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

Penny seemed to be saying that the technological advances and the increase in the number of NDE's may be part of an evolution of consciousness
I can go with that.

Consider how much the Innerwebz have contributed to the advancement of "consciousness" in just the last 20 years.

People all over the world can now discuss and bounce ideas off each other instantaneously. In the past it was necessary to hike down to the local pub, church, or Fraternal Lodge to engage in that conversation, with a very limited set of people and ideas.

The syncretic net effect of this technological innovation on global thought is incredible.
 
I'm currently working on an article on Hadephobia, the fear of Hell. It's centred around an experience I had a few years back where I really started to engage with my own latent fear of going to hell. I started to experience night terrors of waking up but still being quite dreamlike and feeling the terror of dying and hell opening up. I'd pull away strongly out of the vision until I was fully awake in my bed.

One time this opened up really strongly and I had the image of flames all around me and Satan sat on his throne in front of me. I wanted to run from it but realised I would never 'complete' the experience if that is all I did. I had a sense of totally surrendering to it, of allowing myself to be taken into that hell, handing myself over to Satan. The moment I did the whole scene transformed, Satan and the fires became an infinite ocean of love.

This is one way to look at the experience the lady Dr. Sartori mentioned had. That she was experiencing the same Love-Light that other NDEers do, but in a different way (perhaps through the lens of fear) so that it appeared as a fire.
 
I'm currently working on an article on Hadephobia, the fear of Hell. It's centred around an experience I had a few years back where I really started to engage with my own latent fear of going to hell. I started to experience night terrors of waking up but still being quite dreamlike and feeling the terror of dying and hell opening up. I'd pull away strongly out of the vision until I was fully awake in my bed.

One time this opened up really strongly and I had the image of flames all around me and Satan sat on his throne in front of me. I wanted to run from it but realised I would never 'complete' the experience if that is all I did. I had a sense of totally surrendering to it, of allowing myself to be taken into that hell, handing myself over to Satan. The moment I did the whole scene transformed, Satan and the fires became an infinite ocean of love.

This is one way to look at the experience the lady Dr. Sartori mentioned had. That she was experiencing the same Love-Light that other NDEers do, but in a different way (perhaps through the lens of fear) so that it appeared as a fire.
That is interesting - had you already read of that technique, or did the idea come to you spontaneously?

David
 
I'm currently working on an article on Hadephobia, the fear of Hell. It's centred around an experience I had a few years back where I really started to engage with my own latent fear of going to hell. I started to experience night terrors of waking up but still being quite dreamlike and feeling the terror of dying and hell opening up. I'd pull away strongly out of the vision until I was fully awake in my bed.

One time this opened up really strongly and I had the image of flames all around me and Satan sat on his throne in front of me. I wanted to run from it but realised I would never 'complete' the experience if that is all I did. I had a sense of totally surrendering to it, of allowing myself to be taken into that hell, handing myself over to Satan. The moment I did the whole scene transformed, Satan and the fires became an infinite ocean of love.

This is one way to look at the experience the lady Dr. Sartori mentioned had. That she was experiencing the same Love-Light that other NDEers do, but in a different way (perhaps through the lens of fear) so that it appeared as a fire.

The ambivalence of the spiritual, the horror turning bliss, was known to mystics from the times immemorial...

An intriguing parallel to alien abduction experiences, BTW - some people perceive (supposed) aliens as benevolent mentors who intend their advancement to the the higher cosmic existence, and other as cold, inhuman, experimenting tormentors... and, as far as I remember, these roles can change in the course of one experience - tormentors can become mentors...

quote-the-only-thing-that-burns-in-hell-is-the-part-of-you-that-won-t-let-go-of-your-life-meister-eckhart-58-29-81.jpg


John Lilly, in his famous "Center of the Cyclone", also stated that "Heaven" and "Hell" are one and the same higher spiritual dimension being seen from the different perspectives... "As above, so below" (c) Alchemists
 
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Sorry, but I do not see this "evolution of consciousness" at all. If anything, it seems to be going in the extreme opposite direction.

It's kind of funny, because for years people on the outskirts of science and on shows and forums like Skeptiko complained about censorship, marginalization, the cult like mentality of scientist and atheism, etc. But now, it seems even worse than it's ever been. If anything, the censorship problem is only getting worse.

Look at our media, there's blood, guts, violence and sex everywhere. There's Satanic symbolism on everything (I'm not exaggerating, I have a teenager that shops at a certain store and I've watched their merchandise get more and more extreme).

Before I get too far off into the weeds, my point is, humanity does not seem to be getting wiser, kinder or "more spiritual" at all. I often wonder when I hear people espouse this "evolution of consciousness" stuff, if we are just straight up witnessing different realities. I often think we are about to descend into another dark age, only this time with robots (think your typical sci-fi, post-apocalyptic urban dystopia, not that I think an "apocalypse" is on the horizon).

Truth is, I'd love to believe an evolution is on the horizon, that light and love will rule the day, etc. etc. But....have you met humanity? I'd say chances are slim to none of that being true.

I dunno, perhaps I'm just cynical. Maybe I've spent too long in the dark corners of reality. But I sometimes think that because things can be so bleak, humanity so heart-breakingly awful, that it's almost a defense mechanism to slip into denial and ONLY focus on the good stuff.

The truth is, evil IS a part of this world. We don't know why, but it's true nonetheless. We still have not learned to reconcile this with the fact that things like love and compassion exist too. Humans are a walking paradox. We are capable of such love and such evil.
 
Look at our media, there's blood, guts, violence and sex everywhere. There's Satanic symbolism on everything (I'm not exaggerating, I have a teenager that shops at a certain store and I've watched their merchandise get more and more extreme).

Just a few centuries ago, people's best choice of entertainment was to go to a town square and see someone who was in a conflict in authority being skinned alive, or burned alive, or impaled on a stake, or cut into pieces, or... well, there were a lot of methods. Yet all these atrocities by the rulers were not a deterrent for their subjects anyway: lethal, armed violence was a most popular way to resolve conflicts, especially between knights, but between commoners as well. Even family members could not feel protected from each other's attacks: even if for them the results were not ususally deadly, it was common for children to be severely whipped for the disobedience that would now, in most cases, cost them just a quarrel with their parents (or some corner time, or fewer pocket money, if the parents are a bit more authoritarian than most) and for wives to be beaten and whipped as well, if they dare to "talk back" to their hiusbands who effectively owned them and children - while, in turn, being themselves owned by some lord who has their life and death in his hands.

Our modern times do have their painful share of cruelty and injustice; violence and oppression is still very much with us; yet both the intensity and prevalence of these violence and oppression has very, very notably lowered, if being compared with the earlier epochs when it was much, much worse

Well, at least as long as we concentrate on the developed Western(ised) countries...
 
Alex's questions at the end of the podcast:

What do you make of the light and love stuff? Can we hold onto that as something that the near death experience science is telling us? Is that a fundamental part of the near death experience, or is it just another cultural overlay, another distraction that we're drawn to because we want it to be that way?

This was such an interesting interview and a topic still very new to me, so I will definitely be reading her book. I just loved her idea to be collecting these stories across cultures in order to compare and contrast, that would be some fantastic research to read if it could then be compiled in a readable way as objectively as possible.

I also like reading anecdotal evidence when it's from credible sources and she certainly seems to have a suitable background being repeatedly so close to death and clearly called to this angle of research.

That said, and answering Alex's questions, the 'light and love' thing is a real bee in my bonnet! I just recently wrote a blog post on "love" and I'll post that below to try to flesh out just a few of the reasons why this is, but let me preface it a little first.

Folks vastly underestimate, under report, under analyze their own negative and challenging experiences. We do not handle the negative emotions well in this culture, not by a long shot. We are avoiders of pain and promoters of artifice and whitewashers extraodinaire. Just look at Fakebook! From folks' posts you'd think we were the happiest, most industrious, most satisfied culture of all time. We gloss over our flaws, we get liposuction and botex, we airbrush, and we live in fantasy land. In fact, loads of folks are terribly unhappy and unfulfilled and they think they can just 'fake it till they make it.' If it were true that folks were as happy as they pretend to be on FB (and oftentimes at work or the party as well) then what would explain the high market demand for pharmaceuticals, endless distractions of sports and entertainment, pornography, illegal drugs, etc.

So, no matter how valid is the NDE, it still does not prove it has anything to do with light and love being the conclusion to draw, just b/c that's what folks most report. We have an entire industry of 'self-help' built mostly around telling folks what they want to hear.

'Light and love' is more Tavistockian-type cultural manipulation. If we make sure they're happy, they be better worker bees, better citizens, more sheep-like. Just look at the recent "World Government Forum" focus, happiness. https://www.thenational.ae/uae/worl...nches-global-happiness-policy-report-1.703367
Be happy in your servitude, love your neighbor as yourself, keep giving and being altruistic and smiling, so you don't notice as we fleece you.

And here is my case against love. I realize when the NDEs (and others in altered states of consciousness) are reporting they are saying love perhaps for lack of a better word, but that's just the point really. How can we make a study serious and scientific if the terms are so poorly defined? I find it also to be quite arrogant when folks say 'oh you just don't understand', or 'it must be experienced to be understood' -- what I hear is, so, you don't have the proper insight, language and compassion in order to make me understand, yet you are preaching about light and love?

So, from the blog post:

Perhaps you will think this is just a battle of semantics. But, I do not think such battles are futile. Words matter. According to popular theories like Neuro-Linguistic Programming they matter significantly, much more than many of us realize.

But, the appropriate naming of a thing is conditional upon understanding this thing, especially when it is as abstract and ephemeral, as defined and debated, as love is.

Maybe sometime in prehistoric, more intuitive times, this was hardly necessary, but today it is. Since the ‘Positivity movement’ – an orchestrated top-down
push by social engineering think-tanks like the Tavistock and Esalen Institutes, Theosophical Society, among many others—love has become a very loaded word in the West. By grand design.

Love is the answer. Love will save the world. Love conquers all. Love the one your with. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yet love is far too loaded a word to make it the salvation of mankind, let alone the multiverse.

This love-pushing is yet another slight of hand by the power structure, and it seems some of most well-versed and well-intentioned in matters of social
programming are still falling for this ruse.

Yes, I will name names, of some of my favorites, and boldly so. James Corbett, Ole Dammegard, Patrick Roddie are among those who have recently rekindled this fog of love. These men are working impressively hard to ameliorate the system, but still insisting love is the answer.

These love lovers come from a very long tradition, Martin Luther King preached constantly of love. From the ancient Greeks to Mary Baker Eddy to today’s New Agers who preach incessantly of agape all march right in step with loads of spiritual and even some secular doctrine to boot.

Crossing every musical genre, every soap opera, through environmental and social movements, through philosophers, preachers, psychiatrists, we have been brainwashed and further confused about what this world really needs.

All we need is love? Not by a long shot!

Here’s what I think: You are all terrifically wrong and embarrassingly so. Please allow me to elaborate.

First and foremost, ‘love’ does not translate well, even among Western languages. ‘Te quiero’ the expression most used in Spanish for ‘I love you’ actually translates better as ‘I want you.’ In French the verb for love is “aimer” translated both as ‘to like’ and ‘to love.’

Love does not translate well through time and space either, it evolves differently over time, place and circumstance. There are 4 kinds of love according to the Bible, 8 according to the ancient Greeks, 7 according to Psychology Today magazine.

Which type is it, I wonder, do we expect to work to solve the world’s ills?

There is the unrequited love of the troubadours, the erotic love equated with infatuation, platonic love, familiar love, and I could go on. And on! A single word with so many variables is a really bad idea for slogans and songs about saving the world. Or a really good one, if you want to remain pathetically ineffective.

Everyone understands love, they insist. We’ve all felt love, they assure us. But that too is a big fat lie. Unfortunately, there are many lonely souls in the world who do not understand love at all and who haven’t any capacity to either receive love, or to give it.

Love is passive, remarkably so. Love is a word over-used to the point of abuse and even contains what most of us today consider malevolent, as in the high form of love according to the ancient Greeks, pederasty, the love between a man and an adolescent boy. We must of course mention the unmentionable as well, in terms of love, that disgusting master of headlines and hatred, pedophilia, the ‘love’ of prepubescent children.

Clearly folks, the answer is not love, not familial love, or romantic love, or sexual love, or cosmic love, or love of man, freedom, god, king or country.

The answer is simply not, in any way, shape, or form, love!

The answer is care.

Care takes out the selfishness and passivity inherent in love. A universal word in the way love never will or can be. It is understood across borders and across generations. Care is independent of love’s baser quality of desire, many times we must care whether we desire it or not.

We care for, we care about, we care to, or not to. Care is a very active word, it embodies and requires action.

Give it a try, just to test my hypothesis. Next time you are inclined to use the word ‘love’ try ‘care’ instead. Instead of saying ‘I love nature’ say “I care about nature.”

Instead of saying “I love that child” say “I care for that child.”

It works especially well with my greatest pet peeve with the word—instead of saying ‘Love your enemy’ try ‘Care about your enemy.’

Does that not feel more right?

Because, I do! I can say that with full honesty and integrity—I care about my enemy. I care what he’s doing so I might prevent it. I care what he thinks, what he says, how he says it, where he goes, in fact, I care about every move he makes, so that I can triumph over him.

There is nothing triumphant about loving your enemy, it’s the equivalent of surrendering to him, because authentic love requires surrender, and everything else is just paying lip-service to love.

Food for thought: Let’s try some songs and preaches and speeches about care for a change.

newmama.jpg

Care is even understood trans-species! :)
https://kenshohomestead.org/2018/02/23/the-case-against-love/
 
I'm currently working on an article on Hadephobia, the fear of Hell. It's centred around an experience I had a few years back where I really started to engage with my own latent fear of going to hell. I started to experience night terrors of waking up but still being quite dreamlike and feeling the terror of dying and hell opening up. I'd pull away strongly out of the vision until I was fully awake in my bed.

One time this opened up really strongly and I had the image of flames all around me and Satan sat on his throne in front of me. I wanted to run from it but realised I would never 'complete' the experience if that is all I did. I had a sense of totally surrendering to it, of allowing myself to be taken into that hell, handing myself over to Satan. The moment I did the whole scene transformed, Satan and the fires became an infinite ocean of love.

This is one way to look at the experience the lady Dr. Sartori mentioned had. That she was experiencing the same Love-Light that other NDEers do, but in a different way (perhaps through the lens of fear) so that it appeared as a fire.
I think that this shows the real source of fear is within ourselves, for better or worse. Anybody that has had anxiety attacks knows this to be true. You can be sitting peacefully on a beautiful shore and suddenly have an irrational fear. Where did it come from? Transversely, you could be in a scary dark woods at night and be totally content and at peace. Maybe the afterlife/dreamworld/bardo etc. is very much the same, in that the real terror lives within ourselves and can be externalized in that realm. The same stuff happens here everyday. This is why people take Xanax!
 
Sorry, but I do not see this "evolution of consciousness" at all. If anything, it seems to be going in the extreme opposite direction.

It's kind of funny, because for years people on the outskirts of science and on shows and forums like Skeptiko complained about censorship, marginalization, the cult like mentality of scientist and atheism, etc. But now, it seems even worse than it's ever been. If anything, the censorship problem is only getting worse.

Look at our media, there's blood, guts, violence and sex everywhere. There's Satanic symbolism on everything (I'm not exaggerating, I have a teenager that shops at a certain store and I've watched their merchandise get more and more extreme).

Before I get too far off into the weeds, my point is, humanity does not seem to be getting wiser, kinder or "more spiritual" at all. I often wonder when I hear people espouse this "evolution of consciousness" stuff, if we are just straight up witnessing different realities. I often think we are about to descend into another dark age, only this time with robots (think your typical sci-fi, post-apocalyptic urban dystopia, not that I think an "apocalypse" is on the horizon).

Truth is, I'd love to believe an evolution is on the horizon, that light and love will rule the day, etc. etc. But....have you met humanity? I'd say chances are slim to none of that being true.

I dunno, perhaps I'm just cynical. Maybe I've spent too long in the dark corners of reality. But I sometimes think that because things can be so bleak, humanity so heart-breakingly awful, that it's almost a defense mechanism to slip into denial and ONLY focus on the good stuff.

The truth is, evil IS a part of this world. We don't know why, but it's true nonetheless. We still have not learned to reconcile this with the fact that things like love and compassion exist too. Humans are a walking paradox. We are capable of such love and such evil.

I agree with some of the stuff you say, and disagree with other. I wanted to asked what you perceive as satanic symbols? A 5 point pentagram is not a satanic symbol unless the point is inverted. The 5 point star represents Spirit(mind) earth, air, water, fire.
If the spirit part is inverted on the bottom usually satanist use that version as the "spirit" part of the pentagram is dug in to the earth which in the occult is the lowest level of being. There is a evolution of consciousness brewing, I am working with people now, but as always egos get in the way and subconscious programming gets in the way of the goal/goals of the community. People come and go for the smallest disagreements its pretty sad to see how sensitive people can be. It definitely puts a spotlight on their social ego which is one of the sneakiest ways your ego sneaks in. Don't come me wrong scores of people are asleep a part of it is indoctrination of religion, atheism aka Nihilism these 2 are not always inclusive. I think right now we are at the stage when the light has turn on to these issues and people are now noticing the levels or corruption going on in our media, goverment, banks, medicine, science etc. I've learned that I don't always have to waste energy and debate someone or try and convince them I simply speak my mind, my point of view and show evidence for it, that's all. My time as well as yours is finite. Choose where to put your energy wisely. My PSI is picking up exponentially the last month, hell I even have proof But I am debating weather I should post it. I'll probably post some dream PSI as not to reveal too much. I've stated on here before PSI/Telepathy will not work in a controlled lab study. Ive experienced PSI and pre-cog multiple times by myself and other people. I have seen small scale telepathy. The "issue" of it being real or not for me I experience PSI almost everyday now, write those dreams down, work with them meditate. As for the telepathy I only seen it once or maybe it was twice. The world is bleak, but believe there are people working to change that, lots of cultural issues might be impeding some progress like political stances, religion, sexual orientation, race, ego ETC. I personally think the new age movement while it opened the door again has become detrimental.
Science and New age to me are theories with some evidence coming to premature hindsights.

For more on symbolism, world religions, freemasonry, egypt, greece, atlantis, qabbalah read "The secret teaching of all ages" by Many P Hall its a great foundational book and his Magnus Opus
 
It seemed to really bother Alex that NDE's tend to have a "cultural overlay"; ie. Hindus meeting Hindu gods, Christians meeting Jesus, etc.

That doesn't bother me. It seems as it should be.

I guess thinking about what Frank DeMarco calls the non-3D world (what I'd call the metaphysical as opposed to the physical) is something that we all approach differently. Thinking that here and there are similar is understandable as here is what we know for sure. There is less concrete so the constituent stuff it is made off is less definitive. For example our reality is made up of atoms in forms that are relatively fixed because we have 'collapsed' potentials into shared 'actualities'. Comparatively (and inaccurately I must say -as this is only an illustration) the atoms of there are present but in a state of indeterminacy - so an individual with a particular belief can 'collapse' that uncertainty into temporary illusions that replicate what they know or believe.

There isn't a consensus reality so much as a capacity for individualised experience of singular sense of what is 'real'. Anyone who has experienced lucid dreaming will understand, as will those whose dreams are intense but still filtered as crazy analogies. The experience is 'real' but the 'bedrock' of experience shifts from matter to consciousness. That shift causes fundamental conceptual problems for us.

The best effort to explain it goes way back to Stewart Edward White who tried to explain the difference between the physical and non-physical elements thus: The essence of Time is Receptivity. The essence of Space is Conductivity. The essence of Motion is Frequency. So if we learn to think in terms of receptivity, conductivity and frequency we will get? No, of course not. The shift is too extreme. What White is saying is that time and space and motion do not cease to exist in the non-physical - they just have different attributes.

So whether we accept or resist the nature of the state of things on 'the other side' it is damned incomprehensible. Our sense of material existence is so linked to our biology imagining a state not mediated by our accustomed biological filters is immensely difficult. Our dreams and imagination are a weird fusion of attributes from both sides - in White's terms a mixture of obstructed and unobstructed attributes - hence dream absurdities - and hence the apparent paradox of NDE experiences expressing the beliefs of the person rather than some kind of consensual 'reality'. To the extent that there is a consensual reality it is abstract rather than concrete. And that abstract can be infinitely complex and expressive - in fact more so than a concrete obstructed 'reality' where things change 'slowly' and appearances are more shared.

I have a compact solid state hard drive that can generate the illusion of space and time and motion. If you like, what appears as space and time and motion to me have program expressions that are not space or time or motion but still are the essences of those things. Analogies don't do the job perfectly, but you could imagine the metaphysical as the expression of those essences - but just not as space, time and motion - and yet still not just the program code.

I want to add to this the essential proposition that we are not ever alone here. We exist in a community, an ecology of conscious agents who are adept in that non-material domain. So if an individual expects Pearly Gates playing along with that, or not, is not a problem. There is a tendency to see NDE experiences in a very simple way, rather than as the complex interplays they actually are. So if a person needs a shake up they might just get a 'negative' experience, The predominance of Light and Love experiences reflects, I think, the actuality that these are not sentimental experiences but deeply penetrating encounters that are transformative at an existential level.

I found the encounter of confirmation of an indestructible core of my being both fundamentally affirming and deeply challenging -because it contradicted the personality I had developed. I had to undo who and what I was and reassemble my constituent parts around an entirely different premise about the nature of human reality. That was a task of immense difficulty. Love and Light are not easy.
 
Penny is very interesting. I had the opportunity to listen to her recently and enjoyed her presentation. There was nothing in it that I found problematic, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that NDE information represents only one element of the body of evidence that both supports the idea that we survive physical death, and also describes what that next stage of existence might be like. Overall there is a degree of overlap, but there are significant differences between experiences described by those who undergo NDEs and those who describe their existence having actually died and remained dead. I think it is difficult to draw from conclusions based on the full body of evidence and unwise to extrapolate too much from one element of the body of evidence - although plenty of people seem to make a living from being certain.
 
Great show!
I'm more of the opinion that everyone has NDE's and OBE's

What about the supposedly new ‘supernatural’ skills NDEs are often supposed to bring the experiencers? Do they only apply if we do remember them?

I'm with LetsEat on this one.

Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel's prospective study into cardiac arrest and NDEs found that memory defects as a result of a complicated resuscitation were the only clinical factor to significantly affect a patient's chance of having an NDE (by reducing it). So, good memory does seem to play a significant role in the NDE experience.

Also, the same study found that both NDE and non-NDE cardiac arrest survivors experienced a number of psychological/attitudinal changes: understanding oneself, showing love, purpose in life, empathy, etc. These changes were measured at 2 and 8 years with both groups showing significant overlap in the changes reported, but with the changes in the non-NDE group being weaker and taking longer to develop.

One interesting divergence between the groups was the non-NDE survivors showing a small(ish) increase in traditional religiosity and a large decrease in interest in spirituality, whereas the NDErs went strongly in the opposite direction.

Perhaps these psychological changes in both groups are as a result of an NDE, but with weakened results in the reported non-NDErs due to a lack of experience recall to work with. If the non-NDE groups' changes were purely down to having had a brush with death, wouldn't you expect them to be more prominent at the 2 year interval and not the opposite?

So, maybe it's possible that non-NDE patients also show an increase in paranormal activity, but to a lesser extent, and, considering the reported decline in interest in spirituality, with less of an inclination to be open to (or talk about) the experience?

Just a thought.

On the love and light thing:

I think if we're serious about developing a building-block spirituality based on experience and evidence, then we absolutely have to put the NDE focus on love and light at the very centre of our efforts. As Alex says, "It's just following the data." And if that makes us sound a little flakey or new-ageish, then so be it.

And, back to the study, NDErs also report a marked increase in sense of social and environmental awareness... so love and light don't mean passive.

there are significant differences between experiences described by those who undergo NDEs and those who describe their existence having actually died and remained dead.

Interesting. Is there any chance you could give me some leads on this?
 
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That is interesting - had you already read of that technique, or did the idea come to you spontaneously?

David

I'd been studying non-dualism for a long time and had had similar experiences in different contexts - as in without the image of Hell as an entry point. The first time this state opened up for me was through entering into a void of nothingness, which I think is also comparable to what I've read some people experience in negative NDEs. I wrote this article about it -

http://deepstateconsciousness.com/depression-and-non-duality

I do see that fear plays a strong role in colouring these experiences. I also see a parallel with the abduction phenomenon and am currently reading Whitley Strieber's work on how his experience changed from negative to positive. For some people it goes the opposite way.
 
I would also add that love as spoken of by people who have NDEs is frequently very, very different from what we experience as love here in material incarnation. The love that we have here on Earth is less than an dilute thimbleful of an ocean that can be experienced in an NDE. There is so much written in 'New Age' teachings of unconditional love and that we should practise that on Earth. The problem for the New Age crowd is that unconditional love just doesn't exist in any of us here on Earth - we can't do it, we have no notion at all of what it is, just how comprehensive it is. (Though I do accept that there might well have been exceptions to that for some individuals, but they are vanishingly rare even if they ever existed on Earth at all.) I recently came across A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and I think, now, I would go along with that part of what it is saying with respect to love. There is what ACIM refers to as special love, which humans practice and mistake for real love. And then there is the love extended by God equally to everything as One (with Itself, though there is no separation), which is a whole different ball-game - and very few people on this planet will be able to conceptualise what that difference is. So I would also say that love (as spoken of by NDErs) might not be what you imagine it to be. To use your metaphor, the 'ketchup' is very different to how you currently conceptualise 'ketchup' to be - and it could never be nauseating, it is utterly, without exception, the highest good. It is that 'much' that you need to understand, not overlook as of minor-interest. Why do you think NDErs speak of it so much? They're not missing something - you are.
Right - perhaps we are getting to the heart of things. I didn't use my 'ketchup' metaphor to belittle the phenomenon, but to try to point out that the use of a single word 'love' to describe something that even NDEers find hard to explain - let alone the rest of us - doesn't really help, or at least the word needs unpacking. I mean you yourself acknowledge that the 'love' you are talking about is far removed from normal human love. For example, normal human love is normally inextricably linked to something else (just as ketchup is linked to steak and chips, or whatever). So in various contexts, love may be linked to:

Concern for the safety and well-being - in every sense - of a child.

Concern that someone who is vulnerable, gets the best out of their life.

Love for the planet might be combined with being a peace activist.

And of course, sexual love is combined with .... sex.

Those earthly meanings of love are somewhat different, and yet they overlap each other. However, anyone using the word 'love' would be using it in one of those contexts. Furthermore, in each of those cases I would argue that separating the 'love' from the associated activity, is pretty weird. What, for example, would it mean to love your child, but have no concern for her welfare!

Long ago (up to age 20) I was a Christian, and I heard the phrase "God is Love" many times, but I am pretty sure practically everyone who heard it, got nothing much from that assertion. Words are slippery things, and we have to realise that they can sometimes mask real understanding.

Coming from a science background, I am very much aware of the ways people can use words to pretend (often to themselves as well as others) that some phenomenon is understood. Conventional 'explanations' of consciousness are full of such language, and I think we should try to avoid the equivalent here.

David
 
Sorry, but I do not see this "evolution of consciousness" at all. If anything, it seems to be going in the extreme opposite direction.

It's kind of funny, because for years people on the outskirts of science and on shows and forums like Skeptiko complained about censorship, marginalization, the cult like mentality of scientist and atheism, etc. But now, it seems even worse than it's ever been. If anything, the censorship problem is only getting worse.

Look at our media, there's blood, guts, violence and sex everywhere. There's Satanic symbolism on everything (I'm not exaggerating, I have a teenager that shops at a certain store and I've watched their merchandise get more and more extreme).

Before I get too far off into the weeds, my point is, humanity does not seem to be getting wiser, kinder or "more spiritual" at all. I often wonder when I hear people espouse this "evolution of consciousness" stuff, if we are just straight up witnessing different realities. I often think we are about to descend into another dark age, only this time with robots (think your typical sci-fi, post-apocalyptic urban dystopia, not that I think an "apocalypse" is on the horizon).

Truth is, I'd love to believe an evolution is on the horizon, that light and love will rule the day, etc. etc. But....have you met humanity? I'd say chances are slim to none of that being true.

I dunno, perhaps I'm just cynical. Maybe I've spent too long in the dark corners of reality. But I sometimes think that because things can be so bleak, humanity so heart-breakingly awful, that it's almost a defense mechanism to slip into denial and ONLY focus on the good stuff.

The truth is, evil IS a part of this world. We don't know why, but it's true nonetheless. We still have not learned to reconcile this with the fact that things like love and compassion exist too. Humans are a walking paradox. We are capable of such love and such evil.

I am entirely sympathetic to this point of view. I now don't share it, but I see where it is coming from. I know we bang on about the evolution of consciousness in a careless way. Evolution of anything on this planet is not uniform, so even if there is a general evolutionary momentum that does not mean it is like a rising tide that will lift all boats equally.

If we consider NDEs as a present cultural phenomenon in the more technically sophisticated 'West' - in a culture that has become fixated with death and stuck between traditional religious views and materialism - all we can say is that for some people the growth in interest in NDEs reflects a particular evolutionary impetus that may be directed to unstick a particular situation. We don't know what happens in other cultures - because we are so conditioned by our own.

And what we call 'evolution' tends to be related to that romanticised quasi-Darwinian notion of changing toward an ideal. Evolution is also about adapting to a situation (think the finches of the Galapagos). Darwin thought about intentional breeding and adaptation - and we confuse ourselves now because we use one word to mean two things and we don't always know which meaning applies.

Perhaps a long background in public policy and community service helps me see that some (in fact many) things (here in Australia at least) are getting better. But I also see a lot of new problems emerging as old institutions crumble even further and emergent technologies and opportunities present new ways for exploitation and predation.

The internet is a classic example. I now cannot imagine the extraordinary benefits its has brought in communication and information access. But it has also given unprecedented opportunity for lunatics and idiots to amplify their voices in a way that harms vulnerable folk. The internet is not a rational environment even if it is built on the discipline of computer logic. It is an emergent ecosystem that has, in its own right, yet to morph into a tame and docile thing. And when we look back on our cultural history we see a stream of innovations that create new and raw environments. Look back on the evolution of sea, air and land transport to see this.

There is no doubt at all that we 'Westerners', supposedly the most 'evolved', have precipitated crises in the physical and metaphysical environments over the past 500 years. We have arguably created a deficit of virtue. It is entirely justifiable to think that on balance we haven't moved out of the red yet - and that we risk failing to do that for a long time.

As much as I try to be positive in my outlook my optimism is tempered by a realism that sees a constant stream of concerning events. These do genuinely suggest, that despite our hopes for the better, we remain deeply vulnerable to those who favour very different values.They are content to exploit and predate. I don't call this evil. Mostly I see venal opportunism that arises because we cannot establish moral clarity. And that arises because our capacity for moral discourse has been deeply injured.

Edmund Burke was thinking in the right direction when he said" The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." But I am conscious that opens up a huge can of moral and intellectual and theological worms.
 
The internet is a classic example. I now cannot imagine the extraordinary benefits its has brought in communication and information access. But it has also given unprecedented opportunity for lunatics and idiots to amplify their voices in a way that harms vulnerable folk. The internet is not a rational environment even if it is built on the discipline of computer logic. It is an emergent ecosystem that has, in its own right, yet to morph into a tame and docile thing. And when we look back on our cultural history we see a stream of innovations that create new and raw environments. Look back on the evolution of sea, air and land transport to see this.

The BIG problem with such statement is that it tacitly implies that the person who wrote or said it (you, in this case) knows for certain who exactly is the "idiot" and the "lunatic". However, if you ask a hundred different persons about their opinions on the nature of "idiocy" and "lunacy", you will have a hundred different answers. Yet, there are two regularities that you will notice:

1) "Idiots" and "lunatics", especially "dangerous" ones, are always other people; it is neither the person who answers the question, nor the people who are (more-or-less) close to him in his most significant positions.

2) Every person is perceived as the "idiot" and the "lunatic" by at least some people who strongly detest his or her views; yet the people so perceived usually do not give a damn about it, since they are likely to brand the people labeling them as "idiots" and "lunatics" as "idiots" and "lunatics" in return.

For example: maybe someone here has forgot it, but nearly all of here are seen as "idiots" and "lunatics" by the extreme skeptics and mainstreamers; and, in their eyes, we are pretty "dangerous" "idiots" and "lunatics" indeed, since, by our Web activities, we undermine the public faith in mainstream scientific positions and public trust in mainstream scientific institutions, and thus "bringing the society into the new Dark Ages of irrationality and superstition".

So, two questions:

1) Do you give a damn about extreme skeptics' opinions on your humble personas?

2) Don't you perceive extreme skeptics as "idiots" and "lunatics"?

My own answers: 1) yes, I don't give a damn; 2) no, I don't perceive them as stupid or insane people, since I do not perceive anyone at all as such. I only perceive them as "true (dis)believers" - the people who completely forgot about the necessity of SELF-critical reflexivity and doubt and thus are filled with illusive certitude of their own utter correctness.
 
So, two questions:

1) Do you give a damn about extreme skeptics' opinions on your humble personas?

2) Don't you perceive extreme skeptics as "idiots" and "lunatics"?

My own answers: 1) yes, I don't give a damn; 2) no, I don't perceive them as stupid or insane people, since I do not perceive anyone at all as such. I only perceive them as "true (dis)believers" - the people who completely forgot about the necessity of SELF-critical reflexivity and doubt and thus are filled with illusive certitude of their own utter correctness.

If you will think about your answer to 2, it's pretty much saying you see them as idiots and lunatics: because a. they lack self-critical reflexivity and b. are filled with illusive certitude. Possibly because you don't want to see yourself as the kind of person who would use the pejoratives "idiots" and "lunatics", you might be resorting to phraseology that really amounts to much the same thing.

I'm not trying to get at you personally, just pointing out that imo people often try to sugarcoat the epithets they apply to others (and this often applies to me as much as anyone else). If one really did feel charitable about others, one might just say something like "I disagree with them". This leaves open the possibility that one might -- one never knows -- be wrong.
 
It seemed to really bother Alex that NDE's tend to have a "cultural overlay"; ie. Hindus meeting Hindu gods, Christians meeting Jesus, etc.

That doesn't bother me. It seems as it should be.
It makes sense to me also. Actually, my post on the first page explaining why I think that fear can induce negative NDE's also applies to the cultural aspect of NDEs. When in spirit form we are much more capable of manifesting realities through thought than we are while incarnated. While incarnated our thoughts do shape reality to a degree ie-the placebo effect etc., but its much more profound while out of body. And I don't feel that what people experience during NDEs are the objective afterlife. I think its largely a transitory stage/area, and here our own thoughts are very powerful.
 
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