I read an article in Newsweek a couple of days ago written by a neurologist who had a near- death experience about four years ago.\u00a0 The interesting thing is his approach to this experience.\u00a0 He prefaces his article by talking about how much of a scientist he is and how, prior to his own experience, he felt about near-death experiences.\u00a0 He thought of them as delusions, dreams or fantasies people had.\u00a0 This was based on scientific evidence which showed activity continuing in the parts of the brain which could produce such illusions for people who went through this.\u00a0 In this scientist’s case, however, he states it was not possible for what he experienced to be a dream as the important parts of his brains, the ones which could produce what he saw, were shut down.<\/p>\n
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The man describes his experience in great detail.\u00a0 He talks about angelic beings, while stating he didn’t know if they were angels or not.\u00a0 He felt they were some sort of higher power, but he didn’t really know how to classify them.\u00a0 He spoke of moving among clouds and interacting with other beings there–a woman in particular–but through thoughts and emotions rather than words.\u00a0 In short, the experience he shared was similar in many respects with those of other people who have reported such things.<\/p>\n
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The author of this article rejects the thought that his experience could be anything other than real.\u00a0 It was vivid and the CT scans and other tests done on him while he was in a coma showed the necessary regions of the brain to be non-functional.\u00a0 The one thing that trips his story up is that at some point, he woke up.\u00a0 This meant the necessary parts of the brain were working again.\u00a0 It is unlikely they came back to life a few seconds before he opened his eyes.\u00a0 How long before he did is debatable, but it wouldn’t have to be very long.\u00a0 Most people have had a few vivid, real-feeling dreams in their life.\u00a0 Scientific evidence has demonstrated dreams, even long dreams, are done in a matter of minutes.\u00a0 So if his brain woke up half an hour before he opened his eyes–maybe even as little as ten or fifteen minutes–it’s possible it was all a dream.<\/p>\n
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I don’t think I would go so far as to suggest it was likely he was dreaming, but I have a thought which suggests that.\u00a0 Often when something which has been inactive is made active again, it surges after its period of rest.\u00a0 The dreamy parts of this scientist’s brain were off for a couple of weeks and now suddenly they were active again.\u00a0 It seems to me that would cause anyone to have some very interesting dreams as they came back to life again, ones very easy to remember in great detail.<\/p>\n
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I am not saying what this man experienced was not real.\u00a0 I have no basis for that argument, but I also think the author does not have enough of a basis for his point of view.\u00a0 I think he has overlooked a lot to allow his experience–admittedly a very traumatic one–to cloud his judgment on it.<\/p>\n
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I believe near-death experiences in many cases are real.\u00a0 I don’t think there is a heaven, per se, or a hell, or any other specific plane of existence beyond the one we spend our lives in.\u00a0 I believe other planes of existence do<\/em> exist, but I am hesitant to label them.\u00a0 I am an atheist, and I don’t think a deific being exists, but I don’t rule out the possibility of spiritual beings on other planes which could be construed as angels or demons or whatever label you want to give them.\u00a0 I think ghosts are real in some cases.\u00a0 I have high hopes some day there will be scientific evidence for the human spirit, and ghosts in particular.\u00a0 Until then, however, I think more caution should be used, especially by a scientist, in labeling a near-death experience as a heavenly visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I read an article in Newsweek a couple of days ago written by a neurologist who had a near- death experience about four years ago.\u00a0 The interesting thing is his approach to this experience.\u00a0 He prefaces his article by talking about how much of a scientist he is and how, prior to his own experience, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}