describe in great technical detail exactly what went on in the operating room while they were supposedly unconscious or dead. Dr Sabom, investigated the hypothesis that these patients were merely using their creative imagination, or knowledge that they had subconsciously picked up through earlier exposure to emergency care.
He interviewed a group of seasoned cardiac patients who had not undergone Near-Death Experiences and asked them to imagine watching a medical team reviving a heart attack victim and to describe in as much detail as possible the steps being taken. To his surprise 80% of them misdescribed the procedures. On the other hand none of the group which claimed to have witnessed their resuscitation while out of their bodies made an error about the procedure (Sabom 1980: 120-121).
Coming back with unexplainable information
There are many accounts of people having near death experiences returning with factual information which they had no prior knowledge of. These include being able to identify ancestors from pictures, learning about siblings who had died before their own birth, learning about family secrets etc. Others were able to document information they had learned about future events (see for example Eadie 1992, Brinkley 1994).
Corroborative evidence
For centuries clairvoyants have claimed that every living thing possesses an invisible body — an astral body or an etheric body — which duplicates our physical body and which contains our real 'mind' as distinct from our physical brain. Most interesting corroborative evidence for this claim was reported by Sheila Ostrander & Lyn Schroeder in their revolutionary book, PSI Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (1973).
These authors state that experiments in Russia using sensitive electronic equipment are detecting that all living things — plants, animals and humans — not only have a physical body made of atoms and molecules but also a counterpart body of energy which the Russians are photographing and calling 'the biological plasma body'. Interestingly the Russians have corroborated the claim of clairvoyants that if a human being loses a finger or an arm or a leg the counterpart body remains whole — a kind of 'ghost' of the missing limb (Ostrander and Schroeder 1973: 223).
End Quotes.
There is also alot of modern research into this, which has the same results, from many different researchers all around the world, I can't find those sources right off hand though.
http://www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter10.html
Materialization Mediumship:
Below are three examples of extraordinary materialization mediums which no skeptic can dismiss.
Daniel Dunglas Home — a powerful gifted medium
Daniel Dunglas Home was a physical medium who was born in Scotland and raised in the United States. He gave seances for friends and acquaintances in England and Europe for twenty years between 1854 and 1874, refusing to take payment for his services. In all that time he was never detected in cheating in spite of the fact that he was one of the best known men in Europe. His seances were attended by members of the aristocracy, literary giants and eminent scientists like Alfred Russel Wallace, William Crookes and Francis Galton. 'Famous conjurers, too, came to his seances hoping to be able to catch him out; but they all went away disappointed' (Inglis 1984: 20).
What was extraordinary about Home was that he was able to work in daylight or gaslight and in houses he had never been in before. Under these circumstances he:
• produced rapping noises that could be heard around the room
• caused tables to rise in the air
• caused musical instruments to play by themselves
• caused disembodied hands to appear; sitters could inspect them, touch them and shake them but if anybody tried to cling onto them they melted away
• levitate himself and others
• handle hot coals without any ill effects.
Towards the end of his career Home was asked to demonstrate his powers in laboratory trials. In tests by Alexander von Boutlerow in Russia and William Crookes in England he was able to produce telekinetic effects at a distance which could be measured on weighing machines.
For more on Home see Altered Dimensions and Jeffrey Mishlove’s The Roots of Consciousness.
Carmine Mirabelli — irrefutable evidence
A medium who undoubtedly produced fantastic physical phenomena was Carmine Mirabelli from Brazil (1889-1950). Through him scientists from many parts of the world witnessed psychic phenomena which up until to-day have not been rebutted, nor are they likely to be rebutted.
In 1927 there appeared in Brazil a book entitled O Medium Mirabelli containing a 74 page account of phenomena which occurred in broad daylight at times in the presence of up to sixty witnesses at the same time representing the leading scientific and social circles of Brazil. Among those who gave their names as witnesses were the President of Brazil, the Secretary of State, two professors of medicine, 72 doctors, 12 engineers, 36 lawyers, 89 men of public office, 25 military men, 52 bankers, 128 merchants and 22 dentists as well as members of religious orders ( Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie 1927 : 450-462).
The testimony of so many prominent credible witnesses cannot easily be overlooked and in Brazil a committee of twenty leading men, headed by the President, was set up to interview witnesses and to decide what should be done to scientifically investigate Mirabelli's powers.
It was decided in 1927 to mount a series of controlled investigations by the newly established Academia de Estudos Psychicos using the same controls as European mediums had submitted to.
The investigators divided into three groups. One group dealt with dealing with spoken mediumship and had 189 positive sittings (sittings which produced positive results). A second group investigated automatic writing and had 85 positive sittings and 8 negative sittings (sittings which produced no results). A third group investigated physical phenomena and had 63 positive and 47 negative sittings. Of the positive sittings, 40 were held in daylight and 23 in bright artificial light with the medium tied up in a chair in rooms which were searched before and after (Inglis, 1984: 223).
Mirabelli had only a basic education and spoke only his native language. But when he was in trance spirit beings spoke through him in 26 different languages including German, French, Dutch, four Italian dialects, Czech, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, Albanian, several African dialects, Latin, Chinese, modern Greek, Polish, Syrio-Egyptian and ancient Greek.
While he was in trance high level spirits delivered talks through him on difficult subjects far beyond his own understanding. These included medicine, jurisprudence, sociology, political economy, politics, theology, psychology, history, the natural sciences, astronomy, philosophy, logic, music, spiritism, occultism and literature (Greber 1970: 236).
While in trance he also exhibited the faculty of automatic writing in 28 different languages, setting down writing at a speed which normal penmanship cannot reach. In 15 minutes he wrote out 5 pages in Polish on 'The Resurrection of Poland'; in 20 minutes he wrote 9 pages in Czech on 'The Independence of Czechoslovakia'; in 12 minutes 4 pages in Hebrew on 'Slander'; in 40 minutes 25 pages in Persian on 'The Instability of Great Empires'; in 15 minutes 4 pages of Latin on 'Famous Translations'; in 12 minutes 5 pages in Japanese on 'The Russian-Japanese War'; in 22 minutes 15 pages in Syrian on 'Allah and his Prophets'; in 15 minutes 8 pages of Chinese on 'An Apology for Buddha'; in 15 minutes 8 pages in Syrio-Egyptian on 'The Fundamentals of Legislation'; in 32 minutes 3 pages of hieroglyphics which have not yet been deciphered (Johannes Greber 1970: 236).
Mirabelli also excelled in physical mediumship
• At a well-attended seance in Sao Vicente the chair on which the entranced Mirabelli was sitting rose and floated in the air two meters above the floor. Witnesses timed its levitation for 120 seconds.
• On another occasion Mirabelli was at the da Luz railroad station with several companions when he suddenly vanished. About fifteen minutes later a telephone call came from Sao Vicente, a town ninety kilometers away, stating that he had appeared there exactly two minutes after he had disappeared from da Luz.
At a seance conducted in the morning in full daylight in the laboratory of the investigating committee in front of many people of note including ten men holding the degree of Doctor of Science:
• The form of a little girl materialized beside the medium.
• Dr Ganymede de Souza who was present confirmed that the child was his daughter who had died a few months before and that she was wearing the dress in which she had been buried.
• Another observer, Colonel Octavio Viana also took the child in his arms, felt her pulse and asked her several questions which she answered with understanding.
• Photographs of the apparition were taken and appended to the investigating committee's report.
• After this the child floated around in the air and disappeared, after having been visible in daylight for thirty six minutes.
• The form of Bishop Jose de Camargo Barros who had recently lost his life in a shipwreck appeared in full insignia of office.
• He conversed with those present and allowed them to examine his heart, gums, abdomen and fingers before disappearing.
At another seance conducted at Santos at half past three in the afternoon before sixty witnesses who attested their signatures to the report of what had happened:
• The deceased Dr Bezerra de Meneses, an eminent hospital physician, materialized.
• He spoke to all of the assembled witnesses to assure them that it was himself.
• His voice carried all over the room by megaphone.
• Several photographs were taken of him.
• For fifteen minutes two doctors who had known him examined him and announced that he was an anatomically normal human being.
• He shook hands with the spectators.
• Finally he rose into the air and began to dematerialize, with his feet vanishing first followed by his legs and abdomen, chest arms and last of all head.
• After the apparition had dematerialized Mirabelli was found to be still tied securely to his chair and seals were intact on all the doors and windows.
• The photographs accompanying the report show Mirabelli and the apparition on the same photographic plate.
At another seance under controlled conditions Mirabelli himself dematerialized to be found later in another room. Yet the seals put upon his bonds were intact as were the seals on the doors and windows of the seance room (Inglis 1984: 226).
Additional information on Mirabelli: http://members.tripod.com/~Mirabelli/index.htm
An additional website of information on the subject matter:
http://www.noahsarksoc.co.uk/ - Noah's Ark Society for Physical Mediumship
On both accounts, that's a lot of credible witnesses and alot of gathered evidence I would think.
http://www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter07.html
Other psychic laboratory experiments
Laboratory experiments into psychic phenomena have been conducted for over a hundred years and continue to increase the voluminous objective evidence for the existence of the afterlife. Most impressive and persuasive results have been achieved in controlled experiments where maximum co-operation was achieved between intelligences from this dimension and the afterlife. It is proposed here to give details of only a few experiments.
More laboratory experiments
Dr Hereward Carrington is a most distinguished, highly credible and respected scientist and author who was Director of the American Psychical Institute. In many instances he personally investigated psychic phenomena. In his most impressive work, The World of Psychic Research (1973) he outlines a number of psychic laboratory experiments which clearly and in absolute terms prove how intelligences from the afterlife are in a position to make their presence and participation known.
Psychological testing
In another series of laboratory experiments the experimenters moved away from physical to psychological testing. This involved the participation of one of the most successful American mediums ever, Mrs Garrett, who according to Carrington submitted herself to all kinds of scientific investigations. She was tested by leading universities and scientific groups in Europe and America.
Mrs Garrett as a medium stated that she had a regular control, a spirit or intelligence by the name of Urvani who would speak through her while she was in trance. The experimenters decided to use a word association test devised by Dr Carl Jung from Zurich to test whether Urvani was really a separate entity from Mrs Garrett. It was decided to give Mrs Garrett the test when she was NOT in trance and to give her control, Urvani, a word association test when Mrs Garrett WAS in trance.
Professional psychologists and psychiatrists attest that the subject cannot maintain fraud for any length of time using a word association test of 100 words where the response time to a word is measured in tenths of a second. Any inconsistency and hesitation is noticed immediately. This being so, it was arranged that Urvani would himself take the test and bring in another seven intelligences from the afterlife to also participate.
The results showed conclusively that the word associations of Mrs Garrett when not in trance and of Urvani and the seven other entities were all radically different and that it was NOT possible for the information transmitted to have come from one person, from one mind (Carrington 1973:59). These results correspond with the evidence that we survive physical death and that our personality, our mind, our character survive with us.
Voice machine analysis
The independence of the entities speaking through a medium was also given corroboration by a totally independent scientific investigation of a most gifted Australian medium, Shirley Bray. The voices of three intelligences which regularly manifest through her were tape recorded. These taped voices were then put through a very high tech voice machine, the same one which was used by the British police in the investigation of the serial killer, the Yorkshire Ripper. The voice machine can measure variables such as pace, rhythm, accents etc. The machine showed that all taped voices from the medium Shirley Bray were those of totally different individuals. Scientists stated in unequivocal terms that because the machine registers the person's breathing pattern while speaking it would not have been possible for one person to produce the three voices on the tape. This is because the voice pattern-vibration for each individual is just like a fingerprint — different from person to person (Bray 1990:15).
EEG analysis
American Professor Charles H. Hapgood, reports in his excellent book, Voices of Spirit (1975) that he tested a medium to see if the electroencephalograph (EEG) of the medium Elwood Babbitt when out of trance would be different from when the medium's mind was allegedly taken over and controlled by intelligences from the afterlife. Hapgood took EEGs of Babbitt while three different intelligences were allegedly in control of the medium. The EEGs of each of the three were found to be completely different from each other and from the EEG of Babbitt not in trance. An EEG expert, Dr Bridge, noticed that the EEG's were characteristic of people of different physical age and could not belong to the one person. Hapgood reproduces the EEG diagrams in his book (1975: 224-227).
These are only a few of a huge number of experiments which together comprise a substantial body of evidence.
http://www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter12.html
The direct voice mediumship of Leslie Flint
'I think I can safely say I am the most tested medium this country has ever produced ... I have been boxed up, tied up, sealed up, gagged, bound and held, and still the voices have come to speak their message of life eternal.'
Leslie Flint
Another direct voice medium who was thoroughly tested in recent times was Leslie Flint. In his presence while in trance, with his mouth taped shut or full of water:
literally thousands of different voices of discarnate persons have been tape-recorded for posterity, speaking in different dialects, in foreign languages unknown to me and even in languages no longer spoken on this earth (Flint 1971: 170).
In his autobiography Voices in the Dark Flint describes how he was 'boxed up, tied up, sealed up, gagged, bound and held, and still the voices have come to speak of life eternal' (Flint 1971: 169). Flint describes how he gave sittings extempore in hotel rooms, in houses of strangers, in foreign countries, in halls, theatres and churches.
The Psychic News of 14th February 1948 reports in detail one experiment where he conducted a seance with elastoplast pressed over his lips, bandages over the elastoplast and his hands and legs tied to a chair. The observers concluded that in spite of the above restrictions the voices were soon speaking with their usual clarity, even shouting. Some twelve persons in the room all heard more than enough to convince the most obdurate skeptic that the sealing of Mr Flint's lips in no way prevented the unseen speakers from saying anything they wished. At the conclusion of the experiment they found the plaster and the cords intact and undisturbed.
The information coming through a Flint sitting was not, as some critics of mediums claim, vague suggestions which could apply to anyone. Take for example the following exchange between a young airman killed in the Second World War and his parents. He had initially appeared at a seance attended by Lord Dowding, giving his name as Peter William Handford Kite, and asking that his parents be contacted at an address he gave. The parents accepted an invitation to attend a second seance and for close on forty minutes Peter came through and in his own voice told them the following which his parents confirmed to be true:
• of a joke about buying an Alsatian he made before he died
• that his mother had put a photograph of himself and photographs of his grave in Norway in her bag that morning
• that he liked the cherry tree in the memorial garden they had planted for him
• that his bedroom had not been changed in the six years since he died
• that he had not liked the wallpaper in his bedroom
• that his father was still driving his car although it was a too small for him.
Flint describes his bitter disappointment with parapsychologists in the following extract:
When first I began to allow myself to be tested I was naive enough to believe that if the tests were successful the scientists and researchers who had carried them out under their own conditions would proclaim to all the world the truth of life after death. All too soon I learned the hard way that many of those who call themselves researchers have immutable values of their own which preclude belief in a meaning or purpose in man's existence or in the possibility of a life after death. Their concern was to disprove the reality of my voices and they would postulate any alternative however far-fetched or absurd sooner than admit the implication of their own successful experiment (Flint 1971: 169).
Flint rebuts the skeptics
Flint gives some examples of the ludicrous theories put forward by these psychic researchers. One was that the voices were not real but produced by a combination of hypnotic power on his part coupled with mass auditory hallucinations on the part of the sitters. This was disproved when the voices were recorded (Flint 1971: 167). Another theory was that Flint was a ventriloquist. This was disproved when a throat microphone was attached to his throat so that the slightest sound made through his larynx would be magnified enormously while observers watched him through an infrared telescope (Flint 1971: 168). When they could come up with no further explanations one of the psychic researchers put forward the idea that Flint could talk through his stomach (Flint 1971: 163).
For those who, being unable to think of any other explanation, allege fraud Flint had this to say:
It has been hinted that I might have a two-way voice channel to another room where accomplices mimic the voices of the departed or that I might conceal tape-recorders which play prepared messages from the dead. There is no end to the ingenious tricks which have been thought up by those determined not to believe and who more often than not have never even had a sitting with me…I could also ask these stubborn cynics how these supposed accomplices of mine however skilled their mimicry contrive to produce the recognizable voice of a wife or a husband or other dead relative of a sitter who is as likely as not newly arrived from Australia, India or Timbuktu. I do not however waste my precious energies bandying words with skeptics who are as ill-informed as they are prejudiced.(Flint 1971: 170).
One expert who did investigate Leslie Flint and thoroughly vouched for his authenticity was Professor William R Bennett, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Colombia University in New York City. As engineers are highly practical people, not usually given to over-active imaginations, his testimony has high credibility:
My experience with Mr Flint is first hand; I have heard the independent voices. Furthermore, modern investigation techniques not available in earlier tests corroborate previous conclusions by indicating that the voices are not his. But to be thorough, one should consider the possibility of live accomplices... This suggestion became untenable for me during his visit to New York in September 1970, when, in an impromptu seance in my apartment, the same voices not only appeared but took part in conversations with the guests (Flint 1971: 220).
VICTOR ZAMMIT
A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife
Irrefutable Objective Evidence
http://www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter01.html
Circumstantial evidence for survival
of consciousness after death
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html
Survival Science
http://www.survivalscience.org/
Personal Survival After Death
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/paraps.html
Ronald Pearson's New Physics
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/theory.htm
The International Survivalist Society
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/
Esalen Center for Theory & Research
http://www.esalenctr.org/
Psychic tests - Noetic Sciences
http://www.noetic.org/
Journal of Scientific Exploration
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/a...racts.html#v9n2
Personal Survival After Death
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/paraps.html
Society for Psychical Research
http://www.spr.ac.uk/
Lancet Study on NDEs
http://www.iands.org/dutch_study.html
NDE Evidence from Survival of Bodily Death Site
http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage....eid=22&pgtype=1
University of Arizona Medium Study
http://www.survivalscience.org/schwartz/frame1.htm
Some scientists theorize that NDEs are produced by brain chemistry. But, Dr. Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist and the leading authority in Britain concerning NDEs, believes that these theories fall far short of the facts. In the documentary, "Into the Unknown: Strange But True," Dr. Fenwick describes the state of the brain during an NDE:
"The brain isn’t functioning. It’s not there. It’s destroyed. It’s abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don’t know what’s happening and the brain isn’t working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won’t remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [an NDE], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."
'There seems little doubt that NDE's occur in all cultures and have occurred at all times through recorded history ... the NDE happens to young and old, to people from all walks of life, to those whose life has a spiritual dimension and to those who profess no faith at all ... there are many examples of people who have a NDE at a time when they did not even know that such a phenomenon existed.'
Dr Peter Fenwick
Studies have shown that NDE's occurred following illness, surgery, childbirth, accident, heart attack and attempted suicide.
They saw while unconscious
Dr Sabom, a Georgia cardiologist, interviewed 100 hospital patients who had narrowly escaped death. Of these 61 per cent reported experiencing classical NDE of the type closely corresponding to those published in 1975 by Moody.
Many of the patients who had been revived were able to describe in great technical detail exactly what went on in the operating room while they were supposedly unconscious or dead. Dr Sabom, investigated the hypothesis that these patients were merely using their creative imagination, or knowledge that they had subconsciously picked up through earlier exposure to emergency care.
He interviewed a group of seasoned cardiac patients who had not undergone Near-Death Experiences and asked them to imagine watching a medical team reviving a heart attack victim and to describe in as much detail as possible the steps being taken. To his surprise 80% of them misdescribed the procedures. On the other hand none of the group which claimed to have witnessed their resuscitation while out of their bodies made an error about the procedure (Sabom 1980: 120-121).
A common experience
There are now literally millions of people from all over the world who have undergone a Near-Death Experience. In 1983 a major American survey by George Gallup Jr reported that eight million Americans, approximately five per cent of the adult population, had experienced one (Gallup 1982). A 1989 Australian survey by Allan Kellehear and Patrick Heaven found that ten percent of 179 people claimed to have experienced at least five typical elements of a NDE.
Studies in widely differing geographic locations have produced remarkably similar findings eg. Margot Grey's study of NDEs in England (Grey 1985), Paola Giovetti's study in Italy (Giovetti 1982), Dorothy Counts' study in Melanesia (Counts 1983), Satwant Pasricha and Ian Stevenson's (1986) study in India. More studies are coming out from different countries on a regular basis, and historical examples show that the experience has been remarkably consistent over time (see Plato's example of Er's NDE in The Republic reprinted 1973).
Yet while these experiences have been happening throughout human history, in western culture it is only in the last twenty years that people have felt free to talk about them and the effect that they have had on their lives.
Coming back with unexplained information
There are many accounts of people having near death experiences returning with factual information which they had no prior knowledge of. These include being able to identify ancestors from pictures, learning about siblings who had died before their own birth, learning about family secrets etc. Others were able to document information they had learned about future events (see for example Eadie 1992, Brinkley 1994).
Common after-effects
Cherie Sutherland, an Australian researcher, interviewed 50 NDE survivors in depth and found that the effects on the lives of survivors had been remarkably consistent and quite different from the effects of drug or chemical induced hallucinations. She identified many effects which have been substantiated by other studies eg. Ring (1980 and 1984) Atwater (1988). These included:
• a universal belief in life after death
• a high proportion (80%) now believed in re-incarnation
• a total absence of fear of death
• a large shift from organized religion to personal spiritual practice
• a statistically significant increase in psychic sensitivity
• a more positive view of self and of others
• an increased desire for solitude
• an increased sense of purpose
• a lack of interest in material success coupled with a marked increase in interest in spiritual development
• 50% experienced major difficulties in close relationships as a result of their changed priorities
• an increase in health consciousness
• most drank less alcohol
• almost all gave up smoking
• most gave up prescription drugs
• most watched less television
• most read fewer newspapers
• an increased interest in alternative healing
• an increased interest in learning and self-development
• 75% experienced a major career change in which they moved towards areas of helping others.
Closed-minded skeptics are asked to answer the following questions:
• If the NDE is the effect of a dying brain it should happen to everyone who is dying. Why is it that not all of those who are near death whose brain is 'dying' experience a NDE?
• If the NDE is wish fulfillment, why is it that not every NDE experience is a positive one? Why is it that some experience a neutral and/or a horrific negative NDE as documented by Phyllis Atwater (1994).
• If the NDE is caused by the release of endorphins, what objective evidence exists to show that the release of endorphins necessarily elicits a life review in an orderly way?
• What objective evidence exists to show that the release of endorphins leads to the breakdown of a sense of time and its relationship to 'self'?
• Why is it that nearly all experiencers of NDEs undergo a permanent transformation which is consistent with spiritual refinement, a more refined way of living?
• Why is it that most experiencers of NDEs relate their newly found intrinsic motivation to the powerful experience they had out of the body?
• What objective proof is presented to show that understanding of the role of the limbic system and temporal lobe can account for the experiences of familiarity, insight and deja vu and the statistically significant increase in psychic experiences that follow NDEs?
• How do skeptics explain the incredible consistencies between NDEs and OBEs?
Physical explanations insufficient
Elizabeth Fenwick, co-writer of the book The Truth in the Light — An investigation of Over 300 Near-Death Experiences (1996) actually began her research thinking that all could be explained in scientific terms. But, after investigating, she concluded:
While you may be able to find scientific reasons for bits of the Near-Death Experience, I can't find any explanation which covers the whole thing. You have to account for it as a package and skeptics ... simply don't do that. None of the purely physical explanations will do (Skeptics) vastly underestimate the extent to which Near-Death Experiences are not just a set of random things happening, but a highly organized and detailed affair (Fenwick 1995:47).
These views are supported by a study of Near-Death Experiences in Holland by cardiologist Dr William van Lommel and his team who studied 345 cases who would have died without resuscitation. Ten per cent recalled a substantial Near-Death Experience and a further eight percent had a less pronounced one.
These patients were compared to a control group who were identical in terms of seriousness of their illness but who had not had a Near-Death Experience. According To Dr Van Lommel (1995):
Our most striking finding was that Near-Death Experiences do not have a physical or medical root. After all, 100 per cent of the patients suffered a shortage of oxygen, 100 per cent were given morphine-like medications, 100 per cent were victims of severe stress, so those are plainly not the reasons why 18 per cent had Near-Death Experiences and 82 per cent didn't. If they had been triggered by any one of those things, everyone would have had Near-Death Experiences (Van Lommel 1995).
Similarly Yvonne Kason, a Canadian psychiatrist, has found in her clinical practice people who are not close to dying reporting near death-like experiences; these included people who thought they were about to die and people who were meditating (Kason 1994:73).
Without doubt, the near death experience together with the Out of Body Experience and with other objective evidence of the psychic phenomena presented in this work, constitute a most powerful objective argument for the afterlife.
For more information on Near Death Experiences and their after-effects visit the home page of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS).
http://www.iands.org/
Here is modern, up to date, scientific research on life after death: (the following website gives links to many different modern news articles concerning modern scientific research of life after death around the world)
http://www.near-death.com/news.html
NDE News Index
Research sheds more light on NDEs
Scientists validate NDEs
Dutch study makes NDEs hard to dismiss
NDE visions baffle doctors
Near-death experiences probed
Evidence of life after death
Life after near-death
Scientists describe how NDEs change time
Psychologists discuss NDEs
Studies prove the soul exists
Seeking meaning beyond
Life changes cited after NDEs
A physicist speaks on NDEs
Scientists zero in on out-of-body experiences
Stress cited in out-of-body claims
Nurse seeks truth behind NDEs
NDEr can communicate with dead
Doctor observes that NDErs heal better
Electrodes trigger out-of-body experiences
African pastor is dead for 2 days and has NDE
Dead but awake: Is it possible?
Artist is inspired by his NDE
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html
NDE Evidence for Survival Index
Visions and memories occur while brain dead
Real events are witnessed far away from their body
People born blind can see during an NDE
Children have similar NDEs as adults
People are dramatically changed by an NDE
NDEs have unusual common aspects
Scientific discoveries are brought back
People are absolutely convinced they left their body
A group of people can die and share an NDE
Some people were verifiably dead for days
Some people have successfully foreseen the future
NDEs have been occurring for thousands of years
Ancient religions support NDE concepts
Scientific studies support out-of-body aspects
More evidence supporting survival after death
NOTE: How are you going to logically explain all of this away? Please, no two sentance answers that ignores 90% of the material presented please.
And yes, I'm sorry about this being ridiculously long!
- to debunk all of that stuff on your own you'd need about a year!
. Somebody's friend often turns out to be themselves. So if YOU want to discuss any of the many topics, pick one.
