Is it possible to have such experiences during death? I mean, if death was a process, could it be that these people simply did not complete the process? If the process includes lucid memories or imagination... — creativesoul
Well, that's the case with near death experiences and with dream experiences. There is no serious question that we do have the experiences constitutive of dream experiences, and no question that such experiences have a great deal in common, are attested to by virtually everyone, and, while one is subject to them anyway, can have representative contents as vivid as that contained by any phenomenal experience. And there is no serious question, I think, about near death experiences either - or at least, you won't find me questioning it. But in both cases we are in unusual circumstances - circumstances that operate as undercutters for those experiences. When it comes to sleep, we are unconscious. Our normal sensory modalities are not functioning. And so the more reasonable explanation of these experiences is not that they are accurate and that sleep transports us all to a bizarre other realm in which other laws of nature operate, but that we are hallucinating. And the same is true of near death experiences: those who have them are unconscious at the time and furthermore their body is under extreme stress. The idea that we become 'more' reliably hooked up to reality under those circumstances seems to me to be utterly bizarre and one only someone quite unreasonable would make. — Bartricks
I do think that it is possible to enter into heightened states of awareness of without dying too, including out of body experiences. — Jack Cummins
I had a college tutor once who saw near death experiences as leading to a possible eternity of being in that dimension. At the time, I was swayed towards that idea. However, looking at that way of thinking now, I am inclined to think that that state would not be permanent. Personally, having read 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead,' I wonder if the near death experiences is an entry into the bardo state, and would be a period of time and lead to eventual rebirth. Of course, I realise that this is only a speculation. — Jack Cummins
It may be the case that while experiencing a dream we believe it to be real or veridical, but most people who awake from a dream do not confuse the dream with reality. — Sam26
For example, people who are experiencing an NDE in a hospital setting (say in an operating room) are able to describe what is going on in the operating room in detail. — Sam26
DNA evidence that Jones's hand was on the knife is good evidence that Jones killed Susan. That Jones has a bit of a shifty look about him is not. — Bartricks
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