Newsweek Declares that Heaven is Real!

[_The Dude]

DrW,

I've been having a terrible time sleeping the last few weeks. I'm also traveling right now. I'm going to try the melatonin route and see if I do better this week.

I passed a Safeway around the corner. Hope they have some over-the-counter.

[Guest]

It's a side-effect of different areas of the brain shutting down at different rates. Many people, myself included, experience highly lucid "hyper-reality" when dreaming from time to time, by the way. That's also a consequence of altered brain functioning, but not everyone experiences that. You may never have, but others do.

EAllusion,

This is well put, and I certainly agree. One need only consider the dramatic changes in mood, affect and even perception, that result from minute changes in synaptic function brought about by psychoactive compounds (or even the SSRIs), and then realize that at least two such compounds are (or can be) minor products along enzymatic pathways that are found in normally functioning human brains. The two compounds I am referring to here are N,N, DMT and 5-Methoxy-DMT.

With the enzymatic chemistry set present in the pineal gland, there could even be more. Then, of course, there are also the endogenous opioids.

[_DrW]

DrW,

I've been having a terrible time sleeping the last few weeks. I'm also traveling right now. I'm going to try the melatonin route and see if I do better this week.

I passed a Safeway around the corner. Hope they have some over-the-counter.

Dude,

Good luck with the melatonin. I travel overseas a lot and would (absolutely) not leave home without it.

Good chronohygiene also helps with sleep issues:

- Try to re-establish a normal diurnal (sleep / wake) cycle as soon as possible in the new location
- Take the melatonin (one or two 3 mg tabs) about a half hour before you want to sleep.
- Sleep in a completely darkened room
- Get exposure to direct sunlight for at least 20 minutes each day, preferably in the afternoon
- Avoid alcohol
- Avoid caffeine in the afternoon / evening

[_Nightlion]

Ya know, guys, the good doctor knows all your chemical and brain shut down stuffola. He was impressed otherwise because he experienced spiritual communications. This sort of stuff has a much greater effect upon our whole soul than just a thought, vivid dream, or hallucination would. It is multidimensional. It hits you in more ways than one. Experiencing that sort of reality Trump's all the gotten up learned excusing cry baby-where's-my-big-momma-evolution-hiding-behind-her-skirts BS.

[_The Dude]

Ya know, guys, the good doctor knows all your chemical and brain shut down stuffola.

Read the Sam Harris piece and you will see that "the good doctor" does not even begin to connect the dots.

[_DrW]

Ya know, guys, the good doctor knows all your chemical and brain shut down stuffola. He was impressed otherwise because he experienced spiritual communications. This sort of stuff has a much greater effect upon our whole soul than just a thought, vivid dream, or hallucination would. It is multidimensional. It hits you in more ways than one. Experiencing that sort of reality Trump's all the gotten up learned excusing cry baby-where's-my-big-momma-evolution-hiding-behind-her-skirts BS.

I saw no evidence that the "good doctor" knows any of the "chemical and brain shut down stuffola".

If that were the case, then he would have (should have) addressed these issues and explained why he believed that they were not in play in his experience.

Instead, he claims that he was essentially brain dead (not very likely if he is alive today) and that his experiences ended up in the "memory banks" of a non-functioning brain. by the way, the evidence he provides in support of a "non-functioning brain" is far from adequate for establishing such as claim.

Formation of memories requires synaptic activity. In fact, it requires locally synchronous synaptic activity. This is not something that a non-functioning brain is likely to produce (by definition).

Think about it. If the brain were indeed not functioning, how were these vivid memories even formed in the first place?

[_krose]

When someone dying in Tibet has an NDE of Jesus, get back to me.

I would also be interested to know whether a deaf or blind person's separated spirit can hear or see the conversations in the hospital room, and accurately describe what's going on.

Both of these things should happen if disembodied spirits have their own senses and memory storage capability, unrelated to the physical body parts.

[_Drifting]

It is interesting, is it not, that Near Death Experiencee's tend to experience a near death experience that they had envisioned prior to experiencing the near death experience itself...at least in my experience of these experiences.

[_Nightlion]

Think about it. If the brain were indeed not functioning, how were these vivid memories even formed in the first place?

Whether in the body of out of the body I could not tell.........
Seems like an experience of this magnitude by a mature adult keeps the memory of it alive in their eternal intelligence and can later imprint the same on the fleshy tables of the brain.

[_DrW]

Think about it. If the brain were indeed not functioning, how were these vivid memories even formed in the first place?

Whether in the body of out of the body I could not tell.........
Seems like an experience of this magnitude by a mature adult keeps the memory of it alive in their eternal intelligence and can later imprint the same on the fleshy tables of the brain.

You have an internally inconsistent statement on your hand there, NL. It is a self-contradictory.

Magical thinking of this kind is not engaged in by mature adults, by definition (of both "mature adult" and "magical thinking").

Magical thinking is a type of causal reasoning or causal fallacy that looks for meaningful relationships of grouped phenomena between acts and events. In religion, folk religion, and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense.

{In Psychology, the reasoning often exhibited of 3 to 5 year olds is characterized as magical thinking. Most kids grow out of it.)