Are Out-of-body and/or Near-death experiences real or hallucinations?

TheVat said:
Aye, there's the rub. These things all hit the same epistemic wall. How do others witness an experience that is sui generis to the one person. The whole thing with an OBE is its subjective nature - no one watching Dave while he astrally projects is likely to see anything other than Dave snoozing. All that's left are anecdotes about astral projectors (projectors, is that the term?) who themselves see something, say during surgery, which they couldn't see or have knowledge of from their location on the operating table - like that oft-repeated blue tennis shoe anecdote.

elizabethwhitworth.com

The Shoe on the Ledge: Kimberly Clark Sharp's Account of Maria's NDE - Elizabeth Whitworth

Kimberly Clark Sharp says a woman named Maria saw a shoe on the ledge of the hospital when she was flatlining. I examine the story.
elizabethwhitworth.com elizabethwhitworth.com
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I do not doubt the existence of anomalies that are difficult to explain, but that doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that supernatural phenomena are in play. As DaveC mentioned, difficulty in verification isn't a win by forfeit for the claimant. Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence.

The case at hand will (hopefully) clarify that an entirely subjective experience is indistinguishable from an hallucination. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the claim, but it does move us into evaluation of probabilities.

Which is more likely? An authentic OBE / NDE / Astral Vacation or...

Are you on drugs, boy? (even if that drug is endogenous)
 
Randwolf said:
That doesn't necessarily invalidate the claim, but it does move us into evaluation of probabilities.
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This.

DaveW should know that we're not saying it didn't happen, were just saying we are skeptical, and we prefer what we consider more likely explanations. And it is unlikely it will be objectively determined either way anytime soon.
 
Randwolf said:
The case at hand will (hopefully) clarify that an entirely subjective experience is indistinguishable from an hallucination. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the claim, but it does move us into evaluation of probabilities.
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And that statement is indistinguishable from irrational skepticism.
Randwolf said:
Which is more likely? An authentic OBE / NDE / Astral Vacation or...

Are you on drugs, boy? (even if that drug is endogenous)
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Depends who you ask.
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
It's not astral projection. It is a true "I've gone somewhere else" experience.
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And that statement is indistinguishable from irrational skepticism.
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OK.

Let's say someone came to you and told you they had a true out of body experience. No kidding, they had felt themselves leaving their body, flying into heaven, then returning into their body. While OOB they had gone to see Jesus, and Jesus told them to kill their family because they are sinners, and like Sodom and Gomorrah, they have to be sacrificed to protect the rest of the flock.

Would you say "wow, that's an incredible experience" and tell him you had a similar - and equally true - experience?

Or would you suggest that perhaps he did not actually see Jesus?
 
Just to clarify, my previous post was from a skeptical position - I was saying that these extraordinary claims lack extraordinary evidence and hence my "epistemic wall" - jargon for a inherent problem of verification. Sorry if that was unclear.

Randwolf
DaveC426913

From an Ockham perspective, hallucinations or anesthesia dreams or whatever seem to be favored. So many ways our brains can fool us. As any Oliver Sacks book will dramatically illustrate.
 
Ok, I see now what happened. The portion of that post after where I link that silly tennis shoe anecdote (and for the record, I almost never use the term anecdote except in a skeptical context) and then eviscerated it was somehow chopped off. How odd. That missing portion of the text addressed the poor quality of the tennis shoe tale as any sort of evidence, and the vast possibilities of information leakage through entirely prosaic means.
 
gmilam said:
I used to know a guy who claimed to have had out of body experiences as a child. These happened at night when he stayed with his grandmother. He also told me that his grandmother was a natve american medicine woman.

Personally, I think that his grandmother made some herbal tea to help him sleep. And it had the added bonus of vivid dreams.
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I've had a number of seizures over the years that are in the form of an OBE. They tend to be remarkably consistent, as though I'm looking down upon myself from about 3 to 4 above and 3 to 4 feet behind myself. I will observe myself acting in a slightly peculiar manner, often ranting about something weird that has nothing to do with anything that is actually going on, and I cannot act upon or influence what I'm doing in any way--I can only observe. These episodes will typically last for several minutes and then I am immediately back "inside" my body, I'll fall to the ground, and be largely non-responsive and verbally aphasiac--I can sometimes write after a few minutes--for a good twenty minutes or so; yet I'm cognizant of what's going on around me for most of the duration of the episode. Fun stuff.
 
TheVat said:
From an Ockham perspective, hallucinations or anesthesia dreams or whatever seem to be favored. So many ways our brains can fool us. As any Oliver Sacks book will dramatically illustrate.
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I once attended a Sacks lecture towards the end of his life. Afterwards, during the q and a session, I asked him a question but he was quite hard of hearing at that point, so he misunderstood me entirely. Never got my query satisfactorily answered.
 
parmalee - still a pretty good name drop. I've got a few, but Asimov is the only one with genuine interaction. IIRC, Sacks placed himself as sort of on the spectrum, so misunderstood questions may have been a common thing even when his hearing was good.

One more afterthought on the so-called OBE - there's sometimes a confusion out there that there's something so much better about a corroborated (third party) anecdote than an uncorroborated anecdote. They are both still anecdotes. If a doctor, as a third party, obtains some form of verification - e.g. sends the janitor up to the upper floor of the hospital where the tennis shoe is observed on a ledge just as described by the patient from their claimed OBE floating perspective - this can only suggest an anomalous event and perhaps a path of research, not provide any sort of "proof." But I've noticed several authors and supposedly scholarly "encyclopedias" of the paranormal will wave that tennis shoe around as if it had toppled the applecart of physicalism. (Could I mix metaphors a little more? Here, hold my beer....)
 
billvon said:
OK.

Let's say someone came to you and told you they had a true out of body experience. No kidding, they had felt themselves leaving their body, flying into heaven, then returning into their body. While OOB they had gone to see Jesus, and Jesus told them to kill their family because they are sinners, and like Sodom and Gomorrah, they have to be sacrificed to protect the rest of the flock.

Would you say "wow, that's an incredible experience" and tell him you had a similar - and equally true - experience?

Or would you suggest that perhaps he did not actually see Jesus?
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Considering my own OBEs, I have to say it was a false experience. But only because of my own. Without having my own, I would have said it probably was a religiously induced vision as many christians have had and highly likely false.
 
Randwolf said:
Please explain the distinction...
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In astral projection a part of the mind is projected into the realm of the astral. In real OBEs, the whole real Self leaves the body. This is as close as I can get to understanding the difference. Others may see it differently.
 
55 comments and I have only scanned.

NDE are real in the same way being under anaesthetic is real, just physiology.
The experiences are similar because giving someone ketamine or fentanyl in India will produce the same results as administering them to someone in the US or Australia.
The hallucinations are different due to cultural experiences, a guy from Karachi will see Mohammed, a guy from Chennai will see Vishnu and a guy from Texas will see Jesus and Trump.
 
exchemist said:
No. “The realm of the astral” sounds like woo to me.
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I've always felt kind of cheated in that in my "astral travels" I only get to watch myself throw some kind of tantrum about nothing in particular, and then I fall down, while others apparently get to travel to Athens or throughout the universe. Moreover, oftentimes people who haven't quite figured out what's going on tend to yell at me the whole time--until I fall down. Then they all of a sudden demonstrate some sort of contrition, or they simply pretend that they weren't just yelling at me only moments prior. I'd rather get to travel throughout the galaxy, and interdimensionally, like the Silver Surfer.
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
In astral projection a part of the mind is projected into the realm of the astral. In real OBEs, the whole real Self leaves the body. This is as close as I can get to understanding the difference. Others may see it differently.
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OK... I'm curious, which part? Of the mind?
 
Pinball1970 said:
The experiences are similar because giving someone ketamine or fentanyl in India will produce the same results as administering them to someone in the US or Australia.

The hallucinations are different...
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I just want to make sure I'm understanding you here...

You're not implying that ketamine & opiates do not cause hallucinations, right?


(I do appreciate the humour, though :)
 
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