NDE due to lightning strike: Krohn excerpt #1

Elizabeth Krohn

Elizabeth G. Krohn is the author with Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness.” Her complete essay is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

When Elizabeth Greenfield Krohn got out of her car with her two young sons in the parking lot of her synagogue on a late afternoon in September 1988, she couldn't have anticipated she would within seconds be struck by lightning and have a near-death experience. She felt herself transported to a garden and engaging in a revelatory conversation with a spiritual being. When she recovered, her most fundamental understandings of what the world is and how it works had been completely transformed. She was “changed in a flash,” suddenly able to interact with those who had died and have prescient dreams predicting news events. She came to believe that some early traumatic and abusive experiences had played a part in preparing her for this experience.
 
Told in matter-of-fact language, the first half of this book is the story of Krohn’s journey, and the second is an interpretation and analysis by Jeffrey J. Kripal, Associate Dean of the School of Humanities at Rice University who holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought. Kirpal is also Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion. He places Krohn's experience in the context of religious traditions and proposes the groundbreaking idea that we are shaping our own experiences in the future by how we engage with near-death experiences in the present. Changed in a Flash is not about proving a story, but about carving out space for serious discussion of this phenomenon.

Elizabeth G. Krohn writes:

 

What is the best available evidence for the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death? While numerous scientific practitioners have attempted to conclusively answer this question, none so far have succeeded.

Why not?

Despite the advances it has attained for humanity, the scientific method is inadequate to conclusively answer the above question. Strong innate curiosity has compelled many brilliant minds to pursue science, usually using methods that overlay data with the rigidity of the scientific method. However, some of these same researchers find that there are times that this method does not—cannot—yield accurate answers.

An integral and inextricable component to the scientific method is observation. Observation is a cripplingly missing element when it comes to what researchers call “scientific” studies. It is not possible to effectively employ the scientific method in studies on this subject because the researchers cannot personally observe the data. They can only assemble the testimony of experiencers into groupings and make some assumptions that may or may not be what the individual narratives intended. Those studies, while good tools, are not the best evidence. The best evidence must come from individual near-death experiencers telling their individual stories.

Part of what makes science so dependable is the fact that it is an iterative process. In order for a theory to be scientifically accepted, it must be repeatable on demand. Therefore, to say definitively that human consciousness survives permanent bodily death from a purely scientific standpoint, one would be required to repeatedly run the experiment on demand and get the same results each time. Since this would involve intentionally causing permanent bodily death to humans, and then somehow communicating with the deceased in a documented and verifiable manner, it cannot currently be done in a legal or humane setting.

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.