Shared Near-death Experiences from Nderf.org Part IV

This is Part IV, the last of a series of posts about shared near-death experiences published at Nderf.org. Nderf.org is a web site run by near-death experience researcher Dr. Jeff Long M.D. and Jody Long. The site has a web page on Exceptional NDE Accounts. Below are two more accounts of shared near-death experiences from that page.

• Darlene K's NDE 2948:
  

  Darlene had a near-death experience which she shared with her cousin Lucy. They met a group of people who were expecting Lucy and Darlene observed Lucy's life review. Darlene was told she wasn't supposed to be there and returned to her body.
  

  I was asleep. Then I was floating above my body. I observed the shine on my hanging copper pot and the pretty colors of my quilt. I watched my body but I don't recall seeing Mom in the room with me at that time. I floated up to the ceiling.
  

  Lucy entered the room with the bright rays of sun through the window. She had no body, like me. We greeted each other happily and played, spinning and twirling in the air. It was fun.
  

  When we stopped, she took me up through a dark tunnel with an intense light at the top. When we arrived, there was no top or bottom. There was nothing there but love. It was pure love. Intense love. Everything was okay. Everyone there was okay. They were all happy, loving beings. They were expecting Lucy. They talked with her and laughed with her. I watched them and felt the love all around me. They reviewed Lucy's past. Suddenly, I felt a being communicate, "You're not supposed to be here."
  

  After her near-death experience, Darlene learned that Lucy had died that morning. During her NDE, Darlene felt she was more conscious and alert than normal and she experienced heightened colors and smells. She believed her experience was real. When she reached the light she said about it, "the totality of life was love and happiness". She described it as "endless in scope". She felt, "intense love, joy, happiness, and sympathy (for Lucy). I had the most incredible peaceful feeling that I've ever had in my life."
  

• Meg A's NDE 903:
  

  Meg had a rare hellish NDE after she was severely injured a car crash. She descended to a lower realm with the driver of the car. The driver remained there, but Meg returned to her body and recovered from her injuries. When she regained consciousness she learned that the driver of the car had died. If you want to read more about this near-death experience click on the link above. While it is different from many other NDE's I have written about, it is consistent with what I have written elsewhere about the afterlife. For perspective on this experience, see my posts on:
  

  • "You Can Do No Wrong." What does that mean?
    

  • The Principles Of Spiritualism
    

  • Evidence That God Exists: People Who Have Near Death Experiences Meet God.
    

  • What is it like in the afterlife?
    

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Shared Near-death Experiences from Nderf.org Part III

This is Part III of a series of posts about shared near-death experiences published at Nderf.org. Nderf.org is a web site run by near-death experience researcher Dr. Jeff Long M.D. and Jody Long. The site has a web page on Exceptional NDE Accounts. Below are three more accounts of shared near-death experiences from that page.

• Douglas T NDE 3334:
  

  Douglas had a near-death experience during a heart attack. At the same time, two hundred miles away, unknown to Douglas, his grandfather was also having a heart attack.
  

  There was no tunnel of light that I hear some much about, it was just an expanse of white light. Off in the distance to my right was what appeared to be the shadow of a large oak tree with a large group of people standing under it. As I got closer the this group I recognized the people standing in the front of the group as my grandmother, my great uncle Glenn, my great aunt Lala, my great aunt Wanda her husband Lee, a woman that was like a grandmother to my sister and me and then a group of people that I thought I knew but at that time I couldn't put names to their faces. I tried to speak to them but all they would say to me is "We're not waiting for you go home". I spoke to most of these people and everyone said the same thing "We're not waiting for you go home". Then the last thing I remember from that side was my grandfather's voice, I did not see him I just heard his voice say "Your the luckiest boy I know". Then three days later I awoke in the hospital with my Mother and Sister standing over my bed. My Mother says that my first question was about the play I was working on at the time and my second question was about my Grandfather. The Doctors told her not to tell me right away that he had died two days earlier so as not to put me in shock.
  

  During his near death experience Douglas met a group of his deceased relatives but they told him that they were not gathered waiting for him. Then he heard the voice of his grandfather whom he thought was still alive. When Douglas woke up three days later in the hospital, he learned that his grandfather had died two days earlier.
  

  Douglas felt his near-death experience was real. It was as if he was seeing and talking to people as he normally did, but he felt more conscious and alert. He described his sight and hearing as clearer than they normally were. He felt joy, love, and the absence of stress. During his near-death experience, Douglas met deceased relatives he had never seen before. After his NDE, Douglas could identify them in photographs.
  

• Erika R NDE 6354:
  

  Erika was eleven weeks pregnant when she had a near-death experience. It occurred when she lost consciousness while she was being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance because of an asthma attack.
  

  Then I was moving through this purple light. Although it was dark, I wasn't afraid. I then entered pure white light. I have a hard time explaining how and what I felt, because there is no words I can find to describe how beautiful, loving and peaceful it was. It was like I was surrounded in warm, loving wings of light. I have never felt anything close to this, before or after, this experience. I heard a little boy's voice say ,"Mommy, don't leave me." (I thought it was my 7 year old son...who asked me if I was going to die as I was leaving my house with the EMTs).
  

  Later, after the birth of her unborn son she recognized this voice as belonging to him. Her NDE continued:
  

  I did not want to leave where I was; I have never felt so good. Then I saw my Mother-in-law, who died 4 months before. She told me that I didn't belong there-that I had to go back.
  

  Next thing I remember I am looking down at the EMTs and Paramedics as they're wheeling my body from the ambulance into the hospital. Then I am behind my Mother who is talking to doctors in the ER about what was happening with me.
  

  I regained consciousness off and on for a few hours until I was put into a medication-induced coma. I woke up sometime on Monday, connected to a ventilator and many other devices that were keeping me alive, including an insulin pump.
  

  During her near-death experience, Erika felt her senses were sharper than normal. She described her experience "not dream like". She believed it was real. During her near-death experience, Erika felt love, peace, contentment, and happiness. She observed her mother talking to doctors in another part of the hospital. After Erika recovered, she verified this had occurred when she was unconscious. After her son, whom she was pregnant with during her NDE, was born, Erika recognized his voice as the child she heard during her near-death experience.
  

  The little boy I heard was my son, who I was pregnant with at the time. About a year ago we were in his bedroom, and I left to do something in another part of the house. He chased after me saying, "Mommy, don't leave me!" There was NO doubt anymore that I heard him during my experience.
  

  The memories of her NDE are more detailed than other memories from the same time of her life, she describes them as the strongest memories she has. She wrote, "What is waiting for us after we leave our body is so magnificent. Pure love. I am not afraid to die.". Since her NDE Erika has developed telepathy and clairvoyance.
  

• Karen vDK NDEs 6359:
  

  Karen had two near-death experiences. The first occurred during surgery for internal bleeding caused by a previous operation for endometriosis. During her NDE, she met her grandmother at a "gate". Karen returned to her body but her grandmother remained.
  

  I was aware of a hugely intense feeling of love and compassion. I travelled through a kind of tunnel. Time didn't exist, and I found myself at a "gate," together with three figures. One of them, I recognized as my grandmother—whom I knew was alive at that time. The other two were other kinds of beings, human-like, but I couldn't identify them. The feeling of harmony, love, and goodness was overwhelming. At one point we were "told" we weren't allowed to pass yet and had to "go back." It wasn't communicated in words, exactly, though. We were both reluctant. I "went back," but my grandmother stayed.
  

  The next day Karen's husband told her that her grandmother had suffered a stroke and was in very serious condition.
  

  Karen's second NDE occurred three weeks later during an operation to save a kidney that was blocked by her previous operation. In her second NDE, Karen met her grandmother by the same gate. Again, Karen returned but this time her grandmother passed through the gate.
  

  I remember traveling through time and space, until I came to the gate. I vividly remember how intensely I was looking forward to it. My grandmother was still there. Words were not exactly spoken—it was more a communication of "knowing." It was in a totally different dimension. The two beings were there, too. The light was blindingly beautiful and all-encompassing. It's difficult to find words, but, as I seek them in my memories, tears are in my eyes. Then suddenly they let me know "It is not your turn yet." I remember vividly how I reached out for my grandmother, and her "energy" touched me and became a sort of lacy string of light. She went through the gate and—still with this tremendous feeling of love—the beings sent me back.
  

  Karen regained consciousness four days later and was told that her grandmother had died on the day of Karen's kidney surgery. During her NDE, Karen felt more conscious and alert than normal. She felt overwhelming love, harmony, and oneness with everything. After her experience, she understood that love is an important part of our existence. She wrote, "Love is the answer to everything." Karen also finds that she is now more tolerant in her relationships. She believes her experience was real.
  

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Shared Near-death Experiences from Nderf.org Part II

This is Part II of a series of posts about shared near-death experiences archived at Nderf.org. Nderf.org is a web site run by near-death experience researcher Dr. Jeff Long M.D. and Jody Long. The site has a web page on Exceptional NDE Accounts. Below are three more accounts of shared near-death experiences from that page.

• Denise NDE 5122:
  Denise had a severe case of pleurisy which caused her to lose consciousness and have a near-death experience. When her neighbor came to check on her and tried to rouse her she came back into her body.
  

  In a fraction of a moment, everything around me melted away.
  

  I was surrounded by a mass of solid glowing white. My eyes caught a girl to my right side. She was probably 19 or 20. Shorter than my 5'8 stature she starred up at me. She asked where we were. I had no clue. She proceeded to tell me she'd been driving home from work and didn't understand how she was now standing beside me. I revealed likewise, that I had been in my sons bunk bed and had no recollection of moving. In front of us a man appeared and approached us. The best I can describe his face/features is: brown curly hair to the nap of his neck, liquid brown eyes, ... and a delicate mustache under a pronounced nose. ... I asked him where we were. He smiled, nodded, and said, "the best way to describe this is, you are in a form of limbo. ... He smiled with every ounce of unconditional love and compassion that I will never properly explain ...
  

  Gesturing he told me to walk forward and I would see what I would call "a mirror". ... Moving into the direction, before me was a liquid pool of white, yet, it also appeared to be a mirror. ... I was an array of beautiful moving, shimmering, vibrating, colors. He came closer and said, "do you understand now?" I realized I was pure energy, spirit, and part of a flowing consciousness; while still remaining 'Denise'. At that moment he shared his name, "John". ... The following is a reiteration of his words. "Everyone has choices. Everyone has free will. How this interacts in your life, and death, and with others, is all by choice. ... I need to tell you, your neighbor is entering your home. She will find you. You will be going back." With these last words still ringing in my ears, I was sucked like a vacuum back into my body.
  

  Eight years later Denise was sightseeing at a cathedral and a man, asking her to walk with him, led her to a stained glass window. The design in the stained glass window contained a rendering of the apostle John which looked exactly like man from her NDE. She described what happened next:
  

  Yes it is my dear. He was an apostle on earth and he was called smiling John. You needed to see this. You needed to remember and know that it happened." I stood there shaking my head in a yes motion and turned to look at the little man. He was gone. No where in sight.
  

  During her NDE Denise felt more conscious and alert than she normally did, and she communicated with others telepathically. Since her NDE, she can communicate with "the other side". She believes her experience was real.
  

• Joanie S NDE 5271: Joanie went into convulsions during a pregnancy and was thrown out of her body. During her NDE she saw a past life replayed where the woman who was currently her grandmother was with her in that life too.
  

  The convulsions tightened every part of my body and I felt like I was bouncing off the gurney, until I convulsed out of my body, and was looking down at my body as it continued to convulse. I floated up to the ceiling, while looking at the body below. Both the doctor and the nurse were checking it (me). I was pulled back through the ceiling tiles and into a tunnel, to a place of cloudy space. The cloudy area materialized into a large marble room with marble doors and a "being" at the center. I'll refer to this person as "the Grim Reaper," who was cloaked in a dark cloth, covering all parts. The Grim Reaper pointed (indicating to me to choose a door). But before I could choose, a door opened and I had already gone through it. I found myself in what I now think of as a previous life. I smelled smoke from a fire I was near, and saw others around me. I looked into another woman's eyes, and I knew her immediately as the woman I called my grandmother in this life. I knew then that our lives had "danced" around each other since time began. She was once my mother and once my sister. She was my aunt, and several times my cousin. The life that was being shown to me now was during a prehistoric time, when we lived winters by a creek cave, and summers we had a camp in the woods where we foraged. Looking down, I realized I had a child in my arms, and the woman I had known in so many lives was chatting with me, telling me to cover the child to keep it warm. Then she was showing me how to tie the wraps around me to carry the child while we collected wood.
  

  Joanie had another NDE several years later when she was in surgery for an ectopic pregnancy. During this NDE she saw the unborn child she was losing. The child told her not to worry because she would be back soon. Two weeks after returning from the hospital Joanie's sister-in-law gave birth to a child that Joanie recognized as the child she had lost.
  

  Joanie felt her experiences, including sensations such as touch, sights, sounds, smells were real. She felt as aware and conscious as always. Near the time of her grandmother's death, her grandmother called her by other names and Joanie felt her grandmother did this because she was remembering Joanie from previous lives.
  

• Paul's NDE:
  During the Vietnam war, Paul and a fellow soldier, Pete, were both shot. They left their bodies and shared Paul's NDE. Only Paul survived. During the NDE, Pete told Paul he was going to visit his mother to say good by.
  

  The next thing I knew I was viewing the scene from about sixteen feet above my body. I saw that my body had been hit several times in the right leg and once in the left. I was convinced that I was going to bleed to death and felt tremendous sorrow that I'd never see my wife and our unborn baby. My sadness was joined by a growing confusion and curiosity. So, this is death? I thought. No pain! No fear! How weird, I don’t feel any different. I still can think. I stared at my body and wondered what was coming next. My buddy, Pete was lying next to my body. I was shocked to see a mist leave from his head, which instantly turned into an exact duplicate of his body. I noticed that his spirit or new body was whole and glowed a bit. (His physical body below was missing his hand and part of his forearm due to being hit by the same sniper.) Pete looked dazed and I called to him. He immediately flew to join me and we discussed what was going to happen from that point. We noticed that a young black medic had discovered our bodies. First he checked Pete and then me. He began working on my body and Pete commented that he guessed that meant he was dead, but that I probably still had a chance. He reached out and shook my hand and said, "I want to thank you for being a good friend and for trying to save my life. I don’t know why, but I just get this sense that I am not staying here. I am going someplace I’ve been before. It feels like home. I know this sounds crazy, but I think it’s not your time to go yet. I think I’ll try to say goodbye to my mom now, but you go on and have a groovy life and if your kid is a boy name him after me. OK?" I said, "You got it Pete!" I reached over to give him a pat on the back, but he vanished in a blink of light. I watched several soldiers below help carry me away from the scene while the medic continued to work on me. I was filled with a yearning to be with my young wife and my unborn child. Suddenly, I was slammed back into my body, as if I fell from forty feet above.
  

  Later Paul went to visit Pete's mother. She had told Paul of a visitation by Pete's spirit the day he died. Pete had a spirit child with him who he was helping prepare to incarnate. Years later Pete's mother recognized Paul's child as the spirit who had been with her son during his visitation.
  

  Paul describe the effects of his NDE this way:
  

  If everyone could do the same, I know that there would never be another war!
  

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Shared Near-death Experiences from Nderf.org Part I

Nderf.org is a web site run by near-death experience researcher Dr. Jeff Long M.D. and Jody Long. The site has a web page on Exceptional NDE Accounts. Below are three accounts of shared near-death experiences from that page.

• G Ryan's NDE 992: Greg and two friends fell when a balcony collapsed while they were filming of a movie. Greg was severly injured and his friend Charlie was killed. Before the medics arrived and began to revive him, Greg and Charlie shared an out-of-body experience.
  

  It was like, I blinked. My eyes were suddenly open, but my position had changed, I was now up high, I looked around me and found that I was on the balcony. I wasn’t flying, or floating, I was just crouching there on the edge looking down at myself, watching Shane remove the spike from my chest, he was shouting, but It was silent, no noise what so ever.
  

  ...
  

  My sight was not… human. It was fragmented, although I could see perfectly, if not better, it was not the sight I’d had previously, and everything glowed in a silvery way.
  

  ...
  

  Then something caught my eye. Something or someone was coming along the balcony just behind Jo. It was Charlie.
  

  I quickly looked down at his body. He was clearly dead. His head was precariously placed away from his shoulders. I looked back at Charlie. He was looking blank, but he had tears in his eyes. He sat down and dangled his legs on the over the broken ledge of the balcony just on the other side of the frantic Jo. He looked down at himself. “Charlie?” I asked, not knowing if he would hear me. He looked up sharply.
  

  ...
  

  He stood up, as did I, and we walked to each other.
  

  ...
  

  The NDE included veridical events and since the event Greg reports experiencing psychic perceptions. Greg felt the exerience was real, "not at all" dreamlike and he felt he was totally alert through out the entire experience.
  

  
  

• David L NDE 3990: David wrecked the car he was driving and was severely injured. During his NDE he had an out of body experiece during which he communicated with is passenger who was also out of his body. While out of his body, David also visited his brother. He tried to communicate with his brother during that time but thought he had failed. Later, after he recovered he found out that at the time he was trying to communicate with his brother, his brother had a preminition that something had happened to David. This experience convinced him that he really had died during his NDE even though previously he had been an atheist.
  

  Then a voice up, in front, and to my right said, "Fear not. Do not be afraid." My uneasy feeling went away as I asked, "Who are you?" The voice answered, "Just call me father." In the center of my being I heard, "Christ." Then before me there was images. Fuzzy and dark like the scene of the car below my friend and I. But these images were all around me 360 degrees of vision in a circle that curved up and away like a bowl.
  

  I watched as a section of the image became brighter and clear. I could see myself at the age of two. Like a corridor of images stacked one in front of the other running away and up. As the bright area like a flash light was moving from the center in front of me to the left, I watched as the corridors of images showed my life at three, four, five, six and so on till the bright area got to the three o'clock position to my right.
  

  Then suddenly, I was standing in my mother's bedroom. The dog woke up and I said, "Hampton, it is OK." Then the voice up, in back, and to my right asked, "Is this not your mother." I said, "Yes" Then my vision was turned to the right where I would see through my younger brother's door. The voice asked, "Is this not your brother?" I said, "Yes"
  

  Then in the blink of an eye, I was 12 miles away. Outside my older brother's apartment. Looking down through the concrete floor of the second story, and looking through the steel security door of his apartment, I could see my brother reaching out to open the apartment door. Beside him was a shadowy figure. The voice up, behind me, and to the right said, "Is this not your other brother." Thinking that I could talk to the dog, and that my brother is awake, I started to say, "Charles. Get me out of this.. Charles. Get me out of this."
  

  The voice again said in a monotone voice, "Is this not your other brother?" Again, I said, "Charles. Get me out of this." Then the voice said in a fainter voice, "Is this not your other brother?" I said, "Yes" Then again in the blink of an eye I was taken 15 miles away to my father's apartment. Where I was hovering in the parking lot, looking through his apartment door, looking at him sitting on the couch reading the newspaper. I was looking through the news paper at this face when I wondered where his wife was. I was told that she is in the bedroom. Then I was asked, "Is this not your father?" I said, "Yes"
  

  David felt he was more alert than normal during the entire NDE. He later confirmed what he saw his mother, father, and brothers doing during his NDE. On several occasions since his near-death experience David has felt sensations similar to his NDE a couple of days before people close to the family have died and once he felt the presence of discarnate people who talked to him during in NDE.
  

  
  

• William M NDE 4269: William fell asleep while driving. He was severely injured and his girlfriend was killed. They rose out of their bodies together are were met by ethereal beings emanating love and compassion beyond anything he had ever experienced. He communicated with them and with his girlfriend telepathically. They took his girlfriend higher while William went back into his body.
  

  Then I was aware that we were out of our bodies & quickly flying up toward space, holding hands. We flew straight up for a minute or so when we started to see a park or countryside-like landscape. It seemed to be in twilight, sort of dark, but we could see trees, bushes, etc. Suddenly, we were intercepted by 4 creatures. They seemed about ten feet in height & were invisible, but we could see a vague humanoid outline (my best description would be like the invisibility effect in the movie "predator" which I saw some years later. Two flanked each of us and began to gently separate us. They overwhelmed us with a feeling of the highest love & compassion that was well beyond anything we could experience on earth. A divine love. We therefore had no resistance to their effort. I recall feeling sort of like a baby in mother's arms, but it's hard to accurately describe. Two of them moved her upward toward the distant landscape & two moved me back downward. I felt so much love, peace, & comfort, that I wanted to protest & say "no, please let me stay here", but hearing inwardly (without ears) or psychically that I could not stay. Next, I could see my car, in flames, from maybe about a quarter mile up above. I felt a sensation of falling, & awakened in the car.
  

  During his NDE William experienced normal consciousness while out of his body but when he returned to it he drifted in and out of consciousness. While out of his body he was able to see the landscape which he was later able to verify. He feels the experience was real and that the afterlife is real.
  

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

An "Electrical Surge" in a Dying Brain Cannot Explain the Near-death Experience. Why you should ignore claims that attempt to discredit evidence for the afterlife. Don't let the psuedoskeptics waste your time or mislead you. Part II

This is Part II of this series of posts. Part I exposes the flaws in an article in Esquire that incorrectly called into question the validity of the near-death experience reported by Dr. Eben Alexander in his book Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife.

There are many independent forms of empirical evidence for the afterlife and ESP. Unfortuantely, there are also many cases of pseudoskeptics misleading the public about this evidence as I have documented on my web page on Skeptical Misdirection. The evidence for the afterlife and ESP is so strong that pseudoskeptics have to resort to misleading tactics in their efforts to discredit it.

There have been a number of stories in the news about recent research showing an "electrical surge" in the brains of rats in the first 30 seconds after they experience cardiac arrest. It has been incorrectly claimed that a similar phenomenon could be the cause of near-death experiences in humans. A surge of electrical activity has been known to occur in brains of humans close to the moment of death as well as in humans experiencing cardiac arrest, so this story about rats is not anything new. (The preceeding two links include their own refutation of the "electrical surge" explanation for near-death experiences and are well worth looking at.) There are several reasons a surge of electrical activity in the brain cannot account for near-death experiences. A surge of electrical activity cannot explain:

• Veridical (verifiable) near-death experiencess where the experiencer is aware of what is happening at a location he could not perceive with his normal senses even if he was conscious.
  

  
  

• Shared near-death experiences where more than one person is close to death and they share the same near-death experience.
  

  
  

• Shared near-death experiences where one person is close to death and one or more people around him share his near-death experience.
  

  
  

• Near-death experiences that occur when the experiencer is not suffering cardiac arrest and is not physiologically close to death.
  

  
  

• Near-death experiences where the subject experiences cardiac arrest for much longer than the surge of electrical activity lasts and the experiencer can report veridical information long after the surge of electrical activity ends.
  

  
  

• Near-death experiences that occur when it is known that the experiencer's EEG shows no brain activity.
  

Also see: All of the materialist explanations for near-death experiences fail to explain the phenomenon.

Examples and References

• Veridical near-death experiencess where the experiencer is aware of what is happening at a location he could not perceive with his normal senses even if he was conscious.
  

  deathisanillusion.com
  

  While Maria's body was being worked on by the medical staff she experienced leaving her body. She floated upwards some 4 stories and came out onto the roof of the hospital. There on the ledge of the roof she saw an old sneaker with a worn little toe and one lace tucked under the heel. When the resuscitation procedure had proved successful Maria came to and was quite preoccupied with her vision of the sneaker. ... She managed to persuade the social worker Kim Clark to go check and directed her to a window from which the shoe could be seen when leaning out. ... Clark easily found the correct window and there, indeed, lay the sneaker on the ledge with the worn little toe and the lace tucked under the heel just as Maria had described it.
  

  (Because this case is well known, many false claims have been made by pseudoskeptics in attempts to debunk this case. None of the attempts stand up to close scrutiny.)
  

  
  

• Shared near-death experiences where more than one person is close to death and they share the same near-death experience.
  near-death.com
  

  We saw that the sparkling lights were tiny, transparent bubbles that drifted in the air and sparkled on the grass. We realized that each tiny sparkle was a soul. To me, the valley appeared to be Heaven, but at the same time I knew that James and Rashad were seeing it differently. James saw it as the Gulf of Souls. Rashad saw it as Nirvana, and somehow we knew all this without speaking. The light began gathering at the far end of the valley, and slowly, out of the mist, a pure white being began to materialize. I saw an angel with a strong, bright face, but not like you'd usually imagine. She was closer to a strong, Viking Valkyrie. I knew she was the special angel that watches over the women of my family, and I perceived her name to be Hellena. James saw this same being as his late father, a career Naval officer, in a white dress uniform. Rashad perceived the being to be the Enlightened One, or Buddha.
  

  
  

• Shared near-death experiences where one person is close to death and one or more people around him share his near-death experience.
  

  See the example below.
  

  
  

• Near-death experiences that occur when the experiencer is not suffering cardiac arrest and is not physiologically close to death.
  

  near-death.com
  

  Then I saw this incredible white spinning light appear on his left shoulder as he was falling over toward me in his chair. I thought, "My God! I can see his soul leaving his body! Maybe it was an angel who had come for him!"
  

  In any event, the light was so beautiful and lovely, that I stood up without thinking and thought, "Take me! I'll go and he can stay!" I so desperately wanted to go into that light and be with it. Suddenly, I was having a NDE with Phillip in a space that I can only describe as heaven. It was simply a pure whiteness of light just like in the movies. No visuals at all. Just white light everywhere.
  

  Then, I was back in my body. Phillip sat straight up and was back in his body. He was muttering that he guessed he just couldn't die.
  

  
  

• Near-death experiences where the subject experiences cardiac arrest for much longer than the surge of electrical activity lasts and the experiencer can report veridical information long after the surge of electrical activity ends.
  

  Cosmological Implications of Near-Death Experiences by Bruce Greyson Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14.
  

  However, unconsciousness produced by cardiac arrest characteristically leaves patients amnesic and confused for events immediately preceding and following these episodes (Aminoff et al., 1988; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; van Lommel et al., 2001). Furthermore, a substantial number of NDEs contain apparent time "anchors" in the form of verifiable reports of events occurring during the period of insult itself. For example, a cardiac-arrest victim described by van Lommel et al. (2001) had been discovered lying in a meadow 30 minutes or more prior to his arrival at the emergency room, comatose and cyanotic, and yet days later, having recovered, he was able to describe accurately various circumstances occurring in conjunction with the ensuing resuscitation procedures in the hospital.
  

  
  

• Near-death experiences that occur when it is known that the experiencer's EEG shows no brain activity.
  

  Pam Reynolds Near-death experience at near-death.com
  

  This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.
  ...
  

  When all of Pam's vital signs were stopped, the doctor turned on a surgical saw and began to cut through Pam's skull. While this was going on, Pam reported that she felt herself "pop" outside her body and hover above the operating table. Then she watched the doctors working on her lifeless body for awhile. From her out-of-body position, she observed the doctor sawing into her skull with what looked to her like an electric toothbrush. Pam heard and reported later what the nurses in the operating room had said and exactly what was happening during the operation. At this time, every monitor attached to Pam's body registered "no life" whatsoever. At some point, Pam's consciousness floated out of the operating room and traveled down a tunnel which had a light at the end of it where her deceased relatives and friends were waiting including her long-dead grandmother. Pam's NDE ended when her deceased uncle led her back to her body for her to reentered it. Pam compared the feeling of reentering her dead body to "plunging into a pool of ice." The following is Pam Reynolds' account of her NDE in her own words.
  

  (Because this case is well known, many false claims have been made by pseudoskeptics in attempts to debunk this case. None of the attempts stand up to close scrutiny.)
  

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Dr Eben Alexander vindicated. Why you should ignore claims that attempt to discredit evidence for the afterlife. Don't let the psuedoskeptics waste your time or mislead you. Part I

There are many independent forms of empirical evidence for the afterlife and ESP. Unfortuantely, there are also many cases of pseudoskeptics misleading the public about this evidence for the afterlife and ESP as I have documented on my web page on Skeptical Misdirection. The evidence for the afterlife and ESP is so strong that pseudoskeptics have to resort to misleading tactics in their efforts to discredit it. Recently there were two more stories in the news about the evidence for the afterlife that were misleading. One was a flawed article in Esquire that tried to discredit Dr. Eben Alexander's book, Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife which is about Dr. Alexander's near-death experience. Another news story was about a result from research in rats that was incorrectly said to demonstrate a physiological cause of near-death experiences. In this post, Part I, I will describe the facts of Dr. Eben Alexander's near-death experience that refute the incorrect assertions of the flawed Esquire article. In Part II, I will discuss the misrepresented research on rats.

Iands.org has a detailed rebuttal to the criticisms of Dr. Eben Alexander's book made in the flawed Esquire article. The flawed Esquire article incorrectly claims that Dr. Laura Potter said Alexander was not in a coma during his near-death experience but just delirious. If Alexander was only delirious and not in a coma, it would bring into doubt whether his near-death experience occurred when his brain was inactive. Only if Alexander's near-death experience occurred when his brain was inactive, can his near-death experience be construed as evidence that consciousness is not produced by the brain and makes his reports of visiting the afterlife credible. In fact, Dr. Laura Potter says she never said Alexander was delirious and not in a coma. She says this about the flawed Esquire article:

I am saddened by and gravely disappointed by the article recently published in Esquire. The content attributed to me is both out of context and does not accurately portray the events around Dr. Eben Alexander’s hospitalization. I felt my side of the story was misrepresented by the reporter. I believe Dr. Alexander has made every attempt to be factual in his accounting of events. —Dr. Laura Potter

Another invalid criticism of Alexander's book made in the flawed Esquire article involved Alexander's assertion that a rainbow was seen on the day he was coming out of his coma. The flawed Esquire article incorrectly claimed that a rainbow could not possibly occur on a clear day. However the IANDS article explains that when witnesses were contacted, they confirmed they did see a rainbow, and it explains there are various atmospheric phenomena that could cause a rainbow on that day.

A third invalid criticism of Alexander's book in the flawed Esquire article is that a shout for help by Alexander described in the book could not have occurred. However, again, when witnesses were contacted, they confirmed Alexander did shout as described in his book.

The flawed Esquire article also misconstrued a quote by the Dalai Lama incorrectly saying the Dalai Lama was critical of Alexander.

Eben Alexander's description of the circumstances of his near-death experience is supported by the testimony of witnesses. The fact that pseudoskeptics have to make incorrect statements in their attempts to discredit evidence of the afterlife attests to the strength of this evidence and the confidence which one may interpret that evidence to demonstrate the truth that the afterlife is real.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

"You Can Do No Wrong." What does that mean?

Sometimes during a near-death experience the experiencer is told by an advanced spiritual being, "You can do no wrong." Or, they are told, "Everything that happens in life is exactly the way it should be." Something like this happened to neurosurgeon Eben Alexander during his near-death experience when he was told:

You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.

You have nothing to fear.

There is nothing you can do wrong.

When some people hear of this, they may think it implies contradictions:

• After their experience, the near-death experiencers often are changed and make an effort to live differently than they did before. If everything is exactly right why do the near-death experiencers feel the need to change?
  
• If everything is exactly right, why is there so much suffering in the world?
  

In order to understand what "you can do no wrong" means, you have to understand it in its proper context. But before I go into an explanation, I want to point out one source of seeming contradictions in spiritual advice, which is that different people may need different advice. Some people might be too hard on themselves and need encouragement to stop criticizing themselves because of their mistakes. Such people need to learn that mistakes have a purpose which is that we learn from them. However, other people might be too lenient with themselves and need encouragement to admit to themselves that they have made mistakes. Such people may need to learn to consider how their actions affect other people. If someone tells what they were told during their near-death experience, some people may take it for an absolute truth and when they compare what different experiencers are told, they may think they are finding contradictions.

To understand what "you can do no wrong" means, you must understand that it doesn't really mean there is no right or wrong. The purpose of life is to learn. As spirits we plan the outlines of our life before incarnating but within those outlines we have the freedom to make decisions. Below is an excerpt of what "Denise" was told during her near-death experience when she was not told "You can do no wrong", she was told that decisions and actions have consequences:

Everyone has choices. Everyone has free will. How this interacts in your life, and death, and with others, is all by choice. The girl who came here at the same time as you. If the ambulance driver takes a different road to the scene, if someone decides to move her and doesn't know what they are doing and cause more damage, if her internal organs are too crushed by the accident by speed and timing, she will stay here. You are laying in your sons bedroom. Your one neighbor was given the responsibility to check on you. It is her choice. Her free will. Will she find you? Will she decide to take a shower first and be too late? Each of us always hangs in a balance, by decisions. Not only by our own actions, but by the free will and actions of others.

One purpose of life is to learn from the consequences of the decisions we make. From experiencing the consequences of our decisions, we learn what is right and what is wrong.

What "you can do no wrong" does mean, is that in the afterlife, you are not judged as a bad person because of your mistakes because all the causes of those mistakes are understood - the characteristics of your personality, the circumstances of your genetics, and the conditions and environment of your life. The purpose of incarnating is to learn from mistakes. Without mistakes there would be no learning, no purpose to incarnation. Those mistakes, those wrongs, are not really wrong, they are then necessary ingredients to learning.

However mistakes, wrong choices or wrong action, are still mistakes. If you don't recognize your mistakes in life, you may recognize them after death. If you don't recognize them after death, you may recognize them during the life review when you experience for yourself what you did to other people from their point of view. If you don't recognize your mistakes after the life review, you might reincarnate to live through someone else making the same mistake and you will experience the harm you caused to another person when you made that mistake. But you will not progress in the afterlife until you recognize your mistakes.

So, while you don't have to be afraid of eternal damnation or vindictive punishment, and everyone is dearly loved by God, you will experience for yourself all the help or harm you have done to other people so that you will learn that helping other people is good, and harming other people is wrong. You must recognize your successes and mistakes for what they are. While there is no punishment in the afterlife, offenders who recognize their mistakes often want to atone in some way, maybe by helping their victims or by helping victims of similar offenses, possibly as spirit guides. One can learn much about right and wrong by helping others.

When you experience the rewards of helping another person, you learn that doing good is much preferable to doing harm. This lesson is also something that is learned through incarnation. For example, a spirit who needs to learn this lesson might incarnate with a life plan that involves them in a career where they have the opportunity to help others. I have written a lot so far about suffering but I don't want to create the impression that the only purpose of incarnating is to suffer. One learns from doing good, and being helped as well.

The conditions you will experience in the afterlife depend on your mental state, you will naturally go to a place where there are other like minded individuals. This happens more through the action of natural law than by someone judging you. Kind people go to a place with other kind people. Cruel people (ie. undeveloped spirits who liked harming others and want to do more of it) go to a place where they are among other cruel people. But from the perspective of a cruel person, who would probably not like being surrounded by nice people while being the only cruel person, he is where he would prefer to be. The afterlife is permeated with love, but unloving spirits don't like love and there is less love in the lower levels and more love in the higher levels. So, "bad" people go where they prefer to be (even if it some might think it is not a very nice place) - until their mental state changes and they realize their attitudes are mistaken - then they can begin to work their way up to higher levels. Some might call it self-punishment, another way to look at is that as a spirit learns and improves, the conditions they experience improve - but they are earning those benefits by developing themselves.

Most people will spend some of their time in the afterlife studying their past life, planning their next life, and acting as spirit helpers or guides for incarnated people. However those spirits who are unrepentant even after their life review where they experience for themselves everything they did to other people and who won't "get with the program" may be put into another incarnation so that they will learn from hard experience that harming people is wrong.

The second contradiction, "if everything is exactly right why is there so much suffering in the world?" is hard for many people to understand. It is complicated because suffering exists for many reasons.

• We learn best by solving problems, life is intended to give us problems that we can learn from. Suffering prods us to find solutions to our problems. If life was too easy, we would all be selfish, stupid, and lazy.
  
• Sometimes someone who did something wrong in a past life needs to experience being a victim of that type of mistake to learn why it was wrong. A perfectly nice spirit might also agree to incarnate in order to harm them so they might learn the needed lesson.
  
• Sometimes a person needs to learn why someone would harm another person and will incarnate to experience causing harm.
  
• Sometimes a spirit wants to make rapid progress and may desire to have a hard life that they will learn much from.
  

There is no single answer that explains why any given person may be experiencing a particularly difficult life.

It is important to remember that we are immortal and no matter what happens during life, it is not permanent. Existence will be better in the afterlife. Also, no matter how real this life seems, when you are a spirit the earth life seems more dreamlike and less real than the reality in the afterlife.

It is also important not judge others. It is impossible for an incarnated person to tell if another incarnated person is ignorant or advanced based on their actions. You cannot tell if a soul is undeveloped because they are suffering or causing suffering. Sometimes one spirit needs a hard lesson and another spirit agrees to incarnate to teach them that lesson.

In summary, people who harm others are not judged as evil and damned, they are loved just as much by God as everyone is, but they also do not get a free ride through the gates of heaven. They must recognize their mistakes and improve themselves in order to get into the higher levels of the spirit world. If they don't recognize their mistakes they will experience the harm they did to others to help them learn right from wrong. This is not done as vindictive punishment but to help them learn.

Here is some information about the life review reported by near-death experiencers at near-death.com

Characteristics of the Life Review

The life review is an amazing experience that has many interesting characteristic - not all of which are found in every life review. The following is a list of some of those characteristics.

(a) Instantly becoming everyone you came in contact with in your entire life (feeling their emotions, thinking their thoughts, living their experiences, learning their motives behind their actions).

(b) Reliving every detail of every second of your life, every emotion, and every thought simultaneously.

(c) Re-living the way you dealt with others and how others dealt with you.

(d) Viewing a few special deeds in your life.

(e) Replaying a part of your life review to focus on a particular event for instruction.

(f) Viewing past lives and/or your future.

(g) Feeling a strong sense of responsibility.

(h) Feeling a sense of judgment or self-judgment (often these feelings transform from judgment to self-judgment).

(i) The review is a fact-finding process rather than a fault-finding process.

(j) Your motives for everything will be as visible as your actions.

(k) The negative events you expected to see did not show up because you had a change of heart.

...

During the life review, while in the presence of the Being of Light, it is impossible to lie to yourself or to others or to the Light. In the Light, there is no place for secrets to hide. But it is not God who judges us after we die. In the presence of the Being of Light, some people may judge or condemn or punish themselves. There is no judgment except the judgment we might level at ourselves and even this we shouldn't do. God's standard is pure love and our lives will be compared to this standard in the light of God. Pure love is serving God and others without having self-centered motives for doing so. The life review is the perfect experience for the Being of Light to reveal to people how they have measured up to this standard and their mission in life. The following is a list of characteristics of the Being of Light during life reviews. Sometimes the Being of Light is accompanied with other light beings and for this reason the so-called "Being of Light" will be referred to as "they".

(a) They can fill you with a love that is beyond description.

(b) They can eliminate any negativity you may feel from viewing your life review.

(c) They may ask questions concerning your life and how you felt about it.

(d) They may rejoice when love is displayed in your life.

(e) The entire heavenly hosts may thank you in unison for your deeds done out of love. The entire heavenly hosts may thank you in unison for your deeds done out of love.

(f) They may applaud you and let you know that God approved of your acts of unselfishness and caring.

(g) They may suffer and/or feel sorrow for you about something you did.

(h) They can pause the review for awhile if you are upset to strengthen you with love.

(i) They witness everything you did in secret.

(j) They take into consideration various aspects about your life when it comes to evaluating your life; such as, how you were raised, what you were taught, the pain inflicted upon you, and the opportunities missed or not received.

After reading this long post, some people may still think the system is flawed. Some may feel that evil doers need more punishment, some may feel that the system is already too harsh and people suffer too much. Everyone will naturally have their own opinion but I suggest people keep an open mind and wait until they get to the afterlife before they decide if the system is good or bad.

The subject of this post can be a little bit disconcerting. If you find it makes you fearful of the afterlife, please have a look at this post: People who Meet God. Also keep in mind what Eben Alexander was told during his near-death experience:

You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

What Kind of People are Pseudoskeptics? Part V

Here are more examples for my series What Kind of People are Pseudoskeptics? These examples show how pseudoskeptics inhibit scientific freedom, abuse medical science, and persecute children and veterans:

• The first example is from an interview in which near-death experience researcher, Raymond Moody, tells how his own family committed him to a psychiatric hospital when he began to study the afterlife. He later went on to become one of best known pioneers of near-death experience research and is the author of the classic work on near-death experiences Life after Life as well as several other books.
  
• The second example shows how Nobel prize winner Brian Josephson was ostracized by his colleagues and excluded from a scientific conference because of his interest paranormal research.
  
• In the third example, Richard Sternberg explains how he was persecuted for authorizing the publication an article on Intelligent Design that had passed peer-review in a journal he edited.
  
• The fourth example describes how psychic medium George Anderson was persecuted as a child and treated as a psychiatric patient because of his psychic abilities.
  
• The fifth example describes how a veteran "was medicated and sent to a psychiatric ward" after he told his doctor about a near-death experience.
  

1. In this excerpt from A Conversation with Dr. Raymond Moody by Sharon Barbell, Raymond Moody tells how his own family committed him to a mental hospital because of his research into the afterlife.
   

   Nearly twenty years ago, Dr. Raymond Moody wrote Life After Life, the culmination of groundbreaking study on the NearÐDeath Experience. His work helped legitimize a phenomenon that had once been regarded as fantasy, hallucination or something we simply could not explain and most often, would not even acknowledge. Dr. Moody is once again helping to en-lighten us all by having written Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones (Villard Books). This book is hot off the presses and is certain to intrigue and fascinate its readers. The following is part of a recent conversation I was privileged enough to have had with the author at his research facility in Anniston, Alabama.
   

   ...
   

   SB: Have you encountered any resistance to this research from colleagues, friends or relatives?
   

   RM: That has been so funny. One thing is that my family had me put into a mental hospital about it, and I suppose you can call that a form of resistance (laughter). And so it was a really funny situation. And of course the people at my college thought that I had lost my mind.
   

2. The next example shows how pseudoskeptics will persecute and ostracize a Nobel prize winning physicist like Brian Josephson for being interested in paranormal phenomena. If they persecute a Nobel prize winner, what chance does an ordinary scientist have of expressing or pursuing a similar interest?
   

   From How to Run a Conference at Brian Josephson's web site.
   

   Certain invitees to a workshop on the Foundations of Physics received from the organisers letters withdrawing their invitations. The letter to Brian Josephson asserted:
   

   "It has come to my attention that one of your principal research interests is the paranormal ... in my view, it would not be appropriate for someone with such research interests to attend a scientific conference."
   

3. In the next example, Richard Sternberg explains how he was persecuted for authorizing the publication an article on Intelligent Design that had passed peer-review in a journal he edited.
   

   In 2004, in my capacity as editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, I authorized The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories by Dr. Stephen Meyer to be published in the journal after passing peer-review. Because Dr. Meyer's article presented scientific evidence for intelligent design in biology, I faced retaliation, defamation, harassment, and a hostile work environment at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History that was designed to force me out as a Research Associate there. These actions were taken by federal government employees acting in concert with an outside advocacy group, the National Center for Science Education. Efforts were also made to get me fired from my job as a staff scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Subsequently, there were two federal investigations of my mistreatment, one by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in 2005 , and the other by subcommittee staff of the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform in 2006. Both investigations unearthed clear evidence that my rights had been repeatedly violated. Because there has been so much misinformation spread about what actually happened to me, I have decided to make available the relevant documents here for those who would like to know the truth.
   

4. In We Don't Die: George Anderson's Conversations with the Other Side by Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski, the authors explain that when the psychic medium George Anderson was a teenager, he was bullied at school and punished by his teachers because of his psychic abilities. His parents took him to a psychiatrist because they didn't understand what was happening to their son. George was diagnosed with schizophrenia and put on Librium and then Valium which caused him to sleep up to 20 hours a day. The psychiatrist told his parents to take him to a state run mental institution. At the institution one psychiatrist recommended electro-shock treatments. A second psychiatrist disagreed and was in fact alarmed at the prospect of institutionalizing a child in an adult facility because he would probably be raped by other inmates. Due to the actions of the second psychiatrist, George was spared institutionalization although he was kept on mind-numbing drugs.
   

5. An article by Keith Upchurch published in The Herald Sun on January 25, 2012, RETIRED COLONEL HAS DEALT WITH NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES SINCE VIETNAM WAR, tells us that Diane Corcoran, a "retired Army colonel and nurse ... said she knows of one veteran who tried to discuss his near-death experience, but was medicated and sent to a psychiatric ward. 'We’ve seen this reaction too often,' she said."
   

In this series on pseudoskeptics I have been trying to show that the science scam is one of the biggest and worst scams of all time perpetrated on humanity. This installment gives more examples of how pseudoskeptics have inhibited scientific freedom and abuse medical science in the process. What knowledge or discoveries about the human mind have they prevented us from learning? What technology does not exist now that otherwise might be saving lives and improving our standard of living? Without pseudoskepticism our civilization would much better off. Pseudoskepticism harms everyone.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Why I write about materialist pseudoskeptics.

I would like to explain that the reason I have been posting about pseudoskepticism is because pseudoskeptics have obscured the truth of the afterlife and ESP and this harms every human being. The materialist pseudoskeptics have also harmed specific groups of people such as people who experience psychic phenomena, and people who believe in God.

Because of pseudoskepticism, people are ridiculed for believing things that are true. That is harm. People are ridiculed for mentioning their psychic experiences, they may wonder if they are going crazy, or if they are deluding themselves. They may have trouble finding reliable information that would explain what is happening to them. That is harm. If people are deceived into believing something that is false such as materialism, that is also harm. Particularly, knowledge of the afterlife eases grief, and fear of death, and it deters suicide. If people are led to doubt belief in the afterlife which near-death experiencers tell us is permeated with love and in which all souls know their connectedness and brotherhood, people may feel life is pointless, purposeless, and meaningless. That is harm.

The society you live in influences you in many different ways. Even if you have knowledge of the afterlife and ESP, you still live in a society with many people who are deluded. If everyone understood the spiritual truth that when you harm another person you harm yourself, society would be different. Knowledge of both the life review and reincarnation where a person may experience for himself the harm he caused other people, tells a person that when they harm another person they harm themselves.

Compared to all the people materialist pseudoskeptics have harmed by obscuring the truth about ESP and the afterlife, the good they have done by exposing a few two-bit charlatans is microscopic.

The view that materialist pseudoskeptics have caused great harm to our society is not widely held, only because most people who know the truth never stop to think about it. That makes them more complacent about pseudoskepticism and I think that needs to change. Most people believe in ESP and the afterlife and if there were more people outraged at the materialist scientific scam and if they recognized that outrage was justified, the pseudoskeptics would feel social pressure and it would weaken their position in society and it would hasten the paradigm shift and end the ability of materialist pseudoskeptics to harm other people.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

What Kind of People are Pseudoskeptics? Part IV

In a previous post, I explained that evidence of the afterlife eases grief and fear of death, it deters suicide, and gives hope, meaning, and purpose to people's lives. Also, preventing the acceptance of the fact of ESP throughout all sectors of society cauess emotional distress for people who experience ESP and don't know what it means and wonder if they are going crazy and at the same time other people may think they are crazy, deluded, or a liar.

Considering these facts, it is enlightening to observe several items from my web page on Skeptical Misdirection that show the deceptive tactics that pseudoskeptics use to try to fool people into disbelieving in ESP and the afterlife and other paranormal phenomena.

• Richard Dawkins asked Rupert Sheldrake to participate in a documentary film on irrational beliefs but Dawkins refused to discuss evidence that telepathy is genuine which would mean that belief in telepathy is not irrational.
  

  
  

• Martin Gardner made false statements about skeptics failing to replicate parapsychological results when the skeptics never even tried to replicate them.
  

  
  

• Martin Gardner claimed psychic medium Mrs Piper used cold reading techniques. He neglected to say that she had many successful readings using proxy sitters who knew nothing about the actual spirits that were coming through.
  

  
  

• James Randi made false statements attempting to debunk a video of dog telepathy when he never even watched the tape. He was forced to retract his statements.
  

  
  

• CISCOP fellows had to make six errors in a statistical analysis in order to hide evidence that astrology might have some basis in fact.
  

  
  

• Susan Blackmore justified her claim that she could not demonstrate any paranormal phenomena by ignoring her own studies that demonstrated a paranormal effect.
  

  
  

• Wiseman and Hyman tested the 17 year old Russian school girl Natasha Demkina's ability to make psychic diagnoses. She beat odds of 78 to 1 against chance, a statistically significant result. Twenty to one is the usual scientific standard. Wiseman said she failed and mistakenly said she achieved odds of 50 to 1. Hyman told her to forget her delusions. The commentator said she would return to Russia discredited.
  

  
  

• Houdini's assistant tried to plant fake evidence to discredit a psychic medium Mina Crandon. Her spirit guides exposed the plot. Houdini's assistant later admitted planting the evidence.
  

  
  

• More at Skeptical Misdirection including pseudoskeptics paying for fake confessions and fake accusations of fraud.
  

What kind of people would treat a 17 year old school girl visiting from a foreign country like that? She demonstrated a statically significant effect. Discrediting her could prevent her from using her abilities to help people suffering from illnesses.

What kind of people would use those tactics to discredit evidence for the afterlife and ESP when doing so could cause people to suffer anguish, grief, confusion, or it could result in suicides that would otherwise be prevented?

Someone asked why pseudoskeptics do this. I replied this way:

Why do pseudoskeptics cling to materialism?

They are afraid of being embarrassed when the truth is finally accepted by all sectors of society.

Mainstream science has been saying unambiguously, emphatically, and repeated that alternatives to materialism are false and that the empirical evidence against materialism is invalid for far longer than a hundred years.

When it becomes generally accepted throughout all sectors of society that this denial of the truth is the greatest scam in history, deliberately perpetrated on humanity, Science will be disgraced beyond any possibility of recovering its reputation. It will have to live in a future of infamy lesser only to that of governments guilty of genocide.

What could be more important to humanity than the knowledge that the afterlife is real? What could be more important to science than huge gaps in its understanding of the universe revealed by the empirical evidence for ESP and the afterlife? By clinging to the false religion of Materialism despite several independent forms of overwhelming, extrordinary, empirical evidence to the contrary, Science has betrayed humanity and itself, by neglecting its duty to Truth.

Imagine what the world will be like when it is a generally accepted scientific fact that human consciousness survives death, and that everyone will have to experience in a life review or future incarnation the harm they have inflicted on others during their life. The world will be an incalculably better place because it will be an established scientific fact that when you harm another person you are harming yourself. How much pain and suffering could have been avoided if materialism had not been advocated so strongly by scientists? How different the world will be when everyone knows that there is an afterlife waiting for us after death where the atmosphere is permeated with love and all souls are aware of their interconnectedness and brotherhood.

The shame and guilt that is the due of Science is so great that those who have adopted Scientism as their religion, those materialists whom the blame will fall upon, will do whatever is necessary, consciously or unconsciously, to prevent the truth that materialism is false from becoming accepted through all sectors of society.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Consciousness Cannot be an Emergent Property of the Brain

(This article is an addendum to the section: Consciousness cannot be Explained as an Emergent Property of the Brain on my web page Skeptical Fallacies.)

Materialists often try to explain how consciousness can be produced by the brain by saying it is an emergent property of the brain. However it is not possible for consciousness to be an emergent property of the brain.

Consciousness has been empirically proved not to be an emergent property of the brain by several independent forms of empirical evidence for the afterlife. If consciousness can survive death, it cannot require a functioning brain for its existence.

More empirical evidence that consciousness is not produced by the brain comes from the several independent forms of evidence for ESP. ESP is not produced by the brain. Precognition, remote viewing, psychokinesis, and telepathy are independent of time and distance and therefore cannot be explained by the known laws of physics including quantum entanglement. Thus, consciousness cannot be the result of any physical process in the brain.

Simply saying consciousness is an emergent property does not explain anything because materialists cannot explain how consciousness emerges. "Emergence" is just an empty promise. Sir John Eccles the Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist called such promises superstitions.

Things that "emerge" have to be the same general type of thing as the thing they emerge from. Consciousness is a fundamentally different type of thing than matter, therefore it cannot emerge from the brain which is composed of matter.

An amorphous lump of matter probably won't roll. But if you shape that matter into a wheel it will roll. The ability to roll is an emergent property of matter. And you can explain using the known laws of physics why some forms of matter roll and others don't. By understanding momentum, center of mass, velocity, kinetic energy, friction you can explain how the ability to roll emerges from matter.

A lump of inanimate matter is unlikely to spontaneously grow and reproduce. However life is an emergent property of matter. If you have a living cell you can explain the biochemical reactions by which a cell maintains itself, absorbs nutrients, and reproduces. By understanding atoms, atomic and molecular reactions, electron orbitals, stoichiometry, etc you can explain how a living cell works, how life emerges from matter.

However, consciousness is not an emergent property of matter. Subjective experience which cannot be measured objectively cannot be the product of fundamentally different objective measurable phenomena such as neuronal activity in the brain. If you study a lump of brain cells, neither the laws of physics nor any biochemical reactions can explain why subjective experiences feel the way they do. Subjective experiences are known only in terms of subjective experience, not in terms of mathematics, or molecular models, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or psychology, or sociology. Red looks red. Physics can tell you what wavelengths of light look red, and chemistry can tell you how light is sensed by the retina, and neurology can tell you how the signals from the optic nerve are processed by the brain, but none of that will ever tell a colorblind person what red looks like. Consciousness and physical processes are fundamentally different things.

Thinking you will be able to explain how consciousness emerges by understanding more about a massive number of nerve cells is like trying to make a ham sandwich from bricks. You can't make a ham sandwich from bricks and piling up more and more bricks will never get you any closer to having a ham sandwich.

The subjective experience of consciousness cannot be understood in physical terms therefore, consciousness cannot be a result of any physical process. Consciousness is a fundamentally different thing from any physical process.

Copyright © 2013, 2014 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

What Kind of People are Pseudoskeptics? Part III

In Part II of this series, I wrote the following about near-death experiences:

There are thousands of people who have had near-death experiences, who say the afterlife is permeated with love, that the afterlife is just by any sane definition of justice, that consciousness is eternal, that we are all connected, etc. etc. Knowledge of this gives hope, purpose and meaning to people, it consoles people, deters suicide, eases grief and fear of death. Not just for people who have near-death experiences, but for millions of people who learn about other people who have near-death experiences.

Unfortunately, pseudoskeptics often resort to wrong explanations to discredit the reality of near-death experiences.

What kind of people would use wrong explanations to discredit the reality of a phenomena that helps people suffering from grief, eases fear of death, deters suicide and gives people hope, purpose and meaning in life?

One answer to that question is: people like Caroline Watt and Dean Mobbs the authors of a paper titled, There is Nothing Paranormal About Near-Death Experiences which ignored the evidence of the paranormal aspects of near-death experiences.

The evidence that near-death experiences are paranormal comes from verifiable (veridical) events that the experiencer perceives while their brain is inactive. Near-death experience researcher, Dr. Pim van Lommel MD says:

These [veridical] aspects can be corroborated by doctors, nurses, and family members. It’s important, because it not only can tell us what they perceived, but also the moment that it happened can be corroborated. That what they perceived from a position out of the body really happened at a time that they were unconscious. In other words, no cardiac function; there was no brain function at all.

In an interview on Skeptiko Podcast, Caroline Watt said, about the paper There is Nothing Paranormal About Near-Death Experiences:

"Our paper didn’t deal with this question of veridicality at all."

As I said, it was intended to be a provocative piece. It’s not claiming to be balanced.

Near-death experience researcher, Dr. Bruce Greyson MD says:

If you ignore everything paranormal about NDEs, then it’s easy to conclude, there’s nothing paranormal about them.

What kind of people would resort to wrong explanations to discredit the reality of a phenomenon that helps people suffering from grief, eases fear of death, deters suicide and gives people hope, purpose and meaning in life?

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

165. Dr. Caroline Watt Defends, There is Nothing Paranormal About Near-Death Experiences

...

Dr. Caroline Watt: These articles are deliberately designed to be provoking of debate. The whole idea of this group of articles, this type of articles in this journal, is not to claim that you’re making some comprehensive review. It’s not to produce any new evidence for testing a theory, for example.

...

Alex Tsakiris: Do you stand by the title?

...

Dr. Caroline Watt: ...I believe it’s an overstatement. It’s too soon to say there’s nothing paranormal, because we don’t have all of the evidence in yet.

...

I think the title, which is deliberately provocative, is going too far because it’s too soon to say there’s nothing paranormal. The content of the article itself is not saying anything new.

...

Alex Tsakiris: ... all the main researchers in the NDE field; Bruce Greyson, University of Virginia; Pim van Lommel, who you cite in the paper; Jeff Long; Peter Fenwick; all of them agree in saying a conventional medical explanation of NDEs doesn’t fit the data.

I don’t know where you can point to any prominent NDE researchers that would support the title like that. It’s provocative, okay, but is it representative even of the field and of the research?

...

Alex Tsakiris: In the paper, your first citation for van Lommel doesn’t seem to be correct. You site this case; here’s from your paper. ... “One example is a case study in which a patient with diabetes reports a near-death experience during an episode of hypoglycemia. There’s REM…” At the end, it’s cited as being in the Van Lommel paper.

I can’t find that in the van Lommel paper; I have it pulled up right here. Did I miss something? What is going on there?

...

Alex Tsakiris: Here’s the point, I guess. What I read, I’m going to read directly from his paper on his findings, and this is the most important point. Occurrences of the experience, the near-death experience, were not associated with duration of cardiac arrest—that’s very important, or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death before cardiac arrest.

This directly contradicts what your inclination or theory about what some of the causes would be. That’s why this was such a landmark study, because they looked for these things on the physiological or psychological front, and they didn’t find it. I guess I’d come back to saying, if we’re really going to push against this, then I think it behooves you to put forward some data.

...

Dr. Caroline Watt: I disagree with you on that, because I don’t think van Lommel or anybody else has yet provided the evidence that the experience occurred during the time when the patient was clinically dead.

...

Alex Tsakiris:

Dr. Pim van Lommel: …an out-of-body experience, where they have [inaudible 32:57] perception. These aspects can be corroborated by doctors, nurses, and family members. It’s important, because it not only can tell us what they perceived, but also the moment that it happened can be corroborated. That what they perceived from a position out of the body really happened at a time that they were unconscious. In other words, no cardiac function; there was no brain function at all.

Alex Tsakiris: He goes on in that quote, then, to cite the paper by Dr. Jan Holden, who I told you we just had on in the previous episode to talk about this paper. She did a peer reviewed published paper that did exactly that; it followed up with people, and found that their perceptions were significantly more accurate than the control group. We’ve also had Dr. Penny Sartori from the UK who’s done a similar study, and had similar findings. I think we can pinpoint and say that these conscious experiences are happening during the time when there is no brain activity.

...

Dr. Caroline Watt:

These out-of-body experiences are actually quite rare when you tabulate their frequency. Even when people have a near-death experience, they don’t always have an out-of-body experience as part of it, so it takes a lot of time to gather the data.

...

Our paper didn’t deal with this question of veridicality at all.

...

Alex Tsakiris:... Dr. Jeff Long. ... He’s compiled probably the largest database of NDE accounts, and has done some very insightful analysis that I think would contradict a couple of things that you’re saying. One, the veridicality of the evidence and the number of percentage of people who have had an out of body experience is much larger. Hundreds and hundreds in her [sic] survey have experienced that, and have reported that.

...

Alex Tsakiris: Let me just throw this last quote. I’ve been dying to get this quote in. Please. This is Dr. Bruce Greyson from the University of Virginia, and it’s a great response to your article.

His quote is, “If you ignore everything paranormal about NDEs, then it’s easy to conclude, there’s nothing paranormal about them.” That’s what I think I hear over and over again. Let’s ignore this, and then we can talk about how they’re not paranormal.

...

Alex Tsakiris:You also reference people like Susan Blackmore in the paper. We’ve had her on. She said, specifically, “I’m no longer a researcher in this field. I shouldn’t be considered a researcher in this field,” and yet she’s cited, even though her research has been pretty thoroughly countered in, for example, the Handbook of Near-Death Experiences by Greyson and Jan Holden. They cover all that stuff.

...

Dr. Caroline Watt: As I said, it was intended to be a provocative piece. It’s not claiming to be balanced.

What kind of people would resort to wrong explanations to discredit the reality of a phenomenon that helps people suffering from grief, eases fear of death, deters suicide and gives people hope, purpose and meaning in life?

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

What Kind of People are Pseudoskeptics? Part II

(Part I will be posted after Part II.)

On a discussion forum I am a memeber of, someone asked:

Are skeptics mean?

I replied, which I will post later as Part I. In my reply I asked:

How can we help them?

Someone answered:

Perhaps it will help to show them the error of their ways?

I thought I would give it a try. This was my reply:

Just look at any near-death experience thread. There are thousands of people who have had near-death experiences, who say the afterlife is permeated with love, that the afterlife is just by any sane definition of justice, that consciousness is eternal, that we are all connected, etc. etc. Knowledge of this gives hope, purpose and meaning to people, it consoles people, deters suicide, eases grief and fear of death. Not just for people who have near-death experiences, but for millions of people who learn about other people who have near-death experiences.

What kind of people would resort to wrong explanations to discredit the reality of those near-death experiences?

Next, read this post by a new member of another forum:

Hi,

My name is -----,

I found out a year ago that my daughter and I have psychic abilities. I am so happy to have found this forum. It is very isolating (and shame producing) when you are seeing, hearing, smelling,and feeling things that other people don't seem to. I am just glad that my daughter, who is 11, has similar experiences.

I am coming to terms with these abilities, although I cried for many months, was angry, terrified and angry at God because I have always felt different from other people to begin with.I was extremely sensitive.

How many tens of thousands of people go through this needless anguish because the truth of ESP has been prevented from being accepted by all sectors of society?

What kind of people work to make life miserable for an innocent person, often a child, to make it hard for them to get reliable information about their psychic experiences, to make them think they are crazy or self-deluded, and to treat them like liars?

Finally, consider that some people advocate materialism, an irrational philosophy that makes people feel hopelessly alone in a brief, pointless, existence, in an amoral, meaningless, and desolate universe. They attempt to destroy hope, love, meaning, purpose and all the higher aspirations that other people find in their lives by claiming all those are illusions. They claim they do feel meaning and higher sentiments but everything else they say (eg, see all the questions above) reveals their true beliefs are the exact opposite.

What kind of people would do that?

I don't mean to rouse anger in people or to spread hatred by this post. I've written before that I do not believe all pseudoskeptics are bad people. However I think it is important that everyone understand the harmful effects of pseudoskepticism are not theoretical, they are real.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.