Question about the afterlife

[Summerlander]

Fair enough. Don't let me stop you. I just want to add that other books are merely someone else's interpretation. One type of experience can be interpreted in so many ways. But I don't blame you for basing your beliefs on what you see, hear and experience in general. After all, John Nash believed that his hallucinations were real for a while.

[Sinera]

Fair enough. Don't let me stop you. I just want to add that other books are merely someone else's interpretation. One type of experience can be interpreted in so many ways. But I don't blame you for basing your beliefs on what you see, hear and experience in general. After all, John Nash believed that his hallucinations were real for a while.

And so now he doesn't and he is right, you think? Who tells you he is now? Whoever he is, he might also be basing assumptions on assumptions, beliefs on beliefs, like all skeptics and R@ndi-followers do.
So you think that you (or any of us) knows what the basis of a "hallucination" or thoughtform in general is. You just take it as a pre-defined notion. That's the mistake. The truth is: we don't. And who tells us that this Mr Nash isn't wrong about his conclusions about "hallucination" (I assume it means = "not real") and everything he experienced has indeed an underlying reality. I think it has. Every thought is "real". Maybe we should even ask us, if hallucination", as some circles (e.g. scientific / psychology mainstream) (pre-)define it, exists at all?
Those "Debunking" rhethoric strategies (and that is what it's all about: it's just a rhethorical exercise) you use here base their "arguments" on definitions that are not clear at all, but everyone forgets about it. So what is a "thought", what is "real", what is consciousness and self-awareness? And what is "delusion / illusion / hallucination"? Or what is the basis and underlying physics / reality structure of the experience? You don't know. We don't know. Not from our perspective here.
So we draw conclusion by our experiences, because that is what remains to do for us as science CANNOT give us an answer, neither can religious dogma. These are personal experiences of ourselves and others (including book authors), then we compare then, then we can indeed "find out" about a possible afterlife if we find consistency - and we do. You should maybe read some more literature about NDEs, reincarnational data (be it by regression or memories of children), APers' findings (e.g. Monroe, Leland, Buhlman, etc.), scientific (!) parapsychological laboratory research, medium (lab!) research etc., and 'believe' less blindly in the unlogical belief-defending explain-way-strategies of the professional scoffers.
Also, as most is indeed on a personal/individual level, it is true that so far we cannot prove a lot scientifically / objectively as objectivity does not work for consciousness - that much is certain. IT is always subjective. We cannot research it this way unless we change epistemological scientific methods, but it looks as if that will not take place in the scientific community so fast.

[CFTraveler]

Guys, guys, let's honor the original spirit of the post, sharing your beliefs or thoughts or theories about the afterlife, and not making this about criticizing or denigrating each others' viewpoints, please and thank you.

[Summerlander]

I agree with CFTraveller. Let's be calm please. And like I said: "One type of experience can be interpreted in so many ways."

I will shed some light on John Nash though. He was a mathematician who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. So, as you can see, his delusions were taking place in his waking state. His hallucinations were later found to be a "defensive/over-imaginative mechanism" stemming from certain events and how they psychologically affected him earlier in life.

He spoke of non-existent characters who seemed to be endangering him and believed that all men who wore red ties were part of a communist conspiracy. Later, his wife admitted him to a mental hospital where he would make a partial recovery and eventually learn to ignore his hallucinations.

There is no reason to believe that his chemical imbalance enabled him to experience another physical reality and more pragmatically, he was dreaming while awake. The actively imagined scenarios were superimposed on his waking world perception and were often fairly irrational. The fact that he believed his hallucinations to be real to begin with actually endangered himself and his family. Whatever the case, he was better off regarding them as unreal and troublesome distractions. From this way of thinking, he was able to get more control and regain a social life where individuals found him interesting and eccentric.

[CFTraveler]

But you're doing it at this moment, Summerlander. When you say "There is no reason to believe that his chemical imbalance enabled him to experience another physical reality and more pragmatically, he was dreaming while awake" what you are really is saying is "John Nash was schizophrenic but was able to function when he changed his belief", inferring that's what others should do. And that's the same as saying 'you should believe x y or z'.

[poème]

I think we have to keep in mind that science (and I’m including human sciences here), although valuable to seek understanding, also has its limits and is not `unbiaised`. The other day, I read on the topic a very interesting passage about science and scientific instruments’ limits in Seth’s Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment -Volume I- page 142 :
`` The instruments will be planned to catch certain camouflages, and since they will be expertly thought out they will perform their function. (…) By certain means, the instruments themselves will transform data from terms that you cannot understand into terms that you can understand. Scientists do this all the time.``
In other words, even carefully designed scientific instruments may not bring us truths beyond doubts, since these tools are designed to focus on small parts of the whole, therefore may be seen as filtering data to serve a subjective purpose (such as verifying a subjective hypothesis). Moreover, this once filtered data will then also be interpreted by scientists who are subjective human beings.

Therefore, in my opinion, it is not because a scientific instrument measures one thing, or a scientist says one thing, that it is to be held as a truth beyond any doubt… Nor should a psychiatrist’s diagnosis, whatever are the tools he may use to measure and evaluate psychological disorders, be held as such a truth…

Science surely is a great mean to explore possibilities but can it establish undeniable truths?
After all, chances are that what we hold true today will be seen otherwise tomorrow…

[jamboh]

Very interesting discussion guys. My 2 cents..

I think a lot of the disagreements boil down to how you classify reality. By what criteria do you say if something really exists or not? How can you say that your experience of reality is more 'real' than the reality experienced by someone 'halluncinting'? How can you say whether or not a dream is an 'illusion'. What tests must an experience pass if it is to be given the status of absolute reality? Until you determine that you can't say for sure what is real and what is not, whose version of the afterlife is real or not.

[Sinera]

I think a lot of the disagreements boil down to how you classify reality. By what criteria do you say if something really exists or not? How can you say that your experience of reality is more 'real' than the reality experienced by someone 'halluncinting'? How can you say whether or not a dream is an 'illusion'. What tests must an experience pass if it is to be given the status of absolute reality? Until you determine that you can't say for sure what is real and what is not, whose version of the afterlife is real or not.

This is also exactly the point I was trying to make further above. I think that we even do not know a lot about what we think is our own reality we experience ourselves in so-called "waking" consciousness.

Just one example that makes you actually 'shiver' comes to my mind which I saw recently. Yes, I am aware that the guy (D. Wilcock) who's giving this talk is a controversial figure with some daring theories and conclusions. However, many facts are drawn from other sources and literature, e.g. from Cleve Backster ('inventor' of the polygraph and plant consciousness researcher) or M. Talbot (Holographic universe) and they are repeatedly reported and witnessed elsewhere.

It shows us that hypnosis is also sth from which we need to re-think what and how we experience this dimension and what we let into our highly filtered, focussed and crystalised awareness about reality, and what many things not. I recommend watching some minutes of this now from where I bookmarked it. There is e.g. mention of a man who is is hypnotised not so see his daugher - which is already astounding, but then he correctly identifies an object (even reads inscriptions) he did not know before only by 'seeing through' his daughter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR-klTa1y54#t=14m16s

Reality is not what it seems.

[Summerlander]

But you're doing it at this moment, Summerlander. When you say "There is no reason to believe that his chemical imbalance enabled him to experience another physical reality and more pragmatically, he was dreaming while awake" what you are really is saying is "John Nash was schizophrenic but was able to function when he changed his belief", inferring that's what others should do. And that's the same as saying 'you should believe x y or z'.

Actually, CFTraveller, it is not the same thing in saying people should believe x, y or z. If you read my post carwfully, you will see that I merely state that for John Nash, it was better for him to regard his condition as unreal and troublesome. This is a fair statement given the fact that throughout his life, it was observable how his perspective and believe affected himself and his family. His initial regard for his hallucinations had no practicality in his life whatsoever and it was harming him and others. This all changed when he put his experiences in a different light. He never got rid of his characters from the other world of conspiracies but he was able to not interact with them and his life improved massively. Fair statement because it was a fact in his case.

[Beekeeper]

CF, I just finished Danison's "Backward Beliefs." I think she has something in common with Newton when she talks about the human as the animal body plus eternal spirit. She mentions that religions are human - often responding to the needs of the animal more than the soul, even if the initial impetus for religion is soul-inspired. I think her idea (well hardly hers really) about the animal and spiritual aspects of the human being reconciles nicely with Newton's description of the spirit needing to integrate with the body-personality/brain chemistry upon incarnation. Newton also says that this can be a real incarnational challenge: to reconcile a personality that is more spiritual with the inclinations of that particular body that may be at odds with the spirit it harbours.

Danison talks about how the more deeply the discarnate soul infiltrates the layers of the afterlife, the more it sheds of its earth-based personality traits. She sites other NDE accounts that see those discarnates that won't leave the grey zone close to the physical. Like Kurt (or was it Monroe?), one experiencer she sites in the book sees a departed alcoholic attempt possession of the body of a man passed out at a bar. The "grey zone" is like the one Monroe passed through where sexually addicted beings were entangled and attempting sex without their physical bodies. She says there are all kinds of people there trying to work out their issues from the pervious life. Now, this made me think of what Kurt experiences when he sees souls working through the various issues of their lives before they're permitted to pass into the next zone. It's been a while since I've read these books but I remember a story about one man he knew (a suicide, I think) who was replaying a basketball game he was involved in as a kid, working through issues of frustration and aggression. There's also the old lady who saw her long-suffering daughter-in-law instead of the facilitator who is actually shepherding her. It also made me remember reading in a Moen book about a megalomaniacal psychiatrist who loved hurting people continuing his cruel psychological games on the other side, probably in this zone.

I think what Newton talks about in his between life books is the process after those initial periods of adjustment, purification and healing when astral and mental elementals, as Kurt calls them, are shed.