Monday 15 October 2012

Psychology and NDEs - Light at the end of the tunnel?


I've had three encounters with near death experiences (NDEs) in the last week.

The first was reading an article in the Telegraph by Colin Blakemore who was very dismissive of the paranormal claims of NDErs. Then last Thursday I attended a talk as part of Sheffield's Off The Shelf literary festival. Author Linda Hoy was promoting her new book The Effect in which she argued that science and spirituality are converging. She spent a lot of time talking about NDEs. Finally today I read a very well-argued, enjoyable, but skeptical blog post by psychologist Christian Jarrett. His line of reasoning was that NDEs, are simply brain activity along the lines of certain types of drug use. He remains firm in the belief that the mind exists within the brain.