tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6385318669193782159.post2330914411996139901..comments2023-12-24T10:01:24.097-08:00Comments on A Future Ghost: Evidence Of The Afterlife: The Science Of Near-Death ExperiencesA Future Ghosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17102332822572424051noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6385318669193782159.post-42520874963779379572018-03-13T04:32:07.154-07:002018-03-13T04:32:07.154-07:00Interesting piece. I've been interested in and...Interesting piece. I've been interested in and researching NDEs myself lately and coming up with similar questions. It's difficult to separate what might actually be happening from the cultural and religious context in which these experiences are reported. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is impossible since what we have are not the actual experiences themselves but accounts of the experiences, and these accounts are always being given by real human beings who have come through the experience giving them a full emotional significance.<br /><br />A speculation of mine which so far as I know hasn't been made elsewhere is that NDEs are ultimately rooted in a temporal short-circuit. If we set aside linear time locally, then we might suppose that a given body which will be successfully resuscitated or restored to life in the near future might retroactively allow consciousness to survive while the body is evidently dead in the present. In analogy to some of what we hear taking in place in quantum phenomena, if in the near future - which in some sense already exists - the body is going to be alive (again), then there might be a free-floating consciousness that is rooted not in the dead body in the present, but rather in the shortly to be alive again body of the near future. The (future) fact that the body will be alive is what permits the consciousness to exist and function in the present.<br /><br />In a trivial sense, this has to be true: if the body is destined to die - die completely - then we'd never hear about the NDE because the person would never come back to tell of it. But in the scenario I've described, the survival of consciousness is not down to a permanent, independent nature of consciousness, but to the more modest fact of a body grounding it, organizing it albeit one in the (near) future. To my mind, this more limited claim for the survival of consciousness may be closer to the perceived facts, because in all the paranormal phenomena we hear about, it does not appear that fully-fledged consciousnesses are floating around all around us with their complete personalities in the way that NDE out-of-body consciousnesses seem to with their personalities intact. Of course, not all NDEs involve out-of-body experiences with people floating above the operating table. But the sheer variety of NDEs ought to suggest that it may too much to suppose consciousness 'survives' in the way we might hope. Rather, it is prone to wide transformations and alterations depending on the circumstances, and in the case of final death, maybe dissipation.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03799265260819808245noreply@blogger.com