The Krishna Love (Wattpad India Awards Winner)

Chapter 39 - Demystifying NDE and OBE

Is out of body experience true?

Sid typed this sentence on Google and clicked on search engine. Multiple sites regarding information about out-of-body experience displayed. Along with that, there were also similar suggestions on NDE, which means near-death experience. This held him perplexed for a while, thinking, which of these he'd experienced?

Rubbing his chin, Sid skimmed over some titles. One particular article grabbed his attention "Near death experience – where science points towards spirituality." Instantaneously curiosity left no corner of his heart, and he clicked on the article. As the loading wheel was rotating, he brushed his palm over the laptop's screen because it was covered with some dust. Within a moment, the full article flashed before his eyes. The article contained case study of a subject name, Pam Reynolds.

Pam Reynolds Lowery, from Atlanta, Georgia. In 1991, at the age of thirty-five, she claimed that she had a near death experience (NDE). Reynolds was under close medical monitoring during the entire operation. During a part of the operation, she had no brainwave activity and no blood-flowing in her brain, which rendered her clinically dead. She stated to seen and heard several observations (while being out of her body) during the procedure which later medical personnel, reported to be accurate.

During this procedure, also known as a standstill operation, Pam's body temperature was brought down to 50 °F (10 °C), her breathing and heartbeat stopped, and the blood drained from her head. Her eyes were closed with tape and small ear plugs with speakers were placed in her ears. These speakers emitted audible clicks which were used to check the function of the brain stem to ensure that she had a flat EEG—or a non-responsive brain—before the operation proceeded. The operation was a success and Reynolds recovered completely. The total surgery lasted about seven hours with a few complications along the way.

Reynolds reported that during the operation, she heard a sound like a natural "D" that seemed to pull her out of her body and allowed her to "float" above the operating room and watch the doctors perform the operation. Reynolds claims that during this time she felt "more aware than normal" and her vision was more focused and clearer than normal vision. Reynolds says she was able to identify surgical instruments and hear conversations between operating room staff.

Heart still thumping like a snare drum, this case study sent goose bumps popping down Sid's neck. It was indeed spellbinding. Pam Reynolds' is the mystery that science cannot explain, he thought. Sid caught a glimpse of a similar article. It was based on a book name, Mindsight, which claimed that during a near-death experience a born blind woman was able to see. Now this was more interesting; reading on, Sid continued.

Vicki Umipeg, a forty-five years old blind woman, was just one of the more than thirty persons that Dr. Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper interviewed at length during a two-year study just completed concerning near-death experiences of the blind. The results of their study appear in their newest book, Mindsight. Vicki was born blind, her optic nerve having been completely destroyed at birth because of an excess of oxygen she received in the incubator. Yet, she appears to have been able to see during her NDE.

That's it! Now there's no way, this could be denied, Sid indeed had an out-of-body-experience like these people. Plus, he remembered the words spoken by the mysterious man about the soul. But then he caught sight of some articles defying NDE and OBE.

Olaf Blanke and his colleagues report that they are able to bring about so-called out-of-body experiences (OBE), where a person's consciousness seems to become detached from the body, by electrical stimulation of a specific region in the brain. I have discussed OBE experiments in two books and have concluded that they provide no evidence for anything happening outside of the physical processes of the brain – God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, by Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)