Quotes from Greg Taylor

How can we account for long-term memory", van Lommel asks, "if the molecular makeup of the cell membrane of neurons is completely renewed every two weeks and the millions of synapses in the brain undergo a process of constant adaptation?"15

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

As for the theory that these accounts were, perhaps, just stories – confections of creative minds – Gurney's response was scathing. "When we submit the theory of deliberate falsification to the cumulative test…there comes a point where the reason rebels", Gurney wrote.

Belief, as the sagacious Robert Anton Wilson once remarked, "is the death of intelligence".

Of course, if you accept the materialist belief that memories can be created only if the brain is functioning, then that will be your conclusion. But that's exactly the point in question: whether mental functions like perception and memory can occur without the brain.

Nevertheless, the large number of experiences of this type reported by carers suggest that it is an area that deserves far more attention. If it can be shown that patients with significant degradation of their brain tissue (for example, in advanced cases of Alzheimer's Disease) become lucid, with memories intact, in their final days, what implications does this have for the relationship between mind and brain?

Indeed, during their final days the terminally ill are often said to be almost living in two worlds, swapping nonchalantly between chatting with palliative carers and family physically present in the room, and interacting with visions of previously deceased individuals who appear to be – in some way – there to help them through the dying process.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight. – Larry McMurtry

It's an odd question actually, because your body has never been a permanent thing – it is an illusion.

Most of us, even in this digital age, know what a grandfather clock is – but do you know how they got their name? They were once known as long-case clocks, but in 1876 American songwriter Henry Clay Work wrote the song that would give birth to the name that we know them by today: "My Grandfather's Clock".

The shadow of the Newtonian worldview is promulgated by those who wish, for whatever reason, to reinforce the view of a deterministic Universe with consciousness as a bizarre epiphenomenon.

For those who think that the NDE has been satisfactorily explained by science, their advice is sobering: "Theories proposed thus far consist largely of unsupported speculations about what might be happening during an NDE".111