Just my imagination running away with me

Shockingly, no Christians saw Shiva in their NDEs.

For Jews, sitting shiva means an entirely different thing, and they weren't mentioned in the study. For the record, none of the 700 Indian medical personnel surveyed reported hearing tales of seeing Jesus from their patients. Among the 5000 American doctors and nurses participating in the study, no Christian patients spoke of being greeted by Hindu deities. As I said, there was no word on any Jewish patients, but I'd bet they didn't see Ganesh or Jesus.

I read about this study in Susan Blackmore's classic skeptic-oriented near-death experience book "Dying to Live." She states, "Religious figures [in the NDEs] were, not surprisingly, in conformance with the person's own religion." No duh! You'd think if the patients were actually visiting Heaven, and if, as most religions believe, there is only one true religion. the experiencers would be visiting the same set and cast of characters.

It's almost as if the images of Heaven were nothing more than the product of their own cultural influences.

Helping to make covert cognition less covert

I was recently informed by Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Inquirer, that they would like to publish my feature article, "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience." He sent it to an outside expert, who also liked it, and replied amazingly quickly, as well. I was very pleasantly surprised that the expert had no suggested changes whatsoever. I did exhaustive research for the article, but I'm not a neuroscientist, nor do I play one on TV. Plus, it was the first article I've ever written. The earliest the article could come out would be in the July/August issue, appearing in June. That's a lot earlier than I expected!

This, of course, will help my non-fiction writing career immensely. All my previous publications were fiction. But I hope the publication of the article will also educate the public about covert cognition. Though covert cognition is somewhat controversial because some hide-bound neuroscientists have had trouble accepting the findings, there is a wealth of very solid empirical evidence to back it up. I'm not going to give too much detail about the article, but it's part personal essay about my experiences, part exploration of the implication of covert cognition for near-death experiences (NDEs).

My research helped me to understand what happened to me a great deal. Being a card-carrying skeptic, I didn't understand the dichotomy between what my doctors perceived as my hopelessly damaged brain and my rich mental life during my coma. It was no miracle; I was simply experiencing covert cognition. I also did quite a bit of research about near-death experiences. It's often claimed that the people undergoing them were incapable of imagining their NDEs because they're unconscious. It's also alleged that they couldn't hear the things going on around them. But I did. Even as the doctors were shining lights in my eyes to gauge my level of awareness, I was telling them in my coma-dream to leave me alone so I could get back to sleep.

They told my loved ones to give up hope for my full recovery. That even if I woke I up, I would never regain my full mental faculties. How many people like me are out there? According to researchers, that could be as many as one in five people with consciousness disorders. How many of them are having their plugs pulled even though they're experiencing their own coma-dreams?

Not too long ago, I asked my neurologist if she was familiar with the work of Dr. Adrian Owen and his lab at the Brain and Mind Institute. They're pioneers in the study of covert cognition. She was not. I would like to change that.

The first vegetative patient Dr. Owen studied turned out to be covertly aware. That was fortunate, both for Kate Bainbridge and Dr. Owen, whose career took a new turn after that discovery. Kate received therapy after Dr. Owen's astonishing findings and she recovered. She's severely disabled today, but like me, she retained her mental faculties completely.

I hope the publication of my article will help inform the public about these recent findings and enhance the cause of those one in five patients. Dr. Owen's lab has had some recent success detecting covert cognition with EEGs. I had an EEG. Though it showed I wasn't brain dead--it's a good thing they didn't test me first thing in the morning!--the EEG couldn't show them that I was still aware, I wasn't fully aware, but I was still "in there," as Kate Bainbridge put it.

Somebody needs to speak out for the people in my situation who aren't as fortunate as I was, because they certainly can't speak for themselves.