how many here believe in near death experiences?

Question

my uncle had a heart attack and told my aunt about how when he died he was in a room with two doors and he knew the door to the left was to another place and the other door was back on earth, he though about how he couldnt leave his kids behind and chose the door back to earth, he said as soon as he touched the door nob he was back in his body, he never told anybody about this story but to my aunt and when she said he talks about it he starts to freak out, i dont know what to beleive, my uncle is a straight up guy he is not a story teller type of person

Answer 1

George Gallup, Jr., U.S. public-opinion pollster, investigated this subject and published the results in Adventures in Immortality. Doctors and scientists who were interviewed were skeptical about the validity of the near-death accounts. Said a Maryland biophysicist: “These are the experiences of a mind in an abnormal state physiologically . . . The brain is a very complex organ and it can play a lot of tricks when you mistreat it—look at the experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.” An Ohio psychiatrist: “These reports are fantasies or hallucinatory phenomena.” A Michigan scientist: “These are trauma-induced fantasies.”
Gallup came to the conclusion that near-death accounts do not “by any means constitute what might be considered proof of immortality or the afterlife.” He adds: “They may be simply dramatic internal scenarios that are played out entirely in the minds of those who undergo physical traumas.” He also suggests that some religious thinkers would explain such experiences as being “part of a demonic strategy to trick human beings"
I know for certain that electrical misfirings in the brain can cause strange visions or experinces that seem very real since I have experienced these just before or after epileptic seizures. Persons who experience these strange happenings that do not seem to relate to life or death but to stranger things they know to be impossible, are less likely to relate these stories or place any validity on them.

Answer 2

Yes. My father had one almost 2 years ago. We don't know all the details of what he saw, because he was in a coma and when he came out of it he couldn't remember everything. He did, however, see at least one of our other relatives who had died while he was still in a coma, and she looked like she was in the prime of life, say in her early 30s. There are a lot of people here who are answering with rather skeptical answers, but if you are interested in learning more about what happens after you die, there is a good book out by Betty Eadie called "Embraced by the Light," and you can also talk to Mormon missionaries sometime if you would like. Our spirits continue to exist and live outside our bodies, and someday after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, those who have died will have their spirits combined with their bodies once more, only this time they will be perfect and not subject to death and disease. Have a happy day, and I send you a gummy bear.

Answer 3

I have had a near-death experience, however, in my case I found myself in a dimly lit cave and shared the experience with Fenrir Wolf from Norse mythology.

I do not believe them to be genuine spiritual experiences, just an effect of a brain that has been forced into an abnormal state of functioning. This is especially emphasized by the fact such experiences can be induced fairly reliably in a laboratory setting.

Answer 4

The first answers about the brain freaking out are excellent so I'll move on to the last part of your question....

It sounds like he's dealing with a sort of post-traumatic stress type situation. Something about the ordeal left its imprint on his brain. To him it feels absolutely real. Perhaps the best way to help him cope with it is to give him a big hug and tell him that you're glad he came back.

Answer 5

It's been shown in experiments with test pilots (who were in no danger of dying at the time, just undergoing large g-forces) that when your body undergoes a lot of stress (operations, loss of blood to the head, etc) it goes to a 'happy place' - it's your brain freaking out and trying to calm the body down. The test pilots saw bright tunnels of light, dead relatives, travelled outside their bodies and everything that people report from near death experiences. So it's not anything mystical, or heaven, or anything like that - it's just your brain freaking out.

Answer 6

When neurons fire or stop firing it causes changes in the brain. Your brain will interpret this and it will case further responses in your brain which your brain will put together in the way it knows best. Electrical stimulation in the brain can cause dreams and thoughts and I'm sure that killing neurons will have a similar effect. It's just the brain interpreting the process of dying. It doesn't make it real.

Answer 7

I had an insurance salesman that experienced clinical death, and found himself in Hell. The doctors were able to save him and he was snatched from Hell. He was an agnostic, until this event. When he was released from the hospital, he started to attend a local church with his wife. He had no children.

He died several years later assured of his salvation, and sure that he was going to heaven.

Answer 8

Yes I believe. My dad had one before. He said when he got in a bad car wreck he was supposed to be dead. but he survived. He said that his life flashed before his eyes. Right then and there he said that he knew that if he would of died then that he would of went to hell. After the wreck he got in church and has been in since then. That was in 1987. I was born in 1988 so yeah almost 20 years.

Answer 9

i have studied NDEs and find it to be the most amazing evidence of life after death
especially when those experiences have come from children with no knowledge or different thoughts of an afterlife .. yet they tell the same thing when they have the NDE
the most unexplainable bit is when people are leaving their bodies and are able to describe scenes and conversations that they would have no knowledge of on a bed dying

Answer 10

Yes I had an uncle who died and came back to tell of how beautiful it was. He couldn't wait to go back.