Free Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences by Jeffrey Long, Paul Perry Page B

STUDY
    At this time there is a major ongoing study directed by Sam Parnia, MD, principal investigator of the AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study. 7 AWARE involves the collaboration of many major medical centers around the world, and researchers hope to examine some fifteen hundred survivors of cardiac arrest. As the project name implies, researchers will examine the awareness of patients at the time they are experiencing a cardiac arrest. Pictures will be placed in hospital rooms in such a way that they are visible only from the ceiling to determine if they can be seen during the OBE. It will be several years before we have results from this study. Hopefully, this study will answer many further questions about OBEs during NDEs.
    There have been several prior studies where targets were placed in areas of hospitals where critically ill patients might have NDEs. These targets were paper or computer screens with visual pictures or words. Targets were usually placed in a location where the patient, and those caring for the patient, would not ordinarily see them. Designers of these studies hoped that patients having an out-of-body experience during an NDE would be able to see the targets and thus provide objective proof of the OBE. So far there have been few NDEs and even fewer OBEs in these studies. None of the OBEs in these studies ever included visual perception directed toward the target.
    Personally, I think it is extremely important to continue with this type of research. Not only does it contribute to an understanding of our physical and mental processes, it may also contribute to our understanding of the spiritual world. I am convinced that studying out-of-body experiences in a variety of ways will lead to a clearer understanding of the special state of consciousness consistently described in NDEs.

WHAT THE SKEPTICS SAY
    Some skeptics think that out-of-body experiences are simply fragments of memory that pop up as a person begins to die. They suggest that these fragments of memory might arise from what the near-death experiencer was able to hear or feel during the time of apparent unconsciousness. This argument also suggests that out-of-body experiences may be unreal reconstructions of partial memories from the time the NDEr is losing consciousness before the NDE or recovering consciousness immediately after the NDE. That some corroboration of the OBE observations with actual events or objects is found, they say, could be just lucky guesses.
    The NDERF study shows that this argument is wrong. A review of 287 OBE accounts reveals that they are fully realistic, without
any
apparent error, in 97.6 percent of the cases. If OBEs were unreal fragments of memory or lucky guesses, it is unbelievable that there would be such a high percentage of completely accurate OBE observations in hundreds of NDEs.
    Research says that memories formed just before or after a period of cardiac arrest, if they occur at all, are marked by confusion. 8 By contrast, NDEs contain confused memories only rarely. If
any
part of the NDE were due to simple reconstruction of memory fragments, such memories would be expected to become progressively more or less confused as the NDEr approached or recovered from unconsciousness. This is not what happens. Near-death experiences are typically highly lucid from beginning to end.
    In the NDERF study we ask, “At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness?” People are invited to respond with a narrative answer. In reviewing hundreds of responses to this question, we have found that the highest level of consciousness and alertness is usually experienced not at the beginning or end of the NDE but somewhere during or throughout the entire NDE. Very few NDErs describe their highest level of alertness as occurring when they approached or recovered from their time of unconsciousness. This is further strong evidence that the OBEs that take place during