BS: More on Life After Death

Subject: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 06:31 PM

I've gone looking for other threads on this subject and I'm finding closed threads, so I'm starting a new one. Last night was another of those oddities that make me sure that there's a whole lot we don't know- but if we tuned in and accepted it we'd realize that we 'know' a lot more than we think.

Yesterday at the age of 81 a friend/employer of mine died. In Oklahoma. After a very active life, she had had a massive stroke in 1996 and she never walked again. (In another thread I recount the fact that I, in Alaska, was the one who called the police in Tulsa who then discovered her on her floor.) She was bedfast the rest of her life and very unhappy. She used to live in Juneau and I still manage some of her rentals.

At last night's music, Buddy Tabor sang a song of his in answer to a request of someone else in the group, a song I hadn't heard in years. It's about this person "confined in a rest home for the rest of my days" and being old and unwanted.

Nothing so remarkable in that. However, the date he gives in the song is June 23.

My employer's birthday is/was June 23.


Hmmmmmm?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 06:39 PM

ah, yes....but life is SO full of coincidences. We only make serious note of the ones that catch our attention. 'Tain't a good idea to make too much of simple random matches.

Of course, I am the original skeptic, and you'll no doubt hear from those whose attitude runs to giving credence to these things.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST,skipy
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 06:43 PM

With you all the way Bill D.
Skipy.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 07:09 PM

There are undoubtedly mystic connections running everywhere through the fabric of the cosmos, and we humans are undoubtedly not of the mystic stamina to be able to take even their presence on board, let alone their significance.

Or I suppose I should say "I am" not of the mystic stamina etc.
There may be those who are. Bill D & Skipy perhaps?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 07:13 PM

I was hoping you'd post, Bill! And I agree with your premise. But *my* point is that what we consider 'coincidental' may often have more impetus than we are willing to grant.

As a matter of fact, I just realized that I'm fond of saying "I'm not a big believer in coincidence", that if two or three people, for instance, all died in a one week span, even from different causes, the possibility exists that the incidents are related in some way that could bear examination.

That's a brazen statement, of course. I'm willing to stipulate that two or three people could die 'coincidentally' in a close time frame without causing more than comment.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 07:21 PM

Not a dig, Ebbie, but life is full of all sorts of co-inky-dinks. They add spice and flavor at unpredictable times.

In the words of Iris Dement, in such cases I think it is prudent to "Let The Mystery Be"

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 07:28 PM

Ah, but I love the mystery.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 10:23 PM

Well, when I hear of these kinds of coincidentals it just remember tghe words of Voltaire:

"God is a comedian playing to a crowd afraid to laugh"

Hey, sorry to read of the passing of yer friend, Eb, but had this person dies a day earlier or a day after then I reckon God wouldn't have had this opportunity to mess with us..

I mean, like I'd like to think of us as one of God's favorite experiements but I reckon there are plenty other folks livin' on other rocks in the uiniverse who probably have allready staked a claim...

Either way... Good timin'...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST,Partridge
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 11:38 AM

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
· John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
· Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
· John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
· The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
· Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
· Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
· Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
· Both were shot in the head.
· Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
· Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.
· Both were assassinated by Southerners.
· Both were succeeded by Southerners.
· Both successors were named Johnson.
· Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
· Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
· John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln was born in 1839.
· Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy was born in 1939.
· Both assassins were known by their three names.
· Both names are made of fifteen letters.
· Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
· Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.
· Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
· And last but not least,
· Before Lincoln was shot he was in Monroe, Maryland.
· Before Kennedy was shot he was in Marilyn Monroe.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 11:52 AM

Ebbie:

There's a huge number of people who died on that one day, planet-wide. That is probably the only thing they have in common, in most instances. There's a huge number of people born on the same day (although whether less or more I cannot say). Some of them were exactly nine months a long to the hour, others only 7 and some even ten. Most cases, though, don't require a mysterious cnnection to account for the fact that they dropped on that one day of the year.

The place where serendipitous coincidence gets really interesting in the Jungian sense is where the probability of something happening approaches zero -- the story of the night beat-cop assigned to an unusual beat, picking up a rinigng phone in a warehouse in the middle of the night, only to find that it had been a misdialed wrong number but placed by someone who was trying to reach him1 (IIRC, a story Jung tells in his article on serendipity) comes to mind as an example.

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:15 PM

Well, there are some interesting possibilities here, to my way of thinking...

1. The Reductionist view: The Universe is an inexplicable collection of material phenomena which don't exist for any particular reason or with any particular meaning. Although one can point to causes and effects, everthing is basically accidental. You and I are accidents. Life just "happened" somehow. That must have been an accident too. Anything mysterious you observe, like the thing Ebbie mentioned above, is just a coincidence, because nothing really connects with anything else, unless it connects in a physical cause and effect sense.

Gosh, my whole life is an accident. Hmmm? Do I kill myself now...or do I try to get on a reality TV show and make big bucks? Decisions, decisions...   Oh, well, it's all meaningless anyway, so no sweat, eh? :-) I am really pleased that I have such a clever mind that I was able to figure all this stuff out, and not fall for some stupid religion. "Life is hard and then you die," that's my motto, but hey! "The one who dies with the most toys wins!" I value my superior intelligence and enjoy being right, even though it'll all come to nothing when I croak...

2. The spiritual view: The Universe is an inexplicable collection of phenomena which exists as a result of focused consciousness. Focused consciousness implies both purpose and meaning. Some people might refer to that consciousness by a designation such as "God" or "Tao" or some other word. Given the fact that all phenomena are a result of intentional, creative consciousness, nothing is accidental, although something may certainly seem accidental from the point of view of a separated ego that doesn't get the whole picture of what's going on around it. You and I are such separated egos, but we are not accidents. Life didn't just "happen", it's the only thing that IS. Life is conscious awareness manifesting. It brings forth Universes and peoples them with billions of things. It manifests in different ways, some of which are recognized by people, some of which are not. It changes its outer forms in a relative Universe, but remains essentially the same in its eternal nature. All life is intimately connected with all other life at all times, because all of Life is One thing, manifesting as many. Anything that happens to any part of the whole affects the whole. There are no coincidences, because nothing is accidental. An individual ego could, however, think it sees a "coincidence" in something and be mistaken in its interpretation of that. Anything mysterious you observe, like the thing Ebbie mentioned above, is probably an example of synchronicity.

Gosh, my life is part of all life. This is good. This means that for one thing, I will never die, although my body will pass away. It means that everyone is intimately connected to me, and therefore everyone is valuable. I am living a totally meaningful life in a totally meaningful Universe, and so is everybody else. We are not separate, we just appear separate. Their joy is mine. Definitely cause for celebration!


3. Now, just pick which one you like better. Some people like being "right". Some people like being happy. Some people like being tragic victims. Some people like having a grievance. Some people like being angry. Some people like being word-weary. Some like being lusty. Some like being inspired. The great thing about consciousness is...you can apply it any way you want to...and you can change your mind later too, if you want to.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Alice
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:17 PM

Sorry to hear of the death of your friend, Ebbie.

Just realize that if there were NO coincidences, that would be even more weird, wouldn't it? Random coincidences are just a pattern. Humans have "pattern seeking" brains. We like to look at things and read more meaning into them, but that is just a result of our ability to have big imaginations. I have had two near death experiences. If I wanted to interpret what I experienced I could come up with all kinds of ideas. I don't. There is a good book on this topic:
Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:19 PM

replace "word-weary" with "world-weary"...

Or just keep it. It's kind of amusing, actually.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:22 PM

Throw a pebble in a brook. Watch the ripples spread. Throw another couple of pebbles in and watch the various patterns of ripples and how they intersect and affect each other. Not one single coincidence. All totally coherent, once you understand how it works.

That's exactly what Life is like. It is deliberate, focused consciousness that throws the pebbles, just as in my example above. And you are capable of that.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:25 PM

I'm not really arguing for true significance, Amos - I will continue to believe what I believe as events and circumstances affect my beliefs. No one else needs to find any significance in any of it.

But here are the points that I am noting:

1) A song I had not heard in years. (Buddy Tabor wrote it in 1981)
2) A song whose content matched the circumstance of the day.
3) A circumstance none but I in the group was aware of.
4) A woman who died had lived in Juneau for many years.
5) A date given in the song that is that of this woman's birth.

My real point is that I think it is quite possible that many 'coincidences' do have significance, if we but accepted it.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:31 PM

Well said, LH.

Ebbie, sorry to hear of your friend. I get those kind of *coincidences* all of the time, esp. with friends and family to whom I am close. Some would call that ESP. I just think of it as "tuning in."

kat

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:31 PM

When observing the ripples, one notes that a pebble has been thrown. The ripples do not stop till they reach the edge of the pond, and then they start back in the other direction. That continues happening until the ripples are so small that you don't notice them anymore. The pebble thrown by Alexander over 2,000 years ago is still recorded on the fabric of time and space, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

It has affected Amos in some way, but not as much as William Shatner has. William Shatner is more like a refrigerator than a pebble. He makes a big splash. :-)

People observe what they are inclined to observe. This causes them to miss a lot. I miss Fox TV on a regular basis, for example, and I wouldn't even know who "Regis" was if it were not for standing in the line at the grocery checkout.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:32 PM

Sure, Ebb -- I agree with you that some coincidences are just TOO coincidental to be just coincidence. The definiton of synchronicity includes the notion that the event is not only improbable but also meaningful.

When Jung wrote about Synchronicity (not serendipity, sorry), he told this story:

: "A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment." [Coll. Works, vol. 8, § 843]

More on the notion can be found here.

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:36 PM

Excellent example of synchronicity from Dr Jung, Amos...

It's unavoidable, like the ripples in the pond. But that doesn't mean people will notice it. They usually do not, because their minds are on something else.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:36 PM

More on synchronicity by F. David Peat on this page.

THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MATTER AND MIND
by F. DAVID PEAT PhD
[Abridged]


Carl Jung defined synchronicity as "The coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same meaning." His implication is clear--certain events in the universe cluster together into meaningful patterns without recourse to the normal pushes and pulls of causality. These synchronicities therefore must transcend the normal laws of science, for they are the expressions of much deeper movements that originate in the ground of the universe and involve, in an inseparable way, both matter and meaning.

The true story of synchronicity begins with the collaboration of two remarkable thinkers, the psychologist Carl Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Their concept of synchronicity originated in a marriage between the approaches of physics and psychology. Jung writes, "In writing this paper I have, so to speak, made good a promise which for many years I lacked the courage to fulfill. The difficulties of the problem and its representation seemed to me too great...If I have now conquered my hesitation and at last come to grips with the theme it is chiefly because my experiences of the phenomenon of synchronicity have multiplied themselves over the decades". "Meaningful coincidences are unthinkable as pure chance--the more they multiply and the greater and more exact the correspondence is...they can no longer be regarded as pure chance, but, for the lack of a causal explanation, have to be thought of as meaningful arrangements."
W. Pauli writes, "There must be something else. I think I know what is coming. I know it exactly. But I don't tell it to others. They may think I am mad. So I am doing five dimensional theory of relativity although I don't really believe in it. But I know what is coming. Perhaps I will tell you some time.""

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:40 PM

I never noticed this before, LH, but thanks toy our contribution to this thread, I see it clearly: Shatner is more like a refrigerator than Iw ould have thought it possible for a human to be!! Amazing. Large, squarish in shape, mechanical, cold, uninspiring, lacking in color, massive and stodgy, intrusively loud, needed by simple-minded housewives...wow!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:42 PM

Pretty damn cosmic, isn't it, Amos? I got the shivers when I thought of it. If I were in university, I would attempt to write a PHD on this new discovery.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:50 PM

"... it is quite possible that many 'coincidences' do have significance, if we but accepted it."

Significance is something that WE add to coincidence. It is a product of our extracting data that we recognize from random data. Think of all the other things that were happening that day that did NOT catch your attention...the TV programs that were on, what you had for lunch...etc.

This tendency to 'give' significance is described in the logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which was first made famous in the writings of David Hume (middle of this page)

I have had many, many of these experiences, and of course it affects a person to find something of personal relevance entangled in an emotional event....it is just a delicate matter to lean toward assigning mystery or causality to the occurance.

Bill D, with cookies shut off

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:54 PM

Your cookies have been shut off since birth, Bill... (grin)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 01:47 PM

Ah, this is the kind of discussion I like!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Mr Red
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 02:02 PM

I am surprised no-one has mentioned Andrew Macrew - the Don Maclean song - appropriate in a way. I have found the lyrics - I may just post them.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 04:21 PM

why, Little Hawk...my mommie assured me that I had LOTS of cookies very early!

But you wouldn't be suggesting that my essence is somehow resistant to receiving the data needed to impartially eveluate a phenomenon, would you? No...I thought not!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 04:51 PM

I regard your essence as much the same as anyone else's, Bill. It is the superficial appearances you are clothing it in that may differ from others'. Impartial evaluations are relatively rare in this World. Complete impartiality, in fact, is experienced only by the enlightened as far as I know.

My dog, for example, is rarely impartial in his judgements. He tends to be quite opinionated. :-) He likes stuff that either stinks or is clearly edible. He has a lofty disdain for everything else. To try to convince my dog of the presence of God in a work of art would be a hopeless proposition, but I have seen him worship a roast turkey with awe and devotion akin to deep religious conviction.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 05:38 PM

It has only been recently that we have understood the workings of waves and the significance of differing wavelengths, but we have always built and played stringed instruments, because the mathematical parameters were always in place.

It is only recently that we have known that the sun, moon and earth are all exactly the right size, exactly the right distance and follow exactly the right orbits to allow for not only solar eclipses but lunar ones as well.
Eclipses have nevertheless always happened because the mathematical parameters were always there.

All things and all events are related mathematically. Einstein understood this. He was a violinist.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 06:04 PM

It is true that our moon is accidently the right size and distance to allow almost perfect parameters for a solar total eclipse, but there are other planets with moons that would NOT give that effect. I have not seen any theories that suggest that our moon, for example, HAD to be the size it is.

It is certainly true that things and events can be described mathematically, but this is 'almost' a trivial truism once you realize that it couldn't be any other way.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 06:16 PM

It could in a Universe that did not manifest mathematical order, Bill...but was constantly rewriting the rules, so to speak. And if there was such a Universe (which there may be), there'd be someone in it proposing the same argument you favour, I'm sure... :-) He'd say, "It couldn't be any other way." His observations would appear to support that proposition.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 07:07 PM

*grin*..well, yeah...as a Sci-Fi fan of many years, I know about alternate universes with cute twists....but I sure don't know how to approach finding one. And I'm not sure any of us would enjoy one with slippery rules....(remember the Red Queen and "Through the Looking Glass"? It's hard to wrap my poor old 3-D, cause & effect mind around linguistic possibilities that we can't actually imagine. I used to read about "folding space" and appearing a few thousand light years away, but all the attempts to explain how that would be done were all.........wait for it..........mathematically defined.

"maybes" are a dime a dozen.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 08:38 PM

All our understanding about the physical universe is mathemartically defined. Whassamattah dat?

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:16 PM

Maybes are indeed a dime a dozen...but they keep one thinking and investigating new possibilities, whereas resting upon conventional certainties results in brain calcification. :-)

What I'm saying is: most people who are accustomed to a certain general situation simply assume that "that's the way it is, cos that's the way it's always been". Accordingly, Bill, in the early 1800's you might well have believed that the white race is inherently superior to the black race, and would never have even thought to question that notion...unless you were around a very unconventional thinker, who rattled your cage and proposed that whites are not inherently superior.

Even then, you probably would not have given his suggestion much consideration...at the time.

In an earlier era you would have scoffed at the thought that a heavier-than-air piloted craft could ever fly. Ridiculous!

In the present era you scoff at the thought that visiting alien spaceships could manage faster-than-light travel and come to this planet. Your opinion on that is entirely arbitrary, based upon the common assumptions of your era. It's not based on evidence or experience of any kind. It's a reliance upon popular convention. Like most people, you enjoy believing that life is exactly like you already think it is. It's probably not.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:20 PM

LH,

"It's not based on evidence or experience of any kind. It's a reliance upon popular convention. Like most people, you enjoy believing that life is exactly like you already think it is. It's probably not. "


If we want to restrict this to discussion from experience, only those of us who have died should be commenting. I don't suppose you are willing to defer to me? ( d. July 15, 1996 for about 5 minutes)

8-{E

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:06 PM

What did you experience in that time, Bruce?

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:08 PM

"... you scoff at the thought that visiting alien spaceships could manage faster-than-light travel and come to this planet."

one--more--time.... scoffing is not the same thing as skeptical thinking! One involves denial, the other involves doubt.
It is similar to the difference between atheism and agnosticism. Doubt might be measured by the amount one is willing to bet in certain circumstances, while denial might be measured by "unwillingness to take a fool's money" ;>)

and I suspect that in 1822 I would have gotten in a LOT of trouble by refusing to accept the racial stereotyping you refer to. I remember in 2nd grade being told by my mother (in New Orleans) "Don't put that nickel in your mouth, a n***** might have handled it." I thought that seemed silly, even then, although I didn't know how to debate Mom at the time.

And I 'think' I would have been one of those, going back to Leonardo, who said, "birds can fly, some squirrels can glide...why not us?". I used to analyze Superman and Captain Marvel comic books by explaining that Superman was based on scientific theory, while Capt. Marvel just referred to 'magic' and let you guess how reciting "Shazam" could give you special powers!...Oh, I was wearing on my parents and teachers, I wAS!

There is stuff I might be willing to bet on, simply because there are other explanations that, to me, seem more likely....and as I say, there are bets I'd really like to lose!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 10:38 PM

You sure would have gotten into a lot of trouble with such assertions back in 1822, Bill. No question. That's one of the reasons why people don't question conventional thinking too much, depending on how strict their society is about various things. They fear being either laughed at, ridiculed, arrested, or even killed for not parroting the official line.

Conformity is a powerful thing.

It's always been the case that the "leaders" of a society, the learned men in any era, thought they had the World pretty well figured out! :-) Just go back and read their grandiose statements at the time. If they thought the World was flat, well then, just about everybody thought so, because who would dare question the learned authorities, right? If they thought that Satan was instructing housewives to fly on brooms, well, who would question that either? Certainly not someone who wanted to stay alive and well.

I delight in questioning the tacit assumptions of the present crew of learned men (scientists and doctors) who are at the top of this foolish society, because I suspect that like all their long-bearded predecessors in the last 20 so so centuries they have got about half of everything wrong in their very basic assumptions about reality. And I imagine time will bear me out on that.

Bruce - No....I am not suggesting we restrict the conversation to "only things we have experienced". Not by any means. That would leave precious little to talk about, in some cases, I imagine. :-) I am simply suggesting that people should not offhandedly deny something that THEY think is unusual just BECAUSE they have NOT experienced it yet. There's a difference.

I am interested, in what (if anything) you remember about your death experience. Some people seem to have memories of out-of-body circumstances in such cases, while others do not remember anything at all.

Bill (again) - I don't see any particular reason to be skeptical about whether there are alien spaceships that can exceed light speed. I don't see any particular reason to necessarily believe in it either. It's an open question. Why can people not look at it AS an open question without prejudice? Why must they state their skepticism at all, when there is really no basis for it except conventional assumptions of some kind, based on present scientific theories (which will probably yield to new scientific discoveries one day). All they are really saying is "I don't want to give that my serious consideration, because it doesn't fit into the box I am comfortable in."

What are they afraid of?

I agree that Superman's approach was a bit more plausible than Captain Marvel's... :-) But I didn't find either one of them at all convincing when I was a kid. I was Mr Scientific Mind. I bet I drove people nuts even more than you did at that tender age.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 12:27 AM

Of the sum of all available knowledge, there is a proportion that we don't yet know. (I'll take that as agreed.)

Since we don't know it, we also don't know what proportion it is. What we don't know could be most of the sum total.

At any point in our history we have assumed that what we knew was unassailable, and then at most subsequent points we have found that it was not.

The history of western knowledge is comprised of the correction of a series of misunderstandings made from incorrect interpretations of correct or incorrect observations, and we're not done yet.
Many of the corrections might yet require correction.

As for Superman and Captain Marvel, there is no reason to assume that (what we at present regard as) the scientific option is more likely than (what we at present regard as) the magical.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 12:48 AM

All scientific progress is built on the selection of preferred "Maybe" propositions from the array of all possible ones. Obviously those which are further removed from the existing set of believed propositions are more likely to be rejected. The tyranny of belief is that it precludes possibility. That's the blind spot that we build into our own minds through edification. Worth being alert about, anyway.

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Boab
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 01:26 AM

Time. Time. The human mind is capable of realising that it is immense, but not near capable of knowing its immensity. The human lifetime is as a grain of sand in the Sahara in the immensity of time;as is the existence of humanity; as is the existence of the Earth itself; as is the existence of the Milky Way Galaxy; as is the universe. How many billions of "big bangs" have occurred? We have no right ---and no legitimate reason--- to say "only one". How many events, in this enormous time scale, are bound to recur, over and over? When consciousness finally departs in death, time ceases to exist for the individual concerned, and any return to this consciousness must occur seemingly without any passage of time. The new consciousness in those circumstances, can contain no knowledge, no memory. A "new" life has begun. Who can scoff with complete conviction at the notion that this "new" life has been lived over, and over?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 02:29 AM

I like what you're saying, Boab, but you lose me in a couple of places. You say "When consciousness finally departs in death, time ceases to exist for the individual concerned, and any return to this consciousness must occur seemingly without any passage of time."

I agree that time is an artificial measurement but how can you be sure that it ceases to exist for the recently died individual? My impression is that instead of life being more constricted after death, it is far more expansive.

I don't mean to imply that I think that the individual finally understands the 'mystery'. I suspect that there are further lessons, further worlds. It makes no sense whatever to me to believe that here on this earth and in this life is the only time we are learning anything- my guess is that with advancement comes more responsibility. I don't for a minute believe that we sit around on clouds singing the praises of Almighty God.

"The new consciousness in those circumstances," you say, "can contain no knowledge, no memory." I'm not so sure. Even though I no longer remember what it was I knew, I remember when I was a youngster that there was a time when I 'knew' more about the subject than I know now.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 04:24 AM

Further to Ebbie's comment, it seems unlikely to me that successive big bangs should result in precisely the same cycle of events.

If there will be, and have been innumerable big bangs, (and it's a suggestion that makes sense to me) then I think that there must be some kind of maturity that is part of the process, or it all comes back to being absolutely pointless.
(Pointlessness is a suggestion I do not accept.)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 08:50 AM

this article is quite an eye opener

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 09:00 AM

Guest's article relates certain near-death experiences, unusual in particular because the participant observed details about the hospital operating room and doctors participating in the operation and recited those details, despite having been blind from birth with a severed optic nerve.

This is quite significant because ti indicates that the phenomenon of perception is actually occurring not at a brain-site but is an event of the being himself, which to my thinking is the only thing that could ever really explain perceiving anything anyway.

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 05:35 PM

Fascinating article.

It would seem to support the notion that the body is merely a vehicle we use for a while and is a relatively minor consideration in the overall life.

Or that's one of the things I took from it anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 06:30 PM

Bingo

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 04:55 PM

Interesting link, but what's reported in there (tunnel and all that) is just what can be expected as a report based upon neural activity during such a stage. You may want to interpret it differently, but the reports poses no problem for a neural action interpretation.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 05:02 PM

Bingo, indeed. Sight is something you can do by means of physical eyes...or...by means of direct, spirit perception. You don't need physical eyes to see, but you DO need physical eyes to see exclusively and only through the mechanism of the physical body...which is how people normally think of seeing. In dreams, we "see" all kinds of stuff without the aid of the physical eyes, and it's totally convincing...because on its own level, it's real.

The Angel that I saw, like the woman's vision of what she identified as "Jesus", spoke to me not with an audible voice (in the usual fashion of uttering sounds) but by inner telepathy, as a clear thought that sounded inside my mind. It is a far superior form of communication to using spoken words and language, because:

1. it transcends all human languages in its clarity
2. it's instantaneous and complete communication of a complete thought
3. it's completely clear in meaning, not subject to misinterpretation

We are living, eternal consciousness. For a time that consciousness builds itself a physical body here on the Earth plane, by the normal biological means we are all accustomed to (through the biological parents), and experiences life through that physical body. It usually begins to think it IS the physical body, but it's not. It's the consciousness that made the body, and it survives the body at "death". The body passes away. The Spirit lives on.

Like Hamlet or Ophelia, we are playing a temporary part in a physical Earth play that will end, but we will go on afterward...and without a dent in the fender too, by the way. I expect we all learn a few good things in every play we choose to act in.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 05:14 PM

No...it doesn't pose a problem for either your interpretation or mine, Wolfgang. Neural activity, in fact, may be causing me to experience the illusion that there is a Mudcat Cafe at all, and that you, Wolfgang, exist. If so, it's certainly lost me a lot of valuable time composing responses to your responses. :-)

My entire recollection of the last 3 years or so of my "life" may be just an illusory neural activity that I am experiencing in the last few seconds of dying from an auto accident suffered a couple of minutes ago on the way to Toronto.

Disregard what I have just typed here, Wolfgang. It's probably not real, and neither are you. In fact, forget I even said so...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 06:39 PM

Did you speak? *G*

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 06:59 PM

Here we hit, I think, that same impasse that seems to occur in so many Mudcat threads, when those on one side of the fence see # as a sharp and those on the other see it as noughts & crosses.

If it is neural activity it can still be a mystical OBE, and if it is an OBE it can still be neural activity. I don't see that they have to be mutually exclusive.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: freda underhill
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 07:20 PM

i believe in life after death. i believe this because i have experienced things which confirm it for me.

and so, consequently, i also believe this serendipitous message could have been a message for you Ebbie.

and i'm sorry to hear about your friend, but glad for her release from suffering.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 07:31 PM

well, Wolfgang beat me to a comment about neural activity, so let me just add that Little Hawk's wry humor about the "last 3 years of his life..." etc., is a very common notion- taken quite seriously by many people....just as they come up with the "what if our planet and sun and all the stars are just atoms in a bigger universe..?" etc....

*shrug*...it is easy to postulate and toss out ideas, but people usually have no idea how those fascinating ideas might actually work, and are most often just mistaking linguistic constructs for notions about 'reality'. (Very much like angels dancing on the head of a pin.)

Of course we don't know everything yet!: and of course we will find corrections to earlier ideas as we learn more, but being able to say "it might be so-and-so" has serious meaning only when "so-and-so" can be measured against stuff we already know. Otherwise, it is just literature....fascinating poetry, sometimes, but make-believe nonetheless.

As long as we are **ABLE** to find explanations for phenomena that fit current knowlege (neural activity, for example), we risk a lot by buying into theories that sound a lot more interesting, but can't be tested....even theoretically. It's one thing to 'keep an open mind'....it's quite another to pour so much 'maybe' through it that we can't separate it from 'is'.

There is no denying that the blind lady had an **experience** and has memories she needs to come to terms with, but there are way too many unanswered questions to state positively what the process and 'cause' really were.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST,Amos
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 07:31 PM

The anomaLY that is extraordinary is the description of correctly observed physical facts from a person who was not only anesthetized, presumably, but also incapable of physical vision because h/she was blind. Talk about a double-blind experiment!! :D She did something fro her OOB condition that she could not possibly physically do. Neural activity? Around a severed optic nerve? How do you figger?


A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 09:58 PM

the way to 'figger' is to ask how she 'visualizes' things when she's NOT in that situation. If she's in a room and someones tells her there's a cat on the table in front of the window, what does she see in her mind's eye? There would need to be a very careful Q&A sessions about how the OOB experience differed from the usual.

I can imagine (postulate, theorize) that she 'heard' voices, and that her mind added the conversations of doctors to her already existing knowlege of where she was (a hospital) and her mind, like a dream sequence, created a little scenario about the situation.
I can postulate this because I know the mind CAN create stories of startling complexity, and careful hypnosis can do even more. I simply find this easier to believe than to create layers realms of 'being' that only a few of us get to experience and that none of us can locate or measure. ...and, you know,*grin* it is purty sneaky to have as your last line of defense, "Oh, those realms are by definition not measurable materially, so I don't need to justify or prove anything."... sneaky, but clever, says I!

(I have had 'flying' dreams where I looked down on not only places I had been, but also places that never were. (Like a steep ocean beach, with waves & tides...and me, soaring around over it). How was I able to do that?)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 10:19 PM

"I have had 'flying' dreams where I looked down on not only places I had been, but also places that never were. (Like a steep ocean beach, with waves & tides...and me, soaring around over it). How was I able to do that?)" Bill D

Don't look now, Bill, but I'd like to hear from you, oh, say, 10 years from now. :)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: freda underhill
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 10:22 PM

I've had experience like that Bill D, except I was flying through the universe, looking at stars - and I wasnt dreaming.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 11:01 PM

Darned right the mind can create some wonderful things, Bill. I believe that the collective mind that is Spirit (and that includes you and me) has created this whole reality we're in...and it IS real...in our terms. Meaning...it's tactile and tangible. For now...while we have physical senses with which to react to the tactile and tangible.

It would become somewhat unreal once those physical senses were no longer in play, and they can only be in play through the mechanism of the physical body. The physical body is like a car. Without a drive it becomes inert. The driver is the various levels of consciousness, from the simpler automatic levels that run the heart, the liver, the pancreas, and so on...to the emotional and intellectual levels that think, emote, react, imagine hypothetical futures, and so on. You are not the car, Bill, you are the driver. You are not the body, you are the living consciousness that gives the body meaning, function, and purpose. That consciousness can choose to believe it is inextricably connected to the body, if it wants to. It can choose to believe anything it wants to.

John made a very good point. There is nothing mutually exclusive about an OBE and neural activity. As he said: "If it is neural activity it can still be a mystical OBE, and if it is an OBE it can still be neural activity. I don't see that they have to be mutually exclusive." They could in fact, be interconnected, but the person having the OBE would be observing this reality from outside the body at the time, rather than from within the body. The body would have become secondary, but still connected in some fashion. That's just one of many possibilities. People can have OBE's when dreaming too, but they are still connected to the body in some way at the time, and the dream triggers neural activity.

Or...you can say it's the other way around if you wish. :-) It's the old "chicken and egg" debate.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 03:08 AM

I didn't say that an OOB eliminated neural activity. People still run their brains from OOB. But blind poeple do not come up with eaccurate detailed visual descriptions despite lifetimes of neural activity, Why is the legant and simple explanation that the seat of perception is a spiritual rather than material element so gruesome to some folks?

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 06:03 AM

Wwhhooooohh! That's too complicated for us simple folk.

Life after death for me is going to Sidmouth Folk Festival after another year of cleaning and maintaining a school.

I'll get me coat

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 12:46 PM

Aw, so soon? Oh well ... just please shut the door behind you Don

:-)

This book Journey of Souls; Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Dr Michael Newton PhD, a respected American hypnotherapist, is one of the best I've ever read on the subject. It's been around for a few years now, so you can probably find it in the library. Dr Newton has a later book called "Destiny of Souls" which I haven't got my hands on as yet, but I will!

There's an interesting list of points from the book at that link ... enjoy! ANd now I'll grab me coat too

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 01:05 PM

where am I likely to be in 10 years, Ebbie?

" ...elegant and simple explanation..."

Strive for simplicity, but learn to mistrust it.
                   Alfred North Whitehead

I could as well ask why assuming that 'spiritual' concepts are merely aspects of our still-in-the-process-of-being-documented material being is so repugnant to some.

I do not assume that the blind lady DID have truly visual memories from her experience. She says her wedding ring had "orange blossoms", and I wonder how she identifed 'orange' and what the other various 'lights' and "brief panoramic view of her surroundings" consisted of. Even though the optic nerve may not be working, the area of the brain that processes color is presumably intact and in 'neural contact' with the rest of the brain. This why I stated above that careful interviews should be done (and possibly tests with electrodes as well) to investigate just what visual patterns can be stimulated.

You see where I'm going? If awareness of light and color IS possible in blind people, it could be very important to discover how this could be tapped in a useful manner without nearly killing them! Now if this blind lady can read magazines on the table, or pass a printed color-blindness test, we've got something, and I'll be first in line to be amazed!

It is very easy to just state that there is a 'spiritual' existence and to then write metaphors about "cars & drivers" and to declaim that " ...the collective mind that is Spirit (and that includes you and me) has created this whole reality we're in.."....but I suppose that what the word "believe" is for...to state stuff we can't prove or demonstrate. All I "believe" is that too much is just "believed".




(as I was about to post this, one of those fleeting memories of old quotes came upon me...something about "having one's feet planted firmly in the clouds"...*grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 01:26 PM

Feet on the ground is nice. Feet in the clouds would be even better. I have always wanted to fly. In dreams sometimes I do. It's very neat. You just sort of think your way to wherever you want to go and you float over there effortlessly. The only problem is that if your critical, conventional mind steps in at some point in the dream and says, "Hey! This isn't normally possible!" then you find yourself in doubt and you quickly lose the ability to stay airborne and down to the ground you come. Very frustrating! My critical, conventional mind reminds me of Bill D. :-) I wish it would shut up and go away when I'm having a flying dream. It's a nagging, pestiferous, Eeyore-like thing that thrives on limitation and figures it has all the answers.

But don't take this too personally, Bill. :-) I like you as a person, I just wouldn't want you inside my head as a little voice when I'm having those flying dreams, that's all. I've got enough to put up with with my own doubting Thomas conventional mind, which is the very thing that stands between me and achieving my personal liberation.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 02:34 PM

oh, yes, Little Hawk...I don't doubt that we'd had good fun sitting down and chatting, and maybe some music, too!

(can't resist the line "I'll go flying with you, Little Hawk...in your dreams!")

I do love my occasional flying dreams! I remember some where I was learning....pulling my knees up & bobbling along like in a swimming pool. And I know that the process, even in the dream, was having the right mind-set. I had to 'think' floating...and I remember puzzling in the dream about what the propulsion force was! I sorta knew how I floated, but had no idea how I was able to zooom!...and I was TERRIBLY disappointed when I woke up and had to admit I had not actually flown. I still sometimes pop into one where I confound gravity and buzz about for awhile, but stressful 'coping' dreams are far too common these days. (packing, moving, losing things)

I remember reading a long time ago, that dream researchers were (seemingly) able to 'cause' flying dreams by depressing the subject's pillow as the electrodes indicated a time of elevated brain activity.

There's a lot to learn...and I suppose I lean more toward the learning than just enveloping myself in subjective experiencing...but de gustibus non disputandum.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 03:41 PM

Sorry, Bill, in the meantime I realize that my implication was condescending, being that I was thinking in terms of "Within 10 years, given your current experience of "flying", you will have realized the larger truth of what I/we are saying."

And that is simply not true or even desirable for many people. Personally I believe that we will ALL eventually come to such an understanding- but I don't KNOW that. What I DO know is that there are many decent, bright, articulate, fun, whole and yes, wise, people out there who do not and will not believe in the concepts I am propounding. And you personally are very much in that category.

BTW, I love the beautiful wooden bowl I bought from you last October.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: tarheel
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 06:28 PM

wow!...i scrolled very slowly through this replies in this thread and i am ,i guess,the "weird one" here! sorry folks,ut i am a born again christain and believe the bible to be the infalible word of God from beginning to the end!i believe that god saved my souls as a 13 year old boy growing up in a southern baptist church in winston-salem,n.c..
no...i have not been perfect since then nor will i ever be here on this earth,but i do believe in the hereafter and i believe there is a heaven and a hell!i believe those lost in sin will go to hell,as the bible teaches and i believe God forgives us in our daily walk with him,when we stumble along the way!i believe in the rapture of the church,as the bible teaches,and thast the end of time as we know it here on earth is at hand too! the scriptures plainly teach the prophicies about how things will be in the end and thsat we are experiencing those teachings today!Jesus is coming soon and i m looking forward to His return!i will pray for those of you in here who bvelieve otherwise,as God said that we,as chritains,should do!
God blesss you all,in Jesus name,i pray!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 06:33 PM

I thought it was Emmanuel we were to be expecting this time.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 06:39 PM

Life is flexible enough to provide room for any and all beliefs, tarheel. May you find comfort in your connection with Jesus.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 02:02 AM

ah, Ebbie...in 10 years I shall be an even more articulate old curmudgeon, as long as I am able to hone my ideas here at Mudcat!

and you, my friend with the good taste in wood...*smile*....you saw immediately that I AM unlikely to "realize the larger truth..."...(at least without some hard-to-forsee enlightenment). It is a very fine line I walk between arguing for careful, rigorous thinking and sounding like I am condemning wholesale the ideas of others. Since you expect to be at the Getaway once more, perhaps we will have a chance to explore it....between songs, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 08:23 AM

Gruesome? No, Amos, unnecessary in my eyes.

Yes, Bill, we know Little Hawk, even the slightest hint that sometimes, in extreme situations, and for some people a perception may not be based upon external input threatens his view of himself and th world around him. That's why he feels he must make fun of it by blowing it up to meaningless proportions. This way he can dismiss it for himself more easily.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 12:38 PM

You lost me there, Wolfgang. I need that first sentence of yours translated into plain English, please...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 01:33 PM

Wofgang: "Little Hawk, even the slightest hint that ... a perception may not be based upon external input threatens his view of himself and th world around him."

The contention may be more plainly stated thus.

Wolfgang, I've NEVER detected ANY sense of Little Hawk feeling threatened when his "view of himself and the world around him" is challenged. Either you are thinking of someone else or you do not understand human beings. IMO

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 04:31 PM

Wolfgang, have you been studying eloqution under G.W.Bush? Forgive me that, but I wouldn't even try to debate your point without further clue as to what ya meant there

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 05:58 AM

Yes, Bill, we know Little Hawk:
Even the slightest hint that sometimes (in extreme situations and for some people) a perception may not be based upon external input threatens his view of himself and the world around him...

Ebbie, what you think and say does not come close to threatening Little Hawk's world view, so you may never have observed that tendency.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John Hardly
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 06:36 AM

The simpler the human impulse to believe, the greater the complexity of explanation for why not to believe.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 12:20 PM

Humph

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 01:57 PM

Every one is making an incorrect assumption about vision, most visual processing does not happen in the Eyes in fact the eye simplifies images by negative lateral inhibition, so that what leaves the eyes is a sort of line drawing of the seen (oversimplification but bare with me). Most of the processing is done in the visual cortex, which in this lady was intact. The visual cortex is the product of 500 million years of vertebrate evolution and represents the hard-wired phylogenic memory that we all carry. It is to some extent autonomous and in the event of no input from the optical nerves does not whither and die, but becomes involved in other processing jobs.
So there is another possible explanation for this result.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: katlaughing
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 02:07 PM

Wolfgang, your statement about LH still doesn't make sense to me. This part says a perception may not be based upon external input threatens his view of himself and the world around him...

The LH I know understands and expounds on INTERNAL input, from what he and I might term our higher selves/god/the Cosmic/whathaveyou. How, therefore, could anything NOT based on EXTERNAL input threaten his view of himself. I would think it would be just the opposite?

kat

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 04:31 PM

what's reported in there (tunnel and all that) is just what can be expected as a report based upon neural activity during such a stage (Wolfgang)

Neural activity, in fact, may be causing me to experience the illusion that there is a Mudcat Cafe at all, and that you, Wolfgang, exist. (Little Hawk)

the slightest hint that sometimes (in extreme situations and for some people) a perception may not be based upon external input threatens his view of himself (Wolfgang)

I thought it would have been clear in the context of these posts, but I can spell it out: the slightest hint that sometimes (in extreme situations and for some people) a perception may not be based upon external input but on neural activity alone threatens his view of himself.

That Little Hawk believes in perception based on input from higher selves/god/the Cosmic/whathaveyou I take for granted. My only point is that reports taken by some as corroboration of life after death ideas or transcendence can be explained by the neural activity during certain states of the body.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 05:43 PM

Pied Piper...little 'ol me said, at 12 Mar 05 - 01:05 PM approximately the same thing you did, except for not using the trem "visual cortex "

*I* am not making an incorrect assumption, am I? *grin*

..and also, just for the record, I saw what Wolfgang was getting at all along. Let me translate: "Folks LIKE thinking of themselves as part of something bigger & greater, and get testy when someone suggests that they can be reduced to just a bunch of atoms and laws of physics."

(this is a similar reaction to those who shudder at the idea of being descended from apes...or worse, races they consider inferior!)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: katlaughing
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 06:14 PM

Thanks for the clarification, but I still disagree as to what may seem a threat to LH.:-)

BillD said that there are those of us who believe themselves as part of something bigger & greater, and get testy when someone suggests that they can be reduced to just a bunch of atoms and laws of physics."


There are also those who of us believe ourselves part of a bigger/greater something who understand our bodies are exactly the latter, just a bunch of atoms and laws of physics. In fact, we study the very same, without being threatened and without them being mutually exclusive of one another.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 06:38 PM

but, kat...ain't that just a linguistic quibble about whether we restrict the definition to the body? The operant word is "believe", and those who 'believe' that there is something beyond mere physical being may be right, and may be wrong....but adding a layer to the distinction doesn't clarify the controversy much.

The real question is the status of beliefs that can't be tested by the usual scientific methods. Obviously, no one can enforce a rule against holding an opinion, but certain attempts at defending opinions can sometimes be shown to be logically flawed.

Oh, it does get complicated!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 06:47 PM

LH,

"by inner telepathy, as a clear thought that sounded inside my mind. It is a far superior form of communication to using spoken words and language, because:

1. it transcends all human languages in its clarity
2. it's instantaneous and complete communication of a complete thought
3. it's completely clear in meaning, not subject to misinterpretation"




Now I know why I should be listening to those voices in my head telling me what to do!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 07:09 PM

The frustration- what some here are calling 'feeling threatened', I believe comes from trying to explain something that really is not explainable. If you have not experienced it, you will not understand what we are talking about. That is a given.

So coming back with the information that various other things "could be," "may be, "likely are" responsible for the event is not useful. Trust me, those of us who have experienced it have already tried to explain it in earthly and/or scientific terms.

In this same context, remember when I recounted the experience I had - along with a friend - of seeing a recently deceased friend's name spelt in clouds in the sky? Wolfgang and another person made themselves feel much better by explaining that it "probably" was created by a small plane that had been commissioned to commemorate my friend's memory.

What Wolfgang and the other person (I've forgotten who) don't understand is that Juneau, Alaska skies are not the skies over almost any other Mudcatter's home. In Juneau, we don't have plane traffic; any plane that we see here is a single plane and it is either coming from here or is on its way here. We are isolated, and except in the summertime when the floatplanes and helicopters are transporting tourists, our sky is quiet and peaceful. Any plane creating letters in the sky here would stick out like the proverbial thumb. NOt only that- this is a small community and we would know who among the pilots is capable of the feat.

So my message, in that instance and in the current thread is: "Explanations" like that only expose your ignorance of the situation.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 09:13 PM

well, Ebbie since "...(I) have not experienced it, ..." I obviously don't know how it feels. I do know that I would love to be near someone when something like the cloud thing happens, (and I don't doubt Wolfgang would too..) so that we could have something to compare notes on. We'd need to ask if only those who knew the departed one could see it, or whether half a county saw strange letters.....and how long it lasted, and how the wind was blowing and a dozen other questions. It's a mystery, and I don't mind a mystery...I just like to have some idea how to explore a mystery!

I hope you can tell I'm carefully NOT saying you didn't have that experience! I'm just puzzled about how these things work and trying to do the best I can as one who seems not to be privileged. *shrug*

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 09:34 PM

I have those same questions, Bill D! And so does the friend who was with me. We would love to know if anyone else saw it- but how do you go about ascertaining something like that! I do know that my friend was greatly relieved that I too saw it.

In fact, that is a puzzlement on top of puzzlement to me. I was not close to the friend who died- we were friendly on a casual basis. While on the other hand, the friend who was with me had a bond with the one who died. Why was I too able to see it? I dunno.

But believe me- I dearly wish you could have been there too.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 11:51 PM

well...you see why I wonder.... there is this page (and 40 more) WOW!

then this one






(yes, of course I see the difference between a fake and an 'experience' *smile*....but in the first page, the most important part is the comments of all those who just believed without question. That is what scares me.)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 06:50 AM

Sorry for the slander Bill, that site made me laugh.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 07:38 AM

I died as a mineral, and rose a plant,
I died as a plant, and rose again an animal,
I died as an animal, and rose a man.
Why then should I fear to become less by dying?

I shall die once again as a man,
To rise an angel, perfect from head to foot.
Again, when I suffer dissolution as an angel,
I shall become what passes the conception of man.

- Rumi

That famous poem is one of my favorites. Just couldn't resist posting it here! The only thing is, I think Rumi forgot that in Spirit, all time is now. So I'm already an angel??? Well, that explains a lot! No wonder my feet are always in the clouds .... ;-)

And I can't resist these sweet lines either. They're from American folksinger-songwriter Chuck Brodsky's debut We Are Each Other's Angels ...

We are each others' angels
We meet when it is time
We keep each other going
And we show each other signs


Purrrrrrr .... and that's why I love Mudcat .... so thank you, my fellow angels!   :-)

daylia


PS I've had the pleasure of knowing LH as a close friend for about 10 years now, Wolfgang. ANd so I know that very rarely does he allow other people's second-hand, second-rate opinions to bother, much less personally 'threaten' him. Like me, he values his own first-hand experiences much more than anyone's beliefs or opinions.

There are really only 2 opinions that matter to him anyway - and believe me, neither of them are yours, Wolfgang. Or mine, or anyone else's here.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 09:51 AM

I died as a man, and rose as a mineral,
I died as a mineral, and rose a plant,
I died as a plant, and rose again an animal,
I died as an animal, and rose a man.

Until the good earth is swallowed, by the dieing Sun.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:24 AM

ok so ...

you died as a man
and rose again stoned
You died really stoned
and rose quite vegged out
Till you expired, so vegged
that you rose up real bestial
so you'd die well prepared
For another round as man

Now, man you'll remain
Till the Sun eats the Earth
At which point you'll rise up
um .... a solar flare or something???

I'm confused ...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:59 AM

The poem is limited in it's perspective, but yes when the Sun runs out of Hydrogen, it begins to fuse Helium until that runes out and so on up until it reaches Iron which does not fuse to emit energy. By this time the earth will have been swallowed as the Sun expands. Becoming part of its photosphere. Once the energy supply is switched of the Sun collapses and explodes blowing the Atoms that made me you and every other organism on this planet into Space, were it some point in the future they may form part of a new star or planet.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 12:34 PM

It seems that I am not the first one in the world to report seeing words in the sky! Constantine, the pagan-Christian Emperor in the 4th Century, based his very beliefs on the experience.

At the library yesterday I picked up some books, among them Money, Murder and the Mafia- the Vatican Exposed (No, I am not out to discredit the Pope or the Catholic church or any such thing. I am fairly eclectic in my reading habits and I do like to know what other people are saying).

To my surprise, on Page 11 in its introduction it says this:

"Constantine attributed his victory to a vision of a cross that he beheld before the battle. Beneath the cross that arose above the clouds in the morning sky, these words appeared: "In hoc signo vinces" ("By this sign, you will conquer") (LOTS more words there than the single word I saw. *G*)

Now, lest anyone charge me with grandiosity in citing Constantine, let me say that it is my belief that what more than one person has experienced has been the experience of many more people (Kind of like if you see one rat, there are 20 in the bushes).

So. Anyone out there who wants to share a similar experience?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 01:48 PM

Saw a film in Feb that deals with many of the issues raised in this thread: "What the #$*! Do We Know!?" I found it intriguing and intelligent, presenting some fascinating ideas.

Here are excerpts of a review:

What the Bleep Do We Know!? is a sometimes annoying, often preachy, but always thought provoking documentary about things in life we don't often think about -- the nature of reality and our place in the universe. The film has become something of a phenomenon, having gone from one theater in Washington State to more than 100 in 30 states to a national release by Samuel Goldwyn/Roadside Attractions and has repeatedly played to sellout crowds. Supporting the concept that the only reality is consciousness, it combines documentary, fiction, and computer animation to counter the current scientific/materialist paradigm that human beings are survival machines largely powered by chemicals and genetic coding, at the mercy of a random and uncaring universe. In the view espoused by the film, the universe is directed by conscious choice. There is no chance, no coincidence, and there are no innocent victims.

[snip]
Commenting... ...are fourteen scientists, mystics, college professors, and philosophers who remain unidentified until the end credits. These include William Tiller (The Science of Crystallization), Amit Goswami (The Self-Aware Universe), and Fred Alan Wolf (Taking the Quantum Leap). The main thrust of the discussion centers on quantum theory, an entirely theoretical abstract branch of science that contradicts other laws of the universe. Quantum physicists state that on the quantum level, the laws of Newtonian physics do not apply. There are no certainties, only possibilities. What governs behavior of matter at the smallest level is consciousness. What you think becomes reality. The chair you are sitting on may feel solid but, according to the physicists in the film, consists mostly of atoms each of which consists mainly of empty space. The stuff inside that space is elusive -- sometimes it acts like a particle, sometimes a wave. One Ph.D. states that "The most solid thing you can say about matter is that it's more like a thought."

Another tenet of the film is that our thoughts and feelings influence the material world. According to an experiment by Dr. Masuro Emoto that has been replicated, the taping of different words such as "love" and "hate" onto jars of distilled water left overnight altered their appearance under a microscope. The conclusion drawn from this experiment is that water is alive and reacts to the emotional fields surrounding it. Since our bodies consist mostly of water, the clear implication is that our thoughts and feelings can alter our biochemistry. The film also tells us that people can be as addicted to emotions and feelings as they are to coffee or tobacco and that if we observe rather than run our internal "tape recorder", we can choose a more satisfying response. Unfortunately, the channeler Ramtha, who otherwise has some interesting things to say, uses the film to launch an attack on organized religion that seems out of place in a film devoted to scientific discussion.

What the Bleep Do We Know!? has been dismissed by many critics who attack the credentials of the speakers rather than seriously consider what they are saying. These critics, who delight in throwing around tired epithets such as "cultist" and "New Agey", fail to note that science is now simply catching up with what has been a basic tenet of Eastern religion for centuries. While I consider "Bleep" to be an important film and welcome its appearance, I feel that it misses the mark in several ways. It encourages turning what is essentially a personal spiritual experience into a rational belief system, and by suggesting that the act of creation is a process of conscious will rather than underlying (and often misunderstood) intention. While the film has its flaws, it does succeed in shaking our deeply ingrained notions about reality and offers much stimulation for those interested in exploring alternative explanations of their experience. If we simply come away with the awareness that the world is a more mysterious place than we imagined, What the Bleep Do We Know!? will have made a unique contribution.

There were other reviews where I found this one (IMDB, see link below); some more positive, others much more negative. I tried to select one that was at neither extreme and talked about the bits of the film I considered most intriguing.

If you're interested, you might want to check out The Internet Movie Database, IMDB's page for the film and/or the film's official website.

Speaking of synchronicity... I could not remember the title of this film; Googled for it with no luck; did a search on Metacritic (a rather useful movie site); then decided to see if I could find anything about it on IMDB – which, as it happens – is currently featuring it on its home page (apparently the DVD has just come out). It took me a minute to realise that what I'd been searching for (but using the wrong title) was oh-so-conveniently *right* there (where I certainly was *not* expecting it to be!). Funny or what? ;7)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 02:35 PM

"There is no chance, no coincidence, and there are no innocent victims"
And people wonder why I find this type of bollox offensive.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 03:07 PM

It's not even vaguely offensive if you understand it. It is if you don't.

There are a lot of things in life like that.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 05:59 PM

Your suggestion about neural activity in the brain may well apply to some cases, Wolfgang. Quite likely. What causes the neural activity? Is it the one original source of the subjective experience or is it merely one of many observable aspects of the experience?

Bearded Bruce, you have clearly not seen an Angel. :-) If you had, you would be rendered silent (for once), I assure you.

Your reaction reminds me of that passage in the Bible, which cautions people not to throw their "pearls before swine".

Keep in mind, BB, that I did not have to belong to any church or organized religion in order to have that experience, nor did I need to take any drugs or engage in any weird practices. Nor did I need to anticipate the experience in any way. I didn't expect it in the least. Nope...I just needed help at that time, and I got it.

Your disbelief is to me like the disbelief of a dog that doesn't believe that 5 X 5 = 25. You are comfortably armoured by your complete experiential ignorance of the subject.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 07:51 PM

"What the bleep do we know?"

well, not a whole lot, considering how much there is to be learned. So why make a film which goes way out on a limb to suggest...well, more than suggest, that as long as we DON'T know, wild guessing is to be encouraged?

I read several of the reviews/explications of the film, and they seem to agree that it essentially claims not only that traditional religion is wrong, but that subjective, poetic readings of the implications of quantum mechanics are just as good as any others.

The producers of the film say:
"Quantum physics, neurology and molecular biology seem to be saying things that are in agreement with what mystics have been saying for centuries. Furthermore science as a language of the spirit seems to cut across old beliefs and superstitions, and present ideas in a way that encourages people to examine for themselves and make their own decisions."

right...like definitions of 'folk music'...*grin*...just take all your own experiences and concoct a "Theory of Everything" based on 'em. No one can prove you wrong, and it's fun to expound! Besides, it's boring to wait for some stodgy old scientist to do all those experiments and publish papers most of us can't understand, anyway! We'll just think up something that makes use of (again, from the producers)
"...the availability of sophisticated hi-tech movie making at an Indie budget price. The computerization of the film making process has given non-studio productions the ability to make sophisticated effects-rich movies."
and maybe even make some $$$$ out of blurring the line between story-telling and reality even more than old-fashioned religion did.

By golly, the entrepreneurial ummmmm....spirit..... lives on!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 07:56 PM

(does my cynic's hat fit? Or does it make me look like my eyes and ears are all covered up?) Makes no difference, I can see through my 3rd eye.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:08 PM

LH,

"Bearded Bruce, you have clearly not seen an Angel. :-) If you had, you would be rendered silent (for once), I assure you."

Of course. Obviously, I must bow to your superior and enlightened wisdom.


Your reaction reminds me of that passage in the Bible, which cautions people not to throw their "pearls before swine".

Matt. 24:23 is a better quote for this purpose...



Keep in mind, BB, that I did not have to belong to any church or organized religion in order to have that experience, nor did I need to take any drugs or engage in any weird practices. Nor did I need to anticipate the experience in any way. I didn't expect it in the least. Nope...I just needed help at that time, and I got it.

And all others who have gotten help in any other way, such as through and organized religion or "wierd" practices ( like folk singing?) are also wrong, since they did not do it your way...



Your disbelief is to me like the disbelief of a dog that doesn't believe that 5 X 5 = 25. You are comfortably armoured by your complete experiential ignorance of the subject

I have died- the subject of this thread- HAVE YOU? I think perhaps my viewpoint is MORE from experience than yours.

Having said that, I make no claim to knowledge beyound stating that for each of us, we will find within our own experiences what we want to find. You will find what you wish to see, and I will find what I wish to see. BillD will find what HE wishes to see, regardless of your, or my comments.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:31 PM

I have no idea if I'm more enlightened than you or not, BB. I do know that I saw an Angel, and I gather that you haven't...which probably has little or nothing to do with how enlightened we are, respectively.

You say that you died. Fine. Tell me about it.

I have no objection to people getting help through organized religion, if that's what works for them. Or folk music. I thought you might be making certain assumptions about me, that's all. Where in the world do you get the idea that I think people are "wrong" unless they only do things MY way??? Give me a fucking break. What a dismal fate it would be to be in a World where everyone did things in only one way! I approve of any and all ways of achieving wisdom and enlightenment, which is why I don't particularly favour or deny any specific religion. I have also stated numerous times on this forum that I would far rather deal with an honest, fair-minded atheist than a dishonest, unfair religionist.

Angels are not the property of any particular religion (although they are mentioned in several). I look upon them not as the property of religion at all, but as another form of life, that's all. Not biological life, spiritual life.

I agree that people usually find what they WISH to find. Usually. Occasionally they get a surprise that causes them to reshape their expectations. It was a great surprise to me to see the Angel.

Have I died? Oh, yes, indeed I have. Many, many times. But I have not clinically died within the brief chapter of this latest physical lifetime, no. Not yet. I've just felt like it sometimes... :-)

And regarding your clinical death. Well? Tell me about it.

And regarding Angels. Do you have any beliefs concerning them? Or speculations?

And regarding religions. Any beliefs there?

Because I may have misinterpreted something you said.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:37 PM

Bill - You seem to want to be a collection of atoms, governed by laws of physics. Hmmm. It's a peculiar ambition, that's for sure, but a decidedly safe one, I guess. Pretty cut and dried.

I think what it really amounts to, is you just want to be right.

Like everybody else. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST,open minded
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:43 PM

LH I have no idea if you are as crazy as a sack of rats, but I love your faith in your beliefs. You must get great comfort from them. I wish I could unshakingly believe in angels.
Have you ever seen what I would call a ghost? Not an angel, but a 'spirit' of someone that once lived?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 09:05 PM

Guest - Thanks. I do get great comfort from having seen the Angel, because I know I have help out there at all times. And I mean, powerful help. And so does everyone else, because help is not restricted to a chosen few.

There's no particular reason why you should believe in Angels if you haven't actually seen one...AND by the same token...there's no particular reason why you should not believe in them either. The thing that upsets me is the people who automatically disbelieve in such things merely on principle, because that fits their world-view or their emotional security blanket.

Ghosts? I haven't seen any, except for the ghost of a cat. My mother and I saw that one the day after the cat had died. It looked just like the cat normally did, and it meowed, and then it went into the bushes. We tried to find it, and couldn't. My mother got my father to dig up the grave later that day, and the cat's body was still in the grave. Accordingly, yes, I think we saw the ghost of that cat.

My father, who is an engineer, and who is totally disinclined toward anything spiritual...saw the ghost of his dead brother, Harry, a few months after the brother's death. It gave him quite a shock, needless to say. He was driving down to Toronto, alone, in the van, and suddenly realized he wasn't alone. Harry had spontaneously appeared, sitting in the passenger seat. My father looked at him and said, "What the hell are you doing here?" (They had never gotten along well...) Harry glared at him and said, "Is the money flowing to my children?" (my father was executor of the will). "The money isn't flowing anywhere yet," said my father, "It's all tied up with the damned lawyers for another couple of months." Harry gave me father one more dirty look, and vanished into thin air.

My father told my mother and me about it after he returned from Toronto. He said that "being dead did not seem to have improved Harry's nature any".

Now the interesting thing is, the experience did not prompt my father to change his lifelong attitude toward spiritual matters, which is: he has no interest in such things at all. None. Nada. If it ain't tactile and you can't measure it with a protractor and make money with it, he ain't interested. Go figure.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 09:22 PM

LH,

my original comments were about

"1. it transcends all human languages in its clarity
2. it's instantaneous and complete communication of a complete thought
3. it's completely clear in meaning, not subject to misinterpretation"

I have to presume that this is the DEFINITION of telepathy that you are using- but I fail to see any justification. IF someone BELIEVES that something is true, does that make it so? If I read the thought of some being that is as far above me as I am above an amoeba, CAN I truely understand what it's meaning is? How can *I* be so sure that it is clear, complete, instantaneous, and NOT misinterpreted by my ( human and thus failable) mind?

IF you can define what YOU mean by angel, perhaps I can comment as to my beliefs.- WE are limited by human languages, and may or may not be talking about the same thing.

My "religious" beliefs are in a higher order of intelligence, beyound my comprehension. Perhaps the Universe as a whole- What are the thoughts of the sub-atomic particles making up your own body? I feel I am orders of magnitude from being that important to the "God" I am attempting to describe. I guide my actions as best I can by what I have been taught by my culture is a sense of morality and responsibility- I am responsible for my own actions, not others or some higher being.

As for being dead, I remember drifting off to sleep, not seeing any tunnel or light, but hearing the conversations of the surgeons working on me. I remember the hot flash of the iodine dye in my brain, and then waking up some time later, with NO passage of time.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:15 PM

"IF someone BELIEVES that something is true, does that make it so?"

No, not necessarily. It only makes it so for the one who believes it.

By the same token, if someone believes that something is not true, it doesn't necessarily make it so either.

I had no belief one way or the other about Angels until I had an actual encounter, but there is no reason why my belief, based on that encounter, should necessarily convert anyone else to that belief.

What do I think an Angel is? Well, based on my experience only, I'd say that it's a very powerful spiritual being of some kind that comes to help people when they are in need, and probably watches over them much of the time. It's a being that appears to be genderless (or embodying both genders seamlessly), and that makes sense, because it's not in a physical earth body, and does not require biological means of reproduction, I would assume. It's a very positive and strong being, very sure and purposeful in its intent. It has no conflicted nature, unlike human beings who are caught between issues of light and darkness. (at least that one had no conflicted nature) It is loving, compassionate, and merciful, and very strong in its authority.

The communication was like telepathy. The reason I think it was very clear and unmistakable was because it was pure thought...beyond language. A person hears that thought and then the brain automatically translates it into whichever spoken language he or she is familiar with. (The French judges who questioned Joan of Arc at her trial attempted to ridicule her by asking what language the Angels she saw in her visions spoke in. She heard them speak to her in French, of course, so they were ridiculing her and saying "does that mean that French is the language spoken in heaven?" This was the usual courtroom nonsense used to try to embarrass a chosen victim. The fact is, an Angel speaks to you in pure thought, and you hear it inside your mind in the language you are normally familiar with...naturally! What else would you hear it in?)

I think we both live by essentially the same parameters of social morality and responsibility...as you alluded to. I would assume so.

I misunderstood your earlier post in some respects.

I think everyone is equally beloved of God, although we differ in our own ability to receive and express that Love. Accordingly, I'd say that everyone is important to God...in a sense...and in another sense, as you say, it's something totally beyond our comprehension.

The Angel? I'd say, yes, it is a being more advanced than a human being, but it's not as big a gap as that between us and an amoeba, for instance. Not nearly. We are on the verge of becoming Angels at any time we surrender completely to Love...and become the embodiment of that. People are capable of this. The World tends to get in the way, because everything in the World suggests that:

1. we are physical bodies
2. we are in need
3. there isn't enough of what we need
4. we are in danger

Those are the illusions that take us away from Love and into fear. And we struggle with it over and over again.

Regarding your death experience...many have had such experiences, I'm sure. Others have had different experiences. I think everyone's experience is unique, and it has meaning for them within their own particular context. Why I had the experience with the Angel, I don't know, but I'm glad I did. Why my father had the experience with his brother's ghost, I can't figure, because it never changed his materialistic viewpoint one iota. :-) How a person can have dramatic spiritual experiences and NOT develop an interest in spiritual matters is really beyond me! He also saw ghosts come out of slain soldiers in the war, when under fire, but it did not prompt any interest in him to investigate further. I asked him where he thought their ghosts went, and he said that they probably just dispersed and vanished into the Universe like a cloud of steam...to be no more. His lack of faith in anything nonmaterial astounds me, given his experiences. He figures this life is it, so he's still trying (at age 82) to pull off some huge business deal in order to be a "successful guy". The stuff he thinks is important I regard as essentially worthless, and vice versa.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:25 PM

BB..."... BillD will find what HE wishes to see," Piffle! I wish to see alien spacecraft, Angels, telepathy, life-after-death and cheap beer!

Little Hawk..."...You seem to want to be a collection of atoms, governed by laws of physics." nope, for maybe the umpty eighth time, I don't care about that either way...what I want is to know the **TRUTH**. And I don't want to buy into any subjective guesswork. Objective guesswork is different....that requires changing as new information is available. I don't see how your theories of 'universal Godliness' can change much, except thru variations in personal expression....all very lovely and creative, but very like metaphysical cotton-candy.

and "...I think what it really amounts to, is you just want to be right." nope...you still don't get it! *grin*... What I want to be is not wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:29 PM

Everyone wants the truth. And that is why we care so much about the things we have come to believe. We are searching for the truth.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:31 PM

oh, yeah, bearded bruce...I also wish to see honest politicians and unbiased reporters...now THAT is way beyond what I ever expect to see!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:31 PM

And I know what you mean about wanting to see alien spacecraft. I never look out at a night sky without hoping to see one. Despite that, I haven't seen one, as far as I know, since 1968!

So much for seeing what we want to see, eh, Bill? :-)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 10:46 PM

(I guess they figger you HAD your turn, LH...maybe I'm next..you'll be among the first to hear..)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 03:46 AM

Perhaps I should have said "expected to see"- *that* would exclude the items BillD mentions....

My intent was that each of us will see, not always the real situation, but the one which best fits our preconcieved notions of what should be.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 03:56 AM

LH,

"The fact is, an Angel speaks to you in pure thought, and you hear it inside your mind in the language you are normally familiar with...naturally!"

And does this not mean that the person is filtering those thoughts through the langauge the person understands, altering the ture and clear meaning to fit what the language can permit to be said?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 05:14 AM

There is a big difference between you and me LH.
If your worldview is true then eventually real evidence would show it, and in that case I would HAVE to accept the evidence and change my worldview.
You however will accept no evidence to the contrary of your position because you KNOW it to be the truth.
All your arguments start from this premise not the evidence and therefore you are incapable of growing in understanding and have painted yourself into a secure corner from which you can never escape without letting go of your assumptions. Ironically this is the very thing you accuse the sceptics of.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 08:06 AM

LH, I'm most intrigued by your experience of "meeting" an angel. Would like to hear more about the circumstances involved – and about the whole experience, really. Can you share more of the story, or is it too personal to relate here?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 10:09 AM

"There is a big difference between you and me LH."

Maybe there isn't as big a difference as you think, Pied Piper. Both of us will believe things we have definitely and without any question experienced, and we will certainly revise our beliefs when confronted with new experience that challenges old beliefs. As for things we have not definitely experienced, but only heard second-hand information about, well...we may have opinions about that one way or another, and those opinions are based on what we think is probable rather than on what we absolutely know for sure. I think what troubles you about the Angel thing is that I don't just "believe" in them because of books or something, but I actually encountered one. That puts my belief in a somewhat different category than that of the traditional religionist, doesn't it? It gives me the same assurance that is commonly demonstrated by some of history's saints in the religious texts, because they weren't being speculative, they were talking about things they had actually experienced personally.

"If your worldview is true then eventually real evidence would show it, and in that case I would HAVE to accept the evidence and change my worldview."

I have had my real evidence, Pied. You haven't. That's the difference. Yes, if you DID see an Angel you would most certainly change your worldview in some respects, but I have no idea if that is in the cards for you, and I don't think it really matters anyway. I can sleep easily at night knowing that you don't believe in Angels. And you can't fit an Angel in a test tube, if that's the kind of "evidence" you require to believe in something. :-)

"You however will accept no evidence to the contrary of your position because you KNOW it to be the truth."

There IS no evidence to the contrary of my position. :-)

"All your arguments start from this premise not the evidence and therefore you are incapable of growing in understanding and have painted yourself into a secure corner from which you can never escape without letting go of your assumptions. Ironically this is the very thing you accuse the sceptics of."

I'm like any other human being with an education, Pied. I value any and all empirical evidence that is available about anything I'm interested in. I know of no evidence whatsoever denying the existence of Angels, reincarnation, or any of the other stuff I take for granted now. I know of considerable evidence supporting some of the spiritual things I take for granted, and it's not in a test tube, because it's not evidence that manifests as physical material! :-) It's simply experiential evidence, that's all.

You value experience just as much as I do or as anyone else does, and you form many of your core beliefs on the basis of your experience. If you had actually seen O.J. Simpson murder his wife, Nicole, for example, I really doubt that any set of clever and impressive arguments and documentations of convincing evidence on the part of his defence attorneys would prove sufficient to destroy your faith in your own powers of observation...BUT...they might well be able to convince a jury that you didn't see what you thought you saw...or that you were lying...or that you were hallucinating...or that you were crazy...or..etc.,etc.,etc.

My point being...the world in general (including you) is not the guy that SAW the murder, they are the jury. They are easily manipulated by impressive credentials and selectively chosen information.

Now keep in mind, it doesn't matter whether or not you believe in Angels. I don't care. It's not important. If you needed to see an Angel, I expect you would see one. If not, fine with me.

But I am not the one here who is denying things out of hand, just because they are things unfamiliar to my present world view, threatening to it, and therefore disturbing to me in some way. I am just someone who has had an experience which you haven't had yet.

And I don't expect everyone to believe the same things. It never has happened yet in the history of the World, and the planet has still gone on turning regardless, after all...

My belief in Angels, reincarnation, eternal life of my non-physical soul, and other stuff like that is no threat to you whatsoever. It doesn't make me a bad or dangerous person, it doesn't hurt society, and I am NOT in need of being "saved" by you or Wolfgang or anyone else who imagines that their chosen version of reality is more realistic than mine. I mean, really, why don't you guys go and try and save the whales instead? It would be more useful.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 10:45 AM

Yorkshire Yankee - I'll PM you about it later. Send me a reminder if I forget. Don't have time just now.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 03:58 PM

Wolfgang and another person made themselves feel much better by explaining that it "probably" was created by a small plane that had been commissioned to commemorate my friend's memory. (Ebbie)

Memory, Ebbie, is a funny thing. We recall according to our prejudices or preconceived ideas and very rarely as it actually was. Mudcat allows the comparison of what you recall today with how it actually was some time ago.

What someone else, not me, had actually written was:
On the other hand - maybe Earl knew a sky-writer who had their own spectacular way of saying goodbye.
Or maybe it was Earl.
We can only form our own opinions from what Ebbie tells us.

In a later post I said I did like the sky-writer explanation.
I never gave this explanation by myself as you make sound it.
I not even gave any hint why I said I did like the explanation and whether I considered it probable. This connection was never on record here it has only been formed in your head. At that time I had not even thought about how probable that explanation might be, I applauded its creativity. Like I can say to a student: "Your explanation is wrong, but I like it."

No mention of 'probably' which you make look as if it is a quote.
No mention of 'commissioned', the explanation assumes that the skywriter did it just by himself.
Furcone (the poster) actually did give this particular explanation only as one of two.

You misunderstand the word 'explanation' when used by a scientist, Ebbie. All these explanations are tentative on basis of the facts as know at that moment. All these explanations are made in the sense of 'possible'. If more details become known, some explanations are ruled out and others may gain power.

When you tell us about something that happened in Mudcat, Ebbie, we can use the search function to check what you recall against how it was. When you tell us about something else we have only you memory.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 06:05 PM

Wolfgang, I freely concede all the points you make, but it does not faze me or threaten me. I agree that memory is a leaky vessel for all of us, which includes you.

* I said "probably" because my memory's urge was to say that you and the other poster agreed that it was the explanation for what I saw. I toned it down, you see.

* In English, when we say "I like that (explanation)" it generally means the end of the discussion; we have come 'round to the other's view.

* My saying that the sky-writing was "commissioned"- I think you are seriously nitpicking there. I didn't look up the previous thread; I don't need to carefully check to see what I had said last time. It is enough for me to say the truth as I know it each time.

* The idea of Earl conveniently knowing a skywriter is a little over the top. Commissioning is far more logical.

* "We can only form our opinions from what Ebbie tells us." I agree with that, of course. That is what anecdotal evidence is.

But not to worry. I no longer am concerned about whether anyone believes what I saw or have seen or have experienced in other contexts. I will continue to bring it up from time to time because it is possible (not "probable" *G*) that someone at sometime will see it and realize that s/he is not the only one, that s/he has not gone crazy. (I may be crazy but what I have seen or done or experienced along these lines is not evidence of it.)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 06:18 PM

The roles are beginning to change.

The into-the-mystic crowd are starting to argue according to logic, while the logicians are starting to retreat into speculative fantasy.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: robomatic
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 06:20 PM

"In the end, you die in your own arms."

- The Sopranos

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 07:03 PM

well, Ebbie....*I* never assume, or even suspect, that anyone who has a strange or intense experience is 'crazy'. It may, in fact be useful for people to know that they are not alone in having such experiences. I guess, depending on the person, it can be quite disconcerting!

But folks like Wolfgang & I also like to see the alternative explanations OF the experience noted, as it might also be useful for someone to know that the cause(s) of their experience might be more simple and non-mystical than they realized.

I really liked my flying dreams, but I know that such dreams are common, and I won't make much of them unless they get much more vivid, (or quit feeling like dreams...*wry grin*)

If I were talking to someone who has very strange sensations and visions, I would make very sure they knew about Synesthesia, as I'll bet that in various times & places, people who experienced it were eithe thought crazy, or felt crazy, or were mistaken for witches...etc.
   (This is not meant to refer to your experience, but only to be one example of how life can throw us curves.)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 07:31 PM

Bill D, they say that one striking difference between a dream and an "experience" is that you may soon forget a dream but the experience remains forever (?) vivid.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 07:47 PM

Heh! Well, thanks for a couple of good laughs...to John and to robomatic. :-)

Ebbie, if there was a World Championship of Nitpicking, Wolfgang would win the gold medal every year. He is very precise, observant, and exacting. I bet he's a fine chess player too. That is why you have to either be quite careful what you say around him....or just not give a damn. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 08:19 PM

Axiom: The nitpicker misses the sunset.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 09:01 PM

*grin* sunset

Axiom: noun..akseeum

1.(logic) A saying that widely accepted on its own merits
2.(logic) a proposition that is not susceptible of proof or disproof; its truth is assumed to be self-evident

*dodging behind the door*

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 09:07 PM

OOO! Nice picture!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 09:21 PM

Come on out, Bill. I made up the axiom.

(Nice sunset. Where was the photo shot, do you know?)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 11:02 PM

the name includes 'chaco', and I know that Chaco Canyon, N. Mexico was a center of the Anisazi indian culture, so I'm guessing that it was there..

yep...the page before http://www.photo.net/photo/pcd1666/ has more pics, and some of the ruins.

(all I did was Google 'sunset', and then hit 'images' and pick one of the first ones!) I get lots of screensavers this way.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Mar 05 - 11:09 PM

a little searching and you get pages like THIS! with more amazing sunsets than......well.....you know...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 08:19 AM

Nice pics Bill do I see Elvis's head?
A little bit of clarification LH, I in no way doubt your experiences with Angels or other entities you encounter.
It's just that you seem unwilling to even countenance the idea that another explanation other than their objective independent existence is possible.
I have had many elaborate and beautiful dreams over the years including flying, and vivid dreams in which I new I was dreaming (great fun). In these dreams I have met people that are completely new to me, have consistent personalities, have interesting conversation, and respond to mine. Should I accept that these entities had independent existence outside my mind?
As a child I had occasional nightmares from which I would wake and see in the room various large heavy objects floating ominously round the room. These objects behaved in a completely realistic way, passing in front of objects in my room and obscuring them (that's why it was so terrifying). I had to get up walk (more like dash) for the light switch at which point the objects disappeared.
Real objects or mentally generated hallucinations?

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 11:10 AM

... Should I accept that these entities had independent existence outside my mind?

As a child I had occasional nightmares from which I would wake and see in the room various large heavy objects floating ominously round the room. These objects behaved in a completely realistic way, passing in front of objects in my room and obscuring them (that's why it was so terrifying). I had to get up walk (more like dash) for the light switch at which point the objects disappeared.
Real objects or mentally generated hallucinations?


PP, your experiences are your own to sort out of course, so please just take whatever you like from what I'm going to say here (if anything) and leave the rest, ok?

The things you describe from your childhood experiences are neither mental hallucinations or real (ie physically real) objects or entities. They are, however, VERY real on certain of the non-physical (ie emotional or 'psychic'- but please NOT to be confused with Spiritual!) levels of consciousness. These experiences/entities can and do affect one physically for better or worse - whether one understands or accepts this at the time or not.

Flying dreams are very common. They are simply experiences of your astral body that you remember when you wake up. Everyone has an astral, or non-physical body (actually, human beings have 3 of them! - one emotional, one mental and one Spiritual) So everyone has these experiences while the physical body sleeps. However, most people don't remember them upon awakening because the subconscious (ie emotional, or "astral") mind has a vitally important "censor" function. That Censor protects you from being distracted, upset or 'overloaded' by your dream experiences while you're awake and need to focus on the physical.

The astral body(ies) has much different properties than the physical. For example, it's much less dense, and exists beyond the confines of physical time and space. The quality of experience one creates on the astral planes depends entirely on personal desires, fears and expectations. Ever noticed that while you're dreaming, all you need to do is think about something - and lo and behold there it is, right in front of you - instantly?!?

Well that's how the subconscious mind/astral body - and the astral planes themselves - work. That's why it's a good idea to clear yourself of any negative or fearful thoughts/worries before falling asleep. And it's a really BAD idea to watch the news just before bed, polluting your mental and emotional bodies with all those graphic depictions of horror and woe.

So dream on, sweet dreamers... and may you always dream safely and wisely!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 11:57 AM

Oops I meant to say this too... sometimes astral experiences (ie dreams) are so powerful that we remain more or less in that astral, rather than physical consciousness for a while after awakening. That's why you could still "see" the nightmarish images in your room just after you woke up. I used to have experiences like that as a child and a younger adult. In fact, I still make sure there's a nightlight near my bed. Haven't had one of those middle-of-the-night mad rushes for the light switch in a long long time, though ...

But here's a similar experience. A few years ago I'd woken up one morning just exhausted. I didn't understand why; I wasn't sick, I'd gone to bed at a reasonable hour the night before and slept just fine, as far as I remembered. The fatigue got worse and worse, so that by noon I had to give up my gardening and go lie down. My arms were so tired and aching I couldn't even lift the little plastic gardening tools any more.

As I poured myself a bath, worried about why I was so inexplicably tired, suddenly I was back in a dream I'd had the night before. Well there I was, in the middle of a big, swollen flooding river, trying desperately to swim upstream, against that torrent of a current. The last image from that dream was of one little white arm flailing above the water, as I sunk down beneath the surface and drowned (I guess). It must have been the sound of the water running into the tub that triggered that memory!

Anyway, it explained the physical exhaustion alright! And it also demonstrates just how physically 'real' dream experiences can become.

daylia

PS   Some people say you can't die in your dreams. Well, I have. Many, many times!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 12:42 PM

"They are simply experiences of your astral body that you remember when you wake up."   ??? Who says so, and how did they determine it?

" Everyone has an astral, or non-physical body..." ... same question.

" Ever noticed that while you're dreaming, all you need to do is think about something - and lo and behold there it is, right in front of you - instantly?!?"....nope. Where can I have that feature installed?

"... it's a good idea to clear yourself of any negative or fearful thoughts/worries before falling asleep."    Oh, sure! Fine idea, if possible....I never doubted that my dreams were affected by my state of mind, but I don't need to postulate extra "astral bodies" to know that my sub-concious can process things in weird patterns.

*smile*...as you see **daylia**, I still resist theories that are presented as facts. ["everyone has 3 astral bodies"] ["my astral mind has a censor function"].

I can't prove that I don't have these features, but I don't have to. Others are making these claims, and the list of metaphysical claims that various 'others' say I should believe in are overwhelming!
I have, in the last 45 years or so, been told that I should (sometimes 'must') accept Astrology, palm reading, telepathy, Phrenology, Edgar Cayce's predictions, Benjamin Cremes's assertion that 'Maitreya' is among us now, the LDS church AND the Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at my door (each haughtily scoffing at the other), various other forms of Christian religon, witchcraft, various forms of Pantheism (I'm trying to decide if Little Hawk's is one), house plants that respond to my mood, communication with the dead, reincarnation, out-of-body experiences, telekinesis, ....and no doubt a few other ideas that I have repressed...*grin*.....

What is a body to do? And how am I to respond when I recite that list to someone and they say "oh, all those are just manifestations of your interaction with higher planes of existence, and MY way of looking at it is the most useful..."?

*IF* someone says to me, "well, I don't know for sure the absolute truth about any of this, but it helps me to focus by using 'X' as a model and allows me to process my life using a formula..", then I cannot argue with them beyond saying that, "yeah, I use logic and language and science and my own emotions in similar ways."

If it just boils down to 'taste', then it is VERY true that de gustibus non disputandum, because we really can't dispute over personal taste, but if someone tells you (remember the pet psychic TV program?) that they have read the mind of your Cocker Spaniel, and Fluffy is mad at you for paying too much attention to the cat.....well, ummmmmm....yes, I CAN dispute claims like that! Can't prove 'em wrong, but THEY made the claim....and the burden of proof is on the assertor.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 01:01 PM

I get your point, Pied Piper. We all have to judge these things individually as best we can. To me it was a real Angel, and it seems indisputable...but I can't speak for anyone else's personal experience. That's up to them. I can readily believe that some people could mistake a dream of an Angel for the actual encounter with one. I don't think that's what it was in my case.

But who can say?

I had nightmares like yours too, when I was a kid. Although they do seem real at the time, I dismissed them as simply dreams within a few moments of waking awareness (though they sometimes left me scared for quite a while afterward).

Things that are not physical do not provide us with the handy opportunity of establishing physical verification after the fact. Thus, spiritual experiences that have been recounted by sages, saints, and common people for centuries remain in the realm of the speculative. I think some are real, and some are not. That's my guess. So it's not a case of...either your way or my way...it's a case of "both and", in my opinion.

We're both right, and neither one of us has a viewpoint that has to invalidate the other in order to have merit.


Bill - Everyone except you has 3 astral bodies. You're an anomaly. One of your astral bodies got damaged shortly after birth by too much exposure to the "Howdy Doody Show" at too young an age. The damage was irreversible. By the age of 15 your weakened 3rd astral body had withered away completely and ceased to exist. This is why you're such a bonehead about spiritual subjects. I frankly don't know what can be done in such a case... :-) If only your parents had known! It's just tragic. (sob!)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 01:14 PM

My father, at age 93, told my brothers that he'd been awakened by an "angel" that touched him on the knee and then stood smiling at him. Allegedly this happened two or three times and my father told my brothers (separately) that he was afraid that he was going to lose his wife, as he had my mother some years before.

My brother said that he didn't say it but that he thought, Oh, no, Dad. This one's for you.

I don't know how he identified it as an angel and I didn't get to talk with him about it. I am in Alaska and he and my brothers were in Oregon and somehow no one got around to telling me until after Dad's death. I would have loved to ask him some questions.

I don't know any person less whimsical or more work-a-day than my dad was.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 01:19 PM

No, Bill is absolutely correct.

One cannot prove spiritual nature. One can experience it, and in many different ways. And one can find almost any mental manifestation you can imagine associated with it, because of the plasticity of the mind and its vulnerability to suggestion.

Matter is not plastic, in this sense, nor does it seem to be vulnerable to suggestion. It doesn't deform to accommodate wishful thinking the way the mind does. Nor does it require re-creating the past by memory in order to be examined.

I can argue that "3 astral bodies" makes as much sense as arguing over the Trinity, or the seven names of God versus the school of thought that claims there are properly twenty-one names of God, but it's all bull and opinion. Hogwash-counter-hogwash.

What you experience yourself or genuinely believe in the experiences of others you have learned about is as good a data sample as you're gonna get, sorry. Do with it what you will. That's my psychic intution on the matter. :D

A

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 02:19 PM

Who says so, and how did they determine it?

Well for starters I say so with complete confidence, having determined it in the time-honoured fashion (through direct first-hand experience and knowledge).


....nope. Where can I have that feature installed?

Well if that's your truly your will and wish, then you've just installed it Bill. It's that natural. Easy, huh?

Enjoy your dreamtime.



["my astral mind has a censor function"].

What I did say was... "However, most people don't remember them [dreams] upon awakening because the subconscious (ie emotional, or "astral") mind has a vitally important "censor" function."

The properties of the subconscious mind --- and it's corresponding non-physical (emotional, astral or 'psychic' body) --- are not really personal at all, being simply a function of consciousness itself. That's why I made the important distinction between "my subconscious mind' and "the subconscious mind".

For most human beings, the subconscious 'censor' functions independently of conscious awareness. Just like their DNA.

It might be good right about now to understand that dream recall can also be blocked - and, most happily, allowed! - through the conscious logical reasoning mind. Via the simple power of personal decision, intention, will.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 02:38 PM

Doesn't anyone think that cloud looks a bit like Elvis?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 03:03 PM

I couldn't find Elvis in the cloud--honest! But there's a frog over on one side!

"too much exposure to the "Howdy Doody Show"....so that's it! I always heard the theme song as "It's how'd he DO it time!"

I will repeat to myself " I'm an anomaly, I'm an anomaly ,I'm an anomaly I'm an anomalyI'm an anomalyI'm an anomalym an anomalyI'mananomalyIananomalymananomalymananomalymananomaly" .....yeeks!, I think I just crossed over into another dimension...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 03:15 PM

What's a 'yanomaly'? *G*

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 03:30 PM

anomalyI'mananomalyIananomalymananomalymananomalymananomaly

Woooow BillD just LOOK at all that mana ye truly be!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 04:42 PM

Anecdotes mean a lot to the people who tell them. They wouldn't remember them or at least not tell them if it was different. My anecdotes also mean a lot to me. If an anecdote is told to make the listeners understand where the speaker comes from and what moves them they serve a vital function. To challenge any story told for such a reason and to compare it with facts would serve no other function than to destroy trust and understanding in a personal relationship.

But quite often a line is crossed: the narrators make theories about the world (see e.g., Daylia) in a more general sense. That is the moment from which on the theories are open to debate and also the evidence presented for such theories is a matter open to scrutiny. This of course includes the anecdotes if they are offered as evidence.

This is the moment in which the misunderstanding between the anecdote teller and a doubter begins. The doubter offers other explanations or theories and to do that completely (s)he has also to point to other ideas how it might be explained that a certain anecdotal report has been told.

One only has to look into the old thread(s) to see that just a hint that the recollection might be not accurate or might be slanted by the theories dear to the teller is met with outrage. The anecdote teller can be hurt deeply and feels not be taken seriously. (S)he never realises in that frame of mind that any (or at least most of the) critique is directed at the interpretation and the inferences and not at the experience as such.

How much a recollection is influenced by the theories we hold is seen easily in my example above. I have said that I like a theory, Ebbie has made an inference what that should/could mean and her recollection of the episode is slanted in the direction of her inference. She does not remember what has happened but what her inference was. Everybody does that, of course including me. One personal anecdote (based on more than one experience) about that: When I watch the presentation of a stage magician together with somebody else I like to ask these people what they have seen. Since I know many of the tricks, I know what to watch for. Those who do not know recall many details completely wrong, for they are following the wrong theory.

That's one of the main reasons why anecdotes are never treated as proof in science. They are not discarded, that would be the wrong approach. A good theory, for instance for near death experiences or OOBEs, must also be able to explain what gives rise to the many reports of similar experiences (floating, light, tunnel, and all that). "It ain't so" is a very stupid and unimaginative way of approaching the problem.

I wish it wasn't so but my experience is that people telling anecdotes from their lives pointing in their thinking to one particular view of the world, perceive that I attack them personally when I only point to other possibilities. I see that they close their minds even to the possibility of error or another explanation. "That's my experience and you can't tell me what I have seen" or "direct experience is better than any theories" is in my eyes just a way to close one's mind against alternative interpretations.

You can only gain by being open minded.

BTW, I know the rules of chess and have played some games when I was young, but the last time must have been about 20 years ago.

Wolfgang (who prefers being called a nitpicker to being a nitwit)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 05:19 PM

O mana paid me whom? (best I can do)

a 'y-anomaly' is what makes some males weird. I must have one.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 05:53 PM

Nah, Wolfgang, you'll never be a nitwit. Unless the day arrives that you discover something for yourself that convinces you of the validity of certain things. If you then nitpick it to death, you will have arrived at nitwiticism.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 09:03 PM

the narrators make theories about the world (see e.g., Daylia) in a more general sense

I am certainly no narrator, and what I've said is not as complicated as a theory. It's simply the truth.

This is the moment in which the misunderstanding between the anecdote teller and a doubter begins.

There's no misunderstanding here. You do know the truth already - all peoples have known it since the beginning of time. Your conscious logical mind is presently choosing a "doubter's" stance, for reasons only known to yourself. What's to misunderstand about it? It's quite the common mode d'etre, after all.

The anecdote teller can be hurt deeply and feels not be taken seriously

Whether people choose to be serious or cruel or naughty or nice has nothing to do with me or anything I've said here. Rather,people's behaviour has everything to do with them.

I see that they close their minds even to the possibility of error or another explanation

You only ever have only negative, ridiculous things to say about this subject, Wolfgang. Isn't it getting old by now? You still seem to lack even the most basic first hand practical knowledge or experience of it. You've obviously chosen to spend this lifetime gaining experience and knowledge of other matters. Well, cool!

Just please understand that other people's second hand, second rate opinions on this subject mean absolutely nothing to me. Sorry, but I really don't care whose opinions they might be! I know that what you have to say on this subject is valueless because it is (quite simply) either false or irrelevant, regardless of how educated or lettered or logical (or nasty or nice) you might be in other areas of your life.

And just like everyone else, you'll probably make the grade someday both as a nitpicker and as a nitwit! :-)

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Pied Piper
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 09:21 AM

Your worrying me now Bill, Elvis's head is in profile (ish) lifted back looking left and up at about 45 degrees from the horizontal.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 01:26 PM

I guess I see the head you identify as Elvis's. It's a large profile of a person wearing a smile and with a mop of curls up top? I wouldn't have thought of it as Elvis but since it always seems to be a choice between Elvis and the Virgin Mary I'd have to choose the former!

But do you see the much smaller head below it? It also faces left but on a horizontal plane, a bulbous-nosed man that reminds me of the Alley Oop comic strip characters.

Animals, profiles, buildings- all of those are frequently found in the clouds, and they are fun. However, I had never seen even one letter of the alphabet delineated in the clouds until the day I saw a whole name spelled out.

Mind you, I am very familiar with the DRINK PEPSICOLA type of skywriting. In the 40s when I was growing up in Oregon there weren't that many planes in our skies and we kids were charmed by the puffy - and quickly distorted and dissipated - clouds the planes emitted.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 03:31 PM

I don't want a life after death...i just want to stop existing, and that's it...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 04:01 PM

well, with a bit of imagination, I finally see a profile..sort of....but **ELVIS**??? that could as easily be John Kerry, who had his head in the clouds recently..*grin*........Now tell me if you see the frog perched on the dark cloud at the lower right.

( Blissfully Ignorant...don't worry, I sorta think you'll have what you wish. Unfortunately, you & I won't be able to come back and say "I told you so" to those who DO think we go on & on. Come to think of it, I haven't heard from many of them....hmmmmm)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 07:02 PM

Guest at 1:26 was me. I forgot I had come in the back door.

Bill D and Blissfully Ignorant, as you might guess, I think you will get to discuss the subject in the hereafter- and there will probably be a lot of jokes coined, such as 'How many agnostics did it take to ....?' *G*

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 07:43 PM

we get to tell jokes in the hereafter? If I have to put up with Jay Leno forever, I ain't going!

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Mar 05 - 11:24 PM

Having seen what you've written I would agree. You Ain't Goin'.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 12:54 AM

Well, O anonymous one, having met a bunch who are sure they ARE going, I'd say it's just as well.

Still, I have been told that I don't get a choice, and that I'll be 'there'...(wherever 'there' is)....some tell me I'll be miserable for eternity, some say I'll be happy, some say I will become 'part of the whole', some say I'll be reborn in avrious forms, some say I'll get *in* on merit, but will have to sit in the balcony. Oh, the scenarios change daily, and I just shrug.

On the other hand, that beer commercial used to say "you only go around once, so grab for all the gusto you can get." Of course, they meant cheap beer, and THAT won't do-- here OR in eternity.....I guess I'll just drink what good beer I can get, and wait & see, hmmm?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Azizi
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 03:19 AM

It's interesting how there are sometimes two current Mudcat threads with complementary topics.

I just posted a comment about life after death in this thread.

Over the rainbow thread

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: *daylia*
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 06:54 AM

Azizi, I enjoyed your post on the other thread. Thanks!

Come to think of it, I haven't heard from many of them....hmmmmm)

I haven't heard from many of them either. JUst a few, in special circumstances.

The first time it happened I was 14. It was the night of my grandmother's funeral - one of the first experiences with death I'd ever had. I was lying in bed thinking of her, almost drifted off to sleep when suddenly I heard her loudly hailing my mother from the bottom of the stairs, as she always used to do. (She had a hard time with the stairs during her last few years with us, so she'd taken to hollering (oops that's calling) up from downstairs when she needed something).

Well my eyes flew wide open and PANIC set in. But I calmed myself down telling myself "Oh I'm just upset and tired and imagining things. Or maybe I was already asleep and dreaming. She's gone! And there's no thing as ghosts anyway ..." And so I started drifting off again ...

....until I felt something very strange. As I lay there in the darkness, I felt the bed lower, like someone was sitting down on it beside my feet. Well, holy jumpin! No more calming self-talk - I leapt out of that bed, ran to my parent's bedroom and shook them awake, told them I'd heard her call from the bottom of the stairs, and now I'd felt her sitting down on the foot of my bed! I couldn't believe my mother's calm response... "Oh well. Don't worry. Did you say hello at least?"

I couldn't decide which was more scary at the time - what I'd heard and felt, or my mother's nonchalant acceptance of my ghostly experience! It didn't do much to comfort me - but I never heard from my grandmother again, until about 30 years later when I was in REAL dire straits. I was going through quite the personal crisis, part of which was struggling with the decision of whether or not to sell and finally move away from that same old family home I'd been living in since she died. I was wishing so much she was still around, so I could talk to her about it.

Well, one night she came to me in a dream. (I'd seen her in dreams only a couple times over the years). She looked about the same as I remembered, except her hair was blonde and tied in braids with ribbons, like a little girl. She said only two words to me ... "Go. Go."

That was enough. I sold the house and moved away a couple months later. In hindsight, that was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I'd wanted and needed - and received - her help to do it. Well, that's what families are for, after all! ANd love is forever...

Thanks for listening,

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Wolfgang
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 05:45 AM

Those who do not believe in life after death have a chance to find out they are wrong, those who do believe can never find out if they are wrong.

You're right, Daylia, it's not a theory, for it is not testable. But it's not a fact or the truth either, it's an interpretation you prefer.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 07:25 AM

...and those who can find out if they are wrong can not find out if they are right, while those who can not find out if they are wrong will find out if they are right.

True or False?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 03:24 PM

Still busily discussing it, I see...

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 06:47 PM

It seems to have become a sharing of experiences, but I guess I asked for it...*wry grin*....

There is very little I can say to a statement that contains, "well, I believe that..."...Rainbows are a path to Heaven??? ...gosh, you mean no one can go to Heaven until it rains?

(and I have been making the point that if I am right, I don't get to come back and say I told you so for 2-3 years now)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 06:52 PM

They didn't say that rainbows are the only path to heaven, did they?

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: John O'L
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 07:28 PM

Rain doesn't always bring a rainbow. You might have to wait indefinitely, with all the others, hands in pockets, kicking little stones, checking your watches, gazing at the sky, umbrellas furled...

Sorry Bill, not you, somebody else

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 08:44 PM

I'm refreshing this because to me it's a fascinating subject and I very much enjoyed how it developed in this thread; I like its blend of humor, opinion and information.

I do wish to make a couple of points:

1. When a person suggests that the 'believer', 'nitwit', 'naive person' feels threatened by cool logical explanations I would suggest that the obverse may be truer. The logical mind may be even more fearful of being found flatfooted; after all, it can't be easy to acknowledge that other people may have experiences that you have not (And I am not speaking of you, Bill D!).

I recall my brother saying that he can't understand why he used to feel so strongly about the question of validity when it came to such matters. Until he himself experienced some unexplained events he was certain that other people were just making them up.

2. That brother has since died. In several 'visitations' (Oooh! loaded word!) since then in answer to my question as to whether he missed it "here" and regretted having left, he said something to the effect that "The question doesn't really make sense. It's like asking if I'd rather be a baby or an adult."

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 09:35 PM

I made it a point to re-read this entire thread before looking to see who had refreshed it; and I, too, find I liked the interplay and humor that developed. I have finally started tracing interesting threads like this that I have participated in.

(it's ok, Ebbie...I wasn't going to be offended or upset... *grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: Peace
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 10:57 PM

IMO, it's life after birth we oughta be concerned about.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 11:04 PM

Hmmm, haven't read it over, again, but did read a couple things I said.:-) I'll read more when I have more time. Thanks for refreshing it, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: More on Life After Death
From: freda underhill
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 06:41 AM

I have been re reading it and also find the debate fascinating. My capacity for empathy helps me strongly agree with some totally opposing viewpoints.

Like you Ebbie I have heard from a relative who has passed who was a very strong athiest. I always respected him for it. Still do.

I appreciate how diverse perception and experience is. Many people can be at a scene and all have a different perception. The pursuit of evidence based truth is a noble cause, whether through science, the law, medicine or meditation.

meditation is not a process of ingesting dogma or religious reprogrammimg. It is a process of training the mind to concentrate, focus, and thus to find out what happens when it STOPs it's general function of observation, judgement, reaction ,thought.

It's damn hard. Luckily, there are processes other than meditation that can happen spontaneously, and good luck and all joy to those who are lucky enough to have such a moment.

For the true scientists, the rational and brave, Zen is the mirror. In the way of Zen, a belief is worth nothing. Faith is a self delusion. A belief in a higher consciousness is only a belief. It is only in realisation or actualisation that truth exists.