Blue Whale
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Howard Storm's account of his NDE is reprinted here:
http://www.near-death.com/storm.html
He is led into a hellish place but rescued by Jesus.
Interesting stuff. Thanks!
Howard Storm's account of his NDE is reprinted here:
http://www.near-death.com/storm.html
He is led into a hellish place but rescued by Jesus.
thx Ian.First paragraph of the text needs tidying at http://www.skeptiko.com/254-howard-storm-transformed/ (then delete this post)
very cool. thx for sharing this. I tend to give more weight to my few spiritual/paranormal experiences. they seem important, but then again have an ephemeral quality that makes them hard to hold on to. I've come to the conclusion that this is how the game is supposed to be played... we can't hold on to anything... including extraordinary experiences.For myself, the answer to this question is "Not much". I've had so many spiritual experiences in my life (While in my 20's I saw "ghosts" and "auras" on many occasions, felt incredible oneness with the universe on a near-daily basis, and had expansive clarity while meditating that seemed bigger than life itself.) At the time it all seemed amazing and undeniably legitimate, but with life experience, professional training and insight gained through research, I've come to believe these experiences were usually a combination of wishful thinking, exaggeration and depression/anxiety (oftentimes with pot and alcohol also in the mix), and not part of some bigger spiritual reality.
This is in no way to say that I don't believe that spiritual things may exist, but for me, I can't say I would absolutely trust my own judgment if I were to experience something like that now, and I certainly don't trust the many experiences I had when I was younger as being undeniably "spiritual".
I guess I can say I trust the fact that I've actually had the experiences I've had (such as they are). The much harder question for me is how much I trust my interpretations of them. They change over time in light of new evidence/ways of thinking. At best, I suppose they're working hypotheses that could well be wrong.
I don't quite agree... I think this what we in the West have to offer. The scientific method is about putting a little distance between oursevels and our experience.Difficult to say. Like the man said, one can only speak for oneself.
he's covered that a lot in other places... and has some pretty over-the-top sounding ideas about "what Jesus told him" concerning how messed up we are right now.It's a pity that we didn't hear more detail of the actual experience itself
Right, but what if "trusting it" led you to totally change your belief system... what it "trusting it" meant turning your world upside down?I suppose it would depend on what I saw. For instance, if I had, say, some transcendental dream where I encountered a deceased ancestor, and then learned information that I would have no other way of knowing, that is later confirmed to be accurate, I would trust it.
How would you decide when it stops being the experience and starts being what people ascribe to the experience? Don't we all ascribe meaning to experiences while they are happening?
very cool. thx for sharing this. I tend to give more weight to my few spiritual/paranormal experiences. they seem important, but then again have an ephemeral quality that makes them hard to hold on to. I've come to the conclusion that this is how the game is supposed to be played... we can't hold on to anything... including extraordinary experiences.
One factor is that you have to decide if a spiritual message is a personal message just for you, is a message for some group of people, or is a universal message for everyone.
I think Howard Storm's NDE was a message for Christians.
I get where you're coming from... i.e. I do think we have to continue to push back against the NDE debunkers, but I don't think picking apart well-worn cases is the way to go.Just off track a little, Alex, but what about interviewing Judy Bachrach ? Also, do you think it would be possible to get to talk with Dr Robert Spetzler specifically about the famous Reynolds case. I'd love to hear you take him through the stages of the operation and nail down the facts once and for all so that sceptics can't keep twisting them to try to debunk it.
I get where you're coming from... i.e. I do think we have to continue to push back against the NDE debunkers, but I don't think picking apart well-worn cases is the way to go.
I think we have to step back and fully consider the absolute absurdity of their starting point! Debunkers/Skeptics/Atheists/SCIENTISTS are saying this can't happen because YOU don't exist. You don't have real experiences... they are all illusions... you are your brain. This is on par with fundamentalist Christians claiming that Noah got all those animals on the boat.
then again, this idea of "don't get caught up in your experience" is a well established among mediators/seekers.I was shocked by that statement. Experience is paramount! The opinions/beliefs/conclusions of certain "experts" do not even come close to being as valid and vital as anyone's actual experience.
What people ascribe to those experiences is a different thing. Someone may say their experience is that they met Buddha but that's not the experience. The experience is they met someone or something. The rest is the meaning they're giving to the experience. Their translation of the experience. That meaning may, or may not, be mostly accurate.
Also, hose who haven't had a relatively similar experience will always be just speculating. Fascination with the reports of others experience is not the experience. And no. current science does not re-experience in this area. Few, if any, scientists are bringing themselves to the point of death and investigating. Collating the translations of others is no substitute. The truly valid researcher in this area is someone who, for starters, has had such an experience.
I get where you're coming from... i.e. I do think we have to continue to push back against the NDE debunkers, but I don't think picking apart well-worn cases is the way to go.
I think we have to step back and fully consider the absolute absurdity of their starting point! Debunkers/Skeptics/Atheists/SCIENTISTS are saying this can't happen because YOU don't exist. You don't have real experiences... they are all illusions... you are your brain. This is on par with fundamentalist Christians claiming that Noah got all those animals on the boat.
...Unfortunately for neuroscientism, the inward causal path explains how the light gets into your brain but not how it results in a gaze that looks out. The inward causal path does not deliver your awareness of the glass as an item explicitly separate from you — as over there with respect to yourself, who is over here. This aspect of consciousness is known as intentionality (which is not to be confused with intentions). Intentionality designates the way that we are conscious of something, and that the contents of our consciousness are thus about something; and, in the case of human consciousness, that we are conscious of it as something other than ourselves. But there is nothing in the activity of the visual cortex, consisting of nerve impulses that are no more than material events in a material object, which could make that activity be about the things that you see. In other words, in intentionality we have something fundamental about consciousness that is left unexplained by the neurological account.
This claim refers to fully developed intentionality and not the kind of putative proto-intentionality that may be ascribed to non-human sentient creatures. Intentionality is utterly mysterious from a material standpoint. This is apparent first because intentionality points in the direction opposite to that of causality: the causal chain has a directionality in space-time pointing from the light wave bouncing off the object to the light wave hitting your visual cortex, whereas your perception of the object refers or points from you back to the object. The referential “pointing back” or “bounce back” is not “feedback” or reverse causation, since the causal arrow is located in physical space and time, whereas the intentional arrow is located in a field of concepts and awareness, a field which is not independent of but stands aside from physical space and time.
Ironically, by locating consciousness in particular parts of the material of the brain, neuroscientism actually underlines this mystery of intentionality, opening up a literal, physical space between conscious experiences and that which they are about...
great stuff... Tallis would make a good Skeptiko guest.Heh, the materialist Rosenberg let the cat out of the bag on this one:
"Perhaps the most profound illusion introspection foists on us is the notion that our thoughts are actually recorded anywhere in the brain at all in the form introspection reports. This has to be the profoundest illusion of all, because neuroscience has been able to show that networks of human brain cells are no more capable of representing facts about the world the way conscious introspection reports than are the neural ganglia of sea slugs! The real challenge for neuroscience is to explain how the brain stores information when it can’t do so in anything like the way introspection tells us it does—in sentences made up in a language of thought."
Compare this to Tallis, who unlike Churchland's silly self-appointment as a "neurophilosopher" is an accomplished neuroscientist and philosopher:
What Neuroscience cannot tell Us about Ourselves
Amusingly enough, Tallis refers to Churchland as the "Queen of Neuromania".
atheism-as-we-know-it is absurd... just like science-as-we-know-it is absurd because it's married to this idea that you are your brain living a meaningless illusion of a life.I found the interview interesting and informative but I have one thing that I need to comment about.
Alex made the statement that a belief in atheism is "absurd".
At the risk of being pedantic,, here are the definitions of the terms from Merriam Webster online...
Atheist- "one who believes there is no deity" (God)
Absurd- "extremely silly, foolish, or unreasonable : completely ridiculous"
Alex- Really? You are saying it is "completely ridiculous" not to believe in God? Actually I find that comment absolutely "absurd" in the strictest definition of the term.
I have had many of what I would call mystical experiences. I've reached the point of having no doubt that reality is much "larger" than what we all experience on a daily basis. I have reached this conclusion through years of observation and research. However I have yet not come across compelling evidence of an actual deity, a persona, an entity, that I would equate with the typical definition of God.
In that once instance, to me, you sounded as dogmatic as any born again Christian.
great stuff... Tallis would make a good Skeptiko guest.
atheism-as-we-know-it is absurd... just like science-as-we-know-it is absurd because it's married to this idea that you are your brain living a meaningless illusion of a life.
great stuff... Tallis would make a good Skeptiko guest.
I think you have this a little backwards. The East has already extensively mapped many, many different states of consciousness with rigor and these states have been achieved, maintained and written about ad infinitum for thousands of years by different practitioners.I don't quite agree... I think this what we in the West have to offer. The scientific method is about putting a little distance between oursevels and our experience.
Just off track a little, Alex, but what about interviewing Judy Bachrach ? Also, do you think it would be possible to get to talk with Dr Robert Spetzler specifically about the famous Reynolds case. I'd love to hear you take him through the stages of the operation and nail down the facts once and for all so that sceptics can't keep twisting them to try to debunk it.
I get where you're coming from... i.e. I do think we have to continue to push back against the NDE debunkers, but I don't think picking apart well-worn cases is the way to go.
I think we have to step back and fully consider the absolute absurdity of their starting point! Debunkers/Skeptics/Atheists/SCIENTISTS are saying this can't happen because YOU don't exist. You don't have real experiences... they are all illusions... you are your brain. This is on par with fundamentalist Christians claiming that Noah got all those animals on the boat.