i share this comment by miller regarding why all people do not have nde’s when they return to physical, conscious life:

“remember, it’s not their final death, just a brush with death. if there is indeed a god, he knows the nde is a parenthesis in earthly life [an already but not yet experience i have discussed in my writings], not a final entrance into the afterlife. perhaps he allows only those who need a glimpse of the other side (e.g., for personal assurance or a challenge to life change) to get a glimpse of eternity.”

miller cites the cambridge and princeton mathematician and physicist who wrote,

the stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.

in my writings i have identified how the immaterial mind of god is the source of all information. by the process of specification of essentially infinite informational possibilities god has actualized all that has been created. william dembski has stated that energy is the “causal glue” between information and matter, that an energy instantiates what is specified into matter with structure, meaning, purpose and intended action. we must remember that the mind of man has been created in the image of the mind of god, an immaterial personal reality. the human mind does not depend upon the neural networks of the brain, but has function beyond our space-time constraints.

miller suggests that the brain acts as a receiver for the mind. he stATES, “THE MIND CONNECTS WITH THE BRAin while we are in our body, but isn’t dependent upon the brain for its existence.” I am in disagreement with his pespective that brain damage impacts the capacity to access the mind. Rather, i submit that damage to the brain’s neural networks impairs access of the immaterial mind to the compromised spatiotemporal neural codes which are interpreted by the mind, a lifelong learning process I have discussed in my books and selected blog posts. in nde’s the mind does not depend on the brain but has capacities beyond what we experience when we do have interaction with functioning neural pathways.

miller shared in the third chapter of his book some first-hand reports of nde’s. I include a portion of one that i believe readers will find interesting and inspiring:

“i went through this dark, black vacuum at super speed. you could compare it to a tunnel, i guess. the darkness was so deep and impenetrable that i could see absolutely nothing; but this was the most wonderful, worry-free experience you can imagine. i saw a bright light, and on my way there i heard beautiful music and i saw colors i’d never seen before. the light . . . was of a kind that i’d never seen before and that differs from any other kind such as sunlight. it was white and expremely bright, and yet you could easily look at it. it’s the pinnacle of everything there is. of energy, of love especially, of warmth, of beauty. i was immersed in a feeling of total love. . . . from the moment the light spoke to me, i felt really good - secure and loved. the love which came from it is just unimaginable, indescribable. it was a fun person to be with! and it had a sense of humor, too - definitely! i never wanted to leave the presence of this being.”

in the preface to miller’s book is a quote from samuel taylor coleridge:

what if you slept? and what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? and what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? and what if, when you awoke, you had that flower in your hand? ah, what then?

the author identifies “the promise that many near-death researchers claim to fulfill - a glimpse into eternity, verified by corroborating evidence.” miller addresses this question.

My next blog posts will continue to consider near-death experiences (nde), with reference to a book by j. steve miller entitled, near-death experiences, as evidence for the existence of god and heaven: a brief introduction in plain language, wisdom creek press, llc, 2012. jeffrey long, m.d. wrote the forward to this book. my preceding blog post identified his extensive research into nde’s coupled with that of miller. i am addressing this topic due to the growing public interest and because it considers the communion between jesus and humans, both in the present age and in the “hereafter.” are nde’s revelations given to mankind through the years and across our world to amplify the “already but not yet” relationship believers have with eternity to come through the indwelling holy spirit in our time? in my writings i have presented evidence that substantiates dualist interaction between the immaterial mind of god and of man and the material synaptic networks of the human brain. specified information encoded and transmitted within neural networks is bidirectional. we can pray to god and communicate with other people, and we can also receive communion from god via his holy spirit, which process has been extensively discussed in my books and blogs. but in more recent years we are learning about the reality of nde’s in which communion occurs between individuals in the absence of neural networks. the extensive studies of nde’s by this author and others cited are uncovering evidence of life beyond ours on earth, life in heaven blessed to be in the presence of god.

Talia wise has discussed on Cbn a study by a radiation oncologist, dr. jeffrey long, who has spent 25 years studing more than 5000 nde’s. accounts are thus increasing giving testimony to the validity of these experiences. dr. long admits that the ‘phenomenon’ is real but cannot be explained by “science.”

greyson discusses the several features of nde’s in his article. “perhaps the most important of these features, because it is so commonly reported in nde’s, is the occurrence of normal or even enhanced mental activity at times when, according to the mind-brain identity model, such activity should be diminishing, if not impossible. individuals reporting nde’s often describe their mental processes . . . as remarkably clear and lucid and their sensory experiences as unusually vivid, equaling or even surpassing those of their normal waking state. reports of nde’s from widely divergent cultures confirm that people have consistently reported, from different parts of the world and across different periods of history, having had complicated cognitive and perceptual experiences at times when brain functioning was severely impaired.

“another example of enhanced mental functioning during an nde is a rapid revival of memories that sometimes extends over the person’s entire life. . . . memories revived during an nde are frequently described as being ‘many’ or even as an almost instantaneous ‘panoramic’ review of the person’s entire life.

“another important feature of nde’s that materialist reductionism cannot adequately account for is the experience of being out of the body and perceiving events that one could not ordinarily have perceived.

"an even more difficult challenge to materialistic models of nde’s comes from cases in which experiencers report that, while out of the body, they became aware of events occurring at a distance or that in some other way would have been beyond the reach of their ordinary senses even if they had been fully and normally conscious. . . . [greyson shared a report of] “cases of blind individuals, nearly half of them blind from birth, who experienced during their nde’s quasi-visual and sometimes veridical perceptions of objects and events.”

greyson related an especially interesting account “of a man who had an nde during cardiac arrest in which he saw his deceased grandmother and an unknown man. later shown a picture of his biological father, whom he had never known and who had died years ago, he immediately recognized him as the man he had seen in his nde.”

greyson summarizes his article by stating that “the challenge of nde’s to materialist reductionism lies in asking how complex consciousness, including mentation, sensory perception, and memory, can occur under conditions in which current physiological models of mind deem it impossible.”

I recommend this article to you. we are learning that mentation can continue without an interaction with the synaptic networks of the brain, a “both-and” situation of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and material components of the brain and an action of the immaterial mind that appears not to involve the synaptic networks of the brain during a nde. the mechanism remains to be determined. Of special interest is how memory is encoded within neural networks of the brain but is also an immaterial entity within the framework of awareness beyond the physical brain. this revelation reflects how the mind of man has been wonderfully created in the image of the mind of god!

I continue to refer to the article by Greyson:

Individuals who have had nde’s are “convinced that during the nde they temporarily separated from their physical bodies.” greyson points out that “the idea that mind and brain are not identical is not inherently unscientific. . . . although most psychologists and neuroscientists accept the reductionistic model that brain produces mind, or indeed is the mind, several features of nde’s call into question whether materialist reductionism will ever provide a full explanation of them.”

bruce greyson of the university of virginia has published an article entitled, “implications of near-death experiences for a postmaterialist psychlogy,” psychology of religion and spirituality, 2010, vol. 2, no. 1, 37-45. the author stated that materialist psychology has “proved insufficient for describing mentation under extreme conditions, such as the continuation of mental function when the brain is inactive or impaired, such AS OCCURS NEAR DEATH.” HE NOTES THAT “ENHANCED MENTATION AND MEMORY . . . ACCURATE PERCEPTIONS FROM A PERSPECTIVE OUTSIDE THE BODY, AND . . . VISIONS OF DECEASED PERSONS, INCLUDING THOSE NOT KNOWN TO BE DECEASED” CANNOT BE EXPLAINED BY MATERIALISt REDUCTIONISM and its mind-brain identity model.

greyson lists the features common to near death experiences (nde) and notes that “mental clarity, vivid sensory imagery, a clear memory of the experience, and a conviction that the experience seemed more real than ordinary consciousness are the norm for nde’s.” his article suggests that memory exists in the immaterial mind beyond those archived in the codes of neural synaptic networks. in cardiac arrest “neuronal action-potentials, the ultimate physical basis for coordination of neural activity between widely separated brain regions, are rapidly abolished . . . [and] cells in the hippocampus, the region thought to be essential for memory formation, are especially vulnerable to the effects of anoxia.” he states that it is not credible that nde’s “can be accounted for in terms of some hypothetical residual capacity of the brain to process and store complex information under those conditions. . . . a substantial number of nde’s contain apparent time ‘anchors’ in the form of verifiable reports of events occuring during the period of insult itself.”

my next blog will continue to feature greyson’s observations. we must remember that god, who is spirit, has a cognitive mind in whose image the mind of man has been created. i have discussed the dual interaction that is being substantiated between the immaterial mind of man (and of god) and the material neural synaptic components of the human brain. could nde’s be extending revelations of god’s creations in our time? Is memory both immaterially and materially based? we press on.