Rudolf H. Smit - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Rudolf H. Smit
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2012
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2017
Just another book on near-death experiences (NDEs)-as if there aren't enough already? A resoundin... more Just another book on near-death experiences (NDEs)-as if there aren't enough already? A resounding no! With some justification one can speak of this book as a breakthrough. The reason: It is a compilation of a fairly large number of articles that appeared in a high quality medical journal, Missouri Medicine, the journal of the Missouri State Medical Association. On a par with journals like The Lancet and The British Medical Journal, Missouri Medicine has an excellent reputation-and its editor, physican John C. Hagan III, dared to publish a series of articles on a subject that many physicians find controversial at the least. Some physicians continue to say, "NDE? Nothing but a hallucination caused by hypoxia". .. or some other explanation that, in the end, is no explanation at all. Because there is no all-encompassing explanation for NDEs, all that can be done is to tell the public what an NDE is not and why that multitude of explanations does not hold. I think that has been done in an excellent way in this book, thanks to Hagan's true open-mindedness. In his Introduction, Hagan explained how the two-special-journalissues-turned-book came about. Prompted by a friend some years ago to read one book about NDEs, he proceeded to read more than a dozen, after which he "concluded [that] a multi-article peer-reviewed scien
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2013
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008
A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. M... more A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. My e-mail correspondent quoted a recent report that almost 90 percent of afterlife encounters occur to the left and above the witness's head: What is missing from ... all other researcher reports, except mine, is the importance of left.... Nurses in critical care units have noted that between 80 and 90 percent of their patients see spirit visitors manifesting to the left. Hospice volunteers and medical staff have made the same observation. (Atwater, 2007, p. 361)
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008
Please allow me the opportunity to express my astonishment that not one word was devoted to the c... more Please allow me the opportunity to express my astonishment that not one word was devoted to the comments that neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler made in the British Broadcasting Corporation documentary The Day I Died (Broome, 2002). Spetzler's comments are of paramount importance. After all, it was Spetzler who operated upon Reynolds. Gerald Woerlee, on whose ideas Augustine mainly based his judgments, was not there. Nevertheless, Woerlee bluntly wrote that Reynolds had been awake ("aware" as he told me in an Internet blog) and thus could have seen and heard
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2013
The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported t... more The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported that during their experiences (NDEs), they perceived phenomena in the material world that, based on the condition and position of their physical bodies, they should not have been able to perceive, and yet these perceptions were subsequently verified as accurate. Only a few of these cases of apparently non-physical veridical perception during NDEs have been carefully researched. In this article, we report a case described originally by cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy in a YouTube Internet video. We describe our process of following up exhaustively on all avenues of investigation available to us and our conclusion that this case is among the most evidential in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers.
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008
A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. M... more A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. My e-mail correspondent quoted a recent report that almost 90 percent of afterlife encounters occur to the left and above the witness's head: What is missing from ... all other researcher reports, except mine, is the importance of left.... Nurses in critical care units have noted that between 80 and 90 percent of their patients see spirit visitors manifesting to the left. Hospice volunteers and medical staff have made the same observation. (Atwater, 2007, p. 361)
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2017
: The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported... more : The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported that during their experiences (NDEs), they perceived phenomena in the material world that, based on the condition and position of their physical bodies, they should not have been able to perceive, and yet these perceptions were subsequently verified as accurate. Only a few of these cases of apparently non-physical veridical perception during NDEs have been carefully researched. In this article, we report a case described originally by cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy in a YouTube Internet video. We describe our process of following up exhaustively on all avenues of investigation available to us and our conclusion that this case is among the most evidential in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers. KEY WORDS: near-death-experience, veridical perception, cardiac valve resection surgery As early as 1882, the professional near-death literatur...
Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "... more Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "Further Commentary on Pam Reynolds's NDE."
Letter Rudolph H. Smit written to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic &q... more Letter Rudolph H. Smit written to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "When Ideology Overrules Science."
Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "... more Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "Failed Test of the Possibility that Pam Reynolds Heard Normally During her NDE."
As book reviewers, we try to be as positive about a book as we can be. Therefore, we regret to sa... more As book reviewers, we try to be as positive about a book as we can be. Therefore, we regret to say that, for us, in reading neurologist Kevin Nelson’s recent book, we felt extremely challenged to find positive things to say. The good news is that Nelson wrote lucidly and tended to treat NDErs with respect and empathy. The bad news is that Nel-son viewed NDEs from a very narrow perspective: that of mainstream neurology wherein the disposition is entirely materialist, that is, re-ducing all phenomena to physiological processes. Nelson did not make much of aspects of NDEs that render the phenomena so unique and special: those that seem to exceed the limits of what neurology can explain. In order not to be misled by this exclusion from Nelson’s dis-cussion, a reader needs to come to this book with reasonably compre-hensive knowledge of the vast literature on NDEs. After a fairly long, 13-page Prologue, the book is divided into three parts: Part One: The Architecture, with three chapters...
Abstract: One of the most striking examples of near-death experience stories is the account of a ... more Abstract: One of the most striking examples of near-death experience stories is the account of a clinically dead patient whose dentures were removed from his mouth prior to resuscitation, and which dentures were then lost. Days later the patient saw a nurse and told him that it was he who had removed those dentures. The patient was right, but he should not have known this information, because tat the time the nurse had removed his dentures, the patient was clinically dead. Since publication of this account in a prestigious mainstream medical journal, speculations have abounded. In this article I describe the investigation I undertook to put these speculations to rest and the outcome of that investigation.
Journal of Near-Death Studies
In this article we rejoin Gerald Woerlee's response in this issue to Smit's (2008) article, "Corr... more In this article we rejoin Gerald Woerlee's response in this issue to Smit's (2008) article, "Corroboration of the Dentures Anecdote Involving Veridical Perception in a Near-Death Experience." We show the untenability of his claim that the man whose dentures were lost before his resuscitation in the hospital was initiated had been conscious virtually all the way from the moment he was found in the meadow up to his transport to the hospital's cardiac care unit. Also, we question Woerlee's claim that the patient constructed an accurate mental picture of objects and persons in the resuscitation room simply by listening to the sounds caused by the actions around his body. In all, we question Woerlee's materialistic explanations of the out-of-body experience that occurred in this patient's near-death experience. Our conclusion is straightforward: We consider Woerlee's claims to be wrong.
Jounal of Near Death Studies, 2011
The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported t... more The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported that during their experiences (NDEs), they perceived phenomena in the material world that, based on the condition and position of their physical bodies, they should not have been able to perceive, and yet these perceptions were subsequently verified as accurate. Only a few of these cases of apparently non-physical veridical perception during NDEs have been carefully researched. In this article, we report a case described originally by cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy in a YouTube Internet video. We describe our process of following up exhaustively on all avenues of investigation available to us and our conclusion that this case is among the most evidential in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers.
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2012
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2017
Just another book on near-death experiences (NDEs)-as if there aren't enough already? A resoundin... more Just another book on near-death experiences (NDEs)-as if there aren't enough already? A resounding no! With some justification one can speak of this book as a breakthrough. The reason: It is a compilation of a fairly large number of articles that appeared in a high quality medical journal, Missouri Medicine, the journal of the Missouri State Medical Association. On a par with journals like The Lancet and The British Medical Journal, Missouri Medicine has an excellent reputation-and its editor, physican John C. Hagan III, dared to publish a series of articles on a subject that many physicians find controversial at the least. Some physicians continue to say, "NDE? Nothing but a hallucination caused by hypoxia". .. or some other explanation that, in the end, is no explanation at all. Because there is no all-encompassing explanation for NDEs, all that can be done is to tell the public what an NDE is not and why that multitude of explanations does not hold. I think that has been done in an excellent way in this book, thanks to Hagan's true open-mindedness. In his Introduction, Hagan explained how the two-special-journalissues-turned-book came about. Prompted by a friend some years ago to read one book about NDEs, he proceeded to read more than a dozen, after which he "concluded [that] a multi-article peer-reviewed scien
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2013
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008
A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. M... more A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. My e-mail correspondent quoted a recent report that almost 90 percent of afterlife encounters occur to the left and above the witness's head: What is missing from ... all other researcher reports, except mine, is the importance of left.... Nurses in critical care units have noted that between 80 and 90 percent of their patients see spirit visitors manifesting to the left. Hospice volunteers and medical staff have made the same observation. (Atwater, 2007, p. 361)
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008
Please allow me the opportunity to express my astonishment that not one word was devoted to the c... more Please allow me the opportunity to express my astonishment that not one word was devoted to the comments that neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler made in the British Broadcasting Corporation documentary The Day I Died (Broome, 2002). Spetzler's comments are of paramount importance. After all, it was Spetzler who operated upon Reynolds. Gerald Woerlee, on whose ideas Augustine mainly based his judgments, was not there. Nevertheless, Woerlee bluntly wrote that Reynolds had been awake ("aware" as he told me in an Internet blog) and thus could have seen and heard
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2013
The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported t... more The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported that during their experiences (NDEs), they perceived phenomena in the material world that, based on the condition and position of their physical bodies, they should not have been able to perceive, and yet these perceptions were subsequently verified as accurate. Only a few of these cases of apparently non-physical veridical perception during NDEs have been carefully researched. In this article, we report a case described originally by cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy in a YouTube Internet video. We describe our process of following up exhaustively on all avenues of investigation available to us and our conclusion that this case is among the most evidential in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers.
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008
A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. M... more A recent e-mail drew my attention to the issue of the placement of apparitions of the deceased. My e-mail correspondent quoted a recent report that almost 90 percent of afterlife encounters occur to the left and above the witness's head: What is missing from ... all other researcher reports, except mine, is the importance of left.... Nurses in critical care units have noted that between 80 and 90 percent of their patients see spirit visitors manifesting to the left. Hospice volunteers and medical staff have made the same observation. (Atwater, 2007, p. 361)
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2017
: The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported... more : The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported that during their experiences (NDEs), they perceived phenomena in the material world that, based on the condition and position of their physical bodies, they should not have been able to perceive, and yet these perceptions were subsequently verified as accurate. Only a few of these cases of apparently non-physical veridical perception during NDEs have been carefully researched. In this article, we report a case described originally by cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy in a YouTube Internet video. We describe our process of following up exhaustively on all avenues of investigation available to us and our conclusion that this case is among the most evidential in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers. KEY WORDS: near-death-experience, veridical perception, cardiac valve resection surgery As early as 1882, the professional near-death literatur...
Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "... more Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "Further Commentary on Pam Reynolds's NDE."
Letter Rudolph H. Smit written to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic &q... more Letter Rudolph H. Smit written to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "When Ideology Overrules Science."
Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "... more Letter from Rudolf H. Smit to the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the topic "Failed Test of the Possibility that Pam Reynolds Heard Normally During her NDE."
As book reviewers, we try to be as positive about a book as we can be. Therefore, we regret to sa... more As book reviewers, we try to be as positive about a book as we can be. Therefore, we regret to say that, for us, in reading neurologist Kevin Nelson’s recent book, we felt extremely challenged to find positive things to say. The good news is that Nelson wrote lucidly and tended to treat NDErs with respect and empathy. The bad news is that Nel-son viewed NDEs from a very narrow perspective: that of mainstream neurology wherein the disposition is entirely materialist, that is, re-ducing all phenomena to physiological processes. Nelson did not make much of aspects of NDEs that render the phenomena so unique and special: those that seem to exceed the limits of what neurology can explain. In order not to be misled by this exclusion from Nelson’s dis-cussion, a reader needs to come to this book with reasonably compre-hensive knowledge of the vast literature on NDEs. After a fairly long, 13-page Prologue, the book is divided into three parts: Part One: The Architecture, with three chapters...
Abstract: One of the most striking examples of near-death experience stories is the account of a ... more Abstract: One of the most striking examples of near-death experience stories is the account of a clinically dead patient whose dentures were removed from his mouth prior to resuscitation, and which dentures were then lost. Days later the patient saw a nurse and told him that it was he who had removed those dentures. The patient was right, but he should not have known this information, because tat the time the nurse had removed his dentures, the patient was clinically dead. Since publication of this account in a prestigious mainstream medical journal, speculations have abounded. In this article I describe the investigation I undertook to put these speculations to rest and the outcome of that investigation.
Journal of Near-Death Studies
In this article we rejoin Gerald Woerlee's response in this issue to Smit's (2008) article, "Corr... more In this article we rejoin Gerald Woerlee's response in this issue to Smit's (2008) article, "Corroboration of the Dentures Anecdote Involving Veridical Perception in a Near-Death Experience." We show the untenability of his claim that the man whose dentures were lost before his resuscitation in the hospital was initiated had been conscious virtually all the way from the moment he was found in the meadow up to his transport to the hospital's cardiac care unit. Also, we question Woerlee's claim that the patient constructed an accurate mental picture of objects and persons in the resuscitation room simply by listening to the sounds caused by the actions around his body. In all, we question Woerlee's materialistic explanations of the out-of-body experience that occurred in this patient's near-death experience. Our conclusion is straightforward: We consider Woerlee's claims to be wrong.
Jounal of Near Death Studies, 2011
The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported t... more The professional near-death literature contains cases in which near-death experiencers reported that during their experiences (NDEs), they perceived phenomena in the material world that, based on the condition and position of their physical bodies, they should not have been able to perceive, and yet these perceptions were subsequently verified as accurate. Only a few of these cases of apparently non-physical veridical perception during NDEs have been carefully researched. In this article, we report a case described originally by cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy in a YouTube Internet video. We describe our process of following up exhaustively on all avenues of investigation available to us and our conclusion that this case is among the most evidential in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers.
Book in Dutch about Near-Death Experiences, with many translated contributions by English-speakin... more Book in Dutch about Near-Death Experiences, with many translated contributions by English-speaking authors. Here is a short description in Dutch from the publisher: "Een nabij-de-dood-ervaring (NDE) is een overweldigende confrontatie met de onbegrensde dimensies van ons bewustzijn. Met deze woorden beschrijft publicist en onderzoeker Pim van Lommel de bijzondere bewustzijnservaringen die volgens de huidige materialistische wetenschap niet mogelijk zijn. Naar schatting hebben ruim 50 miljoen mensen in de wereld een NDE gehad. In Europa zijn er waarschijnlijk 20 miljoen mensen met een NDE, ongeveer 4,2% van de bevolking, zoals uit onderzoek is gebleken. In Nederland zijn er een kleine 600.000 mensen met een NDE.
In ‘Het geheim van Elysion’ komt een dertigtal auteurs aan het woord uit België, Engeland, de Verenigde Staten, Duitsland en Nederland. Ze delen hun visie op tal van aspecten die te maken hebben met de relatie tussen hersenen en bewustzijn, met de verhouding tussen leven en dood, hemel en aarde. Onder de auteurs bevinden zich (inter)nationale experts als Bruce Greyson, Eben Alexander en Peter Fenwick. Steven Laureys en Raymond Saerens staan voor de Belgische inbreng. Aan Nederlandse zijde geven Pim van Lommel, Hans Gerding, Titus Rivas, Ineke Visser en Rinus van Warven acte de présence.
Tussen de meer wetenschappelijke bijdrage treft u ook tal van ervaringsverhalen van mensen die een NDE hebben gehad. Zij zijn de mensen die na een levensbedreigende crisis een buitengewone ervaring in hun bewustzijn hebben gemeld. In alle bijdragen worden de effecten beschreven die de NDE heeft op mensenlevens. Wat vijfenveertig jaar internationaal onderzoek heeft opgeleverd, is het inzicht dat deze ervaring het leven van mensen fundamenteel verandert.
Maar dat niet alleen. Hoe heeft de NDE überhaupt onze kijk op de wereld beïnvloed? Dertig jaar geleden strookte de belevingswereld van de NDE-er niet met de algemeen geldende opvattingen over leven en dood en met de gevestigde wetenschappelijke en religieuze (kerkelijke) paradigma’s. Wat was er toch met de NDE-er aan de hand? Nu – dertig jaar later – is de vraag waarom de mainstream-wetenschap niet ziet wat de NDE-er ziet. En wat ziet die NDE-er? Misschien is dat wel het geheim van Elysion."
Please note that I'm just one of many coauthors.
Here is the full list of co-authors of which I'm one: Eben Alexander, Phyllis Atwater, Peter Fenwick, Bruce Greyson, Janice Holden en Anita Moorjani en Jeffery Olsen, Walter van Laack, Charlotte Martial, Helena Cassol, Steven Laureys, Stan Michielsen, Paul Robbrecht, Raymond Saerens, Eric Bekker, Robert Jan de Beurs, Marianne Blankenstein, Jacques Caron, Bob Coppes, Ditta op den Dries, Hein van Dongen, Hans Gerding, Jim van der Heijden, Martin Karlas, Pim van Lommel, Tienke Klein, Gert Kunnen, Anke Merkx-Kokshoorn, Elly Moerman, Hans van de Muijzenberg, Catja de Rijk, Douwe Reekers, Titus Rivas, Wim Setz, Rudolf H. Smit, Rico Sneller, Robert Swami Persaud, Odette de Theije, Luc Thomaes, Ineke Visser, Pety de Vries – Ek en Rinus van Warven.