NDEs and what goes on inside the brains of nuns and Pentecostals.

Nunzilla wind-up toy

I just finished listening to a series of Andrew Newberg's lectures on "The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience." Though it's 90% brain science (he's Director of Research at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital), Newberg is quite candid on where science is less helpful and spirituality becomes more interesting.

(What happens inside the brains of nuns when they pray? Or to Pentecostals when they speak in tongues? I won't tell you, but it's different.[1] Listen or read about it here >)

We've all heard accounts or witnessed the dying saying something in the last moment of life that unmistakably indicates they are seeing people long since dead. Sometimes they physically reach out (as my dad did), or can be heard greeting family members.

Newberg devotes a full lecture to NDEs (near death experiences) and allows for the possibility that the dying are interacting with something real.

Ascent of the Blessed, by Hieronymus Bosch,
often thought to depict an NDE (Wikimedia Commons)

But Newberg doesn't ask something I just thought of:

We usually assume that our body parts and behaviors are the result of an evolutionary advantage, benign byproducts of those, or biological bits that have fallen into disuse over millions of years (junk DNA, the appendix).

Why would the appearance of loved ones, lighted tunnels, etc, be so widespread at the point of death?

I can't think of any advantage this might confer. Lots of analogies (eg, the birth canal, waking from sleep), but not good explanations.

I realize that just because I can't think of one that doesn't mean there isn't one. I'm just asking the question because the phenomenon is real and universal so far as we know

Learn more about NDEs >

Learn more about Andrew Newberg >

(BTW, I've listened to a lot of lectures in my time, and I have to tell you Newberg is outstanding.)

[2014-06-22]

c0

[1]
My personal opinion is that the reason the frontal lobe goes silent when Pentecostals speak in tongues is because they aren't talking to anyone. It's not a "heavenly" language, they aren't being energized by the Spirit; they're just babbling.

I know no one who practices this, so hopefully I'm not unintentionally insulting anyone.

c0