Near-Death Experiences: The Stories They Tell

welcome I'm Kim Wilcox I'm the Chancellor here at UC Riverside and it's great to welcome you to our University and to our presidential lecture for those of you who don't know the University California has Presidential Scholars there have been 41 in the history of the entire university we have one tonight there has never guess [Applause] this is our fifth at UCR and it's the first philosopher ever in the entire University of California to be named a presidential professor so we're particularly proud professor Fisher but it's my honor tonight to introduce to you the Dean of the college of arts humanities arts and social sciences here at the University our Dean for the last three years Milagros Daniel thank you everyone for for coming and enjoying with us celebration of this incredible honor and it's my honor and privilege as dean of the college to be able to introduce my colleague professor John Martin Fisher he's University professor and distinguished professor in the philosophy department at the University of California Riverside he received his BA in philosophy from Stanford University and his PhD from Cornell prior to coming to UCR he was associate professor of philosophy at Yale University he also has taught at UCLA University of Colorado Boulder and Santa Clara University Fisher served as director of the University Honors Program at UCR for eight years and was chair of the department of philosophy for five years at UC Riverside he has won the center for ideas and society distinguished achievement award the College of Humanities of Arts and Social Sciences distinguished research award the Graduate division dissertation advising and mentoring award and the Academic Senate faculty research lectureship he has held the university of california presidential chair and he has served as of the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division he's been awarded three fellowships by the National and Endowment for the Humanities and four grants by the John Templeton Foundation as you know he was the project leader for the immortality project a 5 point 1 million dollar grant to us sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation and housed here at UC Riverside Fischer is the author or co-author of four books he has four collections of his essays that have been published by Oxford University Press and he's co-editor of Oxford University presses introduction to philosophy classical and contemporary readings he is currently completing death in mortality and life's meaning please join me in welcoming University professor John Fisher so this seems to be working a mic so I want to first thank Dean Milagros vania and Chancellor Kim Wilcox for organizing this it's very kind of you for doing this I really appreciate it thank you all for coming thank you very much I'd especially just want to say a few words thank you to my department the philosophy department here at UCR you've been incredibly supportive and generous giving me the space and the kind of the collegiality to do my writing and my research and stimulating me thank you to my colleagues who within philosophy here and also throughout the profession I'd like to thank the campus being incredibly supportive this has been I've been here for 30 years and when I got here that there were 5,400 students I don't think I have anything to do with the fact that we now have 25,000 but it's much harder to park and this building didn't exist at all on most of those buildings didn't exist but it's been an exciting time to be part of the growth of the campus I really appreciate the support the campus gave me throughout my career and also in getting the grant and administering the grant and I'd like to thank the College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences I could go on but I want to get in a certain amount in my lecture and I want to leave a lot of time for questions and answers at least for questions and attempted answers - I also see someone who worked with me in the University Honors Program and I forgot to thank the staff who we worked together and I was 8 years in the University Honors Program and I really appreciate all the team we had ok also I tend to be undisciplined if I go off script you might be reminded of someone in any case I'm I'm going to stay on script as much as I can so I apologize that I'll be reading but that way I'll get in the material and then we'll have time for Q&A human beings are deeply afraid of death and we yearn for immortality even if we have some ambivalence toward it religion offers the prospect of immortality near-death experiences are significant for many reasons but perhaps the main reason is that they seem to point to the possibility of an afterlife and thus a kind of immortality indeed most although not all near-death experiences suggest a very attractive immortality given that I'm going to use NDEs shorthand for near-death experiences given that NDEs have been reported throughout history and across cultures and because they appear to be a portal to a beautiful immortality they are of tremendous interest they've been of tremendous interest throughout history and currently as you know they're much in the news and E's take place in near-death contexts situations in which an individual's life is in jeopardy or she simply believes that this is so but not all people in near-death contexts have nd ease roughly ten percent of those in near-death contexts report having nd ease and it's it's hard exactly to quantify I've seen 3 percent 5 percent 12 percent I think it's roughly 10 percent the Dutch cardiologists and researcher on in des PIM van Lommel describes them as follows a range of impressions during a special state of consciousness including a number of special elements such as an out-of-body experience in OBE pleasant feelings seeing a tunnel alight deceased relatives or a life review or a conscious return to the body so these are elements that are typically though not invariably found in and E's I'll define an NDE as taking place in a near-death context and having a sufficient number of the characteristics identified by Van Loma ok an out-of-body experience a life review a dark tunnel traveling toward a life being guided by deceased loved ones or benevolent religious figures and interestingly of course across cultures those figures are different ok about 90% of MDS are described as positive experiences and those who have had n DS have significant change in their behavior we can talk about the negative ones too but I'll be focusing mainly on the positive ones though the negative ones are in some ways more interesting PIM van Lommel has studied people who have had any ease in the context of cardiac arrest and he has observed that the NDEs have had significant transformational effects these individuals have less death anxiety and are more spiritual they are more pro-social appreciating relationships more and spending more time with family friends and relatives they are also more compassionate and attuned to morality and justice the transformations are often profound NDEs are amazing and not just because of their capacity to transform people who were in cardiac arrest or under anesthesia or in comas report having had rich experiences during these times times in which their brains were apparently offline sometimes they report events that cannot be independently corroborated but sometimes they report events of facts or events or facts that can and indeed are corroborated for example some report that they are they've heard conversations among their surgeons conversations that took place when the individuals were under anesthesia the physicians confirm that these conversations did in fact take place many have reported details of what happened during times at which they were not conscious or apparently at least not conscious they were under anesthesia or in a coma and so forth the fact that these NDEs can be checked against the facts and that NDEs have very similar patterns of content at least suggest that even the Andes that cannot be independently corroborated must be taken seriously at least taken very seriously many of these sorts of India he's described communication with deceased relatives and confrontation with a heavenly or otherworldly realm so one of these is the famous nde written up by the neurosurgeon Edmund Alexander many of you have heard of this book and his work in which he found himself in quote a beautiful incredible dream world except it wasn't a dream he describes himself flying along with quote a beautiful girl with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes sometime after his NDE Alexander recognized this girl as its deceased sister whom he had never met so this is in his famous book proof proof of heaven and he's written a sequel map of heaven this isn't proof of heaven which sold more than 3 million copies in this country we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface alive with indescribable and vivid colors the wing of a butterfly in fact millions of butterflies were all around us vask fluttering waves of them dipping down into the greenery and coming back up around us again without using any words she spoke to me the message had three parts you are loved and cherished you have nothing to fear there is nothing you can do wrong Alexander holds that this rich set of experiences occurred while he was in a coma and his brain was not capable of having experiences he was a neurosurgeon and so presumably kind of knows about these things he writes but while I was in a coma my brain hadn't been working improperly it hadn't been working at all the part of my brain that years of medical school had taught taught me was responsible for creating the world I lived and moved around in and for taking the raw data that came in through my senses and fashioning it into a meaningful universe that part of my brain was down and out and yet despite all of this I had been alive and aware truly aware in a universe characterized above all by law of consciousness and reality there was for me simply no arguing the facts I knew it so completely that I ached what I had experienced was more real than the house I sat in more real than the logs burning in the fireplace ok so he has actually a chapter called ultra real he considers these experiences ultra real she just mentioned that he had a bout of meningitis bacterial meningitis and so he was suddenly very very ill and people didn't know exactly what it was and then he was in a coma for five six days I think okay now there's another one that you might have heard about Colton Burpo NDE is described in the book co-written by his father Todd Burpo heaven is for real this book has also sold millions of copies and it was made into a motion picture that was widely distributed and viewed by millions Colton became ill a few months shy of his fourth birthday he was diagnosed with a burst appendix and underwent two surgeries after he recovered miraculously Colton began recollecting and reporting experiences he had while undergoing the first surgery and under anesthesia he had visited heaven and personally met Jesus God and the Holy Spirit he had met various deceased relatives one of whom was a sister who had never been both born due to a miscarriage he saw angels and John the Baptist and he even saw his parents in the hospital at the time of the surgery his father and mother in different rooms praying they were in fact in different rooms brain these are extraordinarily extraordinary and awe-inspiring experiences of course the contents of these NDEs cannot be independently verified these Eamon Alexander's and Colton Burpo proposed there are others that can be well I'll just give you one quickly of the ones that can be independently corroborated and there are thousands of stories of these are reports probably I don't know hundreds of thousands the question it always is first of all whether they're accurate and secondly whether they only could be could have been God or the information could only have been acquired while the individual's brain was offline but there are many many reports and sometimes difficult to explain them in a naturalistic way consider for example the famous story of Pam Reynolds she underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm she was under anesthesia blood was drained from her brain and her body temperature was reduced to 60 degrees the EEG electroencephalography registered no brain activity sufficient for consciousness and yet Pam reported specific conversations of the medical team as she was being prepped for surgery for example she reported that the medical team discussed the problems posed by her small arteries this conversation actually did take place she also reported having an incredible experience after witnessing medical personnel prepping her body she left the operating room for someplace else bathed in a bright light and encountered deceased relatives who communicated to her without words okay so there are many reports and these reports kind of are studied carefully and often it's not obvious that their instance here or that there are naturalistic ways of explaining how the individuals acquired the information and this has caught people's eyes and fascinated them and because of our interest in what happens after we die our fear of death these become even more intriguing and fascinating now I want to just define supernaturalism for our purposes supernaturalism about NDEs has two components first the claim that our minds are not just our brains and can exist after our brains and bodies stop functioning and secondly the claim that we come into contact with non-physical typically heavenly realms in and E's the supernaturalists thus claims that our non-material minds our souls perceive or grasp features of a realm that is separate from our physical world the first claim is sometimes called dualism about the relationship between the mind and body it is plausible that the second claim that we are in contact with a heavenly realm in and the ease requires the first that our minds are non-physical the two views typically come as a package the dominant view in the popular literature is supernaturalism definitely the dominant view NDEs provide quote a proof of heaven and they show a quote that heaven is for real this is also an intellect influential view in the more academic discussions of entities there aren't a lot of academic discussion but there is a literature and maybe it's because people who are fascinated by nd East tend already to believe in the supernatural interpretation of them but even in the academic discussions super naturalism is probably the dominant view okay the experiences are remarkable in their universality and they at least appear to be a portal to an afterlife in another realm usually a deeply peaceful heavenly realm but do we have to interpret them in this way this is the main thing I'll be addressing can we understand the profound significance of NDEs without conceptualizing them as proving that heaven is for real I pause to emphasize I am only attempting to show here how a natural understanding of NDEs a naturalistic not a supernatural is dickey understanding of them as possible I will not here argue that it's necessary or even the best conceptualization of the phenomena I aim to show that supernaturalism is not the only way to understand them and fully to respect the reports by those who have had these experiences so I'm not arguing that in the ease don't point to an afterlife supernaturally construed but I am arguing that that's not the only way to understand them and that there's a really a track to naturalistic way of doing so so if you combine that with if you are predisposed to a scientific worldview this way of understanding the stories or the meaning of Indies might be attractive to you okay consider the difference between explanation and storytelling these are two deep-seated aspects of our human nature distinct ways in which we seek to come to grips with the world and ourselves in it storytelling is how we sort through the significance of what happens to us the stories we tell help us to come to terms with our lives and also our deaths they help us to sort out this experience we call living and they do so by placing events into emotionally recognizable patterns we feel the pull of narratives because they take us both in body and in mind through recognizable emotional landscapes we feel the tension of drama the crushing pain of tragedy the comic release this is the distinctive way in which stories make sense to us they give us a kind of emotional understanding this is what makes something a story and not a mere description of a sequence of events so I want to use story in this specific sense that it tends to elicit an emotional reaction but we don't just tell stories we use the tools of science to discover what is out there and in here and how it all fits together we observe hypothesize and test we refine our vocabulary for describing what we find and we constantly revise our explanations for why things are the way they are in doing so we are searching for the truth unlike our drive to find meaning our drive to explain is not satisfied by fictional representations a good explanation grasps the world just as a good story touches the heart these two enterprises storytelling and explanation are uniquely and essentially human when it comes to making sense of the world our selves human nature is multifaceted we want to understand the way things work and we want to grasp the meaning of it all these two pursuits are not necessarily intention sometimes they can work together okay I think I'll skip a little I want to make sure I have enough time for lots of questions it is important to see that these two kinds of understanding explanation and storytelling are entirely compatible that is the same phenomenon can be understood in either or both ways although of course not simultaneously the kind of understanding we see will be context relative and purpose driven for certain purposes we want an explanation and for others we want a compelling story thus even if a near-death experience is an entirely physical experience with a physical etiology we can achieve an effective grasp of them by attending to their story stories allow the world to become meaningful to us as creatures with feelings they afford us a sentimental and often very deep grasp of what's around us and they do this by placing sequence of events into patterns that Gryff are effective sensibilities we feel the rise and fall of the narrative as it unfolds think of the first time you read Romeo and Juliet recall your anxious excitement as the young lovers see each other for the first time feverish expectation at their courtship crushing heartache at their deaths the meaning provided by a narrative grasp of things does not depend on an assumption that the events being placed in a narrative frame are real in the sense that they really occurred in our concrete world fiction can be meaningful in this way even fiction understood as such we emotionally connect with made-up characters and their lives and we do so knowing full well that they are figments of someone's imagination and projections in our own imaginations the key to grasping the meaning provided by a narrative is at least in part a form the events presented in that story take the connection between those events and an independent reality are beside the narrative point okay the form of a good narrative maps on to our emotional templates the moment Juliette stabs herself with the dagger is as inevitable as the moment Romeo drinks the poison it just had to be that way and yet we feel a certain kind of release we achieve a sense of closure when the action of the play sweeps across the inevitable shores of the star-crossed lovers of deaths we know where we are going we cringe at the thought of the cruel fate that awaits our gaze and yet we can't help but feel relieved when we get there the peace between their families is an afterthought it seems inevitable as well but no more than an elixir to dull the pain in our hearts and yet that pain is the point it ties everything together the story of Romeo and Julia the story of stymied love is meaningful precisely because it ends in sorrow and pain it makes sense because we feel the predictable foreseeable twists and turns of the plot as it unfolds though we don't foresee them in detail we ride the highs of the balcony and suffer the lows of the crypt because that is what it takes to achieve closure otherwise none of this crazy mixed-up dramatic world makes sense now everybody knows a Romeo and Juliet or perhaps a Romeo and Julia or a Juliet and Julia but presumably none of these friends really climbs on balconies none of them really climbs on balconies and so forth the world often gets in the way of their love alright but it does not end in deadly confusion for them not always they mourn and move on as people do or at least they try to do we can soul them and help them along there way and yet we grasp the significance of what they are going through because we are familiar with the tale it begins with a glimpse that gets the blood pumping and ends with heartache the pattern is familiar this story like others meshes with our emotional sensibilities the stories elicit or activate an emotional template in us okay stories render events emotionally meaningful thereby allowing us to comprehend them and come to grips with them in a distinctive way a story can be of high hopes dashed of hard work rewarded of the comeuppance that his ones do of coming home a fall a feeling precisely because of the way you attempt to succeed that's one of my favorite stories and so on Hollywood love stories of improbably overcoming huge obstacles on the path to living happily ever after Hollywood loves them because we love them what unites the various forms stories can take is that they allow us to fit sequences of events into familiar emotional patterns the important feature of a story is not how it describes reality but how it makes us feel explanations allow us to wrap our minds around things stories afford a glimpse into the meeting events by allowing us to wrap our hearts around them okay so we can understand now I want to get to NDE specifically we can understand the meaning of an NDE in part by interpreting the story it tells and the ears are profoundly moved by the NDE story this story includes a heavenly realm and perfect being typically it seems that the story of the NDEs is essentially supernatural but can we interpret the story of nd E's in a different way that is can we understand the story without requiring it to involve its intended reference to certain metaphysically real element elements that are supernatural I want to show how NDEs can be meaningful and transformative in part do this due to the story they tell where this is all compatible with a rejection of supernaturalism okay I was worried that might be mine the distinctive meaning and potency of nd E's need not come from a supernatural a story the paradigm story of NDS can be told in a naturalistic way put in slightly different words even if the story involves supernatural entities at the superficial level we don't have to take this as an indispensable part of the story perhaps the apparent or surface story in an NDE is just a vehicle for expressing a deeper meaning okay I suggest that the story at the core of and E's is a voyage from a known or familiar place to a relatively unknown or unfamiliar situation or status guided by a benevolent parental or authority figure or figures okay it's a voyage from the known and familiar perhaps comfortable to the unknown guided by a benevolent parental or authority figure this Dara t'v is capable of resonating deeply with human beings stories depicting voyages go back at least as far as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in Western literature the narrative of a voyage or journey sometimes a journey of self-discovery as a staple of literature healthy human development involves making a transition taking a voyage in adolescence from the film inner territory of the family to the broader and less familiar world of other people and relationships a psychologically healthy individual learns how to differentiate herself from her parents and to live independently of the family ideally this transition is supervised and guided by an and benevolent authority figure typically a parent but doesn't have to be a parent can be by a benevolent authority figure I mean either parent or someone with more experience and to which one defers in a particular context and who has one's best interests at heart typically I'd say the normative role of a parent or the role of a parent when things are going well there's a good paradigm it doesn't have to literally be a parent the story told by an NDE taps into an ancient genre of the voyage but it also recapitulates or echos our development from dependence on the family to integration into the wider world as guided by our parents or parent figures we can understand some of the elements of the NDE by reference to the way in which we relate to the parental guide our guides both teach and model greater pro-social and moral behavior when things are going well that is in an NDE we are reminded of the sacrifices and love of our parents or those who have raised us benevolently and we are filled with awe further their example of love and sacrifice is salient and thus we want to follow the lessons they sought to teach us as we made the journey from the family to the wider world oh and wonder come from a recognition of the love and sacrifice of our parents and increased pro-sociality and moral concern comes from a desire to learn from their teaching and to follow their example the story of nd ease on my interpretation does not presuppose supernaturalism or a belief in Supernatural at a deeper level I'm sorry I mean at the deep level it doesn't require supernaturalism in the NDEs reported by haven Alexander and Colton Burpo purported details of the heavenly realms and beings are revealed but in many perhaps most and E's the subject experience is traveling toward a barrier that guards some sort of destination maybe a a wall a gated area or your honor you're going toward a river and you're traveling across the river to the other side it's usually a voyage to someplace and before the individual actually negotiates the barrier she awakens typically with regret that she has awakened and a desire to return and experience the completion of the voyage this is like waking up from a wonderful dream you wish it could go on longer if Heaven is for real it is a gated community at least in many Andes the point is that the importance of nve's is not that they depict a supernatural destination at least in my view rather their deeper meaning is that they tell the story of a recognizable and resonated resonant kind of human journey okay how does the story of a voyage to the unknown guided by benevolent authorities or parental figures helped to explain the diminished death anxiety and indeed serenity in the contemplation of death characteristic of those who have had NDEs so that's important because on a supernatural interpretation it seems like we're headed toward heaven and that gives us considerably less death anxiety how does a super naturalistic interpretation comport with that perhaps we feel that a benevolent Authority would not lead us into a dark or unpleasant status in a sense our lives are really a set of journeys from the known and comfortable to the unknown and challenging of course these voyages are not the same for all people but there are some important similarities we travel from the family to the wider world of relationships and active engagement with the challenges of the broader world guided by our parents perhaps we go from the safety and comfort of our family to college or university life here we seek friends and perhaps clubs and associations to take the place of our families they then helped to usher us from the by now familiar and relatively comfortable world of college to the new and more challenging environment of graduate school or the wider world of employment of course our parents are still there perhaps in the background helping us along our way a graduating senior at an American University captures the essence of this transition I saw that this in an alumni magazine recently this is what she says she's graduating leaving an own place off to the world we go to discover more so and she probably felt the same way when she left home for college if things go well in our lives we are guided by parents authority figures family and friends perhaps the most challenging transition for us to get our minds around is the voyage from life to death our last voyage unless there is reincarnation or an afterlife that allows for change and development the stories of India's help to assuage our anxieties about this daunting journey just as our parents assured us into this world they assure us out as well and just as our parents take us on our first journey into independence from our family to the wider world they guide us on our last one from life to whatever lies ahead even if it is nothingness the mind is able to bring our parents or other benevolent parental figures back from the dead as it were to guide us along this last journey not only are we not alone in this journey but we are accompanied by people who love us ok the reported contents of nve's including supernatural realms and beings can be understood then as metaphors or at least as non literal these stories can have profound meaning for us even if we do not take them to refer to really existing hem heavenly realms and beings of course we interpret many stories including biblical stories metaphorically and not strictly literally can okay so um and I want to I know I have about ten minutes another promise a lot of time for questions I want to talk about a very fascinating report of an LSD experience as Oliver Sacks wrote it up in his fascinating book hallucinations and he talks about someone who has an LSD experience goes through various details of it and then gets to this this part I'm skipping part of it but then I left my body and hovered in the room above the whole scene then found myself traveling through a tunnel of beautiful light into space and was filled with a feeling of total love and acceptance the light was the most beautiful warm and inviting life I ever felt I heard a voice asked me if I wanted to go back to earth and finish my life or to go go into the beautiful love and light in the sky in the love and light was every person that ever lived then my whole life flashed in my mind from birth to the present with every detail that ever happened every feeling and thought visual and emotional was there in an instance the voice told me that humans are love and light that day will live with me forever I feel I was shown a side of life that most people can't even imagine I feel a special connection to everyday that even the simple and mundane have such power and meaning that's the end of the quote that's reported by Oliver Sacks though he didn't have the experience himself what's striking is this experience as many of the hallmarks of the near-death experience a life review and out-of-body experience traveling through a tunnel of light travelling toward a light pleasant feelings deceased people and the subject experienced it as powerfully meaningful and transformative yet it was introduced by a drug LSD and he knew this both as it was happening and when he reflected on it in the retelling this man's awareness of the physical explanation of his experience does not seem to have diminished its significance for him in the least and we can understand the significance by noting that the story it tells us very similar to the story of NDEs after all we call LSD experiences trips and LSD experiences indeed at ripped from the known to the unknown and thus also shares this feature with end E's and with life the story told by an LSD experience and in particular the experience related to Oliver Sacks is strikingly similar to the story of an NDE as a as I have interpreted it it's the story of travel from the known to the unknown in a way that is elevating and even ecstatic by the way I'm just basing this on what I've read I have it actually experienced some interpret an LSD experience as opening quote the doors of perception and all this Huxley's metaphor where this involves opening the doors to a different higher reality that's the way some people perhaps the supernaturalists would interpret it but maybe such an experience does not connect us with a new reality but with new ways of experiencing our world our reality the doors of perception are opened in the sense that we are more emotionally open open to a larger or deeper range of emotional experiences perhaps the doors of perception are opened in the sense that a different part of our brain is newly empowered or enhanced this is the way Jill Bolte Taylor explains her deeply spiritual experience during her stroke in her book my stroke of insight she was also a neuroscientist why don't why do these always happen to neurosurgeons a neuroscientist but and she had a stroke but it was deeply spiritual and in fact wasn't for her now the time of her recuperation after were in rehabilitation was not pleasant but the stroke itself was and she interpreted it as taking off line parts of her brain the more logical parts may be the left brain and enabling the right brain okay LSD experiences can be compelling and transformative indeed LSD and other hallucinogens like psilocybin can and ketamine are being studied in the treatment of PTSD and the depression associated with a terminal illness diagnosis the results are sometimes dramatic even after just one treatment or one administration of the drug the changes are strikingly reminiscent of those associated with NDEs less death and anxiety a more spiritual orientation and a general equanimity and acceptance of one's fate the stories told by LSD experiences in NDEs are remarkably similar okay so there I'm just trying to say that there can be indisputably physical causes of what are arguably physical experiences that are very similar to NDEs so that's in service of the idea that we don't have to explain them by reference to supernaturalism you might you might still want to do that though you don't have to ok Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead not unfamiliar with LSD called life quote a long strange trip he once said quote we are on the road to somewhere I just don't know where in life's journey we often don't know where we are going I am reminded of ok so this is probably the only time someone has quoted Jerry Garcia and Bob Hope in the same paragraph but I am reminded of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in one of those road to movies like the road to Morocco or perhaps the road to Zanzibar Bob Hope asks Bing Crosby where each of the forks in the road leads and crosby says I have no idea hope replies okay let's get going then we often don't know where we are going in life's journey but it is even more mysterious where we are going and dying NDEs don't tell us where we are going but they offer comfort on the journey its guided by a benevolent parent figure we are not traveling alone NDEs are metaphorical narratives that capture this idea of travel into the unknown guided by a benevolent parental figure they capture this idea in a context death that magnifies and intensifies the normal anxiety associated with uncertainty about the next step in our lives so they are particularly profound they tap into an address some of our deepest concerns okay almost done how much time am i over now well I've got it just a few more minutes we can understand the remarkable and profound significance of nd he's in a way parallel to our understanding of the sublime beauty of the Grand Canyon or a sunset over the Pacific Ocean the Grand Canyon and a sunset our physical but this in no way diminishes their meaning to human beings LSD experiences are physical but they can be spiritually deep and transformative in remarkable ways NDEs can be conceptualized as part of our physical world but this would not render them without meaning or diminish their transformative power sometimes in the literature on end E's people describe naturalism as reductionistic and as kind of a bad guy in this debate as draining beauty and awe and meaning out of the appearances but I'm trying to argue that that's not really accurate on The Naturalist view we don't have it that we are going to a good place let alone heaven we just can't have this confidence and The Naturalist might say that to seek it is wishful thinking but guidance by a benevolent parental figure represents the thought that we are not headed for a status that is bad for us why would a loving parent lead us into something terrible even on the naturalistic interpretation the stories in de EES tell our stories of hope and of love even if we can't be sure of where we are going the stories tell us that we are not going alone again this resonates with the wisdom of some of the new critiques of the way we treat people at the ends of their lives and put them in sterile institutions and hospitals where we're extending their lives but not in a humane way we want to die for her at home surrounded by loved ones mainly surrounded by family and loved ones unfortunately and E's do not necessarily tell the story of coming home but they do tell the story of solidarity and loving guide guidance along the path forward wherever that will lead us so Kate bowler who has recently written an interesting book see what is it called everything happens for a reason and other lies I've loved a deeply religious person she's a a Mennonite and she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and it's about coming to grips with this and making sense of it she by the way is still living due to an experimental therapy that works for about 4% of the people with this kind of cancer this colon cancer and she wrote this really interesting book she summarizes findings of the near-death experience Research Foundation as follows thousands of people were interviewed about their brushes with death in every kind of situation being in a car accident giving birth attempting suicide etc and many descriptions describe the same thing love as I wrote at the beginning we are frightened by death and a supernatural istic interpretation of NDEs helps to assuage our worries NDEs can thus be part of terror management in DES so interpreted can be profoundly transformative I have offered a slightly different way of interpreting the stories and the easte health this naturalistic interpretation also offers comfort in the face of an uncertain future and can thus help in the strategy of Terror management without presupposing or ruling out or ruling out supernaturalism so I'm not be supposing that but I'm not ruling it out interpreted in the naturalistic way and E's are transformative because the natural response to love is low human beings do not want to die alone we want to be surrounded by loved ones the stories told by nd E's capture this important wisdom they offer the comfort provided by solidarity in the face of daunting challenges and stark uncertainties in the East tell stories of love in the face of perhaps the most terrifying challenge death these stories resonate with us comfort us and transform us narratives reach our emotions their power does not depend on the literal truth of the events depicted there is nothing more beautiful more awe-inspiring more and more motivational than love okay [Applause] okay so we have plenty of time for questions and I don't know all of your names but yes sir oh the negative ones yeah I kind of suggested that they are interesting so approximately 10% of the reports of NDEs are negative in the sense that they depict something very bad or unpleasant now it's often thought that there are more of these than are reported because there's kind of a disincentive to report negative and E's it's kind of embarrassing or humiliating and if it comes out that you had an NDE maybe people will think you're the kind of person who would have an NDE therefore you've done something wrong or guilty or ashamed of something so they are perhaps underreported but their significance is interesting I think way less attention has been given to negative it and E's in the literature because it's thought that they really don't perform the desired function of managing our terror of death matter of fact they seem to do the opposite but there is some work there's there's some academic work and then there's a woman named Nancy Evans Bush who has she's very active in the International Association of near-death studies which was a group in San Diego and one of the groups that in the immortality project we supported she's written two books on negative and E's ones called dancing past the dark and the other is called the Buddha in hell and so what various people including her argue as they're instructed they perform the function of enlightening the individual in the sense of turning him away from bad behaviors and reorienting him toward the good but making it clear that if he doesn't change his behavior who's gonna go to hell or he's gonna have something bad so they can be instructive I would say there's a way in which we could understand them as telling the same story as the positive and the East because they all involve or they often involve a voyage so in a positive NDE you're going from the dark toward the light and you're guided by a benevolent figure and there's peace and harmony in a negative and the oh and often it's a sent in a positive and a negative NDE its descent you're going toward the darkness from the light you're going toward a void and you are accompanied by an authority figure maybe benevolent maybe not but you tend to not I mean the experiences tend not to be according to the reports of being tortured yourself but you are witnessing other people being tortured unspeakably so it's a guided voyage from the known to the unknown because you're going toward darkness or the void and you're guided by a guide is the guide benevolent well it kind of depends if you interpret the guy that's showing you and saying look look how badly you'll do if you continue you continue your bad ways then it really isn't benevolent guy so I would suggest these are just my kind of ideas I haven't really tried them on scholars but I would suggest that the story of net negative n DS is really just the same as the story of positive and E's it's a guided a benevolently guided voyage from the known to the unknown now the details are kind of reversed instead of ascending and going toward the light you're descending and going again but they are helpful in the sense that they can transform your life in a positive way is that help okay yes yeah we're we're taping this videotaping and so we need that they had changed more changed their behavior the negative ones yeah I don't know and I don't know that that's ever been studied we do we have studied and Van LOM all the cardiologists the Dutch cardiologist has done a long-term study of cardiac arrest patients who've had and the EC's a cardiologist but he writes a lot about these near-death experiences and he's really catalogued the transformational nature of Indies and a lot of people are profoundly transformed I don't know about the negative one so I don't know there's been a study of that do you know if they were more afraid of death after this experience well ideally you might say at first they're very afraid and therefore they change such that they come to have more less death an anxiety because they orient themselves in a way that will not lead to that but I okay I must say I don't know a lot of empirical research on this I don't think there has been because I've I'm not I've done a good deal of reading and I have never seen that kind of research what I'd be interested in is okay are the people who have negative and these do they tend to be religious and specifically in a fire-and-brimstone kind of religion or do they tend to be depressed do they tend to feel guilty a lot can and presumably we could kind of find out whether those people are more likely to have negative end E's also we could do some research maybe you'll get a grant to do this on how transformative negative and E's really are you could you could look at positive and negative and E's as the carrot and the stick and I myself I've always thought sticks are more effective than carrots but at least you know you could you could say that the carrot is also profoundly appealing okay so more how about over here I feel like I'm always looking over there for some reason okay Gary yeah you wait for the microphone because they're taking medicine hey thanks for the the interesting talk John thank you I was I'm still not quite clear about the how the comfort comes in the naturalistic yeah but let me if I'm a purpose it by a question about the phenomenon how does it happen that people with positive near-death experiences come back and they say of course that was just a loose nation but then they're transformed anyway or does the sense of transformation depend upon some idea that they've been in touch with some further reality my sense and again I must say you know I'm a philosopher I haven't done the empirical research and I haven't spent my career studying these things I've just been interested in it kind of coming out of the immortality project my sense is the people who are transformed believe that they were in touch literally with a god or a heavenly realm and in other words they they take the significance to be coming from supernaturalism and right they often use the term ultra real or real we're more real than real what I think they mean is they the contents the reported contents are literally true so in your suggested alternative possible explanation naturalistic one it it has to the explanatory explanation has to not depend upon them thinking that one thing that one is in touch with some for expiry and I just so the first part of the question was just whether there was any empirical my empirical support for that I just wondering but for the for the claim that if we switch to this other interpretation we'd still get yeah right yeah no I just basically made it up I I didn't make it up but I I was trying to figure out how a naturalist could pay respect to the sincere reports of any ease and respect the transformational nature of them without having to buy into a supernatural realm and so forth and so I am suggesting this as an alternative and it's more kind of in a way a literary analysis of the reports and finding a different interpretation or maybe another way is you can look at the biblical stories and you could be a fundamentalist and believe they literally are true or you can take the stories as illustrating certain points and that's kind of what I want to do but you're right I mean I don't know if we if we took someone who literally believed in the truth of or that their contents of their experiences map onto the external reality and we said well let's suppose that's not the case you could still get something deeply meaningful and transformative out of it if you think of it as not referring to God but as they are not necessarily referring to a divine power but as pointing to the love we have toward our parents as they guide us I don't know if that would still do it okay but you wanted to okay do you want to ask about the comfort I'm gonna take up to lunch but I want I want to get a fat let me okay let me pretend that you asked the question and answer hey ok I'm sorry and then you can tell me if that was the question I mean well it may be I touched on it though supernaturalists gets comfort because he or she believes he or she is going to heaven if if they've been good but now we don't have that we just have the fact that we'll be building solidarity will be with loving parental figures guiding us but you could imagine your parents lovingly guiding you to a terrible place not not because they deliberately want to but because that's the only thing available like if your child has been diagnosed with terrible condition like cancer you're there for the child and you you know you take them to the hospital but they're going to undergo some painful treatment so the fact that there's a loving guy does not show that the destination is good but they said that's all I don't think we can have more on the naturalistic view to know that you know if you are diagnosed with a terrible disease that will be loved ones they're with you and for you and sharing the experience that's deeply important ok did that I did I don't know if that answered your question it's I think an answer to my quest ok but go ahead with your question it just it seems as though on that explanation you want a person to get as much comfort from just having a lot of loving people around and other kinds of experiences of love where it doesn't that's doesn't it seems as though the the in near-death experience had it was more forceful somehow then other ways of experiencing but what I was trying to suggest was it's more forceful partly because it resonates with the experiences we have as we develop you know as we learn how to detach ourselves differentiate ourselves from our parents then detach ourselves from the family and live independently and then you know leave the womb of college and go out into the world in these cases it's always a voyage from the known to the unknown with scary in certain ways and but we we manage partly because when things go well we're guided by someone benevolent may not be a parent so when we hear these stories that gives it extra force it's not just that we're surrounded by loved ones I don't know okay all right yes sir you mentioned this briefly just like you to expand on it if you would my father had one of these experiences he didn't know what to call it when he told me about it I'm not sure people had a name then he had diphtheria as a teenager and that was a very serious disease and his his memory is the light in the tunnel right and the Angels bringing him along through this tunnel and then being brought back reluctantly and I wonder if this is a common element that he said to me if I hadn't if they hadn't let me go back I wouldn't have I wouldn't have lived right it was his sense that they allowed him to return was this point that he wouldn't have chosen to come if it was up to him no it was so wonderful he wanted this I said the movie far and away I don't know if you saw it but Tom Cruise it has an out-of-body experience at the beginning where he's up above the Irish cabin right and then back down in the body right okay yes it's common that people who have positive and the E's wake up or regain wakeful consciousness and regret it or they wish they could still be in the NDE experience it's like a great dream that you wake up from and you think oh I wish I could continue yes yes that's a common it's common for okay thanks yeah that's interesting and that again points to the diminution of death anxiety because you know that eventually it'll be somewhere that you really will like basically yes okay yes sir I've seen a lot of pieces we're gonna anesthesia and many years ago there was some patients that did report remembering things during the surgery but that hasn't happened the last many years and I guess is better than a seizure okay okay so I think there okay there is research going on and we and the mortality projects supported this big grant we were only a small part of it it's being undertaken or directed by Sam cornea there's an MD and a PhD in neuro science he's a resuscitation doctor he was at SUNY Stony Brook State University of New York at Stony now he's at NYU and basically he's this is the way the study works they use cardiac intensive care wards they put computer screens up on the ceiling in a place where the patients can't see it from the they come in unconscious and then we hope they awake stay awake good from there a severe heart attack or a cardiac event and later they are okay so what happens is the during the time of unconsciousness the screen flashes a number okay and the nurses don't know what number that will be and the doctors and it's double blind and what dr. Parr Nia is trying to find out is whether any of them report oh by the way when I was under anesthesia or when I after when I was not having wakeful consciousness I saw the number 17 that would really be pretty dramatic evidence of an individual being able to acquire information when his brain is offline but so far he doesn't have any positive instances like that but the researchers kind of is ongoing he hasn't done it for a long time so that's the best other than that what see when it was announced that he got this grant many people maybe thousands of people wrote him describing out-of-body experiences and he in sampar Nia's book erasing death he relays relates some of these stories and when you read I mean he doesn't see how they can be explained naturalistically and what I would say is it's not obvious how they can be explained but I'm kind of a default naturalist in the sense that I come to these with the pre presupposition what the prejudice or the antecedent view that there must be some way to explain how these people got this information that's my as it were starting assumption but in intellectual honesty I have to say that I don't know how to explain some of these it could be supernatural that people remember these experiences or it could be that the brain goes under a Samiha and stimulate certain centers like memory and writings right see the light you see remember things on your memory bank right though there are definitely alternative actually it might be in there so people can sometimes there was a famous case of a man who had some kind of cardiac arrest I think in a hospital he was in the hospital then he had his cardiac arrest he was unconscious and he woke up and the nurses were saying well where are his dentures and he said oh I saw someone put him in that drawer you know when I was unconscious or otherwise not wake fully conscious and you know how do you explain this well there are possible explanations like before he had this event he was in the hospital he might have seen nurses foot other patients dentures in the door or he might have not been fully unconscious maybe his his brain registered the information subconsciously wasn't wake fully conscious but his brain was able to register information and when he became wakeful something triggered that I don't know exactly but there are you're right there are alternative explanations and ok there's one I should just mention Kevin Nelson was a neuroscientist at the University of Kentucky I think he's also an MD and he's written about the neurophysiology of NDEs and he has a neuro scientific explanation of the light at the end of the tunnel and it has to do with increased blood flow or during an ende around the optic nerve and it doesn't really matter for me what the details are but he does have an interesting explanation of how this might work ok yes in the back I'm just curious but back in 1999 or 2000 and I remember reading something about how you know when we're all driving on the freeway and you know we see a car accident and you know what immediately you know if we were driving without our seat belt or driving too fast the observers you know automatically after they passed the car accident they stood you know drive with more caution and they're careful because they just saw a traumatic yes and but the point in that either the class discussion or the reading was we see these things and immediately right away we try to take caution and be careful but then two hours passed by and it's behind us and we don't know anymore and the next day we're driving fast so I'm wondering if this plays into near-death experiences and that you know the I can imagine you know the first year second year were awakened and grateful and but I'm wondering how long that plays into the future and has it been tracked and so forth good question and I don't know what I guess the idea would be that if you're in a naturalist you look for evolutionary explanations if there is phenomena and you could say it's a survival advantage for creatures to have a tendency to physiologically kind of to remain calm and carry on in a crisis so maybe we have worrying propensity as one as the fight-or-flight response in a crisis and another is the stay calm and carry on response and somehow we combine these to flourish or at least we have a survival advantage I mean if we panicked that would not be conducive to survival so I look at these I mean it's a long story but I look at these entities as conducive to sort of and you're right if we we look at a a car crash we might be careful for a couple hours or a couple days or a couple weeks but eventually it might wear off maybe a near-death experience plays the role of giving a more sustained example of what might happen okay either positive or negative okay you okay on this side right oh okay yes yes go ahead oh we need a microphone well thank you for a wonderful talk as always my question is are you surprised that these ng EES are described in ways that sort of borrow from lived experiences not tunnels blue eyes and butterflies I'm curious as to why people don't see the solution to a very complex mathematical problem or a complex what mathematical problem or what it's like to slip into a black hole I mean it might be that a mathematician would see no you're right let me give you a good example and this was given to me by Bruce Grayson who's the famous cataloger of n DS he's a psychiatrist a lot of these people are neuroscientists are MDS or psychiatrists and at the University of Virginia Bruce Grayson he's done a study that shows that in Western countries a staple though not universally instantiated but a staple of nd ease is darkness and a light at the end of the tunnel and of course in all Western societies apparently at least according to him and I believe it we have that saying or that thought there's always light at the end of the tunnel there's hope there's always light at the end of them in Japan they tend to see our in their nd he's a rock garden and they're tending a rocker and they have the trope or the idea that it can be and reduce ones anxiety as one gets older to buy a rock garden intended with family and friends so it's definitely culturally relative which calming metaphor you your mind reaches for and so like with other phenomena just about every interesting mental phenomena is a combination of the physical and the neuro physical anthe as it were mental or cultural your history its religion your religious background your culture that will help to determine so in India you know that they they don't have Christian figures in there and the ease they have Hindu figures let's say different gods and goddesses it's culturally relative but at some level they're all the same there's always there's often an out-of-body experience there's often guidance by one of these religious figures but yes I totally agree it's a matter not just of biology but of culture okay but one could have an NDE that is not describable yes that's not describable yes you could have an experience where in a context where your life is in jeopardy but and that experience might be ineffable or not but you can't put it in words but I don't know if it would according to the way people speak it wouldn't be a near-death experience it would just be an ineffable experience as you approach death but a near-death experience has to have these not all of them but some sufficient number of these particular experiences okay thank you at the in the very back so last week I was listening to radio and I thought it was kind of interesting that this program came out because it was specifically related to what you're talking about today and I came into the middle of the radio program so I don't have all the details but they were talking about some research and I'm not sure what the research was pointed towards but it was that these scientists were putting themselves in this centrifuge and we're not even sure exactly how the centrifuge was set up but apparently as they were spinning around in the centrifuge that the brain was losing blood supply and one of the common phenomena that they all experienced was these near-death experience like events right right and they described all the things that are typically described by near-death experiences that's interesting I'd like to see that so I'm gonna look for but definitely out-of-body experiences which are a component of near-death experiences can be induced in that way and fighter pilots report out-of-body experiences also interestingly you can induce out-of-body experiences by stimulating a particular part of the brain and this was discovered by a Swiss scientist named Olaf Blanc and he was trying to treat people with epilepsy and the treatment involved a stimulation of a particular part of the brain they reported out-of-body experiences so there are lots of physical ways of inducing out-of-body experience but let me just by out-of-body experience in this context I just mean it's as if you're floating above your body and you're seeing it from a different perspective that's not to say that they literally are separated their consciousness is separating from their body it seems to them that that's the case I'm not saying that it is the case that's an open question but so the pilots experience that maybe these scientists experience that certain people with epilepsy experience you can even induce it I think I'm not sure about certain kinds of meditation kind of compassion meditation or loving kindness compassion meditation and you literally try to get out of your body into someone else's and I just want to mention so some of you this is to me really fascinating one of the projects we supported in the immortality project is part of an ongoing European research project that's centered in Barcelona and it's about virtual immerse I'm sorry immersive virtual reality and that in this particular case the virtual reality is seeking to get you to leave your body and literally feel as though you're in another body and it's it's supposed to be therapeutic in various ways and helps people regain the use of limbs it can help with phantom limb pain there are various therapeutic uses of it but in any case um these are physical ways of inducing out-of-body experiences so again or the again the experience as if one's perspective is not identical to the perspective one's body they're definitely real let me I want to be that's a distinction that's important to me and is so when people say these are real I want to agree these are real but in the sense that people really have them like dreams are real they're real people really do dream now it's a separate question as to whether they're real in the sense that they're accurate or that they depict an external reality that that actually is the way it's depicted or however you want to put it it's veridical or truthful so OBEs are real out-of-body experiences people have them people have them in different contexts but there is what that means to me is they really think that they are floating above their body are they really floating above their body well that's a separate question okay other or how are we doing okay all right one more question okay let's make this an easy one yes okay do you have any more specific information regarding the life review component of nd ears yes well I have some information it's really fascinating sometimes it is presented like a video highlight reel you know like a narrative order and sometimes it's not it's somehow presented as all happening at once and not in an era C and sometimes it fulfills this role of the negative NDE that I mean when you see your life review you might see something bad in your behavior and you might because to change it so one of again one of the projects that we supported in the immortality project and I can kind of point you to some of the research that's come out of it there's someone who's collating all of it and so far there are more than 70 articles and books that came out of the project but there's an Israeli MD and also PhD he's a psychiatrist as well Shahar RZ is his name and he interviewed someone who said I had this Andy I had this OBE and out of I'm sorry I had this life review and it showed me that I had really been bad to a former girlfriend or a woman friend and I really felt badly about it illuminate it enlightened me and I changed so it can have that role finally what Shahar r:z that so people have said happen these how can there be these life reviews where are they stored I mean some people say this is evidence of supernaturalism but his research uncovered certain at least I don't know if he has a full explanation but he thinks he has at least a partial explanation of how the life review is stored in the brain so it's really interesting and I just want to mention this as he was doing this research to try and figure out where the life review is stored in the brain he serendipitously discovered something that helped so there's certain kind of back problem where people can have a surgery to try and fix it but only certain people benefit from the surgery his research gave a test for determining in advance which people are good candidates for the surgery so maybe that was the one practical thing that came out of the immortality present okay thank you thank you so much for watching I'd like to now invite everyone to join us in a reception here and perhaps if you haven't met professor Fisher but if you have as well an opportunity to interact with him so please stay thank you [Applause]

Channel: Univ. of California, Riverside

Views: 1,484,281

Keywords: UC Riverside, University of California, UCR, immortality, near-death experience, john fischer, NDE, near, death, dying, life, afterlife, philosophy

Id: FgqAYtXfP9c

Length: 85min 54sec (5154 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018

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