Eban Alexander  and psychic Susan Rienjts were in communication during his coma, they say.  They are giving a presentation about their meetings at the Rhine Center in Durham NC on Friday, Feb. 22. Susan visits comatose people in order to encourage and ease them.

Susan’s work offers another possibility within the broad field of retrievals. It’s a good reminder that there is still much that can be done once we ‘draw back the veil.’ 

Bets   

Hi Harvey,

The program tickets cost $20 each and that’s mostly rent on the Millenium Hotel meeting room.

The issue i wanted to point out was that ‘retrievals' are a very broad category. Giving counselling to people in comas --who’ve withdrawn from life to that extent -- is an interesting and welcome variation, imo.

Probably the coma state of consciousness has its own signal to others who are beyond their bodies (OB or imagination method or...). Just like fear does, and other states of mind do. So a sensitive ‘retriever’ could learn to pick up on that, -- or not ‘learn,' just set one’s intent to be guided by the Higher Intelligence that/Who is working for doing good.

Bets

Harvey, please don’t try to pick a fight with me on this. It’s information, -- use it or leave it.

Hi

Did you get a chance to go or know someone else who did?

Alexander had mentioned that in an early interview with Skeptiko; use "find" to search for "SUsan" to get there quickly
http://www.skeptiko.com/154-neurosurgeon-dr-eben-alexander-near-death-experience...

I've watched several of Eben's Youtube interviews about his NDE.  I have a question for anyone who has read the book: Does it contain much new material that was not disclosed in his Youtube interviews?

Don

Hi,

While I was out looking for someone who had attended that presentation, isee answered.
(I didn’t get to attend.)
I think Alexander’s credibility comes more from the mix of his professional background with what he experienced than from his description alone of what he experienced while ‘not here.’  His wonder and joy in the afterlife took unique forms. His Interpreter is alot different from mine! (-:

Bets

I want to emphasize that it actually is courageous and deserving for medicinal scientist to write a book of this kind. It is more worth than statements of hundreds of scientists who always work with that same lame terms like: "Hallucinations brought by [physiological blabla] and evolutionary benefits".

I wonder if he some day would add something to his book (as he wrote he is still trying to remember more of his "trip"), especially to what he said about the evil/bad and free will, as I found this not very insightful.

However, an impressing book.

Spooky

Yes Heisenberg,
you remember right, I'm sceptical about the common concept of free will.
   Following Alexander's experience, the evil (or, as far as I remember, as well suffering in general) on our earth is necessary to provide free will. This is something I've heard before from others, and here, too, I miss a critical revision of this concept of free will, if it is real and how it can be real at all, why it is necessary even when it implies suffering.

Spooky

Consider the expectation that each throw of a a dice has a random 1 in 6 chance of immediate repllcation.  Now consider a dice slightly loaded in favor of 6s with an expectation of 6s 40% of the time.  If 100 shakes produces 6s that number of times, the result would be random.  But what if the dice were shaken exactly the same way each  time and 6s seldom showed up?  Such a result could not be explained in terms of random or determined causation.  It would at best be an extremely improbable consistent outcome.  Of course, to speak of free will, one must acknowledge the variable of consciousness lacking in a dice.

Still that theoretical consistently improbable outcome is a good analogy for the necessary condition for free will.  There is no free will without a somewhat loaded dice, i. e. without inclinations or predispositions to make certain choices.  The capacity to choose contrary to one's inclinations is a necessary condition for free will; a pattern of choices that runs contrary to one's inclinations (or loading, if you will) is the best analogy for actualized free will.  Examples might include (1) the inclination to choose various forms of immediate gratification (sexual, alcohol, etc.) vs. the wish to make moral decisions that take the Big Picture or the long-range impact into account; (2) the inclination to makes choices that avoid immediate pain vs. noble outcomes that require pain to be achieved (e. g. diving into freeaing water to rescue a drowning child).