The Realness of NDEs

Robert Perry has been thinking deep thoughts about near-death experiences: Why do they seem so real?

He quotes a conversation he had with psychologist and NDE researcher Bruce Greyson, who told him he once interviewed

a schizophrenic man who had jumped off the roof of a building because he heard the devil’s voice telling him he deserved to die and should kill himself by jumping. He said that, while falling through the air, he heard the voice of God telling him that he would be all right and did not need to die. Obviously, he did survive, though with some broken bones.

When I interviewed him a couple of days after his jump, he regarded the devil’s voice as a schizophrenic hallucination, but he insisted that God’s voice was real. I pointed out to him that, from the perspective of a third party like myself, both the devil’s voice and God’s were voices only he heard, and therefore I had no way to tell they weren’t both hallucinations; and I asked him how he made the distinction.

More here.

Comments

[RabbitDawg]

Nancy Evans-Bush (of IANDS, Greyson-Bush studies) has a link to, and an interesting take on this post over at her blog.
http://dancingpastthedark.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/so-are-ndes-real/

[Paul]

I suppose the answer for observers is "I don't know whether there is a distinction or how it might be made".

Ultimately, for, me, whether any phenomena is genuine or not boils down to the nature and quality of any supporting evidence.

[RabbitDawg]

As Robert McLuhan wrote in Randi's Prize:

"…[A] reluctance to listen continues to be characteristic of professional sceptics. Their defensive posture leads them to talk about claims as opposed to experiences, too preoccupied by the challenge to their imaginations to think at all closely about what is actually being said…" (italics mine)

I know that Robert Perry is not a pseudo-sceptic, and I appreciate the positions in his article. Yet sometimes I believe we unneccesarily give short shrift to personal testimony.
Of course, people lie and exaggerate all the time, but thousands of Near Death Experiencer's can't be wrong.
Independent of each other, when they insist that what they experienced was a reality that was "realer than real" - that is, more real to them than this world we live in - I have to stand up and pay attention. I would even go so far as to call their collective testimony a "solid strand of evidence".

[Robert Perry]

RabbitDawg, I think you may have missed the point of my piece, which was really trying to look at possible reasons to respect and even accept the testimony of NDErs. I completely agree that when they insist that the reality they experienced was "realer than real," we should sit up and take notice. That was really the point of my piece. Why aren't we listening, not just to the empirical evidence, but to what they say about the realness of what they experienced? I'm not saying we should blithely accept it, but it did surprise me that more research hasn't been done on their reasons for being so convinced.

[RabbitDawg]

Robert (Perry),
Okay, I see your point. I guess it comes down to the emphasis that the reader puts on certain sentences. That's why conversation is better than the written word. Sometimes, inflection of voice can make a difference.

Sentences like "At first, it seems patently obvious that we can’t just take their word for it. We clearly need to look to hard evidence, and not just trust the subjective impression of the experiencers themselves", and "If we can gain some genuine understanding of why, then perhaps that will help us decide how much we can believe them" just jumped out at me, even though the major body of your article tries to stress the reasons why near death experiencer's should be believed.

To me, it seemed like there was a bit of pooh-poohing of the veracity of experiencer's reports that should be verified "scientifically", otherwise, they weren't valid.
Sure, scientific verification would be wonderful, but snowballs in Hell images come to mind when I think about the possibility. At least in this society right now. What's an experiencer gonna do? Bring back dirt samples? There have already been a bunch of neurological studies, and they don't "prove" anything. Maybe our science isn't developed enough just yet, but I think the problem lies more with attitude, not data.

Maybe I'm just too sensitive to sceptical arguments, and I jump to conclusions when I read certain lines of logic.

So you know though, I have several books that you either wrote or co-wrote, and I really enjoy your writing. :-)