Near-Death Experiences. Exploring the Mind-Body Connection by Ornella Corazza Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York, UK/US, 2008 192 pp. Trade, $110.00 ISBN: 978-0-415-45519-0. Reviewed by Luis Miguel Girão [email protected] Near-Death Experiences – Exploring the Mind-Body Connection brings new insights to the realm of technology based art & science thinking and practice. By proposing a mind-body model where both elements are an indivisible one, we are inevitably induced to conceive new art forms. One can sense the presence of Ornella Corazza as a reflex of her profound engagement with her subject matter in the book. This personal and serious approach is the result of her activities as a researcher on Near Death Experiences at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. In the course of her career she has been very close to Eastern conceptualizations of body and soul. As a previous Member of the 21st Century Centre of Excellence involved in the program on the “Construction of Death and Life Studies,” she established an intellectual flight path between London and Tokyo. Somewhere up there in the stratosphere, midway between the UK and Japan, she is in a privileged position to bring along Eastern and Western cultural and philosophical perspectives on the mind-body problem. This is what is brilliantly done throughout the book, combining the strength of someone who is extremely involved with the rigour and critical distance needed in scientific studies. Near-Death Experiences – Exploring the Mind-Body Connection is a huge source of references for everyone interested in consciousness studies. Although Corazza builds a numbers of strong arguments in favour of mind-body as a single and indivisible entity, she does not dismiss any of the alternative perspectives on the problem. The palette of authors analysed is extremely rich and of a wide spectrum of thought, ranging from theological theories about NDE to biologists and psychoanalysts arguing the nature of NDE as a defense mechanism of the dying brain. The transdisciplinary nature of what is known as ‘the hard problem’ in consciousness studies is well characterised and also extended to the mind-body problem. The fact that subjects reported on NDE tend to describe these experiences in keeping with their respective cultural circumstances presents a problem. On the other hand, one can argue that those subjects employ a vocabulary available to them that it is naturally conditioned by their culture. Corazza´s main contribution to the realm of art & science and technology is in her proposed rethinking of embodiment as a non-dualistic non-reductionist concept. The reconfiguration of the way we conceive the functioning of our senses is instrumental in the development of new technologies and new approaches, for instance, on human-computer interaction. Contemporary computers are built mirroring our present understanding of the mind-body connection. In a few words, they are basically a number of peripheral inputs and outputs, sometimes autonomous, that communicate with the core processor responsible for almost everything that is going on. Out of Bodies Experiences force us to re-conceptualize vision and its correlations with other senses. Subjects reporting OBE claim not only to have seen their own body from an outside perspective, but actually to be somewhere else in relation to it. The fact that OBEs do not only happen during the physical experience of NDE, but can also be induced through electromagnetic stimulation of a specific area of the brain, is in itself a step forward in the area of bio-electromagnetism related technologies. Artists are already exploring this realm as a new spectrum for expression. A good portion of the book is dedicated to the study of chemically induced NDE as a consequence of the recreational use of Ketamine. Results obtained in those cases are analysed and compared with others reported by subjects that where close to death either due to natural causes or accidents. This incorporation of new medical research challenges the survivalist hypothesis that takes NDEs as a proof of the existence of an afterlife. Ornella Corazza, in this book, extends the teachings of Yasuo Yuasa and Hiroshi Motoyama and tells us, in a very well documented manner, that we are embodied consciousness. The mind-body connection that is established in it brings science and art together, feeding our imagination for the creation of new technologies.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 07:51:12 +0000
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