Mod+ 255. IAN MCCORMACK’S EXCLUSIVELY CHRISTIAN NEAR-DEATH EXPEIENCE

My gut feeling is that his NDE is untouchably solid as far as these go, and his interpretation is quite possibly correct to a point--as it relates to him.
It comes across to me very much the other way about. The interpretation is untouchably solid but the NDE and other events are malleable.
 
It comes across to me ...
Or at any rate, I think the interpretation and the experience are inseparable in this case. I don't think we can just examine the NDE in isolation. Somehow it reminds me of this, where reality and its representation seem inseparable:
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Many of the better mediums of the last century placed the spheres(vibrations) around the earth ( for us Earth dwellers at least )

Those of us discarnates being of a grosser nature occupying a level/state closest to the present incarnates ( & most easily placed to obsess/possess/influence ).

here are a few relevant Q&A's from On the Edge of the Etheric

Q.Here on earth we can only appreciate the physical, namely, the earth, the sun and stars. What is contained in what we call space?

A.I can only answer you so far as my knowledge permits me. Interpenetrating your world is another world of substance in a higher state of vibration to the one you sense. The universe is one stupendous whole, but you only appreciate what you see and hear and feel. Believe me, there are other worlds of substance, finer than physical matter, in which life exists and of which you on earth can form no conception. Connected with your earth is this world to which I came after what you call death. Encircling your world are planes of different density, and these move in rotation with the rotation of the earth.

Q. Is your world, then, a real and tangible world?

A. Yes, it is very real to us, but the conditions in which we find ourselves depend on the condition of our mind. If we wish it we can be surrounded by beautiful country, Our mind plays a large part in our life here. Just as we live in surroundings suitable to our mental development, so we also attract to ourselves minds of the same type as our own. Like attracts like in this world. So also like attracts like so far as your world and our world are concerned. The evil-minded here are attracted by the evil-minded in your world, and the good here by the good with you. We can, at will, take on earth conditions by lowering our vibrations. Our bodies become heavier and more perceptible to the human eye, which accounts for our being seen at times by those who have the faculty on earth of sensing our vibrations.

Q. You told me your world revolved with this world. How does this happen, and also, do you travel with the earth round the sun?
A.The spheres nearest the earth do so because we belong to this planet. We cannot see your world revolving in space, because we revolve with you. We cannot see your world until we take on earth conditions. In taking these on, we slow down our vibrations, and come through from one plane to another, until we get our vibrations down more to a level with those of which your world is composed. We can all come down, but we cannot go up beyond our own plane until we are prepared for the change.
Q. What would happen to you if this earth cane into collision with another star or planet and was destroyed?

A. It would make no difference to us, our world is quite independent in physical matter.

Edge of the Etheric is a fascinating book.
 
thx. interesting point here... kinda brings into focus the discussion we were having about Jeff Long's work. Do you want to rely on a medical doctor and trained scientist to collect and analyze responses to a 150 question survey, or do you want to depend on Ian to collect stories from the people he meets?
Yes. And McCormack having heard twenty thousand stories corroborating his own?? That is just a ridiculous claim. For example, PMH Atwater has been doing her research for over 3 decades, attends all kinds of conferences every year, and has written about how it's amazing how people come out of the woodworks and tell her about their NDEs, and she now has a database of near 7000, and yet we're to believe McCormack has 20 000, and they all involve Jesus and the biblical narrative?
 
A little knowledge is powerful here:


1) Chironex fleckeri is not native to the waters of Mauritius
2) There is no profile of lethal envenomations in the water around Mauritius, so-
- 3) People seeing him in the water would not have been "surprised that he was still alive," and
4) Chironex fleckeri tends to leave extensive subdermal scarring, especially if there is an elapsed time to treatment (as he claims). If he was stung by FIVE of them, it's *inconceivable* that he would a) even be alive and b) have got away without scarring, and
5) Nematocyst ejection is excruciatingly painful. You'd barely be sane, let alone able to count how many jellyfish were wrapped around you.
 
A little knowledge is powerful here:


1) Chironex fleckeri is not native to the waters of Mauritius
2) There is no profile of lethal envenomations in the water around Mauritius, so-
- 3) People seeing him in the water would not have been "surprised that he was still alive," and
4) Chironex fleckeri tends to leave extensive subdermal scarring, especially if there is an elapsed time to treatment (as he claims). If he was stung by FIVE of them, it's *inconceivable* that he would a) even be alive and b) have got away without scarring, and
5) Nematocyst ejection is excruciatingly painful. You'd barely be sane, let alone able to count how many jellyfish were wrapped around you.
On McCormack's site, it says:
Ian was night diving off the island of Mauritius when he was stung by 5 Box Jellyfish, which are among the most venomous creatures in the world. Ian is not 100% sure which species of Box Jelllyfish that stung him as it has been very hard to find info from Mauritius on them.

From wikipedia:
Box jellyfish (class Cubozoa) are cnidarian invertebrates distinguished by their cube-shaped medusae. Some species of box jellyfish produce extremely potent venom: Chironex fleckeri, Carukia barnesi and Malo kingi are among the most venomous creatures in the world. Stings from these and a few other species in the class are extremely painful and can be fatal to humans.

Although the box jellyfish has been called "the world's most venomous creature", only a few species in the class have been confirmed to be involved in human deaths, and some species pose no serious threat at all. For example, the sting of Chiropsella bart only results in short-lived itching and mild pain.


I found this on another forum:
QUESTION: I read about this guy getting stung my Box Jellyfish off of the coasts of Mauritius. When asking for help to go to the hospital, the natives looked at his injuries and mistook him for a meth junkie b/c they looked like needle marks.

1. I thought jellyfish were only native in the area of Australia, Papua New Guinea, etc. Can they appear as far as the island of Mauritius, which is in SE Africa, near Madagascar?

2. As far as i know, Box Jellyfish lacerations look like whip marks. Can they resemble needle marks?

ANSWERS: The Cubozoa, the class to which box jellyfish belong, is actually quite diverse and widely distibuted; there are species in the Mediterranean, around California and, yes, around the Mauritius area.
However, the extremely dangerous species (Chironex fleckeri, Carukia barnesi and Malo kingi) are indeed found only around Australia and their stings do indeed look more like whip marks, which is probably where your confusion is arising from. I'm not sure about the needle marks thing, but it's perfectly possible that other species' stings do look like that.
He clearly wasn't stung by one of the three I mentioned before, anyway, because if he was he would have been either:
a) Too busy screaming in burning agony to ask for help getting to the hospital
b) Unconscious or
c) Dead.

So yeah.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100902075315AAyMINA
 
Yes. And McCormack having heard twenty thousand stories corroborating his own?? That is just a ridiculous claim. For example, PMH Atwater has been doing her research for over 3 decades, attends all kinds of conferences every year, and has written about how it's amazing how people come out of the woodworks and tell her about their NDEs, and she now has a database of near 7000, and yet we're to believe McCormack has 20 000, and they all involve Jesus and the biblical narrative?

Well Ian said not all of them knew how the being of light was but thanks to the Bible. So basically his NDE confirmed the Bible is true, and the Bible confirms the accuracy of his NDE.

I don't blame Ian though - I'd probably be raving about Jesus, or Dharma, or whatever if I suddenly found myself in an eternal concentration camp followed by eternal bliss. The NDE seems to thoroughly condition many people who end up on this tour. Would be interesting to hear from someone who had the damnation/salvation tour but still rejected it as fictional.
 
?......who is, in my opinion anyway, a very generous, kind, and helpful person. He is also an atheist and has written many anti-psi, anti-religion stories in the media. My feeling is that the way he behaves trumps what he believes.

AP

He may be a all that you say but why write anti-psi and anti-religion stories in the media. He must feel strongly about it ? Why can't people accept others beliefs and say "I don't understand what they see in it but it's Ok" and let it lie. Fair enough, one may have good reasons for arguing strongly against religion, but why psi ?

Your last sentence (above) would be valid ,in my case, if he did not have to have his negative views of things so forcefully expressed.
 
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I was just talking about this with a friend last night in connection to a friend of mine who is, in my opinion anyway, a very generous, kind, and helpful person. He is also an atheist and has written many anti-psi, anti-religion stories in the media. My feeling is that the way he behaves trumps what he believes. He says he doesn't believe in God, but he behaves in a way that makes it clear that beneficence is very close to his heart. Which is more important? I've met some Christians who are quite nasty on a personal level, the opposite of this other friend. Frankly, I doubt their profession of 'belief' counts anywhere near as much as an atheist's good and generous behaviour to others.

Well, belief (or lack of) about the numinous probably has no impact on a person's altruistic tendencies and it's clear that fire & brimstone coercion isn't the best motivator. It's psychologically satisfying being a decent person (but not on internet forums where it's quite satisfying being a dick).

And what about this? Businessmen and politicians are the nicest folks you'll ever meet. How can you win friends and influence people by being mean? I'm not saying the behavior is forced. It probably comes perfectly naturally. I was born into the ownership class, which means I'm now a member of the leisure class. My people and I are extremely generous and caring. But in all honesty, this is only towards other high status individuals. I'm not saying I would abandon all acts of kindness with respect to commoners. I just never see them. Occasionally they'll inadvertently venture onto the estate, but are always beaten to death by the guards before I can make contact. Anyway, I've heard they are filthy.
 
Well, belief (or lack of) about the numinous probably has no impact on a person's altruistic tendencies and it's clear that fire & brimstone coercion isn't the best motivator. It's psychologically satisfying being a decent person (but not on internet forums where it's quite satisfying being a dick).

And what about this? Businessmen and politicians are the nicest folks you'll ever meet. How can you win friends and influence people by being mean? I'm not saying the behavior is forced. It probably comes perfectly naturally. I was born into the ownership class, which means I'm now a member of the leisure class. My people and I are extremely generous and caring. But in all honesty, this is only towards other high status individuals. I'm not saying I would abandon all acts of kindness with respect to commoners. I just never see them. Occasionally they'll inadvertently venture onto the estate, but are always beaten to death by the guards before I can make contact. Anyway, I've heard they are filthy.

I think eventually you come to a crossroad where you need to decide if your highest purpose is becoming a good person and this is the love and the light and unity/christ/cosmic consciousness or you decide that you want to know the ultimate unvarnished truth and this is basically raving lunacy in the void. I think most people prefer the former and I think that is a perfectly acceptable choice. One is maya, the other is not able to be spoken of.
 
From U. G. Krishnamurti:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._G._Krishnamurti

We have strange ideas in the religious field—torture this body, sleep on nails, control, deny things—all kinds of funny things. What for? Why deny certain things? I don't know. What is the difference between a man going to a bar for a glass of beer, and a man going to a temple and repeating the name of Rama? I don't see any basic difference... I am not against escapes, but whether you escape through this avenue or that avenue, an escape is an escape. You are escaping from yourself... What you do or do not do does not matter at all. Your practice of holiness, your practice of virtue—that is socially valuable for the society, but that has nothing to do with this.


People call me an enlightened man. I detest that term. They can't find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I've searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn't arise. I don't give a hoot for the sixth-century-BC Buddha, let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.


I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize—that's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize—and you say to yourself, "What the hell have I been doing all of my life?!" That blasts you.

Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is 'you'. There is nothing there inside you other than that.

The holy men are all phonies—they are telling me only what is there in the books. That I can read—'Do the same again and again'—that I don't want. Experiences I don't want. They are trying to share an experience with me. I'm not interested in experience. As far as experience goes, for me there is no difference between the religious experience and the sex experience or any other experience; the religious experience is like any other experience. I am not interested in experiencing Brahman; I am not interested in experiencing reality; I am not interested in experiencing truth. They might help others but they cannot help me. I'm not interested in doing more of the same; what I have done is enough.

You see, people usually imagine that so-called enlightenment, self-realization, God-realization or what you will (I don't like to use these words) is something ecstatic, that you will be permanently happy, in a blissful state all the time—these are the images they have of those people... There's no relationship at all between the image you have of that and what actually is the situation... That's why I very often tell people, "If I could give you some glimpse of what this is all about, you wouldn't touch this with a barge pole, a ten foot pole." You would run away from this because this is not what you want. What you want does not exist, you see.

There is no religious content, no mystical overtones at all, in what I am saying. Man has to be saved from the saviors of mankind! The religious people—they kidded themselves and fooled the whole of mankind. Throw them out!

Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says, "Now I understand!"—that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere.
 
Ian came across as very arrogant and sure of himself and he seems to feel he has special knowledge and access to God. I don't believe there is a hell, that makes no sense, no intelligent loving Creator would create imperfect and flawed beings (humans) and conditions designed for them to fail and then punish them for eternity because they manifested those flaws in their brief lives . I also agree that the vast majority of NDE's are not strict Christian oriented despite what Ian says of the people he met. Only a small proportion of Nde accounts I have read have a Christian theme and hardly any have the dogmatic themes he describes. Having an Nde does not mean people who return are not subject to the usual human failings of fame, fortune and adulation seeking, arrogence and a 'holier than though' attitude which Ian seems to exhibit. I recall hearing about his story years ago well before listening to skeptiko and it put me right off. Ian has an interpretation of his experience about which he is very sure of himself but it is still just an interpretation. the bible is a wonderful book but it was written by people, not God. The creator and the universe is far too mysterious and vast for us to comprehend so we form a model of it to help us make sense. But is it only a model. Ian's model is a dogmatically Christian one but that is not reality.
 
Yes. And McCormack having heard twenty thousand stories corroborating his own?? That is just a ridiculous claim. For example, PMH Atwater has been doing her research for over 3 decades, attends all kinds of conferences every year, and has written about how it's amazing how people come out of the woodworks and tell her about their NDEs, and she now has a database of near 7000, and yet we're to believe McCormack has 20 000, and they all involve Jesus and the biblical narrative?
Yeah, I wondered about that too.

This interview was so painful to listen to. Ian McCormack comes across rather poorly. Unfortunately, just having an NDE doesn't make someone well informed on the literature of NDE research. I've met quite a few NDErs, and many of them are writing books. And many of them think their book is going to be the one with all the answers. I seem to recall Nancy Evans Bush mentioning in her blog the problem of taking yourself too seriously just because you've had an NDE. I can understand why they get that way... I mean, they have had this HUGE experience, and it probably feels like they are the only one ever to have had THAT BIG AN EXPERIENCE, so of course they have all the answers.

It's the NDErs, like Atwater, who take the NDE as a starting point rather than the finish line who end up having the most to contribute. Ken Ring once suggested that NDEs are "seed experiences", they give someone this wonderful potential... but you have to realize that potential. I think Ian McCormack has a ways to go.
 
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I once emailed Mccormack asking (politely) if he could direct me to any medical evidence or hospital medical staff who could confirm that this ever took place. I received a reply from his "secretary" to the effect that "we don't do that" but...that she'd be happy to help me book him as a speaker.

End of our exchange. But useful. I was able to take my pen and put a red line straight through his account.
his website has some pretty lame explanations for his lack of proof, but I didn't really feel a need to "go there." His account isn't as extraordinary as his interpretation of it.
 
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