Near Death Experience - Causal Theories
Medical Scientists and Psychologists Offer Postulations
Sep 11, 2008
Dr. Kenneth Ring is one of the most respected NDE researchers. He’s Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and co-founder and past president of IANDS, the International Association for Near Death Studies and has written books about the experience.
He believes a valid neurological explanation must show how the characteristics of physical experiences would be expected to happen in a way as to show this occurs when such actions of the nervous system are triggered by death’s approach. The specific NDE experiences Ring mentions are the tunnel, light, out-of-body state, voice, presence, beautiful places, meeting with deceased loved ones and psychic knowledge.
NDE, Somatic Theories
- Hallucination: A powerful chemical, ketamine, can produce some of the characteristics of an NDE, especially the out-of-body experience. One theory is that a ketamine-like substance may be released when an NDE is experienced.
- Hallucinogen: A researcher claims to have induced NDEs by giving volunteers LSD. Critics say that, although drug-induced hallucinations may be similar to NDEs, they are not the same. Drug induced hallucinations often evoke fearful experiences which are rare in NDEs.
- Temporal Lobe: Some characteristics of NDEs occur in a form of epilepsy connected with temporal lobe damage. Electrically stimulating this lobe can mimic some of the characteristics of NDEs. These theorists believe the stress of being or thinking one is dying may stimulate this lobe. Fear, loneliness and sadness are the usual emotions resulting with this stimulation. These aren’t normally found in NDEs.
- Lack of Oxygen: Postulates this or too much carbon dioxide produce NDEs.These hallucinations resemble psychotic ones and don’t explain why some NDE experients give rational reports of what happened during their experiences. Hallucinations almost always happen when people are conscious; NDEs, when unconscious.
- Memory of Birth: NDEs are subconscious memories of the birth experiences. This can’t explain the meeting with loved ones who have died.
Psychological Theories about NDEs
- Depersonalization: Presumes people, when faced with death, try to replace unpleasant emotions with pleasurable fantasies by dissociating, detaching themselves from reality. Most NDEs have spiritual emotions and increased awareness, which doesn’t happen in depersonalization.
- Reductionism: Postulates the nature of complex things can always be reduced to simpler or more fundamental ones.
- Epiphenomenalism: Presumes that mental states and processes are incidental effects of physiological processes in the brain or nervous system and can’t, by themselves, cause effects in the physical world.
The second and third are espoused by behavioral psychologists who theorize that that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning which occurs by interacting with the environment.
Recent discoveries in genetics tend to refute the idea that consciousness is simply an effect of brain-activity. Brain specialists, Sir Cyril Burt, Prof. J. C. Eccles, Professor W. H. Thorpe and Dr. Wilder Penfield have stated that, in their opinion, the brain appears to be a complicated organism to register and channel consciousness as opposed to producing it.
David J. Chalmers Ph.D. theorizes consciousness, as the subjective experience of the inner self, could be a phenomenon beyond the reach of neuroscience. A detailed knowledge of the brain's workings may never explain how or why people have self-awareness.
The Fourth Wave of psychology, the transpersonal school, postulates human consciousness can exist independent of brain-activity.It’s the school of psychology that includes the spiritual and psychic. It’s the study of humanity’s highest potential and recognizes transcendent states of consciousness. One of the founders and leading theorists is Dr. Charles T.Tart who is a psychologist and parapsychologist. His forte is his work on the nature of consciousness, especially its altered states, including NDEs.
Related article:
NDEs: Characteristics and an Example
Source:
Psychology, Second Edition, Wayne Weiten, (Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1992)
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