Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro in the 1990s in which the person being treated is asked to recall distressing images; the therapist then directs the client in one type of bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping. It is included in several evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It has been controversial; critics have argued that the eye movements in EMDR do not add to its effectiveness and lack a falsifiable theory. While multiple meta-analyses have found it to be just as effective as trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of PTSD, these findings are tentative given the low numbers in the studies, high risk rates of researcher bias and high dropout rates.

The person being treated is asked to recall distressing images while generating one of several types of bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping. The 2013 World Health Organization practice guideline says that “Like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with a trauma focus, EMDR aims to reduce subjective distress and strengthen adaptive beliefs related to the traumatic event. Unlike CBT with a trauma focus, EMDR does not involve (a) detailed descriptions of the event, (b) direct challenging of beliefs, (c) extended exposure, or (d) homework.”

A 1998 meta-analysis found that EMDR was as effective as exposure therapy and SSRIs.

A 2002 meta-analysis concluded that EMDR is not as effective, or as long lasting, as traditional exposure therapy.

A 2005 and a 2006 meta-analysis each suggested that traditional exposure therapy and EMDR have equivalent effects immediately after treatment and at follow-up.

Two meta-analyses in 2006 found EMDR to be at least equivalent in effect size to specific exposure therapies.

A 2009 review of rape treatment outcomes concluded that EMDR had some efficacy. Another 2009 review concluded EMDR to be of similar efficacy to other exposure therapies and more effective than SSRIs, problem-centered therapy, or “treatment as usual”.

A 2010 meta-analysis concluded that all “bona fide” treatments were equally effective, but there was some debate regarding the study’s selection of which treatments were “bona fide”.

A Cochrane systematic review comparing EMDR with other psychotherapies in the treatment of Chronic PTSD, found EMDR to be just as effective as Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TFCBT) and more effective than the other non-TFCBT psychotherapies. Caution was urged interpreting the results due to low numbers in included studies, risk of researcher bias, high drop out rates, and overall “very low” quality of evidence for the comparisons with other psychotherapies.

Another systematic review examined 15 clinical trials of EMDR with and without the eye movements, finding that the effect size was larger when eye movements were used. Again, interpretation of this meta-analysis was tentative. Lee and Cuijpers (2013) stated that “the quality of included studies was not optimal. This may have distorted the outcomes of the studies and our meta-analysis. Apart from ensuring adequate checks on treatment quality, there were other serious methodological problems with the studies in the therapy context.”

The 2009 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies practice guidelines categorized EMDR as an evidence-based level A treatment for PTSD in adults. Other guidelines recommending EMDR therapy – as well as CBT and exposure therapy – for treating trauma have included NICE starting in 2005, Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health in 2007, the Dutch National Steering Committee Guidelines Mental Health and Care in 2003, the American Psychiatric Association in 2004, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense in 2010, SAMHSA in 2011, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in 2009, and the World Health Organization in 2013.

EMDR is included in a 2009 practice guideline for helping children who have experienced trauma. EMDR is often cited as a component in the treatment of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

A 2017 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in children and adolescents with PTSD found that EMDR was at least as efficacious as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), and superior to waitlist or placebo.

The proposed mechanisms that underlie eye movements in EMDR therapy are still under investigation and there is as yet no definitive finding. The consensus regarding the underlying biological mechanisms involve the two that have received the most attention and research support: (1) taxing working memory and (2) orienting response/REM sleep.

There have been a number of proposed mechanisms including the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model.[unreliable medical source] In addition, brain waves during EMDR treatment shows changes in brain activity, specifically the limbic system showed its highest level of activity prior to commencing EMDR treatment.[unreliable medical source] A slowing of brain waves during the bilateral stimulation (eye movement) is somewhat similar to what occurs during sleep.[unreliable medical source]

According to the 2013 World Health Organization practice guideline: “This therapy [EMDR] is based on the idea that negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours are the result of unprocessed memories. The treatment involves standardized procedures that include focusing simultaneously on (a) spontaneous associations of traumatic images, thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations and (b) bilateral stimulation that is most commonly in the form of repeated eye movements.”

Salkovskis in 2002 reported that the eye movement is irrelevant, and that the effectiveness of EMDR was solely due to its having properties similar to CBT, such as desensitization and exposure.

EMDR therapy was first developed by Francine Shapiro upon noticing that certain eye movements reduced the intensity of disturbing thought. She then conducted a scientific study with trauma victims in 1988 and the research was published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 1989. Her hypothesis was that when a traumatic or distressing experience occurs, it may overwhelm normal coping mechanisms, with the memory and associated stimuli being inadequately processed and stored in an isolated memory network.

Shapiro noted that, when she was experiencing a disturbing thought, her eyes were involuntarily moving rapidly. She noticed further that, when she brought her eye movements under voluntary control while thinking a traumatic thought, anxiety was reduced. Shapiro developed EMDR therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. She speculated that traumatic events “upset the excitatory/inhibitory balance in the brain, causing a pathological change in the neural elements”.

As early as 1999, EMDR was controversial within the psychological community, and Shapiro was criticized for repeatedly increasing the length and expense of training and certification, allegedly in response to the results of controlled trials that cast doubt on EMDR’s efficacy. This included requiring the completion of an EMDR training program in order to be qualified to administer EMDR properly, after researchers using the initial written instructions found no difference between no-eye-movement control groups and EMDR-as-written experimental groups. Further changes in training requirements and/or the definition of EMDR included requiring level II training when researchers with level I training still found no difference between eye-movement experimental groups and no-eye-movement controls and deeming “alternate forms of bilateral stimulation” (such as finger-tapping) as variants of EMDR by the time a study found no difference between EMDR and a finger-tapping control group. Such changes in definition and training for EMDR have been described as “ad hoc moves [made] when confronted by embarrassing data”.

A 2000 review argued that the eye movements did not play a central role, that the mechanisms of eye movements were speculative, and that the theory leading to the practice was not falsifiable and therefore not amenable to scientific inquiry. It went on to refer to EMDR as “pseudoscience”, citing non-falsifiability as one of several hallmarks of pseudoscience that EMDR met. As discussed in 2013 by Richard McNally, one of the earliest and foremost critics: “Shapiro’s (1995) Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) provoked lively debate when it first appeared on the scene in the late 1980s…. Skeptics questioned whether the defining ingredient, bilateral eye movement, possessed any therapeutic efficacy beyond the imaginal exposure component of EMDR…. A 2001 meta-analysis suggested that EMDR with the eye movements was no more efficacious than EMDR without the eye movements (Davidson & Parker, 2001), implying that “what is effective in EMDR is not new, and what is new is not effective” (McNally, 1999, p. 619).

Although controlled research has concentrated on the application of EMDR to PTSD, a number of studies have investigated EMDR therapy’s efficacy with other disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, and somatic disorders such as phantom limb pain.

A Poem Offered To Beyond

ANON.    Having read some of your books BEYOND and The Immortalists , I decided to make a tiny contribution – that may or may not interest those who follow your website blogs.

           YOU LEARN

After a while you learn

The subtle difference

Between holding a hand

And chaining a soul.

And you learn

That love doesn’t mean leaning,

And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn

That kisses aren’t contracts

And presents aren’t promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes ahead.

With the grace of a woman or man

Not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today

Because tomorrow’s ground is

Too uncertain for plans

And futures have a way of falling down

In mid-flight.

After a while you learn

That even sunshine burns if you ask too much.

So you plant your own garden

And decorate your own soul

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you

flowers.

And you learn

What you really can endure

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth.

And you learn

And you learn

With every failure

You learn.

Do We Ever Meet God In The Afterlife?

Question:   The after-death state sounds pretty boring to me.  Does a spirit personality ever, eventually, meet God so-called?

DES:    Yes.  After death, when you encounter another spirit personality who is substantially more evolved, the inevitable sensation of completeness and joy and overwhelming love that you feel – is the presence of God.

Whoever or whatever you happen to be, there will always be spirits who are more evolved, more complete and realized (and others less  evolved of course).   But the more spiritually advanced a personality, the more serenity and also intellectual resources s/he will command.   How does this work?    At some point we must fall back on analogies if we are to provide answers you can relate to.

You have been told that negative (bad) emotions cannot be discerned or expressed in the after-death state.   So what happens when a spirit personality becomes aware that family members – even children – on the physical plane where  warfare is being waged, are being burnt to death, for example.  How could one not feel negative emotions?

The answer:   In spirit we possess the truth, the most significant reality.  Although the physical person may or may not appear to be in distress, the real person, the spirit within the physical, has simply separated from the physical envelope.   It is aware of what any other spirit is aware of, namely being absolutely safe and reconciled – certainly without any awareness of pain.

But yes, pain and fear will be experienced afterwards, because physical life is the place where one oscillates or moves between positivity and negativity.  Learning takes place.  Because this is an absolutely unique process, every individual in the world uses it to shape an absolutely unique personality.

This is what the physical realm offers.  This is what it is.  Intense discomfort for a few heartbeats that creates a universe out of every cell within the body of humanity;   that is, every individual human being.

The spirit observing life on the physical plane, is aware of this and celebrates its profound significance.  Don’t forget that there is no awareness of time beyond physicality – although there are trains of  cause and effect.

    Even a mouse or bird caught by a cat encounters the same situation.   It leaves its body before any physical distress is felt.  After death, of course, there is no such thing as negativity.   A final point.  At no time does suffering exceed a critical threshold level before consciousness is snatched away, and the awareness of physicality is lost.  The negative side of learning is as perfectly balanced as everything else in nature.

What Is The Answer to The Ultimate Question About The Meaning Of Life?

DES:    What is the destiny of every individual human being? 

The reply from Spirit was slightly meandering.  They commenced by saying that the average person could relate to perhaps one fact out of every thousand that existed on any subject.  Tom Smith and Mary Jones independently found themselves putting together every fact they possessed on one particular subject.  (Of course they could not incorporate what they did not possess.)  Their individual belief structures happened to be vaguely similar, and therefore enabled them to communicate even though they disagreed on many of the finer points.  Importantly, what Tom and Mary believed also defined them.  Some people are more sophisticated than others, but they all understand themself and their family and their society and their universe by falling back on the tiny, tiny percentage of the total facts they can understand.

Bottom line:  Every person is uniquely different.  Everything contained within his or her belief structure or paradigm is “true” and everything beyond it is “false” or so foreign we are unable to make sense of it.  We all live within, and are defined by, this mental-emotional universe we have constructed around ourself.  It’s what we are.

So… as huge sweeps of time carry us through the millennia towards individual and collective perfection, there are as many types of growth being “engineered” as there are human beings in existence.  We each shape and command our own destiny.  Just what are we shaping?  What we have created up to that point in time.

“Now let’s face the other direction,” I was informed, “and look at the total organism we refer to as humanity.  What do we see?  Where does it come from?  Where is it going?  What happens if we poke it with a finger?”

As mentioned there are as many explanations as there are people doing the poking, because each individual is merely fleshing out and exploring, and fleshing out and exploring, and fleshing out and exploring a creation he or she put together in the first place.

Where does this unfolding creation or organism come from?     The sentient body that created humanity and gave it free will (“God”) in turn was created and given free will by an even more evolved body – and so on up the chain.  Forever.  As the human condition continues to evolve, it feeds the process that produced it.  We are all Gods in embryo.  That is, there will come a time when we will produce within the body of each human being the creative agency we refer to as God.  And so we contribute to the infinite chain. 

QUESTION:    Who said?  Can this be proven?  If we all nurture a different perspective, who is teacher’s pet and who is the disruptive one?  Or is there a consensus?

DES’ RESPONSE:    Personally I have no idea.  As always I put a question to the Spirit personalities I work with, and focus psychically on receiving their reply in writing with all the care and integrity I am capable of mustering.  Furthermore, I have always been encouraged to continue questioning until I understand intimately the explanation being made to me.

There are times however, when I disagree with the incoming information.  It contravenes my own views.  Yet without bidding I have always deferred to the details provided.  As with everyone I create myself with my free-will decisions, whatever they are.

Are We Children Of A Mad God?

QUESTION:    I was taught that without exception the God of the Bible, the Creator, created all life in the Universe, including every human being and their circumstances;   and was the source of perfection, love and all wisdom.  Yet I find myself swinging my face away from the TV News, aghast.  The voice I hear is my own:   “Je…..!  Has God gone nuts?  Do I get my money back?

Exactly what is it that stokes my ire?

Recently it was allegedly the Syrian Government that launched a saran gas attack on its own citizens, many of them civilians including children.  Almost one hundred drowned in their own blood.  A much higher mortality rate flowed from previous gas attacks reportedly delivered by unknown sources.  As a weapon of war the use of gas is widely acknowledged to be a war crime.

Again, tens of millions have died of curable or preventable diseases and malnutrition, in Africa and elsewhere.  Why?  We in the relatively affluent Western countries continue to consume their share of the food and other resources.  As a result we grow unhealthy ourself.

Other examples of God’s silliness (who else are we to blame?) fill the space around us like a plague of confetti.  In a single lifetime multiple examples of genocide have been experienced, again in Africa.  All the while, cocooned in our comfortable Western lifestyle, we indulge ourself on the bounty of the land while our kids are sometimes prone to stoning their brain with a bewildering array of illegal substances, all the while contributing to the suicide statistics.  Sometimes the illicit drugs are funded from the proceeds of crime.

It must be admitted that many of the practices which the Holy One permits are the province of only one religion or culture.  To whit:   A young girl is reportedly dragged from her school bus after a day’s tuition, separated from her girl friends, and gang raped in front of sometimes indifferent witnesses.  On occasion the outcome is fatal.  If not, her family hunts her down and murders her for “bringing shame on the family”.  Apparently attempts to outlaw this behaviour in parts of India and Northern Pakistan are successfully being resisted.

I am in a class of students who obtained one of your books online (The Littlest Crusade renamed Beyond).  You claim that Mother Nature or God is perfect, although not necessarily our interpretation.  What is the truth of this matter?  Please enlighten us.  [An English University is identified, correctly or otherwise, as the source of this email.]

RESPONSE FROM DES:    I have been a medium or psychic since childhood.  Any wisdom I happen to possess was channelled to me from the deceased individuals, the Spirit personalities, I am associated with.  I direct a question to them.  It is answered in writing in intricate detail, as are any follow-up questions, although I occasionally disagree with their assessment.

An example:    Why does so much senseless tragedy, brutality, and pain persist;  so many unanswered or unanswerable questions;  the diseases and ghastly afflictions that tear apart even the most noble and loving family?  Does it all take place behind God’s back, as it were, or is it part of a perfect plan?  The answer I received:   ” Without exception the latter.”

To make sense of this it must be understood why so much knowledge, such a depth of wisdom, apparently reposes in the after-death state, and so little in physical.

Okay, what is the physical world?  It is a profoundly coarse version of the Divine Plan, making available every negative experience the human condition can undergo:    every expression of pain and conflict;   every unanswerable question;   every emotional torment;   every betrayal, disappointment and tear that a human being is capable of experiencing.

Why is all this necessary?  In a “perfect world” what does misery and suffering offer the Holy Flock that joy, love, support, empathy and peace does not?

Everything!

The physical is a place where the negative side of every reality is examined.  On the other hand, Spirit is a “place” where the balancing influence of positivity is to be found – absolute love and self-love.  After a lifetime in physical, either brief or otherwise, a person re-examines familiar territory (a familiar timeframe, culture, genetic stream, etc) as experienced emotionally from a  Spiritual perspective.  In simple terms it can be said that the human race is an exploration of the creative potential made available by the polarising process.  Two other dimensions are incorporated;   namely,

  1.  The Spiritual evolvement of individuals while living “past lives”.
  2.  The need, especially in physical, to build individualisation.  That is, every free-will decision uniquely shapes that personality.  And so the millennia go by, second by second.  Of course with the introduction of new religions, such as New Ageism, or the dropping or redefining of established ones, emotional raw material comes and goes – which further defines the population. 
  3. Yet the greatest mystery of all can be found in a single sentence:    What is the destiny of every individual human being?

This is for every individual to find out – your greatest challenge.

From The Littlest Crusade To Beyond – A Title Change

Hello People, Because a recent change in publisher allowed me to take a fresh look at the cover design of “The Littlest Crusade”, I’ve decided to change its title to the more contemporary “Beyond“, reflecting the positive message of the book. Beyond - Buy the book

What Is The Most Useful Information As A Medium In Beyond?

QUESTION:  As a channel, what is the most useful piece of information Spirit has ever directed to you?

RESPONSE FROM DES:  There might be two different answers here.

One – Is ANY information useful if people are too self-preoccupied to be guided or even listen?

Two – Okay, let’s say at least SOMEONE is interested in being guided.  Consider.  There are almost eight billion human beings on the physical plane at this time.  Each is uniquely different from everybody else;   different from any person who has ever lived in the history of the human race, or ever will.  Each of us is a Universe comprising his or her own principles, preferences, genetic makeup, personality, belief structure, interpretations, level of understanding and cultural programming.

Therefore why, why, why should we insist that other people think as we think and believe what we believe and act as we act?  We even demand that people from distant corners of the world share our personal God or interpretation of God.  Is it any wonder why almost every war in history has been a religious war?  If only every individual were able to acknowledge that we are all different.  It is okay to be different.  We can celebrate this difference.  There is no need to be threatened by a difference among people or families or villages or cultures or countries.  If only…

If only we could comfortably allow ourselves to be different from one another, there would be no more conflict or wars.  Humanity would be a different creature.

NOW YOU KNOW.

PS:  Don’t forget that there are almost eight billion different answers to that question, because every person in physical has his or her own unique answer.  WHICH IS ENTIRELY OKAY.

Are We Almost Dead On This Earthly Plane?

BLAIR: You paint a picture of the after-death state in which everyone is happy and loves one another. How and Why? You say we create ourself in the physical world “second by second, and thought by thought, and emotion by emotion”. You also state we take EVERYTHING with us except our physical body. Therefore we must take emotions such as jealousy and hatred and rage and prejudice and greed. You seem to call all that “love”. God by whatever name surely plays His cards close to His chest.

DES: (1) The “Group” we merge with after death is an emotional organism, comprising a large number of people with shared experiences from one past lifetime or another. They belong together because of positive emotions, love in other words, imported from the past. One Group shades into another, and there are Groups within Groups within Groups; intimate family Groups, huge extended family-friend Groups, others with an ethnic identity, a national identity, and special-interest identities. We all gravitate naturally to where we belong, without the hint of resentment or competition. We are all immersed in love because that is the natural order in the absence of negative energy. Almost invariably we are in close proximity to grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren. That is where the emotions are strongest. The far reaches of the Group are made up of links that are remote or indirect, and owe more to other Groups. Beyond that nothing can be discerned at the personal level. It follows that every individual in spirit carries a UNIQUE emotional identity, formed by relationships and Groups and Sub-Groups; all flowing with a harmony and emotional intensity unrecognizable on the physical plane.

(2) What happens to the negative energy Blair talks about? Various types and degrees of negativity are inescapably encountered and incorporated and then expressed in physical, simply because that is what physicality offers, it is what physicality IS. In order to survive, we are driven to navigate a torturous route between two emotional poles, in a world which is polarised at every level: sub-atomic, molecular, physical, philosophical, religious…

THE BEDROCK AND FOUNDATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES ARE BUILT AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL, AND INFINITELY EXPLORED AND HONED IN THE AFTER-DEATH STATE. IN PHYSICAL WE CREATE BECAUSE OF THE PRESENCE OF NEGATIVE ENERGY, AND IN SPIRIT WE CREATE BECAUSE OF THE ABSENCE OF NEGATIVE ENERGY.

(3) It should be remembered that when we die we disengage from negative energy only slowly, as we “move away”. During this process we are neither on one plane nor the other, and can temporarily be dragged back by intense negative preoccupations. This phenomenon is referred to as “being earthbound”.

Blair suggests that “God… plays His cards close to His chest” (He is largely unknowable). Perhaps there are as many Gods as there are human beings, because we all have our own exclusive interpretation or perspective or model – shaped by our emotional need to understand ourself and the universe.

 

Is This The Death Of Old Age?

“JOY GERM”: If I was to be hit by lightning and killed when I was, say, 60 I would have learned what I came here to learn. The “me” I came to create would have been created, job finished. What would another 25 years have to contribute? The last lonely decade would probably be spent in a rest home or bed or hospital. What joy! Or even a dementia ward watching someone wipe my bottom and than change my nappy.

DES: This mindset is probably held by a lot of thoughtful people. The following answer was given to me in response to different questions. Life is lived a second at a time, comprising every emotion and thought and action and reaction. In my case it all comes together as an individual I call Des. That’s what I am in ABC simple terms.
The final 25 years of a person’s physical life contain a lot of seconds, each fitting into an intricate and unique pattern. (Unique in the history of the universe.) The final decades draw on the wisdom and experiences of a lifetime, and so frequently make available a level of understanding not accessible to the younger person. Qualities of patience, humility and empathy are unfolded, because the elderly person’s environment is made of such stuff.
Every single thought and emotion is as precious as a diamond as big as a mug. Collectively, that is what the human species is made of. The designs of Mother Nature are perfect, even if our understanding of them is much less.

A Scientist’s Comments On Beyond – The Book

“JASON WILLS”: I noticed a book review of yours on the New York Times bestseller by Anita Moorjani, DYING TO BE ME. [In a coma suffering from the final stages of terminal cancer, she had a near-death experience after which she was free of cancer – as verified by her oncologists and independent researchers. During the years since, no cancer has returned.] Your own book, BEYOND, was mentioned. Its basic message, to be believed or otherwise, supports what Moorjani discovered. However her account leaves a great number of questions completely unanswered that would interest most readers. I feel her book is substantially incomplete. As an international author examining more or less the same subjects, you may be placed to evaluate her claims in detail or help others do so.

Is the phenomenon to be taken seriously? Moorjani is not a healthcare professional able to evaluate alternative explanations. Patients who report a near-death experience relate quite different events. Why? Facts are facts, and must be supported by replicated scientific evidence.

DES: Her book is a personal account of her life before, during and after her near-death experience (NDE). It does not pretend to discuss other issues. Rather, Anita explores the mindset, attitudes and emotions which encourage the growth of cancer, and those which destroy cancer. In other words she looks back and identifies what caused her own cancer and what removed it – inspired insights given to her as she lay in a coma with hours apparently to live. So far as probing, analytical questions go, which were given to me and included in BEYOND, they are not part of Anita Moorjani’s experience.

What questions am I talking about? If you have looked through my website, or read TLC, there is little I can add. It is all quite simple. However I have just finished reading another book on near-death experiences (this one also a New York Times bestseller), written by the eminent neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, MD. Dr Alexander explored the world of the NDE after his own experience – both appalling and inspiring – changed him from a sceptic to a crusader whose story has transformed lives.

His account is described in PROOF OF HEAVEN: A NEUROSURGEON’S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks; New York; 2012). Both, however, are eclipsed by the first books on NDEs to gain international scientific attention, those written by Raymond A. Moody, MD, Ph.D. Dr Moody interviewed and researched 1,000 patients who reported near-death experiences. Moody himself may be uniquely qualified to pass judgment on the efficacy of these claims. He obtained a Ph.D. in psychology from the Univ. of West Georgia and later became a professor in the faculty. After obtaining his MD he worked as a forensic psychiatrist. Later he was appointed Professor of Consciousness Studies at the Univ. of Nevada. In 1992 he won a prize at the New York Film Festival in the Human Relations category, for a TV documentary on his books on NDEs.

It can therefore be concluded that Moorjani can rely on specialist academic support. As for my latest book BEYOND and its associated website which is now part of the SelfEMDR.com website, I was able to draw on a lifetime as a psychic and many decades as a neurotherapist in the mental healthcare system, to channel information that answers almost any question relating to near-death experiences.

All this notwithstanding, is the threshold of “scientific evidence” reached to justify the claims of Anita Moorjani and others?

To start with, what are we to make of the Holy Grail referred to as “scientific evidence”?

Consider: Turning back time, the most respected scientists in the world are instructing the population – uneducated, intelligentsia and specialists alike – who listen in awe. “It has been scientifically proven that blowflies are produced from rotten meat. As it breaks down, eggs and then maggots form within the decaying matter, and give rise to adult flies. This is where blowflies come from. A natural cycle of life can therefore be seen creating itself.

Another claim that was paraded before the world as absolute, undeniable, and scientifically proven, was that no human being, throughout the history of the species, would ever travel at a speed exceeding 25 miles per hour (I have seen various figures, all below 100 miles per hour), because to do so would crush the cardiovascular system and cause death.

Of course these assertions are rubbish. As time passes and science evolves, other “facts” come and go, trumpeted as true and proven, only to be discarded as more modern principles take their place. And so on. Common sense tells us this will continue. There is no such thing as unchangeable scientific proof. What is revered as proven, absolute, replicated, generally accepted reality today, will be derided as a pitiful joke by the next generation or the one after.

Perhaps Anita Moorjani is justified in shrugging off her many “scientific” detractors.