It is clear from most near death experiences that they have a very different flavor than a lucid dream or dream.  Some characteristics which are mentioned frequently include the "crystal clarity" of perception and thought.  In depth conversations are often encountered, and in many cases, memory appears to actually be enhanced (i.e. acces to memories in the life review). 

In contrast, the vast majority of us (most probably 99+%) have significantly decreased abilities while dreaming in sleep.  Yet, I would not extrapolate much from this fact.  The number of sous stuck in the earthbound planes, I would argue is much smaller than the number who progress on.  We are told by numerous sources that there are deceased relatives, religious figures and others who try to attract our attention from the earliest stages - if we are only open to the experience.  We have been told that this attempt is virtually universal, and that as soon as a person dies, the process is always initiated, automatically.

Those who are unloving/destructive/hateful to others,  may truly initially find themselves in darkness, like Howard Storm did initially.  In thier instances, I think getting stuck in an earthbound plane may be much easier, as they may be unable to see the helpers/loved ones who would normally meet them. 

Swedenborg states that upon death, man is present is his complete human form, with memories intact.  He does mention that those who turn away from God's truth and indulge their own falsities may have problems at this stage:

(from HH chapter 47):



So, I would imagine that the vast majority of average people keep their mental faculties intact enough to see loved ones and not become stuck in the earth plane - unless they embraced such values as embraced evil and destructive tendencies.


Matthew

In the physical World we have our belief systems and we have our physical sense organs.  This enables us to maintain contact with each other even when we have differing belief systems.

In the spirit World we don't have sense organs and rely on our minds to make contact with others. Therefore, our belief systems play a much bigger role in keeping us seperated from others.

In the physical World the circumstances of our lives determine where our bodies are located.

In the spirit World the state of our mind determines where we are located.

Regarding what Rondelle asked:

I would think that the predominant personality takes over. Or perhaps they'll fluctuate just as they did while a person was in the physical.

I don't believe everybody gets stuck. I would guess that most people don't. Consider all the near death experiences where people go to the light or meet a being of light, even when their lives haven't been positive. This matches up with how I was able to experience heaven one night even though I was an atheist at the time. I was still a loving person. Perhaps this is what made the difference for me.

When it comes to a person like Danion Brinkley who was able to make contact with a light being during his NDE even though he wasn't a positive person at the time, perhaps he didn't have a predominant belief system that caused him to be overly influenced. Perhaps some people get bogged down because they have a belief system or a pattern of thought that influences them so strongly they lose the ability to think consciously and make choices.

Perhaps this is what happened to the man who killed all those people at Virginia Tech yesterday. Negative thought patterns got the best of him and he stopped making use of his conscious mind. It is hard to imagine one could do what he did, if one was making use of one's ability to think consciously. 


rondele wrote on Apr 17^th, 2007 at 12:42pm:

There is a qualitative and quantitative change in the mode of awareness and processing as one abandons the usual experiences of reality and goes into either deep meditation, a hallucinatory drug experience (or intoxication at that general level), or the state of dreaming, or psychosis, and evidently, death. 

We normally operate with what is termed "Secondary Process", which includes the ability to handle multiple threads of abstraction, and to deal with similes, resting in a static posture from which to view them. Relative goodness of options is judged from behavioral reinforcers.

When the physical mechanisms the maintain these multiple operations are gone, we are left with only a dynamic system. That system operates on associative functioning only. This is called Primary Process. The good and bad values we had previously become absolutes, black and white, much as a child reasons.

Primary Process objects, actions and experiences are evaluated against the contents of memory which is intact. Memory remains intact because memory is the basis for the dynamic state we exhibit as we attempt to cope. There is no option for stasis, as this would negate the operation of the life force which is, of itself, dynamic. (Maybe this is where Werner von Heisenberg got the idea for the uncertainty principle, in the sense of the instant of reality existing half a Planck bit in the past and half a bit into the future. Hence vacuum energy etc.) Just as the world is necessarily dynamic, we too must be.

As a dynamic operation in which our reality is held in memory, the sum of all experiences up to the point, we operate by associative logic. That which carries similar attribution to something else is equal to it. In this way the schizophrenic sees a typewriter and identifies it as equal to all prior experiences of typewriters.

In this state, a person whose beliefs do not allow forward motion without an association that includes some form of logical self negation (eg. a murderer) will attempt to "tread water" by retaining an attachment to the outside world as an anchor.  This offsets existential dread. To abandon that grip would require an existential negation of some part of the personality.  Hence people get stuck. Bruce's notes on their release are precisely to this point, and his methods offer an alternative association that was not previously accessible, thus allowing motion to a new viewpoint in which associations lead to a better future and bypass existential destruction.

In past life therapy or work with entities we use the same methods as Bruce just stated, the difference being that we use slightly different methods to access the problem states.

All mental health issues seem to arise because of conflicts on a Primary Process level that cannot be resolved through rational thinking because they are "emotional" in nature. Emotions are the dynamic operators of Primary Process. This is the reason that we can't "talk them out of it" when someone is psychotic.

There is remarkably little information about Primary Process because most people talk about what other people said when they talked about what other people say about it etc. However, this is the state in which we enter meditation, and meditators who carefully examine their functions will be able to observe how it works. Unfortunately, we tend to cling to Secondary Process in the same waywe cling to anything familiar, because we don;t understand the alternatives. To understand them requires becoming to that degree insane, dead or whatever. Given this caveat, meditators can filter out secondary phenomena and notice the manner in which their inner functions take on an "absolute" associative quality.

dave

Hi Lights-
I suggest Don can do better with "soul" and "spirit" etc in the Old Testament.

The New Age interpretation often equates soul with the collection of traits that define someone, and spirit with the dynamics that are observed in the behavior of the soul. (This is from Cayce.)

In both this and the afterlife, energy fields can be cited as effective, although it's an oblique reference.

Energy is a derivative concept related to the ability to cause change. It analyzes into force times the range over which the force is effective. (Force in the abstract is the probability for the occurrence of something, usually within a context of other probabilities and tendencies. For distance, think "amount of dimensional change" where "dimension" means any measurable or sensible attribute.) Force causes acceleration attached to some part of our definition by which this dimension is altered. In the physical, that means that some part of our sensory system is accelerated (like wiggling the little hairs in the semicircular canal for music) and we perceive a sensation.

In the abstract, such as when we are not "extended" as an embodiment, a change in energy means that some part of the definition of our state is altered. (A Bell Labs engineer, Claude Shannon, used thermodynamic theory to demonstrate that information change, or change in entropy, is equivalent to physical change.) We sense the change with respect to our present definitions, and especially with respect to those definitions of state that we wish to retain, such as "I am lovable," or "I am one with God," or the most major issue, "I exist".

With a body we use changes in the body as the receptors. Without a body (or when thinking in Primary Process mode) we use changes in definition of self-state as the receptor system. The "embodiment" of self in the abstract is derived from the collection of states of other stuff in context, since our proper embodiment is lacking. So long as we are in accord with those states, we can extract our own definition from them by attaching to those portions of contextual states that support our definition of self-state.

Life is a dynamic, we exist in the crack between yesterday and tomorrow, which is the nebulous moment of "Now". Thus we are perpetually driven forward. When we can find no available place to move our identification that agrees with our self-state definition, we lose the parts of our definition that are incompatible.

One way out for those of us who are highly discordant with the natural world is to cling to phenomena of the material world we knew, hence we have earthbound spirits in existential crisis.  We also can cling to cycles of definition, and become "stuck". Or we can cling to another person's psyche, and become "entities".

The other way out is to come into global accord with everything, which means that we can go anywhere in creation, and we merge into the general nature of God.

Consciousness through this process remains as a Primary Process phenomenon, in which we move our identity from one "place" to the next, where "place" means subset of universal attributes. We are defined much as we are in dreams, by emotional tendencies, attachments and associations - so we still "think", but in limited and fundamental terms only.

(It's actually possible to express this in symbolic terms as a proof.)

Hope that is more clarifying than obscuring-
dave

Going back to Dave's comment,

Dave, how does Primary Process relate to the more generic meaning of  'soul'?
Would someone outside your field see them as same or similiar? Are you saying that in the afterlife we can expect primary process to take over?

Do the emotions that are generated from primary process come from conflicts when love is shortchanged, and primary process then reacts to this lack? Much as soul might measure events by how much love is involved?

I realize that in your field you probably cannot define soul, but you're among friends here, Dave.    Can you speak alittle more 'afterlifische' and keep all your content too?

Bets

Wow, Dave!  I feel like a freshman that just stepped into a post-grad class.  I know I want to take the course, but I sure hope you’ll bear with me while I try to formulate a question.

A dynamic system implies to me that change is the primary element as opposed to any static state.  Without a body, awareness of changes in self-state is the means by which we our identity.  Then, history plus change or interaction sort of becomes our mode of operation.  If I haven’t garbled it too much, then any primary process action would subsequently result in a newly created history that reflects that new action or change?  If this is correct, wouldn’t there be some significant degree of autonomy beyond either getting stuck or clinging to another psyche?  Perhaps I don’t understand what you meant by “cling to another psyche”.

Your discussion of primary process was an eye opener.  And 42 is a nice summary.   Many thanks.

Rob

Before discussing Howell Vincent's retrieval insights, I will present this consensus of Classical Channeling, Swedenborg {ES], and some NDEs and OBEs as to what is permanently or temporarily "lost" during postmortem transitions.  Somne of this material is reposted from my ADC memory thread.

CLASSICAL CHANNELING: WHAT IS LOST IN THE TRANSITION FROM THE SUMMERLAND [FOCUS 24-26] TO THE FIRST HEAVEN?

“The usual picture of life after death as a passage from one sphere to another, each more refined than the preceding one [is inaccurate]....It is more accurate to think of the process of passing through a mumber of layers of consciousness, and of man as not yet fully aware of himself as a many-levelled being, and who at these early stages is much less than his full self (Paul Beard, "Living On."
108).”

“...The former consciousness will gradually melt away as irrelevant.  This is an aspect of the putting away of childish things of which St. Paul  speaks.  To a certain degree the traveler can move up and down within these layers of consciousness.  As he progresses, more and more of his attention rests in his more refined levels.  But a part of him may still belong to a lower level of
himself which he may not yet have shaken off (Paul Beard, 110)."

WHAT IS LOST IN THE TRANSITION FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND HEAVEN?

“Now he has to get ready to shed a large part of this more familiar self....The traveller must face the...demise of the personal self, because it is becoming no longer tenable to live within its limitations...What is meant by the `personal self?’  It is the sum of all the person’s memories of the experiences, thoughts, and feelings which made up his sense of himself...during his past life on
earth...It is a kind of oblivion, but a conscious oblivion...The man leaves his desire body.  He is perfectly conscious.  He passes into a great stillness...He cannot think.  No faculty is alive, yet  he knows that he is...and his soul is filled with a wonderful peace (Paul Beard, 123, 130-31).”

Independent corroboration from Swedenborg’s astral trevels challenges the assumption that discarnate spirits have access to their full earth memory in higher planes. The  reader must ask himself how ADCs and channeling from these planes remains possible in light of this problem.  Certainly these troubling insights shed light on why our deceased loved ones so rarely contact us
in an impressively paranormal and verifiable way.   I am not trying to discredit ADCs.  But integrity requires us to come to terms with evidence that contradicts our preferred astral explorers and their comforting insights.   We must come to terms with the incoherence of the overall evidence from astral exploration and seek a fresh synthesis.   Here is a sampling os some ES quotes about the status of memory in “the World of Spirits,” a realm “below” the Heavens:

“We have two memories, an inner and an outer, or a natural one and a spiritual one. We are not aware that we have this inner memory.  How much better the inner memory is than the outer one!  The contents of our outer memory are in the world’s light, while the contents of our inner memory are in heaven’s light.  It is because of our inner memory that we can think and talk intelligently and rationally.  Absolutely everything we have thought, said, done, seen, and heard is inscribed on our inner memory....Things that have become second nature to us and part of our life and therefore have been erased from our outer memory are in our inner memory (HH #463, note b)."

After death, adult memory “stays fixed and then goes dormant; but it still serves their thinking after death as an outmost plane because their thought flows into it.  This is why the nature of this plane and the way their rational activity answers to its contents determines the nature of the individual after death (HH #345)."

".All that remain are the rational abilities that now serve as a basis for thinking and talking.   We actually take with us our entire natural memory, but its contents are not open to our inspection and do not enter into our thought as when we were living in this world...To the extent that our spirit has become rational by means of our insights and learning in this world, we are rational after
our departure from the body (HH #355).”
   
“The reason our outer memory goes dormant as far as material things are concerned is that they cannot be recreated.  Spirits and angels [= discarnate people] actually talk from the affections and consequent thoughts of their minds, so they cannot utter anything that does not square with these...I have talked with any number of people who were regarded as learned in the world
because of their knowledge of such ancient languages as Hebrew and Greek and Latin, but had not developed their rational functioning by means of the things that were written in thos  languages. Some of them seemed as simple as people who did not know anything about those languages; some of them seemed dense, though there still remained a pride as though they were
wiser than other people (HH #464).”

“I have also talked with some people who had believed in the world that wisdom depends on how much we have in our memory and who have therefore filled their memories to bursting.  They talked almost exclusively from those items, which meant that they were not talking for themselves, but for others; and they had not developed any rational functioning by means of these
matters of memory.   Some of them were dense, some silly, with no grasp of truth whatever (HH #464).”

“Our rational faculty is like a garden or flower bed, like newly tilled land.  Our memory is the soil, information and experiential learning are the seeds, while heaven’s light and warmth make them productive...There is no germination unless heaven’s light, which is divine truth, and heaven’s warmth, which is divine love, are let in.  They are the only source of rationality (HH #464).”   

“One particular spirit lamented the fact that he could not remember much of what he had known during his physical life.  He was grieving over the pleasure he had lost because it had been his chief delight.  He was told, though, that he had not lost anything at all and that he knew absolutely everything.  In the world where he was now living, he was not allowed to retrieve things like that.
It should satisfy him that he could now think and talk much better and more perfectly without immersing his rational functioning in dense clouds, in material and physical concerns, the way he had before, in concerns that were useless in the kingdom he had now reached (HH #465).”

“Since the natural objects that reside in our memory cannot be reproduced in a spiritual world, they become dormant the way they do when we are not thinking about them.  Even so, they can be reproduced when it so pleases the Lord (HH #461).” 

Consider, then, how George Ritchie's NDE and ES's astral insights challenge common New Age perspectives about the ease of contacting our deceased loved ones in higher planes and finding them with their earth memories intact.  Christ takes Ritchie on a tour of an astral educational plane below Heaven:

“WHATEVER ELSE THESE PEOPLE MIGHT BE, THEY APPEARED UTTERLY AND
SUPREMELY SELF-FORGETFUL--ABSORBED IN SOME VAST PURPOSE BEYOND
THEMSELVES.  Through open doors I glimpsed enormous rooms filled with complex equipment.  In several of the rooms hooded figures bent over intricate charts and diagrams, or sat at the controls of elaborate consoles flickering with lights....I felt that some vast experiment was being pursued, perhaps dozens and dozens of such experiments [69-70] .”

Ritche's NDE description seems incompatible with the chatty ease with which mediums interrupt the lives of discarnates and seek confirmation from their memories of their earthly lives.  His description hints at the insight thst the inhabitants of this educational plane have an altered state of consciousness that cuts them off from their normal earthly memories.  His reports cohere nicely
with Robert Bruce’s OBE insights into memory problems created by shifts in focus from one astral plane to another. 

In "Astral Dynamics." OBE adept, Robert Bruce, claims to have discovered a reason for this  troublesome memory loss:

“When present, the base level.. replaces any higher levels of consciousness and overwrites any memories gained independently by those levels of consciousness on higher planes.  ..The higher level memories still exist after the event, but they are driven into inaccessible levels of the subconsicious mind and memory.  The overall effect is that a projection continues from that moment on as if it had just started.  ...The lowest level of consciousness always replaces and overwrites any higher level of consciusness and effectively wipes out all trace of its memories at the moment of reintegration (75).”.

‘Memories from higher levels of consciousness may not even be in sync with what the physical brain is capable of recognizing and storing as viable memories. ...The only parts of high-level experiences that are storable as recallable memories are those parts the physical brain is capable of recognizng and converting inot base-level format...The above factor accounts for the...symbols, images, and feelings that are sometimes remembered after high-lveel OBEsand dreams, instead of more recognziable OBE and dream memories.  This, if true, goes a long way toward explaining the...metaphorical nature of prophetic OBEs, visions, and dreams, and why these areso difficult to
understand and interpret (77).”

This theory fits well with Robert’s observations about the memory problems of discarnate spirits who "descend” to the Healing Center to be with their loved ones.  In my view the need for such a “descent” already implies the imadequacy of the implied Monroe reduction of “Heaven” to Focus
27.  On the other hand, these descending spirits must have some ongoing memory contact with their loved ones on Earth.  Otherwise, why would the former be prompted to descend for a visit?   And how elsde do they discover the new arrival of their loved ones to the Healing Center?   Robert’s OBE observations about spirits descending to the Healing Center seem most significant.  He reports:

“Many of the people/ spirits I have met there seem to be quite real.  All are visiting or waiting for a patient in the hospital...Spirits I have spoken to in this situation do not seem to be aware of the length of time that has elapsed since they passed over, or of many details concerning the afterlife since that  time. MEMORIES OF THEIR EARTHLY LIFE ALSO SEEM VAGUE, MUCH LIKE HOW A HALF-FORGOTTEN DREAM IS REMEMBERED  BY A LIVING PERSON."

“Many spirits only seem to be aware of their present reality, that of being in only the hospital scenario for an indeterminate length of  time.  Some spirits, however, do have vague memories of their earthly life, and of coming from other dimensional areas; but have so far given only very sketchy details.  Often they will speak of a warm, brightly-lit, interesting place where they have
many friends and loved ones, but with little more details than this.  The most common response I get from asking spirits what it’s like where they come from is: `It’s really lovely there and everyone is so nice.  I don’t understand this.  I’m very sorry.  I know it well and can picture it in my head, but I just can’t describe it to you.’”

Evidently, descending spirits encounter the same memory problems that earthly astral explorers do upon returning from higher astral planes.   So here is my queston for readers?  Are not these memory problems inconsistent with ADCs from higher planes and especially with the chatty ease mediums have in channeling deceased loved ones on demand from higher planes?   Perhaps, we
need a mew model for understanding ADC and channled contacts.  Perhaps, the mmories of discarnatel loved ones can be tapped and experienced as direct communication, when in fact these loved ones are unaware of the contact.   

Don

Don:

Does this mean if a person dies and tries to share memories with a former beloved grand parent, his or her grand parent won't be able to remember he or she? Would the grand parent ask: "Who in heaven are you? We don't remember nuttin around here? What's this World you keep talking about? What have you been smoking? Smoking? What's smoking? Man I'm losing it. My memory doesn't work like it used to. Used to? What do I mean by used to?"

And this is how it goes in the land of dementia.

Or on the other hand  , perhaps spirits take care of memories in a manner that supports their spiritual development. Their earth based memories are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

You wrote the below about George Ritchie:
'WHATEVER ELSE THESE PEOPLE MIGHT BE, THEY APPEARED UTTERLY AND SUPREMELY SELF-FORGETFUL--ABSORBED IN SOME VAST PURPOSE BEYOND THEMSELVES."

I read George Ritchies's book and didn't get the same impression. "Forgetul" doesn't mean they couldn't remember their former lives as humans. It simply means that they were completely engrossed in their work. People in the physical can do the same thing when they really dedicate themselves to something. Certainly they can remember about the rest of their lives when they change their focus of attention. The fact of how you're using the above statement as a basis for your argument makes me wonder how objective you're being about this issue.

DocM wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 6:03pm:

The memory loss theory is B.S. I agree, with you Matthew..

[Duh Bears:] "The memory loss theory is B.S. I agree, with you Matthew."

It seems like most of yoiur replies are mindless echoes of views that reinforce your prejudices.  The consensus of Swedenborg's astral insights, Classical Channeling, Robert Bruce's OBEs, and some NDEs will not be routed by your dngmatic posturing.   But let's press you to actually frame an orignal thought.
Why are ADCs so rare are the first year of a loved one's passing?  

Don

Don,

Berserk wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 7:57pm:


  I don't see how the lack of repeated and unmistakable communication from a deceased person to an earthy loved one demonstrates anything that could be described as "one of the best arguments AGAINST an afterlife."  Lack of such communication only demonstrates that one of the two people involved in such communication, the dead person OR the physically living person, is for some reason unable to participate, but, it doesn't "prove" which of the two participants lost the ability.  It could be as simple as something about our existence within physical reality makes it extremely difficult for us to be aware of the deceased person's attempt to communicate.   What could that thing be?

Perhaps someone on the other side of the Afterlife/No Afterlife debate could say:

If incarnate souls retain the same consciousness and sensibilities that they had when they existed in the Afterlife/Prelife, they would repeatedly and unmistakably communicate with their departed loved ones.   Their failure to do so is one of the best arguments AGAINST the possibility of maintaining the same consciousness and sensibilities during incarnation within physical reality --unless they are prevented from doing so by loss of memory (temporary or permenant), by a limited astral consciousness that prevents such contacts, by a lack of knowledge about how to make such a contact, or by strong spirit teaching that such contact is ill-advised.  

Maybe it is we the physically living who have lost something at birth Here?  

Maybe which hypothesis we side with says more about how our own beliefs color and distort the meaning of whatever the evidence might prove?  

Bruce

Don:

You make it sound like they would have no choice in the manner. If you crossed over would you continually try to make contact with the people you used to know, or would you allow them to live their lives while you continued with your own?

Even when they do try to make contact not everybody is able to communicate with them. I didn't always have the ability. It wasn''t until my energetic system and chakras were developed  that I obtained the ability.  

Does Flushing New York mean anything to you? These words might be a random occurence.

Berserk wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 7:57pm:

Oh yes - I forgot to add, that Bruce' Book Five is available. It tells you how to find the barn.

My copy was even autographed!

d

I Just now was going to post up an article somewhat related to this topic I'm reading here. thought it was more than coincidence. I'll call it Emotions and DNA. no, maybe I should call it spiritualized DNA.
this idea to bring the logic of biological science to marry the emotional spiritalized human to see this is a concept of connections of Pantheism. (my new word I have to look up)

love, alysia

recoverer wrote on Apr 20^th, 2007 at 6:55pm:

Nice post, and I agree with you a 100 %.. Because my good ol' deceased gpa tries to get my attention by giving me signs and visiting me in my dreams.. One dream I received PUL, from him!! It was amazing!!!

Thanks for the encouragement Rob-Here's some quick ways to experience Primary Process without the use of drugs or becoming dead -

(1) Go dancing. As you dance you stop thinking "right foot, left foot" and  just DO IT. That's primary.
(2) Lift a weight. As you lift, notice that your mind shuts down and everything is focussed on DOING.
(3) Have a really fantastic sexual encounter. Everything dissolves into DOING and BEING.
(4) Meditate - the state in which the "things of the world fall away" leaves a primary residue.
(5) Go rescue a few stuck souls and notice how they are thinking. That's Primary Process, 2nd person.
(6) Or one of my favorites, D T Suzuki told us, "When you drop fart, you don't think. It just come."
(7) (If you are in good health) hold your breath until you suffocate. (Ugh! - but it works.) A healthy body will reset and return to life.
(8) The process of past life regression leads to a primary level of functioning for both the "regresee" and also the spooks encountered in the spirit world.

The problem with trying to do this intellectually is that the experience is not on a level that is intellectually accessible. That's why the Zen people invented koans. I can load myself down with quotations galore, and I can talk about Hindu Koshas, Spiritual levels of the Astral World, how it feels to dream, and how the banks of the river form a "memory" that resembles our own, but in the end they are nothing but  ideas on how life feels, and often only with respect to other people who tried to express them using a language inadequate to the task - and that is most definitely NOT primary. In fact, it usually isn't even good logic or an accurate rendition of the underlying feelings.

Personally, when I start to feel that I really can tell the world how it is, I  recall the tale of the ass laden with textbooks. The brilliant astronomer Eddington suggested that the solution to this is to make certain that we can insert numbers into our ideas and use them to figure something out. If not, all we have is interesting daydreams.

My personal work is to reduce these ideas to a topology of self-arranging, self-originating, points of information in a more or less Riemannian space, using only probability and relational terms. If you really like math, it offers a wonderful problem in dynamic set operations. The resulting model also happens to explain creativity, scientific growth and similar stuff, which is where I started my inquiry. My 1987 PhD thesis in that area is available at University Microfilms, or their successor, but you'd have to dig a bit for it in the "irregular" section. It gives the basic primary mechanisms in detail, but is awfully basic. There's an update in one chapter and Appendix of my "Developmental Psychopathology" (2006 - BookSurge.com, a text for regression hypnotherapists) and I'm working on a far more general version with more of the corners tucked in for past life researchers.

My suggestion is to not go and try to read about it. Instead, meditate. Experience primary process at the level of nirvakalpa samadhi, and be done with the whole issue. Then it makes sense, and all the preceeding bafflegab falls away.

dave

dave

Juditha - a question -

I don't know what trance level you work at, but as a person actively using these skills, you definitely are using "primary processing"when you contact other spirits. Would you be inclined to agree with my general statement that we "live our thoughts when using primary process" as opposed to doing it abstractly in our heads?  I'd expect this to be true of both the medium and the spirits contacted.

To my experience this makes sense, but I'd be interested in your views.
d

Hi Dave I receive thoughts from spirit ,that are communicating with me and also visions in my mind ,thats how i talk to spirit,i only just read what you wrote me as i would have answered you earlier,spirit give me clues who they are by using there earth memories. Sometimes i actually see the spirit im talking to but i see them from a side way glance mostly and sometimes a front veiw as well. Ive actually had my hair gently pulled and taps on my forehead and sometimes my shirt has been lifted up slightly by spirit.

Its hard sometimes to work out ,whether some are your thoughts and not spirit as every medium goes through this and that is why i write excactly what i receive,i have to trust in spirit,which i do now but i used to have ny doubts sometimes.

I remember when i went on stage the first time ,this woman walked in and straight away i was given the names Rosemary and Daisie and shown this old farm house scene with a swing and animals and i thought "no its me whats thinking this and i said nothing to this woman,then i thought "no i have to trust in spirit" so i told this woman these two names of rosemary and daisie and of the farm scene and she said that rosemary and daisie were her two aunts and they brought her up and she lived on a farm with a swing.So ive learned to trust in myself as a medium.

Love and God bless  Love Juditha

Hi Juditha-  I'll try to be more clear -

The term "primary process" is an ancient Freudian inheritance that sort of vanished when B F Skinner came out with studies in behavioral modification through rewards. What it initially referred to is the level of function of the  inner "self" before there is any thinking or other specific training to get along. In the same way, primary processing is the kind of self directing and orienting operation that we use when we are in a deep meditation in which the body and learned coping mechanisms aren't being used - or when we are wandering about in the astral without a body and responding to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Primary process is not a popular concept in modern psychology because almost nobody looks "inside the mind" any more, preferring to use Skinner's idea that the mind is just a "black box" that acts like a computer, and can be programmed. That's where a lot of modern therapy focusses - as well as giving pills to change functioning. The result is that therapy is oriented to learning to cope with a problem, as opposed to getting rid of it, with chemicals to numb us so we don't care, and we can return to work as productive members of society. Thus we are generating a huge army of the "walking wounded" who live on mind-altering medications.

Psychologists who do spiritual work, and psychoanalysts in general (this is where I got caught up in these ideas), are generally "intrapsychic theorists", meaning that we are interested in the inner workings of the mind, and the manner in which mental disorders are explained by conflicts and
circular definitions in the primary process level. We work to totally resolve issues in exactly the same way as Bruce gets souls unstuck. The process takes effort and time, but actually gets rid of the conflicts and so on by working with emotional components, as opposed to thinking. The fact that psychoanalytic therapy turns out to be essentially the same as soul retrieval interests me, since it suggests the way that everything in the spiritual world that involves the life and times of the soul must occur.

I was trying to find a way to express this, and was suggesting that one way to do it would be to think of it as "living the thought", in the sense that in that state we tend to think and act through total involvement of our entire being. The idea that I was toying with was that your access to Spirit must be in a state of meditation, that is, with the "inner voice" quieted so that you can perceive clearly. (Some people call this the "sound of silence".)  When the inner voice, which is the mechanism of abstract thinking, is silent, only the primary level of function remains.

My basic question was whether you would agree with me that the nature of function at this level is not like abstract thought, but rather that "thinking" is the same as acting, and involves a total involvement of our entire "being". - (Bad description, language is inadequate here, but I hope that you can follow my thought.) So I am suggesting that on the primary level of the existence of the soul, thought and action are equivalent, and occur in the face of raw emotion.

If that makes sense, I'm interested in what your feelings are.

PUL
dave

Rather than debate what has been alleged in this thread, I will focus on the astral vision of Rev. Howell Vincent and his family during their deathbed vigil, first over his daughter Rea and later over her new husband Herbert.  This couple died from wounds sustained in a car crash during their honeymoon in 1941.  In this post I will quote excerpts form Howell's report on Rea's passing.

"Unseen and silent, a lovely procession of joyous brides were always there undergirding her with the power of their triumphant joy as little by little she detached her spirit body from its broken physical counterpart...Little by little the temporal substance was transmuted for her into eternal substance." 

"Three times during those darkest hours of her lonely struggle, Rea turned to me and asked, `Woofus, how much longer has this got to to last?'  I replied, `Just a little while. Walk  bravely, my darling, ...underneath are the everlasting arms.'  At the last she said, `But I cannot see you now; I am trying to see you, Daddy.'  `Yes,' I replied, `you will soon see clearly the beauty that is all around you.'...At that moment of Rea's triumph over mortality the gracious presence or those brides, her celestial escort, was clearly revealed to her..."

"At that time, Rea was standing in the hospital room beside us.  Her physical body lay on the bed still and lifeless, while she stood beside it in her spirit body that had been derived from the physical by transmutation.  These processes of transmutation had been active for years but more especially so since the accident...Brilliant light of many colors poured down upon her and she grew in grace and power and radiance as she absorbed this light..."

"We of earth were permitted to help her.  First we had to release her from the bonds of our fervent desire to keep her with us.  And second, we had to help her faith by lifting her with our faith.  We had to assist her to gain faith-altitude, as it were, from which she could glide over the chasm on this her first celestial flight. ...Across the chasm we could see a group of people watching with joyous interest. ...Foremost in this group stood Nellie, Rea's mother.  There is no describing her radiant beauty..."

"We asked Nellie, `Why don't you come and take hold of Rea and help her start?'  Nellie shook her head; that was not allowed; no help could be given from her side.  Rea had to make her own crossing 'in Light,' with such help as we through love and faith could give her from this side.  The chasm that Rea still had to cross, in part resembled..the barrier of an inferiority complex that has to be attacked and overcome by the person himself."

"She [Rea] turned to us with a childish curtsy, smiled and waved, then turning toward her mother Nellie on those gleaming highlands, she leaned forward as though to take a step and one of her brothers standing just behind her gave her a gentle, loving push, and instantly she was gliding in the rhythm and formation of the bride's ritual dance.  Over the valley now robbed of its shadows, a bride among brides, danced our beautiful Rea into Emmanuel's Land, into the arms of her mother, Nellie ("Lighted Passage," pp. 79-91)." 

In my next planned post, I will report Howell's excerpts about Herbert's passing.

Don

With respect, Don, I think it implies a bit less, and we get back to the problem of verification.

(1) There is the implication that there exists  a "mental body" of various strengths, and that there exists a "spirit body" (aka "Spirit body of Light") and that these are differentiable in a (hopefully) non-trivial manner.

(2) There is the implication that there exist spiritual (?) doctors and nurses who operate on spiritual bodies in a manner seemingly analogous to physical practices.

(3) It implies that "brighter shades" exist, and that they are meaningful.

(4) There is the implication of a "chasm" across which the "spirit body" had to get across, but we do not know its nature nor why to cross it.

(5) We are told that some problems have no visible solution and that this can disturb the individual making the transition across the chasm.

(6) (a) It implies that the "spirit body of Light" is transmutable in a manner that permits development. (b) and that this development extends beyond the mental plane. 

(7) The existence of a mental plane is implied, and is located below the "spiritual heavens".

(8) It is implied that the spirit body might be impotent.

(9) It is implied that dead relatives may be present at death, but their abilities are limited by laws in that place.

(10) Spirit bodies are given relative ages, such as "infant".

(11) The spirit body is implied to give off vibrations by which it can be recognized.

(12) Contact interaction between spirits is implied.

(13) The body of a spirit is like the physical body.

(14) There is an embodiment called a "resurrection body" which occurs through some kind of "transmutation".

I don't wish to criticize the literary value of the selection, but it seems necessary to point out that it uses a vast number of terms without any type of definition.  To try to draw conclusions from this array of ill-defined concepts seems to me to be a poor idea.

This criticism does not argue that there is anything wrong with the selection nor its content, but simply that we can't really tell what it means.

In your conclusions, I'd suggest that whatever the mental body is and what discarding it might mean, and by what alternative  it is to be replaced may be true, but will remain meaningless until we can define what these terms mean.

I do not understand what the "upward 'ascent'" actually means. I can only assume that you mean some sort of spiritual induction into a place that is "above us" - and I don't know how
above" might be defined.

The selection states that there are limitations to what some of the characters could do. That this raises questions about being incarnate or discarnate is a non sequitur.

Similarly, questions about the presence or absence of Herbert's dead relations are your own, and carry the implicit assumption that not mentioning them means that they were not present. Your suggestions about reasons and their importance for not being present are speculation on your part.

Your statement that, "The point is this: the absence of loved ones in this greeting party is as important an issue as those who are present. " is a non sequitur.

I have great respect for people who are widely read and who know a lot of facts. Years ago I read or scanned the entire U C Berkeley Psych Library's Metaphysics section, every book. That is a great way to develop sensitivity, awareness of the state of the art, and common idioms in use. But it is not a way to do science, and in particular, it is not a substitute for methodology. That fact that ten million people write books claim, on the basis of well documented personal experience, that all crows are black birds, is not science. It is merely opinion - not even theory, because there is no test by which to falsify it. Maybe one albino crow lives in Patagonia, I don't know.

When doing bibliometric research, it might be more useful to  give terms and usage freqencies, as well as the associations used that seem to define what the terms mean, and how much variance is expected within and between authors etc. However, that does not validate the terms as having a real meaning - merely that a lot of people use them. As an example, a lot of French people use the term "Merde", but they do not actually imply an experience of excrement, nor that they have stepped in some etc.

Personally, I'd like to see where you go with these ideas after developing the ability to meditate deeply - at the "sound of silence" level and beyond, and after you have had some of these experiences. This is not an attempt to be snotty (God knows I have a long way to go!), but to encourage you to actually go and see, rather than quoting experiences with which you have limited familiarity. For some of us this is an almost impossible task (I am the worst case example I know of) but it can be done. I earnestly wish you all possible success in this venture.

Respectfully,
dave

Quote:


Don, it seems I may not be off topic after all, so I'll ask my question again.  Could you give the meaning of spirit and soul from the Old and New Testaments? 

Thanks,
Kathy

ok so i've read through all these pages and have tried to follow along best i can, however i'm a newbie and still have a lot more learning. forgive me if what i'm about to ask is redundant.

as the story goes, when someone dies, they are more often than not greeted by a loved one(s). if this is the case, it would imply they have memory of the person who just passed over - enough so that they would want to greet and be near them. furthermore, it's my understanding that loved ones may decide to stay together in their afterlife travels. why would one be compelled to do so if their earthly memories have faded?

Bird:

Going by my communications with spirits, memories are retained as needed. In fact, I've found that the spirits I've communicated with have much better mental facility than we do. Some might claim that just about anytime a person communicates with a spirit they are communicating with demons who are pretending to be something other than what they are.  I believe there are some spirits who try to deceive. But I've also found in numerous ways that there are loved based spirits who communicate with people in this World.

Don has claimed that light beings make a point of not communicating to people in the World in order to prevent them from communicating with deceptive spirits. This suggests that people who have the courage to make contact with sprits for positive reasons, are completely abandoned by the love based spirits that exist.  This doesn't seem likely and doesn't match my experience. There is no way a deceptive spirit could duplicate some of the xperiences I've had while in contact with spirits.


bird wrote on May 15^th, 2007 at 8:32pm:

Hi Don,

Here is a possible alternative: perhaps the deceased move to an ever-higher vibratory level.  It may become difficult, then, to communicate with our lower vibrations; hence, it would also be more difficult for us to detect them even if they would willingly contact us.

In my own case, my husband contacted me 21 years after his death.  Later, I learned that the date of contact not only coincided with a time of emotional turmoil for me, but was the very day his father chose to commit suicide.  I have not found out if
the time synchronized also as his two remaining sons are not certain about the time.

Last fall, when I was at my husband's gravesite I had an unusual physical phenomenon.
I distinctly felt something like waves of pulsating electricity encompassing me from the ground on one side up and around and down to the ground on the other side.  What
was even more remarkable was that it felt as though  these pulsing vibrations were on a sort of invisble ruffle extending outward from my body.

Another unusual occurrence was that before I went to Europe to restore his grave
and reconnect with the remaining members of his family, I received an avalanche
of junk mail addressed to a person with an unusual name.  Imagine how I felt to
discover a person with that name as a member of the family in Europe.    I no longer
receive mail addressed to that person.

Best wishes in the move west.

How awful, Dave,

To lose our ability for abstract thinking after death........I for one will not take it as a given, and will try to find another path.  I can understand, on the one hand how attachment to this life and the physical world could prevent one from learning valuable lessons and moving on.  On the other, I believe that the love we carry with us of our loved ones can not easily be forgotten, no matter what our path.

Augo has an interesting quote from Steiner on the board where he describes the stages after death, and the living of one's earthly memories, which, unbound from a physical body take on an existence of their own in the astral.  I'm not sure I like everything he has to say about it as well.

We still have not reconciled Don's chatty mediums with the loss of memories and abstract thinking that others on the board find.  As such, I will stubbornly cling to the belief that loss of abstract reasoning and memory is not a given in the afterlife, and that there may be other forces at work here.  If the purpose of our existence is based on love, I don't see why complete loss of memory is necessary or loss of the ability to think clearly or use intelligence in an abstract way.  There has to be more to consciousness than that.


Matthew

Relating to what Dave, Doc and Augo have recently wrote, I'm adding some thoughts, without coming to a definite conclusion.

When I had my night in heaven experience I was an atheist. If somebody tried to tell me that God and the afterlife existed, I would've said no way. Yet when I had my experience no effort to convince me was required. Divine truth was completeley obvious. I've had other experiences where the truth of the matter was simply known beyond what my beliefs told me. Many NDEs have confirmed what I have found.

On the other hand, while we dream, our abstract thinking gets lost to an extent where we usually don't tend to notice that we are dreaming, even though we experience things that contradict our physical life. I've found that my basic moral structure stays alive during a dream. If I consider a particular kind of activity inappropriate while in the physical, I'm likely to find it inappropriate during a dream. I've found that unfavorable tendencies I haven't let go of completely will manifest in a dream, even though for the most part I prevent them from manifesting in the physical. After analyzing over 1,000 dreams during the past two years or so, I believe that dreams are created by our higher selves.  Therefore, the factor of not questioning things that are inconsistent with what we experience while in the physical, might be a matter of how our higher self feeds us information.  I believe there are limits. If we aren't open to seeing something, our higher self won't force it on us.

I've found that a lot of people aren't good at abstract thinking while in the physical. They are quick to react to what their overall psychological conditioning tells them. If a person gets in the habit of stepping back and trying to look at things honestly while in the physical, this tendency might carry over into the after life. Sort of related to this, sometimes I have meditations where I experience all kinds of things but don't get effected, because I take the position of the one who experiences everything. I take such a position by feeling it, rather than thinking about it. Since this type of experience doesn't happen all of the time, I believe my higher self is getting me used to taking the position of my awareness self. It is at this level that true intelligence and detachment exists. If you want to remember who you really are when you die, try to remember who you are while alive.

Dave,

I have experienced moments of deep awareness in calm meditation.  Pure awareness.  While I appreciate that, I know for a fact that you and I value our ability to think and reason, whether based on physical reality or not. 

Your goals of understanding involve, by necessity some abstract line of reasoning.  I do not accept therefore, as fact that in spirit we would be incapable of juggling various lines of thought or abstractions.  I agree that we may lose the ability to speak of our elxperience in terms of being a physical entity, and as such, our descriptions and idease may be changed.

But I will not buy into this idea that most spirits lose their ability to reason or be what we consider to be rational, thinking creatures.  Cogito ergo sum.  I think therefore I am.   My thoughts while presented in the physical plane do not arise from there now, and hence when I pass away from the physical, these thoughts should still find expression, even the abstract ones.


M

Hi all, my, I just decided to look over this thread and find it kickin! it is putting some things in perspective for me regarding the area of retrievals and that state of mind. I find in retrievals a merge takes place in the energy field of the retriever and the retrievee. my first retrieval I was cautioned by a guide to not get overwhelmed by the emotion of the retrievee and I am calling an emotion a field of energy.
Thanks for my lesson today Dave in primary process.
______

Primary process is the operational description for emotional thinking.  It's difficult for me to express verbally because I always use symbols working at home.
______



Without a body, our definition is the sum of all the relationships associated with being who we were in the past. Thus, without a body, we are just history, plus a dynamic tendency for interaction.


Emotion arises as the logical projection of our history, and manifests as the dynamic. Were the available realityinto which to next move our existence to not support all of our definitions, then those fall off. This is sensed as some kind of suffering.



The reason that we "live the thought" in primary processing is that the mechanism by which it is handled is our collection of attributive relationships with the world, so that these are altered as we alter our attitudes. In this way, the physical body is involved in emotions when we have one, and when we don't, our definition as an historically supported event is altered.
________
Were we to be able to exist as a static structure, matters might be different, but our existence is in the dynamic between instants of external definition. Thus, as we "live the thought" we also alter attitudes and the choices made. The options for participation in some of the other available future states are more likely in some cases, less so in others. But we are forced, willy nilly, to participate, because only in the dynamic do we exist.
____

Hi Doc- When you dream, you use primary functions, just as when you live in any other world in which the spirit is awake, but the body is not being used. Some of us have "lucid dreams" in which we are presented with the immediacy of an event. Now watch what happens when we're awake - First the event occurs. Next we prehend it as it is in and of itself. (Primary) Then we interpret and evaluate. (reaction). Finally we cast into terms of other ideas in an interpretive manner., (secondary) - Hang onto that sequene for a moment and consider what happens when we try to make love but spend the time focussing on interpretations of what we are doing. "Spectatoring" in that manner is the primary cause of primary anorgasmia.  To make love is a primary process activity, and needs absolutely no secondary thought. That does not detract from the pleasure - in fact, I'd say that it adds, since it eliminates the intermediate efforts to capture the ineffable nature of the experience.

Anyway - the "sound of silence" state is the first major permanent attainment of meditation. Once attained, the mind does not operate as an abstract observer, but rather interacts at the point of experience. Afterwards we can analyze it - and unfortunately, our ability to handle abstractions is pretty poor. Thus, we lose something that was there when all we did was to have the experience. And if we try to "explainb" it to someone else, things really get mucked up.

Alyssia- - you understand what I'm trying to say, and doubtless agree that we lack adequate words for the task. However, I'm trying to deal with normal psychic states, not psychotic ones. But the latter are always the product of conflicted primary factors - interesting that you picked up on that.

I on't see whay you would be denied entry into psychology. That's a major ripoff!!  - I mean, it's not like my efforts to get into Girl Scouts - whether singly or in groups - But there may be a parallel hidden there anyhow, considering that you got screwed anyway, so to say.

What you refer to as "like suffering" is what I express as "regret" - or pretty close. It's a gut-level sensation, and I'm glad that for you it turned you to love. In my case, the example that comes to mind is the girl friend who got herself preggers (obviously I didn't have anything to do with it) and desiired an abortion. I based a sense of security and happoiness on her not being PG anymore, and (without admission of gult nor responsibility) I bought her an abortion. The nextday a big billborad went up right across fro my apartment: "Abortion Is Murder" - including a picture of a test tube of fetal remanants. Meditation then too me to a place where I idnetified with my decision, and could see that I had predicated my life on the death of the fetus, plus a sense that I was the fetus, and the implication by direct association that I had thus killed myself. The next few hours brought me the experience of being the star attraction of a D&C, disposal into a trash compactor, and somekind of incineration or some such. I stayed sane primarily by telling God to do whatever was needed so that I wouldn't cause more problems.

Don - I honestly tend to believe that past life regressions are valid. BUT I have no basis except my own personal recollections on which to base that opinion. Some people I've regressed were pro-active, and some were re-active in their lives. It seems that everybody is more or less the same. Those who cling to abstract reasoning tend to be earthbound, because they are typically frightened that if they stop analyzing, they'll stop existing. (Making love etc is proof that this isn't true.)

The biggest problem is that we're dealing with a second hand recollection of inexpressable experienceas. No hard data. No first order data. Everything is abstracted to death. It's like doing psychoanalysis on people caught in their own BSTs - like Bruce's tank driver, for example. - Incidently, notice that the tank driver was greeted joyfully by his comrades - secondary abstractions seem not to be necessary when we have direct miond-to-mind connections.

The flip side of that is that wthout secondary functions we lack interpretive ability for many things. I have a vast array of what looks like Japanese Kanji ideographs that scrolls by me in meditation - and I have no idea at all what it means. I also have a bunch of Egyptian hieroglyphs that occasionally appear, and again, I can't make out the meaning. - Maybe that's the primary process psychotic state that Alyssia was mentioning - aka "Duh?"

d

Dave said: I on't see whay you would be denied entry into psychology. That's a major ripoff!!  - I mean, it's not like my efforts to get into Girl Scouts - whether singly or in groups - But there may be a parallel hidden there anyhow, considering that you got screwed anyway, so to say.
___

ahh, I was attempting humor Dave. sorry.
I thought I was funny   the story was I went to a college career counselor and discovered through him the psychology field was so glutted with would be fix it type persons that soon everybody would be trying to fix somebody else and nobody would get paid for it. and so I let him dissuade me and became a happy contemplative. ultimately I'm from a another planet where nothing ever needs fixing so I got lucky I didn't take up psychology.
_____
sorry to confuse things with the psychotic reference I made as a sort of afterthought. I should probably explain what I was thinking better.
I was thinking of how primary thing you are talking about, relates to a belief system, which in turn relates to a computer type brain, which in turn relates to how a person, we can label them psychotic, will commit a crime from a mentality place where they will later say "I don't remember what happened." I called it an altered state.

upon transition into death, there can occur temporarily a state of amnesia. this I conjecture, I only speak for the nearest experience I experienced, plus some retrievals I did. and I think we have it figured out on this thread that being in physical body, our consciousness is divided into segments, concerned with body functions which on the other side there is no events into segmented time slots, such as eating, defecating, driving to work, driving home, so we can agree it is vastly "different" to be relieved of all body and livlihood responsibilities.
this state of affairs is enough to spend many hours of contemplation on but we will not agree necessarily nor immediately what its like.

I would only say its vastly important to gather as much knowledge about the states of consciousness, the different levels, to get one's priorities, desires in place before exiting physical area as what we think now becomes reality there.
the amnesia then can be bypassed entirely, the life review can be done while you are still alive.
Dave said: "sound of silence" state is the first major permanent attainment of meditation. Once attained, the mind does not operate as an abstract observer, but rather interacts at the point of experience.
___

this statement above is a gem. and now I shall go and be silent.
and I promise the next time I make a joke Dave, I am going to make sure you know it's a joke.

love you all (most of the time) alysia

Very interesting Augo,

I still think we have to account for our ability to think and reason in the afterlife.  I do agree that we may perceive things in thought more directly/emotionally, however this is NOT to say that it is without intelligence.  This is my objection to the complete loss of the ability to abstract concepts after death.  I believe that our ability to reason survives death, but that the vocabulary changes because much of our abstractions on earth deal with earthly sensory input.  

I found three passages from Swedenborg's writings, which I feel are very much on topic for this discussion, and go toward explaining my point that abstract thinking may be found in the spiritual world:

The first sets up his philosophy -

"The first step in philosophy is to admit that the essence of being is knowable or intelligible. While the esse of a thing is in itself unknowable, its qualities are made manifest as 'essence.'14 Thus the essence of God is knowable as Divine love and Divine wisdom, thus as Divinely Human.15 But man's mind is finite, limited. What the Infinite and Eternal is in itself cannot be comprehended, for no finite idea can 'contain' the Infinite; yet by means of ideas abstracted from space and time it can be seen that a thing is although not what it is.16

There is an absolute Truth which, being infinite, is above human or angelic comprehension, yet must be the source and origin of all perception. This Divine truth, in its proceeding, is the same in all creation, in all substance and in all phenomena - and thus represents itself in matter and in spirit, in nature and in mind. The essence of material things is represented to our minds in terms of sensations of space, time, and motion, and can be evaluated only by these. The physical reality of a thing-in-itself can be attested only by experience, scientific analysis, and checked research, which thus become the criteria of natural actualities. Nature represents the Divine truth which operates therein as laws of order.

The essence of spiritual things is represented to our minds in terms of states - as moods and emotions and thoughts, or as goods and truths and perceptions of use. The reality or essence of spiritual things can be estimated only by the experiences of the mind which sees its own phenomena (or noumena) to be independent of, and antithetical to, physical phenomena and their causal sequences. In the Word, the Divine truth regarding spiritual things is revealed as sequences of spiritual causes and spiritual effects, represented correspondentially in the letter and formally in doctrine; and the Word is therefore the criterion of all spiritual truth.

There is no absolute or "pure" human truth." 17 In both worlds the essence of the thing-in-itself is knowable so far as it can be inferred from its results and qualities. But the perceiving intellect is limited (even as are the senses of both men and angels), and is disturbed in its functions by the affections of the will and by the fact that the media of perception may be lacking, wholly or in part. This accounts for errors of sense, information, and judgment. Since the will motivates the understanding, a true philosopher must not only have a love of truth for the sake of truth, but have modesty and a love of Deity.18 Yet so long as men debate whether a thing is so, they cannot advance into anything of wisdom.19"


Matthew

At this point. it seems that we all have more or less fixed ideas, wherever obtained, which await discovery in the future. Perhaps a more fruitful approach would be to look for the minimal functions expected in the spirit world.

My experience in meditation is that I have, as a meditator, more capability to be aware and understand, then when I'm dreaming. Lucid moments of dreaming seem to be the exception, and bring an acute awareness, but still of the immediate situation.

Piaget attempted to define the transition between pre-operational function at birth, and fully abstract logic.  Perhaps the issue is the notion of "abstraction". Concrete operations, using Piaget's sense of the term, imply that all we can do is shuffle immediate sense data. That is certainly not the limit. On the other hand, to view something as defined by some kind of abstract implications, such as the ratiocinations by which I try to justify immoral things I've done on the basis of some long and involved chain of reasoning, that always falls apart, and concrete terms prevail.

As Caryn says, our basic morality seems to stays with us in sleep, which is a concrete connection. Being in this state, or an equivalent with eyes open, a fair percentage of the time, I sense relationships slightly differently than I used to. When I am with other women who might be willing to engage in a little hanky-panky, the association I sense is that this would negate my relationship with my wife. This is an absolute negation, either-or, no possible way to abstract a compromise. That's the sense I get with respect to all moral imperatives, and I call it non-abstract, and I sense the logic to be based outside of myself, not where I can manipulate and bend it. Maybe there's a better term that would communicate what's happening more clearly.

Incidently, the same kind of logic seems to govern the mental operations of drug users, which is why drugs (which actually seem to block certain functions) can lead into states equivalent to meditation, especially if augmented by standard meditative methods. It also suggests a reason why people who take drugs sense a "different kind of mental operation" or a "different reality", even though nothing has been altered externally.

Alysia - I recognize your humor - but can't resist responding in kind. That leads to a totally useless conversation, but it's fun. Having gone through the usual academic process, I'd be inclined to say that people go into the area of study that makes them feel most secure. Psychologists are all bonkers, sociologists are typically sociopathic, philosophers are long winded and confused, political scientists talk a lot and say nothing, and so on. Maybe you just weren't sufficiently dysfunctional to get people to believe that you needed a psych degree to fulfill yourself.

Albert,

I'll have to find the passages where you feel Swedenborg disparages Jews or women - I don't believe that to be the case, but he was, afterall human, and perhaps prone to bias as anyone.  He did leave room for non-christians to enter heaven - so this was a big leap for anyone who lived in his time.  I bet Don would have a better answer about this.

Dave, I think we are starting to agree, that when in spirit, the ability to communicate and understand things which were based on an understanding of the physical/sensory world may be lost.  This may be different than saying that we are not able to think/reason in the abstract.  I plan to post two more Swedeborgian passages that I think solve the puzzle of what we lose at death shortly.


Matthew

Doc:

I didn't write that Emanuel disparaged women.  I wrote that in "Heaven and Hell" he states that when a male and female Soul marry, they become one, the male intellect takes over, and the female intellect goes into subsidance. I find this hard to believe. It goes against everything else I've found to be true. I believe that our Souls are neither male or female or both.

Regarding what he wrote about Jewish people, it doesn't come from Heaven and Hell. I returned the books to the library so I'm not certain what book he stated this in, but it was either in "The true Christian religion" or "Angelic wisdom concerning the divine." Probably the first. If you like I can check the book out again and share the section that relates. I read this section more than once in order to be certain, and he clearly wrote that Jewish people end up living in a squalid place. My feeling is that if a person is open to the love of God, he or she will make it to heaven quite fine. Regarding how Christ fits into the picture, there are all kinds of things spirits find out about after they cross over that they didn't know about before doing so. If a spirit has love in its heart, I believe heaven will be an experience of rejoicing about what is or isn't true, not a matter of, "Well, that doesn't fit into how I believe things should be." One time when I got too hard core on this forum my guidance told me: "You make us sound like a bunch of dictators."

DocM wrote on May 30^th, 2007 at 3:20pm:

Albert said: Regarding what Emanuel Swedenborg wrote, I recently checked out four of his books from the library, and after reading a little I stopped doing so, because some of his viewpoints are hard to believe. For example, in heaven and hell, he writes that when a male and female get married they merge as one, the male spirit takes on the role of intellect, and the female takes on the role of volition.
________

Albert I had to go to the dictionary for "volition."  I don't know about these statements either, I think they need much greater scrutiny, they seem incomplete.

speaking just off the top of my cranium, there's only a few men I've met personally who could keep up with me intellectually. I have to rely on archtypes for guidance there.
as for the definition of "volition" and speaking as a woman, my polarity choice in this lifetime only, the definition went like this: noun:   the act of making a choice (Example: "Followed my father of my own volition")

it can be said in marriage between opposite polarities love of the highest order entails a desire to please. yet its beyond that aways. man and woman surrender to each other their respective egos and do merge. she is receptive in that regard, he is active in leading in his spirit. it has nothing to do with who's boss if they are in Oneness, like is described above.

in general, we are not at that high of an evolutionary standard.

Alysia:

I don't believe that merging means that one spirit has to surrender its intellect so that another spirit's intellect can take over.  Especially not,  if as Swendenborg suggests, it's always the spirit who used to inhabit a female body that has to surrender its intelllect.

Alysia, my guess is, that even though you inhabit a female body now, you believe that your spirit isn't limited to one particular gender. Why go through the trouble of developing your intellect in this lifetime, just so you can give it up when you merge with a spirit that used to inhabit a male body? Where is the National Organization For Women when we need them? They need to chime in on Swedenborg's concept of how merging works. 

LaffingRain wrote on May 30^th, 2007 at 4:35pm:

I don't believe a person needs to be a Swedenborg expert to understand what he said about the issue of a female spirit, if there is such a thing, surrendering her intellect to a male spirit, if there is such a thing. Certainly oneness can be obtained without spirits who inhabited a female body for a while having to surrender their intellect to a spirit who used inhabit a male body.

I haven't run accross any other source that suggests what Swedenborg contends on this matter. It sure doesn't feel right to me.


vikingsgal wrote on May 30^th, 2007 at 5:31pm:

Thank you so much, Matthew, for transcribing this cogent,  well-organized
argument.

I particularly like his view that our knowledge will be forever incomplete.(Remember
that in the late 19th century, it was argued that the US patent office should be
closed as everything that could possibly be invented had been invented.)
Thus, he argues for a vertical, ever- expanding growth as the ideal for both the
individual and mankind in general. Isn't this what's happening now?

Further, it is true that we choose to assign meanings based on previous sensory
experiences as seen through the filter of our own consciousness.  We need to recognize
this basic freedom of choice.

What's needful is to explore our personal use of will in assigning meanings.  Alot of
non-developmental stages could be surpassed by not working against ourselves
by resorting to habitual patterns that do not enhance anything.

At some point, apparently, we'll observe our actions and be called upon to accept
responsibility.  I think it's a good idea now to take a closer look at our own
actions and see if we were other-directed or actually having a frequent pity party.

To lead a useful life, one needs to extend one's self and focus on the needs of others.
All of us have read of people who have accomplished this.  Just now, an example
that comes to mind is a young person who sacrifices his life by physically blocking
a grenade explosion.  He acts against his basic, instinctual behavior of self preservation.

The comment about ancient people having a greater awareness of celestial good is
interesting.  I think he's hit on something there. Eons ago people did have a mystic
take on the world.  When we moved to the "only what can be measured" view.
we threw out the baby too.  These days, many recognize the sheer unknowability
of creation, and are utilizing intuition to gain insight.

Once again, thanks.  This is a fascinating thread. 

Vikingsgal

I've decided to resurrect this old thread for 2 reasons:
(1) It deals with a very important spiritual topic that is seldom discussed critically.
(2) Although some of the discussion here is the most intelligent I've encountered on any of my threads, I find most of the various suggestions finally unconvincing because of conflicting relevant claims from various "spiritual sources."  Please survey the thread and share your current thinking about this issue.

DocM wrote on Jun 4^th, 2017 at 11:38pm:

But what is there to retain? If we leave out the physical body, there are emotions and thoughts.

If I were to close my eyes, my awareness can register external sounds for example, and internal emotions and thoughts. But not only is there awareness, but also an internal initiative that decides to keep the eyes closed or to open them.

These questions strike me as potentially helpful,
(1) In our dream consciousness, we normally seem far less astute in our critical faculties and scope of awareness.  How analogous is such dream consciousness to disembodied consciousness after death? 

(2) Most of us love our families and, if it were up to us, we would be eager to reassure them of our wellbeing and survival after our death.  So why aren't  ADCs with convincing verifications more common?  Is it because most of us don't know how to make such ADC contacts?  Or is it because the earth memories of most of us become dormant soon after death?  What, then, about the exceptions who provide us convincing ADCs?  [See my ADC thread.]   Are they simply earthbound spirits whose status as such makes it easier for them to make postmortem contact with their surviving loved ones?  Or are their energetic vibrations more in sync with the loved ones they contact?   Or have they simply been able to shed limiting beliefs that prevent ADC encounters from happening?  Perhaps research into the personality types and religious/ philosophical backgrounds of postmortem ADC contactors might hint at the answer.

TheDonald wrote on Jun 5^th, 2017 at 12:39am:

The quality of awareness in my dreams that is most common is being along for the ride, like a passenger having a look out the window. Then with lucid dreams there can also be partial and not full lucidity. I've found changing the size of a pair of shoes to be harder than flying when gaining lucidity (being able to decide). The last lucid dream to my recollection was treating the objects in the dream world as 3D ojects in a computer program and then zooming into the objects and checking the resolution of the texture wrapping themselves around the forms/objects.

I would add to your questions (2): is it common to be unaware about one's death and hence the newly deceased will then not want to contact loved ones? Also I expect some deaths resulting from accidents to be quite shocking and confusing. One minute a person could be walking down a hill to suddenly loose footing, tumble down, raise up and find a familiar body in the field of view.

Following what there is to retain at death, I'll try to exemplify conscience, so help me God, with a simple and hopefully suitable example for a public forum. But first some definitions:

Conscience:
A guide for one's behaviour
Awareness of one's actions as being either morally right or wrong
Awareness of right and wrong that governs a persons's thoughts and actions
Awareness of right and wrong in one's conduct and motives, impelling one toward right action
Inner judge/voice of right and wrong to guide one's conduct
The highest sense within our self of what is good and right to do by others (1796/Crossbow)
The urge to prefer right over wrong
The responsibility of one's own words and deeds (Morrighan)

Like:
To feel attraction toward, to feel inclined, to take pleasure (feeling of enjoyment) in

Example:
I was a potato employee for my former employer, and it turned out to be a dynamic position to learn about the structure and the people from top to bottom, and sometimes assignments nobody else would do. One assignment was taking pictures of collected stray animals, in order to see if any of them became reported as missing or else they would be killed. I hesitated about the scenario and when learning about who had collected the animals. I knew the man had been convicted for harming my ex-girlfriend when she was growing up, but eventually agreed to do the snapshots.

Not knowing what to expect I stepped into the room where the animals were and my first thought was "this is wrong" and then took a closer look around. The room was barely lit, cold, damp, the cages were way too small and the animals seemed alarmed/frightened but yet settled. My emotional reaction started swirling, but composed myself quickly and decided to do what I agreed to do with smooth movements and be quick about it to try to minimise the duration they had to spend with the stranger. And of course, my exposure to the situation would end. The way back to work took a short time, while thinking about the whole situation and how to address it while my emotions were boiling and bubbling. I met my employer on the way in and told him that the pictures were taken, and that it was likely that he would be accused of animal abuse if there was to be an inspection. I don't remember the exact response only that it was defensive and swift. When I came back home and met the cat of the house, shame and post-cowardice lingered for the rest of the day, while questioning myself, how I could have done better, how my weakness betrayed my sense of doing what was right, though I wasn't really sure what was right. I did one more round of pictures and then at least the room was lit and the cages were much bigger. Soon after the collection stopped, not to my involvement.

Questions:
If what we like and what we don't like are treated as right and wrong, how likely is one to pay attention to conscience? How likely is one to be aware of one's conscience when one is wrapped up in or centred around what we don't like or what we do like, seeing that as the most trustworthy compass? Does one eye conscience when too emotional?

If you like doing good and have a clear sense of what is good then it there is a fortunate compatibility, yet if somebody likes to harm children then like is revealed to be relative.

Is a halo/nimbus symbolic of conscience? Awareness? Something else? https://ibb.co/cMFHyF