I sang at a funeral today. It was a Catholic service for a woman (she lived to be 88) who was very eccentric and impacted our community in major way. At the beginning of the service, I got the strong impression that she was chuckling at us for having a "service" for her. Later, I saw her in my mind's eye as dancing above the congregation, as though she was expressing freedom and joy.

Later, while talking to my friend who put the music service together and played the organ, he told me he often has visions and communications from the deceased at the funeral services. Infact, they sometimes want to change his music selections( ), and he's even had the experience of them playing the organ "through" him. You'd have to know this person to know that embellisment of the truth is not in his nature. We talked about many other personal experiences. I shared being able to "hear" my grandmother and aunt after their deaths. We both agreed some (read: many) in our community might think we were crazy.

What's interesting to me is that the longer I live, the more of these stories (visions, communications, or whatever) I hear. I think these experiences, more than anything else, have been fundamental to my conviction that there's a higher consciousness, that we're all connected, and that there are other realities that live along with ours. It makes me wonder why everyone is not a "believer".....

What do you think of such things? Should we trust our inner visions and revelations, or chalk them up to imagination? If these things are "real," does it add credence to religion/a belief in God?

I volunteered in pastoral care program at my local hospital for about four years and I visited a man in hospital about a year ago who "out of the blue" and with no prompting from me whatsoever told me he had a near death experience.. or was supposed to have been clinically dead for some minutes and experienced great joy and bliss.

He told me that the experience changed his life and he was no longer afraid of death but he was not particularly religious either... that is he wasn't pumping religion or identifying himself as religious.

I suggested he might share his experience with others and that it might help some.. He replied he met another man who also had a similar experience as he had and they talked he said and the man counseled him not to share this with a lot of people as they would simply dismiss him as being crazy.. anyway he talked with me because we were just having a chat about a variety of things.

So I do tend to believe people who have these experiences and don't discount them.. All of us I would suspect have had experiences that are either so remote in probability or seem miraculous but we also tend to screen them out of our minds or maybe even suppress them as they are extra-ordinary or super-natural and don't fit the "logical" constructs of every day life.

- Art

__________________
"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

All of us have expereinces that remind us there is something more
Some block them out or discount them
Thats the path we all walk - some aware and some not - no matter as all travel the same way.

When each of us are ready we will expereince our SELF
It cannot be described in words - It is more than life changing and there is no "i think i expereinced this or that"
It is absolute proof, there is no doubt left.

It is absolute proof because you remember your SELF
Its not new or something you see or picture or hear (although all of these are important in the path itself)

When you expereince what "we are" there are no more questions
You know infinity, you know the questions to things like "why are we here" or "what am i and where did i come from" etc etc

There are no more mysteries

You dont say I think I saw God or had Revelation


You Know, and all will see

AND finally none, not one has anything to fear

Thanks, Art. I've always been impressed by those who have had near-death experiences. While I haven't known anyone personally, I've read alot about them and watched programs with individuals who have had them. They almost always say that they didn't want to tell anyone initially, and also that fear of death is a thing of the past for them. While listening/reading, I find that their stories resonate truth.

It's so encouraging to know this, T! It's like having someone say "I've lived in the truth of ACIM." Your posts mean alot to me personally. Thanks again!

Maybe thats why I expereinced it the way I did

So that I could testify to ACIM being genuine ?


That said its one of many courses

Walk with Love in your heart and you head home


Thank you

Subjective experiences without objective proof are interesting. They cannot be easily defined. First, the experiences do happen. The debate is whether they represent something paranormal (supernatural) coming from an external source...or are they entirely brain generated, purely subjective, and composed from complex brain circuits connecting memory associations, voice memory, visual memory, and recombinations of memory bits?

Let me state unequivocally that I believe these "things are real." Do these experiences "add credence to a religion/belief in God?"

I suppose that the experiences support the belief in God of a person already prone to believe in God. Those who do not believe in God are most likely to assume they have had hallucinations triggered by some actions within their/our own brains.

Humans have reported visions of gods and goddesses for many thousands of years. God hallucinations are of hundreds of different gods depending upon the god in their brain’s memory circuits. Catholics often "see" the Virgin Mary or Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. Protestants rarely ever see the Virgin Mary but tend to see Jesus. Moses saw the burning bush god of JHWY.
Many Pre-Christian Irish saw Dagda (Father God), Lugh (the Sun God) who appeared in human form and mated with a human to produce the hero Cuchulainn. Cuchulainn saw the War Goddess Mabd in the form of the hag and often as the giant Raven. There have been others like Muhammad who saw the archangel Gabriel communicating from God. There are likely many such events in religions long extinct and Gods long dead.

Are they all real representations of some external reality? If so, it might support a supernatural plane of existence, but it rather discredits religions that have personified God (Christianity, Islam, Druidry, and Paganisms of many types.) What it tells me is that in religious visions, people see or hear the God who has been downloaded into their brains as children. These gods are clearly fictional and designed with human traits. However, the possibility that the brain might pick up messages from some supernatural entity can be speculated. It is likely that if there is a real God, the Creator of Hadrons, quarks, the Big Bang, Billions of Galaxies, a Million million stars, a million million million planets...animal life (including us) is unlikely to be JHWY, Allah, Brahma, Zeus, Jesus, Mithras, Dagda, or Odin.

I find the evidence compelling that the paranormal experiences of religious or non-religious nature are entirely human brain generated. My reasons for thinking that visions of Jesus, Mary, the Burning Bush, Gabriel, Grandma, or Daddy are brain generated are the following.

1. Identical events can be produced in Partial Complex Epilepsy such as out of body experiences. These mystical events can be suppressed by anti-epileptic drugs.

2. Visual or Auditory hallucinations can occur with certain drugs, and by withdrawing other drugs taken chronically (Alcohol).

3. They can be caused by hypoxia, decreased blood flow to the brain (Near Death Experiences, with or without Out of Body Experiences.)

4. They can occur in chronic mental disorders like Schizophrenia, especially visions of Jesus, Mary, human celebrities. , Satan, or space aliens. These paranormal events can be suppressed by psychotropic drugs such as Thorazine, haloperidol, and other dopamine antagonists.

5. Hallucinations often with religious content can incur in Metabolic Encephalopathy. That is a chemical imbalance in brain cells and/or axonal conduction secondary to diseases like Kidney failure, Liver cirrhosis, Hyperparathyroidism, hyponatraemia, abnormalities of Calcium, Potassium, Phosphate, and Magnesium.

6. Hallucinations can be seen in any of the forms of Encephalitis (Herpes simplex, Varicella Zoster, several Mosquito born types, Amoebiasis, Malaria, HIV, and secondary infections with HIV.

It is obvious that the Brain is the source of all hallucinations of a known cause. Clearly some are undiagnosed or unexplained. However, the ones we can test, brain image, detect on EEG, or map in the Brain with fMRI or TDI show consistent abnormalities in the same regions of the brain (i.e. different from areas for motor control.)

From a neuroscientist's point of view, I regard these experiences as brain generated events because we know the brain can do that.

I will follow up on NDE's and OOB's.

Amergin

__________________
Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

Near Death Experiences (NDE)

In my work as a neurologist I primarily treat epilepsy. And as a hospital staff physician I see post-cardiac resuscitation patients in consultation. I have interviewed patients and studied their NDEs. The background is three possible precipitants, blunt or penetrating head trauma, decreased blood flow and/or low pO2 in the brain (Hypoxaemia), and temporal lobe epilepsy (partial complex seizures.)

NDE experiences are largely stereotyped no matter which of the above is the cause. The person is observationally unconscious or in a confusion like state. In the remembered event the patient often perceives an out of body experience (OOBE) which has two forms. One is standing next to one’s own body or more often floating above their body, seeming to see people around the bedside such as nurses and doctors. The other is a feeling of limitlessness, expanding and merging with the universe. The OBE is followed by going through a bright tunnel in a dark background. In this phase one might see images of dead relatives, angels, Jesus, or Brahma, or saints. This is followed by a smaller but brighter light. Usually at that point they either come out of it or come out of it (sometimes in reverse.) During the tunnel phase they may hear the voice of a dead parent or God/Jesus/Virgin Mary/Muhammad/Brahma.

On recovery, the patients often feel disappointed, cheated out of Heaven or bliss. They do have often have permanent or transient neurobehavioural changes mainly in short term memory, attention span, and emotional regulation with loss of some inhibition, loss of rational skills, loss of some problem solving efficiency, and changes in efficiency of task specific shifts. Depending on the degree of hypoxia or hypoxaemia, the post-episode impairment varies.


NDE’s are only sometimes near (risk of) death. Many occur with cardiac arrests which indeed are life threatening. In such a case, there is a marked decrease or stop in blood flow to the brain temporarily in “watershed regions.” Watershed areas are the tissue between two different arterial trees and perfusion there is more tenuous. During shock or cardiac arrest blood perfusion to the border zone between the territories of two arteries decreases.

Arteries branch into more and smaller arteries and arterioles. At the peripheral end of an arterial “tree”, the capillaries merge with those of the neighbouring artery producing the Watershed Area. When blood flow decreases, the area getting the worst deprivation is this watershed area. It is the area suffering any neuronal loss (there is likely always some neuronal loss, varying with the severity of hypoxaemia).

Watershed areas are found all over the body. However, in the inferior medial temporal lobes are arteries named the posterior cerebral and middle cerebral. The sudden hypoxaemia can precipitate temporal lobe like seizures. This Temporal Lobe watershed is the anatomical focus of the Near Death Experience.

Other watershed areas are in the upper parasagittal areas of frontal lobe (rational, inhibitory, analytical), calcarine occipital lobe (visual), and cerebellar (balance, coordination (arteries are Superior Cerebellar, Anterior Inferior Cerebellar, and Posterior Inferior Cerebellar.)

Temporal lobe seizures are epileptic discharges that begin in the mesial inferior temporal lobe spreading to the amygdala and on to multiple cortical association areas generating the event. They can also occur in pure brain hypoxia, in hypoxaemia (deoxygenated blood and poor flow or shock) and in deoxygenated but normal volume blood perfusion.

Complex Partial Epilepsy can and generally is non-hypoxic and non-ischemic. In Epileptics, they have many causes. Some are due to temporal sclerosis (scarring), head trauma, brain tumours, arterio-venous malformations, small haemorrhages, small infarcts/strokes, metabolic imbalances (↓Na+, Renal Failure, ↓Mg++, ↓ or ↑Ca++, ↓blood osmolality, and ↓pH.) They can also occur from a number of different drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamines or drug/alcohol withdrawal.

The electrical discharge begins in the neurons in the region of Ammon’s Horn in the temporal lobe. The discharge is transmitted to memory association areas of the nearby temporal lobe for visual and auditory memories and odd smell memories. Some go to the superior parietal lobe (body orientation/localization areas) to give the primary OOBE (Out of body experience) phase.

In this situation discharges have an inhibitory effect. Some go to cingulate gyrus as well for the affective component (happiness, mystical, frightened, or angry.) In some cases frontal lobe discharges are recorded. This causes the symptoms I described in the second paragraph.

The third major cause is head trauma. Sudden trauma precipitates seizures. Americans usually remember the televised generalised seizure of Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys in the end zone of a Saturday televised game seen by millions of fans. His career soon ended. But he did not have epilepsy. It was just a post-traumatic seizure. Many trauma patients who have seizures, have partial seizures instead of generalised. These often manifest as Temporal Lobe seizures or focal motor seizures. The Temporal Lobe Seizure may be simple hallucinations auditory or visual which some call Partial Simple Seizures. Many spread across the cortex to a full NDE described in the second paragraph.

The most important thing is that these people are not clinically DEAD. They are unconscious, and in some cases at risk of death. Most Epileptic patients are not at serious death risk unless driving a car. Those who actually die may experience NDEs before they die but cannot tell us about them. The DEAD brain cannot seize. We have no evidence of sentience in a dead brain. That is for you to speculate as you wish.

Amergin
Disclaimer: I do not claim that paranormal events or holy visions are not from an external source. I simply have no evidence of an outside source.

__________________
Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

I wonder if you can explain this then


I had no knowledge of Spirituality - none - no reading of books theologies - nothing except BIKE magazines
I had asked about God some years earlier and figured that God would come to me - Made sense to me at the time


2003 - I expereinced GOD
No maybe or perhaps in that statement



1 year later I am given a book that from page 1 onwards speaks exactly of the experience i had
More importantly in one chapter it speaks exactly of the stages of that expereince perfectly

Now how can i expereince something that i then find written about exactly, a year afterwards ?

Dont do drugs
Dont do illness
Dont do meds
Dont have mental heath probs or any in familly
Didnt die
Havent got a dent in my head


Oh and importantly the "visions" are not seen with eyes - There is a higher communication medium



Riddle me that

You can not really convince me that you had no knowledge of spirituality unless you grew up in an ice cave in the Greenland Glacier. Of course you heard about it. I heard about it and I did not have any family interest in religion. You and I likely have a concept in our minds as to what the word God means.

So you had a concept of God and that concept was in complex circuits of memory, emotion, intuition, and influence of your native culture. When I said people prone to believe in God, I meant that all or most all of humans are prone to believe in the God of their parents and their community. They may not have belief formulated, but if they have something like a mystical experience they already have a template of the kind of god their brain is receptive to. Most humans worship a god because nearly all cultures have their own gods.

I do not know if you are a Muslim but if so, I expect you to experience some Islamic mysticism. If you doubted God you would perhaps believe in God but call him Allah. If Christian, then Jesus; if Jewish it would be JHWY; and if raised in a Hindu family in central India it would be Brahma. Even I was raised in a country that is predominantly Christian although we have a high rate of Non-Theism in Scotland. I am the third generation in a row to never convince myself of any god. My son and daughter likewise are Non-theists. But IF I had a paranormal experience of what seemed like a supernatural deity, I suspect it would be Jesus.


I am not sure if you are saying that you and God sat down and had beer and crisps while watching Football on Telly. I suspect you mean that some inner voice in your subconscious started ringing a "Danger, Danger Will Robinson". It could be an epiphany in which your mind suddently connected the previously disconnected problems you had...and suddenly it made you aware that your life needed a new course. What follows is actually reminiscent of my secular epiphany.

I have always been a Non-theist. In my younger years I was a rowdy lad. I hung out with other lads a lot like me. We wanted Guinness, Girls, more Guinness, some whiskey, more girls, and then went out making mischief. I spray painted a historical statue of Queen Victoria. I was caught and my father slapped me on the back of the head and cursed in Gaelic. He paid my fine, and I had to personally work day by day to hand clean Queen Victoria in Queen's Crossing. And I had to pay my father back for the fine. I got a job working at the ancient ruins at Scara Brae, a Stone Age village on Main Orkney Island. One night I sat on a hill side with the sun set to the west, the stone houses and the Standing Stones of Stenness glowing in the red light. The sunlight light reflected and flickered off of the water waves of the Bay o' Skaill. All of this was visible from my blanket on the hillside. I had a mystical thinkiing. This Neolithic City was built by my ancestors in 3500 BC. It is hard to describe my feeling at that time (and I used no drugs.) I think it may be similar to what you experienced.

I didn't sense a god present. But it changed me. Overnight I started hard study. Lord Daniel recommended me for Sandhurst British Military Academy. That changed my life. After my military tour of duty in the Falklands and Belfast, I applied for medical school in Edinburgh and a satisfying acacemic career. My old friends back in North Scotland were shocked at my change. But it was real. I think we can all have "spiritual - like" epiphanies that change our lives. Most involve the concept of a deity but a god is not critical. Some involve Ancestors (Shinto) and Native Americans. And some of who have a minimal concept of current gods, just attribute our epiphany to an inner voice from deep regions of our brain that sense we need a serious tune up. Either way they often get us to turn our lives around.



I think that is because we all experience this brain recharging whether it includes gods, angels, ancestors, or just the awe of Nature.


I had the same set of priorities (no drugs, meds, avoid dying too soon, and avoid dents in my noggin. Mine is more like yours than you suspect. We Atheists are just human beings like you. We are not heartless monsters. We want the same things as you do. We want education, occupational success, good families, good family relationships. and a desire to help our fellow humans. We do not find much to disagree with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.


The riddle is that our riddles come from the same place...our own minds. Your reinforce you belief in your God. Mine reinforce my awe of nature and my duty to help those less fortunate than I.

Amergin

__________________
Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.