The blog Skeptico recently featured an interview with PMH Atwater, after which a couple of commenters kept asking about the medical evidence that her three NDEs happened. In fact, they wondered whether any NDE can be said to happen in the absence of corroboration. Where are the records? Or, to quote one comment, “An NDE-like experience without any witnesses or medical documentation to support it can be anything, including hallucinations.”
Those questioners are far from alone. The fact that this question keeps being asked is an indication that a great many people don’t get the idea of “experience.” Any experience is a private, personal happening in consciousness. It is not a public activity. By definition, a near-death or similar experience cannot be witnessed, although in rare instances it may be shared.
The best a medical record can do is track physiological events and record circumstances. Although a monitoring device may register a blip in some function being recorded, it cannot indicate the presence of an NDE during that blip. No one watching the monitor will see, or feel, or think what the patient is seeing and feeling and thinking. In short, the biological event may be witnessed, but the NDE itself is not open to observers.
It seems ironic that under the most tightly monitored circumstances, in cardiac arrest with stringent clinical recording, studies find the fewest reports of NDEs. Does this mean that near-death experiences in other circumstances are fraudulent? No, it means simply that the conditions surrounding cardiac arrest and resuscitation either do not promote having an NDE or affect a patient’s being physically and cognitively able to report it afterward. As for mistaking one type of experience for another, the differences between the sensations and effects of NDEs and hallucinations have been well documented for two decades; that is no longer an issue except for people who are unaware of the research.
I wonder, after so many thousands of NDE reports with no corroborating medical records but with objective evidence of life changes to indicate that something happened, what is it that people are looking for in demanding medical evidence?
People who are afraid, are afraid to believe anything. This fear hides behind anger that’s directed toward any alternate possibilities.
As the cave man said when he bashed open the TV set, “that’s scientific proof that people in TV sets don’t and never did exist”
This is the level of scientific proof that’s wanted. The next rebuttal to come is “signals in the air??” I don’t see anything!
Thanks! I like that cave man bit.
As I often like point out, it’s not like near death experiencer’s can bring back dirt samples. After all – as you point out Nancy – it’s an experience. All the experiencer can do is struggle and try to describe the ineffable. Their behavior after the experience is an obvious validating clue of the realness of what they know.
I like to use love as an example. Love is an experience that can’t be quantified, so does that make it any less real? We can observe the lovers behavior, and even take measurements of their vital signs and the electrical activity in their brain. But those measurements aren’t “Love”.
Put another way, when you’re in love, you can’t produce soil samples, either. All you can do is give roses produced out of the dirt from the material world we live in now, in an effort to somehow try and convey what you’re experiencing.
But the mere existence of roses, and transferring the ownership of those roses to another person doesn’t “prove” that love exists.
Let’s face it — death is sexy! Near-death experiences are only one category of a larger umbrella of spiritually transformative experiences that include mystical experiences (a.k.a., spiritual experiences, religious experiences), death-bed visions, after-death communications, etc. The fact is that mystical experiences often have the same phenomenology as near-death experiences (excluding the fact of seeing yourself dead). Mystical experiences also change people’s lives for the better, and, unlike near-death experiences, mystical experiences occur in 40% – 60% of the general population. Like near-death experiences, the individuals who have mystical experiences are no more apt to be psychotic than the general population. To me, this is good news! While mystical experiences can occur when people are trying to induce them via drugs, medications, Sufi dancing, meditation, etc., the majority of mystical experiences occur when people are fully awake and fully conscious. This refutes all of the nonsense that near-death experiences are caused by some physiological phenomenon occurring at death. Vince Migliore, in A MEASURE OF HEAVEN, analyzed cases from the IANDS website that included people reporting 1) clinical death, 2) a serious condition, 3) non-life-threatening, and 4) other. When he compared the clinical death group with the non-life-threatening group (mystical experience), he found no statistically significant difference between the groups. Some years ago, Ian Stevenson et.al. in an article in LANCET compared people who experienced clinical death with a group that came close to death; the study found that the persons who had actually died reported enhanced cognitive powers and were more apt to experience the light.
In other words, you don’t have to die to see God, but it may help. Like the negative near-death experience, this similarity between mystical experience and NDEs has been noted by many NDE researchers, especially those who — like myself — research mysticism. But the popular press always focuses on the people who actually die (like Pam Reynolds) because it makes a better case for life after death.
Ken, you’ve been reading my manuscript! I expect the book to be online within the next few months, so you can see how almost word-for-word the first part of your comment is. Great minds and all that…