WhyBelieve

17/09/2023

40 Percent of Patients Recall Near Death Experiences
People have long talked about having near-death experiences in which they felt they were looking down on themselves while others tried to save them.

Now, researchers have documented some of those experiences. In a study published online recently in the journal Resuscitation, investigators found that nearly 40% of patients recalled some degree of consciousness that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious and dying. Of those, 21.4% had lucid recall of their experience.

“These lucid experiences cannot be considered a trick of a disordered or dying brain, but rather a unique human experience that emerges on the brink of death,” lead researcher Dr. Sam Parnia said when the research was first presented at an American Heart Association meeting late last year. He's an intensive care physician and associate professor in the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.

“Our results offer evidence that while on the brink of death and in a coma, people undergo a unique inner conscious experience, including awareness without distress,” Parnia added.

The study involved 25 hospitals in the United States and the United Kingdom. In it, researchers studied 567 hospital patients whose hearts stopped during their stay between May 2017 and March 2020. The patients all received cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) immediately, but only 10% were discharged from the hospital.

The experiences these patients described included a perception of separation from the body. They reported observing events without pain or anguish. The time also included a meaningful evaluation of life.

These experiences of death were different from hallucinations, delusions, dreams or CPR-induced consciousness, the researchers said.

Patients were also tested for hidden brain activity during this time. The researchers found spikes of brain activity up to an hour into CPR. These included gamma, delta, theta, alpha and beta waves.

Some of these brain waves typically happen when someone is conscious and performing higher mental functions, including thinking, memory retrieval and conscious perception, according to the study authors.

“These recalled experiences and brain wave changes may be the first signs of the so-called near-death experience, and we have captured them for the first time in a large study,” Parnia said.

Together this suggests the human sense of self and consciousness may not stop completely around the time of death, Parnia said. This is much like other biological body functions.

The study authors further explained that at death, many of the brain’s natural braking systems are released in what is called disinhibition. A person has access to the depths of their consciousness, from early childhood memories to other aspects of reality.

This reveals “intriguing questions about human consciousness, even at death," Parnia added, noting further research is needed.

Still, the study has its skeptics.

“This latest report of persistent brain waves after cardiac arrest has been blown out of proportion by the media. In fact, his team did not show any association between these brain waves and conscious activity,” Dr. Bruce Greyson, a professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, told CNN. “That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences."

Greyson, co-editor of “The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation,” said he and cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel, a Dutch researcher who focuses on near-death experiences, submitted comments to the journal in which they pointed to the study’s statement that “two of the 28 interviewed subjects had EEG data, but weren’t among those with explicit cognitive recall.”

“All [the study] has shown is that in some patients there is continued electrical activity in the head that occurs during the same period that other patients report having NDEs [near-death experiences],” Greyson said.

Parnia acknowledged the study was not able to match electrical activity with a near death experience in the same patient.

“Our sample size wasn’t large enough. Most of our people didn’t live, so we didn’t have hundreds of survivors. That’s the reality of it,” he told CNN. “Of those that did live and had readable electrocardiograms, 40% of them showed that their brain waves went from flatline to showing normal signs of lucidity.”

In addition, Parnia said, people who survive often have fragmented memories or forget what they experienced due to heavy sedation in intensive care.

“Absence of record doesn’t mean there’s an absence of consciousness,” Parnia said. “Ultimately, what we’re saying is, ‘This is the great unknown. We’re in uncharted territory.’ And the key thing is that these are not hallucinations. These are a real experience that emerges with death.”

28/08/2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tF0Ud9M6QQ&t=1415s&ab_channel=WhyBelieve

Watch this fascinating video in which Southampton University scientists have found evidence that awareness continues for at least several minutes after clinical death which was previously thought impossible. A recent article in British newspaper The Daily Mail featured an interview with Dr. Sam Parnia, with the lead “Consciousness may continue even after death, scientists now believe."

Sam Parnia is head of a multidisciplinary team at Southampton University (United Kingdom) who published a study in the Oficial Journal of European Resuscitation Council, with the title “AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation—A prospective study which included more than 2,000 persons who suffered a cardiac arrest and successfully responded to resuscitation treatment, in 15 hospitals in the United Kingdom, United States and Austria.

This is the largest study of its kind to date, using rigorous methodology, in order to exclude all those cases that could be based on individual impressions that are worthy, but which hold no scientific interest.
Jerry Nolan, Editor-in-Chief at Reuscitation Journal, who did not participate in the study but is considered an authority on the subject, said of the research, “Dr. Parnia and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the completion of a fascinating study that will open the door to more extensive research into what happens when we die.
Consciousness after clinical death: “Whether it fades away afterwards, we do not know. The results revealed that 40% of those who survived a cardiac arrest were aware during the time that they were clinically dead and before their hearts were restarted. Dr. Parnia, in the interview stated: “The evidence thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is not annihilated.

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/What happens to the brain when we die? Dr. Sam Parnia gives a lecture on the subject called Conscious Awareness and Mental and C...

21/08/2022

Prominent Surgeon: Evidence Soul May Leave Body in Near-Death Experience

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/dr-lloyd-rudy-veridical-nde/

Declared dead, man allegedly views hospital in spirit, returns to tell what he saw which is corroborated by the two surgeons, one of which is world renowned. This veridical NDE could prove to be the strongest evidence yet for the mind’s ability to exist outside the brain.

We include a video interview withe the surgeon and a downloadable investigative report into the incident.

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/dr-lloyd-rudy-veridical-nde/

Whybelieve looks at age old question and asks if God is Real? The website provides evidence for the reader to be able to form a definitive answer.

03/07/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

Near death researchers are particularly interested in studying those NDEs that may provide an answer to the question of whether the mind can function outside the physical body. This is the first step in determining whether consciousness can survive bodily death. One way is to discover this is to examine those NDEs which are “veridical” (verifiable).

Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information which they could not have obtained by any normal means. Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital. If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have taken place. It would provide very compelling evidence that NDEs are experiences outside of the physical body.

03/07/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

The following post is a quick look at some veridical NDE’s documented by Dr Raymond Moody BA,MA PhD.

Example 1: An elderly woman had been blind since childhood. But, during her NDE, the woman had regained her sight and she was able to accurately describe the instruments and techniques used during the resuscitation her body. After the woman was revived, she reported the details to her doctor. She was able to tell her doctor who came in and out, what they said, what they wore, what they did, all of which was true. Her doctor then referred the woman to Moody who he knew was doing research at the time on NDEs.

Example 2: In another instance a woman with a heart condition was dying at the same time that her sister was in a diabetic coma in another part of the same hospital. The subject reported having a conversation with her sister as both of them hovered near the ceiling watching the medical team work on her body below.

When the woman awoke, she told the doctor that her sister had died while her own resuscitation was taking place. The doctor denied it, but when she insisted, he had a nurse check on it. The sister had, in fact, died during the time in question.

Example 3: A dying girl left her body and into another room in the hospital where she found her older sister crying and saying:
“Oh, Kathy, please don’t die, please don’t die.”
The older sister was quite baffled when, later, Kathy told her exactly where she had been and what she had been saying during this time.
“After it was all over, the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I said, “Yeah, I know.”
He said, “Well, how do you know?”And I said, “I can tell you everything that happened.”

He didn’t believe me, so I told him the whole story, from the time I stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming around. He was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had happened. He didn’t know quite what to say, but he came in several times to ask me different things about it.

When I woke up after the accident, my father was there, and I didn’t even want to know what sort of shape I was in, or how I was, or how the doctors thought I would be. All I wanted to talk about was the experience I had been through. I told my father who had dragged my body out of the building, and even what color clothes that person had on, and how they got me out, and even about all the conversation that had been going on in the area.

And my father said, “Well, yes, these things were true.”
Yet, my body was physically out this whole time, and there was no way I could have seen or heard these things without being outside of my body.

25/06/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/Alexandrina_da_Costa/

It often amuses me when I receive comments from people who say they'd rather believe in the science than in faith. Yet when presented with science, they often reject that to. Blessed Alexandrina da Costa (1904-1955) is alleged to have survived 13 years without food or water. Read her remarkable story complete with medical reports from the stunned doctors who isolated her in hospital to ensure they uncovered the truth.

A full analysis of this miraculous event can be found at https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/Alexandrina_da_Costa/

Whybelieve looks at age old question and asks if God is Real? The website provides evidence for the reader to be able to form a definitive answer.

08/06/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

Agnostic Scientist: Near-Death Experiences Real

Psychiatrist and neurobehavioral scientist Bruce Greyson, author of After (2021) — a science-based look at near-death experiences — offers a short video unpa...

30/04/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

On 2 April 1968, tens of thousands of Egyptians, Muslims and Christians alike, congregated to see the Virgin Mary appear above a Coptic Orthodox Church in Zeitoun.

The Lebanese press was the first to extensively cover the event. At first, Al-Ahram only published a few lines about people gathering by the Zeitoun Church. It was not until mid-April that Egyptian newspapers started to allocate full pages to the apparition, reporting that it lasted for over two hours.

Furthermore, the Egyptian government investigated the apparition and it's even alleged that President Gamal Abdel Nasse also witnessed it. The Egyptian police could not find any natural way to explain the phenomenon. Everyone was universally stunned by what they saw and no one could offer a scientific explanation. The apparitions continued between 1968 to 1971.

Unable to provide any rational explanation, Egypt’s state-run General Information and Complaints Department issued the following statement: “The official investigations have been carried out with the result that it has been considered an undeniable fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary has been appearing on Zeitoun Church in a clear and luminous body seen by all present in front of the church, whether Christian or Moslem.”

14/04/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/
In April of 1977, Maria, was visiting friends in Seattle when she suffered a severe heart attack. She was taken, at night, by paramedics to Harborview Medical Center where she was admitted to the coronary care unit. Kimberly Clark, a social worker, was with her when, three days later she suffered a cardiac arrest. What followed quickly became an international legend. Did Maria experience a veradical NDE? https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16

10/04/2022

Glimpses of afterlife? ‘Near-death’ experiences aren’t hallucinations, scientists conclude in new study just released

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

What happens when we die? It’s a question people have been asking throughout time and the answer is still a mystery. Now, a review of research exploring what people experience when they’re close to death leads scientists to one important conclusion — “near-death experiences” are a real thing, even if we can’t explain them.

Countless people have claimed that their life “flashed before their eyes” or that they actually left their body and traveled somewhere else while close to death. Critics have called these experiences hallucinations or illusions, but researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine say something else is actually happening.

The team of scientists across several medical disciplines — including neurosciences, critical care, psychiatry, psychology, social sciences, and humanities — have come up with a number of scientific conclusions after reviewing unexplained lucid episodes which involve a heightened state of consciousness.
What exactly is a near-death experience?

The main finding is that these events don’t have much in common with the experiences someone has if they’re hallucinating or using a psychedelic drug. Instead, people who have a near-death experience typically report five different events taking place:

A separation from their body with a heightened, vast sense of consciousness and recognition that they’re dying
They “travel” to a different location
A meaningful and purposeful review of their life, involving a critical analysis of all their past actions — basically, their life flashes before their eyes
Going to a place that feels like “home”
Returning back to life

Researchers note that the near-death experience usually triggers a positive and long-term psychological transformation in the person. The team notes that people who had negative and distressing experiences while near-death did not experience these kinds of events.
Something is happening in the brain

The team found that there’s more to a near-death experience than just the stories each person tells. It turns out scientists can actually see physical changes taking place in the brain when someone is close to death.

Researchers found the presence of gamma activity and electrical spikes when people are technically dying. This is typically a sign of a heightened state of consciousness when scientists measure it using an electroencephalography (EEG). The findings further back up the claims from people who say they “left their body” while dying.

Study authors note that advances in medicine over the last century have brought back countless people from the doorstep of death. For many of these patients, they come back with stories of unexplainable events, which until now, have not been studied in detail.

“Cardiac arrest is not a heart attack, but represents the final stage of a disease or event that causes a person to die,” says lead author Sam Parnia in a media release. “The advent of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) showed us that death is not an absolute state, rather, it’s a process that could potentially be reversed in some people even after it has started.”

“What has enabled the scientific study of death is that brain cells do not become irreversibly damaged within minutes of oxygen deprivation when the heart stops. Instead, they ‘die’ over hours of time. This is allowing scientists to objectively study the physiological and mental events that occur in relation to death,” Parnia continues.
Death may not be the end

Study authors conclude that neither physiological nor cognitive processes completely end at the moment of death. While prior reports haven’t been able to prove what people are saying about their near-death experiences, the new report finds it’s also impossible to disprove what they’re saying.

“Few studies have explored what happens when we die in an objective and scientific way, but these findings offer intriguing insights into how consciousness exists in humans and may pave the way for further research,” Parnia concludes.

The findings are published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

03/04/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

Within the field of near-death studies and among those who believe in life after death, the case of Pam Reynolds has been cited as well-documented and significant with many proponents considering it to be evidence of the survival of consciousness after death.

Pam Reynolds reported to her physician that she was experiencing symptoms of dizziness, loss of speech and difficulty in moving parts of her body. Her physician referred her to a neurologist and a CAT scan later revealed that Reynolds had a large aneurysm in her brain, close to the brain stem. Because of the difficult position of the aneurysm, Reynolds was predicted to have no chance of surviving surgery for its removal.

As a last resort, Robert F. Spetzler, a neurosurgeon of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, decided that a rarely performed procedure, known as hypothermic cardiac arrest, could improve Reynolds's chances of surviving surgical removal of the aneurysm.

During this procedure, also known as a standstill operation, Reynolds's body temperature was lowered to 10 °C, her breathing and heartbeat stopped, and the blood drained from her head. Her eyes were closed with tape and small ear plugs with speakers were placed in her ears. These speakers emitted audible clicks which were used to check the function of the brain stem to ensure that she had a flat EEG—indicating a non-responsive brain—before the operation proceeded.

"I was lying there on the gurney minding my own business, seriously unconscious, when I started to hear a noise," Reynolds recalls. "It was a natural D, and as the sound continued — I don't know how to explain this, other than to go ahead and say it — I popped up out the top of my head."

She says she found herself looking down at the operating table. She says she could see 20 people around the table and hear what sounded like a dentist's drill. She looked at the instrument in the surgeon's hand.

"It was an odd-looking thing," she says. "It looked like the handle on my electric toothbrush."

Reynolds observed the Midas Rex bone saw the surgeons used to cut open her head, the drill bits, and the case, which looked like the one where her father kept his socket wrenches. Then she noticed a surgeon at her left groin.

"I heard a female voice say, 'Her arteries are too small.' And Dr. Spetzler — I think it was him — said, 'Use the other side,' " Reynolds says.

Soon after, the surgeons began to lower her body temperature to 60 degrees. It was about that time that Reynolds believes she noticed a tunnel and bright light. She eventually flat-lined completely, and the surgeons drained the blood out of her head.

During her near-death experience, she says she chatted with her dead grandmother and uncle, who escorted her back to the operating room. She says as they looked down on her body, she could hear the Eagles' song "Hotel California" playing in the operating room as the doctors restarted her heart. She says her body looked like a train wreck, and she said she didn't want to return.

"My uncle pushed me," she says, laughing. "And when I hit the body, the line in the song was, 'You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.' And I opened my eyes and I said, 'You know, that is really insensitive!' "

Michael Sabom, a cardiologist in Atlanta who researches near-death experiences, believes that Pam Reynolds' "physical sensory perception was off the table" during her surgery. Other physicians disagree.

A Vision That Matches The Record

Afterwards, Reynolds assumed she had been hallucinating. But a year later, she mentioned the details to her neurosurgeon. Spetzler says her account matched his memory.

"From a scientific perspective," he says, "I have absolutely no explanation about how it could have happened."

Spetzler did not check out all the details, but Michael Sabom did. Sabom is a cardiologist in Atlanta who was researching near-death experiences.

"With Pam's permission, they sent me her records from the surgery," he says. "And long story short, what she said happened to her is actually what Spetzler did with her out in Arizona."

According to the records, there were 20 doctors in the room. There was a conversation about the veins in her left leg. She was defibrillated. They were playing "Hotel California." How about that bone saw? Sabom got a photo from the manufacturer — and it does look like an electric toothbrush.

How, Sabom wonders, could she know these things?

"She could not have heard it, because of what they did to her ears," he says. "In addition, both of her eyes were taped shut, so she couldn't open her eyes and see what was going on. So her physical sensory perception was off the table."

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

27/03/2022

https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/

"Some there are, I know, who think the story is too good to be true — such things just don’t happen in these days, they say. But history and science are against them, for there is overwhelming evidence that the story is true."

In 1914, when the First World War broke out, John Traynor was mobilised with the Royal Naval Reserve, to which he belonged. On April 25, 1915, he took part in the landing at Gallipoli. Being in charge of the first boat to leave the ship, he was one of the few from that boat to reach the shore that day. He seems to have been literally sprayed with bullets. Medical Corps men brought him back dazed and suffering to the beach. Having severed nerves in the upper arm, which a bullet wound had left paralysed and useless he also suffered head wounds causing severe epilepsy as well as partially paralyse in both legs. Nearly every organ in his body was impaired.

Having underwent multiple surgery's, without success John life was effectively over. That is until he decided to travel to Lourdes. This is just one of many cases documented by Doctors of the supernatural healing's that have taken place there. Visit us at WhyBelieve to find out more https://www.whybelieve.co.nz/lourdes/