sgrenard
01-11-2002, 07:35 PM
>01-08-02
Dr. Timothy Johnson of ABC News gives thumbs up to study validating reality of Near Death Experiences..................
from ABC News Good Morning America:
>
> A new study validates near-death experiences reported by heart
> attack patients. Brushes With Death
> Scientists Validate
> Near-Death Experiences
>
>
>
> Jan. 8 — When a car plowed into the vehicle in which she was
> riding, Leslie's chest was crushed, eight bones were broken and
> her heart stopped beating for three minutes. Before she was
> revived, she says she glimpsed the afterlife.
>
> "My next experience was really lying on the ground outside of the
> car, and it was actually an out-of-body experience that I had,"
> says Leslie, who declined to give her last name. "I was actually
> floating above my body, and I looked down, and I saw all these
> men working on this poor girl who was down below, about eight
> feet below me, and she was struggling."
> An estimated 7 million people have reported hauntingly similar
> "near-death" experiences. And a new study in the British medical
> journal Lancet gives credence to such accounts, concluding they
> are valid.
>
> Scientists Study Near-Death Experiences
>
> ABCNEWS' Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson says this study lends
> more credibility to the possibility that these near-death
> accounts are accurate because the researchers conducted the
> interviews soon after the experiences occurred. The study does
> not provide a way to scientifically measure whether or not there
> is life after death, however.
>
> The study reported in Lancet looked at 344 patients in the
> Netherlands who were successfully resuscitated after suffering
> cardiac arrest in 10 Dutch hospitals.
>
> Rather than using data from people reporting past near-death
> experiences, researchers talked to patients within a week after
> they had suffered clinical deaths and been resuscitated.
> (Clincical death was defined as a period of unconsciousness
> caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain.)
>
> About 18 percent of the patients in the study reported being able
> to recall some portion of what happened when they were clinically
> dead; and 8 to 12 percent reported going through "near-death"
> experiences, such as seeing lights at the end of tunnels, or
> being able to speak to dead relatives or friends. Most had
> excellent recall of the events, which undermines the theory that
> the memories are false, the study said.
>
> "We don't even begin to have the tools to debate the subject on a
> rational scientific basis," Johnson told Good Morning America. "I
> don't think our belief on afterlife is defined on a cause of the
> brain." Johnson, who serves as assisting minister of the
> Community Covenant Church in West Peabody, Mass., said belief in
> the afterlife remains primarily a matter of personal faith.
>
> Brain Down, Consciousness On?
>
> Lead researcher Pim van Lommel of the Hospital Rijnstate in the
> Netherlands said the study suggests that researchers
> investigating consciousness should not look in the cells and
> molecules alone.
>
> Even when the brain is not showing signs of electrical activity,
> it is possible that a person can still be conscious, he said. In
> other words, people can be conscious of events around them even
> when they are physically unconscious.
>
> "Compare it with a TV program," he told The Washington Post. "If
> you open the TV set you will not find the program. The TV set is
> a receiver. When you turn off your TV set, the program is still
> there but you can't see it. When you put off your brain, your
> consciousness is still there but you can't feel it in your body."
>
> Many people describe seeing their own bodies from a distance, as
> though watching a movie. Others say they felt their bodies
> rushing toward a brilliant light.
>
> Some who have had this experience say it's a sign there is a
> tunnel that leads to eternal life, but researchers do not really
> know what the visions mean. The study does not address whether
> there is such a thing as the soul, God or the afterlife.
>
> "I think what's happening is that people are trying to validate
> their experience by making these paranormal claims, but you don't
> need to do that," said Susan Blackmore, a psychology professor at
> the University of the West of England in Bristol. "They're valid
> experiences in themselves, only they're happening in the brain
> and not in the world out there."
>
> She believes the experiences are like a movie that our brains run
> at times of extreme traumatic stress. The brain creates
> endorphins which can reduce pain, and under extreme stress, these
> large amounts of endorphins produce a dreamlike state of euphoria.
>
> Life Beyond Death
>
> Some of those who described the experiences to ABCNEWS say they
> feel they were given the opportunity to explore life beyond death.
>
> "I was looking down, and I saw my body, and I saw the doctors,"
> said Jessie Lott, one woman who was resuscitated.
>
> "I had come into this place of brilliant, beautiful life," said
> another, Dannion Brinkley.
>
> "The feeling of peacefulness, the feeling of utter acceptance,
> utter — I mean, love, and it sounds so hokey, and I hate that
> part of it, because there aren't really good words to describe
> it," Leslie said.
>
> Another woman described how she felt she was being pulled toward
> a giant tunnel, a common theme in the near-death experiences.
>
> "I couldn't stop it. I didn't know why I was moving. I was just
> pulled right through this enormous, infinite tunnel," said Diane
> Morrissey.
>
> Blackmore says science can also explain those tunnels: Electrical
> brain scans show that in our last moments, as the brain is
> deprived of oxygen, cells fire frantically and at random in the
> part of the brain which govern vision.
>
> "Now, imagine that you've got lots and lots of cells firing in
> the middle, towards fewer at the outside, what's it going to look
> like? Bright light in the middle fading off towards dark at the
> outside," Blackmore said. "I think that's where the tunnel comes
> from. And as the oxygen level drops, so the bright light becomes
> bigger and more immediate, and you get this sensation of rushing
> forward into the light."
>
> Scientist Turned Spiritual Healer
>
> But not all scientists are skeptics when it comes to explaining
> near-death phenomena, and researchers have debated such issues for years.
>
> Joyce Hawkes, a cell biologist with a PhD, had an accident that
> forever changed her life — and her view of science. She suffered
> a concussion from a falling window.
>
> "I think that part of me — that my spirit, my soul — left my body
> and went to another reality," she said. She was surprised at the
> experience.
>
> "It just was not part of the paradigm in which I lived as a
> scientist," Hawkes recalled. "Iit was a big surprise to me to
> have this sense of something different than the body — a
> consciousness different than the body — and to be in this
> wonderfully healing, peaceful, nurturing place."
>
> Hawkes now works as a spiritual healer.
>
> "I think what I learned was that there truly is no death, that
> there is a change in state from a physical form to a spirit form,
> and that there's nothing to fear about that passage," she said.
>
> The Dutch researchers found that people who had such experiences
> reported marked changes in their personalities compared with
> those who had come near death, but had not had those experiences.
> They seemed to have lost their fear of death, and became more
> compassionate, loving people.
>
> "I can hardly wait to die, and yet I don't have a death wish. I
> live my life a hundred percent more now because I have such a
> fine appreciation about what might happen to us and where we
> might go," said Morrissey.
>
Dr. Timothy Johnson of ABC News gives thumbs up to study validating reality of Near Death Experiences..................
from ABC News Good Morning America:
>
> A new study validates near-death experiences reported by heart
> attack patients. Brushes With Death
> Scientists Validate
> Near-Death Experiences
>
>
>
> Jan. 8 — When a car plowed into the vehicle in which she was
> riding, Leslie's chest was crushed, eight bones were broken and
> her heart stopped beating for three minutes. Before she was
> revived, she says she glimpsed the afterlife.
>
> "My next experience was really lying on the ground outside of the
> car, and it was actually an out-of-body experience that I had,"
> says Leslie, who declined to give her last name. "I was actually
> floating above my body, and I looked down, and I saw all these
> men working on this poor girl who was down below, about eight
> feet below me, and she was struggling."
> An estimated 7 million people have reported hauntingly similar
> "near-death" experiences. And a new study in the British medical
> journal Lancet gives credence to such accounts, concluding they
> are valid.
>
> Scientists Study Near-Death Experiences
>
> ABCNEWS' Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson says this study lends
> more credibility to the possibility that these near-death
> accounts are accurate because the researchers conducted the
> interviews soon after the experiences occurred. The study does
> not provide a way to scientifically measure whether or not there
> is life after death, however.
>
> The study reported in Lancet looked at 344 patients in the
> Netherlands who were successfully resuscitated after suffering
> cardiac arrest in 10 Dutch hospitals.
>
> Rather than using data from people reporting past near-death
> experiences, researchers talked to patients within a week after
> they had suffered clinical deaths and been resuscitated.
> (Clincical death was defined as a period of unconsciousness
> caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain.)
>
> About 18 percent of the patients in the study reported being able
> to recall some portion of what happened when they were clinically
> dead; and 8 to 12 percent reported going through "near-death"
> experiences, such as seeing lights at the end of tunnels, or
> being able to speak to dead relatives or friends. Most had
> excellent recall of the events, which undermines the theory that
> the memories are false, the study said.
>
> "We don't even begin to have the tools to debate the subject on a
> rational scientific basis," Johnson told Good Morning America. "I
> don't think our belief on afterlife is defined on a cause of the
> brain." Johnson, who serves as assisting minister of the
> Community Covenant Church in West Peabody, Mass., said belief in
> the afterlife remains primarily a matter of personal faith.
>
> Brain Down, Consciousness On?
>
> Lead researcher Pim van Lommel of the Hospital Rijnstate in the
> Netherlands said the study suggests that researchers
> investigating consciousness should not look in the cells and
> molecules alone.
>
> Even when the brain is not showing signs of electrical activity,
> it is possible that a person can still be conscious, he said. In
> other words, people can be conscious of events around them even
> when they are physically unconscious.
>
> "Compare it with a TV program," he told The Washington Post. "If
> you open the TV set you will not find the program. The TV set is
> a receiver. When you turn off your TV set, the program is still
> there but you can't see it. When you put off your brain, your
> consciousness is still there but you can't feel it in your body."
>
> Many people describe seeing their own bodies from a distance, as
> though watching a movie. Others say they felt their bodies
> rushing toward a brilliant light.
>
> Some who have had this experience say it's a sign there is a
> tunnel that leads to eternal life, but researchers do not really
> know what the visions mean. The study does not address whether
> there is such a thing as the soul, God or the afterlife.
>
> "I think what's happening is that people are trying to validate
> their experience by making these paranormal claims, but you don't
> need to do that," said Susan Blackmore, a psychology professor at
> the University of the West of England in Bristol. "They're valid
> experiences in themselves, only they're happening in the brain
> and not in the world out there."
>
> She believes the experiences are like a movie that our brains run
> at times of extreme traumatic stress. The brain creates
> endorphins which can reduce pain, and under extreme stress, these
> large amounts of endorphins produce a dreamlike state of euphoria.
>
> Life Beyond Death
>
> Some of those who described the experiences to ABCNEWS say they
> feel they were given the opportunity to explore life beyond death.
>
> "I was looking down, and I saw my body, and I saw the doctors,"
> said Jessie Lott, one woman who was resuscitated.
>
> "I had come into this place of brilliant, beautiful life," said
> another, Dannion Brinkley.
>
> "The feeling of peacefulness, the feeling of utter acceptance,
> utter — I mean, love, and it sounds so hokey, and I hate that
> part of it, because there aren't really good words to describe
> it," Leslie said.
>
> Another woman described how she felt she was being pulled toward
> a giant tunnel, a common theme in the near-death experiences.
>
> "I couldn't stop it. I didn't know why I was moving. I was just
> pulled right through this enormous, infinite tunnel," said Diane
> Morrissey.
>
> Blackmore says science can also explain those tunnels: Electrical
> brain scans show that in our last moments, as the brain is
> deprived of oxygen, cells fire frantically and at random in the
> part of the brain which govern vision.
>
> "Now, imagine that you've got lots and lots of cells firing in
> the middle, towards fewer at the outside, what's it going to look
> like? Bright light in the middle fading off towards dark at the
> outside," Blackmore said. "I think that's where the tunnel comes
> from. And as the oxygen level drops, so the bright light becomes
> bigger and more immediate, and you get this sensation of rushing
> forward into the light."
>
> Scientist Turned Spiritual Healer
>
> But not all scientists are skeptics when it comes to explaining
> near-death phenomena, and researchers have debated such issues for years.
>
> Joyce Hawkes, a cell biologist with a PhD, had an accident that
> forever changed her life — and her view of science. She suffered
> a concussion from a falling window.
>
> "I think that part of me — that my spirit, my soul — left my body
> and went to another reality," she said. She was surprised at the
> experience.
>
> "It just was not part of the paradigm in which I lived as a
> scientist," Hawkes recalled. "Iit was a big surprise to me to
> have this sense of something different than the body — a
> consciousness different than the body — and to be in this
> wonderfully healing, peaceful, nurturing place."
>
> Hawkes now works as a spiritual healer.
>
> "I think what I learned was that there truly is no death, that
> there is a change in state from a physical form to a spirit form,
> and that there's nothing to fear about that passage," she said.
>
> The Dutch researchers found that people who had such experiences
> reported marked changes in their personalities compared with
> those who had come near death, but had not had those experiences.
> They seemed to have lost their fear of death, and became more
> compassionate, loving people.
>
> "I can hardly wait to die, and yet I don't have a death wish. I
> live my life a hundred percent more now because I have such a
> fine appreciation about what might happen to us and where we
> might go," said Morrissey.
>