Reincarnation Examination

Examination of the Phenomenon and Research of Reincarnation

Updated: August 10, 2009

The most convincing aspects of the Reincarnation Phenomenon to me are the numerous well documented cases of Spontaneous Past Life Recall of young children (typically from the time they first begin talking until they are around seven years of age) where they recall numerous very important often obscure veridical details from a previous life that turn out to be correct, information they and their families couldn't have ordinarily known or obtained. Even if the previous person was totally obscure and living hundreds or thousands of miles away and seperate by a period of years or decades or longer. Often very specific "unknowable" details come through in addition to personal and life event details, such as where they hid important things, and family secrets unrevealed to outsiders, privite events in their life that are only known to the immediate family or a perticular family member, and even details not currently known, but later discovered to have been accurate. Numerous well documented cases where birthmarks or scars in the present life match those of death marks or injuries or scars in their previous lives. Numerous well documented cases of people having intense fears or phobias or physical problems in their present life that is traced to a previous life either through Spontaneous Past Life Recall or through undergoing Past Life Regression, that is then completely cured by them remembering it and confronting it. Numerous well documented cases where a person undergoing Past Life Regression speaks an unlearned foreign language in the manner of the dialect of the time, including persons who speak dead languages during their Past Life Regression. Several noted cases of people born blind who were able to see during a Spontaneous Past Life Recall or through undergoing Past Life Regression in which they had recalled living a previous sighted life. Etc.

The best cases do not deal with weak data, but with very specific veridical details, where not a few, but dozens upon dozens of key statements are verified. Key dazzleshot veridical details, obscure veridical details known only to the person and their closest family members, veridical details known only through painstaking research (not easily known, especially given the education of the person and their family), veridical details from their previous life (checked and confirmed to exist) that they, their family, and the investigators couldn't have possibly known, things known only to the previous person, or only known as a secret between them and their family, where they hid documents and other personal valuables, where they had scars or injuries on their bodies, obscure events in their life that was never written down or talked about until the previous family was told about it and remembered, etc. Details that are not confirmed until years later due to the current historical record not having that information, xenoglossy, curing of phobias and fears from these recalls, and the biggest of all, birthmarks in the present life matching death marks and scars from the veridically recalled previous life, complete with medical records and autopsy reports. These keep the phenomenon interesting.

(I will discuss individual best of the best cases indepth in an upcoming seperate article.)

***Answering Arguments Of The Skeptics***

Skeptic Argument # 1: Everyone who claims to have remembered a past life always remembers being someone famous, never anyone normal or ordinary, and several different people have claimed to have the same past life.

Ridiculously inaccurate beyond even being laughable. People who make this statement have obviously NEVER read the actual research on Reincarnation, nor any actual research cases, because if they had, they would realize that the vast majority of Reincarnation cases that are taken seriously and are well documented which contain numerous veridical details of past lives, ARE of people recalling normal ordinary lives. There are a very few seriously taken cases of people claiming to recall the life of some famous, and even then, most of the time it is someone obscure to the general public, such as a little known artist who is known to people in that profession, but not famous enough to be recognize by the general public, and the information that comes through is Veridical and Obscure enough to be taken seriously.

As for more than one person claiming to remember the same past life, it's all in the veridical details. You will find hundreds of gullible New Agers claiming they are peter pan, cleopatra, napoleon, marilyn monroe, or darth vader, but do their "memories" add up to things they couldn't have possibly known? That's the checker.

Skeptic Argument # 2: Most cases of Reincarnation are reported in countries where belief in Reincarnation is the norm, and it is even encouraged.

My Answer: While many cases are, there are also many exceptions to this. Most of the Best Cases of Reincarnation that I have personally come across have come from America or European Countries, where Reincarnation is not the norm, and where it is discouraged. Many of the people and families in these cases were Christians or Non-Religious People who did not believe in Reincarnation and it even went against the belief system that they were raised with and adhered to. There are a number of books and reports on these well documented cases in these countries.

In addition, even in cases in which Reincarnation is reported in countries that believe in Reincarnation (such as India) they will often happen to families that are of a Religious Belief that does not believe in Reincarnation, such as Muslims and Christians, to the dismay of their parents.

The reason many critics use this argument is because Ian Stevenson's earliest published research books that got widespread attention consisted of mostly cases from those countries (because they were more prone to discussing their experiences there, as opposed to America where reincarnation is greatly discouraged in families due to Christian Upbringings), but he later did a research book on many veridical cases of european and american families with reincarnation, and a number of researchers in the years after him have gathered many additional cases from american and european families.

Skeptic Argument # 3: During past life regression and even spontaneous past life recall, there is always the possibility of false memories coming out.

True. However, when a person under regression begins to speak an unlearned foreign language, or even a dead language, and comes up with veridical details that can be checked with historical sources, even very obscure information that takes tons of indepth research to confirm, some of which is not confirmed until decades after the fact, it's far more plausible that these are authentic memories of an authentic past life. There are also the cases where the person had a lifelong phobia or physical ailment that is cured after remembering details from a past life where the phobia or ailment originated. That also lends credence to it being an authentic past life. It's also interesting to note that most researchers point out that when such people describe the era they were reliving so vividly, they often describe it better than the best historians.

Skeptic Argument # 4: Linguist Sarah Thomason's attacks on Xenoglossy Research.

Linguist Sarah Thomason has written several debunkery articles attempting to discredit Dr. Ian Stevenson's Xenoglossy Work over the years. The title of her key article attacking the Xenoglossy Work of Dr. Ian Stevenson is, "Stupid Dead People Communication Tricks", which gives you an idea from the title as to how cynical and one-sided her approtch to the subject is. She has been completely discredited with opposing facts and evidence that was supplied to me by the good folks over at www.childpastlives.org which I will post below. In short... (and I quote)

"In his book "Xenoglossy" Dr. Ian Stevenson documented a study he made of a 37 year old American woman. Under hypnosis she experienced a complete change of voice and personality into that of a male. She spoke fluently in the Swedish language, a language she did not speak or understand when in the normal state of consciousness. Dr Stevenson's direct involvement with this case lasted more than eight years. The study involved linguists and other experts and scientists who meticulously investigated every alternative explanation. Others have followed in Dr. Stevenson's footsteps and offered up impressive cases for research and obtained similar results."

(The critic in question dishonestly acted as though no expert linguists were present with Dr. Ian Stevenson in his research, which is completely untrue, she also cherry picked the weakest Xenoglossy cases in existence to attack, with common languages such as german and french, ignoring the stronger cases of more remote languages and even dead languages coming through in Xenoglossy, especially in cases where the person lived in an area where there is no access to such languages, remote or dead. Many examples of these are provided in one of the key links I will provide below.)

I made two topics on www.childpastlives.org clearing up further Skeptical Arguments used against Reincarnation and Xenoglossy...

http://www.childpastlives.org/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=130 38 - Question Regarding Geographical Beliefs In Ian Stevenson's Cases Of Reincarnation

http://www.childpastlives.org/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=129 97 - Question regarding Xenoglossy Research in Reincarnation Cases of Past Life Regression

http://www.childpastlives.org/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=14581 - Tackling A Skeptic's Arguments

Links with *some* of the best cases (by no means complete by a long shot) are here...

http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter24.html - Victor Zammit's Book's Chapter on Reincarnation (despite my dislike for Victor Zammit's arrogent outspokenness and his gullibility in certain areas, he does a very good job presenting an overview of indepth veridical information on some of the best cases of Reincarnation, complete with reliable sources.)

http://www.childpastlives.org/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=351 8 - A good forum post containing links to information on some of the best cases.

http://www.wie.org/j32/reincarnation.asp - Death, Rebirth, and Everything in Between: A Scientific and Philosophical Exploration, by Carter Phipps

A decent article on Ian Stevenson's research in perticular, including matching birthmarks...

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation01.html

Two Books I can recommend on the subject that I have personally read are...

"One Soul, Many Lives: First Hand Stories of Reincarnation and the Striking Evidence of Past Lives" by Roy Stemman, which is an indepth overview of the best of the best veridical cases of Reincarnation, documented from numerous reliable sources.

David Fontana's "Is There An Afterlife?: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence". I have read through the book, and in each and every chapter, he presents all avalible evidence and presents both pro-researcher arguments and skeptic arguments and pro-researcher counter-arguments and skeptic counter-arguments, etc. He presents the full data and full set of arguments for and against as is. It deals with far more than simply Reincarnation though.

The book is interesting, because at the beginning of each chapter, he presents the weaker, mildly veridical cases, and shows how easily they can be explained away, but then he goes on to present stronger and stronger cases, with more and more solid and obscure veridical details that are harder to explain away, and then goes on to present the best of the best cases, all the while putting forth the arguments and counter-arguments of both sides.

The book has a full Five Star Rating on Amazon and incredible reviews. I highly recommend it if you want a fair presentation of both sides.

Here are several TV & Documentary Segments on YouTube on some of these cases...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EWwzFwUOxA - Veridical Case of James 3 (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5965wcH2Kx0 - Veridical Case of James 3 (Part 2)

The above segment however does not contain all of the avalible information on the James 3 case, just a brief overview of the case, showcasing many of the verified dazzleshot past life memories. A more indepth article on this case in perticular, containing additional veridical information, is here...

http://www.ntcsites.com/acadianhouse/nss-folder/publicfolder /AP/cover_feature_24_3.htm - The Past Life Memories of James Leininger

Last time I discussed this case on a message forum I was hit by a Skeptical Article that claimed to "expose" the case, and I looked at it, found it to be a distorted one-sided half-truthed presentation that did not deal with the overall facts and circumstances of the case, and made unfounded assumptions that are easily checked and countered, and so I rebutted it in full here in this topic post on this forum here (childpastlives.org), in two parts, along with rebutting several other skeptical explainations of the case I have heard...

http://www.childpastlives.org/vBulletin/showpost.php?p=15897 6&postcount=11 - Rebuttal of Skeptics' Arguments against James 3 Case (Part 1)

http://www.childpastlives.org/vBulletin/showpost.php?p=15897 7&postcount=12 - Rebuttal of Skeptics' Arguments against James 3 Case (Part 2)

Several other segments on YouTube of Reincarnation Cases...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB_j-chZvR0 - Veridical Case of Robert Snow (A highly skeptical chief of police who investigated his own past life memories following a hypnotic regression, and confirmed dozens of obscure veridical details, which he was only able to confirm by getting ahold of the dead man's diary from almost a century earlier, loaned from a museum. In his regression he even mentioned he did a painting of a hunchback woman in this previous life, which he was later able to find and obtain in real life, painted by the same guy he remembered being.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OarxB-dsK8U - Case of a four year old boy who recalled life as an 18 year old WWI Soilder named James who was shot through the throat and killed. The four year old suffered from a throat tumor in the same location his previous self was shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQHp9bGVDB8 - Someone Else's Yesterday (Fireman who recalls previous life as a general in the civil war, his scars and birthmarks in his present life exactly match those the general obtained during battle, he also greatly resembles the general.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5cGSUBU8-w - Excellent Documentary on Reincarnation titled "The Boy Who Lived Before". This program looks at two perticular amazing veridical cases of two small children recalling past lives, and researches their cases from all angles, and interviews serious reincarnation researchers and serious skeptics alike for their insights, and does an investigation with one of the kids in real time, with very interesting results.

Near Death Experiences / Out Of Body Experiences: An Indepth Examination of Veridical Evidence

Near Death Experiences / Out Of Body Experiences: An Indepth Examination of Veridical Evidence & The Rebuttal of Common Skeptical Explainations

Updated: August 10, 2009

Veridical Perception & Veridical Information gained during Near Death Experiences / Out Of Body Experiences, even during a flat EEG where brain and heart activity have ceased, and even in cases of persons born blind:

There are a number of highly interesting documented cases of people having near death experiences / out of body experiences, even during a flat EEG where brain and heart activity have ceased, returning with factual information which they had no prior knowledge of, and numerous cases in which the experiencers returned to life with information unavailable to them at the time of death.

These include being able to accurately tell the doctors what they were doing while they were clinically dead, what clothes they wore, what procedures and instruments they used, and any conversations being said, including accurate blow by blow accounts of their own resuscitation from a bird's eye point of view, the details of which can later be checked and verified to be true.

Often times they also describe what was happening out in the hallway, who was sitting in the waiting room, what was happening on the other side of the building, and conversations being said at these same locations, all while they were clinically dead elsewhere. The events witnessed, heard, and experienced later being verified to be true. Even obscure objects on the roof have been seen and verified.

There are also accounts of experiencers meeting deceased relatives during an NDE that the person did not know was dead, such as a relative or a friend, and finding out that they were in fact deceased after the fact, and learning information from them that they could not have otherwise known.

There are many accounts of children and adult NDErs learning about relatives and siblings who had died before their own birth that they never met or were never told about, etc.

Also, people who are blind, and some people who have been blind since birth, have been able to accurately perceive visual surroundings during their experience. Many people have also been informed of knowledge far beyond their personal capacity. Etc.

The most convincing aspect of these, is that a number of them were recounted, recorded, and documented IMMEDIATELY or VERY SOON after the patient regained consciousness to the doctors, nurses, staff, and family members, not long after the fact.

(I will discuss individual best of the best cases indepth in an upcoming seperate article.)

Interestingly, there have in fact been Successful Experiments in actually testing Veridical NDEs...

* Many doctors, nurses, medical staff, paramedics, and family members have been interviewed by NDE Researchers to obtain cross-referanced verifiable information between the stories of the patients concerning their Veridical NDEs and the cross-referanced experiences of the medical staff involved with them.

* Dr. Michael Sabom did a study on over 57 cardiac patients who had clinically died and were brought back, 32 of whom had experienced Veridical OBEs and had described in great detail their own resusitations during cardiac arrest, and 25 of whom had not experienced an OBE during their cardiac arrest. He had two groups, the experiencers who saw in their OBEs and the non-experiencers who did not, describe their resusitations. To his suprise, 80% of the non-experiencers made serious mistakes. On the other hand, all of the experiencers did not make a single mistake.

Accourding to PMH Atwater in her book "The Complete Idiots Guide To Near-Death Experiences" regarding Dr. Michael Sabom's Research Study...

"Experiencers even correctly detailed readings on medical machines that were not in their line of vision, and described other circumstances they should not otherwise have been able to know."

* Dr. Pim Van Lommel did a more indepth study with 344 cardiac patients independently of Dr. Michael Sabom with similar results.

They made sure that their subjects could be verified as flatlined during the experiences. (This is significant because the brain flat-lines within 4 to 20 seconds of cardiac arrest.)

* Dr. Kenneth Ring did a study on Veridical NDEs of 31 persons who were blind (a number of whom were born blind) and found that they could veridically "see" events while their OBE unfolded the same way sighted people's do.

I'd like to add that Dr. Michael Sabom and Dr. Pim Van Lommel and Dr. Kenneth Ring's Research were published in PEER REVIEWED Science Journals. Most notably The Lancet Medical Journal.

Here is an excellent list of arguments in favor of the phenomenon by IANDS...

* Once a person's brainwaves have ceased, indicating that all mental activity has stopped - perceiving, thinking, and remembering - how do we explain their accurate perception of events going on around their 'deceased' body (both sight and sound), and their accurate reporting of events taking place even at significant distances from their clinically-dead body?

* If we regard experiencers' perceptions of dead relatives as just imaginary "wishful thinking", how can we explain their accurate description of relatives previously unknown to them, yet later verified by living relatives and by civil documents?

* If the spiritual component of the near-death experience could be explained away as just an extension of the person's pre-existing belief system, why have confirmed atheists come back after their NDE convinced there is a God? And why have religious believers returned from their NDE with un-orthodox changes to their prior dogmas?

Many NDE-accounts seem to include elements which, according to several theorists, can only be explained by an out-of-body consciousness.

As Greyson notes: "No one physiological or psychological model by itself explains all the common features of NDE. The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain." (Greyson, 2001)

Research on NDEs occurring in the blind have also hinted that consciousness survives bodily death.

NDE's can also lead to long-lasting spiritual effects (as evidenced by the many studies which confirm the experience as having taken place during clinical death)."

OBE Specific Research:

* The Monroe Institute's OBE Experiments.

* Charles Tart's OBE Experiment of having an experienced OBEr accurately read a five-digit number from an unreachable/unseeable location. 100,000 to 1 chance accuracy.

* Robert Morris' OBE Experiments with Keith Harary who reported accurately on sitters, letters, and positions, in a sealed laboratory 20 yards away.

* Clinical testing of OBEs - in which strain gauges were triggered at a distance, apparently by the test subject's roving presence, and in which an animal reacted consistently as if the subject were in the room when he was reportedly having an OBE while asleep in the next room.

* The US Government's 20 year long Program "Stargate" on Remote Viewing which had a number of amazing positive significant veridical results with Remote Viewers, as well as a number of noted misses.

What do the Skeptics on the other hand have to say about NDEs? Let's be fair now.

Skeptic Argument 1: Dying Brain Theory

The Dying Brain Theory states that upon clinical death the brain is slowly straved of oxygen and creates a vivid hallucination that is later remembered as an NDE.

This theory in truth falls very short of the cold hard medical facts of what happens to the brain after cardiac arrest occurs and when clinical death sets in, and is likewise destroyed by the well documented Veridical Aspects of the NDE Phenomenon itself that are never adaquetely dealt with as a whole.

In total refution of the "Dying Brain Theory" the cold hard medical facts are that when a person's heart stops they lose total consciousness within seconds. The loss of consciousness is complete and there are no memories of the event. EEG and brain stem monitors show no brain activity while in this state. There is no gag reflex, no pupil response, no brain activity whatsoever. They are dead. The brain cannot produce images in this state, and even if it could, you couldn't remember them.

Multiple medical doctors including Peter Fenwick a respected neuropsychiatrist, Pim Van Lommel a cardiologist, Sam Parnia, Bruce Greyson, Ian Stevenson, Melvin Morse, Michael Sabom, and numerous others, will tell you the same thing.

"Simultaneous recording of heart rate and brain output show that within 11 seconds of the heart stopping, the brainwaves go flat. Now, if you read the literature on this, some skeptical people claim that in this state there is still brain activity, but, in fact, the data are against this in both animals and humans. The brain is not functioning, and you are not going to get your electrical activity back again until the heart restarts." (Dr. Peter Fenwick)

Further Dr. Peter Fenwick Quotations:

"Let's look at the physiological state of the brain and body at the time of reported NDEs. No detectable cardiac output, no respiratory output - they certainly weren't breathing. Neither did they have any brain stem reflexes - in other words they was no activity whatsoever in the brain."

"The first point is that signs of cardiac arrest are the same as clinical death. There is no detectable cardiac output, no respiratory effort, and brainstem reflexes are absent. If you are in this state and I put a tube down your throat, you will not cough. You will have dilated pupils. Your blood pressure has fallen to zero. You are, in fact, clinically dead. Even if I start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), I cannot get your blood pressure any higher than 30 millimetres of mercury, and this is not going to produce an adequate blood flow to your brain."

"When you are fully unconscious, you show the signs of clinical death which is no respiration, no cardiac output, fully dilated pupils showing that your brain stem is not functioning and that is the clinical criteria of death." (Dr. Peter Fenwick)

Dr. Sam Parnia: "During cardiac arrest brainstem activity is rapidly lost. It should not be able to sustain such lucid processes or allow the formation of lasting memories."

Further Dr. Sam Parnia Quotations:

".....This is termed the delayed hypoperfusion phase and is thought to occur due to a disturbed coupling between brain function, metabolism and blood flow. Clinically, these observations are supported by the loss of brainstem reflexes such as the gag reflex that indicate a loss of brainstem function, which normally activates the cortical areas via the thalamus."

"As seen these experiences appear to be occurring at a time when global cerebral function can at best be described as severely impaired, and at worse non-functional."

"An alternative explanation is that the experiences reported from cardiac arrest, may actually be arising at a time when consciousness is either being lost, or regained, rather than from the actual cardiac arrest period itself. Any cerebral insult leads to a period of both anterograde and retrograde amnesia In fact memory is a very sensitive indicator of brain injury and the length of amnesia before and after unconsciousness is a way of determining the severity of the injury. Therefore, events that occur just prior to or just after the loss of consciousness would not be expected to be recalled. At any rate recovery following a cerebral insult is confusional and cerebral function as measured by EEG has in many cases been shown not to return until many tens of minutes or even a few hours after successful resuscitation." (Dr. Sam Parnia)

Pim Van Lommel's well-known research study published Peer-Reviewed in The Lancet, a leading medical journal, also notes that cerebral activity flatlines within 4 to 20 seconds of cardiac arrest.

Dr. Pim Van Lommel Quotations:

"You can prove that the brain stem is no longer functioning because it regulates our basic reflexes, such as the pupil response and swallowing reflex, which no longer respond. So you can easily stick a tube down someone's throat. The respiratory centre also shuts down. If the individual is not reanimated within five to 10 minutes, their brain cells are irreversibly damaged."

"The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view."

"From studies of induced cardiac arrest we know that in our Dutch prospective study of patients who survived cardiac arrest (Van Lommel et al., 2001), as well as in the American (Greyson, 2003) and English study (Parnia et al., 2001), not only total lack of electrical activity of the cortex must have been the only possibility, but also the abolition of brain-stem activity."

"However, patients with an NDE can report a clear consciousness. And because of the occasional and verifiable out-of-body experiences, like the one involving the dentures in our study, we know that the NDE must happen during the period of unconsciousness, and not in the first or last seconds of cardiac arrest. So we have to come to the surprising conclusion that during cardiac arrest NDE is experienced during a transient functional loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem."

"What you see when you induce cardiac arrest is that within one second the blood flow to the brain is zero centimeters per second. Within two seconds, it stops totally. After an average of 6.54 seconds, the first ischemic changes show on the EEG, with attenuation of the waves. After 10 to 20 seconds, you have a flat- line EEG, which means the electrical activity of the cortex is gone. The brain stem reflexes- such as the gag reflex and whether the pupils stay dilated - and the medulla oblongata - where the center of breathing is - stops. So that's the functional loss of your total brain. Well, with a heart attack, if it occurs on the coronary care unit, it takes between 60 and 120 seconds before circulation is restored. If it occurs on the general ward, it takes two to five minutes. If it occurs in the street, it usually exceeds five to 10 minutes, and 90 percent of those people will die."

"How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG? . . . Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience. NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation. In our prospective study of patients that were clinically dead (flat EEG, showing no electrical activity in the cortex and loss of brain stem function evidenced by fixed dilated pupils and absence of the gag reflex) the patients report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, or memory from early childhood occurred, as well as perceptions from a position out and above their "dead" body." (Van Lommel, Van Wees, Meyers, Elfferich (2001). Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands. Lancet.)

The Dying Brain Theory also doesn't explain why only 18% of those who are brought back from clinical death experience an NDE, while the remaining 82% do not. Even under the exact same conditions.

"Our most striking finding was that Near-Death Experiences do not have a physical or medical root. After all, 100 per cent of the patients suffered a shortage of oxygen, 100 per cent were given morphine-like medications, 100 per cent were victims of severe stress, so those are plainly not the reasons why 18 per cent had Near-Death Experiences and 82 per cent didn't. If they had been triggered by any one of those things, everyone would have had Near-Death Experiences." (Van Lommel 1995)

The point being, if anyone of those things, dying brain, etc, had been the trigger, they all would have had NDEs who suffered the same degree of lack of oxygen, but because only 18% did, it's obviously not the trigger for the NDE experience.

I'd like to clarify that even though only 18% of those who are brought back from clinical death experience an NDE (all under the same medical conditions), the LONGER one is clinically dead, the higher the chance of being brought back with an NDE. Those who were clinically dead longer than several minutes have a far higher chance of coming back with an NDE than those who were clinically dead for only a minute or two.

Skeptic Argument 2: DMT Chemicals Causing NDEs

DMT does not account for the Veridical Elements of the NDE, nor the amazing structure of many NDEs, accourding to the book DMT: The Spiritual Molecule, it may act as an initial NDE trigger, but cannot make up for the entire experience, Veridical Elements and all, in addition to the pesky little fact that within 4 to 20 seconds of cardiac arrest, the brain waves go flat, and even if they were sufficient (which they are not), the brain cannot produce images in this state, and even if it could, you couldn't remember them.

Skeptic Argument 3: Ketamine

The Skeptic Sources refering to the Drug Ketamine causing NDEs are referancing an old paper by Ketamine Researcher Dr. Karl Jansen, who has since totally changed his stance on Ketamine actually causing the experiences, and is now far more open to the metaphysical component of NDEs. His current hypothesis is that Ketamine and other triggers of NDEs/OBEs simply act as a "door to a space" rather than actually producing that space. He states that his findings now are more in line with other researchers in his field such as John Lilly and Stanislav Grof.

"I am no longer as opposed to spritual explanations of these phenomena as this article would appear to suggest. Over the past two years (it is quite some time since I wrote it) I have moved more towards the views put forward by John Lilly and Stan Grof. Namely, that drugs and psychological disciplines such as meditation and yoga may render certain 'states' more accessible. The complication then becomes in defining just what we mean by 'states' and where they are located, if indeed location is an appropriate term at all. But the apparent emphasis on matter over mind contained within this particular article no longer accurately represents my attitudes. My forthcoming book 'Ketamine' will consider mystical issues from quite a different perspective, and will give a much stronger voice to those who see drugs as just another door to a space, and not as actually producing that space'." (Dr. Karl Jansen)

Melvin Morse M.D. wrote an insightful article titled "The Right Temporal Lobe And Associated Limbic Lobe Structures As The Biological Interface With An Interconnected Universe" that is along these lines of thought.

Skeptic Argument 4: The Navy Airmen Stress Tests

These are studies where they used Navy Airmen in G-Force stress tests that caused the blood in the heads of the individuals to drain, inducing a state of simulated clinical death, in which NDEs were reported. These do not conflict with the NDE Phenomenon, as the persons were essentially put into a state of simulated clinical death when the blood drained from their heads, and they had an NDE.

Again, like Pim Van Lommel's findings, it only occured in 18% of individuals who underwent and came back from this state of simulated clinical death.

Skeptic Argument 5: Susan Blackmore's Critique Of "The Tunnel"

Regarding the Tunnel that people see during their NDEs, Susan Blackmore has theorized that the optic nerve causes a "Tunnel Effect" due to random neuron firings in the back of the eye to explain away the "Tunnel" that people see.

But a woman named Vicki who was born blind had her optic nerve severed in her incubator at birth, and she still visually saw a Tunnel during her NDE and OBE. And it happened awhile into the actual experience.

The fact is, The Tunnel can appear in front of them, to the side of them, up above them, even through a wall, soon after or long after their clinical death set in. And sometimes even not at all.

The Tunnel is truely a moot point concerning the overall NDE experience.

Skeptic Argument 6: The Assertion That People Only See And Experience What They Already Believed

While this may be true in certain cases, this is also completely untrue in a number of other cases. Many Atheists and Agnostics have come back believing in a God for example. Many Christians come back believing in Reincarnation, that Other Religions are Valid Spiritual Paths, and other Unorthodox Hetrodox ideas. There are a number of cases of Hindus meeting Muhammed, Muslims meeting Buddha, Christians meeting a Figure of God other than Mainstream Christianity. (I know one Southern Baptist Christian who saw Shamanic Imagery in his NDE, and became a Shaman. I met another one who met a Demiurge Figure in Addition to a God Figure, which reflects Gnosticism.) A seven year old girl who was raised Christian saw deceased spirits of people waiting to be reborn (reincarnation) that goes against her belief system, etc.

I know an Atheist who had a very profound NDE when she was a child, and she had been raised non-religious, and she had experienced God in a Interconnected Oneness Context, that she was informed "All is One", and she said that she became and identified and connected with everything during her NDE. Very much in line with Eastern Spiritual Thought.

Skeptic Argument 7: Keith Augustine's Anti-NDE Article (The Skeptic's Trump Card)

Sources such as Keith Augustine's article will prey upon the perceived weakness of certain NDEs, out of their full context, while ignoring alternative explainations and far better and far stronger NDE examples, in an attempt to bring all NDEs down. The "weird" NDEs he presents are without context, and his sources are usually Christian Fundamentalist Anti-NDE Books (Not Kidding), and short excerpts from Books of NDE Researchers, taken out of their full context and presented without the full explaination of the NDE Researchers who are presenting them. His alternative explainations of Veridical NDEs ignore pesky facts and additional and alternative information that he convienently ignored to come to his conclusions.

The bulk of his arguments against specific veridical cases, revolve largely around presenting totally unprovable unverifiable highly speculative "coulda-woulda-shouldas" regarding how they "could have seen/heard those things naturally" while ignoring well presented alternative explainations, the full context of the specific cases, and ignoring all of the known facts and circumstances surrounding the matter at hand that conflict with his hastey conclusions. Basically, presenting personal speculation in such as way as to suggest that mere speculation is somehow as damning as actual facts. His arguments often revolve around presenting a totally one-sided view of things, ignoring what the other side has to fully say regarding it, and comes up with his own conclusion without the full data being presented there. There are times where he partially or very briefly and shortly presents what the other side has to say, but certainly not all of it, as much of what he does not present is very damning to his side of the argument.

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/carter/augustine.htm - Rebuttal to Keith Augustine's attack of "Does Consciousness depend on the Brain?"

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2006/08/ndes_and_their_.html - Michael Prescott's indepth critique of Keith Augustine's Anti-NDE Article.

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/07/who-will-watch-.html - Who Will Watch The Watchers (Michael Prescott debunks the Skeptic Sources that Keith Augustine used in an attempt to discredit Kimberly Clark's famous case)

FIN

I'm planning on making another indepth article on this subject eventually to tackle more indepth skeptical arguments that I didn't have time to tackle in this perticular article, although I feel that the whole of what I did tackle in this perticular article covers all of the main skeptical objections.

Sources:

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html - Indepth NDE/OBE Evidence In Favor of Survival of Consciousness (53 Items of Evidence Presented, Full of Links, Sources, and Referances.)

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/articles001.html - A Critique of Susan Blackmore's Dying Brain Hypothesis by Greg Stone

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=86&pgtype=1 - Transmission Theory of Consciousness

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=95&pgtype=1 - Near Death Experiences as Evidence for Survival of Bodily Death

http://www.melvinmorse.com/e-tlp.htm - The Right Temporal Lobe And Associated Limbic Lobe Structures As The Biological Interface With An Interconnected Universe

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm - Van Lommel, Van Wees, Meyers, Elfferich (2001). Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands. Lancet.

http://www.cinemind.com/atwater/VLommel.html - "About the Continuity of Our Consciousness" by Pim Von Lommel

http://www.mikepettigrew.com/afterlife/html/dutch_study.html - The Dutch Study

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/whoswho/vanLommel.htm - A great response by Pim Van Lommel against a Leading Skeptic regarding his research study.

"Autoscopic Evidence: Dr. Charles Tart's Out-of-Body Experience Research":

http://www.near-death.com/tart.html

"Psychophysiological Study of Out-of-the-Body Experiences in a Selected Subject":

http://web.archive.org/web/20060215224439/http://www.paradigm-sys.com/display/ctt_articles2.cfm?ID=31

Out-Of-Body Experiences (OBE or OOBE), Article by Mario Varvoglis, Ph.D.:

http://www.parapsych.org/out_of_body_experiences.htm

Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) Research:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0120993/obefull.html

http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html - CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing At Stanford Research Institute

"In July 1995 the CIA declassified, and approved for release, documents revealing its sponsorship in the 1970s of a program at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, to determine whether such phenomena as remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection". Thus began disclosure to the public of a two-decade-plus involvement of the intelligence community in the investigation of so-called parapsychological or psi phenomena. Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director (1972 - 1985) is the early history of the program, including discussion of some of the first, now declassified, results that drove early interest."

http://www.geocities.com/wwu777us/Debunking_Skeptical_Arguments.htm - Debunking Pseudo-Skeptical Arguments of Paranormal Debunkers

http://www.nderf.com/phpBB2/index.php - NDERF Forum, where lively Debate and Discussion of NDEs/OBEs takes place on a daily basis.

New Veridical Information and Additional Cases upcoming in my soon to be Revised Article on Psychic Dorothy Allison

Just letting everyone know, on the topic of my Dorothy Allison article, I recently bought the only known book (used since it's out of print) on Dorothy Allison that I could find entirely devoted to her and her cases, co-written by her, on her life and cases, written in 1980, that I know will shed additional light and new information on some of the cases I have already presented here in my indepth article on her, in addition to containing information on cases of hers I haven't yet read about.

From briefly skimming through it during the past several days, I have noticed that it does contain MUCH additional Veridical Information on those cases I've already profiled in my Article, but that it also contains MUCH information on new cases that I did not even know about before. From what I have read within it so far, the Veridical Information I have posted on each of these cases in my current Article generally covers only roughly HALF of the overall Veridical Data on these Cases. So actually, the cases I presented appear to actually be even more solid with the overall data than they appeared in my article. Think of my current article therefore as a "Preview" to my upcoming updated draft. The original will remain as a summery, the new one will be far more indepth.

The book also mentions certain misses and misdirected hits of Dorothy's in these cases, going chronologically from the beginning to the end of each case, so it's a fair presentation overall, and doesn't cover up things she got wrong or misdirected.

The most exciting thing is there are new cases within it that I can update my article with. I will be updating my article in the near future after I read the entirety of the book for it's contents of additional information on her cases, including some previously unknown to me. I'll let you all know then.

I wish I could somehow get in contact with one of Dorothy Allison's relatives, friends, or the law enforcement that worked with her, for additional information on her later cases past 1980 that I know are very intriguing, but little is known about. Maybe one of them will stumble upon my article online someday and contact me? Who knows.

She is definately a Psychic who needs more indepth material written about her and put out there. That's why I wrote my article. To get as much information as I know on her out there in one article.

Accourding to the information in the book, she never charged families ANY money for helping them find bodies or helping find out who the killer was, and in many case she later became very close friends with the family members of dead relatives she helped locate. However, accourding to some skeptic sources, she requested to be paid for her services to law enforcement, which is reasonable knowing there are a number of cases she actually flew to another state or at least a great distance to investigate, spending her time and effort to try to assist Police.

EDIT: A friend of mine suggested that I take the book "with a grain a salt" because it was co-written by Dorothy Allison. I'd like to point out however, that that's not how the book is at all. And it wasn't directly written by her, but by a man named Scott Jacobson, who consulted her, and obviously did his research independent of her. It's not written from a first person's perspective, it's a chronological timeline of events from her earliest cases up to 1980. It even mentions things down to the hour right, that I've read from other sources. Every single thing I've read in the book so far matches every other source I've read (including skeptic sources), including the misses and misdirected hits, those are also the same ones mentioned in Skeptic Sources. It even mentions misses and misdirected hits that AREN'T mentioned in any Skeptic Sources I've seen. You'd think that if the book were leaving anything out, that Skeptics would have picked up on anything not mentioned in it. Regardless, as it's the only book ever published on Psychic Dorothy Allison, it's the only indepth source I currently have independent of the others. That it currently matches everything exactly with the other sources I read (though giving much more indepth detailed information, additional hits, additional misses) it's really my best source at the moment.

"Material for this book was gathered from several sources. Dorothy's own retelling of the stories has been supported by newspaper and magazine articles and signed affidavits from many of the parties involved. In most cases, the families of the victims have cooperated fully, regardless of the fact that the interviews stirred unpleasent memories. Many of the law-enforcement officers involved have also given generously of their time in recounting their experiences with the psychic detective." - Scott Jacobson in Foreward to 'Dorothy Allison: A Psychic Story'

So, it does appear that the man who wrote it cross-referanced all of his material with the people involved and existing sources to confirm her stories.

- Eteponge