Bertha, I've been pondering the problem of evil, which is basically what you pointed to in your post about the recent death of that opera singer and her family, as well as all the other folk who died in the crash over the Alps.
Thanks for your thoughts Michael. My thinking parallels much of your own thought - such as, if this is a training ground, then we cannot be allowed to know really that there is more afterward. Although, there seems to be then a loophole regarding mediumship and after-death communications (of which I suspect I have been the recipient myself of). So I guess one might ask oneself - why the loopholes? If we're not suppose to know, shouldn't it be more airtight? :)
The NDE research does provide some amount of optimistic hope. Far more then 2000 year old biblical stories or going to church each Sunday, or kneeling and bowing down to the ground each afternoon. The death-bed visions work by Barrett, and more recently Osis & Haraldsson
"At the Hour of Death" publication (1977) I have found supportive and relevant. Both classes of phenomena (death-bed visions, NDEs) do reinforce the possibility that (at least in some cases) death may not be this terror filled occurrence, as many accounts describe ineffable feelings of love, or exquisite music, and very often the presence of dead ones the dying either sense or actually appear to perceive - as if greeting them and assisting them with what would obviously be a pretty momentous transition.
A great deal does hinge on the concept that consciousness itself is not as perishable as the every day objects we appear to interact with in what we consider objective reality. Although what is striking, even here, is that these same objects do not have the kind of permanency that our perceptions assume, given what has been established in quantum physics and the nature of sub-atomic particles collapsing upon observation. Or that virtual particles come in and out of existence in the large distances of outer-space. The beggared question here is, from where do these virtual particles come from, and where do they go to?? One could of course, ask the same question for the universe itself. From where did it come from - and where will it go to? And how can time itself have a beginning? And how can time possibly end?
The
problem of suffering to me though is the toughest nut in the universal bag of tricks thrown at us. Yes - there have been all sorts of official answers by organized religion. Yet - I am reminded of a quote:
"But am I bound to feel - can any bribe of personal happiness justify me in feeling - religious enthusiasm for a universe in which even one being may have been summoned into a sentiency destined to inescapable pain?" -FWH Myers
Myers also once wrote to his good friend William James:
"The mystery of the Universe and the indefensibility of human suffering are never far from me." ~Myers
I admit, I often find myself sharing the same feelings as Myers here. Why indeed, is it so necessary for so many to suffer so? If there is indeed this amazing loving reality beyond the one we now find ourselves - why not just remain in existence there? Why even bother with this "earthly" existence? Surely, if consciousness is as expansive, the source of it is so loving - then elements of the reality we now experience here and now, can be echoed elsewhere, but without all the incredible horror and absurdities that we all know are present in this sad - vicious, greed infested world we find ourselves in.
I never bought into the religious idea that we're here to be "tested" and if we fail the test, off to hell we go. That you better be good, or else you will be punished. It just is such kindergarten moral thinking, just as an anthropomorphized God is kindergarten thinking. Our current religions - so many of them set in stone thousands of years ago now - no longer can really fit the mold of what we are today (IMO). Science, if anything has indeed advanced our thought. Human thought has grown. But human spirituality - at least organized spirituality remains rigid, unflinching, dogmatic - about as dogmatic as the Materialists who now fervently advocate their nihilism as if they suddenly have come up with some new, all encompassing truth about the world and ourselves. All I see is more dogmatic fundamentalism
yet again being forced upon the general culture by today's popular materialists.
It clearly is a mystery. Maria Radner and the rest of those poor people on German Wings are now gone forever - at least from the existence you and I know. We too, will follow some day. Frederic Myers even when young, was horrified by the prospect of any living being's possible complete annihilation at death. And how indeed can one love life, love all that there is about life, and not be horrified by the fact it will all just end for yourself, and all those that you have loved - as no more than temporary perishable
things. The Skeptic materialists - the Saganites insist we should be content with this, that there is enough wonder in the universe (never mind all the horror and poverty and pain that is visited on so many souls) that this in itself should be sufficient for a good life. I never could myself believe in that - that how could one love a reality, where as Myers states - even one being is brought into existence for a life of inescapable pain? Where is the meaning there for that individual? Are we to determine meaning as strictly universal, and the individual just a casualty of universal laws that will randomly smash any living thing out of existence whenever it randomly suits it?
So. But thanks for your response. I think these questions about consciousness and death are the reason why I find myself so interested in psi and nde phenomena. They are important questions, and have been asked since the time of the Greeks. And unlike Stephen Hawkings, or Niel deGrasse Tyson - I don't believe philosophy is quite dead yet. Or these pretty important questions have been answered beyond all doubt.
My Best,
Bertha