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Goodbye Jesus

Near Death Experiences, Hell, Hope


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Posted

It's not just this one, but this caught my eye. When a lady/doctor went on the today show, I heard about her NDE experience. Of course like a lot of people who don't particularly like Christianity, I was a little annoyed. However, I wanted to look up just because I felt like I hadn't really looked up that stuff before/actually read/learned about it. I looked it up, and of course this came up:

 

http://www.near-death.com/storm.html

 

I tried to talk to someone and they said to post in a pre-existing thread, but I felt like I would be "crashing" the threads, even though they are talking about similar topic. I hope I can find someone who can help me overcome the idea that this man had a genuine experience with god. He had been an atheist for the greater part of his life. From interviews I've seen on him, he was raised with Christianity, but only up until when he was a teen or so. And from his own testimony of his experiences. I do believe that he at least had an experience that changed him, because he was a professor of art and literature and quit his job to become a pastor after his experience. My problem is that the details of his experience seem to be a little hard for me to just dismiss as not at least being a bit strange, given that he "wanted oblivion". I know there are other Near Death experiences, and a lot of them seem to be somewhat based on culture, but I was wondering if anyone would look at this experience and help me transition through the idea it was genuinely god. He basically was attacked by demons who lured him to hell, he was saved when something inside him told him to pray to god. His sins weren't his atheism, as much as selfishness brought on by materialism (I by not means actually believe that materialists are more selfless).

 

What I was afraid of posting for wasn't that I was afraid no one would post, but that I would just get mocked without anyone actually looking at this experience. I have no problem with people saying that it's just a brain thing, but I wanted help in thinking that for myself, or at least finding out how to get around the idea that this man went to a genuine hell. I know that a lot of other people had experiences where they were told that hell was not permanent.

 

I guess I am just trying to reconcile this, and other aspects of religious experiences, with my seemingly hopeless condition. I have told my father how I don't feel like I can love god, that I don't know how to reconcile the idea of hell with a loving god. I don't feel like I have a choice at all in this world anymore, and have been sleeping all day to try and escape my fears and thoughts. Most of all, the idea that there are happy heathens, who get to love and accept themselves, not repent for who they are. That if god is there, that I just didn't want to reject who I was in order to be close to god if he was there. That I was a sinner, that knowledge and self-reliance were the anti-thesis of the Christian god's desire for us to be pure, and with him.

 

I just hope that there is some way I can reconcile this man, as well as other experiences, with the idea that god is not doing this. That there isn't a hell that I have to fear, or a fascist to follow. That if god is there, that somehow I would be able to follow the path of acceptance and love. That there is some hope. I just want some hope that I am not a slave in the reality of god. I just want to know that there is some hope that I am not trapped in a psychological, or literal world of fascism and fear.

Posted

IMO near death experiences are just chemically altered states of the brain.

  • Like 2
Guest Valk0010
Posted

I am somewhat reminded of the Johnny Cochrane, look at the pretty monkey seen from south park.

 

The experiences of NDE's are of a too diverse subject matter to prove, even if they are real anything other then, some mass equal afterlife sort of scenario. How one gets Christianity out of it is beyond me.

  • Like 2
Posted

How one gets Christianity out of it is beyond me.

 

This. I've heard NDEs that are different from the "tunnel of light", and still, all the descriptions sound like nothing from the bible.

 

Personally, I don't see how "chemicals in the brain" prove something doesn't exist - physical stimuli also cause chemical reactions. Still, that doesn't mean that an NDE proves Christianity. It only suggests that a non-physical reality could exist. And that could be so many things.

  • Like 1
Posted

I've read a lot about NDEs. Just finished a book by the first doctor to do a full scale study on them, actually.

 

Even after all the research, the consensus is, "We don't know". Yeah, that sucks, right??! There's "evidence" that points to both sides being right. Noone knows. BUT it's DEFINITELY not particular to any one religion. Religions, at best, are poor ways to describe this "ultimate reality" (if it really exists). And only about 15-20% of people who flatline and come back report an NDE. Why is that?? IDK.

 

Just know that they definitely DO NOT show any one religion to be more likely than another.

  • Like 1
Posted

Just throwing out a question here, because I don't know if there's been any research done on this idea or not. Do people tend to see in an NDE what they have earlier "thought" they would see?

Posted

Religions, at best, are poor ways to describe this "ultimate reality" (if it really exists).

Why would you say that? What other than religion attempts to describe it? Science doesn't. Poetry does, but that is part of religion too. Art does, but that is part of religion too. Actually, I would say that religions specifically take those forms of expression and specifically employs them to describe it. What other discipline does?

 

How well it describes it is the better question. And to that I would say the only way you can truly judge that is by first experiencing ultimate reality yourself. Then you are in the position to say, "yeah, I can see how it can be talked about that way", or not. Otherwise to say it doesn't do a good job assumes the person has some first-hand experience they are drawing from to say it doesn't, and then the question becomes to them how would you choose to describe it?

 

Just know that they definitely DO NOT show any one religion to be more likely than another.

Well to me it shows that all religions express essentially the same thing. The real key to getting your mind around this is that religious expression is not really at its heart about trying to tell you facts of some 'unseen worlds' beyond the grave. Those are simply ways to talk about the experience of a state of ultimate reality. They are highly symbolic expressions, not literal facts. And that the words and symbols used don't point to actual places or persons, is beneath the real point.

 

Questions like 'are NDE's real or not', is not the point. Of course they are real. What the heck are people describing? They had a real experience. They had an experience. It's not an imagined experience. They were there and reported the experience. What they describe as real or not is again besides the point. It's what they represent that is real. What is it in themselves that takes these forms in their minds, and why do these take the forms they do? Those are the real questions. Any face we put on that ultimate reality is NOT that reality itself. It is a face we supply in order to try to comprehend it with the rational mind. That is why each person sees something different. But the real point is they are all talking about the same thing, even if it has a different mask it wears.

 

Why do some experience it and others not? Why are some people more open to religious experience and other never 'get it'? It probably has to do with how we are wired, how those pathways work, which is due to some very complex reasons. We can and we do rewire our brains all the time, and through various life experiences we may become more open to these things, or more closed down to them through such processes. I do believe personally however that we all have that within us, but its a matter of it being more or less opened to us by a lot of factors. But at the bottom line, you have pretty much everyone who does report these experiences saying pretty much the same sorts of things, regardless of how it's expressed symbolically.

Posted

I had an NDE before, a comical one--sort of, but there was no bright light, just endless rolling fields and clear blue sky, and a person who looked like 'Jesus', like the one in the paintings, and he was pissed cuz he looked like he did because I expected him to look that way, kind of a gate keeper of sorts. Weird but it did nothing to reinforce by beliefs at the time. NDE occurs when someone is NEAR death, not actually dead, so seeing Jesus during an NDE is just wishful thinking or dreaming. Not everyone has the same NDE.

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Posted

I just hope that there is some way I can reconcile this man, as well as other experiences, with the idea that god is not doing this. That there isn't a hell that I have to fear, or a fascist to follow. That if god is there, that somehow I would be able to follow the path of acceptance and love. That there is some hope. I just want some hope that I am not a slave in the reality of god. I just want to know that there is some hope that I am not trapped in a psychological, or literal world of fascism and fear.

I hope this point wasn't lost in my details of my last post above this one. I want to make sure I can offer some encouragement to you. I've had an NDE, and have similar experience all the time through my personal practice of mediation. I feel I have gained a great deal of insight into this through my experiences, as well as research into what others have learned. So I am speaking from a place of direct experience and not just speculations about what others say.

 

As I was saying before the faces that we put on these experiences are most definitely drawn from a reservoir of cultural symbols. The reasons we do this is because they express in symbolic form things we experience within ourselves that transcend, go beyond what we normally have symbols for that we represent to ourselves. We have a symbols of our 'self', that 'me' you think of when you imagine "who am I"? That's symbolic too, even though we don't see it as that. We don't see it that way because that's how we identify ourselves.

 

And so when something huge, way out of the ordinary, comes along and blows the roof off of reality of that normal little symbolic 'me', the mind draws from a reservoir of our symbols of transcendent projections of ourselves: animal figures in shamanic experience, Jesus or Krishna, or Buddha as transcended divine-humans, archetypal forms of angles. These are things that we experience in ourselves as ourselves, that we externalize and put a face on to see it. It takes the formless, raw experience, and gives is a form.

 

Seeing God is a form from that formlessness within us we experience. Seeing hell, is the subconscious mind speaking to itself through symbolic form - never do people who 'go to hell' actually suffer anything - they are observers only and it tells themselves something through that symbolic expression. It is their own subconscious mind speaking to their conscious mind through these symbols.

 

Now the key to understanding why this guy would describe it as a real place, or a real god, etc, has to do with how they process reality on this level. He is thinking still in magical or mythic-literal terms. When I first started practicing mediation and encountering these forms in those deeper altered states of consciousness, my first thoughts were "I can see how someone who believe in literal gods 'out there' would see this as actually meeting a deity literally. Their minds would process this into the normal stage of development they are at in the area of spiritual realization.

 

My mind no longer thinks this way, and so even though the experience is indeed extraordinarily profound and meaningful, life changing, my mind doesn't walk away from it and say, "Jesus appeared to me today, and I met Sophia from beyond the golden gateway over the river Styx". I may in fact experience such forms, but I know them as aspects of some greater, higher, deeper, truer state of ultimate reality that my mind uses to express that to myself. They come from that deep well of the collective unconscious, and well as our own cultural training. He however sees this literally, in very much the same way a young child might see the clouds as real people.

 

The thing to add to this I just thought of. In my experiences these 'forms' these faces, these visions, are in fact not the ultimate state, not the ultimate truth. In fact I experience many times what I describe as "Heaven disappears". These subtle-state experiences, of which an NDE is, give way to those forms melding into yourself. That dualistic representation of 'heaven above' simply melts and dissolves away into you. It becomes you, and you become it, and there is no more separation. You become aware as That, which it previous was represented in these forms. You essentially awaken to your Self. There is no longer any God above, but pure Oneness of all that is. What God represented in transcendent form, you now are.

 

So I would try to start to see that how people talk about these things don't respent some fact about them in the form they take. "I saw hell, therefore its a real place", is an incorrect way to ultimately understand these things. Don't loose sleep over this, and I would encourage you to try to find that 'heaven' inside yourself. Understand that no expression of these things are the thing itself. You're already that, and its simply a matter of finding your Self within all that we see the world through.

Guest Valk0010
Posted

 

 

I guess I am just trying to reconcile this, and other aspects of religious experiences, with my seemingly hopeless condition. I have told my father how I don't feel like I can love god, that I don't know how to reconcile the idea of hell with a loving god.

Here is a unrelated thought that has come to mind. If god is not benevolent, then there is no reason to see him as any different from the devil. That makes Christianity logically impossible, because you have to accept the devil is evil, god is good paradigm for it to make any sense. And if the bible is the word of god and this god exists, there is no reason to believe it would fail on this key point. The fact that it does proves its man made. A unrelated point yes i know, but I figure that idea might be of interest to you.
Posted

Religions, at best, are poor ways to describe this "ultimate reality" (if it really exists).

Why would you say that? What other than religion attempts to describe it? Science doesn't. Poetry does, but that is part of religion too. Art does, but that is part of religion too. Actually, I would say that religions specifically take those forms of expression and specifically employs them to describe it. What other discipline does?

 

How well it describes it is the better question. And to that I would say the only way you can truly judge that is by first experiencing ultimate reality yourself. Then you are in the position to say, "yeah, I can see how it can be talked about that way", or not. Otherwise to say it doesn't do a good job assumes the person has some first-hand experience they are drawing from to say it doesn't, and then the question becomes to them how would you choose to describe it?

 

Just know that they definitely DO NOT show any one religion to be more likely than another.

Well to me it shows that all religions express essentially the same thing. The real key to getting your mind around this is that religious expression is not really at its heart about trying to tell you facts of some 'unseen worlds' beyond the grave. Those are simply ways to talk about the experience of a state of ultimate reality. They are highly symbolic expressions, not literal facts. And that the words and symbols used don't point to actual places or persons, is beneath the real point.

 

Questions like 'are NDE's real or not', is not the point. Of course they are real. What the heck are people describing? They had a real experience. They had an experience. It's not an imagined experience. They were there and reported the experience. What they describe as real or not is again besides the point. It's what they represent that is real. What is it in themselves that takes these forms in their minds, and why do these take the forms they do? Those are the real questions. Any face we put on that ultimate reality is NOT that reality itself. It is a face we supply in order to try to comprehend it with the rational mind. That is why each person sees something different. But the real point is they are all talking about the same thing, even if it has a different mask it wears.

 

Why do some experience it and others not? Why are some people more open to religious experience and other never 'get it'? It probably has to do with how we are wired, how those pathways work, which is due to some very complex reasons. We can and we do rewire our brains all the time, and through various life experiences we may become more open to these things, or more closed down to them through such processes. I do believe personally however that we all have that within us, but its a matter of it being more or less opened to us by a lot of factors. But at the bottom line, you have pretty much everyone who does report these experiences saying pretty much the same sorts of things, regardless of how it's expressed symbolically.

 

OMG...I'm starting to understand what you are saying, Antlerman! Interesting.

  • Like 1
Posted

OMG...I'm starting to understand what you are saying, Antlerman! Interesting.

:HaHa: Awesome! I think this says something about how you are starting to see things then. It definitely takes seeing things from a different vantage point to get this.

Posted

Look. Have I had an NDE? No. So Ill admit I'm obviously not an authority. BUT, I have read a lot from others who HAVE had NDE's, and from medical professionals they have spent exhaustive amounts of time and resources studying it. So, if NDE's WERE ALL IN YOUR HEAD/not authentic (believe me, I'm not saying that's true though, I don't know), of course the people experiencing them would say its "real" or "truth" or whatever term they wish to use to describe its innate "realness". Just like a schiz would say the voices hes hearing are real. NOW, that schiz might be hearing a real person, say his mom, talking to him. Or it could be the voices caused by bad wiring. But both seem real to the person experiencing it. So when I hear a person describing an NDE they experienced, I take it with a grain of salt. Could they be describing something real? Something causes by actual external stimuli? Maybe. But if it were an "hallucination" , they wouldnt call it a hallucination, they would call it real.

 

This is all just my thoughts and opinions though. I understand there's a wide difference of opinion here, and I could most definitely be wrong.

Posted

You misunderstood what i said. I should ask sjessen to translate it for me since she is getting it. Its not about proving the content as factual as i said. Its all there in what i went into detail explaining.

Posted

You misunderstood what i said. I should ask sjessen to translate it for me since she is getting it. Its not about proving the content as factual as i said. Its all there in what i went into detail explaining.

 

I better not, I am not sure I would do it justice! Also, I'm not sure I am understanding you correctly!!

 

Antlerman, what you've written reminds me of a story I've heard (I think it is more of a proverb--Buddhist?) about how when Columbus came to America, the natives could not see the ships out in the water. They could see the displacement of the water, but they couldn't make out what was causing the displacement for they had never seen such vessels before. So the medicine man of the tribe went out day after day and would look. Eventually he was able to make out the shape of the great ships and then the details of it. Since it was so far away from anything they understood, they couldn't see it.

 

I've heard of something similar done with psychology tests. Rats raised where there are only vertical lines, they can't see horizontal ones, for example.

 

Anyway, that is what is getting through to me. That each of us has a certain view of things and a different way our brain interprets what we see. Like at an accident scene where people report things completely differently. What we see is a projection of who we are and what we are "wired" to comprehend. Someone interested in fashion may be able to tell you what the people were wearing in detail, but not know what the people were driving. Another guy into cars can tell you all about the vehicles involved and the damage done to the vehicles, but couldn't tell you if it was a man or woman involved. This is a poor example, but it is an example, nonetheless.

 

Our minds create shapes and colors and sounds etc to interpret what it perceives; however, what is really there? Is a car actually red or is that just how I perceive it? Your eyes see it in a different shade, which is correct? Or if you're color blind you can't see the color red at all but see gray. So is it really gray or really red, or neither? Maybe it is actually clear with properties that reflect certain wavelengths of light that cause me to see it as red. We don't really know for sure the nature of what we are seeing, we only know how we perceive it.

 

Not sure this is what you are talking about. Hope I'm close.

Posted

Look. Have I had an NDE? No. So Ill admit I'm obviously not an authority. BUT, I have read a lot from others who HAVE had NDE's, and from medical professionals they have spent exhaustive amounts of time and resources studying it.

Now that I'm back from lunch, I'll take another stab at this...

 

Studying it has it's place, but whatever is said is simply based on observation and an attempt to interpret what others who have experienced it are tying to say. Actually experiencing it is first hand data, and any researcher who has that has a lot more insight into it than just observation. Understanding these sorts of things work best understanding them from the inside, as well as observing them from the outside.

 

An example would be like trying to understand what being an Eskimo is like by studying Eskimo culture and language. Though that does offer good insights, it will never, ever tell you what being an Eskimo is truly like. The only way to know that is, to live life as an Eskimo yourself, looking at the world through the eyes of those firsthand experiences. Then coupling your experiences as an Eskimo, with your knowledge of Eskimo culture from a scientific inquiry, adds a greater depth of knowledge on both fronts.

 

So, if NDE's WERE ALL IN YOUR HEAD/not authentic....

Right here is the crux of the problem. If something being 'all in your head' makes it not authentic, then nothing in your head is authentic. Everything we experience in life is 'in our head'. Its how we take in experience and understand it with our cognitive minds. Of course an NDE is "all in your head". So is everything we experience. Every single thought you have about your world is 'all in your head'.

 

Yes, there are physical objects outside yourself that correspond to these mental objects in your head, such as your girlfriend is a physical human being, that you also carry around in your head as a mental object you bring to mind in processing all your thoughts and emotions against in a non-material, representational world 'all in your head'. But there is also a whole world of non-material realities we interact with such as culture, values, emotions, thoughts, hopes, dreams, regrets, memories, fears, etc. All of those also have mental objects, or faces we put upon them in order to process them with our minds. We 'think' about them. We interact with them. We plan, we rehearse, we dialog with, fight against work with, etc, and none of them are really there. They are objects in the mind. There are an experienced reality "all in our heads".

 

The way this works is like this. In every day life we have an experience. That experience is raw and unmediated. It just hits us and the mind immediately takes the experience and splits it into two parts: object and subject. The mind asks, "What was that?" (objective), and "What does that mean?" (subjective). This is true for every experience and it happens instantly and invisibly to us. A loud bang occurs, your ears hear it and your body feels it; the mind goes, "What was that? That was an explosion!", and "What does that mean? Am I in danger?" Another example, "You receive a letter in the mail from your girlfriend, "What is this? it's a letter from Karen". What does it mean? She breaking up, it means my life will change". We live mentally in a world comprised of a subject/object duality. From this point on, after the experience has passed, we now live "all in our heads".

 

Following this yet? This is all normal functioning that we never even realize is going on because it constitutes reality to us. We are embedded within it, and it is invisible to us. It appears as reality to us, but the nature of that reality is in fact directly tied to a symbolic, linguist construction of mind objects, "all in our heads" that we interact with objectively, even though they are not material objects. They represent an interpretation of an experience. This not supernatural, but natural. We just don't recognize it because we are inside of it.

 

Now lets kick it up a level or three. NDEs. What happens in these transcendent experiences is an experience of life that we have no frame of reference to quickly say, "Oh, that's an car approaching, I need to move. Oh, I know what that is, the lawn needs to be mowed". It's a level of experience that blows the roof right off all the normal functioning symbols we can slot things easily into. The experience is real, what the mind supplies to see it in that duality, "What is it", has no frame of reference in material objects, nor in everyday emotional objects. The mind is overwhelmed with information flowing from a source it normally has little to no interaction with, and so the mind pulls from cultural symbols that are transcendent in nature already, gods and angels, and whatnot.

 

Are those real? Well, yes and no. The experience itself, sans any symbols is a real, measurable, observable, repeatable experience. No doubt about it. That's what I mean by an NDE is in fact real. That someone sees a religious symbol doesn't mean the experience is invalid. Not at all. It just happens to have used an available cultural religious object as what it will attach the experience to, "That was God". In the deepest sense, yes, it really was God, but in that the experience itself transcended any object, and what the mind manifest was culturally recognizable as God in that moment. That was the face the mind put upon "God", so to speak. This is why I like the quote of Meister Ekhart where he refers to "God beyond God". What is it that is behind the face we see?

 

You see, the reality is the experience. It's not what is manifest symbolically to understand it. It's the raw, unmediated, prior reality before it splits into subject and object duality that is the reality. The NDE is like lifting the lid on this mediated reality, shooting the mind beyond its symbolic world "all in its head" to experience itself beyond thoughts. It is only the face of that the mind is trying to put faces upon it, in its final hold to what is knows as reality as it dissolves, or awakens, into Infinity.

 

Virtually everyone who experiences this finds their entire sense of self forever changed. It is not some unhealthy misfiring of the mind in schizophrenic breaks from reality, which can in fact somewhat mimic it because of the breakdown of these pathways which leads to dysfunction. Most NDE's lead to a powerful, life-transforming positive, healthy change. I for one, have never been the same. My entire life has been towards that realization again in my waking mind. It is in fact possible.

 

 

I'm not sure if this helps, or further muddies the waters for you. I'll try to make it easier if possible if you ask for clarification on individual points.

Posted

I'm gonna have to wait til I can sit down with a coffee and "absorb" your wisdom, Antler. :)

A quick read through wont do it justice. I'll respond when I can. Thanks for being so helpful in explaining, A!

Posted

I'm gonna have to wait til I can sit down with a coffee and "absorb" your wisdom, Antler. smile.png

A quick read through wont do it justice. I'll respond when I can. Thanks for being so helpful in explaining, A!

I'll keep trying till I can find better ways to put it. I know that last one was a bit technical, mixed with more just expressiveness coming from that place. The bottom line is, what is experienced is real. How it is understood by the mind, is just that. How the mind understands it. That is not the measure of Truth. Our very Being itself is, head on, Face to Face. How's that for simplified? The rest is interesting to try to understand as well so we can attempt to talk about it.

Posted
OMG...I'm starting to understand what you are saying, Antlerman! Interesting.
:HaHa: Awesome! I think this says something about how you are starting to see things then. It definitely takes seeing things from a different vantage point to get this.
I'm gonna have to wait til I can sit down with a coffee and "absorb" your wisdom, Antler. smile.png A quick read through wont do it justice. I'll respond when I can. Thanks for being so helpful in explaining, A!
I'll keep trying till I can find better ways to put it. I know that last one was a bit technical, mixed with more just expressiveness coming from that place. The bottom line is, what is experienced is real. How it is understood by the mind, is just that. How the mind understands it. That is not the measure of Truth. Our very Being itself is, head on, Face to Face. How's that for simplified? The rest is interesting to try to understand as well so we can attempt to talk about it.

 

Kudos Aman! Kudos!3.gif

  • Like 1
  • Moderator
Posted

I really wish that I could vote your posts up, Antlerman. You are seriously rocking the empirispiritual spectrum. B)

Posted

I really wish that I could vote your posts up, Antlerman. You are seriously rocking the empirispiritual spectrum. cool.png

Wow thanks. "Empirispiritual", that's a new one! Cool. :)

  • Moderator
Posted

I really wish that I could vote your posts up, Antlerman. You are seriously rocking the empirispiritual spectrum. cool.png

Wow thanks. "Empirispiritual", that's a new one! Cool. smile.png

 

Yeah--I just came up with that. Fitting, no? :D

Posted

I really wish that I could vote your posts up, Antlerman. You are seriously rocking the empirispiritual spectrum. cool.png

Wow thanks. "Empirispiritual", that's a new one! Cool. smile.png

 

Yeah--I just came up with that. Fitting, no? biggrin.png

Yeah, it works...

Posted

Let me first thank you for responding at all everyone, especially Antlerman, and for attempting to describe your experiences. Thank you to Kaiser, Valk and McDaddy for your opinions and for not mocking me with them, even though you don't think there is anything to them for the most part, and HereticZ for your personal experience. I have heard of similar things regarding what people want to see and that influencing it. And to Sjessen and Lunatic for your input. The thing that bothers me about this is that at the time, he seems to have genuinely "wanted oblivion" (his quote), and his experiences seem to have come out of no where, since he doesn't seem to have experience with the idea of vicious demons luring people in and then turning on them, at least the Christian perspective of them. This goes along with the appeal of the story as evidence for Christianity for most Christians. He has multiple video interviews describing his experiences.

 

I think I understand what you are saying Antlerman, at least mostly. Although the first time I read it I think that it was a little muddled. You are saying that what is experienced are our minds trying to categorize and organize an experience of something which has no precedent in culture or previous experiences. The seeing of cultural or religious symbols is representative of this process, and not necessarily of the reality of those symbols and/or belief systems.

 

Antlerman, you said that no one who goes to these places actually has anything happen to them? I am a little confused because it says in this man's experience that he was beaten/attacked and clawed by these initial beings. Not only this, but supposedly he was told that the bible has spiritual truth, although reading it literally will lead to problems, that if you read it "spiritually" and "prayerfully" that is speaks to you. Not only this but this man apparently was told of the future/possible future. One of which talking about the economic collapse of the world and I believe something about a civil war in America that no one else will intervene to help with, since they had all been abused by the exploitation of America. During his experience he was going over life experiences, talking about them "loving" him whenever he became too ashamed or sad, and stopping the review of his life. It went further to say that in the future, and this is where is gets a little weirder, I think it was like 100 years or 200, that he was shown "God's garden", instead of what he expected or at least what he describes as a world where people are telepathically linked and pray to change the weather. This was because of god's kingdom being ushered in. He was also told there were more spiritually developed life on other planets, that earth was in a "bad way" for lack of a better word. Basically a weird version of revelations it seems like/he was told that god wanted to bring in his kingdom in the next hundred years.

 

Another reason I get hung up on this is because it seems like, even though he says to not have much of a history in Christianity (He has said in interviews about having an influence when he was younger, but going astray when he was a teenager.) Not to mention that he was an atheist when he "went under", making me wonder why he would have such a "Christian Experience". I know you're saying that the experience itself is your mind is in essence experiencing itself, but in this instance he repeatedly talks about his "surprise" when he is presented with details by the angels/"beings of light". I know that the person who owns the site/documents all these experiences talks about how this person's experience and details is one of the most, if not the most, detailed/in depth, or at least something to that affect. Since you know from experience and from study, I was wondering if you could tell me what you think of the details of the story? If you could read the story and give me your insight on this man's experiences from your perspective, I would be most grateful. (The details are in the link/there are 4 links describing the his experiences)

 

When you talk about Ultimate Reality, are you referring to an actual spiritual realm/stimuli that are experienced in the NDE, and elaborated upon by our minds through the process of symbolic thought/attaching religious or cultural "faces" to the experiences in the phenomenon?

 

PS is the idea of things feeling "more real than real life" a common theme? He seems to mention how everything felt more intense than normal.

Guest Valk0010
Posted

One detail, the christian experience, is in a sense, a bland generic experience. Heaven or Hell, fairly typical.

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