Marshalling “The Spirit” for the Martial study
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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