Materialists Act Like Soldiers in a War on Meaning

 Behold today's materialists, many of which act like they were soldiers in a War on Meaning. What we can call the War on Meaning is a long-standing agenda of materialists to describe human life in a way that makes it sound as meaningless as possible.  Materialists started out by pushing the idea that the human race is a mere accident of nature, contrary to all of the facts of biology which suggest in the strongest way that we are here on purpose. Materialists never had more than the scantiest crumbs of reasoning to try to back up such a claim that the human species is an accident of nature, but they used "give us an inch, and we'll take a mile" tactics to try to make their specious specks look like something substantial.  

Materialists have long engaged in free-will denialism, which has been part of this War on Meaning. Trying to portray human life as having  no moral meaning, materialists attempted to persuade us that all of our actions are unavoidable on the grounds that every decision is just chemistry or electricity going on in the brain, and that we are controlled by the "falling dominoes" of molecular interactions. The best way to debunk this nonsense is to study the brain and its many severe physical shortfalls very carefully, which leads the sufficiently diligent scholar and philosopher of mind to the conclusion that brains cannot explain human decisions, human beliefs or human memory. Once we adequately study the brain and human mental phenomena in all its diversity and human best mental performances that are impossible to explain by neural means, the malignant foolishness of free-will denialism melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West melting away near the end of The Wizard of Oz.

Later on materialists tried to drag us down the craziest of rabbit holes, pushing the nutty idea of an infinity of parallel universes in which all possible events occur, and in which human life has no meaning. There was never the slightest iota of evidence for believing in such a claim. The claim was based on the silliest reasoning. It was argued that there is in quantum physics a puzzle of "wave function collapse," and that one way to get around the puzzle is to imagine that every possible outcome is actualized.  This was the stupidest reasoning. 

The very concept of a "wave function collapse" is a social construct of physicists, not an actual physical reality. A wave function is part of a mathematical calculation method that physicists find useful in making certain predictions. According to most interpretations of quantum mechanics, there is no actual event in nature corresponding to a "wave function collapse." As the source here says, "Of the several 'interpretations' of quantum mechanics, more than half deny the collapse of the wave function." Another source puts it this way:

"In one view, a wave function is a piece of math, an equation. It’s not a physical thing. So, it can’t collapse in any physical sense. The collapse is metaphorical. This is one interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s the interpretation taught in most university classes, the Copenhagen Interpretation."

So the idea that we should believe in some infinity of parallel universes because we are puzzled by a wave function collapse was always the silliest nonsense, rather like believing in an infinite anti-universe because we are puzzled by the concept of negative infinity. But many materialists love the idea of an infinity of parallel universes, because it gives them a pretext for a description of reality in which all meaning is destroyed. Of course, some multiverse in which all possible outcomes occur is a multiverse devoid of any meaning. A person's life can have no meaning if he lives in some multiverse in which everything he might possibly do occurs. 

Then there is the simulated universe theory originated by Nick Bostrom. It is the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations have computers that are simulating our reality, and that you are just some bits in an extraterrestrial computer. The reasoning Bostrom gave for the idea was fallacious. It was based on the idea that there is a nonzero chance that extraterrestrial computers can produce a stream of experiences like human experiences. This crucial premise of the theory was false. Computers can no more create a stream of human experiences than your television set can cause a tiger to leap out of its screen and bite you. Arguments that we are mere bits in some extraterrestrial computer program are part of the War on Meaning. If you were merely part of some simulation of human life running on a computer on another planet, then your life presumably would have no meaning, and you could not even be sure that the people you see really exist. 

Recently we had on a popular podcast an example of the featherweight reasoning of simulated universe theorists. It comes in the 56:12 mark of the interview here with AI expert Roman Yampolskiy. The podcast host talks about how there is some impressive Google program producing video output from text prompts. The host says this is the beginning of being able to create a simulation that simulates "everything we see here," apparently referring to his studio and his current podcast. Yampolskiy then unwisely says, "That's why I think that we are in one, that's exactly the reason," and by "we are in one" he means a simulated universe in which our experience is produced by computers. 

This is some very bad reasoning. The impressive Google program the podcast host is referring to is something that merely produces pixels on a computer screen. Neither that program nor any other program has ever produced the slightest iota of human experience. It's the same thing for video consoles such as PlayStation and X-Box. They produce mere pixel outputs on a screen, and never produce the slightest speck of human experience. A human may interact with a computer or a video console, and have his experience affected by such devices. But no such devices have ever produced a single second or a single millisecond of human experience. 

Therefore all arguments based on improving computer proficiency are completely worthless in supporting the idea that computers on other planets can produce our experience. What is going on in such arguments is equivocation sophistry. Ambiguity in the word "simulation" is being leveraged. First the simulated universe believer uses the word "simulation" to refer to something that is only output on a computer screen. Then (without announcing that he is changing how he is using the word "simulation") the believer starts talking about universe simulations, using "simulation" in an entirely different sense, to mean something that has never been observed to any degree whatsoever: the production of human-like experience from computer activity. 

This is the same kind of equivocation sophistry that goes on if someone says, "Taylor Swift is a star; a star is a giant self-luminous ball of hot gas; so Taylor Swift is a giant self-luminous ball of hot gas." In that fallacious reasoning, the speaker switches the definition of "star," using one definition at the beginning, and an entirely different definition at the end. Similar tricks are used by the simulated universe believer. First he refers to a "simulation" that is a mere output of pixels on a screen. Then, without announcing he is switching the definition of "simulation," he says something about a "simulated universe" in which the idea is a flow of human experience like the experience humans have. Progress in producing outputs on computer screens gives not the slightest warrant for thinking that outputs of human experience could be produced by a computer. No computer has ever produced one speck of human experience. 

Materialists are constantly engaging in equivocation sophistry like this.  Their biggest example involves equivocation on the word "evolution." First the materialist will tell you "evolution is fact," referring to a fact of mere gene pool change over time. Then the materialist will say that this proves the doctrine of common descent, which is a definition of "evolution" entirely different (and a billion times more presumptuous) than the mere fact of gene pool change over time. 

Yampolskiy is reasoning very poorly when he states this at the 57:02 mark, using the phrase "we are in one" to mean that humans are merely part of an extraterrestrial computer simulation of our existence:

Yampolskiy: "That's why I think we are in one, that's exactly the reason. AI is getting to the level of creating human agents, human level agents. And virtual reality is getting to the level of being  indistinguishable from ours."

There is progress in computer programming and data processing that allows some computer programs to perform highly, debatably at "human level."  But that provides not the slightest warrant for establishing the possibility or likelihood that human experience is produced by extraterrestrial computers. Getting a computer to produce a second, minute or day of human experience is an entirely different task from getting computers to produce some visual output on a screen that looks like human experience. Similarly, progress in virtual reality provides not the slightest warrant for thinking that a computer could produce a single minute of human experience (not to be confused with screen output simulating human experience). And the fact that AI systems can provide high-performing results (such as well-answering a typed question) provides not the slightest warrant for thinking that computers will ever be able to produce any speck of actual human experience. 

A person as old as me has seen over his lifetime the greatest progress in screen representations of tigers. The first tigers I saw on TV were blurry black-and-white affairs, no bigger on the TV screen than a dinner plate. Now my wide-screen TV can produce a stunningly sharp image of a tiger, almost as big as a real tiger. But it would be the worst type of reasoning for me to reason like this:

"Gee, the tigers on TV sure are getting better as the years pass. The first tigers I saw were black-and-white, small and blurry. Now my TV tigers are so big and realistic-looking, looking just like real tigers. So it seems that soon a tiger will leap out of my TV screen, and that might be dangerous. I better get a gun to protect myself."

The fact that there has been progress in TV screens producing images of tigers provides not the slightest warrant for thinking that a TV could ever produce a living tiger that could leap out of a TV screen. And progress in simulating human experiences on television screens and computer screens provides not the slightest warrant for thinking that computers could ever produce a single second of actual human experience. There is only one thing capable of producing actual human experience: a real live human being. 

A Recent Paper Indicates a 14% Difference Between the Genomes of Humans and Chimps

The intellectual empire of Darwinism was not built on honest speech.  Darwinism got launched by the word trick of using the phrase "natural selection" for a claimed survival-of-the-fittest effect that was not actually any such thing as selection. "Selection" is a word meaning a choice by a conscious agent, but the so-called natural selection depicted by Darwin was no such thing, being a mere blind accidental process rather than any willful act of selection.  Darwin was also guilty of larger deceits, such as the glaring deceit (in a passage of The Descent of Man) of claiming that " there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties."  This appalling lie continues to be repeated by the disciples of Darwin, and a few days before writing this post I saw the same witless claim repeated by one of the evangelists of Darwinism, who cited Darwin as his "proof" for this obviously false claim. 

A very silly thing to say

Following in the footsteps of their adored master, the apostles of Darwinism have for a very long time been guilty of dozens of deceits and misrepresentations large and small. In my post here I have a numbered list of 80+ such deceits, word tricks, misleading statements and tall tales.  One of the worst of these deceits has been the massive repetition by Darwinists of a claim that human genomes and chimp genomes are 98% or 98.6% the same. Typically the claim is made without any citation of its source. The word "genome" refers to what is in DNA. The genome includes the set of all genes in the DNA of an organism. 

Below are some of the leading scientific sources where this false claim has been made:

• “We share more than 98 percent of our DNA and almost all of our genes with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.” (Nature)
• “Most studies indicate that when genomic regions are compared between chimpanzees and humans, they share about 98.5 percent sequence identity.” (Scientific American)
• “Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA.” (American Museum of Natural History)
• “Humans share about 99 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives.” (Science)

There are many scientific papers contradicting such a claim. A 2005 paper had the title "Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees."  A 2021 study found that "1.5% to 7% of the human genome is unique to Homo sapiens," suggesting the claim of 98% similarity was in error. The 2021 study "An ancestral recombination graph of human, Neanderthal, and Denisovan genomes" published in the journal Science states, "We find that only 1.5 to 7% of the modern human genome is uniquely human," and later states, "We find that approximately 7% of the human autosomal genome is human-unique and free of both admixture and ILS."  A 2002 paper is entitled "Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels." 

Recently we had the publication of another paper showing how false is the claim that human DNA is 98% the same as chimpanzee DNA. The paper is one entitled "Complete sequencing of ape genomes," which you can read here. The authors act just as if they were trying to make it almost as hard as possible for readers to get a clear statement of how they debunked the claim that human DNA is 98% similar to chimpanzee DNA. The main body of the text says little more than this on this topic:

"Overall, sequence comparisons among the complete ape genomes revealed greater divergence than previously estimated (Supplementary Notes III–IV). Indeed, 12.5–27.3% of an ape genome failed to align or was inconsistent with a simple one-to-one alignment, thereby introducing gaps."

To get a graph that shows a comparison between the human genome and the chimpanzee genome, you must go to the trouble of opening up the paper's Supplementary Information, as a PDF file. You can do that by using the link here. The average reader will still by stymied, as nowhere in that file do we have a simple quote clearly stating a degree of difference between chimpanzee DNA and human DNA.

Finding the relevant figure requires the following pieces of luck that 99% would not be likely to experience:

• First, you have to know that the Latin name for the chimpanzee species is Pan troglodytes. 
• Then you have to notice that in Supplementary Table VIII.37 the authors are using "mPanTro3" as a tag for the chimpanzee genome. 
• Then you have to somehow find out that the authors are using "hg002" as a tag meaning the human genome. 
• Then you have to somehow find your way to Supplementary Figure III.12, where the seventh row and the eighth row has a comparison between "PanTro3" (the chimpanzee genome) and ""hg002" (the human genome). 

Finally, if all this luck occurs to you, you can get to the relevant visual depiction, which is found in the red rounded rectangle below, where we see a depiction (according to one measure) of the difference between the human genome ("hg002") and the chimpanzee genome ("PanTro3"):

Notice the numbers above. They are about 13%. What the authors have found is that by one important measure (a "gap divergence" measure), there is about a 13% difference between the human genome and the chimpanzee genome. 

Casey Luskin in his post here helped to clarify what is meant by this "gap divergence" measure and another measure called SNV (single-nucleotide variant). He gives us a hypothetical stretch of DNA showing examples of such "gap divergences" and SNV differences:

In the diagram one line represents part of human DNA, and the other line represents part of chimpanzee DNA. The blue parts are parts where you cannot compare the human DNA part to the corresponding part of chimpanzee DNA, or vice versa. 

To compute the total difference between the human genome and the genome of the chimp, we must add these two different types of differences (corresponding to the blue parts and the yellow parts in the diagram above). The paper says that the SNV differences (single-nucleotide variant differences) between humans and chimpanzees are about 1.5%.  To compute the total difference between the genomes we need to add up the 13% "gap difference" measure stated in the paper and the 1.5% SNV measure. That leaves you with a total difference of about 14.5% between the human genome and the chimpanzee genome. 

So the Darwinist authorities who so often told us that there was merely about a 1.5% difference between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees were very much in error, off by a factor of about 1000%. Previous studies published years ago had already shown the falsehood of the the claim of a 1.5% difference between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees, suggesting that that the actual difference was several times larger. But Darwinism evangelists kept citing that phony figure of a 1.5% difference, a figure that was never well-established. 

It is rather obvious why we were so long deceived in this matter. Darwinists have always tried to make the ocean-sized gap between humans and chimpanzees and other apes look like a small gap, as a way of trying to make more credible claims of a natural evolution from an ape-like predecessor to humans. 

A recent article from the very mainstream site LiveScience.com helps clarify that the difference between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees is much greater than 1 or 2 percent. The article tells us this:

"The truth is that the frequently cited 98.8% similarity between chimp (Pan troglodytes) and human (Homo sapiens) DNA overlooks key differences in the species' genomes, experts told Live Science....the 99% figure is misleading because it focuses on stretches of DNA where the human and chimp genomes can be directly aligned and ignores sections of the genomes that are difficult to compare, Tomas Marques-Bonet, head of the Comparative Genomics group at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC/UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, told Live Science in an email.

Sections of human DNA without a clear counterpart in chimp DNA make up approximately 15% to 20% of the genome, Marques-Bonet said. For example, some bits of DNA are present in one species but missing in the other; these are known as 'insertions and deletions'...

So, while earlier studies suggested a 98% to 99% similarity, comparisons that include harder-to-align regions push that difference closer to 5% to 10%, Marques-Bonet said. 'And if we account for the regions still too complex to align properly with current technology, the true overall difference is likely to exceed 10%,'  he said.

In fact, a 2025 study found that human and chimpanzee genomes are approximately 15% different when compared directly and completely." 

What happened is that our mainstream biology authorities for quite a few recent years engaged in the most outrageous deceit by making the false claim that human DNA is 98% the same or 99% the same as chimpanzee DNA. This is only one of innumerable lies and deceits and misleading claims that over the decades have been used to prop up the dubious claims of Darwinists. 

Acting like a giant echo chamber, the ideological soldiers of the materialist mainstream tend to uncritically repeat any useful-sounding sound bite that seems to them like a good talking point. So by a process of social contagion in a herd-like conformist community, an incorrect talking point can become a belief community speech custom, with the same false claim repeated on a thousand web pages and in a thousand professor lectures. 

In the year 2025 the materialist-oriented newspaper The Guardian published an article confessing how scanty is the claimed fossil evidence for the evolution of humans from apelike predecessors. It stated this:

"Our direct knowledge of the first few million years of human evolution derives from a collection of bone fragments that could no more than halfway fill a large shoebox....Attempting to reconstruct the history of early humanity from the available evidence is, it has been said, akin to trying to divine the plot of War and Peace from just 13 of its pages, picked at random."

The wikipedia.org article on "Chimpanzee-human last common ancestor" (CHLCA) confesses, "no fossil has yet been identified as a probable candidate for the CHLCA." Faced with the weakness of fossil evidence backing up the claim that humans and chimpanzees are descendants of a common ancestor, the assertion that human and chimpanzee genomes were 98% or 99% similar seemed to serve as a crucial substitute talking point.  Now that it is clear that such a talking point was untrue, our confidence in such an ancestry claim should be disrupted or shattered. 

Is the recent LiveScience.com article an indication that scientists will no longer give us deceptive miseducation on this topic, and will tell us the truth on this topic from now on? Not quite. The article gives us some evidence of the deceit continuing. The article ends with a quote by a scientist saying, "Humans and chimps are made up of essentially the same building blocks (proteins), but these are used in somewhat different ways to make a human versus a chimp." This sentence misleads us in four ways:

• Organisms such as chimpanzees and humans are not honestly described as being "made up of" proteins. Physically a human is made up of a skeletal system and organ systems, which are made up of organs and other components, which are made up of tissues, which are made up of enormously organized cells, which are made up of organelles, which are made up of protein complexes, which are made up of proteins. You vastly misstate the amount of organization in the human body when you say that humans are made up of proteins. 
• Proteins are way too complex to be honestly described as "building blocks." A building block is something all made of the same thing, usually clay. Protein molecules are very complex components built up of hundreds or thousands of very specially arranged amino acids, with each protein molecule having thousands of well-arranged atomic parts. The continued use of the dishonest phrase "building blocks" to refer to things with thousands of well-arranged parts is an inexcusable deception which can be easily avoided by using the term "building components." 
• It is not true that humans and chimpanzees are made up of the same proteins, because a 2005 paper had the title "Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees."  
• Given all the physical differences and mental differences between bipedal humans who can speak very well and fast and non-speaking chimps who normally walk on four limbs rather than two, it is misleading to claim that proteins are merely used in "somewhat different ways" in humans. 

We can expect that lies about a mere 1% genomic difference between chimps and humans will long continue, just as many biologists have long continued to tell the even worse lie that there is in DNA or its genes a blueprint, recipe or program for making a human body (a lie told because of reasons explained here). The ideological motivation for telling the first of these lies is basically the same as the ideological motivation for telling the second of these lies. 

Psychic Experiences in the News, Part 5

Here is the latest in a series of videos I am making about newspaper accounts of things such as ESP, precognition, prophetic dreams, out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. 

If you have any difficulty viewing this video, try the link here. 

To see another video as long as this one, with the same type of newspaper clippings, see Part 1 of this video series using the link here, or see Part 2 of this video series using the link here, or see part 3 of this video series using the link here or see part 4 of this series using this link here. 

Recent Research on Near-Death Experiences and Out-of-Body Experiences

Near-death experiences are only one of an interrelated set of phenomena suggesting life after death and the existence of a human soul with uncharted powers and limitations. The diagram below sketches the wider picture that near-death experiences are part of. 

A paper describes how voluminous is the evidence for near-death experiences (NDE)  and out-of-body experiences:

"NDEs are not rare phenomena; survey studies indicate that the incidence may be around 4% of the general population (Gallup & Proctor, 1982; Knoblauch, Schmied, & Schnettler, 2001). Researchers have collected tens of thousands of cases. Three important case archives have been established: one at the Religious Experience Research Centre, based in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David; one at the Division of Personality Studies of the University of Virginia; and one in the Near-Death Research Foundation. These archives hold approximately 4,000 case reports. By 2005, more than 65 research studies involving nearly 3,500 NDErs had been published (Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009, p. 7). 

Mainstream neuropsychiatry appears to be stumped in terms of explaining NDEs (Greyson, Kelly, & Kelly, 2009; van Lommel, 2010, pp. 113–134), opening up the possibility that important discoveries may result from deeper investigation of NDEs. Of particular importance in this regard are cases in which people report having conscious experiences under conditions of cardiac arrest. Researchers have found that 10–20% of the people who survive cardiac arrest report such experiences (Greyson, 2003; Parnia, Waller, Yeates, & Fenwick, 2001; Schwaninger, Eisenberg, Schechtman, & Weiss, 2002; van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers, & Elfferich, 2001)."

Below are some fairly recent papers on this topic:

• The 2023 study "Incidence of near-death experiences in patients surviving a prolonged critical illness and their long-term impact: a prospective observational study" found that 19 out of 126 survivors of Intensive Care Unit hospitalization (15%) had a near-death experience. There was only a very low association between such experiences and positive responses on a Dissociative Experiences Scale questionnaire, with an odds ratio of only 1.13. The low association seems to argue against hallucinatory explanations for near-death experiences. The paper here ("Measuring dissociation: Comparison
  of alternative forms of the dissociative
  experiences scale") gives us at its end the questions used for this Dissociative Experiences Scale, a questionnaire that is claimed to be a way of detecting a psychiatric syndrome called "dissociation."  One of the questions asks about out-of-body experiences. The question is: "Some people sometimes have the experience of feeling as though they are standing next to themselves or watching themselves do something and they actually see themselves as if they were looking at another person." People doing the survey are asked to rate how often this happens to them. Anyone having an out-of-experience would answer "Once" or "Sometimes" to such a question, causing them to get a non-zero score on such a scale. But this does nothing whatsoever to show any pathology of such people. It merely shows that people who have out-of-body experiences report out-of-body experiences. 
• A 2024 study "Near-Death Experiences, Post-Traumatic Stress, and Supernormal Abilities in a Latin American Sample" found that "most of our 128 participants reported significant changes regarding beliefs and attitudes toward themselves and others as well as an increase in psychic or supernormal abilities."
• The 2024 study "Near-death experiences after cardiac arrest: a scoping review" examined other previously published studies. It found that "near-death experiences may occur in as frequent as over one-third of patients with cardiac arrest." A table from the study is shown below:

The study "Why Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) Matter to Psychology: An Exploration of Aotearoa New Zealand Psychologists’ Knowledge of NDEs and Implications for Professional Practice"  tells us that psychologists tend to lack knowledge about near-death experiences. We read this:

"Walker and Russell (1989) surveyed 117 registered U.S. psychologists in Illinois... Many were familiar with the term ‘near-death experience,’ but few had knowledge about NDEs."

In the study 45 psychologists were given a fictional narrative that sounded like a typical near-death experience, including a heart attack followed by an out-of-body experience that included the participant viewing his body from outside it, and a claim by the participant that "universal truths" were revealed to him, and a claim by the participant that he had an encounter with God or maybe something like God. Only 11% of the psychologists identified the account as a near-death experience, with the majority of psychologists guessing it was a panic attack, even though the description made no mention of fear or panic. 

The result should come as no surprise. Nowadays you can get a PhD in neuroscience and psychology without ever having been exposed to the vast evidence for paranormal phenomena. Such evidence is senselessly censored from most of the textbooks of neuroscience and psychology. 

Here is a quote from one recent study of near-death experiences:

"In my review of 617 near-death experiences from NDERF, a life review occurred in 88 NDEs (14%). None of the life reviews in these NDEs appeared to have any unrealistic content as determined by my review or based on comments by the NDErs about their own life reviews. Life reviews may include long forgotten details of their earlier life that the NDErs later confirm really happened. If NDEs were unreal experiences, it would be expected that there would be significant error in life reviews and possibly hallucinatory features. "

The same study says:

" A study by Dr. Emily Kelly was a comparison of 74 NDEs with descriptions of encountering deceased individuals with 200 NDEs that did not describe encounters with the deceased. ²³ This study found that when NDErs encountered beings known to them from their earthly lives in their NDEs, only 4% described meeting beings that were alive at the time of their experiences. I reviewed 84 NDEs from NDERF that described encounters with individual(s) that they knew in their earthly life. ²⁴ There were only three NDEs (4%) where the encountered beings were alive at the time of the NDEs, consistent with the findings of the Kelly study."

In the paper here, we have a long discussion of a Mr. M. who reports very frequent out-of-body experiences. The paper uses the term SAC to mean "state of accreted consciousness."

"Mr. M reports experiencing SAC at least once a day for the duration of a couple of minutes to many hours of the standard physical time flow as experienced by a healthy physical body....The vast majority of instances of Mr. M‟s SACs occur spontaneously or at will while Mr. M is fully conscious and active. Mr. M also experiences SACs while relaxed or resting. Mr. M reported his SACs occurred multiple times daily spontaneously or at will, while in a waking or active state such as standing, working at a computer, driving a car, etc., or when resting such as sitting or lying down. Mr. M reported he would be walking or performing regular daily activities at work, when suddenly he would spontaneously slip out-of-body and into the SAC. The SAC experiences would be extremely vivid, real, and a clear sense of separation between the Self and the physical body would accompany each SAC. The surroundings as described by Mr. M, when in SAC, would appear in brighter colors than what is considered normal under a regular state of consciousness. 'Under SAC I perceive colors that are not visible when in the physical body.' ...What triggers Mr. M‟s floating above his body while experiencing SAC in the waking/active state, given the fact that he represents the healthy population and his sensations of being clearly separated from his physical body are not caused by drugs, alcohol, hypnosis, trance, or linked to any pathological condition, is unknown."

The study "Differences and Commonalities Among Various Types of Perceived Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) (Phase II)" analyzed 252 reports of out-of-body experiences, received by those who filled out questionnaires after responding to advertising asking for responses from people who had out-of-body experiences. Some interesting findings of the study are below:

• Page 57: "At least 90 (35.7%) of the 252 perceived OBEs have included a report of having had an actual form or nonphysical body of some sort, usually similar in shape to the physical body (but not always). Other studies found that experients reported having a shape similar to their physical body (or some other type of form included in the results of two of these studies) with a range from 49% to 77% (Alvarado & Zingrone, 1999; Greyson & Stevenson, 1980; Twemlow et al., 1982). A total of 70 (27.8%) of the 252 perceived OBEs in this research so far included a report of lacking any type of form."  One of the participants claimed the ability to change his form at will during an out-of-body experience. 
• Page 24: "Some of the participants reported they were able to see a much wider area than before. This even included a visual perception spanning up to 360° in some cases. Although there was a question about the clarity of sight asked during both phases, the question did not mention anything about the field of their vision, so their comments about a broader form of sight were not directly solicited and their descriptions contain self-chosen terms (e.g., 360°, etc.)." There then follows several quotes from survey respondents talking about 360 degree vision of "fish-eye lens" vision, and two respondents talking about a binocular or zoom ability. 

The study "Incidence of near-death experiences in patients surviving a prolonged critical illness and their long-term impact: a prospective observational study" found a 15% incidence of near-death experiences in ICU (intensive care unit) survivors. 

For a very in-depth discussion of a recent paper purporting to present a model of near-death experiences (the NEPTUNE model of Charlotte Martial and others), see my long post "Physically Unrealistic NEPTUNE 'Model' of Near-Death Experiences Is a Misleading Mishmash." Some of my complaints were similar to those in a letter published in Nature Reviews Neurology a few days before my post was published, a letter entitled "Limitations of neurocentric models for near-death experiences." The letter is behind a paywall, but without paying I can at least read that it says this about Martial's NEPTUNE "model" of near-death experiences:

"Their model, though ambitious, omits key phenomenological features that are central to the core NDE experience [near-death experiences] and overextends certain neurochemical correlates into causal explanations. In establishing their neurocentric model, Martial et al. attempt to reframe many defining features of NDEs. NDEs characteristically involve a distinct constellation of features that sets them apart from dreams, fantasies, hallucinations or epileptic phenomena. These features include veridical out-of-body observations (often corroborated by medical personnel); transitions to ‘otherworldly realms’; panoramic life reviews (including re-experiencing past events from multiple vantage points); and encounters with deceased (but not living) relatives or ‘beings of light’. Many experiencers also undergo lifelong transformative changes in personal values and a marked loss of fear of death. Such features appear with remarkable consistency across cultures and times, and merely equating them with phenomena on the spectra of hallucinations or stress-induced fantasies misses precisely what distinguishes NDEs in terms of their specificity, coherence and intensity."

The paper "Explanation of near-death experiences: a systematic analysis of case reports and qualitative research" has a title that sounds like one of those affairs in which silly or skimpy speculations are suggested as explanations of reports beyond explanation.  But the paper is no such affair. The paper has the chart below in which "supernatural experiences" (in pink) is listed as the most common type.

According to the chart, the two most common aspects of near-death experiences are "out-of-body experiences" (the highest pink bar in the chart above) and "heightened senses." 

That the second largest bar in such a chart is "heightened senses" should come as no surprise to any very thorough student of out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. Below are some accounts in the the literature of heightened senses during out-of-body experiences. 

(1) On page 70 of a book an author quotes Eugenie Garcia as having an out-of-body experience, apparently while being hypnotized:

"  I cast my eyes on myself: 'Look! I am luminous, transparent, light as a feather.'  Suddenly, I saw my body lying motionless in an armchair. Three or four people surrounded me, watching me attentively. What are they looking at me like that? Let's see. I come closer and look at myself too. doing like everyone else. I could clearly see the inside of my body, I could see the heart beating, the blood circulating, the networks.."

(2) On page 63 of a book, we read an account by Joseph Costa an out-of-body experience. Speaking as if he had X-ray vision, he says, "I saw my body perfectly recognizable by its particularities, its profile, my figure, but also bundles of veins and nerves vibrating with a luminous tingling."

(3) On page 62 of his book Lessons From the Light, Kenneth Ring quotes an account received by him in a letter, in which a woman described an out-of-body experience (when she says "three hundred degree" she apparently means "three-hundred-sixty degree"):

"I was hovering over a stretcher in one of the emergency rooms

at the hospital. I glanced down at the stretcher, knew the body

wrapped in blankets was mine, and really didn't care...I could see

the tiles on the ceiling and the tiles on the floor, simultaneously:

three hundred degree spherical vision. And not just spherical. Detailed! I could see every single hair and the follicle out of which it grew on the head of the nurse standing beside the stretcher."

(4) On page 37 of the same book, Ring quotes a male witness who claimed to see a womanly figure of light during his out-of-body experience. He recalls this when looking at his body:

"I could see the vascular system and the chambers emptying and filling with blood. I could see the vascular system and the life-sustaining materials working their way through the entire body. "

(5) On page 60 of the same book, a nearsighted woman recalls "the next I was aware of was floating on the ceiling" and that at this time "it was so vivid" and that "I could read the numbers on the machine behind my head." 

(6) On pages 254 to 255 of the 1895 book Brown Studies by George H. Hepworth, we have a description of an out-of-body experience. On page 255 he seems to describe enhanced vision during such an experience:

"I shall never be able to tell you how the stars looked that night. The heavens were an astonishing revelation to me. Not only did I see with perfectly clear vision, but there seemed to be a penetrating, a far-reaching quality to my sight which doubled the number of glistening lights above me, and the spectacle was so marvelous, so beautiful, that I stood entranced."

On page 256 the author compares his enhanced vision during his out-of-body experience to an account he heard of a very nearsighted boy who was given glasses and who could suddenly see the world clearly for the first time. 

(7) In the account below (from page 393 of the paper here) a person having an out-of-body experience reports having enhanced hearing (the account has both Feature #1 and Feature #4):

(8) One person having an out-of-body experience said this: "I was suddenly not in my body but above it...I could see, but all around, as

if my mind ...had eye-facets all over."

On page 72 of Green's book on out-of-body experiences, we read this:

On page 79 of Green's book she quotes someone who claims to have seen through a wall during an out-of-body experience. 

Around page 59 of his book Lessons From the Light, Kenneth Ring begins discussing cases that seemed to show superior vision during out-of-body experiences. He mentions some cases of people who reported being able to see very clearly the dust that was in some high spot above their bodies, such as the dust on a hanging lamp. On page 60 he estimates that he encountered about six cases of what he calls the "dust on the light fixture" type. On the same page he quotes someone as saying that she could see in vivid detail during her our-of-body experience, even though she is very nearsighted, and at time was not wearing her glasses. On page 61 he quotes a first-person account of someone else who claimed he could see very clearly during an out-of-body experience, even though he was very myopic and not wearing glasses. 

On page 76 of Green's book, she quotes someone who claims to have seen clearly in the dark during an out-of-body experience outdoors. On page 78 she quotes someone who claims to have been able to see "in a full circle of 360" degrees during an out-of-body experience. 

The study "Differences and Commonalities Among Various Types of Perceived Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) (Phase II)" analyzed 252 reports of out-of-body experiences, received by those who filled out questionnaires after responding to advertising asking for responses from people who had out-of-body experiences.  On page 24 we read this: "Some of the participants reported they were able to see a much wider area than before. This even included a visual perception spanning up to 360° in some cases. Although there was a question about the clarity of sight asked during both phases, the question did not mention anything about the field of their vision, so their comments about a broader form of sight were not directly solicited and their descriptions contain self-chosen terms (e.g., 360°, etc.)." There then follows several quotes from survey respondents talking about 360 degree vision or "fish-eye lens" vision, and two respondents talking about a binocular or zoom ability. Page 26 quotes a person as saying "everything seemed very vivid, a higher definition," and quotes another person as saying, "I could see very clear and it looked crystal clear like it was the best high definition ever." The same page quotes another person as saying, "I could see everything perfectly clearly, which is odd because my glasses had fallen off my face in the accident." 

The author of a 2023 PhD dissertation ("Investigating the Nature and Psychological Impact of Out-of-Body Experiences") performed an online survey of 213 people who claimed to have had an out-of-body experience (page 156).  He states that 16% reported "the ability to see through physical objects" (page 450), that 23% reported "the ability to see at an abnormal distance" (page 450), that 45% reported "the ability to see in the dark" (page 450), and that 22% reported "the ability to see 360 degrees" (page 451). 

The 2025 paper "Inducing Unusual Bodily Sensations and Out-of-Body Experiences Across the Wake-Sleep Cycle: A High-Density Eeg and Neurophenomenology Study" is one of a class of papers that makes misleading insinuations that out-of-body experiences were somehow artificially induced. The paper describes some combination of suggested meditation techniques and visual stimulation, which the paper calls an "induction technique." Because the main element is the mental effort of the participants, what is going on is not actually any thing that can be fairly described as a technological induction technique or a pharmaceutical induction technique. We cannot trust any of the claims made that out-of-body experiences occurred, because we do not have first-hand testimony from the participants. We do not know whether statements they made were responses to leading questions, questions designed to push them in a particular descriptive direction, questions utilizing the power of suggestion. (Previous studies of this type have been marred by leading questions to subjects, such as "So did you kind of feel a sort of floating feeling?") The second-hand descriptions by the writers of the paper (describing what went on in someone else's mind) should not be trusted, as readers of the paper cannot compare such descriptions to first-hand testimony by the participants. The failure to provide first-hand testimony from the participants seems like a fatal flaw in this study. A researcher cannot be trusted to accurately describe what went on in someone else's mind, particularly when the researcher is motivated to put a desired interpretation on what someone else was experiencing. 

The 2025 paper "Out-of-body experiences: interpretations through the eyes of those who live them" examined the accounts of "10 participants without mental disorders or neurological and/or vestibular pathologies" who reported out-of-body experiences, none of them involving life-threatening situations.  We read this:

"All participants agreed that their experience was not only real but described it as more vivid and authentic than everyday reality. Four participants had no explanation for their experience, while one interpreted it in physiological terms. The remaining five explained their experiences using terms like 'other planes or dimensions' and 'universal consciousness,' aligning with some authors who use concepts such as 'non-local' or 'expanded consciousness' to address OBEs."

At the link here you can read a free online 160-page book on the topic of near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. After you press the [] icon at the bottom of the screen, it is very easy to read the whole book by finger-swiping. 

When Apparitions Get Multiple Witnesses

Let us look at some cases of apparitions seen by more than one witness. 

Below is a report of several workers seeing an apparition of a worker who recently died at their work site:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86075298/1923-09-07/ed-1/seq-7/

Below is another report of several workers seeing an apparition of a worker who recently died at their work site:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90059523/1903-09-26/ed-1/seq-1/

Here is a newspaper account of an apparition seen by two different witnesses, both of which claimed to have seen the apparition of Fred F. Lange. There is a strange additional detail of 3 photos taken of Lange's corpse, which all come up blank. 

You can read the account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85059663/1914-04-18/ed-1/?sp=6&r=0.045,0.234,0.642,0.26,0

Here is another newspaper account of an apparition seen by two different witnesses:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016810/1923-07-07/ed-1/seq-2/

Below we read of an apparition of a Colonel Brice. In the account a professor says he saw the apparition once, and that an associate saw the apparition three times. The professor says the apparition was transparent, and walked through the professor's bed.

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1957-11-10/ed-1/seq-48/

Below is a rather chilling story of multiple witnesses seeing an apparition, not just once but multiple times, apparently:

Below is an account of an apparition seen by six witnesses, including an ex-Congressman:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89053684/1902-03-21/ed-1/seq-7/

Below is another case of an apparition reportedly seen by multiple witnesses:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025841/1907-01-12/ed-1/seq-3/

Below we have a very dramatic account of an apparition witnessed by a very sick child's father and the child's stepmother. The apparition reportedly had an appearance matching that of the child's deceased mother. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91064011/1910-04-14/ed-1/seq-9/

Below is a quote from a scholarly article, in which the author quotes an account he heard on TV. The witness claims that he and five other people saw an apparition corresponding to a person who was at the time close to death. It's one of the rare cases of an apparition of the living, which tend to occur when the person matching the apparition is having a close brush with death. 

"In recently watching the Jonathan Ross show again on the 29th October, quite unexpectedly, another guest and poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, presented another experience for all to hear. Following asking about attitudes towards Halloween, Ross, already primed with information on his guests, asks Zephaniah, 'am I right in thinking that you had a sort of supernatural experience once?' Drifting into thought and recollection, he replied, 'Yes, I had a very, very weird experience, and interestingly y’know, a lot of these experiences happen in the night when there’s shadows y’know and stuff like that, but this happened in broad daylight. Me, and five other people, were in a house in Birmingham. We were waiting for cousin to come home. She walked in [through] the front door, through the front room, and out the backdoor. And we went to see her, and she wasn’t there.'  The other guests on Ross’s show clearly shocked with stunned reactions at this point. He continues, 'And we all saw her. Later on that day, we found out that she’d been hit by a car, died for about five minutes or whatever it is, and came back to life [Ross lets out a ‘wow’ with his eye fixated on Zephaniah], and it wasn’t just me, like I said there were five others who witnessed it… And I’m not really one of those people that believes in that stuff, I’m into science y’know, but I also understand that there is stuff that we can’t prove.' Ross remarks that normally he would dismiss that sort of thing, and yet, it was hard to with Zephaniah’s account as it sounds so convincing, especially as sober and level headed gentleman." 

In the 1914 news account below, we have quite a few prisoners in the same jail claiming to see the same apparition, an apparition of John F. Jones, who hanged himself in the same jail in 1896. We read of nine prisoners pleading guilty, and the article suggests that more than a dozen confessed because of the apparition, saying, "Investigations of the reasons brought out the story of the 'ghost' and also the remarkable fact that in the past ten years twenty murderers had made confessions of guilt urged on by the same cause." 

You can read the account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn99021999/1913-03-09/ed-1/?sp=21&r=-0.096,0.518,1.055,0.427,0

The account here is quite the "haunted house" account. There are many details of people seeing spooky things in the house. We hear that a Mr. and Mrs. Siegal several times saw a ghost walk through their living room. But the second-hand nature of the account means it is not first-class evidence of an apparition. 

On page 136 of the document here, we read that some paranormal investigators said they saw an apparition of a man holding a baby. 

In a previous post I briefly mentioned the case of Mary Goffe, writing only this:

"The case of Mary Goffe was one of the earliest reports of an apparition of a living person.  On her death bed in 1691, Mary Goffe claimed that she had seen her children who had been entrusted to the care of a nurse far away. She claimed 'I was with them last night, when I was asleep.'  The nurse swore that she saw Mary Goffe appear at two o'clock, and that she visited the children. The nurse said, 'If I ever saw her in all my life, I saw her on this night.' "

My discussion was rather lacking, in that it did not refer to the original source material, which should always be cited whenever possible.  I have since found the original version of this account. It is on page 147 of the book The Certainty of the World of Spirits, published in 1691. On page 147, and the next few pages, we have the original account, which occurs in the form of a letter written by Reverend Thomas Tilson, dated July 6, 1691. I would quote the whole account exactly as it appears in its original form, except that it would be hard to read in the original because of all the antiquated typography in which the letter "s" is printed as "f." 

But luckily the 1691 letter from Thomas Tilson  is quoted exactly in a 1929 facsimile in the January 12, 1929 edition of the journal Light. Here is the account as quoted in that edition, which matches the original text:

"Mary, the wife of John Goffe, of Rochester, being afflicted with a long illness, removed to her father’s house, at West Mulling, which is about nine miles distant from her own; there she died, June 4th, 1691. The day before her departure, she grew impatiently desirous to see her two children, whom she had left at home, to the care of a nurse. She prayed her husband to hire a horse, for she must go home, and die with her children. When they persuaded her to the contrary, telling her she was not fit to be taken out of her bed, nor able to sit on horseback, she entreated them however to try....The next day this dying woman told her mother, that she had been at home with her children. 'That is impossible'  said the mother, ' for you have been here in bed all the while.'  'Yes'  replied the other, 'but I was with them last night when I was asleep.' 

The nurse at Rochester, Widow Alexander by name, affirms and says, she will take her oath of it before a magistrate, and receive the sacrament upon it, that a little before two o’clock that morning, she saw the likeness of the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay in a bed by itself, the door being left open) and stood by her bed-side for about a quarter of an hour : the younger child was there lying by her; her eyes moved and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, moreover, says that she was perfectly awake; it was then day-light, being one of the longest days in the year. She sat up in her bed, and looked steadfastly upon the apparition; at that time she heard the bridge clock strike two, and awhile after said,  'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, what art thou?'  Thereupon the appearance removed, and went away; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became of it she cannot tell. Then, and not before, she began to be grievously affrighted, and went out of doors and walked upon the wharf (the house is just by the riverside) for some hours, only going in now and then to look at the children. At five o’clock she went to a neighbour’s house, and knocked at the door, but they would not rise; at six she went again, then they arose and let her in. She related to them all that had passed; they would persuade her she was mistaken, or dreamt: but she confidently affirmed, ' If ever I saw her in all my life, I saw her this night.' One of those to whom she made the relation (Mary, the wife of J. Sweet) had a messenger who came from Mulling that forenoon, to let her know her neighbour Groffe was dying,-and desired to speak with her; she went over the same day, and found her just departing. The mother, amongst other discourse, related to her how much her daughter had longed to see her children and said she had seen them. This brought to Mrs. Sweet’s mind, what the nurse had told her that morning, for till then, she had not thought fit to mention it, but disguised it, rather as the woman’s disturbed imagination. 

The substance of this, I had related to me by John Carpenter, the father of the deceased, next day after the burial. July 2nd, I fully discoursed the matter with the nurse, and two neighbours, to whose house she went that morning. Two days after, 1 had it from the mother, the minister that was with her in the even, and the woman who sat up with her last that night: they all agree in the same story, and every one helps to strengthen the other’s testimony. They all appear to be sober intelligent persons, far enough off from designing to impose a cheat upon the world, or to manage a lie, and what temptation they should lie under for so doing, I cannot conceive." --

 Thomas Tilson. Minister of Aylesworth, near Maidstone in Kent, Aylesford, July 6, 1691

We have here high-quality evidence for the reality of this astonishing appearance of an apparition of a dying person. A very important fact is that the testimony has been written down within about a month after the claimed events, with the writer being someone who interviewed most of the relevant witnesses, including the nurse who claimed to see the apparition. According to the account, both the nurse and one of Mary Goffe's children saw the apparition, so we may classify this case as one of the cases of an apparition seen by more than one. 

A Google search for "Soyuz 7 angels" produces quite a few web pages claiming that astronauts on the Soyuz 7 mission of the Soviet Union in 1969 saw apparitions of angels or mysterious beings outside of their space station.  I have been unable to yet track down the original source of this account, or any firsthand testimony from any of these astronauts. So I don't know whether this claim is reliable. 

For other cases of apparitions seen by multiple witnesses, see my posts below:

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases
More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

When Multiple Witnesses See the Same Apparition

Yet More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

Many Said They Saw Nelly Butler's Apparition

If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy my free online book "Spookiest Years," which can be accessed here. After pressing the [] icon at the bottom of the viewer, the entire 435-page book can be very conveniently read by finger-swiping.