Toma is a reader of this blog who keeps asking unanswerable questions…to which I do my best to provide responses. Just the other day he wrote, “What is the purpose of life?” and I answered, “I’ll have to think about whether that even feels do-able.”
Frankly, I thought coming up with a reasonable response was unlikely to be do-able at all. But that was before Oliver Sacks learned he has terminal cancer. [Read more…] about What is the purpose of life?
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that Alex Malarkey’s story was all made up. And yet, that’s the news this week. Here is the NPR lead:
“Nearly five years after it hit best-seller lists, a book that purported to be a 6-year-old boy’s story of visiting angels and heaven after being injured in a bad car crash is being pulled from shelves. The young man at the center of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, Alex Malarkey, said this week that the story was all made up.” [Read more…] about The “Burpo-Malarkey Doctrine”…and dilemma
Months have gone by since my last post. Months, since I confidently promised a conclusion to my answer to Tomas’s question, “Are you afraid of death”? It’s been months.
People wonder (with reason) whether anyone who has had a distressing NDE will be terribly afraid of death. Because the usual response is an uncompromising “yes,” I was really, seriously trying to figure out my answer. In the first responding post I talked about my realization that there are ways in which we are all afraid, because we’re hardwired to repel death. In the second part I went over why I am not afraid of the hell that most people mean when they ask the question, “Are you afraid of death?” Part three was to be my personal answer. I said it would have something to do with Carl Jung. But it’s been months. Why? [Read more…] about “Are you afraid of death?”, Part 3
It takes a gifted author to produce a fresh, interesting look at NDEs at this stage in the game. Fortunately for readers, Judy Bachrach brings years of experience as a top-flight journalist to the assignment, and in Glimpses of Heaven: The Stories and Science of Life After Death she has done just that. Some paths she follows are well-worn, but in her hands they take on new and absorbing perspectives. [Read more…] about Two reviews: Glimpsing Heaven
Tomas and some others asked me, “Are you afraid of death?”
The opening of my response (last week’s post, the one below this one): “Some yes.”
This week: “Most no”
What does that mean, “Most no?”
Bear with me, please, because I’m thinking on paper here. I think what “Most no” means is that I’m probably not afraid of what most people are afraid of when we think of death. At least in Western societies, most people are afraid of hell, or at least of punishment. That is what at least 1,700 years of theology have led to. [Read more…] about The “Are you afraid of death?” question, Part 2
One of the delights of blogging is the openness of readers’ questions. And because the questions here have been so good, to an astonishing extent (at least to me) I have responded by publically dissecting the deepest slam to my psyche, my NDE and the issues that came with it, both for me and for the field of near-death studies. Most recently it was Tomas, seconded by others, who came right out with the big question: Are you afraid of death?
I sent an immediate reply—“No, I don’t think so. For a more satisfactory answer, watch for a post in the next week or so.”
Hah. Wrong. Oh, so wrong!
Weeks have passed since Tomas’s inquiry and my blithe reply, and day after day I have sat at my computer with nothing happening except an alarming amount of Candy Crush. That can mean one of several things, none of which is that I actually enjoy Candy Crush. That kind of stupefaction means either that I actually have nothing to say and should make a quick and apologetic getaway; or that something is bubbling away in my subconscious, which will make itself known in due time; or that I really, really don’t want to go to wherever the topic is. This time, I suspect it’s a bit of all three.
[Read more…] about The “Are you afraid of death?” question, Part 1
“Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible.”
~ Carl Jung
