The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

by Iain McGilchrist

Most compelling is the evidence of people who report complex ‘near death’ experiences at a time when the EEG shows brain activity to be absent.262 People who are judged clinically dead and are resuscitated or revived after a brief interval with memories of what they have experienced, according to Bruce Greyson, who has studied the phenomenon, typically report exceptional mental clarity, vivid sensory imagery, a clear memory of their experience, and an experience more real than their everyday life; all of this occurring under conditions of drastically altered brain function under which the materialist model would say that consciousness is impossible … There’s a sense of the person’s thoughts being much faster and clearer than usual, and finally there was a life review or panoramic memory where their entire life seems to flash before them … Typical emotions reported during the NDE [near death experience] include an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being, a sense of cosmic unity or being one with everything, a feeling of complete joy and a sense of being loved unconditionally …