Another Near-Death Experience
10/10/2012
We were talking about these a couple of months ago. This one is from a neurosurgeon, who had previously believed that consciousness is an entirely material phenomenon. "But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it."
I have not read the Newsweek article to which the short notice above, in the Telegraph, points. Just the fact that it's in Newsweek makes me slightly skeptical. But something is going on here.
Update: you really should read the entire Newsweek piece. It's one of the most full and interesting accounts of this sort of the thing I've ever read. If the man is not just flat-out lying, this is, at a minimum, a striking piece of evidence for the belief that the soul does not begin and end with the body.
a friend on FB put it up
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html
Posted by: Grumpy | 10/11/2012 at 06:32 AM
Both of those links take me to the original post.
Grumpy, Did one of those take you to the item Maclin was talking about?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 10/11/2012 at 08:09 AM
Thanks, Janet. Here it is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9597345/Afterlife-exists-says-top-brain-surgeon.html
Posted by: Mac | 10/11/2012 at 08:14 AM
And I will have to wait till later to read the Daily Beast one.
Posted by: Mac | 10/11/2012 at 09:35 AM
I finally had a chance to read it. Wow. Quite a story. It is remarkable how some of what he says really does fit with what mystics have told us. The thing about thoughts having "physical" reality made me think of Lewis.
Posted by: Mac | 10/11/2012 at 08:03 PM
One of our mega-rich guys (Kerry Packer?) had been clinically dead after a heart attack and had not had any kind of consciousness that he could remember, so after they revived him, he bragged "I've been there! There's nothing there!" which I always took as some kind of brag that "I'm going to get away with it!" But since he's dead now, I guess he's had a bit of a shock. :/
Posted by: Louise | 10/11/2012 at 08:06 PM
Bergman says in an interview that when he had surgery and was under anesthesia for some time, and emerged having been similarly unconscious, he was tremendously relieved, because as a guilty ex-Lutheran he was afraid of what might be waiting for him after death. But later on--still an unbeliever--he began to wonder, after his wife's death, because he just couldn't accept that he would never see her again. Perhaps that love helped to save him.
Posted by: Mac | 10/11/2012 at 08:31 PM