I have come to the inevitable conclusion that our mind or
consciousness resides fully in our spirit for lack of a better name.
I have come to understand that the real physical information content
of our spirit is many orders of magnitude greater than our easily
observed physical component.
Our consciousness does embed memories that are needed in our present
into our physical component, but this is necessarily slow. Yet we
also learn to depend on it and I suspect that may be a mistake.
Photographic memories come to mind as well.
NDE demonstrates a shift of spectrum and that is the underlying
observation I want to note. This also occurs with lucid dreams and
not so with ordunary dreams. You can tell the difference.
As it is I have had exactly one lucid dream that conforms well with
the NDE experience but that is because my mother provided the venue
as part of my instruction. She did not originate the instruction nor
do I remenber the instruction but I do know that I spent time in such
communian as reported later by my mother. My mother is long passed
of course but she was obviously there to provide assurance to myself.
I do want to remark that the spirit existence is physically supported
( I know how) and photonically dense as well, yet at wavelengths we
do not access. I think that might be remedied with specially
designed eyewear. You would still feel one of them walk through you
though. I do not think they would want to do that either.
The Neuroscience of
Near-Death Experiences
By Tara MacIsaac,
Epoch Times | September 5, 2014
he universe is full of
mysteries that challenge our current knowledge. In "Beyond
Science" Epoch Times collects stories about these strange
phenomena to stimulate the imagination and open up previously
undreamed of possibilities. Are they true? You decide.
NEWPORT BEACH,
Calif.—When people report having profound out-of-body experiences
during close brushes with death, skeptics often attribute it to
physiological and psychological factors.
Robert Mays, who has
studied near-death experiences (NDEs) for some 30 years, looked at
some of these factors during a talk at the International Association
for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) 2014 Conference in Newport Beach,
Calif., on Aug. 29.
Hypoxia, or oxygen
deprivation, is one often-cited cause. Another is rapid eye movement
(REM) intrusion. REM is characteristic of the sleep state in which
people often dream. REM intrusion is when REM activates during
wakefulness, and some say the scenes of the afterlife, interactions
with dead loved ones, life-reviews, and more, are a result of REM.
The experiences
reported by NDEers diverge greatly, however, from the experiences
usually reported under the conditions of hypoxia and REM intrusion,
Mays said: “NDEers almost always report that they have
had a hyper-real experience that far outshines our ordinary,
conscious experience—that they felt the NDE realm was their true
home, permeated by unconditional love, and that they are no longer
afraid to die.”
“These
characteristic aspects are simply not present with hypoxia, REM
intrusion, and so on,” Mays said.
Researchers at the
University of Liège in Belgium looked at other physiological
aspects. They wondered if people who have NDE-like experiences
during non-life-threatening situations—such as sleep, meditation,
or after fainting—would describe the same feelings as people who
have NDEs during life-threatening situations, including cardiac
arrest.
These two sets of
situations involve very different physiological states. While
skeptics may argue that the physiological conditions connected with
cardiac arrest (such as hypoxia) may cause the NDE, if people who
are physiologically normal have the same experiences, it suggests
the cause of these experiences is not physiological.
The researchers found
that people in both life-threatening and non-life-threatening
situations described their experiences the same way in terms of
content and intensity.
“There appears to
be a consistency and commonality among NDEs independent of
physiological factors,” Mays summarized.
Robert Mays speaks at the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) 2014 Conference in Newport Beach, Calif., on Aug. 29, 2014. (Tara MacIsaac/Epoch Times)
On a broader scale,
Mays discussed the lack of evidence for a compulsory mind-brain
connection. If the mind is definitively proven to be dependent on
the brain, then the argument for NDEs as brain-based events would
also hold true.
Yet a “center
of self” has not been found in the brain, Mays said. He listed
what he called “enigmas of consciousness,” many of which center
on the fact that we have unified personalities that seem to
coordinate the disparate regions of the brain.
For example, despite severe brain dysfunction, a unitary and
coherent mind, or a “whole person” is able to exist, Mays said.
If consciousness were so dependent on the brain, one might expect a
damaged brain to fragment the person’s central consciousness.
He spoke of a
phenomenon called terminal lucidity, in which people with
dysfunctional brains (including Alzheimer’s patients) suddenly seem
to regain their memories and a calm, rational thought structure
shortly before death. This may show, he said, that a central
personality is not damaged when the brain is damaged—it’s just
somehow distant.
Neuroscience could
greatly benefit from further study of NDEs, Mays said. For example,
if it could be determined that the consciousness is able to operate
outside the brain, it may be possible to use that consciousness to
treat brain damage.
He would like to gain
access to appropriate equipment and work collaboratively with
neuroscientists to test hypotheses on how the mind may physically
interface with neurons in the brain. This could be accomplished, he
said, by testing living neurons in-vitro.
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The very thought is mind-blowing.
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