Your poll has quite biased options with multiple ones implying that the Light is somehow God and not allowing a nuanced view of near death experience.
Multiple medical studies have been conducted into Near death Experiences such as the Perera study in Australia in 2005 or Lommel's study in the Netherlands in 2001 for instance.
The medical fraternity have created a weighted Core Experience index to try and objectively measure the phenomena and the Near-Death experience scale to try and predict who is more likely to experience the phenomenon.
Generally they concluded that about 10% of people who undergo cardiac arrest and have dilated pupils and cessation of observable brain activity but survive, will report a Near Death Experience afterward. The problem is that there is no way to see if there is really no brain activity as we cannot hook up a dying unstable person to an MRI or EEG, so we cannot say that a Near death experience is not related to brain activity.
Another problem is that if we use the Anaesthetic agent Ketamine, which is a NMDA receptor antagonist, we get very similar reported phenomena afterward such as lights, out of body etc. This agent raises your heart rate, releases adrenaline, decreases dopamine re-uptake and activates pain reduction pathways, so loosely mimics what one would expect in a dying person physiologically, although more controlled.
Based on the reported phenomena, it looks similar to disorders of the Occipital and temporal lobes of the brain and lymbic system. These symptoms are visual and non-verbal auditory hallucination, autoscopia etc. and no one would suggest that these people with brain damage or epilepsy are now communing with God.
Generally the modern medicine has concluded that Near Death Experiences are either lucid dreaming, breakdown of cerebral physiology, lymbic system stress or alternatively a psychological defence mechanism.
I find it doubtful that the mere mortal hands of physicians can bring someone back that has already begun to commune with God. If God wanted to take you, believe me you would die regardless of every intervention of modern medicine.
So my personal opinion is that it is either a process of dying or a lucid dream. I have not investigated this matter thoroughly though, so I am willing to give a lot of leeway to other more esoteric interpretations, but they must be weighed against the facts as well.
As an aside, the idea of souls leaving bodies and astral projection etc. I find ridiculous for I do not believe a body would be able to survive without its soul. This to me seems to be hallucinations at best and the fact that practitioners thereof continue to show brain activity in MRI and EEG tests confirm that someone is still at home upstairs while they are supposedly 'travelling'.
I also see no reason why visions in the Bible require the soul to leave the body. This does not necessarily follow.
Your reply is brilliant!
May I quote you into other related discussions that I have going on this?
I am sure that you will enjoy reading about the Pam Reynolds procedure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Reynolds_case
"Pam Reynolds Lowery (1956 – May 22, 2010), from
Atlanta, Georgia, was an American singer-songwriter.
[1] In 1991, at the age of 35, she stated that she had a
near-death experience (NDE) during a brain operation performed by
Robert F. Spetzler at the
Barrow Neurological Institute in
Phoenix, Arizona. Her experience is one of the most widely documented in
near-death studies because of the circumstances under which it happened. Reynolds was under close medical monitoring during the entire operation. During part of the operation she had no brain-wave activity and no blood flowing in her brain, which rendered her
clinically dead. She claimed to have made several observations during the procedure which later medical personnel reported to be accurate."
..... Reynolds reported to her physician that she was experiencing symptoms of
dizziness,
loss of speech and
difficulty in moving parts of her body. Her physician referred her to a neurologist and a
CAT scan later revealed that Reynolds had a large
aneurysm in her brain, close to the
brain stem. Because of the difficult position of the aneurysm, Reynolds was predicted to have no chance of survival. As a last resort,
Robert F. Spetzler — a neurosurgeon of the
Barrow Neurological Institute in
Phoenix, Arizona — decided that a rarely performed surgical procedure, known as
hypothermic cardiac arrest, was necessary to improve Pam's outcome. During this procedure, also known as a
standstill operation, Pam's body temperature was lowered to 50 °F (10 °C), her breathing and heartbeat stopped, and the blood drained from her head. Her eyes were closed with tape and small ear plugs with speakers were placed in her ears. These speakers emitted audible clicks which were used to check the function of the brain stem to ensure that she had a flat
EEG — or a non-responsive brain — before the operation proceeded. The operation was a success and Reynolds recovered completely. The total surgery lasted about 7 hours with a few complications along the way."
....
such an one caught up to the third heaven.
