“News” about AWARE II publication! (and a comment about “news”)
Yesterday I had a long journey back from vacation, and didn’t arrive home till 3:00am. So firstly apologies for not commenting on all the excitement that Mary and David mentioned in the previous post around the “publication” of Parnia’s AWARE II study yesterday. Secondly, after having my very tired brain shocked into activity by reading those comments, and frantically following up on this “news” I really feel like I could go back to bed…but I won’t. I have another flight on Monday, this time for work, and need to adjust my brain to yet another time zone.
The AWARE II study was not published yesterday, it was published in July. However, it became freely available on the on line version of Resuscitation yesterday and I encourage you to download the PDF and read it:
Link to full AWARE study publication
This is identical to the paper that I discussed back in July . If you recall I focused on the one key piece of data that we had been asking for since December 2019 and had finally been revealed, namely whether there was any EEG data for patients who reported an NDE or RED. This key piece of information was buried in the footnotes of Figure 2:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903Two of 28 interviewed subjects had EEG data, but, weren’t among those with explicit cognitive recall.
To be fair to CNN they do include an excellent rebuttal to the inference of their own title provided by Bruce Greyson, who presumably also read the small print under figure 2:
“This latest report of persistent brain waves after cardiac arrest has been blown out of proportion by the media. In fact, his team did not show any association between these brain waves and conscious activity,” said Dr. Bruce Greyson, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.
CNN article
“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.
Thank you Dr Greyson for putting it so perfectly. THERE IS NO ASSOCIATION, OR “TIES” in this study. So CNN are misrepresenting the studies core findings, but what is new about that? Organizations like CNN have been misrepresenting the “news” for decades now. However, I am a little concerned that it is not just CNN, but an organization that should know better:
Up to an hour after their hearts had stopped, some patients revived by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) had clear memories afterward of experiencing death and while unconscious had brain patterns linked to thought and memory.
https://nyulangone.org/news/patients-recall-death-experiences-after-cardiac-arrest
This is from the NYU News Hub, and is possibly even more misleading than the CNN headline. By joining the two separate findings of 1. “patients experiencing clear memories of death” and 2. “while unconscious had brain patterns linked to thought and memory” with an “and” in the same sentence, they are guilty of egregious conflation to infer a conclusion that these memories were a result of brain patterns. This is pretty shameful for a reputable medical scientific organization to do . Was this Parnia’s doing, or the work of others who are opposed to the potential for his work to prove the fact that the soul persists after death? Something fishy is going on.
Then David mentioned this interview with Sam Parnia yesterday which was presented on NBC:
More balanced NBC article with interview with Sam Parnia
The written article does not misrepresent the data in the way that CNN does, or NYU, although some dodgy editing of the interview perhaps leads one to conclude the EEG data may be linked. Parnia talks about a book that he is co-authoring with Mary Curran-Hackett who had an OBE. I look forward to that book.
Finally, as promised my comment on the media. In an ideal world the media would report the facts as they appear with balanced commentary, but they do not…they report stories that often support specific preferred narratives based on facts that they often twist. This is most obvious in politics where an event involving either Biden or Trump, will be reported in completely differently ways by Fox and CNN. That’s bad enough, but when it comes to scientific data that has implications on how we view the very essence of our existence, then it is utterly despicable. In fact I would go so far as to say it is evil. I have seen it in the field of origin of life research, and I spent a chapter in my book about the origin of life, DNA: The Elephant In The Lab venting on the issue of media misrepresentation of the science, and that includes scientific media, such as Science magazine, or NewScientist. Here we have something that is my view even worse. Not only is CNN guilty of misrepresentation of facts, but the NYU news hub, the very institution that generated those facts.
You have to ask yourself why do they do this? Why are they so determined to suppress all discussion or science that may point to a non-materialist understanding of our existence, and change the way that man behaves.
I look forward to your comments.
Finally, thank you to those who have bought me a coffee. If you appreciate my writing, then please feel free to buy me a coffee now (or more than 1 as some very generous people have done!)
AwareofAware 
Good work Ben.
My point of view about scientific research has changed in the past years, since from my own experience in the world of research you actually witness how biased most publications are, and how manipulated some results can be. I barely trust any publication on anything, or at least I am very skeptical about everything. And I am a scientist, so that is a bit sad…
(To set an example: new Surgical technique, the future in my field, my colleague on another city published 3-4 cases. Then she tells me in a personal telephone conversation, when I look forward to try the technique, that she really doesn’t think it’s good, 3-4 cases were fine, some others didn’t go well, and that she still believes results are unpredictable .WTF??)
Back to materialism:
Concerning “why”, I truly believe it is due to confirmation bias, and the fact that in the scientific world it is a) acceptable to be a believer in God, and b) acceptable to be an atheist, and c) ABSOLUTELY NOT ACCEPTED TO BE OPEN to new theories on consciousness or be a believer in the reality of OBEs. You are tagged as “dumb” and “gullible”. And no respected scientist wants to be considered gullible…
That is what I feel in the everyday life in the hospital, around my friends and even my family. I don’t talk about this kind of research (NDE and OBEs), they just say “oh, you perfectly know it is all brain tricks, can’t believe anyone would even consider the possibility…”
Can’t believe the Langone group actually wrote that (and they have people actually for writing these things). Makes me really disappointed with… don’t know, scientists? research founders? university? The world? Whatever….
I’ll buy you a coffee Ben, nice work defending real results and explaining the articles to people.
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Good comment Ben.
It’s sad and unfortunate all this…It would be a pleasant surprise to me if some media outlet asked Parnia why he (Parnia) submitted an essay to the Bigelow contest in 2021, being that said contest was looking for (and rewarding) evidence of life after death.
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I think our friend, Sam Parnia, is stuck between a rock and hard place.
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Thanks Mery. Truth is a rare commodity in our current world…and as for case series, precisely. What about the ones they don’t include. Either you have a full cohort analysis of all patients over a time frame adjusting for different baseline characteristics, or you don’t bother. I get embarrassed when my company gets excited about case series.
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Oh they won’t Eduardo. The OBE was 2004. Parnia plays it both ways .
Reaction out of UFO Twitter was how does CNN just accept this …Anyway Grayson is right and Parnia is no Lue Elizondo or Dave Grusch.
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Hi David,
Totally off-topic, but I know you are very much into the UFO thing and I wanted to share what we just saw and get your thoughts. We we were in our back yard having a fire and cigar (one of my pleasures) and my wife says oh look, is that a satellite. It was about 8:15 pm with the last embers of light in the sky…then we saw 9-12 objects way up in the sky travelling in a line spaced relatively evenly apart travelling north to south across the south coast of the UK. The light was probably reflected from the last of the sun. Is there a grouping of satellites that travel in a line like this? Could it have been a large object that had broken up in the atmosphere? It didn’t look like that as they were relatively evenly separated and the same size, all travelling in the same direction, at the same speed. Thoughts?
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I saw something like this while I was doing some observing of Saturn with my telescope. It turned out to be starlink satellites as stated
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Makes sense. Never seen anything like it before. see satellites regularly, but not a chain of 12. Thanks for putting that one to bed…back to NDEs!
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I think a lot of it is just secret technology developed by the U.S.
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Starlink maybe?
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Yes you are describing starlink perfectly
UFOs are possibly not unrelated to this at . I won’t go into it but entire tweeters have pages that connect them Especially theufojoe.
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Thanks. Totally freaked us out as we had never seen anything like it before! But having googled it, and seeing Tony’s comment, I am satisfied it was Starlink.
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I don’t find it surprising at the least. Every article, be it news, or even studies themselves make assumptions and conclusions, usually aligned to an existing paradigm. This one seems to sting a bit more because its an area that we care a great deal about.
Its really a shame that this will give the uninformed more of a reason NOT to delve further on the topic.
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I think it is more than just area that we care about, it is an area fundamental to the understanding of who are and what we are here for. I cannot think of anything more important and for this to be corrupted by ideological bias is, as I state, evil. On here we never ever overstate that the meaning of scientific evidence, although we do recognise the value of thousands of reports from respectable individuals. It is beyond frustrating.
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You can’t be told it, you have to search for it. It can’t be hidden from you. It’s easier to find it near the fire.
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I agree more research is needed. I e been studying NDES for 31 years now. I’m looking forward to watching the documentary Rethinking Death on October 4.
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As I keep warning you…don’t get too excited. There is nothing massively new in it.
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“You have to ask yourself why do they do this? Why are they so determined to suppress all discussion or science that may point to a non-materialist understanding of our existence, and change the way that man behaves.”
It’s because we are informed of an alternate view, and they are inclined to a skeptical outlook especially when anything spiritual is involved, and they are writing for a health column.
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But the pursuit of knowledge should never be directed by inclinations, only curiosity. Moreover, they are actually misrepresenting the facts. It is utterly reprehensible. I cannot overstate how offensive I find it that these individuals steamroll over a subject that is of fundamental importance to humanity.
I feel for Parnia. I do wonder if joining NYU was a mistake.
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Certainly THE most important subject for humanity, I couldn’t agree more. But I come from a position that it may be better for most of humanity to be left in the dark on the subject. I’m surrounded by people that if I bring up the topic (including my wife) they roll their eyes. They are no different than the authors of such articles. It’s too farfetched in their mind for any of it to be true, and to delve further on the topic is a waste of time.
What do you think however, regarding NYU? I am left surprised that he’s even allowed to touch on the subject to begin with. He seems to have more latitude to research this topic than I’d expect. I remember in Bruce Greyson’s book, his superiors urged him to stop the research in this area. Parnia holds a director’s position in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. That might give him more freedom than most with such a senior title?
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I agree and disagree. the higher up the food chain you get the more you have to conform to orthodox positions.
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For some time now I’ve detected Parnia’s attempt to serve two masters: 1) the hardline proponents of materialism and 2) the public with interest in this subject matter which undoubtedly falls heavily on the side of postmortem survival of consciousness. He’s also backed by the Templeton Foundation, which may serve to taper his speech and restrain any attempts on his part to go too far into materialistic explanations for NDEs. As you mentioned, he’s now co-authoring a book with an individual who claims to have had an NDE and I’m a bit baffled by what such a partnership will produce. I didn’t see or read the CNN take on this subject matter, but did you get a chance to watch NBC’s. Here’s the link:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cardiac-arrest-near-death-experiences-rcna104812
And his last words at the conclusion of the documentary Surviving Death were, “We may not have all the answers yet. But for now, what we know definitively is that there is one certainty in life and that is death. And that death itself is not what we thought and it simply seems to be the beginning of something new”. I do hate to sound critical of him when he has demonstrated on past occasions a willingness to be open. And I certainly prefer his involvement in this field of research to that of more myopic and quasi-misanthropic clinicians.
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Well summed up Thomas. There is another master as well. Money. He needs it for research so has to stay strongly on the side of credibility to garner support. Also he lives in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I too wonder about the book he is writing. It is an odd one.
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This article is an excellent example of how you should, if you can understand it, go directly to the primary source and not the potentially (in this case obviously) biased media report on it.
Everyone should have this as a bookmark on their web browser: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
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Guys. I think we are reading this wrong. We are all pretty well versed in NDE RED literature however CNN and NBC write article for the layperson. We aren’t normal lol.
Try to read this article from CNN as a layperson and suddenly Parnia’s words take on a whole new meaning.
He says in the article that they demonstrated that the brainwaves were not compatible with hallucinations or delusions created by a malfunctioning brain but instead are a bio marker of A REAL EXPERIENCE AT DEATH.
If I hadn’t spent the last five years scouring NDE literature then wow that’s profound. All the sudden it sounds to me as if they suspect they just recorded the brain at death responding to STIMULI. As in a bio marker of what a brain does when it encounters a real experience. As has been said here many times “consciousness packing it’s bags.”
Parnia never discounts his previous writings about the real veridical NDE REDs he has encountered in his career and he has pretty consistently maintained a dualistic rhetoric.
We’ve fallen into a bit of a philosophical trap here where everytime we hear brainwaves we immediately assume materialism. But that’s not what’s even happening. Recording brainwaves do not prove a causation and Parnia has never said that. As a matter of fact by blatantly separating his findings from hallucinations and saying the brainwaves show a REAL EXPERIENCE. He is more likely saying this could be a bio marker of how an immaterial consciousness interacts with a material brain.
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I get where you are coming from, but there are a couple of big problems with assuming that is what is going on. The interpretation for the lay person is that the EEG data is the brain causing the experiences. I agree that Parnia is inferring that it is the brain responding to the experiences. the second issue is that THERE IS NO ASSOCIATION. That is what I said back in July and what Greyson says…in an email, obviously somewhat irritated at the all of scientific reasoning. None of the interviews which had reported memories had associated EEG data. That is the key. I am happy to accept Parnia’s explanation if it was grounded in the evidence, but as I said in July, it is just speculation.
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I think the title of the article would lead one to think that the eeg data shows that nde’s are a product of brain function, but then the article doesn’t exactly paint that picture.
Halfway down the article you see Parnia, the lead researcher, proclaim that the eeg data is not consistent with hallucinations or delirium and that the data is more in line with a REAL experience at death.
Immediately I’m intrigued. What is this researcher saying? He’s saying that these reported experiences have strong commonalities and the eeg data is not consistent with misfiring of malfunctioning brains?
That would lead me to think this researcher is postulating that the eeg data is being interpreted as something real and encountered. Like when 500 people look at an Apple they report the same experience and have similar brain electrical patterns… but when 500 people hallucinate the pattern is nowhere near as consistent.
It seems like Parnia is really really trying to find the interface that an immaterial consciousness can Bluetooth itself onto a physical brain. That connection has been so illusive and is the single biggest punch materialism can throw at dualist philosophy. What is the mechanism behind this interaction? Seems Dr Parnia is insinuating that he thinks this is a bio marker of that.
But then out of nowhere Dr Greyson comes in and says wait wait wait there’s actually just no real data at all and bam no one knows anything still lol.
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The ideas that you suggest Parnia is musing over, are intriguing, but in the instance that there were REDs or NDEs with associated data, the materialists would have a field day mashing that idea up. They might be wrong, but they would have their smoking gun of NDE + brain activity = brain makes NDE.
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Theoretical physicists already mapped the shape of the ‘thing’… it resembles the shape of something we experience as a highly conserved biological structure.
The mapped shape of the ‘thing’ was revealed once in a video for about 2 minutes, and it will never be talked about again. It’s been buried.
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So basically, it’s flawed logic that wasn’t even spot in the review process :
Some As (NDE) are Cs (after cardiac arrest)
Some Bs (ECG) are Cs
So As = Bs.
It just passed because he separated the statements in different paragraphs, while wrapping them up in the takeaway. Bad article.
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Yep.
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I think you say things that don’t bear any relation….Parnia states: “Although doctors have long thought that the brain suffers permanent damage about 10 minutes after the heart stops supplying oxygen, our work found that the brain can show signs of electrical recovery for a long time after ongoing CPR,” said the study’s lead author, Sam Parnia, MD….
But when people talk about those 10 minutes, it is over-understood that they are referring to no CPR?
However, Parnia talks about “signs of electrical recovery” but this happens because there is minimal blood flow due to CPR….
I do not make sense of what Parnia says.
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I wrote: I think it is said things that …
Excussme
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I think anyone who is not an expert on this subject will be totally confused as to what they are supposed to conclude.
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when will aware 2 end?
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Well the original study was looking to recruit about 1500 patients, and this paper had just over 500. The data in this paper was mostly from before COVID. The NYU site says it is ongoing. The paper was definitely worth publishing given the groundbreaking findings. Who knows what is next.
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In all fairness, the study at least raises the hypothesis that brain activity during CPR and NDEs is correlated. Actually, I would think such a hypothesis should make it easier to secure funding for further research into awareness during resuscitation, as it provides a rather unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of consciousness, even from the materialist perspective.
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Hi Steen, you are right, and this is the point that Parnia should be focusing on. This study has been hypothesis generating. The key finding is that patients who are in CA, but still receiving CPR ( and that is a vital but), show brain activity for up to an hour after CA. This is a genuinely groundbreaking finding and has lots of implications, especially when combined with our developing understanding of brain viability for hours after CA.
However, because there are no patients with memories + EEG activity (or even any data), one can only speculate what the activity is about. There are 3 hypotheses that could be tested in a future study, or by continuing to collect data from AWARE II (which is still running I believe):
1. The brain activity is associated with NDEs, and causative.
2. The brain activity is associated with NDEs but not causative.
3. The brain activity is not associated with NDEs.
It would be very hard to tease out information that would allow proving either 1 OR 2, without validated OBE reports.
What is missing from the discussion is all the reports of NDEs and OBEs before CPR was started, or where ROSC occurred without CPR. Without CPR, all brain activity stops within 30 seconds of CA, no ifs, no buts…it just stops.
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“Without CPR, all brain activity stops within 30 seconds of CA, no ifs, no buts…it just stops.”
That extremely broad statement isn’t correct.
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Hi Max,
Please explain why that isn’t correct? Which study shows that the brain is active more than 30-40s after CA in the absence of CPR?
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You would first have to define what activity you are measuring? Where you are measuring it in the brain? How you are measuring it (equipment type)? And both the organism’s biological, and environmental conditions under which you are measuring?
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Hi Max,
Meaningful activity associated with normal brain function.
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In the.NY LANGONE report you read things that seem to bear no relation….
Parnia states, “Although physicians have long thought that the brain suffers permanent damage about 10 minutes after the heart stops supplying oxygen, our work found that the brain can show signs of electrical recovery for a long time after continuous CPR,” said the study’s lead author, Sam Parnia, MD……
But when Parnia talks about those 10 minutes, it is implied that they refer to a situation with no CPR.
However, Parnia relates it to “signs of electrical recovery” that occur because there is minimal blood flow due to CPR…..
Parnia’s statement is even more incomprehensible because, in fact, in his study CPR started on average 5 minutes after arrest. And in some cases the patients were already being cared for before those 5 minutes by a resuscitation team other than his own, which started working before the Aware 2 team arrived.
It is not clear what Parnia means or shows by this, nor what his supposed finding consists of
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When they state eeg levels are at levels find during normal consciousness, I read them as spikes in the eeg data. But in normal consciousness does eeg data show up as spikes or as long consistent readings? I’d expect the memories that Nders recall similar given the ultra real and deep these experiences are.
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Just read this article, very interesting, especially the divergence into the UFO phenomena.
I myself have seen a UFO from about thirty feet away, absolutely true, I am not lying. I never reported it because I thought at the time there is no point, people can believe what they like. I was with another person at the time, and it was about 40 years ago.
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I have no skin in that game, especially after seeing the same series of satellites pass over at the same time tonight, but the evidence for them is far too compelling to ignore. The question is, what do they want? Surely they can’t be any worse than the psychopaths who rule our society.
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Not saying it was Aliens, no idea what it was, but it was 30 feet away, maybe 35, brilliantly bright like an arc welders torch, oval, about 30 feet across and ten feet deep, no discernible features, but like I said it was so bright it was impossible to stare at it
longer than a second or two and the brightness would cover any features anyway.
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Orson, do you wonder how this effects religion? I wonder that NDE accounts and the “guiding” through our lives and how they have effected others that Sam constantly speaks of don’t really point to any of the human religions we have. I mean, if we accept these accounts as a kind of baseline experience after death that *any* intelligence could have. Like, what did you do with your life? Any religion applicable to aliens and life in the universe as a whole would seem to me to be so much bigger.
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I think the word religion has different meanings to different people. NDEs prove that the soul may persist beyond death and potentially eternally. They also show that God exists (the supreme being of light that some encounter). For me religion is the practises by which we are able to access God and the way of living that insures the good health of our souls. My personal experience and my analysis of what NDEs and the different faiths teach us is that Jesus was exactly who he said he was and that his way is indeed the best way to look after your soul. Others would disagree.
However, religion also represents manmade structures and rituals that have nothing to do with God. The church for much of human history, due to its position in society, was an institution through which men were able to gain power and authority over others, and then abuse that power.
From the accounts we have from NDEs, from science and from the teachings with which I am familiar, I am all but certain that the Universe and life are a created illusion. It is amazing and fantastic, and I love living in that illusion and learning about it, but as NDErs report on returning…this life is not the real life. How that translates to alien life is an interesting question I have pondered.
Presumably, given that the supreme being who created everything enjoys the company of souls, and that this life may be part of the process of preparing/testing those souls for the real life, then I doubt he would restrict the creation of life forms that are able to host a soul to just one planet. In such an instance, I suspect that other intelligent life forms would have been exposed to knowledge of God though various revelations and representatives sent to them at points in their history where they were ready to receive them. These revelations and teachings may then turn into religions like ours, or maybe they are mature enough to not need the formal structure of religion, with the all the danger for abuse by psychopaths that these institutions create.
But that is just speculation. One day we will know all.
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Great answer, particularly liked the idea of other intelligences being exposed to God in their way. A common theme then for all and also kind of Copernican Principle for religion. Except, still, every lifeform esp. intelligent is truly special. It does make sense also the idea of prophets like e.g. Jesus, to have a pivotal role and a kind of spur to guide also.
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I had a powerful experience in the summer of 2009 involving a brilliant light, vibration, buzzing and being paralysed at night while lying down next to an open sliding window. I sent the details to Professor Alexander Wong of Florida Atlantic University last year who was collecting these experiences at the time. Must get back to him and see what he’s doing with these. So you’re in the company of many I’m sure!
NASA is now involved in UFO studies and will be focusing their orbiting platforms downwards, among other things, re also ground-based detection from Earth. Meeting a few days ago – 38 page Report.
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For the heck of it to complete this circle, I got a reply back from Prof. Wong a little while back who said a paper he’s writing on UFO experiencers showed there’s nothing really wrong with them (I then wrote back – just as John Mack of Harvard had concluded). Will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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I had a powerful experience in the summer of 2009 involving a brilliant light, vibration, buzzing and being paralysed at night while lying down next to an open sliding window. I sent the details to Professor Alexander Wong of Florida Atlantic University last year who was collecting these experiences at the time. Must get back to him and see what he’s doing with these. So you’re in the company of many I’m sure!
NASA is now involved in UFO studies and will be focusing their orbiting platforms downwards, among other things, re also ground-based detection from Earth. Meeting a few days ago – 38 page Report.
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Hi MAX_B, what were you referring to when you mentioned “the thing” and that it has since been buried?
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Just an object which was drawn on a slide, to explain the mathematical relationships of a new theory. It was shown briefly during a marathon theoretical physics lecture in 2020.
I say ‘just an object..’, but it was actually a moment of profound revelation for me.
It’s unlikely to mean anything to anyone on here
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Have you any details about the new book being written by Parnia, I am most interested.
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Speculating for fun: Its possible that the Fermi paradox – and why we don’t see signs of intelligence life in a unverse that should be full of it, is because alien races, once they discover the NDE, have chosen to explore other beings through the NDE itself. They may have decided to explore other alien life by controlling the death process medically. Many people describe beings of light. If they are aliens, then given that we as humans have no way to know what they look like we represent them in the mind simplistically as beings of light.
We as humans may only now have started this same process of discovery (Sam Parnia medical study of NDEs). Once NDEs are proven, perhaps scientists will explore ways to cross over without killing the body. This would be the new mode of exploration. The uncharted country. 🙂
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We do see signs of other intelligences and a technology (if that’s what it is) performing feats outperforming the best fighter jets on the planet. UAPs have been included in the last two US Gov NDAAs (2022, 2023). The news at least has been saturated with these developments over the last 5 years. Respectfully, comments like this utterly baffle me. Otherwise, yes, very interesting speculation.
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I’d hate to take this off topic and get into ufos. I made my comment as it was more NDE related then in ufos. I’m on the fence with ufos to be honest. Take David Fravor for example. Although his story is intriguing (on the Joe Rogan podcast) in the podcast he described actually hoaxing campers with the jet afterburners. It tells me he’s willing to play hoaxes specifically with ufos. So then it’s left to the radar and other other instrumentation and other eye witness accounts. I’d like to know if the images on the jet cameras are some sort of sensor artifact. I’ve also read from experts that fighter pilots can very easily make errors in observation. I’m not there on the ufo phenomena but I’m open to it.
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Cdr. Fravor testified under oath before Congress the other week with pilot Lt Ryan Graves and intelligence officer David Grusch. Fravor said what all four pilots in his squadron saw wasn’t of this Earth. Surely you saw the Hearing which frankly was history in the making. Don’t have to go off topic – you brought it up, but let’s stick with the important facts of Fravor’s statements on the Tic-Tac object.
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And there seems to be a UFO/consciousness connection. My experience above shocked me and some cases of pilot’s attempting to fire on them has led to system’s shutting down (e.g. the famous Tehran 1976 case) without disabling the pilot. As if there’s some access to the intention of the pilot. It makes sense to me that some more vastly evolved spiritually/physically entity would be an explanation. But non-corporeal beings, who knows? Again, humans have constantly reported these over history and within NDEs and much more. Why not some kind of alien too, again could make sense.
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I’m also interested in Dr. Parnia new book. I’ve read his last two books What happens when we die and Erasing Death. Both good reads. If anyone has any information on his new book, please share it
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Ben- Do you not feel that scientific progress in the subject of postmortem survival of consciousness is at an impasse? I understand, COMPLETELY, that science is (potentially) a drawn-out struggle for knowledge and that the quest for that knowledge can take centuries. Sometimes we have to grow into that knowledge as apposed to finding, I suppose. It just seems to me that the distance traveled towards finding a clearer and more complete answer to this subject matter is negligible, despite my understanding that scientific progress can take a very long time. And I’m equally aware of the fact that this is not the only area of science where progress is excruciatingly difficult.
I think the word “funding” is an inevitable part of the response to my post.
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Hi Thomas,
I think Parnia had the funding for more patients, but due to the ability to recruit surviving patients, does not have a large enough sample size.
The impasse is a result of lack of survivors. The fact is there were only 28 people interviewed only 6 of whom had an NDE, and none of whom had an OBE…after 6 years! I think that maybe given the data he has, there is perhaps a strong rationale for funding for a much larger study, and that may be why we see the adopted tone in his paper and on the website leaning towards a link between the EEG data and the reported experiences. As such, and I state in a previous comment, it is hypothesis generating and also medically very relevant , especially if it points to the brain still being viable after 1 hour of CPR. It is possible that there wouldn’t be any reperfusion injury to the tissue if there had been adequate artificial circulation due to the CPR. This is strong justification for a much larger study, but he might struggle to get the iPad facing the ceiling included in the design.
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“From the accounts we have from NDEs, from science, and from the teachings with which I am familiar, I am all but certain that the Universe and life are a created illusion. It is amazing and fantastic, and I love living in that illusion and learning about it, but as NDErs report on returning… this life is not the real life.”
I’d appreciate it if you expounded on this in terms of the science and teachings you’re familiar with. In my opinion, NDEs/OBEs don’t necessarily prove that our existence here is fake or illusionary. They simply highlight another dimension of reality.
As someone who also believes in the Messiah concept, do you think Gd would bother much with this world’s future if it were all just an “illusion”?
“I doubt he would restrict the creation of life forms that are able to host a soul to just one planet. . . . Other intelligent life forms would have been exposed to [the] knowledge of God. . . . These revelations and teachings may then turn into religions. . . or maybe they are mature enough to not need the formal structure of religion, with all the dangers of abuse by psychopaths that these institutions create.”
How exactly might they be “mature” enough not to need formal structures? What does “mature” look like (if it can be explained)?
Also, while organized religion has its pitfalls, I think there’s a strong case for it.
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As all experience is reality, you are of course right. I have no physical evidence to support my position, rather it is speculation based on what I have read from NDEs, and understand about the observed reality around us…i.e. you took the space between between electrons and protons away, the whole human race would be the size of a sugar cube. What I mean is that I feel that the physical world is illusory, but is a created environment in which the creator has placed us for a purpose…to find him. The Messiah is not coming to save the physical world, but the people in the world…and here we disagree, but he already came 😉
I am very much a believer in organised groups of worshippers who share the same understanding of their faith. I always go to one and experience teh presence of the living God in a way that is more intense than when I am on my own in prayer. Religion, with its rituals, and hierarchy, less so.
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Anyone know when Dr. Parnia new book will be released and the title of it.
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No, it was only mentioned in passing in the interview.
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I have looked all over the internet and can’t find a mention of it anywhere.
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Maybe I am grasping at straws and it’s a matter of faith after all.
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Not exactly the best news, but I’m glad he’s writing a book as it means he still thinks there’s value. Of course, we must also remember that there was a limited amount of people in the study. Ideally, it ought to be expanded to perhaps a few thousand, even tens of thousands. But until there’s a qualified “hit,” the financial interest simply isn’t there.
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https://www.tmz.com/2023/09/15/cardiac-arrest-survivor-out-of-body-experience-hospital-mary-curran-hackett/
I think Paul you posted this elsewhere. It appears book will be called Lucid Dying…
Though I imagine that could change. These things sometimes takes a while to get published anyhow.
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Looks like it’ll be a good one. Interesting new direction from Sam.
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Thanks Z, gives us a bit more detail. Again it looks like Parnia is pinning his colours firmly to the dualist mast. I suspect that while the book will be a great read, there will be no new revelations from his studies.
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I wonder when it will be published.
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I believe he is working with Mary Curran Hackett, an author, editor. At the very least theyve been in correspondence with each other. She has had several ndes/obe. If thats true, its got to be an interesting person to write on the topic. Shes already published on the topic.
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The Parnia Lab NYU Instagram page has posted a story about a study and an article from Scientific America. I don’t know if you guys already talked about it.
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Thank you, I have created a new post on this.
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-patients-who-died-but-survived-report-lucid-near-death-experiences-a-new-study-shows/
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I have created a brief post on this article. Thank you.
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