For anyone who's interested in the subject, Brinkley's
first book "Saved by the Light" is a fascinating read. It's
available in mass market paperback. I found my copy at
the supermarket. According to his story, he was not only
a bully, but a sniper in the military and CIA operative in
South America. After his experience (and recovery) he
has devoted himself to hospice work (a hospice is a
care facility for incurable terminally ill patients).

What's interesting to me is whether one can take as
evidence cases where clinically dead people seem to
have experiences of events going on around them
without necessarily accepting everything they
experienced. For example, I find Brinkley's narrative of
being struck by lightning, looking down on his body,
seeing his wife and best friend come into the room,
seeing the odd shaped vehical (the new box-shaped
ambulance which had just come out), etc. compelling.
However, his elaborate description of the Crystal Ciites
and directions from beings of light to build new age
healing centers make my skeptic warning bells start to
ring. In other words, if we're going to believe he
experienced anything that was really going on while he
was dead (i.e. it was not just a hallucination) do we
have to accept most or everything of what he says he
experienced? Is it a "package" deal?

There is also the difficulty of the variety of experiences
people have. Some have even reported "going to Hell"
while others who expect to go to Hell and encounter
"beings of light" are told that Hell is a myth. A similar
question emerges: If we're going to accept some
accounts as verdical (meaning that they are
non-hallucinatory), what do we do when people
experience conflicting or contradictory things?

Is there any objective way of sorting out which naratives
are veridical and which are hallucinatory?

A skeptic might argue out that the divergence in
accounts is evidence that they are hallucinatory. In other
words, if there were an afterlife, we'd expect people to
report seeing the same sort of thing on the other side
and to get the same sort of information regarding life
after death, the meaning of life, and so on.

Prof. Borrowdale
borrowdalej@lanecc.edu