I understand the neurological explanations for near-death experiences, and I don’t dispute that the brain plays a major role in shaping perception and memory. In my case, I didn’t feel pain or awareness when struck by lightning. It happened instantaneously. I did not see, hear nor feel the lightning or thunder or know that I'd been struck.
I only became conscious afterward with what I initially took to be a strange dream-like memory. What I concluded was my experience was beyond what the human mind can directly comprehend. There is more to death than we or science currently know. My brain simply tried to translate the event into something familiar. Something I might make sense of in a living breathing human way. I had not before nor since, "dreamed" of meeting a higher power and been given a choice of returning to wakefulness or progressing beyond the light. He sent me back.
So yes, my mind did perceive in a way it might understand the event and profound implications. Can science actually replicate that? ... maybe if science strikes me with lightning ... or something as profound and deadly.
I’m not sharing this as proof of anything for anyone else, just sharing how it changed my own view of consciousness. And until someone experiences an event similar to what I experienced, we can't really have a meaningful conversation about the matter. I shared a longer and somewhat detailed version of the event in the diary forum section here a couple of years ago.
