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Dec 29th, 2019
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US team explains near death experiences [ theregister.co.uk] The University of Kentucky team studied 55 people who'd had near death experiences - defined as "a time during a life-threatening episode when a person undergoes an outer body experience, unusual alertness, sees an intense light, or feels a great sense of peace" - and compared them to 55 who hadn't.
Sixty per cent of those who claimed a near death experience said they'd also suffered a "REM state of sleep during periods of wakefulness", or REM intrusion, described by study author professor Kevin Nelson to the Daily Telegraph as "an activation of certain brain regions that are also active during the dream state".
Nelson added: "However, I hesitate to call it dreaming or dreaming while awake. This is the first testable hypothesis of a biological basis for these experiences. People who have near death experiences may have an arousal system that predisposes them to REM intrusion."
The theory has found favour with Dr Neil Stanley, director of sleep research at Surrey University, who chipped in: "There are plenty of rational people who say that these things happen and the one part of us that's utterly fantastical is our dreams.
"Our dreams can appear incredibly real - after all they are our reality when they are happening. If you get that sort of reality playing through into your consciousness, it's a very convincing reason to believe such a thing is happening."
For the record, common symptoms of REM intrusion include "waking up and feeling unable to move, having sudden muscle weakness in the legs, and hearing sounds just before falling asleep or waking up that others do not hear", the Kentucky team notes. So we don't see God in a NDE?
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Seraphim Rose actually writes about his beliefs that NDE's are actually demonic and nature in his book "The Soul After Death". Don't know if I believe him or not, but he makes some good points.
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Jessup B.C. Deacon Member
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Jessup B.C. Deacon Member
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Some accounts of NDE's are too realistic to be dismissed. In 1980, I read a book by a cardiologist named Rawlings who indicates that one of his patients was able to recreate every move made by the medical team working to revive him while he was in a state of unconsciousness. His detailed accuracy of who picked up what scalpel, and when, was more accurate than that of the accounts of the other people in the room. I've read similar accounts by other authors.
In addition, I have a few friends who have had the NDE experience, and they have similar stories to tell. Don't listen to the "mainstream media" or secularist sources. They have an agenda to dismiss all of this as bogus.
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A cardiologist and Deacon whom I know tells a story about a man who had a heart attack and whom he revived in the emergency room. The man was not a believer and had a very bad reputation in his town. When he was revived he apparently sat up, grabbed the doctor and said something like, "Don't let me go back there again." The man converted to Catholicism a short time after this heart attack and died peacefully a year later.
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I don't have a problem with near death experiences per se. After all, Jesus rose people from the dead; and He Himself rose from the dead.
I do have a problem with the "accounts" which seem to exonerate every kind of sin or which imply that reincarnation is real.
But, there are plenty of accounts which seem close to the truth. In those, people died, saw that it wasn't their time or that they needed to repent, and were sent back.
St. Bede the Venerable, in his History of the English Church, has a quite amazing account of such a man who lived in England in the 600s. The man died; his angel showed him glimpses of purgatory, hell and heaven; and then he was sent back with the mission to do penance for himself and others. He became a monk, and he spent the rest of his life in prayer and penance.
There are other such accounts, including from modern times. The Protestant minister Howard Storm used to be an atheist and a hater of God and Christianity. Then he died. He was tormented by demons, but then he was saved by Jesus Christ. He converted, and he was sent back as a changed man. He served for years as a minister in a suburb of Cincinnati, and he is now (if I remember correctly) a missionary in Central America.
Etc.
Glory to Jesus Christ; glory forever!
-- John
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In the book I am reading 'Life after Death' by Metropolitan Hierotheos, he told a story about a monk that had an unpleasant after death experience. He stated:
"After such experiences no one can remain unmoved and unrepentant. If someone does, and especially if he is proud, then either the experiences were demonic through and through, or even if they were a sign from God, he distorts it, to his cost."
He then stated the case of his spiritual advisor:
"But even in the case of my Gerondas, (spiritual father), I can vouch for the fact that he reported once what he had seen. But this event produced in him great, admirable and immeasurable repentance. He could criticise no one. He felt that he was in the dreadful tribunal of God. Once when I said an imprudent word to him he was angry because I had deprived him of the purity of his nous, (spirit), and because I gave him the opportunity to criticise, while he at that time, as he said to me, was under condemnation."
Then again, we Orthodox believe that the soul remains on earth for forty days, so these probably were special cases.
Zenovia
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