riesgo
Member
That was quite the interview to listen to, there was no point in the interview where Ian even remotely considered his own fallibility. Even though it was pretty obvious almost right from the start that there are holes in his interpretation. I think that Alex, you were right in immediately jumping on the lucifer remark and I totally agreed with you, the guy was absolutely going there; saying that everybody who didn't match with his interpretation were deceived by satan. Ian was quick to say that Alex put words in his mouth instead of admitting to an error on his part. His remark followed immediately after a different interpretation, a different story that contradicted his own. It was so obvious that he meant to say that this woman was deceived. His backpedaling on this was interesting because he said in more words that people that experienced the love of God didn't interpret it correctly namely that this love of God is the Christian God and that you can get to know this 'fact' through reading the bible.
I think that in this lies his justification in saying that the thousands of people that he spoke to all shared the same experience. Because the NDE literature is pretty clear that he is wrong about the majority of reports being Christian. The majority do actually talk about the 'being of love' in some form or another. It is just his own personal 'mission' to convince himself and others that this love means what the bible says it means. He later on confirms my suspicion after you, Alex, pushed him on this. He, Ian, said that the majority of NDE experiencers "pointed them to Christ" and "they have met Christ himself and had an incredible encounter of this love". He personally equates this love with Christ, that is his own personal interpretation.
So in terms of strangeness of NDE's, or the question you asked at the end of the interview, I think that this account fits actually perfectly in the overall picture of love, compassion, kindness and NDE in general. Ian sounded to me like a looney bin, he didn't exactly came across as a mentally healthy and stable person to me. Why take him seriously? All we should do is try to detach Ian's personal opinions and interpretation, those are clearly logically inconsistent and rely on fire and brimstone fear mongering. Obviously that is inside the bible, but outside of what we know from the NDE data that is available to us. Follow the data? Wasn't that your personal motto Alex? :)
I'm very glad that you stepped away from the idea that NDE's are somehow of a higher truth value, or as you put it 'unfiltered' accounts. People who had NDE's consistently told us that they did not lose their personality, their own personal thoughts, their own personal perspective. They did not turn into somebody else. They had to interpret and had no other option than to interpret their sudden realisation of being in a different environment through their own perspective as themselves. We have in this reality, in our everyday world, invented 'science', invented ways of investigating to get around this exact problem. If NDE's are part of reality, we should continue applying these investigative models. Subjective experience is not interchangeable with shared objective reality, has never been that way and will never be that way. We know that there is a shared objective reality within NDE, which is more in terms of archetypes or an underlying structure. Our understanding of NDE's is going to be abstract and has to be extrapolated from personal experiences. We're better off applying what we know from the social sciences, like psychology or anthropology, to get an idea of what this underlying structure is. For me the interesting part is not the personal experience, but exactly that underlying shared structure or archetypes of all experiences.
I have to say though that this interview was a fantastic insight into the religious fanatic part of NDE, glad you added it.
I think that in this lies his justification in saying that the thousands of people that he spoke to all shared the same experience. Because the NDE literature is pretty clear that he is wrong about the majority of reports being Christian. The majority do actually talk about the 'being of love' in some form or another. It is just his own personal 'mission' to convince himself and others that this love means what the bible says it means. He later on confirms my suspicion after you, Alex, pushed him on this. He, Ian, said that the majority of NDE experiencers "pointed them to Christ" and "they have met Christ himself and had an incredible encounter of this love". He personally equates this love with Christ, that is his own personal interpretation.
So in terms of strangeness of NDE's, or the question you asked at the end of the interview, I think that this account fits actually perfectly in the overall picture of love, compassion, kindness and NDE in general. Ian sounded to me like a looney bin, he didn't exactly came across as a mentally healthy and stable person to me. Why take him seriously? All we should do is try to detach Ian's personal opinions and interpretation, those are clearly logically inconsistent and rely on fire and brimstone fear mongering. Obviously that is inside the bible, but outside of what we know from the NDE data that is available to us. Follow the data? Wasn't that your personal motto Alex? :)
I'm very glad that you stepped away from the idea that NDE's are somehow of a higher truth value, or as you put it 'unfiltered' accounts. People who had NDE's consistently told us that they did not lose their personality, their own personal thoughts, their own personal perspective. They did not turn into somebody else. They had to interpret and had no other option than to interpret their sudden realisation of being in a different environment through their own perspective as themselves. We have in this reality, in our everyday world, invented 'science', invented ways of investigating to get around this exact problem. If NDE's are part of reality, we should continue applying these investigative models. Subjective experience is not interchangeable with shared objective reality, has never been that way and will never be that way. We know that there is a shared objective reality within NDE, which is more in terms of archetypes or an underlying structure. Our understanding of NDE's is going to be abstract and has to be extrapolated from personal experiences. We're better off applying what we know from the social sciences, like psychology or anthropology, to get an idea of what this underlying structure is. For me the interesting part is not the personal experience, but exactly that underlying shared structure or archetypes of all experiences.
I have to say though that this interview was a fantastic insight into the religious fanatic part of NDE, glad you added it.
