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Second part
But how exactly does this binding happen? This question is very important for the study of consciousness. George A. Mashour, one of the participants in the experiments on rats conducted at the University of Michigan (as we wrote about above), belongs to the materialist camp. In his opinion, it is difficult to explain the mechanism of consciousness generation by a healthy human brain; it is even more difficult to explain how a damaged brain, in a state of near-death, produces such vivid “supernatural visions” as NDE. “Anyway, is there a scientific explanation for NDEs? This is a very important question for studying consciousness,”George told me.
If it were possible to confirm the fact that peak neural activity arises in the dying human brain (the same that Mashur and colleagues observed on the EEG of rats), then it would be possible to shed light on the nature of the NDE and, therefore, approach the question of whether what is consciousness from the point of view of neurobiology. But man is not an experimental rat.
According to Mashur, it is unlikely that enough data can be collected about people who have already experienced NDE during clinical death after cardiac arrest and would be willing to talk about it. Experiments on rats, Mashur continues, at least tell us that in order to explain the phenomenon of near-death experiences, one cannot "ignore the connection between the brain and consciousness."
How does consciousness arise? This question is likely to become one of the main questions of the twenty-first century, when man begins to create machines of the complexity comparable to the human brain. Will these machines be conscious? And if yes, how can this be determined? Will consciousness become as valuable to a machine as it is to a person? What are the global consequences of this step for humanity? We will be able to answer these questions only after we find out from which "bricks" consciousness is formed.
Finally, the need for a thorough study of the phenomenon of near-death experiences is at least to completely exclude non-materialistic explanations of this phenomenon. Those who believe in life after death will still not change their views.
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After all, there are many beliefs that people hold in spite of overwhelming scientific denials (think of global warming). But science develops only in the following way: first it recognizes its own boundaries, and then slowly pushes them apart. We have no reason to be ironic about any unscientific ideas about the NDE, until a scrupulous work has been done to refute them.
So, let's say that the experiments are carried out, and we have received a comprehensive, strictly scientific and materialistic explanation of the causes of near-death experiences. Does this mean that all the testimonies of people about the vision of angels and deceased relatives are just fairy tales, unworthy of attention?
I think no. What I saw at the conference, despite all the unusualness of what I saw, convinced me that the study of NDE can be useful even for convinced materialists, because this mysterious phenomenon will help to understand the mechanisms of human perception of reality and, most importantly, the determining role played by evidence people who have been in clinical death, when answering a question about the essence of a person.
By the way, Susan Blackmore, although she is an inveterate skeptic, agreed with me. At the end of her email, she criticized those who take a one-sided approach in interpreting NDEs, that is, she simultaneously criticizes those who praise the NDE, calling them "the truest and most spiritual" experience, and those who belittle it, calling it "all just a hallucination."
It seems to me that near-death experiences of a person during clinical death are an amazing and mysterious phenomenon. It can radically change the way of life, shed light on human nature and bring us closer to the answer to the question of life and death.