Near Death Experiences.

Definition of Death & Near death experiences.

• DEATH : The act of dying; termination of life…the permanent end of life in a person or animal. The end of life of an organism or cell. In humans and animals, death is manifested by the permanent cessation of vital organic functions, including the absence of heartbeat, spontaneous

breathing, and brain activity

• NEAR DEATH:the subjective observations of people who either have been close to clinical death or have recovered after having been declared dead. Many claim to have witnessed similar episodes of passing through a tunnel toward a bright light and encountering people who had

preceded them in death..also ‘out of body experience’.

Plato! – Greek PhilosopherHe said the soul belonged to a level of reality that was higher than that of the body. He thought the soul as a substance and immortal. His ideas are called ‘forms’ for everything in existence, there’s a perfect idea (form) of that, every man is an ideal man. He explains that the spirit is trapped in our body and wants to break out and go to a ‘spiritual realm of ideas’ spend eternity in contemplation of true, beautiful & good.

Body exists in the physical world and only knows what it can sense.

PLATO’S CAVE ANALOGY!Plato used an allegory of an underground cave with an entrance open to the light to explain his distinction between body and soul.

The analogy.

A number of humans were chained inside a cave facing a wall since birth and chained in such a way that they couldn’t turn their head to look around. Behind them, although they couldn’t see it, was a fire behind a low raised wall. The fire cast shadows in front of the prisoners and what they saw they thought was real as they didn’t know any different. One day, one of the prisoners was set free and climbed out of the cave, once out of the cave he started to understand that there was more then what was in the cave, he now had a much more detailed understanding.

Plato explained that the cave is the world of sight, the fire was the sun, the journey out of the cave was the spirit going to the intellectual realm and being free is the spirit being free.

Raymond Moody

Raymond Moody (born June 30, 1944) is a psychologist and medical doctor. He is most famous as an author of books about life after death and near-death experiences (NDE), a term that he coined in 1975. His best-selling title is Life After Life.

Moody concluded that there are nine experiences common to most people who have had a near death experience. These are:

1. hearing sounds such as buzzing 2. a feeling of peace and painlessness 3. having an out-of-body experience

4.a feeling of travelling through a tunnel 5. a feeling of rising into the heavens 6. seeing people, often dead relatives

7. meeting a spiritual being such as God 8. seeing a review of one's life

9. feeling a reluctance to return to life

Dr.Susan Blackmore

Blackmore says ‘sensation of light at the end of a tunnel is due to the way the cells in the visual system are arranged’ – impression of a tunnel.

The ‘Feel good factor’ created by emotional effects of a person being in the situation of being close to death. Under stress,in shock + lack of oxygen,body releases a massive surge of endorphins.

NDEs Blackmore says, are product of the brain, can’t happen when the brain is dead..

In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St. Hilda's College, Oxford, with a BA (Hons) degree in psychology and physiology.

Blackmore says that there’s no evidence that NDEs are anything other than a function of the brain..Billions of neutrons and an NDE is an illusion created by the brain.

Dualism.• Philosophy. The view that the world consists of or is explicable as two fundamental

entities, such as mind and matter. • Simplistic concept that all issues can be divided into either/or states such as

good/bad, right/wrong, determinable/indeterminable. Dualism does not recognize a continuum of values (a stretch of varying shades of gray between black and white at either ends) and cannot explain complexity.

Materialism.• Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and

that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.

• Materialism as a philosophy is held by those who maintain that existence is explainable solely in material terms, with no accounting of spirit or consciousness. Individuals who hold to this belief see the universe as a huge device held together by pieces of matter functioning in subjection to naturalistic laws.