Share:
Near-death experiences Explanations, examples and experience reports
contents
- A look into the hereafter?
- "Interviews with the dying"
- What are the causes?
- Christian-esoteric perspectives
- stimulus processing?
- When will there be near-death experiences??
- A sufferer reports
- Mystical experiences
- Out-of-body experiences
- User reviews
- Extraordinary experience
- Trance and dissociation
- lack of oxygen
- The interpretation is culture-dependent
- No direct danger of death
- What does brain research say??
- What do the religions say??
- What does neurobiology say??
A look into the hereafter?
"Suddenly I realized the whole thing and had the feeling: 'Here I was before'. (...) I felt that the way through the gate would mean my final physical death. Conscious of having the opportunity to return with the insight that this state of being is a reality more real than anything we understand here, and the thought of my young wife and three small children, I decided Return "(From: Pim von Lommel / Endless Consciousness).
Many near-death victims report a bright light at the end of a tunnel. (Image: brueggerart / fotolia.com) Others, however, who reported similar experiences, were not near death, but had an epileptic seizure, suffered a traumatic experience, or actively introduced this altered consciousness - through meditation.
Esoteric authors see near-death experiences as proof of a life after death and pick out certain features of these experiences that they see as evidence: seeing one's body from the outside, beings that appear, a tunnel that those concerned see and have a " supernatural light ".
Critical researchers point out, however, that neither these beings, nor the view into a tunnel or the overwhelming light appear in most people who make and interpret these images as self-produced. Neurobiologists soberly look at near-death experiences as symptoms that certain functions of the brain are temporarily shut down.
Thus, near-death experiences are comparable to shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, trance or anesthesia.
"Interviews with the dying"
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has made a name for herself in the German gossip press since she published "Near-death Reports" in 1969 in "Interviews with Dying". She claimed that many of those bordering on death had similar experiences: the separation from the body, the review of one's life, a journey through a tunnel, and a fulfilling light.
The Christian Raymond A. Moody sent a similar message of salvation in "The Afterlife" in 1975: After death, it goes on and the dying is beautiful.
Moody and Kübler-Ross were both believers and sought out exactly what suited their religious affairs. Hubert Knoblauch, a sociologist, studied so-called near-death experiences without these esoteric-ideological glasses.
He interviewed more than 2,000 people after death experiences. The results were completely different from those of the two religious heresy mediators: they could not be generalized. After all, 60% of East Germans and 30% of West Germans made terrible experiences.
How the afterlife is experienced depends on the sociologist Hubert Knoblauch, which cultural background of the affected person has. (Photo: sunnychicka / fotolia.com) The beautiful death, which adheres to certain rules, could not confirm garlic. Garlic's conclusion was clear: "The whole design of the hereafter, which is encountered in the near-death experience, is of course from this world". In other words, how a person experiences this condition depends on the culture in which he grew up.
The patients examined by Moody all came from the same Christian fundamentalist milieu as he, and his questions were suggestive. So his "research" had nothing to do with science, but with the proclamation of faith.
What are the causes?
The causes of the changed consciousness have been the subject of research for some time now. In the 1990s, scientists examined in a study possible changes in the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the brain.
Doctors of the Virchow Clinic let test subjects breathe quickly in 1994 and then fainted. The healthy clients showed similar pictures to near-death experiences: they saw their lives as "passing through the film" and thought they were leaving their bodies.
The psychic experience of leaving the body is also a core experience of the shamanic journey that a shaman takes in an abnormal state of consciousness. He goes into a trance with fasting, drums, drugs or dances.
A core element of this psychic journey is the experience of a tunnel, behind which lies the entrance to an invisible world that can be as full of wonder as it is terrible. Even shamans believe that their bodies, so to speak, "die" while in this "other world".
However, shamans are well in a state where brain functions change, usually not in a situation that is close to physical death.
However, it is important for the near-death experience that even shamans believe that they are entering a world beyond, that is, a world of the dead, and that they come into contact with the ancestral spirits.
Neurobiology has since discovered that these experiences are not spinning, but that trance, like hallucinogens, actually produces visual worlds similar to those of a dream. The difference to the drug rush, however, is that the shaman remembers his experiences in detail. Exactly the same applies to near-death experiences.
Lack of oxygen was not the cause of the experience in cardiac arrest patients, but seven of those who reported a near-death experience had even higher levels of oxygen than patients with no such experience.
The patients' detailed memories show, according to a study, that near-death experiences are not hallucinations. (Image: vchalup / fotolia.com) The near-death imaginations could not be explained as hallucinations. The chief physician, dr. Parnia emphasized: "All patients were able to remember the experience very precisely and in great detail. This does not indicate hallucinations. "
The body's own substances obviously affect near-death experiences - but not only in the face of real death. Dying people often report an overwhelming sense of happiness. But what Christians and esoterics represent as "proof" of a life after death proves to be a push of the organism to survive.
The same feelings of happiness that people experience in extreme situations, when they are on the edge of their physical stress. Even more: For many marathon runners, the euphoria that sets in after many kilometers of running is the reason why they take on these hardships.
People who are critically injured in a car accident, on the verge of freezing, free climbers climbing an overhang, bungee jumpers, or drowning people, all report a state of bliss that is just setting in on the climax of stress.
Torture victims also know the experience that their mind is released from the body and they no longer perceive the pain. Agents even train themselves to consciously learn such conditions.
Instead of looking into the hereafter, the body is thus brutal about this world: The brain releases more happiness hormones, so that people in need survive the dangerous situation.
Scientists see so-called near-death experiences not as a phenomenon, but as different experiences that need to be explained differently, but all of which cause the brain to spill out high levels of specific substances and block others.
From the Christian-esoteric point of view, the elements of the near-death experience include the feeling of leaving one's own body. (Image: Spectral-Design / fotolia.com) Christian-esoteric perspectives
One of the bestsellers of religiously-inspired NDE literature is the fundamentalist Christian Raymond Moody of America. He systematically divides the near-death experiences into twelve elements:
1. The unspeakable of the experience.
2. A feeling of peace and tranquility. The pain has disappeared.
3. The knowledge of being dead. Sometimes there is a sound after that.
4. Leaving the body or an out-of-body experience (LFS). Your own resuscitation or surgery is performed from a position outside and above your own body.
5. Staying in a dark room at the end of which there is a small patch of light to which it draws the dying: the tunnel experience. They are pulled at high speed to the light, which is very bright but not dazzling.
6. Perception of an off-world environment, a wonderful landscape with beautiful colors, beautiful flowers and sometimes music.
7. Encounter and communication with deceased.
8. Encounter with a radiant light or a being of light. The experience of complete acceptance and unconditional love. One comes into contact with deep knowledge and wisdom.
9th Life review, life panorama or review of the course of life since birth. Everything is going through again. One surveys the whole life in a single moment, there is neither time nor distance, everything is simultaneous, one can talk for days about this life show, which lasted only a few minutes.
10. Foresight. One has the feeling of surveying and looking at a part of life that lies before you. Again, there is neither time nor distance.
11. The perception of a limit. It can be seen that after crossing this limit, it is no longer possible to return to one's own body.
12. The conscious return to the body. It takes great effort to leave this beautiful environment. After returning to the sick body, one feels deep disappointment that something so splendid was taken.
Moody says, "A human is dying. As his physical distress nears its climax, he hears the doctor declare him dead. All of a sudden he perceives an unpleasant noise, a piercing ring or hum, and at the same time he has the feeling. that he moves very fast through a long, dark tunnel. "
The Christian author explains how the soul seems to leave the body: "After that, he suddenly finds himself outside his body, but in the same environment as before. As if he were an observer, he now looks at his own body from a distance. Deeply disturbed in his feelings, he lives from this strange observation post from the revival attempts. "
In some cases, the entire life runs in fast motion in front of the inner eye. (Image: okunsto / fotolia.com) stimulus processing?
Richard Kinseher, on the other hand, sees NDEs not as a dying process, but as a brain stimulant.
He writes:
- NDEs also report 'out-of-body experiences' with detailed perception of the environment: in order to have sensory perceptions, the sensory organs must first of all be functional so that sensory stimuli can be registered. Then these stimuli must be directed by nerve conduction to the brain for further processing. And only then - in the brain - does the sensory perception arise.
- According to my explanatory model, NTEs can consciously experience how a single stimulus is processed by the brain - a unique phenomenon. It helps to understand how the brain processes stimuli, how to store and remember experiences. Here one could learn to understand basic ways of working the brain.
- According to my explanatory model, NTEs are recognizable as memory processes or how a virtual simulation is created by the brain (OBE). In the 'The AWARE Study', which has been running since 2008, it is intended to investigate NDEs as deaths - ie. Senseless research is conducted on patients. If this delays treatment, it would be bodily harm through questionable research.
- NTEs clearly show how reminder processes take place. As people grow older and suffer from diseases that affect their memory (dementia, Alzheimer's disease), every opportunity should be harnessed to understand how the brain works - so that useful therapies for forgetting can be developed.
When will there be near-death experiences??
1.) cardiac arrest in patients with a heart attack or severe cardiac arrhythmia
2.) Coma due to brain damage in a traffic accident or brain hemorrhage
3.) Coma, when people are almost drowning
4.) In respiratory arrest or Zuckerkoma
5.) When unconscious due to low blood pressure - shock
6.) In case of allergies
7.) In case of severe sepsis
8.) During anesthesia
9.) During an electric shock
Near-death experiences can occur, for example, during anesthesia. In all these situations, brain functions are temporarily out of order.
However, near-death experiences also occur without the brain functions being damaged:
1.) In diseases with a high fever
2.) When dehydration and hypothermia
3.) For depression and mental crises
5.) In meditation, trance and ecstasy
6.) Spontaneous without apparent cause
7.) In situations of fear of death - not necessarily real near death, for example, when a truck in aquaplaning drives in front of the car, or if we slip off when climbing
A sufferer reports
"A few weeks ago, I was looking for a harmless traffic accident for neck pain and cervical syndrome to the outpatient clinic of a hospital. There I did not want to lie down despite the advice of a nurse, although I was dizzy, which unfortunately resulted in a fall and the injury of an artery in my nose. What followed then came slowly back to us little by little in the last few weeks. "
In the OP, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest: "Since there were massive shock and circulatory problems anyway and I actually was allergic, followed by a cardiac arrest with resuscitation, thank God !! was successful. I learned a lot from this phase, including heart pressure massage, defibrillator placement and voices. Partially as in a dream, partly totally distanced, partly totally factual. I got cold, and I went through the tunnel so often described to the light, saw dead relatives. "
It describes an experience that esoterics see as evidence of the existence of a hereafter: "But I also heard a voice that invited me to come back. Who told me what I still want to do in life, how great life is. As I learned afterwards, that was the ambulance who was still present in the shock room. "
She actively returned to life: "There was a moment when it became clear to me (as clear as it is subconsciously) that I am on the border and how much I want to live. And it went back with the help of the doctors. "
Like many other people affected, this borderline experience was an incision for them to take life more seriously than before: "Life is a gift. I've enjoyed living before, but I've just seen how strong my will to live really was. The doctors afterwards told me that I was fighting a lot. Do not throw it away recklessly, it's always worth it. "
The experienced border experience leads many people to live more conscious and intensive lives afterwards. (Image: Denis Rozhnovsky / fotolia.com) Mystical experiences
Near-death experiences show many elements that are also reported by people who made mystical experiences: a positive-sacral mood, a sense of intense reality, the experience of a sense of unity, the transcendence of time and space, a transience of experience, speechlessness over the sensations and paradox Happenings.
In addition, mystical and near-death experiences share the fact that many of those affected then give meaning questions a higher priority than before and intensively deal with religious and philosophical questions.
Science and religion answer these overlaps between near-death and mysticism differently. Religious authorities see evidence that the mystics are looking into the hereafter and those who are near-death experience an insight into life after death. In other words, they consider such experiences to be independent of the brain and body.
On the other hand, agnostics view these experiences as subjective and explain the interpretations through socialization and culture.
Psychology, psychiatry and neurophysiology also know classical elements of the near-death experience as well as stepping out of the body and see this depersonalization as a biological process. So there are autoscopic hallucinations in which someone sees a picture of themselves outside their own body. A basic pattern of visual hallucinations is the tunnel, which shows near-death experiences as well as shamanic journeys.
Out-of-body experiences
Out of body experiences are near-death experiences similar in many ways, of varying length and duration. Sufferers feel that they are detached from their body, a unity of their body, even if they are paralyzed or limbs were amputated.
They feel no pain, believe they can float and glide through the air, feel invisible and see my 360 degree angle. They believe they can glide through walls, people or blankets.
These correspondences suggest that in near-death experiences, certain brain areas are equally activated and others paralyzed. Out-of-body experiences occur not only in experiences of near death, but in meditation, migraine and vascular brain damage, but also in the "aura", which precedes an epileptic seizure.
Near-death experienced people report these LFSs, as well as hypnotized and ecstatic, LSD consumers as well as people under the influence of psilocybin or mescaline. Consciously bringing about AKEs is considered a "shaman's" tool in many cultures.
Meditation allows out-of-body experiences. (Image: Coka / fotolia.com) User reviews
A sufferer describes an out-of-body experience that he did not associate with death:
"When I was about 10 years old, I lived with my older brother in my uncle's home, the major in the U.S. medical corps. Army was. One night I lay awake on my bed and looked at the ceiling beams of the old Spanish building where the living quarters were. I asked myself a few questions about what I did there and who I was. Suddenly I get up from bed and go to the next room. There I felt a strange feeling of weightlessness and a strange happy feeling mix. I turned on the spot to go back to bed when, to my astonishment, I found myself lying in my bed. This surprising experience at this young age gave me a kind of jolt that shook me back into my body, so to speak. "
Both the feeling of happiness and the "see his body from the outside he experienced as in the reports of near-death experiences.
Another victim tells more clearly how he left his body:
"I woke up at about 3 o'clock at night. I meditated briefly lying down and then fell asleep again. A short time later, while still falling asleep, I clearly and consciously felt a kind of detachment of my body. It felt like a gentle to-and-fro. I remember that I was surprised by the ease of detachment. I floated from my bed over my wife on my back, then turned slowly and looked down at my EMPTY bed. "
Similarly, the out-of-body experience with an NDE reads: "I saw the nursery room from above: the cots, my mother by my bed, and my figure (indistinct). (...) It seemed like I should hold back my strength and creativity. The fact was, after this clear experience, I reestablished contact with my body. For a while I felt around and body at the same time. I experienced the hospital room as my own "body." And when I saw the pain of another crying mother sleeping in the company of her terminally ill child, it hurt me everywhere. "
Out-of-body experiences are also associated with so-called dream-dreams. An affected person reports:
"Then it suddenly changed again when my son was 1.5 years old. He was pretty ill and I was always worried that even though I had a baby monitor, I might not hear him at night if there was something wrong with him. It was very strange almost like the first time, my son started to cry and I was suddenly in his room, he was sitting in his bed. I wanted to comfort him but it did not work and then I "woke up" suddenly and heard over the baby monitor that he was really crying and went to his room. He was sitting in his bed just as I had seen in a while before. That's when I realized that it could not have been a dream. "
Extraordinary experience
The imagery of near-death experiences is in part in line with lucid dreams, the illusionary consciousness (oneiroid syndrome) and a loss of consciousness caused by the centrifugal force.
Trance and dissociation
In a dissociative trance, sufferers lose the sense of personal identity, their consciousness narrows down to certain stimuli. Movements and language are reduced to repeating the same actions.
Obsession trance causes the actors to temporarily assume a different identity, which they ascribe to a spirit or God.
Psychologists describe the perception that the personality is replaced by the body as a dissociative experience.
lack of oxygen
Research has shown that some near-death experiences have a lack of oxygen or an excess of carbon dioxide in the brain. Artificially induced impotence in many cases brought about out-of-body experiences, as well as feelings of peace and happiness, lack of pain, light phenomena, a different world, mythical creatures and tunnel experiences.
The interpretation is culture-dependent
The sociologist Knobloch made a comprehensive study of near-death experiences and found that the afterlife experiences claimed by Christian esoterics such as Moody were not a common feature at all - the reports rather reflected diverse biographical, cultural and social imprints.
No direct danger of death
Near-death experience is a term that is easily misleading, as Garlic found that less than half of those affected were really in mortal danger. Conversely, very few of those questioned by him, who were actually on the verge of death, reported such an experience. Sociology therefore speaks of near-death experience.
Garlic emphasizes: "Contrary to the common claim of a consistent structure, there was a great diversity in terms of content."
Conclusion: There are hardly any valid elements. On the contrary, typical culture-related patterns show up: angels or grim reapers.
The ethnologist Hans Peter Duerr explains: "To believe that such abilities or conditions could sometimes detach themselves from the organism and, for example, go somewhere through a tunnel, is as pointless as the idea that a thought can be knocked flat with a hammer."
What does brain research say??
Brain researchers hold near-death experiences for the ability of the brain to make sense in chaotic processes.
What do the religions say??
Shamanic cultures take it for granted that the soul detaches itself from the body. Jakob Ozols summed this up as follows: "After death, the soul form separates from the body and carries on its own life, largely separate from the body. However, she always returns to the skeleton and especially to the skull to rest. In the living it leaves the head only at night or in extraordinary situations, such as sudden fright, severe illness or in special states such as in trance and ecstasy. The soul figure may not stay out long. If she does not return soon, man will fall ill, he will be exposed to many dangers, and he will even have to die if the soul form is absent for a long time. "
The mythical religions of antiquity already refer to the paradisiac elements that occur in some near-death experiences. Thus, the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh recounts: "After a long time, he comes behind the seas at the end of the world to the river Chubur, the last frontier before the realm of the dead. Gilgamesh left the world and crawled through an endless dark tunnel. It was a long, uncomfortable way ... but in the end he saw light at the end of the dark tube. He came to the exit of the tunnel and saw a magnificent garden. The trees carried pearls and jewels, and above all, a wonderful light poured out its rays. Gilgamesh wanted to stay in the other world. But the sun god sent him back through the tunnel into his life. "
Plato wrote about an experience on the border to death: "After he left his body, he came to an otherworldly place, which was crossed by four huge caves ... (Then) he saw at the exit from the underworld 'impure and stained souls' ; but on the way that led down from heaven, pure and purified souls. They all camped in a field and shared each other's experiences in each place from which they came ... (those who came down from heaven) spoke of the immense joy and bliss they received there. "
Visions of light can also occur independently of near-death experiences. (Image: sdecoret / fotolia.com) What does neurobiology say??
The neurologist dr. Birk Engmann from Leipzig, says clearly: "Such experiences are not only after a past clinical death, but also in everyday life, in diseases such as epilepsy or when someone abused drugs. In the brain, different things can trigger the same reactions. I had a client who talked about light visions and thought he had had a near-death experience. It turned out he had never been clinically dead in his life. "
The term is, according to Engmann, in the general language wrong: "Near death is when someone has survived a clinical death. It is not clear exactly what causes these phenomena especially in clinical death. One can not study near-death phenomena at the exact moment they are likely to occur, the brain death just occurred. "
The neurologist explains, "If someone is clinically dead, so the heart is at rest, then no more blood circulates through the body. Therefore, all organs are no longer supplied with enough oxygen and nutrients, especially sugar. The brain can only live without oxygen for about five minutes, after which nerve cells die off. Then it comes to irreversible damage and finally to brain death. If the brain gets too little oxygen at near-death, it can no longer function properly: signals are no longer transmitted correctly. "
But what does that say about the experiences that tell those affected in iridescent colors. Engmann explains: "Thus, for example, light visions can develop in the occipital lobe, which processes visual input, even though there is no light at all. Out-of-body experiences, on the other hand, are likely to develop in the area of the crest and temporal lobe, because these brain regions are important for the self-living of one's own body and its location in space. But that stops when you have survived the near-death and enough oxygen returns to the brain. "
The neurologist Prof. dr. Dr. Wilfried Kuhn from Schweinfurt identifies NDEs through seven hallmarks: Awareness near death, experience, tunnel phenomenon, life review, extrasensory perceptions, spiritual transformation, difference to hallucinations.
Birk Engmann is certain that near-death experiences can be explained neurobiologically and give no indication of a life after death. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)