Here’s an issue I have. Skeptics have no problem accenting that the NDEs which they can debunk happen. What I mean by this is that the typical “I saw a bright white light and did such and such” can be debunked by saying, “it was some sort of a hallucination.” But the trickier phenomena are just totally ignored and never seem to enter the discussion. And people who experience these phenomena (which I’ll list below) are not dealt with or are simply called liars. But these people do not seem any less credible whatsoever than the people who experience the more “mundane” NDEs. Here are some examples of what I mean.
1) Shared Death Experiences
These are experienced by people who are completely healthy who just so happen to be near somebody who is dying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BuI-DugnU&t=8s
2) The Blind seeing for the first time during NDE's, and the deaf hearing for the first time. There are several reports and testimonies of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azIh8gsXVRg&t=84s
3) Veridical NDE's
People floating outside their bodies (often to other rooms) to report conversations and events which later check out as accurate. There are a great deal of these on record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gGqpxa32og
4) These events are life altering. People change permanently. They report a non-existence of time. Those are two (there are many more) rather bizarrely common reportedly themes of NDE's. This doesnt fit the notion that they are Hallucinations, which are disorganized and bizarre and rarely make sense, and generally have no typical after effects. In contrast, NDE's are reported as being more real and clear than everyday real life, and that they make every day existence seem like a mere dream. This is nothing like a hallucination or dream.
5) People very frequently encounter dead people during their NDE's. Notice, they're not meeting living people. Strange coincidence if its a dream that all the people they run into just so happen to be dead isn't it? And why are people hallucinating something which is like what we would think the afterlife would be? Why arent people hallucinating their 57 Chevy? Why are there profound and intelligent moral lessons which are learned? Why this undescribable state of love expressed during these experiences? Sounds a lot like what we would expect an afterlife to be based upon the religious writings of the wise man, sages, holy men, and shaman of the past.
6) There are a lot of reports of people given information about the future, which eventually came true
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EydWO5vqT80
7) Miraculous healings which people were told would occur during their NDE's, and actually occur
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPmtfW3BIGs
In the cases of the more explainable NDEs, skeptics are happy to admit that people are having these experiences, because they have a skeptical explanation or two on hand. But with regards to these other circumstances, the only real explanation for many of them is that they are essentially lying. Especially with regards to the SHARED death experience. But the problem is, these people aren’t any less credible than the other experiencers. And this holds true for all the areas im mentioning, which have been thoroughly studied and documented. But you won’t understand the true power of these testimonies until you listen to the people tell their stories on video. When hundreds upon hundreds of these stories come through through sincere and emotional people, that’s when they pure weight and power of the testimony comes through. And skeptics virtually never take the time to even listen to any of these people. The “research” is usually so shallow and involves usually no contact with experiencers whatsoever. And there’s two things that will can change you, listening to all of these people, and having the experience yourself.
Then, when you dive into the PSI research which has demonstrated through hundreds of experiments that psychic abilities seem real, and you dive into the essentially unassailable research and studies in the field of re-incarnation done on University levels, and you realize that quantum physics seems to be showing us that consciousness shapes measurement of the world, and you look at Dr Julie Bieschels work on Mediums (Triple blond studies using proxy sitters) and you combine all of this with the near consensus of all of mankind in all points of history in all parts of the world (except the modern day western world) that we are not our bodies, and the hard problem of this bizarre downright magical property of consciousness, under what ground is the a-priori explanation of NDEs that they must some hallucination? It’s an a-priori explanation to those who practice materialism.
To properly unpack this topic I think you need to consider all the research that has been done in the aforementioned topics. To me, they blatantly point in the same direction. And this isn’t even mentioning dozens of other areas of documented research such as terminal lucidity, bedside visitations etc etc etc. At some point, when can we trust our experiences and the testimony of others when it’s so incredibly obvious and overwhelming? I get it that it’s hard for people. This illusion of materialism is overwhelming due to every day experience. But this sort of intuition based on everyday experience says nothing about ultimate reality.
When you have one of these experiences, you become converted permanently. There is no believing at that point. Only a knowing. I think a lot of skeptics think that if they had one of these experiences that they would be rational enough to realize it for what they think they are, some sort of dream. And then it happens to them, then they change their tune. Happens essentially every time.
Mainstream academia buried their head in the sand with regards to the strangeness of consciousness, philosophy of quantum physics, telepathy, precognition, the placebo effect, death bed visitations, healing through prayer and intention, NDEs, mediumistic abilities, the remarkable reincarnation evidence etc, because it’s a serious challenge to their beliefs. I think current Western society tends to think of itself as advanced due to our scientific prowess and technology, whereas I think we are one of the most ignorant cultures of alltime with regards to our understanding of the nature of reality and what it is to be a conscious agent. We’ve backwards with regards to the most important questions. In the future, this era will be looked back upon and considered silly. This hardline dogmatic materialistic attitude is an absolute poison. And I wish the general public realized it for what it is, a belief system carried by many in mainstream academia. It certainly isn’t “the conclusion of science”, as we are lead to believe.
I realize my post is too large and shotgun like to be tackled or properly addressed. I just felt compelled to share my feelings.