Can you explain how someone born BLIND could see during a NDE??

Question

One of the most remarkable NDE stories that I've ever seen was from a woman who was blind since birth. She had never seen anything, nothing at all. She had no idea what colors were, she had no idea what she looked like. She had no idea what anything looked like.

However when she was in a terrible auto accident and experienced Near Death she felt herself floating out of her body, and she looked down and for the first time saw what she looked like as the doctors frantically tried to save her life.is a visionary experience, typically of a paranormal, spiritual or religious kind, sometimes reported by persons who have been revived after being pronounced clinically dead or who have been otherwise close to death. Some scientists consider such an experience to be hallucinatory[1]; whilst others claim that such an explanation cannot adequately explain the phenomena
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QavlsCL79k8

Answer 1

This happens to live people as well, is called out of body experience, or via astral travel.

This I have experienced more than once, when either in a deep meditation, or while asleep, the spirit leaves the body, for me it's sleep.

If you are blind, and this happens to you, yes you can see, because you are using your spiritual eyes.

Usually while I am asleep, when spirits come near, I am so sensitive that my spirit wakes up as my body sleeps, and I can see, feel, communicate, and feel thoughts telepathically.

I am explaining about the blind able to see, not the video. I just got done seeing the video.... wow

Answer 2

I saw on TV the other day that a new study suggests this is very comparable to REM sleep. I think you misunderstand the state the brain is in during these NDEs. On a side note, your very first assumption is wrong. Brain death is the point where you pull the plug because there is no hope of recovering. It is the "irreversible end of all brain activity". People who come back with an NDE story were definitely NOT brain dead. There IS brain activity. As for your predictions of the future, most who "predict" something don't seem to say anything about it until AFTER it happens. Your story of a man predicting 9/11 is a classic case of an urban legend. Some "unnamed man" predicted it on some "arbitrary date" before it happened. Not only do you not back up this claim, you don't even give enough information to check it out. This type of claim is almost always false.

Answer 3

If she had no knowledge of these things, how did she know that she was seeing them? How did she know what colour was, or what the shapes represented?


Did she ever 'see' things in dreams?


Here is something for you to think about.

In order to see something you have to have a photon react with a detector of some sort. The light that would have passed on has to stop. Anything that detects light must appear black, under ambient lighting conditions, to surrounding people because of this. This is why the pupils of your eyes, and all eyes, camera lenses, etc. are black.

So for all these NDEs how come no one has noticed some black or dark object floating over the body? If it is not there, how do the people having the NDE see? If they are seeing by some other perception method, how come they see in colour? That is only possible by using the visible spectrum.


Finally, why is it that people have exactly the same sort of experience when under high Gs or in low oxygen environments? These people are not dying, they just temporarily have reduced oxygen flow to their brain. How is this a NDE if death is not imminent?

Answer 4

How did she know that what she imagined was sight?

I'm sure her brain was pretty much like any other brain. It had the capability to interpret input as sight, but lacks such input. So, perhaps during her oxygen starved trauma, her brain interpretted its hallucination as sight when it really wasn't. Since the brain has no real reference, it could interpret anything as being sight.

There is no real evidence that out-of-body experiences are real. However, there is much evidence that they are not real. A classic example is the hospital emergency room where many patients have claimed to have had an OBE on the operating table, describing how they were floating above watching the operation. Curiously, none of them saw the sign a nurse placed that could only be seen by someone floating above the operating table.

Answer 5

She may be blind, but that doesn't mean she doesnt have a brain or brain areas which originally were visual cortex. Blind people have to get a pretty good idea about the shape of things, so they have a map or image in their mind about the structure and shape of things. If you get blindfolded your visual areas actually are active as well if you exploring an object by touch.
How do you know what she saw corresponded to what you would have seen? There are a few examples of people who have through operations gained sight after being blind from birth, they actually are found to have problems understanding what they are seeing. So I assume she saw herself as she understood it from her knowledge of the world through touch.
If she correctly identified colors, that may be another thing. But only if that was colors of objects she had no non-visual way of knowing (somebody told her earlier that surgeons gowns are usually green or told her that she is wearing a red sweater today).
To tell you more I lack sufficient info about the case you mention, but that would be my primary assumption. Read the link to get a bit more info about this subject.

Answer 6

Okay... first off lets just assume that her spirit or whatever you want to call it floated out of her body.

HOW did she know she was looking down at herself.... maybe she floated up an extra floor and was watching the other lady that was being worked on.

The fact is whether she is blind or sighted she has some idea of what she looks like both from the fact that she can freely touch her own face with her hands and the fact that I'm sure people have spoken to her... so with that in mind she already has a mental image of what she looked like. Now if she were to suddenly get her eyesight back and pick herself out of a pack of photos while never being allowed to use a mirror then yeah I would say wow.... as it is, i'm more to a, "yeah so what"

Answer 7

There have been instances of people who were blind for many years--not since birth but since infancy--whose sight was restored by doctors. These people could 'see' but they couldn't interpret what they saw. It was very frightening because they didn't know what they were looking at, what shapes, colors, etc. meant. If you think about it, it takes years for our minds to be able to interpret the information that comes down the optic nerve.

So I tend not to believe the story. A person who went blind at an early age (say, school age) could 'imagine' seeing, probably sees in dreams, etc. A person who -never- saw wouldn't even know -how- to see, even if suddenly she could.

Answer 8

I will watch the video in a moment .. but just wanted to say this is not the first I have heard of such things
people seeing objects in dreams and OBEs etc
it is amazing

Answer 9

If the damage was to her retinas or to her eyes, and not the cerebellum, the portion of the brain responsible for such experiences would still be in good shape.

Further, since you cannot access the qualia of her experience, you cannot say for certain that she had an experience of vision, only that she had an experience she considered equivalent to vision.

Did you see what she saw? No?

Keep trying then...

Answer 10

Oh, yes.

I died on an operating table and was "revived," so I've been through the experience first hand. At this stage you are not seeing with your eyes, you are seeing with the pure awareness of your non-corporeal being, the real and enduring you. It makes perfect sense that she would see under these conditions.