hey check out this site. it's this guy who makes rings that make you immortal. hehe. some of the explanations sound ok, but some are just dodgy.
http://www.alexchiu.com/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=unwished

Looks like people have already made the point I was going to make, but I'll make it my own way. If you can say:

If the brain mediates all experience, then paranormal phenomena are nothing more than neuronal events,

then you can just as well say:

If the brain mediates all experience, then normal phenomena are nothing more than neuronal events.

Both of which statements I think are stupidly reductionist. I always distrust any statement that says that something is "nothing more than" or "only" something else.

As any techie knows, being able to reproduce something doesn't mean you have an explanation for it.

Sure, there is a physical, reproduceable mechanism to these perceptions. Of course there is. That proves nothing whatsoever about the source or significance of the perceptions, any more than understanding the visual cortex proves anything about a piece of art that someone is looking at or understanding how the brain perceives sound proves anything about a symphony.

Just to see if the name Randy alone goes through, or if someone else has it. OLNE (on-line name experience).

Edited by author 02-24-2003 03:41 PM
When I first saw the film Carrie in the theater with two friends, and as we were sitting in the second row as the end neared, we all leaned over and rested our heads on our arms on the chairs in front of us because the movie's atmosphere was very high-tone. Then, when Carrie's hand and arm suddenly came up from the ground, I found "myself" in the back of the theater. It lasted less than a second, maybe a third of a second, but in that time I saw the film and the three of us sitting in the front, leaning against the row in front of us. True story. Maybe it was a brain reaction to stress (because stress there was) but it was an interesting event nonetheless.

"...several out-of-body experiences happened in that room as people nearly died, and NOBODY ever saw the message."

One of the tests of lucid dreaming is if you can look at a text twice and read it.

I'm awake right now.

I don't view OBE as a phenomena, but a not-fully-understood mechanism of the brain to deal with stressful situations. It's more of a dreamlike state. Anyone who's had one can realize that what they saw in their OBE is different from what actually was. Some examples are what they were wearing, who or what was in the room, where or what they were sleeping on, etc.
   Taking things into consideration without thinking is what spawns supernatural superstitions, as have happened for thousands of years. Other recommended reading is Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World".

What Alan said. I'm a scholar of mysticism by trade (Sufism is my specialty). But I've long been interested in materialist models for spiritual phenomena such as Persinger's work, but these models are coincidental, and neither sufficient nor exhaustive in their explanatory power. Just as my seeing of a tree is not exhaustively explained by modelling the brain chemistry of my visual cortex--one must also know the tree that is there, outside.

Mothrafugger, any decent scientist never says "We know everything about process X". In fact, most quotes from scientists tend towards, "The more we discover, the more we learn how much we don't know."

Tarkan, maybe they were focused on the business at hand? Another possibility is that OBEs differ. That hospital might have had an unfortunate statistical cluster. Since I don't know how many patients or how many OBEs were involved, of course I'm talking through my hat. But we should remember that many factors could confound such an experiment. Perhaps factors we don't know exist yet.

It's always amazed me when scientists say "We know everything there is to know about Process X within the body." Every century of scientific progress leaps to a new level; how the hell can they make such blanket assertions? It's a continuing mystery to me.

I've had several OBEs, and they felt very real. I've also had that "falling" feeling, before I went to sleep. Can't explain either of them. I just know that the've happened, and they probably will happen again.

I can't find the link right now, but there's a hospital that had a hidden random message (computer-controlled LED panel) in their trauma room -- the idea being that anyone who had a genuine out-of-body experience would be able to see the message. Nobody was told that the panel existed, and it couldn't be seen by anyone that wasn't hovering near the ceiling.

...several out-of-body experiences happened in that room as people nearly died, and NOBODY ever saw the message.

If OBE is real, the subjects sure as heck aren't very observant.

  I don't think it matters if OBE's originate within the brain or not. The fact that they've "pin-pointed" the origin only means they know where it occurs.
  Why or how it occurs in the first place still has'nt been looked in to. We already know the universe is holographic and the brain follows suit, but scientists are so afraid that the ancient theories are correct that they try to disprove them.
  Finding the physical origins of what Shamans and Witchdoctors have been talking about for thousands of years before christ, does not disprove their existence, but confirms it.

Lame-o, illogical thinking. ie. The brain is involved in a phenomenon therefore it is the cause.

In this guy's world view, scientific equals objectively measurable.

He says he had a subjective experience - this experience is in no way measurable - only the coincident material phenomenon....but he conveniently ignores this.

Science is about being able to repeatably verify a theory. The only way he could verify what these guys are saying is to try it himself and have the subjective experience. This is what "true" spiritual teachers have done for centuries - compare subjective results of spiritual methods to find out what is in common and how to verify it. He violated his own thinking but didn't realize it.

The true test would have been to continue working this to gain some information/knowledge from his out of body experience to verify it's reality.

Another equally viable hypothesis is that consciousness is the cause and the brain is the tool required for experience here. By altering the tool, you alter the experience. Think of the eye looking through a lens - change the lens, change the experience. Does that mean the lens is the cause of the experience.