2. Marco teórico:
2.9 Implementación de un programa de actividad física en personas con TEA
explain why transcendental experiences (¼ NDE) afford glimpses of the afterlife, he is persuaded, in their manifesting an escape of soul, that NDE represent the work of the Spirit or the power of God: ‘it is a spiritual encounter that is both “real”, “otherworldly” as the soul is in the process of leaving the body’. Four criteria underpin his assertion: an occurrence within the spiritual realm, a pertinence to religion and hence to the transcendent, unavailability for scientific quantification, and, finally, that they are real events and hence neither hallucinatory, imaginary nor dream-illusory. In Sabom’s view,13ECE are spiritual adventures and divine revelations. Inclusive of visions of Jesus, ECE provide inspirational models for the future life- direction of subjects they involve.
The interpretations of the Fenwicks are uncertain: they query whether ECE are internally generated cerebral events, psychophysical phenomena, or
12 Grey 1985, 41, 186 187. 13
Sabom 1982, 185 186.
outwith the physical domain of body or brain—that is—spiritual. They are unable to muster any substantive evidence that mind exists without its under- lying brain or, more importantly, that memories could be manufactured and stored in some place outwith the cerebral cortex.14They recognize meaning in the world and in the life of the universe, as expressed through varied cultural- religious perspectives on the afterlife and disembodied survival. If there is no meaning in the universe as severe reductionists insist, then life for billions of people—past, present and surely in the future, becomes entirely pointless, cold, limited, and unfulfilled. But how could meaning be secured, either on earth or in the future, and do ECE shed any light on, or give substance to, that longed- for meaning? My feeling is that these authors, in reviewing their narrative- testimonies, are unable to articulate any real theory that ECE do, in reality, point to an afterlife or existence of mind outwith corporeality.15
The least conventional interpretation is envisaged by Ring and, following closely on his coat-tails, Grey.16Both firmly believe that consciousness escapes the brain. For Ring,17 OBE act as springboards for the disembodiment of consciousness, a splitting-off process at death releasing the centre of self- awareness from the constraints of physicality, thus to rise to the ‘fourth dimension’. At this point their views begin to diverge.18 Grey holds that in leaving the dualistic world of mind–body, consciousness dissociates into the sushami nadi or pathway of energy (prana) located in the spinal cord, giving rise to the luminosity (or ‘light’) experienced by ‘many’.19 Corporeally free,
14
Fenwick & Fenwick 1998, 256.
15
In later work, Peter Fenwick has more persistently advocated the view that as the brain dies, consciousness does escape, thus raising (for him) new issues regarding the nature of mind and brain and their independent existence.
16 Ring 1980, 220ff; Grey 1985, 41. 17
The problem here for Ring is that not all ECE are preceded by OBE. The numerical data are 37% (Ring 1980, 40, fig. 1), 52% (Sabom 1982, 52) and 21 32% (Grey 1985, 31, table 1), indicating that50 60% of subjects never report this occurrrence. That other ECE terminate with an OBE undermines considerably Ring’s position, as well as his concept of a universal, sequential ‘core’ experience.
Ring argues that not all subjects may have known they were having an OBE (idem 1980, 220), a curious statement indeed if separation from the body (as Ring insists) markedly heightens subjects’ perceptiveness (idem, 229; 232).
18
For Grey, any technique (eastern) permitting consciousness to acquire independent function of the body (kundalini, yoga, pranayama meditation, and ‘third eye’ (Shira Yoga)) facilitates this ascent. The third eye is evolutionarily connected to the pineal gland, which is not redundant, but ‘still evolving’. With accelerated growth, it permits subjects to see events on a larger panoramic canvas. Pineal development also collapses temporal progressions and se quences, thereby engendering a newer sense of oneness and eternity (Grey 1985, 189ff).
19 The probity of that statement is undermined by observing that of700 collective subjects,
only about 50%, as a crude average, admit to seeing a light (16% (Ring), 39% (Grey), 28% (Sabom), 43% (Greyson 1990), 56% (Lindley et al 1981), 72% (Fenwick and Fenwick)).
consciousness is enabled to function independently beyond the world of sensibilities thus becoming immediately aware of the fourth dimension. Ego-death is an intense emotional experience, embodying a ‘tremendous sense of encompassing oneness’ and awareness of a ‘higher transcendent order’. This is invariably followed by a ‘sense of rebirth’ (reincarnation) and the certainty that consciousness enjoys physical independence. Fine words, indeed, but scarcely supported by firm, empirical data.
Hellish experiences arise when subjects have unresolved psychological aggravations in life. Thus the NDE appears to represent, in an ‘ever increasing frequency’, an evolution towards the attaining of enlightenment, and that in attaining that heightened form of consciousness, such individuals become united in a universality of brotherhood, love and compassion.20Individual- ism is mutating into a wider collective cooperative, based on increased self- responsibility. Therefore, we do not necessarily have to die so as to experience these newer levels of higher consciousness. The afterlife is but an illusory chimera: there is no heaven or hell. We need enlightenment to lift our own lives from the mundane of the here-and-now into one of those exalted planes via the agency of the collective consciousness of the universal cosmic mind.
Ring, on the other hand, sees free consciousness (or ‘entity’, ‘replica’, ‘second body’, even ‘soul’) entering the tunnel towards the light.21 Here the experiencing of a presence, voices, judgement, or encountering former de- ceased people, and the decision to return home, represent a shift of con- sciousness into the ‘fourth dimension’. The perception of movement and weightlessness22is literally that of unembodied mind-awareness in transit to this higher plane of existence. Indeed, the light is a vision of one’s ‘higher self ’. One’s inherent divine nature which, embodying all knowledge, is now capable of initiating its own life-review. This, according to Ring, is what subjects often interpret as being in the presence of God. These latter experiences are to be understood through holographic theory whose ‘origins lie in neurophysiolo- gy and physics’.23As a laser can reconstruct an object from a representation of itself through interference patterns so the brain, in interpreting the world by analysing received frequency domains, portrays them as the environmental objects with which subjects are familiar. ECE, mysticism, and eastern philos- ophy all provide means of appreciating these orders of (holographic) reality that lie behind our day-to-day world of sensible appearances. Nevertheless,
20
Grey 1985, 193 195 (and see Ring 1980, 255).
21
Ring 1980, 220ff.
22
As we shall see later, these changed perceptions of bodily characteristics have an alterna tive explanation in terms of vestibular function as disturbed brains recover from their previous insults.
23
Ring 1980, 234 5, 240ff.
Ring backtracks on the mechanisms of separation on grounds that any answer would take us into ‘the wilds of esoteric speculation’ (222–233). But why?— even if we knew precisely what those words mean.
There are other difficulties. Ring supposes that those who ‘stick’ in the tunnel experience hell, although we are not told through which agency the adhesion is manifested. Unfortunately for Ring, the published literature fails to identify a single subject who remained caught in this predicament: and, furthermore, had that been the case, clearly we on earth could never have been informed of such a catastrophic outcome. Of the very few hellish experiences recorded in the literature, subjects are always finally rescued by spiritual beings and taken to heaven. Next, despite the alleged power intrinsic to holographic theory, a proper and definitive judgement on its appropriateness as an explanatory framework ‘cannot reasonably be undertaken’ because we, as earthbound humans, do not exist holographically.
Ring’s threshold for the scientific study of the ‘impossible’ seems to have collapsed without affording us any further substantive innovatory or revela- tional insights. In other words, this is neither an all-embracing analysis nor a complete explanation by Ring of all facets of ECE phenomenology. This is a strange whimpering finale to what was earlier heralded as (his) freedom to ‘explore other experimental categories, as against those failed approaches stemming from conventional neuroscience’. Here we see a grandiose approach whose speculative superstructure vastly outstrips the data upon which it should have been based, and which ultimately fails miserably to account for the narrative phenomena relayed to him. Doubtless few subjects would immediately recognize the implications of their experiences as viewed either through Ring’s eyes, or those of Grey. This assertion could hardly be bettered than by a remark of one of the Fenwicks’ correspondents. Having watched a television broadcast on ECE, she declared a total inability to recognize the content of the experiences as advanced on the programme!
In conclusion, it seems to me that these collective approaches to explana- tory scientific hypotheses, and their ‘other-worldly’ interpretational outcomes of the phenomenology narrated by respondents, are weak, superficial and, in parts, dismissive. Of the authors reviewed, only Sabom provides any reason- able documentation of pertinent research papers. For the remainder, their referencing, relative to the breadth of material surveyed, is somewhat selec- tive, while the omission of important details about other workers’ publica- tions cited in the text does not make follow-up for the reader particularly easy. One might have expected from each authorship, possibly, more engagement with existing scientific material and a more considered assessment of the outcomes considered. For Ring and Grey, their cosmic interpretational con- structs far exceed the data received through their respective narratives.
Throughout each book published by all these authors, the text is continuously disturbed by frequent anecdotes as though offered to prop up weakly devel- oped argument, although sufficient narrative material included in earlier chapters was adequate in providing a more measured, competent, descriptive overview of ECE phenomenology,24its possible basis, and ultimate meaning.
3 . 2 . T H E P RO B L E M O F P R E - C O G N I T I O N A N D AC Q U I R E D P S YC H I C A L P OW E R S
In this section, I am concerned with the specific approach made by authors to the alleged acquisition of precognition and other psychical powers by subjects as a result of their undergoing an ECE. Furthermore, such evidence is aggressively deployed as affirmative evidence for the veridicality of ECE. Two major arguments favouring psychical explanations (as against neurolog- ical constructs) are advanced. First, on subjects’ propensity during OBE to observe their bodies and resuscitations, this being regarded as exemplary of the supposed existence of mind (or soul or free conscious-awareness) beyond its neural substrate.25For example, in his scoring system, Greyson (we should recall) holds the curious opinion that an OBE is a manifest psychical phe- nomenon.26Second, on subjects’ supposed acquisition of precognitive infor- mation about contemporaneous or future eventualities. It is this latter contentious issue which I critically evaluate in detail below.