What happens when you die?

[Yeti101]

I understand why people wonder about this. I think about it regularly and not in a morbid gothy way (I hope). I would like to think that we go to the "fields of light" I saw once, but I have no solid evidence that this is the case. Really, I don't know what happens when we die - maybe something - maybe nothing. But I do take perverse satisfaction in this lack of knowledge because I feel it gives life a bit of edge.

[devance]

Well perhaps, the new series 'Fringe'.

So the guy that produced, 'Lost'.

Rejoice.

Good luck.

[Garbage]

People eithe fight back the urge to rejoice and/or feel sad when they think of it?

[devance]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_/ai_67185279

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2000/08/21/nr_tissue/

' A.J. Welch can turn skin transparent but, no, he explains with a laugh, he cannot make you look like one of those old "Visible Man" science toys. What Welch, a biomedical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues can do is nonetheless amazing: They can create temporary windows where they can see right through the outer skin of rats and guinea pigs.

The trick is an injection of glycerol under the animals' epidermis. Glycerol drives out the water molecules that normally scatter light and render skin opaque. Because glycerol has nearly the same index of refraction as collagen, the common protein in skin, light travels in a straighter line through treated cells. In a few minutes, the skin becomes transparent up to a millimeter or two deep--far enough to make blood vessels visible. Water gradually seeps back into the cells, so the skin fogs up again after about 20 minutes.'

I think the TV 'fringe' is a cheap rip off like 'lost'.

Without any scientific facts,

Just view it as a comedy, as the Mad Scientistis funny.

But getting some scientist outlooks is not happening and just confusing the audience from a giddy confusing outlook which never happens or becomes clear..

Some people like 'lost' but as someone mentioned it was interrupted and reversed many times and the 'fringe' series was a 2 hour introduction with only 60 second intervals for commercials.

I really dislike the guy.

Any way theres way to actually get a transparent skin, not polyethene glycol although a good guess as in the series.

[Tlaloc]

In 2003 I went up to Brisbane and learned under a visiting Zen Master Wong Kiew Kit.

We had a farewell dinner, and I asked him, "Sifu, what happens when a person dies?"

He said, " It depends upon what their last thought is"

What r u thinking?

I just wanna love everyone & everything

underneath, I do love everyone and everything

I've heard so many arguments and ideas on the nature of death/life. Alot of ppl don't realise their awareness is totally conditioned.

If you "believe" such and such, your perceptions will be coded and influenced as such.

Ppl fear death immensely, and would rather "go with the crowd". It's safe and comforting to 'imagine' that something out there in that massive unfathomable universe gives an absolute flying fig about us microbial ants on a floating rock. What utter ridiculous Self-Importance!

I liked what another Zen Master Seung Sahn once said to me..

"Christians believe in the past, present life & future life"

"Taoists believe only in the Now. No past, no future"

"Buddhists believe in the present & future life but no past"

"Who is correct?"

"If you say. One of them is correct, I hit you!

If you say All of them are correct, I hit you!

If you say None of them are correct, I hit you again!

So what can you do?

These are systems of Thought.

God is an IDEA Created by Thought. MAN has created His Idea of "God"

Everything you see is Interpreted, molded & fashioned by Thought.

There are many paths to "the Truth", and once reached, they are discarded.

To kill or persecute one another for our different paths is utterly ridiculous.

The Truth is BEFORE Thinking

Don't Answer

Don't Know

[Tlaloc]

Actually, scratch that last post.

I really haven't got a clue exactly what happens when we truly die.

It PROBABLY is not entirely able to be understood by our rational mind. Perhaps in Metaphors, pictures and dreams it can be alluded to.

I just believe in the existence of love for all beings, and hope all beings discover it within themselves.

Then, you can forgive anything.

Then you can let go into the Self.

I've only ever had one experience of death.

(no drugs/plants involved)

(Perhaps Naturally occurring DMT in the brain.??.)

I was very sick at home, i had been awake ALL night, lying in front of the heater. Suddenly i got up and ran to the bath. very intense distress, extreme pain in my body vomiting and then everything SLOWED down.

My Thoughts slowed down. I somehow entered a state in which i could see my next thought Before it arose! then everything became silent.

I was aware of an INTENSE cold Blackness around me, and that in front of me was a black cold indescribable shadow. I felt that if i truly wanted to die at that moment, the shadow would come into me with the force of a hurricane and blast me into oblivion. Also, the black shadow had something to do with the dark pupils in the eyes.?? ideas anyone?

Suddenly I became aware that i was in a complete dark 'void' for lack of words. I was lost in the never-ending darkness. Then Far, far far away there was this teeny tiny tiny point, the size of a pinprick. It was so immensely small, "i" focused on this pinprick. That pin prick was LIFE!

OMG! The Emotional turmoil that raged .. how I longed to come back to life, to experience that warmth, that love, that being. recounting it now brings tears to my eyes.

Somehow, I knew i was going to die. It was an ominous feeling i was going to lose it.

My friends, my family, the people i loved. the scenes of beauty, OMG The Sunshine!! It was all contained in this tiny pinprick in an immense dead black cold nothingness.

With my last breath and thought I intended to come back to life.

I came back

I was in agony, screaming.

That is my experience of "death".

What's yours?

[ThunderIdeal]

what kind of sickness?

my experience of death occurred when i was in no physical danger (a bit sick though) and willed it, willed myself to be overcome, and i was. i was shown how everything can be reduced to it's base component - nothing.

about the pupils, i dunno. pupils are a bit like a black hole aren't they? (a form of) information goes in and doesn't come back. not quite up on my black hole theory.

[Tlaloc]

what kind of sickness?

folks reckoned it was food poisoning. Nanna reckoned i was on shrooms when i told 'em what happened.

HAHA! If u knew my Nan, u'd know how goddamn funny that statement was coming from her!

I've nerver done shrooms! (prefer to take sacrements like that with good - hearted shaman. i.e. Maria Sabina

I don't look to plant's to "get me off" as such, rather more interested in the psychological aspects and personal growth/healing side of things. Had soo many friends who would just abuse the shit out of whatever substance they could find. doesen't gel w me. w some of 'em twas just a phase.

love to all of them

my experience of death occurred when i was in no physical danger (a bit sick though) and willed it, willed myself to be overcome, and i was. i was shown how everything can be reduced to it's base component - nothing.

funny, deep down i think i willed it too IdealThunder. you're picking up my subconscious vibes there...

i was at a period in life where i wanted death. I would seek it in various ways, and things did happen.

about the pupils, i dunno. pupils are a bit like a black hole aren't they? (a form of) information goes in and doesn't come back. not quite up on my black hole theory.

That's not the only time i've had that perception. It's a strange one Thunder, it's like a strong & undeniable link between the two objects i can't explain it.

Thanks for your input.

[notguilty]

When you die or come close to death large amounts of endogenous DMT are released into your brain as a defense mechanism to make the experience as enjoyable/painless/bearable as possible. This could explain the "light at the under of the tunnel" and many other spiritual near death recollections.

This is only an opinion and I can not support it with any facts.

[mutant]

When you die, you just cease to be. That's all.

[ThunderIdeal]

maybe when you enter a black hole you are squashed against the retina of galactic consciousness i dunno

btw i didn't will myself to actually die. more accurate to say i willed my ego to die.

[Machine Elf]

Ppl fear death immensely, and would rather "go with the crowd". It's safe and comforting to 'imagine' that something out there in that massive unfathomable universe gives an absolute flying fig about us microbial ants on a floating rock. What utter ridiculous Self-Importance!

Not necessarily. The whole 'insignificant ants in a massive Universe' argument is really based on physicalist philosophy, where the size of physical objects impacts upon importance/influence. If you turn to some of the consciousness-related theories of quantum physics, the observing consciousness becomes of great importance - literally, 'size doesn't matter'.

There is a lot of information about psychic mediums and Near Death Experiences which is suggestive that there is something beyond death - there is even some interesting crossover in the information given by both (see 'The Supreme Adventure' by Robert Crookall). Two of the best mediums ever - Leonora Piper and Gladys Osbourne Leonard - were of a quality that is close to convincing me that there is either an afterlife, or that our consciousness is at least separate from our body somehow, and leaves an 'imprint' that can be read from, or returns to some sort of cosmic 'one consciousness' as just one facet of the whole.

It's an interesting thing to note that most atheist/physicalist scientists are biologists (influenced by Darwin etc), while most scientists who are metaphysical in nature are physicists (influenced by quantum physics).

Elf

[Undergrounder]

If you turn to some of the consciousness-related theories of quantum physics, the observing consciousness becomes of great importance - literally, 'size doesn't matter'.

yeah but very few people actually believe in the consciousness interpretation of QM.

There is a lot of information about psychic mediums and Near Death Experiences which is suggestive that there is something beyond death - there is even some interesting crossover in the information given by both (see 'The Supreme Adventure' by Robert Crookall). Two of the best mediums ever - Leonora Piper and Gladys Osbourne Leonard - were of a quality that is close to convincing me that there is either an afterlife, or that our consciousness is at least separate from our body somehow, and leaves an 'imprint' that can be read from, or returns to some sort of cosmic 'one consciousness' as just one facet of the whole.

I've had many OBEs, no NDEs, but i'm convinced that the explanation is purely psychological, to do with kinisthetic/vestibular system hallucinations and heavily influenced by expectation. I think the process if something similar to the way we construct the illusion of reality out of our senses itself.

It's an interesting thing to note that most atheist/physicalist scientists are biologists (influenced by Darwin etc), while most scientists who are metaphysical in nature are physicists (influenced by quantum physics).

Can you give an example of the second point? I consider myself all of atheist, physicalist and i'm interested in metaphysics. Maybe all the nutters are interested in QM because it still has a bit of mystery about it? Maybe the psychological need to believe in something bigger, more mysterious than ourselves in a godless age is the major drawcard of QM, when in reality the 'answer' of QM may be purely mathematical and hold no greater mystery at all.

Edited October 14, 2008 by Undergrounder

[Machine Elf]

yeah but very few people actually believe in the consciousness interpretation of QM.

Depends who you mean by the "very few people", and what you mean by the "consciousness interpretation" of QM. By the latter, do you mean the extrapolation from 'observer' to 'consciousness', or that Everett's Many Worlds hypothesis is now more favoured (although I personally think that still involves consciousness, in terms of 'navigating' the many worlds.

I've had many OBEs, no NDEs, but i'm convinced that the explanation is purely psychological, to do with kinisthetic/vestibular system hallucinations and heavily influenced by expectation. I think the process if something similar to the way we construct the illusion of reality out of our senses itself.

My materialist self would agree with you. Going against that feeling though is the 'why' question (many of the elements of the 'hallucination' are strange - why do people not see themselves as they think they look, but as they are, why does this hallucination have so many common elements, and contain such strange religious overtones, why are there accounts of veridical hallucinations, why do some people share the same hallucination etc). Also, as I previously mentioned, the crossover in descriptions of 'the other side' from both NDErs and mediums. Lastly, the expectation part seems only a hypothesis, considering atheists have had NDEs, and that archetypal NDEs have been happening for much longer than the elements have been 'common knowledge'.

Do you mind describing some of your own OBEs to us?

Can you give an example of the second point? I consider myself all of atheist, physicalist and i'm interested in metaphysics. Maybe all the nutters are interested in QM because it still has a bit of mystery about it? Maybe the psychological need to believe in something bigger, more mysterious than ourselves in a godless age is the major drawcard of QM, when in reality the 'answer' of QM may be purely mathematical and hold no greater mystery at all.

A number of the founders of quantum theory all verged quite clearly to a more mystical view. In the modern day, you can range from 'New Age' physicists like Amit Goswami and Fred Alan Wolf, to the more grounded and pragmatic physicists such as Henry Stapp and (the late) John Wheeler. The latter two certainly don't head off into mystical territory, but their theories do suggest something beyond a reductionist physical world in which consciousness plays no part.

Elf

[Undergrounder]

Depends who you mean by the "very few people", and what you mean by the "consciousness interpretation" of QM. By the latter, do you mean the extrapolation from 'observer' to 'consciousness', or that Everett's Many Worlds hypothesis is now more favoured (although I personally think that still involves consciousness, in terms of 'navigating' the many worlds.

By consciousness interpretation i was meaning the Eugene Wigner idea that consciousness itself is the cause of the collapse of the wave packet. ie: For Schrodinger's cat, the cat only collapses into a "dead state" or an "alive state" when something with a consciousness perceives it. ie: What the Bleep - consciousness creates the reality we see.

I like the many worlds theory but i don't think there's any shred of evidence to actually support it being true and it has as much chance as any other theory (and all the ones we haven't figured out yet). The whole of QM is based around the idea that vector mathematics and Hilbert spaces is the best model for describing state spaces, maybe the mathematics is fundamentally flawed. Perhaps if the theory used geometric algebra instead of linear vector spaces for instance these fundamental mathematic problems wouldn't occur. As well as far-fetched theories about many worlds and time travel and faster than light-speed particles etc. the true answer could be fairly mundane and everyone that's interested in QM because it's 'mysterious' would have to find another mystical theory of reality to hold on to.

My materialist self would agree with you. Going against that feeling though is the 'why' question (many of the elements of the 'hallucination' are strange - why do people not see themselves as they think they look, but as they are, why does this hallucination have so many common elements, and contain such strange religious overtones, why are there accounts of veridical hallucinations, why do some people share the same hallucination etc). Also, as I previously mentioned, the crossover in descriptions of 'the other side' from both NDErs and mediums. Lastly, the expectation part seems only a hypothesis, considering atheists have had NDEs, and that archetypal NDEs have been happening for much longer than the elements have been 'common knowledge'.

I can't explain every example of anything weird or spooky or 'coincidence' perceived in the OBE state, because there's always a story that can't be explained. Aliens, abominable snow-men, drop bears, ewoks, whatever. Everyone knows a story of the above creatures that simply can't be explained rationally, but at the same time there's still no actual evidence that any of the above actually exist. Stories just don't cut the mustard in evidence.

But there's no denying that OBE experiences are extraordinarily subjective. The way an OBEr makes contact with a 'spirit guide' is to go to sleep rehearsing a mantra 'let me find my spirit guide' etc. If i've been worried that my dead husband is OK in the afterlife, then its more likely than not when i have an OBE i will actually see and talk with my dead husband. If i've been told through the media and through friends that death is like 'moving towards a light', then that subconscious expectation will form the content of the hallucination. In that particular example, i actually believe that there is a physical reality to the 'black tunnel/white light' phenomena, that may be as simple as the effect of stimulation or lackthereof in the occipital lobe. The sensory input may be a white light in total darkness, which one's own cultural expectations then turn into a full-blown 'floating through a tunnel towards a light with my dead husband waving at me' hallucination.

So how do i explain common OBE, psychedelic and NDE content? I believe the basis is physical, and that there may be a common experience that most humans perceive which is common to what happens when the brain shuts down. This common experience is then told in stories, elaborated in cultures, and turns into a cultural phenomena that then feeds back into the expectations of the NDEr and informs the archetypal content of the NDE hallucination. The culture isn't necessary for the common content (due to the common experience of dying, hallucinating, OBEing), but it does shape it. Let me give you an example:

You've no doubt had or heard of sleep paralysis. The common features of the SP experience are:

- Paralysis

- The sense of something malicious being present

- Hallucinations

These are the common features of SP that almost everyone experiences, at least the first time. The paralysis is fairly easy to explain, and has been linked to the way the brain paralyses the body before sleep in order to stop you acting out your dreams and hurting yourself. The malicious presence could quite simply be stimulation in the amygdala, or the non-activation of the part of the brain that normally suppresses the amygdala. Either of these would lead to an overwhelming sense of dread, which would fit with the fear of something 'unseen' which is a common SP complaint. Now for the interesting part, the hallucination: The hallucinations always take on things that are relevent to the person experiencing it. For instance the first time i had SP i saw a few thousand red-back spiders on the wall (i actually ran upstairs grabbed a can of insect spray and ran back downstairs and sprayed the entire wall before realising i had had a SP). The second time it was floating jellyfish. Many women see a man raping them. My friend saw the ghost of a little girl staring at him. Lots and lots of people feel themselves paralysed, feel themselves floating out a window and then see aliens operating on them. Cultures all through time have had their own cultural explanation, which has informed the content of their experiences.

The important point here is that these experiences have two aspects: one: a common thread which makes them all the same experience, generated by common brain processes, and two: an individual/cultural interpretation which has shaped the experience. This basic process i believe is behind NDEs, OBEs and hallucinations in general.

In fact my NDE theory is more precise: In NDEs i believe that anaesthetics, either medically induced or natural (from pain suppression), are the base cause of NDEs. I think that anaesthesia causes the body to lose contact with basic sensations like kinisthetic awareness and the vestibular constant of gravity. When we lose awareness of these things we hallucinate the sensation of floating, spinning, flying, falling, etc. I think the common thread of Ketamine, meditation experiences, strong hallucinogens, Sleep paralysis, OBEs and NDEs is some level of anaesthesia, or at least the shut down of normal sensory input from the visual and vestibular systems. In the vacuum of this input, while we are still 'conscious', our own expectation-based, yet extremely complex subconscious generates a replacement hallucination of reality that makes sense in light of our current situation or expectations. If we're in an ER jacked up on anaesthetics, the experience will take on an archetypal NDE floating around the room experience, if we're meditating, shutting down the sensory input naturally, the experience will take on whatever experience you have been told you will experience from what you've been taught, or it will be something of your own creation, or something you don't expect at all. The subconscious is weird like that, but given how extraordinarily creative we are as people, it shouldn't surprise that the pure subconscious can be even more so.

Do you mind describing some of your own OBEs to us?

This post is already too long so i'll just mention a few themes.. flying into space, walking around the house, floating through a black void with a strange alien voice talking to me, watching the TV in my bedroom play a football match that didn't occur, a bright light expands out of the dresser to expand me and fill me with warmth, lots and lots of auditory hallucinations, radios seem to be common..

A number of the founders of quantum theory all verged quite clearly to a more mystical view. In the modern day, you can range from 'New Age' physicists like Amit Goswami and Fred Alan Wolf, to the more grounded and pragmatic physicists such as Henry Stapp and (the late) John Wheeler. The latter two certainly don't head off into mystical territory, but their theories do suggest something beyond a reductionist physical world in which consciousness plays no part.

Which founders are they? I didn't know that any of the people that major founding contributions to QM had mystical views.. Schrodinger maybe, but none of the Copenhagen lot, EPR, von-Neumann, Bohm, Bell, though i might be wrong. I hadn't heard of Henry Stapp but he sounds like a typical Consciousness theorist, same as Amit Goswami.. actually now that you mention it the people you mention seem to be from What the Bleep. David Albert is the only person i was impressed by on that program.

Maybe you can explain to me why consciousness is convinving. It seems to me like it's a theoretical shortcut that replaces one mystery with another, leaving you nowhere as a result. The mystery of wave packet collapse is solved by the mystery of consciousness? Just doesn't sound plausible to me. It sounds unprovable and unfalsifiable, and as convincing as that unprovable, unfalsifiable belief that when we die we go to heaven.

Edited October 15, 2008 by Undergrounder

[Machine Elf]

I can't explain every example of anything weird or spooky or 'coincidence' perceived in the OBE state, because there's always a story that can't be explained. Aliens, abominable snow-men, drop bears, ewoks, whatever. Everyone knows a story of the above creatures that simply can't be explained rationally, but at the same time there's still no actual evidence that any of the above actually exist. Stories just don't cut the mustard in evidence.

No, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate them scientifically (ignoring your implicatory inclusion of drop bears and ewoks and the like). There are 'recurrent regularities' in much of the data in a number of fields - including UFOs, NDEs and OBEs. There may be a very prosaic explanation behind them, or there may be some new discovery behind them. But when pseudoskeptics continually dismiss the topics by saying 'anecdotes do not equal evidence', how is any actual evidential data going to be collected?

In discussing this, I'm coming from the point of view that there is something that links (many) UFO sightings, NDEs and OBEs, and entheogenic experiences (and a number of other 'border experiences'). It may well be a simple matter of brain chemistry. But dismissing say, UFOs, out of hand so that someone can stroke their intellectual ego is rather...unscientific I think.

But there's no denying that OBE experiences are extraordinarily subjective. The way an OBEr makes contact with a 'spirit guide' is to go to sleep rehearsing a mantra 'let me find my spirit guide' etc. If i've been worried that my dead husband is OK in the afterlife, then its more likely than not when i have an OBE i will actually see and talk with my dead husband. If i've been told through the media and through friends that death is like 'moving towards a light', then that subconscious expectation will form the content of the hallucination. In that particular example, i actually believe that there is a physical reality to the 'black tunnel/white light' phenomena, that may be as simple as the effect of stimulation or lackthereof in the occipital lobe. The sensory input may be a white light in total darkness, which one's own cultural expectations then turn into a full-blown 'floating through a tunnel towards a light with my dead husband waving at me' hallucination.

The problem with that view is the historical record of NDEs and the like. NDEs have been noted for centuries, long before they were known of 'publicly', and they still retain a number of archetypal elements - not just the tunnel/moving towards a light. Things like cities/cathedrals of crystal, gateways/bridges/point-of-no-return imagery, and silver cords connecting their 'astral' and physical bodies.

Further, there are other discrepancies such as the Peak in Darien NDEs, where the person having an NDE sees a vision of a dead person, who they did not know previously was dead.

I do agree though that there is a lot of subjectivity in aspects of experiences. But that would agree with the general occult lore of 'astral planes' and the like - it has long been said that the astral mixes parts of the physical world with that of the imagination.

For instance the first time i had SP i saw a few thousand red-back spiders on the wall (i actually ran upstairs grabbed a can of insect spray and ran back downstairs and sprayed the entire wall before realising i had had a SP).

That's pretty funny to me, because one of the spookiest moments I've had with my wife (she does spooky things all the time, whereas I have no paranormal inclinations at all) was when she woke up in the middle of the night screaming to me to get the redback spiders off the curtains. I told her she was having a dream, then when I woke up in the morning I found there was a big web of redbacks hidden in the backfold of the curtain.

Which founders are they? I didn't know that any of the people that major founding contributions to QM had mystical views.. Schrodinger maybe, but none of the Copenhagen lot, EPR, von-Neumann, Bohm, Bell, though i might be wrong.

Certainly, Schrodinger. Pauli was interested in links between the mind and quantum physics. Heisenberg also had a penchant for mystical thinking. And then you have other notables of the time, like Eddington and Oppenheimer.

I hadn't heard of Henry Stapp but he sounds like a typical Consciousness theorist, same as Amit Goswami.. actually now that you mention it the people you mention seem to be from What the Bleep. David Albert is the only person i was impressed by on that program.

Well that's not surprising considering I listed the range, including as I said those closer to the 'New Age'. I don't think John Wheeler was part of What the Bleep? Neither was Stapp. I think you're using loaded language when you say a "typical Consciousness theorist" - what do you mean by this? Have you read Stapp's work? Does it conform to a "typical consciousness theorist"? And are Wheeler and Penrose "typical consciousness theorists"?

On Wheeler's (and Penrose's) interest in the consciousness question, I read an interesting passage by British 'Astronomer Royal' Martin Rees in a book the other day (obviously, written prior to Wheeler's death):

"The paradoxes of quantum mechanics, and the nature of consciousness, are manifestly two of the deepest mysteries of all. It is striking that John Wheeler and Roger Penrose, the most original and influential living theorists about space and time, have both, in their later years, advocated the dissident view that these mysteries are linked."

Maybe you can explain to me why consciousness is convinving. It seems to me like it's a theoretical shortcut that replaces one mystery with another, leaving you nowhere as a result. The mystery of wave packet collapse is solved by the mystery of consciousness? Just doesn't sound plausible to me. It sounds unprovable and unfalsifiable, and as convincing as that unprovable, unfalsifiable belief that when we die we go to heaven.

I didn't say it was convincing. I just like following speculative epistemological threads, I find them fascinating. Especially those that aren't mainstream...I guess I just like to start trouble. In fact, that's a fact - I hate certainty. Following those theories may or may not result in a 'soul' or an 'afterlife'. When I spoke to Stu Hameroff, who has worked with Roger Penrose on the 'quantum consciousness' theory, he said of NDEs: "Under normal circumstances consciousness occurs in the fundamental level of spacetime geometry confined in the brain. But when the metabolism driving quantum coherence (in microtubules) is lost, the quantum information leaks out to the spacetime geometry in the universe at large. Being holographic and entangled it doesnt dissipate. Hence consciousness (or dream-like subconsciousness) can persist."

What is interesting to me about the (possible) link between consciousness and QM is that it may change the game in terms of what our consciousness is regarded as.

Thanks for the intelligent discussion, sorry I haven't had more time to engage it properly!

Elf

Edited October 17, 2008 by Machine Elf

[Undergrounder]

No, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate them scientifically (ignoring your implicatory inclusion of drop bears and ewoks and the like). There are 'recurrent regularities' in much of the data in a number of fields - including UFOs, NDEs and OBEs. There may be a very prosaic explanation behind them, or there may be some new discovery behind them. But when pseudoskeptics continually dismiss the topics by saying 'anecdotes do not equal evidence', how is any actual evidential data going to be collected?

I think the anecdotal thing is strictly true, and if and when an actual alien actually landed, it would leave irrefutable evidence of having done so. I guess anecdotal evidence can be true, just that in the current environment of hoaxes and fakes you need to raise the bar of evidence pretty highly to make the leap of believeing wholeheartedly in something.

I guess this makes the significant difference between you and me. I've gone from "keeping an open mind" on all things to not believing in things i don't have reason to believe in. A common one is God. I don't believe that God exists, in fact i believe that God doesn't exist. UFOs, OBEs, NDEs etc. all could be real, just that i've decided that if i don't have reason to believe in them, i won't. In fact all the commonalities you talk about suggests to me that the common link is human psychology and/or culture. It makes total sense to me for instance that religious symbolism is present in the NDE hallucination, since that's the culturally reinforced archetype. If it occurred "before" the archetype, i'd suggest it was the result of a common human experience.

In discussing this, I'm coming from the point of view that there is something that links (many) UFO sightings, NDEs and OBEs, and entheogenic experiences (and a number of other 'border experiences'). It may well be a simple matter of brain chemistry. But dismissing say, UFOs, out of hand so that someone can stroke their intellectual ego is rather...unscientific I think.

I can't agree with you more... the whining, high frequency noise / vibrations is the biggest one i can think of, uncanny how its common to all of the above. I actually had an OBE the night after writing the above post, first one in at least a year. Quite a long one, lots of random floating and spinning, no sight though, i've always had a problem with sight. That's another common OBE thing, they tend to occur when you're thinking about them or when you've been reading about them. I think there's some subconscious trigger in the hypnagogic state that snaps you out of the dreamy/border state and into full consciousness, which then lets you have the OBE. Loading your subconscious by reading and thinking about OBEs seems to do the trick. And for me it reinforces the subconscious base to the experience.

I think you're using loaded language when you say a "typical Consciousness theorist" - what do you mean by this? Have you read Stapp's work? Does it conform to a "typical consciousness theorist"? And are Wheeler and Penrose "typical consciousness theorists"?

To be honest i don't know the ins and outs of consciousness theory, other than the basic premise that the mystery of consciousness is the root cause of the collapse of the wave packet. By "typical" i wasn't trying to demean the theory, just "typical" in the sense that it comes back to the basic theory i just described. Your quote: "The paradoxes of quantum mechanics, and the nature of consciousness, are manifestly two of the deepest mysteries of all. It is striking that John Wheeler and Roger Penrose, the most original and influential living theorists about space and time, have both, in their later years, advocated the dissident view that these mysteries are linked." sums up my hesitation to accept it: It seems like simply defference of one mystery onto another and calling it progress. Crucially, there is no explanation of -how- the collapse of the wave packet is supposed to occur from consciousness. Nor is there an explanation of what would happen if a couple of different people, Schrodinger's cat, three ants and a few thousand microbes all happened to see the same quantum state at the same time.. would there be a dual of consciousness to see who's consciousness gets to collapse it first? If the collapse is instantaneous, and therefore violates relativity theory, then which consciousness collapses which quantum state and when? And if the collapse occurs at the speed of light or slower, how does it account for the non-locality of the EPR paradox? On the face of it, it seems to me to be a theory without any explanation as to exactly what it is or how it works, which to me isn't a theory. To quote someone else, its a real "deus ex machina"... wheel in "consciousness" to solve the mystery, ignore all the problems and be happy.

On consciousness i keep an open mind, because there is little else that satisfactorally answers the questions posed by QM. But i don't put any store in it actually being correct. In fact like so many of these mysteries, i see the psychological impetus that makes people want to believe in it, and this only serves to turn me off. If i believe in something, i want to do so not because i want to, but because reason tells me to. The more i want to believe in something, the more i'm wary of doing so. Consciousness theory seems particularly appealing, a really self-affirming, astounding type of theory that would be fantastic if it were true. This makes me disbelieve it even more. Your statement: "What is interesting to me about the (possible) link between consciousness and QM is that it may change the game in terms of what our consciousness is regarded as." This would be fantastic, and i hope it is true. But i'd be equally happy if the real answer was von-Neumann smudged one of the numbers in an original equation somewhere down the line and all these problems are depressingly benign.

You mention Penrose, i have to confess i haven't read him, but i want to. And i don't know a thing about Quantum consciousness. In fact i only have a very basic understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation, the main paradoxes by EPR, Bohr, Schrodinger, and a few different contributions here and there. I'm not a physicist by the way either. I'm also interested in consciousness, but again only from a basic viewpoint of the major theories. I am studying psychology by the way though. My library is a motley collection of philosophy of consciousness, cosmology and QM books, mostly unread. So i probably have a very general understanding of a lot of these issues without knowing any in any great depth.

Speaking of Penrose though.. Did you know he sketched this painting for M.C. Escher as a young boy?:

And even weirder, the strange cube shape on the left-hand tower is actually a perfect representation of the Kochen-Specker mandala, if you make all the points on the shape points on the mandala? ie: One of the most important arguments against Hidden Variable theories of QM was doodled randomly by M.C. Escher in response to a Penrose letter. And it was Penrose who discovered the coincidence later, as an old man. These are the kinds of useless things you learn at Australia's universities...

P.S. No need to keep trading walls of text if you don't want to, i just ramble because but you don't run into people with these same interests very often

Edited October 17, 2008 by Undergrounder

[Chiral]

What happens when you die...

DIE METHYL TRYPTAMINE.

H.

[ThunderIdeal]

i looked up that mandala and this thread was the first result.

finally got to read the long exchange of text.

die methyl tryptamine heheh, cool.

[Evil Genius]

One year ago i had a near death experience! Totally unspectacular and very overrated! It was pretty much like the time before i was born! Very nothing. I´m sorry to say...there is just this one life we have! So better use it well! bye Eg

[PhantomTurkey]

I have no idea. Nobody knows what happens when you die.

Hopefully the inevitable death we all face won't involve us remembering this thread while our souls are burning in Hades...

Edited November 25, 2008 by PhantomTurkey

[mountainmaniac]

When you Die your physical body is no more,but your spiritual body moves to the Astral plan. Where you will face your judgement for all your wrong doings.

No,we are not talking heaven or Hell here. Thats Man made (or misinterpreted as either) you will learn from your mistakes on Earth and after a period of time ,given another chance to do better.

The Astral world is part of the teachings of the Tibeten Monks who are able to travel to the Astral world through taught control of their minds. and say it is a learned thing we are all able to accomplish through practice, What they call the Third eye. there are books on the subject by people who have spent many years with them.

I could go on in alot more detail about this subject,but this will do for now i feel.

[tomte]

Go to this page and read the section titled 'The Relation between Appearances, Clear Light Mind, Death and Rebirth' for a detailed description from the tibetan buddhist viewpoint.

Read Nagarjuna's Sixty Verses on Reasoning

Edited May 6, 2009 by tomte

[botanika]

When you die you are re-born in china. live life to the fullest now while you have the chance.

[FancyPants]

What a great topic because it's one where nobody can be ridiculed for their opinion because there will never be an ultimate proof of truth of the afterlife.

As someone above more eloquently said, I believe our living bodies (and other living organisms) are a concentration of energy only destined to burn for a short amount of time before life is fizzled out. Much like a star has a period of life before it burns up all its gases and dies. I wonder if ghosts are a lingering of this collection of energy/force because their will has remained after death. It seems that many ghosts and apparitions are of people who were treated terribly, or had lingering worries, family members to tie them to earth/physical plane. They're not ready to be at peace with things.

When I was 17 I had major surgery and the following night after the operation (which went perfectly) I was accidently given far too much fentanyl via epidural catheter. When I awoke from the rescusitation team trying to save my life from respiratory arrest (stopped breathing for 2 minutes total) I looked up, having NO idea what was really going on - I thought they were routinely waking me for sleeping meds or checkup or something stupid - and saw people standing all around the bed. All dressed in white. I remember wondering why so many of them were standing around for a simple checkup. I don't remember much after that because I was too focused on them shoving the endotracheal tube down my throat to be put onto a CPAP and then breathing machine. A fucking horrible feeling which still gives me PTSD (and I'm taking deep breaths now hehehe). So I didnt' think any more of those people. About one or two years after that I had to go back to the same hospital for a fairly routine procedure and a doctor came up to me and introduced himself as one of the guys on the rescus cart team who saved my life that night. He recognised my name because of all the ruckus over my overdose. I thanked him profusely and something prompted me to ask why there were so many people there. He looked confused and said there's no way there were any more than 3 people helping at the time because too many people just get in the way. It may just be as simple as other nurses in the room tending to other patients, but I remember clearly they were all standing around the bed, or just to the side. Maybe 6 at least, but more like 8. They were all wearing white, but doctors wear white too so that didn't look so strange at the time. I guess if there's any place that's going to be filled with lost souls/spirits/whatever, a high dependancy unit in hospital is probably going to be a good place to start. I don't tell many people that story because I partly don't want to think about the implications, and partly don't want to diminish the experience by retelling it. I can't rightly say if endogenous chemicals (possibly as well as the huge amounts of rad opioid euphoria) made me feel happy and calm and just made me hallucinate, but there was no self suggestion that I knew I was going to die so made it all up; because I didn't know how bad things were.

I don't think there's a Heaven or Hell in the Judeo-christian sense, but I think perhaps if you are a bad person in life and you die realising how bad you've been, you're possibly going to end up in a metaphysical state of dread or terror. Or the other side of the coin if you're at peace with how you've handled your opportunity at life, you'll be in a relaxed, peaceful state.

I also think there are spirits out there who have perfected the art of "transcendence" and so may be less reliant on weak-energy signals like a ghost, but are more perfectly "mind" rather than any particles of matter. A more omniscient state. I think maybe these are what humankind has recognised as Gods or higher beings. I think there's too much coincidence regarding what people see with meditation, or merkaba as T ST said, or entheogenic experiences (like the envisaging of animal spirits via sapo or ayahuasca etc). We may as well call it the fourth dimension. Perhaps even the fifth dimension if we count fourth dimension as another "physical" one that just can't be seen - like time.

I've thought too that all history is acted out at once. After all, by looking through a powerful telescope through space, we see the past as it is happening right now. We right now see nebulae forming that actually happened billions of years ago. At our current time of right now, another being could be looking through a similar telescope to see us. Their now is our current. Depending on your viewpoint, everything is happening at once, we just see it from a different perspective. This then lead me to thinking that if everything physical is happening all at once, then only our spirit/soul/mind is moving. It's our mind that move on while our body stays in the current time. Not sure if this is even making any sense. Bit hard to piece together the random ramblings of psychonaut musings. But you all know what I'm talking about in that regard anyway

But these are just my current thoughts. Who knows what I might believe tomorrow? It shouldn't matter as long as I don't bring harm upon others. It feels better to be a good person than to be a crunt anyway so why not live and let live?