Posted on 09/14/2003 3:57:43 PM PDT by foolscap
Scientists to Probe Near Death Experiences Wed September 10, 2003 10:03 AM ET By Jeremy Lovell MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Scientists probing the paranormal said on Wednesday they hoped to set up a major experiment in Britain trying to find out once and for all whether the mind can step outside the body at the brink of death.
The proposed study would involve interviewing people who had survived cardiac arrest to see if they had had an out of body experience while on the operating table.
"Over the course of a year we hope this would give us 100 people who leave their bodies," neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick told reporters at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
The researchers plan to ask 25 hospitals to place special objects and pictures around their cardiac units.
Each survivor who then claimed to have an out of body experience -- where they typically hover near the ceiling watching the resuscitation process -- would be asked if they had noticed any of the objects.
"If they do notice them when the brain is not functioning then it makes the case for the mind being separate from the brain," he said.
Fenwick, whose special field is near-death experiences, said there was ample anecdotal evidence of out of body experiences, but scant data.
"These people seem to be able to get information when they are out of their bodies. People have talked of 'mind sight,"' he said.
But he accepted that if no one noticed the objects it would equally kill off the theory.
He also said there had been scientific studies proving that prayer worked, including one in which the number of women in a clinic in Seoul who conceived after being implanted with fertilized eggs doubled when groups elsewhere prayed for them.
Robert Morris, Koestler Professor of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh, said there was evidence that voice, touch and sight were not the only means of communication.
He said that in experiments, particularly sensitive people had been able to communicate over distance, although he readily accepted that his field was also full of cheats and liars.
The Near-death Experience of David Perry (1762)
Sergeant David Perry was on his way home from the hospital at Halifax, Nova Scotia, after participating in the recapture of St. John’s, Newfoundland his fourth and last campaign in the French and Indian War-- when he had the following 'near-death' experience. He had just turned 21 years of age, and had contracted “the nervous fever” --typhus.
It is Autumn, 1762...
the words of Capt. David Perry (1741-1826)
"...While I was on board that vessel, it appears to me that I died -- that I went through the excruciating pains of the separating of soul and body, as completely as ever I shall again (and such a separation must soon take place<4>), and that I was immediately conveyed to the gate of Heaven, and was going to pass in; but was told by One, that I could not enter then, but in process of time, if I would behave as he directed, on the set time I should have admittance.
“It appeared to me that my feet stood on a firm foundation and that I stood there for the space of about a half hour. In this time there appeared to be a continual flowing up of people, as we suppose they die; and none stopped, but all passed off, one way or the other. Just at my left hand, there appeared to be the opening of a great gulph, and the greater part of the grown people seemed to pass off there. Once in a while one passed through the gate into the Holy City.<5> One person appeared, with whom I had been intimately acquainted, and it appeared to me that I knew him as well as ever I did: it was Doctor Matthews -- (and whether I saw him or not, he died, as I afterwords learned, while I was sick on board the ship).
“The One that talked with me, told me about the Revolutionary War, and showed me the British vessels in the harbor of Boston, as plainly as I saw them when they came. And during the first year of that war, I was down there in Gen. Putnam’s regiment, and I went on Roxbury Hill to see the shipping in the harbor, and they looked exactly as they had been shown to me many years before
“This transition (as I firmly believe) from life to death, and from death to life, which took place nearly sixty years ago, is as fresh in my mind now as it was then; and not many days have passed from that time to this, which have not brought the interesting scenes I then witnessed, clearly to view in my mind. But I never dared to say anything about it, for a great many years after wards, for fear of being ridiculed. But about the last of February or first of January, 1763, peace was declared between England, France and Spain, and the people rejoiced exceedingly on account of it. I told them we should have another war soon. They asked me why I thought so. I told them the British had settled peace with their foreign enemies, but they could not long live in peace, and they would come against us next.
“But I never told my own wife,6 nor any other person, of what happened to me on board the vessel, as above related, for nearly thirty years afterwords, when a great deal was said in the neighborhood where I lived, about one Polly Davis of Grantham, N.H.,7 who was taken very sick, so that no one thought she could live long, and many times the people thought she was dying. In one of these turns she had a dream or vision, by which she was assured that, on a stated Sunday, she should be healed, and go to meeting the same day. On the Saturday night, previous to the time appointed, many people stood round her bed, expecting every moment that she would breathe her last: but when the hour she had mentioned arrived, she rose from her bed, and said she was well: and Captain Robert Scott carried her some distance to meeting, behind him on horse back, the same day she recovered. There was so much talk about it, that I ventured to tell my experience as before described, and have since told it to a great many people; and some believe it, and others do not..."
Bottom line -- it won't prove anything one way or another.
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