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Fascinating research. What strikes me is many of these near death experiences are described by people who've been under general anesthesia when they had their experiences. Starting in my mid 30s I've had about five general anesthesia operations. In each case they'd drop the mask and I'd find myself in the recovery room with absolutely no memory of what happened in between, IOW an experience much like riding a time machine.

. The near death experiences while under general anesthesia profoundly differ because some part of the person regains some kind of consciousness in spite of the anesthesia. Now I get spiritual because that leads me to believe that each of us has two kinds of consciousness, a physical consciousness and a spiritual consciousness, with the spiritual consciousness remaining dormant while each of us is physically alive. Then, on the moment of death, or perceived likely death for someone who is psysically conscious, the spiritual consciousness, possibly the soul, separates from the body and takes over, subject to the possibly of being reunited.

I realize this is wild speculation; hence, I invite polite disagreement.

I have had 5 general anesthesia ops as well.

Each time I did not know or remember when I dropped out of consciousness, just like turning off a light switch.

Woke up in post-op, once 6 hours later, like waking up from a dream you can’t remember.....................

Fascinating research. What strikes me is many of these near death experiences are described by people who've been under general anesthesia when they had their experiences.

When you are under general anesthesia, you are barely down and can have brief moments where you are up enough to have an awareness of your surroundings. I've heard about the bright light associated with NDEs and can confirm that when I was under general anesthesia, I too saw the bright lights, heard voices and saw humanlike forms but realized it was all due to my coming up enough to have a brief awareness. The anesthesiologist probably noticed that and tweaked the dosage just enough to put me back down.