Book excerpt, part four

The fourth and last excerpt from a chapter of my book, currently in progress.

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A natural question at this point would be: How do we know that the experiences of Mrs. Crans and Dr. Wiltse are not hallucinations? In fact, if it’s true that consciousness processes our perceptions according to mental categories, how can we be sure that any of our experiences are not hallucinations? How can we trust our perceptions at all?

A thoroughgoing skeptic would say we can’t, but not one actually tries to live by this dictum. In practice, we do accept our perceptions as accurate — or at least accurate enough — most of the time. Yet we’re aware that we can be fooled by optical illusions or by mental changes brought on by drugs, illness, or injury. Our practical method of determining what’s true is mainly based on consensus. If you’re the only one who sees an elephant galloping down the freeway, you may be imagining it. If other people see it too, you’re on safer ground. This is the value of what is known in parapsychology as veridical experiences — experiences that can be independently confirmed by the reports of others.

In the case of Mrs. Crans, we have two veridical components. One is her accurate description of Charley’s room, 1500 miles from where she rested, as confirmed by Charley himself. The other is her description of her late daughter’s appearance and actions, again seconded by Charley. Adding credibility to the account is that Charley reported the spiritual visitation even before receiving Mrs. Crans’s letter.

In the case of Dr. Wiltse, we have the statements of his doctor and other witnesses, which Wiltse took the trouble to collect after the fact, verifying his description of the people present in the room and their behavior. He even obtained sworn depositions from some of them. An additional factor is Wiltse’s medical condition; the attending physician reported that Wiltse was so deeply comatose, he showed no response to a needle thrust deeply into his flesh at various points throughout the lower part of his body. Even ordinary mental processes should not be possible in such a condition, let alone the detailed observations that Wiltse reported.

Finally, there’s the issue of commonality between his report and many others. If one explorer returns from an unknown continent and makes a report, we may be skeptical; if dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other explorers unconnected with each other deliver similar reports, we are entitled to accept the basic truth of what they’re saying, even if there are some discrepancies and variations among their separate experiences.

If Wiltse were the only person ever to report leaving his body when critically ill, closely observing the deathbed scene, or finding himself in a spirit world, we might chalk up his account to mere fancy. But his is only one of countless reports, some of which are even better attested. Despite differences in the experiences that have been related, enough common elements have emerged to form a recognizable pattern. These elements include:

• Disconnecting both emotionally and literally from the body, often with the parallel development of a “soul body” that can hover in air and pass through solid objects, and which may be connected to the physical body by a cord.
• Observations of one’s environment, typically with greatly enhanced perception.
• A frustrating inability to communicate with the living.
• A feeling of health, relief, and “exuberance.”
• Transition to a different plane of reality, accomplished by rapid flight.
• An earthlike quality to this other reality (a road, flowers, trees).
• A barrier blocking further progress.
• A cloud or a bright light that somehow embodies a higher intelligence, which communicates telepathically with the experiencer.
• A choice to remain or return, based on whether or not one’s work on earth is complete.
• The sudden resumption of life in the physical body, often accompanied by surprise and disappointment.
• A compelling need to relate the experience.

All these elements are present in Wiltse’s account. Other common elements in NDEs, not seen in the Wiltse case, include:

• A transition through a tunnel or other passageway.
• A reunion with departed loved ones, who communicate telepathically.
• An encounter with a religious figure (or more than one), usually consistent with the experiencer’s personal belief system or background.
• A comprehensive review of one’s life, in which the experiencer feels the direct impact his actions had on other people, for better or worse.
• Sometimes, a temporary merging with the higher intelligence (which may or may not be identified as God), in which the meaning of life and the purpose of existence are grasped in a way that is instantly clear but, later, almost impossible to communicate.
• Lasting changes in one's personality, behavior, and philosophy. 

Some patterns seem to be cultural in nature. Western NDEs often involve a choice, as in the Wiltse case. NDEs in India typically exclude the idea of choice or a personal mission that must be completed on earth, and instead present the person’s brush with the afterlife as a kind of clerical mistake, a bureaucratic mishap. Often a different person of the same name was scheduled to die that day, and some angelic bumbler picked up the wrong person!

Do I think clerical mistakes of that sort really happen? No. Nor am I convinced that the experiencer has a genuine choice about whether or not to resume earthly life. (Dr. Wiltse’s choice proved illusory; his choice to remain was not respected, and he was required to go back anyway. This is not uncommon.) And I’m dubious of encounters with iconic religious figures like Jesus or the Virgin Mary, which constitute a minority of NDE reports.

In all these cases, I think a narrative is constructed that can make sense of the situation in terms the person can understand. The experiencer, temporarily caught between “frequencies,” having made only a partial transition from one level of consciousness to the next, lacks the ability to fully process and interpret what’s happening to him. Any familiar-seeming and superficially logical interpretation may be sufficient to get him safely through the experience and back on firmer ground. (Think of the invisible hands that Dr. Wiltse imagined carrying him through space. The “hands” helped make the experience intelligible to him.)

Moreover, I suspect that interpretive issues like this are extremely common when dealing with the liminal state — a state in which we’re tuned in to more than one frequency at a time. In that condition, we’re receiving new and unfamiliar input, but we have yet to develop the mental categories and concepts to process it. In such cases, we inevitably fall back on familiar narratives and familiar (even comforting) imagery to fill in the gaps. This point will become more important as we go along.

Comments

[Roger Knights]

Up to par!

[Art]

NDEs and quantum physics have everything to do with each other. It is much easier to understand NDEs if you have read a little bit about the strangeness of quantum physics. Like for instance when near death experiencers say that the people in surgery just passed right through them or in Arthur W's NDE description where a car passed right through him.

"I watched below as the car turned around and came back to run me over again. It was heading toward us way to fast to go around me. My wife was in front of my body, arms extended. Just before impact I cried, 'Please God, not now.' And I watched the car pass through us. Yes. It passed through us." https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1arthur_w_nde.html

And Robert K. Blair, a journalist describes something that happened to him,

"Robert Blair Kaiser is an author and a former correspondent for Time magazine. Reviewing a book about miracles he wrote: "In 1994, behind the wheel of my Mercedes, I lurched out of my driveway and was awakened from my dreamy preoccupation by the sight of a speeding car bearing down on me, not five feet away on my left. I knew I was a dead man.

"All of a sudden, that car was on my right. The driver weaved a bit, braked for a moment and then drove off, shaking his head in disbelief, as I was. For it was clear to me, there was no way he could have missed crashing into me, no way he could have steered aside. His car had flashed through my car, his steel and glass and rubber passing through my steel and glass and rubber like a ray of light through a pane of alabaster."

Kaiser ends his anecdote with a reflection: "This miracle moment was a turning point in my life, for I took it as a sign that God wasn't finished with me yet and that I had some new business to attend to." https://www.near-death.com/philosophy/atheism/an-analysis-of-the-ndes-of-atheists.html

"Everything we call real is made out of things that can't be considered as real." Niels Bohr, was one of the early founding fathers of modern quantum physics.

And from Peter Russell's Mysterious Light essay from the Ions website. "Take, for example, our ideas as to the nature of matter. For two thousand years it was believed that atoms were tiny balls of solid matter-a model clearly drawn from everyday experience. Then, as physicists discovered that atoms were composed of more elementary, subatomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrons, and suchlike), the model shifted to one of a central nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons-again a model based on experience.

An atom may be small, a mere billionth of an inch across, but these subatomic particles are a hundred-thousand times smaller still. Imagine the nucleus of an atom magnified to the size of a grain of rice. The whole atom would then be the size of a football stadium, and the electrons would be other grains of rice flying round the stands. As the early twentieth-century British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington put it, "matter is mostly ghostly empty space"-99.9999999 percent empty space, to be a little more precise.

With the advent of quantum theory, it was found that even these minute subatomic particles were themselves far from solid. In fact, they are not much like matter at all-at least nothing like matter as we know it. They can't be pinned down and measured precisely. They are more like fuzzy clouds of potential existence, with no definite location. Much of the time they seem more like waves than particles. Whatever matter is, it has little, if any, substance to it." https://www.peterrussell.com/SG/IONS.php

[Art]

One other small note... people describe things in different ways because what is important to them is different. So if I were to write a story about an NDE (if I had one) I might remember and describe all the ways in which it paralleled or corroborated the holographic universe theory or seemed similar to what I've read about the strangeness of quantum physics.

A Christian having the same experience might concentrate on the being of Light and how much it was like Jesus or God.

We might all have had the exact same experience but what fascinates me might be uninteresting to someone else. And so what I write about and talk about in describing my NDE (if I had one) would probably be very different than most other people's NDE description.

[Art]

Okay, one more and then I'll stop... I promise. {smile}

“Consciousness Creates Reality” – Physicists Admit The Universe Is Immaterial, Mental, & Spiritual

"“Consciousness creates reality.” This statement has changed the scientific and medical landscape, and alternative media outlets around the world have and continue to explore its meaning and implications for out future. Countless scientists study this idea and how it might be correlated with the nature of our reality."

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/11/11/consciousness-creates-reality-physicists-admit-the-universe-is-immaterial-mental-spiritual/

[Art]

Michael I just read a great article in Scientific American that has a whole lot to do with what we've been talking about here. I think you'll really like it. It was written by Bernardo Kastrup.

Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?

"Therefore, when we believe that we see objects and events outside and independent of mind, we are wrong in at least some essential sense. A new paradigm is needed to accommodate and make sense of the anomalies; one wherein mind itself is understood to be the essence—cognitively but also physically—of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves."

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/should-quantum-anomalies-make-us-rethink-reality/

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Interesting article in Scientific American, Art. Thanks for the link.

I was not impressed with the article however but it is probably consistent with Scientific American standards. I find it difficult to believe that Bernardo Kastrup would allow his name to be associated with such a fluff piece. There is actually no supporting information in it. It must have been severely edited by the magazine editors as I believe that Bernardo Kastrup is not normally this superficial.

If one wants supporting mathematics for a new paradigm of reality, see the presentations by Nassim Haramein. Because of his lack of academic credentials Mr. Haramein has been forced to go outside of academia to get his ideas presented for consideration. One could criticize him I suppose for using the internet and marketing strategies to get his thoughts into the mainstream but he has written several papers of proofs which have been published in one or two scientific journals.

By the way, is anyone else disappointed with Psi Encyclopedia? I thought that it was going to be the go-to site for all information about psi and related topics. (This site and Michael Tymn's site are much better.) After all it was funded by a grant through the Society For Psychical Research. It seems to have deteriorated into a roster of people who do research in parapsychology or psi. And I think it has a serious weakness in that it doesn't allow comments to the articles. - AOD

[Michael Prescott]

From Kastrup's article:

//The only alternative left for those holding on to the current paradigm is to postulate some form of non-locality: nature must have—or so they speculate—observation-independent hidden properties, entirely missed by QM, which are “smeared out” across spacetime. It is this allegedly omnipresent, invisible but objective background that supposedly orchestrates entanglement from “behind the scenes.”//

Kastrup himself isn't sympathetic to this view, but superficially, at least, it sounds compatible with the idea of an information-processing system as the substrate of physical reality. The "binary code" would be the "observation-independent hidden properties," and because the code underlies all events in the phenomenal realm, it would (in effect) be "smeared out" across spacetime as an "omnipresent, invisible but objective background that ... orchestrates entanglement from 'behind the scenes.'"

The CPU running a computer's programming similarly could be seen as an omnipresent, invisible, objective background that orchestrates the behavior of the pixels on the screen.

[Bruce L Siegel]

"superficially, at least, it sounds compatible with the idea of an information-processing system as the substrate of physical reality information"

Michael, for me, the problem with such an explanation boils down to this: an information-processing system is a machine. Likening the universe to a non-living thing reinforces the essential blindness of mainstream science, which treats the universe as a dead thing that inexplicably, and only occasionally, gives rise to life, rather than as an entity alive at its core.

As I see it, there's nothing *but* life here.

I'm glad that up to this point your book does not dwell on the computer metaphor.

[Bill Pedersen]

Can't we be sharper edged about this? Individual hallucinations happen all the time as extensively discussed by Oliver Sacks in his book of the same name.But I do not think there is any evidence for multi-person hallucinations -identical detailed perceptions of the same thing. If they existed, they would have to depend on a mechanism completely different from those posited for individual hallucinations. So the claim of "mass hallucination" is just a sloppy way to dismiss inconvenient evidence.

[Kathleen]

I just wanted to put out a rebuttal to the skeptic's rebuttal that people are only experiencing NDEs "now" because it's only recently that people have started actually "admitting" that they've had them.

Raymond Moody "Life After Life" was published in 1975. At that time, NDEs weren't discussed much if at all, and there was no term for them, as Moody actually coined the term. But in his book, he recounts the NDEs of many people. Nobody was much talking about these experiences before his book, if at all.

And as an aside, I'd like to add that as someone who had an NDE, one of the most amazing things was how I instantly felt that everything was completely "OK" - a feeling other NDErs often report. It was a complete feeling of relief, as one often feels returning home after a long, challenging trip. The other thing was how I got there in an instant. Despite the severe head injury I received, I don't remember the impact, and I was over on the other side in an instant. And there was a barrier, in this case a low stone wall, and one of the my deceased loved ones coming quickly towards me. It was such a joyful experience - something other NDErs also often report.

I defy anyone to offer an "explanation" for NDEs that makes sense.

[Chris Myers]

Loved these 4 excerpts Michael, when do you anticipate releasing the book, can't wait to read the whole thing, great stuff!!

[Matt Rouge]

Excellent work, Michael!

I've been buried for a couple weeks, but I'm catching up on your book...

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks, Chris. To be honest, I have no idea when the book will be released. It’s in its earliest stages, and even the excerpts I posted will probably be rewritten pretty extensively.

"I've been buried for a couple weeks ..."

Man, I hate it when that happens. 😮

[Roger Knights]

"Raymond Moody "Life After Life" was published in 1975. At that time, NDEs weren't discussed much if at all, and there was no term for them"

When I was a child 65 years ago, my Catholic friends told me of other Catholics who had been at death's door and beyond, and who had returned with tales of a heavenly and Christian realm after death. I got the impression this was a really big deal for them, and that awareness of such claims was high among Catholics.

[Art]

\\"When I was a child 65 years ago, my Catholic friends told me of other Catholics who had been at death's door and beyond, and who had returned with tales of a heavenly and Christian realm after death." - Roger//
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"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

When I was in high school and college I was fascinated by paleoanthropology and human and primate evolution. My friends called them "Art's Ape Books." I read every book I could get my hands on about it and later even took graduate courses in the University of Tennessee Anthropology department about human and primate evolution.

We got a computer and internet around the year 2000 and I stumbled upon a site called "survivalscience.org" and that is where I started reading about NDEs and the holographic universe theory. It's interesting to me how just knowing about NDEs and deathbed visions has changed my whole perception of life? Even though I haven't experienced either I am no longer near as afraid of death as I once was.

The connection between them was so obvious to me and it changed my life. I wasn't the first one to see that connection. Dr. Ken Ring has a whole chapter about the connection between NDEs and the holographic universe theory and there is some about it in Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe theory. Dr. Melvin Morse devotes several pages to the holographic universe theory in his book "Where God Lives." It was obvious to me that it couldn't be coincidental and it meant something profound.

Anyway, a few years after that I read about deathbed visions and there was just something about them that struck me as being true. That they had to be more than "just hallucinations" because there were too many people who had them and they couldn't all be hallucinating the same thing? And also deathbed visions are just too comforting and uplifting for them to just be some strange evolutionary quirk of the brain?

So I've tried to reconcile my former fascination with human and primate evolution and later interest in life after death? And the truth is there is no real connection between them. And I still believe in both and they seem to live in two different parts of my brain and I still find both interesting. Perhaps our physical body was made by evolution and our "soul" or consciousness is "something else" and just uses the body to learn about this 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe we are living in now?

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Art
Let's imagine that all living things have a consciousness. We could also assume that consciousness is eternal but ebbs and flows in and out of itself as it joins and leaves the Source Consciousness. On some other plane perhaps individual consciousnesses actively participate in creating all that we see on the physical plane. That is, they create and modify over time each and every living thing on earth and throughout the universe which they inhabit. That's their job. They are the creators. From the earth's perspective that creativity--- we call evolution.

What we see and call evolution is really just the creative process of consciousness over time playing with form. Human consciousness inhabits a physical form ideally situated for activities on the earth. It is not too big nor too small to use and enjoy all that the planet has to offer. - AOD

[William]

"In all these cases, I think a narrative is constructed that can make sense of the situation in terms the person can understand."

I can't help but think that these aspects of the NDE may constitute a deception by some kind of non human intelligence that the NDEr is encountering.

[Art]

\\"I can't help but think that these aspects of the NDE may constitute a deception by some kind of non human intelligence that the NDEr is encountering." - William//
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I know you probably didn't mean this to be funny but after I read it for some reason I started laughing.

We'll all find out when we get there. I'm guessing that it probably doesn't really matter what I believe. It is probably irrelevant. I enjoy reading NDEs and deathbed vision stories and I especially find deathbed visions to be very comforting and uplifting. If there is a God deathbed visions seem like something that He/She/It might allow or do? We'll see!

Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End, by Christopher Kerr

https://www.amazon.com/Death-But-Dream-Finding-Meaning/dp/0525542841/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Christopher+Kerr&qid=1581699338&s=books&sr=1-1

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

William,
You might want to consider some YouTube videos of NDEs experienced by people from Germany. The videos are in German but have a translation. I highly recommend these videos (there are several) as they are very intense accounts of people who have died and left their body. - AOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeIIDYG8ryw

[Art]

Amos, it's really early on Saturday morning and my wife is still sleeping so I need to be quiet but since you posted 2X that we should watch these German NDE videos you've peaked my interest. Later on today after my wife wakes up I will start watching these videos. Sometimes I wake up really early in the morning and have trouble getting back to sleep....

Most of my recent ancestors were German so it sounds interesting to me and ya'll know I am an NDE fan. I even have some Neanderthal German ancestors! I took the National Geographic DNA test and it said I was 1.4% Neanderthal! {grin!}

One of my nieces taught in Germany for several years and my older sister spent a lot of time in Germany visiting (during the summers) while her daughter was teaching there. They traveled all over Europe while she was there and took a ton of photos and posted them on Facebook!

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Art,
"Row, row, row your boat, gently up the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, LIFE is but a dream" - AOD

[Art]

\\Art, "Row, row, row your boat, gently up the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, LIFE is but a dream" - AOD//
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The strange thing is that it is probably true! {grin!}

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." – Niels Bohr, founding father of modern quantum physics

"I felt an understanding about life, what it was, is. As if, it was a dream in itself." excerpt from Michelle M's NDE description, https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1michelle_m_nde.html

"But the day before he passed away, he wrote me a note: "This is all an elaborate hoax." I asked him, "What's a hoax?" And he was talking about this world, this place. He said it was all an illusion." - excerpt from Roger Ebert's final moments with his wife, https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/news/a26606/roger-ebert-final-moments/

"For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion." http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html

"In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significantly so on its own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience

And I have read quite a few other NDE descriptions that have described pretty much the same thing, that our Universe is some kind of strange holographic projection and not quite real.

[Remus]

I believe we are already in the spirit world. When this current identity dies, we go back to being God. Pure awareness. That's boring (if within time) so we continue on with another equally Imaginary life. What we experience immediately after death is whatever we expect to happen. We are not our ego or our body and neither are those around us. Death is not truly real because we don't really exist in the first place. To understand who you really are, you must first subtract everything that you are not. Everything you've accepted beginning from the moment of birth. I think this is the true meaning behind the "fall from grace"as well as being "born again".