Are out of body experiences real?
Wed Sep 10,10:07 AM ET
By Jeremy Lovell
MANCHESTER (Reuters) - Scientists probing the paranormal say they hope to set up a major experiment in Britain trying to find out once and for all whether the mind can step outside the body at the brink of death.
The proposed study would involve interviewing people who had survived cardiac arrest to see if they had had an out of body experience while on the operating table.
“Over the course of a year we hope this would give us 100 people who leave their bodies,” neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick told reporters at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (news - web sites) on Wednesday.
The researchers plan to ask 25 hospitals to place special objects and pictures around their cardiac units.
Each survivor who then claimed to have an out of body experience – where they typically hover near the ceiling watching the resuscitation process – would be asked if they had noticed any of the objects.
“If they do notice them when the brain is not functioning then it makes the case for the mind being separate from the brain,” he said.
Fenwick, whose special field is near-death experiences, said there was ample anecdotal evidence of out of body experiences, but scant data.
“These people seem to be able to get information when they are out of their bodies. People have talked of ‘mind sight,’” he said.
But he accepted that if no one noticed the objects it would equally kill off the theory.
He also said there had been scientific studies proving that prayer worked, including one in which the number of women in a clinic in Seoul who conceived after being implanted with fertilised eggs doubled when groups elsewhere prayed for them.
Robert Morris, Koestler Professor of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh, said there was evidence that voice, touch and sight were not the only means of communication.
He said that in experiments, particularly sensitive people had been able to communicate over distance, although he readily accepted that his field was also full of cheats and liars.
It just so happens that I read an article in “Readers Digest” regarding experiences of those who faced “death” or “near death experiences” and now I came across this news article.
According to the other article most people who are given drugs so they can be operated upon get some experience like they watch themselves operated upon, doctors reject that obeservation/phenomena calling it as “hallucination” caused by dying brain but other scientists observed that hallucination cannot be caused by a “dead” brain which happened in one of the cases. The case was of one “Pam” whose blood was sucked out of body, heart was removed and brain was “dead” for all “medical”, “legal” purposes and surgeon than cut her head for some surgery (to remove certain brain tumor).
That “Pam” talked about watching herself being operated after she was “brought back to life”. Pam told surgeon that she remembered some events of the operation and surgeon agreed to those events as taking place. That surgeon had no idea of “paranormal” things so he couldn’t help her explain that phenomena.
Muslims/Christians/Jews don’t have problem understanding life after death but “science” still does not acknowledge life beyond this world.
It’ll be interesting if science can find anything at all, and if they do whether “atheists” who take science as their “faith” would accept/revert to any of God’s religion.
who agrees? it was in my comments that mentioned that, not the original article.