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Facebook friend Eric Newhill points me to this article on comedian Tracy Morgan, who survived a car crash and a coma. Morgan says that while comatose he had an NDE.

"Morgan said he 'went to the other side' while he was in his coma and learned that his time on Earth was not quite up.

"'This is not something I'm making up,' Morgan said. 'Do you know what God said to me? He said, "Your room ain't ready. I still got something for you to do."'"

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/28/entertainment/tracy-morgan-coma-feat/index.html

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  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “I mean looking at reincarnation cases karma doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it”
    Saj, I am no expert on this, but my understanding is that “karma” is a severely misunderstood concept in the west. From what I can tell, karma is merely the accumulation of habits. Being good at a musical instrument, for example, would be “karma” of a sort. The Buddhists believe that this “karma,” or the accumulation of habits, is not fully lost at death. This includes bad habits, so those can carry over to the next life and cause you pain and suffering. In the west, we’ve interpreted this within our Abrahamic religions’ frameworks, and regard it as some form of punishment from a moral authority. This is not at all the case and it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding.
    Of course, it could be I who has the misunderstanding, so if anyone knows better than me, please correct me.

    Reply
  2. Matt Rouge Avatar
    Matt Rouge

    Anonymous,
    I think you are correct. “Karma” in Sanskrit simply means “action.”
    I think our bad actions end up being things that are *with us* and that we need to work through. There is no need to punish us for them.

    Reply
  3. Matt Rouge Avatar
    Matt Rouge

    Bruce wrote,
    ||do you agree with me that plants are conscious, and live for themselves as well for others? That they’re here to experience reality as only a plant can, not merely placed here for the benefit of humans?||
    I’m all up for a New Age interpretation of plants. It’s seems they have life force and a kind of intentionality. Further, in perhaps the broadest sense, they have consciousness (insofar as everything does, right?).
    But they have no nerves, no brains, no sense organs, and so on. In what way do you feel that they are conscious?

    Reply
  4. Art Avatar
    Art

    \\”There’s a difference between life being “easy” and, say, children forced into prostitution or slavery. Seems unlikely many of these victims will ever even hear about NDEs?” – saj”//
    ——————–
    They would learn what it means and how it feels to be separate which is something that can’t be learned in heaven, about time and space, what it’s like to be embodied and control that body and the parameters of the body, and live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe. The exact same thing every soul learns.
    The soul’s lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is holistically imprinted with what it needs to learn regardless of who we are, or where we live, or what we believe.
    If you had read thousands of NDEs like I have you would find that many near death experiencers describe the other side as a place where time and space don’t exist, where the feelings of oneness and connectedness are infinite and overwhelming, where they felt like they were one with the Universe or they were the Universe, or where they had “all knowledge”, they had 360 degree vision, more colors than normal, more real than here, communicated telepathically, etc.
    Dr. Craig Hogan made the statement in New Scientist online magazine in 2010 that there is a certain inherent fuzziness or blurriness in a holographic projection. We are living in a holographic projection and that is why near death experiencers described the “other side” or heaven as being more real than normal. The fuzziness or blurriness of our Universe wouldn’t exist in heaven because it is the original holographic film that our Universe is a projection from.
    And by the way I have also read NDEs that said they went into a hall of knowledge or learning (library) and it seemed to them that the building itself was “made of knowledge” which fits right in with quantum physics when it says it takes consciousness to collapse the quantum wave into a particle.
    All things that are explainable if one were living in or on a piece of holographic film. Read Michael Talbot’s online essay “The Universe as a Hologram.”
    http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html

    Reply
  5. Julie Baxter Avatar
    Julie Baxter

    @Amos: your poem was/is probably far more insightful than you imagined at the time. There’s a reassuring stability about the presence of a healthy, mature tree; I love them.
    There are many trees in the grounds of my home – some of them planted by me over thirty years ago. It’s been a joy to watch them grow and to see them bursting with new life each Springtime. I don’t talk to them – and I certainly don’t hug them – but I can understand why some people do. 🙂

    Reply
  6. Saj Patel Avatar
    Saj Patel

    Fair point Anonymous though from my own experience many Hindus do see karma as largely punitive or at the least very restrictive (this is how I saw it when being raised but admittedly Hinduism exists as a plurality).
    Karma, if I’m remembering my childhood lessons correctly, might also be seen as attachment to this life. I can see reincarnation like pressing continue after losing a video game too soon. In fact this seems to be what happens when reincarnation (it true) arises from suffering a violent death.
    This echoes the idea that this life is a simulation of sorts, not just functionally in the sense of Mind and (Game) World but by deliberate design. Which returns us to the question of why souls bother to plug in.
    Reminds me of an oft repeated line from one of my favorite comics, Grant Morrison’s Invisibles:
    “You’ve become lost in a Game disguised as Everything. Try to remember.”

    Reply
  7. Lawrence B Avatar
    Lawrence B

    A partial solution to the conundrum I and Saj have both described occurred to me when walking along the street yesterday….
    For my part at least my complaint that we don’t recall our purpose and don’t remember where we came from is predicated, I now realise, on something which isn’t actually part of most belief systems…the idea of a pre-birth existence. This only really applies where the dominant belief is in reincarnation (and even that needn’t imply going anywhere between lives).
    So on reflection let’s suppose a different scenario – that for most people this is our first and possibly only earthly life. That our “soul”, our consciousness is indeed a product of the physical brain,but that it none the less survives death in some dream like realm of collective consciouness we call the afterlife. We therefore don’t recall our purpose because we were never previously in the other place to be set one.
    Then we die. We go “there”. We have the famous life review. And then, and only then do some people – perhaps voluntarily, perhaps not – return for another go at it. People whose lives were cut short or who morally fell short, want to take summer school in effect, repeat a year, retake teh exam they had been unprepared for. In other words reincarnation is a minority sport.
    The vast bulk of humanity however started their existence as conscious beings here upon the earth – they weren’t sent here – and do indeed progress to that other, “better” place where their very first task is to decide whether they’re ready for it now they’ve had a chance to review the situation.

    Reply
  8. Amos Oliver Doyle Avatar
    Amos Oliver Doyle

    Julie,
    I think as a teenager I was toying with ideas of reincarnation, that is, reuse of the old to make the new as the last two lines of the above poem might suggest. As I got closer to a belief in reincarnation, I wrote the following, rather simplistic poem.
    J’ever think while taking out nails
    Of some old thing that’s worn,
    That he who drove those nails in there
    Was dead ‘fore you were born.
    What strange communion you two share
    As fingertips entwine.
    A handshake ‘cross a span of years,
    His handiwork—now mine.
    Or could it be your own firm hand
    Perhaps once feebly grown,
    And here again arrayed anew
    Twice travels, now, your own.
    And did you ever guess that what’s grown old
    After many years and’s worn.
    With a coat that’s new a nail or two,
    You’ll find it’s been twice born.
    -AOD

    Reply
  9. Amos Oliver Doyle Avatar
    Amos Oliver Doyle

    Julie, I swear! This is the last one.
    (Sorry everybody but I couldn’t control myself.)
    We’re all made up of rocks and clay.
    The crystalline components play
    Important parts in every way
    Our bodies work from day to day.
    You add some water to these stones
    And poof! you’ve got some blood and bones.
    There’s nothing to it. You can see.
    It all ends up as you and me.
    And when the rain dissolves us fools,
    The elemental molecules
    Return again and find their way
    Into some other rocks and clay,
    To start the cycle once anew
    Into another me and you.
    So all is rock and all is clay.
    And life is but a novel way
    In which the mud and rocks and stones
    Can dance around on calcium bones.
    A Brownian movement from the start
    But now a tango of a heart.
    A clever guise, a masquerade?
    A regal ball? A big charade.
    -AOD

    Reply
  10. Dammerung Avatar
    Dammerung

    I’m also partial to the “larval gods” explanation. It seems obvious to me that I haven’t simply sat down and invented all the various phenomeneal content of my life, nor could I, with any amount of time and power at my disposal. But as we ascend through the tiers of bodily form, becoming more and more conscious with each successive embodiment, it gives us raw material from which we can eventually create entire worlds, by ourselves or with others. I think reality is like an onion with an infinite number of skins infinitely growing in an infinite number of different directions.
    Mahayana Buddhism presents a very convincing topography of consciousness. In their cosmology, the next level above human branches out into two major families of possibility, the deva and the asura. They’re essentially the same species (they sometimes fight with one another but they also intermarry) but are dominated by different passions.

    Reply
  11. Saj Patel Avatar
    Saj Patel

    Lawrence: But what exactly are we learning here, assuming there’s an afterlife to prepare for?
    It would seem the disparity in the “lessons” suggests, at the least, that a large majority aren’t getting much out of the program or a small minority are getting screwed over.
    Weiss suggests that in the Vital and Mental worlds above the material distance becomes more about mental state than physical separation. I could see a “nation” of blissfully unaware souls enjoy a grand afterlife akin to the Lotus Eaters Odysseus encounters while everyone else is subject not necessarily to horrors but just the usual mix of joy and suffering in life we have here.

    Reply
  12. Kathleen Avatar
    Kathleen

    “The vast bulk of humanity however started their existence as conscious beings here upon the earth – they weren’t sent here – and do indeed progress to that other, “better” place…”
    Lawrence, this is what Seth seemed to imply. It’s a few years since I read Jane Roberts’ books, but that’s what he/she seemed to say. We start as conscious beings – all of us, animals, dinosaurs, etc. – die and reincarnate at will.
    Those are wonderful books by the way, I swear, reading them, I felt like I was going to go into a trance, they are so soothing to me. As are trees too of course.

    Reply
  13. Art Avatar
    Art

    \\Lawrence: “But what exactly are we learning here, assuming there’s an afterlife to prepare for?”//
    I thought I all ready covered that? We simply learn here the things that can’t be learned in heaven. It has to do with the difference between the physics of heaven (as described by near death experiencers) and the physics of where we are now. They are very different.
    The physics of heaven is the physics of holographic film as described by Michael Talbot in his book “The Holographic Universe” and the physics that we experience here is the physics of the holographic projection.
    http://www.nature.com/news/simulations-back-up-theory-that-universe-is-a-hologram-1.14328
    We use what we learn here in heaven to create whatever we wish to create. Before pure consciousness can create something it first has to learn a few things, what it means and how it feels to be separate, what time and space look and feel like, what it feels like to be embodied or have a body and control that body and the parameters of that body, what it’s like to live in a universe where there are three dimensions and time only moves one way.
    These are all things that are quite different in heaven. In heaven time is flexible and you can move anywhere you want to because in holographic film all the information is spread throughout the entire piece of film. Time and space on holographic film doesn’t really exist, at least not in the same way it does here.
    Life has to be the way it is because it has to evoke enough emotion so that it imprints on the soul (and the soul remembers) the things it came here to learn. Enough to overcome those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness in heaven. Otherwise the soul wouldn’t know or understand what it means and how it feels to be separate.
    Emotion and memory are linked. If we knew that there was an afterlife and that this side was really just an illusion or holographic projection we might not feel enough emotion to remember the lessons we experience here.
    The soul’s lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is holistically imprinted with what it needs to learn whether it wants to or not. It doesn’t matter who we are or where we live or what we believe. Just by going through life the soul learns what it came here to learn.
    We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. After our physical body wears out the soul simply transitions to the other side or the place we call heaven. It maintains it’s sense of uniqueness since it has experienced so much separation here.

    Reply
  14. Bruce Siegel Avatar
    Bruce Siegel

    Matt said:
    “But they have no nerves, no brains, no sense organs, and so on. In what way do you feel that [plants] are conscious?
    Thanks for the question, Matt!
    One thing I’m certain of is that human beings can suddenly find themselves within the consciousness of other living entities, experiencing what they experience, feeling what they feel, and knowing what they know.
    This quote from Kathleen Raine, posted earlier by Saj, is an example:
    “I found that I was no longer looking at it, but was it; a distinct, indescribable, but in no way vague, still less emotional, shift of consciousness into the plant itself. Or rather I and the plant were one and indistinguishable; as if the plant were a part of my consciousness. I dared scarcely to breathe, held in a kind of fine attention in which I could sense the very flow of life in the cells. I was not perceiving the flower but living it. I was aware of the life of the plant as a slow flow or circulation of a vital current of liquid light of the utmost purity.”
    I’ve read numerous such accounts, and some of them are backed up by veridical evidence, in the sense that these people may gain insights into plant or animal behavior that’s totally new and surprising to them, but which they later verify as accurate.
    And the point is, they will sometimes describe the experience as ecstatic. In merging with them in this way, they learn that these forms of life do indeed experience pleasure.
    Wish I had time to search out some examples!
    (I’m confused as to what Raine means by “in no way vague, still less emotional.” But she may indeed be suggesting that the consciousness of the plant was characterized by a degree of emotion. What do you think?)

    Reply
  15. FDRLincoln Avatar
    FDRLincoln

    Well this isn’t so theoretical to me now. Last night my sister called to inform me that my mother had suddenly died. She was 77, not young obviously, but in good health for her age. My sister went to a movie and when she came back last night my mom was lying in bed, dead.
    My mother was a firm believer in an afterlife. She had worked in a hospital with dying patients for 30 years and had witnessed a large variety of phenomenon which led her to conclude that consciousness survives physical death in a recognizable form.
    She passed easily and quickly and suddenly by all available evidence.

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  16. Juan Avatar
    Juan

    “Actually I’ve always had a problem with the “its not your time, you have to go back” element of these accounts.”
    Maybe these phrases are said when the subject is expected to be recovered. I do not see any problem.

    Reply
  17. Amos Oliver Doyle Avatar
    Amos Oliver Doyle

    FDRLincoln,
    Helen Keller, whom you may know was blind and deaf, was reported to have said about death that “When I die I shall simply step from one room into another. The only difference will be that in that room I shall be able to see and hear.”
    You have my condolences on the death of your mother. – AOD

    Reply
  18. no one Avatar
    no one

    FDRLincoln, I am very sorry to hear of your sudden and unexpected loss of your mother. You have my sympathy and condolences.

    Reply
  19. Michael Prescott Avatar
    Michael Prescott

    My sympathies to you and your family, FDR.

    Reply
  20. Julie Baxter Avatar
    Julie Baxter

    FDRLincoln writes ” She passed easily and quickly and suddenly by all available evidence.”
    What a blessing! My maternal grandmother passed under very similar circumstances. She wasn’t afraid of death and, I believe, chose her time to go. Like your mother, she was accepting, in control and hadn’t had to suffer debilitating illness beforehand. That understanding gave great comfort to us, I hope it does to you too.

    Reply
  21. Julie Baxter Avatar
    Julie Baxter

    @Amos: More Wordsworth:
    “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
    The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
    And cometh from afar:
    Not in entire forgetfulness,
    And not in utter nakedness,
    But trailing clouds of glory do we come”

    Reply
  22. Amos Oliver Doyle Avatar
    Amos Oliver Doyle

    Yes Julie, that is one of my favorite poems. I believe that I posted part of it somewhere on this blog a year or two ago. – AOD

    Reply
  23. Lawrence B Avatar
    Lawrence B

    FDRLincoln : your mother’s death is the kind we’d all wish for ourselves and, if we thought about it long enough, our loved ones.. at the end of a relatively long run and without the anxiety or distress of illness and awareness of death’s approach.
    People often lament of sudden deaths that “I never had time to say goodbye” but I often wonder if they’ve thought it through. Because saying goodbye also means confirming to the dying that death is on his way. News few of us would want to receive ourselves. And what’s to be gained? Either the dead live on and know all we felt and thought for them…or they don’t and are now incapable of sorrow or regret.
    Given the nature of this blog and the fact you posted the news here may I broach the obvious subject..was her passing accompanied by anything you now deem paranormal or strange? I’ve been anticipating my own mother’s passing for several years now (she’s approaching 88 and seemingly indestructible) and am always fantasising when the day comes there’ll be something..the crisis apparition, the death bed vision, the dream conversation..yet know in reality these are surely experienced by very few, and so some other part of me wonders whether their absence will shatter my relative certainty about all this stuff.

    Reply
  24. FDRLincoln Avatar
    FDRLincoln

    Thank you everyone. My sister is taking it quite hard…she found the body and did CPR until the paramedics arrived but it was far too late.
    My father lingered with a serious illness in a nursing home for 13 years until he passed. My mother’s death was quite the opposite and a great blessing in contrast. I hope I follow in her path someday.

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  25. Julie Baxter Avatar
    Julie Baxter

    @Amos: Meant to add:
    “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
    Shades of the prison-house begin to close
    Upon the growing Boy,
    But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
    He sees it in his joy;
    The Youth, who daily farther from the east
    Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
    And by the vision splendid
    Is on his way attended;
    At length the Man perceives it die away,
    And fade into the light of common day.”
    William Wordsworth

    Reply
  26. FDRLincoln Avatar
    FDRLincoln

    No apparitions or manifestations so far.
    HOWEVER, there was a very odd synchronicity BEFORE she died.
    I was supposed to attend a major business conference this week. However, last Friday, I cancelled the trip. Why? I didn’t know. I just didn’t feel like I should leave home.
    This past Sunday, I took my car to get new tires. Why? I didn’t know. I didn’t really need new tires. The old ones were somewhat worn but driveable. Or so I thought. Turns out one of the tires was close to failure/blowout.
    There had also been an odd noise coming from the left wheel recently. Turns out that was a bad wheel bearing.
    Took the car out on the highway Monday morning. Drove beautifully, like new. Even the gas mileage was better than in the recent past.
    Then a few hours later I got the call about mom’s death and had to jump in the car and drive 300 miles with no warning.
    So…if I had not cancelled the business trip, I would have been on the other side of the country when the news came and unable to get back quickly. If I had not taken the car in Sunday for repairs, I might have had a blowout or wheel bearing failure on the way.
    It is interesting that when my dad passed in 2006, we had MANY manifestations…including objects moved, strange electrical malfunctions, and voice manifestations heard simultaneously by multiple witnesses.
    If I hear or see something from mom, that’s cool. If I don’t, that’s cool too.

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  27. Matt Rouge Avatar
    Matt Rouge

    FDRLincoln,
    My condolences. It sounds like she had a very peaceful passing. May your family be blessed to get through the holidays with happy memories of her.

    Reply
  28. Adeimantus Avatar
    Adeimantus

    This concept of incarnation on the Earth as a learning environment is a toughie, isn’t it? Lawrence’s objections are valid and I don’t think any of us have adequately addressed it, notwithstanding Art’s articulation of the explanation widely given by the spirit world: “learn to love”, “learn to experience loss, pain, sadness that cannot be experienced in the spirit world”, “learn lessons that only the physical life can bring” etc. It all seems a highly convoluted way for souls to “learn lessons”, and we are led in circles too: what about those people who appear to learn nothing from life? This apparent waste of time cannot be blamed on the soul itself, surely, since we can speculate that this soul has wasted its time due purely to its ignorance of its learning opportunities. An uneducated soul, or one conditioned by religious upbringing, might learn nothing of great value in a whole lifetime, that could not have been learned in the spirit dimension.
    Perhaps, it might be said, we are here to “manifest our creativity”. As divine sparks with an inherent urge to be creative, the physical world affords us that opportunity (discovering fire, electricity, inventing devices, devising new ways of living, and so on). However, such creativity appears to be for a relatively small bunch of souls, whilst the rest of us sit back and enjoy the fruits, and create little more than our own comfort zone.
    All the spiritually uplifting concepts that might be proffered – learning to love, to serve, to create, to endure, and so on – are hard to square with the stereotype of the uneducated waster who spends his life on welfare scratching his balls, or the guy on his deathbed who has learnt all the wrong lessons, be they materialist or religious in nature. If I was that person’s spiritual guide, watching out for him and encouraging him spiritually from afar, for four score years and ten, urging, urging him to learn the right spiritual lessons…I’d think I’d done a lousy job! And that poor soul presumably has to incarnate all over again, perhaps with a better mentor this time!
    However, as an accepter of the afterlife, the message I hear certainly does seem to be based around this learning zone idea, so who am I to question it…I just wish it was elucidated some more; it clearly leaves many of us strangely dissatisfied.

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  29. Julie Baxter Avatar
    Julie Baxter

    @Adeimantus: Perhaps some people are here as a learning experience for others?

    Reply
  30. Art Avatar
    Art

    \\”notwithstanding Art’s articulation of the explanation widely given by the spirit world: “learn to love”, – Adeimantus//
    I never said anything about learning to love. It’s about learning about the physical universe. What it’s like to be separate, what time and space look and feel like, about being in a body and controlling that body, and living in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe. That’s it. It’s not about learning to love one another, or love God, or any of that stuff.
    Love can be experienced and felt on the other side so why do we have to learn it here? We simply learn here the things that can’t be learned in heaven. It’s about the difference between the physics of heaven and experiencing the physics of where we are now.
    \\”what about those people who appear to learn nothing from life?”//
    This lets me know you didn’t understand anything I was talking about. Soul’s learn “holistically” which means that the information was imprinted on the consciousness regardless of whether they wanted to learn or not. The soul’s lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is holistically imprinted with it needs to learn whether we it wants to or not.
    Who we are, where we live, what we believe are all irrelevant. What it means to learn holistically is that the lessons are embedded (mixed in with) just every day living and the soul learns informally what it needs to learn.
    I reiterate, it’s about the difference between the physics of heaven and the physics of where we are now. The physics of heaven is the physics of holographic film which is very different from what we experience here.
    In order to understand it read The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. Also I learned a lot by reading Dr. Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, The Hidden Reality, and Fabric of the Cosmos and also Dr. Fred Alan Wolf’s book The Spiritual Universe.

    Reply
  31. Kathleen Avatar
    Kathleen

    I don’t think it’s about learning or lessons, it’s about making decisions. In horseracing, there’s a popular term among jockeys, “I asked him (the horse) the question.” I think we get asked the question – which way do you want to go? – every day. Our decisions eventually make up who we are and where we’ll go. One of the best books illustrating this is “Uncle Silas” by J.S. LeFanu, who was heavily influenced by Emmanuel Swedenbourg. Even though it’s only a fictional novel, the discourses alluding to Swedenbourg’s teachings explained a lot, at least for me, and are easily understood.
    And FDR, please accept my condolences and sympathy for you and your family during this difficult time.

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  32. Sleepers Avatar
    Sleepers

    I tend to agree with Art. But maybe that’s only because he repeats it over and over (I’m only weary of that style of persuasion because I believe it’s common among evangelicals who simply won’t dare to rationalize beyond their level of ‘truth’). I’m not knocking it and think he does it because he truly believes that answer is the correct one for many of the issues we discuss, and it does make a lot of sense.
    The way Adeimantus sums up the remaining questions, however, is pretty profound. What the hell did an ISIS suicide bomber learn? What’s that soul significant purpose? A lot of questions remain about this world even if we accept the premise of life after death.

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  33. Bruce Siegel Avatar
    Bruce Siegel

    Art said:
    “Love can be experienced and felt on the other side so why do we have to learn it here?”
    Because “here” *matters*. It’s an important part of the cosmic scheme, not just a waystation.
    I agree with much of what you say, Art. But in downplaying the importance of human beings learning to love, you’re ignoring the fact that our earthly environment—like countless others, no doubt, throughout space and time—is valuable in itself, not just as a means to an end.
    *In itself*.

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  34. Art Avatar
    Art

    \\”I tend to agree with Art. But maybe that’s only because he repeats it over and over” – sleepers//
    Because it’s so simple. It’s not complicated. We learn here what can’t be learned there. Why make it so complicated? I’ve read NDEs where they were told the answer and they said it could be summarized in just two or three sentences. The stuff we learn is universal and applies to every soul.
    It’s not about learning to love, or learning to love God, or morality, or religion, or about becoming self actualized (whatever that means?), or becoming one with each other. All that is stuff that happens automatically on the other side because of the physics of heaven.
    I have a friend at Church that had an NDE when he was 8 years old. He was hit by a van. He told me what he remembers is the love he felt.
    People who have NDEs routinely say stuff like “I felt like I was the Universe,” or “me and the Universe were one”, or “I literally felt like I was everywhere in the Universe at once.” All stuff that perfectly describes holographic film.
    The other side is the holographic film that our universe is projected from and we come here to learn the stuff that we couldn’t learn if we stayed there. It’s as simple as that.

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  35. Art Avatar
    Art

    Yes, this life matters but it matters in the sense that we were sent here to learn just a few simple lessons and then cross over into Heaven. And the beauty of it is that everyone succeeds – because the Creator of the Universe was that smart. Like baby ducks imprinting on their mother. They just do. It doesn’t have to be taught. We learn about time and space and separation and being in a body and living in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe because it’s automatic. Everyone learns what they are supposed to learn.
    Excerpt from James E’s NDE:
    “I was not “told” anything in the light, as much as, I just knew everything there was to know. I knew why there was bad in the world, I knew why there was good, I knew that every little thing that will ever occur here, is exactly planned out, in order to bring about something else. Everything we have ever done or known or will know, is perfectly planned out and perfectly in tune.”
    http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/james_e_nde.htm
    Excerpt from Carl Turner’s mystical experience,
    “I had the realization that I was everywhere at the same time…and I mean everywhere. I knew that everything is perfect and happening according to some divine plan, regardless of all the things we see as wrong with the world.”
    http://www.beyondreligion.com/su_personal/dreamsvisions-kundalini.htm
    The vast majority of people on this planet are just struggling to survive. They aren’t sitting around gazing at their navel contemplating the Universe. That is a 1st world luxury. It’s rich western New Agers who say things like “I’m here to learn to love God, or each other, or whatever.” Most people are happy if they just make enough money to buy groceries for the day.
    Whatever the reason we are here it has to be Universal, it has to apply to everyone. How stupid would the Creator of the Universe have to be if he created a Universe where most people don’t learn what they were sent here to learn?
    That’s the secret to Holistic Learning. The learning is embedded in our everyday lives. You learn stuff while you are just living your everyday life. It doesn’t matter whether you want to learn or not. The learning is embedded in just living in this Universe.
    I have 30 graduate semester hours towards a Masters Degree in Holistic Teaching and Learning from the University of Tennessee. I took the graduate courses in the UT College of Education when I was renewing my Tennessee Teacher’s Certification.
    https://apps.tn.gov/eli-app/view-public.html?id=287643

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  36. Douglas Avatar
    Douglas

    I’m sorry for your loss FDR. I dread the time it happens to my own parents.

    Reply
  37. Saj Patel Avatar
    Saj Patel

    @Art:
    I’m afraid I must confess I don’t understand why we need to come here to learn about the physics of this world if we can learn other things holographically?
    This world’s space-time regularities/laws/constants are not the only possible combination so it’s unclear why life in this world would necessitate preparation.
    Beyond that, if the sole purpose of this existence is experience of a particular space-time reality why can’t it be much, much easier/gentler?
    I could possibly make sense of all this stuff about learning about space (or love, of whatever) if we think about a number of lifetimes in the trillions or higher, in which we see so many points of view we become more in that afterlife existence where all the memories are present…but that again is a sort of positive nihilism which makes this life meaningless.
    That or we should be getting better and better as the personality but not the memories remain. (Though again it seems like it would be better for the memories to stick around?).
    I recall reading a Manichean account (modern, based on Zoroasterianism) in which the God of Good traps the God of Evil in this reality. So this entire universe was meant to be a prison not for us but for another entity – meaning we’re either bait, martyrs, or both. One more idea among many (prison, quarantine, school, etc)

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  38. Bruce Siegel Avatar
    Bruce Siegel

    Art said:
    “Yes, this life matters but it matters in the sense that we were sent here to learn just a few simple lessons and then cross over into Heaven.”
    Right. That’s exactly what I’m questioning.
    You can quote all the NDErs you like, but I bet most would agree with me that this life, while flawed, is priceless in and of itself. There’s much to do and enjoy, despite the formidable challenges we face.
    One of things I love best about the NDE literature is that it’s positive on *all* accounts. Besides extolling the next life, these people express a profound appreciation for this one—and not just as a means to an end.
    I enjoy much of what you have to say, Art. But there’s also a defeatist attitude that bugs me.
    As I see it, totally separate from its role in preparing us for the “future,” this moment matters. Now. For itself.
    That’s the only kind of living that makes sense to me.

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  39. Art Avatar
    Art

    “I’m afraid I must confess I don’t understand why we need to come here to learn about the physics of this world if we can learn other things holographically?”- Saj
    First off everything is happening at once. Remember Einsteins quote about “we who believe in physics know that past, present, and future all exist at the same time”? Or something to that effect.
    The online essay about the universe as a hologram says the same thing. So, we experience time here like it is happening consectutively but in actuality we are only here for the blink of an eye. It just feels like a long time so we experience emotion so that we remember it. This life is important – and life ain’t supposed to be fun and wonderful all the time. It is through suffering that we remember the lessons we learn.
    Can you learn to drive a car by reading a book or watching a video or watching somebody else do it? No, you have to get in the car and drive it yourself. You have to feel (which you can only do in a body) what it feels like, learn where the outside parameters of the car are, where the controls to the car are, and develop the motor skills to operate the vehicle.
    You can’t learn about being in a body without actually getting in a body and controlling it.
    The alternative is to spend eternity as some kind of strange pure consciousness that knows nothing, that is like a gas that fills the entire container but has no shape or form, no experience as a solid, and can’t empathize with other creatures, and doesn’t know what it means to be separate, doesn’t understand time or space, or what it is like to be in a body and control it.
    But if you had gone through the experience of living here you would know what it’s like to have a body and all those other things. And after we cross over we use that information to create our own reality. We are gods in training.

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  40. Juan Avatar
    Juan

    One important thing: NDE research have to deal with low level issues such as veridical experiences not obtainable by known senses, memory, inference or luck, or when NDEs occur, or the neural activity that may accompany NDEs, before that address issues of far reaching as if this life has a purpose, whether it is a school…

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  41. Bruce Siegel Avatar
    Bruce Siegel

    One more point, Art, to complete my last comment.
    Those lessons you say we are here to learn—is it possible that our ability to learn them is impaired if we think of this life primarily as preparation for the next? Maybe what’s needed is an attitude that says this moment—right now—is all that’s real.
    Isn’t that one of the most powerful lessons of all?

    Reply
  42. Art Avatar
    Art

    Bruce, exactly. The reason is emotion. Emotion is needed to remember what we learn. There is a very close connection between emotion and memory. The more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates.
    http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20050131/emotions-make-memory-last
    If we knew absolutely for certain that this life was an illusion, a holographic projection, we’d wouldn’t feel near as much emotion when someone we love dies. Losing someone we love is the ultimate lesson in separation. If we knew that one day we were going to be reunited with our loved ones forever in heaven this life wouldn’t have near as much meaning and wouldn’t be near as important to us.
    Pure consciousness or “soul stuff” needs to spend time in a body to understand what “physical” means, what it means to be separate, what it feels like to be limited by and enclosed in a body and the parameters of that body, what up, down, backwards and forward, etc. mean, heck if you’d never seen a telephone or TV or radio or car or airplane you wouldn’t know what any of that stuff was either. It’s only by first spending time in a body and getting oriented by that body that we begin to understand all the things I’ve mentioned.

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  43. Art Avatar
    Art

    \\”One important thing: NDE research have to deal with low level issues … before that address issues of far reaching as if this life has a purpose, whether it is a school.” – Juan?//
    —————
    Juan, I’ve moved past all that. I know and understand something that is tremendously veridical and that is the connection between NDEs and the holographic universe theory can’t be accidental. That says to me that some NDEs are exactly what they purport to be… visits to the other side. I’ve posted links and explained about this connection a hundred times at least.
    Read the online essay “The Universe as a hologram” written by Michael Talbot and then go and read Mark Horton’s NDE. The connection between them is obvious. Mark Horton didn’t even know why he experienced what he did but I do. It jumps right out at me.
    The Universe as a Hologram, online essay,
    http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html
    Mark Horton’s NDE,
    http://celestial.kuriakon00.com/nde/mark_horton.htm
    I’ve been reading and studying about the connection between NDEs and quantum physics and the holographic universe theory for 15 years now. It can’t be coincidental or an accident. It says something very important is going on here and that is that NDEs are what they claim to be. They are visiting the holographic film that our Universe is projected from.

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  44. Juan Avatar
    Juan

    “Juan, I’ve moved past all that.”
    But that has not yet happened with NDE researchers.
    “Read the online essay “The Universe as a hologram” written by Michael Talbot and then go and read Mark Horton’s NDE. The connection between them is obvious. Mark Horton didn’t even know why he experienced what he did but I do. It jumps right out at me.”
    I read the book The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, and even a holographic structure in the space-time could explain how are possible an afterlife and psychic phenomena, that says nothing about whether life has a purpose.
    And about the experience of Mark Horton, he writes that he could access any region of space-time, but then what specific information is brought with him to corroborate these bits of data?

    Reply
  45. Saj Patel Avatar
    Saj Patel

    Paranthropology Interview w/ Graham Hancock on our confrontation with Good-Evil duality. (pg 69-78)
    http://paranthropologyjournal.weebly.com/uploads/7/7/5/3/7753171/paranthropology_vol4no3.pdf
    Interesting read, admittedly I don’t know if there’s enough evidence to say it’s one way or another beyond the physical universe but I think if we’re going to ask what, if anything, lies beyond this material reality it’s best to absorb varied perspectives.
    I’d also note the occurrence of negative NDEs (note potential link to suicide attempts) though I’m guessing Michael’s covered this before:
    http://www.dancingpastthedark.com/

    Reply
  46. Roger Knights Avatar
    Roger Knights

    Huxley made a similar remark somewhere about a flower.

    Reply
  47. Julie Baxter Avatar
    Julie Baxter

    What did Huxley say about the flower, Roger?

    Reply
  48. Simon Avatar
    Simon

    To Michael and all Commentators;
    MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR
    from
    The ENFIELD POLTERGEIST
    (and, apparently: a troll) SC

    Reply
  49. SPatel Avatar
    SPatel

    @Art – When you say all time exists simultaneously do you mean it exists in potential or that it’s all really happening at once.
    For example, under Marcus Arvan’s Peer to Peer Simulation all timelines exist in potential in the way a gaming environment has all paths accounted for by the coding of the world.
    But the timeline that’s actualized is the one that we, the “peers”, come together on.
    Is this what you mean? If not, I have to admit I don’t understand how all time can exist simulatneously. I guess I lean toward Smolin’s idea of time as extant reality over Einstein…

    Reply
  50. Art Avatar
    Art

    It’s like a DVD disc of a movie. The whole movie from start to finish exists on that disc. And if you had the ability you could read the whole disc at one time, and if your brain was big enough absorb all the information at one time.
    So on this side we experience our lives as if they are consecutively but in actuality they are really all written out on some kind of strange holographic film, the whole thing from start to finish, and while we are here it seems like a long time but in actuality, when we get to the other side, it goes by in the blink of an eye.
    That is how people who have NDEs come back sometimes and say they saw some of their future, and some of them remember things that they saw, like one guy recognized a wall heater that hadn’t been invented yet but later on in his life he recognized a scene he’d seen in his life review but it was from his future and not his past.
    In physics there is nothing to preclude time running backwards and forwards. It’s the rules of our Universe are written to only have time going one way.
    It’s so our soul can learn what it’s like to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe – but on the other side time can go both ways. Since we will be living on holographic film however we focus our attention that is what we see and experience. We won’t be limited to just one time.

    Reply

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