Via Facebook, Mark Alexander alerts me to the current issue of Newsweek. The cover story is Dr. Eben Alexanders's NDE.

Comments

[Michael Prescott]

Guess it would be helpful if I linked to the actual article (which I haven't read yet):

http://tinyurl.com/962djlf

[RabbitDawg]

Eben Alexander has a powerfully compelling story, written in a framework that any open minded scientist would appreciate.
He's a well respected Harvard Neurosurgeon who was advised to write down his near-death experience and thoughts about it, shortly after his release from the hospital but before he read any literature or discussed it with anyone who could influence him.

His book has a well-oiled professional promotion machine behind it, which leads me to believe there are a lot of non-materialist movers and shakers out there who are getting tired of hiding in their intellectual closets. Although you can bet he will come under fire from the usual suspects, Dr. Alexander is a formidable foe. Expect others to join him.
Maybe it's just wistfulness on my part, but I can't help but think that we are watching the reductionist funeral procession rapidly parading by us in this lifetime.

I just wish he would ditch the bow tie. :-)

[Joshua Cearley]

Seems to be the usual fare of response on that page:

"He wasn't dead enough!"
"He had to piece it together, that means his brain filled up with garbage and it only became sensible when he was alive again."
"He saw what he wanted to see."

One commenter suggested the soul carries on, but only some memories get retained while the conscious "you" is lost; that there would likely never be a state you recalled all of your past existences. Kind of an un-comforting thought, especially since spirits through mediums and mystics don't talk about past lives generally...

[Paul]

I never really understood how I survive if my consciousness of my present self doesn't.

[Kathleen]

At this point, I think anyone would be foolish after reading accounts like this and so many others to dismiss NDEs out of hand. There's obviously something going on that we haven't yet explained. I also enjoyed this line: "The colors of the stained-glass windows recalled the luminous beauty of the landscapes I’d seen in the world above." For some time now, when I'm in Church and see the stained-glass windows out of the corner of my eye, I've thought the same exact thing.

[Sleepers]

RabbitDawg - don't hate the bow tie.

[lynn]

I love it! Its helps so much that those in the field of science are experiencing what many have been experiencing for a long time. And more importantly, finally voicing it.

I have read a lot of books, can't find this one in my pile - some of you may know of it. I'll see if I can find the book.

Some years ago a researcher who was in the field of psychology, was advised by a friend to contact a dowser to find her daughters stolen violin.

He provided the state, some hours from her home, the street and even the box number. So she goes to the police, with no result, and decides to place a note and contact number in letter boxes surrounding the house. She was later contacted by his neighbour, and indeed the violin was there.

What was interesting was that as she began to tell people, her colleges and others quietly came up to her to tell of their experiences.

One was a prominent heart surgeon, and said how a young student doctor stated he wanted to work with him, as none of his patients. died.

He said "How can I tell him and my esteemed colleges, that when I go to a patients bed side. I know who will live and who will die, and thus who to operate on. As a little light forms over their heads, and that,s my sign.

Unfortunately people wont speak for reasons of prestige, fear of being ridiculed and not taken seriously.

Cheers Lyn.

[Matt Rouge]

I've read his account. Very compelling.

Materialism may be having its own near death experience right now. Let's hope that this is one patient that *isn't* saved!

[Joshua Cearley]

@Matt Rouge
Meh, I'm not impressed. It's written very well, but it won't move someone who is skeptical; I've written up a short article that points out the skeptical gaps that block this from being a very good case:

http://skylic-library.com/articles/NDE-EbenAlexander.html

Namely the lack of verdical information that could be verified by others, that it seemed to fit cultural expectation, and that he was not actually dead. I don't mean "oh, our EEGs aren't sensitive enough", I mean he wasn't even clinically dead. He was in a coma.

[Michael Prescott]

Lynn, that book is Extraordinary Knowing by Elizabeth Mayer. The musical instrument was a harp, by the way.

[lynn]

opps, thanks, Lyn x

[Art]

Today on "Katie" it was about near death experiences. At the very beginning of the show she held up a copy of the Newsweek with the above story in it. Katie had on Dr. Mary Neal, Akiane Kramarik, and Colton Burpo. Colton's answers to Katie's questions were sort of "out there" but Katie didn't burst out laughing so she just kept on with her show. I was especially impressed with Akiane's responses to the interview.

[lynn]

I often don't post on a lot of the books I have read, as I forget authors and some of the explicit detail which are important to get right. So thanks for the correction !) Lyn.

[Bruce Siegel]

"Some years ago a researcher who was in the field of psychology, was advised by a friend to contact a dowser to find her daughters stolen violin."

Lyn, the woman in question is Elizabeth Mayer. She wrote a book called Extraordinary Knowing. It begins with the experience you described (it was actually a harp that got stolen and recovered), and goes on to relate her ensuing adventures and discoveries in the realm of psi and psi research.

One of my favorite books of the last five years--I've read it twice.

[Bruce Siegel]

Wow--this seems to be a pattern today. Second time I've written something only to see that Michael got there first. Cut that out!

[lynn]

Ha ha I seem to do the same, read new scientist article the other day, and often seem to preempt what is coming up. Synchronicities? Love you posts by the way.

Lyn x.

[Michael Prescott]

Having now read the article, I agree with Joshua that the lack of veridical information is a serious weakness in the case, at least as far as convincing (honest) skeptics is concerned.

The author takes pains to state that his higher brain functions were inactive, but the obvious comeback is that his NDE could have occurred at an earlier or later point when either the disease had not progressed so far or was already abating. We don't really know that it took place during the depths of his coma. If he had perceived veridical details that could be established as occurring when his brain was flat-lining, the case would be far more evidential.

That said, it's certainly interesting. Here's a passage Art will like:

'I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a Persian carpet ... or a butterfly’s wing.'

Communication by telepathy is a common feature of NDEs, and shows up here:

'“We will show you many things here,” the woman said, again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me.'

And even though I wouldn't call this case "proof" of anything (unless there's a lot more to it than the article indicates), I do like the sentiment behind the author's conclusion:

'The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already.'

[Art]

"I agree with Joshua that the lack of veridical information is a serious weakness in the case, at least as far as convincing (honest) skeptics is concerned." Michael Prescott
-----------------

I am so long past that. This need for "proof" left me long ago. It's just not an issue with me anymore. I do enjoy when they make comments that are congruent with or corroborate the holographic nature of our universe, like when he talks about nothing being separate, everything being a part of everything else.

Emmanuel Swedenborg in Heaven and Hell says that the other side will look and feel even more real than this side. I find that interesting because many near death experiencers say the same thing. Also Dr. Craig Hogan from Fermilab said that there is a certain inherent fuzziness or blurriness in a holographic projection, and since this side is the holographic projection and the other side is the original holographic film of course that blurriness wouldn't exist in the place we call "heaven."

Even though I have never had a near death experience myself my fear of death has been greatly reduced by reading and studying NDE's and death bed visions for the last 12 years.

[Roger Knights]

Too bad A.J. Ayer didn't come clean like this.

[Joshua Cearley]

Fermilab said that there is a certain inherent fuzziness or blurriness in a holographic projection, and since this side is the holographic projection and the other side is the original holographic film of course that blurriness wouldn't exist in the place we call "heaven."
~~~~~~
I believe a lot of channeled spiritualist text refers to this about a hundred years before the quantum holography debate cropped up. When I was still reading up on the last generation of mediums, one description stuck out to me: The guide said it was like "looking through frosted glass."

[Douglas]

Joshua, one thing I would mention as being important here:

In the rush to establish whether this is a good case or not, it's essy to omit one of the most striking feature of this, and indeed many other, NDEs.

That is, the sheer scale of the psychological impact on the individual who has experienced the NDE. They are completely transformed by the experience. That sense is clear in this case, and many others.

This critical aspect is continually overlooked by skeptics, which is a shame, because for me it is one of the stongest indicators that the experience is a true opening of perception into a far greater reality.

The tranformational aspect of NDEs are continually overlooked as being 'not evidential', which is odd, seeing how hallucinations and drug induced visions, which are often used as comparisons to indicate a brain-origin explanation, fall far short of the experiences of NDEers. Hallucinations are almost always fragmentary and chaotic, and share very little with NDE accounts when you compare them side by side.

[Douglas]

Joshua,

I just ready your blog on this case, and you make good points that are likely to be highlighted by skeptics.

However, for me the old argument that 'evidence of cultural expectations prove that the phenomena is brain-generated' doesnt really hold a massive amount of weight.

As you admit yourself, a survey of cases show that the expected jesus figure (as an example for western cases) does not always appear, often NDEs *ARE AT ODDS* with cultural expectations. At other times, when a jesus-like figure appears, it strikes me that this is the experiencer overlaying their own cultural expectations over a glimpse of higher order realities. Sometimes the 'jesus figure' later disolves to reveal the more generic 'being of light', while at other times the jesus overlay remains throughout; again it depends on the individual NDEer.

If we are, in fact, dealing with higher order realities outside our normal experience, is it not only likely, but actually predictable, that NDE experiences will often (although not always) perceive the experience according to whatever cultural expectations they have, in order to integrate the experience into their reality?

In a world that NDEers frequently state is *impossible to describe in human language*, are we really suprised that they may interpret the experience, at least in some part, upon concepts with which they have some familiarity?

I think this comes across in Eben's account. Did you not notice that his acount highlights the experience first, THEN he looks for cultural references to help integrate it. He didnt see angels and harps; he later attached these lables to what he experienced.

Then you mention a similarity in part of his description with Buddhist literature. So now it's not western expecations being fulfiled, it's eastern philosophy. you can't have it both ways.

Of course, you can always dream up that he *may* have read buddhist philosophy while a student and so this *may* have programmed him for that part of the experience, but there's lots of 'mays' here, as always with skeptical arguments.

[Smithy]

No veridical information, Michael and Joshua?

Sorry, but it seems to me that his finding out that the beautiful woman he saw was his sister he had never known, and which fact was verified after he had seen her photograph much later ... well, that seems veridical enough for me.

Actually, this fact made him cross the line.

[Smithy]

No doubt the skeptics, or rather the scoftics, will come up with the silliest explanations, and will also say that Alexander had gone off his rocker, or that he has a loose wire in his head, or is just plain stupid and a danger to society... etc etc. Here, in the Netherlands, it has already happened in one of our daily newspapers.

[Barbara]

This is one of the best NDE descriptions I’ve read. This neuroscientist is good with language, too! He took the trouble to find the right words, (eg where he quotes Henry Vaughan’s “There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness ...”
That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.)

Some thoughts:

“I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.”

Shame about this bit - laughing-fodder for the skeptics!

The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this:
“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
“You have nothing to fear.”
“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

The last is the big, big issue, isn’t it? We down here can never find useful value in a tyrant’s psychopathic killings and torturings, no matter how hard we try.

These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter than water—and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

So why bother with a pathetic earthly incarnation and a physical brain, then? Utterly pointless! NDEs raise important questions but never seem to answer them.

[Douglas]

Barbara, I think the *experience* of living a 'pathetic earthly incarnation' is what it's all about.

Btw. after reading some of the comments by so-called skeptics on the magazine's comments section, what a despicable, odious, rude, insulting, patronising, ego-centric and totally unlikeble bunch of creeps they are.

If that's the kind of 'enlightened human beings' skeptics are aiming to produce, I fear for humanty's future - I really don't call this an improvement.

Is this the 'Bright' Movement? Please no!

[Barbara]

Douglas, just saying "living pathetic here is what it's all about" is a poor answer.

You go on to castigate skeptics as creeps. What value is there to living as a creep when there is no need for it -when all concepts worth conceiving per Eben (including obviously creepdom) can be easily conceived on a higher level?

On the other hand, if creepdom really can't be conceived up there, that can only be a bonus.

[Douglas]

I think from a higher perspective its probably all good, as its the experience that counts, in all its multi-coloured hues. but this is difficult for us to reconcile while here.

So no, while here, i don't care much for the attitudes of these people, but i'm sure it doesnt matter a jot in the greater reality. However, collectively here, I think humanity is expressing a dissatisfaction with living in crapness, and so those in higher levels respond to that request for help by offering assistance, as they probably have done since time began.

Ultimately though, I think that all experiences are probably equally valued as its all growth food.

[Art]

"I believe a lot of channeled spiritualist text refers to this about a hundred years before the quantum holography debate cropped up. When I was still reading up on the last generation of mediums, one description stuck out to me: The guide said it was like "looking through frosted glass." - Joshua
--------------------------------

Joshua that's not what they are talking about when they talk about the other side being more clear or "realer than real." The comment about frosted glass is talking about trying to communicate with this side.

The realer than real or more real than normal is talking about what Heaven will look like while we are there. It refers to the fact that in a holographic projection there is a certain inherent blurriness or fuzziness. So this side, where we live now, is not perfect. There is a certain amount of fuzziness in the picture. Whereas in Heaven that fuzziness won't exist.

[Duck Soup]

I don't agree that the experience could have occured as he was going into or coming out of coma. Remember, as you go into coma your brain is shutting down and this not conducive to an experience of expanding hyper consciousness. Oh sure, the sceptics have been trotting out this tired old theory for decades but it's just hand waving avoidance.

Coming out of coma he remembers but he knew that his vast hyper experience was behind that period not in front in the same way that we know when our dreams occured..before we come back to consciousness.

As to it being proof of life after death or brain shut down which is effectively the same thing (where no experience should be possible) ..it is only proof to him of course because he could be lying about the whole thing (of course I don't believe that for a second).

But remember, Dr Alexander is hardly the kind of person who would be willing to speak about this and go to the enormous trouble and strife of trying to get the world to take notice if it wasn't what he said it is.

[Douglas]

The skeptics under the article are making hay with the point that Eben talks about his 'neo-cortex' shutting down, and then talks about his whole cortex.

This is inconsistent, they say, and perhaps he is brain damaged since his experience.

As I said, vile.

[Barbara]

"However, collectively here, I think humanity is expressing a dissatisfaction with living in crapness, and so those in higher levels respond to that request for help by offering assistance"
- Douglas

If humans are dissatisfied with crapness, then why are we 7 billion and rising at an exponential rate. I do not comprehend your argument, Douglas

[Douglas]

Barbara, I think perhaps you are not comprehending the completely different perspective perceived by those currently immersed within physical reality and those who are not - the two perspectives need in no way align.

[david r]

I don't see how him being a neuroscientist has any bearing on the facts of his subsequent experience at all. Other than that he didn't believe in these things beforehand.

Is the assumption that someone in a particular scientific field is somehow more englightened about life than the rest of us?

You see this attitude everywhere. This idea that because someone is in one branch of science that they must somehow be more intelligent and clued up as to what is real and what is not.

At the end of the day, subjective experiences are all that counts. I am constantly irritated by know-it-alls who claim that science is restricted to replication and laboratory experiment. No, not at all!

[Duck Soup]

"I don't see how him being a neuroscientist has any bearing on the facts of his subsequent experience at all"

It does in the sense that he knows how the brain works and therefore is in a postion of 'authority' based on his nueroscientific knowledge to interpret his experience and make a justifiable conclusion about it what it means.

[Michael Prescott]

Smithy, I wasn't aware of the identification of the spirit guide as Alexander's sister. Unless I somehow missed it, this important detail was not in the Newsweek except.

[Duck Soup]

Here it is in the last part of Dr Alexander's Bio-ethics interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwLgxniI7KM

It was Eben's blood sister (he was adopted as a baby) and he had never met or seen any picture of her.

[RabbitDawg]

Barbara, I believe that debating the definition of right and wrong can be healthy, but I also find myself cringing at the there-is-no-good-or-bad mantra.
Popular emphasis on preaching that people 'choose' their life prior to birth, and other feel-good dismissals of this (currently) very real life has to cause folks suffering in pain to ignore the entire near death experience concept.

It's odd how radiant NDE's are openly and unquestionably embraced, while distressing ones are ignored or explained away by so many new age types. I'm all for finding joy in life, but this "don't worry, be happy" spiritual worldview tells its believers that evil and suffering are illusions at best, or part of God's plan at the worst. Either way, the believer abdicates moral responsibilities. Whatever truth there is to find in transcendent experiences, I'm sure it can't be distilled into insipid sophistries. Heck, one of the hallmarks of NDE's is their ineffability.

I don't doubt there is some Greater Truth we end up grasping in the afterlife that causes us to level out and understand the good/evil problem, some sort of Yin Yang revelation. But then, maybe there's a reason why we apparently aren't intuitively capable of understanding it right now. Call me spiritually unsophisticated, but I really believe that this life compels us to personally and collectively grow up and deal with this life's injustices.

[Sophie]

Roger Knights,

'Too bad A.J. Ayer didn't come clean like this.'

Sure is! It's odd, too, that he lost no time to announce his 'I saw a divine being' experiennce, then formally retracted it as a product of his brain chemistry. Yet he formed an amazingly close friendship with the Jesuit Copleston, his old ideological adversary. (As far as I know, Copleston did not talk about this at all.)

What could have happened here? Was it A J Ayer's professional pride that got in the way of his withdrawing his logical positivist's atheism? Yet that is so inconsistent with the man's lifelong enjoyment of the notoriety of his atheism. Surely he would have been tempted to bask in the new notoriety of his new theism? Or was he just too old and unwell by this time? Frustrating!

[Sophie]

Sorry, typo: experience

[Kathleen]

The "We can do no right or wrong" does stick out like a sore thumb, especially when we know people have had negative NDEs, that is, have experienced a hell-like Afterlife.

Maybe it reflects somehow the idea that doing right or wrong is all part of the learning or spiritual evolution process, and eventually if not in this life, then the next, we all wind up on the "good side."

[Art]

"What value is there to living as a creep when there is no need for it -when all concepts worth conceiving per Eben (including obviously creepdom) can be easily conceived on a higher level? On the other hand, if creepdom really can't be conceived up there, that can only be a bonus." - Barbara
-------------------------------------------

Duality and separation. Creep versus non-creep. Teaches the soul what it means and how it feels to be separate, something it can't learn in heaven due to those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness.

Everything in this life exists in some kind of "dual" form, male/female, straight/gay, positive/negative, black/white, tall/short, skinny/fat, rich/poor, liberal/conservative, educated/uneducated, etc. etc. etc. There are a million different ways that we experience duality and separation in this life.

We here in our Universe can't begin to comprehend the overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness in heaven. So much so that I theorize that what it means and how it feels to be separate can't be learned in heaven so that is why we are mainly here.

That and learning about time and space and make memories of what it was like to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time universe. The physics of heaven will be very different than the physics here.

[motley]

Roger Knight said to bad AJ Ayler did not not clean. Well he sort of did. After his NDE he told his Doctor that he met a Divine being and that the experience meant that he was less attached to his belief in total extinction at the point of bodily death

[Barbara]

Douglas, yes I do comprendo the difference of perspective. But as Rabbitdawg says, the abdication of moral responsibilty it implies is to me quite incomprehensible. Is it then equal to live as Pol Pot and as Mother Teresa in your view (and the view of the higher perspective)?

Art, your point about separation is true, but Eben says (as I quoted) that all important concepts can be much more wholly and quickly understood in the heaven world than in the physical world. One would expect that to include the concept of separation as well as of creepdom.

If the heavenworld can only understand goody two shoes stuff, then no wonder it has no sense of moral responsibility. But of course, this can't be so, because as Rabbitdawg points out, there is plenty of bad stuff up there too (hellish NDEs, nasty spirits etc).

So I'm none the wiser.

[Barbara]

There are separate planes for good and bad in the afterlife but here it's all mixed up.
Maybe the goodies in the higher planes don't want to get their concepts dirty -don't want to think about the nasty stuff, and leave it all on the lower planes just as we leave sewage in the sewer.

[Roger Knights]

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

[Barbara says:] The last is the big, big issue, isn’t it? We down here can never find useful value in a tyrant’s psychopathic killings and torturings, no matter how hard we try.

Maybe the "you" in that message was meant only for Eben. Maybe these universal-sounding messages are tailored to their recipients. That is, some people need to be less inhibited and get the bushel off their light. Other people would be better advised to be more inhibited.

[Roger Knights]

There's a one-day-only sale on Amazon for $1.99 of a Kindle version of Heaven is for Real: A Young Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

[Joshua Cearley]

@Douglas
The retort used by skeptics is that psyclobin and DMT can have profound changes too. IONS has a mention here about giving hospice patients psyclobin http://noetic.org/noetic/issue-fifteen-october/psilocybin-at-end-of-life/ which can bring about mental changes.

"Then you mention a similarity in part of his description with Buddhist literature. So now it's not western expecations being fulfiled, it's eastern philosophy. you can't have it both ways."

I don't need it both ways. I mention the Buddhist literature because its a reference to better descriptions of the void experience, and I'm not refuting the man's experience or claims. Perhaps I should edit the page to make it more clear: I'm pointing out why the article is not as world shattering as hype inevitably will suggest.

@Smithy
He should have mentioned that in his article directly. I gleamed it from the comments, so I'm aware of the claim, but if the article had mentioned it, I would have gladly trumpeted it as a verdical detail. However the article doesn't contain the word "sister" in it at all. I'll have to look at the interview that was linked earlier and consider revising my page to include that.

@Art
"The comment about frosted glass is talking about trying to communicate with this side." I'm well aware of that: If they are on the real side and we are in the hologram, then it makes sense to me that if they were looking inside to communicate it would seem blurry.

[lynn]

Just my personal subjective experience that I am putting out there, take it as you will.

I have trouble with names, dates etc, whereas much of the other info is very clear. I am told that all cannot be given, as it would render experience on earth obsolete.

Police, detectives, average citizen etc, must each experience the interplay of life and fate etc.

Also when asking about the universe, I am told knowing too much would make life feel strange in that I would feel like I didn't fit. I can understand that, as I feel a bit like that already with what I know.

As "Art" I'm over the need to find truth, although I see that others need proof for themselves. I don't read as much on the subject now either, i could probably write a book on the subject myself. Cheers Lyn.

[Joshua Cearley]

@lynn
I'm curious, what of the people who already know they don't fit?

I came in to reading the status of afterlife research (among other things) through dealing with people who have a feeling of knowing something is amiss, and were drawn to similar afterlife/energy/etc out of that.