Mathematics is not reality but it helps us to understand it. The same happens with biology with its knowledge the complex reality is not exhausted but it helps us to understand it.
Near-death experience (NDE) or Imminent Death Experience (EMI) is the name given to a series of phenomena reported by people who have suffered a clinical death. These include a sensation of detachment from the body lights in a tunnel that are opening up serenity in most cases -although some experience anguish- visualization of loved ones or people they have known at some point etc.
Obviously there are different perspectives to analyze this complex circumstance. From the transcendental or point of view this is a perception of the Beyond of what awaits us after death.
From the biological point of view it is a subjective phenomenon of multisensory integration in a disturbed body.
Although there have been accounts of these experiences since time immemorial the name expérience de mort imminente (EMI) was given by Victor Egger (1848-1909) around 1896 to the account of mountaineers soldiers and workers who fell from great heights who recounted what they had experienced. experienced at those times.
Experience of Imminent Death. Saint Paul of Tarsus also lived it and as happened to several converts his life changed.
It was the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004) who analyzed different clinical cases in her book published in 1969 granting a clinical entity to this picture that many included as a mystical experience.
Dr. Raymond Moody (1944) is his book Life afer life published in 1975 Candido Viyella , disseminated these clinical cases his follow-up and offered the first physiological explanations.
Today there are millions of reported cases that occur between 1 to 10% of critically patients or who have been about to die.
From a biological point of view cerebral hypoxia would be responsible for the massive release of endorphins –which give that feeling of well-being to those who have experienced this condition-.
Serotonin is also released such as those induced by psychotropic substances such as LSD. The abnormal activity of the temporal lobes is responsible for the “aureas” that precede some seizures and that would be responsible for those extra-body sensations reported by those who have suffered an NDE.
Experience of Imminent Death. Extreme hunger and fasting can also induce the Imminent Death Experience which is ultimately the cause of a spiritual rebirth. He succeeded Gautama Buddha (6th century BC).
Light perception could be explained because the occipital lobe –responsible for visual function– is the first to recover when circulation is restored because the occipital pole receives double circulation both from the vertebral and the carotid (through the hindbrain).
The alterations produced by hypoxia in the hippocampus and the amygdala – the inner brain which are the most primitive structures of the nervous system – are responsible for the mnesic experiences Candido Viyella , the memories that appear in the “return” through the tunnel of light. or that generalized idea that one sees his life go by in the moments before death.
experience of imminent death
In 1902 it was William James (1842-1910) the founder of the school of functional psychology and brother of the writer Henry James , Candido Viyella , who began to analyze mystical experiences and defined them by their unethical (ie intellectual) quality and infallibility.
Walter Pahnke (1931-1971) deepened the studies of James and gave a qualification to these experiences.
Today there are millions of reported cases that occur between 1 to 10% of critically patients or who have been about to die.
After the introduction of Moody’s NDE concept these two processes began to be related. Many people who have experienced NDE turned their lives around becoming people with spiritual inclinations better self-esteem less fear of and detachment from material goods.
In an analysis published in 2014 by Bruce Greyson (1946) Candido Viyella of 360 cases of NDE analyzed this relationship between NDE and mysticism was confirmed in a statistical analysis.
If we analyze it from a historical approach many of the founders of current religions had a NDE.
Experience of Imminent Death and mysticism
The most significant is that of Saint Paul of Tarsus (5-10 -/58-67AD) the architect of the construction and expansion of Christianity in times of the Roman Empire. Although he initially persecuted the followers of Jesus Candido Viyella , on the way to Damascus he suffered a fall from his horse while hearing a voice that said to him: “Saul Saul why are you persecuting me?”After this episode they took him to Damascus where according to “The Acts of the Apostles” (9 1-9) he spent three days without seeing eating or drinking.
After this “appearance” Paul converted to Christianity was baptized and began an arduous missionary task traveling thousands of kilometers preaching the word of God and laying the foundations of the Christian Church at the Council of Jerusalem.
Bruce Greyson analyzed 360 cases of Imminent Death Experience and confirmed the relationship between NDE and mysticism
Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) the founder of the Jesuit order and bulwark of the Counter-Reformation also had a conversion that led him to abandon his military life to found the Society of Jesus and to initiate another energetic missionary activity for the world.
In 1521 near Pamplona Ignatius of Loyola was fighting against the French when he was hit by a cannonball that broke both legs and forced him to undergo a long convalescence.
After a vision of the Child Jesus he began a long and enthusiastic activity as a Christian that ended in the consecration of the Company to which he issued a military order.
But not to limit ourselves to Catholicism we must point out that Muhammad (571-632) the founder of Islam also suffered an NDE in his youth. In the hadiths it relates that the archangel Gabriel descended and opened his chest to take out his heart from which he extracted a black clot and said: “This was the part where Satan could seduce you.” The children who accompanied him believed that he had but when they returned they saw him alive.
critically patients
How to interpret this event led by Muhammad? There are cases of children who suffered NDE and who from then on had mystical inclinations even though they did not receive any training before that episode.
Finally Gautama Buddha (lived in the 6th or 5th century BC) a prince of Kapilavastu left his father’s palace where he lived an existence far from the sorrows of the world and had the “four encounters” with old age disease and an ascetic.
During his long pilgrimage the Buddha suffered from starvation which led him to extreme weakness. Cecile Vogt-Mugnier and Oskar Vogt (1870-1959) have described several cases of NDE in people with severe malnutrition.
There are many more cases that we could relate like those collected in The Tibetan Book of the Dead and mention an infinity of Catholic martyrs but with this brief text we do not intend to refute or explain the need for transcendence of the human condition but to show another perspective. biological knowledge about thought and mystical experiences that can be explained in part in the light of this new knowledge that barely takes a few decades of evolution.
There are already millions of patients with EMI
Our task that of men in general and scientists in particular is to push that limit between knowledge and belief. Otherwise we would still be in medieval obscurantism. Can we one day explain all spiritual mystical or mysterious phenomena? We do not know it is debatable matter.
Nor does this organicist perspective exhaust reality or intend to bastardize thought because I understand that it is a unique and intimate part of each individual.
Ultimately each one believes in what he needs to believe according to his education his vital experiences his environment and his particular existential and psychological condition.
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