Yesterday, we examined some of the stunning implications in Chris Carter's outstanding examination of the subject of Near-Death Experience (NDE) and the implications of the NDE on the concept of consciousness.
Today, we feature an actual film clip (above) from one of the most famous NDEs ever caught on camera: a man who has been "mostly dead" all day but who is able to tell Miracle Max (with the help of a bellows) that he needs to be revived for the sake of True Love.
As most readers are no doubt aware, the "mostly dead" man in the clip above was placed in that condition by the dastardly Prince Humperdink, using a horrible vacuum device manufactured by the evil Count Rugen, after Humperdink threw the switch to a truly terrifying setting of 50 (a setting so intense that it caused even Count Rugen to exclaim, "Not to 50!").
While that was, of course, a cringe-inducing moment, the deliberate brain operation performed on a patient in another extremely famous NDE case is only slightly less terrifying in the details of the events that led to the subject being placed in a situation that could only be described as "mostly dead." This operation took place in August of the year 1991, twenty-one years ago this month -- and almost four full years after the release of the "mostly dead" scene shown above (which came out in September of 1987).
That 1991 operation, known as a "standstill operation," was performed on a young woman named Pam Reynolds, who had suffered a major aneurysm on the wall of the basilar artery on the base of her brain. This famous operation is discussed in detail in Chris Carter's Science and the Near-Death Experience, as well as in a book by cardiologist Dr. Michael Sabom entitled Light and Death. During the operation, in order to relieve the life-threatening pressure on the aneurysm and then enable them to operate, the surgeons would have to reduce Pam's body temperature to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, stop both her heart and her breathing, ensure that all electrical activity in her brain had stopped, and then drain all the blood from her head (Carter 221).
According to the description by Dr. Sabom, Pam was given general anesthesia at 7:15 am, her skull was cut open by a bone saw at 8:40 am, her blood was re-routed to a cardiopulminary bypass machine through her femoral artery and vein at 10:50 am in order to cool her core temperature, her heart was arrested at 11:05 am with injections of potassium chloride, her body temperature was measured at "a tomblike 60 degrees Fahrenheit" at 11:20 am in the words of Dr. Sabom, and then at 11:25 am -- as described by Dr. Sabom -- "the head of the operating table was tilted up, the cardiopulminary bypass machine was turned off, and the blood was drained from Pam's body like oil from a car" (Sabom 43, cited in Carter 223-4).
The operation itself is unbelievable -- the fact that Pam recounted a detailed NDE after the successful surgery and her revival is even more astonishing. The fact that she was able to accurately describe the appearance of the bone saw (her eyes were taped shut and she had been unconscious for over an hour before that instrument was even uncovered on its table) and the conversation during the search for her femoral artery and vein (which did not take place until 10:50 am, and which would not be expected to be heard since she had form-fitting earplugs in each ear producing rapid high-decibel clicking so that the surgeons could monitor her EEG to see if her brain was processing sound signals at all) makes her particular NDE account even more stunning.
If anyone deserved to be described as "mostly dead," it was the patient in that particular operation.
While there are skeptics who have tried to question the implications of the Pam Reynolds operation, the fact is that her particular near-death experience -- as astonishing as it is -- counts as only one of literally thousands of such accounts.
Accounts like these have tremendous implications for our understanding of human consciousness and the question of whether consciousness is in fact dependent upon the physical mechanism of the brain, as Chris Carter discusses in his book.
The descriptions of the state of Pam Reynolds' brain during her NDE, and the accurate descriptions she was able to provide from a consciousness that appears to have continued during some portion of the time that her brain was being drained of blood and measured as having no responsive activity, suggest that consciousness may not be dependent upon the brain in the way that most hard-core materialists continue to insist must be so.
In fact, the sheer number of NDE evidence suggests that the continuation of consciousness for someone who is "mostly dead" may not be only the stuff of fairy tales after all. In fact, it may be the materialists who are clinging to a fantasy in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
Today, we feature an actual film clip (above) from one of the most famous NDEs ever caught on camera: a man who has been "mostly dead" all day but who is able to tell Miracle Max (with the help of a bellows) that he needs to be revived for the sake of True Love.
As most readers are no doubt aware, the "mostly dead" man in the clip above was placed in that condition by the dastardly Prince Humperdink, using a horrible vacuum device manufactured by the evil Count Rugen, after Humperdink threw the switch to a truly terrifying setting of 50 (a setting so intense that it caused even Count Rugen to exclaim, "Not to 50!").
While that was, of course, a cringe-inducing moment, the deliberate brain operation performed on a patient in another extremely famous NDE case is only slightly less terrifying in the details of the events that led to the subject being placed in a situation that could only be described as "mostly dead." This operation took place in August of the year 1991, twenty-one years ago this month -- and almost four full years after the release of the "mostly dead" scene shown above (which came out in September of 1987).
That 1991 operation, known as a "standstill operation," was performed on a young woman named Pam Reynolds, who had suffered a major aneurysm on the wall of the basilar artery on the base of her brain. This famous operation is discussed in detail in Chris Carter's Science and the Near-Death Experience, as well as in a book by cardiologist Dr. Michael Sabom entitled Light and Death. During the operation, in order to relieve the life-threatening pressure on the aneurysm and then enable them to operate, the surgeons would have to reduce Pam's body temperature to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, stop both her heart and her breathing, ensure that all electrical activity in her brain had stopped, and then drain all the blood from her head (Carter 221).
According to the description by Dr. Sabom, Pam was given general anesthesia at 7:15 am, her skull was cut open by a bone saw at 8:40 am, her blood was re-routed to a cardiopulminary bypass machine through her femoral artery and vein at 10:50 am in order to cool her core temperature, her heart was arrested at 11:05 am with injections of potassium chloride, her body temperature was measured at "a tomblike 60 degrees Fahrenheit" at 11:20 am in the words of Dr. Sabom, and then at 11:25 am -- as described by Dr. Sabom -- "the head of the operating table was tilted up, the cardiopulminary bypass machine was turned off, and the blood was drained from Pam's body like oil from a car" (Sabom 43, cited in Carter 223-4).
The operation itself is unbelievable -- the fact that Pam recounted a detailed NDE after the successful surgery and her revival is even more astonishing. The fact that she was able to accurately describe the appearance of the bone saw (her eyes were taped shut and she had been unconscious for over an hour before that instrument was even uncovered on its table) and the conversation during the search for her femoral artery and vein (which did not take place until 10:50 am, and which would not be expected to be heard since she had form-fitting earplugs in each ear producing rapid high-decibel clicking so that the surgeons could monitor her EEG to see if her brain was processing sound signals at all) makes her particular NDE account even more stunning.
If anyone deserved to be described as "mostly dead," it was the patient in that particular operation.
While there are skeptics who have tried to question the implications of the Pam Reynolds operation, the fact is that her particular near-death experience -- as astonishing as it is -- counts as only one of literally thousands of such accounts.
Accounts like these have tremendous implications for our understanding of human consciousness and the question of whether consciousness is in fact dependent upon the physical mechanism of the brain, as Chris Carter discusses in his book.
The descriptions of the state of Pam Reynolds' brain during her NDE, and the accurate descriptions she was able to provide from a consciousness that appears to have continued during some portion of the time that her brain was being drained of blood and measured as having no responsive activity, suggest that consciousness may not be dependent upon the brain in the way that most hard-core materialists continue to insist must be so.
In fact, the sheer number of NDE evidence suggests that the continuation of consciousness for someone who is "mostly dead" may not be only the stuff of fairy tales after all. In fact, it may be the materialists who are clinging to a fantasy in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
