Guest: Dr. Peter Fenwick, neuropsychiatrist, world renown expert on end of life phenomena, including near-death experiences and deathbed visions. His most recent book is, The Art of Dying. Download MP3 (60:21min, 28MB) [audio:http://content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-2009-02-15-45707.mp3]Alex: Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. Iâm your host, Alex Tsakiris. Today, I donât have much news on the experiments weâre working on but I do have a very, very interesting interview coming up with Dr. Peter Fenwick, one of the foremost authorities on near-death experiences and a really clear and compelling voice about so many of the topics that we talk about here in Skeptiko. Itâs a rather long interview so Iâm going to get right to it. Hereâs my interview with Dr. Peter Fenwick. Alex: Our guest today is an internationally renowned neuropsychiatrist and Britainâs leading clinical authority on near-death experiences. Heâs the author of many, many books including one weâre going to talk about a little bit today, The Art of Dying. Dr. Peter Fenwick, welcome to Skeptiko. Alex: Itâs a real joy to have you on. I of course am very inspired by much of your research and your writings. I think you give a real clear voice to this whole issue of survival of consciousness and as well as in this new book The Art of Dying. So I really canât hide my support of your work. But I think weâre going to have a very interesting dialogue here and might be able to engage on a couple of different points and see where all that shakes out. Where I thought we might start though is maybe you could tell us a little bit about what sparked your interest in the whole issue of survival of consciousness. In particular, since you were really I think going down a much more mainstream track at the time, what compelled you to speak out publicly about this topic? Peter: Two question though. First, one is what sparked my interest. Iâm a neuropsychiatrist and as such I deal with peopleâs mental state and I have wide experience in different mental states. Also, I dealt with patients with epilepsy and so I have experience of abnormal brain discharges in different brain structures and the alterations that these can make in peopleâs mental states. Vba to java. So I was familiar with that whole are. I also at one point read Raymond Moodyâs book on near-death experiences and I looked at that and I knew that near-death experiences only happen in California and they donât cross the Atlantic to the UK. That was in about â82. Then into my consulting room came a man who had a cardiac catheter and it had gone hopelessly wrong. His heart stopped and if his account is correct, they were not prepared for this in the cardiac cath room and there were specific reasons for this. There was a lot of turmoil went on while they tried to restart his heart. He told me he was watching this from the ceiling during the time his heart had stopped. He was extremely anxious about the whole thing, not surprisingly. He didnât have a full near-death experience. He left his body, watched the resuscitation process, went down the tunnel, met the being of light and then essentially was sent back. The next day, the cardiac surgeon came up to him and said, âI think we didnât quite get the information we wanted yesterday so weâll have you again in the cath lab today.â He was so traumatized by the whole thing, he just simply got up and left the hospital. So what I saw was a man with a [inaudible 00:04:37] in the story. It was quite clear to me then that the evidence suggested that near-death experiences actually did cross the Atlantic. So we set up a study or Margot Grey set up a study in Guyâs Hospital and of course we found them just as common here in England as we did in as if they had been found in America. That was really interesting because it raised questions. The question it raised is what is the nature of this particular mental state? Is it just due to alterations in brain function which had very good organic causes or could it point in another direction. One of the things I did in 1986, we did the first British NDE film. In following that, we got over 2,000 letters and I selected at those 500 and sent them a specific questionnaire. So you got a large sample of detailed questions and answer to what a near-death experience was in the British population. Now you have to remember that 98% of that sample had never heard of a near-death experience when they had it. You canât get samples like this nowadays because everybodyâs heard of them but back then they hadnât. So we feel that our data is fairly clear. The next point was it all due to drugs. We asked this question of the data and the respondents in over 30% said they werenât on any drugs at the time. So thatâs [inaudible 00:06:31] drugs [inaudible 00:06:32]. Alex: Can I interject something with a question here because whatâs intriguing to me is Iâm wondering, Dr. Fenwick, as youâre going and preceding through this research and you made a funny comment that you didnât know whether or not NDEs crossed the Atlantic, what was the climate like for you both, with your colleagues and maybe even internally in terms of this paradigm shift thatâs going on in your head. What is that like? Can you share a little bit about that? Peter: Yes. That was interesting but you have to remember that Iâm grounded in neuropsychiatry. So if I talk about mental states, my colleagues arenât too surprised. But there is a lot of resistance because at the hospital I was practicing at that time, they had an intensive care unit. I applied to the ethics committee to carry out a questionnaire survey of people who had been through the intensive care unit to find out if any of them had had near-death experiences. In the ethics committee, one of the major people who was running the committee at that time was very, very hostile. Since he was one of the physicians on the intensive care unit, he said, âThere will be no such experiences in my unit because when people are seriously ill like that, they are treated with drugs and sedated and they are not conscious. So itâs impossible to get experiences like that because they donât occur and itâs therefore a stupid question and will only be upsetting the patients by asking them.â They turned down my first request. So thereâs a lot of hostility which was impulsive and not rational because in fact what has come out of the data is that people with near-death experiences are very much supported by being able to talk about them. But that information only came later. So it took a little while to be able to point out that there is now a growing science behind this and weâre interested in the science of it and weâre not just interested in the phenomena as trying to prove any particular point. Just on another point which became very important for us and which really directed the whole research. Was that when we looked at our first 500 questionnaire responses we found that near-death experiences or the phenomenology of near-death experiences could occur in many different situations. Obviously, they occurred near to death because thatâs what we were looking at. Well the people said they were near to death. They also occurred in accidents when the outcome of the accident was no trauma to the person but they may have been threatened by it. But they also tended to occur in situations where [inaudible 00:09:51] the person could never have been near death. Then there were some people who said they had these experiences relaxing in front of the fire or even when they were going to sleep. So, sort of having [inaudible 00:10:07] getting a drink. So that made me feel that you could not get a sample like this and expect to be able to get a good scientific explanation because theyâre probably going to be many. So what we needed to know very firmly was brain states. We had to hold brain states constant and then we could look at phenomenology. The most interesting were in the cardiac arrests. We had 10% of cardiac arrests in the sample. So we said where we must start in trying to understand these is to in fact look at cardiac arrests specifically because then we know that it has the three states, three clinical features which indicates that the person has, if in fact dead. If they werenât resuscitated the process would become irreversible. That is no pulse rate or no heart rate. Theyâre not breathing and all their brainstem reflexes are down. So the brain is totally dysfunctional. So if we were going to study near-death experiences then that was our group. So we set up a study at Southampton Hospital with Sam Parnia, whoâs since gone on to look at these in other group patients which is ongoing at the moment. What we found out, yes, they do happen in cardiac arrest. The data pointed to this experience occurring when brain function was absent. Now the importance of this to science is astonishing. If you can really say that people have mental states which are present in the absence of brain function then youâre saying something so important and we have to look at consciousness in a different way. That is the aware project which has been discussed and Sam is looking at this now in 18 hospitals in the UK and I think 3 in the USA and 1 is in Austria because we must know if near-death experiences occur at the time the heart has stopped. If so, what the phenomenology of the heart is. Alex: That really encapsulates the whole gist I think of what I wanted to talk about. Really, if I can, Iâm going to delay a little bit going into your book, The Art of Dying. Itâs a very interesting book and I want to talk about it. But youâve just brought us to the central question and that is, why hasnât there been the shift? So the data is there, the data has mounted up and of course we can always want more data. But why hasnât there been the shift? Peter: There are several reasons for this I think. Letâs assume that one is a scientist and that one is following oneâs career. If youâre doing that then you obviously had to be attached to a unit and you have to apply for grants. Now, if youâre applying for grants, what youâre going to apply for? Youâre going to apply for things particularly in medicine that is seen as helpful. Is it really helpful to study near-death experiences? Would you rather find out how to place a new microvalve in the heart or would you be interested in the mental states of the patients who are unconscious? One would contribute towards the usefulness of medicine as a whole. We could all do with new microvalves at some time, whereas the other is much more for pure science. Alex: Let me interject, Dr. Fenwick, because I would question whether you really even believe that. I think the implications for survival of consciousness are so vast and so widespread â and letâs take it out of the medical profession, move it into psychology. Certainly, and my wife is a psychologist, but every aspect, every area of psychology is turned upside down if you have this different view of consciousness and survival of consciousness. Iâd take it one step further and I was mentioning to you before that I had a very interesting interview with a gentleman, Dr. David Lester, whoâs not only one of the leading authorities on suicide and is on all these boards and whatnot but is also the author this book Is There Life After Death. This goes to my point that I donât think we can explain it just from what the practical applications of it are because hereâs a guy whoâs investigating suicide on one hand, heâs investigating and writing a book on is there life after death. Thereâs just this lack of scholarship thatâs kind of dumbfounding. If I can, let me play for you a clip. Can I play this clip for you? Peter: Yes. Iâd be interested to listen to it. (Start of interview with Dr. David Lester) Alex: What do you make of the fact that in Dr. Bruce Greysonâs research people who have attempted suicide, had failed, and have had a near-death experience are dramatically less likely to try suicide again and that they tell them that Iâm not afraid of death and I want to live and all these other things? David: Iâm not sure what to make of that, even to speculate. It actually doesnât really make sense to me that those who attempted suicide and have a near-death experience donât feel suicidal afterwards. I would expect that if the experience is that pleasant they might be more prone. Alex: But thatâs not what the data shows. David: I know, so itâs counterintuitive to me. When you me why do you think it might happen is like I really donât know because I would have thought the opposite would happen. (End of interview with Dr. David Lester) Alex: Okay, so a nice enough guy and we had this chat but I just have run across this so many times. Here is a guy whoâs in a position, heâs one of our authorities. Heâs in the position of being a scientific authority. How can there be this disconnect? How can there be this lack of scholarship to just be so disconnected from the research? Peter: I think there are several points there. The first point is heâs right. Heâs right in the sense that some suicide patients, if they have a near-death experience want to get back to that place again. Iâve had referred to me one or two people who set out to commit suicide again because it was such a nice experience. This world, beside the NDE world, looked very tawdry and non-inviting. There was one patient who we had to have in hospital for over a year while she came to terms with the fact that it was a near-death experience and she had to get on with her life. I can think of another person who after his near-death experience would sit in his chair all day just saying that he wanted to die to get back to where heâd been. But that is not the general feeling. The general feeling is that you lose your fear of death and youâre less likely to commit suicide. But Bruce Greyson has done some work on the accounts of spirituality after near-death experiences. But heâs also looked at those people whoâve had a very close brush with death. For example, cardiac arrests without near-death experience and they share the same thing but not to the same extent. So if you look to this people who are very close to death do get a change in attitude. They do become more spiritual in the wider sense of the world, although those who have a near-death experience become more spiritual and have a much greater understanding of life than they did before the near-death experience. Alex: What about the point do you think weâre properly engaging with that data? Peter: No. It raises a whole lot of questions for us. The most important one through my point of view are that we actually donât really properly understand death even. So the near-death experience suggests, and Iâm talking about near-death experience in cardiac arrests. Keep it very specific so we know what weâre talking about then. Suggests a continuation of consciousness once the heart has stopped and the brain has become dysfunctional. Now if that is what suggested it then we should be able to go to the literature and ask questions about the mental state of the dying as they come up to death because there should be some information there about what the actual death process is. Now if you do that, youâll find thereâs a huge, big, black hole. People have not asked that really interesting question to me, and that is what is the phenomenology as you approach death. Now these donât occur in everyone and Iâm not absolutely certain yet of what the frequency is, but what I can say is that theyâre frequent. Weâve been researching in hospices, in a nursing home and the palliative care team, looking at the mental states and what happens before you die. Now for various reasons we have started by asking the carers of the dying what they have noted when people died. There were a whole set of questions which we extracted and these related to deathbed visions. Youâre account in the literature, very few, thereâs a nice book by [Otis and Haralson] [ph 00:20:27] on this. There are very few studies and no prospective studies of what deathbed visions are and how often they occur. So we wanted to examine those and thereâs something else called deathbed care instances and these go into all the phenomena which occur at the time of death. In our western culture, there really are no studies at all of what actually happens at the time of the death. On materialistic science, it will just simply be a switching off of the brain, end of story, letâs go home, with no interest. In actual fact, the near-death experience has taught us that there could be a considerable interest because of the potential for a continuation of life after death or certainly continuation of life when the heart has stopped and the brain is dysfunctional. So we need to know what happens at the time of death. Weâve now been able to write four papers on what the carers of the dying say happens at the time of death. The story is enormously interesting. Alex: Isnât there somewhat of a disconnect there as well? You were talking about early on in your research when the person who was running the ward of the hospital was not interested in having you poking around with your patients. Isnât there also this disconnect with end of life healthcare providers? If I was to walk down to my local hospice center, go, pull a nurse aside and say, âIâm really concerned about my mental health because Iâm having visitations from my father.â Iâm sure sheâd pull me aside and say, âReally, thereâs nothing to worry about. I see this all the time.â Versus if I walk in and told my psychiatrist this or my neurologist this down at the hospital, theyâd be putting me under medication. So you obviously are exploring and starting with these end-of-life healthcare providers. Why hasnât been done before? Maybe the other question is, is their story different from other healthcare providers? Peter: What is so interesting is that thereâs a huge black hole. Science has refused to look at this area in the west. They just are not many papers on the mental state of the dying and what they experience. Again, I think there are two reasons for this. One is because thereâs the taboo of looking at death because the doctor see it as a medical failure if their patient is going to do so they donât study it. So thatâs one point. The other point is that in society too, we tend to not consider our own death. Weâll talk about peopleâs death but we very seldom spend time thinking about what death is going to be like for us. You certainly donât in a party go up to somebody and say, âHi! Tell me, whatâs it going to be like when you die.â We make absolutely certain we donât visit that. So we donât allow ourselves both from a scientific point of view and to some extent in a cultural point of view to look at this. But the phenomenology is just fascinating and it starts, the Dalai Lama says that we know, and this is my current research interest and if any of your listeners have information on this, Iâd love to know about it. The Dalai Lama says that two years before you die, you get inclinations that youâre going to die. So, I would like to know from people if their relatives who have died had inclinations that long before. I donât mean once youâve gone to the doctor and found a lump and you know you got cancer, thatâs not that. Itâs mental inclinations that you know that youâre going to die, probably when you consider yourself to be well before anything happens. So thatâs one point. About a month about you die, then youâll start getting visitations from dead family members. Weâve got enough accounts of these to say who comes and it tends to be spouses are the highest on your list. Then brothers or sisters and children quite often see their grandparents. The visitations are most interesting because it produces a change in journeying language or change in language of the dying. They donât talk about âwhen I die.â They talk about âIâm going on a journey,â âwhen Iâm picked up,â âI wonât be here because Iâm leaving.â Itâs got quite a different sound to it. The visitations usually tell people or the visitors tell people that theyâre going to be there for them and look after them at a certain time. The time they give them is, âIâll be back at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon.â Now the person dies at that time. Sometimes they die in the process of greeting somebody. So weâve got quite a bit of information about the nature of these visitors and what itâs like for people who are dying and what their purpose is. They seem to be there to pick the people up or thatâs what the dying say. The dying can negotiate with these visitors, put off their dying for a bit. They say, âNo. Iâm not ready to go yet. I want to wait for my son.â Sometimes the dying process will seem to stop, they can wait for their son to come and then they die after that. Alex: How intriguing. Iâll make sure we that we have a link up on the Skeptiko website for any of you who are listening where you can directly connect with Dr. Fenwick and pass those stories along. Can I go back for a minute and touch on something that you were mentioning about the cultural factors in this. I was just thinking of how weâve changed our approach to death and how really in the last 20, 30, maybe even 40 years weâve pushed it more and more in the background. I think back about when I was a kid it was becoming rare but it was still possible that people would have a wake in their house. Thereâd be a dead body in the house and that seems so strange to us now. Yet, from a standpoint of being comfortable around the fact that that is whatâs coming for all of us, what are the consequences of removing ourselves from that fact? Peter: Youâre so right. Thatâs absolutely correct. Death has been swept under the carpet and swept into special places. I donât mind going to special places but itâs divorced from life which is the difficulty. Of course, in Victorian times, when death was so common, what would you have, 10 children, five of whom would live? Death was a common phenomenon. Everybody was brought up knowing about death. Death was seen very much as part of life. It wasnât something strange, which you donât want to know about, and is something outside of oneâs experience. Everybody knew about it and they had been there when a sibling or parent had died. Remember of course, people were dying much younger. They didnât go on and on and on, and then going to nursing homes and then die without any contact with the rest of the family. So I think this has had an enormous effect on us to the extent that we have mentally pushed death right away from us. I donât know if you remember but when I was younger, if you saw a cortège passing down the street, I would used to stand still and some people would bow their heads as the hearse pass them. People donât do that now. What you get are the motorists behind honking their horns because the cortège is going so slowly. In other words, there is no longer any respect for the death, for the people who had died, for the dead in that sense at all. Itâs not until you precipitated into this that you come to recognize that death is in fact a profound part of life and it needs to be reintegrated back again to society. I think youâre absolutely right on that. Weâve lost all our rituals too, havenât we? Alex: Yes. I think itâs funny that you mentioned the Dalai Lama and without getting too far into the Buddhist tradition. One thing I came across, and I canât even put my finger on exactly where, but in certain Buddhist sects, the first training that a Buddhist monk does is go and meditate in front of the, basically the graveyard where the bodies are placed before theyâre cremated or whatever is done. The idea is obvious. Is that you start by considering the ending point. I just always thought that was so spot on in terms of isnât that where we should all be putting our attention to begin with before we even consider life, to consider the end. Peter: I think youâre absolutely right. One of the things I would like to do is for death to be taught as a subject in school. Now you may say this is very ghoulish but it is only ghoulish in our culture, itâs only ghoulish because we have swept it under the carpet. So you might say, âWhat are you going to teach the kids? What is there thatâs special about death? Itâs a switching off.â No, it isnât. Iâm going to suggest that we actually donât know yet when we die. Now Iâll support that in the moment because you may say to me when the heart stops beating and brain stem reflexes go, the definition of death. Thatâs when we die. But I can give you artificial respiration and cardiac massage and then you donât die, so thatâs no longer a point. So what you say is we should take brain death but Iâve already shown you that brain disruption does not negate a full mental state with memory which is astonishing if itâs correct. So we have to think about that. Just think about this, if you talk to the dying and say when did the person die, they will tell you that there is a moment when the body that theyâve been looking at changed from an animated or having an occupied presence to one when itâs an empty shell. Now this is a definite moment they say. Alex: So this is during an out of body experience? Peter: No, just ordinary people dying. The relatives gathered around. They look at it and say itâs moved from an animated presence to an empty shell. These ideas might be strange but yet these are what the people who are surrounding the body at the time of death say. Now if you take that as the moment of death, then youâre going to push death quite a long way [inaudible 00:32:40] from the definition which weâve been thinking about before which is the cessation of respiration, etc. Sometimes we have accounts from people. Iâve got a lovely account from a son who came and visited his dead father a week after he had died. The father had asked this, in fact, his body was kept until his son came. When the son arrived, his experience was that his father was still there, still present in his body even though heâd been dead, as weâre using the other definition, for over about a week. Then soon after his father had been sitting with him for some time, it became apparent to the son that the state of the body, as far as he perceived it, changed and it became an empty shell. Now that sort of thing would suggest that our understanding of death yet is still very imperfect. We need many, many more accounts from people and studies of what this actually means because it may mean that we will get a linking in our western tradition much more onto the eastern traditions of death, the idea and the concept of something leaving. Now, if you ask people who, again, who care for the dying theyâll tell you that the relatives of the dying frequently see shapes and mists leaving the body at the time of death, when they stop breathing. So we have this within our own culture of things leaving the body at the time of death. But it goes much, much wider than that. There is some evidence of connectiveness between the dying and people they know. Weâve had the chance to look at this and it has a very definite structure to it. The phenomenon is as follows: that somebody whoâs connected to the dying person at a distance, maybe in another country even, suddenly gets a very strong feeling that that person is dying or if theyâre not dying that something very strong is happening to them. Now the way this feeling occurs depends on the mental state of the individual at the time the experience happens. So if youâre awake, you get fairly simple ones, theyâre strong feelings, theyâre emotions that something is happening. Itâs a compulsion that you have to go and ring somebody up because theyâre in danger, that sort of feeling. Occasionally, people report a vision of the person but that is rare. They may have a knowledge that the person has come to say goodbye to them and reported to the knowledge. Itâs that sort of thing and of course, this happens in people who donât know that the other person is ill at all. Now if youâre asleep then the visitation is quite different. Itâs much more complex, itâs much more narrative. It now takes part as a part of dream imagery when the dying person comes to tell you that theyâre dying. Usually, they come with the message that theyâre also okay now. The phenomenology is something like this, there is this one other woman who became aware that her son was standing at the end of her bed. Her son was in country, she was in another and that he was dripping wet. As she watched him, she became aware that he slowly became dryer and then became surrounded by light. The light is always the light of love and compassion. He said to his mom that heâs okay and then the vision faded. Now this was all in a dream. She didnât know whether she was awake or in a dream. I suspect she was probably asleep. Of course, she was extremely worried by this because she knew that something awful had happened to him. So when she could she rang up to find that heâd been drowned about the time that he appeared to his mother. Now weâve got lots and lots of stories like this, these deathbed care instances. So thereâs a very strong linkage at the time of death between the person whoâs dying and somebody they know extremely well. Alex: Whatâs so intriguing about this story that youâve just told and the way that youâre linking the science to the stories is that thereâs, again, such this disconnect between science that youâre trying to put together and whatâs generally accepted among mainstream science. What do you think itâs going to take to change that? Is there a breakthrough study that can be done? Is there breakthrough work that can be done or is it just plowing away with the kind of work which is very, very compelling? Is it just building block by block, putting together accounts and doing work or is there some breakthrough that we can have? Peter: I think the breakthrough is going to come through some [inaudible 00:38:18] experiment. Where it becomes quite clear that in cardiac arrest itâs possible for the consciousness with a dysfunctional brain to perceive what is happening in the [inaudible 00:38:31]. Maybe go outside it and pick up information and then remember this after is over because one of the things that we do know that is that memory is significantly affected in head injuries. Itâs one of the first questions you ask, âDo you remember what happened?â Thatâs just because memory is so sensitive to cerebral trauma. So it should be, on our current understanding of memory function, impossible to remember what happens after cardiac arrest during that process. So if we can do really two things, one is to define the brain state more accurately, in other words we need cerebral monitors of some sort. It would be interesting what weâre doing is to stop the cerebral blood flow. If we could look at cerebral blood flow at the time of the cardiac arrest and we can get information from the patientâs account to show that they were indeed acquiring information at the time their brain was dysfunctional and to remember this afterwards. Then we have to ask questions about consciousness and whether it is the sort of phenomenon that we think it is at the moment. If it turns out that itâs not, then all the things that Iâve been talking about come right midstream scientific agenda. Weâd have to then get more information on it ¬¬- but the crucial breakthrough, one crucial breakthrough, certainly that. The other breakthrough is just collecting information of what actually happens. There is a doctor in the States, in Houston, Dr. John Lerma, who had started this process of collecting information, what happens around the time of death. Heâs got the most wonderful accounts of what happened. So we need many, many more Dr. John Lermas all over the States starting to ask these questions and publish them. In fact, all of us who are interested in human in life must start to look at and understand human death because it is so much part of life. Alex: Absolutely. I think at some point it just becomes an issue of parsimony and I think weâre almost already there. What other explanations do we have? Although it is interesting, I had a conversation with a Dr. Cliff Saron at the University of California-Davis. Hereâs a guy who was actually, heâs at the Center for Mind and Brain and heâs studying Buddhist monks and meditation. I actually had the occasion to call Dr. Saron because I was interested in potentially supporting the research, in funding some of it. So I thought this would be someone who would be very open to continuation of consciousness research. He just was hostile to the idea and, it seemed to me, very misinformed about the data. What particularly brought up which I wanted to address with you is it seems like no matter how much research is mounted on the side of continuation of consciousness, the skeptics are waiting on the other side to just find the least little bit of evidence to counter that. What came up from my conversation with Dr. Saron he goes, âWhat about the recent work Henrik Ehrsson,â Iâm probably mispronouncing his name. But in Sweden they did this study and they made such a big deal out it. It garnered so much press attention that they had recreated an out of body experience and when you really look at the substance of the research, thereâs really not much there. Are you familiar with that and would you care to comment on how you think that research might fit into near-death experience and the out of body experience? Peter: Yes. Thereâve been a number of papers published on out of body experiences and the brain processes which underpin them. Now thereâs nothing surprising in that at all because we found for many years with the body image generated within the brain, thereâs structures which mediate it. If you stimulate these structures either electrically or damage them in such things as stroke, you get an alteration in body image. So, thereâs actually no difficulties about that. Alex: Just to back up, thatâs what they did in this study. They used virtual reality goggles in order to trick them into a feeling where their body was at the time. Isnât that essentially it? Peter: Thatâs absolutely correct. But you see, what they didnât do and what they shouldâve done was to refer to the Japanese work which occurred about 20 or 30 years ago, saying that you could change body image by using television cameras in a way which is not too dissimilar from what theyâve just recently done. Theyâre just going over old ground again. Really, all this is showing is that our brain images are enormously plastic and can be changed. As we go towards out of body experiences, in any sense because youâre not actually dealing with that, weâve got one piece of evidence I think from another study which points to the fact that you can get information by an out of body experience when the brain is down. This work was done by Penny Sartori in Swanzee. Sheâs an intensive care nurse and she was doing a study of near-death experiences in the cardiac unit. She divided her sample up into those of whoâve said they left their bodies and watched their resuscitation process and those who had no experience during their cardiac arrest. What she did was she asked both groups of people to say exactly what happened during the arrest. Now, the prediction is that everybody who goes into a cardiac arrest, they have a very good idea of what actually happens in the res situation because of what theyâve seen on telly. Thatâs where the fact that people whoâd say that seeing the rest is probably wrong because itâs just memories of what they think happens. So when she compared the group, they said they had seen it, and how accurate they were with the group who just had not seen anything for what must have happened. Sheâd found that the group whoâve said theyâve seen it were in fact significantly more accurate. Alex: So just to clarify then. The resuscitation process and I donât know anything about it other than ER show on TV like youâre mentioning. But itâs very complicated in terms of the sequence of events at which⦠Peter: That is exactly right. Alex: â¦different apparatus are connected at any time. So the chances that someone would just guess that are not very great and she found significant differences between folks who had been resuscitated after a near-death experience versus those who had not. Is that correct? Peter: Yes. Those who had seen it knows it had happened. Who said theyâve seen it compared to those who had had no experience. So itâs a straw in the wind, you get lots of these straws. As Michael Sabomâs work, again, showing correlations between descriptions of the near-death experiences of what happened during the arrest which they couldnât have known because they were unconscious at the time. So thereâs a lot of evidence pointing in this direction but what we need is to be absolutely certain from a scientific point of view that the brain is down. That needs to be demonstrated apart from the fact that all their brain stem reflexes have gone. We need something to show which is unique to that situation to show that the experience occurred at that time. Alex: The last area I guess that I want to probe in terms of this disconnect between the research and the data on near-death experience, on afterlife encounters, on re-orienting ourselves towards the dying process which is I think part of what youâre trying to do in your book The Art of Dying. But the last component of that that has to do with an interview that I had just recently is the role that religion plays in this whole equation. I canât help but feel that weâve struck a bargain between science and religion and created this false dichotomy that further perpetuates this misunderstanding. The book Iâm talking about is The Spiritual Brain and weâve just had an interview with Denyse OâLeary, who is one of the co-authors of that, is a Catholic and is very upfront about her beliefs and her acceptance of that doctrine. But what I find is from religious folks, theyâre either not willing to look at this data at all or theyâre only willing to accept it to the point that it disconfirms the materialistic, atheistic paradigm. But theyâre not really interested in fully engaging with where this data might lead us. So do you have any thoughts on maybe the role our organized religions, particularly our western religions, have played in this whole issue. Peter: Yes. I think it enormously interesting and a very wide question. Of course now with it being the [inaudible 00:48:41] or is it 150 years since the origin of species. Thereâs been a lot of discussions as to relationship between the evolution theory and religion and the effects that it had at the time on the scientific culture and the way that various religions have seen it. Itâs not the debate which that caused isnât too dissimilar from the debate which the new data on how we die, the phenomenology of dying and what this shows us in terms of moving on, moving towards and moving from, suggestions of the continuation of consciousness. People are very divided, and they get very divided in specific areas. On Monday to Friday, theyâre materialists and on Saturday and Sunday, they accept their religionâs views and the two can be diametrically opposed. Itâs the way that we work like you can pick up a packet of cigarettes in the UK which says, âDanger! Cigarettes cause cancers. This will shorten your life,â and you smoke away happily. Itâs absolutely illogical that one should go through these behaviors. Itâs just simple cognitive [inaudible 00:50:19]. Itâs a refusal to let the two areas come together. But taking it from a different point of view, I think there is a huge change sweeping through society now. The fundamentalists are becoming more fundamental and the atheists are becoming more atheists. Itâs the middle ground which I think tends to be losing out by polarization on the two sides. I think that the result of this would be that we will in fact go through this phase of polarization and then come into a much more general acceptance of the area. I think that this will occur for two reasons; because society is changing but also because the data is pointing towards it is increasingly going to become much stronger. The Art Of Dying Peter FenwickAlex: Itâs funny because one of the things that I talked about with Denyse OâLeary is again, back to the Dalai Lama and heâs famously said that he is in favor of science to test and prove all Buddhist doctrine. To the extent that science finds Buddhist doctrines incorrect then Buddhist doctrines need to change. I kind of challenged her and said, âIsnât this the position that Christians should take, the position of truth that we want the truth no matter where it leads?â I just canât help but wonder why that position hasnât been more popular because it seems like it would really change everything. If across the United States and Europe every pulpit had someone saying, âWe just want the truth. Wherever that is, weâre all about the truth.â Again, that seems so obvious and we know thatâs not going to happen. Peter: I think youâre right. It was said very nicely, I think it was St. Augustine who said that there are no miracles. Theyâre just events that we donât have an explanation for. I think what has happened in our materialistic science is that weâre denying the events. So I think there is a move now towards a recognition that you cannot deny psychic phenomena because theyâre there, what is wrong are your theories about the phenomena. So thereâs a beginning of a publication, thereâs a book coming out I think by Charlie Tart, talking about the end of materialism. This is just it. Itâs a recognition that we have to move on from saying the theory is correct. So this is a range of phenomena which we could look at because weâre encompassed within our theory, to one which says, âHere is the phenomena, now itâs time to change the theories which underpin them.â If you look at the phenomena of dying, they all tend to point towards this journey and this moving on, this continuation of something. So we need to think about that very strongly. Our book in fact ends with the dying process itself. Thatâs why itâs called The Art of Dying . There are very good books, thereâs a lovely book by David Fontana, Is There an Afterlife? Looking at the scientific evidence to suggest that there is a continuation of consciousness and itâs very good. So if youâre a materialist, you canât not look at the phenomenology, you have to do that. Then of course itâs a question of creating the theories which will encompass the phenomena into worldview, rather than saying they canât occur, therefore theyâre not there. Alex: Tell us a little bit more about the book and how itâs doing and what audience itâs reaching. Peter: The book was written because I became interested in what happens as we die. I appeared on a television program discussing what weâd already found and wrote some newspaper articles. So we have over about 1,500 to, again, coming towards 2,000 stories from people who were sitting with their relatives when they died. So that forms the basic data source for the book. It looks at what happens as you approach death, what is a good death, how we can prepare for it, what we should do for it. It suggests ways of understanding the death process and coming to terms with it. I really donât think that any of us now should die without having read a book like that. Which of us would go on a car journey without taking a map or actually knowing whatâs going to happen or where weâre going to go? We got to know that and the data is beginning to be there. So I think itâs terribly important that we do find out about it, not only find about it but that it becomes absolutely mainstream within our culture so we can start to come to terms with it. So that as one of the reasons why we wrote the book. As you said, itâs called The Art of Dying and the art of dying was taken from a book published in the 14th century, thatâs the time that the Black Death in the UK and Europe in fact. It was called the Ars Moriendi, the art of dying. The Ars Moriendi was put out by the church to help guide people through the death process because there werenât enough priests, theyâd been killed by the Black Death, to attend to all the people who were dying. So itâs really there to produce a scientific evidence or what they fear and the phenomena which occur which we should all know about before they start occurring to us, before theyâre forced on us by death itself. Alex: Dr. Fenwick, is there any data on whether or not this guiding process, this being aware of what might lie ahead, whether that plays into the phenomena of dying in any way that youâve discovered? Peter: That is such an interesting question because it goes to two sides. It goes to one, are we dealing with expectation only or is it that we can actually manipulate the phenomenology of death. Now John Lerma, who Iâve talked about before has some data on this. It is that if youâre totally open when you die, just ask and look for all the help you can get then you get it. There are lovely accounts we heard people who were very keen not to die alone and they had visitations from their dead relatives. In our culture, we donât seem to see angels as much as they do in the States. But I suspect that if you want angels to come and help you then you will see angelic figures. Itâs really very interesting and the relationship between expectation and what you allow yourself to perceive in the dying process I think is enormously important. Alex: Well wonderful book and just an even more important practical reason to prepare yourself for the process. It might make a substantial difference in your journey. So what more reason do you need than that? Peter: Yes, absolutely. I totally agree. Alex: Well thank you so much for joining us today. Itâs been a real pleasure. Peter: Itâs been wonderful speaking to you and thanks very much for asking. Alex: Hey, Dr. Fenwick, thanks again. That was great. I will send you an e-mail of the link when itâs ready to go out and weâll also have a transcript up as well. Peter: Thatâs really kind of you. Thanks so much and I hope this was the sort of thing you wanted. Alex: It was excellent, far exceeded my expectations. Iâll also put a link up and maybe weâll get some stories from some folks. Peter: Listen, I use a different e-mail address for people giving experiences because sometimes we get so many itâs difficult to get them out. Alex: Of course, if you would like to send to me in an e-mail, Iâll make sure that we just provide that link to folks. Peter: Okay, perfect. Iâll do that. Iâll send it on that e-mail address to you so that you can then use that. Alex: Okay, great! Peter: Thanks very much, nice chatting with you. Alex: Thank you, take care. Peter: Okay, bye-bye. (End of interview with DR. PETER FENWICK) Alex: Thanks again to Dr. Peter Fenwick for joining us today on Skeptiko. If youâd like more information about Dr. Fenwickâs books or an e-mail link if you have any of the stories that he was looking for and asked about during the show, please visit our website at Skeptiko.com. Youâll also find links to all our previous shows, a link to our forums and an e-mail link to me. Much more coming up on future episodes of Skeptiko, I have quite a few I think very interesting interviews coming up that Iâve already completed and I just need to get out there, so stay with us for that. Also, much, much more on the experiments weâre working on. Iâve actually been able to find a couple of folks to hire and help me on that, so I think weâre off and going on that again. Much more to come, stay with us and bye for now. â End â
https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/p/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-2009-02-15-45707.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS Download MP3 (60:21min, 28MB) [audio:http://content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-2009-02-15-45707.mp3]Alex: Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. Iâm your host, Alex Tsakiris. Today, I donât have much news on the experiments weâre working on but I do have a very, very interesting interview coming up with Dr. Peter Fenwick, one of the foremost authorities on near-death experiences and a really clear and compelling voice about so many of the topics that we talk about here in Skeptiko. Itâs a rather long interview so Iâm going to get right to it. Hereâs my interview with Dr. Peter Fenwick. Alex: Our guest today is an internationally renowned neuropsychiatrist and Britainâs leading clinical authority on near-death experiences. Heâs the author of many, many books including one weâre going to talk about a little bit today, The Art of Dying. Dr. Peter Fenwick, welcome to Skeptiko. Alex: Itâs a real joy to have you on. I of course am very inspired by much of your research and your writings. I think you give a real clear voice to this whole issue of survival of consciousness and as well as in this new book The Art of Dying. So I really canât hide my support of your work. But I think weâre going to have a very interesting dialogue here and might be able to engage on a couple of different points and see where all that shakes out. Where I thought we might start though is maybe you could tell us a little bit about what sparked your interest in the whole issue of survival of consciousness. In particular, since you were really I think going down a much more mainstream track at the time, what compelled you to speak out publicly about this topic? Peter: Two question though. First, one is what sparked my interest. Iâm a neuropsychiatrist and as such I deal with peopleâs mental state and I have wide experience in different mental states. Also, I dealt with patients with epilepsy and so I have experience of abnormal brain discharges in different brain structures and the alterations that these can make in peopleâs mental states. So I was familiar with that whole are. I also at one point read Raymond Moodyâs book on near-death experiences and I looked at that and I knew that near-death experiences only happen in California and they donât cross the Atlantic to the UK. That was in about â82. Then into my consulting room came a man who had a cardiac catheter and it had gone hopelessly wrong. His heart stopped and if his account is correct, they were not prepared for this in the cardiac cath room and there were specific reasons for this. There was a lot of turmoil went on while they tried to restart his heart. He told me he was watching this from the ceiling during the time his heart had stopped. He was extremely anxious about the whole thing, not surprisingly. He didnât have a full near-death experience. He left his body, watched the resuscitation process, went down the tunnel, met the being of light and then essentially was sent back. The next day, the cardiac surgeon came up to him and said, âI think we didnât quite get the information we wanted yesterday so weâll have you again in the cath lab today.â He was so traumatized by the whole thing, he just simply got up and left the hospital. So what I saw was a man with a [inaudible 00:04:37] in the story. It was quite clear to me then that the evidence suggested that near-death experiences actually did cross the Atlantic. So we set up a study or Margot Grey set up a study in Guyâs Hospital and of course we found them just as common here in England as we did in as if they had been found in America. That was really interesting because it raised questions. The question it raised is what is the nature of this particular mental state? Is it just due to alterations in brain function which had very good organic causes or could it point in another direction. One of the things I did in 1986, we did the first British NDE film. In following that, we got over 2,000 letters and I selected at those 500 and sent them a specific questionnaire. So you got a large sample of detailed questions and answer to what a near-death experience was in the British population. Now you have to remember that 98% of that sample had never heard of a near-death experience when they had it. You canât get samples like this nowadays because everybodyâs heard of them but back then they hadnât. So we feel that our data is fairly clear. The next point was it all due to drugs. We asked this question of the data and the respondents in over 30% said they werenât on any drugs at the time. So thatâs [inaudible 00:06:31] drugs [inaudible 00:06:32]. Alex: Can I interject something with a question here because whatâs intriguing to me is Iâm wondering, Dr. Fenwick, as youâre going and preceding through this research and you made a funny comment that you didnât know whether or not NDEs crossed the Atlantic, what was the climate like for you both, with your colleagues and maybe even internally in terms of this paradigm shift thatâs going on in your head. What is that like? Can you share a little bit about that? Peter: Yes. That was interesting but you have to remember that Iâm grounded in neuropsychiatry. So if I talk about mental states, my colleagues arenât too surprised. But there is a lot of resistance because at the hospital I was practicing at that time, they had an intensive care unit. I applied to the ethics committee to carry out a questionnaire survey of people who had been through the intensive care unit to find out if any of them had had near-death experiences. In the ethics committee, one of the major people who was running the committee at that time was very, very hostile. Since he was one of the physicians on the intensive care unit, he said, âThere will be no such experiences in my unit because when people are seriously ill like that, they are treated with drugs and sedated and they are not conscious. So itâs impossible to get experiences like that because they donât occur and itâs therefore a stupid question and will only be upsetting the patients by asking them.â They turned down my first request. So thereâs a lot of hostility which was impulsive and not rational because in fact what has come out of the data is that people with near-death experiences are very much supported by being able to talk about them. But that information only came later. So it took a little while to be able to point out that there is now a growing science behind this and weâre interested in the science of it and weâre not just interested in the phenomena as trying to prove any particular point. Just on another point which became very important for us and which really directed the whole research. Was that when we looked at our first 500 questionnaire responses we found that near-death experiences or the phenomenology of near-death experiences could occur in many different situations. Obviously, they occurred near to death because thatâs what we were looking at. Well the people said they were near to death. They also occurred in accidents when the outcome of the accident was no trauma to the person but they may have been threatened by it. But they also tended to occur in situations where [inaudible 00:09:51] the person could never have been near death. Then there were some people who said they had these experiences relaxing in front of the fire or even when they were going to sleep. So, sort of having [inaudible 00:10:07] getting a drink. So that made me feel that you could not get a sample like this and expect to be able to get a good scientific explanation because theyâre probably going to be many. So what we needed to know very firmly was brain states. We had to hold brain states constant and then we could look at phenomenology. The most interesting were in the cardiac arrests. We had 10% of cardiac arrests in the sample. So we said where we must start in trying to understand these is to in fact look at cardiac arrests specifically because then we know that it has the three states, three clinical features which indicates that the person has, if in fact dead. If they werenât resuscitated the process would become irreversible. That is no pulse rate or no heart rate. Theyâre not breathing and all their brainstem reflexes are down. So the brain is totally dysfunctional. So if we were going to study near-death experiences then that was our group. So we set up a study at Southampton Hospital with Sam Parnia, whoâs since gone on to look at these in other group patients which is ongoing at the moment. What we found out, yes, they do happen in cardiac arrest. The data pointed to this experience occurring when brain function was absent. Now the importance of this to science is astonishing. If you can really say that people have mental states which are present in the absence of brain function then youâre saying something so important and we have to look at consciousness in a different way. That is the aware project which has been discussed and Sam is looking at this now in 18 hospitals in the UK and I think 3 in the USA and 1 is in Austria because we must know if near-death experiences occur at the time the heart has stopped. If so, what the phenomenology of the heart is. Alex: That really encapsulates the whole gist I think of what I wanted to talk about. Really, if I can, Iâm going to delay a little bit going into your book, The Art of Dying. Itâs a very interesting book and I want to talk about it. But youâve just brought us to the central question and that is, why hasnât there been the shift? So the data is there, the data has mounted up and of course we can always want more data. But why hasnât there been the shift? Peter: There are several reasons for this I think. Letâs assume that one is a scientist and that one is following oneâs career. If youâre doing that then you obviously had to be attached to a unit and you have to apply for grants. Now, if youâre applying for grants, what youâre going to apply for? Youâre going to apply for things particularly in medicine that is seen as helpful. Is it really helpful to study near-death experiences? Would you rather find out how to place a new microvalve in the heart or would you be interested in the mental states of the patients who are unconscious? One would contribute towards the usefulness of medicine as a whole. We could all do with new microvalves at some time, whereas the other is much more for pure science. Alex: Let me interject, Dr. Fenwick, because I would question whether you really even believe that. I think the implications for survival of consciousness are so vast and so widespread â and letâs take it out of the medical profession, move it into psychology. Certainly, and my wife is a psychologist, but every aspect, every area of psychology is turned upside down if you have this different view of consciousness and survival of consciousness. Iâd take it one step further and I was mentioning to you before that I had a very interesting interview with a gentleman, Dr. David Lester, whoâs not only one of the leading authorities on suicide and is on all these boards and whatnot but is also the author this book Is There Life After Death. This goes to my point that I donât think we can explain it just from what the practical applications of it are because hereâs a guy whoâs investigating suicide on one hand, heâs investigating and writing a book on is there life after death. Thereâs just this lack of scholarship thatâs kind of dumbfounding. If I can, let me play for you a clip. Can I play this clip for you? Peter: Yes. Iâd be interested to listen to it. (Start of interview with Dr. David Lester) Alex: What do you make of the fact that in Dr. Bruce Greysonâs research people who have attempted suicide, had failed, and have had a near-death experience are dramatically less likely to try suicide again and that they tell them that Iâm not afraid of death and I want to live and all these other things? David: Iâm not sure what to make of that, even to speculate. It actually doesnât really make sense to me that those who attempted suicide and have a near-death experience donât feel suicidal afterwards. I would expect that if the experience is that pleasant they might be more prone. Alex: But thatâs not what the data shows. David: I know, so itâs counterintuitive to me. When you me why do you think it might happen is like I really donât know because I would have thought the opposite would happen. (End of interview with Dr. David Lester) Alex: Okay, so a nice enough guy and we had this chat but I just have run across this so many times. Here is a guy whoâs in a position, heâs one of our authorities. Heâs in the position of being a scientific authority. How can there be this disconnect? How can there be this lack of scholarship to just be so disconnected from the research? Peter: I think there are several points there. The first point is heâs right. Heâs right in the sense that some suicide patients, if they have a near-death experience want to get back to that place again. Iâve had referred to me one or two people who set out to commit suicide again because it was such a nice experience. This world, beside the NDE world, looked very tawdry and non-inviting. There was one patient who we had to have in hospital for over a year while she came to terms with the fact that it was a near-death experience and she had to get on with her life. I can think of another person who after his near-death experience would sit in his chair all day just saying that he wanted to die to get back to where heâd been. But that is not the general feeling. The general feeling is that you lose your fear of death and youâre less likely to commit suicide. But Bruce Greyson has done some work on the accounts of spirituality after near-death experiences. But heâs also looked at those people whoâve had a very close brush with death. For example, cardiac arrests without near-death experience and they share the same thing but not to the same extent. So if you look to this people who are very close to death do get a change in attitude. They do become more spiritual in the wider sense of the world, although those who have a near-death experience become more spiritual and have a much greater understanding of life than they did before the near-death experience. Alex: What about the point do you think weâre properly engaging with that data? Peter: No. It raises a whole lot of questions for us. The most important one through my point of view are that we actually donât really properly understand death even. So the near-death experience suggests, and Iâm talking about near-death experience in cardiac arrests. Keep it very specific so we know what weâre talking about then. Suggests a continuation of consciousness once the heart has stopped and the brain has become dysfunctional. Now if that is what suggested it then we should be able to go to the literature and ask questions about the mental state of the dying as they come up to death because there should be some information there about what the actual death process is. Now if you do that, youâll find thereâs a huge, big, black hole. People have not asked that really interesting question to me, and that is what is the phenomenology as you approach death. Now these donât occur in everyone and Iâm not absolutely certain yet of what the frequency is, but what I can say is that theyâre frequent. Weâve been researching in hospices, in a nursing home and the palliative care team, looking at the mental states and what happens before you die. Now for various reasons we have started by asking the carers of the dying what they have noted when people died. There were a whole set of questions which we extracted and these related to deathbed visions. Youâre account in the literature, very few, thereâs a nice book by [Otis and Haralson] [ph 00:20:27] on this. There are very few studies and no prospective studies of what deathbed visions are and how often they occur. So we wanted to examine those and thereâs something else called deathbed care instances and these go into all the phenomena which occur at the time of death. In our western culture, there really are no studies at all of what actually happens at the time of the death. On materialistic science, it will just simply be a switching off of the brain, end of story, letâs go home, with no interest. In actual fact, the near-death experience has taught us that there could be a considerable interest because of the potential for a continuation of life after death or certainly continuation of life when the heart has stopped and the brain is dysfunctional. So we need to know what happens at the time of death. Weâve now been able to write four papers on what the carers of the dying say happens at the time of death. The story is enormously interesting. Alex: Isnât there somewhat of a disconnect there as well? You were talking about early on in your research when the person who was running the ward of the hospital was not interested in having you poking around with your patients. Isnât there also this disconnect with end of life healthcare providers? If I was to walk down to my local hospice center, go, pull a nurse aside and say, âIâm really concerned about my mental health because Iâm having visitations from my father.â Iâm sure sheâd pull me aside and say, âReally, thereâs nothing to worry about. I see this all the time.â Versus if I walk in and told my psychiatrist this or my neurologist this down at the hospital, theyâd be putting me under medication. So you obviously are exploring and starting with these end-of-life healthcare providers. Why hasnât been done before? Maybe the other question is, is their story different from other healthcare providers? Peter: What is so interesting is that thereâs a huge black hole. Science has refused to look at this area in the west. They just are not many papers on the mental state of the dying and what they experience. Again, I think there are two reasons for this. One is because thereâs the taboo of looking at death because the doctor see it as a medical failure if their patient is going to do so they donât study it. So thatâs one point. The other point is that in society too, we tend to not consider our own death. Weâll talk about peopleâs death but we very seldom spend time thinking about what death is going to be like for us. You certainly donât in a party go up to somebody and say, âHi! Tell me, whatâs it going to be like when you die.â We make absolutely certain we donât visit that. So we donât allow ourselves both from a scientific point of view and to some extent in a cultural point of view to look at this. But the phenomenology is just fascinating and it starts, the Dalai Lama says that we know, and this is my current research interest and if any of your listeners have information on this, Iâd love to know about it. The Dalai Lama says that two years before you die, you get inclinations that youâre going to die. So, I would like to know from people if their relatives who have died had inclinations that long before. I donât mean once youâve gone to the doctor and found a lump and you know you got cancer, thatâs not that. Itâs mental inclinations that you know that youâre going to die, probably when you consider yourself to be well before anything happens. So thatâs one point. About a month about you die, then youâll start getting visitations from dead family members. Weâve got enough accounts of these to say who comes and it tends to be spouses are the highest on your list. Then brothers or sisters and children quite often see their grandparents. The visitations are most interesting because it produces a change in journeying language or change in language of the dying. They donât talk about âwhen I die.â They talk about âIâm going on a journey,â âwhen Iâm picked up,â âI wonât be here because Iâm leaving.â Itâs got quite a different sound to it. The visitations usually tell people or the visitors tell people that theyâre going to be there for them and look after them at a certain time. The time they give them is, âIâll be back at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon.â Now the person dies at that time. Sometimes they die in the process of greeting somebody. So weâve got quite a bit of information about the nature of these visitors and what itâs like for people who are dying and what their purpose is. They seem to be there to pick the people up or thatâs what the dying say. The dying can negotiate with these visitors, put off their dying for a bit. They say, âNo. Iâm not ready to go yet. I want to wait for my son.â Sometimes the dying process will seem to stop, they can wait for their son to come and then they die after that. Alex: How intriguing. Iâll make sure we that we have a link up on the Skeptiko website for any of you who are listening where you can directly connect with Dr. Fenwick and pass those stories along. Can I go back for a minute and touch on something that you were mentioning about the cultural factors in this. I was just thinking of how weâve changed our approach to death and how really in the last 20, 30, maybe even 40 years weâve pushed it more and more in the background. I think back about when I was a kid it was becoming rare but it was still possible that people would have a wake in their house. Thereâd be a dead body in the house and that seems so strange to us now. Yet, from a standpoint of being comfortable around the fact that that is whatâs coming for all of us, what are the consequences of removing ourselves from that fact? Peter: Youâre so right. Thatâs absolutely correct. Death has been swept under the carpet and swept into special places. I donât mind going to special places but itâs divorced from life which is the difficulty. Of course, in Victorian times, when death was so common, what would you have, 10 children, five of whom would live? Death was a common phenomenon. Everybody was brought up knowing about death. Death was seen very much as part of life. It wasnât something strange, which you donât want to know about, and is something outside of oneâs experience. Everybody knew about it and they had been there when a sibling or parent had died. Remember of course, people were dying much younger. They didnât go on and on and on, and then going to nursing homes and then die without any contact with the rest of the family. So I think this has had an enormous effect on us to the extent that we have mentally pushed death right away from us. I donât know if you remember but when I was younger, if you saw a cortège passing down the street, I would used to stand still and some people would bow their heads as the hearse pass them. People donât do that now. What you get are the motorists behind honking their horns because the cortège is going so slowly. In other words, there is no longer any respect for the death, for the people who had died, for the dead in that sense at all. Itâs not until you precipitated into this that you come to recognize that death is in fact a profound part of life and it needs to be reintegrated back again to society. I think youâre absolutely right on that. Weâve lost all our rituals too, havenât we? Alex: Yes. I think itâs funny that you mentioned the Dalai Lama and without getting too far into the Buddhist tradition. One thing I came across, and I canât even put my finger on exactly where, but in certain Buddhist sects, the first training that a Buddhist monk does is go and meditate in front of the, basically the graveyard where the bodies are placed before theyâre cremated or whatever is done. The idea is obvious. Is that you start by considering the ending point. I just always thought that was so spot on in terms of isnât that where we should all be putting our attention to begin with before we even consider life, to consider the end. Peter: I think youâre absolutely right. One of the things I would like to do is for death to be taught as a subject in school. Now you may say this is very ghoulish but it is only ghoulish in our culture, itâs only ghoulish because we have swept it under the carpet. So you might say, âWhat are you going to teach the kids? What is there thatâs special about death? Itâs a switching off.â No, it isnât. Iâm going to suggest that we actually donât know yet when we die. Now Iâll support that in the moment because you may say to me when the heart stops beating and brain stem reflexes go, the definition of death. Thatâs when we die. But I can give you artificial respiration and cardiac massage and then you donât die, so thatâs no longer a point. So what you say is we should take brain death but Iâve already shown you that brain disruption does not negate a full mental state with memory which is astonishing if itâs correct. So we have to think about that. Just think about this, if you talk to the dying and say when did the person die, they will tell you that there is a moment when the body that theyâve been looking at changed from an animated or having an occupied presence to one when itâs an empty shell. Now this is a definite moment they say. Alex: So this is during an out of body experience? Peter: No, just ordinary people dying. The relatives gathered around. They look at it and say itâs moved from an animated presence to an empty shell. These ideas might be strange but yet these are what the people who are surrounding the body at the time of death say. Now if you take that as the moment of death, then youâre going to push death quite a long way [inaudible 00:32:40] from the definition which weâve been thinking about before which is the cessation of respiration, etc. Sometimes we have accounts from people. Iâve got a lovely account from a son who came and visited his dead father a week after he had died. The father had asked this, in fact, his body was kept until his son came. When the son arrived, his experience was that his father was still there, still present in his body even though heâd been dead, as weâre using the other definition, for over about a week. Then soon after his father had been sitting with him for some time, it became apparent to the son that the state of the body, as far as he perceived it, changed and it became an empty shell. Now that sort of thing would suggest that our understanding of death yet is still very imperfect. We need many, many more accounts from people and studies of what this actually means because it may mean that we will get a linking in our western tradition much more onto the eastern traditions of death, the idea and the concept of something leaving. Now, if you ask people who, again, who care for the dying theyâll tell you that the relatives of the dying frequently see shapes and mists leaving the body at the time of death, when they stop breathing. So we have this within our own culture of things leaving the body at the time of death. But it goes much, much wider than that. There is some evidence of connectiveness between the dying and people they know. Weâve had the chance to look at this and it has a very definite structure to it. The phenomenon is as follows: that somebody whoâs connected to the dying person at a distance, maybe in another country even, suddenly gets a very strong feeling that that person is dying or if theyâre not dying that something very strong is happening to them. Now the way this feeling occurs depends on the mental state of the individual at the time the experience happens. So if youâre awake, you get fairly simple ones, theyâre strong feelings, theyâre emotions that something is happening. Itâs a compulsion that you have to go and ring somebody up because theyâre in danger, that sort of feeling. Occasionally, people report a vision of the person but that is rare. They may have a knowledge that the person has come to say goodbye to them and reported to the knowledge. Itâs that sort of thing and of course, this happens in people who donât know that the other person is ill at all. Now if youâre asleep then the visitation is quite different. Itâs much more complex, itâs much more narrative. It now takes part as a part of dream imagery when the dying person comes to tell you that theyâre dying. Usually, they come with the message that theyâre also okay now. The phenomenology is something like this, there is this one other woman who became aware that her son was standing at the end of her bed. Her son was in country, she was in another and that he was dripping wet. As she watched him, she became aware that he slowly became dryer and then became surrounded by light. The light is always the light of love and compassion. He said to his mom that heâs okay and then the vision faded. Now this was all in a dream. She didnât know whether she was awake or in a dream. I suspect she was probably asleep. Of course, she was extremely worried by this because she knew that something awful had happened to him. So when she could she rang up to find that heâd been drowned about the time that he appeared to his mother. Now weâve got lots and lots of stories like this, these deathbed care instances. So thereâs a very strong linkage at the time of death between the person whoâs dying and somebody they know extremely well. Alex: Whatâs so intriguing about this story that youâve just told and the way that youâre linking the science to the stories is that thereâs, again, such this disconnect between science that youâre trying to put together and whatâs generally accepted among mainstream science. What do you think itâs going to take to change that? Is there a breakthrough study that can be done? Is there breakthrough work that can be done or is it just plowing away with the kind of work which is very, very compelling? Is it just building block by block, putting together accounts and doing work or is there some breakthrough that we can have? Peter: I think the breakthrough is going to come through some [inaudible 00:38:18] experiment. Where it becomes quite clear that in cardiac arrest itâs possible for the consciousness with a dysfunctional brain to perceive what is happening in the [inaudible 00:38:31]. Maybe go outside it and pick up information and then remember this after is over because one of the things that we do know that is that memory is significantly affected in head injuries. Itâs one of the first questions you ask, âDo you remember what happened?â Thatâs just because memory is so sensitive to cerebral trauma. So it should be, on our current understanding of memory function, impossible to remember what happens after cardiac arrest during that process. So if we can do really two things, one is to define the brain state more accurately, in other words we need cerebral monitors of some sort. It would be interesting what weâre doing is to stop the cerebral blood flow. If we could look at cerebral blood flow at the time of the cardiac arrest and we can get information from the patientâs account to show that they were indeed acquiring information at the time their brain was dysfunctional and to remember this afterwards. Then we have to ask questions about consciousness and whether it is the sort of phenomenon that we think it is at the moment. If it turns out that itâs not, then all the things that Iâve been talking about come right midstream scientific agenda. Weâd have to then get more information on it ¬¬- but the crucial breakthrough, one crucial breakthrough, certainly that. The other breakthrough is just collecting information of what actually happens. There is a doctor in the States, in Houston, Dr. John Lerma, who had started this process of collecting information, what happens around the time of death. Heâs got the most wonderful accounts of what happened. So we need many, many more Dr. John Lermas all over the States starting to ask these questions and publish them. In fact, all of us who are interested in human in life must start to look at and understand human death because it is so much part of life. Alex: Absolutely. I think at some point it just becomes an issue of parsimony and I think weâre almost already there. What other explanations do we have? Although it is interesting, I had a conversation with a Dr. Cliff Saron at the University of California-Davis. Hereâs a guy who was actually, heâs at the Center for Mind and Brain and heâs studying Buddhist monks and meditation. I actually had the occasion to call Dr. Saron because I was interested in potentially supporting the research, in funding some of it. So I thought this would be someone who would be very open to continuation of consciousness research. He just was hostile to the idea and, it seemed to me, very misinformed about the data. What particularly brought up which I wanted to address with you is it seems like no matter how much research is mounted on the side of continuation of consciousness, the skeptics are waiting on the other side to just find the least little bit of evidence to counter that. What came up from my conversation with Dr. Saron he goes, âWhat about the recent work Henrik Ehrsson,â Iâm probably mispronouncing his name. But in Sweden they did this study and they made such a big deal out it. It garnered so much press attention that they had recreated an out of body experience and when you really look at the substance of the research, thereâs really not much there. Are you familiar with that and would you care to comment on how you think that research might fit into near-death experience and the out of body experience? Peter: Yes. Thereâve been a number of papers published on out of body experiences and the brain processes which underpin them. Now thereâs nothing surprising in that at all because we found for many years with the body image generated within the brain, thereâs structures which mediate it. If you stimulate these structures either electrically or damage them in such things as stroke, you get an alteration in body image. So, thereâs actually no difficulties about that. Alex: Just to back up, thatâs what they did in this study. They used virtual reality goggles in order to trick them into a feeling where their body was at the time. Isnât that essentially it? Peter: Thatâs absolutely correct. But you see, what they didnât do and what they shouldâve done was to refer to the Japanese work which occurred about 20 or 30 years ago, saying that you could change body image by using television cameras in a way which is not too dissimilar from what theyâve just recently done. Theyâre just going over old ground again. Really, all this is showing is that our brain images are enormously plastic and can be changed. As we go towards out of body experiences, in any sense because youâre not actually dealing with that, weâve got one piece of evidence I think from another study which points to the fact that you can get information by an out of body experience when the brain is down. This work was done by Penny Sartori in Swanzee. Sheâs an intensive care nurse and she was doing a study of near-death experiences in the cardiac unit. She divided her sample up into those of whoâve said they left their bodies and watched their resuscitation process and those who had no experience during their cardiac arrest. What she did was she asked both groups of people to say exactly what happened during the arrest. Now, the prediction is that everybody who goes into a cardiac arrest, they have a very good idea of what actually happens in the res situation because of what theyâve seen on telly. Thatâs where the fact that people whoâd say that seeing the rest is probably wrong because itâs just memories of what they think happens. So when she compared the group, they said they had seen it, and how accurate they were with the group who just had not seen anything for what must have happened. Sheâd found that the group whoâve said theyâve seen it were in fact significantly more accurate. Alex: So just to clarify then. The resuscitation process and I donât know anything about it other than ER show on TV like youâre mentioning. But itâs very complicated in terms of the sequence of events at which⦠Peter: That is exactly right. Alex: â¦different apparatus are connected at any time. So the chances that someone would just guess that are not very great and she found significant differences between folks who had been resuscitated after a near-death experience versus those who had not. Is that correct? Peter: Yes. Those who had seen it knows it had happened. Who said theyâve seen it compared to those who had had no experience. So itâs a straw in the wind, you get lots of these straws. As Michael Sabomâs work, again, showing correlations between descriptions of the near-death experiences of what happened during the arrest which they couldnât have known because they were unconscious at the time. So thereâs a lot of evidence pointing in this direction but what we need is to be absolutely certain from a scientific point of view that the brain is down. That needs to be demonstrated apart from the fact that all their brain stem reflexes have gone. We need something to show which is unique to that situation to show that the experience occurred at that time. Alex: The last area I guess that I want to probe in terms of this disconnect between the research and the data on near-death experience, on afterlife encounters, on re-orienting ourselves towards the dying process which is I think part of what youâre trying to do in your book The Art of Dying. But the last component of that that has to do with an interview that I had just recently is the role that religion plays in this whole equation. I canât help but feel that weâve struck a bargain between science and religion and created this false dichotomy that further perpetuates this misunderstanding. The book Iâm talking about is The Spiritual Brain and weâve just had an interview with Denyse OâLeary, who is one of the co-authors of that, is a Catholic and is very upfront about her beliefs and her acceptance of that doctrine. But what I find is from religious folks, theyâre either not willing to look at this data at all or theyâre only willing to accept it to the point that it disconfirms the materialistic, atheistic paradigm. But theyâre not really interested in fully engaging with where this data might lead us. So do you have any thoughts on maybe the role our organized religions, particularly our western religions, have played in this whole issue. Peter: Yes. I think it enormously interesting and a very wide question. Of course now with it being the [inaudible 00:48:41] or is it 150 years since the origin of species. Thereâs been a lot of discussions as to relationship between the evolution theory and religion and the effects that it had at the time on the scientific culture and the way that various religions have seen it. Itâs not the debate which that caused isnât too dissimilar from the debate which the new data on how we die, the phenomenology of dying and what this shows us in terms of moving on, moving towards and moving from, suggestions of the continuation of consciousness. People are very divided, and they get very divided in specific areas. On Monday to Friday, theyâre materialists and on Saturday and Sunday, they accept their religionâs views and the two can be diametrically opposed. Itâs the way that we work like you can pick up a packet of cigarettes in the UK which says, âDanger! Cigarettes cause cancers. This will shorten your life,â and you smoke away happily. Itâs absolutely illogical that one should go through these behaviors. Itâs just simple cognitive [inaudible 00:50:19]. Itâs a refusal to let the two areas come together. But taking it from a different point of view, I think there is a huge change sweeping through society now. The fundamentalists are becoming more fundamental and the atheists are becoming more atheists. Itâs the middle ground which I think tends to be losing out by polarization on the two sides. I think that the result of this would be that we will in fact go through this phase of polarization and then come into a much more general acceptance of the area. I think that this will occur for two reasons; because society is changing but also because the data is pointing towards it is increasingly going to become much stronger. Alex: Itâs funny because one of the things that I talked about with Denyse OâLeary is again, back to the Dalai Lama and heâs famously said that he is in favor of science to test and prove all Buddhist doctrine. To the extent that science finds Buddhist doctrines incorrect then Buddhist doctrines need to change. I kind of challenged her and said, âIsnât this the position that Christians should take, the position of truth that we want the truth no matter where it leads?â I just canât help but wonder why that position hasnât been more popular because it seems like it would really change everything. If across the United States and Europe every pulpit had someone saying, âWe just want the truth. Wherever that is, weâre all about the truth.â Again, that seems so obvious and we know thatâs not going to happen. Peter: I think youâre right. It was said very nicely, I think it was St. Augustine who said that there are no miracles. Theyâre just events that we donât have an explanation for. I think what has happened in our materialistic science is that weâre denying the events. So I think there is a move now towards a recognition that you cannot deny psychic phenomena because theyâre there, what is wrong are your theories about the phenomena. So thereâs a beginning of a publication, thereâs a book coming out I think by Charlie Tart, talking about the end of materialism. This is just it. Itâs a recognition that we have to move on from saying the theory is correct. So this is a range of phenomena which we could look at because weâre encompassed within our theory, to one which says, âHere is the phenomena, now itâs time to change the theories which underpin them.â If you look at the phenomena of dying, they all tend to point towards this journey and this moving on, this continuation of something. So we need to think about that very strongly. Our book in fact ends with the dying process itself. Thatâs why itâs called The Art of Dying . There are very good books, thereâs a lovely book by David Fontana, Is There an Afterlife? Looking at the scientific evidence to suggest that there is a continuation of consciousness and itâs very good. So if youâre a materialist, you canât not look at the phenomenology, you have to do that. Then of course itâs a question of creating the theories which will encompass the phenomena into worldview, rather than saying they canât occur, therefore theyâre not there. Alex: Tell us a little bit more about the book and how itâs doing and what audience itâs reaching. Peter: The book was written because I became interested in what happens as we die. I appeared on a television program discussing what weâd already found and wrote some newspaper articles. So we have over about 1,500 to, again, coming towards 2,000 stories from people who were sitting with their relatives when they died. So that forms the basic data source for the book. It looks at what happens as you approach death, what is a good death, how we can prepare for it, what we should do for it. It suggests ways of understanding the death process and coming to terms with it. I really donât think that any of us now should die without having read a book like that. Which of us would go on a car journey without taking a map or actually knowing whatâs going to happen or where weâre going to go? We got to know that and the data is beginning to be there. So I think itâs terribly important that we do find out about it, not only find about it but that it becomes absolutely mainstream within our culture so we can start to come to terms with it. So that as one of the reasons why we wrote the book. As you said, itâs called The Art of Dying and the art of dying was taken from a book published in the 14th century, thatâs the time that the Black Death in the UK and Europe in fact. It was called the Ars Moriendi, the art of dying. The Ars Moriendi was put out by the church to help guide people through the death process because there werenât enough priests, theyâd been killed by the Black Death, to attend to all the people who were dying. So itâs really there to produce a scientific evidence or what they fear and the phenomena which occur which we should all know about before they start occurring to us, before theyâre forced on us by death itself. Alex: Dr. Fenwick, is there any data on whether or not this guiding process, this being aware of what might lie ahead, whether that plays into the phenomena of dying in any way that youâve discovered? Peter: That is such an interesting question because it goes to two sides. It goes to one, are we dealing with expectation only or is it that we can actually manipulate the phenomenology of death. Now John Lerma, who Iâve talked about before has some data on this. It is that if youâre totally open when you die, just ask and look for all the help you can get then you get it. There are lovely accounts we heard people who were very keen not to die alone and they had visitations from their dead relatives. In our culture, we donât seem to see angels as much as they do in the States. But I suspect that if you want angels to come and help you then you will see angelic figures. Itâs really very interesting and the relationship between expectation and what you allow yourself to perceive in the dying process I think is enormously important. Alex: Well wonderful book and just an even more important practical reason to prepare yourself for the process. It might make a substantial difference in your journey. So what more reason do you need than that? Peter: Yes, absolutely. I totally agree. The Art Of Dying Peter Fenwick Pdf To WordpressAlex: Well thank you so much for joining us today. Itâs been a real pleasure. Peter: Itâs been wonderful speaking to you and thanks very much for asking. Alex: Hey, Dr. Fenwick, thanks again. That was great. I will send you an e-mail of the link when itâs ready to go out and weâll also have a transcript up as well. Peter: Thatâs really kind of you. Thanks so much and I hope this was the sort of thing you wanted. Alex: It was excellent, far exceeded my expectations. Iâll also put a link up and maybe weâll get some stories from some folks. Peter: Listen, I use a different e-mail address for people giving experiences because sometimes we get so many itâs difficult to get them out. Alex: Of course, if you would like to send to me in an e-mail, Iâll make sure that we just provide that link to folks. Peter: Okay, perfect. Iâll do that. Iâll send it on that e-mail address to you so that you can then use that. Alex: Okay, great! Peter: Thanks very much, nice chatting with you. Alex: Thank you, take care. Peter: Okay, bye-bye. (End of interview with DR. PETER FENWICK) Alex: Thanks again to Dr. Peter Fenwick for joining us today on Skeptiko. If youâd like more information about Dr. Fenwickâs books or an e-mail link if you have any of the stories that he was looking for and asked about during the show, please visit our website at Skeptiko.com. Youâll also find links to all our previous shows, a link to our forums and an e-mail link to me. Much more coming up on future episodes of Skeptiko, I have quite a few I think very interesting interviews coming up that Iâve already completed and I just need to get out there, so stay with us for that. Also, much, much more on the experiments weâre working on. Iâve actually been able to find a couple of folks to hire and help me on that, so I think weâre off and going on that again. Much more to come, stay with us and bye for now. â End â
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS John was an eleven-year-old patient of Melvin Morse who was dying of lymphoma. In his last days, he was hospitalized with severe, untreatable pneumonia. Though he was having difficulty breathing and was in constant pain, he was given very few drugs such as morphine and Valium because they made breathing more difficult. 'There are beautiful colors in the sky!' he shouted. 'There are beautiful colors and more colors. You can double jump up here, double jump!' At four a.m. an extraordinary event occurred. They were joined by a woman who said that she had received a strong premonition that she had to visit John right away. She was not known to John's parents, but her son was a playmate of John's. She had no explanation for why she would suddenly visit John at four a.m. except to explain that she had had a vivid dream about John and had felt a need to visit him that was overpowering. 'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'I've seen God, angels, and shepherds. I see the white horse.' As sick as he was, John still begged his family not to feel sorry for him. He had seen where he was going, and it was a joyous and wondrous place. 'It's wonderful. It's beautiful,' he said, his hand held out in front of him. Soon he laid back and fell asleep. John never regained consciousness and died two days later. Dr Peter FenwickJohn's visions and the incidents surrounding them intrigued Dr. Morse. John's mother believes that through God's mediation, John communicated with his friend's mother. Although she knew he had been hospitalized, it was during the period of his most powerful visions that she had her vision of John. Although Dr. Morse has nothing scientific to base it on, Dr. Morse believes coincidence was too great for these periods of vision activity not to be connected in some way. Jump to navigationJump to search
Peter Brooke Cadogan Fenwick (born 25 May 1935) is a neuropsychiatrist and neurophysiologist who is known for his studies of epilepsy and end-of-life phenomena. Education[edit]Fenwick is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge,[1] where he studied Natural Science. He obtained his clinical experience at St Thomas' Hospital.[2] Career[edit]Fenwick is a senior lecturer at King's College, London, where he works as a consultant at the Institute of Psychiatry.[3][4][5] He is the Consultant Neuropsychologist at both the Maudsley,[6] and John Radcliffe hospitals, and also provides services for Broadmoor Hospital.[7] He works with the Mental Health Group at the University of Southampton, and holds a visiting professorship at the Riken Neurosciences Institute in Japan.[5][8] Fenwick is the president of the Horizon Research Foundation,[9] an organisation that supports research into end-of-life experiences. He is the President of the British branch of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.[7] Fenwick has been part of the editorial board for a number of journals, including the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, the Journal of Consciousness Studies and the Journal of Epilepsy and Behaviour.[1] Near-death research[edit]Fenwick's interest in near-death experiences was piqued when he read Raymond Moody's book Life After Life. Initially skeptical of Moody's anecdotal evidence, Fenwick reassessed his opinion after a discussion with one of his own patients, who described a near-death experience very similar to that of Moody's subjects.[10] Since then, he has collected and analysed more than 300 examples of near-death experiences.[11] He has been criticised by the medical community for arguing that human consciousness can survive bodily death.[12] Fenwick argues that human consciousness may be more than just a function of the brain.[8][13] The plain fact is that none of us understands these phenomena. As for the soul and life after death, they are still open questions, though I myself suspect that NDEs are part of the same continuum as mystical experiences.[14] Fenwick and his wife are co-authors of The Art of Dying, a study of the spiritual needs of near-death patients. The Fenwicks argue that modern medical practices have devalued end-of-life experiences, and call for a more holistic approach to death and dying.[15] In 2003, Fenwick and Sam Parnia appeared in the BBCdocumentary 'The Day I Died'. In the documentary Parnia and Fenwick discussed their belief that research from near-death experiences indicates the mind is independent of the brain. According to Susan Blackmore the documentary misled viewers with beliefs that are rejected by the majority of scientists. Blackmore criticized the documentary for biased and 'dishonest reporting',[16] particularly in respect to the theory of consciousness proposed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, which Blackmore herself presented as a theory long ago subjected to 'the most devastating critique' by philosophers Rick Grush and Patricia Churchland, who, according to Blackmore, took Penrose & Hameroff's 'argument step by step, and demolish(ed) each one'.[17] However, Blackmore failed to mention the existence of a reply by Penrose and Hameroff, in which Grush and Churchlandâs arguments are demonstrated to be misleading and with respect to the physiological evidence factually incorrect.[18] Fenwick and Parnia have said that research from NDEs may show the 'mind is still there after the brain is dead'. The neurologist Michael O'Brien has written 'most people would not find it necessary to postulate such a separation between mind and brain to explain the events,' and suggested that further research is likely to provide a physical explanation for near-death experiences.[19]Robert Todd Carroll has written that Fenwick has made metaphysical assumptions and dismissed possible psychological and physiological explanations for near-death experiences.[20] Selected bibliography[edit]
Personal life[edit]Fenwick's interests include hill-walking and fishing.[21] He is married to Elizabeth Fenwick, who co-authors many of his books. References[edit]
External links[edit]
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