Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-Of-Body Experiences in the Blind

by Kenneth Ring, Sharon Cooper, Charles T. Tart

Ring and Cooper explore evidence that even those blind from birth can "see" during near-death experiences. Their evidence reveals a unique type of perception. More than just "seeing", it involves a deep awareness and profound ability to know that the authors have called "Mindsight". This volume is a ground-breaking work in the field of near-death studies. It investigates the astonishing claim that blind persons, including those blind from birth, can actually "see" during near-death or out-of-body episodes. The authors present their findings in scrupulous detail, investigating case histories of blind persons who have actually reported visual experiences under these conditions. There is compelling evidence that the blind do "see" in those moments, but it is not sight as we think of it. Ring and Cooper uncover a kind of "transcendental awareness" they refer to as mindsight. It involves the strange experience of being able to perceive from all angles at once, from every focal depth at once, and a sense of "knowing" the subject, not just visually, but with a deep and inexplicable knowledge. Human beings may be more complex than we thought, gifted with amazing abilities of perception. This book is an opportunity to assess the evidence for yourself.

Genres: Spirituality, Paranormal

217 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 1999

Reviews

[Tom]

Meh. It was so-so. The most interesting parts of the books were the accounts of the blind and low vision people who experienced NDEs. Sadly, this was only in one chapter of the book, and the rest is mostly pseudoscience and parapsychology which tries to apply the scientific method to surveys and accounts that are mostly only internally verified. Until more rigorous methods can be used such as a pattern on a OR floor that can be confirmed by unconscious patients, I remain skeptical as a scientist. As a believer in the afterlife, I found it fascinating, but again thin on the descriptions of 'semmingly countless' accounts from blind people who have experienced OBEs or NDEs. I also found it interesting that in a literature review towards the end of the book, they cite "esoteric literature," and I instantly began thinking while reading later chapters that this book could be described as 'esoteric literature' as well. It's an interesting phenomenon, but overall one would be better off reading the book by Jeff Long from 2010, and his anaylses on NDEs and his review of this book.

[Jorge Delgado-Ron]

I consider this book a MUST READ, but I am not going to give it FIVE starts because the content can be dull for some. Even for me, I would have done a few things differently.

The book is OLD, published in the nineties, but extremely valuable for two reasons. For potential readers,

(1) sampling among people born blind nowadays might be a bit harder. In the fifties, we overexposed a lot of premature babies to high oxygen, resulting in damage to their retina. I am not sure repeating the same study would result in a comparable sample nowadays.
(2) as of 2023 (PMID: 37457556), the overall study of the topic suggests that the people born blind cannot produce internal visual imagery.

Therefore, the few descriptions in the book about people seeing are unique in two ways. First, they provide a narrative description of the type of words they would use to describe "seeing" (if you accept the book premise) which is valuable even outside the field of NDEs. Second, if the descriptions are good enough for you, "seeing" during NDEs would disprove the hypothesis that NDEs are visual hallucinations.

I wish I had all of the transcripts. Yet, the book is very good as is, too.

I have seen other people reviews saying the book is MEH. If the book comes as unconvincing is precisely because Drs Ring and Cooper do not sugarcoat the testimonies as irrefutable proof. Rather, they show the nuance in their interviews and the epistemological limitations of asking someone about something they had not experienced before.

Cherry-picking from this book could get you a banger of a book as a "proof," the fact it doesn't tells you they took a careful and skeptic approach.

A full review can be found at https://andresdelgadoron.substack.com...

[Kevin Revolinski]

Interesting study of Near Death and Out of Body Experiences in blind people who nevertheless see things clearly. There's not a ton of data and of course the innaccuracy of humans reporting an experience, but there's enough there to make you wonder. Toward the end it feels like it's teetering on the edge of a New Age theory of "nonlocal" consciousness and transcendental flakiness, but who knows, what we learn in the future might make our current skepticism look quaint some day. Much of the book describes the interaction with subjects and their stories. Skimmable and then worth reading the theories and dispelling of potential explanations at the end.