Light and Death One Doctor s Fascinating Account of Near Death Experiences
This article continues the construction of a dualistic interaction ist theory of the near death experience (NDE) the theory of essence, which was begun in two previous articles (Arnette, 1992, 1995) The present work repre sents an extension of the theory to the microscopic level of analysis, in order to specify in detail the mechanism of essence brain interaction and to address some general and specific objections to interactionism and the theory of essence. In the theory construction process, a second issue is addressed: that of the ap parent multiplicity of causes of NDEs or NDE like experiences. I show that this multiplicity is simply a manifestation of the mode of essence brain interaction and is accurately predicted by the theory. How can thoughts and ideas, decidedly abstract entities, arise from mere neurons or collections thereof? Conversely, how do thoughts influ ence neurons and, thereby, the functioning and actions of our bodies? These questions are a modern rendering of an ancient dilemma, the philosophical mind/body problem, which inquires as to the nature of our conscious experience and indeed of our very humanity. The present work, the third in a series of related articles, approaches these questions from the context of information provided by the near death experience (NDE) and, in the process, sheds theoretical light on the apparent mul tiplicity of causes of NDEs and NDE like phenomena. In two previous articles (Arnette, 1992, 1995a) I put forth compo nents of an explanatory theory of the NDE, the theory of essence, built J. Kenneth Arnette, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Eastern Washington University. This work was initiated while Dr. Arnette was a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. Reprint requests should be addressed to Dr. Arnette at the Department of Psychology, MS 94, Eastern Washington University, 526 Fifth Street, Cheney, WA 99004 2431. Journal of Near Death Studies, 18(2) Winter 1999 1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 73 JOURNAL OF NEAR DEATH STUDIES upon an empirical foundation provided by the NDE data. This theory is a form of mind/body dualism called dualistic interactionism, hold ing that humans are composed of two parts comprising two different substances the physical body composed of matter, and the essence composed of a nonmaterial substance which interact during physical life to produce mind. In the first article (Arnette, 1992) hereafter referred to as Part I, I explored the similarities between the predictions of Albert Einstein's (1961) theory of general relativity and certain aspects of the NDE (Moody, 1975) such as the tunnel, timelessness, and weightlessness. I interpreted the NDE from a relativistic perspective that yielded, for example, the notion that the NDE tunnel is identical to the wormhole (Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, 1973) providing a pathway to other uni verses. In the second article (Arnette, 1995a) hereafter referred to as Part II, I proposed a connection between essence/body interactions as described by NDErs and the interactions between electric dipoles as described in electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. For example, I proposed that the NDE phenomenon of thought reception (Moody, 1975) was analogous to the radiationless process of fluorescence energy transfer (Stryer, 1978) In this manner, I interpreted additional elements of the NDE within the framework of physics and chemistry, providing a level of organization and explanation of the near death phenomena that ma terialistic theories have thus far been unable to offer. In the present article I continue the construction of the theory of essence and present an extension of the theory to the microscopic level of analysis, in order to specify in more detail the mechanism of essence/ brain interaction and to address some general objections to interaction ism, as well as some specific objections to the theory of essence. As I will discuss below, the lack of an interaction mechanism has long been an objection posed by materialists to interactionism. In the process of con structing this mechanism, I will address a second issue: the apparent multiplicity of causes of NDEs or NDE like experiences. I will show that this multiplicity is simply a manifestation of the mode of essence/brain interaction. The Perceived Inadequacies of Interactionism In the centuries old argument between materialists and dualistic interactionists over the mind/body problem, materialists have iden tified the violation of scientific conservation principles and the lack of a 74