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I myself have followed the works of Sam Parnia too. While he is heavily biased towards a positive result supporting the existence of an after life he has managed to design some methodologically sound double blind experiments to undermine his own biases. Yet he has failed to find a positive result.
OOBE for example was one thing he researched. He had it designed that objects which were unmissable and entirely incongruent to their surroundings were placed in areas only visible to people in the classic OOBE positions.... such as floating a few meters above their own body looking down at the operating table.
The patients, the doctors, even the researchers and Sam Parnia themselves, had no idea what the objects were, what hospitals they were in, or which operating theaters. So that made the experiment double blind.
The procedure then would be to interview every patient reporting an OOBE over a period of time. And in that interview ask them if they saw any unusual objects.
Then after the period of time the data on what the objects were, and where they were, would be given to the interviewers. They then would go compare this data to the interviews and see if any of the objects described matched the objects that were there.
Not. One. Positive. Result.
Yes, I followed those studies with interest too. It was a serious scientific, multi-year effort. It came up empty-handed.
Some studies have been done on homeopathic remedies also, but without fail every time an informal, uncontrolled study seemed to show something, a scientific double-blind study came up empty-handed. To the extent that someone as I recall advanced the apologetic that it is a case of observer effect or even observe-expectancy effect. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle has even been invoked. Still ... aside from the fact that homeopathic dogma flies in the face of a number of scientific principles, it has been disconfirmed scientifically.
But people so want there to be a pleasant afterlife, and so want the current inabilities and high costs of modern Western healthcare to have a backstop, that they cannot accept the science. And so, like with god, it is "afterlife of the gaps" and "medicine of the gaps". Usually with some inappropriate reference to quantum mechanics tossed in, because, well ... quantum! I think it's easier sometimes for people to believe that several disconfirming studies, rather than settling anything, reflect incompetence or conspiracies.
It is funny when you think of it. Someone starts a thread on Where do you think you will be when you die, and then the Christians come on and try to save everyone so they won't be in a hell. And so the thread gets off topic.
I know God exists, and I know God is Love, not condemnation. JUST LOVE. I also know that the Bible is not completely the word of God but of what mankind believed God to be.
Where will I go when I die? I believe in an afterlife, but I don't concern myself with what that afterlife will be like; I just know that it is not filled with a condemnation of anyone.
This accusation of wishful thinking is quite ubiquitous. I suppose it may be true for some maybe even many . . . but it certainly is nothing I relate to. I wished for nothing but Nirvana and was presented with an unmistakable conscious reality that cannot be anything BUT God. The experience IS not remotely physical and did NOT involve my physical body at all . . . yet I was complete, individual and part of the Oneness that is ALL LIFE . . . not just human. I see no way whatsoever for the entity that I produce in my brain to rot or otherwise decompose. It is NOT physical. I wish for nothing. I just accept what I was presented with as a given. I have no idea what it will be like untethered from this physical body nor do I know how long it will last in that form. But since EVERY LIVING THING is of the same essence . . . I do not see how anything can be lost.
No one here can understand this, and I know you know this to be true. They will say it is wishful thinking, a hallucination, or give some other reason why you had this experience. But most of all they can't understand it, and I wish they could. You do too.
I was an atheist when I had my own experience. It was not wishful thinking or an hallucination. I saw nothing to hallucinate, and I didn't expect it. But It is a knowingness that can never be taken away or explained away by anyone.
No one here can understand this, and I know you know this to be true. They will say it is wishful thinking, a hallucination, or give some other reason why you had this experience. But most of all they can't understand it, and I wish they could. You do too.
I was an atheist when I had my own experience. It was not wishful thinking or an hallucination. I saw nothing to hallucinate, and I didn't expect it. But It is a knowingness that can never be taken away or explained away by anyone.
I was raised Pentecostal as a child, complete with tent revival meetings and regular attendance at Sunday school. By the time I was 13 years old however I had reached the conclusion that it was all a bunch of made up nonsense, and that I must be an atheist because I was no longer buying ANY of it. This occurred even though I had never even uncounted another atheist at that point in my life. Now at the age of 66 I have seen no reason to change my mind. When I believed however, as a child, I truly believed. I said my prayers regularly. No one ever answered back. Throughout my adult life as an atheist I have had no experience similar to the one you describe. One is forced to wonder why is God apparently so selective, capriciously picking and choosing those He will reveal Himself to, and those He will not? God is generally represented by those who believe that He exists as a loving father figure who loves His children equally. Does God love His children equally? Because He seems to play a somewhat cruel game of inclusion/exclusion. Perhaps a better question to ask you is, why should God choose to love you more than those of us he has never granted such an experience to as the one you have mentioned? Why is it that He has selected you out to be special? What kind of a loving parent does THAT? And, having had no such experience ourselves, why should we consider your experience to be anything other than a personal mind game you have chosen to play with yourself for reasons of your own?
I would like to think when I leave this world, I will be with my loved ones who have gone before me. Like I said on another thread, the truth of the matter is, none of us on this side knows what lies beyond.
This accusation of wishful thinking is quite ubiquitous. I suppose it may be true for some maybe even many . . . but it certainly is nothing I relate to. I wished for nothing but Nirvana and was presented with an unmistakable conscious reality that cannot be anything BUT God. The experience IS not remotely physical and did NOT involve my physical body at all . . . yet I was complete, individual and part of the Oneness that is ALL LIFE . . . not just human. I see no way whatsoever for the entity that I produce in my brain to rot or otherwise decompose. It is NOT physical. I wish for nothing. I just accept what I was presented with as a given. I have no idea what it will be like untethered from this physical body nor do I know how long it will last in that form. But since EVERY LIVING THING is of the same essence . . . I do not see how anything can be lost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
No one here can understand this, and I know you know this to be true. They will say it is wishful thinking, a hallucination, or give some other reason why you had this experience. But most of all they can't understand it, and I wish they could. You do too.
I was an atheist when I had my own experience. It was not wishful thinking or an hallucination. I saw nothing to hallucinate, and I didn't expect it. But It is a knowingness that can never be taken away or explained away by anyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tired of the Nonsense
I was raised Pentecostal as a child, complete with tent revival meetings and regular attendance at Sunday school. By the time I was 13 years old however I had reached the conclusion that it was all a bunch of made up nonsense, and that I must be an atheist because I was no longer buying ANY of it. This occurred even though I had never even uncounted another atheist at that point in my life. Now at the age of 66 I have seen no reason to change my mind. When I believed however, as a child, I truly believed. I said my prayers regularly. No one ever answered back. Throughout my adult life as an atheist I have had no experience similar to the one you describe. One is forced to wonder why is God apparently so selective, capriciously picking and choosing those He will reveal Himself to, and those He will not? God is generally represented by those who believe that He exists as a loving father figure who loves His children equally. Does God love His children equally? Because He seems to play a somewhat cruel game of inclusion/exclusion. Perhaps a better question to ask you is, why should God choose to love you more than those of us he has never granted such an experience to as the one you have mentioned? Why is it that He has selected you out to be special? What kind of a loving parent does THAT? And, having had no such experience ourselves, why should we consider your experience to be anything other than a personal mind game you have chosen to play with yourself for reasons of your own?
This complaint of "Why not me?" is a legitimate one and I haven't the foggiest idea what the answer is. I am absolutely certain that it has nothing to do with worthiness because I was anything BUT! I am equally certain it is not any kind of mind game that I am playing.
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
― Carl Sagan
My best guess is that my remains will return to this state.
In my experience I knew that God loves everyone no matter what they have done or continue to do. It was equal. There was no judgment. It just was LOVE. It was an encompassing Consciousness of LOVE. Why it doesn't seem this way,I don't know. Whether God answers prayers or not, I don't know. I don't pray.
All I can say is that my experience was not mind games, and that it was the most wonderful experience I have ever had.
Also, I don't look at God in the Christian way, nor do I have all kinds of expectations on God. I don't ask, why is there war, why do we get old and die, and on and on.
Last edited by Mattie Jo; 05-01-2015 at 03:18 PM..
This complaint of "Why not me?" is a legitimate one and I haven't the foggiest idea what the answer is. I am absolutely certain that it has nothing to do with worthiness because I was anything BUT! I am equally certain it is not any kind of mind game that I am playing.
You can certainly see however, from the point of view of those who have never had such an experience, how we could reach the conclusion that God is either being cruelly arbitrary, or that those of you who claim to have had such experiences are simply indulging in mind games with yourselves because it causes you have a warm feeling of being special.
You can certainly see however, from the point of view of those who have never had such an experience, how we could reach the conclusion that God is either being cruelly arbitrary, or that those of you who claim to have had such experiences are simply indulging in mind games with yourselves because it causes you have a warm feeling of being special.
Indeed.
Aside from 30 plus years in Christianity, I've explored secular mindfulness meditation and related things because I can see some potential and value in it, quite apart from the "woo" some people seem to want to put on it. But it doesn't seem to be something my particular brain configuration gets any lift from at all. At the other extreme you have someone like Eckhart Tolle who had severe anxiety and depression when he was younger and seemed to enter into a semi-permanent blissful state simply because something snapped in his head and the infrastructure sustaining all his anxiety and self loathing simply collapsed.
In other words, these blissful, peaceful, nondual, oceanic experiences of enlightenment or god or presence or being or whatever you want to call it, can not happen at all no matter how hard you try in a small minority of people, or can happen spontaneously without trying at all in an even smaller group of people, or anything in between.
Since these kinds of things are clearly not a tool that works for everyone and most people seem to need to be rather dedicated and disciplined to see any benefits, and then tend to overthink it or institutionalize it or otherwise corrupt it anyway, I am not particularly impressed with it. There is too much suffering in the world for people to sit around waiting for god or enlightenment or whatever to descend upon them. Most advanced Buddhists would tell you in fact that the pursuit of such things is in and of itself just more suffering and that enlightenment is only right here and right now anyway. Which is rather like how Christians say that god might answer yes, no, or not right now when you ask him for something in prayer. It ends up not meaning anything for most people most of the time, and definitely ends up not meaning anything for humanity, ever. Yeah maybe it leaves a legacy of pleasing music or art or an inspiring story now and then but the only reduction in wars, famine, disease, ignorance and the like have come from science and a priority on secular education. Religion tends to get in the way of that. Sorry.
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