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LINZ AUDAIN
example, Ring (1980) gave an account of a woman with lifelong blind-
ness who discussed the resuscitation equipment and procedures that
she observed during her NDE. Blind from birth, she could not possibly
have had personal knowledge of these things. Indeed, accurate obser-
vations by the blind constitute some of the most objective evidence for
the existence of the veridicality phenomenon, in that it is difficult, if
not impossible, to argue that the blind individual is fabricating or pre-
varicating about things previously seen. Ring has continued his work
in identifying these kinds of cases (Ring and Cooper, 1997; Ring and
Lawrence, 1993). Cases of veridical observations have also been dis-
cussed by others (Moody and Perry, 1988).
The veridicality phenomenon presents the traditional explanatory
model of the NDE with a significant problem indeed. Consider, for ex-
ample, the proposition that the NDE represents the activation of pre-
viously genetically encoded memories (Morse, Venecia, and Milstein,
1989). The problem that such a theory confronts is that genes were en-
coded at least one generation before the resuscitation technology was
developed. It becomes difficult therefore to explain how NDErs can ob-
serve resuscitation technology and procedures that had not even been
discovered at the time that their genes were encoded. Other traditional
explanatory models that take the NDE-as-memory approach (G6mez-
Jeria and Saavedra-Aguilar, 1994; Jourdan, 1994) confront a similar
temporal problem of how the memory of the event could possibly pre-
cede the actual occurrence of the event.
The Precognition Phenomenon
The precognition phenomenon arises when some NDErs are able to
make predictions about the future after their experience. A dramatic
example of this phenomenon was seen in the case of Dannion Brinkley,
one of Moody's NDE subjects. Brinkley returned from his NDE with
predictions about the Persian Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union
years before those events actually came to pass (Brinkley and Perry,
1994). Others (Lundahl, 1993; Ring, 1982) have discussed the precog-
nition phenomenon in greater detail.
Traditional explanatory models of the NDE confront a different sort
of temporal problem in their attempts to explain the precognition phe-
nomenon. In the case of the veridicality phenomenon, the issue concerns
how someone can have a memory of an event that is happening in the
present. In the case of the precognition phenomenon, there is no pos-
sible memory or other traditional frame of reference; the individual is
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