Transformed by the Light - a Study of Near-Death Experience

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron
Dr. Melvin Morse's Transformed by the Light challenges the inability of the scientific method to explain near-death experience. Prepare to be enlightened.

Dr. Melvin Morse,MD, in the book written with Paul Perry, Transformed by the Light, says that the near-death experience does not resemble drug-induced hallucinations, transient psychosis, schizophrenia, psychotic breaks, anaesthetic reactions or dreams. Nor is it like any medically-described hallucinations. He says:
 "The near-death experience is a logical and orderly event that involves floating out of the body, entering into darkness and experiencing a wonderful and indescribable light." 
Dr. Morse explains that, unlike people who hallucinate or experience episodes of mental illness, those who encounter a near-death experience feel in control of their situation and are not detached from their being.
Transformed by the Light is a powerful and convincing book, although Dr. Morse admits that the results were not widely accepted by the medical community. One of the problems is that we still do not yet know enough about these experiences. 
"The irony of science," says Dr. Morse, "is that the scientific method sometimes destroys our ability to study a phenomenon." 
To back-up his statement, Dr. Morse cites the now well-known phenomenon of how, by observing an experiment, its outcome can actually be changed.
Dr. Morse has worked extensively with children, including at the Seattle Children's Hospital.
NDE Case Studies
This is an account of Dr. Morse's first encounter with an NDE child. In 1982, while working at an Idaho clinic, Dr. Morse helped to revive a young girl who had got into difficulties in a community swimming people. After she recovered, she gave a joyful description of her encounter with death, finally telling the doctor not to worry, because heaven was fun.
The following is an independent case, and not taken from Dr. Morse's book. An Eastbourne nurse, Jeanette Atkinson, was eighteen-years-old when she had her near-death experience. 
Jeanette had suffered a blood clot in her leg and the main vessels to her arteries became clogged, preventing her body from receiving oxygen. The doctors were not hopeful and did not expect the young woman to recover. But she did and here is her experience in her own words:
"The first thing I noticed was that the world changed. The light became softer but clearer. Suddenly there was no pain. All I could see was my body from the chest downwards, and I noticed that the time was 9.00pm. In an instant I found myself looking at the ceiling. It was only a few inches away. I remember thinking it was about time they cleaned the dust from the striplights."
Common Factors in Near-Death Experience
NDE's do vary from one person to another, but there are factors that are repeated in a number of cases. Many people lose their fear of death. They say they value themselves and others far more and that they feel a need to help out wherever they can. Like Jeanette, many people hear themselves pronounced dead, leave their body with a sense of great peace and then begin to move through a dark tunnel towards a bright and inviting light. Some even report meeting up with their long-lost friends and relatives.
One of the most inspiring quotations from Dr. Morse's book is the following: "When I died I felt free of all things that had bothered me on earth. But when the doctors brought me back I felt free of them, too."
The following statement appears in the medical journal The Lancet:
"One study found that 8 to 12 percent of 344 patients resuscitated after suffering cardiac arrest had NDEs (near-death experiences) and about 18% remembered some part of what happened when they were clinically dead."
A Natural Process
Dr. Morse's main aim in working with NDE patients is to help them, but he refuses to write these experiences off as particularly "New Age" or spiritual experiences. Instead, he insists that they are "...a natural and normal part of the dying process and have profound implications for those of us who work with death and dying." Also, they happen to perfectly ordinary people - ordinary people who manage to survive an extraordinary experience.
Dr. Morse is working on localising the area of the brain that is responsible for spiritual visions and he believes it may be something to do with the right temporal lobe. His latest book is entitled: Where God Lives.
Sources:
·      Transformed by the Light, Dr. Melvin Morse, with Paul Perry, Pitakus, 2001.
·      http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts06.html
·      The Lancet, 15 December 2001.
·      www.newsmonster.co.uk
·      Partly adapted from Paranormal Eastbourne, Janet Cameron, Amberley Publishing, 2010.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fifteen Women Philosophers

Image
Follow the link to access my latest book, Fifteen Women Philosophers you should have learned about at school (but probably didn't)  http://www.amazon.com/Fifteen-Philosophers-should-learned-school-ebook/dp/B00MR8OSS8#reader_B00MR8OSS8 Review by Sarah Barton: In her book Ms Cameron gives us interesting insights into the lives of women philosphers of bygone eras who were only too aware of the injustices of living in a world dominated by men. Thinkers like de Gournay and Wollstonecraft were early feminists, demanding that women should have access to education and equality. Wollstonecraft even stated that if men were treated as demi-gods then the inequality would result in women becoming 'cunning, mean and selfish'. Ms Cameron combines a brief biography of each of her candidates with a summary and an analysis of the main thrusts of their arguments, making us wish for more so it is excellent that there is a useful bibliography at the end.  The work of some of these women...
Read more

Philosopher Louis de Jancourt - How to Become an Enlightened Writer

Image
Public Domain Wikimedia Commons Louis de Jaucourt, (1704-1779) was a great scholar of the Enlightenment, born in Paris, who studied theology in Geneva. He  influenced his readers by his intelligent use of language and metaphor, and by inviting their complicity through sound psychological processes. Overcoming the Loss of a Manuscript Today, we are lucky as there is a degree of safety in storing our work online. It might be plagiarised but it is unlikely to be lost. It wasn't so in times past. The saddest thing about this great man's life was that he worked for twenty years to produce a work of six volumes on Anatomy, but the ship carrying his manuscript sank on its way to Amsterdam, and his labours were entirely lost.  Yet, undeterred, he went on to contribute more articles to the Encyclopédie than any other writer, and he did this voluntarily. He was already wealthy so he was willing to participate without payment. He wasn't as well-known or...
Read more

Jennifer Young - Role Model for Aspiring Romantic Thriller Writers

Image
Have you always seen yourself as a "writer" and created stories and non-fiction from an early age, or is there something that happened to inspire you to put pen to paper? Jennifer Young: I resisted the description “writer” for years and still do at one level. I have never seen myself as a writer but as someone who writes. You don’t call someone who breathes or eats a “breather” or an “eater”, and writing is just something I do. And yes — I’ve written, or thought about writing, for as long as I can remember. And that’s a loooong time! 2. You write both fiction and non-fiction, but which do you prefer?   Jennifer Young : Fiction. Don’t get me wrong — I love writing non-fiction (for those who might be interested, I’m a science writer and I specialise in Earth science) but fiction sets you free in a way that non-fiction doesn’t. My scientific background has taught me that you should check your facts, be accurate, go back to the source material. In fiction, a...
Read more