re: Do you believe in NDE and the afterlife?

NDE's happen, but they're not from what you think. afterlife is bullshite. here ya go

from michael shermer:

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Sometimes trauma can trigger such experiences. The December 2001 issue of Lancet published a Dutch study in which of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences (NDEs), where they floated above their bodies and saw a light at the end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives.

The general explanation for all of these phenomena is that since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when a part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is thought to be the paranormal. In reality, it is just brain chemistry.

More specifically, NDEs and OBEs have biochemical correlates. We know, for example, that the hallucination of flying is triggered by atropine and other belladonna alkaloids, some of which are found in mandrake or jimson weed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans. OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine) causes the feeling of the world enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression where things we have long forgotten are brought back to memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory hallucinations and gives a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially processed chemicals, means that there are naturally produced chemicals in the brain which, under certain conditions (the stress of trauma or an accident, for example) can induce any or all of the feelings typically described in a NDE. Thus, NDEs and OBEs are forms of wild “trips” induced by the extreme trauma of almost dying.

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Psychologist and paranormal researcher Susan Blackmore has taken the hallucination hypothesis one step further by demonstrating why different people would experience similar effects, such as the tunnel. The visual cortex on the back of the brain is where information from the retina is processed. Hallucinogenic drugs and lack of oxygen to the brain (such as sometimes occurs near death) can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs, “stripes” of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be “seen” as a tunnel. Similarly, in the OBE the experience of visualizing things from above is actually just an extension of a normal process we all do called “decentering” — picture yourself sitting on the beach or climbing a mountain and it will usually be from above looking down.

These studies are evidence that mind and brain are one. All experience is mediated by the brain. Large brain areas like the cortex coordinate imputes from smaller brain areas such as the temporal lobes, which themselves collate neural events from still smaller brain modules like the angular gyrus. This reduction continues all the way down to the single neuron level, where highly-selective neurons, sometimes described as “grandmother” neurons, fire only when subjects see someone they know. Caltech neuroscientists Christof Koch and Gabriel Kreiman, in conjunction with UCLA neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, have even found a single neuron that fires when the subject is shown a photograph of Bill Clinton. The Monica neuron must be closely connected.

The search for the neural correlates of consciousness begin at this fundamental level, and then we ratchet up from there, as we look for emergent properties of complex systems of thought that arise from these simpler systems of neuronal connections. Of course, we are not aware of the workings of our own electrochemical systems. What we actually experience is what philosophers call qualia, or subjective states of thoughts and feelings that arise from a concatenation of neural events. But eventually even the grand mystery of consciousness will be solved by the penetrating tools of science.

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OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine) causes the feeling of the world enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression where things we have long forgotten are brought back to memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory hallucinations and gives a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects. The

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I can verify most of these.

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Posted by Message HempHead Do you believe in NDE and the afterlife? quote: DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine) causes the feeling of the world enlarging or shrinking

Uh...not really.

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Oh come on, yeah it does.. Right before you're shot into fricking space

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Is it a coincidence that there are males and females, who each have specific body parts and functions that allow for reproducing. It doesn't seem like its just a coincidence.

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shrinking or enlargement of the world is the last thing I am concerned with when seeing machine elves

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So, there is this entity floating infinitely close and infinitely far away from me in a sphere of interwoven pulsating bands of ethereal light....how big is the world???

Absolutely I believe in Heaven! It's going to be so awesome. I'll be able to see all my friends & family, there will be no sickness or sadness, my dog will be there and able to talk, I'll eat chocolate, have my back scratched for hours, arms rubbed, have answers to life's mysteries, and all the Jesus and God a person could dream for.

As far as Hell, I think that is just an eternal separation from God and that would SUUUUUUCK!

I believe...

After my grandfather died, My grandmother said he came to visit her one night. She woke up and he was standing at the end of the bed, laughing. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one she ever told about it, and she's the last person I expected to have an anecdote like that. She was a lifelong Baptist, and it went against pretty much everything she was ever taught. But she believed it happened. As for me, I don't know. I hope there's something out there. I don't really care for my own sake, but I'd like to think there's a continued existence for those I've loved. Even if I didn't get to be a part of it, I'd want it for them.

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I believe. And most of your grandparents and great grandparents believed.

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i can haz appeal to tradition