Dr. Penny Sartori, Are NDEs All Light and Love? |374|

.......In my own NDE (can be read here Peter N -- NDE) I did have experience of 'merging' with other minds and that didn't in any way compromise my sense of identity, in the sense that I was losing something. Far from it, my sense of identity grew exponentially in ways that isn't easy to describe, but it really was very, very beautiful (I would much rather be that than be what I am now). So here there is an example of merging with other minds and not losing individuality, but also becoming more than your individual sense of self in ordinary human life. See, what counts as 'individuality' is quite malleable in the spirit realms -- so you can't really look at the issue from a restricted human mind viewpoint, trying to approach it that way just doesn't work.

There was a point in my experience when I completely merged with the 'light'. At that point I just disappeared. What humans would regard as 'me' just wasn't there any more. This was a very brief phase of the experience but wasn't in any way frightening, quite the reverse it was beyond belief astonishingly beautiful to just be that 'light'. (I wouldn't object to being that even if the cost was my human identity.)


Dr. Ron Scolastico left a large body of channeled material from his Guides relating to this subject. Here is one directly relevant quote, from https://www.ronscolastico.com/a-thumbnail-sketch-of-life-and-death.html. It seems to corroborate your NDE experience at least to a small extent.

"Question: Please elaborate on the relationship between a soul and its human self. You have said that we do not need to worry about dying because we are eternal souls. But, I think you have also said that the human personality self, the personality matrix, is self aware for a short time after death, and then merges back into the soul. So, really it would seem that the human personality self does end. Would you please clarify this?"

Answer by the Guides through Ron Scolastico: If you can truly understand the following, then all fear of death will vanish: Your human personality self can be likened to your left thumb as you are sitting in a cathedral where there is beautiful architecture, colored glass, and holy sounds being sung by a choir. If you turned your attention only to your thumb, you would not notice any of that beauty. You would only notice your thumb.
As a soul, you are sitting in a cathedral of eternal love, perfection, creativity, beauty, and goodness. Only a certain part of your soul attention is focused on your thumb—your human self. In other words, what you experience as you-as-a-human is a small portion of the awareness of you-as-an-eternal-soul. The rest of your soul awareness is blocked out from your human awareness.
When your body dies, that ‘sliver’ of soul consciousness that has been focusing on its thumb — your experience of your human self — is turned back to the full soul attention in the eternal cathedral. What you experience as you simply stops being small, and it becomes large. Your human self does not vanish. It simply wakes up to its existence as an eternal soul."

For me, to the extent that this can be humanly understood, it still amounts to a great loss of human individuality, that is, loss of the human sense of self as the unique human personality identifying with the unique memories of physical life from early childhood, and identifying with the unique physical body. This is replaced by a vastly expanded form of consciousness with an entirely different basic "personality" (if you could call it that), manifoldly different memories, and with basically different likes, dislikes, emotions, etc. etc. The former human self becomes merely a sort of set of static "meta-memories" tucked into some cranny of the total soul being, which appears to be alien to the former human self.

This picture may very well be the truth, but it is not surprising that few human beings would welcome this. From the strictly human standpoint it certainly doesn't look like "survival" in any meaningful form.

It's interesting that some spiritual traditions claim that the human individuality is never lost. The Bahai Faith is one. Of course, there are other difficulties here: for instance their teachings also deny that there is any form of reincarnation, despite the overwhelming evidence from childrens' past life memories.
 
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I have read a number of accounts of this sort [where time is claimed to be absent or is fundamentally different] - and puzzled over how to understand them. One problem is that a lot of verbs (maybe all verbs) don't make much sense without time - for example if A learns X then surely that means there is a time when A does not know X, and a later time when he does know X!

I wonder if the real state of affairs, is that time has more than one dimension, so that you can view individual incarnations - in their entirety, and there is no sense of future and past that relates to incarnate time, but there is a second time axis along which it is possible to 'learn' or do many other things.
That's a great idea, David. Never thought of it like that before, thanks very much! :)
I guess that sounds a bit like unrestricted telepathy?
Kind of depends what is meant is meant by 'telepathy'. In my experience that 'telepathy' had several 'components'. There was directly experiencing the thoughts of another (but not in words, words are redundant there, the cudgel of primitives); directly experiencing the feelings of another; directly knowing/understanding the historicity of that other (like understanding how they came to their present-instantaneous-state from the beginning of time right up to that instantaneous-point -- like it couldn't be any other way, they had to land at that present-instantaneous-state because that was the current conclusion-point of the entirety of their own history). I've written of that as 'components' but it wasn't like that either -- all of it happens at once, immediately. Bang! It's all there! Bang! As one thing! Also there was the state of having that other being(s) inside you -- like inside your own thought-feeling sensorium as part of it, it's a part of you, for want of a better way to put it -- quite literally a part of you -- to my mind that goes beyond what I think most people would envisage as 'telepathy'. (Though, fair enough, 'unrestricted telepathy' might be pressed to fit the bill. I'd have to think about that a bit more.) And into the bargain this is all being coordinated by what I called in my write-up a 'meta-mind' which unifies and guides the whole group. Which is one of the reasons why I really like Myers' explanation of the spiritual realms (though I don't know if he is right in every regard) when he points to a guiding Spirit that unifies and directs the souls in a Group -- I think he's talking about what I was calling a 'meta-mind'. It's an astonishing beautiful state to be in to have one, two, a hundred, a thousand (whatever) individuals inside you all at the same time, and you're inside them as well in the same measure and way, and a 'meta-mind' gets thrown in for good measure too. None of that 'possesses' you though -- all of it is an expansion of self -- truly beautiful and well beyond the human. (And, if I'm to believe Myers, this is only the start, an early stage of that expansion.)
 
In my own NDE (can be read here Peter N -- NDE) I did have experience of 'merging' with other minds and that didn't in any way compromise my sense of identity, in the sense that I was losing something. Far from it, my sense of identity grew exponentially in ways that isn't easy to describe, but it really was very, very beautiful (I would much rather be that than be what I am now). So here there is an example of merging with other minds and not losing individuality, but also becoming more than your individual sense of self in ordinary human life. See, what counts as 'individuality' is quite malleable in the spirit realms -- so you can't really look at the issue from a restricted human mind viewpoint, trying to approach it that way just doesn't work.

In all NDE and OBE accounts that I have read, the experiencers say that their individuality remained despite the merging. I think your experience sounds like those other cases, and like David Bailey, I think it sounds like unrestricted telepathy.

In my opinion these quotations from another NDEr describe this situation accurately:
We are not a great melting pot, a collective. We are individuals, and always have been and always will be, for infinity.
If one person on the other side of infinity knows the answer, then so do you, but we are not ‘all one.’
Each of us is unique. Without this uniqueness , there would not be any reason whatsoever for there being more than one being. Thus, each and every unique being, from our sentient race, to the slightest bug, is important. There is no regard, there, for what we consider physical reality.
https://angelicview.wordpress.com/2...t-in-the-breath-of-god-there-is-nothing-else/

After their experience, the NDErs return to life and they have retained their individual selves. I think this proves that merging cannot destroy the self.

I don't consider channeling reliable evidence.
 
In all NDE and OBE accounts that I have read, the experiencers say that their individuality remained despite the merging. I think your experience sounds like those other cases, and like David Bailey, I think it sounds like unrestricted telepathy.

In my opinion these quotations from another NDEr describe this situation accurately:



https://angelicview.wordpress.com/2...t-in-the-breath-of-god-there-is-nothing-else/

After their experience, the NDErs return to life and they have retained their individual selves. I think this proves that merging cannot destroy the self.

I don't consider channeling reliable evidence.


On this subject, channeled teachings such as Ron Scolastico's Guides seem to conflict with much of the parapsychological evidence, such as mediumistic communications and other types of psychic contacts with and visits from deceased persons. These seem to indicate that the individual human personality is definitely retained after physical death, at least for a long time. Questioned on this, Ron Scolastico's Guides replied that during such communications the Soul or Oversoul assumes the persona of the previous human personality in order to reassure and comfort the human loved ones left behind. I have never been fully persuaded by this response.
 
It's an astonishing beautiful state to be in to have one, two, a hundred, a thousand (whatever) individuals inside you all at the same time, and you're inside them as well in the same measure and way, and a 'meta-mind' gets thrown in for good measure too. None of that 'possesses' you though -- all of it is an expansion of self -- truly beautiful and well beyond the human. (And, if I'm to believe Myers, this is only the start, an early stage of that expansion.)
I wonder if there any resemblance to sex? Seriously, sex seems so powerful compared to what it is on the physical plane, I wonder if it somehow extends to something 'out there'.

David
 
On this subject, channeled teachings such as Ron Scolastico's Guides seem to conflict with much of the parapsychological evidence, such as mediumistic communications and other types of psychic contacts with and visits from deceased persons. These seem to indicate that the individual human personality is definitely retained after physical death, at least for a long time. Questioned on this, Ron Scolastico's Guides replied that during such communications the Soul or Oversoul assumes the persona of the previous human personality in order to reassure and comfort the human loved ones left behind. I have never been fully persuaded by this response.
My feeling is, though, that the idea of people communicating thoughts and emotions with all around is the same. As I was discussing with Radish, there may be just a matter of degree there.

David
 
I wonder if there any resemblance to sex?
Ha, ha, ha! (Is that wishful thinking, David? :)) There wasn't anything like that for anyone in the group, nor for the meta-mind, nor for the 'light'.

Personally I think Myers might well be right in this respect: sex is possible in the afterlife and may occur for (still) human-body-identified souls in lower levels, to the point of ad nauseam, until satiation and beyond is reached, then folks are begging for mercy and release from the newly discovered curse. He also says that sex is a function of possession of a human body and souls just move on from that as they develop up the levels. I agree with that. I don't know that, your guess is as good mine, it just seems to me to be the most reasonable likelihood.

Could you clarify what you meant by the term "unrestricted telepathy"? Would what I wrote about be included in your use of "unrestricted telepathy"?
 
Could you clarify what you meant by the term "unrestricted telepathy"? Would what I wrote about be included in your use of "unrestricted telepathy"?

Yes, I think it is what I mean. "Merging" always sounds too much like annihilation, however positively it is described. However, if people communicate directly with their thoughts, that still retains individuality.

David
 
Also there was the state of having that other being(s) inside you -- like inside your own thought-feeling sensorium as part of it, it's a part of you, for want of a better way to put it -- quite literally a part of you -- to my mind that goes beyond what I think most people would envisage as 'telepathy'. (Though, fair enough, 'unrestricted telepathy' might be pressed to fit the bill. I'd have to think about that a bit more.)


This process is sometimes referred to as ‘auric coupling’: our energetic fields or auras fuse and thus we are energetically inside one another. However, even though we are connected to such a level, I do not lose my sense of identity.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/obe-book-defoe/consciousness-beyond-the-body-2016.pdf

Page 38, Self-awareness
 
In all NDE and OBE accounts that I have read, the experiencers say that their individuality remained despite the merging. I think your experience sounds like those other cases
That's fine for most of my experience, I did 'have an identity' but it was clearly moving away from being what would normally be regarded as human (but with a massive increase in sense of self, which is considerably more fulfilling than normal human identity). I explicitly say this in the write-up. The only point where that was different was on merging with the 'light' -- at that point I vanished completely. There was no human being there of any description, instantly gone. That was a brief phase in the experience but very distinct.
. . . like David Bailey, I think it sounds like unrestricted telepathy.
If you feel that does it for you then fine. Go according to your own lights.
In my opinion these quotations from another NDEr describe this situation accurately:
We are not a great melting pot, a collective. We are individuals, and always have been and always will be, for infinity.
If one person on the other side of infinity knows the answer, then so do you, but we are not ‘all one.’
Each of us is unique. Without this uniqueness , there would not be any reason whatsoever for there being more than one being. Thus, each and every unique being, from our sentient race, to the slightest bug, is important. There is no regard, there, for what we consider physical reality.
Yes, NDEs are variable in content and variable in what the individuals draw from them. Personally, I wouldn't say of my own experience that this is what everyone will get. There are some common themes across a wide variety of NDEs e.g. what you want to call "unrestricted telepathy", so-called "unconditional love", themes regarding absence of time (as we normally regard it) and so on. I would think from that there are good grounds for saying this is a part of common experience that will on balance be experienced by most people to some extent in NDEs (maybe OBEs -- though I haven't read much about those) and the afterlife. So maybe I would think some kind of statement along those lines as likely eventually applying to everyone is reasonably valid. However, when it comes to making a blanket statement like human identity will be preserved for everyone for ever and ever into infinity is a pretty reckless call. How can the individual that claims this know this. I don't see it. If you want to believe that, fine -- but I don't see how you could claim to know it. From my own experience, which is what I would go on and with good reason, I think that in an ultimate sense it might be possible to lose identity (as we understand it) completely. I don't know that but I think it might be possible. You claim the other side of the coin, fair enough, you believe that, but I fail to see how you can know that as being accurate. What I do think is very likely is that people will lose human identity as they progress up the spiritual realms. I don't know that but my NDE was, to my satisfaction, clearly indicative that this is a likely case. Myers, to my mind, provides a good description of this (albeit couched in existences that a lot of people might baulk at) -- but then you place no faith on channelled literature, fair enough. (I should say that channelled literature is often full of, in my opinion, dross, but some of it does, to my mind, strike a chord.)
After their experience, the NDErs return to life and they have retained their individual selves. I think this proves that merging cannot destroy the self.
I would think that the only thing it proves, if it proves anything at all, is that in an NDE scenario merging doesn't destroy the human self that returns to material existence. But I couldn't be sure that would be the case in a scenario in which one permanently moves over to the afterlife and as one progressively moves up in the spiritual realms. I'm sure that things in the spiritual realms will be beyond belief astonishingly varied and with possibilities that a human mind just cannot conceive of at all. I'd say that to the extent that if you don't want to lose, or are incredibly fearful of losing, your human identity then you won't lose it -- that would be my best guess. (But likely that will have consequences on what you can do and 'where' you can go.) I'm always struck by how non-coercive things are there -- but love is always the ruling/guiding principle; I think that part isn't optional; you personally can go against it if you want -- with commensurate, likely unpleasant, alteration of 'state' -- but you'll be utterly stuck until you change your mind on that score.

Again, to restate what I said before, in an ultimate sense of an 'end game': retain individuality, maybe; lose individuality, maybe; some, to us, paradoxical state in between (that the human mind just can't conceive of), maybe. I'm open to any of those possibilities and would decide in whatever one produces the greatest movement closer to God.
 
For me, to the extent that this can be humanly understood, it still amounts to a great loss of human individuality, that is, loss of the human sense of self as the unique human personality identifying with the unique memories of physical life from early childhood, and identifying with the unique physical body. This is replaced by a vastly expanded form of consciousness with an entirely different basic "personality" (if you could call it that), manifoldly different memories, and with basically different likes, dislikes, emotions, etc. etc. The former human self becomes merely a sort of set of static "meta-memories" tucked into some cranny of the total soul being, which appears to be alien to the former human self.

This picture may very well be the truth, but it is not surprising that few human beings would welcome this. From the strictly human standpoint it certainly doesn't look like "survival" in any meaningful form.
Yes, thanks very much, that is very well explained (along with your quote of Dr. Ron Scolastico). It helps me to understand why some people might find that prospect frightening/threatening. Personally I would very much welcome that kind of scenario -- in it you would have an identity but it surely wouldn't be human as we understand it. I wouldn't view that as a loss of 'survival', just expansion of self. Again, having had experience of what seems like the beginnings of that kind of process, I think it is a very beautiful state to be in and definitely non-threatening. There was nothing coercive about this there. All very gentle. All very beautiful.
 
Yes, I think it is what I mean. "Merging" always sounds too much like annihilation, however positively it is described. However, if people communicate directly with their thoughts, that still retains individuality.
David, I've tried toying around with accepting the label "unrestricted telepathy" and every time I run into a brick wall with my intuition telling me not to go down that road, it just doesn't feel right. So I'll have to say if that is how you conceptualise what I've been trying to say then that is fine, if it works for you it works for you. I would though note that in my original write-up of the experience I do say that at no time did my identity feel threatened by what was happening with the other beings, the meta-mind, and the enormous sense of expansion of self generated by what was happening. My identity wasn't like it is in normal life, not by a long stretch, so in the end I would just have to say that moving beyond what would be regarded as normal human identity was clearly indicated by the NDE.

There is, though, the caveat that I did lose all human identity when I merged with the 'light' -- I literally became that light, that was 'my' identity, though that was a brief part of the experience it was very pronounced, and very beautiful. And that light was definitely not human, it was far, far, far beyond the human.

I also take the same kind of attitude to the term frequently used in NDE accounts of "unconditional love". In my experience that term doesn't cover the sheer energy and power (but "power" doesn't mean "force" or "coercion") of love in that environment. I mean a reader might think "unconditional love"? Oh yeah, I get that that's like what I feel (or do) this or that but "unconditional". If the reader thinks like that then, in my experience, they are instantly missing it. It's why I never use the term myself, I know it's going to fail to pass on the experience to the reader. And that is the whole sense of writing up or trying to explain an NDE -- when you're writing it you know you are failing, you know that at bottom the only way anyone is going to be able to understand what is going on in an NDE is to have one themselves. As Judith said earlier in this thread NDEs are ineffable and really can't be explained in words -- you will always fail in the attempt to transmit what you mean. Best that is possible is just to point a finger in the general direction and hope the reader looks in the direction not at the finger.
 
However, when it comes to making a blanket statement like human identity will be preserved for everyone for ever and ever into infinity is a pretty reckless call. How can the individual that claims this know this. I don't see it. If you want to believe that, fine -- but I don't see how you could claim to know it.

In my opinion NDEs are not the strongest survival evidence. I don't necessarily trust NDErs' own interpretations of their experience. e.g. some Hindu may see Yama, god of death during his NDE and some Christian may see Jesus etc. I believe that they had real spiritual experiences, but I don't believe in Yama or Jesus.

I think that you experienced "auric coupling" during your NDE. I also think that the quote by Luis Minero in my previous post explains these experiences of oneness. William Buhlman has over 40 years of experience of OBEs. In my opinion he has explained these experiences better than anybody else.
I am pure consciousness. I possess no form or three-dimensional structure. I have the ability to manifest and use different energy forms for my expression and education. I realize I am not humanoid nor any other form based concept.
http://www.astralinfo.org/effective-mindset/
 
In my opinion NDEs are not the strongest survival evidence. I don't necessarily trust NDErs' own interpretations of their experience. e.g. some Hindu may see Yama, god of death during his NDE and some Christian may see Jesus etc. I believe that they had real spiritual experiences, but I don't believe in Yama or Jesus.
The fact that NDE's frequently contain spiritual figures appropriate for the person's faith, if any, is strange, but we need to remember that people also often meet their own dead relatives, including sometimes those that they didn't know were dead.
I think that you experienced "auric coupling" during your NDE. I also think that the quote by Luis Minero in my previous post explains these experiences of oneness. William Buhlman has over 40 years of experience of OBEs. In my opinion he has explained these experiences better than anybody else.
As I have said before, I think while it makes a certain sense to try to fit these phenomena to materialistic ideas like low levels of oxygen etc, when that approach fails, it really doesn't make much sense to re-interpret phenomena in terms of other psychic phenomena. A science that operates like that, never gets anywhere!

David
 
The fact that NDE's frequently contain spiritual figures appropriate for the person's faith, if any, is strange, but we need to remember that people also often meet their own dead relatives, including sometimes those that they didn't know were dead.

As I have said before, I think while it makes a certain sense to try to fit these phenomena to materialistic ideas like low levels of oxygen etc, when that approach fails, it really doesn't make much sense to re-interpret phenomena in terms of other psychic phenomena. A science that operates like that, never gets anywhere!

David

I am not a materialist. I believe that people can really meet their dead relatives during NDEs. "Merging" is not a psychic phenomenon. It is merely a word. An interpretation of a certain component of a NDE.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/obe-book-defoe/consciousness-beyond-the-body-2016.pdf
Page 38, "Self-awareness".
 
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