See No Evil Hear No Evil
This video was posted in the past few days and is a presentation by Sam Parnia and one of his researchers, Tara Keshavarz Shirazi.
The presentation focuses entirely on the output from the qualitative research they have done on NDEs, or REDs. I suspect this was the same dataset they used for their AWARE II paper. The presentation appeared to occur in a room in NYU to other researchers. I think some of these are NDE researchers as they seemed familiar from previous meetings. I will try to be kind, but it’s not easy.
With regard to the quality of the research, I was gobsmacked. The dataset was basically the first 43 NDEs from a set of “exceptional’ experiences from Jeff Long’s NDERF site. Given this is the “selection” criteria it is hard to take it seriously. Why?
- The NDEs from NDERF are all NDEs that have been uploaded by people self reporting their NDEs.
- Presumably the 100 exceptional NDEs were selected on the basis of their outstanding content. However, these criteria seem subjective at first glance.
- After all this time, why have only 43 been looked at? Parnia said that there would be an acceleration now?
There is absolutely nothing scientific or academic about this approach towards selection. This is no different from any of the books by NDE authors. I know why they are doing it…they do not have enough NDEs from their prospective studies, but by using NDEs off the internet as the basis for their information, they completely undermine the “scientific” credibility of the research in my opinion.
As for the research itself, they have developed the narrative arc presented in the consensus paper and AWARE II, which consists of a number of themes such as leaving the body, travelling to a destination etc. These are then broken down into a number of subcategories. I have no problem with this, and their work teases out a lot more detail about common elements of NDEs.
Parnia talks about memory circuits being wiped out during induced coma, and that experiences that patients have while they have moments of consciousness as their coma becomes less deep, meld with memories they have from their time during death. He talks about the memories collapsing into one memory and that we need to differentiate memories that occurred on the ICU ward from those that occurred while dead. Fine so far. Then he uses a specific example – when a patient has a moment of transient consciousness and tries to remove their breathing tubes, they are held down by nurses, and that the patient experiences this as a “bunch of evil people trying to attack them.”
This is how Parnia dismisses all Hellish accounts. He makes the assumption that ALL negative NDEs are the result of ICU experiences or something similar. In the consensus paper he cites a study by Cassol to support this position claiming that the phenomenology of negative NDEs is completely different from classical NDEs, which is in fact entirely the opposite of what Cassol concludes! I make much of this in my recent book…Did Jesus Die For Nothing, and discuss it in a podcast I took part in recently which will be available next week. This is extreme confirmation bias – Parnia will not see or hear evil. It exists, but he refuses to acknowledge it and dangerously is trying to exclude negative NDEs from future research.
In my view this is utterly outrageous, and I am not alone in thinking this. At a later point in the presentation he showed data from these 43 “subjects” that 90% encountered a being of loving light (this is much higher than previous percentages I have seen quoted). Parnia and another researcher toyed with the idea with making this one of the qualifying criteria for an experience to be classified as an NDE. A different attendee piped up at this point and said she would be very concerned about accidentally disqualifying what may be very important experiences by using only these positive criteria. Parnia basically ignored this objection. I am not just concerned, I am very frustrated. Parnia is trying to impose his own bias on the direction of future research, and in doing so may be missing important lessons from NDEs.
There was another point where Parnia’s approach was challenged by an attendee. Parnia was saying that people are all experiencing the same thing but are using their cultural background to interpret what they see differently. Again, this is an assumption arising from Parnia’s bias, and the other attendee used an analogy to describe his issue with this. He said that everyone in that room had been on a journey that morning to get to that room in New York, and while there were commonalities such as mode of transport etc, there were also differences such as route and what they observed. These differences weren’t just subjective differences, they were objective differences, and that by trying to impose generalities on the experiences, there was a risk of imposing your own bias as you developed a theory. The point seemed to be lost on Parnia. I will expand the analogy that the other attendee made.
Let’s say there were ten attendees and they were all new to New York. 5 took taxis, 3 drove in private cars 1 came by bus and 1 came on the subway. All took a form of transport – the necessary commonality, but their experiences were different. The ones in the taxis and private cars would have had reasonably pleasant experiences, except for the traffic, but the ones on the bus and the subway may have had less pleasant experiences. Now let’s say the one who took the subway saw a mugging. His experience of travelling in New York would have been negative and he would say New York was dangerous. From a purely objective external position, it is rational to say that New York can be dangerous, particularly if you take the subway. What Parnia is doing is to entirely discount this kind of experience. He is like a tourist brochure which says that New York is safe. Yes, it mostly is, but not always. The objective differences in these travellers’ experiences provide us with vital information about the best, or safest way to travel in New York, and that excluding them would be to exclude very important information based on a biased view that New York can only be safe.
The same applies to NDEs. Hellish NDEs exist. They have the same phenomenology as positive ones, except people do not have a positive feeling. They experience a sense of timelessness, heightened senses etc. What we learn from these experiences may be extremely valuable and Parnia is indeed trying to impose his own bias of basically “seeing no evil and hearing no evil” on the future direction of research and discussion on the topic.
Also by assuming that all NDEs are essentially the same, and that assuming the differences in reports are due to cultural interpretations, he may be missing the fact that there are differences DUE TO cultural background, or indeed other possible explanations – which I explore in great detail in my latest book. What if NDEs are SUPPOSED to be different and create confusion? That is what I explore in Did Jesus Die For Nothing?
If you enjoy this blog, you may enjoy one of my books. Click on one of the links on the front page or visit my personal website to find out more about them:
AwareofAware 
Hello Ben. Some interesting points in your post – I tend to agree with you.
Pull your finger out Dr Parnia and get back to do what you do best – Doing your own research and reporting about that.
Paul
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I do wonder as to why he is adopting this position. However, I will not air my theories in public.
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Hi Ben. Why not? You are entitled to your opinion even if others might disagree with you. I think it was Voltaire who said ‘I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’
Paul
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I hping off script but
Not exactly said by voltaire but more his general perspective
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/?amp=1
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Heheh Z. You are quite right – My bad 😉 Enjoy your weekend.
Paul
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thank you
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Well that I did not know, thank you Z for illuminating us on this famous quote. I guess attributing it directly to Voltaire makes it more weighty.
Freedom of speech is so very important.
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very much so
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Ive watched the video. I agree mire research is needed. Looking forward to listening to your podcast interview next week.
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Theres a new book coming out next year. Its called Immortal Mind by Michael Egnor. I think it comes out june 3rd 2025
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I take your point of hellish NDEs and how he may be ignoring their importance.
I agree there is a bias of ones own experience (which includes a cultural bias) and how the truth of the elements of an nde are interpreted through their past experiences.
For example we know that there is a border, a place of no return which a common element of NDEs. Given that the experiencer lacks any of the earthly senses while having an NDE he still is aware of this border. The mind has a propensity to fill in the gaps in order to make sense of his environment and so he sees a fence, a river, etc. the reality is the border of a place of no return, the river is a personal description of it.
When they started the presentation it sounded like they were going to delve into what is reality and what is interpretation and I am really interested in that.
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Have you read my latest book. I go into what reality might be, and the purpose of life…from my subjective position.
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I have one of your books on my todo list on my kindle. 🙂
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I didn’t watch the video…
The later NDE part of the experience, which occurs after the OBE (if the OBE occurs at all), seems to contain imagery that invokes (or is invoked by) strong feelings that vary from repelling, to attractive.
It’s very clear that this repelling to attractive narrative recalled by the experient, is relative to them. It’s also relative to the patients environment. And also – it seems – relative to third parties – who the experient seems to be anomalously connected to (not sure connected is the right word).
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I know that these topics are related yet etirely different: aging, immortailty and life after death. However I have been watching some videos and interviews with and about Dr. David Sinclair (for those who don’t know about him he is an Australian-American biologist and academic known for his research and controversial claims on aging and epigenetics. Sinclair is a tenured professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. (from Wikipedia)). I also came across a short 13mins clip from when he had a conversation with Lex Friedman (in case the link doesnt work, Title: Dr. David Sinclair ond Death and Immortality, posted on a small channel named Health Tips, you can find that easily on Youtube https://youtu.be/0ekop7oSD_k?si=Ul_b0mKQZEgU30Au ) and there he says some things that kept me thinking and asking questions. The instruments and deveices we have to see brain cells and data are not accurate enough also when it comes to the question of what memories are and where they are stored. So maybe the option to upload them on some device in the future might be possible? My main question here is basically: Maybe we actually CAN explain death and all these phenomena but our medical and scientific instruments are just not accurate enough and therefore we are simply missing it so after death we actually absolutly cease to exist and turn into nothingness. (Or immortality is possible through certain scientific and biological ways while at the same time there are other realms and a life after death.) Maybe our devices are simply to weak, old and bad to see what is actually going on in the brain during dying. What are your thoughts on this? And maybe phenomena like shared death experiences could also be explained biologically through better understanding epigenomes, genetic, neurons and the brain? Also in regards to consciousness and? memories, has someone looked into the ideas of Stuart Hameroff? Another thing I thought about is that NDEs are all very subjectice obviously and most are not happening in an controlled medical environment, so how can we believe that these experiences are true and not really a construct of the brain in one way or another and that a person is only seemingly dead during these experiences and not actually dead at all (whatever this means) so the brain is only constructing these memories or they are some form of hallucination? And OBEs are not the (idk which term to use here soul or consciousness) leaving the body or anything like this but the brain is just able to perceive reality in a differnt more open way, which does not exist once the brain is dead. I know I mention a lot of different things and throwing around many questions and thoughts, still I would be interested and thankful if you would tell me your thoughts about this and maybe even give me some answers.
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I meant Lex Fridman not Friedman.
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I haven’t seen the video but I’d be cautious about anything Sinclair says. He’s been accused of fraud many times and might gain benefits from describing some tools as flawed. Brain imaging is not perfect, but is not as bad as he seem to make it sound. Animal tests allow for more intrusion and reliability testing. This being said, it’s true that we don’t understand perfectly neither memory nor consciousness. No theory works perfectly and there are many contenders (check the list from the Closer to Truth host). The press and studies have a tendency to claim otherwise sometimes, but it’s a work in progress. Just the fact that consciousness and memories arise from inanimate matter is pretty amazing, when you think about it.
I’ve been through this loop of materialism VS something more a lot. I do not think materialism necessarily means the soul doesn’t exist. It also does not invalidate a lot of “paranormal” events like NDEs, death bed visions, terminal lucidity or anomalous events. Have you ever experienced one of these events before?
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The idea that perhaps OBE experiencers are somehow not beyond the threshold of death but instead that our instruments are not sensitive enough to be able to detect signs of brain activity is an interesting idea to me and one that I think about as well. It’s one I’m surely too ill equipped to answer. One argument I heard against this is that being in a condition where your brain would not show any detectable signals of consciousness would supposedly not be enough to create the sorts of vivid experiences that were described by patients. I think there have been cases where the patient was believed to have no brain activity but the patient was able to recall specific details about the surgery. Supposedly even if the patient had some remnants of brain activity, they should not be able to have the clear lucidity that they had experienced. At least that is my understanding of the situation.
One of the shortcomings of the studies with hidden targets in my opinion is that it makes the objectivity of the OBEs difficult to falsify. If there is some objective reality to people’s experiences then it really takes one hit (maybe a few others to verify) that the experiences are real. However what if the naysayers are right? What if OBEs are a hallucination of some sort or perhaps the experiencer unknowingly reconstructs the events during the surgery from some cues? It’s difficult to say that is the reason why they were not able to see the target because there’s always a possibility that perhaps they weren’t paying attention to the targets or they were not at the correct vantage point. It’s difficult to validate a miss as proof of the lack of objectivity in OBE experiences.
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Pablo, I agree. Despite the limitations of the equipment, we know what to expect on an EEG or FMRI when one has a fully conscious experience. We would also expect it to happen when we use EEG for other stuff and it does not unless there are problems with the electrodes, which usually does not concern all of the electrodes at once.
As for the targets in OBE, the following metaphor is dark, but I find it’s similar : lawyers used to try to invalidate a rape victim’s testimony because she could not remember specific stuff like the color of the curtains in the room where she was abused. This kind of “proof” is not allowed anymore because you don’t pay attention to these trivial details when you go through such experiences. Several studies (see the funny one about the gorilla playing basketball) has also shown that when we focus on something, we can miss super evident cues. This has even led some to theorize that our brain creates reality. They should try to use a target that is related to death and the afterlife rather than showing a fruit or a number on a tablet. They should devise a test to see how many people going through a stressful moment actually register such targets to see if it’s at least a bit valid.
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Thank you Paul and Pablo for letting me know your thoughts on this!
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If you are looking for more valid age reversal sources you should be looking more into SENS/LEAF. They went through a merger and have been making incredible progress if the Rejuvenation Roadmap on their site is in any indicator. We may have medically controlled aging in the near future and a more advanced form of healthcare which increases human life expectancy.
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I don’t think these 43 cases were the same dataset from AWARE II. In AWARE II there were more than 43 cases reviewed. I believe this is a new small little overview of the common qualities of REDs.
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What really makes me angry about the AWARE II paper is that it is a time limited read, 48 hours I think, then it auto-deletes. You spend $20 and don’t get to keep it. Pathetic and greedy, and also self defeating as people are less likely to read it.
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Recycling the same small sample of self-reported NDEs across multiple studies indicates that the real-world frequency of ‘spectacular’ NDEs is likely extremely low, as there is little to no new data being generated.
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I listened to the end of the video again and he does mention having a database but mostly having studied it already. It’s kind of a chicken and egg problem since people will say MD reported NDEs are anecdotes, but a rigid protocol probably reduce the number of hits a lot. It must be a frustrating field to use a strict method.
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Recycling the same small sample of self-reported NDEs across multiple studies indicates that the real-world frequency of ‘spectacular’ NDEs is likely extremely low, as there is little to no new data being generated.
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My understanding is they used the database from Jeff Long website and only selected the 43 firsts with cardiac arrest, not the spectacular ones. If it’s like IANDS, cases are added frequently. They only had time to code (qualitative research 43). I honestly don’t know why they did a video on something so preliminary though…
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Agreed. I get the feeling that Parnia is much more focused on normal medical research now after AWARE I and II didn’t get a hit. I also suspect that the COOL study hasn’t yielded anything either. He has palmed everything off to his junior researchers and just does the odd interview. Don’t blame him to be honest, it is a thankless task “Hit hunting”/
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After 25 years of research, I would have expected Sam Parnia to maintain a proper database of cases confirmed by medical professionals, rather than relying on a self-reported database. Who knows how often fictitious cases are submitted, or how frequently details about genuine cases are misreported?
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I couldn’t agree more.
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Yeah, I agree but imo he’s only testing this osteo student before starting the second phase he talked about ie looking at ICU registries. Again, what I don’t understand is why make a video about it, though it’s true that’s it’s not the kind of format and editing that would suggest a big study. Maybe it’s just to keep up with what they’re doing.
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I think it was just intended for the researchers he was communicating with. I wonder if they were potential collaborators or sponsors.
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Recycling the same small sample of self-reported NDEs across multiple studies indicates that the real-world frequency of ‘spectacular’ NDEs is likely extremely low, as there is little to no new data being generated.
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post blocked again by wordpress
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Lets step through each block of text to see what WordPress want’s to censor
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The lady sitting next to Parnia said that they used Jeff Long’s personally selected exceptional experiences on NDERF, to review the NDE.
So in answer to the question on the video, “did they cherry pick the 43 experiences?” The answer is no, they didn’t, but Jeff did!
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I posted my childhood NDE-like experience on NDERF years ago, and Jeff moved it to his OBERF site.
I’ve also seen frightening NDE’s that don’t fit Jeff’s personal bias be given a warning by Jeff, then move into a different section, and then simply disappear from NDERF (at least I can’t find them anymore).
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More recently, I’ve found evidence of what I consider to be an important experience on NDERF being edited, to remove what I thought were very important aspects of the originally posted experience. I was able to compare an experience recorded on NDERF now, with the same experience on the waybackmachine, and found the experience had been altered. Again, I found that the editing caused the experience to more closely mirror Jeff’s bias, or, the narrative he puts on these experiences.
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All we have is experience, we shouldn’t be selecting what is / is not an NDE using terribly flawed criteria.
The only part of the NDE where we can objectively measure the accuracy of the experience in some manner, is the apparently veridical OBE component. Nobody is doing that, I mean nobody… after decades.
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That is weird that you couldn’t just post a few paragraphs. No links etc. Not sure why that would be. Sorry.
I completely agree with everything you say. The whole thing is a crock.
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I can’t seem to find the original post, what did they change? As for OBEs, they seem hard to assess. I’ve seen a study stating NDE OBEs are more accurate then non-NDE OBEs but still, it will take a big hit and heavy protocol to prove it leaving no room for critics from skeptics. Ben, have you seen qualitative reports that provided evidence, though “weak” for skeptics, on OBEs?
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WordPress censors me, it accepts my post, but gets rid of it, so Ben can’t even see it, to manually approve it.
I put the original URL below ( you will have to replace SLASH and DOT). This gets a 404 on nderf, but if you paste it into the wayback machine, you can see the original post.
Larry_P’s original experience in his own words was 6968 characters long.
The new edited version keeps only 1863 characters of Larry_P’s original experience, getting rid of 5105 characters of his original story.
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Weird. I suspect the link is corrupted or has something nefarious attached to it.
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wordpress let me post everything… but not in one post
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I can’t post the URL’s to the original NDE, and current NDE post on NDERF, it’s back to blocking me again…
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this is the original NDE URL (gone off NDERF), but still on waybackmachine (sorry for the mangled way I had to do this):
www DOT nderf DOT org SLASH NDERF SLASH NDE UNDERSCORE Experiences SLASH larry_p_nde DOT htm
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and you can search for larry p 6211 NDERF on google to see the current experience.
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Of all thIve be on NDERF several times. Its informative but Im stilĺ skeptical of all those reports
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just saw this paper was published.
Haven’t read it but will try to read it over the weekend maybe. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newswise.com/articles/what-out-of-body-experiences-may-tell-us-about-the-mind-beyond-the-brain
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But…there’s more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTdYGk1ChCY
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Seems that in this video they are evaluating the Greyson Scale, highlighting the its weaknesses with an implied intent to refine it. At around the 20:08 minute mark in the presentation Dr. Parnia mentions that Dr. Greyson “will be joining us” (assuming in a future video) and a little further on states that Dr. Greyson is writing another book. It has a brief conclusion in which the potential direction of NDE research is considered, but not in any meaningful depth.
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The consensus paper created what is effectively a new scale, albeit without quantitative measures, which could be easy to add. My huge concern is that they will only include positive experiences, as they said they would in that paper. I would lose all respect for Parnia if that happened. It’s one thing flying a kite, but if he makes it a prerequisite that only positive experiences be included as NDEs/REDs, when the evidence does not support this position, then he would be going against good scientific and philosophical principles.
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I’m looking forward to Bruce Greyson working Sam Parnia
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And yet more disappointment. When is actual progress going to be made rather then just continuing to disappoint on all fronts with nothing being done?
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I just want to rest easy so I don’t have to worry about being deleted from existence. But I can’t have it if people keep pulling up the same things that make them look less credible. Aware 2 was hyped up as this major study. It turned out to be an effective waste of time.
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From my own personal understanding, which is obviously highly biased, there is only one way that you can be assured that you will not be deleted from existence…faith in Jesus Christ. Read my latest book: Did Jesus Die For Nothing (link on the front page) if you wish to understand why I believe this after examining all the evidence available.
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If Parnia wants to be credible he needs to stop overly appealing to the radical materialists and actually give compelling data.
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He doesn’t have any from his studies. The compelling data is in The Self Does Not Die.
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And it makes me wonder why he doesn’t just integrate his findings from said book into his studies. Or actually put effort into his research. Because at this point he seems like a quack on the public medium to those who waited long for Aware 2 results which is frustrating when it leaves us with no real answers. I already know that NDEs are real but the public won’t accept it until it’s publicized and what Parnia is doing is not helping those with knowledge of NDEs when it comes to the world stage except giving materialists more leverage to continue to make excuses.
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I don’t see how he is appealing to materialists. He’s been saying quite the opposite for many years.
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Read his new book Lucid Dying. Its a good read.
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Hi, Ben!
Thank you for your new book “Did Jesus die for nothing”! Will this book be translated into other languages, particularly into Russian?
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Hi Karina, I would love to have my books translated into other languages, and even to be able to do an audiobook, but I need to sell more copies to afford such luxuries. It is selling steadily, but I am nowhere near the point where I have recouped the costs for getting the Englishish version produced yet.
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I enjoyed reading your book Ben
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Really glad to hear it. Please put a review on Amazon if you haven’t already, I need as many as I can get!
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I already have
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Ah yes, thank you!
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I agree with the general sentiment here. I’m kind of skeptical of Jeffrey Long’s work. I appreciate his effort but it’s too easy to punch holes in his data. I think he said he removed some of the more questionable experiences but that sounds kind of arbitrary and error prone. How can you determine which stories are hoaxes and which are real and which ones are some other phenomenon being mistaken for NDEs?
I’m currently reading the Embodied mind by Thomas Verny. This book came to my attention based on the article he wrote (I posted it in the Fenwick thread I think). Thomas Verny seems to have strong credentials in the medical community and he seemed to be open to the less orthodox interpretations of OBEs which made me interested in the book. The book doesn’t deal with OBEs specifically though I think he mentions them briefly at the end of the book, though I haven’t gotten there yet. So far the book talked about epigenetics and also also questions some of the long held assumptions about the mind, e.g. how the mind and memories are formed. I’ll probably give a more thorough update when I finish reading. At the very least I’ll probably summarize the OBE material.
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Thanks Pablo, that would be greatly appreciated.
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Thought this response from Luis on Quora was interesting. It is the Internet so it’s a take it with a grain of salt situation. Would be interesting to be able to track down the doctor and interview him. I believe Dr Yerington first posted his experience on quora as well.
https://www.quora.com/Do-any-doctors-or-scientists-believe-reported-incidents-of-near-death-experiences-or-is-it-a-more-common-belief-that-the-typical-NDE-is-caused-by-a-dying-brain-releasing-small-amounts-of-DMT-resulting-in-a-common
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I think every doctor who has worked in an ER for a reasonable period has their story. I spoke to one recently who told me one, but it wasn’t an OBE, just a guy reporting an NDE.
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Ben,
I think Sam referring to hellish NDE which phenomenology is not aligned with classical “positive”. It us not new and not even the main point here as I see it, he is just referring that collapsing it all in one blob of memory creates those standing out experiences that are not actually related to NDE and rather represent lots of other things.
If listen carefully to Bruce Greyson he says the same but in different words – there are “hellish” NDE that are truly NDE but individuals perceptions of it were frightening and scary – underneath though real NDE. Perception is hellish. They saw it through those lenses. And reported as one.
Another deal is total hellish fantasize that is different by many measures. And are not NDE or could have NDE deep down but on top of it have all those layers of actual sensations and experiences of different levels of coma.
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