[net.med] NDEs

mikes@tekecs.UUCP (10/27/86)

In article <1235@hoptoad.uucp>, sunny@hoptoad.uucp (Sunny Kirsten) writes:
> I know a very psychic lady who has particulary been that way ever since she
> had to push open her own drawer at the morgue.  Commonly reported is a total
> awareness of what was going on while out of body.  The real factor involved
> in death, is the attachment by the silver cord from the physical body's
> 3rd chackra to the astral body's 3rd chackra.  When you are asleep, or in a
> coma, you still have that connecting cord.  When that cord is broken, the
> spirit has left that body, and the body has become "dead".  Note that,
> the wonders of modern medical science are perfectly capable of sustaining
> the mass of cells in the usual pattern of blood circulation and respiration,
> but without the spirit, that is, without the connected astral body, it's just
> so much dead meat.
> 
> 				Sunny

  When I originally posted an article to BOTH net.med and talk.religion.misc,
I knew it was a chancey thing.  There may be both religious and medical aspects
to NDEs (as well as personal/testimonial ones), and I had hoped that the two
could at worst be treated separately, if not complementarily.  Oh well.  What
I *specifically* want to stay away from are people giving pat answers based 
on religious or cultural tradition that are unverifiable and possess little
in the way of informational content.  
  I would like to see the discussion of NDEs go on.  I would not like it to
become (yet another) place for postulating our own particular conclusions
for what causes them (theories, hypotheses, and ideas are different).  Has 
there been any research done on them in the past 50 years or so?  Has anyone 
on the net had an NDE?  If they are a product of acute anoxia, why do they
only happen when someone dies (as opposed to being comatose or in a different
sort of anoxic condition such as drowning)?  What about the hypothesis that
they are caused by massive release of endorphins?  Can we test this?  What
about cross-cultural studies?  Have any Hindus come back and suddenly switched
to Christianity (or vice versa)?  Can we distinguish between people who have
really had these experiences and those who are pretending (I think we can)?
What does it mean if we can't explain them with science?  Are they unexplicable
or just beyond our present means?  Craig, do you have any med school stories/
rumors/legends/theories (take your pick :-) about these things?
  These are just a few of the questions I'd like to get opinions on.  Stuff
about the names of the cherubim that greet you or the length of the dark 
tunnel or which chakra it is that the silver cord is attached to have little
meaning or place here.  
  'Nuff said.  On with the show.
-- 
			   Mike Sellers
     UUCP: {...your spinal column here...}!tektronix!tekecs!mikes

		"The goal of AI is not yet insight."