Near death experiences and what they teach us about the afterlife

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DrAllaire

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I wish to explore what different beliefs and religions say about the nature of the afterlife and it's relation to this world we live in now.

I became interested in this subject 12 years ago after having my own brief yet vivid NDE.

I'm not scared of death or dying, more curious as to what any afterlife could be.

At the moment my own personal philosophy on the issue comprises the following:-

- We are a part of nature, the cosmos and the universe.

- When we are born we emerge from nature / the universe / the cosmos, much in the same way we return to it at the end of life.

- If you boil it down to its most basic parts of life we are all just a collection of atoms / matter along with the rest of the universe

- That religions seek to put a human face on a one-ness, a great power at the centre of the universe that we return to when we die. Is this what NDEs are describing / hinting at, or are they just a set of brain based hallucinations from a d
ying brain?


Opinions /personal experiences appreciated
 
DrAllaire said:
I wish to explore what different beliefs and religions say about the nature of the afterlife and it's relation to this world we live in now.

I became interested in this subject 12 years ago after having my own brief yet vivid NDE.

I'm not scared of death or dying, more curious as to what any afterlife could be.

At the moment my own personal philosophy on the issue comprises the following:-

- We are a part of nature, the cosmos and the universe.

- When we are born we emerge from nature / the universe / the cosmos, much in the same way we return to it at the end of life.

- If you boil it down to its most basic parts of life we are all just a collection of atoms / matter along with the rest of the universe

- That religions seek to put a human face on a one-ness, a great power at the centre of the universe that we return to when we die. Is this what NDEs are describing / hinting at, or are they just a set of brain based hallucinations from a d
ying brain?


Opinions /personal experiences appreciated
Click to expand...
Welcome to the forum. Personally I see NDE experiences are a great confirmation of Gods creations and our path to life after death.

As a Baha'i we have many Writings about life after death to meditate upon.

We are told in the Baha'i Writings that this world is a matrix for our journey through all the worlds of God. In this life our purpose is to come to know and love God and enable the attributes that are latent within us. Each virtue we obtain becomes a spiritual limb so we can function in the world of lights.

Most people who have an NDE, will say there are not words to adequately describe what they experienced. Thus the virtues are the basic requirement for our journey after death.

I guess you have experienced this? Our oneness is absolute and found in our pure motives.

In this respect, hell for us becomes a lack of those virtues.

Great topic, happy to discuss further.

Regards Tony
 
Welcome DrAllaire.

I've never had an NDE but respect it as an alternate experience of reality. I did have one experience of nondual being and that drastically changed me from agnostic to spiritual but not religious. I connected more with philosophies like advaita/daoism/buddhism. I am still uncertain if an NDE is genuine experience of life after death or dreaming as brain systems go offline instead.

It seems to me odd that mystical perceptions of the world increase for a person as their brain systems slowly go offline. Take dreams for example. Every night we die and are reborn as a new being in a new reality. Or psychedelics deactivate more sections of brain than they activate as recent neurology discovered compared to the old idea that they activated the brain more. And that deactivation, especially of our default mode network, allows new realities to be lived and known.

Similarly, shutting off of brain as it dies seems to lead to unique world arising and being known. A materialist would call that hallucination or delusion but I am no materialist. After my awakening, I am led to believe that union with our infinite self is what is realized upon death but I'll know better once I die which is why I look forward to death whenever it may arrive.

Share your NDE so that I may glean a deeper look into the world you were in. I would love to hear it. Thanks.
 
I used to think reincarnation was the most likely scenario. I got the idea from my mom who claimed to believe it at one time. I read a bunch of books over the years and took stories of NDEs or PLRs which I took as evidence. I no longer find the idea as appealing as I once did but it seems at least as plausible as other afterlife scenario theories.
 
DrAllaire said:
Opinions /personal experiences appreciated
Click to expand...
I'd say that the NDE can be given to some as the glimse into the other world, but it is not something that is of a very general nature. And so it is of a class totally different that the text claiming to be the revelation from the Lord Himself about the other life. Such claims can of course be fantastic, erroneus, fake, but as a man reads it and is able to understand the arguments rationally, and see into the rationality of it all, then he can see for itself, if it is true or not, and whether it also contains the true explanation of the Sacred Scripture or not. From I was able to see and read, there are many texts that have various claims, but their overall explanation of the Sacred Scripture is not consistent, fantastic, or fallacious in the various essential respects, but there is, as far as I was able to see, which is not such, but which is correct as to its explanation of the Scripture. And so the whole story about the other life is not simply "I saw it, believe it", but it comes in a context/package of the through explanation of the Sacred Scripture.

So, NDE in that respect, is not something that is to be relied upon spiritually as the Divine Revelation in its fullness, but certainly, NDE, once given, it should not discarded, but simply on its own, NDE is not containing the means of regeneration, and thus conjoining a man with God, and thus granting the true life eternal.
 
The breadth and depth of visual and audible hallucinations that get interpreted from a reduced blood and oxygen flow to the brain can feel quite real. The ones I had in the ICU I do not interpret as valuable...but if I were such a being who did...I would have many a story to get excited about.
 
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