Near Death Experiences (NDEs)

I keep reading about people having near death experiences and what weird and wonderful things occurred.

People who think that their soul has left their body and looked down upon themselves, people who have seen what it is like in Heaven (not sure the capital letter is justified here incidentally), people who have seen the flames and furnaces of Hell (see previous comment in parentheses) usw.

I often participate in discussions on the subject. The problem is nobody replies to anything that I ever say ....

Readers of this blog will realise that I nearly died in 2008 - in hospital, during the second (of three) operations following my heart attack.

So I have had my own NDE! Which was? Two days of total peace, quiet, undisturbed, nothing strange or unusual. Then my brain started to wake up, my subconscious was roused and set off the usual vibrations in the form of a shapeless dream mixing all the usual nonsense that is filling the space in your cranium viewer at the time, and finally revived - conscious and in pain. Extreme pain! It still hurts when I look back and think about that moment. The sleep had been so wonderful and then came that ....

So shall I say that I am sceptical when it comes to what I have read on the subject of other people's NDEs (or may maybe I am envious as mine was nothing like as enjoyable? Laugh at that thought and move on)?

Remember that most anyone in this situation is very sick. Repeat - very sick. Your body is completely out of sync, your brain is fighting along with the rest of your anatomy to stay in existence, and logic is one of the victims.

Delusion in this circumstance is easy. I can recall for days lying in the same bed, staring at the same doorway and trying to persuade myself that it was exactly the same place. The usual control that you have over your mind is missing - at least part of the time.

That people at this point of their lives should lose a grip on reality and start having illusions, does not surprise me. That people have dreams that present some wonderful vision that they are seeing the afterlife, again does not surprise me.

The question really is whether they have analysed what was happening in the broad light of day, with clear logic, as to what was the reality of what happened. The more assiduous the analysis, the more you understand what was involved. When you are very ill, on the point of death, that sort of logical clarity is not always available. So that people might delude themselves (in a totally harmless way incidentally - this is not to blame them for anything) into thinking that something weird and wonderful happened, or that a dream was actually real, should not come as a surprise.

My own view though, looking back upon my own NDE is that there is no logical analysis which will accept that these events actually occurred in reality. And that there is a perfectly logical explanation as to why people underwent these "experiences".