For those people who missed the
session, I'll come on around 9PM Monday
2/24 for any more questions. I have class
from 6:00 - 8:50 or I'd come on earlier.

I won't stick around long if nobody's there,
so show up 9:00 to 9:10 (earlier if you
want, maybe fellow students can help
answer your questions) if you have
questions. If no one is there by 9:10, I will
depart, as Mondays are a long day and I
have a cold.

An issue in the study guide that no one
has asked me about but which came up
in the chat last night with Jennifer was the
question of evidence for life after death
from NDEs and past life experiences.
How much evidence, if any, do they offer
for life after death?

It is my contention that both offer SOME
evidence for life after death, but not
enough to PROVE life after death. The
problem is that both rely on self-reporting
and NDEs have various biological
explanations for at least some of their
features while past life experiences have
possible psychological and social
causes (i.e. children making up
imaginary stories then adults looking for
verification and finding what they set out
to look for).

Experiments could be devised to test the
verdicality ("realness"--you should know
this word for the exam) of both types of
experiences. For the NDEs you could
introduce a visual stimuli when a person
was under cardiac arrest and see if they
could report what it was. While medics
attempted to revive the patient, you could
cover their eyes or could have a partition
which from the "bird's eye" point of view
the NDE experiencer should be able to
see over. If the patient, once brought
back, reports the guy in the clown suit or
whatever and this happens consistently, it
would confirm the hypothesis that NDEs
were veridical.

One could do the same with past-life
regression, taking a random sample of
people and regressing them and
empaneling a group of blue ribbon
historians to investigate their claims. The
historians would be unaware of the
nature of the experiment, but would just
be given the data to verify. Additionally,
background checks could be done of the
individuals to make sure they didn't have
any specialized knowledge from which
they were drawing on their "past lives." If
verifiable names, people, places and not
widely know historical facts are
consistently reported and from cultures
and time periods that the subject is
unlikely to have knowledge of, the
veridicality of past life experiences would
be confirmed.

Prof. Borrowdale
borrowdalej@lanecc.edu