Demystifying Reincarnation 09 – Near Death Experiences – Partial consciousness?

Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our series on demystifying reincarnation.
We are now discussing about near-death experiences. And in the previous session, we discussed about how near-death experiences cannot be explained simply as hallucinations or guessworks. How would we explain people who while they were unconscious, not only aware of their circumstances, but also of things beyond their circumstances? How would a unconscious person lying in a hospital bed because of a heart attack in a ICU know who were the relatives who had come to meet him and were waiting in another part of the hospital, which was several closed doors away from where he was? Such are the questions that near-death experiences raise.
So, from the skeptical perspective, if the near-death experiencers are perceiving something and if that is not guesswork, then what could it be? Could it be partial consciousness? Could it be that the near-death experiencers are not yet fully conscious and that is why they are able to, by their conscious awareness, see what is happening or perceive what is happening? It is possible. But there are problems with this explanation also. The first problem is that why are there only sites? Why sites only or primarily sites? That means that the most prominent perception that near-death experiencers report is of seeing themselves, seeing their body, seeing the medical staff or other people from a perspective above the bed where they are lying.
So, sight is the primary perception. And normally, when we go from consciousness to unconsciousness, medical science has documented that the visual faculty shuts down first, long before the audio faculty. That means we stop seeing even before we stop hearing.
Just like when we sleep, we close our eyes first and we may still hear some sounds around us and gradually we stop seeing and stop hearing and we drift into sleep. Something similar happens in unconsciousness. So, in the state of partial consciousness, what is more likely is that people should be hearing rather than seeing.
But actually, most near-death experiencers, the subjects are seeing more than hearing. The sight is the most prominent of the perceptions that they have and they also hear sometimes some things. But in many cases, the primary thing that they perceive is seeing.
Now, could it be that actually they are not seeing, but their sights are manufactured from the sounds? That means that whatever they think they are seeing, they have actually heard the doctors, heard the medical staff talking and based on that, they imagined that they saw it. It is a massive imagination. That could also be possible.
But again, Dr. Sehbom in his books investigates this possibility. For example, in a particular case of a near-death experience, he described that actually he perceived the near-death experiencer described that he saw himself being given a shot. That means a shot is a word for injection.
He was given an injection in his right thigh, right leg, in the thigh area and above. Now, actually when Sehbom compared to the medical records, it was not that he was being given an injection. He was actually a blood sample was being taken.
So, if the subject had heard the conversation and they would have clearly heard the medical staff talking and saying, oh, now you have to take a blood sample. Yes, I have taken it. I have taken the blood sample.
But if the subject had been observing from above, then from an overhead perspective, the two activities of giving an injection and taking a blood sample look similar because both involve putting a needle into the body, of course. So, that way, there are many such cases where the idea that the subjects may have manufactured their vision based on sound, that does not work. So, another hypothesis could be that maybe the subjects manufactured their sights based on touches, maybe based on when our eyes are closed and somebody touches us, we may be able to guess based on their touch who it is that is touching us.
That is also possible. But again, in the same case, when Sehbom compared the medical record of the subject who said that he had been given a shot in the right groin with the actual medical record, he found that actually the subject had been given not a shot, but a blood sample had been taken and the blood sample had been taken not from the right thigh, but actually from the left thigh. Now, if this had been manufactured through touch, then the subject would have known that actually this is that it is in the left thigh.
But if he had been seeing from above, just like in a mirror, our right side comes on the left and the left side comes on the right. So, similarly, if the subject had been seen from above, he would have thought that it was the right thigh. So, if we critically analyze the near-death experiences, we find that actually they support the idea that the subjects were actually seeing, not just being touched or hearing.
More importantly, if even if the subjects had been conscious, now how would they have reported? How would they have reported something which happened far beyond their vicinity? Sehbom in his book Light and Death also describes another case where there was a person who was recovering from a long illness and he was about to be discharged on that day. And just before the day of, just on the day of discharge, a few hours before his discharge, he got an unexpected heart attack. And during that heart attack, he had a near-death experience.
And if the doctor struggled to revive him, he told, as soon as he came back to the consciousness, he told the doctors that my wife, along with my eldest son and my daughter have come there and they are waiting for me outside. This was an astonishing piece of information because when the patient had been unconscious, he had not been expecting anyone to come at that time because his discharge was after a few hours and he was expecting his family members to come at that time. And more importantly, he had six grown-up children and they would all take turns, one or two of them would come with their mother and they would all come once a day to see him.
So, he had no way of knowing who it was that was going to come on that particular day. Moreover, they were at a place which was several doors away, quite a few yards away and several doors away and all the doors were closed in between. And further, the subject had been unconscious and had been, while unconscious, after the cardiac arrest and the process, his head had been inclined on the other side.
The door was on this side and there were many doors like that and the subject was facing this way. So, even if he had been conscious, he would not have been able to see what was happening because his head was turned away and there were several doors blocking the way. And that’s why the partial consciousness hypothesis doesn’t work.
And one of the cases which has survived the strongest critique of this idea of partial consciousness as an example of paranormal perceptions, paranormal means beyond the normal range perceptions, there is a case of the migrant worker Maria, which was reported by Dr. Kimberly Clark, who is a professor of medicine at the Neareth Experience. So, Maria had been brought in the hospital evening when she had got a cardiac arrest and she was immobilized completely. She had to be using a wheelchair and she had to be actually brought to the hospital bed and she had to be treated.
And the next morning when she came back to consciousness, she told Clark that Maria had a Neareth Experience in which she had seen herself come out of her body. After coming out of her body, she had seen herself rising up, she had seen herself lying on the body and then she said she had thought herself out of the window. That means she thought, I want to go out of this window and she found herself floating out, going out of that window.
And as she went out of that window, she went out and she was floating outside and she noticed that there was on the ledge, on one of the windows, a tennis shoe. And she described in detail the markings in the tennis shoe, what kind of shoe it was. Now, Clark was intrigued by this description because she knew that she had been immobilized when she had been brought and afterwards she had been unconscious and she had become conscious in the morning and that was the time Clark had come soon after that and talked with her.
So, Clark went and investigated and she went, one, two, three, four, she looked out through several windows, peering down and trying to see whether there was on the outside window ledge anywhere a tennis shoe. And finally, after going to several floors, opening several windows and peering out, stretching out of the window, she finally saw outside one window, a tennis shoe. And she then, somehow with some effort, she managed to retrieve it.
And when she pickled up, she saw that the tennis shoe had the exact same markings that Maria had described. And they were such small and detailed markings that the only way anyone could have seen those markings was if they had seen the shoe before and they had seen the shoe at close quarters. And the only way somebody could have seen that shoe at close quarters was if they had been floating outside.
So, the hospital building was like this, the ledge was here, the window was here, from window she had to bend down and retrieve the shoe after great difficulty. And the markings on the shoe, so the markings that Maria had described were not markings which were visible from the top. From the top, it was just shoe that was visible.
But if somebody had been seeing from outside, here there is nothing but empty space. So, if somebody had been floating over here, only then they would have been able to see these markings. So, the question here begs itself, how? How was Maria able to see this? How was Maria able to know this? And there are cases such as this, not just one or two, but many such cases where the subject has not only described things which are in the vicinity, but the subject has also described things which are far beyond the vicinity.
And in such cases, the idea that the knowledge could have come from partial consciousness is strongly problematized. It just does not work. Even if the subject had been conscious, they were not in a physical condition to move away from their beds.
And if they are reporting things which are seen far away from their beds, then what is the explanation? That is, the explanation that they were partially conscious does not work at all. An even bigger problem with the idea that these reports came by partial consciousness is that such cases are not just one or two. In 1954, Hornet Hall published a study of those out-of-body experiences in which, so basically Hall compiled all the studies that had been done till now and put them all together in one publication and found that there were 288 cases from various publications and where the subjects had claimed to have paranormal perceptions.
And out of that 99 cases, the accuracy of those paranormal conceptions had been confirmed and similar studies have continued thereafter and many findings have been uncovered. And perhaps the most astonishing of cases which challenged the partial consciousness hypothesis is the near-death experiences among the blind. Among the blind, people who had no capacity to see saw the only time in their life when they were undergoing the near-death experience and they had no capacity to see because their brain, optic nerves or eyes were irreparably damaged.
So, if they just don’t have the apparatus to see, the physical apparatus itself for seeing is not there. And how can they see at such a time? So, Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper have written a whole book also titled Mindsight which is about NDEs of the blind. So, it is not just one, not two, but many cases of people who were blind and yet they saw.
So, use the word mindsight to describe the idea that these near-death experiences are having sight, but it is not through the eyes. It is the mind that is seeing directly. Who exactly is seeing? That is a mystery.
And in our later sessions of the Demystifying Reincarnation series, we will discuss who is actually that is seeing. The focus is that the problem is how can someone who is unconscious during the near-death experiences see and perceive and describe accurately the events that happened when they were unconscious? That is the problem. So, the hypothesis could be that maybe they were unconscious and that is how they were able to perceive.
But what is becoming unconscious even if they had been fully conscious, still if they had no capacity to see itself because they were blind, then how could they see? So, in Mindsight, NDEs of the blind, Ring and Cooper, describe several cases. Let us consider one distinctive case of a lady named Vicky Umipeke. She was born blind and when she was investigated at the age of 45, at that time, she had had two near-death experiences with an intervention of around 10 years in between.
And she had actually been born blind because of her optic nerve had been destroyed completely at birth because she had been given too much oxygen in the incubator. So, that means, it was not advent, there are two types of blindness. There is congenital blindness and there is adventitious blindness.
So, adventitious blindness is because of some subsequent event, some accident or something like that, a person grows blind. Whereas, congenital blindness is when a person is born blind. Now, here, Umipeke was born congenitally blind and there was no known medical cure for her blindness.
And she was not cured literally because after her near-death experience, she continued to be blind. And yet, during these two near-death experiences when she had, she described vividly what happened during her surgery, who was operating, what did they do and what was the circumstance, what was the setting. And she described seeing herself for the first time.
Blind people, they can only consider, you can see, you conceptualize of who they are or where they are. But she saw herself for the first time during the first ND and second time during the second ND. And this, the cases of near-death experiences among the blind are strongly suggestive that actually something very mysterious is happening.
That there is something very, that this consciousness may just not be coming from the body or the brain at all. So, normally we think that the eyes have to be open, the brain has to be functioning and that is when we are able to see. Yes, these may well be the tools for vision.
These may not be the sources of vision. What near-death experience suggests is that the source of vision is something different. And that source of vision, the conscious being, who if they have a tool that is defective, then they are not able to see.
That source of vision, the conscious being is not able to see because the tool is defective. And that is why during normal consciousness, normal behavior, they are not able to see. But during near-death experiences when the conscious being comes out of the body, then the tools of vision, which because of dysfunctioning have now become obstacles to vision.
Those obstacles are removed. And then the person is able to see from an out-of-body perspective without being shackled, without being blinded by the defective tools of vision. So, going further, the greatest challenge for the near-death experiences, explanation as being because of consciousness, because of partial consciousness is that there are cases of people, not just one or two, who have been documented to be totally unconscious, medically clearly documented as being unconscious.
And yet, they have had near-death experiences. Dr. Sam Parnia, from 2001 onwards, he and his team at Southampton, they conducted a study of near-death experiences in a proper scientific setting in the cardiac care units. So, where subjects are likely to have heart attacks.
And if they have heart attacks, then at that time, because the subjects are already under treatment and they are medically monitored very carefully, everything that happens to them can be very meticulously monitored. So, for example, if a near-death experiencer describes that, okay, I saw this, this, this, this. And then, if the subject has already been admitted in the hospital and everything is going on systematically, then the medical records can be compared.
This thing, if the subject said, oh, I heard the doctor speak this to the nurse, and then it can be compared to the medical records, what time did the doctor speak this to the nurse? Or if they say, I was given this injection, or my head, my chest was cut like this, you can find out, what time was the incision applied. And then, when that timing is found, then they can find out what was the condition of the subject at that time, as per the medical report. So, Parnia and his team found again and again, that under this cardiac, under this cardiac care, in this cardiac care units, under proper medical monitoring, there was NDRs, there were subjects who had experienced near-death experiences at a time when they had no pulse, no heartbeat, no respiration, they had dilated pupils, and they were actually known to be, they would have been considered dead at that time.
Clinically, clinically, they would have been considered dead, because the symptoms of life were not present at all. No pulse, no heartbeat, no breathing, the brain activity at such time goes down to flat. And under such documented, clearly, undisputably documented conditions, what was found? Not one, not two, but 11% of the subjects reported near-death experiences.
And Sam Parnia said, after uncovering this finding, that something profound is going on here, that something goes on, even when conventional science says that the body has stopped functioning, something which may be the mind, the soul, whatever you want to call it, it goes on. In our next session, we will discuss in detail two cases of people who are medically documented to be unconscious and knew it they were conscious and had near-death experiences. In this case, in this session, we discussed, to summarize, we discussed the partial consciousness hypothesis as an explanation for near-death experiences.
So, the problems with this hypothesis are, firstly, normally, when we go towards unconsciousness, our visual faculty shuts down first. Whereas, most subjects who have near-death experiences describe sharp visual perceptions, prominent visual perceptions, and sometimes exclusively visual perceptions. They could not have manufactured these sights through sounds or touches, because the way they reported it would have been different if they had inferred it from sounds and touches.
Like a person feeling that he was given an injection when actually blood was drawn, a person feeling that he was given the injection in his right thigh when it was given to him actually in the left thigh. And then, more importantly, there are subjects who are described near-death experiences which are beyond their vicinity. So, we discussed two cases, the case of this subject who had a heart attack, and while he was recovering, he was about to discharge, and described that who were the relatives who had come to meet him while he was unconscious, head turned away, and with several closed doors between him and those relatives, when he would have no knowledge of which of his relatives were going to come to meet him, and he was not expecting them to come at that time also.
And secondly, the case of Mariyadh reported by Kimberly Clark, where she described in detail the shoe, that was a tennis shoe that was hanging or that was on a ledge outside a window, and described details which could not have been known except seen from by somebody who was floating from outside. Then, we discussed the sensational near-death experiences of people who were blind from birth. So, that was Vicky Umipeg s case of, the only time in her life she could see was when she, during her two near-death experiences.
And then lastly, we discussed how during documented unconsciousness, the cases which were formed by Sam Parnia of people who still had near-death experiences. So, thank you very much. Hare Krishna.