Media Manipulation – The Guardian
I am in the process of writing my piece on Psychedelics, but today the Guardian followed up its recent interview with Sam Parnia, with this, and I decided it was worth addressing since your friends and family may bring it up (my mother has already!). The Psychedelics article is coming…promise!
This article starts out with a fairly balanced account of how the field of NDE research evolved. It lulls you into a false sense of security that the balance will continue, but whenever you read the name Borjigin referred to in terms of progress in understanding, then you know that balance is likely to evaporate very quickly.
My previous post relates to the kind of work that Borjigin does, and the data that she has produced. In summary, and for the umpteenth time, Borjigin and others have shown that in rats brains activity can persist for maybe up to a minute after death without CPR. The studies in human coma patients have shown that immediately prior to death, and immediately after life support is withdrawn, coma patients have a number of minutes in which the brain produces EEG data that might be associated with consciousness. Moreover, Parnia’s own data has shown that the brain is capable of producing activity that might be associated with consciousness up to an hour after CA but while CPR is being administered and therefore while there is still oxygenated blood flow to the brain. I have explained ad nauseum here why this data, while interesting, says absolutely nothing at all about NDEs since no NDE has to date been reported that could even be associated with, let alone correlated with EEG activity. Nothing. Using the coma patients is particularly egregious since the patients had no reported EEG activity after death.
However, because of the profile of the Guardian, and the bias that emerges towards the end of this article, it is my duty to provide a reminder to people on here that to draw the conclusion that this EEG activity is the cause of NDEs is a gross conflation. The author also makes false assumptions:
As more and more people were resuscitated, scientists learned that, even in its acute final stages, death is not a point, but a process. After cardiac arrest, blood and oxygen stop circulating through the body, cells begin to break down, and normal electrical activity in the brain gets disrupted. But the organs don’t fail irreversibly right away, and the brain doesn’t necessarily cease functioning altogether.
Yes it does. Without the flow of oxygenated blood, the brain stops functioning after about 30 seconds. The journalist has misunderstood the findings of the studies, or is deliberately misrepresenting the findings of the studies. This is the kind of understanding that is picked up by the reader who goes on to parrot or paraphrase that “the brain can work for hours after death”. As we on here know, it is capable of working hours after death provided that cellular death has not occurred on too large a scale, but without the flow of oxygenated blood, it does not work. Just like a computer without power. I suspect that this misunderstanding was helped by Borjigin who we well know can be misleading in the use of language:
At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death. “The brain, contrary to everybody’s belief, is actually super active during cardiac arrest,” Borjigin said. Death may be far more alive than we ever thought possible.
The implication is that the brain is active in CA for long periods without CPR. There is zero evidence to support this and decades of data to contradict it. WITHOUT THE SUPPLY OF OXYGENATED BLOOD THE BRAIN BECOMES COMPLETELY INACTIVE WITHIN A MINUTE OF DEATH AT MOST (and usually within 20-30 seconds).
Unfortunately once such a fundamental false understanding is assumed to be fact, then you know that the article can only go one way…and it does.
“So far, there is no sufficiently rigorous, convincing empirical evidence that people can observe their surroundings during a near-death experience,” Charlotte Martial, the University of Liège neuroscientist, told me. The parapsychologists tend to push back by arguing that even if each of the cases of veridical near-death experiences leaves room for scientific doubt, surely the accumulation of dozens of these reports must count for something. But that argument can be turned on its head: if there are so many genuine instances of consciousness surviving death, then why should it have so far proven impossible to catch one empirically?
Definition of empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
Using this definition then the 130 odd cases in the The Self Does Not Die is empirical evidence. What he really means is scientifically verified cases, i.e. cases that have been proven using the scientific method. Create hypothesis to explain a phenomenon – devise experiment to test hypothesis – results from experiment verify or falsify hypothesis. The ‘journalist’ does not explore the possible reasons why there have to date been no scientifically verified OBEs, but I have explained many times on here why the AWARE studies have not provided a scientifically validated OBE. This shows his bias, in that he will only come up with materialist objections.
This is super interesting though:
Borjigin hopes that understanding the neurophysiology of death can help us to reverse it. She already has brain activity data from dozens of deceased patients that she is waiting to analyse. But because of the paranormal stigma associated with near-death studies, she says, few research agencies want to grant her funding. “Consciousness is almost a dirty word amongst funders,” she added. “Hardcore scientists think research into it should belong to maybe theology, philosophy, but not in hardcore science. Other people ask, ‘What’s the use? The patients are gonna die anyway, so why study that process? There’s nothing you can do about it.’”
This is proof, as if we needed it, that the scientific community, or the funding establishment, is overtly suppressing research into this most important of fields – even when the research might support a materialistic finding! Parnia has alluded to this before. It stinks, but there is nothing we can do about it.
Towards the end we see the author’s bias against anyone who entertains belief in the possibility that these experiences might be real and evidence of the understanding that the consciousness persists after physical death. This is overt gaslighting of anyone who might be “NDE curious”:
Meanwhile, in parts of the culture where enthusiasm is reserved not for scientific discovery in this world, but for absolution or benediction in the next, the spiritualists, along with sundry other kooks and grifters, are busily peddling their tales of the afterlife. Forget the proverbial tunnel of light: in America in particular, a pipeline of money has been discovered from death’s door, through Christian media, to the New York Times bestseller list and thence to the fawning, gullible armchairs of the nation’s daytime talk shows. First stop, paradise; next stop, Dr Oz.
Now, while I say it is gaslighting, I have a little sympathy for this position. Having spent a number of months going through YouTube NDE accounts, and reviewing the literature of “post tunnel events”, my position on NDEs has subtly changed. OBEs are objective, but what happens once people venture beyond the observations they make of this world, while having some common core themes, are so utterly different and unique, that I am coming to some conclusions about them that differ from the mainstream NDE community position. This will be presented in my next non-fiction book which I will publish later this year (after Part 1 of my fiction book is complete). However, this section of the article is 100% gaslighting and is deliberately attempting to manipulate those who may be “NDE-curious” into scuttling back into their materialist pens lest they be regarded as kooks or gullible. Nasty.
So if someone brings this article up and says “I read an article that says there is proof the brain is active for long times after CA and that is causing NDEs” hopefully you will now be suitably equipped to put them straight. If not then review the countless posts I have created responding to these claims before.
AwareofAware 
Good observation Ben, thanks very much…!!!!.There is EEG data from that 77 year old patient…Where does it appear?
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Thank you for coming up with a new blog. Many of us check for new information on this blog almost daily.
I appreciate your understanding of the subject. The coverage here about the subject is almost comprehensive.
I tried buying coffee for you so many times but got stuck somehow in the middle. Will keep trying.
please continue with your good work….coffee or no coffee!!
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Hi Kumar,
Now I feel super guilty for being so slack! I have had lots of distractions of late, including focusing more on my books, which has meant I have not been so active here. Also I had a Lumbar puncture 10 days ago which has left me with some lingering side effects that mean I need to lie down a lot. I try not to waste that time though, and today while lying down I watched Sam Parnia’s Nour foundation interview which is his best interview yet. I will be creating a post on that soon.
If you can’t buy me a coffee, then please buy a copy of my book on Kindle and if you like it please leave a 5 star review (4 stars is considered average, and less than that is bad).
Thanks for your encouragement though.
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If you recall, I mentioned to you the Sam Parnia interview on the Nour Foundation’s YouTube channel a few weeks ago and I used (almost) verbatim the same words you used here to describe it. It really is his best interview to date. As for brain activity during CA, I’m glad you addressed this issue in this post, because I detect a range of nuanced to blatant contradictory language in articles and discussions regarding this subject matter. Here’s my bafflement, Ben, and I’m going to use what you wrote to best express my misunderstandings.
You wrote:
Without the flow of oxygenated blood, the brain stops functioning after about 30 seconds.
Later, in that same paragraph, you continued…
As we on here know, it is capable of working hours after death provided that cellular death has not occurred on too large a scale, but without the flow of oxygenated blood, it does not work.
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If you recall, I mentioned to you the Sam Parnia interview on the Nour Foundation’s YouTube channel a few weeks ago and I used (almost) verbatim the same words you used here to describe it. It really is his best interview to date. As for brain activity during CA, I’m glad you addressed this issue in this post, because I detect a range of nuanced to blatant contradictory language in articles and discussions regarding this subject matter. Here’s my bafflement, Ben, and I’m going to use what you wrote to best express my misunderstandings.
You wrote:
Without the flow of oxygenated blood, the brain stops functioning after about 30 seconds.
Later, in that same paragraph, you continued…
As we on here know, it is capable of working hours after death provided that cellular death has not occurred on too large a scale, but without the flow of oxygenated blood, it does not work.
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Ben- I’m not sure what happened, but my comments posted prematurely and twice! My apologies. Basically, if you could clarify how the brain works hours after death – provided mass cell death hasn’t occurred but still not oxygenated, and on the other hand stops functioning after 30 seconds or so during CA.
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The brain ABLE to work hours after death, but without oxygenated blood does not work. A laptop is able to work when there is no power supply, but without the power it does not work. Is that clear.
I will put another post up later that goes into the coma patients data in more detail, but basically the Guardian article is completely false in some of its assertions..
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thanks for posting this. knowing my luck i’d have stumbled over this not well prepared. i wonder why funders are so against the idea of there being life after death.
wouldn’t it beneficial to their extravagant lifestyle? they could only benefit from such informations.
anyways… to me it seems we are about to go back into “ice age” when it comes to the exploration of conciousness because grown men and women supposed to represent science are having actual toddler fits. there is no neutral ground or curiosity. it’s all about money and fame.
and whats even more gross is that non scientist people only caring about their business have a say in this too. people that either don’t care or cling to their materialist views and only pay those hopefully confirming their ideas and using their money to suppress any research that could prove the opposite.
but of us people they demand to be more “accepting” and “grown up” towards materialism. easy said for someone who can “decide” whats about to be researched and what isn’t with $$$.
apologies. i’m a bit upset.
PS: what are the names of these youtube NDE channels you are watching?
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There is a battle raging that is both seen and unseen. On the surface we see this manifest in the dominance of materialist ideologies such as socialism, capitalism, scientism etc. Under the surface there are, I believe other forces at work and all we can do is make the right choices. That is our purpose.
As for NDE channels, there are lots, and I have come to the conclusion that trying to make sense of what happens after “the tunnel” is like trying to make sense of a box of frogs. There is consistency on a number of the core elements like the life review, meeting dead relatives, the nature of the Being of Light, but when it comes to what people come back with in terms of their interpretation of things such as which if any religions are right, all consistency evaporates. It’s like we aren’t supposed to know for sure what the answer is through these people. Also there are a lot of crazies who I am pretty sure just make stuff up for attention or to sell a book.
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Hey there, I wanted to share something that might not seem directly related at first. Having spent time in several countries in the Far East, which I won’t name explicitly, some of these places have been in the recent news headlines. However, due to my background, I’ve developed skepticism towards mainstream media outlets like BBC, CNN, DW, and others. This skepticism stems from my firsthand experiences witnessing intentional misreporting of events, which often perpetuates biased narratives about certain countries and events, all to serve particular political agendas. These aren’t merely conspiracy theories; these manipulative techniques were widely recognized by the public even before the 1990s. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a noticeable lack of accountability in the establishment. It seems that without the need to construct a narrative to counter the “other side,” there’s less pressure to ensure accuracy and fairness in reporting.
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Don’t get me started! I stopped watching the BBC News a long time ago. It is extremely biased against Christians for example, and once you see bias on one topic, you realise it infects just about every aspect of their reporting or content production. These organisations will always promote materialist ideologies and memes. They openly hate Christians and Jews, and patronise believing Muslims. I keep politics out of this blog and will continue to do so, but the Guardian and BBC are two heads of the same atheist monster. We are on the same page. Enough said.
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If there are so many genuine instances of consciousness surviving death, then why should it have so far proven impossible to catch one empirically?
As far as I know, Penny Sartori is the only one who conducted research involving two individuals experiencing an out-of-body experience (OBE) in a position where they could observe a hidden sign.I’m not sure if this is the only time it has been tested. But as Sam Parnia has said in the past, it has not been tested enough.
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Currently researchers either use hidden secret visual targets that nobody can see, or other researchers don’t bother using visual targets anyway.
The former groups of researchers make one assumption, the latter group make another assumption.
If the visual targets can’t be seen, or visual targets ain’t used. Experients are never going to recall them.
Penny deliberately chose to use hidden and secret visual targets in her study, because she wanted to rule out any telepathic-like mechanism. Blanke doesn’t even bother using visual targets during his induced OBE studies.
Not that any of this matters, because..
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“We are all trapped within the result…”
I understand where you are coming from. The more we learn about all this, the easier it is to fall into an understanding that we are in one giant “simulation” or “consciousness” and regard the truth as being something along the lines of philosophical idealism. I think this is a dangerous and negative path of thinking to take, and we need to be careful to avoid it.
Many religions give us a revelation that points to there being some truth in this understanding…we were created. As created/imagined things it may seem to take the unique independence we thought we had, away. Our lives are not our own, we are just here for entertainment.
If that is the line of thinking that you are travelling down when you say we are trapped, which is a negative word, then I would like to encourage you to look at things differently as I have had to learn to do.
Yes, it is true that our lives are the result of some other being’s will. Our existence seems to be a series of events that this being, or beings get to observe. At the end of it we go back to this being, who I call God. Then you start to delve deeper and wonder if we are all just God, and that this a distraction from boredom. It is possible, but we have been given an analogue to help us understand this situation that may be a fundamental truth about our existence. This analogue is the process of human reproduction (or all reproduction).
Through the will of 2 human beings (or lust) a new human is bought into existence. Without that happening, that being would not exist, and yet that being is independent. This is the same about our existence, the ultimate purpose of which I suspect is to please God, but with one huge caveat. We have been given choice. That I believe is what this life is about, and to an extent what is revealed in NDEs. We are here to choose how we behave, and ultimately choose God and his ways.
More and more I am thinking about the line beyond which you cannot go in NDEs. There, as you point out, all will be revealed and here is the thing.from everything we have learned about God or the source from NDEs, we know that he is good beyond imagination, and that the experience people have of him is amazing. That too is my experience in my walk as a Christian.
Ultimately, while I have entertained some of the existential concerns and questions you may have, I have decided that this source, this God can be trusted and that our existence is not meaningless, and will have a great outcome.
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Maybe go back and read this blog from beginning to end:)
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“Yes, it is true that our life is the result of the will of another being” of three beings… 🙂
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I wrote a long reply, and it hasn’t shown up. So I just give up.
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Hi Ian, I need to approve first posts, but I still can’t see your long reply.
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OK, I’ll try again, but this time without any links or formatting and see if it posts.
I wrote an answer to this before in my kindle notes for a book called “the soul fallacy” that I reproduced on a blog. I’ll paste below.
The author of “the soul fallacy” says:
//”If you want to determine whether people’s souls really leave their bodies during an NDE, one way to find out is to place laptop computers or pictures in locations that only a floating soul could reach, like the top of a closet. When the soul reenters the body, patients should in principle be able to describe what their souls “saw” while floating about in the room. Of the five studies that Holden believes were conducted with the proper controls, she concludes that not a single one of them has been able to demonstrate extraordinary perception of the soul-floating-in-the-room type”//.
I said in my kindle notes:
To imagine people are likely to see these pictures and other signs displays a ignorance and a naivety about how perception actually works. We do not just passively perceive what is out there. Our attention is very selective, indeed to such an extent that we may even fail to see what’s there right in front of our eyes and in the centre of our vision. This short video illustrates this nicely. On first viewing this, I for one failed to see the gorilla!
Now, imagine if you’re on the threshold of death. Imagine you find yourself floating above your body. Maybe people saying that you’ve gone and nothing can be done to resuscitate you. Imagine your emotions, the profound shock, the horror, the disbelief. Would you really notice, take in, some picture on top of a closet? If many of us fail to see the gorilla when we are relaxed and in front of our monitors, think how vastly less likely we would notice things that are not involved with our apparent dead body below us.
Anyway, of course, after a while the NDEr might accept his situation and start exploring around. Then there is a chance of seeing pictures or other signs. But longer NDEs will be comparably less frequent than short NDEs. Also, people don’t just float around in the Earthly environment forevermore, they ascend and enter into some other reality.
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brilliant, excellent, thanks.
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I guess some people are miffed because some people that had an NDE will describe you minor details of the room (color of shoe laces, a boot outside a window) and then are unable to fixate on hidden images on top of closets.
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Thanks for posting this Ben – I saw the article via Reddit and found it very disappointing.
The information in the article itself is interesting, the studies in coma patient’s brains is interesting, but unfortunately the author felt the need to add their biases in, which tainted the article as a whole.
An example of this is the author questioning the validity of veridical NDE’s as evidence, but said the below quote about Borjigin’s two out of four cases from ONE study, where the activity all occured before the heart flatlined:
‘At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death.‘
Two case’s out of four do not tell us this, especially when neither patient had experienced clinical death when the brain activity took place (I believe, correct me if I’m wrong here).
The other thing that stood out to me, more positively, is that Sam Parnia said this:
I think in 50 or 100 years time we will have discovered the entity that is consciousness,” he told me. “It will be taken for granted that it wasn’t produced by the brain, and it doesn’t die when you die.”
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Indeed, the article was extremely misleading, and in places outright false on fundamental points. Very frustrating.
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Good evening here in Brazil, Ben.
If you don’t mind, of course (I’ll perfectly understand if it’s not allowed as it deviates from the main topic, but I see this subject as a potential secondary evidence regarding extra-physical phenomena), I’d like to know if you’re familiar with the research conducted in the USA on the deceased psychic from Trinidad and Tobago, Sean Harribance, regarding the phenomenon of Extra Sensory Perception. Personally, I believe in the reality of this phenomenon due to the thousands of positive tests conducted on Sean by qualified researchers for over 50 years, significantly surpassing the chance line in probabilistic terms. Even a skeptical neurologist named Michael Persinger validated the phenomenon as real in 2002, attributing its physical origin specifically to electromagnetism (this materialistic theory had already been widely challenged in the 1970s by Stephan Schwartz, who demonstrated significant limitations in Persinger’s studies). In my view, this provides fundamental evidence that at least something non-material is at play within us.
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I have no doubt that something non-material is at play in us. I personally steer clear of the world of psychics etc due to my christian belief. My Aunt was a medium, and an extremely accurate one, so I do believe in this stuff, I just have issues with the spiritual sources of this and prefer to avoid meddling in things that may lead to a negative outcome. There are dark spiritual forces as well as good ones.
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Discussing the lack of funding to prove the NDE phenomenon as extrasensory, I suspect the main obstacle is the fear of confronting the extrasensory itself. I personally acknowledge this truth, though my logical understanding of how it occurs is limited. In our logic, we only recognize a single fundamental and primordial energy, the one that can be measured and traced. However, imagining the discovery of an energy distinct from material in Parnia’s studies would challenge this logic. It would be logical to conclude that there are at least two primary energies, which completely escapes our understanding. I deeply question how this is possible, although I acknowledge and do not doubt the existence of the extrasensory.
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Didn’t physicists hijack the word “energy” and assign their own meaning to it? I think this physicist’s energy no more exists than centrifugal force (I do have radical views on the philosophy of science).
I think it just leads to confusion when talking about non-physical energy or spiritual energy or whatever, since this has absolutely nothing in common with this new modern conception of energy. Why not just talk about non-physical selves or souls? Difficult to discover them though, since non-physical by definition means non-measureable. Indeed, we can’t even detect normal embodied consciousness, least of all disembodied consciousness. So we can only have indirect evidence for such a disembodied consciousness.
I don’t struggle at all to see how such a non-physical self is possible. Science completely leaves out the existence of consciousness in its description of reality. We require a scientific revolution to assimilate consciousness into our scientific world picture. Once we have done so then it is quite possible that this new world pciture will entail that selves are both fundamental and can exist separate from one’s body.
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The Guardian article affirms as a novel learning of scientists the trite expression that death is not a moment or a point, but a process, which has been proclaimed to the four winds as if it were a great discovery by Sam Parnia …But for me it is a truism…This expression is misinterpreted as “the extinction of the being is not a moment, but a process”…But, in reality, it is almost obvious to say that medicine deals only with the body …And that the death of the body is a process is not a great discovery…When someone dies, the body decomposes little by little, gradually, until it rots and disintegrates completely. Nobody died and, “ipso facto”, automatically, their body magically disappeared from our sight… In all this the main point is consciousness, and this, when clinical death occurs, increases and improves.
None of these terminal patients referred to regained consciousness of the hospital environment…so Borjgin’s expression that “in death the brain is very alive seems a superlative exaggeration.”
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And they weren’t dead. Every one of them still beating hearts when the EEG was active. The EEG activity stopped before the heart completely gave up in all of them/
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https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2216268120
This the paper itself that is the source of the articles discussion. I find it best to go to the primary text itself.
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Thanks Z. I had actually been looking at that this morning again, and will put a quick post up since it shows that there was still heartbeat through all the periods of EEG activity.
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I agree that the article is misleading
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Pingback: When does misleading become lying? | AwareofAware
“This is proof, as if we needed it, that the scientific community, or funding institution, is openly suppressing research in this very important field – even when the research could support a materialistic discovery!” Precisely because they don’t know where to end up they play even dirtier… one of the interviews with Dr Pim Van Lommel gives a good idea of what interests the existence of an immaterial conscience would affect… in fact the process is already underway … ask yourself the appropriate questions and you will get all your answers. Neuroscience, for example, risks finding itself on the same level as spleen specialists…
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The book The Self Does Not Die is very important.
Applying common sense to NDE research.
Rejecting anecdotal evidence?
It is true that most evidence for veridical perceptions during the OBE portion of an NDE is anecdotal.
But, for skeptics this evidence simply does not exist. Never mind that anecdotes number in the hundreds: “The plural of anecdotes is not data,” they say. As thinkers and scholars have pointed out, not taking anecdotal information into account when trying to construct a picture of reality is a major intellectual and methodological mistake. Anecdotes (the stories people tell) are the basis of our legal system, for example. Imagine what court proceedings would be like if we automatically ignored witness testimony in court. Imagine what a GP’s job would be like if he or she had to automatically classify as “inaccurate, unreliable, faulty” anything a patient says during a consultation. And the fact that I had coffee in the kitchen this morning with my wife and one of our two cats has not appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Nevertheless, it is a fact.
Piero Calvi-Parisetti
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Very true Piero
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Had to delete your cut and paste of the entire blog post from somewhere else. Just the link please. Thanks Paul.
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I understand. Type in headtruth.blogspot.com. The article is titled the guardians misleading story on near death experences. It should come up
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I don’t know if it has the same effect on you, but listening to these people with their profoundly serious stories (based on first-hand experiences) and then reading articles like the one in the newspaper “the guardian” is like comparing the encyclopedia Treccani, https://www.treccani.it/, (experiences like this of Peter Nadas) and the weekly “Mickey Mouse” (the guardian)…. Einstein was right when he said that man would regress, the facts very often prove him right. Soon, at this point, other “news” on NDEs will arrive from the DailyPlanet…
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The most frustrating part of that last quote about grifters is that’s it’s not even wrong. There are people who make a buck off NDEs or use them to push some kinda message they’re personally interested in. But not being able to tell the difference between those people and everyone else who is just genuinely enthused about the topic just shows where a person’s headspace is.
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