To anyone who has studied Near Death Experiences, what do you make of the fact that the vast majority of these experiences conflict with the teachings of most organized religion? I know some have had NDE's that pretty much align with their religious beliefs before the experience, but from what I've seen they are the minority.
Also, many non-religious people have had NDE's of a very spiritual nature. Do you believe this is evidence of life after death,and if so what is the nature of this life?
Even more interesting to me are so-called Pre-Death experiences. Can't go into all the details now, but I would suggest reading some of the word done by Dr.John Lerma,who specializes in hospice care for those near death. The experiences of some of his patients is truly incredible, and the things they see and learn are so different than what we are commonly taught in most of the religions of today. When I first read these accounts, I felt like I was finally seeing what God was really like,without all the attributes given to him by humans.
Anyway, maybe someone else has done some reading on these topics and cares to share their views.
It is interesting to me that the experiences contradict religious teachings for the most part, sometimes even the experiencer's firmly held beliefs. However, I would not resort to the supernatural to explain this: drug-induced spiritual experiences can also challenge a person's firmly held notions. Altered states of consciousness, however they come about, do this, and this is part of what makes them an altered state. I remember a spontaneous experience I had in which what I experienced and was "told" contradicted everything I had ever been told by cruel people about my homosexuality, and I knew in that moment, immediately, that all love is beautiful, whoever one loves.
There is a book of near-death experiences of gays and lesbians that conveys the same truth (Crossing Over & Coming Home, by Liz Dale, Ph.D.), the only compilation of gay and lesbian NDEs I know of.
I do not believe these experiences are evidence of an afterlife, although I once did, and I once interpreted some of my own similar spiritual experiences (usually in times when I really needed guidance) in a supernatural way. Susan Blackmore provides a very good case for the dying brain theory in her book Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences. I am really interested in evidence that can account for the NDE related to the brain, such as the excerpt from one of Blackmore's article. It is an attempt to explain the light. The book explains this in more detail:
This theory is important in showing how the structure of the brain could produce the same hallucination for everyone. However, I was dubious about the idea of these moving stripes, and also Cowan’s theory doesn’t readily explain the bright light at the center. So Tom Troscianko and I, at the University of Bristol, tried to develop a simpler theory (Blackmore and Troscianko 1989). The most obvious thing about the representation in the cortex is that there are lots of cells representing the center of the visual field but very few for the edges. This means that you can see small things very clearly in the center, but if they are out at the edges you cannot. We took just this simple fact as a starting point and used a computer to simulate what would happen when you have gradually increasing electrical noise in the visual cortex.
The computer program starts with thinly spread dots of light, mapped in the same way as the cortex, with more toward the middle and very few at the edges. Gradually the number of dots increases, mimicking the increasing noise. Now the center begins to look like a white blob and the outer edges gradually get more and more dots. And so it expands until eventually the whole screen is filled with light. The appearance is just like a dark speckly tunnel with a white light at the end, and the light grows bigger and bigger (or nearer and nearer) until it fills the whole screen. (See Figure 1.)
If it seems odd that such a simple picture can give the impression that you are moving, consider two points. First, it is known that random movements in the periphery of the visual field are more likely to be interpreted by the brain as outward than inward movements (Georgeson and Harris 1978). Second, the brain infers our own movement to a great extent from what we see. Therefore, presented with an apparently growing patch of flickering white light your brain will easily interpret it as yourself moving forward into a tunnel.
The theory also makes a prediction about NDEs in the blind. If they are blind because of problems in the eye but have a normal cortex, then they too should see tunnels. But if their blindness stems from a faulty or damaged cortex, they should not. These predictions have yet to be tested.
According to this kind of theory there is, of course, no real tunnel. Nevertheless there is a real physical cause of the tunnel experience. It is noise in the visual cortex. This way we can explain the origin of the tunnel without just dismissing the experiences and without needing to invent other bodies or other worlds.
Near-Death Experiences: In or Out of the Body
She has also written other books on the paranormal, out of body experiences, etc.
The field of neurotheology is a new field that is attempting to provide scientific explanations for spiritual experiences. Michael Persinger has created a "God helmet" that can replicate such experiences, and there are various other ways of inducing near-death experiences besides death. What is interesting is that there are differences in near-death experiences that occur near death and those that are induced in other ways (Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences by Susan Blackmore goes into this in more detail than I can), which is to be expected if the phenomenon has a physical or biological basis.
Providing a natural, rather than a supernatural, explanation for these experiences should not diminish the value of the insights gained from them, whether it is a near-death experience, lucid dream, out-of-body experience, theophany, telepathic communication with "spirit beings," and so forth. The fact that love has a physiological basis doesn't mean that love is any less meaningful to us. Rather, I think these experiences can illuminate something about the nature of the human mind.
The experiences I've had, now that I no longer interpret them in a supernatural way, have not at all changed for me in their value or the emotional impact they still have on me, and I continue to practice meditative/contemplative practices, mantras, and prayers. Sometimes I feel a little of what I did before, although not quite so intensely. It is possible that our capacity for these experiences has been selected for during the process of evolution because it provides an advantage, although this is debatable.
