Dancing Past the Dark ~ distressing near-death experiences

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Distressing NDEs as Scary Rites of Passage, #3

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This is part #3 of what I presented at the 2015 IANDS conference, somewhat amplified by things I wish there had been time to say in San Antonio. If you missed the previous segments, you might want to scroll down to read the two posts below this.

We need a new post-Copernican viewpoint

Copernicus – Loss of stability. Are we safe?

It was six hundred years ago that Copernicus put forward his earth-demoting observation of the heliocentric solar system. It was not simply a great scientific discovery – it changed everything. We overlook the enormity of that shock to the people of the West –the destruction of their ancient and stable sense of How Things Work, their cosmos, their very earth, their central identity, their orderly universe governing orderly social conventions. Our thoughts and language show how we are still clutching at remnants of those more secure times, still struggling theologically, philosophically, and psychologically to adapt to this “new” reality.
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Why keep discussing distressing NDEs?

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Over the past few months, a pattern has been emerging in the comments to these blog posts and in my emails. I have been seeing expressions of discomfort and even anger about this discussion of distressing NDEs, based on the idea that the NDEs represent institutional and/or cultural abuse. The vocabulary includes words such as “falsity,” “manipulation,” “intimidation,” “coercion,” “judgmentalism,” “control.” One respected reader wonders why the discussion even needs to be continued, why it gives the forces of oppression such attention rather than outright denunciation.

Let me say again: “For several months now, these blog posts have been steps on a journey to get down underneath all the preconceptions and assumptions, all the theories and doctrines, and ask, ‘What is bedrock?’ Is it possible to get beyond overlays of supposition to something so simple I am able to trust it? Can we begin to see near-death experiences through lenses other than doctrinal or disbelieving?” [Read more…] about Why keep discussing distressing NDEs?

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Here is Scottish physician Bob Leckridge in a post on his “Heroes Not Zombies” blog.

The suffering gap

by bobleckridge

http://heroesnotzombies.com/2013/01/06/the-suffering-gap/

mindthegap.jpg

 

I come across this issue all the time – there is a gap between reality and fantasy, and that’s where suffering occurs.

By fantasy, I really mean imagination, but that includes hopes, dreams, and idealised wishes for how things could be. It includes memories too, because I don’t believe memories are like objects tucked into some cerebral drawer – we recreate them, imagine them anew, every time we bring them into the present.

Some terrible things happen to people. Things that will never go away. And those things keep jumping into the present.

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https://dancingpastthedark.com/bob-leckridge/

Meaning and Imagination: NDErs as Hobbits

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You may remember (dimly by now), that in this series about religion and near-death experience I have been prowling through layers of human interpretation, in search of whatever may amount to bedrock understandings.

A few days back, something came along that stopped me in my prowling tracks like a bird dog on point. I’ll give you some context so you can understand the impact.

Back two posts, I had suggested that descriptive systems—theologies, ideologies, disciplines, paradigms—provide us with cognitive grab bars: ways of ordering information to give a sense of stability in a deeply mysterious universe. The grab bars say, here, this is the way this place works; hold on to these to keep your balance so you do not fall into a chaos of disordered observations. 
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Follow-up on the Near-Death Experience Void and Space

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In the previous post, I waved a flag for Brian Greene’s book and PBS series, The Fabric of the Cosmos, especially the segment on space. I’m still waving. However, responding to some of your comments, here’s what may be a clarification.

(What follows is quoted from the book Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences, which should be available online early in 2012.)

Suppose, says Greene in the video, suppose we took away everything in the physical universe—the buildings, people, objects, the planets and stars, down to the smallest atoms of gas and dust; what would be left? We would say “Nothing.” If we took its picture, it would be empty. And as Greene agrees, we would be right; but we would also be wrong. He asks, “How do you make sense of something that looks like nothing?” At this point, experiencers of the Void sit up and take notice.

“As it turns out,” he tells us, “empty space is not nothing; it’s something.”

 (Buddhists are nodding and smiling.)

“Empty space is not nothing; it’s something with hidden characteristics as real as all the stuff in our everyday lives. In fact, space is so real it can bend; it can twist; and it can ripple—so real that empty space itself helped shape everything in the world around us and forms the very fabric of the cosmos.”

In the book he summarizes (p. 32), “Space is unavoidably suffused with what are called quantum fields and possibly a diffuse uniform energy called a cosmological constant—modern echoes of the old and discredited notion of a space-filling aether.” There’s a lot going on, beyond our ability to see it with our own eyes.

I am not suggesting that Nirvana is outer space, nor that it is located in outer space, nor that an experience of the Void is an actual trip into outer space any more than a blissful NDE is a voyage to a physical heaven. However, there is this curious resemblance among space, the Void, the Godhead, and Nirvana, that what seems so empty may be full of everything there is, that it may be, in fact, the fabric of the cosmos.

In the play Our Town, the young people are fascinated to discover that a letter can be sent to them at an address beginning with their house number and ending with the Mind of God. I wonder if this conception of space doesn’t have a good deal in common with that idea.

There are no answers here, but intimations of likenesses suggesting that there may be more to this whole business of spirituality than confirmed skeptics admit.