I will condense for convenience sake what could be a potentially long question:

I was pondering why so many reports of near death experiences don't neccessarily correlate specifically to that person's expectations/"beliefs" held priorly to death... For instance, the description that I had previously posted under the "Personalities" thread involving a "rigid" fundamentalist catholic grandmother whom, upon death, had visited her granddaughter while her grandduaghter was undergoing surgery... she had reported to her granddaughter numerous observations involving various concepts of soul multidimensionality and reincarnation... My curiosity, which stems from reports such as these, tells me that beliefs regarding the afterlife don't neccessarily fully dictate inevitably the focus level that you (by shear belief alone) should theoretically end up in... (i.e. one of the hollow heavens as would be expected under a belief structure such as that of a rigid fundamentalist catholic). 

Even the granddaughter was shocked to hear what her grandmother had to say considering her staunch beliefs in Catholicism...

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

Greetings Cosmic,
Is that a case where a soul (in role of grandmother) knew some others whom she felt might be needing some new insights to get their spirituality unfolded abit more? So she accepted, maybe even devoutly, the wisdom of their church for this lifetime, in order to communicate best, but then added her spiritual wisdom privately from time to time?
We are not bound to one belief system once we have seen that most such systems are limited. And with all the new discoveries of ancient teachings being revealed, it seems like it won't be long until even the old denominations become inspired by more spiritual practices.
bets

An experience as strong and impressive as this happens for a reason, and we are not always aware of the reason from our limited perspective.  This leads me to say that I feel we definitely get the experiences we are ready for, even when we don't know we are ready for them. 

Vicky

I'm deeply sorry for the way that I had worded my initial post... What I "meant" to communicate was that instead of the grandmother having a "NEAR" death experience... she in fact, was "PERMANENTLY" physically "dead" at the moment of this revelation to her granddaughter, and well on her way to transitioning into the various afterlife planes... The experience that the grandmother had described was told to her granddaughter, whilst her "granddaughter" was undergoing surgery, and having her own OBEs... The grandmother was "physically" permanently dead, and the granddaughter's OBEs, happened to coincide simultaneously with her grandmother's departure...

So, I can't say how the experience has effected the grandmother's beliefs as she isn't physically alive with us anymore... However, with the post on track now... I have still found that the replies to the ideas that I had posed are quite useful and knowledgeably informative. Thank you all kindly/sincerely for your replies!

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

P.S. (Just a quick thought I was wondering about)... Does anybody involved with retrievals here know what has happened with the terrorist's souls who were involved with the 9/11 attacks with regards to their souls' placement in the afterlife, and where they currently reside?... (i.e... taking into consideration their formerly held beliefs of martyrdom and being treated to the 70 odd virgins that they were promised whilst in the afterlife...)


P.S.S. Also, with regards to what recoverer wrote about staunch rigid beliefs probably being a catalyst to the "stuckness" in belief systems... This is exactly why I was so *shocked* to here the story about the grandmother's experiences whilst transitioning to spiritual... Her granddaughter had stated, with sincere conviction, that the grandmother was such a fundamentalist catholic, that she had a hard time believing what her grandmother was telling her about reincarnation and soul multidimentionality; (it goes against catholic grain.)

I'll have to ride with Betson on this one and say:

"So she accepted, maybe even devoutly, the wisdom of their church for this lifetime, in order to communicate best, but then added her spiritual wisdom privately from time to time?"

I checked out a couple of Betty Eade books and she also speaks as if satan exists. At one point she mentions an advantage we have over satan's demons. They can't read our minds. I wonder how in the heck they can effect us when they can't even read our minds.

There are also a lot of near death experiences where people found out that reincarnation does exist.  

Probably the best thing to do when reading an NDE is to see it speaks to your heart.

Don:

Add Robert Monroe's third book into the mix (even if you're not a fan). He makes it sound as if his previous incarnations still existed when he met them.  Therefore, it is possible that even though his consciousness was connected to the consciousness of what he refers to as previous lives, his incarnating consciousness still had an independence from his previous selves.

If you speak in a disc/higher self context perhaps each disc self that incarnates, incarnates just once, but shares experiences with other selves once it gets back to the spirit World.  There may be occasions when a self will choose to incarnate again for special reasons.

I can't say that I really know how it works. One person says one thing, and another person says another.  Choosing to believe one view over the other isn't knowledge. It's just a belief.

I'm not too crazy about the idea of having to go through hundred or perhaps even thousands of incarnations.

Quote:

Recoverer wrote:
>>>If you speak in a disc/higher self context perhaps each disc self that incarnates, incarnates just once, but shares experiences with other selves once it gets back to the spirit World.  There may be occasions when a self will choose to incarnate again for special reasons. <<<
This is what I resonate with, and what I wrote about in the "personalities" thread.
There are much possibilities, why try to declare only one for valid? And statistics about NDEs will make us not much smarter regarding certainty how it works with reincernation. It's amazing enough to get a detailed review of the recent life, so has a person who is in a near death situation also get infos about all past lifes, the higher self, the key to heaven and the secrets of the universe?!

Spooky

[Spooky:] "If you speak in a disc/higher self context perhaps each disc self that incarnates, incarnates just once, but shares experiences with other selves once it gets back to the spirit World."
_______________________________________

You make a potentially very important distinction here.  Despite his vehement opposition to  reincarnation,  Emanuel Swedenborg too confirms the reality of group souls in the afterlife.   His view is independently confirmed by classical mediumship.  The fact that this idea finds support from conflicting astral perspectives is a powerful argument for its underlying reality. 

Don

Hi Everyone,

If I may, I'd like to chip in a few thoughts of mine own, not just to the original posters question, but in response to some of the replies given. These are not criticisms, just alternative viewpoints.

Let's begin by defining what we might mean by 'belief' and 'faith', as you cannot have one without the other. "Belief, to my mind, is the 'accepting' of a premise having no veridical proof of its reality; and faith, is the 'expectance' that one's belief will at some time be proved. Both belief and faith are thus wedded by this mindful percept, and as well as forming a self-instructing mechanism, they also become self-reinforcing...", and contribute to the (dis)colouring of experiences and the meanings we garner from them. (**)

This leads me into the first potential discolouring of meaning  from experience:

Berserk wrote: " The one most significant common constant is the role of Jesus.  He often appears to atheists (e.g. Howard Storm) and sometimes even to Muslims.  Conversely, Muhamad and Buddha (Siddartha Gautama) almost never appear to their devotees.  Clearly, Jesus is the major player in the afterlife."

This I feel is wishful thinking deriving from one's belief system. I agree that Jesus plays a significant role, even in my mind as I perceive Him as a fictional character given profound spiritual understandings which He sought to inspire mankind with. Most Muslim encounters with a spiritual being during their NDE have been reported as an encounter with either Allah or Mohammed. I have yet to come across an NDE experient whom was given identification as to whom the spiritual being they encountered is. Usually, it is the experient whom assesses the Being's identification. One's own cutural inculcation plays a significant role in the experient's understanding of their NDE, for prior to the experience, cultural inculcation was the only parallel upon which they could draw for meaning.
The common global themes of the NDE are the core elements of oobe, peaceful feelings, journey through a tunnel, encountering a bright loving light, meeting deceased friends and relatives, encounter with a higher spiritual being, a life review, and a return to one's physical body. Not all the elements are experienced as in one linear experience, it all depends upon the depth of the experience.

Bruce Moen wrote:"But I guess since we go out of body at death there really isn't much difference except the return to the body with an OBE."

I beg to differ, Bruce. The NDE is vastly superior to a simple oobe experience. However, to make a response from you easy, I will tell you that I have had no NDE or oobe experience. I do not, nor ever have wandered off into the other frequency realms in exploration. I will not deny that others believe that they do. I dream. Very lucidly as a matter of fact. I dream in colour and in sound, and I am able to motivate myself through active tasks as I interact with the characters that people my dreams, but I know that I am dreaming lucidly, and I know that it is in my head.

Recoverer wrote:" Add Robert Monroe's third book into the mix (even if you're not a fan). He makes it sound as if his previous incarnations still existed when he met them."

I accept post-mortem consciousness. I accept that when we die physically, we move onto other realms of frequency. With this acceptance, I must acknowledge that the potential for reincarnation for the spirit must be probable. Thus, my own thoughts on this have lead me into the concept that previous incarnations are stored as memories in their own disparate resonant orbits. So in a sense, I can quite agree with Recoverer's statement concerning Monroe. Only the 'Over-Soul' (the conglomeration of all previous incarnations?) would have access to those memories, the 'selfs' residing in those separate resonant life memories will not have correspondence with each other. They will be as different to each other as you and I are.

(**) The lines quoted are what I wrote elsewhere.

Regards All