Bruce Greyson, Near-Death Experience Pioneer |494|

This is a subject that has been endlessly discussed here on Skeptiko. I think my take on this is that the brain seems to tidy up certain experiences by deleting things (rather like Alex's moderation :)). This is why we usually forget our dreams very quickly after waking up. My partner occasionally has night terrors, and if I ask her about her dream even a few seconds later, she has forgotten!

My hunch is that that mechanism sometimes gets invoked by the brain and it tidies away a newly experienced NDE!

David

I have had what I called Psychic dreams precog to what I believe was contact with a dead friend and two out of bodies, very vivid colorful high def stuff and I remember every part of it
 
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Still listening to your latest show, but I just had to pop on here to say I am so glad you are doing what you are doing Alex. Thank you.
I undoubtedly agree w/ you. It's so important to address these issues for so many people; as a lot of people have noticed, there's a building openness & acceptance of the 'extended consciousness realm.' Skeptiko was a great way for me to stop flirting w/ atheism of the Dawkins type & focus on the data, the evidence that makes NDEs, remote viewing, evidence-based mediumship, and so much more undeniable. Now we just need to think of a way of addressing willful ignorance.in a compassionate but firm way.
 
Great interview! Now this is the type of stuff that's lively and gets my attention. One thing Alex let this guy get away with is this! How come only %20 of people have these??? Everybody else that have them not worthy??? Don't remember??? WTF? When we pass or pass and come back we should all have them you would think?
When I first began practicing Monroe's Gateway Training for OBEs, I was faced w/ the same question: why can't everyone have OBEs? Why do some of us have to learn how? Another phenomenon is the experience of Kali Ma or the Mother. I was told by a devotee that he climbed in a box just like many others had & stayed & tried, but never had the vision, even after several tries, so he lied about seeing her so he could quit. I don't think the Supreme Being plays favorites, but I do think karma & many other factors limit what one can experience. My late uncle got quite angry when I told him that some people appeared to be 'favored by God.' What law says we all have to have the same experience at the same time for it to be valid? I would certainly be quite skeptical of NDEs if everyone had one when they passed, as if it were like taking LSD. Take a drug, hallucinate. Die, see the Absolute. No, I think there are exceptions for a good reason: skepticism is good for everyone, not just scientists. The day I think I have all the answers is the day I stop growing.
 
What impresses me about Dr. Greyson is his line of inquiry regarding the so called mind/brain dichotomy. He doesn't go full blown mystic and say that material doesn't exist, this is all an illusion. and so forth. Also, he doesn't ignore the fact that we actually do have something called a brain, and when it is injured or impaired, it effects our living function. However, he takes this a step further and explores it as something correlated with consciousness that perhaps has a mechanism blocking our interpretation of other dimensions because of the need for survival. This is a very fascinating perspective, and opens the door to so many other questions.
I'd like to ask Greyson about mind as matter, & matter as mind. Li Hongzhi states this as true. He appears to think that consciousness or spirit is beyond mind.
 
Social engineering or just the place we find ourselves, what I will agree on is that we are in the midst of a crypto-religion. The foundational faith of this crypto-religion is that phenomenal consciousness just sort of pops into existence from unconscious physical processes. Ask someone for the epistemology of that and the best they can do is correlation implying causation, they have nothing better to back it up. That's not a reasoned belief, it's a faith.

News just in, the sun comes up in the morning because I put sunblock on.
I see your point, but as Alex says, it has implications for the future of this science. What I experience & hear about over & over is that we'll never have a complete picture using the mind & senses. Full knowledge is accessed in the silence that is unshakeable but ever new. That's a paraphrase from Nisargadatta Maharaj.
 
What if your dreams become more real than waking reality? I experience that phenomenon quite a bit. I have dreams that are so incredibly real, so indelibly vivid, that they make waking life look like repetitious nonsense.
After I had been using Sacred Acoustics for a while, I suddenly became aware that my dreams & the brief episodes I was having when I could finally quiet the mind fully were identical. Does this mean meditation is just learning to dream awake? What else can I expect if I cancel thinking for longer?
 
The day I think I have all the answers is the day I stop growing.
Hi
If only that factual way of thinking was more prevelant on this world
He appears to think that consciousness or spirit is beyond mind.
In my understanding mind that is not based in heart never amounts to more than superficial gibberish and mind trips. I think some people don't fully realise the need for heart but are heart based to some extent of their own accord so their mind focus approaches dont amount to just giberish
Full knowledge is accessed in the silence that is unshakeable but ever new.
Agreed and definitely something i need to work on. I would say though that even inner silence (which is hugely important at times) if not based in heart can turn into just another corruptable mind tool
 
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What if your dreams become more real than waking reality? I experience that phenomenon quite a bit. I have dreams that are so incredibly real, so indelibly vivid, that they make waking life look like repetitious nonsense.
Do they have a theme, or are they just the usual muddle of things we dream about, only more vivid?

David
 
"More real than real" near death experiences, subjects seeing through and passing through walls; flying through space passing galaxies at infinite speeds. Subjects meeting people they knew on earth, long since dead. Some subjects feeling the incomparable pleasure of arriving at and being in the presence of the Creator... and Dinosaur fossils still containing soft tissue and carbon dated to a mere 25-40 thousand years of age... Established science must be quaking in their boots by now... Should we throw in the probability that all Human races had the same original ancestors about fifty thousand years ago...?
I might not be the only one we may add to many, beginning to enthusiastically think, "science is wrong about nearly everything."
 
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Hi
If only that factual way of thinking was more prevelant on this world

In my understanding mind that is not based in heart never amounts to more than superficial gibberish and mind trips. I think some people don't fully realise the need for heart but are heart based to some extent of their own accord so their mind focus approaches dont amount to just giberish

Agreed and definitely something i need to work on. I would say though that even inner silence (which is hugely important at times) if not based in heart can turn into just another corruptable mind tool
The heart element is one of the things that distinguishes Dr. Greyson. In an IANDS address he gave, he kept choking up as he recounted some of the encounters he'd had over the years as an NDE researcher. If we can all keep that kind of emotional connection to the work we do, what a different world this would be.
 
Death grips sucks!
After listening to death grip song i thought to myself that i should think of a hip hop tune that was better and portrayed perseverance in the right way. This tune popped into my head almost straight away and i think it's quite fitting. Haven't heard this in a while. . Turn up that volume :)
 
You are beginning to experience enlightenment, Shane! I can only wish to attain that plateau. However, though dull and boring, fuzzy and mixed up my dreams may be, I'm freed from physical aches and pains. I guess that counts for something...

I don't know if I am beginning to become enlightened, as I have always been this way. If your dreams are freeing you from physical aches and pains, that is great!
 
I'd like to ask Greyson about mind as matter, & matter as mind. Li Hongzhi states this as true. He appears to think that consciousness or spirit is beyond mind.

This could be true, and there could be some kind of stabilizing force that are often interpreted as things such as "the laws of physics." It could be that the greater mind is simply permeating everything, all knowing, and only creating life as a kind of game for itself. This splintering of itself into so many parts could be a kind of self imposed amnesia to make eternity more entertaining.
 
Do they have a theme, or are they just the usual muddle of things we dream about, only more vivid?

David

Sometimes there are themes. Sometimes they foretell situations, other times they are regarding battles of forces people may describe as good and evil. For example, I went on an impromptu adventure to New York in 1999. I was there for a few months, and I could see the Twin Towers from the flat that I was living in, at Park Slope, Brooklyn. One day, I visited these amazing structures and was absolutely spellbound. I laid down between them on a cement bench for about an hour. Granted, I wasn't new to large buildings, as I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but these......WOW, they absolutely dwarfed any building that I had ever witnessed, AND THERE WAS TWO OF THEM!

The next day, I had a terrifying dream that they were absolutely obliterated. I couldn't see how they were destroyed in the dream, but I could see that they were being destroyed. The dream was so incredibly vivid, that when I awoke, I was sure they were gone. However, I looked out the window, and they were still there! Two my surprise, about two years later, the disaster happened!
 
After I had been using Sacred Acoustics for a while, I suddenly became aware that my dreams & the brief episodes I was having when I could finally quiet the mind fully were identical. Does this mean meditation is just learning to dream awake? What else can I expect if I cancel thinking for longer?

For me, thinking is meditation in a flow state. I like that question you are asking about if meditation is learning to dream awake. That is a separation from lucid dreaming, perhaps.
 
The brain/body is the material reflection of the soul.
nice... agreed.

But doesn't this still leaves open question about the connection between Medical Technology like resuscitation and our understanding of the near-death experience.
 
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