(May 10, 2014 at 12:53 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: That's funny, you seem to have missed the multiple times I've mentioned my NDE on this forum, and ignored any of the research into near death experiences that don't say what you want to hear.
I'm not entirely sure who you were talking to here but it could be me. I joined the forum in January 2013, stayed for about three months and then didn't come back until a few weeks ago. This is probably why I missed the times you've mentioned your own NDE. Can you find any posts you made about it because I'd like to read them.
I find the research very interesting, particularly the Being Of Light.
Quote:Interestingly, while the above description of the being of light is utterly invariable, the identification of the being varies from individual to individual and seems to be largely a function of the religious background, training, or beliefs of the person involved. Thus, most of those who are Christians in training or belief identify the light as Christ and sometimes draw Biblical parallels in support of their interpretation. A Jewish man and woman identified the light as an "angel." It was clear, though, in both cases, that the subjects did not mean to imply that the being had wings, played a harp, or even had a human shape or appearance. There was only the light. What each was trying to get across was the they took the being to be an emissary, or a guide. A man who had had no religious beliefs or training at all prior to his experience simply identified what he saw as "a being of light." The same label was used by one lady of the Christian faith, who apparently did not feel any compulsion at all to call the "Christ."
Mellen-Thomas Benedict's Near-Death Experience has an interesting view of this being.
Quote:The light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs.
As the light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our Higher Self matrix. The only thing I can tell you is that it turned into a matrix, a mandala of human souls, and what I saw was that what we call our Higher Self in each of us is a matrix.
As I asked the light to keep explaining, I understood what the Higher Self matrix is. We have a grid around the planet where all the Higher Selves are connected.
Mandalas, archetypal images and Higher Self made me wonder if his NDE experience had been influenced by Jungian psychology and a misunderstanding of what the collective unconscious is.
Carl Jung's Near Death Experience
Quote:I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block. An entrance led into a small antechamber. To the right of the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench. He wore a white gown, and I knew that he expected me. Two steps led up to this antechamber, and inside, on the left, was the gate to the temple. Innumerable tiny niches, each with a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and small burning wicks, surrounded the door with a wreath of bright flames. I had once actually seen this when I visited the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort.
As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me - an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.
He was all set to enter the temple but got a message saying he had to return to Earth.
Quote:... as he reflected on life after death, Jung recalled the meditating Hindu from his near-death experience and read it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the God-image within. Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, centered on the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
The collective unconscious is only collective in the sense that it's the same in everyone. The Self (Higher Self) is like the blueprint for how the brain produces the mind - everyone has one of these blueprints but the blueprints aren't connected in some kind of mystical way.
So what does it all mean? One group of people insists that NDEs prove we continue after death while the other group insists that they don't. The only way of finding out for certain is by dying and staying dead. If there isn't any continuation after death, we won't be aware of it, of course.
Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?