I was dismayed when their misuse of science led to what I knew were misunderstandings and myths: people returning from brain exists and we are all headed for an afterlife. Nelson, , p. We had perceived a similarly con- in the Skeptico. We found it ironic that he, who characterized other profes- fundamental way.
Based on a statement on p. However, we were surprised to read the sentence that followed: Although I knew our research [into NDEs] was provocative, I was stunned at the furor it created in the popular press. It seems we want to know, but we do not trust what anyone else says about our most personal spiritual experiences. Thus tended to derive from their NDEs. In any case, we found that Nelson he also negated the basis of the profound meaningfulness NDErs have seemed usually to consider NDErs with empathy and sometimes not.
On one hand, the link I have made between REM and the near-death experience upsets those who see such experiences as a revelation of the afterlife or proof of an underlying web of consciousness or the existence of God. For these people, my work puts near-death experiences uncomfort- ably close to dreams—in other words, experiences that are not real. On the other hand, my work also irks some die-hard atheists, because it inextricably links spirituality with what it means to be human and makes it an integral part of all of us, whether our reasoning brain likes it or not.
That camp consists of non-dogmatic, open-minded researchers taken into account and who, on the basis of that evidence, have found suficient evidence to favor a dualistic world view—that consciousness and the brain are essentially independent though closely associated during physical life.
Nelson clearly is not a dualist; throughout his while ignoring or dismissing out of hand any evidence that could bring book, he vehemently adhered to the monistic materalist paradigm into question or even directly contradict his world view.
My research sheds new light on the irrational, primal nature of spiri- tual experience and religion. The fu- the be all and end all of the spiritual. We may inally begin roots of our spiritual impulses from the associations, imagery, and to understand how the spiritual has shaped the cerebral cortex. This book is only a beginning. The ield of spirituality and the brain is in its inception. Each of us, on our own, must ind spiritual mean- ing and value.
This is one of our greatest burdens, but it is also one of our greatest opportunities. In the end, understanding the neurologi- standing of what it means to be human. We cannot imagine that anyone could ind consolation, more or less transcendance and meaning, in this perspective. How can one ind spirituality and meaning in reductive materialism, which, to give it a positive twist, may indeed add to a belief in a management of mate- rial reality, i. Hence, no transcendance, no hope, no deeper values, and no best perhaps the lifting of physical immortality.
All there is, according to die-hard materialists: Life is intrinsically meaningless, humanity but a contingency. But to give Nelson a complete and fair hearing, we continued.
For the re- mainder of this review, we address aspects of the book that struck us most. We will not comment on aspects involving pure neurology; we leave those aspects to other more qualiied commentators such as perhaps neurosurgeon Alexander.
Our objection is that Nelson gave the it seems very unlikely, in the case of a very powerful, vivid, veridical impression that REM-intrusion is fundamental to every NDE. We found in these two sentences experiences: There are things about them that may not, in a philo- a strange contradiction: If, indeed, spiritual experiences happen enti- terialism , then it follows that there is no reason to believe that there rely in the brain at least, as Nelson apparently sees it: reductive ma- is anything more that is beyond the brain and that cannot be known.
The materialist worldview is incompatible with a spiritual world view in which there is more than a physical reality. Consciousness does not originate in this cited in van Lommel, , p.
Elsewhere he rejected out of hand cases of consciousness with lat EEG. Nelson indicated that the Self is an illusion and did not go into thousands of years of philosophical discussions about per- sonal identity.
Of course, this exclusion is related to his materialism, acknowledging alternate viewpoints with a substantial basis in the but, once again, his perspective seemed to preclude him from even professional literature.
His tactic was, from the out- In Chapter 4, Nelson became more concrete in his attempts to make set, not to take seriously any evidence that argues against materialist He also said that opponents of materialism always accept the truth- explanations. That stance does not characterize our impres- characterize our own perspective.
Although we do not accept material- sion from a thorough reading of the professional literature, nor does it ism as a valid world view or ontological framework for scientiic theo- rizing, we do endorse a rational, scholarly approach to NDEs which means, among other things, that we usually concentrate on NDEs with conirmed veridical aspects.
However, we think that NDEs often seem a mix of extrasensory and dream-like elements and believe that For us the following feature was striking: Nelson saw Blackmore this perspective holds for many serious NDE researchers.
Our impression is quite different, beginning with the fact that as a critical, open-minded researcher of claims about veridical experi- s, as she has stated in an email to one of us S.
Ever since then, she has played We were perhaps most shocked by Chapter 5. Nelson again explic- itly stated that there is no evidence of an afterlife whatsoever; ap- subject—and once again, perhaps another neuroscientist, Alexander, parently he has never bothered to read the serious literature on that can teach him a lesson in this regard.
He even went so far as to state that such a brain may remain article by van Lommel et al. As we have seen, after blood low stops, the brain goes along quite nicely for ten seconds or so. It is not dead. Only after that ten- approach death for several minutes, even when it has zero blood low. We have asked van Lommel to address this matter di- We consider this to be a shocking misrepresentation of van Lommel rectly, which he has done elsewhere in this Journal issue. Without any further corroboration he bluntly said, p.
In this regard Nelson echoed Woerlee , with the important dif- logical explanation—however thoroughly his explanation was refuted ference that Woerlee at least tried to provide a highly detailed physio- by Chris Carter and Stuart Hameroff An old explanation, clearly based on Blackmore that has already been challenged with very good arguments Stone, ; van Lommel, , p. If a physi- who experienced low blood low would report a tunnel experience as such as a tunnel, then it seems reasonable to expect that any NDEr part of their NDE—but this is not the case.
Nelson did not address this discrepancy. Light: Ambient light and REM visual activation. Aside from the fact that only a relatively small percentage of all NDErs experience a ful study of the circumstances in which many NDEs take place. Throughout this entire book, we found not a word on that well-published subject. Besides, Nelson ignored other aspects such as NDErs being aware of deceased people who, indeed, were deceased but of whose deaths the NDErs had absolutely no prior knowledge.
Life Review: Memories Hippocampus from ight-or-light. Again: only a fairly small portion of NDErs experience such a review. Not all NDErs have a blissful experience; rately characterized as rewarding Bush, Narrative Quality: REM dreaming and the limbic system.
An abun- ample, whereas dreams usually involve distress of some kind, the dant literature has differentiated REM dreams from NDEs. For ex- great majority of NDEs have been pleasurable, often to the point of ec- stacy; whereas dreams have no underlying pattern, NDEs have a pat- tern; whereas dreams are notoriously prone to being forgotten, even and whereas dreams rarely are followed by transformation, NDEs are highly detailed NDEs are recalled virtually unchanged over decades; followed by transformation of a particular nature that, thanks to NDE research, is now well documented.
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