An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God! ( Archived) (52)

Mar 4, 2009 8:18 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
Da10th
Da10thDa10thThree Springs, Pennsylvania USA17 Threads 2,744 Posts
krimsa: Yes I was thinking that also. I try to keep an open mind because the reality is we just cant kill a human being and then resuscitate a half hour later to hear their story. I wish we could do that in some safe and controlled environment. Maybe we could freeze the person. These NDE generally are for very short time periods which also doesnt help lend them any credibility. Grrrr. Its frustrating.
Sure we can , well in movies, Flatliners, great movie...laugh
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Mar 4, 2009 8:34 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
krimsa
krimsakrimsaMiddleton, New Hampshire USA6 Threads 2 Polls 1,345 Posts
Da10th: Sure we can , well in movies, Flatliners, great movie...


Yeah, cool movie. I saw that in the theatre. I was in high school back then. I also enjoyed Jacob's Ladder.
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Mar 13, 2009 7:55 PM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
matuka1: i'm an atheist and an army combat medic.

"tunnels", "lights", "floating sensation", all these are chemical reaction in people's brains caused by hypoxia. do not read too much into them.

imho, there's nothing after we die. it's man's vainglorious attempt to establish some sort of answer to the depressing reality of death's finality that makes us---well, you mostly---grasp onto anything that will make us feel 'special.'

enjoy life now, live it to the fullest, and if you really want something that will outlive your corporeal existence, begin a legacy of goodwill amongst your fellow men. THAT is your afterlife.

better than a tunnel full of blinding lights, i believe.


I was thinking the same thing... handshake
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Mar 16, 2009 9:47 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
krimsa
krimsakrimsaMiddleton, New Hampshire USA6 Threads 2 Polls 1,345 Posts
The similarity in experiences would be somewhat suspicious and point towards a physiological, medical conclusion. confused
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Mar 16, 2009 11:11 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
StressFree
StressFreeStressFreesmall city, Kalmar Sweden176 Threads 16 Polls 8,986 Posts
krimsa: The similarity in experiences would be somewhat suspicious and point towards a physiological, medical conclusion.


I'll come out and play eventually krimsa...not today

Nice of you to rationalize this away hiding behind your empirical science which will be outdated in a few years...oh no I didn'tscold
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Mar 16, 2009 2:02 PM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
I am not completely sure why I like this. It doesn't really make a statement one way or the other, but it does pose interesting questions. It is taken from a movie released in 2001 called Waking Life. See what you guys think about it. And if you haven't seen the movie, it is a good one. Very interesting and thought provoking.

(A couple are in bed talking -- Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke)

I keep thinking about something you said.

Something I said?

Yeah. About how you often feel like you're observing your life from the perspective of an old woman about to die. You remember that?

Yeah. I still feel that way sometimes. Like I'm looking back on my life. Like my waking life is her memories.

Exactly. I heard that Tim Leary said as he was dying that he was looking forward to the moment when his body was dead but his brain was still alive. You know they say that there's still six to twelve minutes of brain activity after everything else is shutdown. And a second of dream consciousness, right, well, that's infinitely longer than a waking second. You know what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah, definitely. For example, I wake up and it is 10:12, and then I go back to sleep and I have those long, intricate, beautiful dreams that seem to last for hours, and then I wake up and it's ... 10:13.

Yeah, exactly. So then six to twelve minutes of brain activity, I mean, that could be your whole life. I mean, you are that woman looking back over everything.

Okay, so what if I am? Then what would you be in all that?

Whatever I am right now. I mean, yeah, maybe I only exist in your mind. I'm still just as real as anything else.
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Mar 19, 2009 1:39 PM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
krimsa
krimsakrimsaMiddleton, New Hampshire USA6 Threads 2 Polls 1,345 Posts
StressFree: I'll come out and play eventually krimsa...not today

Nice of you to rationalize this away hiding behind your empirical science which will be outdated in a few years...oh no I didn't


I’m not sure I even began...care to enlighten me since you seem to feel so threatened by my "empirical science?" laugh You have yet to take me up on my Atlantis challenge as it is...roll eyes
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Mar 19, 2009 1:57 PM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
StressFree: Thanks for sharing Tamarin. The tunnel is common in many near death experiences. It's like a transition chamber supposedly. I think she did not fully cross over.
....and each person's experience is in line with their particular Religious persuasion!professor confused
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Mar 19, 2009 1:57 PM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
Conrad73: ....and each person's experience is in line with their particular Religious persuasion!
Or Indoctrination!laugh
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Mar 21, 2009 6:41 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
StressFree
StressFreeStressFreesmall city, Kalmar Sweden176 Threads 16 Polls 8,986 Posts
C.G. Jung's near death experience after a heart attack (taken from Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal):

" It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of Indai. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed coloured, or spotted dark green like oxydised sliver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse- the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was thought the silver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue.Then the Red Sea, and far back - as if in the upper left of a map - I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly towards that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view. - approximately one thousand miles!
The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I have ever seen.

After contemplating it for a while, I turned round. I had been standing with my back to the Indaina Ocean, as it were, and my face to the north. Then it seemed to me that I made a turn to the south. Something new entered ömy field of vision. A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, lie a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space.

I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hallowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block. And entrance led into a small antechamber.To the right of the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench. He wore a white gown, and I knew that he expected me. Two steps led up th his antechamber, and inside, on the left, was the gate to the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort.
As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had this feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me - an extremely painful process.

Nevertheless, something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. ' I am a bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished'.

This experience game me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence. Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a fait accompli, without any reference back to what had been.

Continued...
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Mar 21, 2009 6:44 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
StressFree
StressFreeStressFreesmall city, Kalmar Sweden176 Threads 16 Polls 8,986 Posts
There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away of been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything. Something else engaged my attention: as I approached the temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality. There I would at last understand- this was a certainty - what historical nexus I or my life fitted into. I would know what hadd been before me, why I had come into being, and where my life was flowing. My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and now end. I had the feeling that I was a historial fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succedding text was missing.

My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had it taken this course? Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me? What had I made of them? What will follow? I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all these questions as soon as I entereed the rock temple. There I would learn why everything had been thus and not otherwise. There I would meet the people who knew the answer to my questoin about what had been before and what would come after.

While I was thinking over these matters, something happened that caught my attention. From below, from the direction of Europe, and image floated up. It was my doctor, Dr H. - or, rather, his likeness - framed by a golden chain or a golen laurel wreath. I knew at once: 'Aha, this is my doctor, of course, the one who has been trating me. But now he si coming in his primal form, as a basileus of Kos. In life he was an avatar of this basileus, the temporal embodiment of the primal form, which has existed from the beginning. Now he is appearing in that primal form.'

Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this was something i did not observe but simply took for granted. as he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought took place between us. Dr H. had been delegated by the earth to deliver a message to me, to tell me that there was a protest against my going away. I had no right to leave the earth and must return. The moment I heard that, the vision ceased.

I was profoundly disappointed, for now it all seemed to have been for nothing. The painful process of defoliation had been in vain, and I was not to e allowed to enter the temple, to joining the people in whose company I belonged.

continued...
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Mar 21, 2009 6:45 AM CST An atheist has a near death experience, and another dude meets God!
StressFree
StressFreeStressFreesmall city, Kalmar Sweden176 Threads 16 Polls 8,986 Posts
In reality, a good three weeks were still to pass before I could truly make up my mind to live again. I could not eat because all food repelled me. The view of city and mountains form my sick-bed seemed to me like a painted curtain with black hole in it, or a tattered sheet of newspaper full of photographs that meant nothing. Disappointed, I thought, ' Now I must return to the "box system" again'. For it seemed to me as if behind the horizon of the cosmos a three-dimensional world had been artificially built up, in which each person sat by himself in a little box.

And now I should have to convince myself all over again that this was important! Life and the whole world struck me as a prison, and it bothered me beyond measure that I should again be finding all that quite in order. I had been so glad to shed it all, and now it had come about that I - along with everyone else - would again be hung up in a box by a thread. While I floated in space , I had been weightless, and there had been nothing tugging at me. And now all that was to be a thing of the past!

I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought me back to life. At the same time, I was worried about him. 'His life was in danger, for heaven's sake! He has appeared to me in primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is going to die, for already he belongs to the "greater company"! Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that Dr H. would have to die in my stead. I tried my best to talk to him about it, but he did not understand me. I was firmly convinced that his life was in jeopardy.

In actual fact I was his last patient. On 4 April 1944 - I still remember the exact date - I was allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and on this same day Dr H. took to his bed and did not leave it again. I heard that he was having intermittent attacks of fever. Soon afterwards he died of septicaemia. He was a good doctor; there was something of the genius about him. Otherwise he would not have appeared to me as a prince of Kos.
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