Discovering secrets of near-death
NT professor studies near-death phenomenon in victims whose hearts have stopped
Imagine getting rushed to a hospital after going into cardiac arrest. A physician flees to your unconscious body as he prepares to insert a tube in your windpipe to help you breathe. He opens your mouth, takes notice of your dentures and removes them carefully, placing them in the drawer of a nearby cart.
When you wake, you find the same physician in your room and ask him to please retrieve your teeth from the drawer where you saw him put them.
The physician is perplexed. How did you see his actions if you were clinically dead?
According to Janice Holden of the counseling, development and higher education department who was recently elected president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, thousands of people have reported near-death experiences, describing them as "hyper-real," or more real than life itself.
"Several faculty members have had near-death experiences," Holden said, adding that most observe the scene from above their body, looking down.
Their perceptions that are later confirmed to be accurate are called "vertical perceptions."
"My theory is that near-death experiences happen when our attachment to our ego is loosened," Holden said. "They also happen to people in deep despair."
Holden was elected president by the board of IANDS directors to serve a one-year term, ending in October 2004. The nonprofit organization was established in 1978 and incorporated in 1982 as the first in the world to foster research in near-death studies. According to the organization's Web site, www.iands.org, today it has members on almost every continent.
Also led by Holden is a support and interest group, Friends of IANDS, which meets in Lewisville, for individuals who want to share near-death experiences or who have an interest in the phenomena.
Some near-death witnesses may be reunited with a loved one, Holden says, recalling the story of an anesthesiologist she met at a professional counseling conference in the early '80s. "He was reunited with his deceased father during his NDE," Holden said. "He told us his story as we sat at a closing banquet, and several of us were in tears."
According to Holden, an account similar to the one described earlier of a man asking for his dentures after regaining consciousness actually happened during a study by researcher Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist. Published in 2001 in the British journal The Lancet, his findings have furthered research in near-death studies.
Prior to Lommel's findings, some scientists thought near-death experiences were simply hallucinations occurring after oxygen is cut off to the brain as a result of the heart stopping.
According to that theory, all cardiac-arrest patients should have near-death experiences, but only 12 percent of the patients in the study reported one, Holden said.
Currently embarking on her own research on veridical perception in cooperation with psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia, Holden's near-death study will focus on cardiac-arrest patients receiving pacemaker implants.
In an electrophysiology lab, a laptop computer installed well above eye level will display one of 60 animations throughout the procedure.
The computer will randomly select, display and record the animation, so no one knows what animation was displayed until after the procedure when the patient has stabilized and been interviewed.
Holden said the medical procedure often requires that the patient's heart be stopped temporarily, and many of these patients have reported the out-of-body phase of the near-death experience. Holden hopes that some of the patients in her study will be able to report the animation displayed during their procedure. The positive results will support the hypothesis that consciousness transcends the function of the brain.
As president of IANDS, Holden will continue to offer and enrich the publication services it provides such as the Journal of Near Death Studies and Vital Signs.
Holden will also help prepare for the next NDE conference slated for late June in Illinois titled "Creativity and the Near-Death Experience."
Holden says there is a common thread among the 50 percent of near-death witnesses who explicitly remember returning voluntarily to life.
"Every story I've ever read or been told of happened because of a love commitment -- the near-death witness wanting to fulfill some service to someone they love," Holden said of the phenomena and then elaborated on the importance to understand: "It has to do with who we are as humans and the nature and purpose of life, to deepen our capacity to love and to learn knowledge."
Source: http://www.ntdaily.com/vnews/display.v/ ... 44a790c412
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