Two highly reputable scientists are studying what used to be
a disreputable phenomenon in straight science: Near-
death experiences. With the advent of modern medicine,
NDEs have become a much more common experience that
include seeing a white light and being greeted by dead
relatives. Patients rise above their own bodies and see
doctors frantically trying to resuscitate them.
Dr. Sam Parnia and Dr. Peter Fenwick plan to place cards in
places where heart-attack victims will be treated that can
only be seen from the ceiling, if they have out-of-body
experiences. Parnia has published a study showing that 10%
of clinically dead patients who were later resuscitated
reported NDEs. Some of the evidence includes patients
recognizing hospital staff they had never met but who
helped resuscitate them. Others remembered overhearing
conversations between doctors. According to known medical
science, this should be impossible, because they don't have
any brain activity during this period.
Most scientists assume near-death experiences and out-of-
body experiences are a result of a lack of oxygen in the
brain. However this is changing?in December 2001, Dutch
neurologist Dr. Pim van Lommel published an article in The
Lancet, a respected peer-reviewed medical journal, showing
that 18% of clinically dead patients who were later
resuscitated recalled near-death experiences years after the
event. NDE researcher Kenneth Ring studied blind patients
who were resuscitated from cardiac arrest who described
seeing their body while clinically dead, although it was
slightly out of focus.
If near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences don't
come from the brain, where is consciousness based? "There
are two ways to view the universe," says Fenwick. "Our
current world model is that everything is matter." But this
doesn't explain consciousness. A new theory says the basic
building blocks of the universe are not made of matter but of
consciousness. "This second, transcendent, view of the
universe makes it much easier to understand NDEs,? says
Fenwick. He thinks quantum mechanics, which shows that
matter can have both a physical form and a wave form at the
same time, is a step in that direction.
Scientific studies of prayer are also beginning to influence
scientists. These studies show that subjects benefit from the
prayers of others even when they don't know that someone
is praying for them. This has been interpreted as an
indication that consciousness behaves like a field, such as
magnetism, which can be affected by other fields. If that's
true, then it's possible for one person's consciousness to
affect another's.
Will this finally convince the skeptics? "No, nothing will, but
that's OK," says Fenwick. "It's how science progresses. Any
research that says you have to have a major rethink in your
world model is always rejected. But it will prove that
consciousness is not in the brain."
Can other consciousnesses attack us and can we defend
ourselves from psychic attack? Robert Bruce tells how
in ?Practical Psychic Self-Defense,?
click
here. Listen to a fascinating interview, where Robert tells
Whitley Strieber how to protect himself against this type of
attack, by clicking ?Listen Now? at the top of our homepage.
For more information, click here.
