Near Death or post death but brought back to life experiences and out of body experiences....
Do you think that they are real?
Faked?
The book "Heaven is For Real" became the worst hoax in recent years because of the small child involved in this ploy. But in the meantime they sold millions of books and made millions of dollars.
Others have done similar things. But are there real ones?
What do you think?
John,
It is my view that NDE can be real for people but they are unreliable indicators of what happens at permanent death. Why? Because they are not permanent death.
This is why NDE are unreliable about what happens after death - permanent death. NDE are not permanent death, so they cannot tell us about life or otherwise after permanent death. Take this example:
The late Kerry Packer, who had this said about him at the beginning of his obituary in
The Age newspaper, Melbourne, Australia: ‘The last time Kerry Packer died, 15 years ago [his NDE], he quickly took the opportunity to denounce the existence of an afterlife. “I’ve been on the other side and let me tell you son, there’s f—ing nothing there,” he was fond of saying’ [1]. Dorothy Rowe reported of Packer:
When the Australian media mogul Kerry Packer had recovered from a massive heart attack during which he virtually died, he told his friend Phillip Adams, “I’ve been to the other side, and let me tell you, son, there’s f—ing nothing there. There’s no one waiting for you. There’s no one to judge you, so you can do what you bloody well like (in Rowe 2009:205).
What seems to be missing in that Packer example is that the NDE 15 years before his actual death, where he stopped breathing for 8 minutes (other reports say 6 minutes),[2] was just that – a near-death experience. When he was air-lifted from the Warwick Farm racecourse, Sydney, where he was playing polo after a massive heart attack, it was not permanent death but a near-death experience. If it were permanent death, Packer would not have been alive to make that kind of blasphemous statement about what happens at death.[3]
While Dr Fenwick (see [3]) wants to see common elements in NDE, that is not what my research found and I've written briefly about it in:
Near-death experiences are not all light. What about the dark experiences?
A much more reliable indicator is that provided by almighty God who stated that ‘each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment’ (
Heb 9:27 NLT). Kerry Packer knows about it now. ‘Kerry Packer died of kidney failure on Boxing Day [26 December], 2005, aged 68’ (Phillips 2013).
Oz
Notes
[1]
The Age, Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer 1937-2005: Obituary (online), 28 December 2005. Available at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/12/27/1135445572500.html?page=fullpage (Accessed 1 January 2016).
[2] This report stated that Packer was ‘without a pulse for six minutes’, Emma Alberici, Kerry Packer dies,
The 7.30 Report (online), 27 December 2005. Available at:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1538560.htm (Accessed 1 January 2016).
[3] For an example of research into near-death experiences, see the interview with Dr Peter Fenwick, one of Britain’s leading neuropsychiatrists, on a year-old research project in the cardiac unit, Southampton General Hospital on Australia’s
Lateline, 30 October 2000. Available at:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s206217.htm (Accessed 1 January 2016).
Bibliography
Phillips, N 2013. Packer’s last words to his son.
The Sydney Morning Herald (online), February 11. Available at:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/packers-last-words-to-his-son-20130210-2e6jw.html (Accessed 2 February 2016).
Rowe, D 2009.
What Should I Believe? Why Our Beliefs about the Nature of Death and the Purpose of Life Dominate Our Lives. London and New York: Routledge.
