Is Westworld our world?

Sorry I didn't realize. Read the whole thing, then reposted it.

Just in case you hadn't realised what it was, and for future reference, the problem was the bit after (and including) the hash symbol: that links to an "anchor" within the page, which generally isn't the top. Probably it was there because you'd clicked on the last heading in the table of contents. Anchors like that can generally - but not always - be safely removed from links so as to make sure the page opens at the top. But I might be teaching grandma to suck eggs...
 
Look there is absolutely no sense whatever in mixing this thread with politics. Obviously I think what went on was a manifestation of evil, though the fundamental evil was to attack Vietnam in the first place. Once you unleash the dogs of war, terrible things happen.
But again, it is YOU bringing "politics" into this debate -- by dismissing/minimizing pure acts of evil simply by categorizing them in a special "dogs of war" category. And Laird was not using the examples in a political way, but merely citing to the gruesome examples of torture to ask whether a human being would "volunteer" to be subjected to those techniques for the "thrill of it" or for some "(unspecified) learning." You dodged the question by minimizing both the human suffering -- and acts of evil -- involved, apparently because acts of evil committed and suffering endured under the guise of "politics" (i.e., the winning and keeping of power) is somehow less evil or less meaningful?

Ignoring/diminishing the existence of actual evil is the very problem with the "life is a school," "life is a thrill ride" theories of reality. I'm also at a loss to understand why "war" is continuously necessary in this learning school by a benevolent creator/creators? It makes no sense to me whatsoever under such a view.

However, under the gnostic view, war makes a lot of sense, because in addition to being a manipulated/orchestrated conflict and financial windfall for various oligarchs/plutocrats, who use others to do their dirty work (there's a reason military ID necklaces are called "dog tags"), war is a form of intentional human sacrifice. And the evils encouraged/perpetuated/justified in the name of "war," such as those listed in that article, can be understood as archonic/satanic/demonic/negative entity influence to completely destroy/invade/corrode ordinary men/women's souls. I think such soul destruction is apparent from the high rate of suicide in returning vets, vets who have to confront their horrific deeds/actions once back home (and with the dawning understanding of who they were actually fighting/killing for).

So what happens to such corrupted/destroyed souls once they leave this plane? Are they forgiven immediately by a loving/nonjudgmental God Rock? Are they unburdened as soon as they leave their physical bodies, grateful to realize that it was all just a ride, with no meaning whatsoever? Are they shown how their evil actions affected others and given another involuntary go in the incarnation wheel to do better next time? Are they thanked for their service to the learning environment? These are the answers that I feel are frustratingly absent in most of the NDE'r accounts I have read -- other than a few I read that were easily dismissed as inauthentic/dogmatic Christian propaganda.

I did find this interview with Jeffrey Long interesting, particularly this last part, where he describes the "hellish" part of "heaven" -- as a voluntary place to go -- and maybe even a form of "heaven" for souls that simply enjoy being evil.

https://goop.com/wellness/spirituality/1000s-near-death-experiences-can-teach-us-dying/

"After reading these accounts, my opinion, based on this fairly objective evidence, which is mirrored by work from other researchers, is that there is indeed a hellish realm. However, there are also near-death experiencers who say there can be no Hell here. Both are correct, and here’s why. When hellish realms are encountered in near-death experiences, they’re generally highly compartmentalized. They can’t, won’t, don’t interact with the rest of the blissful, pleasant afterlife. And why or how these hellish beings can be there is very interesting. We’ve had one near-death experiencer describe that these beings literally chose to live in that realm and all they have to do is choose to leave it. So, what you see there in these hellish realms are beings that have made unbelievably bad choices in the afterlife, not that they’ve been sentenced there or forced there, but because they are such dark, evil beings, their Heaven is literally to be surrounded by beings who are like them, who share their values. Neither I nor any near-death experience researcher that I’m aware of believes in a permanent, involuntary Hell based on our research. It seems to be a product of incredibly bad choices."

This doesn't exactly satisfy, but it does seem to correspond to the Law of One idea of souls having a choice at the end of their human lives and "choosing" to join negative/positive "social memory complexes" in the next non-physical evolutionary stage.

It is apparent that much of the debate here is simply based on upgraded twists on old religious/spiritual/occult ideas trying to explain the reason for good/evil and the desire for a better afterlife. But IMO, the NDE's are so varied and often conflicting in the experiences and the answers given, that even thousands of them do not provide satisfactory answers to the nature of reality we are living here.
 
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Excellent post, AryaS. The interview with Jeffrey Long had another nugget in it which I think is worth highlighting. In one of his answers re his belief in the "incarnation as school" paradigm, he writes (emphasis mine):

"And apparently, interestingly, what we learn down here is important. It’s important not only for our lives but in some way, that I don’t have it all figured out, it seems to have universal, if you will, cosmic consequences".

If the NDE researcher who has compiled the largest database of these experiences can't even explain what the point of / need for our "learning" down here is... well...

ETA:

You [David] dodged the question

Sadly, I'm noticing this more and more as a trend.
 
But again, it is YOU bringing "politics" into this debate -- by dismissing/minimizing pure acts of evil simply by categorizing them in a special "dogs of war" category.
Once you start killing and maiming people - i.e. start a war - people are exposed to the most awful horror. It isn't political, and certainly not minimising to point out what that leads to. I mean even the most hi-tech war causes incredible suffering, and people will retaliate.

The deep state folks should realise that they are just about as guilty as humans can get, even though they probably do it all from plush Washington chairs.

We aren't getting anywhere with this discussion, so I will leave this thread to the rest of you! Let me know if you reach a conclusion :)

David
 
We aren't getting anywhere with this discussion, so I will leave this thread to the rest of you! Let me know if you reach a conclusion :)

It was not my desire to have you leave this thread, David, and I hope you'll reconsider. In fact, I think your comments/positions are allowing me (and others) to better articulate why certain "theories of reality" don't resonate or make sense for me (and others). It is just frustrating b/c it seems like you are consistently ignoring certain pieces of data in your responses to fit a metaphysical worldview that you prefer. I'm trying not to be guilty of that myself -- as I confess I do currently lean more towards a gnostic/hermetic or dualist worldview and have also been accused of having "predetermined objections" to positive NDE experiences. But I am currently working my way through the "exceptional" NDE experiences on Dr. Long's website in an effort to expand my current perspective. I am definitely interested in exploring/analyzing other possible theories of reality -- and think using Laird's "data" points as the analytic framework makes a lot of sense because it forces all of us to step outside our preferred theories in order to try to address each of the data points.

Along these lines, Dpdownsouth, I really do find your theory fascinating, but am wondering if you might be willing to speak more to data point #1 (the existence of evil in the fullest metaphysical/spiritual sense). Where does this fit into your model, if at all? Is 'evil' just the result of both individual/collective consciousness shadow sides? I feel as if I may need to immerse myself in Jungian depth psychology to fully appreciate this view. But wasn't Jung accused of being a gnostic? ;)
 
A more relevant question than any that I posed to dpdownsouth, AryaS - I'm glad you asked it! [ETA: To be fair, he has addressed it to at least some extent already with his idea of self-determination requiring the possibility of negative action (an idea which I've challenged, and to which challenge I hope he responds!).]

It's inspired me to ask a related question to anybody reading this thread: are you aware of any NDE accounts where this issue is addressed (that is, how to account for the existence of evil in the fullest metaphysical/spiritual sense), and if so, can you please link us to them?
 
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We aren't getting anywhere with this discussion, so I will leave this thread to the rest of you! Let me know if you reach a conclusion :)

Unlike Arya, I don't mind if David leaves us to it, because, respectfully, if we are all going to stay stuck on this extremely basic point (that our suffering here is not a big deal seen from a higher "higher vantage point") this discussion cannot move forward. And this is because this is a question of taste, at the end of the day: for some of us evil and suffering are unacceptable per se, incompatible with the simple explanation (in which most people believe) that there is a benevolent creator behind it all, or that "it's all good" despite everything. For some of us evil and very nature of the functioning of the material world are shared, solid evidence that "there's something very wrong with this material reality", while others seem to take the approach that "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs", and that's basically what there is to it, so "get over it, it will all be OK and you won't mind one day".

This difference is not a question that can be ironed out by "evidence" because some of us will never accept that such good end (supposing it's going to all end well, of course we don't know!) could ever justify such means, so all the evidence we need that this reality is flawed is there already. I mean, even if it was a dream (and it is obviously not - the dream metaphor is only a metaphor, because you don't feel real physical pain in a dream etc etc), who is forcing this bad dream on us, since none of us goes to bed thinking "I hope I'm going to have a great exciting nightmare where I get blown up in a terrorist attack and lose my legs and see people around me die, so that I will learn something really useful!", say.

So thanks David for not forcing us to repeat the above for the 100.000th time :)

As for reaching a conclusion: it's very clear to me that no definite conclusion can be reached, but surely discussions such as this can help us move forward in the sense of considering new theories and discarding ones that others have thought through better. I mean, years ago when I was first exposed to this theory of "life as a school" I listened and tried to make sense of it. Now that I have thought it through, I know that it makes no sense whatsoever, but I continue to explore other theories to see what the logical "holes" in them are and how they could (or could not) be filled.
 
the dream metaphor is only a metaphor, because you don't feel real physical pain in a dream etc etc), who is forcing this bad dream on us, since none of us goes to bed thinking "I hope I'm going to have a great exciting nightmare where I get blown up in a terrorist attack and lose my legs and see people around me die, so that I will learn something really useful!"

I often feel physical pain while dreaming, I often have nightmares. The nightmares are frequent enough that I do try to learn from them and at times there are things I could learn only through the nightmares. I've learned lucid dreaming as well even though they merely make my nightmares more vivid half the time.
 
OK, sorry to reappear, but let me ask this.

Would the LAS (life at school) theory make sense if the potential bad things that could happen were much less extreme, but still unpleasant?

David
 
I often feel physical pain while dreaming, I often have nightmares. The nightmares are frequent enough that I do try to learn from them and at times there are things I could learn only through the nightmares. I've learned lucid dreaming as well even though they merely make my nightmares more vivid half the time.
Interesting - I don't remember my dreams well, but I did wonder if fact was indeed a fact! It is a reminder of how little we really know about consciousness, particularly since dreams merge into lucid dreams which merge into OBE's - it is no use just thinking of dreams as unimportant.

David
 
It's inspired me to ask a related question to anybody reading this thread: are you aware of any NDE accounts where this issue is addressed (that is, how to account for the existence of evil in the fullest metaphysical/spiritual sense), and if so, can you please link us to them?

I have been reading through the NDE's on the Dr. Long website -- the ones labeled "exceptional" for various reasons. So far, I have found none that directly speak to the need for/existence of evil, but I did come across this one, which posits an amoral, pantheistic "God" (or creator energy -- everything that is). This NDE does suggest that life is for "learning," but just learning for its own sake, not for any moral lessons or to learn how to love or live better lives, etc.

http://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1aaron_m_nde.html

Some interesting gems from this NDE:

"This thing I’m in, it must be ‘God.’ It is not a man or a creature dictating over the world. It is just a force that is an endless and infinitely powerful ‘thing.’ But again, the word ‘thing’ doesn’t do it justice. It is existence itself. It runs through everything; it is everything, from a stone to a drop of water, to a bacteria, to the stars in the sky and even ‘nothingness’. It is everything. I can feel it."

"The universe is a thing that created itself and is watching itself. We’re all part of it. This ‘place/thing/existence’ that created us and is us, doesn’t know where life will lead. That is what it enjoys."

During your experience, did you gain information about premortal existence? Yes I suddenly had a feeling of familiarity and understanding that I had existed before. I felt like I had been in the place many times before. It was like a feeling of coming home. In regards to physical life, I saw brief glimpses of myself as thousands of insects that were all alive at the same time. They were all eaten by another creature and I became part of that. Then that creature was eaten too. I felt a weird peace when I saw that, and understood how life works. Then it flashed to another period of time and I was underground and I could feel something eating me once again. Then I saw roots of plants and felt like I was them. All of this felt like it happened a very long time ago, before people existed.

During your experience, did you gain information about universal connection or oneness? Yes It's hard to explain without a diagram. I learned that everything is connected, but we just can't see it. The way I would explain it is like water. A fish is connected to all other fish in the ocean because the sea envelopes them all. They are all in the same water. That same theory applies to everything in existence. But instead of water it is energy. We are all made of and surrounded by energy. Even the air and gaps in space are filled with this same energy. We just can't see it. And this is the thing that connects us all.

During your experience, did you gain special knowledge or information about your purpose? Yes I felt like i knew everything. But there was no purpose. And that was fine. Learning is the only reason for existence, but that in itself had no purpose. Consider life as an experiment. Whatever created it doesn't know what the result is. It doesn't care too much and just wants to see what happens.

This NDE seems to line up somewhat with the "incarnation is God's self-entertainment" theory from your article, Laird -- with a few tweaks -- or maybe answers to your questions. Specifically, in this NDE, "God" doesn't know where its creation will lead -- and there is no presumption of benevolence. It is what it is. Thus, the open questions about the problems of real evil posed in your article might not be relevant here. Even though it isn't discussed in the NDE, I would presume that there would be no "limitation" on evil here because "God" created something with no predetermined benevolent outcome -- and is simply watching/experiencing/learning from its creation. In a sense, things will be "OK" because ultimately no one ever dies -- they are simply merged back into the entirety of creation until it's their time to incarnate again. But the evil experienced on earth is presumably unlimited (and without consequences), because the evil perpetuated and the suffering endured would simply create more opportunities for God's "learning" about itself/its creation. I note here that the NDE'r does suggest that existing in the "nothing" is boring -- and that the energy beings are all looking forward to incarnation. This is one of the few NDE's I've read where the person was eager to get back to his life rather than to stay in the wholeness of creation. There was also not any discussion of the all-encompassing "love" energy that many NDE'rs describe.

I'll keep looking for more NDE's that directly address data point #1 and/or that stretch beyond the simplistic "life is a school" stories that wholly fail to address the problem of evil -- and will share when found.

What do you think of this experience? Does it help to flesh out theory # 5?
 
Here is another NDE that suggests that NDE's are likely "accidents" that mess with the determined order/functioning of the Universe....In this one, the NDE'r met with a giant mechanistic "Wheel of Fortune" that seemed to be quite determined to push the experiencer back into the wheel of incarnation -- although perhaps on a different timeline/probability line.....as it appears that his almost certain to be fatal car accident was completely erased!

http://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1wilson_fde.html
 
Would the LAS (life at school) theory make sense if the potential bad things that could happen were much less extreme, but still unpleasant?

That's difficult to answer when nobody has yet explained the point of our "learning" in the first place! You yourself have admitted that it makes no sense to learn things that are irrelevant to the supposed state of our ultimate existence.
 
This NDE seems to line up somewhat with the "incarnation is God's self-entertainment" theory from your article, Laird -- with a few tweaks -- or maybe answers to your questions.

Yep, I think it has a few tweaks. The original idea behind #5 is that God is unitary, perfect, alone... and bored out of His/Her mind. The boredom drives this perfect Being to create a reality in which S/He splits Him/Herself into a bunch of individual consciousnesses which are made to forget who they really are so that they can play the game of incarnation and alleviate the utter boredom of static perfection.

The picture presented by this NDE though doesn't seem to involve any deliberate (self-)deception. And yes, as you say, in this scenario it seems that there are no limitations on evil (which weren't necessarily present in the original idea but which I'd inferred, simply because I found it hard to believe that if you were going to set up a fun game to alleviate boredom, you would not at least eliminate the possibility of endless, inescapable horror, pain, and suffering).

What do you think of this experience?

I think it illustrates just how contradictory NDEs and spiritual experiences in general can be. For example, in this NDE, the NDEr is told "there is no ‘life-span’ or plan", yet life plans are crucial aspects of so many other spiritual experiences, e.g., as described in life-between-life hypnotic regressions. For another example, in this NDE, the NDEr understands that "This ‘place/thing/existence’ that created us and is us, doesn’t know where life will lead", yet in other NDEs or spiritual experiences, past, present, and future exist all at once, and people can reincarnate into any part of the world's timeline - past, present or future - which surely implies that everything temporal is already fully known and thus that the "place/thing/existence" that created us does know where life will lead.

Does it help to flesh out theory # 5?

I think it's more a variation on #5 than a fleshing out.

Here is another NDE that suggests that NDE's are likely "accidents" that mess with the determined order/functioning of the Universe....In this one, the NDE'r met with a giant mechanistic "Wheel of Fortune" that seemed to be quite determined to push the experiencer back into the wheel of incarnation -- although perhaps on a different timeline/probability line.....as it appears that his almost certain to be fatal car accident was completely erased!

http://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1wilson_fde.html

Ah... I've read that one before, so didn't reread it this time. Again, I think it illustrates how contradictory (or perhaps "varied" is a more justifiable term in this case) NDEs can be. What do you think? Does "contradictory" or "varied" fit best?
 
I think it's more a variation on #5 than a fleshing out.
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Thank you for clarifying. I would agree that the first NDE would be a departure/variation from the article's #5 "incarnation as God's self-entertainment" theory -- if the original theory's presumption was that this was just a "fun game" for a bored God -- with deliberate veiling/self-deception, and a presumed ultimate benevolence.

The idea of God intentionally splitting itself into parts in order to gather experience is also a concept discussed in Kabbalah, with the idea that the Ein Sof split itself into various emanations, each becoming more and more dense, and ultimately ending in Malkuth -- the physical world. However, in Kabbalah, physical life is not just a "fun ride" attempted out of boredom (although sometimes I have read that God split out of "loneliness"). Rather, it's a learning/evolutionary/reparation process -- a journey back towards wholeness, which includes a free will choice to follow a Left Handed (dark side) path to get there. There is also the idea of the Qliphoth -- the shadow side of the Tree of Life, populated by demonic/negative energies that are the shadow sides of the "positive" Sephirah. I haven't read much about the shadow side of the Tree of Life, but found this blogsite that discusses it. I'll link now in case anyone is interested in reviewing, although I haven't reviewed it in detail myself yet.

http://keepersoftherealms.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_27.html

I also agree that the two NDE stories I linked to are variations and/or contradictions to many of the more typically reported NDE's. This has always been one of my problems with NDE accounts -- the sheer variety of experiences, which to me has always suggested either individual brain malfunctions or an extremely varied (but perhaps real) afterlife experience that seems to be largely tailored to the individual NDE'rs religious (or lack thereof) beliefs/preconceived notions of the afterlife/cultural overlays. The problem of this incongruence is described pretty well in this article:

http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog...ngruence-inconsistency-near-death-experiences

I'm not completely willing to dismiss all NDE's as deceptions/lies or "products of the brain" (as the article above suggests) quite yet -- but the variety of often contradictory experiences certainly does make them less persuasive or useful to me when trying to formulate a satisfactory "nature of reality" theory -- even when some of the NDE accounts are stunningly detailed.

However, perhaps we can analyze the first NDE account (I'll call it "Aaron's theory," after the NDE'r -- for now) on its own merits as a theory of reality, using your data points? In some ways, I see Aaron's theory as somewhat similar to dpdownsouth's Process theory. And Aaron's theory does at least address the #1 data point (evil), in that it posits an amoral -- and not wholly in control -- creator energy/force that appears unconcerned with morality/moral judgments and far more interested in "learning" everything -- almost like a giant AI computer soaking up knowledge. In fact, in this theory, everything IS part of the creation, so we are all creating this reality -- with no ultimate benevolent outcome guaranteed or even desired by the original creative force. It just is what it is.

What about the other data points? Can it satisfactorily address the others?

As for the "Wheel of Fortune" NDE theory, this one stood out to me first b/c of its connection to the tarot Wheel of Fortune and the Ouroboros -- and second b/c it also suggested some kind of mechanistic controller of our experiences/realities. I know I've shared my experience elsewhere on this forum with both Ayuhuasca and mushrooms -- but in both experiences I entered a very mechanistic dimension -- black and white, machine-like -- seemed like AI. And when I asked (telepathically) aloud who was creating the mechanistic world I was seeing, I got the response "we are bored immortals"!

(Edit: there's also a pop culture connection/correspondence to this "wheel of fortune" entity in the most recent conspiracy-friendly Avengers: Infinity film....)
 
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That's difficult to answer when nobody has yet explained the point of our "learning" in the first place! You yourself have admitted that it makes no sense to learn things that are irrelevant to the supposed state of our ultimate existence.
Well it seemed to me that the LAS theory is being attacked on several fronts, one of which is the intensity of potential suffering here on Earth - something I do not deny, but which people keep trying to emphasise with new examples.

If we can put that issue to one side, I would say that the "what is it for" question is difficult, but not without possible explanations.

I would remind everyone that the LAS theory is based on most of the NDE data and most of the deathbed visions data. To me, it is really hard to develop a theory that uses the minority data - it feels incredibly like the way materialists think.

Remember what we don't know here:

1) Does intelligence control everything in this reality, or just some aspects? I.e. could we be struggling with stuff that didn't get designed in in the first place?

2) Are we being trained to go and tame some other physical environment, or is Earth the only one?

3) Does looking at painful experiences look different from a vastly different perspective? One hint might be childbirth, which is, I understand, seriously painful, and yet most women do not seem fearful about giving birth - even after a previous unpleasant experience.

4) Does the non-physical world need the physical world in some way - perhaps it can't just abandon the physical with all its problems?

Before everyone explodes with indignation and sends me even more links about torture, rape, diseases of various sorts, I wish they would think about these questions!

David
 
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The idea of God intentionally splitting itself into parts in order to gather experience is also a concept discussed in Kabbalah, with the idea that the Ein Sof split itself into various emanations, each becoming more and more dense, and ultimately ending in Malkuth -- the physical world. However, in Kabbalah, physical life is not just a "fun ride" attempted out of boredom (although sometimes I have read that God split out of "loneliness"). Rather, it's a learning/evolutionary/reparation process -- a journey back towards wholeness, which includes a free will choice to follow a Left Handed (dark side) path to get there. There is also the idea of the Qliphoth -- the shadow side of the Tree of Life, populated by demonic/negative energies that are the shadow sides of the "positive" Sephirah. I haven't read much about the shadow side of the Tree of Life, but found this blogsite that discusses it. I'll link now in case anyone is interested in reviewing, although I haven't reviewed it in detail myself yet.

http://keepersoftherealms.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_27.html

I also agree that the two NDE stories I linked to are variations and/or contradictions to many of the more typically reported NDE's. This has always been one of my problems with NDE accounts -- the sheer variety of experiences, which to me has always suggested either individual brain malfunctions or an extremely varied (but perhaps real) afterlife experience that seems to be largely tailored to the individual NDE'rs religious (or lack thereof) beliefs/preconceived notions of the afterlife/cultural overlays. The problem of this incongruence is described pretty well in this article:

http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog...ngruence-inconsistency-near-death-experiences

I'm not completely willing to dismiss all NDE's as deceptions/lies or "products of the brain" (as the article above suggests) quite yet -- but the variety of often contradictory experiences certainly does make them less persuasive or useful to me when trying to formulate a satisfactory "nature of reality" theory -- even when some of the NDE accounts are stunningly detailed.

However, perhaps we can analyze the first NDE account (I'll call it "Aaron's theory," after the NDE'r -- for now) on its own merits as a theory of reality, using your data points? In some ways, I see Aaron's theory as somewhat similar to dpdownsouth's Process theory. And Aaron's theory does at least address the #1 data point (evil), in that it posits an amoral -- and not wholly in control -- creator energy/force that appears unconcerned with morality/moral judgments and far more interested in "learning" everything -- almost like a giant AI computer soaking up knowledge. In fact, in this theory, everything IS part of the creation, so we are all creating this reality -- with no ultimate benevolent outcome guaranteed or even desired by the original creative force. It just is what it is.

Great stuff AryaS, thank you for the great research work you are doing looking at NDE reports to see if they contain any reference to reasons for the existence of evil (and as the excellent article you linked to above usefully points out, such explanation should not be limited only to human evil but "natural evil", too i.e. the inherent functioning of the natural world which requires constant killing, destruction, pain and death; freewill is a poor explanation of human evil per se, but it loses any value whatsoever in trying to explain why the material world should function as cruelly as it does).

Indeed within the framework you descrive above (I quote: "it posits an amoral -- and not wholly in control -- creator energy/force that appears unconcerned with morality/moral judgments and far more interested in "learning" everything -- almost like a giant AI computer soaking up knowledge") the concept of "learning" is equivalent to mere experience, in the sense that it would not be learning in order to achieve in practice (i.e., in the material world) a result that it already has in mind (which is what NDE'rs who believe in "life as a school" imply: that we, as individual souls, have to go back to the material world and live again and again until we get it 100% right - pretty far-fetched as we know, and moreover this would only be possible for human beings, and those lucky enough to be born with the potential to do so, so what would be the point of the suffering of all other sentient beings? But this is just to underline what their optimistic view of thing would imply logically).

On the other hand, "learning" in this framework means "experiencing" what this creator force is potentially able to do ("discovering itself", rather than learning something in order to implement a pre-existing abstract plan), when manifesting in the material world. Now of course one can be optimistic and say that as it discovers itself, it differentiates between good and bad, and it strives towards goodness (as perhaps dpdownsouth was implying), but that is debatable because, for instance, even if the whole of mankind was transformed into a wonderful loving utopia I don't see how this in itself could change the very functioning of the natural, material world (unless one postulates that each and every animal, including bacteria, gets a life review where they are encouraged to change their nature and not kill other forms of life - I wonder if volcanos and earthquakes get life reviews, too, because they also cause plenty of death and destruction, and not only of human beings obviously).

I think the optimistic, developmental view of things is very anthropocentric, as if the material world was all about us.

This "a-moral force" of course has been posited by lots of people, and it's even become mainstream via the Star Wars saga. It's a never-ending saga about the constant shifting balance between the light and the dark side of the Force. And here is where the question of "taste" becomes relevant: for some ours is a wonderful saga, it's great that there is a dark force to fight against, that way there is something to do and you can be a hero etc (people like David's friends he referred to would think it's supercool). OK, there's drama and death but it's preferable to non-existence. As most of you will probably know already, Star Wars was based on the ideas of Joseph Campbell, who embraced the "hero's journey" and notoriously said (repeatedly) "Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."
Also "JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts. And that wonderful Irish saying, you know, “Is this a private fight, or can anybody get into it?” This is the way life is, and the hero is the one who can participate in it decently, in the way of nature, not in the way of personal rancor, revenge or anything of the kind. " "I think it’s a really childish attitude, to say “no” to life with all its pain, you know, to say this is something that should not have been.
Schopenhauer, in one of his marvelous chapters, I think it’s in The World as Will and Idea, says: “Life is something that should not have been. It is in its very essence and character, a terrible thing to consider, this business of living by killing and eating.” I mean, it’s in sin in terms of all ethical judgments all the time."
https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-2-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-message-of-the-myth/

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So, I think it boils down to a question of taste - you either think the material world is an exilharating ride despite the suffering or you think the violence and suffering are part of a cosmic game that you don't find funny at all. This is not about evidence, because the evidence is all there. It's our shared experience of this world. Even if it were a dream, for some of us it would be an unacceptable nightmare that we wish we hadn't had, and that will make us sad and will make us wonder why we had to experience such a disturbing vision in the first place, whence it came and why, for others it was just something of little importance, something to be forgotten quickly as they turn to the next 'cool' thing to do.

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Now of course this is only ONE possibility - that we are already somehow the pure expressions of Ultimate reality, and it's necessarily a mix of black and white, you can't have it any other way. But we could simply be in a little pocket of reality, created by a being/beings who are not omnipotent (they just used preexisting matter to start a process which they cannot entirely control), and hence are NOT Ultimate reality, although they are vastly more powerful than we are, and this planet may indeed be their experiment, or their "reality show" where they occasionally may indulge in "interfering" with some of us (hence the huge variety of incompatible 'spiritual experiences', and I'm not referring just to NDEs).

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Other important points that I think have been neglected so far in this discussion:

1) if we are supposed to learn something specific (i.e., how to be better human beings, supposing this means the same thing to all people and in all cultures, which I strongly doubt, so we would definitely need to get lots more details about what that means in order to 'get it right'), why are we not told this explicitly and in a way that we are 100% sure about what we are supposed to do when we are born, instead of having to go through the process of working this out over and over again in each life?

2) Why the need to erase the memory of previous lives, AND especially of the (supposed) life review, if what we learnt and acknowledged during it was crucial and we are being sent back to "make it right"?

3) Again (and I have not read a proper response to this yet), if all is perfect love in the realm we go to after we die, according to NDEs, why is this material world so different?

4) Why is it that we should even be consulted about coming back (as at least some NDErs purport), if we are just the expression of a huge consciousness? Who is boss? How can there be a difference of opinion between It/other beings which would in any case be other expressions of it and us, its 'splinters'?

There's LOTS in NDEs that makes no sense, frankly. But I can see how lots of people find consolation in them (it's 'all about love', and it's going to be OK, and we don't really die etc etc) so that they prefer to take the approach that "we can't understand, but it might all make sense from another perspective and it must be somehow about love because lots of NDEs say so" (despite the dozens of inconsistencies and the lack of overall logic, both in practical and ethical terms).

No time to write more now but will simply say that, due to lack of time (and energy...) I will selfishly refrain from addressing points that I consider obvious or, frankly, extremely marginal in terms of human experience (like the preference for nightmares as a way to "learn" things - especially since nobody here has provided a clear explanation of why we should be learning something in an unpleasant way in the first place, given that we allegedly come from a place of perfection and love, which many NDEs refer to as "home". How come such loving source - if there is only ONE loving source- had to design such a cruel "bootcamp" for entities which are just an expression of itself, and who therefore should logically be wonderfully loving 'splinters' of such a perfect being in the first place?).
 
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Along these lines, Dpdownsouth, I really do find your theory fascinating, but am wondering if you might be willing to speak more to data point #1 (the existence of evil in the fullest metaphysical/spiritual sense).
Well I am very impressed by the evidence for Intelligent Design (though I don't think that supports the idea of a Christian God). Biology based on ID seems to demonstrate vast intelligent applied to designing biological life, but not infinite intelligence - things definitely go wrong!

Infinite intelligence wouldn't need to create umpteen different body plans in the Cambrian, only to discard most of them. This act has the feel of trial and error to me!

One sort of suffering - biological problems like viruses etc can be explained by the design being good but not perfect.

Assuming something like the filter model for the mind/brain interface, it may well be that a few people have a brain anomaly that prevents them empathising with others whom they hurt. Psychopaths may be extremely evil because they never feel the cruelty they create - analogous in a way to a blind person who causes injury to someone by mistake. Some people even claim to have found a brain abnormality in such people. Maybe this is also a product of the finite amount of intelligence of ID?

Focussing on sin and suffering has an awfully Christian feel to it - we live in an ex-Christian culture and it is hard not to think that way - but I think we should make the effort.

David
 
I would remind everyone that the LAS theory is based on most of the NDE data and most of the deathbed visions data. To me, it is really hard to develop a theory that uses the minority data - it feels incredibly like the way materialists think.

Well, as an admitted "conspiracy theorist," I am often questioning the mainstream/majority views on things -- e.g., vaccine safety, GMOs, false flags, official history, mainstream science, etc. -- and looking for the narrative that makes the most sense, given all the data available, and taking into consideration any clearly biased agendas (i.e. cui bono?). So even if the "majority" of NDE reports follow the LAS theory -- to me, I can discard at least some of them for all of the reasons already discussed in this thread (i.e., the possibility of scary/negative NDE's being less reported, the possibility of lying/deception by the NDE'rs (and I've dismissed quite a few NDE stories on this basis, based on how overtly religious/contrived the alleged experience seemed to be), the possibility of deception by higher level beings, and the problem of not addressing the #1 data point -- the existence of severe evil here and why it would be necessary at all, presuming an ultimately benevolent creator/creators).

Remember what we don't know here:

1) Does intelligence control everything in this reality, or just some aspects? I.e. could we be struggling with stuff that didn't get designed in in the first place?

2) Are we being trained to go and tame some other physical environment, or is Earth the only one?

3) Does looking at painful experiences look different from a vastly different perspective? One hint might be childbirth, which is, I understand, seriously painful, and yet most women do not seem fearful about giving birth - even after a previous unpleasant experience.

4) Does the non-physical world need the physical world in some way - perhaps it can't just abandon the physical with all its problems?

Some good questions. But David, some of these are far better answered by the "minority" NDE's I linked to above....and they certainly do not have any "christian bias"....so why wouldn't you be willing to develop (or consider) a theory of reality based on a "minority NDE" that seems far more capable of answering some of the tougher questions?
 
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