What are the chances?
This article was posted by Maria in the comments of my last post. Thank you.
Link to article on how to capture visual OBEs
The original article is over 30 years old, and this fact alone highlights just how long we have been waiting for a scientifically verified visual OBE in a research setting. When I say scientifically verified, I mean that a hypothesis is generated, an experiment devised to test that hypothesis, and a positive result recorded within that context. I have taken great pains over the years to point out that adherence to the scientific method is central to insuring the credibility of any results that emerge from a study seeking to verify OBEs or NDEs.
The hypothesis would go something like this:
The consciousness is able to persist and separate from the physical body once the heart has stopped beating and brain stopped working, and observe events externally from the body.
The experiment would then test this hypothesis by creating a method by which the ability to observe events during this state is assessed. This paper describes the type of visual stimuli and location that would be best, based on interviews of people who reported OBEs during their NDEs. Presumably Sam Parnia read this article as a reference for designing this aspect of the AWARE study. He placed cards on shelves near the ceiling in various ICU wards in different hospitals. Despite there being a total of thousands of these cards dotted around hospitals all over the world, none of the reported NDEs from AWARE 1 occurred in a room with a card. The reasons for this have been discussed multiple times before. While reports of NDEs are very common, deliberately setting out to prospectively observe patients who have a CA with an NDE and an OBE and who then survive long enough to be interviewed is extremely difficult. Reports of murders are common, but if you set up an experiment to try to witness a murder, it would be very hard. Maybe a clumsy analogy, but my point is that while a random event may occur commonly, being able to deliberately observe that event may not be straight forward.
This problem has also plagued AWARE II despite its updated methodology and slightly tighter inclusion criteria, and based on the preliminary data presented at AHA in December 2019, it seems unlikely that when the final results are published that there will be a verified visual hit. This quote from the article’s conclusion predicts our torture all the way back in 1988:
the process of accumulating sufficient data in hospital veridicality research may be protracted
No kidding!
There is another problem with the AWARE studies. The above hypothesis that I state is not specifically included in the study, and the studies are not designed with the specific intent of testing this hypothesis. Testing this kind of hypothesis may have been Parnia’s original intent when he started out, but possibly for credibility reasons, he has not been able to explicitly state this in the study designs. The studies have therefore been hampered in their ability to achieve the outcome of proving this hypothesis as a result. If there is a scientifically verified OBE it will be a byproduct of the research in that the stated aim of the visual and auditory experiments is to better understand the nature of reports of conscious awareness rather than prove the above hypothesis.
Finally, any publication that Parnia submits will need to be peer reviewed. Peer review is far from a flawless process and is subject to the personal biases of the reviewers. Given the hostility in the materialistic scientific community to research that might challenge the prevailing materialistic orthodoxy, any evidence that Parnia presents to support this hypothesis will scrutinised very closely and potentially arbitrarily dismissed by reviewers. We only need to look at the COVID lab leak vs natural emergence fiasco to know without doubt that the scientific community is capable of subverting the truth if the truth challenges their preferred narrative.
Given all of this, I am becoming quite gloomy about the prospect of the paper that presents results from AWARE II including any scientifically verified OBE. It is due in the next few months, so we should know one way or the other.
AwareofAware 
In such veridical OBE studies, there will never be hit’s on hidden, secret, real-time targets. That’s because these targets are hidden and secret. Our reality is a shared reality, and this reality is only the result which arises from classical patterns, being added up non classically.
We have all the information we require to understand this, from other well known anomalous human phenomena.
If the visual targets in these veridical OBE studies were hidden from the patient, but available to everyone else working around the patient, we would certainly get hit’s on the target. Making the target secret from everyone, ensures that no information can be shared, it’s a dead end.
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I had an NDE with an OBE as well, I think. I fell in a coma for 21 days in September 2005 and was awake but not conscious for a further 2 months. During this time, I had a vision in which I was living my best life, but in the vision time went so fast 11 months passed.
In my vision the time was August 2006, but when I awoke to reality it was December 2005. No one can explain this. Can you?
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Much of what is being researched here cannot be fundamentally explained. I don’t think there is thalamus function at any point when situations like this occur. This basically means that the brain is not so much a factor of self. Yes it is an organ but it is more or less a controller or operating system that we are at the helm of. Now where we go if the OS crashes is as good as my guess. But I think we have some hints as to what happens. There are other realities out there. But we don’t know much about them. Regardless I do hope you enjoyed your 11 month visit to another world. I bet it was enlightening.
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I’m looking forward to the aware 2 results. I don’t have high hopes though
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Why?
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I guess we will be put out of our misery one way or the other!
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‘So you’re telling me there’s a Chance’ – couldn’t resist 🙂 – Dumber and Dumber
Seriously, if the Supplement to the 2022 NYAS paper mentions other “dimensions” so much (implying other dimensions of reality) that must be leading to something substantial. More than the one-in-a-million for poor Jim above!
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Yep…feels a bit like that in the world of verified OBEs!
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But I have hope!
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I think it’s the time of year for me. I always feel a bit more gloomy as the days get shorter and the weather turns. It would be great if the AWARE results cheered me up! I notice the Parnia lab Instagram seems to have disappeared. Not sure what to make of that.
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But it does look like the main parnia lab page had a wee refresh too. They have a Facebook page I’m realtion to the terminal lucidity study too bot updated since April. And they uploaded a YouTube video regarding cpr about 9 days too. I say just to keep the social media simpler. Or maybe just crap coming into Instagram feed. Who knows with social media
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Plus sure didn’t sam parnia close his own twitter and a while later a new parnia lab page emerged
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That is true. For a while one of the researchers seemed very engaged on Instagram. Been quiet since August now.Maybe because a publication is imminent. Fingers crossed.
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I found this recent from a hospice nurse. She says “it happens all the time”. Amazing and nice to hear.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/hospice-nurse-reveals-one-fact-085023425.html
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Julie’s everywhere on this! Just google “Julie McFadden” hospice
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It is amazing, and again is different from terminal lucidity, another of those pre-death experiences…PDEs 🙂 that link in with the data that points to the existence of the life after life.
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I think elders are more fine tuned to other realities beyond this one then those who are younger. That’s something I kind of realized.
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Some elders may be, but not all. Van Lomel’s data shows that people who don’t have an NDE are more likely to lose interest in spiritual things as they grow older than those who don’t. My church, which is a very spiritual place, is full of people of all ages, and in discussions I have I would say that connection with “realities” beyond ours is distributed equally among adult age groups.
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Ben, wouldn’t that be empirical verification of a scientific theory? Or at least empirical falsification of materialistic theories of consciousness?
I first heard of Parnia back in 2006 when he did a radio interview when I was in my O level years as you guys on the other side of the pond call it. He talked about how he (somewhat clandestinely) tried putting the targets and talked about the difficulty of getting this tested. However he did get that one hit in AWARE 1 of not a target but the description of events – how satisfied should we be with these types of hits as opposed to the controlled ipad pictures?
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Hi Nic,
The case from AWARE 1 is strong empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that the consciousness is a separate/independent entity from the brain. It was a human recollection confirmed by a professional HCP within a research setting. So it is a highly important piece of “empirical” evidence, that in a balanced world would be sufficient for the academic community to at the very least consider dualism an equally possible explanation of our observed reality to untested materialistic explanations. But as you know, we do not live in a world that is balanced, but one that is corrupted by ego, egos built on ideology and belief, and when those beliefs which are central to the foundations of those egos are challenged they feel threatened. Anyway, that is all psychology, but the key thing is that while this evidence is empirical it is does not satisfy the principles of evidence created using the scientific method, so strictly speaking it could be argued that the hypothesis is not scientifically validated, no matter how valid it may seem.
The scientific method is roughly as follows:
Generate hypothesis – create experiment that test hypothesis – results from experiment either (scientifically) validate the hypothesis, falsify the hypothesis or do neither requiring refining of the experiment or altering the hypothesis.
Now in the AWARE studies the central hypothesis that we are considering is never explicitly stated in the context of being tested by the experiment that tries to validate an OBE. The objectives of the studies are observational and exploratory in nature. The objectives are not to prove a hypothesis, but rather to gain understanding of these reports of conscious awareness, and provide information for further study. Even AWARE II seems framed in this context.
Now despite the fact that proving the hypothesis of dualism is not a specific objective of the study, it is perfectly acceptable to retrospectively apply the hypothesis to the experiment and in the case that a positive result was obtained from the experiment that for all intents and purposes tests this hypothesis, and thereby claim that the hypothesis is proven true. However, we do not have a positive (or negative) result from any of these experiments yet.
The experiment is very clear in AWARE I and II. Cards in AWARE I and an iPad screen in AWARE II project images upwards in places where people are most likely to have a CA and then undergo CPR. In AWARE I neither of the reports of visual OBEs occurred in rooms with cards, therefore the experiment failed to prove anything. The learning from this was that it is incredibly hard to prospectively have the right equipment in the right place at the right time to potentially test the claims that subjects have external visual awareness of themselves.
In the instance where the AWARE studies were specifically setting out to test the hypothesis central to dualistic belief, the design of AWARE II would have been different from that which was deployed. Specifically the recruitment criteria would have focused on insuring that there were enough reports of OBEs in the presence of equipment designed to validate these OBEs to either validate or falsify the hypothesis. This would have meant increasing the numbers by a factor of 5-10. Given that they haven’t, there is a high likelihood that we will get no further than we were 30 years ago. From our understanding of the numbers involved, there will probably be 1 or 2 OBEs verified by human HCPs, adding to the already overwhelming mountain of empirical evidence supporting the theory of dualism, but the chances of someone actually seeing the iPad screen and remembering it are extremely low, and since this is the experiment that is central to the “scientific” method, the chances of getting a “scientifically” validated OBE are very low. However, provided that there are insufficient reports of visual OBEs in rooms with the iPad without iPad verification, then neither is the hypothesis invalidated.
The fact is that the evidence we currently have proves beyond reasonable doubt that OBEs during NDEs are a real phenomenon, and therefore dualism is a correct understanding of human existence. However, without scientific validation, the people that control the gateway of global thinking – the scientific establishment – will never publicly concede this possibility and therefore nothing will change.
Long answer, but I hope that clarifies!
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@Ben “…that the evidence we currently have proves beyond reasonable doubt that OBEs during NDEs are a real phenomenon, and therefore dualism is a correct understanding of human existence…”
The former may be correct, but it doesn’t therefore follow that latter claim is.
What we do have however, is masses of wakeful human anomalous experiences suggesting that we can gain access to experience/information that is not our own.
These anomalous experiences seem to suggest that our shared experiences here are only the result of the processing of information that is actually stored very differently from the way we experience it. That our everyday shared experiences are only our way of understanding, interacting with, and sharing this raw information.
It is this truth that seems to be hidden in plain sight.
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For sure the information of our experiences is stored differently from how we experience it, and accessible to all after this life ends, however, I feel that OBEs…the ability of the mind to observe the separate body, do prove mind-body dualism.
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That’s OK… I just think it’s possible for one, to become entrained by others… such that both patterns match and add-up… and thus ones experience, may become the others experience.
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Also, just to add, and answer your question of iPad picture vs printed picture. I think the iPad creates an extra layer of blinding in that if the pictures are randomly generated and change at random time intervals, then it would be impossible for a nurse or doctor who regularly uses that room to have seen the image before or after the event occurred. It makes it very hard for sceptics to undermine any validated experiences…that doesn’t mean they won’t try though!
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@Max_B You mean that we can acces some information from other places? what do you think about consciousness?
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@Wicktor It’s a very hard thing to explain… a simplistic and wrong example might be… when you write a note to yourself, to remind yourself to pick up some potatoes from the supermarket, when you next see the note.
When you next see the note, you’re increasing the probability of reconnecting to your experience when you were writing the note, this happens via yourself, via the note, and via the environment of the note.
This idea is not how science currently thinks about memory.
When you saw the note again (a pattern), you actually altered your present experience, by increasing your chance of directly connecting to (adding up) your past experience when you were originally writing the note to yourself.
That adding up happens outside of spacetime, via a non-traversable wormhole if you like. Because of this, you’re actually adding up ALL matching patterns available, via yourself. I really mean ALL, it doesn’t matter how far away, or how long ago, if it matches, it gets added. But because of coherent interference, and because ‘you’ only experience the result of the humongous amount of information being added up, all you experience is the everyday world, when you are wakeful.
It is however the anomalous stuff, that provides the odd clue that things are not really how we’ve been taught to understand them.
Although this is a helpful example to get across an idea of what I’m thinking about. It’s actually not accurate.
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@Max How about consciousness. Dualism, Materialism. Panpsychism?
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What I wrote above is probably the best way I can very briefly explain my thinking. I don’t much care for the label consciousness, preferring to use the term ‘experience’ where I can. The other labels you mentioned don’t fit with my ideas.
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i do not know if i understand you correctly. Do you think that experience is common to everything in existance?
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I don’t really know what ‘everything in existence’ means? If you mean everything that you experience, then one has to define first, other things such as ones ideas about indirect, or direct perception etc. before one can even discuss these things properly.
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every object, every being, everything around us. That is what i meant. I think that everything experience something
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That’s fine, but it’s your ‘self’’ which is observing “every object, every being”. Is your ‘self’ viewing the object directly, or indirectly viewing some representation of the object, or perhaps these two ideas of direct and indirect perception are incoherent, and it is something else.
What one can say is that even a simple experiment, like you spinning around a few times, then stopping, will give you the dizzy visual perception that the world continues spinning around you after you stop. As we know, that spinning visual perception isn’t apparently accurate. The same thing goes for common optical illusion’s where we can show perception isn’t accurate, and it also occurs most startlingly for our visual perception of colour, which we find is not a property of the world at all, but arises within our ‘self’.
All these things throw into question ideas of direct perception. Optical illusion’s, and colour force one to rethink one’s ideas about perception, and may start a journey into a richer, more complex view of reality.
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interesting, i am quite skeptical but still interesting.
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Are these the findings of Aware II? Could a native English speaker explain it, please?
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970272
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Yep. Those are the results. Sounds vague.
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The articles that appear on line say that the full results would be presented on November 6th…yesterday. It sounds like it was an oral session,and unless you were an attendee y would not get the full results.
However, what is clear is that they had only recruited 100 more patients than in the previous poster presented in November 2019. I will create a post once I have been able to find some detail.
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He must have presented them over the weekend at AHA.Still not in a publication though. I will try to find the posters.
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And thank you!!
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I think what is really really important is what is mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs “observing events”. This is the detail we are waiting for. This was verbally presented, and I can’t find any abstract. I suspect that it won’t be long before a paper follows, but if anyone can get hold of more detail, please post it here.
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Other than the observing events line,
Did you gather any new info from that short article? It sounds like just more things we have talked about already,
And what do you think about the brainwaves part? I know not a lot of info but very curious.
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They have mentioned the brainwaves before in the 2019 poster, but without correlating these brainwaves to specific recollections, they are meaningless, and this article does not contain this detail.
Anyway, I have started a new post on this so let’s move this to there.
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I was unable to locate anything on the circulation journal anyhow so far. I assuming that where it be published.
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He published in Resuscitation before I think. It is possible he could get into a more prestigious journal if the results are “groundbreaking”.
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Yes that’s correct. I only assuming circulation as it stares in the pr newswire or eureka piece on the side it in the journal circulation.
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NEW POST FROM PARNIA LAB ON INSTAGRAM
Seems like a materialistic approach: “detection of rythmic brain waves are suggestive of near death experiences”
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I am sorry I think you already discussed it.
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New press release November 7th is out now, via linktree of Parnia Lab Instagram.
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