What are Near Death Experiences? Are they glimpses into the afterlife or hallucinations?

What are near-

death

experiences

? Are

they

glimpses

of the

afterlife

or simply

hallucinations

created by the mind? Let's find out that I am Dr. Prashan Sharma. Welcome to search the channel for everything about how to combine mental health and spirituality to live a more meaningful life. There have been several studies on near-

death

experiences

or NDTs and you may be surprised to know that the entire body of scientific literature is quite reliable. I was especially drawn to one by Dr. Jeffrey Long in 2014. I'll include a link in the episode description for all the ones he observed examined the experiences of people who were unconscious on the verge of death and who may have required resuscitation.

The study had some requirements, one of them being that the experience had to be reasonably lucid and vivid, so there were no fragmented or disorganized memories, no

hallucinations

or anything like that. that and directly from the writing he says that the appointments occur at a time when the person is so physically compromised that

they

are usually unconscious in a coma or clinically dead and that they are often associated with cardiac arrest. Now keep in mind the 10 to 20 seconds after a heart attack. During arrest there is no measurable brain cortical electrical activity, so a prolonged detailed lucid experience should not be possible, but it happens now.

Let's look at some of the different aspects of NDTs, as this will help us understand why they are so important. What's fascinating about ndes are the out-of-body experiences people have, which is why almost half of the people in the database reported seeing events in the world from outside their own bodies, sometimes floating above their bodies. Many of these people were extremely precise in describing the details of their own resuscitation, so this person is literally having a heart attack, they are being given CPR, and they are being given medications through their IV, but they are able to describe these events happening in great detail, how is that possible just from one point of view? physiological or brain function perspective as a psychiatrist, I have no idea how to explain that another very interesting thing is that there have been NDT in people blind from birth.

One study examined case reports of nine congenitally blind people who described END. which were extremely vivid with similar content to other NDE reports. Here is a report from a young woman named Marta who was blind from birth and it is about an NDE she experienced after almost drowning in a lake. She explained: "I breathed slowly in the water and I was unconscious. A beautiful lady dressed in bright white light pulled me out. The lady looked me in the eyes and asked me

what

I wanted. I couldn't think of anything until it occurred to me to travel around the lake while doing it.

I was doing and I saw a detail that I would not have seen in real life I could go anywhere even to the tops of the trees simply with my intention of going there I was legally blind for the first time I could see leaves on the trees birds feathers birds eyes details on telephone poles and

what

was in people's backyards again, I have no idea how to explain this, these people never had previous experiences of seeing the world, they are blind, and yet they had this completely lucid and vivid experience , this is generally a common theme in people who are not blind in In terms of the experiences being also vivid, many people who have NDT described more vivid colors than anything they had experienced before and some described 360 vision ​​​​degrees that I can't even begin to understand, but now it's fascinating, people who have had NDT experience it too. what's called a life review, basically a rehash of life events from a third person perspective now, rather than describing it, which I'll probably end up doing wrong.

I am going to quote one of the participants in the study quote. I entered a darkness. place with nothing around me, but I was not afraid, there was a lot of peace there, then I began to see my whole life unfolding before me like a movie projected on a screen from childhood to adulthood, it was so real that I was looking at myself. myself, but better. than a 3D movie, as he was also able to feel the feelings of the people he had interacted with over the years. I could feel the good and bad emotions I put them through.

Dr Long looked at 617 ndes and life reviews were conducted on 14 of them. many of them included events that had been long forgotten, but the person could remember them in great detail, so they were not hallucinatory or unrealistic, they were very rooted in reality, events that really happened in the past, the encounter with deceased loved ones has been another theme in Las ndes. They even saw family members who had died before the person who experienced the nde was born, so it was not someone in recent memory and, in some cases, it was These were people who hadn't had many or any photos taken of them, so basically it couldn't have been a vision shaped by that person's expectations.

Young children have ndes too. This is important since children generally do not have such strong religious beliefs or know conceptualizations of what life after death is or even what death itself is, interestingly their experiences are extremely similar to those of children. elders and adults. Now you might be thinking that this is a phenomenon that occurs only in the US, perhaps in Western countries. Things like that. Interestingly, the END database questionnaire has been translated into 23 different languages ​​in more than 500 NDs from non-Western countries. English languages ​​around the world and NDT topics around the world are very similar, so regardless of pre-existing religious or cultural beliefs, we are talking about Western and non-Western countries, different religions and also atheists, for what we are talking about is an experience.

That's constant, whether you're young or old, religious or non-religious, regardless of your gender, whether you're spiritual or not, it doesn't really seem to matter. Interestingly, 54 percent of people who had these experiences said that big changes occur in their lives. lives after the experience people reported that they had reduced fear of death increased belief in life after death more interest in the meaning of life acceptance of others and became more empathetic toward others, so Even an experience that could last minutes for the person the changes last for years, this reminds me of some of the research currently being done on psychedelics, where a brief experience lasts for years, but that is a topic for another video.

Now I took a moment to think about ENDs from a psychiatrist's perspective. I have certainly interviewed patients who have had hallucinations during life-threatening situations in the hospital most of the time these experiences are quite distressing and people who are admitted to places like the intensive care unit can even develop post-traumatic stress disorder. This is how traumatic these hallucinations or delusions can be, but the conditions are very different. Of this phenomenon, ndes are calming experiences that tend to center people more and create positive changes in the person's life, which from a physiological perspective is strange when we are in a situation that threatens life and is traumatic for us. amygdala or the central part of fear and worry.

The brain is racing, we are on edge, the adrenaline is pumping, we are thinking about dying, but in these times people have a very different experience and, honestly, it is the complete opposite of a traumatic experience, so what do we do with it all? this? Well, first of all, we can't explain ndes from a physiological or brain function perspective when we say that the brain has no activity during these experiences. This is a phenomenon that occurs outside the brain or our body. To me, this is proof of life after death effect, but that is just my perspective and can be debated.

I suppose people could argue that these experiences are a defense mechanism created by the mind during an extremely stressful time of being close to death, it still doesn't explain the lack of a brain. activity during cardiac arrest, of course, or out-of-body experiences or, actually, according to any of the other lines of evidence that we've talked about now, what we do know is that these experiences are not hallucinations or fictitious things invented by the mind. For me, the most compelling evidence is about those out-of-body experiences in which the people in the study described their resuscitations in detail.

You know that a person is actively undergoing CPR. He is in cardiac arrest but is able to accurately describe the events that happen. around you what the doctors and nurses are doing details that you couldn't have known about another very interesting aspect from a spiritual perspective is the life review, being able to look at your life, look at the events that occurred and being able to feel the feelings of others. It seems quite appropriate when you sort of look at your actions and learn from them from the point of view of seeing life as a series of lessons that we learn.

This certainly makes a lot of sense, not only that, but also the experiences of people who were blind. from birth to have been able to see all of these experiences vividly and the scenes surrounding them vividly and in detail is quite amazing now, if you want to learn more about this in a way that is easily digestible, I recommend reading a book called proof of heaven by dr eben alexander is a highly trained academic neurosurgeon with tons of experiences who had his own experience which he describes in the book and discusses it from both a scientific and spiritual perspective.

He also analyzes the scientific data on NDEs and his opinion is very interesting. Now I want to know from you what you think about this topic of near-death experiences or NDEs. Leave a comment about what you think. Have you had an END yourself? Have you had a family member or friend describe an END? for you or have your own point of view on all this, let me know, I'm dr. sharma to find a home that is understanding and mastery of consciousness aum that combines mental health and spirituality to live a more meaningful life thank you for watching