Originally Posted by nighthawk
Originally Posted by DBT
Not really, nothing has been proven. Nobody doubts the phenomena of NDE's and out of body experiences happen, but the evidence supports that these are a brain induced experience, a form of lucid dreams or visions. Both NDE's and OBE's have been induced in the lab using both hallucinogenics and electrical brain stimulation.



That's what I thought too. But then there have been clinical peer reviewed studies since. There are documented events which cannot be explained. Leaves open the possibility of a transcendent part of our being as long as no physical explanation is available.

Proves nothing, leaves open the possibility of alternate explanations.

Here's one I particularly like, dunno why.

Shoe on the Ledge

Melvin Morse and Kim Clark reported a woman who had knowledge of a shoe on a window ledge outside the hospital. The shoe was nowhere near the place she had been resuscitated, but was next to a third-floor office. Though the shoe could have been seen from a window after the woman’s resuscitation, she had described it with such detail that it must have been viewed up close. She noted that the shoe had a worn little toe, and the shoelace was tucked beneath the heel.

The psychologist who interviewed the woman (Kim Clark) had to crawl along the ledge outside to verify the claim. The shoe was indeed there precisely as the patient had described it.

Clark concluded that:

“The only way she [the patient] could have had such a perspective was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”



Things are never quite as simple as some folks would have it. The world is far too complex to assume anything;

Quote;
''Although she had been able, with difficulty, to see the shoe from inside, Clark believed her view of it had differed from Maria's. That is because for Maria to have noticed that the side of the shoe next to the small toe was worn and that a lace was tucked under the heel, she would need to have viewed it from the opposite direction; i.e., looking toward the building rather than out of it. Clark is adamant that these details of the shoe could not have been visible from inside the hospital. She then proceeded to retrieve the shoe, convinced that it offered irrefutable proof that Maria's spirit had indeed left her body and floated outside of the hospital during her CPA.


Do the facts require a spiritual interpretation?

On the surface, certain aspects of Maria's story seem to defy naturalistic explanation. The leading NDE researchers, Ring and Lawrence, quoted above, accept Clark's spiritualistic interpretation wholeheartedly, although they do admit that not everyone would agree. There are, of course, other plausible explanations for the key points that distinguish this case. Closer examination reveals that the story is much less impressive than it seems at first blush.

Clark was impressed by the fact that Maria recalled seeing that the monitoring apparatus was streaming out chart paper while she was supposedly out of her body. But, as she herself admits, Maria could have been familiar with the hospital equipment and procedures. So, like other parts of typical NDEs, it is quite possible that this was merely a visual memory incorporated into the hallucinatory world that is often formed by a sensory-deprived and oxygen-starved brain. We know that the brain frequently tries to construct a substitute image of external reality from memory when traumatic changes temporarily deprive it of its normal sensory inputs (Blackmore 1993; Beyerstein, in press). Because this memory-derived imagery is the most complete and stable construct the brain can muster under the circumstances, it is accepted as reality for the moment.''