Too many people have contacted me recently about stories that concern NDE (Near-Death Experiences).

It appears that people are willing to be convinced by just about anything. Things that are unknown (or even things that are known – but not to them), are easily supplemented (or replaced) by personal interpretations.

Take NDE for example: Near-Death Experiences have been researched a lot during the last few decades. Much of public fuss was triggered by a couple of books written by Raymond Moody during the ’70s, where information about many cases was gathered. This was followed later by scientific research, performed by various people such as Susan Blackmore and Karl Jansen, who linked NDEs with actual physical and chemical activities associated with the brain. They even managed to induce similar experiences artificially. Recently, researchers have been able to actually map specific areas of the brain that take part in such experiences.

A few things must be remembered. The fact that many people across different cultures experience similar phenomena should not come as a surprise. Our brains are built the same way, more or less. As written by Shakespeare: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” – Had we experienced totally different things, this would have been the time to wonder!

Furthermore, retroactive memory is now a well known phenomenon. People don’t “lie”, but many of the things they describe with great sincere, may be the way their brain built those memories at a later time. This may be even truer in traumatic situations like NDE.

And there’s more. The fact that someone experiences, say, a view of his own body (or the whole room) from above, implies nothing but a well-explained trick of the visual mind. Experiences are generated by the brain down below, whether they include an image of the room from above, of a far-away planet, or of the Almighty himself. Much of the data is taken anyway from recent “real” experiences around the same geographical area, from certain sensory input that’s still flowing in, and from imagination.

Science has good explanations for all those experiences. If you want to use them as some sort of a “proof” for divine next worlds – you are cordially invited to a nearby lab to present your thesis. When the first official scientific research demonstrates a person in NDE knowing something they shouldn’t know – that’s the time to refresh this post.