EEG surges near death prove NDEs are generated by the brain, and oily bubbles
I decided to write a very brief post on this study because it keeps popping up in the comments and people haven’t seen previous responses to it.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216268120
In summary 4 people in commas had life support turned off. While their ECG was still active, but transitioning to flatline (i.e. pre-CA), two of them had EEG activity of a level and kind that is observed in consciousness (gamma waves). Since the patients never recovered, we don’t know whether they experienced awareness, or NDEs or anything. As the authors state in their discussion:
“Although the marked activation of the posterior hot zone in the dying brain is suggestive of elevated conscious processing in these patients, it does not demonstrate it.”
(There is one huge issue that they do not raise in this paper. They are saying to the family of the patients that the brain is damaged beyond repair and would not recover, and at the same time suggesting that it might have produced conscious awareness just prior to CA).
We have known now for a while that in rats there can be a burst of brain activity for about 30 seconds after CA. This study does not repeat that in humans, but shows activity once the life support is turned off and the heart is starting to pack in. In addition, if there is CPR, AWARE II has shown that EEG activity, including gamma waves can occur up to one hour later. To date no data has been presented or published that associates these bursts of EEG with conscious awareness. Therefore these studies do not prove that NDEs are generated by the brain. So what’s with the oily bubbles?
Well, I am so tired of answering question’s that arise from conflation of the two independent facts:
gamma waves are associated with consciousness + some patients have gamma waves in their EEG near (or after) death = NDEs are due to this activity,
I thought I would do something completely different and describe a conflation from the origin of life puzzle that is one of the easier ones to understand.
The conflation is this:
Under certain conditions lipids can come together and form spherical bilayers (oily bubbles) spontaneously in water + Cell membranes (or walls in plants) consist of lipid bilayers = proteins and DNA developed within spontaneously formed oily bubbles. Later on the DNA and proteins produced a cell membrane.
This is one of dozens of heinous conflations that appear in otherwise credible scientific journals to try to brush the origin of life conundrum under the rug. It is a chicken and egg question (not the biggest, which is DNA and proteins, but one of a number).
The question is this: which came first, the cell membrane that allows the cellular equipment to function, or the cellular equipment that codes for and builds the cell membrane.
The problem is this: for any primordial (pre-life, pre-evolution) system to develop, the nascent chemical systems would need to develop in enclosed structures otherwise they would just wonder off in whatever puddle they started developing in. Oily bubbles were proposed as the answer to this problem, and actually taken seriously, and still cited as a possible solution, but it is a complete nonsense for the following reasons:
1.Oily bubbles are nothing like cell membranes. Yes, cell membranes contain lipid bilayers, but these are punctured by numerous other chemical structures that allow the transport of specific chemicals in and out of the cell. Without the removal of waste or the addition of key components from outside, the machinery would die very quickly.
2. Ignoring 1, let’s say that the a system did develop, then why would it create a cell membrane? Evolution is a product of necessity, but there is an oily bubble doing the job, so you don’t need a membrane.
3.The code for a typical cell membrane is thousands of codons long, and it is assembled by specific proteins. To suggest that the code for a cell membrane, and the associated proteins spontaneously appeared in a nascent system is absurd, so no one suggests it. Moreover it is not something that could be conceived of emerging via a stepwise process. So materialist scientists who mention this in their theories hope no one notices that the oily bubble idea is totally absurd…which most people are happy to do as the moment they understand that life could not have developed by natural processes, they start to sense the presence of a rather large grey creature with a trunk in the room, or the lab. Hence my book DNA: the Elephant in the lab.
So Oily bubbles do not answer the origin of the cell membrane question, just as (currently) the reports of EEG signals in patients near death do not answer the NDE question. However, if the AWARE study shows that EEG is associated with NDE, then it is no longer conflation. It is still not proof that NDEs are the result of brain activity, but the association would strengthen the theory that they are. That is much more likely to happen than anyone squaring the oily bubble circle…or sphere.
Finally, you might be a bit peeved with me writing this, well to be honest I have been itching to write about this for a while, and the repeated raising of this conflation gave me the excuse I needed, and in truth the two are related. NDEs point to a realm beyond this life which, according to countless NDE reports, includes the presence of a Being Of Light, or God. Understanding the Origin of Life issue also points to the existence of an intelligent creator, aka God.
AwareofAware 
In four patients, arrest cardiac??
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Correct.
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Sorry, no, only 2 had gamma activity consistent wit consciousness, the other 2 had activity but a bit more messy.
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where it says that these four (or two) patients have a flat electrocardiogram when those gamma surges were recorded?
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Thank you Eduardo. That has to be the comment of the month by a long shot. I suspect I wasn’t the only one befuddled by all the S1-S10 and other jargon (although I am sure Tim wasn’t and is shaking his head in despair). None of the patients were in CA when they showed EEG activity as evidenced by Fig S1A in the supplementary material. All the EEG activity occurred before S8 when the ECG started to flatline, or at least head that way.
Smoke and mirrors.
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Of course, Ben Williams; that comment is “endorsed” from two important and prestigious NDEs researchers. The media also misrepresents a lot of things.
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Now you have me curious. Which two would those be?
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Pagina web IANDS
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I have changed the post accordingly. This really makes this paper a bigger nothing burger than I originally thought. My bad for misreading it in the first place.
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I think this is what threw me:
“The brain is assumed to be hypoactive during cardiac arrest. However, animal models of cardiac and respiratory arrest demonstrate a surge of gamma oscillations and functional connectivity”
That was in the first line, and from that point on I guess I was thinking that they were describing the same scenario…namely that the brain activity occurred in cardiac arrest. However, the brain activity described in this paper happened prior to CA.
Smoke and mirrors.
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This whole study is complete garbage. I mean I know the materialists are kinda hard forced to find an explanation for NDEs and stuff. But this is just a real fat nothing burger.
We have NDEs, Shared Deaths Experiences and fear death experiences amongst many other spiritual phenomena. And they want to explain all that with some gamma waves that occurred while the heart was still very active (higher pulse than usual). Even if they could actually show some gamma activity after CA that wouldn’t mean much.
We have NDEs with confirmed flatline EEG (f.e. Pam Reynolds).
We have veridical NDEs (OBEs) that last for quite a while after CA (f.e. the case reported by Lloyd Rudy, several minutes here). So there’s not even a coincidence in time. How could some 30 seconds of gamma activity explain that?
We have a whole lot of cases with veridical perception from an out of the body position corroborated by credible people. That’s not „scientific“ but since I am no member of the religion of scientism I don’t really care about that so much. The testimony of hundreds of credible people is ok for me.
Oh and of course a bit of gamma here and there can’t really explain a live review that is incredibly more detailed than every other memory you have or why an NDE is „more real than real“.
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Yep, it’s absolute rubbish. I fell for it though until Eduardo pointed out my mistake. The sleight of hand is the set-up in the opening statement talking about in CA, but none of these were in CA. It is nonsense. I’m surprised PNAS let it in…actually, no I’m not, they are desperate to maintain the materialist narrative.
Interestingly Sam Parnia mentioned negative PR in his talk the other day and that it impacts him. He has alluded to these things before. The materialists in the scientific community can be fanatical in their hostility towards anyone who dares challenge their dominance. I have experienced it myself.
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That I think in lies the problem. An hallucination would imply blood flow to the organs. If the brain does not have blood flow there cannot be consciousness. So why is it people experience something during CA where they have for a period would be considered as dead? Why did this happen to people like Pam Reynolds? There are forces at work here we cannot understand nor verify by any standardized means.
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Just want to raise a point that EEG machines coupled with AI computing can decode your thoughts and the music you listen to:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-27361-x
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-brain-scanner-combined-with-an-ai-language-model-can-provide-a-glimpse-into-your-thoughts/?amp=true
Now they are attempting to decode dreams that people are having, so I think subjective experiences can sooner or later be decoded by computers. Although I don’t subscribe to the notion that consciousness is a simple byproduct of the brain.
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Yeah, it’s not just music, even words that you think of. Thought police anyone? Dystopian future awaits!
Your point is a more advanced version of the situation in which one day EEG data is merely associated with an NDE. Parnia has been saying for a long time that such signals could be the result of the consciousness interacting with other dimensions. I postulated the idea that it was just a sign of the consciousness packing its bags and leaving. It is as just as plausible as the explanation that the signals are showing that the brain is causing the NDE. Now, as you are suggesting, even if EEG+AI was able to show that the signals were associated with a dream of a beautiful realm, it is just as plausible to say that the consciousness is observing the realm in another dimension and reporting it to the brain,as it is to say that the brain is generating the beautiful realm.
By the way, I am more and more of the opinion that Parnia is sitting on an EEG that IS associated with an NDE report. Why else would he peddle this theory of interaction with different dimensions. We know he is a dualist by everything else he has said,so he is trying to provide an explanation of an observation that potentially challenges dualism. Either way, sitting on this data is not good science.
Humanly verified OBEs,particularly ones that occurred in hospital and research settings, and reported by HCPs completely blow the monist explanation out of the water. If only we had a scientifically verified one, although they would still dispute that.
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I agree! The absolute money hit would be an NDE With eeg AND a verifiable OBE. All the sudden you start unraveling the mechanism that a non material consciousness uses to interact with a material brain. You start to answer the single biggest problem in the dualist philosophy AND you prove dualism lol. Wild.
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Just want to raise a point that EEG machines coupled with AI computing can decode your thoughts and the music you listen to:
Now they are attempting to decode dreams that people are having, so I think subjective experiences can sooner or later be decoded by computers. Although I don’t subscribe to the notion that consciousness is a simple byproduct of the brain.
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Sorry for the repetition just want to gather some opinions from subject matter experts
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Correlation doesn’t mean causation.
If you „decode“ the activity in your TV you could also get the picture out of that. Does that mean that your TV produces the television program? Of course it does not.
They tried so long to explain consciousness in terms of brain activity. But so far it’s still:
Electrical activity -> magic -> consciousness
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It appears we’re connected. Our experience is a group process.
But only matching patterns can be shared (added up). We can’t experience patterns we don’t share.
The others don’t accept we’re connected, or that our experience is a group process. The others won’t stop biting and scratching at each other until this blindness is resolved.
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Is it matter over mind or mind over matter?:)
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Has the documentary Rethinking Death been released yet. I keep seeing just the trailer fir it on Dr. Parnia website. If not does anyone know when it will be released. Thanks
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No idea.
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Interesting book there
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I already discussed this topic some years ago with a molecular neurobiologist. It was clear, that the electrical surges after cardiac arrest are due to depolarisations of all single cells. The synaptic connectivity fails very early under hypoxia, so the electrical surges are not caused by synchronized brain activity but only by single depolarizations, which result in these EEG patterns.
Single cell firing without synaptic connectivity does never result in any conscious activity.
That a good resuscitation process, which often results in some brain activity is necessary, that a person recovers well and does not have too much amnesia later, which results in deeper memory formation should be clear.
I already talked to people with a cardiac arrest. There you have the one with clear memories, who told he felt well and was “flying at the ceiling” while the others are even not able to tell, what they have done an hour before the cardiac arrest set in.
So I think, a bad resuscitation does not prevent an NDE but results in deep amnesia, so that the people are not able to tell about the experience.
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Interesting!
Wondering if there is statistic somewhere about ” random ” Ndes without cardiac arrest and etc. Same +-20% in which people remember something?
On other hand if those 20% “cardiac arrest” cases are in every area – does it mean that quality of resuscitations is Same everywhere?
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Click to access vanLommel-Greyson-2023-Critique-Recent-Report-Electrical-Activity-Dying-Human-Brain.pdf
A rebutal to the study, made by Greyson and Lommel.
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My conclusion from all this is that there is no real progress, neither one way nor the other. At this point it is more a matter of interpretation of the phenomenon. Personally, I think that most of what happens in near-death experiences is due to a cerebral and physiological self-defense mechanism when it feels danger, but I also see it as likely that a part of consciousness transcends for an indeterminate period in the first moments after biological death, as evidenced by out-of-body experiences. However, there is no scientifically verified out-of-body experience yet. I am sure that most of them depend on interpretations, false memories and also, of course, directly fraud, as Susan Blackmore showed in her research on them and the famous experience of the person who saw the shoe on the roof of the hospital.
In my interpretation of these phenomena nothing of religion enters at all, neither God nor any creator. It would be too biased. My opinion about religions and the people who rely on them would lead to a long debate that would not make sense.
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I agree with your first sentence and your last sentence!
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I disagree on Susan Blackmore, don’t find her trustworthy, mainly because she changed her own OBE account in order to fit the proposed explanation.
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Gunther P
I think she didn’t change her experience, she changed her interpretation and opinion about it.
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“However, there is no scientifically verified out-of-body experience yet.”
Nobody is even looking for them… some of the studies don’t use visual targets, others hide the targets from view.
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You are so right on origin of life . We even just assumed RNA world and we’ll oily bubbles are a sign of complete desperation.
I have been mostly on UFO Twitter where the pseudo sceptics have been in complete meltdown despite the current head of the agency trying to downplay
His slide with detailed sensor readings of the mostly orbs with the clear video has sent them into doxing and other bad behavior
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We are living in the upside down.
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Does anyone know Dr. Parnia email. I can’t seem to find it. Still no word on when the documentry Rethinking death will be released on youtube or the Parnia lab website.
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I guess you will just have to be patient! In truth, while it was a good documentary, as you will have read on this page, there was nothing ground breaking, just a consolidation of existing evidence and thinking.
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Hi Ben, kind of an off-topic question. I have followed your blog for several years now, came on a couple of weeks ago and saw some fresh post where there was a discussion between you and Tim. I decided to come back to it a little later and now that I came back on – I can’t seem to find that post, neither that discussion. Did I hallucinate that post and Tim coming back to this blog haha or did that post get deleted or something?
Sorry for the off-topic question, just curious, cause I seem to vividly remember seeing another post in the past weeks, which looked had an interesting discussion in the comments section, but now is gone
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You hallucinated it! Despite Tim leaving, we do still have interesting discussions though.
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Okay, thanks for answering! Like I said, I was just curious – might have clicked on an old post with an old discussion.
And I didn’t mean to say that the discussions are not interesting anymore. It’s just that there haven’t been really exciting news in the past months in comparison with 2019 when I first joined.
But anyways, I’m still a regular visitor, might even participate in a discussion at some point.
Thanks again!
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You are very welcome to participate in a discussion. It s true, we have not moved forward since December 2019. Quite discouraging.
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Yeah, I agree, but I’m sure we’ll stumble onto the answer (or at least get closer to it) at some point… provided we’re meant to actually find out that answer.
To me really it’s not the lack of answers that’s discouraging, but the silence on behalf of Sam Parnia. I mean he doesn’t have to share his conclusions before the paper is peer reviewed, but updates on recruitment would’ve been nice throughout the years, as now it’s not very clear what they’ve been doing for the past 4 years with such small participant figures… We never got the official response why they’re so small, just speculations on our side.
In my opinion, some regular communication, like once in a couple of months, in terms of how the study is going and what challenges it’s facing for such a poorly researched field is important. He doesn’t have to mention his conclusions, because they may be controversial, but updates from the methodology and organisational point of view would be nice.
But again, maybe there are reasons for such an approach. I’m not in the UK academia, I wouldn’t know. So I’ll just keep waiting 🙂
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Th explanation he has given is the difficulty in getting a crash cart into the room on time due to availability of staff,and the fact that most patients do not survive long enough to be interviewed. However, this does not explain the lack of new recruits since March 2020. I guess that is explained by the pandemic.
On conclusions, the ones he mentions in the preprint are allI think we are going to get i.e. while the data does not provide evidence of dualism, neither does it provide evidence against it (or words to that effect).
We have got nowhere since the case from AWARE I.
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Yeah, I agree with you
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The biggest problem with “brain spikes” is it still DOES NOT PROVE anything. Even if there are brain spikes during CA it is illogical for a patient to in ANY CAPACITY hallucinate due to the lack of blood flow to the vital organs of the body including the brain which is required for any form of coherent hallucination. Brain activity does not always equate to consciousness. During true CA all consciousness is lost. No exceptions. People need to stop looking at the brain and think it holds the answers to everything since it clearly in this situation does not.
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What you say is true, but there are many people in this world who would not know what the truth was even if it slapped them in the face with a wet fish. It is one of the reasons the word of man is always in turmoil.
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Yes and instances like the Pam Reynolds case show further evidence that there is something else at work we don’t understand.
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It’s been more than 30 years since the Pam Reynold case was recorded, isn’s it a bit strange that we are not seeing more similar cases being recorded?
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That is a very good point.
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AW, what about The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena From Near-Death Experiences book? Academic review here,
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1125029/
Also featured on the UVA website as a recommended book (just checked). So that’s two academic recommendations. This implies cases like these are current and being recorded, it’s just one has to dig around for them.
This reminds me of the UFO (UAP) stuff that’s now becoming academic. One F-18 pilot leading the charge at the AIAA, Ryan Graves, has said fighter pilots are telling him they’re seeing stuff all the time.
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I think they happen but scientists continue to be materialistic even though the evidence is right in front of their dang face.
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I googled doctors afterlife poll and got a survey of 1044 doctors (US) from 2005. 76% believed in God, 59% an afterlife. My view is that doctors (and closely related, e.g. nurses) are more relevant than any other scientifically qualified person as they are “in there” with their patients, seeing everything.
I guess it’s largely accepted then (esp. God belief, but that surely goes hand in hand with an afterlife?). OTOH, a scientist who may see things materialistically only, day-to-day hands on or just “believes” in the equations as reality (and could be forgiven for seeing things this way) isn’t directly involved in the experiential side of a profession. Like a doctor or nurse who may see stuff. So he’s missing the main part of the picture of life.
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I guess it comes down to whether science, overall, will accept the experiential as part of reality. An afterlife is experiential. As is Sam’s “undiscovered scientific entity” – as he’s termed consciousness (possibly).
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Back to someone’s comment above…I remember reading the case of the patient who saw a red shoe on the roof. Was that fraud?
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No I talked to Kimberly Clark Sharp. She’s the one who found the shoe. She’s also a NDER herself.
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Anomalies like this further evidence to me that it’s basically impossible for such instances to be fake. How on earth can someone who’s dead see a shoe on a dang roof when she probably wasn’t on said roof.
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Saw something interesting just out about DMT. Imperial College study where people are given high doses. Four speak out about their experiences. Sam Parnia spoke of DMT in his recent paper but this looks new.
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Dr. Parnia just released his lecture from Rethinking death. Type in his name on Google or YouTube. It should be on there.
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Thanks Paul. I’m guessing this is what you mean. This is a panel discussion. I may not have time to view it today as I am between conventions, but if someone else finds anything super interesting let us know:
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Had a quick look and fascinating comments by Sam start at 1:01:54 which again point to consciousness being unexplained and not from a materialistic source. Then Dr. Robert Montgomery relates his own profound experience … “the experiences that I had, you know, at that junction between being dead and then being alive were completely unearthly, they’re not anything that I’ve experienced in any other state, um, and it was so profound that it, you know, shook me to, you know, the depth of, you know, who I am, that I had that experience so I don’t know how to explain that with, you know, a bundle of neurons, where that place was …”. The jist of it.
Then Sam answers the cross-culture question about NDEs saying what we’ve heard time and again – the core experiences are the same cross-culturally but with people interpreting differently.
Implication from all this is that mind does not equal brain.
I would say this correlates to the new DMT studies at Imperial College in the link above.
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Thanks Alan, very useful. That DMT panel discussion is even longer. Will have a look at some point just snowed under at the moment.
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Ok, sure! It looks like both talks link together because these four DMT experiencers at Imperial do not imply they are having hallucinations at all. Just as hallucinations are ruled out for NDEs, we have to consider some “mental spaces” as real and we can meet other intelligences there. No other conclusion.
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interesting, but I have a question, is what Dr. Parnia says the result of your scientific studies or is it just your hope?
I hope the first
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Hi Davide,
Sam says (which is a conclusion of years of *his* scientific studies not mine) in the video …
“we can’t minimise it to a little bit of electricity, there is no mechanism to account, how your thoughts arise from your brain processes, there is no mechanism, yet you are a deeply conscious thinking human being …”
He’s also consistently said for years that the mind could be an “undiscovered scientific entity” and then we have the encounters people say they have with some kind of intelligences while in the NDE state, also the guided life review etc. On this, what/who is doing the guiding? He also consistently has ruled out hallucinations. Then Dr. Montgomery’s statement on his own experience?
I said … “we have to consider some “mental spaces” as real and we can meet other intelligences there.” What is the difference in the ontological status of Sam’s points and mine? Would you contend that the former does not imply the latter? How? What is being missed?
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The actual documentry Rethinking death hopefully will be released as well soon.
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Unfortunately, Ben, I think the materialists are more aggressive because they have already (in their minds) found closure with death. Like trying to change someone’s medication after they are under the impression it helps.
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thanks alan, sorry i’m not english and i used the translator!
my question was only about parnia!
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