I was posting something about the Todd Burpo evangelical Christian NDE account in the thread New Movie - Heaven Is For Real.
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threads/new-movie-heaven-is-for-real.198/#post-2926
This raises a larger question for me about comparing the validity of NDE accounts - their truth value if you will, and not based on the did-they-have-an-hallucination perspective, or were-they-really-clinical-dead-when-they-had-this-experience? perspective either, which may have no bearing on what the NDE account is like anyway, or its ontological status (a soul/consciousness may decided to upchuck the body, or partially separate from it, whether there's actual physical harm, damage or not).
When I hear NDE accounts like Burpo's, that I personally find implausible, it obviously doesn't mean my biases make the ontological truth beyond the NDE experience itself not valid. (Although in a case like the Burpo one, as you can read in that thread, there are many other reasons other for being skeptical of it.)
On the topic of OBEs, Tyler wrote this:
This seems to fit in in some way with the intuitive framework I've come to for the time being for "evaluating" NDE accounts. Some NDE accounts, like Nanci Danison's for example, where she experiences a sort of meta-NDE or "lucid NDE" (!), possibly because of previous soul growth (she learned she was a light being who had finished all her incarnations and had decided to incarnate once more because a volunteer was needed to do a mission), demonstrate that the out-of-body consciousness can "manifest" their reality: the tunnel, for example.
My intuition is therefore that many NDEs (and perhaps this varies at different stages within the same NDE) are a) indicative of an early body-separation process where the soul/consciousness is still in transition from separating (and expanding) from the host body (and perhaps there influenced by the human animal's fear to produce the hellish/frightening experiences) and prone to unconsciously "manifest" features or an emotional tone that has the high likelihood of re-creating psychodynamic or cultural realities [EDIT: so that this arena of consciousness perhaps would correspond to the "lower level astral planes" referred to by Tyler];
while other are b) indicative of a further-along process, where the soul/consciousness is encountering astral realms, thought-planes created by others (that they perhaps co-create), and may perhaps even go beyond those.
Are these cheap metaphysical speculation to explain away perplexing differences among NDE accounts? Possibly. Are they therefore wrong? I don't think so - it would need to be argued.
Do others have opinions about this, or about their own frameworks to compare and evaluate NDEs? And one of the questions that's implied here is: obviously they are all extremely (and potentially equally) meaningful to the experiencer, and (equal) spiritual experiences. The question is whether they are all ontologically "equal", or whether some point to a higher level of reality that explains or frames the lower ones.
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threads/new-movie-heaven-is-for-real.198/#post-2926
This raises a larger question for me about comparing the validity of NDE accounts - their truth value if you will, and not based on the did-they-have-an-hallucination perspective, or were-they-really-clinical-dead-when-they-had-this-experience? perspective either, which may have no bearing on what the NDE account is like anyway, or its ontological status (a soul/consciousness may decided to upchuck the body, or partially separate from it, whether there's actual physical harm, damage or not).
When I hear NDE accounts like Burpo's, that I personally find implausible, it obviously doesn't mean my biases make the ontological truth beyond the NDE experience itself not valid. (Although in a case like the Burpo one, as you can read in that thread, there are many other reasons other for being skeptical of it.)
On the topic of OBEs, Tyler wrote this:
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threads/ndes-and-obes-dreams-are-the-key.147/page-7#post-2797There are two initiations into the OBE, spontaneous and self-generated. The latter can be intimately controlled, the former is the typical OBE phase of the NDE. Neither are dreams.
Although there is a [astral] world of difference between the two, the reason that there are more 'demonic' or hellish or terrifying OBE's in the self-generated ones is that travel in the lowest of the astral planes, those nearest to our physical plane, assures you will meetup with belligerents. The NDE-OBE, if you go by the literature, has a very small % of "hellish" experiences which would by astral definition mean that the lowest realms are bypassed.
Why this is, pure conjecture, but the answer may lie in the purpose of the NDE and the purpose of the self-initiated OBE-astral. The former being a more intentional, entry-level, spiritual teaching tool, the realization or reaffirmation of the survival of consciousness; in the latter the experient most often is well versed in the survival evidence. The OBE-astral is more informative, higher education if you will, and spiritually progressive and allow the OBEr to control or at least participate in the selection of what he is to learn.
This seems to fit in in some way with the intuitive framework I've come to for the time being for "evaluating" NDE accounts. Some NDE accounts, like Nanci Danison's for example, where she experiences a sort of meta-NDE or "lucid NDE" (!), possibly because of previous soul growth (she learned she was a light being who had finished all her incarnations and had decided to incarnate once more because a volunteer was needed to do a mission), demonstrate that the out-of-body consciousness can "manifest" their reality: the tunnel, for example.
My intuition is therefore that many NDEs (and perhaps this varies at different stages within the same NDE) are a) indicative of an early body-separation process where the soul/consciousness is still in transition from separating (and expanding) from the host body (and perhaps there influenced by the human animal's fear to produce the hellish/frightening experiences) and prone to unconsciously "manifest" features or an emotional tone that has the high likelihood of re-creating psychodynamic or cultural realities [EDIT: so that this arena of consciousness perhaps would correspond to the "lower level astral planes" referred to by Tyler];
while other are b) indicative of a further-along process, where the soul/consciousness is encountering astral realms, thought-planes created by others (that they perhaps co-create), and may perhaps even go beyond those.
Are these cheap metaphysical speculation to explain away perplexing differences among NDE accounts? Possibly. Are they therefore wrong? I don't think so - it would need to be argued.
Do others have opinions about this, or about their own frameworks to compare and evaluate NDEs? And one of the questions that's implied here is: obviously they are all extremely (and potentially equally) meaningful to the experiencer, and (equal) spiritual experiences. The question is whether they are all ontologically "equal", or whether some point to a higher level of reality that explains or frames the lower ones.
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