Questions and explanations

The consistency of near-death experience has brought up some questions: Is there a place we will go when we die, and our loved ones are there to receive us?

The highly regarded paranormal psychologist Dr Susan Blackmore has suggested that our brains caused the near-death experiences to be like one another. As our physical system collapses, the shards of consciousness interpret these symptoms of death on the best possible way, calling on the falling memory to create a marvelously bengin and reassuring, but essentially fantastic, mental environment. She concludes that ‘what is generally now called the near-death experience is a psychological trick, played by the dying brain on the consciousness in order to lessen the trauma of dying. Essentially, this type of experience is the brain’s last fling.’

This is a very acceptable reason. But there are several reports of near-death experience that does not fit with this analysis and that suggest there may be an objective reality to these accounts of what happened when we really die. The first problems are about the brains. Where did the brain get the ‘trick’ to make dying easier from? How did it know it has to learn it? It is hereditary?

Even if there is a materialist explanation for near-death experience, the strange formula is hardly the best way to express it.

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