Many people recognize that reports of near-death experiences tend to contradict materialist claims about the mind and the brain, such as the claim that the mind is merely the product of the brain and that memories are stored in brains. But I think that few realize just how thoroughly such experiences contradict such claims. As I discussed in my previous post, there are several facets of near-death experiences that discredit claims that brains make minds and claims that memories are stored in brains. In this post I will consider only one of these: the experience of high-speed life reviews.
A common characteristic of near-death experiences are so-called life review events in which someone may recall the events of life in very rapid succession and great vividness. Claims that such life-review events occur in near-death experiences go back more than a hundred years before Raymond Moody's 1975 book Life After Life. For example, on page 267 of the June 4, 1875 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a first-hand account of such an experience, told by William Stainton Moses. He states this, describing a life-review during a near-drowning:
"It never occurred to anybody, I suppose, that a
man who could venture in a little cockleshell such as I was
sculling, was unable to swim ; and so no particular effort was
made to rescue me. I went down dazed and confused with
the upset, and the shouts and objurgations of the crowd. I
remember the shout of the coxswain, more forcible than
polite, and then I floundered about until I suppose I became
unconscious. At any rate a strange peacefulness took the
place of my previous feeling. I recognised fully that I was
drowning, but no sort of fear was present to my mind. I did
not even regret the fact. By degrees, as it seemed—though
the process must have been instantaneous—I recollected my
life. The link was—well, I am drowning, and this life is
done with. It has not been a very long one. . . . And so the
events of it came before my mind, and seemed to shape themselves in outline and move before me. It was not that I
thought, but that objective pictures of events seemed to float
before me, a moving tableau, as though depicted on the mass
of water that weighed upon my eyes. I seemed to see the
tableau, but not with the eye of sense: with that mysterious
inner vision with which I have since discerned spiritual things.
The silky, velvety appearance of the tableau, which seemed
as I say to float before me, was very prominently impressed
upon me. The events were all scenes in which I had been an
actor, and no very trivial or unimportant ones were depicted,
though they were not all serious, some indeed laughable
enough. Nor was my frame of mind particularly solemn. I
was an interested spectator ; little more. One incident of
which I had no previous knowledge was recalled to my mind
on that occasion, and has never again left it. My memory of
it is now as clear as of other things. The next thing I remember was the interruption of this peaceful state by a series
of most unpleasant sensations which were attendant on resuscitation."
Similarly, on page 410 of the 1870's book The Marvellous Country by Samuel Woodworth Cozzens, we have an account of a near-death experience occurring when the author fell from a high height:
"All this time I was acquiring greater momentum, until it seemed as though I was fairly flying into the very arms of the horrible death which stood staring me so steadily in the face. Not a bush or shrub could I see growing upon the precipitous sides; there was nothing, absolutely nothing, for me to cling to, and the stones and earth which I disturbed in my descent were falling in a shower around me.
Convinced that death was inevitable, I became perfectly reconciled to the thought. My mind comprehended in a moment the acts of a life-time. Transactions of the most trivial character, circumstances the remembrance of which had been buried deep in memory’s vault for years, stood before me in bold relief; my mind recalled with the rapidity of lightning, and_yet retained a distinct impression of every thought.
I seemed to be gliding swiftly and surely out of the world, but felt no fear, experienced no regret at the thought; on the contrary, rejoiced that I was so soon to see with my own eyes the great mystery concealed behind the veil; that I was to cross the deep waters and be at rest.
I thought I heard the sound of many voices, in wonderful harmony, coming from the far-off distance, though from what direction I could not tell.
My momentum had become so great that I seemed to experience much difficulty in breathing; and I remember that I was trying to explain to my own satisfaction why this should be so, when the heel of my right boot struck the corner of a small stone that chanced to be firmly imbedded in the earth and therefore offered so much resistance to my descent, that upon striking it I was thrown forward upon my face. This stone without doubt saved my life."
The book includes this illustration of what happened:
In 1892 Albert Heim produced a paper in German entitled "Notizen über den Tod durch Absturz," which can be translated as "The Experience of Dying from Falls" or "Notes About Death from Falling." The original German text of the paper can be read here. Below is a translation I got using Google Translate. First Heim notes how he got his accounts of people who had close brushes with death after falling:
"In mountaineering and other literature we come across relevant stories here and there, although rarely. In the Hamburg Laza-rethen in the war year 1870, as well as on various later occasions, I interviewed war wounded. Several doctors who had a lot of contact with victims were able to tell me about their statements. I researched several bricklayers and roofers who had fallen from scaffolding and roofs, half-injured workers in mines, on railway lines, etc. A large number ...who fell without losing their lives were able to give me precise information. Those who were thrown away by the air strike during the Elm landslide and became unconscious told me their experiences. I also received detailed reports from some club members who had crashed and were rescued, from three fellow professionals, etc. A fisherman who had been swept deep under water when the Zug bank collapsed told me his experiences. We have some good accounts of the Mönchenstein railway accident from those who narrowly escaped with their lives, e.g. from a locomotive driver, from some passengers, etc. etc. But what has caused me not to miss an opportunity to write such notes for more than 25 years collect, were my own experiences."
Then Heim notes a remarkable similarity in the accounts:
"For the vast majority of those who have had an accident - probably 95% - regardless of their level of education, the symptoms are exactly the same, only experienced slightly differently in degree. In the face of death due to a sudden accident, almost everyone experiences the same mental state - a completely different state than in the face of a less sudden cause of death. It can be briefly characterized as follows:
No pain is felt, nor is there any paralyzing shock that can occur in the event of minor danger (fire outbreak, etc.). No fear, no trace of despair, no pain, rather calm seriousness, deep resignation, commanding spiritual security and speed. The activity of thought is enormous, increased to a hundredfold speed or intensity, the conditions and the eventualities of the outcome are objectively clearly seen far away, no confusion occurs. The time seems very extended. You act quickly and think carefully. In many cases this is followed by a sudden look back into one's entire past. Finally, the faller often hears beautiful music and then falls into a wonderful blue sky with little rose-colored clouds. Then consciousness disappears painlessly - usually at the moment of awakening, which is only heard and never painfully felt. Of the senses, hearing is probably the last to disappear."
Heim discusses a strange increase in the speed of thought:
"Anxiety paralysis does not occur, thought activity appears to be enormously increased, and time is lengthened in the same proportion. The judgment remains clearly objective, and as far as the external circumstances allow it, the person who falls remains able to act at lightning speed."
Heim quotes a first-hand account by one person who nearly died in a terrifying fall:
"Meanwhile, a whole flood of thoughts had time to move through the brain in a clear way: The next blow will bring you a grim death, it was said. A series of pictures showed me in quick succession all the beauty and love that I had experienced in this world, and in between them the sermon that I had heard from Mr. Obersthelfer that morning sounded like a powerful melody: God is almighty, heaven and earth rest his hand; We must remain silent about his will. Infinite calm came over me at this thought, in the midst of all the terrible turmoil. The car was thrown up twice more; then the front part suddenly drove vertically down into the Birs, and the rear part with me was thrown sideways over the embankment down into the Birs. The wagon was shattered."
Heim gives this first-hand account of a fall he experienced, noting that his thought seemed greatly speeded-up:
"Then I saw, as if on a stage from a distance, my entire past life played out in numerous images. I saw myself as the main character playing. Everything was as if transfigured of a heavenly light and everything was beautiful and without pain, without fear, without torment. The memory of very sad experiences was also clear, but still not sad. No fighting or strife, the fight had also become love. Sublime and reconciling thoughts dominated and connected the individual images, and a divine calm passed through my soul like wonderful music. More and more a wonderfully blue sky surrounded me with little rosy and especially delicate violet clouds - I floated out into it without any pain and gently, while I saw that I was now flying freely through the air and that there was still a field of snow below me. Objective observation, thinking and subjective feeling occurred simultaneously side by side. Then I heard my thud and my fall was over."
Below is a similar account from the 2023 paper "Near-death experiences and the change of worldview in survivors of sudden cardiac arrest: A phenomenological and hermeneutical study
":
"Anders was married and 74 years of age. He had ended his working career in a leading position for a company with 20 employees. He viewed himself as an easy-going man who, for the most part, had a bright outlook on life. He experienced an NDE during an SCA [sudden cardiac arrest] that lasted nearly two minutes. He said that the NDE started with a brightly lit, joyful meeting with his parents when he was about two or three years old, followed by a life review, where he re-experienced his life at intensely high speed. He said that if he had compared it to the world’s fastest computer, the computer would have been slow in contrast. To him, the experience was clear and vivid, featuring memories and people from his past who were alive again. He also explained that before the experience, he did not believe in any form of continuation of life after death, although he said he had thought about it previously."
In another paper on near-death experiences, we read of someone who says, "I reviewed 15 or 20 years of my life in perhaps two seconds." One person's modern account of a near-death experience states this:
"It was a scene from my life. It flashed before me with incredible rapidity, and I understood it completely and learned from it. Another scene came, and another, and another, and I was seeing my entire life, every second of it. And I didn’t just understand the events; I relived them. I was that person again, doing those things to my mother, or saying those words to my father or brothers or sisters, and I knew why, for the first time, I had done them or said them. Entirety does not describe the fullness of this review. It included knowledge about myself, that all the books in the world couldn’t contain. I understood every reason for everything I did in my life. And I also understood the impact I had on others."
Another person who had a near-death experience stated this:
"Every detail of every second, every feeling, every thought while I had been alive on Earth was displayed before me in perfect chronological order, from my birth until my electrocution. At the same time, to my amazement, I was re-living my entire twenty-eight years simultaneously!"
What does all this have to do with whether the brain is the source of the mind, and whether memories are stored in brains? The credibility of claims that memory recollections come from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity at which things can be recalled. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second). Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast thinking and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that memory recall occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). The more evidence we have of very fast thinking and very fast and very capacious recall (what a computer expert might call high-speed high-throughput retrieval), the stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall occurs from brain activity.
What we have in the "life reviews" of near-death experiences is evidence of enormously fast and capacious "high throughput" memory recall. Often in a very short span of time people are able to recall with great clarity and vividness the most important moments of their life. Such recall should be absolutely impossible from a brain, given all of the physical shortfalls of the brain which should prevent it from being able to produce extremely rapid recall -- factors such as a total lack of sorting and addressing and indexing, and a relatively slow rate of signal transmission caused by factors such as relatively slow chemical synapses and cumulative synaptic delays.
In the paragraphs above I mention only signal speed time. Then there is the fact that if memories were stored in a brain, there would have to be some system (unlike any ever discovered or ever even described by any detailed theory) by which sensory experiences were encoded as brain states or synapse states, through some chemical translation process, with the opposite (a decoding) occurring during recall. The decoding part would be a sluggish affair, which would never allow experiences such as a person very rapidly recalling in a flash many things that had happened in his life. We know of a decoding process that occurs in cells, DNA translation decoding involving an encoding scheme (the genetic code) vastly simpler than any system that would be required for encoding and decoding stored human memories. DNA translation occurs at a fairly sluggish rate of about one minute per protein.
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