In January, 2022, I experienced a 100% blockage of my Left Anterior Descending artery (a "widowmaker" heart attack), and I experienced cardiac arrest for a minute or two while on the exam table in a local emergency room. CPR was administered, and I was shocked back into rhythm, whereupon I regained consciousness immediately.
During the time I was dead, I have a memory. It is a singular experience of non-existence. Everything was black, and warm, and comfortable. It was silent, and there was no pain or concern for anything that had been going on. I didn't even think about it. It was as though I were in the most effective sensory deprivation tank ever.
Then they shocked me, and it hurt like hell. I woke up, looked at the doctor, and he said, "you went away for a few there", and I said, "Oh, did I?".
A couple minutes later, they "lost" me, and I went back to the blackness, but for a much shorter period of time, and I was shocked almost immediately. I had the wherewithal, upon being shocked, to say, in a very annoyed voice, 'Ouch.' which apparently caused some people in the ER room to laugh.
I ended up crashing 6 times that day, and each time I underwent cardiac arrest, it was like slipping back asleep into the deepest dream.
I used to be afraid to die. Now, I'm not, but I'm afraid to leave behind the people that I love, because I want to spend time with them, and I don't want them to have to go through me leaving them again.
> I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. In the face of such evidence and against such powerful and widespread belief systems of the afterlife, I occasionally think of the possibility of an afterlife, but there is no hint that I will see anyone I know, or even continue to exist in any form, but rather a long dreamless sleep.
- Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
I was present when someone else went through the same experience but they reacted slightly differently than you did…”Please don’t stop CPR! There’s nothing there! Whenever you stop and I die, it’s all black!” His last horrified words were “There’s nothing there!”
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting experience however, I don’t think that you were dead. IMHO, you were in a state where your brain was not functioning properly due to lack of blood flow or maybe external input.
All death experiences seem to be something of that sort and I suspect if body transplant was a thing, the experience would have been similar.
I think the correct description of the experience would be pre-death or something similar and would not be a glimpse into the “life beyond death”.
I had similar experience where my heart stopped beating and went into complete darkness, apparently it was a reaction to something they were doing a tissue sample. Nonetheless the experience was very similar but I was only 14 then, so I didn't think much of life or death then.
Now almost 3 decades later, I really don't think that dying is what I'm most worried about, really I just don't want to die before my dog or my wife. That said, being quite influenced by stoicism I do remind myself that I could die any second and I always live such that I won't have any regrets if I die any minute. Memento Mori.
Did you experience brain death? Because that kinda sounds like the sensation of losing all contact with the peripheral nervous system, without actually losing consciousness.
Loss of consciousness is not death, your brain was alive the entire time. It takes upwards of 10 minutes before the brain dies, usually longer, and each minute approaching those thresholds has a high probability of severe brain damage. Check out cerebral anoxia or brain death to learn more.
I read quite a few reports claiming the similar experience, a deep sleep. That's how I view death now, a sleep so deep that no one can wake up from it. With all external inputs are muted, the brain left itself alone in the "void", doing what brains do, fade to "dreaming".
But then again, I imagine one could experience almost the same when under anesthesia or just regular sleep, so I guess you don't really have to do it the hard way :)
> First, most of the 53 survivors initially flat-lined on the EEG, but, with continued CPR, recovered brain activity up to 60 minutes later. This result not only encourages first responders to persist, it also suggests the possibility of to-be-recalled cognitive activity in comatose patients.
> Second, 6 of the 28 interviewed survivors (21 percent) had a “transcendent recalled experience of death.” This roughly accords with prior studies’ finding that 10 to 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors report a memorable transcendent conscious experience (which Parnia labels a “recalled experience of death” rather than a “near-death experience”).
> Third, the study enabled an unprecedented objective test of survivors’ recall accuracy. ... Parnia and his three dozen collaborators creatively devised and implemented a plan to put claims of death-experience recollections to the test. As patients underwent CPR, a tablet computer displayed one of ten visual images, such as an animal, a person, or a monument. When later interviewed, could the 28 survivors report the image displayed during their death experience? If not, could they, when shown the ten possible images, guess which image had been displayed? The result: “Nobody identified the visual image."
> During 5 minutes of the CPR, patients also were repeatedly exposed through the headphone audio to the names of 3 fruits: apple, pear, banana. When the 28 survivors were later asked to guess the 3 fruits, how many correctly recalled them? One person. (A chance result? When a colleague invited his psychology students to name 3 fruits, a similar 2 of 50 named an apple, pear, and banana.)
So near-death experiences are fairly common, but no evidence that memories of out-of-body experiences reflect reality.
I had an English teacher in high school who had a near death experience during a surgery. His description of the experience tracks with what's in the article - floating above the body, a tremendous feeling of peace and acceptance, and the feeling of being drawn towards a bright light.
I can't say I'm not afraid of death but it's nice to hear stories like these from folks that help lessen that fear. :)
Obviously, I can't say what your teacher experienced. But think about this. His brain was going through a traumatic experience of some kind, presumably at least low oxygen and a accumulation of cellular waste products, such as CO2, due to lack of blood flow. After he was resuscitated, his now functioning brain was left to make narrative sense out of what it had experienced.
How much of that was was after the fact reconstruction and how much was actual experience? In the same way, our brain doesn't notice the visual blind spot and just assumes that whatever is there is consistent with its context, even though there is nothing it can experience there.
I'd like to see a study such as that described but not limited to Americans. See what people experience when you cut across cultures and whatever expectations of what death is supposed to be like are less similar.
My wife had a near-death experience about seven years back and she described it to me later, saying there was indeed a tunnel, but it was filled with cartoon Satans holding dildos and our cat was there beckoning her to come. It seems like this is almost a kind of Rorschach test of whether you're a Christian, a foxhole atheist who deep down wants there to be a Christian-like afterlife, or an honest-to-god true nonbeliever.
It also recalls to me the first time I had a true night error experience. I'd been tremendously into UFO lore and alien abduction scenarios as a teenager thanks to the X-Files, so had read up so much on some of the possible explanations that I'd had it drilled into me by then that night terrors were one possible explanation, and probably similarly for experiences people had of things like succubi in centuries past. Then when it happened to me, I did indeed wake up totally paralyzed and my bed was surrounded by ghostly alien-looking figures. But I'd read so much about it at that point that I knew exactly what was happening, knew it wasn't really aliens, and didn't even really find it scary so much as frustrating because I could neither move nor fully wake up.
Personal experience corroborates. The last embers of self fade away in a place far too narrow to fit anything but that overwhelming peace.
It's a difficult subject though, the fear of death underpins a significant portion of life (see terror management theory for that idea taken to the extreme). I don't know the value of trying to undermine it at scale.
Well - not to increase your fear of death - but, presumably your English teacher is still alive, so his experience is wholly distinct from actual death.
It's a logical fallacy to say that a common experience is the only experience, and that fear therefore should be lessened. Perhaps the fear is there for good reason, and perhaps there is a soul and there is moral judgment at death and perhaps our moral character is sealed in stone at death, whether good or bad. Can't rule these out because lots of NDEs say it's a peaceful experience.
At the end of 2022 I caught Legionaries and arrived at the hospital with 48% O2 saturation and promptly slipped into a coma. Next came a trake and a respirator which was placed in a medically induced coma. I was unconscious for almost 2 months in the ER. I'd get CPR twice and once I awoke fully the head nurse came in and asked (once I could talk) how it was to meet Jesus. I didn't meet Jesus but I did hang with several dead friends, some aliens and at least one deity. The dreams were most vivid and I now look at death as a physical phenomena, I do believe that my spirit persists. I'm glad that I get to continue with this life and I'm grateful for all the days, good or bad. The "dreams" were 90% dark/bad but having survived those makes today just wonderful.
Thanks for sharing. When you read articles like the above, which suggest that those perceptions are hallucinations from oxygen starvation, how do you react?
Always wondered if the likes of DMT or trace amounts of it contribute to these experiences similar to how adrenaline is produced during fight/flight response.
Could it be possible that the brain sensing no more blood is being supplied then triggers a mechanism to release this chemical (and in what quantities)? Wildly speculating as a layman, however, maybe there is a link between dream states / DMT production/synthesis and these experiences which are yet to be explored further.
Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned.
I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things.
In other words: Scientific experiments about some things are inconclusive or just limited to what is scientifically measurable. The world is larger than that.
The brain is a strange thing. Perception and experience is very difficult to wrap one's head around.
I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Often in medical settings but also in other settings. Often when I wake up I am in a state where I feel like I’ve been gone for hours, it feels like I’ve been basically dreaming the equivalent of a full length movie, when in reality I’ve been out for maybe a minute.
It’s strange. It seems impossible to decide what I actually experienced and what I, after the fact, believe I experienced.
I reason about the “life flashes before my eyes” concept similarly. I believe in fact it doesn’t, that a persons brain just makes one believe that has happened, after the fact. But. What do I know.
I experienced the “life flashing before my eyes” once. It was a situation where I thought I was about to die. It was like a very high speed real of all my memories playing. I was amazed (while it was happening) that it was happening just like I’d heard about - so at least in my opinion it wasn’t an invented memory later. Of course I might say that even it was. My theory is the mind was desperately trying to find a similar situation as a hint of how to get out of the current situation, but it’s just a guess. I lived :)
It's not necessary to have an experience that lasts hours in order to have a memory of an experience that lasted hours, even less necessary if it's just the feeling of an experience that lasted hours.
Our memory is highly fallible and easily manipulated, at least compared to how much people tend to believe it's a flawless record of the past.
All memories exist in the present, a memory created a minute ago about an experience a year ago would feel just as real as the memory created a year ago - probably even more so, given how fresh it would be.
Everything I read about near death experiences suggests to me that it's a brain making things up, coupled with more stimuli being processed by the "dead" patient's brain than people assume is possible - accounting, I think, very well for the "things the patient could not have known".
There is no life after death, and there is no existence separate to the body - before our birth we were not; now we are; at some point, we won't be again.
I have fainted twice. The first time, I cannot have been unconscious more than max 5 minutes, probably quite a bit less. But it felt like waking up well rested after a long nights good sleep. But I was very fortunate. I was very close to have hit my neck in a table when falling backwards. Then I most likely would never have woken up.
Given that near death experiences are very often reported as being incredibly detailed and complex, often involving time dilation modes enabling one to be "away for years", its hard to imagine 'name the fruit' being the thing a person in that state brings back. This does seem like an interesting area of research though if the right experimental stimulus could be found.
I've had a couple OBEs (as a result of meditation, not near-death), and they're very interesting, but I'm not surprised that Parnia's subjects weren't able to match up any images because I've never had an OBE where the objective world is completely accurate. It's odd because you'll be totally lucid, often more so than in waking life, but things are slightly off, and electronics in particular never seem to work.
I've had OBEs where I can remember any aspect of my life from any time period, in exact, incredible detail, just as if it had all been recorded and was being played back on a gigantic IMAX. Smells, tastes, sounds, thoughts, everything, with no impediment to recall. Every memory was instantly available as soon as I thought of it. It was like I'd just taken off a heavy lead raincoat I'd been wearing all my life, and now there was nothing to impede thought or movement.
In another, more mundane experience, I had just OBE'd and was trying to lift my arm out of my body. As I did so, my watch's vibrating alarm went off, so I grabbed my arm and tried to turn it off (it only has two buttons and pressing either will turn it off.) I could feel the buttons, but as I pressed them it did nothing. Then I realized, of course, that I wasn't grabbing my real arm. So I laid back down, snapped back into my body, opened my eyes and turned off the real watch.
I was surprised b/c it had never occurred to me that something as insignificant as my wristwatch would come with me into the OBE state, nor that I would be able to feel it and manipulate it exactly like the real thing. It made me think how in ancient Egypt the dead would be buried with everything they needed to take with them to the afterlife. Food for thought.
No real reason to believe OBEs are anything other LDs. As you said nothing lines up, so the whole "your soul / astral body / whatever is travelling" has no weight. Furthermore, LDs/OBEs seem to be subject to working memory overload. Try looking at a large distance in an OBE, it won't render.
How do they obtained informed consent for human experimentation? If I understand, the researchers are summoned to the hospital bedside of someone undergoing cardiac arrest. If they came into a loved one's room, or mine, I would be very angry. Any risk or distraction is too much.
But that's my perspective. Maybe they obtain permission from next of kin?
It seems pretty obvious that they didn't, and I suspect this whole project is a function of knowing the right people.
I also don't think it's a very well-designed experiment (in that it makes some assumptions about where attention is focused; if there were truly an OOBE taking place, then I would not expect the disembodied consciousness to be connected to the sensory apparatus, nor to pay particular attention to a tablet with some random image being held up toward the ceiling), but I suppose you have to start somewhere. I don't think it's unethical exactly, but it's intrusive in an extremely weird fashion. Might be justifiable if the EEG cap turns up useful medical information independent of the parapsychological investigation.
It’s increasingly clear to me as a group, people who practice real science as a discipline, are an odd bunch that don’t necessarily fit into the social categories that would be bothered by these kinds of things
I know nobody in my close friends or limited family that would bat an eye if someone came into my hospital room to do this
I encourage everyone interested to check out Dr. Bruce Greyson's book After. It's a scientific look at various NDE cases. This study mentions patients being unable to identify images on an ipad, but the book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe. I find NDEs to be a real frontier of science, no matter what's actually happening - whether it's hallucination or real consciousness outside of the body (e.g. nonduality, Advaita, etc). Fun stuff!
I haven't been near death, even though I was previously involved in a serious motorcycle accident (I was a pillion rider) as a kid, where I completely blanked out. Don't have any memories of the actual accident at all.
What I want to say however is that anyone who wants to make conclusions regarding whether there's life after death cannot do so without invoking the spiritual realm as well.
I've personally had a spiritual encounter whereby the holy spirit entered my body (I could actually sense the lifting of my skin in my chest and His entry into me). That experience changed my life forever.
The point I'm trying to make I guess is that there are many things about this so-called life that we still don't know about, in particular the dimensions we can't see and which science refutes because they can't be tested.
Perhaps that's why religion is often about having faith?
I happen to had a lot of Out-Of-Body Experiences. They are anything but similar. There is like a gradient of lucidity and the most common are the ones where you're very low on that. Like super-sleepy, feeling heavy and lazy to think or do anything. The ones that usually people remember and find remarkable and (sometimes deeply) influential are the ones that have your consciousness super lucid. As much as when you're awake (vigil) or more.
Nothing will convince you more that you are way way more than the matter that composes your body than having these experiences a bunch of times.
A long time ago I wrote some details about this here:
I feel like I'm missing something with the purpose of the recall accuracy study.
> Third, the study enabled an unprecedented objective test of survivors’ recall accuracy. Many have wondered: Have those who recall death experiences—even of happenings during the resuscitation—experienced hallucinations, such as commonly reported with oxygen deprivation or psychedelic drugs? Or are their out-of-body reports of cardiac arrest events factual and verifiable?
How does the ability to recall and report an apple, pear or banana confirm/deny whether the persons have experienced a hallucinogenic event or not?
I had a bit of a...situation...recently and I didn't experience anything.
Like, 100% literally nothing. I collapsed and then just flashed back like if no time has passed, and very confused because the room suddenly changed and there was a lot of people around me that weren't there last time I blinked.
It was not like sleep where even when dreaming you kind of have a sense of things happening and a flow of time, it was a literal off-on. Like if time stopped, I was moved elsewhere and then resumed.
We don’t even know what consciousness is, where we come from and why we are here. When you start to delve in the areas of synchronicities, archetypes, placebo effect and quantum mechanics, you realize that science can only get you so far.
I long for a new company exploring the fringe of such phenomena, something like Sony did with ESPER (google it, it’s a nice rabbit hole).
I could bet that some people in the world are currently doing this, just not in public.
>I long for a new company exploring the fringe of such phenomena, something like Sony did with ESPER (google it, it’s a nice rabbit hole).
Followed your advice but could find nothing except repeat mentions of the Xperia phone (thanks Google, because obviously ESPER is the same thing as Xperia...)
Very cool to even explore this area. Although I do have to ask how on earth can this work in terms of patient consent?
Because if you ask conscient me, would I want a researcher waffling around in a room I am being resuscitated in, I would certainly not consent.
Physical space around the patient and distraction free environment are a premium in a resuscitation. The "Without interfering with the resuscitation" part reads like something you write down in a proposal to get it past an Ethics committee.
[+] [-] MPSimmons|2 years ago|reply
During the time I was dead, I have a memory. It is a singular experience of non-existence. Everything was black, and warm, and comfortable. It was silent, and there was no pain or concern for anything that had been going on. I didn't even think about it. It was as though I were in the most effective sensory deprivation tank ever.
Then they shocked me, and it hurt like hell. I woke up, looked at the doctor, and he said, "you went away for a few there", and I said, "Oh, did I?".
A couple minutes later, they "lost" me, and I went back to the blackness, but for a much shorter period of time, and I was shocked almost immediately. I had the wherewithal, upon being shocked, to say, in a very annoyed voice, 'Ouch.' which apparently caused some people in the ER room to laugh.
I ended up crashing 6 times that day, and each time I underwent cardiac arrest, it was like slipping back asleep into the deepest dream.
I used to be afraid to die. Now, I'm not, but I'm afraid to leave behind the people that I love, because I want to spend time with them, and I don't want them to have to go through me leaving them again.
Update: Here's a link to my tweet when I first talked publicly about it - https://twitter.com/standaloneSA/status/1478436334347816960
[+] [-] metamet|2 years ago|reply
- Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
[+] [-] just_1_comment|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtksn|2 years ago|reply
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting experience however, I don’t think that you were dead. IMHO, you were in a state where your brain was not functioning properly due to lack of blood flow or maybe external input.
All death experiences seem to be something of that sort and I suspect if body transplant was a thing, the experience would have been similar.
I think the correct description of the experience would be pre-death or something similar and would not be a glimpse into the “life beyond death”.
[+] [-] nelblu|2 years ago|reply
Now almost 3 decades later, I really don't think that dying is what I'm most worried about, really I just don't want to die before my dog or my wife. That said, being quite influenced by stoicism I do remind myself that I could die any second and I always live such that I won't have any regrets if I die any minute. Memento Mori.
[+] [-] generalizations|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wutwutwat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirui|2 years ago|reply
But then again, I imagine one could experience almost the same when under anesthesia or just regular sleep, so I guess you don't really have to do it the hard way :)
[+] [-] interfixus|2 years ago|reply
Semantic correction for this and all similar recollections: You are alive to tell the story, so you were, in fact, not dead.
[+] [-] AdamH12113|2 years ago|reply
> First, most of the 53 survivors initially flat-lined on the EEG, but, with continued CPR, recovered brain activity up to 60 minutes later. This result not only encourages first responders to persist, it also suggests the possibility of to-be-recalled cognitive activity in comatose patients.
> Second, 6 of the 28 interviewed survivors (21 percent) had a “transcendent recalled experience of death.” This roughly accords with prior studies’ finding that 10 to 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors report a memorable transcendent conscious experience (which Parnia labels a “recalled experience of death” rather than a “near-death experience”).
> Third, the study enabled an unprecedented objective test of survivors’ recall accuracy. ... Parnia and his three dozen collaborators creatively devised and implemented a plan to put claims of death-experience recollections to the test. As patients underwent CPR, a tablet computer displayed one of ten visual images, such as an animal, a person, or a monument. When later interviewed, could the 28 survivors report the image displayed during their death experience? If not, could they, when shown the ten possible images, guess which image had been displayed? The result: “Nobody identified the visual image."
> During 5 minutes of the CPR, patients also were repeatedly exposed through the headphone audio to the names of 3 fruits: apple, pear, banana. When the 28 survivors were later asked to guess the 3 fruits, how many correctly recalled them? One person. (A chance result? When a colleague invited his psychology students to name 3 fruits, a similar 2 of 50 named an apple, pear, and banana.)
So near-death experiences are fairly common, but no evidence that memories of out-of-body experiences reflect reality.
[+] [-] lib-dev|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyggetrold|2 years ago|reply
I can't say I'm not afraid of death but it's nice to hear stories like these from folks that help lessen that fear. :)
[+] [-] tasty_freeze|2 years ago|reply
How much of that was was after the fact reconstruction and how much was actual experience? In the same way, our brain doesn't notice the visual blind spot and just assumes that whatever is there is consistent with its context, even though there is nothing it can experience there.
[+] [-] nonameiguess|2 years ago|reply
My wife had a near-death experience about seven years back and she described it to me later, saying there was indeed a tunnel, but it was filled with cartoon Satans holding dildos and our cat was there beckoning her to come. It seems like this is almost a kind of Rorschach test of whether you're a Christian, a foxhole atheist who deep down wants there to be a Christian-like afterlife, or an honest-to-god true nonbeliever.
It also recalls to me the first time I had a true night error experience. I'd been tremendously into UFO lore and alien abduction scenarios as a teenager thanks to the X-Files, so had read up so much on some of the possible explanations that I'd had it drilled into me by then that night terrors were one possible explanation, and probably similarly for experiences people had of things like succubi in centuries past. Then when it happened to me, I did indeed wake up totally paralyzed and my bed was surrounded by ghostly alien-looking figures. But I'd read so much about it at that point that I knew exactly what was happening, knew it wasn't really aliens, and didn't even really find it scary so much as frustrating because I could neither move nor fully wake up.
[+] [-] katmannthree|2 years ago|reply
It's a difficult subject though, the fear of death underpins a significant portion of life (see terror management theory for that idea taken to the extreme). I don't know the value of trying to undermine it at scale.
[+] [-] jdthedisciple|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nytesky|2 years ago|reply
The moments before, yeah who knows...
[+] [-] dheera|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbjs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wessorh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kokanee|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voldacar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvas|2 years ago|reply
Could it be possible that the brain sensing no more blood is being supplied then triggers a mechanism to release this chemical (and in what quantities)? Wildly speculating as a layman, however, maybe there is a link between dream states / DMT production/synthesis and these experiences which are yet to be explored further.
[+] [-] fhqwhgads|2 years ago|reply
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploa...
https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/do...
[+] [-] _nalply|2 years ago|reply
I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things.
In other words: Scientific experiments about some things are inconclusive or just limited to what is scientifically measurable. The world is larger than that.
[+] [-] surfsvammel|2 years ago|reply
I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Often in medical settings but also in other settings. Often when I wake up I am in a state where I feel like I’ve been gone for hours, it feels like I’ve been basically dreaming the equivalent of a full length movie, when in reality I’ve been out for maybe a minute.
It’s strange. It seems impossible to decide what I actually experienced and what I, after the fact, believe I experienced.
I reason about the “life flashes before my eyes” concept similarly. I believe in fact it doesn’t, that a persons brain just makes one believe that has happened, after the fact. But. What do I know.
[+] [-] DougN7|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taberiand|2 years ago|reply
Our memory is highly fallible and easily manipulated, at least compared to how much people tend to believe it's a flawless record of the past.
All memories exist in the present, a memory created a minute ago about an experience a year ago would feel just as real as the memory created a year ago - probably even more so, given how fresh it would be.
Everything I read about near death experiences suggests to me that it's a brain making things up, coupled with more stimuli being processed by the "dead" patient's brain than people assume is possible - accounting, I think, very well for the "things the patient could not have known".
There is no life after death, and there is no existence separate to the body - before our birth we were not; now we are; at some point, we won't be again.
[+] [-] mongol|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perfmode|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sibeliuss|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duncancarroll|2 years ago|reply
I've had OBEs where I can remember any aspect of my life from any time period, in exact, incredible detail, just as if it had all been recorded and was being played back on a gigantic IMAX. Smells, tastes, sounds, thoughts, everything, with no impediment to recall. Every memory was instantly available as soon as I thought of it. It was like I'd just taken off a heavy lead raincoat I'd been wearing all my life, and now there was nothing to impede thought or movement.
In another, more mundane experience, I had just OBE'd and was trying to lift my arm out of my body. As I did so, my watch's vibrating alarm went off, so I grabbed my arm and tried to turn it off (it only has two buttons and pressing either will turn it off.) I could feel the buttons, but as I pressed them it did nothing. Then I realized, of course, that I wasn't grabbing my real arm. So I laid back down, snapped back into my body, opened my eyes and turned off the real watch.
I was surprised b/c it had never occurred to me that something as insignificant as my wristwatch would come with me into the OBE state, nor that I would be able to feel it and manipulate it exactly like the real thing. It made me think how in ancient Egypt the dead would be buried with everything they needed to take with them to the afterlife. Food for thought.
[+] [-] throw1234651234|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolverine876|2 years ago|reply
But that's my perspective. Maybe they obtain permission from next of kin?
[+] [-] anigbrowl|2 years ago|reply
I also don't think it's a very well-designed experiment (in that it makes some assumptions about where attention is focused; if there were truly an OOBE taking place, then I would not expect the disembodied consciousness to be connected to the sensory apparatus, nor to pay particular attention to a tablet with some random image being held up toward the ceiling), but I suppose you have to start somewhere. I don't think it's unethical exactly, but it's intrusive in an extremely weird fashion. Might be justifiable if the EEG cap turns up useful medical information independent of the parapsychological investigation.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|2 years ago|reply
I know nobody in my close friends or limited family that would bat an eye if someone came into my hospital room to do this
[+] [-] myheadasplode|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike_hock|2 years ago|reply
Quite an extraordinary claim, any evidence of this?
[+] [-] doctorhandshake|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xysg|2 years ago|reply
What I want to say however is that anyone who wants to make conclusions regarding whether there's life after death cannot do so without invoking the spiritual realm as well.
I've personally had a spiritual encounter whereby the holy spirit entered my body (I could actually sense the lifting of my skin in my chest and His entry into me). That experience changed my life forever.
The point I'm trying to make I guess is that there are many things about this so-called life that we still don't know about, in particular the dimensions we can't see and which science refutes because they can't be tested.
Perhaps that's why religion is often about having faith?
[+] [-] sebastianconcpt|2 years ago|reply
Nothing will convince you more that you are way way more than the matter that composes your body than having these experiences a bunch of times.
A long time ago I wrote some details about this here:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-out-of-body-experience/answ...
[+] [-] elil17|2 years ago|reply
Good lord that's a long time. Does this mean that if I'm performing CPR, I should keep going for 61 minutes? Longer?
[+] [-] cypherpunks01|2 years ago|reply
> Third, the study enabled an unprecedented objective test of survivors’ recall accuracy. Many have wondered: Have those who recall death experiences—even of happenings during the resuscitation—experienced hallucinations, such as commonly reported with oxygen deprivation or psychedelic drugs? Or are their out-of-body reports of cardiac arrest events factual and verifiable?
How does the ability to recall and report an apple, pear or banana confirm/deny whether the persons have experienced a hallucinogenic event or not?
[+] [-] falsaberN1|2 years ago|reply
It was not like sleep where even when dreaming you kind of have a sense of things happening and a flow of time, it was a literal off-on. Like if time stopped, I was moved elsewhere and then resumed.
Disappointing, in a way.
[+] [-] MailleQuiMaille|2 years ago|reply
I long for a new company exploring the fringe of such phenomena, something like Sony did with ESPER (google it, it’s a nice rabbit hole). I could bet that some people in the world are currently doing this, just not in public.
[+] [-] southernplaces7|2 years ago|reply
Followed your advice but could find nothing except repeat mentions of the Xperia phone (thanks Google, because obviously ESPER is the same thing as Xperia...)
Care to share a link maybe?
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|2 years ago|reply
Because if you ask conscient me, would I want a researcher waffling around in a room I am being resuscitated in, I would certainly not consent.
Physical space around the patient and distraction free environment are a premium in a resuscitation. The "Without interfering with the resuscitation" part reads like something you write down in a proposal to get it past an Ethics committee.
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
Patients recall death experiences after cardiac arrest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726301 - Oct 2023 (13 comments)
People experience ‘new dimensions of reality' when dying: study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725115 - Oct 2023 (66 comments)