No evidence that near-death experiences are spiritual

Recently I was being my usual sceptical self in a coffeehouse conversation, saying "Everything we humans are aware of is processed by the physical brain, so nobody has ever had a purely spiritual experience."

My companion replied, "But what about near-death experiences? Sometimes people leave their bodies and view them from the outside."

Well, not really, according to a neurophysiologist, Kevin Nelson, who is a leading researcher on NDE's (near-death experiences). A recent issue of New Scientist has an interview with him -- attached as a continuation to this post -- where he states that NDE's are akin to lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreams are among the closest things we know of to an NDE. They are very similar. Brainwave measurements show that lucid dreaming is a conscious state between REM and waking. During REM consciousness, the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex is turned off. As that's the executive, rational part of the brain, this explains why dreams are so bizarre. But if the dorso-lateral cortex turns on inside a dream, you become aware that you are dreaming. It is like waking up in your dream. When the body is in crisis during an NDE and the brain is slipping from consciousness to unconsciousness, it can get momentarily stuck in a borderland between REM and waking, just like a lucid dream.

Near the end of the interview Nelson talks about the evidence, or rather lack thereof, that consciousness is separable from the physical brain.

You often hear people claim that these experiences happened during minutes when they were declared clinically dead. How could that be?

This is an incredible misconception that has arisen because people use the term "clinical death" when they really mean cardiac arrest. When your heart stops and you lose blood flow, you don't lose consciousness for another 10 seconds and brain damage doesn't occur until 30 minutes after blood flow is reduced by 90 per cent or more. So when experiencing an NDE, you are not dead.

People like to say that these experiences are proof that consciousness can exist outside the brain, like a soul that lives after death. I hope that is true, but it is a matter of faith; there is no evidence for that. People who claim otherwise are using false science to engender false hope and I think that is misleading and ultimately cruel.

Absolutely. And if it is misleading and cruel to use false science to engender false hope, doesn't this also apply to false spirituality, false religion, and false mysticism?

Like Nelson, I too hope that some part of us lives on after death. However, hope isn't reality; belief isn't truth. While I'm alive I'd rather live honestly, facing facts as we humans currently best understand them, instead of taking refuge in a fantasy realm.

I've ordered Nelson's book, "The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience." The way I see it, if there truly is a domain of consciousness beyond the material, it won't be found through means that are demonstrably physical.

So even if someone believes in an other-worldly spirit, soul, heaven, god, or whatever, they should pay attention to what science is learning about so-called "spiritual" experiences -- since if these are produced by the brain, as Nelson considers NDE's to be, they aren't what a seeker of spirit is looking for.

I came across another interview with Nelson that looks to be even more interesting, from a quick read-through of the first part of it. Early on he skillfully defends the following point of view against the interviewer's challenges.

Sure. I think near-death experiences are in the brain and I think that the only experience we can really know about comes from the brain and so I think that my emphasis as a neurologist, of course, is just that. It’s the brain.

Read on for the complete New Scientist interview.

Near-death neurologist: Dreams on the border of life
New Scientist
22 December 2010 by Amanda Gefter

Neurologist Kevin Nelson explains how the brain slips into a strange state of hybrid consciousness during a near-death experience

How common are near-death experiences (NDEs)?

A 1997 survey reported that 18 million Americans had had one. When my team surveyed people who have had them, we found that some occurred during cardiac arrest but the vast majority were during fainting. Thirty-seven per cent of all Americans will have fainted at one point in their life, so I suspect NDEs are common.

In your book The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain you talk about borderlands of consciousness. What are they and how do they relate to NDEs?

We have three states of consciousness: awake, non-REM sleep and REM sleep. But there aren't absolute dividing lines between them - they can blend with one another, most commonly REM and waking. Twenty to 25 per cent of people at some point experience some kind of blending, a borderland of consciousness. What I have discovered is that the switch in the brainstem that regulates these three states functions differently in people who have had NDEs. These people are more likely to get stuck between the REM state and waking. So it looks like some people are prone to having these kinds of experiences. Interestingly, it tends to run in families.

Does that mean NDEs are a kind of lucid dream?

Lucid dreams are among the closest things we know of to an NDE. They are very similar. Brainwave measurements show that lucid dreaming is a conscious state between REM and waking. During REM consciousness, the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex is turned off. As that's the executive, rational part of the brain, this explains why dreams are so bizarre. But if the dorso-lateral cortex turns on inside a dream, you become aware that you are dreaming. It is like waking up in your dream. When the body is in crisis during an NDE and the brain is slipping from consciousness to unconsciousness, it can get momentarily stuck in a borderland between REM and waking, just like a lucid dream.

But unlike dreams, NDEs tend to feature some specific images, such as seeing a tunnel with a light at the end.

The tunnel actually has nothing to do with the NDE - it's to do with what's happening to your vision. During fainting, for instance, there's a blackout because the eye isn't getting enough blood, so the eye begins to shut down even though the brain is still going. As it shuts down first from the sides and then into the centre, it's like looking through a tunnel.

The light that people tend to see has a few sources. To start with, the eye might only be capable of seeing smudges of light because of the tunnelling and lack of blood flow. Then, as the brain enters REM consciousness, the visual system becomes strongly activated - that's the rapid eye movement that defines REM consciousness. When the visual system is activated, you get light.

People often report having out- of-body experiences during NDEs.

These come about because the temporoparietal region of the brain is turned off, so the brain is no longer able to map the body's position in space. A Swiss researcher named Olaf Blanke was able to use electrodes to turn the temporoparietal region of a woman's brain on and off, making her feel like she was floating up out of her body and then returning. It was like flipping a light switch.

REM consciousness turns the temporoparietal region off, so if you are semi-conscious in a borderland between waking and REM, you can easily have an out- of-body experience. These are extremely common during lucid dreams, narcolepsy, fainting and sleep paralysis - all borderland states. I have never had one, though. I wish I could!

You often hear people claim that these experiences happened during minutes when they were declared clinically dead. How could that be?

This is an incredible misconception that has arisen because people use the term "clinical death" when they really mean cardiac arrest. When your heart stops and you lose blood flow, you don't lose consciousness for another 10 seconds and brain damage doesn't occur until 30 minutes after blood flow is reduced by 90 per cent or more. So when experiencing an NDE, you are not dead.

People like to say that these experiences are proof that consciousness can exist outside the brain, like a soul that lives after death. I hope that is true, but it is a matter of faith; there is no evidence for that. People who claim otherwise are using false science to engender false hope and I think that is misleading and ultimately cruel.

Do your findings undermine religious belief?

There's no conflict. I'm interested in how the brain works during spiritual experience, I'll leave the "why" to others. I'm a "big tent" guy. I think a dispassionate, non-judgemental view is important.

Profile
Kevin Nelson is a neurophysiologist at the University of Kentucky. His book The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain is published in December in the US by Dutton, and will be published in the UK as The God Impulse by Simon and Schuster in March.

Comments

[tucson]

I have reported before of an experience I had while meditating (sleeping). I suddenly found myself at the retaurant where I worked. There was a celebrity at a table chowing down on some gross tofu cutlet or the like. (of course they would say the hideous pieces of salmon I eat are equally repulsive, if not more so, so touche'). You eat your gross shit and I'll eat my gross shit.

Anyway, the clebrity was at the table with a couple other people dressed a certain way and the celebrity was wearing a certain colored shirt.

When I arrived at work later that day I asked the staff if indeed the celebrity was there earlier in the certain colored shirt with the people dressed a certain way. They said yes.

What can I say? I don't know WTF happened. This certainly does not prove that there is consciousness after death, but it certainly proves, in my mind, that mind is able to travel to alternate locations and make accurate perceptions without the physical body present.

IMO, life is infused with a universal field of life, consciousness, awareness, whatever you choose to call it. 'Great Spirit' will do. Why not? I've been reading about Indians lately, so give me some slack.
Every atom, every photon and quark, is this interconnected spirit. No where to go to escape it because you are it. IT is. Why? Do I look like someone who could answer that question? If so, memberships in my guru club are only $86.57 per month which includes a T-shirt and incense I have blessed. Jsut call me Baba Con.

Probably when you die, just a wild guess, the physical mind and its memories disintegate. What is left is this Great Spirit that permeates all. When asked where he would go when he died, Ramana Maharshi said, to this effect,"Where would I go? I will be here of course."

The Great Spirit is here. We are here. This is it. It's essence is what composes you. In death you revert to the simultaneously undifferentiated, and manifest, Great Spirit, a force, if you like, that is All. You ARE, at death, but there is no you...until the spirit moves your life essence to some other form, or not. But you will BE, one way or another. Isness is, What else is there? How can there be notness in all pervasive isness? Even if you're not, isness is. So, that's what is. Dig?

Reincarnation? Maybe you could call it that, but the Great Spirit has taken and been all forms. I was Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin and Attila the Hun. So were you.
You are what I am, I am what you are.

Happy fucking New Year, as if every day was not a happy fucking New Year. We are reborn every second drinking champagne into infinity. It's an endless celebration. Rejoice!!

[chauncey carter]

"While I'm alive I'd rather live honestly, facing facts as we humans currently best understand them, instead of taking refuge in a fantasy realm."

Yes, but if these facts are coming from scientists, you're taking refuge in science.

Not to impugn the work of scientists, but aything I haven't found out for myself is not really mine. How can I be honestly accountable for what I think and do if I'm depending on others to supply me with the information my thinking and behavior stems from?

[Blogger Brian]

chauncey, we're all dependent on others to supply us with information that our thinking and behavior stems from. I can't research human history, human science, human art, human geography, and all the other aspects of human culture by myself.

If I only rely on what my senses tell me, I'd believe that the sun goes around the earth, and that there are only a few hundred (or thousand) stars in existence.

Actually, the Earth goes around the sun, and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. I find these facts useful, and they guide how I understand life. I'd hate to return to "caveman" days where all a person knew is what he/she experienced directly, plus what little human culture could be passed on between people and generations.

I don't think you're really saying that this would be a desirable way of life. I'm just pointing out how important and pervasive our human ability to learn from others about how the world (and cosmos) is. Language, to offer another example, comes from others, and our individual ability to think and be aware is highly dependent on language.

[George]

but you can research scientific evidence for yourself, if you want to, that is what full disclosure and transparency is all about. evidence has to be repeatable, so that you can repeat the evidence and it works every time, that is why scientists publish papers and their evidence is open and encouraged for peer review and challenge to test the presented evidence.

This is totally different to a mystical tradition, where you might do the same experiment for 30 years and never get a result or observe anything. Moreover, science describes in detail the repeatable result you will see, whereas mysticism has never arrived at a proper description of the mystical experience, so i never really understood why it is called a science. It may be true knowledge, but it is not scientific knowledge.

As for religious knowledge, that is simply belief, which has been imbibed from someone else and has no evidence in support thereof. Creationists infer the existence of God, because of all life's complexity, but it is an unecessary inference and most importantly devoid of support.

[Account Deleted]

yes i Believe Rebirth strongly;& i believe our Rebirth is also on other planets as Aliens; in that planets Aliens Life span is 1,000years,or 10,000years,or 100,000years; in that planets Aliens Live without polution(They use solar energy,not use petrol,diesel Like us);They are Looking so Beautiful compare to us(not Like as Hollywood film Aliens);God created Not only our Dirty planet,he also created,good world's,for who people did good Things,in their past Life;if God is not Here,Then all planets,stars(suns),Asteroids,Black Holes are collapsed (crushed by Accident);
Note:There are 9 planets,100 moons in our solar system,There are 10,000crores above solar systems in our Galaxy,There are above 10,000crores Galaxies in our Universe; There are Lot of universes in space;