TruthBook Religious News Blog

From The Sunday Times
December 14, 2008
The living dead

This is a lengthy article which is encapsulated here. Please click on "external link" to view the entire article.

NDEs (near-death experiences)are so common, so vivid and so life-transforming — survivors frequently become more compassionate, religious and serene as a result of what they experience — that scientists, philosophers, priests, psychologists and cultists all want a piece of the action. Their problem is that the human mind is unreachable. We can’t see what’s going on in there. Even if we could rush cardiac-arrest patients into an MRI scanner, we’d only see lights in the brain. We wouldn’t know what they meant. But now NDEs are to be scientifically investigated in a US and UK study involving 25 hospitals. This is co-ordinated by Dr Sam Parnia at Southampton University and is designed to find 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrests — “clinical death” — who tell such stories.

Getting a scientific handle on this phenomenon is fiendishly difficult. Dead people don’t report back, and it is very hard to assess the status of survivor accounts — are they merely hallucinations occurring before the crisis or just after? Perhaps they are no more than the brain’s way of soothing your path to extinction.

Parnia’s study is aimed solely at OBEs in cases of cardiac arrest. It uses a technique known as “hidden target”. In the participating hospitals he is placing pictures on high shelves so that they will be invisible both to patients and staff. But anybody floating near the ceiling would see them. A substantial number of accurate reports of the pictures would seem to establish the reality of OBEs. There are numerous problems with this. Parnia’s study does not have enough money to put laptops on the shelves generating random pictures to ensure that cheating is impossible. Furthermore, previous hidden-target experiments by, among others, Parnia himself and Dr Penny Sartori at Morriston Hospital in Swansea have failed to produce a single positive result. In fairness, this may be because the last thing that a floating dying person, with Jesus behind him and his body being pounded in front of him, will notice is some odd picture left on a shelf. This leaves believers in OBEs with an evidential mountain to climb.

There are plenty of sceptics who will pounce on negative results or even positive ones with any signs of ambiguity. Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuro-psychiatrist who has overseen Parnia and Sartori’s work, admits that, whatever the outcome, there will still be “wriggle room” for sceptics.

Hidden targets are the best key science has for unlocking the true nature of NDEs. If Parnia comes up with positive results, then even the most hardened sceptics will have to pay attention. They will force a serious rethinking of all current ideas about the brain and the mind.

“This is definitely a legitimate scientific inquiry,” says Chris French, professor of psychology at Goldsmiths College, London, and co-editor of The Skeptic magazine.

French’s position is important. He specialises in paranormal beliefs and experiences. In some cases his position is that of outright scepticism. For example, people started reporting alien-abduction scenarios — flying saucers, anal probes — in large numbers only after a single case, that of Betty and Barney Hill, was publicised in Look magazine in 1966. This was clearly a kind of mental virus, made more virulent by the fact that most of the accounts were retrieved under hypnosis. But NDEs were widely reported even before they became known to a mass audience through Raymond Moody’s 1975 book Life after Life. And hypnosis has not been involved in retrieving the accounts. The consistency and clarity of these reports across cultures and time zones convince French that, even if NDEs may not prove the afterlife, they do cast light on the human mind.

And, as in all things, it is the human mind that is at the heart of the matter. If we can float out of our bodies, then the mind is separable from, and, perhaps not dependent on, the brain. Twelve years after Tom Wolfe famously announced in Forbes magazine that, as a result of developments in neuroscience, “Your soul just died,” it may be time to say: “No, it didn’t.”

But is such a thing as a separable mind poss-ible or even conceivable? The answer is yes. In explaining why, it will be necessary to plunge into philosophy and quantum mechanics. Bear with me: it will be as painless as a cardiac arrest and much more interesting. And at the end of it, you might just believe you are immortal.

Labels: Dr Sam Parnia, near-death experience, out of body experience, science, Southampton University

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Near-death experiences, guardian angel research projects connected?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

by Steve Hammons

This month, news coverage of two research studies related to near-death experiences and belief in guardian angels provoked surprise, skepticism, and for some people, curiosity about transcendent and anomalous phenomena.

Are there cosmic connections between the two research project results?

The Human Consciousness Project at the University of Southampton in the UK began the biggest research study to date of near-death experiences (NDEs) among heart attack survivors who have been resuscitated.

The Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion also released results of a survey that found more than half of those polled believed they have been helped by a guardian angel during their lives.

There is an obvious link between NDEs and angels.

For those who suspect there may be some truth in both of these phenomena, the connections between them take only a small leap of faith, or even of scientific logic.

If, when we pass on, we go from this existence to some other place, then this afterlife or other dimension is probably associated with the dimension from which angels conduct their activities.

DIMENSIONS AND HEAVENLY WORMHOLES

Some physicists now tell us that the Universe may have many dimensions, including several we may not be able to easily perceive.

The Universe may be a "multi-verse" where layers or interfaces of different realities exist in ways that are both separate and connected.

People who report NDEs often describe going through a tunnel-like experience. This tunnel is often described as consisting of warm and beautiful light – a deeply loving and compassionate light.

In some cases, at the end of this tunnel, they may meet loved ones who had previously passed on. Or, they may encounter other beings.

Dr. Sam Parnia, head researcher of the University of Southampton project, was quoted in the UK newspaper The Telegraph as noting, "What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process."

These NDE accounts seem to indicate a pathway from our daily reality to another dimension or another kind of reality.

One in five of those respondents identified themselves as not being religious.

Why do so many people have this belief? Wishful thinking? A psychological security blanket? Or, is it something more?

If it is true that they (we) do go to another dimension of reality, what kinds of activities are undertaken there? Are the daily lives of family members and friends back on Earth simply forgotten and left behind? Or, are missions and projects undertaken that have some important meaning?

CONSCIOUSNESS BEYOND DEATH

The NDE study at Southampton University, led by Dr. Parnia, is called the AWARE study, referring to "AWAreness during REsuscitation."

Parnia has done previous research on patient consciousness while experiencing clinical death.

The research will be conducted in the UK and the United States and will involve 25 hospitals. Researchers will look at 1,500 patients who had heart attacks that resulted in cessation of heartbeat and brain activity.

Parnia was quoted in The Telegraph newspaper as saying, "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity."

The Telegraph article also quoted Parnia as explaining, "Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death."

According to Parnia, "During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present. There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process."

Some recent scientific studies reportedly have found that 10 percent to 20 percent of people experiencing clinical death also claim to have had consciousness and vivid, very interesting experiences during the period between death and resuscitation.

AN ENCHANTED WORLD

The Baylor survey included a wide range of religious topics, not just guardian angel encounters. Christopher Bader was the director of poll. The survey queried 1,700 people.

The response that generated the most interest, however, was the agreement by those polled with the following statement:

"I was protected from harm by a guardian angel."

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed agreed with this statement.

This general response was consistent across educational levels, geographic region and religious denominations.

Bader was quoted in TIME magazine as saying, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences."

The number of people saying they believed they were protected by an angels was "the big shocker," Bader said.

The TIME article also quoted Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at Barnard College in New York. He said the Baylor survey reflects the fact that "Americans live in an enchanted world" and that "There is much broader uncharted range of religious experience among the populace than we expect."

According to an ABC News article on the Baylor poll, Rodney Stark, a professor of social sciences and co-director for studies of religion at Baylor, said, "While I knew there were a lot of people who had such [beliefs in angels], I wasn't prepared for the frequency of it."

NOTE TO READERS: For more information, please visit the Joint Recon Study Group site and have a look around.

Labels: AWARE, Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, faith, guardian angels, Human Consciousness Project, near-death experience, religious experience, science, Steve Hammons