If we went through time, studying things like the western view of the brain, how would we know that the planet revolves, with nothing short of us turning it outselves proving that?

I think neurology is just assumption.

Do you think there has to be a meaning to life? Life would make no sense if you die, and your just.......dead for ever.

People passing away, like a mother loses her daughter she would never get over her, and the same goes for a father and son. It would just not fit in properly if oblivion only waited for you.

IMO there has to in the end be some kind of afterlife, EVERY human has a love for someone else (that goes way beyond reproduction of genes) and EVERY human wants to survive death, you can NEVER deny that. If we were not meant to survive death I don't think nature would have made us want to so much, make us conscious beings, and want to disappoint us in the end. Even the most hardcore "I don't believe in an afterlife" alive wants to survive death. So much emotion in the world towards it. Everyone wants to have an afterlife, because we all have a longing towards it. The people who think oblivion just don't have everything sorted out, and think we must be gone forever due to thinking we are purely biological survival animals, even though they want an afterlife.

Before humans thought the Sun was God, thought the earth was flat and centre of the universe, that there was a rain God, thunder God, the list goes on. I don't think humans are robobts, there is no limit on what life holds, and I think in millions of years to come people will hold the way we interpret consciousness, the brain, our view of the universe (including us being only biological survival humans) now in the same manner as the people who believed in water Gods, and the like.

What does everyone think?

Interesting theory zyzyx.

And MJ, I meant to say it in that consciousness is non-physical, and science would have to expand their boundaries to cater for that.

I think with the brain activity still operating during a NDE, that is because people are still alive to report back! People who permanently died may have experienced an NDE, but they completed it, and so they didn't come back. During NDE's people come out of their body and enter through a tunnel, they see the surgery before and afterhand. How come the NDE didn't last longer than that? Like until their brains core processes went completely dead. (if NDE's are produced by the brain that is)

You have to remember that there is such thing as materialisation mediums, and I think they prove conclusive evidence of the afterlife. If we go off this, that a person does in fact survive death, then the brain still operating on a dead EEG doesn't hold much function.

Yes, an OBE is a non-physical phenomena. For science to prove, and therefore accept, they'll have to accept the existence of non-physical phenomena, a feat I don't think they will make.

We are going to hit a stalemate in science soon.

Hi MJ

Agree with the NDE experiences, which is why I would love for more research to be done here. But we cannot ignore the fact that people who experience NDEs/OBEs still have a living functional brain.

I disagree, because there are "core processes" still operating in the brain does not mean you still have  a fully functioning one. According to the EEG meter, when your brains electrical activity is displayed, memory and having experience is working fine. With the brain activity so low as to not appear on the EEG, I dobut it is possible of producing such an experience. People who experience NDE's have a clear and an amazing experience.

The brain running in "core mode" could have a useless meaning for all we know, we do not know if it even operates properly in that mode (or is repsonsible for these experiences). Maybe it is just the brain slowing alll the electrical activity down after it's been going all your life? Maybe when (duing a NDE) you make a choice of not coming back or not. Maybe the brain remains in this core mode to allow the option of coming back? I think you have to examine NDE's from an afterlife perspective too, and not solely on the dying brain.

And if the NDE is the effect of a dying brain how come it doesn't happen to everyone who is dying. Why is it that not all of those who are near death whose brain is 'dying' experience a NDE?

And also there are many accounts of people having near death experiences returning with factual information which they had no prior knowledge of. These include being able to identify ancestors from pictures, learning about siblings who had died before their own birth, learning about family secrets etc. Others were able to document information they had learned about future events (see for example Eadie 1992, Brinkley 1994).

And I don't think the idea of the brain downloading information is entirely belief, people place these views on their experiences, they don't just make them up without reasoning. People can get information from elsewhere, ie remote viewing, which simply cannot be functioned directly by the brain, the idea is plausible and it can explain phenomena.

Also, I think consciousness is fundamental to the questions we are proposing here, and this is a feat western medicine has not examined closely. I think they even totally avoided it when calculating these "up to date" neurology theories. Study quantum physics for an explanation of consciousness. This field adds an entirely new idea to neurology in proving that consciousness is not solely a product of the brain.

And if the NDE is true, it has non-physical implications. We are getting nowhere with these experiements only going by physical means. We are a LONG way from forming a true hypothesis

You are clever Beth! If only the people who follow christianity thought like you.

I'll try to get out of this focus first!

^great post

What do eastern mystics say about these kind of experiments? (trying to invalidate OBE's)

can someone up the book version of The Secret?

Does anyone else just get ticked off by the blatent materialism of the west?

Take Persinger for example, he doesn't care about love, God, or any of the finest things in life, he thinks we are just unconscious phenomena and everything is of the brain, and when we die we are gone.

I don't let it affect me, but I DETEST fools like him.

Western medicine seem to think that they do not exist, when they do. It is the same with energy work like Kundalini, when it is raised the brain transforms with loads of "antennas" sticking up, howcome western medicine has never studied a person with raised kundalini?

I think they should study reality first before they even start to think about disproving OBE's, NDE's and the like.

[So we might live ‘forever’ in a brain created environment]

 Regarding death – we can ‘live on’ without there being any afterlife. Such theories which suggest this look at the subjective nature of time. As ones brain nears death, subjective passage of time could grind to a near halt. So we might live ‘forever’ in a brain created environment (i.e. like an LD) in between the space of life and death. As the brain can seem to generate worlds, how would we know whether we are in a shared astral, or a self generated environment in a dying brain?

Would we be alive for eternity in that state so? Cos when a person is buried their brain rots, it is eventually gone, but could "you" survive that? (if that theory is true)

Reality, in my mind, as a word, as being a solid defined thing, doesnt exist.  It all just IS

Indeed

What is your preferred method?