Great Claims and Great Evidence

The setting: The Ruth, Alabama  EF-4 tornado.

The date: April 27, 2011
The actors: Ari (6 years old), Shane and Jennifer (Ari's parents), Maw Maw and Paw Paw (Ari's  grandparents, Philip and Ann) and her two young cousins.
The event: Tornado strikes. Cows flying through the air, trucks hitting the house, glass breaking all around her. Then she is knocked out and follows her family up a staircase with "her angel".

Rescuers found her unconscious with severe injuries in a field. 
Ari's Near-Death-Experience can be read here: To Heaven after the Storm

The honest and crystal clear accounts of those who have experienced authentic near-death-experiences are personal evidence of the highest integrity and goodwill.  A near-death-experience (NDE) is an experience reported by individuals who have come very close to dying or have died but have revived. In the US alone, documented cases number in the millions says the Gallup Poll. The majority of these experiences point to the existence of an extrasensory world and active supersensible beings both benevolent and malevolent.  From the “etched in my memory” meaningful narratives of such events, it is clear that the NDE accounts are referencing and bringing forth nuggets of knowing, pedagogical guidance and corrections applicable to not just the one undergoing it  but to all humanity, from a source which is the foundation of our individual and collective, all encompassing reality. It is said that great claims require great evidence . . . and this evidence exists. It comes from  the millions of veracious heads, hearts and hands of those who have rendezvoused with death.

Can millions of people be wrong in asserting that their NDE experiences are real? Or is their experience merely the result of a hyperactive imagination, a result of the brain’s chemistry going awry and squeezing out colorful phantasmagoria for the dying person’s entertainment? Can the mineral, physical brain by itself create consciousness? Can matter that is purely mineral, say a stone, make up a near-death-experience? Can minerals think? The affirmative is an obvious absurdity, yet this is what the skeptics want believed and they want it believed at any cost, even if this means misrepresentation, omissions, overlooking important facts, ignoring truth and deliberate falsification.

A paper titled “There is Nothing Paranormal About Near-Death Experiences” illustrates the lengths that skeptics, even if they are from prestigious universities, will go to in order to discredit the phenomenon of Near-Death-Experiences. In this paper, Dr. Watts and Mobbs completely ignored the well documented and substantial body of empirical research on NDEs, including the  facts of lucid consciousness and veridical perceptions during Near-Death-Experiences, especially those occurring with cardiac arrest and deep anesthesia (See: Kelly et al., 2007, Greyson et al., 2009; Greyson, 2000; Fenwick, 2012, Holden, 2009) in order to flagrantly dismiss the events as nothing but messed up functions of a brain gone wrong.  Dr. Bruce Greyson, professor of Psychiatry and an extremely well respected and veteran NDE researcher explains a critical error in this spurious paper, “If you ignore everything paranormal about NDEs then it’s easy to conclude that there is nothing paranormal about them.”

Pim Van Lommel, a cardiologist, a scientist and a veteran of studies in cardiac arrest specific Near-Death-Experiences, in a prospective study with fellow researchers published a paper in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. He says that "the NDE is an authentic experience which cannot be attributed to imagination, psychosis or oxygen deprivation".  He further states that the ideas held by most physicians, psychologists and philosophers are too narrow and not sufficient for a proper understanding of the NDE phenomenon. He evidences through real examples that the consciousness is not always synonymous with brain functions and that consciousness can exist separate from the body, that the brain serves as a facilitator of consciousness and not its producer. He posits scientifically that consciousness is not confined to our brains but is pervasive. He too, like many of us questions a purely materialist paradigm in science.
 
There is much more to the human being than people like Mobbs and Watts are willing to acknowledge.  But like it or not, dying experiences happen at death and sooner or later will apply to everyone, therefore is it not wiser to explore this amazing, profoundly meaningful mystery with a science that is comprehensive, pure and unbiased rather than with  its brain-bound, contorted and stratified caricature?

References:
http://www.systemsphilosophy.org/publications/Rousseau_Journal_of_the_Society_for_Psychical_Research_76.3_908_190-191.pdf
http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/?home_eng
http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/?Endless_consciousness

The Enigma that is not Anu Agarwal but Thomas Hardy's, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"

In the year 1990 a film from the Indian Film Industry created in the 90's, a widespread 1970's style mood of innocent romantic euphoria. From this movie emerged the image of a woman possessing an indisputable aura of mystique and tantric spirituality.  Recently I came across a photograph of Anu, probably taken when she was 21 year old or so which poignantly brought back lucid memories of my own; how I looked and felt at that age when I was a student at the Poona Film and TV Institute of India. Even the movie that won Anu fame and recognition, "Aashiqui" is a nearly accurate account of my own story, complete with the heroine in the movie living at a women's hostel, just like I did.  Life is strange indeed and my subliminal connection with Anu gets uncannier the more I learn about her.

 This evocative photograph of Anu has a certain impressionistic and existential quality, reminiscent of Nastassja Kinski in "Tess", a Polanski movie, don't you agree?

 

While I was a student at the Film Institute, I had a profound Near Death Experience that totally changed my life; from desiring to be a movie star I became a seeker of the true meaning of life and of the spirit instead (See my "LOGOS" post, Oct. 2012).  Anu has expressed  that she is in the process of writing about her near-death-experience and her subsequent metamorphosis. I kept my near-death-experience close to my chest for nearly 30 years and only recently have I posted it on the internet because I felt that there was a need for it in the world.  I think Anu's account will be extremely interesting as well. Inexplicably she also reminds me of the Indian film actress, Parveen Babi.  Parveen had a relationship with the movie producer Mahesh Bhatt, who coincidentally directed Anu's movie mentioned above.  Parveen Babi was also good friends with the philosopher and spiritual searcher, and researcher, U.G.Krishnamurthy.  U.G. was an amazing man who had a mysterious experience which he called "The Calamity"; an event that completely and irrevocably  changed him, not just mentally and psychologically, but spiritually as well, to his very physiology itself.  From the descriptions gathered from Anu's interview, it is likely that her dissociation, might have some features in common with that of U.G.'s alienation, or sublimation, if you will. On the other hand, perhaps its time for a tentative observation; could it be that the post 1999/post accident Anu is a "walk-in?", not the original Anu? Such events, where the original individuality leaves when confronted with great trauma and another being/soul/individuality takes its place, have been described in esoteric literature and in anecdotal accounts. And yet again, it could simply be a part of the process of recovery.

But before jumping to conclusions, let's wait and see what she has to say about her life before and after the accident in her forthcoming and much anticipated book.

I would also appreciate hearing from anyone who may have any additional knowledge about Anu Agarwal's life, her spiritual calling and healing works.  

Quotes  from Anu's interview

                              

'My life started the day I woke up from the coma'
I was comatose for 29 days. My life started from the day I woke up half paralysed, which is when I didn't even know what the meaning of paralysis was. I existed outside my body. I had many, so called, spiritually amazing experiences throughout that time. And I saw the other side, where death is finality and mortality, normal... where the death angel rules.

'So life just happened to me, I didn't make it happen'
I was here on a holiday and suddenly the talent scout guy saw me at Churchgate station. That's how my first modelling job happened. Then acting happened. So life just happened to me, I didn't make it happen.I have learned that you have to let life happen to you and never oppose it. That's the greatest, most peace-giving realisation. People think they make their lives…. They don't do anything.

India forums

~ ~ ~

Anu is the owner and director of an organization called, Come Face-to-Face with You, in the Mumbai area. She is a certified Yogi from the Bihar School of Yoga.- this system of yoga addresses the qualities of head, heart and hands – intellect, emotion and action – and attempts to integrate the physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions of yoga into each practice. She favors an informal education in monkhood and has a background in and involvement with Zen, Buddhist centers and an "Inner School of the Mind" and also works on issues of social assistance.
 

Proofs for the existence of GOD

Saint Anselm's Ontological Argument

 
Premise 1:            GOD is the greatest conceivable being

Premise 2:            The greatest conceivable being exists
 
Thesis:                  God exists 

Premise 3:            Existence is greater than nonexistence.

Premise 4:            If existence is greater than non-existence
 
Thesis:                 The greatest conceivable being exists.   

~ ~ ~

Read the Proslogion

http://www.stanselminstitute.org/files/AnselmProslogion.pdf

Survival Tip

For many thousands of years Polaris has been used as a guiding star and reference point for navigators and astronomers. Through experience and observation they discovered the North Star lights the way to true north.

A Night Visit to Purgatory

During  the entire year of 1990, I felt  very  unappreciated and seriously wondered if there was any purpose to my  goodwill and hard-work. 

One night, exhausted after a long day and having put my child to bed, I briefly and casually chatted with GOD, while preparing for my night's rest. I asked GOD, what was the point in leading a good life, when others who weren't, seemed to be getting all the benefits.

Sometime during the night while I slept, I awoke. I knew I was in bed and sleeping yet I was fully awake and conscious. I became aware of a presence standing at the door.  A shadow like spirit person, telepathically asked me if she could come in. I acquiesced and the very next moment, in spirit, I changed my position on the bed, so that  my head was now at the foot end. The woman and a man were leaning back on the pillows at the head.  I felt a great kinship towards them.  They felt parent-like, and I now believe that they were my parents from a different time, in the style of the father and daughter painting, the American Gothic. 

The women told me that they would like to show me something and would I like to go with them? I agreed.  The very next moment I was lifted off the bed, with each of them holding me by the arms and we were flying!  We flew out of the house and into the dark cosmos.  I felt incredibly light and joyful. We sped up into the distant cosmos and alighted on a planet.  There was darkness all around except for a cone of bright light emerging from the cosmos, surrounding us in a circle. I inquiringly looked at "my angels without wings" as to what the place was. The woman and man as one, instructed me to move yonder and explore the area.  

Stepping out of the circle of light  I felt a dreadful heaviness. The gravity of this planet was exceedingly heavy, many many times that of the Earth.  Walking out some distance, I observed a curious scene. In an alley was a dump truck. I watched the back of it open upwards. A man jumped out of the front and dragged a dead person out of the dumpster.  I watched intently to see where he was taking the murdered man, but to my surprise the scene immediately repeated itself, exactly! The act would restart at the dumpster opening, then the driver jumping out and dragging the body and back to the dumpster opening . . .(just like the movie Groundhog Day!). I watched this replay for quite sometime, then I moved on further down the alley.  The farther I walked, the harder it became because of the lead like feeling of my (spirit) body and the sinking of my heart.  The place was dreary, a uniform yet monochromatic gray, giving depth and perspective to the environment. It was very depressing. I began to feel like I was going to pass out so I retraced my steps to   my friends in the cone of light.  Oh, boy! what a relief it was to get back into the light. I felt lighter and at peace. I ask about the place, they say, "This is Purgatory." Looking up at the incredibly vast space of the cosmos; the light subtly lit the cosmos out into an infinite distance. I saw stars in space after space spreading farther out, up into the universe.  In wonder, looking up, I asked my friends, " Where is GOD?".  The woman, stretched her arm upward and pointing up to infinity said, "GOD is way up there."   I clearly saw stars loosely bound, stretching to infinity with gaps between levels, delineating some form of separation between spheres. But GOD was nowhere to be seen! GOD was even beyond that last band of stars in the dark but lit sky . . . somewhere way up there!  It was an amazing vista.  Then we began to fly out again. I felt so very light and free. Exhilarated, I expressed my lightness to them and they said, " You feel light and free because you have led a good life. The reason for leading a good life is that after you (a person) dies, you can be light and have the freedom to go anywhere", (and not be stuck on a dark, heavy planet or other similar areas of the cosmos).  

We landed on Earth and my friends in parting said, "Because you asked, we came to show you the importance of leading a good life". The next moment I found myself sinking into and waking up in my body.


Survival Tip

Of all the knots used to tie two ropes together the Zeppelin Bend is the best bar none. And chances are you have never heard of it! In this Survival Topic we will discuss one of the best knots of all time and explore its interesting history and usage in the days before you were born.

LOGOS

Sein und Nichts sei dasselbe
Being and non-being are the same.
Heraclitus

A Near Death Experience

The year is circa 1973 - 1974. I am a young girl undergoing training in film and television and have completed several films. But this has not been a good year for me. A film I participated in called "Out of Nothing" has left deep emotional scars.

I am in the operating room of a small private hospital. On the operating table, I stare without emotion at the wall facing me.  There  is a black and white photograph of an old man who I imagine is the founder of the hospital. I am reassured, administered anesthesia through a mask and rapidly begin to disassociate from my  physical senses.

I was plunging rapidly into my body. I felt I was getting entombed. I was falling into myself  and into an inner, ever expanding, deep darkness. The normal sense of time, place and space became non-existent.  After I had been in this engulfing darkness for what seemed to be a very long time, I suddenly became aware that I was on some sort of  horizontal escalator or a conveyor belt, that was moving incredibly fast almost at the speed of light or greater, intentionally taking me somewhere. I felt I had traversed millions of years and millions of miles. At some point during this journey I became aware that I was traveling in a pitch black tunnel. This moving through the tunnel went on for quite some time, almost an eternity. Then all of a sudden I was approaching an amazing, truly indescribable white shining, light. This light was scintillating, every particle of it alive and full of the purest, highest love. It was tantalizing, brilliant, beautiful, living and moving. This light was at the end of the tunnel or by its very presence ended the tunnel.  As I came closer, still moving at the incredible speed, I began to feel  a mounting sense of  exhilarating anticipation. I felt I was approaching a truly great, magnanimous, magnificent and beneficial event.  In complete clarity, I thought and felt, "This is what I have been waiting for all my life, this is what had been missing all along, this is why no event, no relationship, no possession, no achievement, no desire hankered after or possessed had ever felt complete. This is the reason why I have never felt fulfilled". Every bit of me desired to completely go into this living light and these  thought-feelings (both one here) seemed to add an additional momentum to the escalator's speed. I sped to the Light but at the very moment of union, I heard a loud, sonorous, authoritative, masculine voice, coming into me from all directions ask,"Are you ready to die?".

When I heard this, everything came to a stop. I was aghast. I was, and had been, totally ignorant that reaching, meeting and going into this "beyond everything else" and "all knowing light", astonishingly meant my death!. I felt betrayed. Then, filled with great fear in my thinking and responding (both occur simultaneously here), I quiveringly asked, "Why must I die?" and instantaneously the Voice replied, "You must die, because you have failed to do what you promised us." (No wiggle room here. My death was imminent). Confused and frightened, I fell to my hands and knees (metaphorically speaking), and began begging for my life. I begged like I have never begged before. Grovelling like a worm beseeching a human not to stamp on it, I implored, "I don't remember what I promised, I don't know why I must die". "Please give me another chance. I don't remember what I promised!".  The Voice answered. "You promised us that you would help others. You have failed to do this, therefore you must die." At this point, I was begging in a manner which could be equated to convulsive crying from my deepest depths. I had no idea what promise the Voice was confronting me with, but deep inside me, I knew that the Voice knew more about me than I did and that it was behaving justly; I was getting exactly what I deserved).

After hearing my desperate pleas and acknowledging my sincerity, the Voice, with a gesture of  benevolence (like a sweeping motion of a hand in gushing wind) announced, "You have a second chance."

Everything was still very dark, accept for the presence of the Light. A hushed calmness came over me. I felt humbled, fortunate, special, in kinship and harmony with the Voice . I reverently asked," What is the meaning of life?" The Voice now changed its severe judge-like manner and became instead, a teacher.  Still very just and awesome but now, much kinder. What followed was even more mind-blowing.

I found myself suspended and moving in a pitch dark, empty, endless cosmic space (no escalator this time!). I was just a tiny dot of consciousness.  I had no remembrances other than that I was an "I". The only ground (metaphor) to hang on to was my "I". I was getting smaller and smaller until I became an even smaller "I". There were no reference points, no up, no down, no right, no left. Just my concentrated essence, my "I" that had been falling into and onto  itself and becoming smaller and smaller. I became aware that there were a multitude (infinite) of other "I"s around me, like stars studding the sky.  They were "I"s; "Ego's". These "All Seeing Eyes (metaphor), "were scrutinizing me".  "They" who are the One Voice  (the voice that had been communicating with me all along) began to tell me things. They transmit, convey, tell. "They" as the One Voice, with a finger (metaphor) drew a white, brilliant, fluorescent, living plasma-like, palpable-light graphic in the darkness. This was a circle. Its entire circumference moved in a clockwise manner. Then arrows were drawn on the circumference to show me the direction of movement. I then heard the following," In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with GOD, and The Word was GOD. All things were made by The Word.  Humanity cannot  understand The Word.  The Word is always (seeking) chasing after humanity and humanity is always chasing The Word (seeking). This is the way it was, this is the way it is, this is the way it shall ever be".

The finality and truth of this sacred communication, naturally and instantaneously dissolved my every barrier to humbleness, and, apprehending the circle, I was spontaneously made part of a dynamic living cosmic revelation. I was placed in THE WORD.  It is difficult to fully describe this immersion for what it was in actuality. Adjectives and descriptions herein are only feeble attempts.

I was in, and surrounded by The Word. I was made an integral part of it but  I was not "absorbed" into The Word for I fully retained my awareness as a separate I. The Word is a supremely alive, charged, scintillating, dynamic, exquisite and eternal flowing of fine living particles of true  wisdom, true knowledge, eternal truth, all pervasive, all knowing, everywhere, in all, outside all, all powerful, complete, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, that in which everything has its origin, its life and its return, but beyond which no one can go because there is a permeable membrane, a force-field like barrier and through its pores (not a metaphor) oozes out this subtle, but most substantial holy, sacred, pure, dynamic ceaselessly-in-motion energized particles that are both homogeneous and heterogeneous, fully self-sustaining and all-sustaining truth-wisdom substance; a substance which is the be-all and end-all of all that is possible for all beings, animate or inanimate. This is not figurative substance, but literally "substance". It has beingness.  Naturally, this substance is not at all the material substance that we all know of ordinarily, yet it is related to it in a (some) extremely remote sense. It's some sort of living force made up of the above described lively and living particles. It is the basis of all other substances and forces as we experience them in ordinary daily consciousness. It penetrates and reverberates in all.

As I was experiencing this profundity, I began to have a strange feeling of claustrophobia. I felt irrevocably enclosed, I wanted to break through this thing-in-itself, the all encompassing Word. I felt deep within me that there is something else and I must go to it. I was drawn to The Word's cosmic boundary. Boundary, not as a metaphor but as it actually felt and showed itself to me. It is truly a boundary. I tried to go through it but was unable to. Then "They" as the "One Voice" told me that no one can cross this boundary, except that which emanates through it; The Word.

Being in The Word was discombobulating and anti-climactic, yet The Word is complete, just and fully integrated, full of reason, logic, wisdom, the container-holder of  past, present and future, the all-sensible, all knowing in its every particle. I believe that the Logos substance is the actual substance of the "Other". The "Other" is the rest of the Logos or some superior and/or different part of it, that is on the other side of the boundary. I experienced this entire event in a unique state of timelessness where the Past, Present and Future are one. I was told that I had made a promise to the spiritual world, which I had failed to keep. I was told that my purpose on Earth is to help others. I was also shown my previous incarnation on Earth in great detail.  I have to regain what I have spiritually lost since my last incarnation. I have also been told explicitly how I am to help others, however, this is not an easy thing to do and cannot be disclosed. There were some other instructions I was given; but being a mere human, with a flawed memory, one detailed, important instruction cannot be recalled; I see it but I am unable to read it.

Afterwords, I fuzzily saw several beings in white robes with blurred halos surrounding me. I had died and gone to heaven. "Are you angels?" I asked. Soft giggles. The blurring cleared and I saw smiling, relieved human faces. One of the docs says, "You gave us quite a scare. We almost lost you."

The operation had taken no more than an hour and a half, but it felt like I was gone for billions of years to a place trillions of miles away.


Note:

People ask me if  I  am claiming to know anything special about objective reality through this experience. My answer is that I was fully alert and cognizant throughout this experience. I was disoriented because of the strange timeless, other-world setting and my lack of any control over the happenings, once the process began, it was as if a mechanism kicked in during the early part of the event, that is until the light appeared.

The information given to me was just that, it was given to me, its personal.  I kept it unshared for nearly 30 years, and only now, have I been inspired to share it.  I share it because I feel its important in terms of what I experienced of the WORD.  The manner in which the teaching occurred and the nature of its content, demonstrated its universality, therefore my desire to share it.  This was to me a very real event,  it was not dreamlike and not just an image related imagination or a hallucination. It was as real as this moment that I type this on my P.C., only more substantial, infinitely larger, supremely important and life changing. 

9/27/2018 Update
Another thing I would like my audience to know is that the exquisite particles of the WORD are continually coming together and separating. It is a dynamic, not a static reality. The coming together and separating, even staying together is energy like. Infinite particles.  With logic, sense, wisdom, knowing, with liveliness, they do this. Each particle with motivation of it's own, yet completely in harmony and integrated with the others.  One thing.


Read other accounts of near death experiences at nderf.org  



Copyright ©


Every idea, thought and phrase in this narrative is mine, in that I experienced it. I have placed it a fixed form. If you desire to quote from it or utilize it in any research  please do so with permission only.

The Meanings of Life

Accomplice to murder

Lovely early Fall day.
Autumn leaves, confetti on cars
Smileys toasting in the toaster-oven
Colombian coffee brewing

Pachi has grown fat
Neutered cats put on weight
Dog nail clipper awaits his sharpies
But he's eager to walk and play

Let him enjoy his life
He's been cooped up
His harness 's too tight
Lumbering felines can't catch

Pachi walked in with a baby squirrel
Still warm but gone
My bad thinking or the Devil made me
No excuse - its glassed eyes now haunt