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Near Death Experiences: Reality, Dreams Or Other

Do you believe Near Death experiences are: and why?

  • People simply describing dreams in delirious states.

    Votes: 4 26.7%
  • Something very different and possibly unexplained new knowledge.

    Votes: 7 46.7%
  • I do not know.

    Votes: 5 33.3%
  • It is all made up hype.

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • Total voters
    15

Ambarsaria

ੴ / Ik▫oaʼnkār
Writer
SPNer
Dec 21, 2010
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Near Death Experiences (NDE) are often been described, spoken about or written about over the history of human existence. I personally had no first hand knowledge or experience as such. However I find NDE perhaps something that we should talk or share our thoughts about. It is considered a taboo by some as fairy tales. It is considered by others to prove that there is something out there which comes to a realization or transforms into a first hand experience with their believed God, hell or heaven, etc.

near-death.jpg


I post below a well articulated description that appeared in Newsweek a few years ago. The writer, a Neurosurgeon by training, relates his personal experiences as though having a glimpse of heaven:

Proof of Heaven: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife

By Dr. Eben Alexander 10/8/12 at 1:00 AM

As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.

The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would return from their experiences with strange stories. But that didn’t mean they had journeyed anywhere real.

Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.

In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.

I know how pronouncements like mine sound to skeptics, so I will tell my story with the logic and language of the scientist I am.

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline.

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the hospital, as my doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open.

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me. Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious during my coma, but—more importantly—the things that happened during that time. Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.

Reliving History: The search for the meaning of the afterlife is as old as humanity itself. Over the years Newsweek has run numerous covers about religion, God, and that search. As Dr. Alexander says, it’s unlikely we’ll know the answer in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean we won’t keep asking.

Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer like lines behind them.

Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.

A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise—that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a Persian carpet ... or a butterfly’s wing.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real—was not some fantasy, passing and insubstantial.

The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this:

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.

“We will show you many things here,” the woman said, again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me. “But eventually, you will go back.”

To this, I had only one question.

Back where?

A warm wind blew through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration.

Although I still had little language function, at least as we think of it on earth, I began wordlessly putting questions to this wind, and to the divine being that I sensed at work behind or within it.

Where is this place?

Who am I?

Why am I here?

Each time I silently put one of these questions out, the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a crashing wave. What was important about these blasts was that they didn’t simply silence my questions by overwhelming them. They answered them, but in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter than water—and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch-black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. The orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this vast presence surrounding me. It was as if I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself was like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I sensed was somehow connected with, or even identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing) was guiding me through it.

Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the 17th-century Christian poet Henry Vaughan that came close to describing this magical place, this vast, inky-black core that was the home of the Divine itself.

“There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness ...”

That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.

I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable, all this sounds. Had someone—even a doctor—told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion. But what happened to me was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of my two sons.

What happened to me demands explanation.

Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it is undivided. Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference, physics tells us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the universe is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation.

Before my experience these ideas were abstractions. Today they are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it is also—I now know—defined by love. The universe as I experienced it in my coma is—I have come to see with both shock and joy—the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways.

I’ve spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers hold—as I myself did—to the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us. But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.

I don’t expect this to be an easy task, for the reasons I described above. When the castle of an old scientific theory begins to show fault lines, no one wants to pay attention at first. The old castle simply took too much work to build in the first place, and if it falls, an entirely new one will have to be constructed in its place.

I learned this firsthand after I was well enough to get back out into the world and talk to others—people, that is, other than my long-suffering wife, Holley, and our two sons—about what had happened to me. The looks of polite disbelief, especially among my medical friends, soon made me realize what a task I would have getting people to understand the enormity of what I had seen and experienced that week while my brain was down.

One of the few places I didn’t have trouble getting my story across was a place I’d seen fairly little of before my experience: church. The first time I entered a church after my coma, I saw everything with fresh eyes. The colors of the stained-glass windows recalled the luminous beauty of the landscapes I’d seen in the world above. The deep bass notes of the organ reminded me of how thoughts and emotions in that world are like waves that move through you. And, most important, a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples evoked the message that lay at the very heart of my journey: that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned of as a child in Sunday school.

Today many believe that the living spiritual truths of religion have lost their power, and that science, not faith, is the road to truth. Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself.

But I now understand that such a view is far too simple. The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth.

This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together. It won’t be finished in my time, or even, I suspect, my sons’ either. In fact, reality is too vast, too complex, and too irreducibly mysterious for a full picture of it ever to be absolutely complete. But in essence, it will show the universe as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.

I’m still a doctor, and still a man of science every bit as much as I was before I had my experience. But on a deep level I’m very different from the person I was before, because I’ve caught a glimpse of this emerging picture of reality. And you can believe me when I tell you that it will be worth every bit of the work it will take us, and those who come after us, to get it right.

http://www.newsweek.com/proof-heaven-doctors-experience-afterlife-65327
 

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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Jan 31, 2011
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I am going with the fairy tales on this one, its strange that heaven is always full of women that look at you and make you turn to jelly, I wonder if it had been from a woman's prospective, there would have been a man with deep brown eyes? Is it not quite clear these are brain induced given the mushy content.

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

strange that these amount to the sum of human desires, to be loved, to be fearless and to do the right thing, so here on planet earth, we overcome these desires, we realise that we do not need to be loved to survive, we realise that fear is something that checks us, and we realise that there is much we can do that is wrong, but we can learn from it, but in super heaven, none of these rules apply.

I have nearly died physically quite a few times, and have died as a person thousands of times, you see cowards die a million times, but the brave, well they die just the once, my last near death experience was 7 months ago after a huge heart attack, I thought I was going to die, maybe its the fact that I could not really care less whether I died or not, as the ambulance hurtled towards the hospital, as the paramedics struggled to find a vein, any vein that had not collapsed, all I remember thinking was that soon it would all be over, and I could have a nice sleep, a nice long sleep, that soon the responsibility of being an ambassador of Creator would be over, that soon I could stop living for other people, stop feeling their pain, stop sharing in their desires, their goals, I could just sleep, brilliant!

But it was not to be, and in my head, god laughed at me, soon I was on an operating table, and they were sticking things in my heart, I remember saying to the surgeon that if he needed any laptops, I would give him a discount, he looked at me seriously, and said, good, I need 6, and I'll hold you to that (he did, and I did), within a short period, he stented two arteries that were completely blocked, and the blood flowed again, I thought shift was over, but it wasn't.

maybe its those that love life that have these experiences? For me every day is an adventure, and very possibly my last, maybe these experiences are just not for those like me, to paraphrase the line from a book, not for madmen only.
 

Ambarsaria

ੴ / Ik▫oaʼnkār
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Dec 21, 2010
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Harry brother thanks for your reply. Sorry to hear about your heart situation and eat well brother and exercise more. I keep telling the same to myself too.

In terms of the thread topic it is just a curiosity type of topic and not substantially serious. As Sikhs we should always be open to learning whether through our own experiences or efforts or those of others. I am just conjecturing here that at the time of near death brain calls in all the directors and managers of the company (body) to a meeting. The autonomous regions like the heart and lungs also report to the honcho, brain. So what occurs at this juncture perhaps is fascinating as probably the brain tells all the interface managers and operational manager like the vision department, the hearing department, all five of them to shut up. So the question is who takes notes and are these notes termed near death experiences. My conjecture would be that these are if you live to tell and live and remember the crazy goings on in this come to dada/Jessus moment. There is far too much unknown about us and much to know if you want to. So I welcome others thoughts and experiences if any in this regard. I have not had a near death experience yet. If I do and am capable of telling afterwards, I will. If other have and can tell it will be fascinating. It should be unabridged and unfettered and without any fear as to how Harry ji or Tejwant Singh ji or others are going to rip it apart.

So folks share up if you had experiences, had come to know first hand of others and don't be scared.

Sat Sri Akal.
 

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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Jan 31, 2011
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Harry brother thanks for your reply. Sorry to hear about your heart situation and eat well brother and exercise more. I keep telling the same to myself too.

Thank you Ambarsariaji, but it is just something that happened, rather than something I think about.

In terms of the thread topic it is just a curiosity type of topic and not substantially serious. As Sikhs we should always be open to learning whether through our own experiences or efforts or those of others. I am just conjecturing here that at the time of near death brain calls in all the directors and managers of the company (body) to a meeting. The autonomous regions like the heart and lungs also report to the honcho, brain. So what occurs at this juncture perhaps is fascinating as probably the brain tells all the interface managers and operational manager like the vision department, the hearing department, all five of them to shut up. So the question is who takes notes and are these notes termed near death experiences. My conjecture would be that these are if you live to tell and live and remember the crazy goings on in this come to dada/Jessus moment. There is far too much unknown about us and much to know if you want to. So I welcome others thoughts and experiences if any in this regard. I have not had a near death experience yet. If I do and am capable of telling afterwards, I will. If other have and can tell it will be fascinating

I am with you on this one!

It should be unabridged and unfettered and without any fear as to how Harry ji or Tejwant Singh ji or others are going to rip it apart.

that is not going to happen, speaking for myself, I have never, ever ripped apart a personal experience, I only ask questions when the point being made is being made as absolute, and if you are making a point as absolute, in my mind you should be prepared to be questioned on it.
 

Ambarsaria

ੴ / Ik▫oaʼnkār
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Dec 21, 2010
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Harry brother no problem and thanks for your reply.

You may not see it as such but you appear to have cited a near nearer death experience. If I may paraphrase your previous post you noted two things;
  • You had a will to live by talking about activities after the operation which could have been catastrophic and you were cutting deals with the surgeon ;)
  • You obviously like what you do and offered discount on laptops and perhaps will continue to do so for ever in places unknown or be known for the same forever. By the way I am not talking heaven or hell plus why would anyone need a laptop in heaven as it typically gets portrayed, and hell would be too hot for a laptop to survive any way.
Heaven possibility:
8023895_f520.jpg

Hell possibility:
latest


Sat Sri Akal.

PS: In terms of questioning people making statements about absolute truths, I have no problem for anyone to challenge these. I personally believe that any seasoned member who questions a newcomer with a question about their question should rethink their approach. I believe too many newcomers to spn have been smothered out and perhaps they would have contributed a lot with time and were never given the chance to grow up at spn. Just my little observation and I am sure I have been guilty of it as well over the years I have visited spn.
 
Last edited:

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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Jan 31, 2011
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PS: In terms of questioning people making statements about absolute truths, I have no problem for anyone to challenge these. I personally believe that any seasoned member who questions a newcomer with a question about their question should rethink their approach. I believe too many newcomers to spn have been smothered out and perhaps they would have contributed a lot with time and were never given the chance to grow up at spn. Just my little observation and I am sure I have been guilty of it as well over the years I have visited spn.

point well made and taken

btw your picture of heaven does not look heavenly to me, it looks hellish, ie I would rather stick pins in my eyes then spend eternity in that place

hell looks quite inviting by comparison
 

Original

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Sirs,

An extract from the above......"In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death".

Definitely a good read and pretty much in line with Sikh Theology. Consciousness surviving the physical death of the body is what Sikhism is all about, hence;

ੴ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥ ਉਸਤਤਿ ਨਿੰਦਾ ਦੋਊ ਬਿਬਰਜਿਤ ਤਜਹੁ ਮਾਨੁ ਅਭਿਮਾਨਾ ॥ ਲੋਹਾ ਕੰਚਨੁ ਸਮ ਕਰਿ ਜਾਨਹਿ ਤੇ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਭਗਵਾਨਾ ॥੧॥ ਤੇਰਾ ਜਨੁ ਏਕੁ ਆਧੁ ਕੋਈ ॥ ਕਾਮੁ ਕ੍ਰੋਧੁ ਲੋਭੁ ਮੋਹੁ ਬਿਬਰਜਿਤ ਹਰਿ ਪਦੁ ਚੀਨ੍ਹ੍ਹੈ ਸੋਈ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥ ਰਜ ਗੁਣ ਤਮ ਗੁਣ ਸਤ ਗੁਣ ਕਹੀਐ ਇਹ ਤੇਰੀ ਸਭ ਮਾਇਆ ਚਉਥੇ ਪਦ ਕਉ ਜੋ ਨਰੁ ਚੀਨ੍ਹ੍ਹੈ ਤਿਨ੍ਹ੍ਹ ਹੀ ਪਰਮ ਪਦੁ ਪਾਇਆ

And,

ਸੋਰਠਿ ਮਹਲਾ ੩ ॥ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਸੇਵੇ ਤਾ ਸਹਜ ਧੁਨਿ ਉਪਜੈ ਗਤਿ ਮਤਿ ਤਦ ਹੀ ਪਾਏ ॥ ਹਰਿ ਕਾ ਨਾਮੁ ਸਚਾ ਮਨਿ ਵਸਿਆ ਨਾਮੇ ਨਾਮਿ ਸਮਾਏ ॥੧॥ ਬਿਨੁ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਸਭੁ ਜਗੁ ਬਉਰਾਨਾ ॥ ਮਨਮੁਖਿ ਅੰਧਾ ਸਬਦੁ ਨ ਜਾਣੈ ਝੂਠੈ ਭਰਮਿ ਭੁਲਾਨਾ ॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥ ਤ੍ਰੈ ਗੁਣ ਮਾਇਆ ਭਰਮਿ ਭੁਲਾਇਆ ਹਉਮੈ ਬੰਧਨ ਕਮਾਏ ॥ ਜੰਮਣੁ ਮਰਣੁ ਸਿਰ ਊਪਰਿ ਊਭਉ ਗਰਭ ਜੋਨਿ ਦੁਖੁ ਪਾਏ ॥੨॥ ਤ੍ਰੈ ਗੁਣ ਵਰਤਹਿ ਸਗਲ ਸੰਸਾਰਾ ਹਉਮੈ ਵਿਚਿ ਪਤਿ ਖੋਈ ॥ ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ ਹੋਵੈ ਚਉਥਾ ਪਦੁ ਚੀਨੈ ਰਾਮ ਨਾਮਿ ਸੁਖੁ ਹੋਈ ॥੩॥ ਤ੍ਰੈ ਗੁਣ ਸਭਿ ਤੇਰੇ ਤੂ ਆਪੇ ਕਰਤਾ ਜੋ ਤੂ ਕਰਹਿ ਸੁ ਹੋਈ ॥ ਨਾਨਕ ਰਾਮ ਨਾਮਿ ਨਿਸਤਾਰਾ ਸਬਦੇ ਹਉਮੈ ਖੋਈ ॥੪॥੧੨॥ {ਪੰਨਾ 604}

Spiritual Sikhism is to that end, meaning, jeevat maryia bhavl jal taryia [die whilst alive] page 775 SGGSJ.

Splendid contribution Ambarsaria Ji -

Many thanks
 

Tejwant Singh

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Jun 30, 2004
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How near is the Near Death Experience?

Can one be fully conscious and experience it? This one is from the ex marathon runner whose heart went on V Tach for some hours.
 

Tejwant Singh

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Jun 30, 2004
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So I welcome others thoughts and experiences if any in this regard. I have not had a near death experience yet. If I do and am capable of telling afterwards, I will. If other have and can tell it will be fascinating. It should be unabridged and unfettered and without any fear as to how Harry ji or Tejwant Singh ji or others are going to rip it apart.

Ambarsaria ji,

Guru Fateh.
You seem a bit upset with Harry and myself according to your above post. What reasons would Harry or I would have to rip the article apart? I am a bit appalled by this pro-activeness.

I personally would plead you to express this emotion so I can apologise and learn from it. And I am certain Harry would do the name knowing his nature. Being at SPN, that is neither the intention nor the goal, but rather to the contrary. This is the reason a Sikh learns, unlearns, and relearns with every breath.
 

Ambarsaria

ੴ / Ik▫oaʼnkār
Writer
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Dec 21, 2010
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Original ji thanks for your post. I do want to share with you something I believe is quite simple but gets over-complicated as expressed by many. This is regarding what happens hen we live and after we die.

While we live we carry the bearings of our parents which kind of sets up a basis to spring from. How we then proceed in life is impacted by others and not just people living or dead but also all that is living or not that surrounds us. So we are in continuum of this interaction imprinting and leaving imprints forever. we may call that when we have a physical body that the soul resides in us and state that it resides outside when we die. Where does such a soul reside. We should be smart enough to note that part of our Guru ji's soul is embedded in Sikhs through Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji. Part of them through our linkage to there historic facts, journeys and folklore about them. whereas we are not at the level of our Guru jis, the modus-operandii is still the same. We are imprinted upon and we imprint and this is a continuum. The degrees of these imprints are unique to each and every living and non-living thing in creation. If one recognizes this continuum then all the talk about soul migrations, death and near death visions, etc., falls by the wayside. Unfortunately since we at many times are so engrossed by and about physical bodies that we forget the aspect of who and how we are.

Just some thoughts to share with my friends at spn.

Sat Sri Akal.
 

Ambarsaria

ੴ / Ik▫oaʼnkār
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Dec 21, 2010
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Ambarsaria ji,

Guru Fateh.
You seem a bit upset with Harry and myself according to your above post. What reasons would Harry or I would have to rip the article apart? I am a bit appalled by this pro-activeness.

I personally would plead you to express this emotion so I can apologise and learn from it. And I am certain Harry would do the name knowing his nature. Being at SPN, that is neither the intention nor the goal, but rather to the contrary. This is the reason a Sikh learns, unlearns, and relearns with every breath.
Tejwant Singh ji it is not about this article at all. This is a sentiment from what I have observed in how many new members are being treated. I have seen it often enough that I mentioned it. I am not a judge of any and if it offended you, I apologize. I would say no further about it in this thread. I will be happy if an admin or anyone else edits my post and deletes any offending part.

My only observation is that it is very difficult for young people to come to these forums and we need to bend over backwards to accommodate and help out. Sometimes when someone asks a question we don't need to ask them to clarify with another question. We should make an assumption, spend some time to think with their mindset and help out if we can. Asking a question about a question is too simple and too easy and for me it does not belong with senior and respected contributors at spn.

Sat Sri Akal.
 

Tejwant Singh

Mentor
Writer
SPNer
Jun 30, 2004
5,028
7,188
Henderson, NV.
Ambarsaria ji,

Guru Fateh.

You write" "We should make an assumption, spend some time to think with their mindset and help out if we can. Asking a question about a question is too simple and too easy and for me it does not belong with senior and respected contributors at spn".

Sorry to differ with you about the above.

Making assumption does mean that one has already assumed/pre/judged without giving oneself some time to think with their mindset and help out if we can".

If I am not mistaken, you may have meant that and one should take others on the face value of their comment and dig deeper through questions in order to understand the other better.

Please correct me if I am wrong.
 

Searching

SPNer
Aug 8, 2011
146
219
Yesterday I read this post on NDE here. Somehow this topic came up in discussion with an elderly person where told him about this article I had read on the Internet. The man retorted with his own story on NDE. He told me about this school principal who was clinically dead for hours and was about to be cremated when he came back to life. They had already put the pyre on fire when he came back and still has burn marks from that incident. The principal told this guy that he saw some people discussing that how they had taken the wrong guy and he should be sent back and that is when he came back, just about to be reduced to ashes.
When I narrated this to my father he told me about a similar incident that happened to a distant family member many years ago.
I am sure these people were not lieing as they were actually dead and I have no reason to lie. Was it their brains hallucinating? Beyond 3-4 minutes the brain begins to die and it's an irreversible process so how come these people hallucinate for hours after blood supply to the brain had stopped.
I do not know if life after death exists or not therefore I will remain skeptical. I will surely not reject this concept completely.
 

Original

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Jan 9, 2011
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Mera Pyara Veer Ambarsaria Ji - SSA
While we live we carry the bearings of our parents which kind of sets up a basis to spring from
...DNA, shall we say....
How we then proceed in life is impacted by others and not just people living or dead but also all that is living or not that surrounds us
..cultural socialisation and environmental habitation....

So we are in continuum of this interaction imprinting and leaving imprints forever
..that'd be the perceived reality, but in truth [sat] we've always been here, that is to say, ad sach jugad sach havy such Nanak hosi v sach
we may call that when we have a physical body that the soul resides in us and state that it resides outside when we die
...from a Sikh Ideology Perspective [atma-parmatma] that we the atma is part n parcel of parmatma then it leaves little or no room for us to be anything but Divine n Eternal beings. Death, Birth, Growth n Decay [cycle of 84] are simply like the four seasons of the Sun. Gur Ghar's doctrine to exit the wheel of 84 via initiation of Nam is to that end. And, because consciousness survives [chautha pad] the death of the physical body, realisation of it in this here life is the overriding objective of Sikh Ideology......man tu jyot saroop ha apna mool pehchan, meaning, eternal being.
Where does such a soul reside.
....we are the soul [sargun] residing within the supreme soul [nirgun]
We should be smart enough to note that part of our Guru ji's soul is embedded in Sikhs through Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji
....SGGSJ is the form God and believing it is the substance God
Part of them through our linkage to there historic facts, journeys and folklore about them. whereas we are not at the level of our Guru jis, the modus-operandii is still the same.
...they live as Ambarsaria, HH, Tejwant n the rest. There is no death of the soul. Nanak, Gobind, Christ are all here, they live in the word and the word is Gurbani and Gurbani is sound and sound is you my brother. How you're perceived by the rest of the population, your interpretation, understanding and actions are evolutionary engineered, that is to say, what you know and understand today you didn't yesterday. Such is the nature and character of this here human condition.
The degrees of these imprints are unique to each and every living and non-living thing in creation.
....we are sarguns [unique individuals] and the experiencer of all collectively [nirgun, AP] is what constitutes universal consonance.
If one recognizes this continuum then all the talk about soul migrations, death and near death visions, etc.,
....mera pyara veer, there are 36 contributors to SGGSJ, do you not consider them abstract thinkers to express the wonders of the spiritual world or do you consider them mistaken ? Their experiences are what underpins Sikh Ideology, their vocab is abstract n particular, but why would they choose abstract language if everyday language were to do the job equally well ? Like they say, no smoke without fire and it really is one's own conviction at the end of the day.

Unfortunately since we at many times are so engrossed by and about physical bodies that we forget the aspect of who and how we are.
...Veer Ji, fortunately we're spiritual beings having a human [temporary] experience.

It is always a pleasure to converse with you.Please find a way to accommodate the above response as something off the cuff. Not lot of serious thought had gone in to make it intelligible and plausible, I'm at your service for any rebuttals or explanations.

Goodnight n Godbless
 

Ambarsaria

ੴ / Ik▫oaʼnkār
Writer
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Dec 21, 2010
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Harry Haller ji indeed the word death is a term that is not applied in a verifiable way across all regions of the globe. When I was growing up I also recall story of a person in the neighborhood who started to move while being cremated and the damage from fire caused people to then kill him (chop) and let him burn.

I do believe that there may be some uniqueness to a state where your body is quite close to a point of total shutdown and you are experiencing some weird stuff in terms of mental activity and are capable to recall and tell. Verified dead or near death is just semantics in this case and the phrase near death amply explains it. Basically you are not dead but as close to dying as you possibly could be other than dying an d never coming back to tell. The grey matter under our skulls is weird and wonderful indeed.

Sat Sri Akal.
 

Sherdil

Writer
SPNer
Jan 19, 2014
438
874
I had a neurology professor who told us that an NDE is a self-defense mechanism of the brain. It dissociates the dying person from the psychological trauma of dying. What one sees during an NDE is largely influenced by their faith and life experiences. Christians might report seeing white clouds and pearly gates, while a Buddhist might see something entirely different. Someone with a guilt-free conscience might see their interpretation of heaven, while someone with a guilty conscience might see their interpretation of hell.
 

Searching

SPNer
Aug 8, 2011
146
219
Dear Harry Ji when I say actually dead I mean clinically dead. And that too for hours. When the brain and heart is not supplied by blood for about 4 minutes they begin to die and cell death is an irreversible process medically speaking. So when a person is clinically dead for hours it means there is no coming back and they are actually dead. How these people came back is a mystery, for some it's a miracle.
 

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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Jan 31, 2011
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not really, who confirmed clinical death? how was it confirmed?

I am afraid a wailing auntie screaming 'he's dead' is not confirmed clinical death

in any case, what you are talking about is not life after death, its reversing death, if indeed they were already dead
 

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