Over at the Skeptiko blog (“Science at the tipping point”), host Alex Tsakiris has just posted the podcast and transcript of an interview he did with me last month. A bit different than most NDE interviews, with a couple of turns I think neither of us expected.
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Hope you enjoy reading or hearing it. You could even send the link to anyone who’d be interested!
You can find it all here
I just listened to it today. Definitely a great conversation! Hope to hear you make another appearance on the show 🙂
Appreciated! I think Alex and I both had a good time with the conversation.
I enjoyed the interview, Nancy. I’ll be over at Skeptiko, as usual, enjoying the discussion–there’s certainly much food for thought. Maybe you’ll be able to join in? Whatever, thanks for the interview and all the best! 🙂
Michael
See you there, Michael!
Hi Nancy… thx again for this terrific dialog. so many topics we didn’t get a chance to talk about… maybe here is the place 🙂
topic 1 — the big one — what is the nature of this “evil factor” that keeps popping up both here in the world and beyond?
— how can we begin to approach this topic objectively/scientifically?
Hey, Alex, what do you do for really hard questions? 🙂 Will do my best!
You already know I thoroughly enjoyed the interview.
You continue to be an excellent ambassador for the value of distressing NDEs, and, in general, for intellectual and theological humility.
Nan: “We are surrounded by people whose knees are jerking.” 🙂 “I think there’s no single answer.”
Great choral metaphor about bringing all religions into collaboration!
Shifting from foot to foot, toes pointed in…thank you, Sheila.
I know what I’ve done right because my capacity to love and understand has grown so much. I feel it in me, I feel it coming out of me, in my caring and regard for others.
Yes, I make mistakes, my capacity to radiate this can falter at times.
I have to apologize for mistakes just like everybody else, but it’s there. I’m also carrying the regret of what I know I’ve done wrong, or fallen short. There’s no ego there.
My stepson and I had a difficult relationship with his growing up. Yesterday, all 230 pounds of his 6’3” frame hugged me so tight I couldn’t move. He told me he loved me, and was glad I was his Dad. This to me is succeeding in life.
I’m living my seventy eighth year. I’m just trying to make my loved ones as safe as possible before I go. When I do, and I run into any negative entities, they’re going to hear “OK you idiots, you want to boogie? let’s get it on”. I’ll laugh in their face.
The essence of you. Thanks, Dave.
In regard to the distress thing. We don’t know what we’re going to encounter when we cross. It could be frightening, ecstatic, or anywhere in between.
Therefor, building your spiritual strength, and capacity to radiate love is the way to prepare for it. Positive has to confront the negative.
Who knows, you may even be able to win them over. Come on daemons ……lighten up! This doesn’t have to escalate into a kick butt party.
🙂
From Alex:
“topic 1 — the big one — what is the nature of this “evil factor” that keeps popping up both here in the world and beyond?
If there was one single, strongly defensible answer to that question, it potentially would make it’s discoverer king of the world.
IMO – and that’s pretty much all we can have is an opinion – we all fall into a materialist trap when we try to answer it. We can’t help it, because all of our senses (so far) are geared to the material world we live in.
Even common words that we use, such as ‘spirit’, ‘energy’, ‘apparition”, ‘force’, ‘The Light’, etc… carry materialist baggage. The imagery that these words conjure up is of an time/energy/mass concept. E=Mc 2 anyone?
I suspect that whatever is really going on behind the Veil cannot be measured using units of measure enslaved by concepts and images of time, matter or energy.
It’s kind of like expecting a dog to understand calculus when it doesn’t even have a mental framework for numbers. It can experience a quantity of a lot or little food,, but it can’t possibly even begin to wrap its mind around the idea of math.
We can experience a tension between The Divine and the demonic, and we can participate in the process, but we wrap our brains into pretzels trying to fathom the underpinning.
Well said! Thanks for clear thinking.
I agree with Nan, well said, and a good illustration of how truly useless the verbal labels we throw out really are.
Some things are only understood when you don’t think. They’re only understood when you empty your intellect, turn it off and feel.
Speaking as someone who is continually accused of “going to the dogs”, I’m in good company.
can you take a look at this one….4 days died and came back to life! http://www.domitilaministry.com/about.html
If we could collect all the published accounts of people who have had experiences like these, it would fill a room of bookcases. Each instance occurs in its own distinctive set of circumstances, some of them, like Domitila’s, seeming remarkable when described later. (And it is not unkind to suggest that excited onlookers may sometimes add a bit of drama to the details.) The thing is, these experiences are so powerful, so transforming of a person’s understandings, so explosive to all previous ways of thinking, that they can become the focus and purpose of that person’s entire life. These are the people who become prophets, evangelists, leaders of storefront churches and regional sects and sometimes more than sects. What they teach is what they bring back from their experience. Domitila sounds as if she falls into this category, with teachings that are strong and meaningful for the people who hear her. At the macro level, think Moses, the Buddha, almost certainly Jesus, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Joseph Smith: No two of them said exactly the same things afterwards, but there is a consistency of theme and direction.
So–do I believe that Domitila had this kind of experience? Yes, I see no reason not to believe that. Do I believe that the experience was precisely as she now describes it? I have no basis for knowing that answer, though I think this is where careful discernment is needed (and that does NOT mean that she may be lying, but that interpretation after the NDE may not be able to be expressed adequately without hyperbole.). Do I believe she believes this transformation to be real and powerful? Absolutely. Do I believe she was physically, clinically, actually dead for four days? I am more likely to believe that she was in a very deep coma, although the people she was with believed her to be dead; I do not believe that people return from actual death, which is permanent. But note that a great many people would disagree with me on this point.
You’ve been reading and thinking about these kinds of NDEs for a while now. What do you think of this one?
Hi again, Nancy.
This thing has got me thinking, and so I’ll be downloading your kindle book (which incidentally is a very reasonable price). I’m expressing some of my thoughts over at Skeptiko, no point duplicating them here, except one thing: I like to think the universe makes sense. It does not make sense if some good people, such as yourself, are punished, whilst some bad ones are rewarded.
It could be so, but if so, whence would come the beauty and order that we can find in even ordinary waking awareness? Whence Shakespeare, the New Testament, Bach, Ibn ‘Arabi…
Michael, as you’ll see, I make a distinction between these experiences and punishment. That’s been an interpretation, and a social desire, even; but they serve a more useful purpose than that if one can get past (or maybe it’s behind) the fear. They can be terrible, but so, for instance, can dentistry.
Hi Nancy,
I guess I was a bit loose in my language. I didn’t mean punishment or reward meted out as such by a supreme being. I more meant to say that there are some experiences that are felt as punishing or rewarding, as in the sentence: “The journey’s hard slog was punishing, but the arrival most rewarding”.
Yes, punishing as in “hard slog” is how I would mean it, too. Thanks for the clarification.
…Indeed, whence such magnificence as Manley Hopkins’ sonnet “As kingfishers catch fire”, wherein I like to think all wisdom can be found:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Bless the man! I was musing just yesterday on what books I would save if my house were threatened, and the collected Hopkins was one of them. What a good read first thing in the morning!
What a great, thought -provoking conversation! I’ve always loved Hopkins Here’s a favorite poem:
My own heart let me more take pity on: let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormenting mind
With this mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all of world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather-as skies
Betweenpie mountains – lights a lovely mile.
Hopkins definetly knew the Dark and the Light.
Isn’t this great? Where else this morning would we be likely to have a Hopkinsfest?
Yes, another beautiful sonnet. Hopkins, if I recall correctly, was a bit tortured, possibly because it’s rumoured he might have been gay. On his untimely deathbed, though, he said how glad he was at the thought of death. Yes, he knew darkness and depression, but in his essence, he also knew the light better than most, and yearned to return to it.
Here are some beautiful recitals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhQwFf6Qb9U (Richard Burton reads the leaden echo and the golden echo–a tour de force!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f-1w5xAx0k
(Paul Webster reads Kingfisher)
The Burton is breathtaking! One forgets what that man could do… This is pure treasure. I’m so struck, haven’t listened to the Webster yet.
The Burton reading is haunting me! We forget what the human voice can be. That link is going on my Facebook page.
Incidentally, Michael, I think you might enjoy my daughter’s blog from London. See http://baroqueinhackney.com (Short listed for this year’s Orwell Prize, so you know I’m not recommending drivel!) The link is also on my blogroll here. She’s quite something.
Thanks for the link to your daughter’s blog, Nancy. I too am a Brit, though I live quite some way from London, in Lancashire, where I was born. I see the blog includes a focus on poetry, which is a hobby of mine. My latest effort is my first villanelle:
BEAUTY
Like ermine kissed by candlelight,
like breath on skin, but softer still,
it’s hardly something you could fight:
you’d sooner nail a lark in flight
for singing songs that sound too shrill.
Like ermine kissed by candlelight,
but calculating, if polite,
it cultivates a marksman’s skill.
It’s hardly something you could fight:
exploding suns don’t flare as bright;
how fortunate its muted thrill–
like ermine, kissed by candlelight?
An owl’s stoop, in moonless night?
Whether you think it warm or chill,
it’s hardly something you could fight;
absurd to thrash, as if it might
come crashing in and steal your will:
like ermine kissed by candlelight,
it’s hardly something you could fight.
Oh, aren’t you having a good time doing a difficult thing! Well done.
Nancy, I’ve posted a couple of messages for you on your thread on Skeptiko which might, hopefully, help you navigate around more easily – see messages #128 and #129 in reply to your #127.
Michael, I just went and looked. How thoughtful of you! Will try using the tab approach. Maybe you can get me trained so that I’ll go to the forum more often; it has always been so daunting a prospect, I have tended to stay away. Punishing, one might say.
I’d be proud if I could help you become a more frequent contributor to Skeptiko! 🙂
Your contributions are really welcome and I’m sure that many others besides me have been finding them thought-provoking and authoritative. The link you provided for more info on active imagination is terrific–I’m about half-way through that and will be coming back at the end to post something on Skeptiko in response.
Just one thing–there are just a few Skeptiko contributors of the so-called “sceptical” persuasion (i.e. trolls) who can sometimes be a bit of a pain. Don’t let them discourage you. Most contributors are genuinely constructive even if they disagree.
Properly used, skeptics are like the grit on sandpaper: They keep us sharper. And thank heaven I’m at an age when it’s easier either to ignore them or swat back without getting all in a flap myself. And didn’t that just take some time to learn!
Nancy, I very much enjoyed listening to you on skeptiko. Thank you for visiting the skeptiko forum and making such a valuable contribution to the dialogue.
I’m a multiple NDEr, and I haven’t done very well at figuring out my experiences. You’ve really helped me a lot in coming to a better understanding of what happened to me and why I’ve never been able to deal with it. Thank you so much for that.
The understanding comes hard. We don’t do mystery very well, and none of us has a full answer; but maybe, by sharing information from many sources, at least pathways will become visible. I’m very glad to have helped.