If I ever have an NDE...

[INRM]

I would probably be a different person...

I would need you all in that case to give me the dose of reality. The "it's all in your head" thing... etc. I am insuring myself against being deceived by an illusion.

Reality may be bitter, but it's better than the alternative.
-INRM

[Darwin]

A few questions for you if you don´t might;
Do you feel you would be more or less likely to experience an NDE anytime soon?
Why do you think it would affect your personality?
Do you think it would necessarily be bizarre?

I agree with your closing sentence.

[Landis]

I've had at least 2 near death experiences. On one of them, there appeared to be a Consciousness witnessing my life and weighing the pros and cons of continuing on with my meager existence or just letting go. It was very impartial.

The othe experience which was even more intense, led me to the reallization of "NOTHING"! That is no thingness, there was no thing existing without my life. Today as an Atheist, I can fully appreciate the experience.

When I hear people on TV talking about going to the light, or Uncle Harvey waiting to greet them, I believe they were just experiencing stored memories of pre-concieved fantasies. They were in a subconscious state of awareness, not an unconscious state.

[justsaygnosis]

I went out from carbon monoxide poisining in 1973. It was an industrial incident, working near a gasoline forklift without adequate ventilation. People in my crew saw me go down and got me away and then the rescue squad came and put me on air and took me to the hospital.
The sensation of going under is identical to the sensation of anesthesia.
When I came to in the hospital I had amnesia for several hours.
The carbon levels in my blood were sufficient to generate a NDE however all I remember of it is going out and coming to.
In between is a blank.
I'm ordinarily a very lucid dreamer and wake several times a night from dream states. One would assume I should have had a similar experience but I didn't.
A devout advocate of NDE's could argue that I wasn't close enough to dead to qualify so it's just typical unconsiousness.
My point is,when my brain wasn't getting sufficient oxygen I was experiencing nothing.

[Roadtoad]

If you have an NDE, you could always have a taco....

(Thank you, EvilDave...)

[Mike D.]

Originally posted by justsaygnosis
I went out from carbon monoxide poisining in 1973. It was an industrial incident, working near a gasoline forklift without adequate ventilation. People in my crew saw me go down and got me away and then the rescue squad came and put me on air and took me to the hospital.
The sensation of going under is identical to the sensation of anesthesia.
When I came to in the hospital I had amnesia for several hours.


This is the Hour of Lead —
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —
First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —

--Emily Dickinson

[Nucular]

I sometimes vaguely worry about what something like an NDE would do to my personality/critical faculties. Same as people's reports of religious experiences; you can argue till you're blue in the face about why the experience doesn't endow the experiencer with the right to claim knowledge, but the answer generally given is, "well, your words don't matter to me - I know there is (a God/an afterlife) now, and you would too, if you'd had the experience".

Would I? I hope I wouldn't - I hope I'd be able to think clearly about such an experience. But nearly everyone who's had one claim otherwise (only of course, they believe they're thinknig more clearly about it).

But I try to keep Susan Blackmore in mind, who did have a proper, full-blown NDE, and several similar experiences subsequently, but still managed to keep her scepticism about her and ask what it really was. I hope I could do that.

[Mike D.]

Originally posted by Nucular
But I try to keep Susan Blackmore in mind, who did have a proper, full-blown NDE, and several similar experiences subsequently, but still managed to keep her scepticism about her and ask what it really was. I hope I could do that.

Nucular,

I thought that Susan Blackmore had an OBE, not an NDE. Am I wrong about that?

Mike

[Mike D.]

Here is a link to an account by Susan Blackmore of her OBE:


http://www.issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?set=expom&id=00075&ss=1

[Nucular]

Hmmm... well the OBE is a common part of the NDE; she certainly had an OBE. But the classic NDE has other aspects too - the tunnel, etc. - which she reports on that occasion. One question might be whether she was potentially near death when she had it; there's no evidence to suggest she was, so to call it an NDE might not be strictly true. But phenomenologically, it seems to have been pretty much an NDE, or we might call it an OBE with some NDE characteristics.

This site (http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts09.html) calls it an NDE; I can't reach my copy of Dying To Live without getting a chair from the other room, but I think in that she labels it an NDE. Anyway, it sounds like the same thing, qualitatively.

Also, in that early account, and in her later recollections, she mentions that assumption of validity that the original post here talked about. So whichever, I dunno.

Would an NDE by any other name smell as sweet?

[scribble]

I had an NDE but it came with an NDA so I can't tell you about it.

[INRM]

Originally posted by Landis
I've had at least 2 near death experiences. On one of them, there appeared to be a Consciousness witnessing my life and weighing the pros and cons of continuing on with my meager existence or just letting go. It was very impartial.

The othe experience which was even more intense, led me to the reallization of "NOTHING"! That is no thingness, there was no thing existing without my life. Today as an Atheist, I can fully appreciate the experience.

When I hear people on TV talking about going to the light, or Uncle Harvey waiting to greet them, I believe they were just experiencing stored memories of pre-concieved fantasies. They were in a subconscious state of awareness, not an unconscious state.

Can you clarify about the "NOTHING"?

-INRM

[ChrisH]

Life is a Near Death Experience

[Landis]

Originally posted by INRM


Can you clarify about the "NOTHING"?

-INRM

Nope. I wish I could but Nothing or NO thing is pretty much an end in itself. How does one describe nothing??? I can say there was no shining light, there was no fear (although immediatley before the experience there was a lot of fear). There also was no joy or elation or happiness, etc. There was just NOTHING.

[INRM]

Originally posted by Landis


Nope. I wish I could but Nothing or NO thing is pretty much an end in itself. How does one describe nothing??? I can say there was no shining light, there was no fear (although immediatley before the experience there was a lot of fear). There also was no joy or elation or happiness, etc. There was just NOTHING.

So, basically...

You lost consciousness?

-INRM

[Landis]

Originally posted by INRM


So, basically...

You lost consciousness?

-INRM

There was consciousness immediatley prior to the event and immediatley after. It happened several times prior to my becoming aware of it. There was an old Bob Dylan song with the lyric "Something is happenin' and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?" (or something close to that). Those words kept running through my mind prior to actually getting a handle on the periods in which there was no consciousness.

I have feinted in the past and the main difference was that there was no loss of physical control in the NDE. I was standing up and did not fall over. When I feinted, I was physically sick, when I experienced the NDE I was healthy.