[FairMaiden]

I have had three near death experiences: once when I was born (that I don't recall). Once when I was 2, I had a drowning incident and had to be CPR'd back to life. I remember the pain in my lungs and a great panic that vanished into a warm but its vague impressions. Then when I was 5, the neighbourhood children hung me by a skipping rope and I was choked. I remember the experience very clearly. This time, there was absolutely no fear. Everything went numb, then black and then I felt this incredibly lightness. I floated above the scene as my mother walked out onto the balcony to check on me and discovered my hanging body. She ran to me and started CPR to get me breathing again. I know I didn't want to go back. I wanted to keep going somewhere...where I wasn't sure. But I think now I believed it was better than here.

Since then, I've had experiences where I am floating outside my body but I'm not sure if I am dreaming or if I awake. I did jump off a 3 story building after the hanging incident & broke both my ankles...I don't remember that but maybe I wanted to go back there? (LOL, thats speculative)

I often see things that are not there. I've been told by aboriginal folks and seers that is bc I have been "on the other side". When I told my fiance all this, he thought I was crazy. Later that day, we were on public transit and a gentleman walked up to me and said, "so you are one of us? right?" I knew exactly what he was talking about and said, "yes, I've had a near death experience." I can't explain how/why I knew what he was talking about - but it was the "sign" I needed so that my fiance wouldn't think I was nuts. (He's not a believer as I stated before)

[Dukat_Reloaded]

Seems your very susceptable to Near Death Experiences. I would like to futher explain my view on NDE's, and why to me they make no sense. Your brain holds memories, the brain is like a vrc recorder for your bodies senses. This is fact, the brain stores memories, if you cut out some of your brain, you will lose memories. So memories in the brain can only come from our 5 senses. If a soul is real, if the soul left the body, it would not beable to transmit information to the human brain for the person to remember what the soul did on it's journey. I have read some stories of NDE's, where someone says they died on the operating table and they floated upto heaven and spoke to Jesus and he was so kind, is crap imho, because how can your soul implant memories into your brain when it's far off away from your body.

[hotsacks]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', 'S')eems your very susceptable to Near Death Experiences. I would like to futher explain my view on NDE's, and why to me they make no sense. Your brain holds memories, the brain is like a vrc recorder for your bodies senses. This is fact, the brain stores memories, if you cut out some of your brain, you will lose memories. So memories in the brain can only come from our 5 senses. If a soul is real, if the soul left the body, it would not beable to transmit information to the human brain for the person to remember what the soul did on it's journey. I have read some stories of NDE's, where someone says they died on the operating table and they floated upto heaven and spoke to Jesus and he was so kind, is crap imho, because how can your soul implant memories into your brain when it's far off away from your body.

[LadyRuby]

Thanks for sharing your story, FairMaiden, I was going to ask myself if you'd be willing to share it but someone else beat me to it. Wow, you sure had a rough first five years of life!!

There are many Dukat's out there (in fact I think Dukat may be my dad) who won't believe in this until it happens to them personally, and just insists that memories are stored in the brain. Thousands of people have had experiences countering that, but there are many Dukat's out there who choose to ignore that, and seem to feel we've reached our peak in understanding how the body/mind works. I think most real scientists recognize how much we still don't know, and the importance of keeping an open mind.

[AmericanEmpire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')eality is merely a perception.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

I actually have thought about this topic alot. I made up my own idea on how the brain works and what concousness is. I havn't bothered looking on the internet what other people think, but I was in deep thought one day and this is the conculsion I came to.

I don't believe that it is possible for something to be random in the universe. The whole idea of something random is flawed. If someone flips a coin, it will come up heads or tails, but something must have decided weather it would be heads or tails. Something must have decided what the outcome of that would be, and that something is concousness. When something happens, the universe must choose the outcome, something being just "random" is meaningless. When a coin is flipped, the universe creates a spark of concousness which decides the outcome of the coin. Only a very tiny bit of concousness thou, and only for a fraction of a second. When something can go either way in the universe, brief period of concousness decides the outcome. Life through evolution used this law to it's advantage. The human brain is like 100 trillion coin flips per second, and alot of concousness is constantly created in this brain, very dense powerful concousness in a very small amount of matter, giving us the concousness we know. The electrical signals in the brain can go either way, this gives us alot of coinflipping concousness. The human brain evolved to take advantage of this fact as did most other life forms here on earth, but other lifeforms have not grown a larger brain to increase their concousness. So concousness is created by matter which desires an outcome which life uses as manipulation of electrical signals in the brain on that matter.

So you can see, when you die, the matter in your brain stops functioning to create your dense concousness. I honestly can't see how a soul comes into it, people want to live forever but they know they don't, so they created an idea of a soul that will allow them to live forever after they die. Science has found no evidence of people having a soul, it's people who are emotionally frightened of death that they need to believe in the afterlife.

[Doly]

Dukat, I guess your explanation of consciousness is as good as any other, given that we don't really have now an explanation for it that everybody finds convincing.

[FairMaiden]

I'm not saying I really know for sure - but I do think there is alot we don't know. If our cells are regenerating our body every 7 hours (so that we have a completely new body) - why do look EXACTLY the same all the time? How do our cells know exactly when/where to replicate? Some believe its the "esoteric" body. If so, how does that play into the equation?

I've had plenty of deep thought and pondering myself on the issue. I believe that the electromagnetic energy that is released from the body has "information" stored in it. I think that creates some kind of biofeedback with the universe. So that our experiences are being stored around us and this why the universe needs to keep expanding - its growing with experiences. I have practised and trained myself to pick up on this information and thus have earned the nickname "psychic lady" from the neighbourhood children. Who knows? I may be completely wrong and my belief in this concept alone is what allows me to get information about the future (sometimes its the past too). We live in a 3-D world while physics teaches us there are 10 (or 26) when you solve the unified field theory equation...how does our brain react in more dimensions?

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FairMaiden', 'I')'m not saying I really know for sure - but I do think there is alot we don't know. If our cells are regenerating our body every 7 hours (so that we have a completely new body) -

[EnviroEngr]

In addition to the highly scientistic G,E,B, I recommend a similarly reductionist book, Maps Of The Mind by Charles H. Turner. Doug replied back thus
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hanks for the musings. No, I'm not into the kinds of
things you speak of, but you might write to my friend the
Dutch logician Henk Barendregt, who is, I believe, at the
University of Utrecht (either Philosophy or Math), because
he has tried to connect Zen and meditative states with the
rigorous study of consciousness and logic.

Best wishes,
Douglas Hofstadter.

P.S. -- Thanks for the kind words about my writings.

[ubercynicmeister]

Hi Doly

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'I')t's a well known fact that the most psychologically resilient people are, in this order:

1) Children

[ubercynicmeister]

LOL, Hi FairMaiden

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FairMaiden', 'I') have had three near death experiences: once when I was born (that I don't recall). Once when I was 2, I had a drowning incident and had to be CPR'd back to life. I remember the pain in my lungs and a great panic that vanished into a warm but its vague impressions. Then when I was 5, the neighbourhood children hung me by a skipping rope and I was choked. I remember the experience very clearly. This time, there was absolutely no fear. Everything went numb, then black and then I felt this incredibly lightness. I floated above the scene as my mother walked out onto the balcony to check on me and discovered my hanging body. She ran to me and started CPR to get me breathing again. I know I didn't want to go back. I wanted to keep going somewhere...where I wasn't sure. But I think now I believed it was better than here.

Since then, I've had experiences where I am floating outside my body but I'm not sure if I am dreaming or if I awake. I did jump off a 3 story building after the hanging incident & broke both my ankles...I don't remember that but maybe I wanted to go back there? (LOL, thats speculative)

I often see things that are not there. I've been told by aboriginal folks and seers that is bc I have been "on the other side". When I told my fiance all this, he thought I was crazy. Later that day, we were on public transit and a gentleman walked up to me and said, "so you are one of us? right?" I knew exactly what he was talking about and said, "yes, I've had a near death experience." I can't explain how/why I knew what he was talking about - but it was the "sign" I needed so that my fiance wouldn't think I was nuts. (He's not a believer as I stated before)

[threadbear]

"She underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that threatened her life. The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neuro-surgical techniques. She was referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest. It allowed Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced an NDE
. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead"

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html

[LadyRuby]

There are thousands and thousands of these stories. A few of them are here:

http://www.nderf.org/NDERF_NDEs.htm


I'm sure that some of these people are liars or psychotics, but in general people should be presumed sane and moral, and given the benefit of the doubt IMO. [/url]

[daniel347]

I agree with everything you said! I was excited when I read it.

About the afterlife: I think its possible that conciousness/mind/being is a property shared by not just humans but everything...

I am not talking about thoughts and emotions, but (this is theoretical... I dont know what I'm talking about) the actual nature of our experience itself.

I think that the information given to us through our senses is not the true reality that we live in - consider the existence of atoms and electromagnetic maves, etc. We dont see everything as it really is.

So if our Being is a fundamental property of our existence, why not say that it is not just unique to us, but applies to everything? The dominant idea is that our Being is some kind of emergent property. But if that is true, how can we exist at all?

It's interesting to note that some centuries ago people thought that animals were unthinking automatons. How many people beleive now that animals dont have conciousness but only a brain made of visible matter? I extend that to everything... if an animal brain has a kind of Being that is unaccesible to me through sight, then why not everything that I can see?

I wonder about this. When we die, maybe there is some kind of continuity of Being? A tree? A lake? I dont know. I could never say I knew for sure because I think it would be pretty hard to "prove" scientifically.

Lately I keep wondering how humanity will ever get itself out of the mess it is in. I think the world will heal eventually. It's just going to take a really long time. So I try to just live happily and thoughtfully today. I hope that my actions now will have a positive effect on the future.