Source: Distressing Near-Death Experiences: The Basics – PMC
After pretty much a decade of thoroughly studying other people’s near death experiences, which is in part responsible for having manifested and lived with (complex) PSTD for all my life – I’ll be 59 in two days –, I’m (again) leaning more towards the medical, naturalist, reductionist approach, i.e. finding those explanations to be more plausible to me which are based purely in neurobiological, chemical origins of these ‘ultimate’ experiences any human could ever find themselves going through.
I came to the entire field of ‘spirituality’ – in quotes, because I think it’s a total misnomer – with the inquisitive mindset of a scientist seeking to explore one of the probably still poorly understood phenomena in human biology and psychology: Coming within close range of actual physical death, either perceived or for real; for real in my case at the outset as an infant when I was examined and treated for acute maldigestion and malnourishment for weeks in a pediatric hospital, with the doctors trying their utmost to avert and fend off a life threatening situation for my infant organism as I couldn’t keep food down and had been born already slightly underweighed. I’ve logged some thousands of hours of either watching co-experiencers’ interviews or reading their accounts online. I’ve delved deeply into the associated literature from every possible angle, medical, ‘reductionist’, psychological, ‘spiritual’ (again the quotes. What do we even really refer to with this broad and inspecific term?). I’ve repurposed this blog to documenting my own trauma history and in an effort to 1. piece all available and accessible factual information together and 2. try to ascertain what the heck had happened then and 3. why and how.
After all this time – much less than the authors of the above linked article devoted to their research spanning some 40 years in Dr. Greyson’s case, not much less for Dr. Bush, and both having had countless conversations with patients, having published several books, given lectures and presentation talks – I’m leaning heavily towards the neurobiological, medical approach, which more or less maintains – pending further incoming information – that these perceptions of an ‘otherworldly’ realm are really more or less the result of the complex interplay of endogenously produced “feelgood” drugs like e.g. DMT and other substances produced in our very brain itself, mainly the pineal gland and potentially other parts of the limbic system, hippocampus etc., i.e. all the ‘primordial’ brain regions we as a species have been equipped with since our earliest predecessors in human history . And for whatever it’s worth: Basically that was also the content of my own NDE that kind of reverberated back in my remaining, disoriented consciousness that “you never existed, you don’t exist, you won’t ever exist, none of what you thought you experienced had ever been real, you were allowed to believe it for a moment and that moment has passed. This is all there is is: Nothing. And it has been like this and will be like this forever.” (I talk about this and other things more explicitely in this interview with Rebbeca Wertz, a fellow trauma survivor and fundamental church dropout herself. Please support her work by subscribing to her channel if so inclined).
What is more and after I’ve also delved very deeply into physics and consciousness research and all associated areas, I’m strongly siding with Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder’s take on free will (she’s a physicist by trade and in her day job, YouTuber, musician and social media personality for the ‘moonlighting’ part of her waking life) and her leaning toward maintaining that our cosmos – which would include our brains and also other species on the planet – is ruled by laws of nature which have been established very firmly over and over again in the last roughly 100 years. On top of that and from recently binge watching the US survivalist TV series #Alone I simply can’t help but conclude any different than by way of realizing and acknowledging: Under acute survival stress, our minds start making up all kinds of stories that make the inevitable just a tad bit more tolerable for most others, even blissful in some cases. When the body reaches its ultimate limits and goes into the process of shutting down, for most people that is not a terribly difficult experience to have and often associated with feelings of utter peace, bliss, they unanimously report that they never wanted to “return” into their bodies.
I guess as I’m now embarking on the last remaining third of whatever time on the planet may be left for me, I have to settle on the hope that these neurobiological “Hail Maries” are going to kick in for me as well instead of needing to reexperience the abject distress I was exposed to so early into my life (at age four in the context of clinical surgery). One last remaining doubt lingers with me that I was never completely able to further rule out or confirm: In my case, was it all a result of the anesthetic I was administered to induce unconsciousness? There is a fairly strong tendency for this to be the case as the effects of the substance I received going in seems to be very similar to the effects of ketamine at higher doses, particularly because it’s known to produce ‘dissociative states’ in a person’s perception and mind. So that particular action of the active compounds in this chemical could very well explain the sensations I experienced. If so, then technically my experience probably doesn’t fall into the category of an NDE or only in part so. But I guess, I’ll never fully manage to establish complete certainty as to what it was or wasn’t. Like I said: May the hope suffice that my final transition is also going to be associated with feelings of euphoria and bliss.
That said: Happy 2024 all around! I guess, I’m going to have to rethink my general priorities as far as activities in 2024 and this will include needing to dramatically reduce my social media and online activities. So I’m not sure as to whether or how frequent I’m going to add more entries to this blog. But I appreciate your support and reading along over the years and want to thank my subscribers and returning visitors for doing so. May you be blessed and well.
Late.Shift 