Al Sullivan - Near death out of body experience.

This is perhaps one of the most compelling examples of a person who had a NDE [Near Death Experience] and observed events while outside of his body which were later verified by others. The only way that these events could have been observed by the experiencer was if in fact he was outside of his body. Al Sullivan was a 55 year old truck driver who was undergoing triple by-pass surgery when he had a powerful NDE that included an encounter with his deceased mother and brother-in-law, who told Al to go back to his to tell one of his neighbors that their son with lymphoma will be OK. Furthermore, during the NDE, Al accurately noticed that the surgeon operating on him was flapping his arms in an unusual fashion, with his hands in his armpits. When he came back to his body after the surgery was over, the surgeon was startled that Al could describe his own arm flapping, which was his idiosyncratic method of keeping his hands sterile.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Near
• Death
• experience
• Al
• Sullivan
• NDE
• Dr
• Takata

[adam3251]

Your brain does crazy stuff when you deprive it of oxygen and/or pump drugs into it.

[AnduinX]

@finalcloud13: I’d love to hear of such evidence too. I think the reason that we’re lacking evidence is because science is just now beginning to take the idea seriously. The horizon research foundation has kicked off the first well-funded expansive attempt at studying veridical perception in their awareness during resuscitation study, which is still underway.

[AnduinX]

@finalcloud13: What also impresses me about the NDE is that many people who speak of accurate veridical perception stand to gain little, and some actually stand to lose a great deal, such as doctors who went on to risk their multi-million dollar medical careers to study the phenomenon.

[AnduinX]

@finalcloud13: Well, I think there’s a big difference between the NDE and those other subjects. Aside from the fact that there is far more anecdotes behind the NDE, there's also a very big difference between the quality of anecdotes between those things. The NDE evidence includes much more cases of doctors and medical staff, family members, or friends verifying out of body perceptions. Bigfoot sightings usually involve a lone man in the wilderness and a great deal of alcohol.

[AnduinX]

@finalcloud13: Who defines what an extraordinary claim is, and who defines what constitutes extraordinary evidence? Without a clear definition of either, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" becomes a license to dismiss anything out of hand. Beyond that, why should I require a much steeper degree of evidence before I accept survival than anything else? Simply because it’s outside of the physicalist paradigm? I have never heard a good response to this.

[finalcloud13]

@finalcloud13 And also, I totally agree with you that the validity of each anecdote needs to be verified. However, in the end that verification will have to require a step further than just anecdotes, and that has not happened yet, but maybe someday it will.

[finalcloud13]

@finalcloud13 How do you approach claims of people saying they've been abducted by aliens? Sightings of so many legends like lochness monster, bigfoot, fairies, leprechauns, demons, chupacabra, etc. etc. etc.?

All of them are anecdotes, and all of them have multiple cases from different people. But it's not like we will therefore say all of these happened or exist. We need more. We need better. We need stronger evidence than anecdotes.

[finalcloud13]

@AnduinX The reason that the scientific method is so successful is because it doesn't accept anything less than concrete evidence that can be tested, where predictions can be made and reproducible results can be obtained.

Simply, the notion of invisibly flying out of one's own body is - you gotta admit - an extraordinary claim. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Anecdotes is just not enough, even when there are multiple anecdotes.

[AnduinX]

@finalcloud13: Is your position then to dismiss all anecdote and case-study accounts that go against your world view as liars? Even when there are multiple people involved - such as the medical staff in this video? Due to the bulk of NDE accounts, I find that position to be untenable. I also think the validity of an anecdote needs to be examined on a case by case basis, not dismissed out of hand.

[AnduinX]

@finalcloud13: The problem with the peer reviewed process in my eyes is because it has become more a scientific conformity measure than an unbiased quality control check. Most entries are dismissed out of hand by the 'old guard'. Just look at how much outrage and commotion was made when a scientific journal published Bem's paper on ESP.