OOB revisited (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 30, 2010, 19:46 (5137 days ago) @ David Turell

David has referred us to Dr Sam Parnia's current study of OBEs and NDEs, but the results have not yet been published, so we shall have to wait a bit longer for his conclusions.-The article, however, mentions a study of 52 patients in Slovenia, of whom 21% reported NDEs. I've raised this question before (in Pim van Lommel's study only 41 out of 344 cardiac arrest patients had what he calls a core NDE), but I think it's worth raising again: if the argument is that consciousness and identity are NOT the product of the material brain, and we live on as "souls" after death, shouldn't this fact apply to all of us? In that case, why did 41 of the 52 patients not have NDEs? Are we to believe that 41 of the 52 have different structures of consciousness and identity from the other 11? We know that only a small minority of people (claim to) have psychic powers, but this phenomenon has nothing to do with psychic powers, as the patients are generally just ordinary folk with no previous psychic record. I remain open-minded on the subject, but I would like at least a theory as to why the majority of souls "black out" when the heart stops beating, whereas a few others go straight off to their tunnel of light.