Dr. Gregory Shushan, Making the Case For Cross-Cultural NDEs |422|

For example, Anita Moorjani said the message of her NDE was "be true to yourself" She was so busy taking care of other people she neglected herself. Lot's of people need to hear that message from a spiritual authority. But not everyone. Some people only think of themselves and need to hear the opposite message.

Jim. Somehow I think that "be true to yourself" pretty much sums up what all spiritual insights are about - but will vary as to how. We all have unique blindnesses. The divine, through its various agents, will tailor its message to our needs. It does not stand on dogma. It care only that we grow.
 
n my opinion, I believe raymond moody will reveal the kind of nonsense remembered by experiencers is indication of an advanced society of which we are a part of. Taking this a step further, the best explanation for life here is that we are in a living emulation.

Okay. I am now intensely curious. An emulation of what? Please do elaborate.
 
when collective and individual experience align it makes sense to trust until proven otherwise. in the case of NDEs, the burden of proof has shifted.

Alex, let's rephrase this. Its when the collective invalidates the individual that we have a sense of trust. It is when individual experience is accepted as a possible expansion of what is available to the collective on the metaphysical, as it is on the physical. Nobody said to Columbus: " America? Christopher you must be crazy. None of us have come across it. Now let's have none of this silly stuff. Go off, masturbate, and lie to your priest like the rest of us, and come back to being normal and sensible." That's because we accept the physical as being linear and without pre-ordained limits. The metaphysical, on the other hand, is completely imaginary - so it can be subjected to completely imaginary rules. Total bullshit of course, but that's how the 'thinking' goes in the 'real' world.
 
Alex, let's rephrase this. Its when the collective invalidates the individual that we have a sense of trust. It is when individual experience is accepted as a possible expansion of what is available to the collective on the metaphysical, as it is on the physical. Nobody said to Columbus: " America? Christopher you must be crazy. None of us have come across it. Now let's have none of this silly stuff. Go off, masturbate, and lie to your priest like the rest of us, and come back to being normal and sensible." That's because we accept the physical as being linear and without pre-ordained limits. The metaphysical, on the other hand, is completely imaginary - so it can be subjected to completely imaginary rules. Total bullshit of course, but that's how the 'thinking' goes in the 'real' world.
Sorry, I may be stupid, but I haven't got a clue as to what you are saying!

We discuss important and interesting subjects - there is no need to cloud the discussion in obscurity. BTW, that comment doesn't only apply to you!

David
 
Good interview, Alex. The doctor's last stated opinion is that Near-Death studies will lead to an extension of the "Natural" world, as opposed to "Supernatural" categorization. If empiricism is truly emerging from a materialist mindset in order to accomodate anecdotal NDE cross-cultural accounts, it's also entering into meta-physical explanation by definition. So I believe that Supernaturalism is an apt characterization of the survival hypothesis, given the transcendent, ineffable, and Divine attributes associated with NDE's (and mysticism generally).
totally agree... by definition and by intuition :)

I thought about bringing this up but we were a little bit too far in time-wise :)

Btw, cultural or individual variations of thematic phenomenology in NDE can be attributed to confabulation, which seems to exist to funnel down the ineffable into coherent apprehension for the experiencer.
I do get your point... but I'm a little hesitant to label it as confabulation. I mean, we just don't know what that process of reintegration from the metaphysical is really all about.
 
nice, but very hard... everybody is busy
Money makes the world go round. If only someone had on their phone in app that would allow people to get paid for their consultation service. Even better if common questions could be answered and paid via crowdsourcing. Even better if their was an accurate feedback mechanism that was far superior to reddits algorithm. Reddit favors the news cycle and novelty, not truth, and is certainly awful at accumulating knowledge.
 
Once you've had an NDE or an OBE, there is no doubt the experience is real.
Except for the die hard believers. Yes, they exist! I don't have time to find the appropriate moment, but its well known what she believes despite her experience:


And she isn't the only one.
 
I hope no one's offended but I got a bit curious too. Being a bit vocabularily challenged I had to look up the word emulation and according to Merriam Webster it means, ambition or endeavor to equal or excel others. So to be in a living emulation could mean we are trying to do a little better this time than we did last time on Earth since we obviously failed to graduate from Purgatory here, perhaps..
I think there seems to be a lot of history regarding what exists after this life but you're right, not much of it can be proven absolutely. I guess we kinda have to take it on faith from one or another religious tradition.
 
Well what the hell did it mean?

Reality is what you experience, not what others agree on and then tell you what is or is not real. Consensus reality is what the group thinks is real, and while that is valid for the group, that does not mean an individual non-conforming experience is not also just as real.

We are okay when we are talking acceptable unknowns - like what's on the other side of the mountain or ocean. But when it comes to psycho-spiritual matters things turn ugly. It seems anything existential has to be collective, for the most part - and if we exclude or expel a person from the collective psyche we can violate or even brutalise their physical being.

Columbus was financed on a voyage of discovery in a physical sense. Those who went after him had papal sanction to cause havoc against others who were not existential equals.

In the most mundane sense we are friendly to people who share our physical space unless they violate some trigger sense of being not an existential peer - wrong colour, mad, wrong faith, too primitive. The difference that triggers our adverse reaction is qualitative - as if the presence of difference is a real threat. And so it is to those who set their identity by group. They have no proper sense of being a particular person, an 'individual' - even though they use the language of individualism, and invoke the idea, when it suits them.

You are an individual, I am an individual, we all are individuals. Except that (crazy/black/xxxx believing etc etc) so and so over there. He/she cannot belong to 'our' community of individuals because (insert excuse).

Reality is big enough to accommodate us all. We are the ones who are too small to accommodate the depth diversity of experiences of reality.

You are right. I could have been clearer.
 
Except for the die hard believers. Yes, they exist! I don't have time to find the appropriate moment, but its well known what she believes despite her experience:

I have to say that I think Blackmore is just overthinking it all. I listened to her some time ago explaining her position, and I thought, WTF lady, it isn't that complicated. Why are you doing this? Then I lost interest in her..

I don't think she believes, and that's a problem. You can think yourself down a rabbit hole, and maybe you can build a career out of doing that. But as a journey of personal exploration it does seem like overkill. Of course Blackmore is entitled to her sense of the real. My observation is that she is a stand out loner here - so what she has to say may be useful to some, but not the many.

She's not to my taste. Others will doubtless have a different POV.
 
I cannot go any further than that. It's like asking if aliens have NDE's. But its clear whatever exists beyond this life, after this life, has no history we know of.

Now that is an interesting notion. What is beyond the physical (what I call metaphysical) functions not in time, but that does not mean that 'history' does not exist - as memory. I am rereading White's The Unobstructed Universe at the moment. It argues that what we call time has a more fundamental expression in the metaphysical. I am not going to describe the idea because it is head hurting. Ditto space. What we call time and space are expressions of more essential things in the physical world.

There is a history we know of, called the Akashic Records. Its worth exploring as an idea.
 
I have to say that I think Blackmore is just overthinking it all. I listened to her some time ago explaining her position, and I thought, WTF lady, it isn't that complicated. Why are you doing this? Then I lost interest in her..

I don't think she believes, and that's a problem. You can think yourself down a rabbit hole, and maybe you can build a career out of doing that. But as a journey of personal exploration it does seem like overkill. Of course Blackmore is entitled to her sense of the real. My observation is that she is a stand out loner here - so what she has to say may be useful to some, but not the many.

She's not to my taste. Others will doubtless have a different POV.
I am glad she is around only to demonstrate it takes more than experience to change your worldview. And she is not alone in her stubbornness. Some people want to know while others, like myself, recognize its impossible.

Moody's shared NDE occured in 1994. Supposedly he fully came around to a conclusion about death about 5 years ago (estimated).
 
What we call time and space are expressions of more essential things in the physical world.

There is a history we know of, called the Akashic Records. Its worth exploring as an idea.

The world is far more complex than what we can understand. So religion is mostly wrong by default since knowledge grows over time. Is god a giant conscious database or a dead one that we attribute life too?
 
I hope no one's offended but I got a bit curious too. Being a bit vocabularily challenged I had to look up the word emulation and according to Merriam Webster it means, ambition or endeavor to equal or excel others. So to be in a living emulation could mean we are trying to do a little better this time than we did last time on Earth since we obviously failed to graduate from Purgatory here, perhaps..
I think there seems to be a lot of history regarding what exists after this life but you're right, not much of it can be proven absolutely. I guess we kinda have to take it on faith from one or another religious tradition.
Emulations have causal powers, simulations exist within computers. The bridge between the two ideas is neuromorphic engineering.
 
The world is far more complex than what we can understand. So religion is mostly wrong by default since knowledge grows over time. Is god a giant conscious database or a dead one that we attribute life too?

I love the last statement. When I stop, laughing I will try to think of a sensible response. But I wanted to deal with "So religion is mostly wrong by default since knowledge grows over time."

Kinda mostly true. Religion has two functions - to interpret the shared existential reality of a community and to keep the community (and its individual members) mostly pointed in the right moral direction. Religions do those jobs to greater or lesser degrees - and can become substantially wrong on both accounts.

It would be fair to argue that Christianity is substantially wrong on both accounts. And this is not only because those who manage the faith are not as true its its ideals as they pretend, but also because knowledge has moved on. For example, psychology has validated the good bits of the faith and confirmed that the problematic bits do not work. At one stage, for many people, their faith was the only source of moral psychology. Now it can be the poorest source.

The science v religion business is just too silly for words. The science types get all excited over a loud mouth like Gallieo being oppressed by the Church - the one example that keeps on being trotted out. Of course there are the biblical literalists, but they are an example of stupidity, not religion. Religion has been the engine of science, not its opponent. Most of the great scientists were either deeply religious or profoundly spiritual. There are rampant ideologues in religion who will block growth of knowledge, but if you want seriously mean bitchery over disagreements about new ideas you have to go to science. Just remember the war waged by scientists who are materialists - they try to deflect attention away from their outrageous nonsense by trotting out Gallielo (remember this guy got sentenced to house arrest - he wasn't killed or tortured and nobody wrecked his career. why happened to him seems to have been self-inflicted).

If Gallieo is the best folk can come up with its a very weak case.
 
If Gallieo is the best folk can come up with its a very weak case.
Well he isn't is he. Anyone with an enquiring mind could get caught up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Imagine for a moment, the chilling effect of even one such execution on the burgeoning science of the time. Many of the witches were probably killed for nothing at all, but probably some were interested in some sort of proto-science.

How many of us would come here to share heretical thoughts of all kinds if we knew we might be burned at the stake?

David
 
I love the last statement. When I stop, laughing I will try to think of a sensible response. But I wanted to deal with "So religion is mostly wrong by default since knowledge grows over time."

Kinda mostly true. Religion has two functions - to interpret the shared existential reality of a community and to keep the community (and its individual members) mostly pointed in the right moral direction. Religions do those jobs to greater or lesser degrees - and can become substantially wrong on both accounts.

It would be fair to argue that Christianity is substantially wrong on both accounts. And this is not only because those who manage the faith are not as true its its ideals as they pretend, but also because knowledge has moved on. For example, psychology has validated the good bits of the faith and confirmed that the problematic bits do not work. At one stage, for many people, their faith was the only source of moral psychology. Now it can be the poorest source.

The science v religion business is just too silly for words. The science types get all excited over a loud mouth like Gallieo being oppressed by the Church - the one example that keeps on being trotted out. Of course there are the biblical literalists, but they are an example of stupidity, not religion. Religion has been the engine of science, not its opponent. Most of the great scientists were either deeply religious or profoundly spiritual. There are rampant ideologues in religion who will block growth of knowledge, but if you want seriously mean bitchery over disagreements about new ideas you have to go to science. Just remember the war waged by scientists who are materialists - they try to deflect attention away from their outrageous nonsense by trotting out Gallielo (remember this guy got sentenced to house arrest - he wasn't killed or tortured and nobody wrecked his career. why happened to him seems to have been self-inflicted).

If Gallieo is the best folk can come up with its a very weak case.
To be fair, I was critiquing revealed religion and stories like found within singular NDE acounts. It takes more is my point and convergence of evidence to change a paradigm. Or a successful product, like if Rossi actually sold a working LENR device to consumers at Lowe's or Home Depot. Religion has a succesful product, legal protection, and cultural truth. What do we have at this stage? Nothing.

Well, ok some cool guests!

If aliens ever show up or the soul phone works, I will have finally launched the last sunken battle ship in my armada of doubt.
 
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