“Only about 10% of people actually survive from resuscitation. Resuscitation is not very effective. So you go from 500 to 50 people. Of those, only five or six had near-death experiences. And none of them, in none of the cases, was their consciousness in a location that they could perceive the visual target.”
Giants Shoulder · October 2026
Holden, a near-death-experience researcher, is describing a large multi-hospital study that hid visual targets in resuscitation rooms to test reports of patients seeing from outside their bodies. She is candid that the controlled test turned up no hits, though she believes such perception happens elsewhere.
Transcript
Yeah, I think they would find a way to disconnect. They'll find a way, yeah,
yeah. They can always find a way.
Um, but yeah, they're, yeah, um, have faith in materialists to be staunch in their views. But, um, but in any case, it's really true, Evan. It would be such a so such convincing evidence. And in our study and six subsequent studies, one of which I was involved in, but the others were other researchers. And the most recent one was Sam Parnia's Aware 2 study that was conducted in like 250 hospitals or something like that in 10 different countries over three years. And they interviewed every person who survived cardiac arrest. And there were over 500 resuscitations during this time across all these hospitals. And when you get right down to it, one of the things that was shocking to me is only about 10% of people actually survive from resuscitation. Resuscitation is not very effective. So you go from 500 to 50 people. Of those, only five had or six had near-death experiences. And none of them, in none of the cases, was their consciousness in a location that they could perceive the visual target. So, and that's what's happened in all of these that we just don't have any. Interestingly, in a few…
I really applaud you, though, for setting up such an audacious and ambitious paradigm, though. I think people are kind of scared that when they stake their life on an idea, they're almost afraid the experiment will fail and then it will be a disapproval of their idea. Now, obviously, just because…
I think we would need to do more like what Sam did most recently. I also have suspicions that are not scientific. I wonder whether humanity is ready for this for this level of proof that consciousness is essentially independent of the brain and all the implications of it. Because, you know…
Right.
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