Dancing Past the Dark ~ distressing near-death experiences

ICU, Memory, NDE

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It has been almost eighteen months since a hemorrhagic stroke in my right temporal lobe knocked me almost completely out of commission. From the very beginning, even the days of confusional mental states in ICU, a single ambition about recovery has been clear to me:  I will put up a blog post. An interesting blog post.

The prospects ranged from dire to unlikely. Tremors snarled my typing and my handwriting is illegible. Sitting up to work required a hoist; I could not stand or reach or lift even a small book. It was a struggle to read a simple mystery novel, much less think enough to write paragraphs. I could not think of a thing to say.

But “inch by inch, row by row,” and as I write this, 517 days of healing have happened and are continuing. I still cannot think of a thing to say on my own; but this past week an email brought a perspective so fascinating that it popped everything open. This morning I made it through a full session of physical therapy walking shakily but without a walker, and this afternoon, here we are, drafting that blog post. Obviously, beyond my own determination, it is the care of a raft of health professionals, therapists, helpers, and people who love me that has brought us all to this point. I am so grateful to them, and to the writer of the email that ignited today’s topic, and to you readers for coming back.

The email from “Ann”:

 My mother (over 80 years old retired teacher) told me that she remembered some things from her recent surgery. I started to look for references about near death experiences and found your article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6173534/.

In January this year, my mother underwent an 8-hour-long abdominal surgery under general inhalational anesthesia [anesthetic gas] with endotracheal intubation [insertion of breathing tube] . She was septic, and she had a subileus [partial bowel obstruction] from extensive peritoneal adhesions [abdominal scar tissue] from prior surgeries.

She did not regain consciousness after her surgery and she stayed in the ICU for 45 days. During this time she was extubated, then she experienced hypoxia [low blood oxygen], reintubation, unstable SVT [very fast heart beat with low blood pressure] corrected by synchronized cardioversion, [electrical jolt to restore normal  heart rate] pneumonia, and tracheostomy [opening on of the neck to place a breathing tube].  She did have 2-5 day periods between these crises when she was under light sedation by propofol infusion or no sedation.

My mother is now recovering at a lower acuity unit and she told us that she remembered “things” from her OR and ICU stays:

  1. First she saw amorphous, dark entities approaching her. She was afraid of them.
  2. Then her field of vision brightened up and there was a pleasant light.
  3. In the end she saw a friend, and she knew that she would be all right. The friend is a physician at the hospital where Mother is staying and the friend visits her daily.

My mother thinks it is a memory and it made her more reflective. She is asking questions she would have never asked before (Am I a good person?). Before her illness she never talked about death, the word was banned and her goal was to live to be 100. She was raised Catholic, but for her religion is more of remembering childhood and Latin rituals. She believes in God, though, without defined beliefs about what happens after death.

Do you think this might have been an NDE?  

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

~ ~ ~

Other than that the writer is clearly medically sophisticated, did anything in the content strike your attention? What do you think it was that caught mine?

Here is an expanded version of my response:

Intensive care units are (understandably) notorious for their association with hard-to-explain states of consciousness. Given the seriousness of your [letter-writer] mother’s condition, her intermittent sedations, and the length of her stay in such high-stress surroundings, it is not surprising she has a blur to deal with.

Patients coming out of deep unconsciousness are like travelers returning home from abroad, though the ‘foreign country’ they describe is the unfamiliar territory of the deep unconscious. It is not unusual to hear of indistinct, shadowy figures such as those you mentioned. While many patients, like your mother, experience them as frightening, others find them non-threatening, even comforting presences. There is no “one explanation fits all” to identify them or their function.

Images have always been the language of disordered thinking—but they are also the vocabulary of art and spirituality, subject to much interpretation. The pleasant light your mom mentions is probably as close to having a universal meaning as any symbol, usually interpreted as having something to do with the sacred. The one anomalous element in her description is the presence of the physician friend, as it is not at all common for people who are still living to appear in these experiences.

The experiences are so different from everyday awareness! What are they, and how to interpret them? Given your mother’s situation, three explanations come immediately to mind: hallucination, ICU delirium/delusion, and anomalous experience (near-death experiences, for one).

  • Hallucinations are sensory perceptions, often chaotic, illogical, and emotionally charged, which are not shared in consensual reality. They may be vivid but do not ordinarily carry much in the way of deeper meaning (simply forms). Although a patient’s interpretation of a hallucination may endure and be troublesome, they are not known for creating life-changing aftereffects such as overturned values or sudden psychic abilities.
  • ICU delirium/delusion is a complex quick-onset confusional state, described by DSM-5 as involving attention deficits, disorientation and perceptual disturbances. Delirium, according to PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32644706/) is “the most common clinical manifestation of acute brain dysfunction in ICU,” especially for patients on mechanical ventilation. It may have long-lasting effects such as PTSD.
  • NDEs also present as emotionally charged images, often about movement through space and entering what feels like a profoundly meaningful environment. They tend to be more highly structured than hallucinations and can fall easily into a logical narrative form. They are known for their durability in memory and the pervasiveness of their effects on people’s lives.

So—NDE or not? Many people are powerfully affected by having to think of themselves as dead. If the “near-death” aspect is alarming, there may be comfort in knowing that in any sizable collection of these accounts, the majority are from people who were not medically declared dead (clinically dead), though as many as seventy-five per cent “had a sense of being close to death, were in a life-threatening situation, or believed they were clinically dead” [emphasis added]. (www.iands.org/ndes/about-ndes/key-nde-facts21.html) In other words, although the experiencers felt death, their physicians would not have confirmed it.

That is perhaps the greatest mystery of these experiences: if most do not originate in actual death, what is their source? The fault of the common confusion lies in the “near-death” name, which was accurate for the original study sample, all of whom had been in cardiac arrest; but that uniformity does not hold up in the general population of experiencers. In fact, many accounts featuring elements such as presences and a memorably pleasant light, like your mother’s report, have not explicitly mentioned death at all. The “non-death accounts” are called by many names–mystical experiences, exceptional human experiences, spiritually transformative experiences–there are dozens of terms and acronyms for them—but all may include the familiar NDE reports of out-of-body events, movement through space, encounter with presences, a sense of place and of being at home, emotions, profound life changes. Like death-related NDEs, they rarely speak to the beliefs and dogmas of any specific religion, though there is affirmation for love, compassion, fair play, and a sense of what I will call reverence.

Your mother’s circumstances certainly put her experience within the NDE type of non-pathological event. Coming from the confusing swirl of post-ICU images, as you and your mother are now discovering, the label of the incident is likely less important than the living of the experience’s beneficial psychological and spiritual effects. They are all full of mystery, whatever biological specifics may contribute to understanding them and by whatever name we call them.

The most striking observation to me is this:

“She thinks it is a memory and it made her more reflective. She is asking questions she would have never asked before.”

I have been fascinated by that: “She thinks it is a memory.” I wonder, a memory as opposed to…what? Perhaps a memory, in her terms, is more closely aligned with a physical experience than merely a glimpse of something? I am hearing it as perhaps an instance of our Enlightenment thinking: in Newtonian terms, does a memory originate somewhere tangible, as in a place? (Is this a restatement of the “hallucination vs NDE” question again?

Most NDE accounts are structured like stories, tangibly, with a sequence of incidents, one or more settings, characters—overall, becoming like a location for the memory. Otherwise, the happening might seem like something of no substance, something nonexistent. It’s a fascinating question! Is it perhaps the narrative sense which gives an NDE its feel of stability and being “realer than real”? Is memory simply a perspective?

I am aware that this exploration of things non-physical is likely to be unsatisfying for those grounded in the hard sciences. In terms of consciousness, though, there is no material substance, no physicality. What the writer’s mother remembers is a genuine memory of an experience of consciousness. This seemingly flimsy, invisible reality is actually so powerful that it is launching her, over 80, into asking the kinds of self-reflective questions maturity demands. She has been able to refuse them house-room before this hospitalization, but is now asking developmentally and morally imperative questions about herself and her life.

It is not easy, encountering whatever it is that lives, at least in part, in images across time and cultures and, at least in another part, in our individual heads. Socrates would be pleased that her life is being so carefully examined.

Please share your thoughts!  And “Ann”,  thank you for sharing your question!

UFO Religious Movements

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Things are never enough by themselves. This statement originated this morning with my observation that what I had thought was happening with my recent post about a new UFO news article has turned into something considerably more interesting–a close look at what’s going on in UFO religious movements.

A scholar from the University of North Carolina was quoted in the post: “A cursory review of UAP literature, both primary sources by witnesses, as well as secondary literature by academics, reveals overt religious and often apocalyptic themes in UAP witness reports.” As it seems that quite a few UFO witnesses have formed what academics are calling “new religious movements,” I went looking for some. The only thing is, the UFO movements are not brand new but 1950s new! Here is a sampling, made easier by the fact that every one of the UFO religious movements I scouted has a presence on the internet. The post is a bit long, but I think it moves quickly.

Aetherius Society

Aetherius Society:  Founded in the UK in 1955. Its founder, George King, claimed to have been contacted telepathically by an alien intelligence called Aetherius, who represented an “Interplanetary Parliament.” These metaphysically significant “transmissions,” as he called them, were recorded on magnetic tape as King sat in a state of Samadhi, and spoke the transmission. Several of these transmissions forecast UFO activity on specific dates in parts of the world where newspapers reported coinciding sightings. He reported being in communication with Cosmic Masters–beings from higher levels of existence on other worlds–from the time they first contacted him in 1954 through to his death in 1997.

The website says, “The spiritual teachings about UFOs on this website have come either from Dr. King directly or from the messages that he has channeled from Cosmic Masters who live on the higher realms of other planets, as well as Ascended Masters and unascended Earth people living on the higher realms of Earth. His legacy provides a spiritual path now known as “King Yoga” that embodies spiritual wisdom, self-development practices and service to others. In combination, these three facets provide a well-balanced path you can use to advance yourself and, more importantly, help the world around you.”

Ashtar

Ashtar is the name given to an  extraterrestrial being or group claimed by quite a few channelers to be their UFO contact.

Ministry of Universal Wisdom. One of the founding fathers of the modern religious ufologies, George Van Tassel created two secular UFO groups in the 1940s. In 1952 he began to receive telepathic communication from an extraterrestrial and interdimensional being named Ashtar.  A year later he created the “Ministry of Universal Wisdom,” interpreting the Bible in terms of extraterrestrial intervention in human evolution and claiming that Jesus was a being from space. One scholarly article (Nova Religio) reports, “Just as the mixing of the divine and the human violates the natural order in Genesis, so to, according to Van Tassel, does the mixing of the extraterrestrial with the human upset idealized categories. He wants the reader to understand that the reality we perceive is not the ideal reality, our existence is a fallen existence, and only the knowledge of our true extraterrestrial heritage can deliver us to a more authentic existence”

The Ministry of Universal Wisdom taught that all humans have the power to tap into the “Universal Mind of God”, which facilitates evolutionary progress such as that exemplified by Jesus and Ashtar. Van Tassel also claimed that by accessing the Universal Mind he could receive messages not only from Ashtar but from humans who had died, such as Nikola Tesla, from whom he claimed to receive instructions to build the  “Integratron” machine. Still standing in the Mojave Desert, the “Integratron” is said to be capable of enabling rejuvenation, time travel, and anti-gravity.

[Note: It is imperative not to confuse this Ministry with a similarly named “Congregation of             Universal Wisdom,” which is blatantly labeled by Wikipedia as a “quack religion.”)

Ashtar Command. By the mid-1950s, the concept of Ashtar and a galactic law enforcement agency preparing an imminent rescue of humanity had become well-established.  Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, many individuals in the spiritualist movement began to claim contact with Ashtar, and the space being’s role as Ascended Master grew. The Ashtar Command evolved into a worldwide network of loosely organized groups growing out of a generally theosophical base with UFO add-ons, described as “the common property of a diffuse New Age Spiritualist milieu.”  One author describes much of the Ashtar channeling as akin to cargo cults, due to the blending of spiritual ascension with new alien technologies. Most of the Ashtar millenarian concepts are said to involve a transformation of human beings, via these technologies, who will then return to the planet Earth to enjoy a golden millennium. From the mid-1990s up to the present, several of these channeling groups began to utilize the Internet in order to promulgate their beliefs and attempt to unify the movement by establishing a single ‘authoritative’ source for all Ashtar messages. This led to more prominence in the religious scene and significant membership. Currently, a profusion of groups with a wide sweep of interests is populating the Ashtar web site.

Powerful Intentions (source: Google/Ashtar) declares that “Powerful Intentions is a Law of Attraction community. Official online community for The Secret Movie. Law of Attraction blogs, forums, etc.  Our intent is to remind you of your Cosmic Nature. Explore your Cosmic Nature and let the universe be a mirror for your infinite potential.” The material continues: “Its time to expand the awareness of our Oneness. We are equals, no matter what religion we belong to; no matter which concepts we carry with us. This is what the website does… it unites different views into a common energy; where we can grow and change our Collective Reality just by being “Who we Are”.  Ben-Arion

Spending time at the website shows a multiplicity of groups demonstrating that while some aspects of Ashtar are genuinely spiritual, a good many others are now aggressively anti-government, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and supportive of defiantly sovereign citizen views; there is a lot of conspiracy theory.

The Pioneer Voyage (source: Wikipedia)

In 1994, a small group of Ashtar Command members claimed to have had “the lift-off experience”. They announced to the Ashtar Network that they had been placed aboard the ‘ships of Light’ that were circling the planet. “The Galactic Fifth Fleet” had used ‘physical vibrational transfer’ which involved the human consciousness (or, sometimes, the ‘etheric body’) being raised from the physical dimension and transferred to the “Light ships”. More than 250 people participated in a second event. It was claimed that in order to participate, a person’s vibrations had to be raised through an eight step contemplative procedure, and that the Pioneer Voyage would occur during the meditative state and would later be revealed to the individual in some form of conscious recall. This eventually evoked ‘memory recall’ from a core group of Ashtar Command members meeting in Australia who began providing accounts of their ‘time aboard the ships’. Others followed suit. The time on the ships was claimed to be extensive even though the member’s meditation period was short.

Despite an increase in complexity, the general themes have remained in accordance with the Australian reports. The claim is that the events are occurring on a spiritual or etheric dimension and not a physical one. The group claims that the purpose of the lift-off is for the ascension of the human race as a whole, to which individual ascension is a precursor and an aid. It also claims that the collective ascension is being aided by large electronic grids deployed around the planet by the guardian ships.

Ashtar Summary: The Ashtar belief system is based on faith in an extraterrestrial celebrity, the concept of which has fared better than the individual messages. Failed prophecies have moved the emphasis from a physical space fleet averting doom, to the more theosophical concept of an Ascended Master aiding spiritual advancement, mingled with the UFO experience belief system which regards UFO experiences and sightings as the natural progression of the spiritual development of humanity. Though followers of Ashtar believe in his divine right and knowledge spread across the human race, he and others of his kind have yet to provide any physical evidence of their existence.

Raëlianism

Raëlism (not Realism) is a large, atheistic religion claiming tens of thousands of members, mostly from Francophone areas of Western Europe and North America. In France on December 13, 1973, Claude Vorilhon reported his alien abduction by an extraterrestrial species known as Elohim (Hebrew for “gods”), including his contact, named Yahweh.  The Elohim renamed him Raël and instructed him to act as their prophet.

Raëlism teaches that the Elohim, who have historically been mistaken for gods, created humanity using their advanced technology. It claims that The  Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, and Muhammad, along with thirty-seven others including Raël himself, are not divine but Elohim/human hybrids who have served as prophets. Raëlists believe that since the Hiroshima bomb of 1945, humanity has been in an Age of Apocalypse, threatening itself with annihilation, and must find new scientific and technological developments for peaceful purposes. Then the Elohim will return to Earth to share their technology and begin a utopia.

Raëlians disbelieve in evolution, believing that DNA naturally rejects mutations. They believe the Elohim planted all life on Earth 25,000 years ago through scientific processes. The Elohim were likewise created by another race and one-day humanity will do the same on some other planet. While the Raëlians also disbelieve in an afterlife, they vigorously pursue scientific inquiry into cloning, which will grant its own form of immortality. Raël established a research company called Clonaid, which in 2002 alleged that it had successfully produced a human baby named Eve, bringing much critical scrutiny and media attention to the group.

Joining the Raëlian Movement requires denying any previous theistic associations, followed by a baptism. The ritual, known as the transmission of the cellular plan, is believed to communicate the new member’s DNA makeup to an Elohim extraterrestrial computer.

Raëlianism strives for world peace, sharing, democracy and nonviolence, and also has a very liberal attitude towards sex.  The Elohim are benevolent creators who wish for us to enjoy the life they have given us. As such, Raëlians embrace sensuality and are strong advocates of sexual freedom between consenting adults, which attitude is one of the better-known facts about them. Raëlians, therefore, exhibit a very wide variety of sexual orientations and preferences, including monogamy and even chastity.

Scientology

A news story in 2009 blew apart decades of intense secrecy about Scientology:

“Scientologists believe that mankind’s problems stem from brainwashed alien soul remnants created millions of years ago by genocidal alien overlord Xenu. The admission follows years of attempts to dismiss the story, first leaked by defectors, as anti-church propaganda… A core doctrine of Scientology belief is that freeing the human body of attachment to alien soul remnants…is key to achieving spiritual progress and relief from worries.” The Register

Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard devised a process he called Dianetics, representing it as a form of therapy. After losing and regaining his rights to the material, and with accusations of practicing medicine without a license, he restructured it as a religion named Scientology.

In the words of Scientology scholar Susan Raines:

Ron Hubbard created in Scientology an immense landscape of alternative worlds, realities, and possibilities. Scientology cosmology, mythology, and eschatology are inescapably linked to galactic events and Hubbard’s retelling of human history is replete with science-fiction tropes …. In his therapeutic and religious teachings, Hubbard proposed a complex narrative that re-defined the essence of self and society in relation to the cosmos. For Scientologists, the fantastic becomes mundane as they position themselves within a vast and heavy quest to reshape themselves, the rest of humanity, and, for some, the entire universe. Understood within the science-fiction context from which Scientology emerged, one can better understand the grand nature of Hubbard’s proposals as belonging to a specific tradition within the genre – namely, space opera.

Only through Dianetics auditing, with its technology, reported Raines, could one address these ability-inhibiting engrams to reach the state of ‘Clear.’

Wikipedia describes the belief system succinctly:  “Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business or a new religious movement.” As of 2008, its worldwide membership had declined from upwards of 100,000 to roughly 30,000.  As Wiki points out and other groups in this post demonstrate, UFO groups often recast traditional religious themes in the language of modern technology; similarly, the Church of Scientology presents spiritual teachings and mythology as psychology. For his followers, Hubbard created a new reality.

Within his cosmology, whose history seems to form the structure of his space opera, each Scientologist works his way  step by expensive step, through 75 million years of collected engrams to reach a state of ‘Clear.’ Even after that, more levels of therapy are required to ensure spiritual adequacy.

Without question, Scientology is far and away the most complex, designed, and inherently manipulative of these alternative religious movements, not to mention its being the most controversial, pricey, and litigious.

Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam is a quasi-Islamic and Black nationalist movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in 1930. His mission was to “teach the downtrodden and defenseless Black people a thorough knowledge of God and of themselves.” The group’s central purpose has always been to build social justice and racial pride, on a foundation of UFO and biblical beliefs.

Its late leader Elijah Muhammad built a myth around the fabled story in the biblical Book of Ezekiel about a mighty wheeled chariot in the heavens. Elijah reported in his books that his mentor, Wallace Fard Muhammad, used that biblical evidence of a “Mother Plane” or great “Wheel” to claim there was hidden technology on Earth which is secretly known to certain scientists all around the world. The UFO cover-up is not simply to hide the fact that such objects exist; instead, the cover-up is to prevent the public from knowing the source of power behind these crafts. These apocalyptic views describe how these machines will have a hand in the Day of Judgment, when God will use them to (at last) wipe out evil—white oppression and its society—leaving the Black nation to live the Kingdom of God on Earth, as biblically described in Revelation.

 

SUMMARY

The associations between UFOs and spiritualism were once very much joined at the hip. … there obviously are still unique similarities between the spiritual nature of mankind and the UFO phenomenon;  At the heart of the matter, it seems that the ultimate nature of the UFO mystery does still maintain some link to our inner-selves. |
– Micah Hanks , mysteriousuniverse.com
           

The “contact movement,” represent[s] one maanifestation of a “scientific” NRM. Drawing on time-honoured religious stories of the descent of supernatural beings from the heavens, UFO groups developed what has been called a “technological myth” of the arrival—whether imminent or actual and ongoing—on Earth of space aliens, who will bring advanced knowledge and spiritual wisdom.
Britannica.com          

 

Primary sources:

Aetherius

https://www.aetherius.org/ufos-and-extraterrestrial-life

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=aetherius&atb=v276-1&ia=web

Ashtar

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ashtar&atb=v276-1&ia=web

https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/proceedings-college-universal-wisdom

Ashtar Sheran

https://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-abstract/14/2/61/70446/Revisionism-in-ET-Inspired-Religions?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://www.powerfulintentions.org/members/BenArion

Raëlianism

https://www.learnreligions.com/raelian-movement-95694

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism

Scientology

https://www.theregister.com/2009/03/16/scientology_xenu_confirmation

https://www.britannica.com/topic/new-religious-movement/Scientific-NRMs-UFO-groups-and-Scientology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera_in_Scientology

https://www.amazon.com/Scientology-Popular-Culture-Influences-Legitimacy-ebook/dp/B073FSN9K5?asin=B073FSN9K5&revisionId=7c2a7c6b&format=1&depth=1

Nation of Islam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam

https://slife.org/nation-of-islam/

 

Summary

Spiritual Vessels: The Spiritual Side of UFOs

https://www.socialistalternative.org/life-legacy–malcolm-x/nation-islam-black-muslims

 

THREADS

Saviors from the sky
Conspiracies  – secrets and hidings
Technology as god
Biblical retelling

 

UFO Narrative Belief System Shifts

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First, a Bit of Housekeeping

Please, as your first action now, go to Subscribe in the lower left column and enter your email address, even if you did receive a notice for this post. Next, if you know anyone who used to subscribe or would be interested, please invite them to join us. So many names have been dropped—and so many thanks to you who are still here!

The widening gap in our communication here has resulted not only from the pandemic. More than six months ago, I discovered a significant breakdown in system software, which has affected messaging for who-knows-how-long and has taken far more time than expected to rectify. We have had to find and install new software and are having to rebuild the entire mailing list. Deep appreciation to Susan Pomeroy of the  Web Geographer for the fix! And now, back to blogging!

UFO Narrative Belief System

“A big problem with all this over the years is that pilots and others have seen things which just don’t add up, but have been afraid to share that information for fear that they would be laughed out of the barracks. And, you know, finally, we’ve gotten to the point where we can have a conversation about this without people, you know, wondering if people need to talk to a therapist or something. And so that’s a big deal.” – Miles O’Brien, PBS NewsHour, June 27, 2021

It would be difficult, I think, for anyone in an NDE community not to blink with recognition of the sentiment in that statement. In more ways than one, we are not alone in this world!

The quote, from the July 8 issue of Religion Dispatches, follows a headline: “With Release of Pentagon Report, UFO Narrative Belief System is Suddenly Supported by Military Witness Testimonies.”

The occasion was the June 25, 2021 release of a report, under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, marking the first-ever acknowledgment by the U.S. government that the many sightings of UFOs in our airspace, witnessed and documented by pilots and military personnel over decades, were in fact real events. The sightings, never officially recognized but widely known to the public as rumors of spooky “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs) now had a new label, “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs). Journalist Diana Pasulka noted the observation of other journalists like Mike O’Brien, that the report “creates a safe space within which to discuss matters related to the sightings of UFOs and UAPs.”

How many near-death experiencers exclaim every day about having the “safe space” of an online NDE group, or a local IANDS gathering, or an ASCISTE forum—a safe place to speak freely, to be oneself, to share a common sense of reality! The individuals who first report experiences not sanctioned  by the wider culture are all too familiar with the need for such a space in which to feel free…and normal.

The importance of a protective environment continues, even with the explosion of public information about near-death and related experiences, and now as with UFOs and their kin. We are all familiar with the rolled eyes and snide comments which too often greet these topics in social situations. Ironically, Pasulka notes, the new report “reversed the multi-year—and quite successful—campaign to debunk all types of witness testimonies regarding UAP sightings. The campaign to debunk testimonies, called Project Bluebook, was also funded by the U.S. government.” Like NDE experiencers, the pilots and other citizens who for so long had been forced into hiding, have emerged into the paradox of a mixed acceptance.

What do their witness reports mean? Pasulka quickly nods to a potentially spiritual basis in the  UFO/UAP narrative:

Scholars of religion are among those who understand the importance of witness testimonies in the formation of religions. Raëlism [Ed.: one of the new religions] and The Nation of Islam, for example, were formed from the UFO/UAP testimonies of their founders. A cursory review of UAP literature, both primary sources by witnesses, as well as secondary literature by academics, reveals overt religious and often apocalyptic themes in UAP witness reports.

(More on these new religions in my next post.) Meanwhile, Pasulka continues:

Harvard researcher Dr. John Mack’s bestselling book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994) featured the testimonies of people whose encounters with alleged extraterrestrials are best characterized as beneficial and spiritual, if frightening… Extraterrestrials are believed to be technologically advanced and are often thought to be supportive of humans’ best interests.

But,

Current UAP military narratives counter the testimonies found in books like Mack’s. They’re replaced with the specter of the reality of extraterrestrials and their danger to humans.

…The UFO/UAP narrative is a belief system that suddenly, with the release of the Pentagon Report, is supported by military witness testimonies. A new development in the vetting of witness testimonies includes internet algorithms related to search engines like Google. After the report was released, though ostensibly unrelated, Google reported a new process of vetting the credibility of user content; that is, videos and photographs uploaded by users of the internet. Coincidentally the video documenting Google’s new algorithm uses UAPs as an example.

According to coverage of the new algorithm, “Google will warn people when search results could be unreliable.” The example Google uses of unreliable information, shown as the result of a search on a phone, reads, “UFO filmed traveling 106 mph.”

This new algorithm will allow regulation of user generated witness testimonies. We’ve had witness testimonies for a long time. Is it really suddenly okay to talk about UAPs? Closer examination of this question reveals that it is only okay to talk about certain sightings—those ensconced within a military framework, and new algorithms will make it easier for internet search providers to vet civilian generated UAP reports.

So, does the new view envision a spiritual reality or a military threat? As Pasulka sums it up:

The consolidation of knowledge of UAPs to military witness testimonies, and the use of internet algorithms to monitor non-military testimonies represents a new development in this new religiosity of the UAP, what Carl Jung has termed “a new mythology.” For scholars and students of religion, this provides a rich opportunity to examine the formation of new systems of belief and practice coalescing around powerful cosmological questions, otherwise known as religions.

Next time: UFO religions.

More NDE Reckoning Than Expected

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Here’s a conversation about NDEs we haven’t had before—and doesn’t it seem odd there’s anything left we haven’t discussed? The topic comes once again from Nemo (Steve Weber), the source of so many interesting and worthwhile thoughts. Confusingly, there is another Steve Weber who also had an NDE, but that Steve lives in Florida and has a book about his NDE, titled The Place between Here and There. Nemo (Steve) lives in California and has a couple of walk-ins in my book.

It is Nemo (Steve) who writes to me introducing so many intriguing discoveries. Well into the pandemic, and more than a year after I had posted anything here, there were still bits of conversation happening occasionally online around the comments. In one of those lingering exchanges, he wrote:

One thing I’ve come to realize, regarding my current spiritual reality, on my path, is that it is virtually diametrically opposed to my “spiritual reality” of 50 years ago. I’ve wondered more than once what it would be like to time travel back to 1970 and present my current view to that new “Jesus Freak.” I wonder how the old “me” would respond to such apparent heresy. I mention this because I find it prudent to be mindful of this reality when conversing with others lest I become dogmatic and even find myself pontificating (Lord help us!). I’ve often despaired at attempting to convey my “truth”/reality to others, concluding that one’s truth/knowing isn’t transferable– after all, the “me” of much of the last 50 years likely couldn’t identify with it. The realizations that I’ve had regarding my Void NDE therefore have remained largely ineffable– I’ve attempted to convey them, but realize that one really can’t get it unless they’ve been there.

During the holed-up Year of Covid, I had spent my entire time, months on end of twelve-hour and fourteen-hour days, grappling with the story of my NDE and how I got from there to here. But oddly, it seems now, although the year was full of recollections about that earlier self, I had never thought to go back and have a conversation with her. What would we have to say to each other, with such different outlooks and understandings?

Time travel reckoning

In a preface to Beyond the Postmodern Mind, Huston Smith quotes Gai Eaton in The King of the Castle: “If, by some strange device, a man of our century could step backwards in time and mix with the people of a distant age, he would have good cause to doubt their sanity or his own.” The self of my today is a decade more than a half-century removed from the self of my NDE, which does not sound like “a distant age,” but the differences in thinking clearly mark the pivotal character of the years between. All of us who have memories from the 1960s and beyond have been living a sea change.

We surely knew there was chaos all around, but what most of us did not realize consciously was that so much of it was the crumbling of the Modern epoch. Our understanding of the world, and our certainties and expectations would go with it. Huston Smith continues:

[T]he stages peoples’ outlooks pass through on the temporal continuum have led the West to one that has come to be called “Postmodern” to distinguish it from the Modernity that began in the seventeenth century and ended around the middle of the last century. The Modern Mind took its cues from the new worldview that science introduced, but twenty-first century science has abandoned not just that worldview but worldviews generally. From Aristotle to Dante, the world was pictured as a series of concentric spheres. Newton replaced that with his clockwork universe, but quantum mechanics gives us, not a new picture of the world, but no picture at all. And philosophy has followed suit. Metaphysics died around the time that God died, Langton Gilkey has observed, tying its death to the “death of God” movement that Nietzsche announced, but which took a half-century to come to public notice.

The “no picture at all” of our quantumized Now is the “You are not real” of my NDE,  My earlier self was securely Modern; the current version is recognizably Postmodern, though in contention with the aggressively “woke.” No wonder it has taken such struggle to integrate that hard-edged NDE, which was forcing a leap to a sociological, philosophical, and spiritual developmental stage for which I was not ready. And how interesting that, looking at it from this perspective, it sounds so obvious and not all that hard!

About that conversation with my younger self: it occurs to me that my best option would be simply to give her a copy of Reckoning and get an earlier start on unraveling this reality-shaking NDE.

* * *

Asking a favor:

If you have read Reckoning—and especially if you enjoyed it (or at least found it interesting)—please add your Like to whatever review page you use. The book has been out more than a month and still has only three Likes and a single comment on Amazon. It is reassuring that all three have five stars and the comment is beyond gratifying, but in publishing, having only three people leave a rating is a body blow to the book’s reputation!

Your participation will make a difference. Readers with a distressing NDE need these books! I suspect that some readers may find the changes outlined in this one a bit hard to take in, simply because they are different from the usual NDE pattern and mainstream thinking  That bewilderment is familiar to all of us when first encountering quantum realities!  Your comments can help others make their way through. If you can’t bring yourself to write even a quick review, at least give Reckoning some stars! Five would be lovely, but honesty is important.

Thank you for helping!

Bruce Greyson, MD’s long-awaited book on his NDE research

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Asked by the editor of the magazine Vital Signs to write a book review of Bruce Greyson’s After, I decided to share it here also, as a piece of glad tidings. On the personal level, my Reckoning: Discoveries after a Traumatic Near-Death Experience is now generally available in both paperback and ebook format. (If you hear that a bookstore does not have the ebook, there’s been a lag, but it is coming!) The next post here will be within two weeks.
And now, heeere’s After!

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond

Bruce Greyson’s long-awaited book is out. Ken Ring calls it a “humdinger.” He’s right. I call it unparalleled, a book as foundational for the next generations of near-death studies as Raymond Moody’s Life After Life was to the first. It is certainly unparalleled as a basic read for anyone wanting reliable information about near-death experiences.

Greyson is personally an engaging man, and this book is a thoroughly engaging read. Conversational and full of personal experience, it moves right along, offering, for the first time, glimpses into his family life and growing up. The voice is thoroughly his own, warm and approachable yet always following his carefully restrained objectivity in the cause of balance. In a field occupied on one hand by strictly skeptical materialists and on the other by spiritual enthusiasts, others may speculate and theorize; he is occupied by a search for evidence.

Among the personal glimpses illuminating his distinctive contribution is a wonderful anecdote about Bruce and his father, whom he describes as  a skeptic, “a chemist whose perception of reality was defined by the periodic table of the elements.” The anecdote describes a conversation during a visit home as a third-year med student.

I surprised my father with the news that I was thinking of becoming a psychiatrist. I told my father that I was fascinated by the effects our unconscious thoughts and feelings had on our behavior. Sitting in his easy chair with his legs crossed, my father slowly pulled a corncob pipe and tobacco pouch out of his jacket pocket. He meticulously filled the bowl of the pipe and tamped down the tobacco, then added some more and tamped it down again. Then he struck a wooden match and carefully waved it over the bowl as he drew gently on the pipestem. Finally, he looked up and, to my surprise, he asked, “What makes you think we have unconscious thoughts and feelings?”

I was shocked by this blunt challenge. But  my father wasn’t saying that the unconscious didn’t exist. He was just asking for the evidence—as any skeptical scientist should…As surprised as I was…I realized that he had a point. I should look into the evidence of the unconscious before accepting it.

We see here the makings of a lifetime achievement. In fact, it is to a great extent Greyson’s unflappable quest for evidence which enabled IANDS–with which he has been so faithfully associated–to realistically describe itself as “the most reliable source of information” about NDEs.

A prime source of that reliability has been the evidence-based research of Bruce Greyson and his co-investigators, asking not only big questions but the myriad of small ones which matter, and which are the substance of After. There has been no shortage of  writers contributing to the notion that near-death experiences are anything from weird to divine intrusion. Greyson is unquestionably a star among those who have made near-death experience credible.

One quality making this book stand out so satisfyingly is its breadth. Greyson is not, of course, the only significant NDE researcher and author, though he was among the first in this era. Other respected authors have routinely acknowledged research findings across the field and perhaps presented their own. The difference is that in reading After, a realization dawns, as question after question is answered across twenty chapter topics, that the findings are all emerging not from others but from the author’s own work; he is himself, sometimes in partnership but often singly, the source of so much of what we know. And this is key—that he does not flaunt that fact; it simply is.

Quantitatively, his output has been stunning: his cv tells the tale: Peer-reviewed professional journals have published more than one hundred of his near-death related articles and book reviews. (The public rarely hears of them because they are behind high pay walls of academic exclusivity). Another seventy are published letters and book chapters. He has presented at sixty-seven conferences around the world, including at the United Nations and the compound of the Dalai Lama.

Through it all, there is his sense of humor and his humanity. In Reckoning, I have recently told the story of the very early meeting of the IANDS Board of Directors, back when most academics were still at the very beginning of discovering how normal and paranormal co-exist. There was a good deal of “Can we believe this?” The high point of the three-day meeting was a demonstration of spoon-bending. The demonstration, using a large, heavy stainless steel serving spoon, was a resounding success, leaving Board members stupefied by what they had just seen with their own eyes. One outcome of the meeting could have been witnessed on a United Airline flight from Connecticut to D.C. There sat a man whom Ken Ring would forty years later describe as “the most distinguished and important authority of near-death experiences in the field,” patiently practicing spoon-bending with the airline’s plastic flatware. Bruce Greyson, pursuing evidence!

I predict you will be glad to read After. It’s a wonderful book.

(Further) Patience Rewarded

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Pre-introducing … book #3!

A question frequently asked but unanswered for dedades has been, how have I made sense of my own NDE? How many years has it taken even to have such a sense of what a distressing NDE might mean! And then, how to go deeply enough inside and in the literature to shape the mountains of information, how to get thoughts on paper in spite of the disruptions of daily life? Trying to write the book took insane amounts of time. It went on for years. There was never enough quiet, enough emptiness for concentrated thinking, enough time for the kind of focus it required.

And then came Covid-19. The isolation which has been a horror for so many has also, sometimes, been pure gift. Suddenly to have no meetings, no appointments, no lunch dates, no plans, no trips, no ventures beyond the mail box! The vast sweep of unencumbered time and purpose created a unique, almost biblical circumstance, like a long labor enabling  a hard-to-write book to be delivered into being. Now it is almost time for the new arrival’s public appearance.

The paperback edition of Reckoning is in the IngramSparks pipeline and will be published internationally in early spring, or as soon as Ingram completes its part with Covid-depleted staff. As with the first two books, I am self-publishing because the size of the readership niche does not entice a commercial publisher. The ebook version is also moving toward production. Soon!  You’ll see–I wasn’t just doing nothing all that while!

If you like, bring some questions or discussion and we’lldance another round of blog life. Would love to hear from you.