This is a recently released French NDE documentary that I really enjoyed. It is quite long, so you might want to break it into 2 sessions, but well worth watching as it covers the subject thoroughly with some fresh thinking, various interviews with well known researchers from both sides and some intriguing new cases I had not come across before and were quite recent. (Click on the image to see the YouTube trailer)
Overall while the skeptics were given a lot of airtime, the framing was very balanced and up to date. Of note was a recent interview with Charlotte Martial who gave more details about her study and position. Key points for me:
Some of the cases were new to me: There were a number of good examples in the video that I hadn’t come across before, which made it very interesting.
The focus on cases of people seeing things outside the room stood out: I found these especially compelling, particularly the one about the man in Iran (I think he was an Imman). This was a good angle for the film maker to take as the usual lazy explanation skeptics provide of the patient being semi conscious when they claim to observe things in the ER cannot possibly apply. It forces the skeptic to claim that the subject is being dishonest somehow.
The sceptical pushback felt frustrating: What annoyed me was that the sceptics were allowed to argue against each case one by one, instead of having to deal with the cumulative evidence of hundreds, if not thousands of cases saying the same thing.
The elucidation of Charlotte Marshall’s new study methodology was valuable: This is where I first learned about the method she is now using of filming the emergency room during the study to either confirm, or otherwise, claims made by patients during periods of unconsciousness. This may overcome the issue with objects on shelves or images on screens not being observed. It reverses the evidence process from the patient needing to confirm a specific item of a scene, to the video confirming observations unpredictable observations of the room. This is much more likely to provide scientific evidence if any of the patients in the study have an OBE.
The thorough examination of the difference in quality of recall between people who say they’ve had out-of-body experiences when they weren’t actually near death vs those who were near death provides strong support to the validity of NDEs. NDEs are unique and can’t be reproduced using other techniques.
As always the burden of proof is backwards: It’s annoying that people act as though near-death experiences or dualism have to be proven in order to challenge the current scientific view. For millennia dualism was the established consensus, and science has not provided any evidence at all to change that, and yet the physicalist assumptions of science are now regarded as the established paradigm requiring scientific evidence to challenge it. This is methodological materialism and it is biased. I understand why, and the value of this approach, but it creates a false understanding in the minds of the wider population.
The point about the sheer number of cases mattered: The video does make this point near the end, but I think it needed to be aimed more directly at the sceptics in the interviews.
Interesting new study idea. The filmmaker is involved in establishing a study called the ROSETTA study that seeks to validate observation from OBEs that occur in visitor waiting rooms. The rationale is that people are drawn to their loved ones when they first separate from their bodies and often report witnessing conversations or events etc that occur in waiting rooms. I have some doubts about the protocol, but at the same time support any research that seeks to understand and characterize this phenomenon better. I wish them luck.
On balance the film provided further support to the understanding that NDEs do not have a natural explanation. Definitely worth putting some time aside (and a bit of cash) to watch this even though it is in French (if you’re French, that will be a bonus, but most who come here are English speaking). It is available with subtitles or dubbed on Apple TV and Amazon.
(Disclaimer: I was given a free advanced viewing of the documentary by the filmmaker but this did not in anyway influence my review.)
I read this in an article today and felt sympathy for the judge after my own recent experience of writing on this blog:
“What the judgment effectively said is that feelings are not facts; there is only ever one version of the truth – the one that can be proved, with evidence.”
This related to the court case in which Prince Harry, a somewhat emotional chap, and a bunch of other celebs tried to sue the Daily Mail for illegally obtaining information about them. The facts did not support their claim, and the judge threw it out. Virtually all the facts were human testimony. The volume and credibility of this human testimony made them facts in the eyes of the judge. This kind of evidence is empirical evidence. Post modern relativism likes to promote the idea of “lived truth” but in the end there is only one truth, ever, even when insufficient facts are available to prove it, that truth still exists but we just don’t know it is true for sure. Truth vs false is binary…always.
It got me thinking about the reaction to recent posts that I have created here, and I think feelings have clouded people’s view of what I am doing. I am seeking truth on this subject, nothing else. I have beliefs based on evidence, but if the evidence points without doubt to a truth that is different from what I believe, then my beliefs will crumble. So far in my life the evidence has pointed mostly one way – but enough of my beliefs.
Historically this blog has focused very much on factual evidence. As an important reminder, here is the sum of factual evidence regarding the 2 competing hypotheses that attempt explain NDEs – the “Dualism” hypothesis that NDEs are the result of the consciousness or soul separating from the physical body when the heart stops beating and the brain stops functioning; and the “Physicalism” hypothesis – that the brain generates the experience.
After 50 years of research these are the facts about the evidence:
1. Evidence supporting Dualism:
There is significant, if not overwhelming empirical evidence to support the hypothesis.
This evidence is comprised almost exclusively of reports by experiencers that they were able to observe events or objects that it would have been impossible to observe given the state of clinical death or post CA unconsciousness that they were in. Many of these people were reliable witnesses, otherwise ordinary citizens from all walks of life.
There are many hundreds of these reports that have been verified by Healthcare professionals, including field leading physicians, who had nothing to gain, and sometimes much to lose, by publicly supporting these claims. Over 120 of these have been rigorously researched and documented in the excellent book by Titus Rivas, The Self Does Not Die.
2 of these verified OBEs occurred in prospective research studies that were published in peer reviewed journals and therefore were subject to scrutiny from scientists.
2. Evidence against the Dualistic hypothesis:
None. There is no evidence that directly challenges this explanation. There have been some attempts to debunk a few of the more famous reports, but by and large these attempts were themselves debunked.
The sum of the factual evidence supporting the dualist hypothesis is significant. To say otherwise requires believing that hundreds of highly intelligent, generally sceptical and deeply ethical healthcare professionals were either duped by very sick patients or were lying.
3. Evidence for the physicalist hypothesis:
Reports of brain activity in rats for up to 30 seconds into CA;
reports of brain activity in suffocating coma patients but not during CA;
reports of brain activity in patients who are in CA but undergoing CPR in AWARE II, but these patients did not report NDEs (2 who had EEG activity were interviewed but had no recollections)
And most recently it appears that Fritz and Martial have collected EEG data consistent with conscious activity from patients undergoing CPR who reported NDEs. A publication is expected in the coming weeks or months that will provide more detail.
Disruption of normal brain activity through various means e.g. psychedelic drugs, epilepsy, meditation techniques etc – produce experiences that measure greater than 7 on the Greyson scale and thereby might be regarded as analogous to NDEs and demonstrate the theoretical possibility that NDEs are induced by brain activity.
4. Evidence against the physicalist hypothesis
If you disregard the evidence for dualism, then you can argue there is no evidence against the physicalist hypothesis.
On first viewing you have 2 hypotheses that both have evidence supporting them with little to no evidence against them. However when it comes to weight of evidence there is a very significant difference, and this relates to the specificity of the evidence.
When it comes to OBEs, the primary objectively measurable piece of evidence supporting dualism, there is no possible alternative explanation for a verified OBE other than that the consciousness was able to observe itself from outside the body (this is supported by cases in which the attending physicians specifically stated that patients eyes were closed the whole time – or even taped closed, or that there was no heartbeat at the time of the reported observation as in AWARE I). This, combined with the sheer number of high quality verified accounts makes this evidence overwhelming in nature.
What about the physicalist evidence. It is all circumstantial and suffers from the fundamental scientific principle that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. While it is plausible to say that this EEG activity may be causing the NDEs, it is equally plausible to say that the EEG activity is caused by the NDEs...namely the disinhibition theory of Parnia’s. More likely it is caused by sufficient oxygenated blood from CPR causing the brain to start “rebooting” (the 2 cases from AWARE II support this explanation). NDEs and EEG activity may sometimes be associated when CPR is applied, but causality is not elucidated by this data. Moreover, what about NDEs that occur outside of a hospital before CPR is applied?
As for the analogous experiences, while Martial claims to show significant similarity between drug induced NDEs (or other “natural” causes) other researchers, including Parnia, Greyson and Van Lommel have all shown that these experiences are very different. Furthermore, while there are reports of OBE-like experiences, these are actually just visual distortions and there have been no validated OBEs from these experiences, supporting the idea that these particular experiences are indeed merely the result of disrupted brain activity.
In summary it is factually true to say that you have very strong empirical evidence supporting dualism, with no evidence against it, and weak circumstantial evidence supporting physicalism, also with no evidence against it.
It is also factually correct to state that for millennia human beings believed in some form of dualism. This is not strong evidence, but it is no less strong than the assertion by scientists that there is always a natural explanation for every observation. Both are beliefs based on worldview and lead to bias when interpreting results (I try my hardest to suppress this bias, but it is almost impossible).
As far as my bias allows me to see, the facts of the matter are that an objective analysis of evidence points to the sum of evidence strongly favouring the dualistic explanation.
So far so good…and most who come here accept this statement. There is no real emotion at play here. Feelings are not especially disturbed by this, unless you are a fanatical physicalist who is so wedded to their ideological position that it is a fundamental affront to their core identity.
Where feelings have become inflamed is when I have discussed the implications of the above truth…namely what come out of the understanding that because the evidence supports NDEs being real, by implication, the subjective elements of NDEs must therefore also be regarded as authentic accounts of what people experienced, and to an extent “real”, especially when these people describe these experiences as feeling more real than our existence here. This inevitably leads us into philosophical or religious territory especially when despite retaining certain core elements, the subjective accounts differ in so many ways. I would argue that again I am only discussing empirical evidence or facts but even the discussion of this has caused a significant amount of negative mail in my inbox, including one person suggesting that I had somehow lost the plot! I can assure everyone here that my beliefs and interpretation of the implications of NDEs has barely changed at all since starting this blog. Yes, my understanding has evolved, especially on simulation theory, but the central beliefs haven’t. That aside, as a result of the negative response, I have tried to separate the purely objective discussions around emerging NDE research, from the subjective interpretation of that.
But is that the right thing to do?
Let’s analyze the recent topic that has caused the latest tranche of negative mail…the subjects of Hellish NDEs and simulation theory. Despite what people may “feel”, in all of this I have been discussing facts (reports of experiences are facts) and trying to understand what truth we can learn – the truth in this case is the answer to the question “Does Hell exist?”. Some people are so offended by the idea, that they allow their emotions to flare up and blind their ability to reason (I believe this is what lies behind Parnia’s drive to exclude these experiences from analysis). It is a legitimate question though, and of existential importance to answer. I believe I know the answer, but I cannot provide proof to state with certainty it is true, but I believe that the evidence supports that position (if not I would not believe it). In fact, despite the newspaper story headlines of previous posts, I do not state that the evidence proves anything, but rather that it points to certain possibilities. They fail to report on the other possibilities that I discuss in my book.
So let’s look at the facts on both these subjects as they are of fundamental importance to humanity, and therefore, whether or not they stir up emotions, they must be discussed, and we must try our hardest to elucidate the truth to help guide us.
On “Hell”:
Facts providing supporting evidence for its existence:
Fact 1: Hellish experiences are reported as part of the subjective element of NDEs. The reports are less common than positive experiences, ranging from about 5-20%.
Fact 2: Despite the 2022 consensus paper’s assertion that these experiences are not authentic NDEs (in that they meet the defining criteria of a Greyson scale), they are because they do. [they do not meet the new RED criteria though because these criteria discount these experiences by default…a huge logical fallacy]. This is proven by the fact that the citation the consensus paper uses to underpin this position (Cassol, Memory 2019) actually says the opposite of what the paper claims it says. Specifically it states that other than positive feelings, negative NDEs share all of the other traits of authentic NDEs, and are otherwise identical in phenomenology.
Fact 3: Virtually every dualist religion that has ever existed describes Hell-like states being a consequence of actions or decisions in this life.
Facts providing supporting evidence against its existence:
Given that CPR induced consciousness, which is often traumatic, is very different in its phenomenology to NDEs, I will discount this and so there is no evidence against its existence. None. Only emotions. Only feelings. Only a strong desire for it not to exist.
Therefore applying logical reasoning it is correct to state that there is more evidence that Hell exists than that it doesn’t. The quality of the evidence is less strong than the evidence that supports the reality of OBEs or NDEs because it is based on subjective unverifiable accounts, and religious teachings. This means that is reasonable to be skeptical about its existence, but it is also reasonable to believe in it, and those who react with blind emotion to this discussion are not doing anyone any favors. In fact they are inhibiting humanity from exploring what must be one of the most important subjects that exists.
I will not drag this on any more, nor will I visit the other discussions from my book that drew the interest of the Daily Mail, namely those around whether more people might have Hellish experiences than is reported due to dissociative amnesia or the concept of death of the soul. Nor will I enter the religious understandings of how to avoid this state, but I must be absolutely clear…the discussion of whether Hell exists or not belongs outside of the religious discussion due to the empirical evidence for its existence (eye witness accounts from living people who had NDEs).
What about simulation theory?
Again this drew quite a bit of negative response, but it is a legitimate question that many ask, and has been a question that has existed for decades since we understood the potential for AI etc. I am not going to go over the discussion in detail as I did this a few posts back, but there is evidence from NDEs that the life we experience in this dimension shares parallels to what we understand simulations to be in a broad sense. Therefore it is not unreasonable to believe that this existence is a simulation. It is also reasonable to believe that it is not a simulation, although any evidence that people might produce to say this isn’t a simulation could be shot down with the answer that the designer of the simulator put it there to fool us into believing this is reality!
There are other facts that support the idea this is a simulation. The existence or emergence of life, the universe and consciousness defy the laws of nature and science that govern the very same universe. It is a paradox that points to the Universe’s existence being a fabrication or illusion. Chemistry and quantum mechanics point to the illusory nature of matter and even time.
Do these facts prove we are living in a simulation? No, but again that makes it is reasonable to believe that such an understanding might be true.
Beyond that any discussion on the originator of the simulation and its purpose are purely speculative and philosophical/religious in nature. But some people think that the very discussion of the subject of life being a simulation is offensive or philosophical. It is not. It is a legitimate question raised due to the evidence from NDEs, the subject of this blog.
Anyway, I hope this has clarified things a bit. My posting on these subjects is not out of a desire to “preach my version of what I believe the truth to be”, but rather it is an attempt to arrive at baseline “likely” truths supported by available evidence. These are:
It is rational to believe that a Hell-like state exists beyond this dimension. It is less rational to not believe this.
It is rational to believe we live in something akin to a simulation. It is equally rational to believe we aren’t.
It is irrational, and a position based on subjective emotions to say that positions 1 and 2 are irrational!!
So to all you Prince Harry’s, please stop your emotions from ruling you.
So in this post we are going to look at a slide presentation created by Charlotte Martial and presented recently (click on the diagram below to access the full PDF). Thanks Mak and Z for providing this. As we know Martial is more than sceptical about supernatural or paranormal explanations for NDEs. This presentation is very much along those lines in its attempt to provide a natural explanation for NDEs and also presents evidence from their NDE study which appears to be data that will be presented in a journal in the near future by her colleague Fritz.
First let’s look at the model she uses to explain the natural emergence of NDE’s in a life-threatening situation. I’m not going to look too closely here at the neurotransmitter explanation because frankly the interaction of neurotransmitters with their various receptors inside the brain are extremely complex, and while what is offered in the diagram may appear plausible, its relevance is a moot point. Why do I say that?
The neurotransmitter diagram is just the biochemical explanation underpinning the overarching hypothesis behind the Martial group’s natural explanation for NDEs. The central premise of the hypothesis is based on the idea that NDEs, or specifically the phenomenology associated with NDEs, are a product of evolutionary processes and provide a survival advantage. This hypothesis, which has been presented in various forms by sceptics over the past decade, ultimately fails to survive contact with serious scrutiny. There are a number of reasons why I say that:
Prior to the discovery and implementation of CPR in the 1950s, authentic near death experiences were extremely rare. Moreover there is absolutely no evidence that NDE like experiences ever contributed towards survival when humans were threatened. For a neurological mechanism to emerge through evolutionary processes, it would be a trait that is relatively common and would’ve been observed and known about prior to the emergence of CPR. This is something that would’ve been observed during battles throughout history or when humans were hunted by predators. That just isn’t the case. You do not hear of hundreds of examples of soldiers having near death experiences and surviving battles. Martial tries to imply that this process kicks in when fight or flight is no longer an option. This is speculation based on absolutely zero evidence from the historical record, and does go against what we do know about the fight or flight system. So the only instance in which this might have occurred is on operating tables since the 1950s and this is not long enough to allow evolution to create this new mechanism.
The idea that becoming floppy or imobile or in a state of peace is going to aid survival in the kinds of life-threatening situations where humans would be exposed to just does not make sense. Survival in life-threatening situations is almost always dependent on fighting back or running away from the life-threatening situation. Yes people might pretend to play dead but this would be a conscious process, and particularly when it comes to natural predators would prove futile as they would just be an easy meal, but even in a military situation it is well known that soldiers pretended to play dead and enemy combitants would go round putting their swords through bodies lying on the ground to make sure that the soldiers were dead. The other kinds of life-threatening situations usually caused by disease or old age or drowning or fire would not really see a benefit from the phenomenology of NDEs either. It’s nonsense.
Moreover, when it comes to the actual definition of NDEs, Martial has created her own set of parameters which allow her to expand experiences away from the parameters that the consensus statement created. As a result, she is able to claim that fainting produces NDE like experiences. These experiences are nothing like authentic NDEs. This is one of the reasons why I’m much more supportive of Sam Parnia’s RED definition since the patient actually must have their experience in proximity to clinical death and the experiences must contain more clearly defined elements following a narrative arc.
Now we’ll look at the EEG data that is presented and will be in the paper being prepared by Fritz. Obviously without the full data set which will hopefully follow in a future publication it is difficult to tell precisely what is going on. However, it appears that they have data on the EEG of 11 unconscious patients, seven of whom didn’t have NDEs and 4 who did have NDEs. They then look at the complexity of the EEG signals of the two different groups and claim that the NDE group has a higher level of complexity. In one breath they state correctly that they can’t determine things with absolute precision, in the next they make the claim that the brain of NDE patients remains more organised and dynamically active. Any medical scientist of any repute looking at the bar charts representing this data and considering the tiny numbers of patients involved, would instantly dismiss any assertion. The error bars overlap, and there is insufficient difference between the two groups to draw any conclusions about the level of complexity between them. This won’t stop the Guardian and other atheist press outlets from claiming that this data shows that is are the result of brain activity. The fact that there is brain activity in both groups, combined with the reality that there is no statistical difference between the activities of both groups, and our knowledge that they are using a loose definition of NDE to characterise these groups, means that this study is not providing anything new (unless they have an authentic NDE with associated EEG…but even then for the reasons below, it is irrelevant).
Even if we saw significant differences in the brain activity between the NDE group and the non-NDE group, as we have said so many times association is not necessarily causation. Sam Parnia’s dissociation explanation is just as valid. If any such difference did exist it could be related to the consciousness separating from the brain.
Finally, while all this is interesting and gives sceptic something to talk about, none of this comes close to explaining validated OBEs and never will.
Well maybe not fame, but a bit of attention. Rob Waugh got in touch with me last week and asked a few questions, next thing thoughts from my book appear in the Mail!
Daily Mail article about one of the findings from my book.
There are a few mistakes in it which I’m sure some of you will notice unfortunately. The journalist said he will change them when he is able to access it again…can’t ask for more than that
Anyway, I am putting this in the general news section and I want to steer clear of the religious implications, but I do want to revisit this topic as I believe it is incredibly important. We need to understand just how real and just how prevalent these experiences are so that we can determine if we should take them seriously and do more to help others avoid this fate. Obviously my faith does influence my stance on this, but I do not want to bring that into this discussion, just focus on the evidence we have from research and individual accounts.
Firstly, Parnia’s consensus statement said that negative NDEs weren’t REDs (or authentic NDEs) but episodes of consciousness during CPR, however the very paper he used to justify that, a paper by Cassol published in Memory in 2019, said the opposite…that they were identical to positive NDEs except for leaving the experiencer with a negative rather than a positive feeling. The first question I would love to hear from you on is whether you think these are authentic NDEs, and if they aren’t, what evidence do you have to support that position? Or if you feel they are, likewise.
Secondly the article highlights only one of the potential theories explaining why only 10% have NDEs…namely that due to dissociative amnesia it is possible that many more people have these negative experiences than is currently the case. I do state that this is only one possible explanation rather than THE explanation as the article implies, but obviously to attract attention the story focuses on this one and not on the less interesting ones. I can live with that even if it’s a bit of a distortion of what I say. What are your thoughts on this?
Someone pointed out to me that some of my overtly religious comments ended up in a general post (the one that was created to say I had a new religious section!). I have now moved that over to the religious section, but want to apologise if you came here expecting unbiased NDE discussion and got slapped in the face with my Christian position.
This happened because WordPress is a bit rubbish on the APP I use and I can’t always see what the original post was that I am now commenting on. I will do my best to not let this happen again. I do have a very clearly defined position on religion, but am aware that the majority of people do not share that and have always tried to keep the forum neutral on this topic. However, a few people said they wanted to talk about religion so I created a separate section where we are free to state whatever we want provided it is not insulting to individual contributors and is based on reasoned discussion. However, it is inevitable in these types of discussion that people will be offended by other people’s beliefs and statements of beliefs…if that is you, probably best to stick to the main page!
[NB ALL POSTS END UP IN THE “BLOG” SECTION, IF YOU WISH TO AVOID ANYTHING RELIGIOUS USE THE DROPDOWN TO CHOOSE NDE NEWS…I AM GOING TO HAVE TO THINK ABOUT CHANGING PROVIDER AS WP IS NOT GOOD OR I AM MISSING SOMETHING]
Anyway, there will be a new post this weekend about the latest NDE article from the Daily Mail in the UK. It may get some people hot under the collar.
(I will delete any comments in here that refer to specific religions directly, but feel free to express how you feel about the topic of discussing religion etc, the way that I have endeavoured to separate church and state and the general crappiness of WordPress)
(If Ms Martial sees this picture, I hope she takes it in the spirit of fun it is intended…maybe she was a fan of these blokes if she is old enough to remember them…I was not).
I started this blog primarily to discuss clinical research into NDEs. Sam Parnia’s AWARE studies have formed the backbone of such research over the past 2 decades, but there is a new kid on the block and her name is Charlotte Martial (thanks Z for the heads-up). Below is a link the latest interview with her:
Martial approaches the subject from a different angle to Parnia, specifically she is clearly a physicalist and unfortunately, I believe this prejudices her work. Parnia, while apparently a dualist, at least attempted to maintain some impartiality and retain an open mind as to what was causing NDEs…he allows for a physiological explanation while stating that the evidence defies this. Martial does not allow for non-physiological causes at all. This necessarily means that all of her discussions and conclusions will be framed by this thinking, forcing her to interpret the data in one way only, even if logic dictates otherwise. It is also possible that it may also influence her presentation of the actual data too. This is something that we observed in extremis with Jimo Borjigin who went beyond just allowing bias to enter discussion, to the point where she completely “misrepresented” her data to create an entirely false conclusion (which was lapped up by the media)…specifically she claimed that there was an increase in brain activity DURING cardiac arrest in coma patients when her own raw data clearly showed that it happened PRIOR to Cardiac arrest, and that by the time the heart had stopped beating all notable EEG activity had ceased. On this point, Martial sets out her stand on more solid ground from the start.
Moreover, unlike Borjigin who never actually researched NDEs, but rather looked at neurological output around the time of death in rats and coma patients, Martial has been running a study similar to the AWARE studies, interviewing patients after resuscitation and it seems that she has now garnered enough data to publish.
From the interview this is a summary of the data she has:
We tracked 180 patients, and of those, 12 had near-death experiences. Our preliminary results suggest that the brains of patients who had near-death experiences showed greater complexity than those who did not.
and
what we observed is that as soon as several days after the acute severe crisis, we can see memory change in terms of content of the experience, which challenged what was found in the retrospective literature.
Some features appeared, and some others disappeared in their memories. For instance, you can have someone who doesn’t report an out-of-body experience upon awakening, however, two months later, the person does report it.
By now readers of this blog will be familiar with the idea of headline hype. What I mean by that is that the headlines about a study, even sometimes the title, over-egg the actual findings that can be drawn from the data. Sometimes there is [innocent] conflation of data, such as in Parnia’s recent AWARE study in which he seemed to merge data from his prospective observational clinical study with retrospective reports from his database, and from this you get headlines that are spuriously related to the data. In the case of Borjigin, it goes way beyond that. Headlines and statements in the press are designed to draw attention, and in this case in the first paragraph we are obviously drawn to the words:
Our preliminary results suggest that the brains of patients who had near-death experiences showed greater complexity than those who did not.
Given the fact that she says this is the first time that EEG data has been collected in patients who have had NDEs, the implication is that she has managed to link EEG output associated with high level brain activity with actual NDE reports. If this is true, then this is definitely a step beyond what was achieved in AWARE II which also collected EEG data in patients undergoing CPR. In that study there was high level brain activity in some patients, but none who later reported an NDE. BUT while the wording of her statement seems to imply that Martial has this kind of data, will the reality survive rigorous scrutiny? Key questions to consider when she publishes her data:
Was this EEG activity before, during CA, or after resuscitation? She says patients were unresponsive, does that mean that they had no vitals (no heartbeat), or were they just unconscious but with a heartbeat.
If the EEG activity was during CA…i.e. they had no heartbeat, were they undergoing CPR at the time? This is what was observed in AWARE II.
Have they been able to “timestamp” the NDE. This requires an OBE which contains an observation that can be linked to a specific timepoint, and if so, what were the physiological parameters of the patient. Were they still in CA? Were they undergoing CPR?
With regard to the report of at least one OBE, she states that the patient did not recall the OBE until an interview 2 months later. It is great that there was an OBE (if it is a proper OBE), but depending on the content, it is definitely open to accusations of corruption – not deliberate necessarily, but of the notion of false memory creation. This piece of data will be of greatest interest of all to me.
How long will we have to wait?
As is the case in research, I would expect that a publication would be preceded by an abstract at a conference, and that given her increased press activity, that is likely to be in the near future. The spring conference season runs till early July, then things tend to die over the Northern Hemisphere summer, before resuming in the Fall. Given the data she is already talking about, I suspect that she will have submitted her abstract to at least one or two conferences, and deadlines for submission are usually about 3 months prior, so we may get something as early as June, but may have to wait till the backend of the year. I put money Z will spotting it first! I will set up a PubMed and other alerts though as this certainly has the potential to be the most important study in this field since AWARE II.
I just wish she would adopt a more open-minded approach though. It would actually be in her interests if she wanted to sell books or gain publicity one day, although that is not a good reason to bias research of course. The fact is there is a massive interest in the area of spirituality among younger people today, and unless her data absolutely rules out the possibility of NDEs being the result of non-physiological origins, she should avoid presenting it in that light, as she does in this interview. She completely shuts down the possibility of non-natural causes, and I seriously doubt that the data proves this to be the case as it is extremely hard to prove a negative. It would better that she adopted the nuanced position that Parnia does…namely she could say that while this data supports the NEPTUNE model for explaining NDEs, it is still possible there are other causes, and there remain many accounts of NDEs that defy natural explanation.
Frankly no one is going to give a monkey’s about her NEPTUNE model except a few Guardian-reading cranks, since it is not really that different from previous attempts to explain NDEs as being the result of neurotransmitters. These attempts have been thoroughly debunked by the likes of Greyson, and even Parnia. The NEPTUNE model has the added weakness of being linked to the theory that NDEs are a form of Thanotosis:
“Basically, we suggest the NDE is a defense mechanism for coping with a life-threatening situation. It permits the person to disconnect from the environment, from the surroundings, to be absorbed into a more peaceful mental experience.”
The interviewer does a pretty decent job of highlighting the obvious flaws in that approach. The last thing you want is to be peaceful in a life-threatening situation…normally it is fight or flight, and while playing dead (Thanatosis) may suit some creatures in certain situations, they are not actually going through physiological death, they are just “scared to death”. The way she answers that is to claim that the psychological outcomes of NDEs are usually positive and that this may have evolutionary benefit:
for some at least, have psychological benefits. A lot of people who experience NDEs say it’s life transforming. It allows them to evolve and change their own behavior or beliefs. We suggest that the NDE arises when you don’t have any other kind of escape. So there is this fight-or-flight mechanism, but when neither fight nor flight is possible, this alternative would arise
I hope that was her just making it up on the spot as it not a very robust theory.
Ultimately her whole NEPTUNE model and accompanying theory suffers from a whopping great big flaw. Prior to the 1950s the overwhelming majority of people who had CAs stayed dead. It was only through the invention of CPR that people were able to come back (this coincided with the massive uptick in reports of NDEs). If the proximity of physiological death triggers an NDE, and prior to the 1950s physiological death meant permanent death, then whatever processes occurred immediately before CA would have no evolutionary benefit because they wouldn’t have survived. Given that her theory specifically relates to people who had CA (she states this explicitly), and given our collective knowledge of how these experiences are generally associated with CA, the whole evolutionary benefit theory collapses. Without this her NEPTUNE model is just previous [debunked] arguments about neurotransmitters.
No, it would be better for her if the data allowed for a non-natural explanation as well. The world is shifting – we are entering a post-materialistic age. I know so many scientists who accept that there is more to what we observe than just the natural explanations that science has thus provided and either believe in a “spiritual” explanation or that we are living in a simulation.
Given her answer to the final question about NDEs being real, I hold zero hope for such a Damascus moment:
When you meet entities or when you feel as though you’re out of your body, those are non-ordinary states of consciousness caused by disturbed perception. So you don’t actually meet your father in a tunnel of light, for example. But near-death experiences are real in the sense that the person who reported it did have this vivid and intense subjective experience
She is stating as fact they are physiological. She had better make sure that her data absolutely supports that position, or I suspect she may end up with egg on her face like Borjigin.
As always, if you haven’t already visit my book website (click on image below) and buy one from Amazon (or other e-retailers)
Thanks Paul for letting me know about this IANDS podcast with Charlotte Martial, the consciousness researcher from Liège University in Belgium (Liège is a top European university – when I was doing my Ph.D. I collaborated with them on anti-viral projects)
Firstly, it is not a great interview as the interviewer doesn’t seem to understand her position, or properly listen to her. She is a physicalist, and nothing that she has seen in her research has changed that position, so when he asks her at the end about the shift in understanding to a post materialistic world, he is barking up the wrong tree! As a result he doesn’t really challenge or probe her position, which is disappointing. Anyway, key relevant points:
She refers to her publication back in May last year that we discussed previously that proposes a model explaining NDEs physiologically. She makes the same fundamental mistake as Borjigin from Michigan by stating that the observed EEG activity is occurring during Cardiac arrest (CA). It is not. The EEG and neurotransmitter data she is referring to in humans is all before CA in patients who were in comas and whose EEG were isoelectric by the time they entered full CA. In rats there was EEG for maybe 20-30 seconds post CA. After that, nothing. In none of these studies was any patient recollections collected, so everything is speculative at best, but in reality it is worse than that.
There is no brain activity during CA, and therefore no observations can be made or new memories can be formed in the brain. Her hypothesis is that the NDE memories are created during this period (prior to CA) when the brain becomes hyperactive while starved of oxygen, but that theory has been debunked over and over again, not least in instances of sudden CA where there was no period of oxygen deprivation in the brain prior to CA. I have always said that the activity they have observed when patients or rats were basically suffocated, is the brain screaming at every system in the body to get oxygen moving around, but these are very different circumstances to the vast majority of NDEs that follow a different path, usually involving sudden death and CA, followed by immediate loss of consciousness. This is why more and more I am of the view that Sam Parnia’s acronym – REDs – recalled experiences of death, rather than Near Death, are superior when it comes to discussing these phenomenon in a research context.
They also talked about her ongoing AWARE-like study and why nobody has seen the hidden targets (they ignored the HCP validated OBE in AWARE I or the fact that so few even survived to be interviewed). Her explanation is that is scientifically impossible to observe things outside of ourselves while unconscious, so they will never see a hidden target. She said that the scientific explanation for OBEs is that the brain is conflating observations made before becoming unconscious with false memories of events – they are overlaying what they remembered about the environment prior to CA with new memories that didn’t happen. Of course when you look at some of the OBEs reported over the years, particularly those in the Titus Rivas book, the Self Does Not Die, this explanation falls apart.
Her AWARE-like study is ongoing, but she doesn’t expect there to be a hit for this reason. She is open, but her fundamental baseline position is that there is no afterlife…let’s see if we can change that!
CALL TO ACTION – for those of you who believe in the afterlife and God I am going to ask you to do something unsual…I am asking you to pray. If you are Christian, then pray specifically to Jesus, but if you have a general belief, then pray to God/the great spirit/the being of light etc. This is really important. I think that while Charlotte Marshall is obviously a materialist, I also think she is open to new evidence, but the only evidence that would challenge her worldview would be scientifically validated empirical evidence. It is a shame that she does not regard the testimonies of hundreds of patients and attending HCPs of observations of events/objects that could only be observed if the person’s consciousness had actually left the body as valid empirical evidence, but she is a scientist who seems only to regard scientifically produced evidence as valid. To this end she has created an experiment similar to the AWARE study (but really with the objective to disprove OBEs), and the only way that her worldview would shift is if there is a hit in her study. I say it is set up to disprove NDEs being real because she is only intending to recruit 100 patients, and as we know from previous studies, this is nowhere near enough. However, I mention in my book that it would delicious irony if the study set up by a sceptic to disprove NDEs would be the one that actually had a hit. Well let’s pray for it. I want you to pray the following, and try to remember to do it frequently:
“Dear God/Jesus/etc, I know you are real, I know that my soul will survive death, but so many people don’t and that this is a bad thing for them and for the world as their thinking is only focused on the material and passing. At the moment there is no scientifically validated evidence supporting the understanding that the consciousness can survive death, and that without such evidence it is hard to convince a materialistic world this may be true, therefore please allow at least one person in Charlotte Martial’s study, who has a full CA with no ECG and EEG, to observe the hidden target (s)and recall it accurately, and for this person’s testimony to be validated and presented publicly by Marshall.”
Simple. I believe in the power of prayer, and I believe that while it is vital that free choice is maintained, at the moment the lack of a scientifically validated OBE presents a very real barrier for some who might otherwise be inclined to believe. Hardcore sceptics will still dismiss it, but for those who have “eyes to see and ears to hear” it may be enough to spark their wider curiosity.
“God, please throw us a bone!”
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Apologies for the delay in creating this post, but I recently moved from the UK to New Zealand, starting a new job at the same time, so I have been somewhat distracted!
As the eternal hunt for a scientifically validated OBE in an NDE continues (slowly), and the realisation dawns on researchers that it may be many years before such an event occurs, the community is required to continue to rely on human validation. This paper is an attempt to create a tool that seeks to objectively measure the reliability of these “humanly verified” NDEs. Thanks Paul for alerting us to this article
Scale Construction
The development of the vNDE evidential strength scale followed the Delphi Method using feedback from a panel of experts. The process involved circulating a draft scale among 11 experts for review and revision in two rounds, allowing time for detailed input and fostering consensus. Initially, the scale covered seven criteria; after expert discussion and consensus (80% agreement), the final version included eight well-defined criteria, each designed to rigorously assess aspects of the near-death experience and its verification.
Scale Criteria
The final scale contains eight items, covering critical aspects such as the timing of the investigation, the experiencer’s physical and medical state, the occurrence of cardiac or respiratory arrest, the degree of third-person verification, possibility of sensory explanations, the number of verified and erroneous perceptions, and the clarity of recalled perceptions. For each criterion, evaluators are required to provide both a rating and a written justification, lending qualitative depth to the scoring process.
Scale Scoring
Scores from each of the eight items are summed, resulting in a total between 0 and 32. This total score is then mapped to one of four predetermined levels of evidential strength (very low, low, moderate, or strong) aligned with the quartiles of possible scores. The highest tier, “strong,” requires not only a high total score but also a high rating in third-person verification, ensuring robust evidential support.
Scale Validation
The vNDE Scale was validated by having 13 experts and three AI language models (ChatGPT v.4, Gemini Pro, and Mistral Medium 3) independently apply it to 17 potential veridical near-death experiences (vpNDEs) detailed in nine peer-reviewed papers (most people would be familiar with these cases that have been discussed here and on the web extensively). The selection of cases was based on strict inclusion criteria, ensuring each paper provided sufficient detail and had undergone peer review. AI raters were included to assess the feasibility of automating the scale’s application and to help counterbalance possible human biases, particularly where personal beliefs could influence scoring. Out of 13 experts, 11 completed the evaluations (with two collaborating on a joint response), while the AI models followed a standardised prompt to apply the scale to each case using the relevant sections of the papers.
My thoughts
In summary the vNDE scale they created had 8 different evidential criteria, each with their own rating scale (from 1-4), which contributed to an overall score (max 32) reflecting the quality of the evidence supporting the veracity of the OBE within an NDE.
Given the baseline requirement of the cases being presented in peer reviewed journals, and also the requirement for an independent witness, the quality is already higher than many. However, this scale refines things further to determine if the sum of evidence reported and presented is strong or not in relation to the NDE being reliable evidence of an independent consciousness or not.
Below is the kind of output that was generated:
What is notable is that in the majority of cases a consensus of specific strength was not reached (e.g. strong vs moderate). However when adjacent levels were considered (e.g. strong or moderate), things improved. There was reasonable consensus within the AI models, and between AI and humans, although some wild discrepancies as well.
Given the fact that the tool failed to create consistent precise consensus between the expert assessors, it is clear that the ability to quantify the levels of strength is not quite objective enough, and allows for subjective inter-assessor interpretation. It also shows (once again) that AI while promising, cannot be fully relied upon to replace humans, even for a task that it should be ideally qualified to perform.
Having said that, in the absence of an OBE verified using electronic equipment like in AWARE II, this is about as good as it gets for now. Further refinement of this tool creating better alignment between expert assessors will no doubt lead to a fully validated tool that can be incorporated in future research.
The other outcome of this study is the fact that AI and the expert panel agreed that the three top cases in the table above had strong evidence to support the validity of the OBEs. We should bank that for now and use these three as exemplary examples of well documented OBEs with third party witnesses. I am glad that the AWARE I OBE is in this group.
Lastly I just wanted to cover a recent poster presented by the Parnia lab at AHA recently (thanks Z). It is somewhat related to the previous article, so worth shoving in here:
Summary of Abstract:
Background: About 10% of cardiac arrest survivors experience vivid Recalled Experiences of Death (RED) marked by clear awareness and a sense of life review, which can enhance quality of life. Although often dismissed as hallucinations or dreams, this study uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to objectively distinguish RED from dreams and drug-induced states.
Hypothesis: NLP can differentiate RED accounts in cardiac arrest patients from other altered states based on thematic content, informing our understanding of consciousness during clinical death.
Methods: Researchers analyzed 3,700 anonymized first-person narratives: 1,245 RED, 1,190 dream, and 1,265 drug-induced reports, using keyword filtering and transformer-based models (Longformer for narrative classification; BERT for RED theme identification).
Results: The Longformer model achieved 98% validation F1-score and 100% holdout accuracy, accurately classifying all holdout drug narratives without needing substance names. The BERT model identified RED-specific themes with 90% validation and 87% holdout F1-scores.
Conclusion: Transformer-based NLP can effectively distinguish RED from other experiences, revealing distinct and structured patterns, and providing an objective method for analyzing survivor narratives and related psychological outcomes.
My Interpretation
Parnia’s utilisation of artificial intelligence to analyse the narrative content of two distinct types of experiences—Recalled Experiences of Death (RED) and those induced by drugs or dreams—demonstrates that AI is capable of reliably distinguishing between authentic near-death experiences and other altered states. Although the outcomes are inherently influenced by the subjective prompts provided to the AI models, the findings nonetheless reinforce the view that REDs are unique and fundamentally different in character from both “natural” and “artificial” hallucinations or experiences.
Moreover, this approach contributes to the development of more objective methodologies for differentiating between these reports. By leveraging AI as a tool for analysis, it becomes possible to more clearly separate genuine REDs from other experiences, supporting the argument that these phenomena possess distinguishing features that set them apart from ordinary dreams or drug-induced perceptions.
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I have made a few comments or mini-posts about reality before, but the more I think about it the more I believe it is like an onion, and purposefully so.
As I have said before, our experience of reality is an illusion. That is factually true.
As a reminder, the first layer is the perception of the physical world around us. It does not exist as we perceive it to exist, it is quite literally a trick of the light (and electrostatic repulsion). Anyone who has studied chemistry in school will be familiar with the structure of an atom. It has a nucleus that consists of protons and neutrons, surrounded by a ”cloud” of electrons. It is not really a cloud, but rather a number of electrons moving in orbits. In some atoms just a handful, in the heavier ones, dozens, moving around the nucleus in specific defined paths. The speed of “movement” creates the impression of a cloud, just like the cartoon legs of road runner.
Anyway, to avoid getting bogged down in science or detail, all these sub-atomic particles (electrons neutrons etc) are incredibly small, and yet when groups of atoms come together to form molecules, and then these molecules combine to form structures they take on the “appearance” and “sensation” of solidity, however, this appearance and sensation is illusory. The “appearance” is the result of light of specific wavelengths being absorbed by the electrons, and since they move incredibly fast they look solid, and the sensation is due to repulsion of charged particles. If you were to freeze the movement of all electrons, humans would become invisible because the space the subatomic particles take up is ludicrously small. In fact, if you were able to overcome the electrostatic repulsion and squish all the sub atomic particles (everything) that make all the humans on earth together, then the whole of humanity would occupy the space taken up by a solitary sugar cube!
That is why the world we see can be described as an illusion. But that is only the first layer of the onion.
The second layer is the illusion that those particles occupy a specific place in time – in other words that they actually occupy space at all. This is the illusion that quantum mechanics begins to expose. Now I do not understand quantum mechanics to any deep level, and will probably make a fool of myself here, but as part of my undergraduate studies I was forced to solve Schrödinger’s wave equation. This equation speaks to the dual nature of matter, and that electrons and photons etc can be both wave and particle. But there is more. The location of an electron and properties of an electron are not determined until the electron is observed. Now I am going way out of my lane here, but from my understanding this is the heart of Schrodinger’s cat problem, and the argument between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, in which Einstein was forced to admit in the end that the properties of matter are not determined until they are observed. Extending this into metaphysical terms, reality is conscious observation.
I see each of these layers of the onion as layers of consciousness in which we may be able to exist, and progress to. This is in line with many religious understandings, including the Christian one (in my father’s house there are many mansions…). Is this place I was invited to experience the centre, or is there another layer? This is where the Far Eastern religious traditions and the middle eastern ones, specifically Christianity diverge. The centre of the onion in Eastern traditions is the merging of all consciousness, whereas the Middle Eastern ones are the co-existing of individual consciousness in a created paradise with the ultimate creator consciousness.
This is the essence of the second layer of the onion and hints at the true nature of the fundamental problem. The world, the universe in which we live is not real as we understand it to be, and we don’t really fully understand what it is. (I believe a part of the illusion is creating a conundrum that is distracting for superbrains so they don’t find the real answer- if nothing of this is real, then neither is the maths that points to it not being real!). This leads many “superbrain” scientists to engage in speculation on the nature of our experience, inevitably leading to philosophical idealism…everything is just consciousness…and they may have a point. However, without a central reference, or an understanding of any source of this realm of consciousness, this thinking can be destabilising. These people, being supremely smart, turn their nose up at perfectly suitable explanations provided by some religions because they believe only thick people believe that superstitious nonsense (when I say thick, I mean people like me who only have 1 Ph.D.). They want to come up with something clever. A few are really really clever leading them to be humble and see that we already have adequate explanations that fit the observations.
Anyway, it is clear that science is on to something, even if the discoveries ultimately point to the futility of science. NDEs provide confirmation of the illusory nature of this layer of the onion. Virtually every experiencer says that once they leave this realm, they enter another realm which feels much more real. They come to recognise that the earth “realm” is not in fact reality but some sort of “learning” or “testing” environment. It must therefore be created for that purpose. A created illusion designed to fool us that this is the only reality unless we seek truth…it seems that this world is designed to find truth seekers, the kind of people who come to this blog, the kind like Neo in The Matrix who knows there is more to life than just the observable world.
Often these experiencers describe the realm they enter as having a translucent quality. This means that light can pass through things, although it is diffuse. In other words, the world they see there better reflects the true nature of “reality”. This advanced form of reality is also an illusion, although maybe in this realm it is not illusory as in a trick, but clearly so. The objects that people observe are obviously not solid, and therefore what are they? I believe that just like here they are the result of a creative imagination, only in that next place we are allowed to see that the objects we observe are really just images to enjoy or help us to understand or relate to. Does our consciousness create them, or are they created for us?
This NDE world is the third layer of the onion. Beyond that we can only speculate, but my own experience, which I describe in a small passage in my book linked below, may point to another layer, possibly the centre of the onion. In my experience I met God. It was a place, but I couldn’t see or feel anything physically I could only feel emotions (pure love) and be conscious. I existed in the most perfect form. I was an individual point of consciousness, surrounded by many other conscious beings, but focused entirely on one of those beings…God, a being of pure and infinite love.
NDEs do not answer these questions as people come back with differing and contradictory understandings of the answer to this. I believe they are meant to. We are not supposed to know the precise answer to that question here. Here we are meant to find key truths for ourselves. That is a part of the “process”…the purpose of that “process” may be to learn, or it may be to sort, again your belief about that will be determined by what belief system you adhere to, but they can’t all be right.
This was not written with the intention of it being an advert for my book, but rather than “preach” in this post, I refer you to my book on why I believe Jesus is right on this, and in fact the answer to all of this. I do not prove it, and as I explicitly state in my book, the evidence is such that you can choose to believe a number of different explanations for the “onion”, but I do point out that choosing the wrong explanation may have dire consequences.
If you are genuinely curious about why I made my choice the way I did, then get a copy of the book, the Kindle version of which I am giving away for 48 hours from midnight Saturday (PST).
Also, as always, please post your thoughts on this…it is quite a deep, almost esoteric, subject, it is after all the essence of the question around the meaning of life.
I know it is not NDE, but its related to the nature of reality so if you are interested in this fascinating subject, and my views on it after writing a book on the subject (DNA:The Elephant In The Lab), then please click on one of the links below and listen/view Darren and I discuss this subject. The evidence is extremely clear…life could not emerged by random natural processes and was most likely the result of intelligent initiation:
This is a recently released French NDE documentary that I really enjoyed. It is quite long, so you might want to break it into 2 sessions, but well worth watching as it covers the subject thoroughly with some fresh thinking, various interviews with well known researchers from both sides and some intriguing new cases I […]
This is a great article in the Daily Mail on research into TL. It really goes into detail in terms of definition and research. It makes the distinction between terminal lucidity and paradoxical lucidity, which are distinct but sometimes overlapping phenomena. Specifically some terminal lucidity…where a patient who has a period of lucidity immediately preceding […]
I read this in an article today and felt sympathy for the judge after my own recent experience of writing on this blog: “What the judgment effectively said is that feelings are not facts; there is only ever one version of the truth – the one that can be proved, with evidence.” This related to […]
Follow up article to the original one. Another British newspaper is also interested in this. There are some bits that I don’t actually say, or are not quite the same as what I said, but generally a good article that gets people thinking hopefully.
Someone either made a mistake and tried to change their own password for this site, or they tried to hack my account for this blog. I now have a name and address in Germany (amazing how easy it is to find these things!). By coincidence, I am half German and know the area well from […]
When you read a good book, or watch a well directed film, or play an immersive game, or take certain drugs, and especially when you dream, your consciousness is momentarily separated from this existence. In the examples of books films or games, your consciousness is being manipulated by creative talent to exist in their created […]
So in this post we are going to look at a slide presentation created by Charlotte Martial and presented recently (click on the diagram below to access the full PDF). Thanks Mak and Z for providing this. As we know Martial is more than sceptical about supernatural or paranormal explanations for NDEs. This presentation is […]
Well maybe not fame, but a bit of attention. Rob Waugh got in touch with me last week and asked a few questions, next thing thoughts from my book appear in the Mail! There are a few mistakes in it which I’m sure some of you will notice unfortunately. The journalist said he will change […]
Someone pointed out to me that some of my overtly religious comments ended up in a general post (the one that was created to say I had a new religious section!). I have now moved that over to the religious section, but want to apologise if you came here expecting unbiased NDE discussion and got […]
I am making some changes to the structure of the blog. If you click on blog, you will get everything, but if you hover over blog and allow the menu to drop down you can chose a category. At the moment there are only 2 categories, but I will be adding a few more so […]
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