My big questions about God and the Afterlife, on both sides

[Winston]

Awesome links JamesBond!

Here is part one of a press conference by Dr. Sam Parnia and other MD's in a UN symposium about their findings in life after death.



What they've found is that highly structured and coherent NDE's occur even when the brain and heart activity have stopped. But skeptics argue that the problem with that is that it is difficult to pinpoint whether an NDE has occurred before the brain and heart have stopped, during, or after resuscitation. I hope these doctors are able to pinpoint it or find an answer to this.

[ladislav]

Ladislav,
I fixed the problem with your quotes. My parts and your responses are properly quoted now. I don't know what went wrong earlier or what caused such a strange glitch. Like I said, many unexplained things in life......

Cool, thanks. I have also corrected the spelling and added some details. Please read my answers again.

[Winston]

Here is more about Dr. Sam Parnia's project:

http://www.mindbodysymposium.com/press-articles.html

Excerpt

World’s Largest Scientific Study on Mind-Brain
May Finally Unravel Mystery Of What Happens When We Die

Human Consciousness Project to be Launched at International UN Symposium on 9/11

A major new international study to be launched by a consortium of U.S. and European medical centers may finally reveal the answer to the age-old mystery of what happens when we die, as well as the nature of the human mind and its relation with the brain—two of the most perplexing questions that have baffled humankind for millennia.a

[ladislav]

If there is a God, why doesn't he physically come out so that EVERYONE can see him anytime, making himself an objective physical person, to settle the dispute over his existence? Why all the mystery and hide-and-seek, leaving everyone guessing and speculating? Why can't he appear to everyone like he did to Moses as a pillar of fire in the movie "The Ten Commandments", instead of a select few who are sometimes not even credible or sane?

2.

God is not a 'he' or a 'she'. It is the fundamental life force that moves the Universe, it's fundamental law. It is a Non-count Noun. And it has come out. It is what makes everything move and develop, what makes life live itself. It has come out in everything. Can you see electricity itself? Can you the the force of gravity? I think you may not see them but their functions- well, yes. God is the unifying force of all these forces of the universe, its underlying pulse. Its basic principle. Einstein came very close to proving that gravity, the electromagnetic force the strong and the weak forces of the nucleus sprung from one unifying force- that is what God is, or at least one of its dimensions. It is what unifies sentient and non sentient beings and your mind into one whole.

An old man on a cloud with a white beard is just an allegory. Because the above explanation would be too much for common people to understand back in the old days.

If there is life after death, then why don't the deceased return to visit their loved ones or the living in a CONSISTENT reliable unambiguous direct manner? Why do they only allegedly appear to only some of their loved ones through dreams, sensations or feelings, ghostly experiences, or signs and omens? Why not directly in full form that is clearly visible to the naked eye and can be seen by anyone, like the way Ben Kenobi visited Luke Skywalker in his afterlife form in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi?

After death, living being move into a non physical dimension leaving this plane. They can appear and visit you but you will simply not see them with your eyes because they now exist at a different frequency on a different layer of existence. When you sleep, your non physical, very "fine"soul which again cannot be seen by the naked human eye starts acting like its own unit by often separating from your body. It can see things and travel to other planes. Somehow, although the exact mechanism of it is not yet understood, your subconscious mind layers are connected to other non physical dimension of the universe and they can see what goes on there and also see the dead.

However, there have been sightings of ghosts and yes, sometimes, when the non physical shell is heavy enough, it can be seen by naked eye, but this is rare.

You are asking 'why'? Because such are laws of nature. There is no 'why'. There is only a 'what'?

I can ask the same 'why"- why does water freeze at 0 degrees Celsius? And not at one degree or five degrees? Why does the Earth have only one moon and not three? Why is the Sun a single star and not a double star? Many things do not have a ' why'.

Analysis and sub-questions:

Christians like to excuse the first question by claiming that even if God did physically appear, most heathens on earth would not believe him anyway. But that is a total copout, and completely false too. People usually believe what they see with their eyes, especially once it appears. For example, in the movie Independence Day, when alien fighters were attacking and ravaging the whole Earth, no one denied the existence of aliens anymore, they were an established fact by then.

Because many Christians do not understand the nature of God. They think God is some ghost that flies around the Universe. It is not what God is.

Or they say that God is not appearing to test our faith in him, another lame copout which makes no sense. Why doesn't he just appear to settle the dispute over his existence?

Well, God is appearing everywhere because all existence is being fed by God. So, all nature and everything, well, God is it. For example, there is a force of life that moves your body, your thoughts, your innards, that makes your heart pump. Can you make it appear in front of you? No, because that is not its nature. It's nature is to make you alive. See what I mean? Can you make electricity itself come out in front of you? You can make light of it come out, but not the electricity. Can you make gravity come out in front of you and talk to you?

But on the other hand, Atheists have not fully explained away the things that point to the existence of God:

a) Miracles and answered prayers happen so often through the world, sometimes with such detail, that cannot be explained by coincidence alone. However, the miracles that have been documented are usually those that can also have occurred through spontaneous remission or even placebo effect. There has never been a known instance of a miracle, for instance, which involved amputated limbs growing back. Why? Is it beyond God's power to grow back an amputated limb?

There are laws of nature an they are God, too. Even science is being fed by power of God because God is the driving force of all things. Sometimes, by mental concentration these laws can be strengthened and utilized better and served to turn different possibilities in your favor. These are things that are hard to explain but you often feel where the limits of prayer lie. Also, do not discount future existences. Sometimes, when karmic causes are too thick and heavy, miracles will happen and prayers will be answered after the karma has been 'lived down'. Which means, in a very very distant future. But all prayers are answered eventually.

b) The Intelligent Design argument has never been completely debunked, only nitpicked at. So much in creation, from stars to atoms, and especially living organisms, indicate an elaborate, intricate, and efficient order design. In fact, some reputable scientists have compared the chances of life evolving on Earth by random mutations to be less probable or equivalent to the probability of a group of monkeys typing randomly at typewriters for millions of years and coming up with "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare", or the odds that a tornado could blow through a junkyard and randomly put together a complete functional 747 jumbo jet. Such would be beyond astronomical.

That is right- there is an intelligent life force behind all things- it is just that you would have to look beyond ancient allegorical texts to see its nature.

c) And of course, many who have had a Near Death Experience claim to have encountered God face to face.

In the non physical plane where your soul goes to after death, you will see what you have believed all along as it will take the shape of what your mind expects to see.

So what can we make of all this? Could our whole notion of what God is be wrong? And thus the assumptions in these questions here be in error too?

A lot of Christian texts are allegorical and symbolic, not literal. It is up for you to see what they mean and read between the lines. The reason many scientists are anti-Christian is that they think that the symbolisms in the religion are actual. They should not take them literally, though.

Regarding life after death, some spiritualists have proposed that a barrier exists between our world and that of the afterlife dimension that prevents the departed from contacting us easily or directly. However, even if that were so, you'd think that out of the countless millions on Earth who have died, that at least some or a few of them would have found a way to contact the living directly and unambiguously in a clear cut solid manner, to show their afterlife existence to be an objective fact right? Why only through dreams, signs and omens, or sudden feelings/sensations.

View my explanations of different frequencies/dimensions above.

Or perhaps consciousness is completely vanquished at death?

After all, during anesthesia, a patient's consciousness loses its existence momentarily until the patient regains consciousness, to the point that not even dreams occur. So doesn't that mean that consciousness can lose its own existence too? (at least consciousness as we know it) Some spiritualists argue that since matter cannot be destroyed, but only go through a change in form, that consciousness can't be destroyed either. But even if that were so, and consciousness simply changed its form to something else, it doesn't automatically follow that awareness cannot be vanquished, as it seemingly does with the experience of patients in anesthesia. After all, it has not been established that awareness itself is a form of matter. If it were merely a by-product of matter (the brain), wouldn't it be possible for it to be extinguished?

It separates from the body and goes into another plane of sorts. There are also levels of consciousness. The sensual one, that is how you feel things through your body's sensory organs disappears when you faint. Other levels that are connected to your other body- the astral one, live on. Mystics say we have some four bodies, the physical one being the crudest and it is the one that dies and faints and all that. There are other bodies though. These cannot always be seen of detected with eyes or physical instruments at the present level of scientific development but sometimes they can be seen if the vibrations overlap with the physical dimension.

On the other hand, if there is no life after death, then what about the widespread reports of ghostly experiences all over the world all throughout history? Surely countless millions of experiences everywhere throughout all history can't be 100 percent all wrong or mistaken?

Well, there is life after death.

But even if ghosts were proven to be real, that would not prove that they are the spirits or consciousness of people who have passed away. They could be interdimensional beings, a different type of lifeform, projections from the consciousness of the living, etc.

Near Death Experiences, although a fascinating phenomenon, may point to the possible existence of a life after death, but they are highly controversial and personal, and certainly not conclusive proof nor universally testable or verifiable. However, the unwavering conviction and knowing of many experiencers that their experience was real and absolute proof of life after death to them, is quite fascinating.

And reincarnation, a highly fascinating subject, is mainly backed by circumstantial evidence. There are many compelling cases that have been documented and suggest a reincarnation hypothesis, such as those in Ian Stevenson's "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" and "Across Time and Death" by Mary Sutton, which present very convincing cases with no alternative explanations. However, such evidence is purely circumstantial, not hard scientific.

In addition, reincarnation contains inherent paradoxes, such as how can everyone have a past life when 30 years ago, the population was half what it is now? Reincarnation advocates solve this paradox by claiming that some of us may have had past lives on other planets or in other dimensions. But isn't that just a copout?

No, it is not because there are not only other planets but other spiritual planes where souls reside. Also, they say souls can split like cells split. Plus let me ask you this- how many bottles ( bodies) can you fill from an ocean ( God) with individual portions of water ( souls)?

As to all the other phenomena used to support the afterlife hypothesis - amazing mediums, seances, Electronic Voice Phenomenon (capturing ghostly voices on tape), automatic writing, spirit photography, etc. - they are interesting, ambiguous, and may or may not be real. But either way, such phenomena does not seem conclusive enough to make life after death a hard objective universally verifiable fact.

Not yet because science has not yet developed enough to detect all these things.

Again, perhaps our whole notion of what consciousness is, is wrong? Maybe it's totally different in nature than what we think? Could an answer somewhere in the middle be possible?

We have not yet developed science that can explain all this.

Or could the type of consciousness in the afterlife dimension be totally different than the kind we have in this life, as Dr. Melvin Morse, pediatrician and NDE researcher/author, postulated? What he concluded was that "something" definitely survives death, but it's not the ordinary consciousness that we have in this life.

That is right. It is another layer of it that does so. Winston, there is some glitch in the answer window. After some lines, every time I try to place the quote marks on your text it brings me to the very top of the window. Hence no quote marks.

Can such questions ever be answered? Or are they eternally unanswerable?

Eternally? Why such a grand and mighty word? They are being answered, it is just going to take time. As science develops more and more,such things will be answered more and more. We are talking decades, if not centuries.

[Winston]

Here is another response from my spiritual advisor FaithRada:


"Hi Win.. Its late but I thought I'd just jump into these two points.... You say...


Win <<So>>

Answer: God IS .. UNLIMITED BEing. Therefore anything we THINK God to be.. will not be God but only some very limited aspect of The ONE. Our human mind is FINITE contracted Consciousness, while God IS... INFINITE, or UNLIMITED Consciousness. The finite cannot possibly perceive .. in total .. THAT which is INFINITE.

Think of a chicken trying to understand all that it would take to send a rocket to another GALAXY.... It is simply BEYOND its comprehension to do so.. and yet.. it would be easier for a chicken to do that, than for our own mind to grasp fully WHAT God actually IS.
I have heard some Christians say that People who reject God go to hell.. but look closer here. Are they actually even capable of rejecting God??? OR are they simply rejecting some IDEA that they hold in their finite minds of who/what God is?
The Truth is it is impossible to reject God since God is The Ultimate Perfection and in Perfection there is NOTHING to reject.. Perfect is Perfect. So... people have all these IDEAS and NOTIONS of what God IS that they hold with their minds, their intellect, .. but Got cannot be KNOWN this way. The ONLY ONE who can truly KNOW God... is God. Merge fully INTO GOD.. BECOME ONE WITH GOD TOTALLY and then you will KNOW God, your OWN True SELF. This is True Transcendent Enlightenment... and it is incredibly RARE amongst humans.

So.. the answer to your question is YES.. it IS wrong because a "notion" is an idea which springs from the mind of man.

Everything IS Pure Consciousness / awareness, IS God... but the human mind is veiled and cannot RECOGNIZE its OWN Source... its own SELF. Only those who's Kundalini Energy has been FULLY awakened even have a chance at KNOWING the True Nature of God.

There are those who have had the great good fortune of actually MEETING God .... but still they cannot APPRECIATE the TOTAL Reality of THAT, since they are meeting God via their own finite minds. JUst as you could meet a person and know they exist but not be able to see into their souls.. to know what their true nature is. That kind of knowledge is NOT Enlightenment because there is still the understanding that there is YOU and there is ALSO God. This is a mind still stuck in duality because of the contracting ego.

On the other hand, VERY FEW indeed are able to KNOW the actual ESSENCE of God from ITs ownTranscendent, Non Dual Perspective. Here one REALIZES that God ALONE exists! In this highest STATE there is not Me and God, or Creation AND God.. there is ONLY God. This is the Non Dual or Ultimate unchanging Reality. When those such as Jesus say I AM THE ONE, they are NOT referencing their own physical form.. which is nothing but a bag of water and some minerals, OR even their subtle body, non physical forms. They are referencing their Consciousness itself, which is the same in ALL. Jesus IS The ONE, Buddha IS The ONE, Krishna IS The ONE... Winston IS The ONE.. we are ALL the very same ONE. The only difference between you and all those others is that THEY Are fully Enlightened and KNOW from a Transcendent perspective (beyond the mind) who they and everyone/everything here is... while YOU are still in duality having the EXPERIENCE of "OTher" , of Winston and everyone else who is NOT Winston. Grace alone REMOVES this ignorance from our minds. This is what Grace Bestowers such as Jesus come to do. Getting people to heaven is not really what they are about... their "job" is MUCH Greater than that. FR

So... can our finite mind's whole notion of what God is be wrong? YES.. it can ONLY be wrong.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Win <<Can>>

God IS ALL Knowing. In fact, God IS also The Knowledge itself. The moment the finite mind is able to expand fully and merge INTO God/Pure Consciousness, then "they" too have the power to access ALL KNOWLEDGE, both mundane and divine. There is nothing which is ultimately unknowable, HOWEVER .... this does not mean that the intellect of man is capable of grasping those answers, at least NOT at this current level. Rarely does the finite mind have the ability to interpret the info. until they KNOW their own True SELF. It is the ego, which veils the individual soul (spiritually speaking here) .... which blocks our own Divine Knowledge from us. This is why the Wise SEEK GRACE, which Slays the impure, contracting ego.
Peace, FR

PS On the subject of Life after Life....

A very small, but delightful and informative book, which I have suggested in the past.. but was out of print... is NOW BACK in pring... to be released at Amazon this spring I believe. Though I did get one from the UK last month. It is about two nuns who used mental telepathy before one of them died/ crossed over ( actualy there is no such thing as death per say, ... just a transmigration of souls from one dualistic plane to another) and they were able to continue dialog after "death". Helen Greaves penned the book but her "deceased" friend BANKS actually authored it. An excellent read for anyone who wants a good glimps of the process of Life after Life. The book is called TESTIMONY OF LIGHT by Helen Greaves A MOST exellent read IMHO."

[Winston]

Here is a link to press releases about this mind consciousness project conducted by a collaboration of medical centers throughout the US and Europe.

http://www.mindbodysymposium.com/press-articles.html

World's Largest Scientific Study on Mind-Brain
May Finally Unravel Mystery Of What Happens When We Die

MSN press release:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26675999/

UN press release:
http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs// ... um.doc.htm

[Kris]

Has anybody had a general anesthetic? It's brilliant! I had nasal polyps removed a few years ago and when then put the fluid in the anesthetist said this will feel cold (it didn't) and it was like switching a light off. Next thing I knew I was coming round - everything over. If this is what lethal injection is like then I'm all for it. Why do we allow people to suffer in extreme agony when we put animals down as a kindness.

[Kris]

This group did a levitation trip with somebody in a chair.



It really works. We used to do this as little kids. One person would lie on the ground, another would kneel behind their head and rub their temples saying "There's been an accident (don't know why these words), you are feeling sleepy" (probably worked the same as the counting to 10) then roughly 6 of us would lift them with our fingertips - they were rigid and as light as a feather. Of course being kids we sometimes woke them up in the air and they'd wake with a start and fall to the ground.

I've never tried it since. I think as kids you are more open to things and I certainly had more Deja-vu incidents when I was younger.

[Kris]

I've said before - I don't believe in god or all that *ollocks (who is to say that pagans, Romans or Egyptians didn't have the true Gods?)

What I can't get my head around is how there can be no end to space or as I've read recently there is an end but you just return to where you started. And black holes - how do they know what they do if they've never been in one?

When I was learning to drive a train 10 years ago my instructor said something really thought provoking and sad at the same time. Driving through the beautiful green Devon hills in Southern England he said "One day this won't be here."

Of course the Earth will end at some point but actually thinking about that end is quite sad.

[Winston]

I've said before - I don't believe in god or all that *ollocks (who is to say that pagans, Romans or Egyptians didn't have the true Gods?)

What I can't get my head around is how there can be no end to space or as I've read recently there is an end but you just return to where you started. And black holes - how do they know what they do if they've never been in one?

When I was learning to drive a train 10 years ago my instructor said something really thought provoking and sad at the same time. Driving through the beautiful green Devon hills in Southern England he said "One day this won't be here."

Of course the Earth will end at some point but actually thinking about that end is quite sad.

Well the kind of God I believe in isn't a traditional one, more like a universal consciousness that we're all a part of, like pantheism or monism. I'm not for the Gods of traditional religions.

Yeah well if the universe is round like the Earth, then going to the end will make you circle around it to the other side.

They do not know where black holes end up. No one does. They are just speculating.

The Earth will be here for another 5 billion years. That's a long time. That's when our sun supernovas. We have that long to travel in space and colonize other planets.