Mod+ 263. ALBERT LACHANCE AND REBECCA GOODWIN ON THE THIRD COVENANT

Prior to matter, prior to energy, prior to the fireball consciousness is.
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Yes. And once one realizes that the "prior" (linear time) is simply a convenient familiar way of framing things, that becomes "conscious is expressing as matter, expressing as energy. Consciousness is fundamental."

All the rest, the discourse around and about that, is just window-dressing. For me, the valid discourse stems from "how can we more effectively use that knowledge".
 
To understand NDEs you have to consider all experiences not just one, because any one in particular might not contain the whole truth.

For any one individual who has an NDE, his experience will reflect what he needs to know in terms that are acceptable to him. If the people on the other side try to say something that is too "far-out" for the experiencer, they risk their entire message being rejected.

Also, different people might receive different messages because each person is different. Not all spiritual messages are universal. One person might be too selfish and another person might be trying too hard to please everyone. They might get different messages that seem contradictory.

In analyzing any particular NDE, you also have to consider what the experiencer says happened during the NDE, and try to separate that from how, after the experience, he interpreted what happened.

To extract useful information from NDEs you have to consider all of them not just one, and you have to understand that any one in particular may be tailored for an individual and not necessarily contain information that should be applied by everyone. But, just as it is rude for religious fundamentalists to go around trying force their views on other people, it is also rude to for a student of NDEs to try to force his analysis of multiple NDE reports on any particular experiencer. It is hubris for us incarnated people to think we can give someone spiritual knowledge that is superior to what the people on the other side tell him.
 
Jim_Smith said:
For any one individual who has an NDE, his experience will reflect what he needs to know in terms that are acceptable to him. If the people on the other side try to say something that is too "far-out" for the experiencer, they risk their entire message being rejected.
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Though I'm broadly in agreement with, or sympathetic towards what you've put, this part I'd express differently.

Instead of acceptable, I'd say comprehensible. That is to say, the language, symbols or metaphors must convey a meaning which is accessible, meaningful to the experiencer. However, that doesn't mean the message will necessarily be acceptable, on the contrary, the experiencer may find themselves in turmoil and their life shaken to its foundations afterwards. Or in a similar vein, the person who had the experience may find it makes sense, but to the people around them, friends and family it may not, putting existing relationships under severe pressure.
 
Jim_Smith said:
For any one individual who has an NDE, his experience will reflect what he needs to know in terms that are acceptable to him. If the people on the other side try to say something that is too "far-out" for the experiencer, they risk their entire message being rejected.
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My impression of the various NDE reports I have read, is somewhat different. As an analogy, imagine someone - maybe an alien - taking a snapshot of life on earth at one, randomly chosen spot. As more and more aliens tried this experiment, they would build up a chaotic understanding of life on Earth, and might even think they were merely hallucinating.

I can't help feeling that each NDE's represents a tiny snapshot of what is 'out there', and that the complete picture must be extremely complicated.

I also feel that the concept that an NDE experiencer is being told something in a way appropriate to them can potentially devalue their real meaning. In a way, forcing the NDE expereience into one particular mould, may be a little like the efforts of others to force a materialistic explanation - everything is about oxygen levels in the brain, glutamate poisoning, etc.

I feel that man's understanding of consciousness is so vague, that it is best not to over-interpret the evidence.

David
 
I had many conversations with a cardiac arrest survivor in America who was dead for several minutes. He'd never heard of a near death experience before
his encounter. He just wanted to go back and he did recently, permanently.

I asked him just about every reasonable question I could think of about the place he visited. He said the beauty of the existence over there is not something that can be described with words, he'd never seen anywhere on earth, any picture ...real or artificial that came anywhere near what he'd experienced.
The hallucination model makes no sense to me, what hallucination could make you want to die.

A bit off topic, apologies
 
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tim said:
I had many conversations with a cardiac arrest survivor in America who was dead for several minutes. He'd never heard of a near death experience before
his encounter. He just wanted to go back and he did recently, permanently.

I asked him just about every reasonable question I could think of about the place he visited. He said the beauty of the existence over there is not something that can be described with words, he'd never seen anywhere on earth, any picture ...real or artificial that came anywhere near what he'd experienced.
The hallucination model makes no sense to me, what hallucination could make you want to die.

A bit off topic, apologies
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How did you manage to meet this guy - was it just chance?

David
 
Albert LaChance: I’d like to address one or two and hand this over to Rebecca…
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Did I miss something? Rebecca's follow up is not on the transcript.

I like LaChance...in fact I believe he came to a Teilhard class I took years ago. Was my first exposure to the idea that information is more than the matter which represents it. Will definitely need to read this book - thanks to Alex for getting the interview!

That said, I felt akin to Alex - this idea of harmonious integration of science and spirituality is a bit difficult when huge chunks of science are under the religious fundamentalism of materialist evangelicals.

Beyond that, it wasn't clear how one can integrate the varied religions though I accept it's a big issue likely covered in the book. And as Travis mentions in the comment section, the evidence was lacking. More stuff about inner-"science", which still seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me.

He also didn't seem to reflect at all on the potentially Gnostic implications of the paranormal evidence. Not to say reality is a definitely a prison/maze for souls*, as I don't see a good reason to definitvely conclude that we have souls or that there is a God - but I think one has to at least address Gnosticism when talking about God, spirits, etc as it's as good an explanation for the anomalous evidence.

And, of course, how to interpret this anomalous evidence is a whole other bag of questions. Can mind-not-brain be deceived? Can a mind divorced from a brain dream? If reality is in truth incredibly malleable, can you make a shadow reality of your own devising (see Chronicles of Amber)?

*"There are no mortal sins. Just souls, lost in a maze Someone Else has made."
-M. Carey, Lucifer
 
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tim said:
No, he was featured on a NDE documentary. I found his address and then his phone number and contacted him.
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I imagine there is nothing like being in contact with someone to make this subject seem absolutely real.
I do know one lady whose heart stopped on the operating theatre and I asked her if she had any experience of that, but she said she didn't.

David
 
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David Bailey said:
I imagine there is nothing like being in contact with someone to make this subject seem absolutely real.
I do know one lady whose heart stopped on the operating theatre and I asked her if she had any experience of that, but she said she didn't.

David
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Not everybody "has" the experience or if they do, they don't remember it. I have spoken to enough people and I don't have any doubts now, personally although I guess you might know that by now .
 
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tim said:
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Not everybody "has" the experience or if they do, they don't remember it. I have spoken to enough people and I don't have any doubts now, personally although I guess you might know that by now .
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Yes, I think Dr. Parnia had mentioned this during one of his AWARE study interviews, saying people had been interviewed just after the resuscitation who said they had an experience, but later on forgot about it, due to what Parnia had theorized as brain inflammation. His thoughts were that more people have these experiences than reported, they simply don't remember.
 
Sciborg_S_Patel said:
Did I miss something? Rebecca's follow up is not on the transcript.

I like LaChance...in fact I believe he came to a Teilhard class I took years ago. Was my first exposure to the idea that information is more than the matter which represents it. Will definitely need to read this book - thanks to Alex for getting the interview!

That said, I felt akin to Alex - this idea of harmonious integration of science and spirituality is a bit difficult when huge chunks of science are under the religious fundamentalism of materialist evangelicals.

Beyond that, it wasn't clear how one can integrate the varied religions though I accept it's a big issue likely covered in the book. And as Travis mentions in the comment section, the evidence was lacking. More stuff about inner-"science", which still seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me.

He also didn't seem to reflect at all on the potentially Gnostic implications of the paranormal evidence. Not to say reality is a definitely a prison/maze for souls*, as I don't see a good reason to definitvely conclude that we have souls or that there is a God - but I think one has to at least address Gnosticism when talking about God, spirits, etc as it's as good an explanation for the anomalous evidence.

And, of course, how to interpret this anomalous evidence is a whole other bag of questions. Can mind-not-brain be deceived? Can a mind divorced from a brain dream? If reality is in truth incredibly malleable, can you make a shadow reality of your own devising (see Chronicles of Amber)?

*"There are no mortal sins. Just souls, lost in a maze Someone Else has made."
-M. Carey, Lucifer
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Sci -- No you didn't miss anything. We've been going a different direction w/ the transcripts, as you may have noticed, so stuff gets left out. It just so happens that Rebecca's follow-up, while certainly interesting/worthwhile, would have stretched that particular topic out to a point where other content would have to be excluded from the final edit. The system isn't perfect, but hope that's somewhat clearer?
 
tim said:
"

Not everybody "has" the experience or if they do, they don't remember it. I have spoken to enough people and I don't have any doubts now, personally although I guess you might know that by now .
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I don't think I want to let myself move into a position of being certain. I feel that supposedly certain knowledge has such an awful history in this area. Think of the ISIS fighters who are certain God wants them to do what they are doing right now.

I too wonder about the 80% or so of people who suffer a cardiac arrest and don't remember an NDE. I also wonder about anaesthetics that seem to switch off consciousness almost like a light switch. Obviously it is possible that everyone under aesthetic goes into an NDE that is then forgotten. I suppose that might explain the delirium that some people display shortly after they are woken from their aesthetic.

David
 
John Maguire said:
Sci -- No you didn't miss anything. We've been going a different direction w/ the transcripts, as you may have noticed, so stuff gets left out. It just so happens that Rebecca's follow-up, while certainly interesting/worthwhile, would have stretched that particular topic out to a point where other content would have to be excluded from the final edit. The system isn't perfect, but hope that's somewhat clearer?
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Thanks for the info.

So transcripts are no longer reproductions of the interview? Only a partial reproduction? That's rather odd IMO.
 
John Maguire said:
Sci -- No you didn't miss anything. We've been going a different direction w/ the transcripts, as you may have noticed, so stuff gets left out. It just so happens that Rebecca's follow-up, while certainly interesting/worthwhile, would have stretched that particular topic out to a point where other content would have to be excluded from the final edit. The system isn't perfect, but hope that's somewhat clearer?
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Em, not to cause a thread derail, but isn't one of the argument against Skeptiko by the folks at RationalWiki and the like that Alex edits the interviews to either make the interviewee look bad or look as though they were on the same side? Far be it from me to listen to the tantrums of angry, spoiled children, but I certainly wouldn't give them a firecracker...
 
David Bailey said:
I don't think I want to let myself move into a position of being certain. I feel that supposedly certain knowledge has such an awful history in this area. Think of the ISIS fighters who are certain God wants them to do what they are doing right now.

I too wonder about the 80% or so of people who suffer a cardiac arrest and don't remember an NDE. I also wonder about anaesthetics that seem to switch off consciousness almost like a light switch. Obviously it is possible that everyone under aesthetic goes into an NDE that is then forgotten. I suppose that might explain the delirium that some people display shortly after they are woken from their aesthetic.

David
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"I don't think I want to let myself move into a position of being certain"

That's perfectly okay, David. And anyway, I'm only certain that we survive, I'm not certain at all about the details but I've got a lot of clues Religion doesn't come into it for me at least not in the way the churches would have us swallow it.

The mechanism of anaesthesia is not known but it doesn't get rid of the "soul" as it were. Pam Reynolds demonstrated that, she was in the deepest anaesthetic state possible and contrary to what Woerlee would have us believe, she didn't wake up in a normal way.

"Think of the ISIS fighters"

I'm not sure what these guys have to do with us ? "
 
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tim said:
"I don't think I want to let myself move into a position of being certain"

That's perfectly okay, David. And anyway, I'm only certain that we survive, I'm not certain at all about the details but I've got a lot of clues Religion doesn't come into it for me at least not in the way the churches would have us swallow it.

The mechanism of anaesthesia is not known but it doesn't get rid of the "soul" as it where. Pam Reynolds demonstrated that, she was in the deepest anaesthetic state possible and contrary to what Woerlee would have us believe, she didn't wake up in a normal way.

"Think of the ISIS fighters"

I'm not sure what these guys have to do with us ? "
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Guess he related the ISIS fighters to being certain of something. Those guys are certain that their god needs them to do what they are doing. They are doing all their horrible actions because they are certain.
 
DasMurmeltier said:
Guess he related the ISIS fighters to being certain of something. Those guys are certain that their god needs them to do what they are doing. They are doing all their horrible actions because they are certain.
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Are you certain that the sun is in the sky ? I never mentioned "God" and I don't remember threatening to be-head David if he didn't accept survival.
 
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