Okay If This is a long post I apologise but some may be interested to hear an argument for the hypothesis…there is an afterlife.
To be honest I cant say that in my heart of hearts that I fully believe myself yet but in my research I have come to the conclusion that basically the same place is being spoken about(I will get to this later) in all I have gathered on the subject….so I am left with the conclusion ,they are all telling the truth or they are all liars.
My interest in the subject probably goes back to childhood and hearing the priests talk about this wonderful place that only the good amongst us would go.In that context I suppose I never really expected to get there ,but now I believe..if it is there we will all get to go.
When my Brother died almost 2 years ago I found it very hard to accept as we had become very close over the last few years of his life and I didn’t want to accept that I’d never see him again.Not the best way to begin research but I’ll state right now that I want to believe and all my research is geared toward trying to prove to myself that there is more and I don’t bother to look at the arguments against,foolhardy you might say and you may be right but this is the way I am.Nevertheless hear me out and then feel free to comment.
I started by entering the usual keywords on a search engine,you know the kind of thing “afterlife” “scientific proof” “proof” etc etc.The first place of interest I happened upon was Victor Zammits site www.victorzammit.com .On here I downloaded his free book “A lawyers case for the afterlife” I read the book and some parts grabbed me more than others.But in this book was my first experience of first hand accounts of the afterlife and what life is like there …I found it fascinating.Anyway from here I got interested in EVP/ITC and I read the following books on the subject.

The miracle of living forever .. George Meek
Breakthroughs in technical spirit communication….Maggy Harsch/Theo Locher
Bridge between the terrestrial and beyond……Hildegard Schafer
Voices of eternity…..Sarah Estepp
Voice transmissions with the deceased …Friedrich Jurgenson
The road to Immortality….Frederic Myers/Geraldine Cummins
And a couple more who’s names escape me now.

(most free downloads btw)

In these books I saw a consistency of description pertaining to the life beyond,but the cynic or sceptic in me argued that they would all say the same wouldn’t they as they are all forwarding the view that evp actually is contact with beyond …so consistency is convenient.
Anyway from here I decided to look in different directions and to see if I could find any accounts from differing sources to the EVP sites…in other words to look into the crater from the other side.I am not a big fan of mediums or Automatic writing but I was curious to know what descriptions would be forthcoming from this angle.So I went looking again under the familiar keywords ….this time a site captured my eye called www.spiritwritings.com …well who better than the spirits to know ?.
What grabbed me about these books is that they were mostly written in the 1800s and by authors from various parts of the World and by many different types of person…from Farm Labourers to Doctors to Vicars,and although initially sceptical about channelled writing after reading some introductions I decided to give it a go…..i began with the Vicars book because I figured well he’s at least going to try to be honest isn’t he ?
Some of the books I’ve read from here include

Beyond the Veil parts 1 – 4 …..Vicar George Vale Owen
Communication with the next world…..W T Stead
Death and the Afterlife….A J Davis
Letters from the other side…Henry Thibault
Spiritword inhabitants…..E Crowell MD
The enigma of survival…Prof H N Hart
Living Dead Man ….Elsa Barker

And more ,but you get the gist.
To my surprise right from the off and in the first of these books ….and to the last I have found once again the same message to come through on what the afterlife is like and how life is lived there.How we should expect to be treated and what we can expect.
To me this consistency is both surprising and gratifying because when the spread of cultures and religions and backgrounds of all the above (and more) are taken into account don’t you think it’s unlikely if they were trying to make a buck or fool us they would all end up basically describing the very same place ?????.
Of course different experiences and descriptions come from such a variety of people but they all have a commonality and consistency which in my view it is right to highlight.
So I am now left with the following impression of what the afterlife is like….
But before I do I just want to say,as stated above I started with the Vicars book and in this I expected to get the orthodox “Christian” view of what life beyond was like….as did the Vicar I think ,but he wrote what he was given to his credit and surprisingly the similarities to the other descriptions were amazing.Anyway I digress.So my impression of what an afterlife is like.

When we die we are met more often than not by relatives or friends who have gone before.
If we die after a long or painful illness our spirit will have a regenerating sleep …for up to 6 weeks.
We will have a guide to help us adjust to this strange new world.
We will most of us begin our new life in a situation of our own making,that is we will reap what we have sown.If Greed ,Money Power and the like were our main motivators on Earth we will be surrounded by like minded spirits ,there wont be ahell as such but we will stay in this miserable place until we choose to move on by changing our priorities or learning whats really important.
There are Cities and towns where like minded spirits band together…similarly there are country houses with all the beauty you’d expect.
We will be reunited with Family members and if we choose to we may live together again.If you did not like someone on Earth you will not like them over there and you will most likely avoid each other….but to progress these dislikes will become less important …your spirit will progress beyond such trivial things.
Suicides will still need to work out their issues to progress...but wont be cast into the fires of Hell...as the hell is basically of our own making.
Stillborn children grow and learn there
Young Children grow and learn there
The average age is 25-35 people who die young progress to this,those who die old revert to this.
As your spirit progresses so does your surroundings…from grey,brown and drab to beautiful colours.
There will be work to do which is suited to your disposition….helping new souls arrive,even manual work if you enjoy it,caring for animals…yes animals and higher life forms…everything beautiful of the earth without the mosquitoes and stingers basically.
There are centres of learning and science where you can learn about all you were ever interested in …and with some even continue their studies.Music is a major influence and is forever present,the atmosphere reacts to the mood of the music and is a constant feast for the eyes…..this is in several of the books.
As we progress these planes or spheres become less important and the ties to Earthly things fade ,from here some move on to the next levels which increasingly bring you nearer to God …which is universally described in everything I’ve read as Love and Light,here your thoughts become reality and travel or form or whatever you want is but a wish away….after these levels we lose our desire for a connection with the Earth and Earthly things.


Theres much more I’ve read and learned and when I think it out I have probably omitted many important things…but after all this reading and more that I cant even remember reading now …this is the impression I have been left with of what possibly lies in wait for us………………………Now shoot me down

You might want to pick up a book called "Conversations with God" written by Neale Donald Walsh. It is the first book in an inspirational series. You might enjoy them.

As to the afterlife, if it exists, I don't think that you can prove or dis-prove its existance. It is really an exercise in faith/belief- Either you do believe, or you don't. Some are unsure, which is why they place their destiny in their religious organization.

As for me, I'm still undecided what to believe. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

Hi Bogeyman

Thanks for your interesting views in your post. What you have described is very close to my beliefs about what the after life is all about. Its good to see that you are studying this kind of thing with an open mind, because unfortunately so many people dismiss it with out even giving it a thought. So many people would rather believe something just because someone has told them so, which is a shame because they miss out on so much comfort. Whether they be believers in the after life or none believers.

On the Vicar thing, my best friends dad is a vicar, and is quite well respected in the church of England, he found out about my "new age" beliefs and my interest in paganism and spiritualism, and brought it up one time, and we had an in-depth discussion about the sort of things you would expect a pagan and a Christian vicar would have. He basically told me he did not agree with me, but was respectful, but at the same time he was fascinated with what I had to say, because he asked me a question a minute. Some months later I was at my best friends party, and he turned up for a few drinks and to wish his son well, and I ended up talking to him over a few drinks, and inevitably we got onto the subject of life after death, and after a few more drinks he admitted to me that my beliefs fascinated him, and that he had had an experience when he was a teenager, that seemed to suggest the after life was how I was trying to explain to him. He told me that he was a vicar, and that I must understand that he has to be objective about these things, and look on it with a frown, and with suspicion, I told him that I totally understood that.

He told me about why he became a vicar, and that was because about 5 years after his experiences he was walking past a church, and saw an angel hovering above the church steeple, which is what inspired him to train as a vicar.

He said that if he had never had the experience as a teenager and just became a vicar without his experience 5 years earlier, he might have had a very different attitude about the after life, and that he believed that he was always going to be a vicar, but his experience was because god wanted him to become a more tolerant vicar, and not have extremist fire and brimstone beliefs that so many have, he still frowns on the "new age" but I know he only does it because he is expected to.

He has a less harsh view of god that many vicars, priests, and ministers have, its just that he would be ridiculed if he was to express his real beliefs on life after death. He is a strong Christian and believes wholeheartedly in Jesus, but he has a different understanding on the after life, one he cant share with just anyone, so I felt quite privileged that he shared it with me.

If you have not read it Bogeyman you might like to read this link Hell, hot or cold ?

all the best
Faeden

Sorry, you can't do that and be taken seriously. You always have to look at opposing arguments. I can prove anything if I only present evidence that supports my ideas.

I think it's possible that there's an afterlife, but we just don't know.

Yes good research there bogeyman...I don't believe that this is all there is either but just a place of learning for our spirits...hopefully we all move on to a world where peace, love, and light awaits us. This world was very cruel and unfair to some...never experiencing any joy at all, only pain and grief.
It is nice to think such a heavenly place awaits us all and accepts us no matter what religion or belief we expressed here. Continued growth of the spirit...now that is something to look forward to. I have met people who talked about thier NDE's and told me some of what they saw...very different than a dream. I think these things are real and no matter what you believe, still awaits us all. I guess it is very important to be the best you can here so we can move on more easily in the next life?

Thanks for the replies guys....dmgspycat,what i neglected to mention because i thought the post was getting too long is the fact that i am now into the NDE sites and also on the forums there.Once again these people have had the experience that does not counteract what i have said above......in fact once again most back it up....!!!!!.
Redneck...thanks,i suppose i should have said in honesty that i have read some accounts that disbelieve or "debunk" what i've said above but the amount of "testimony" for ,is (to me) more overwhelming than that against....anyways i am enjoying reading the replies and please feel free to point out where i am going wrong,i enjoy it.....but i hope that this post at least starts people off in looking for themselves.I'm no preacher,bible thumper or evangilist but i'm a seeker ,just as is think most of us are !!!!!
And as for seeing both sides....i do try but as i have said ,i dont want the opposite to be true so i dont look for proof of the opposite.....but i have done and it always seems to me that the people purporting this view are cold and negative....and i honestly believe that i am more open minded than they......!

you contradicted yourself

you claim you are open minded and also to not look for evidence against the result you want. If you want the best result you HAVE to look at the strongest agruments against an afterlife and put them against the strongest agruments for.

My take on afterlife, the thoughts of it, and NDE are that it is all explainable by the chemical processes of the brain (all reports are subjective, and experiments have shown that brain function alone can explain the described experiences) and to the need to create order and reduce stressors (living forever removes the fears of mortality, one less stressor).

Does that make me cold and negative?

Hi



This is not entirely true, it might explain some of the symptoms, but I can remember seeing a documentary on TV about this. I cant remember the DR's name at this moment in time, but someone studying near death experiences recently proved that near death experiences can happen when the brain is clinically dead and is not functioning. One such example that got him interested in this field was he was present at an operation and the patient stopped breathing and the brain died, it stopped functioning all together for around 2 or 3 minutes, they revived her, and she was brought back, and when she became conscious some days later she told the Dr's the exact conversation that they had had when they where trying to revive her when her brain had clinically died, she even described in detail the letters and words on the equipment they where using to revive her, this is pretty good evidence that the mind can function out side of the brain, but of course people ridiculed it, and dismissed it as just luck.

The same DR also studied a case where a woman had been completely blind since birth, and never knew even what colours where. Anyway something happened to her where she came close to death, and she had a dear death experience, she was revived and came back and told of her time in a place of light and love, she also told the Drs that she saw them working on her when she was floating up and out of her body and observed from the corner of the room, she remembers the colour of the things in the room, and described the objects in the room. Now before she had the experience she did not know what colours where, being that she was blind from birth let alone what a stethoscope is ect,. Its safe the say that the DR had no explanation to how she did it, other than her mind must have some how left her physical body, and could see with some other form or sight.

All the best
Faeden

Wow...good post Faeden...insightful. I am sure the more skeptical will still not believe that NDE's are possible but I do. Some close people to me had them and they were not kooks either...pretty serious stuff when your dying. Anyway thanks for the post !

chemical processes can continue even though one is dead. that is why they can revive you even after being "dead" for a while.

there is also the explanation of the blind seeing being one of "connecting the dots". All of lifes experiences being tapped at the moment of death, producing the "vision". I would have to see the entire story to give a better explanation.

And again I say, electrical energy, that which the soul is composed of can and does survive a dead mortal body.

Put your money where your mouth is and prove it.

Hyperactive
I dont believe i contradicted myself,as i said i have done research on the other arguments but i have stopped looking at them because i have now read most arguments against.......But by it's nature there can be no real evidence against,but there is tons of circumstantial evidence for.
You are not correct about the dying brain,Dr Susan Blackmore is the strongest proponent for this theory....here is a critique of her findings written better than i could ever hope to.....
http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/background...g_to_live1.html

Faeden....the NDE'r you are trying to remember is Pam Reynolds ,http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html
for those of you who would really like to open up to this subject istrongly reccommend reading her account.Any search engine will bring you up thousands of hits on her name if you dont like the above source...any other will tell you the same thing.
The doctor you are talking about is i believe Pim Van Lommel...he is a Dutch cardioligist who has done extensive medical research on NDE and his research backs the theory of consciousness living on...again,his work is easy to find.
This what Dr Peter Fenwick a Neuropsychiatrist has to say on the matter


"The brain isn’t functioning. It’s not there. It’s destroyed. It’s abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don’t know what’s happening and the brain isn’t working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won’t remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [a NDE], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."

i never heard of Blackmore before. I would have to look into her work before going on the critique provided. She is correct about how belief in the afterlife/religion/gods is just a way to cope with our own mortality. A cleaver way to come to terms with the understanding that we die. Stress is removed if one believes they don't die, and stress reduction is a normal function of the being, thus it is normal to develop ways to reduce stress.

As you state, the evidence for is circumstantial. The evidence for what happens at death via the reactions within the brain that i have seen (sorry, no sources. it has been years since i looked at such things) is concrete. Studies have simulated the "death experience" (recreated the patterns in the brain via stimulation and drugs) and the subjective reports of the participants matched what real NDE survivors described. That is why I see it as completely describable via the actions of the brain and nothing more.

Brain death occurs on a different timeline than heart death. The brain does function longer on energy already within the body. The body is dead, the brain is not, but the brain knows the body is dead and that it is no longer being nourished. The result is the NDE.

I hear you but thats why i have included comments on research done by Doctors......Try reading what Pim Van Lommel has to say.Tons of well qualified Doctors disagree with you and have research resuts to prove it.
Being open minded is a double edge sword........look at the other side and see what you think !

well... like i said, i looked into it years ago out of personal interest. (after my mother died i became interested in if there was something beyond this world - and I, like you hoped at the time to find something beyond at the time). the evidence at the time allowed for accounts of afterlife to be explained by the mondian.

It has been many years now and after my own travels through philosophy, a return to meditation & buddhism, degrees in vastly different fields, a quest to see if there were truths in the ancient religions, etc, plus my own brush with mortality, I realized i just don't see any evidence of anything beyond the attachment to our physical bodies and I really am quite comfortable with then notion of a finiteness to my own existance.

I’m no brain expert, but how can consciousness still occur when the brain has ceased to live, and all electrical activity has stopped ? Dr Susan Blackmore is a great DR when it comes to the study of consciousness, but she is in two minds I think about life after death, sometimes I can listen to her and she seems to believe the separation of mind and body is possible, and other times she doesn’t quite seem so sure. I think she is one of these Drs that is finding it hard accepting all the evidence of late, and is in two minds. Remember consciousness is one of science's most misunderstood studies, its something science knows the least about, they can not even come up with a solid agreement on what exactly is being self aware, or what individual consciousness is.

Here is a paper DR Blackmore did that I enjoyed reading that you guys might like that I found HERE

The Grand Illusion:

What is consciousness?

In Big Questions in Science
Edited by Harriet Swain, London, Jonathan Cape, October 2002 pp 39-43

Originally published in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 14.9.01 pp 18-19

Reproduced here with permission

Why am I here? Who am I anyway? Why does everything feel, and look, and hurt like this? I have been asking questions like this (or they have been asking me) ever since I can remember. For many years I thought I could find out by pursuing the paranormal - a fruitless task if ever there was one. Now the questions seem to converge on one big question - one that has been called the greatest remaining challenge to science - what is consciousness?

The problem of consciousness is real, and deep, and not quite like any other. I fell happily into it yesterday, walking high on the Devon cliffs, with the seagulls crying overhead. The grass brushing against my boots was so - well - grassy. It was green and lush and glistening, and changing all the time as I strode along. This grassiness was my experience. Only I had just this vision from just this point of view. Yet - and here is the problem - I also believe that there is real green grass growing on that cliff; that I have objectively real eyes that take in light; and objectively existing brain cells in my head that make me see. But how can this be? How can objective things like brain cells produce subjective experiences like the feeling that ‘I’ am striding through the grass?

This gap is what the American philosopher David Chalmers calls ‘the hard problem’. Victorian thinkers called it the ‘great chasm’ or the ‘fathomless abyss’. It is a modern version of the ancient mind-body problem - but it seems to get worse, not better, the more we learn about the brain. Neuroscience is rapidly explaining how brains discriminate colours, solve problems and organise actions - but the hard problem remains. The objective world out there, and the subjective experiences in here, seem to be totally different kinds of thing. Asking how one produces the other seems to be a nonsense.

This is what makes the problem of consciousness so interesting - and so painful. If you don’t find it painful (and I won’t apologise for wanting you to) pick up any object - a cup of tea or a pen will do - and just look. Do you believe there is a real cup there? Aren’t you also having a private subjective experience of the cup? How can this be? Call me a masochist but I like to induce this kind of pain in myself many times every day.

The intractability of this problem suggests to me that we are making a fundamental mistake in the way we think about consciousness - perhaps right at the very beginning. So where is the beginning? For William James - whose 1890 Principles of Psychology is deservedly a classic - the beginning is our undeniable experience of the ‘stream of consciousness’; that unbroken, ever-changing flow of ideas, perceptions, feelings, and emotions that make up our lives. These thoughts and feelings flow by and ‘I’ experience them as they pass. This ‘stream’ seems to be what needs explaining.

But what if it isn’t like that? What if there is no stream? Can we even conceive of this possibility? Some recent experimental results suggest we might have to.

These experiments reveal what is called ‘change blindness’. Imagine you are looking at a complex scene - perhaps a street you can see from your window. You probably imagine that in your stream of consciousness is a rich and detailed representation of the trees and cars and people and buildings outside. Many times a second you move your eyes or blink but the picture seems to stay there. You probably imagine that if something changed you would notice the difference. You are probably wrong.

In change blindness experiments a scene like this is shown to people but, by using clever eye trackers or other techniques, something in the picture is changed at the exact moment when they move their eyes. For example, a tree might disappear, a couple appear on the pavement, or a car be swapped for a van. In my own experiments, and many others, people typically fail to detect the change.

This is weird. If the change is made when their eyes are not moving, people
notice the change immediately. This is because we have special detectors in
the brain designed to notice objects that move, and draw our attention to
them. But these detectors can't work when the whole eye moves. If the change
happens to an object they are directly attending to they notice it too, but
otherwise it is as if nothing happened.

This peculiar effect cannot be dismissed as a quirk of lab conditions. Dan Simons, at Harvard University, showed the same effect in disturbingly ordinary situations. An experimenter approached a student on the campus and asked for directions. Meanwhile two men picked up a door and carried it right between the experimenter and the student as they talked. Hidden behind the door was a second experimenter who jumped up and took the place of the first. So now the poor student was talking to a completely different person. Amazingly, most of the time the students did not notice the substitution but just went on giving directions as before.

The conclusion seems to be this. We do not have in our heads a rich, stable and detailed visual image of the world at all. At any time we see in detail only the tiny area we are looking at. When we move our eyes the detail is all thrown away, leaving at most a sketchy memory of the scene. We think it is all in our stream of consciousness because if ever we forget something we can just look again and there it is. We can use the outside world as a memory, so our brains don't need to keep the details. This way we get the illusion that the details are always there. This alone shows we are wrong about our stream of consciousness.

This has been called the ‘Grand Illusion’ theory, but why should we suffer such an illusion? The answer may simply be that there is too much information out there for the brain to keep it all (think of how much computer memory a single picture takes up). But the illusion is deeper still.

Have you had this experience? The phone rings, or the clock chimes, several times before you notice it. At that point you can distinctly count the number of chimes since it started - chimes you did not consciously hear. Or what about this? You drive a familiar route, and on arriving at your destination remember nothing of all those lights you stopped at, pedestrians you avoided, and decisions you made. Obviously you were behaving extremely intelligently - otherwise you would be dead - but somehow ‘you’ were elsewhere - listening to Radio 4 perhaps, or chatting with a passenger.

At any point in this journey you might have suddenly woken up, as it were, and been sure that you had been perfectly conscious for the last few minutes. The odd occasions are when this doesn’t happen and you realise how long the blank must have been. This suggests to me that we live our ordinary lives in a kind of daze. From time to time something wakes us up. In that moment of awakening the brain concocts, from memory, a backwards story about what we were just experiencing. A stream of consciousness and a self who observes it, both appear together - and both are illusions.

Illusion is the right word. An illusion is something that exists but is not what it seems. So the ‘me’ that seems to be steadily experiencing this world is not nothing, but nor is it the persistent observer with consciousness and free will that it seems to be.

How can I say that ‘I’ am an illusion? Surely I, Sue Blackmore, must have a self like you do don't I? Well, yes and no. After decades of thinking about it, funny things happen to the sense of self. Not only have I struggled with the results of experiments like these, and practised living without free will, but I have spent a lot of time sitting still and watching. The harder you look for the self who is experiencing things, the less obviously it exists. Indeed there can arise states in which self and other are not separate at all. This is hard to describe but is obvious when it happens.

I think we have a long way to go to see through these illusions but this is what we have to do. We need both to carry out careful experiments, and to practice looking determinedly into the nature of experience itself. Perhaps then we won’t see a stream of consciousness and a self who experiences it, but we’ll see how things really are. Only then will the hard problem disappear and the fathomless abyss close up.

All the best
Faeden

@faeden:

many answers come when we put down the microscope and pick up the macroscope

(if you look too close, you can't see the whole picture. the complexities of how the brain operates needs to be viewed via the "big picture". Science sometimes fails because it too quickly wants to find the root, when the answer is in the operations, not the participants).

The mysteries in your post can as well be explained by the mondain. We just dream of a greater state, man always has. That is the power of creativity: the mind creates things on its own, leaving the individual to solve the riddles of the source. Subjectivity is a great place for inspiration, a horrible place for understanding.

Bogeyman let me link you to one of my old posts on this subject, which very closely ties in with this one... in fact now I look at it again I see that you posted in it orignally... http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...75&#entry403475

I am a skeptic in many things though I am open-minded, i'm a pretty rational and reasonable bloke, but I genuinely believe that there is some form of afterlife, and very similar to the ones we laid out previously.

I have no "proof" at all, yet there is something in the consistency of the theories, and those spoke by my grandmother (a relatively simple yet purely good woman, never lies), auntie and uncle that seriously lead me to give credence to it.

Cheers Richdog....Did you evr go back to ask your Nan ?

There's a good movie about this.
It's called " Dragonfly "

Where can i get info on that movie ?....cheers

I just watched it last week here in Australia.
Here's the LINK

i totally believe it

read "Journey of Souls" Dr Michael Newton

x

Cheers i'm gonna try the dvd shop on the way home....!

LP
Could you give us an outline of the book ?...is it fiction ?

Journey of Souls