Quote:Waking consciousness is perhaps one mode of consciousness we experience as reality, dreams are a different mode of consciousness we experience as a reality, say that's a lower grade of reality to the one we're experiencing now if it's non-lucid. Death would be a different grade of consciousness again we would experience as a reality, though this would be on a higher grade to the non-mystical waking conscious state. Certainly that does appear to be the case in people who report NDEs. There may well be a difficulty in translating memory from the different grades of consciousness as we know we can't easily recall dreams so that would make sense.
But again, people who experience NDEs are NOT dead, and not every near-death person experiences NDEs.
If death were simply a different grade of consciousness, then it would follow that EVERY person near death would have a NDE (because everyone is conscious and everyone dreams).
There doesn't seem to be a difficulty in translating the NDE - people who claim to have had one always go into great and mind-numbingly dull detail about them, while people who were near death and did NOT have the experience report - nothing (this includes your Humble Narrator). There seems to be no middle of the road.
Quite a long time ago, Carl Sagan wrote a terrific essay regarding NDEs. I don't recall the title of the essay (and can't be arsed to get up and look for it), but you'll find it in his book, 'Broca's Brain'.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
