'Life after death' Sunday Times Article

Oryx

Im posting a link to an article on Near Death Experiences and the possiblity of life after death, which was in the Sunday Times Magazine on Sunday last. Its a good synopsis of a lot of theories on NDEs, and just an interesting read on near death experiences and the possiblity of scientific reasearch of same. Worth a read if youre want an idea of what the different strands of thinking on it are.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5324234.ece

nyarlothothep

As much as I want to believe NDEs there is the fact that we experience a close approximation to death every night when we sleep and "go offline," when brain activity is at its lowest. We don't recall anything, we have no sense of self because we are not there so to speak. Therefore I think that while a non localized quantum state explanation for our minds would be really really cool in a Peter F Hamilton/Matrix way, I'd be very pessimistic about the outcome of the research.

hiorta

"when we sleep and "go offline," when brain activity is at its lowest."
nyarlothothep.

Perhaps brain activity just changes and is more active in another way? (Or place?)

There seems to be three main stages of 'normal' consciousness: Waking, sleep and dreaming.
Add to this the meditative state, a healer (whilst working), the intuitive state and, presumably many more.
I have had the NDE experience and there is nothing in everyday life that could ever prepare for it.

There was a recent lengthy discussion on this topic at:

http://taboard.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=86386

Info at these two also.
http://nderf.org/
http://skepdic.com/nde.html

A Number of hospitals are currently taking part in an experament for NDE's Its quite simple really . What they are doing is putting a shelf above the bed with a number of items, from objects to pictures. It will be interesting to see what happens .