DocM
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Jehovah,
You seem to assume that the scientific method deals in absoulte truths, when in fact each of our individual experiences in consciousness may be different. The scientific method involves setting up an experiement in which given certain rigorous predefined criteria, a reproducible phenomenon may be observed and agreed upon. Yet if you explore the scientific method - really delve into it - you find that the idea that we are getting purely objective data is illusory.
It has been shown and described by scientists and some of the brightest minds, including Einstein, that the observer in any experiment is, in fact intimately tied into the outcome of the experiment. Some quantum physicists even have posited scenarios whereby an experiment could be in either state (positive or negative) until the exact moment that an observer focuses their consciousness on the experiment and "observes." (This is the famous Schrodinger Cat paradox)
The point behind this is, that somehow, in this Western world of ours, we make assumptions about the scientific method, and lose ourselves - in the blind worship of reproducible observation (science). Science is then worshipped as the only "truth," and our true perception - which centers on who/what we really are, becomes secondary or doubted.
Anyone who searches this problem long enough eventually gets into the big issues that Descartes wrote about, and comes up with his conclusions "Cogito ergo sum," - I think therefore I am.
The afterlife really deals with the realm of thought. A realm you live in right here and right now, albeit greatly restricted in the world of matter. We look at commonly agreed on "laws" of the universe (gravity, laws of motion), and assume that these commonly agreed upon laws allow us to then describe everything that is "real" or "true" if we only apply the scientific method to the situation. Except, when things get tricky and it is found that physics and reality are really best described by quantum states, and that this quantum theory is based upon probabilities rather than absolutes.
In the end then, when all is said and done, I am left with my conscious perception as the only thing that is true, that is nonreducible. In deep meditation we become aware of this - that we simply are. We perceive. We are part of everything, and at the same time separate from it.
If you could design experiments to prove NDEs or OOBEs are real, someone would poke holes into the theory. Death defined as cessation of brain function on an EEG or the heart beating. Oh really? The heart is routinely stopped during open heart surgery and there are those who have been clinically brain dead and returned. So as you gather reproducible data, your doubters will redefine what "death" is. The theories for how the experiences of NDEs have formed these memories will also expand, as the fantasies of an oxygen starved mind.
And yet, through it all, there is you and I, the individual pinpoints of perception thinking and existing, a "mind" in a material world. Those of us with personal experience would say that the mind is not truly confined to the body or produced by the body, that the mind is primary, and exists and interpenetrates this reality. My friend Dave-MBS who was one of the most brilliant minds on this board (who I only recently learned passed away suddenly in 2008), would call this theory - "the prmacy of consciousness."
Those led astray by worshipping the scientific method believe in the primacy of physical reality, and write off consciousness/awareness as a secondary phenomenon, dependent on neurochemistry, etc. Those who believe in the "primacy of consciousness," believe that we, in our essence are thought/spirit, and that spirit decides to express itself in the physical world, coupling this thought to a brain (a receiver), and a physical body. Many of us then get confused and lose our way, seeing only the physical, and denying our true nature.
Matthew
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