miller includes descriptions of people with lifelong deafness and blindness who have had nde’s with the capacity to hear and to see. an account is shared of a boy born deaf who had a nde in which he had “direct communication with about twenty ancestors . . . he’s neither heard nor understood verbal communication. yet he finds himself communicating effortlessly, not through sign language, but directly mind-to-mind, without learning a new form of communication.”

miller also shared that “blind persons, including those blind from birth, do report classic nde’s of the kind common to sighted persons; that the great preponderance of blind persons claim to see during nde’s and obe’s [out of body experiences]; and that occasionally claims of visually-based knowledge that could not have been obtained by normal means can be independently corroborated.”

miller stated further, “yet, nde’s reveal a personal god who both knows and cares about each of us.” the encounter with a being of light “is felt to be the most intense and most essential part of the experience. . . this encounter [with the being of light] is always accompanied by an overwhelming sense of unconditional love and acceptance . . . it is a personal being. it has a very definite personality. . . . the light . . . was of a kind that i’d never seen before and that differs from any other kind such as sunlight.”

so in these several accounts we are seeing a possible revelation of the truth of the living jesus christ given us in our space-time by god’s grace and boundless love.

i am posting selected excerpts from miller’s book:

“in a near-death experience, the person is truly alive, with a fully functioning mind in a nonmaterial, spiritual world outside the body.”

“by far the typical experience reported by those undergoing anesthesia or experiencing cardiac arrest is no memory of anything. in such circumstances, the brain is unable to either maintain consciousness or form memories. yet, during this time, nde’rs consistently report, not vague, confused consciousness, but vivid, ‘realer than real’ consciousness. it’s like their brains are on hyper drive, some reliving their entire lives within a brief span of time. and their memories, as we have seen, far from being cloudy and fleeting (as we’d expect from a compromised brain) are retained so efficiently that decades later they report remembering each detail as if it happened yesterday.”

“who would expect the typical experience of communicating directly mind-to-mind rather than using the medium of language? [i remind the reader of the interaction between the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks of the brain in which linguistic neural codes are transmitted through synchronous pathways] who expects to encounter a dimension where both time and space seem to vanish, where they can see both up close and far away with equal clarity, and view an entire lifetime in an instant? a bright light might be expected by some, but who expects the common experience of not having to squint while looking at the extreme brightness?”

my posts will continue, featuring how the deaf hear, how the blind see, and how a personal loving god is experienced.

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!