talking to myself

Craig Detweiler Finds Faith in Film

Craig Detweiler Finds Faith in Film
The co-author of A Matrix of Meanings talks about spirituality on screen.
posted 02/03/2004

Craig Detweiler is uniquely equipped to examine the intersections of faith and culture. He's a screenwriter with a filmmaking degree. He also has a degree from Fuller Seminary as a follower of Jesus. He's taught at the LA Film Studies Center, is now Associate Professor of Mass Communications at Biola University. He's co-author with Barry Taylor of a provocative new book, A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Popular Culture.

What was the point at which you began to see these faith and film intersect?

I would say it was the moving Raging Bull. I saw it as a senior in high school. Martin Scorcese directing from a Paul Schrader script, and it was an ugly, tough, brutal film. It had two hours of boxer Jake LaMotta pounding his head literally against the wall. I have to tell you as a senior in high school, playing football, I actually related to all that aggression and frustration. At the end of the movie, after two hours of all this pain and suffering, the screen fades to black and something comes on the screen, and it says, "All I know is this: Once I was blind, but now I can see."

And I thought, boy, I understand blindness. I'm not sure what sight is. In a sense, the movie Raging Bull catapulted me on a serious search to learn to see, ultimately finding Jesus at the end of that journey.

I also studied a Master's of Divinity degree at Fuller, which is a full background in Bible, in church history and theology, and I really loved the depth of the understanding that I got about the kingdom of God and who Jesus was and who Jesus is and what does it mean to be followers of God in a community of faith. But it was a class on Christianity and pop culture that actually catapulted me to film school.

There are a lot of people that agree that there are themes in film that have theological implications, but you're really going farther than they are. You're saying that there's a process of revelation happening through popular culture. What do you understand about the nature of God's revelation in popular culture?

I certainly affirm the power of special revelation and Scripture and the centrality of that as a measuring stick to lead and guide our lives. But in the book I am definitely celebrating general revelation. It's a long tradition that's revealed in the Bible where God would choose to speak through a donkey, where he would free his people through a king of Persia like Cyrus, where the last couple chapters of Proverbs are coming out of Egyptian wisdom literature. God is speaking through unlikely people and means. And I think he's doing the same thing today. He's choosing Jim Carrey, in a movie like Bruce Almighty, to impart a message to millions of people.

Now, you've got a top 10 theology list, where you mention being post-national, post-rational, post-sexual and other posts. Why are those important to understand?

Well, much of evangelical Christianity has positioned itself, really starting with Darwin and Freud, to take on things like science and psychology. All that was very important at the turn of the last century. The turn of the new century it's no longer the modern era of Darwin and Freud and Communism, but it's a postmodern context. And so maybe science isn't as important as myth. Maybe the next generation doesn't worship at the church of Darwin, they actually believe in the power of story, rather than the power of proof. They might be less rational and more emotional. They might lead with their heart rather than their head. And to the degree the church has aligned itself with the struggles of the last century, we may be ill-equipped to respond to the challenges of the next century.

I find that I don't need to explain postmodernity to people under 40. They inherently understand that as the air that they breathe. I remember talking to a student about a film called Run Lola Run, this odd little German film, and how it's irrational and emotional and doesn't follow things in a linear line. And I said, "This represents a new way of thinking." And he said, "Well, what other way of thinking is there?"

At what point does a person of faith have to engage in a critical analysis and dialogue and even a rejection of some of the elements of postmodernism?

My hope is that there will be plenty of people who will take on the downside of postmodernism and point out where it's good to be rational and it's good to think with your head sometimes. We decided to celebrate what's right with it. Because in a sense, we're trusting that God is in it, that as people of faith our job isn't to oppose stuff, it might be to embrace stuff. My job might be to build bridges rather than erecting barriers.

You make reference to 1999 as the year that changed movies. And then you interact with some of the themes that emerged that year in film. Give us a little slice of why that was a year that changed movies.

The same year that The Matrix was released on Easter weekend, you also had films like American Beauty and Fight Club and Magnolia and Run Lola Run and Dogma, Sixth Sense, films that assumed life beyond what you could see. All of them dealt with the possibility of miracles beyond, of life outside of ourselves, as a search for something more. And I think that characterizes where we are in a culture right now. We have a spiritual culture, not necessarily a Christian culture, but a spiritual culture that assumes a certain respect for the mystery of the divine.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today.

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lLessons from the light by Kenneth Ring

Here's a sample of what people are saying about this book:

"A beautiful melding of research and compassionate, intuitive analysis. An inspirational book filled with both spiritual insight and practical information to help us realize our own personal power."

Caroline Myss, Ph.D., author of Anatomy of the Spirit

"A major contribution that offers a wealth of fresh case materials together with balanced and insightful commentary."

Raymond A. Moody, Ph.D., author of Life After Life and Reunions

"This is unquestionably the most important book on the subject of near-death experience since Moody's Life After Life."

Ian Wilson, author of  The After Death Experience

"In this remarkable book, Ring presents evidence that merely learning about the near-death experience has similar positive effects to those reported by people who actually have had near-death experiences. Kenneth Ring is one of the few authors whose gifts include the capacity to transform their readers' lives." 

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybook Graduate School, San Francisco,  co-author of The Mythic Path, coeditor, Broken Images, Broken Selves

"Lessons from the Light is the best and most complete book on the near-death experience I've ever read, and I believe it will help you overcome your fears of dying."

Seymour Boorstein, M.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and author of Clinical Studies in Transpersonal Psychotherapy.

"Lessons from the Light is the culmination of Kenneth Ring's rich and

extensive career as the foremost researcher of the NDE. One of the very best books on the subject to date, it is a must read for anyone interested in life's possibilities."

Sukie Miller, Ph.D., author of After Death: Mapping the Journey and director of The Institute for the Study of the Afterdeath

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Easter Homily by Dom Francis Michael

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Francis

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Holy Thursday talk by Abbot of local monastery

Below is the Holy Thrusday talk given by the abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers Ga.  It is well worth reading.  The monastery is a great place to visit and it has a large retreat house.  People of all faiths or none are welcome.  Here is the web page trappist.net

peace and a blessed Easter to all

Mitch

Holy Mother Church with our beautiful liturgical year has brought us to Holy Thursday, the night when we celebrate what the world knows as the Lord’s Last Supper. It’s interesting in the Gospels that so much of Jesus’ ministry is centered around eating and drinking many meals with his friends [1]. For the Jews it was and, as far as I know, remains a sacred act. We celebrate the Last Supper this year in the midst of the Year of the Eucharist [2]. Our community just had its retreat. The retreat was centered on the Eucharist [3]. The Eucharist is a great mystery. We must remember that always. It is a gift to us which we will probably never fully fathom or understand. Yet, even so, we have to look at it to understand it, to begin to appreciate it. One thing that came to me very strongly this year—which I believe will stay with me a long time—is that I believe you and I have to become Eucharist. The Gospel that is given to us this evening is about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. One might understandably wonder why the Gospel is not a more focused offering of “This is my Body. This is my Blood.” We do have that in the second reading. It is Jesus’ gift of priesthood not just to priests but to the world, to the Church. Yet, the Gospel for this evening is about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. It seems to me that the washing of the feet is really just another aspect of Eucharist—just another aspect of Jesus’ love. During our retreat, one of our retreat-givers (one of our monks) spoke of human love and how all of us have a desire to give ourselves to one another. When we’re deeply in love with someone, we almost want to merge with the other person—to become one with the other person. But we don’t know how to do that. It seems impossible. And so it is with us, but not for God. God in the Eucharist did just that. Jesus took simple things—bread and wine—which were the common fare of the people, the common thing of every day—and said, “This is my body. This is my blood” (Mt 26:26-28). Jesus, too, had that desire to become one with us. The Eucharist is certainly one of the central ways for Catholics through which that can happen. But the whole world is not Catholic. It’s a big world and there are many people who don’t know who Jesus is or what the Gospel is. I maintain that we have to become Eucharist for those people because they may never in their lifetime manage to go through all the things they would have to go through to become Catholics—read the Gospel and understand the Catholic Church. Jesus has many presences. One of those presences is us. It’s pretty clear. If you have the time before Easter, or even after Easter, read the last discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John (chapters 13-17) where Jesus gathered with those whom he loved and poured himself out. But it wasn’t enough to do it in words. He did it in actions. He washed his disciples’ feet. And that is about to happen here again. I’ll take off my robes, and I’ll wash the brothers’ feet. It’s pretty dramatic from the “outside looking in.” A priest, in this case the abbot of the monastery, washes the feet of his brothers. The pope, when in good health, does it as well. But it’s not enough to watch. Jesus said that he gave us an example so that we could do this for one another. I don’t think he was strictly speaking about the act of washing each other’s feet. He was talking about loving one another. He was talking about becoming Eucharist for one another—feeding one another not just with food and drink but with our lives. All of us do that, but this is a call and a time to commit ourselves to it anew. It is time to say, “Yes, I wish to become Eucharist. Consecrate me. If you can do it to bread and wine, you can certainly do it to me. Let me be broken and shared and given to my brothers and sisters.” Of course, it’s not just giving. It’s receiving as well. Eucharist means thanksgiving—a life of thanksgiving. A life poured out. As we celebrate this Last Supper which became the first Eucharist —the Last Supper, the first Eucharist—I say to you, let the Eucharist grow beyond this moment that we share on Sunday (and for some of us every day of the week). Let’s become walking Eucharist. Living Eucharist. Let’s dare to ask God to transform us so that, as Jesus wished and commanded, we learn to love as he loves (Jn 13:34).

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Julian of Norwich

The following two chapters from A Book of Showings supplement our readings from the textbook.

And when I was thirty and a half years old, God sent me a bodily sickness in which I lay for three days and three nights, and on the third night I received all the rites of Holy Church, and did not expect to live until next day. And after this I lay for two days and two nights, and on the third night I often thought that I was on the point of death, and those who were with me often thought so. And yet in this I felt a great reluctance to die, not that there was anything on earth which it pleased me to live for, or any pain of which I was afraid, for I trusted in the mercy of God. But it was because I wanted to live to love God better and longer, so that I might through the grace of that living have more knowledge and love of God in the bliss of heaven. Because it seemed to me that all the time that I had lived here was very little and short in comparison with the bliss which is everlasting, I thought: Good Lord, can my living no longer be to your glory? And I understood by my reason and the sensation of my pains that I should die; and with all the will of my heart I assented to be wholly as was God's will.

So I lasted until day, and by then my body was dead from the middle downwards, as it felt to me. Then I was helped to sit upright and supported, so that my heart might be more free to be at God's will, and so that I could think of him whilst my life would last. My curate was sent for to be present at my end; and before he came my eyes were fixed upwards, and I could not speak. He set the cross before my face, and said: I have brought the image of your savior; look at it and take comfort from it. It seemed to me that I was well, for my eyes were set upwards towards heaven, where I trusted that I by God's mercy was going; but nevertheless I agreed to fix my eyes on the face of the crucifix if I could, and so l did, for it seemed to me that I would hold out longer with my eyes set in front of me rather than upwards. After this my sight began to fail. It grew as dark around me in the room as if it had been night, except that there was ordinary light trained upon the image of the cross, I did not know how. Everything around the cross was ugly and terrifying to me, as if it were occupied by a great crowd of devils.

After this the upper part of my body began to die, until I could scarcely feel anything. My greatest pain was my shortness of breath and the ebbing of my life. Then truly I believed that I was at the point of death. And suddenly at that moment all my pain was taken from me, and I was as sound, particularly in the upper part of my body, as ever I was before. I was astonished by this sudden change, for it seemed to me that it was by God's secret doing and not natural; and even so, in this ease which I felt, I had no more confidence that I should live, nor was the ease I felt complete for me, for I thought that I would rather have been delivered of this world, because that was what my heart longed for.

Then suddenly it came into my mind that I ought to wish for the second wound as a gift and a grace from our Lord, that my body might be filled full of recollection and feeling of his blessed Passion, as I had prayed before, for I wished that his pains might be my pains, with compassion which would lead to longing for God. So it seemed to me that I might with his grace have the wounds which I had before desired; but in this I never wanted any bodily vision or any kind of revelation from God, but the compassion which I thought a loving soul could have for our Lord Jesus, who for love was willing to become a mortal man. I desired to suffer with him, living in my mortal body, as God would give me grace.

At the same time as I saw this sight of the head bleeding, our good Lord showed a spiritual sight of his familiar love. I saw that he is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us. And so in this sight I saw that he is everything which is good, as I understand.

And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it. But what did I see in it? It is that God is the Creator and the protector and the lover. For until I am substantially united to him, I can never have perfect rest or true happiness, until, that is, I am so attached to him that there can be no created thing between my God and me.

This little thing which is created seemed to me as if it could have fallen into nothing because of its littleness. We need to have knowledge of this, so that we may delight in despising as nothing everything created, so as to love and have uncreated God. For this is the reason why our hearts and souls are not in perfect ease, because here we seek rest in this thing which is so little, in which there is no rest, and we do not know our God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is true rest. God wishes to be known, and it pleases him that we should rest in him; for everything which is beneath him is not sufficient for us. And this is the reason why no soul is at rest until it has despised as nothing all things which are created. When it by its will has become nothing for love, to have him who is everything, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.

And also our good Lord revealed that it is very greatly pleasing to him that a simple soul should come naked, openly and familiarly. For this is the loving yearning of the soul through the touch of the Holy Spirit, from the understanding which I have in this revelation: God, of your goodness give me yourself, for you are enough for me, and I can ask for nothing whick is less which can pay you full worship. And if I ask anything which is less, always I am in want; but only in you do I have everything.

And these words of the goodness of God are very dear to the soul, and very close to touching our Lord's will, for his goodness fills all his creatures and all his blessed works full, and endlessly overflows in them. For he is everlastingness, and he made us ouly for himself, and restored us by his precious Passion and always preserves us in his blessed love; and all this is of his goodness.

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MIDLIFE QUESTIONS by Ron McDonald

I found this article interesting and interesting.  It has a
Christian slant but there is wisdom for everyone in my opinion.  Peace Mitch

MIDLIFE QUESTIONS by Ron McDonald, Pastoral Counselor Samaritan Counseling Centers

Three persons, all middle aged, were overheard in dialogue.

"I've accomplish just about every vocational and financial goal I set for myself during this first half of my life, yet I'm not sure success means anything."

"As for me, I've been working hard all my life, and I've got nothing much to show for it. I'm sick of it!"

"I'm not even in control of my emotions anymore. When I feel terrible, which is much of the time now, I'm either mean to others, self-loathing, or filled with anxiety. It's not good."

These are expressions of the three most typical kinds of mid-life crises. They are questions that can't be easily answered: in midlife we question our purpose--the meaning of life; the fairness of life; and why we do bad or stupid things when we want to be good. Midlife is fundamentally about finding some integrity in our lives. Can we affirm life when it doesn't look as rosy as we once thought it could be?

When Jesus cried out "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" he was giving words to the inward protest of everyone's midlife experience. Part of midlife is the inability to avoid suffering, unfairness, and doubt. We just can't ignore it anymore. Jesus' own response to this protest was a new perspective. He next said, "It is finished," which means it is enough; it is completed. Jesus, moving out of despair, had a vision of the integrity of his life, and his final statement from the cross--"Into Thy hands I commend my spirit"--contains the answer to the question of integrity.

Integrity is not about fairness. It is about living in the hands of God. What does that mean? It means that we are open to possibilities that our lives are meant for a higher purpose, and that our selfish desire for recognition or success is not nearly as important as the sacrifice that will be required of us when we truly answer God's call. That call might be of obvious importance, or it might be answered in secret, but our task at all ages is to be ready. If all you are called to do is to pick up a child who is hurt, then if you can join Jesus in commending yourself to God, you can also join Jesus in his vision of the completeness of his work. Our purpose on earth is not grand--not even if we become President. Our purpose is to commend ourselves humbly to God.

Yet even when we can affirm life despite doubts, unfairness, and suffering, we still run into the question-- How did we get the capacity to be evil, and how do we manage to rise above it? Carl Jung called this the encounter with one's shadow--the dark side of one's self.

One of the most profound paradoxes of the Bible stories is that those who would be our exemplars of the faith were, at one time, very sinful men and women. Jacob, a swindler, was named Israel. King David murdered Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. Solomon created a system of slavery. Peter denied Jesus three times. Paul was an accomplist to the unjust execution of Stephen. We are not called to be perfect. We are called to repent and to know that, but for the grace of God, we can do some terrible things.

The answer to the encounter with one's shadow is humility in recognizing our evil side, and the subsequent inability to be judgmental. And without judgmentalism, we can become filled with God's grace.

Midlife is a tough time, for when faced with the inevitable decline towards death, we encounter some tough questions. The answers--or the responses--are to be found in getting off our high horse and accepting the fact that our success or recognition is not what connects us to the grace of God. Instead, we walk with God when we humbly prostrate ourselves before the God who accepts us just as we are.

Copyright ©2005 Ron McDonald

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Talking When Times Are Tough

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Dr. P.M.H. Atwater's NDE Research of Children

Dr. P.M.H. Atwater's NDE Research of Children

The following is an article by P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) on the near-death experiences of children from her NDE website.

Since my specialty in near-death research is one-on-one sessions with experiencers, I can speak little of the phenomenon's historical significance - except to point out the fascinating anomaly that an amazing number of people important to the evolution of humankind may well have had such an episode during their childhood. I discuss this at length in both Future Memory and Children of the New Millennium. Some of the notables I came across in only one week of perusing library records were Abraham Lincoln, Mozart, Albert Einstein, Queen Elizabeth I, Edward de Vere/the 17th Earl of Oxford (who most likely is the real Shakespeare), Winston Churchill, Black Elk, Walter Russell, plus several others. Either I was possessed of "library luck" that week or there really is a connection between near-death states and possible structural, chemical, and functional shifts that appear to occur in the brain, elevating the individual in appreciable ways. My research leads me to believe the latter.

I did encounter near-death states in people of other cultures, as I met many who were foreign born or of racial backgrounds quite different than the typical white Judeo-Christian mindset. 

Of the 3,000 adult experiencers in my research base, Caucasian Americans, European and Ara-bic people predominate at 80%, with 20% being of the black race (15% African Americans, 5% divided between Kenya, Haiti, and African Canadians). Of the 277 child experiencers, the mix is: 60% white, 23% Latinos, 12% blacks, and 5% Asian.

There have been excellent studies done of NDErs in their native countries, as well as a government study sanctioned in China; but I want to mention the ongoing work by Todd Murphy of child experiencers in Thailand. We'll all be hearing about Todd's findings soon as the Journal of Near-Death Studies will be publishing several of his articles. Early-on he was kind enough to discuss his ideas with me, so I am familiar with his study - a research project that eventually came to confirm or support many of my own observations.

Having this exposure to accounts from a broad range of racial and cultural traditions, enables me to make some "across-the-board" comments - especially about "greeters," who, according to reports, are the first ones met "at death's door." I think you will find this of interest. The terms that follow are those most commonly used by the experiencers themselves.

Initial Greeters Met in Near-Death States

Ranked in the order most frequently encountered:

 
(1) Light beings or bright ones (kids generally call them "The People")
 
(2) Angels, with or without wings (can be white, black, or of various skin hues)
 
 
(3) Deceased loved ones (including relatives not met or known about before who are later verified)
 
 
(4) God or God's Presence or God's Voice (seldom given a gender by adults, described as an older male by children)
 
 
(5) Religious figures (usually conform to the predominant religion the experiencer was exposed to, but not always - Jesus has appeared in near-death scenarios of Jewish people, for stance; a Muslim man once told me he was met by Buddha)
 
 
(6) Animals (most often beloved pets who are deceased, yet there are many of non-pets such as horses, lions, or even chickens, who come as "guides" or to deliver a message)
 

To go a little further with this, most adult experiencers describe God as a powerful, almost blinding sphere of light, that is ecstasy itself. Young children do not use such terms, saying instead that God is like a loving father or grandfather.

Over 70% of children's near-death scenarios involve angels. Not that many adults claim this, more like 40% (although adults often use terms like "light beings" or "bright ones" as if they were describing angels). Just who is what and whether or not there is any real difference between these various emissaries cannot be determined solely by near-death research.

Children sometimes describe an animal heaven they must visit before they can go to the heaven where people are. And they tend to be explicit about skin tones when talking about any religious figure who visited them. By that I mean, Jesus is seen as a man with tan skin (adults are the ones who usually see Jesus as white); Buddha's skin is more often seen as somewhat yellowish; Mohammed is described as having brown skin (yes, there are little ones who claim they saw Mohammed). Children seldom deviate in their description of such coloring regardless of their own skin tone or cultural exposure; adults do.

There is another greeter, though, who is sometimes encountered - a living person - more commonly reported by children than by adults. This may be a favorite teacher, the kid down the block, friends, or relatives. Does this fact call into question the validity of near-death imagery? No, and here's why.

In every case I have thus far investigated where this occurred, the living greeter did not remain in the scenario any longer than it took to alert or relax the experiencer. Once that happened, the living greeter disappeared and imagery more common to near-death states emerged ... as the episode deepened. It is almost as if the sole purpose of living greeters is to ensure the continuance of the episode so that it can become more meaningful. They don't "stick around" like other greeters usually do.

While speaking of greeters, I also want to address this curious observation: child experiencers are often met by a "critical or caring" parental-type of being, seldom biologically related to them, but almost always someone the child recognizes as an authority figure they must respect (religious or otherwise). This being instructs or lectures the child on behavior and what must be done to fulfill the reason for his or her birth. These instructions or lectures can be quite stern and involve incidents where the child is judged on his or her progress toward the goal. If a tribunal is present, it is not unusual for the "judges" to be animals rather than people.

This curiosity is rather typical of near-death cases from kids residing in Asia (Todd Murphy discovered a number of them), with indigenous societies and Third World nations. But I have also found them with youngsters from well-educated families in Europe and the United States. Although many "parental" greeters are gentle and loving, some are rather fearful and threaten the child with punishment if he or she does not obey.

One of these cases in the U.S. involved a nine-day-old infant who "died" during surgery for a serious staph infection and abscess. I had intended to include it in Children of the New Millennium, but the account was somehow lost during rewrites and is only mentioned in brief on page 70, and even there in error. I have since apologized to Judith Werner, the experiencer involved. However, thanks to the generosity of Barbara Rommer, M.D., this account will at last be published - in the addendum to the second printing of Barbara's book, Blessing in Disguise (Llewellyn, 2000). 

Her book, by the way, is an important study of unpleasant and distressing NDEs. Judith's scenario involved being surrounded by white-robed figures devoid of emotion, a huge light which glared from above, and a heavy voice called "Inner Stranger" that sounded like a critical and demanding parental authority. The drawing she did of this scene looks like the typical layout of the average medical operating room complete with nurses and surgeons. Still, if you put yourself into the mind of one so young, the white-clad figures easily become evil giants, the light a torture device, and her subsequent treatments (also shown in the drawing) akin to ongoing punishment.

Once verbal, Judith told her parents about the incident and about Inner Stranger and the threats made ("obey me or you will die"). They pooh-poohed her story, and so did everyone else she told it too. She then repressed the experience until, when twenty-eight, she had a near-death-like episode that explained what had happened to her when nine days old. The closure that resulted enabled her to understand lingering childhood fears and angers, and begin the process of turning her life around in a positive manner.

Any discussion of this case must address the question: how could an infant only nine days old remember surgical details, respond to and retain the words of a threatening male - throughout her entire life?

Today, Judith speaks well of Inner Stranger, acknowledging that, although frightening to begin with, his advice has proved to be invaluable over time. Black Elk, the famous Lakota Sioux medicine man, had a similar encounter during his childhood near-death state in the sense that the wise ones who came to him were stern "parental-type elders."

Comparing the kind of accounts we have become accustomed to with those from other cultures and other timeframes in history, helps us to enlarge our perspective of the human mind and of life and death. 
"Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark." - Francis Bacon
 
 

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HOW TO WORK WITH ADDICTIONS by Pema Chodron

HOW TO WORK WITH ADDICTIONS by Pema Chodron
 The teachings tell us that there is suffering.

There is dissatisfaction and frustration. Often nothing seems to go right. There really is a wound. But it is not necessary to scratch it. Working with addictions is about not just impulsively grabbing for something to stop the itching, not just grabbing for something to fill up the space, not giving in to this impulse to feel okay and just to get comfortable as soon as possible.

When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal. But when we instead experience the raw quality of the itch or pain of the wound and do not scratch it, we actually allow the wound to heal. So not giving in to our addictions is about healing at a very basic level.

It is about truly nourishing ourselves.

The view that is presented in the Buddhist teachings is not one of becoming a better person, or finally getting it right, but is a view based on trusting what we already have, of starting and staying where we already are.

So with letting go of an addiction, the instruction is the same, it is instruction to get in touch with our basic nature, to get in touch with the basic energy of the moment in which we are all caught up. Addictions can be to anything: we can use this process with what we traditionally call addictions or we can use this working with so-called negative feelings of all kinds.

The moment in which we give in to our addictions is a moment in which we are all caught up —in which there is tremendous karmic momentum to go forward in the same old way —to scratch the wound. This can be a wound which really bothers us —we can see the wound bleeding, we can see it getting worse and we will not stop scratching. We can actually even feel quite nauseated by what we are doing, but we just will not stop!

What allows us to stop is maitri, which in this case means a basic feeling that we do not have to be afraid of what we are feeling right now, that we do not have to look for alternatives, that we aren't ashamed of what we are feeling in this moment. We are scared of what we are feeling. Instead, we can just let our warmth toward the wound, or the warmth toward that instant of time just be there as the working basis.

Maitri is settling down with the situation without looking for alternatives.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche talks about three stages in this process. The first is the warmth or maitri, the second is dropping discursive thinking and opening and the third is communicating. When we drop the discursive thinking and open, or communicate, what that basically means is that we we contact the moment fully.

At each moment of time, we can just completely cut discursiveness and open to the moment as an act of total freedom. We can cut through the solidity of identity, can cut through the solidity of our sense of identity, can cut through the solidity of our sense of problem and can just let the problem go. We can cut through the strong sense of "I need this now," "I have to get something out of this," we can cut through that.

But in order to do this we have to develop a sense that it is safe to stay with the present and not look for alternatives, that it is completely safe and even useful not to look for alternatives. Another way of looking at this is to say that we have a sense of warmth for the uncomfortable energy of the present moment, for the raw quality of energy, regardless of how irritating it is. And instead of being ashamed of being all caught up, we begin to regard it as a valuable place to be in. So there is some work that we need to do in preparation.

But what is so liberating about this that it is not saying that we just have to laboriously work and work forever. Once we have developed the habit of trusting, we can just abruptly cut, and find freedom. So the basis is maitri —that is the first moment. And the second moment is cutting discursive thoughts and opening like a flashbulb going off. And then communicating with what remains. When these moments become more continuous it is given a fancy name like samadhi or enlightenment.

And the most powerful time to do this is when we are all caught up.

There is a teaching, a very advanced teaching which people always perk up whan they hear which says, The more neurosis, the more wisdom. People like this because they know they have a lot of neurosis. But no one can really understand this at first hearing because it doesn't ever feel like "the more neurosis, the more wisdom." It actually feels like "the more neurosis, the more despair." But what I have found in working with this is that if you are all caught up and it occurs to you to just open, there is so much energy which is available to wake up —there is so much more energy available at this time.

Often you feel that you cannot let go. But if you have the courage to just experiment with abruptly opening at this time, there is enormous ability to have the mind open completely because there is so much energy. Of course the energy is pregnant with wanting to close right back down into the discursiveness or the mood that you are in. But you do get "the most for your money," the most for your moment at this time when you are all caught up. You get the most for your instant —you are propelled further than you would otherwise go on the energy which pushes you further. The hardest time to do this practice is also the most powerful time to do the practice.

The heavily addicted moment is the perfect time to do this since the intense energy of severe addictions can equally become the equally intense energy of wakefulness.

When you first begin working with this, particularly with severe addictions, you may find that you can delay acting for a while, but eventually you give in to your addiction. But that delay is also extremely valuable, as it become the seed for longer refraining and begins to develop our trust that it is possible. We start with delaying our addictive impulse for just a few seconds but eventually we have a longer and longer delay between the wish to scratch the wound and actually scratching the wound until finally we do not have to scratch at all. During that delay we begin to befriend the energies.

For heavy addictions it is often useful to have as the initial goal something that is achievable. Our initial goal might be to delay fulfilling the addiction for a short period of time and then gradually lengthen the delay. This delay becomes the wedge we can use to bring down the whole addiction.

Working with delay of running off out destructive pattern increases our trust and helps to develop the healthful pattern. Again, we start where we are and work slowly and patiently, without aggression for ourselves. This is maitri.

Then we just contact the moment with our sense perceptions. So instead of the sense of being all caught up in scratching the wound, we are able to let the discursiveness go. Out of a sense of warmth for the whole situation we are able to let the discursiveness go and then there is communication, this contact with our sense perceptions. In the Shambhala teachings they talk about contact with limitless ayatanas, limitless sense perceptions. What this means is that what was limited and becoming more and more miserable and introverted suddenly opens up and goes completely in the other direction.

There is the sense of everything going outward instead of everything being poisoned inward. Things open outward.

Rinpoche said to just abruptly cut discursiveness, open, and then disown. For instance, if you have a wonderful experience, just disown it. Even if nothing happens, just disown it. Then just go on. In another place Rinpoche says it is just like taking a photograph with a flashbulb. You just take one photo after another. There is a sense of just opening to the moment.

When you think of what you are doing here, you are completely cutting through the solidity of self-importance, the solidity of holding on in any way, completely cutting through the chain reaction of karma. It's pretty powerful, what you are doing here. The photographs are separate from each other; there is no ego —glueing them together. This is what "disowning" means. The photos are there and taken but there is no one owning them. There are just these moments of warmth in which we communicate with feelings and are no longer identified with what we consider our poor, miserable, separate selves.

So specifically the process is: When you are frantically eating, smoking, grabbing for a valium or whatever it is and it occurs to you to try this, first you pause. The traditional teaching when we are all caught up is to bring to mind something which stops us, such as the face of our teacher or of someone who really loves us. But it could be anything that works for us.

For example:
Uneasy feelings come up and we say to ourselves something like: "I am not afraid of what is coming up. I have worked with feelings like this before. I can feel them. They are workable. They will teach me something. I know from experience I can trust this process." This is the first stage: maitri.
Then we let go of our words about it, for example, "just this one won't hurt me," "I have to have this now because... "and just be open to the space. It is as if the words were playing in a tiny little corner of the space or it's as if you are in an airplane looking down on them.
Then we communicate with the feelings that are left which are now wordless and move outward, as if the feelings weren't specifically ours but were shared with the whole human race. They are changed to a warmth for the whole human race. They are changed to a warmth and tenderness for the whole human condition. You are really feeling with all of humanity and your heart could melt from the intensity of the pain or longing.
The process can actually be quite fast, but we may have to artificially slow it down the first few times we do it.

What begins to happen as a result of practicing this way is a growing trust we can be brave enough to open and to stop scratching that wound. We trust that we can do it and we also see that sometimes we can't do it for very long, but we nevertheless begin to have a trust that it is possible. We begin to trust that we can connect with what is underneath the facade of protective devices, that we do not have to be afraid of that rawness, of that pain, of that wound.

And then we also begin to find that what we connect with underneath that facade or protective device is actually healing to to us, it is actually nourishing to us, it is not basically frightening. It is not a sense of annihilation, it is a sense of warmth and expansion and a sense of enormous freedom and spaciousness. It is a sense of coming home.

And most important there is a sense of enormous simplicity. Just simplicity. We make life complicated when it is actually simple. Based on our experience of working with this, we develop a real sense that we can evolve from being all caught up scratching our wounds, to a sense of the boundless nature, which is completely freeing and open and focused outward.

We can cut the karmic chain at any moment and just let go. We can cut through the solidity of identity, the solidity of the "problem," and just let it go. Rinpoche describes this by saying that "we can stop collecting dust on our woolly tails." We can stop collecting the dust of negative karma in our actions. The image is of just cutting through discursiveness and opening. In another place, Rinpoche says that this is as if someone punctures your tire Pop! or in this case, punctures your speech balloon. This is not exactly a gentle approach at this time, but is based on a gentle approach. It is a sudden glimpse which is also an experience of warmth at the same time.

In the course of working with this, our perception of ourself changes.

One person describes the change: he said that he used to think of himself as a confused person doing confused things, but now he regarded himself as a good person doing confused things. To him that was a big difference because underlying this was a change of allegiance and expectation from confusion to wisdom. The view is that the wisdom guide is inherent in each of us and that we can connect with that at any time and be completely free.

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Veridical Perception in NDEs

The scientific method requires all phenomena to be reproducible, provide veridical details (i.e., details which cannot be explained away, which are found to be true), and undergo rigorous tests to rule out all the known alternative explanations, for a theory to be proven as scientific fact. Using the scientific method, near-death experiences have been proven to be a real scientific phenomenon because they are reproducible. Near-death experiences were first shown to be reproducible during studies involving the subjection of fighter pilots to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. But the question is not, "Are near-death experiences real?" Even skeptics now concede that it is a real phenomenon. The question to ask is, "Are near-death experiences a phenomenon of a person's consciousness being outside of their body?" And if this can be proven true, then the next question is, "Can consciousness survive bodily death?" This last question likely cannot be proven true to the satisfaction of the skeptics using near-death research alone. This is because no matter how you define "death," the only kind of definition that satisfies the skeptics is "irreversible" death. Just the very nature of the phrase "near-death" suggests that it is not true death - where nobody comes back. However, good scientific evidence for survival can be found in other realms of research such as psychic studies, quantum physics, consciousness studies, and remote viewing - not to mention the mountain of circumstantial evidence.

Veridical Perception in NDEs

At this point in near-death studies, researchers are particularly interested in studying those NDEs that may provide an answer to the question of whether the mind can function outside the physical body. This is the first step in determining whether consciousness can survive bodily death. One way is to discover this is to examine those NDEs which are "veridical" (verifiable). Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information which they could not have obtained by any normal means. Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital. If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have taken place. It would provide very compelling evidence that NDEs are experiences outside of the physical body. Visit the NDE and Out-Of-Body research conclusions to read a large collection of veridical NDEs.

Dr. Raymond Moody's Groundbreaking Research

Besides his ground-breaking book, Life After Life, Raymond Moody is the author of the excellent NDE books, The Light Beyond, Reunions, Life After Loss, Coming Back, Reflections, and The Last Laugh. In Life After Life, Moody documents a number of veridical near-death experiences which will be described here. This veridical evidence suggests the possibility that consciousness can exist away from the body. In light of such veridical evidence, other NDE theories fall by the wayside because they cannot account for these veridical details. And although the available veridical NDE evidence does not constitute scientific proof of consciousness surviving bodily death, it does qualify as very powerful circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, the kind of evidence that is upheld every day in courts of law all around the country.

Whether or not there will ever be scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness may depend upon science itself and how such phenomenon as NDEs can be quantified. Using the strict demands of science, we can only conclude as Dr. Raymond Moody does when he had this to say:


"I don't have any idea whether there's life after death or not. I've been a follower of science all of my life, but I also have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and it really seems to me that the question of life after death is not yet ripe for scientific enquiry because it's not formulatable in a way that fits into the scientific method. I also think it's the most important question. If you think of the big questions of existence, this is the biggie."


The following are some examples of veridical NDEs documented by Moody:

Example 1: An elderly woman had been blind since childhood. But, during her NDE, the woman had regained her sight and she was able to accurately describe the instruments and techniques used during the resuscitation her body. After the woman was revived, she reported the details to her doctor. She was able to tell her doctor who came in and out, what they said, what they wore, what they did, all of which was true. Her doctor then referred the woman to Moody who he knew was doing research at the time on NDEs.

Example 2: One patient told Moody, “After it was all over the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I said, ‘Yeah, I know.’ He said, ‘Well, how do you know?’ and I said, ‘I can tell you everything that happened.’ He didn’t believe me, so I told him the whole story, from the time I stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming around. He was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had happened. He didn’t know quite what to say, but he came in several times to ask me different things about it.”

Example 3: In another instance a woman with a heart condition was dying at the same time that her sister was in a diabetic coma in another part of the same hospital. The subject reported having a conversation with her sister as both of them hovered near the ceiling watching the medical team work on her body below. When the woman awoke, she told the doctor that her sister had died while her own resuscitation was taking place. The doctor denied it, but when she insisted, he had a nurse check on it. The sister had, in fact, died during the time in question.

Example 4: A dying girl left her body and into another room in the hospital where she found her older sister crying and saying:


"Oh, Kathy, please don't die, please don't die."

The older sister was quite baffled when, later, Kathy told her exactly where she had been and what she had been saying during this time.


"After it was all over, the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I said, "Yeah, I know."


He said, "Well, how do you know?"

And I said, "I can tell you everything that happened."

He didn't believe me, so I told him the whole story, from the time I stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming around. He was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had happened. He didn't know quite what to say, but he came in several times to ask me different things about it.


When I woke up after the accident, my father was there, and I didn't even want to know what sort of shape I was in, or how I was, or how the doctors thought I would be. All I wanted to talk about was the experience I had been through. I told my father who had dragged my body out of the building, and even what color clothes that person had on, and how they got me out, and even about all the conversation that had been going on in the area.


And my father said, "Well, yes, these things were true."

Yet, my body was physically out this whole time, and there was no way I could have seen or heard these things without being outside of my body.




------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----


Dr. Moody's Exceptional NDE Testimony

In his book, Life After Life, Moody documents what he calls "a rather exceptional account" which embodies many of the elements of the NDE that he describes and has an interesting veridical near-death experience. I think you will agree that it is rather exceptional:

Jack's NDE: At the time this happened I suffered, as I still do, a very severe case of bronchial asthma and emphysema. One day, I got into a coughing fit and apparently ruptured a disk in the lower part of my spine. For a couple of months, I consulted a number of doctors for the agonizing pain, and finally one of them referred me to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Wyatt. He saw me and told me that I needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately, so I went on in and they put me in traction right away.

Dr. Wyatt knew that I had bad respiratory diseases so he called in a lung specialist, who said that the anesthesiologist, Dr. Coleman, should be consulted if I was going to be put to sleep. So the lung specialist worked on me for almost three weeks until he finally got me to a place where Dr. Coleman would put me under. He finally consented on a Monday, although he was very much worried about it. They scheduled the operation for the next Friday. Monday night, I went to sleep and had a restful sleep until sometime early Tuesday morning, when I woke up in severe pain. I turned over and tried to get in a more comfortable position, but just at that moment a light appeared in the corner of the room, just below the ceiling. It was just a ball of light, almost like a globe, and it was not very large, I would say no more than twelve to fifteen inches in diameter, and as this light appeared, a feeling came over me. I can't say that it was an eerie feeling, because it was not. It was a feeling of complete peace and utter relaxation. I could see a hand reach down for me from the light, and the light said:


"Come with me. I want to show you something."

So immediately, without any hesitation whatsoever, I reached up with my hand and grabbed onto the hand I saw. As I did, I had the feeling of being drawn up and of leaving my body, and I looked back and saw it lying there on the bed while I was going up towards the ceiling of the room.

Now, at this time, as soon as I left my body, I took on the same form as the light. I got the feeling, and I'll have to use my own words for it, because I've never heard anyone talk about anything like this, that this form was definitely a spirit. It wasn't a body, just a wisp of smoke or a vapor. It looked almost like the clouds of cigarette smoke you can see when they are illuminated as they drift around a lamp. The form I took had colors, though. There was orange, yellow, and a color that was very indistinct to me - I took it to be an indigo, a bluish color.

This spiritual form didn't have a shape like a body. It was more or less circular, but it had what I would call a hand. I know this because when the light reached down for me, I reached up for it with my hand. Yet, the arm and hand of my body just stayed put, because I could see them lying on the bed, down by the side of my body, as I rose up to the light. But when I wasn't using this spiritual hand, the spirit went back to the circular pattern.

So, I was drawn up to the same position the light was in, and we started moving through the ceiling and the wall of the hospital room, into the corridor, and through the corridor, down through the floors it seemed, on down to a lower floor in the hospital. We had no difficulty in passing through doors or walls. They would just fade away from us as we would approach them.

During this period it seemed that we were traveling. I knew we were moving, yet there was no sensation of speed. And in a moment, almost instantaneously, really, I realized that we had reached the recovery room of the hospital. Now, I hadn't even known where the recovery room was at this hospital, but we got there, and again, we were in the corner of the room near the ceiling, up above everything else. I saw the doctors and nurses walking around in their green suits and saw the beds that were placed around in there. This being then told me - he showed me:


"That's where you're going to be. When they bring you off the operating table they're going to put you in that bed, but you will never awaken from that position. You'll know nothing after you go to the operating room until I come back to get you sometime after this."


Now, I won't say this was in words. It wasn't like an audible voice, because if it had been I would have expected the others in the room to have heard the voice, and they didn't. It was more of an impression that came to me. But it was in such a vivid form that there was no way for me to say I didn't hear it or I didn't feel it. It was definite to me.

And what I was seeing - well, it was so much easier to recognize things while I was in this spiritual form. I was now wondering, like, "Now, what is that that he is trying to show me?" I knew immediately what it was, what he had in mind. There was no doubt. It was that bed - it was the bed on the right just as you come in from the corridor - is where I'm going to be and he's brought me here for a purpose. And then he told me why. It came to me that the reason for this was that he didn't want any fear when the time came that my spirit passed from my body, but that he wanted me to know what the sensation would be on passing that point. He wanted to assure me so that I wouldn't be afraid, because he was telling me that he wouldn't be there immediately, that I would go through other things first, but that he would be overshadowing everything that happened and would be there for me at the end.

Now, immediately, when I had joined him to take the trip to the recovery room and had become a spirit myself, in a way we had been fused into one. We were two separate ones, too, of course. Yet, he had full control of everything that was going on as far as I was concerned. And even if we were traveling through the walls and ceilings and so forth, well, it just seemed that we were in such close communion that nothing whatsoever could have bothered me. Again, it was just a peacefulness, calmness, and a serenity that have never been found anywhere else.

So, after he told me this, he took me back to my hospital room, and as I got back I saw my body again, still lying in the same position as when we left, and instantaneously I was back in my body. I would guess that I had been out of my body for five or ten minutes, but passage of time had nothing to do with this experience. In fact, I don't remember if I had ever even thought of it as being any particular time.

Now, this whole thing had just astounded me, took me completely by surprise. It was so vivid and real - more so than ordinary experience. And the next morning, I was not in the least afraid. When I shaved, I noticed that my hand didn't shake like it had been doing for six or eight weeks before then. I knew that I would be dying, and there was no regret, no fear. There was no thought, "What can I do to keep this from happening?" I was ready.

Now, on Thursday afternoon, the day before the operation the next morning, I was in my hospital room, and I was worried. My wife and I have a boy, an adopted nephew, and we were then having some trouble with him. So I decided to write a letter to my wife and one to my nephew, putting some of my worries into words, and to hide the letters where they wouldn't be found until after the operation. After I had written about two pages on the letter to my wife, it was just as if the floodgates had opened. All at once, I broke out in tears, sobbing. I felt a presence, and at first I thought maybe that I had cried so loud that I had disturbed one of the nurses, and that they had come in to see what was the matter with me. But I hadn't heard the door open. And again I felt this presence, but I didn't see any light this time, and thoughts or words came to me, just as before, and he said:


"Jack, why are you crying? I thought you would be pleased to be with me."


I thought, "Yes, I am. I want to go very much."

And the voice said, "Then why are you crying?"

I said, "We've had trouble with our nephew, you know, and I'm afraid my wife won't know how to raise him. I'm trying to put into words how I feel, and what I want her to try to do for him. I'm concerned, too, because I feel that maybe my presence could have settled him down some."


Then the thoughts came to me, from this presence, "Since you are not asking for someone else, and thinking of others, not Jack, I will grant what you want. You will live until you see your nephew become a man."


And just like that, it was gone. I stopped crying, and I destroyed the letter so my wife wouldn't accidentally find it.

That evening, Dr. Coleman came in and told me that he was expecting a lot of trouble with putting me to sleep, and for me not to be surprised to wake up and find a lot of wires and tubes and machines all around me. I didn't tell him what I had experienced, so I just nodded and said I would cooperate.

The next morning the operation took a long time but went fine, and as I was regaining my consciousness, Dr. Coleman was there with me, and I told him:


"I know exactly where I am."

He asked, "What bed are you in?"

I said, "I'm in that first bed on the right just as you come in from the hall."

He just kind of laughed, and of course, he thought that I was just taking from the anesthetic.

I wanted to tell him what had happened, but just in a moment Dr. Wyatt came in and said:


"He's awake now. What do you want to do?"

And Dr. Coleman said, "There's not a thing I can do. I've never been so amazed in my life. Here I am with all this equipment set up and he doesn't need a thing."


Dr. Wyatt said, "Miracles still happen, you know."

So, when I could get up in the bed and see around the room, I saw that I was in that same bed that the light had shown me several days before.

Now, all this was three years ago, but it is still just as vivid as it was then. It was the most fantastic thing that has ever happened to me, and it has made a big difference. But I don't talk about it. I have only told my wife, my brother, my minister, and now you. I don't know how to say it, but this is so hard to explain. I'm not trying to make a big explosion in your life, and I'm not trying to brag. It's just that after this, I don't have any doubts anymore. I know there is life after death.

Source: Moody Jr., Raymond A., M.D., Life After Life, pages 101-107, New York, Bantam Books, 1975.
"A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us." – Guirdjieff

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Are NDEs Hallucinations?

Are NDEs Hallucinations?

 
Skeptics claim that the NDE is a product of the brain which occurs during life threatening situations. They claim the brain produces an avoidance response similar to a hallucination when endorphins flood the brain similar to when LSD is introduced into the body. Skeptics also point to the fact that the NDE can be duplicated by using the Hemi-Sync process developed by the Monroe Institute.

But when studies show that psychedelic drugs, meditation, and other methods can be used to induce non-ordinary states such as a NDE, this does not negate the Afterlife Theory. It only shows that there is a biological component involved in the brain. When experiments can be reproduced in the laboratory, such as inducing a NDE with a psychedelic, it means that the phenomenon has satisfied the criteria for scientific evidence according to the scientific method. Proving that there is a biological component in the brain does not negate the Afterlife Theory nor does it prove that NDEs are purely biological. NDEs can be induced many ways. My Triggers of the NDE section of my website lists the many ways that a NDE can be induced. The fact that NDEs can be induced in the brain by certain triggers does not mean that NDEs are not real. On the contrary, it proves they are real.

There is also a misconception in the general public and among materialists that the following things are not real: intuition, ideas, thought, notions, insights, fantasies, visions, daydreams, feelings, visualizations, dreams, and anything having to do with the mind at large. This may be one of the main reasons why the materialist believes that NDEs and all such mental images are just unreal "mental flatulence" of the brain.

There are many published studies of drugs such as PCP, LSD, Marijuana, cocaine, heroin and morphine. They cause distortions of reality, alterations of body image, and disorientation as to time and place. The near-death experience does not involve distortions of reality, but rather the perception of another reality superimposed over this one.

Although the hallucination theory can explain a brain chemical basis, the theory cannot explain everything. Here are some comments by experts in this field:

Psychologist John Gibbs states:

"NDE accounts from varied times and cultures were found to be more orderly, logical, defined and predictable than comparable accounts from drug or illness-induced hallucination. Impressive data from Tart, Moody and Carl Becker also argue for the objective elements of a NDE, including returning with knowledge later verified and third-party observations of odd death-bed phenomena (such as luminosity or apparitions)."
 

Neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, describes the difference between the NDE and hallucinations:

"The difficulty with those theories is that when you create these wonderful states by taking drugs, you’re conscious. In the NDE, you are unconscious. One of the things we know about brain function in unconsciousness, is that you cannot create images and if you do, you cannot remember them."
 

Fenwick describes the unconscious state of the NDE:

"The brain isn’t functioning. It’s not there. It’s destroyed. It’s abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don’t know what’s happening and the brain isn’t working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won’t remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences (a NDE), you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."
 

So it appears that we may never know exactly what a NDE is and what produces them, until science can define exactly what consciousness is. We may have a long way to go to learn this."

There are many published studies of drugs such as PCP, LSD, Marijuana, cocaine, heroin and morphine. They cause distortions of reality, alterations of body image, and disorientation as to time and place. The near-death experience does not involve distortions of reality, but rather the perception of another reality superimposed over this one.

Dr. Ken Ring, the leading figure in NDE studies has this to say:

"Drugs, anesthesia and medication did not seem to be a factor in inducing these impressions and exquisite feelings of a NDE. Indeed, drugs and anesthesia seemed to be more likely to cause a person to forget memories of a NDE."
 

Ring definitely concluded that NDEs are not hallucinations because hallucinations are rambling, unconnected, often unintelligible and vary widely, whereas NDEs tend to have similar elements of a clear, connected pattern.

Ketamine is a drug which several researchers feel creates effects which are similar to NDEs. However, they have not published controlled studies to substantiate their point of view. Scott Rogo describes similarities between NDEs and ketamine induced visions, but ultimately feels that ketamine often causes bizarre, paranoid visions not seen in NDEs.

It is interesting to note that Karl Jansen, a ketamine researcher, not only felt that NDEs and ketamine induced visions were the same, but became convinced that BOTH induced real visions of a real god. He has become very spiritual as a result of his ketamine research.

As a medical student, Dr. Melvin Morse spent time at both Mt. Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Washington, DC, both hotbeds of LSD research. He personally spoke with therapists who used LSD to help patients overcome the fear of death and with psychiatrists who used LSD to successfully treat alcoholism and depression.

For example, Dr. Stanislav Grof reports that Ted, a 25 year old man dying of colon cancer, was given LSD in the context of therapy and reported:

"[Ted] became convinced that he had died. God appeared to him as a brilliant source of light telling him not to fear, and assuring him that everything would be all right. He was overwhelmed at the realization that behind the seeming chaos and complexity of creation, there is only one God. He started realizing the underlying unity of it all."
 

Many excellent studies showed that positive personality transformations occurred with LSD therapy, with many psychiatrists advocating using it as an office-based treatment drug. These studies persisted at the Veteran's Administration Hospital even into the late 1970's, after street use of the drug gave it its bad reputation, for one simple reason: LSD worked.

Understanding the chemistry of LSD led to the discovery of a class of hallucinogens which have served to shape early man's religious and social systems. One cannot compare the unregulated street use of LSD mixed with many other drugs, to the use by our human ancestors throughout the world of hallucinogens as sacred drugs. Primitive peoples, on every continent used these drugs, within religious rituals to do all of the things modern NDEs do, including traveling out of the body to other realities, encountering dead relatives and spiritual entities, and transforming the individual into a more productive member of society.

For example, primitive people in Columbia in 3000 BC took Yaje, a plant with hallucinogenic chemicals in it to "awaken as a new person, fully integrated and at one with his culture. During the experience, the individual 'sees' the tribal god and the creation of the universe. The user is said to 'die' and then be reborn in a state of wisdom."

Two common questions are: What possible evolutionary pressure could have resulted in NDEs? Why would dying brains suddenly have the ability to perceive other realities?

Karl Jansen feels that similarities between the effects of ketamine and NDEs provide an explanation. Users of ketamine describe:

"..becoming a disembodied mind or soul, dying, and going to another world. Childhood events are relived. Users often are not sure they have not actually left their bodies," or, "I was convinced I was dead. I floated above my body. I reviewed all the events of my life, and saw areas in which could have done better."
 

Ketamine acts in the brain to increase a neurotransmitter called L-glutamate which protects the brain against injuries or stresses, such as a lack of oxygen. Its action is in the same areas as the right temporal lobe, the hippocampus and associated structures in the brain.

Jansen states that the NDE is:

"an important phenomena that can be safely reproduced by ketamine."
 

He feels the drug can be used as a door to another space. It causes the same effects seen in yoga and meditation.

Skeptics often glibly dismiss NDEs as a result of the lack of oxygen to the brain or to the many drugs that dying patients are often given. The scientific evidence does NOT support narcotics, valium, anesthetic agents, or a lack of oxygen to the brain as causing NDEs. But, two drugs, ketamine and LSD, may cause experiences strikingly similar to NDEs, including positive spiritual transformation.

It is important to realize, however, that there are many ways to have a NDE-like experience without taking drugs. Methods such as meditation, yoga, and dreaming are some examples.

Dr. Jeffrey Long states:

"One concern of NDE skeptics is the concept of a dual physical and spiritual life presence, with the spiritual presence surviving bodily death. The physical presence is easily discernable, while the spiritual presence is generally not easily discernable. It is very helpful to personally have a NDE or NDE-like experience to address such concerns. For virtually all NDErs, a NDE cures NDE disbelief. However, only approximately 4% of the United States adult population have a personal history of NDEs. Others find they are opened to the possibility of a dual physical/spiritual life presence through other spiritually transformative life events.
 
 
"These life experiences may include, but are not limited to, markedly serendipitous events, other personal paranormal experiences, and acceptance of other people’s accounts of their spiritually transformative experiences. I personally believe that if such spiritually transformative experiences are sincerely sought, they are likely to be encountered. NDE research is somewhat unique due to the subjective nature of the experience. This subjectivity precludes certain conventional scientific methods of studying NDEs, such as replicating NDEs or studying physical changes associated with the experience.
 
 
"This inability to study NDEs via certain accepted methods of conventional scientific verification results in the need for some element of faith to accept the reality of NDEs. I think this necessary element of faith is a problem for many people in accepting the reality and significance of NDEs. Mitigating against this concern is the fact that NDEs are relatively common. Millions of people have had NDEs. NDEs are quite varied, but the consistency of the NDE elements (OBE experience, tunnel, light, meeting other beings, etc.) is striking. There is no plausible biological explanation of NDEs. There is no other human experience so dramatic, shared by so many people, and so relatively consistent in its elements. The preceding suggests faith in the validity of NDE accounts is the most reasonable conclusion from the evidence."
 

Dr. Stanislav Grof states:

"I had my training as a psychiatrist, a physician and then as a Freudian analyst. When I became interested in non-ordinary states and started serving powerful mystical experiences, also having some myself, my first idea was that it (consciousness) has to be hard-wired in the brain. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how something like that is possible.
 
 
"Today, I came to the conclusion that it is not coming from the brain. In that sense, it supports what Aldous Huxley believed after he had some powerful psychedelic experiences and was trying to link them to the brain. He came to the conclusion that maybe the brain acts as a kind of reducing valve that actually protects us from too much cosmic input. So, I don’t see, for example, that experiences of archetypal realms, heavens, paradises, experiences of archetypal beings, such as deities, demons from different cultures, that people typically have in these states that they can be somehow explained as something that comes from the brain. I don’t think you can locate the source of consciousness. I am quite sure it is not in the brain – not inside of the skull. "It actually, according to my experience, would lie beyond time and space, so it is not localizable. You actually come to the source of consciousness when you dissolve any categories that imply separation, individuality, time, space and so on. You just experience it as a presence.
 
 
"People who have these experiences can either perceive that source or they can actually become the source, completely dissolved and experience that source. But such categories as time and space, localization coordinates, are not relevant for that experience. You actually have a sense that the concepts of time and space come from that place. They are generated by that place; but, the cosmic source itself, the cosmic consciousness cannot be located – certainly not in the material world."
 

Kevin Williams states:

"I believe the evidence suggests that the conscious mind (and personality) is the product of a brain function which processes our higher non-localized consciousness. This brain function may be comparable to a similar process that a television (the brain) has when it receives signals in the airwaves (consciousness) and processing them (brain function) to create a television program (conscious awareness, personality). At death, consciousness becomes unrestricted by the brain (the television is shut off, conscious mind disappears) and therefore consciousness expands to its original dimensions (the brain no longer processes consciousness to produce a conscious mind) which is everywhere and nowhere in particular. So, in this sense, both groups are correct - the hallucination theory group and the afterlife theory group. At death, the conscious mind "dies" and never more exists because it is a product of the brain. But the subconscious mind (soul) and superconscious mind (spirit) expand to become a person's "new" conscious mind and "new" subconscious mind. That is, the subconsciousness now plays the new role of "conscious mind" and the superconscious mind now plays the new role of the "subconscious mind."
 
 
"Skeptics often rely on reductionism in an attempt to prove that it is only the brain which produces NDEs. However, by using reductionism, these skeptics may only be defining the brain process which processes consciousness to produce a conscious mind and for which a "trigger" can be introduced which changes that process to free the restrictions of consciousness and allowing it expand and produce a NDE.
 
 
"It is the same principle as with a television set. Using a television analogy, we can reduce a television set to all of its basic components: circuits, tube, transistors and wires, and say that this is all there is to television programs such as "I Love Lucy". But we would be ignoring where the television signals originate and where they are located - in the airwaves. And in this sense, conscious awareness might only be one of these televisions shows coming from the airwaves which the television processes to produce. But, when we shut the television off, the television signals still exist in the airwaves including "I Love Lucy" except that it is no longer processed by the television that was shut off. So, in this sense, death is merely "shutting the television off" for good. And near-death experiences may be the result of shutting off the television, or in some instances, using a "trigger" that alters brain function to the condition where brain is not shut off but the brain process restricting consciousness is. This may also explain phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, dreams, remote viewing, hallucinations, psychic and spiritual visions, etc.
 

So the real questions are these: What is consciousness? Where is it located? Can it exist separately from the brain? Is the NDE a phenomenon for which consciousness transcends the brain? If so, what about other phenomena such as dreams and hallucinations? We can all concede that these states of consciousness all have a chemical basis, but the real question is - are they only a brain thing? Is the human mind only the product of the brain?

Dr. Ronald Siegel says, "No." He is author of the book, Fire in the Brain: Clinical Tales of Hallucination, and is the distinguished expert in psychopharmacolgy at UCLA. He is one of the leading experts in the field of hallucinogens and an ardent skeptic of the "consciousness survives death" theory. The following is an interview with him concerning NDEs.

Question:  There has been a recent explosion of popular articles and books stating that life after death is supported by hard scientific data. This evidence comes from survivors of clinical death, deathbed visions of terminal patients, and other sources of data. Dr. Siegel, you have investigated the NDE for many years with great thoroughness. Can you tell us what a NDE is?

Dr. Siegel:  Our study of life after death is highly dependent on the words, pictures, and other symbols used in description. Many of these words have sensory qualities and describe such properties as sight, sound, taste, and smell. Accident victims who have had NDEs often report visions of long, dark tunnels or sounds of ringing and buzzing. Surgical patients who are resuscitated following cardiac or respiratory failure frequently report floating out of their bodies and watching the operation from a distant perspective and many of them have an awareness of returning to their physical body. Terminal patients often experience unbidden memory images of long forgotten childhood events and deceased relatives. These images arise with such startling vividness that they often prompt the patient to react by speaking with the image or moving toward it. Many people see a blinding white light and regard it as a higher being or god. Some of these people feel ecstasy in their experience.

Question:  Why did you become involved in investigating NDEs?

Dr. Siegel:  All of the descriptions of the afterlife bear a strong resemblance to people's descriptions of drug-induced hallucinations or hallucinations produced by other conditions. I was aware of the popular imagery associated with the NDE and was struck by the similarity of those kinds of reports with those that I had gathered from my drug subjects and from other subjects who were not even taking drugs.

Question:  What is a hallucination?

Dr. Siegel:  It has to due with a change of attention in a person. Hallucinations mean literally a wandering mind or a wandering in attention. To that extent whenever we are even daydreaming technically we are hallucinating. When the brain is really roaring with LSD or in a state of extreme stress from a life-threatening danger, or in a state of isolation there seems to be a lot of wandering in mind that does not seem to be under volitional control. Attention constantly shifts around. When such a person is given a psychological or problem solving test they do miserably on it, because they can't focus attention or concentrate. The death bed is a very good place or very conducive to these kinds of experiences. The person is lying down and is quiet. This is the state into which we try to get our subjects. We used hospital beds in a quiet room. The idea being to get the person to shift from the external events to the internal world.

Question:  In many of the reports describing the NDE the patient was later able to accurately describe the conversations of the doctors and nurses that took place while he or she was unconscious. Is this evidence for an out-of-body experience?

Dr. Siegel:  No. The hearing of voices or other sounds is reminiscent of surgical patients recovering from anesthesia who often recall auditory stimuli that occurred during surgery. This is particularly common with the dissociative anesthetics nitrous oxide, ether and ketamine, which allow sensory input to the brain.

Question:  What about the strength of the subject's conviction that he or she was actually physically undergoing an out-of-body or NDE? Shouldn't that person be able to tell that they are hallucinating?

Dr. Siegel:  You can't tell anything from the conviction of those reports. I heard similar convictions on the supposed reality of experiences from my own subjects under the influence of drugs and stress. These are very powerful experiences. The imbeddedness, the concreteness, the veracity of the experience is so great that it manifests itself in truthfulness. In our experiments we could regulate the truthfulness of the experience by the dosage of the drug. A low dose of the drug produced a mild image and no one was fooled by that, but a very large dose of the drug produced very intense experiences and people tend to make the transition from what we call pseudo hallucinations to true ones.

Question:  What is the difference between a pseudo hallucination and a true hallucination?

Dr. Siegel:  Pseudo hallucinations are when I see that little green man out there, but I know that he really is not there because I say to myself, "I've just taken acid and this is a trip." A true hallucination is when I see that little green man out there and by God he is really there. Now I'm going to get my gun and protect myself. It is very easy to get carried away by this and some people really do. The mechanism that helps explain exactly what happens in the brain during all these states is fairly complex and is still somewhat of a puzzlement to neurophysiologists.

Question:  Some writers on the NDE state that many of the dying patients were not on drugs and their consciousness was clear. They say these experiences were not hallucinations.

Dr. Siegel:  It is important to note that hallucinations can occur in states where consciousness is "clear." People can experience hallucinations in states of sensory deprivation, extreme hunger, cold, or stress. For instance, people can have a hallucination of a dead relative or friend in states of clear consciousness when triggered by emotional states surrounding death, such as mourning. Recently, we did a study with different types of hostages. Some of them were political and some had been kidnapped or raped in cases. We even had a few alleged UFO abductees. All of them had been subjected to some kind of stress, some kind of life-threatening danger, and some kind of isolation. Many of the hostages had visual or physical isolation for periods of time ranging from a couple of hours up to over a year. We noticed some striking similarities in the description of hostages' experiences to that of the description of the NDE. The format of these descriptions was the same. There were bright lights, tunnel perspectives; there was a sensation of moving down that tunnel and being out of one's body.

Question:  Did you do any cross-cultural studies?

Dr. Siegel:  Yes. I lived for a while with a group of Indians in the High Sierra Madres, in Central Mexico, and one particular village that I chose to go to had not been visited by a white team in their three-thousand-year history. In this particular tribe I knew that we were tapping a source of people who were not contaminated, that hadn't been exposed to Mickey Mouse cartoons. They didn't have any of our cultural biases and we studied the use of their peyote, a cactus extract, which contains mescaline as the active hallucinogen and their reports were virtually identical to the NDE. We also did some studies with the Indians in the Amazon basin who use ayahuasca, which is a visionary vine that produces lots of imaginary experiences. So we found that there was a cultural consistency too.

Question:  In other words, you had a lot of common states to a wide variety of situations?

Dr. Siegel:  That's right. It seems to reflect some common wiring in the visual and central nervous system that we all have. While the Indian may see a long dark cave and we may see a long train tunnel the structure and forms of the hallucination were still very similar. We were very pleased with the consistency of this data. We were able to go into the literature and look at other reports and find that with other groups of people and with a mixed variety of situations it was pretty much the same, be they in states of insulin shock or hyperglycemia. Look at the writings of Jacque Monroe, a psychiatrist, who wrote the first book on hashish and mental illness, in which he said the best way to study mental illness and some of the paranormal phenomena associated with it was to provoke it artificially through the injection of hashish which he went ahead and did. At that time in France his medical colleagues were very reluctant to accept his advice but some of the Bohemian artists of nineteenth-century Paris were much more receptive and all of their writings testified to the kind of experiences that were possible with hashish. There were lots of NDEs in their writings, some of which I have recently transcribed and published.

Question:  Can you elaborate on this idea that the similarity of hallucinations are due to the common wiring of our visual and nervous systems?

Dr. Siegel:  Given a wide variety of stimulations to the brain, the brain responds in a finite number of ways. The patterns that we have called "hallucinatory form constants" (the NDE and archetypical images) are really descriptions of the finite patterns of the way the brain responds to an infinite variety of stimulations. The simple imagery consists of tunnels, bright lights and colors, and geometric forms. This is probably caused by phosphenes, which are visual sensations arising from the discharge of neurons in structures of the eye. They also reflect the electrical excitation of organized groups of cells in the visual cortex of the brain. In other words, although you can shake up the brain by many different methods it still transmits out in pretty much the same way.

Question:  How about people who are not wired in the same way. People who are congenitally blind, for instance?

Dr. Siegel:  When we give hallucinogens to congenitally blind individuals we find that they hear the echoes in the room becoming alternatively farther away or closer. This is the same dimensional shift that we find in another modality for the sighted person who would see images becoming very small or getting very large.

Question:  What causes the famous tunnel perspective?

Dr. Siegel:  This is probably due to the stimulation of the central nervous system that mimics the effects of light on the retina. It can also occur when the electrical activity in the brain is altered in such a way that the threshold for perception of phosphenes (electrical activity in the visual system) is lowered, and bright lights are seen in otherwise dark surroundings. This point can create a tunnel perspective.

Question:  Do you have some simple analogy to help explain the relationship between the near-death and out-of-body experiences to hallucinations?

Dr. Siegel:  The analogy that I have found very useful in understanding this is an analogy that I call the fire in the brain. Picture a man in his living room, standing at a closed window opposite his fireplace and looking out at the sunset. He is absorbed by the view of the outside world and does not visualize the interior of the room. As darkness falls outside, though, the images of the objects in the room behind him can be seen reflected dimly in the window. With the deepening of darkness the fire in the fireplace illuminates the room and the man can now see a vivid reflection of the room, which appears to be outside the window. Now he throws into the fire a couple of logs and the fire roars brightly. He turns around to look out the window. He still can't see because it's dark, but he sees a reflection of himself and the furniture in the room on the glass as if it came from the outside. The analogy is that the window is the window of our eyes and ears and senses of the real world. The fire is the degree of electrical excitation that is produced in the brain, so when it's dark at night and not much is happening, and the fire roars brightly in your brain you've got a lot of LSD there. For example, you may no longer see the real world but you see the furniture of your own mind, your memories, images, fantasies, and daydreams reflect as if they came from the outside. The brighter the fire the more vivid those reflections become until some people become sort of like Alice going through the looking glass. They think that all this stuff on the other side is real. Keeping this analogy in mind you can produce those experiences without lighting the fire too much, by just turning off the lights on the outside and using the normal fire in the brain. You can stir up the fire or you can depress it. Drug use is an easy way of manipulating that fire in the brain. There are other ways of doing it, but it is an easy way that we felt that we could control and use very precisely. When you reduce the illumination levels outside you raise the awareness of the internal events. Maybe that's why the imagery that's associated with meditation is very similar to the imagery associated with hallucinations. Whether you light the fire within with drugs or turn off the lights from outside. You get the same kinds of events.

Question:  When did you first discover that the near-death and out-of-body experiences were related to hallucinations?

Dr. Siegel:  It started in the 1960s when I was a graduate student in experimental psychology. I was working with brain chemistry and changes in animals during learning. I was also clinically studying drugs and testing marijuana. At that time the literature on the subject was very poor. I had made an extract of some marijuana and injected it into a pigeon. The pigeon wouldn't perform in the Skinner box. It was quiescent. I then injected a homing pigeon with the extract and threw it out the laboratory window. The pigeon did a kamikaze nose dive straight to the street below. I was fascinated by this. There was a little bit of the extract left and I took some of it and did a nose dive straight to the floor of the laboratory. I remained there for about eighteen hours surrounded by a fantasmagoria of imagery and experiences. They reminded me of all the things that I had read about in the history of psychology, including the stuff I had read about concerning the psychical society and their quest into the supernatural world. I had them all. It seems as if I had every experience I had ever read about during those eighteen hours. It was a very strong experience and I am happy I survived it because it was a fairly toxic dose. When I recovered from that I decided that this was a very interesting experience. I wanted to apply the techniques of experimental psychology to the study of this phenomenon.

Question:  What does your research into the NDE lead us to conclude?

Dr. Siegel:  We end up being able to say that the NDE or afterlife experience is uncannily similar to the experiences that are produced by a wide variety of other situations. But similarities are not explanations and they are no proof that they really are the same. We will probably never be able to convince anyone that they are the same until our technology is able to communicate to the other side.

Question:  Do you have any concluding remarks?

Dr. Siegel:  In the past, dying and death were often accompanied by fear and loneliness, as if the individual were possessed by Pan, the Greek god of lonely places and panic. The belief in life after death provided much comfort and security. Through the research and explanations discussed here, investigators have begun to examine the nature of these life after death experiences as hallucinations, as based on stored images in the brain. Like a mirage that shows a magnificent city on a desolate expanse of ocean or desert, the images of hallucinations are actually reflected images of real objects located elsewhere. The city is no less intriguing and no less worthy of study or visitation because it is not where we think it is. With such understanding, we can counsel the dying to take the voyage not with Pan at their side, but with Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom.

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what about that pig!!!!!!!