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Conversation Lesson

Dan: Okay, this month’s lesson: near death experiences. What do you think? Do you believe in all of this anecdotal evidence?

Aaron: Yeah, I don’t think people, on a mass scale, would lie about their experiences. It seems that there’s a huge body of evidence that has been collected, especially recently with the age of the internet and how people can share their experiences through websites and forums. It just makes it so much easier to gather evidence.

Everywhere it’s happening, all over the world in different countries and different cultures. People are reporting very, very similar experiences when coming back from death. Yeah, I believe there’s something going that we don’t fully understand.

Dan: Would you bet your life on it?

Aaron: Sure would. I’d bet my life on it.

Dan: I find myself really interested and accepting of these kinds of ideas of paranormal experiences or out of body experiences, but at the same time, if it came down to me actually, say, betting my house or my life savings on it I probably wouldn’t do it.

Aaron: You wouldn’t do what?

Dan: I wouldn’t stake my physical reality on the idea of a non-physical reality or the truth of a non-physical reality.

Aaron: I see, I see.

Dan: But on an intuition, on a gut level, I do believe in non-physical, spiritual realities. I guess I have a high tolerance for ambiguity. I don’t seek to feel I need to define these things or to stay 100% I believe in this or I don’t believe in it, but I find it interesting and I think it’s good to stay open to these ideas.

Aaron: I’m the same way. I try to suspend my belief in things. I either know something to be true or I don’t know. If I feel it’s worth finding out then I might explore it, and if I feel like it’s not going to make any difference whether it’s true or not, then I just let it go. I try not to believe in things too much.

Dan: I feel on a gut level I’m very open to these kind of ideas but then on an intellectual level, the skeptical part of me wonders are these people really dead that have these experiences. I think this researcher, the cardiologist that we site in the story - his name is Van Lommel or Van Lammel - he’s a cardiologist and he had a lot of patients that suffered cardiac arrest where their heart stopped. When they were resuscitated, when they were brought back, when their heart was started again, they were coming back with these similar stories of seeing a tunnel and a warm loving place. Sometimes dead relatives and dead friends. He started recording all these different experiences and wrote a book about it. He claims that 3% of Americans have had a near death experience.

Aaron: That’s a lot higher than I would have expected. I didn’t realize that many people come back from almost dying.

Dan: I’ve never met anybody who’s had a near death experience. I don’t know, maybe this is something that people don’t want to talk about because they don’t want to appear crazy.

Aaron: Sure, that makes sense.

Dan: Have you ever met anybody with a near death experience?

Aaron: No, I haven’t. I’ve never talked to anyone who’s had a near death experience.

Dan: One of the things that when I’m reading about this guy and his experiences with claiming that 3%, according to his research, have experienced near death, are they really dead or are they just near death?

Aaron: It depends on how you define death, right?

Dan: Right, so legally, at least I’m sure every country has a different legal definition. I think in the US the legal definition for death is activity in the brain stopping or your heart stopping. Aaron: Right, right. I think it’s the brain. I don’t think you’re officially dead until your brain has stopped functioning.

Dan: I think I’ve read that it’s both.

Aaron: Really?

Dan: That either one can constitute you as legally dead.

Aaron: Oh, I see. Okay.

Dan: But actually maybe that’s not true because if your heart is artificially stimulated then your brain could still be active. Actually, I think that’s the lungs. I think that’s the lungs that can be artificially kept pumping.

Aaron: The real question I have is even if the brain, according to science, according to measurement, is no longer functioning, are we still conscious? These near death experiences suggest that even though the brain may have ceased its activity, there still seems to be a very high level of consciousness occurring. Do we need a brain to be conscious? Some people would say of course.

Dan: First, what do we define as consciousness? Is consciousness the awareness of the five senses of hearing, taste, smell, sight, and touch?

Aaron: I don’t know. One analogy I’ve heard of what consciousness is, is the television set analogy. Basically, consciousness would be like the airwaves, and in order to tap into that, in order for them to have expression, you have to turn on the television. The television, actually the airwaves, will show a program through a television set. Your brain is kind of like the television set. If we turn off the television set, does that take away the airwaves? No, the airwaves are still there. They just don’t have a way to express themselves.

Maybe consciousness is some kind of interaction between our brain, our bodies, and it has an existence outside of our brains and bodies. That might suggest that these near death experiences are having are not dependent necessarily on the functioning of the brain. That might explain why people can actually recall very specific details that there’s no way … Like in the story of the woman who died and she could tell details about the shoe that was on the ledge outside of the hospital. Maybe something like that could be happening. I don’t know. That’s one analogy.

Dan: This idea of the brain being a tuner and tuning into a non-physical consciousness is a theory that’s been used to explain all sorts of different sorts of psychic phenomenon, like telepathy.

Aaron: Or ESP or something like that. It’s interesting because if you listen to a lot of skeptics of the near death experiences, one of the most common explanations that people have for what’s happening is that it’s some kind of biochemical experience in the dying brain. When you’re dying your brain has a lack of oxygen and there are endorphins that are released and other hormones and chemicals.

Maybe the combination of the lack of oxygen and these chemicals being released causes really powerful hallucinations. It’s a physical thing that’s happening so that’s why it goes across culture and people from all different parts of the world. They’re experiencing the same thing because it’s a physical reaction in the mind. Therefore, because we’re all human beings, we’re experiencing the same kinds of things. That’s the most common skeptical viewpoint that I’ve read and heard about for what’s actually going on.

Dan: I think the most common counterpoint to that would be a.) if that’s true that there are physical reactions happening that are happening at the same time as this experience, whether they’re chemical or hormonal activities or responses in your body, that doesn’t really point to the truth or lack of truth in the experience. For example, I’m sure we could drill down to what is the experience of love when you are thinking about a loved one. I’m sure there’s all kinds of chemical processes going on, but does that equal love? Is that what love is? Does love boil down to the release of this chemical hormone in your brain?

Aaron: Some people might say yes.

Dan: Yeah, I wouldn’t be one of them.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: I think the other counterpoint to that skeptical viewpoint is that a lot of these cases like the case in our active listening story is, according to an EEG, they were having no brain activity. Their brain was medically dead.

Aaron: It’s very interesting. What about you? Are you fearful of dying?

Dan: When you ask me that I think well of course, everybody’s afraid of death. I remember one time I was on a plane, and I don’t know how much danger we were in, but the plane was shaking a lot. The stewardess was saying everybody buckle up. This is serious turbulence. The sound in their voice, the stewardess sounded afraid.

I remember I at first had a shutter of fear, and then I had this very strong feeling that if this was the moment that I was going to die that I was okay with that, and the state of mind that I was in when I died was significant and it was important for me to maintain a sense of calmness. If this was the moment that I was going to pass, I wanted to pass in a state of peace. I remember feeling at peace with that. Then of course I’ve had other experiences where … I remember one time as a kid I had a little bit too much to drink and did something really stupid. Decided that that was a good time to go swimming.

Aaron: As kids do.

Dan: I was a teenager and I drank too much. I remember being under the water and not knowing which way was up. I remember being incredibly afraid that I was going to die.

In that situation I would say that there’s a part of me that’s afraid of death and there’s a part of me, I guess the rational part of me, that fears that this is it. Then I feel a deeper, on a gut level, I feel that our lives do have a spiritual component that transcends death and that part of me is probably the part that I tuned into when I was on that plane and where I felt at peace.

Aaron: I see.

Dan: What about you?

Aaron: What about me?

Dan: Are you afraid of death?

Aaron: I think, like you, there’s part of me that is and I just wonder to what extent that’s a biological fear, a physical fear. Because we wouldn’t be here talking here unless people were afraid of death. We don’t want to die. Our species never would have survived if we weren’t afraid of death. I fear more the pain and the suffering of letting go of my loved ones and this life that cherish more so than the actual physical death itself. I have no problem dying; I feel like I’m ready to die inwardly at any time.

It’s just I feel like I have a lot of attachments to people I love and I would not want to die because I don’t want to leave them behind. I think for me it’s more of an emotional fear than a real physical fear. The physical fear is there; I have no control over that maybe. Yeah, I don’t want to die but I feel like I’m ready if need be when it comes and it will come. It does for everyone.

Dan: I wonder for how many people that is the biggest fear: of letting go even if they do feel they have some sort of faith in an afterlife or some sort of spiritual or religious belief system where they feel that this is not the end but they’re fearful of leaving people behind. My father passed away about 12 years ago and apparently that was his last words to the doctors and the nurses was how much he loved his family, how much he loved his children, how much he loved his wife.

Aaron: What do you think happens after you die? That’s a common question I think that many people will ask.

Dan: I don’t really know and I really feel that anybody who tells me with complete 100% confidence, I don’t trust them. I’m open to their experience but if I were to meet one of these people who had this near death experience I think I would take that in as interesting but if they were trying to convince that this is what’s going to happen to you.

Aaron: This is the way it is.

Dan: I would think that maybe they’re a little full of it. What about you? What do you think?

Aaron: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I think this goes back to what I was saying before. I don’t have any particular beliefs about what is going to happen and I’m not really concerned about it. I don’t really care what’s going to happen after. For me what’s important is now, in this life. I want to make the most of every day, of every moment, to enjoy this amazing thing we call life. The body, the mind, all the wonderful colors and all the pain and the suffering and everything that’s thrown in there, the emotions. This is where it’s at now and I’m not concerned so much about what happens after.

Dan: That makes me think of what I found the most interesting about this story was Van Lommel’s research and the life changes that this provoked in people who had these near death experiences. Apparently they came back with a lot more appreciate for life.

If you appreciate life really fully and you really are thankful for everyday that we have here, maybe we don’t need near death experiences.

Aaron: Yeah, maybe we don’t. Anyway, we’re going to find out. We’re all going to find out.

Dan: We’ll all get there one day.

Aaron: That’s right.