Mod+ 254. HOWARD STORM TRANSFORMED BY NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

It seems to me that the implication here is that a true NDE is one that does not contain Jesus. Or possibly that an NDE that includes Jesus may be real, but has been tainted with a non truth, i.e a hallucination. This opens a huge can of worms.
I despair of Skeptiko sometimes. Crop circles are "clearly" not made by humans, but Jesus in an NDE is viral ministry by unscrupulous religionists. The anti-Christian rhetoric on this board is becoming a ridiculous blind spot. It's quite possible to hold convictions and be objective about the data. If people have replaced boring or aggressive religious upbringings and substituted psi research, good for them. Just don't turn your alternative into another religion with all the polarisation you're trying to escape. There are no "obvious" conclusions from NDE testimonies, scientific or religious.
 
According to the experts I quoted above, it is definitive that consciousness is not produced by the brain.

I'm separating that conclusion from what's experienced. For example, Ullman once had a shared dream with a woman in which both of them were cutting a catch of fish. Each of them cuts off the head of a fish, and a bloody-faced human head pushes itself out of the stump.

To me this is a strong indication - possibly outright proof if you trust Ullman wasn't lying - that dream telepathy is real. But I'm not going to commit to saying there's another reality out there where some actual person was cutting up fish and had that odd experience.
 
I despair of Skeptiko sometimes. Crop circles are "clearly" not made by humans, but Jesus in an NDE is viral ministry by unscrupulous religionists. The anti-Christian rhetoric on this board is becoming a ridiculous blind spot. It's quite possible to hold convictions and be objective about the data. If people have replaced boring or aggressive religious upbringings and substituted psi research, good for them. Just don't turn your alternative into another religion with all the polarisation you're trying to escape. There are no "obvious" conclusions from NDE testimonies, scientific or religious.

I think the prevailing post-show consensus was crop-circles are man-made?

But on the second part, I also don't see why the Jesus NDEs would be discounted unless one is willing to cast doubt on the content of all NDEs - which doesn't mean mind=brain, just that mind-not-brain doesn't mean mind can't have interesting dreams detached from whatever reality awaits beyond the veil.
 
I think the prevailing post-show consensus was crop-circles are man-made?
I was referring to Alex's enthusiasm for novelty and conspiracies and contempt for anything mainstream or traditional. Read the crop circle show transcript to see this in action. It's a willingness to see connections where none exist, complexity where things are simple (or at least much simpler) and the use of Christianity as a universal scapegoat - and let's remember Rupert Sheldrake is an Anglican Christian - to be replaced by Dan Brown revisionism and join-the-dots intrigues. Nobody ever went broke trading in this stuff, least of all Dan Brown, but it's unworthy of a site that pretends to seriousness about the subject of psi.

But on the second part, I also don't see why the Jesus NDEs would be discounted unless one is willing to cast doubt on the content of all NDEs - which doesn't mean mind=brain, just that mind-not-brain doesn't mean mind can't have interesting dreams detached from whatever reality awaits beyond the veil.
I agree and said previously, there's very little that's clear about near death experiences. So when a figure is repeatedly seen (whoever that figure may be) I think the presence deserves attention, not summary dismissal, or worse, explaining away as a mundane manifestation of a commonplace.
 
It seems to me that the implication here is that a true NDE is one that does not contain Jesus. Or possibly that an NDE that includes Jesus may be real, but has been tainted with a non truth, i.e a hallucination. This opens a huge can of worms.
I'm not sure if someone has stated this in this thread?

For myself, I thought I brought up an NDE that had a different take on Jesus, different than the official version, and it got, IMO, immediately and unfairly attacked as baloney. I was partly motivated to bring it up because it seemed to me that in this thread (and I may have misinterpreted this) other NDEs were being brought up of the biblical Jesus as "Son of God", and of accounts of hell, etc., as if these were definitely signs that the Christian religion is truth. (When the reality is that the great majority of NDEs don't feature Jesus or hellish scenarios, etc..) (I was also motivated to bring it up just because I remembered it with the topic of Jesus being discussed, and it had been an account that had left an impression on me, not so much for the Jesus specifics, as the overall experience.)

On my end, I really don't know if the Jesus that appears in NDEs (like other figures) is the real deal, and whether that's the case for some NDEs and not others, etc. etc. Going on the NDEs that I find the deepest, most complex and "transcendental", I'm inclined to think (that's where I lean, but of course I don't know and I could be wrong) that there's filtering and possibly unconscious manifesting going on with a lot of these. (BTW. Unlike Alex, I actually believe in a historical Jesus, but beyond that and what were actually his actions and words I have little to no confidence in). My 2 cents.
 
I would also add that you don't have to be dead to have the experience.

I'd also add that Jesus is sometimes encountered in DMT experiences. It is even refered to as the Jesus drug ocassionally.
However it is the amanita muscaria that is tied to christianity without a doubt.
p007_0_02_1.jpg

Adam & Eve fresco 1291 AD, Plaincourault Abbey, Indre, France. The Tree of Wisdom stylized as Amanita muscaria. Notice Adam & Eve hideing their nakedness
 
not sure where your getting that. I think the point is there are no "true NDEs" only personal/idiosyncratic NDEs.
That's a huge claim. There are near death experiences that have consistent themes, and ones which are anachronistic. Are we to say the OBE stage, the tunnel and bright light are also personal? That's sailing very close to physicalist debunking rhetoric.
 
I despair of Skeptiko sometimes. Crop circles are "clearly" not made by humans, but Jesus in an NDE is viral ministry by unscrupulous religionists. The anti-Christian rhetoric on this board is becoming a ridiculous blind spot. It's quite possible to hold convictions and be objective about the data. If people have replaced boring or aggressive religious upbringings and substituted psi research, good for them. Just don't turn your alternative into another religion with all the polarisation you're trying to escape. There are no "obvious" conclusions from NDE testimonies, scientific or religious.
pls stop this silliness or go away.

Skeptiko forum members schooled me on crop circles. I hope to do some more shows and learn more, but I can't deny the evidence that a lot of the "best ones" show signs of being man made. I'm learning... no big deal.

now, as to Jesus in NDEs... as I've said over and over... the reality of Jesus (Christ consciousness/Jesus in spirit) in NDEs is a great mystery. Especially since traditional Christian doctrine is so wacky and impossible to tie back to a historical Jesus (as we've seen in multiple Skeptiko shows.)

finally, I'm not spouting anti-Christian rhetoric any more than I'm spouting anti-Atheist rhetoric. I'm just following the evidence. Christian apologetics are a tangled mess of half-baked half-truths. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

But, I think this whole topic is very interesting and would like to do more shows on Christian apologetics. I've tried and tried to get a NT Biblical scholar to come on Skeptiko and take down Mythicists like Atwill and Acharaya... no takers. I've gotten close a couple of times, but they all back down when you hit them with the tough stuff (very similar to the atheists). I even asked Robert Perry to find someone and when that didn't work out I asked Robert to take on the challenge. I do have a couple of related shows coming up, but still looking for a straight forward NT defender to come on.
 
Guessing this is old hat, but here's some stuff on cross-cultural aspects of NDEs:

MEDIEVAL Chinese and Japanese literature provides numerous examples of near-death experiences, episodes in which the narrator claims to have gained personal images of the afterlife. Within this motif, individuals die, come close to death, or reach an equivalent meditative state, and later revive to describe their experiences. Modern near-death experience (NDE) researchers claim that cross-culturally uniform features exist within these reports (RING 1980). Could common elements inherent within NDEs contribute to a degree of cross-cultural agreement regarding the nature of heavens and hells?

Although the evidence is not fully conclusive, an investigation of NDE accounts in medieval Europe, China, and Japan suggests that these episodes have the capacity to produce such convergences.
 
pls stop this silliness or go away.

Skeptiko forum members schooled me on crop circles. I hope to do some more shows and learn more, but I can't deny the evidence that a lot of the "best ones" show signs of being man made. I'm learning... no big deal.

now, as to Jesus in NDEs... as I've said over and over... the reality of Jesus (Christ consciousness/Jesus in spirit) in NDEs is a great mystery. Especially since traditional Christian doctrine is so wacky and impossible to tie back to a historical Jesus (as we've seen in multiple Skeptiko shows.)

finally, I'm not spouting anti-Christian rhetoric any more than I'm spouting anti-Atheist rhetoric. I'm just following the evidence. Christian apologetics are a tangled mess of half-baked half-truths. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

But, I think this whole topic is very interesting and would like to do more shows on Christian apologetics. I've tried and tried to get a NT Biblical scholar to come on Skeptiko and take down Mythicists like Atwill and Acharaya... no takers. I've gotten close a couple of times, but they all back down when you hit them with the tough stuff (very similar to the atheists). I even asked Robert Perry to find someone and when that didn't work out I asked Robert to take on the challenge. I do have a couple of related shows coming up, but still looking for a straight forward NT defender to come on.
Silliness is a remarkable accusation considering some of the stuff you come up with Alex. If Christian doctrine is so wacky, are we to deduce Rupert Sheldrake's beliefs are all equally uninformed, or just those relating to his religious convictions? Regarding the mythicist/revisionist NT historians, I recall a serious rearguard action on some of the original claims of the Jesus myth once historical theologians joined the thread.

If you want to run a forum where fly agaric was the catalyst for Victorian children's literature, lenticular clouds in Renaissance paintings are a UFO armada and there are "no true NDEs", that's your prerogative. It'll certainly drag in some people interested in interminable discussions and result in plenty of hits. The fact is not all conspiracies were created equal and you seem to have difficulty recognising the fact.
 
“The Light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the Light, “What is going on here? Please, Light, clarify yourself for me… The Light responded. The information transferred to me was that during your life after death experience your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the Light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not. As the Light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our higher Self matrix.”

— NDEr Mellen-Thomas Benedict

Does not explain why people of other faiths or no faith would encounter Jesus though, unless it is on a subconscious level. Just some more to think about.

The formless needs a form.

I would like to think he is a real entity. That does not automatically make the biblical account true though. There are many ways to look at it. Not just two.
 
The formless needs a form.

Check out my last post on Chinese & Japanese NDEs. It's rather interesting to see not only commonalities with European NDEs, but the influence NDEs had on religious shifts in the East.

There's at least one in there where a shared experience includes witnesses also seeing the Buddha, not to mention conversion.
 
p007_0_02_1.jpg

Adam & Eve fresco 1291 AD, Plaincourault Abbey, Indre, France. The Tree of Wisdom stylized as Amanita muscaria. Notice Adam & Eve hideing their nakedness

Notice Adam and Eve hiding their nakedness? Sorry, I don't understand that part. What about that?
 
Check out my last post on Chinese & Japanese NDEs. It's rather interesting to see not only commonalities with European NDEs, but the influence NDEs had on religious shifts in the East.

There's at least one in there where a shared experience includes witnesses also seeing the Buddha, not to mention conversion.

I read all of that Sciborg, really interesting stuff.

I am reminded of the Tibetan book of the dead. There are several parrallels especially in regards to the light.
The light is described as "the clear light". The teachings emphasize that the light must be recognized as the higher self, just as some modern NDE do. Recognizing it is as well as the manifestations of demons and gods as an aspect of self is said to free one from the cycle of reincarnation.
 
Kenneth Ring says the same.

"This higher self is so awesome, so overwhelming, so loving, and unconditionally accepting, and so foreign to one's individualized consciousness that one perceives it as separate from oneself, as unmistakably other. It manifests itself as a brilliant golden light, but it is actually oneself, in a higher form, that one is seeing."
 
“The Light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the Light, “What is going on here? Please, Light, clarify yourself for me… The Light responded. The information transferred to me was that during your life after death experience your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the Light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not. As the Light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our higher Self matrix.”

— NDEr Mellen-Thomas Benedict

The formless needs a form.
The following doesn't establish that Jesus or another figure may not always be who he or she is, but it says something similar to what Benedict experienced. In an e-letter, Nanci Danison, based on the knowledge she received and what she experienced during her NDE, says we choose to incarnate, and if we return before our time, we need to be convinced to reenter "a painful, damaged body in what we may perceive to be a ruined life". So the beings who welcome the NDEr works with their personality to create the proper motivation, and "for a few NDErs nothing less than the God of their understanding can get them back to Earth. So that NDEr will see Jesus, or Buddha, or Lord Vishnu, or what he/she perceives to be the Creator or Supreme Being in whatever form he/she will believe".

Sounds like the bastards are ready to lie to us to get us back here. :D
 
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