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Consciousness Without Brain Activity.


LightAngel

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2 hours ago, Wes4747 said:

But we only know what higher brain function occurring looks like in a healthy brain. One with severely diminished activity could still have the base of conciousness in the spinal column, alert and gathering stimuli.

We often fall into a vicious circle when arguing topics such as this, not because of lack of evidence but because of the interpretation of evidence.

Many materialists will assert that higher consciousness functioning is possible at the base of the spinal column precisely because conscious experiences such as NDE's occur while the base of the spinal column is the only part of the brain that is active. Whereas spiritualists like myself claim that this is proof positive that consciousness is not generated by the brain because it is only the base of the spinal column that is active during a NDE and the whole brain would be required to supposedly generate consciousness.

Both positions have the same evidence to support their claims, they're merely separate interpretations of said evidence. Both claims are possible, yet which claim is more plausible?

I don't find it plausible to assert that consciousness is generated by the human brain when nearly the whole brain is completely inactive during the event of an NDE. Nor do I find it plausible to assume that the base of the spinal column alone could generate full conscious awareness equal to or greater than that of our waking reality (as nearly all NDE experiencers claim).

2 hours ago, Wes4747 said:

As for the shoe on the roof, is it not possible that the shoe might have been reflected in a window somewhere on the patients entry into the hospital and her subconcious picked it up, focusing the recall nearing death?

Just playing devils advocate but i feel strongly this could be a possibility.

It is possible, but is it plausible?

First you would have to demonstrate this to be the case using physics, the architectural layout of the location, the time of day and weather conditions (how much light there was), etc etc. If you can't demonstrate it then it's a guess at best. Not only that but this guess of yours would be a highly rare occurrence, as it would take some serious light reflection physics akin to a stage magic performance to achieve such an effect. The vast majority of random objects on any given roof are not visible by any means, and if they were ever made visible in the way that you suggest it would simply be a rare fluke, not a common occurrence, thereby rendering this guess of yours unlikely. Couple all that with what I've previously stated above regarding consciousness and the brain stem, and you have yourself a far-fetched unlikely guess at best.

It's implausible to suggest it to be a mere reflection.

3 hours ago, Wes4747 said:

I want personal proof of this phenomena honestly. I would love to project my conciousness through the cosmos for a quick recess and know what im seeing is reality. I try.

However, if the subconcious theory i posit for your speculation could be true, i would love to know how to focus that!

And there's nothing more powerful than that. We all seek personal proof, and when it finds you it can be a real kick in the ass. Trust me.

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34 minutes ago, Aquila King said:

We often fall into a vicious circle when arguing topics such as this, not because of lack of evidence but because of the interpretation of evidence.

Many materialists will assert that higher consciousness functioning is possible at the base of the spinal column precisely because conscious experiences such as NDE's occur while the base of the spinal column is the only part of the brain that is active. Whereas spiritualists like myself claim that this is proof positive that consciousness is not generated by the brain because it is only the base of the spinal column that is active during a NDE and the whole brain would be required to supposedly generate consciousness.

Both positions have the same evidence to support their claims, they're merely separate interpretations of said evidence. Both claims are possible, yet which claim is more plausible?

I don't find it plausible to assert that consciousness is generated by the human brain when nearly the whole brain is completely inactive during the event of an NDE. Nor do I find it plausible to assume that the base of the spinal column alone could generate full conscious awareness equal to or greater than that of our waking reality (as nearly all NDE experiencers claim).

It is possible, but is it plausible?

First you would have to demonstrate this to be the case using physics, the architectural layout of the location, the time of day and weather conditions (how much light there was), etc etc. If you can't demonstrate it then it's a guess at best. Not only that but this guess of yours would be a highly rare occurrence, as it would take some serious light reflection physics akin to a stage magic performance to achieve such an effect. The vast majority of random objects on any given roof are not visible by any means, and if they were ever made visible in the way that you suggest it would simply be a rare fluke, not a common occurrence, thereby rendering this guess of yours unlikely. Couple all that with what I've previously stated above regarding consciousness and the brain stem, and you have yourself a far-fetched unlikely guess at best.

It's implausible to suggest it to be a mere reflection.

And there's nothing more powerful than that. We all seek personal proof, and when it finds you it can be a real kick in the ass. Trust me.

Care to share?

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3 hours ago, Wes4747 said:

Care to share?

I assume you're referring to my own 'personal proof?' :huh:

Well it's not anything spectacularly significant like an NDE or some major singular event that's forever changed me if that's what you're asking. But there have been a number of things in my life that have led me to the conclusion that there is definitely more to this world then just the material universe. A good example of this is the story I shared in this very thread. But as for personal experience I'll tell you the most significant thing that has ever happened to me (in a metaphysical sense) that fully validates the existence of the spiritual, to me anyway.

I apologize for the length of this, I just felt it best to give as much detail as possible so you could understand it to the fullest. And with that said let me dive right in...

I grew up in the Southern Baptist Christian Church, but soon after high school I got into an extremely devoutly religious phase, and sought out a form of Christianity that was a lot more 'spiritual' or 'metaphysical' if you will. I became deeply entrenched into the Assemblies of God Pentecostal church, which emphasized 'gifts of the spirit' (a.k.a. spiritual/psychic abilities) alongside a more traditional Christian gospel message. It was big into faith healing as well as evangelism, and was much more active than the typical Southern Baptist Church that basically practiced just goin' to church on Sundays and that's it. I would later come to abandon Christianity entirely and was briefly a staunch atheist before opening myself up to charting my own spiritual path rather than stick with any specific religious or spiritual dogmas.

Anyway, during my time there, I experienced something I couldn't explain. Something that would haunt me for years to come. During some of the services there, the pastor or evangelist would call people up to the front of the church (usually as they were wrapping up) and they would begin to lay their hands on the heads of people who were there, and the people would fall back on their backs as if hit by an unseen force. The Pentecostals call this being 'slain in the spirit'. People who experience this claim to be overcome by the Holy Spirit and fall back under the sheer might of his power. Of course most of this is just a bunch of baloney, and has a lot of very simple explanations. One is hypnosis. People always tend to be 'slain in the spirit' at the end of a service. Why? Because they first have to spend literally hours playing monotonous religious music that puts people in a state of trance, and once in trance they can be influenced through the power of suggestion to feel and experience things they wouldn't normally feel. That's what happens most of the time. The second most common explanation is the placebo effect (feel free to chime in @XenoFish, I know you'd love to tackle this one ;)). When people believe in expectation of something to occur (especially if the expectation is a preconceived specific effect), then they will likely feel the effects of what they believe and expect to experience from it. And of course there's the other possible option of them just faking it and playing along. Personally I think the faking it tends to only happen on the part of the higher ups, y'know, the ones actually profiting off this BS.

Why am I bringing all of this up you ask? Well because (and I'm sorta embarrassed to admit it) but this actually happened to me. <_< I know, I know, how could I be so dumb? Well as stated above, I was later able to explain my experience as just merely hypnosis coupled with a runaway placebo effect. And I explained pretty much everything the Pentecostals did as just that during my Atheist days. However, there was one experience in all of that that just stood out from all the rest...

When the pastor/evangelist placed their hand on my forehead just before being 'slain', I felt a strong 'vibration' of sorts emanating from their hand. It was an 'energy' of sorts, and it flowed what felt like, right out of their hand, then in and throughout my body. I don't know how else to describe it because it was a sort of 'sensation' beyond words or verbal description. I didn't physically feel it per say, as it was again like a sort of separate vibrational energy or frequency that was channeled out of the hand, into and throughout the body. It was nothing like I had ever experienced before in my life. You may think: So what? The mind can be convinced to feel anything under the right circumstances. And you're right, that's true. However, what I made this experience so significant that it lingered in my mind as a burning question just waiting to be answered so many years after the fact, was that this experience had absolutely no physical 'real-world' thing in which to compare it to. It was a sensation I had not felt anything even remotely like prior to this experience, there was no 'real' physical experience to compare it to before or after and therefore nothing my brain could simply just conjure up by means of real-world association. Even now I'm greatly struggling in trying to accurately describe it to you, as it seems to be by definition indescribable. It must by necessity be experienced in order to understand... Nevertheless, I was still able to chock it up as mere placebo and hypnosis in the wake of my abandonment. Though as I said, the thoughts and feelings in association with this experience stayed with me until later...

Now this wouldn't sound all that significant as quote on quo 'personal proof' if presented on it's own, as this experience while definitely significant could otherwise be easily explained. However it was this later experience that ultimately rocked my world and forever opened my mind to the spiritual. Once again, this isn't as magnificent as some NDE experiences you'll typically hear on the internet or elsewhere, but this is my personal proof, and therefore I will happily present it to you...

I can't exactly tell you the exact moment I opened my mind to the possibility of the spiritual, as it happened kinda gradually. It was during my brief Atheist phase that I began to start seeing some of the New Atheist arguments as being a bit of a stretch, and felt as if they were going out of their way to just simply disprove just about everything whole stop. While of course defending their materialism without question. And so, in an effort to not trap myself in with anymore dogma, I decided to branch out and do some more research regarding the paranormal, metaphysical, spiritual, and so on. During this time I suppose you could call me an 'open-minded agnostic', or whatever you prefer.

What kept popping up in my research was this underlying theme of consciousness, as it was considered to essentially be the basis of all things spiritual. I began thinking about and studying the different states of consciousness, dreams and sleep, hypnosis, the subconscious mind, NDEs, etc. Of course I tried to look at both sides of everything as I had already become rather accustomed to the average skeptic sites and answers. Yet at the end of the day it was all just research, and reading and listening to the personal experiences of other people. I knew that I had had some rather strange occurrences myself in the past that I couldn't explain (such as the experience mentioned above), but they weren't anything that were above and beyond natural explanation... Until the night during all of this that something truly strange happened...

I was just laying on my couch one night with the T.V. off just laying there. I started to doze off for a brief second, but then for some reason I jolted myself awake. Yet I was somewhat paralyzed. Now I had heard of sleep paralysis before, my mother has had it multiple times and described it in detail to me before; but I had never personally experienced anything like it before. Only with this experience, I somehow inherently knew that I was able to sort of 'phase it' on and off. I could control it. I couldn't feel any part of my body except for my breath, and yet I wasn't afraid because I was in control. That's when I realized that the fuzzy looking 'fog' so to speak that I saw from the back of my closed eyelids, began to take shape and form an image. It wasn't special, just an image of a wooden floor for some reason. But as the 'fog' cleared I realized I could see every little detail of the wood, the wax finish over it, the round dark spots in some places, every line, every splinter. All as clear as it would look if it existed in real life. At this point I knew that I was about to start lucid dreaming. Unfortunately I didn't do that. But what followed was profoundly more amazing. Although my eyes were closed, I was still keenly aware of the sounds all around me. I could hear my dog barking in the hall, and my cat walking with her claws out (as she does rather often for some reason, idk...). I realized that I had the power and the control to either dive deeper into the beginning of a dream and disassociate myself from my everyday waking reality, or to essentially 'wake up' and resume waking life as normal. However something in me felt compelled to take advantage of this totally new opportunity. I realized I had total control, and so rather than just chose one state of being or the other, I decided to see if I could experience, something else. Something, in-between if you will. I didn't necessarily know what I was trying to achieve. In reality I guess I was just merely experimenting with a strange new exciting experience I had never had before. Either way, I knew I didn't want to just 'wake up', as I've experienced that my whole life; while at the same time I didn't want to 'go to sleep' or dream because I was afraid I would lose this state of total lucid awareness and fall back into just a regular ol' dream. That's when it happened. I sought a new path, and I felt those same vibrations again! But this time they were stronger, more fluid, and rather then entering and flowing throughout my body, they were emanating out from my body. It's hard to describe, because they were like waves, but at the same time they were flowing in what felt like little 'streams' like water. Once again, these vibrations were unlike anything I had ever felt before. However this time, there was something else that accompanied them... Now comes the part that is almost IMPOSSIBLE to describe in words, but I'll do my best... I was able to reach out and 'touch' or 'feel' my surrounding with these vibrations. It wasn't feeling in the same way that we feel with our skin, it was an entirely new sensation completely different from our five senses. This is why it's nearly impossible to describe, as there is nothing I can compare it to. It's like trying to explain the concept of color to a blind man who's never seen in his life. I was able to feel the world around be, and was able to expand these vibrations out from me further and further like a cloud. It was nothing like I have ever experienced my entire life. I could feel the texture of the arm of the couch, and the texture of the hardwood floors, and yet the feeling was almost like an emotion. It was as if my emotions were somehow expanding all around me outside my body, touching, literally touching, everything in sight. During all of this, I was still keenly aware of my environment (obviously), and I heard my cat walking around on the floor a slight distance away from me to my left. She had gotten up to get a drink of water and was going back to lay down in her little bed like she always does, when I had the crazy Idea to try and 'touch' her with these vibrations. So I 'reached out to her with them and that's when Things forever changed. Not only did I feel her, but the moment I did she instantly stopped. The moment she stopped I instantly was shocked and became EXTREMELY excited, and the moment I felt all of these emotions was the moment these vibrations started pulsating like crazy. That's when I knew that these things were my emotions. I decided to call out to her for her to come closer to me using these new sensations I had, and to my own shock and amazement she came running to me meowing like crazy. She was aware of something I was not. I realized that these vibrations weren't something I was using. These vibrations were me. I never left my body, but I expanded my awareness and was able to 'touch' my surroundings with something that had somehow remained dormant inside me my whole life... After I eventually 'woke up' so to speak, I vowed to discover what on earth these vibrations exactly were, and how to access and utilize them in the future.

Now I know, there are probably a million skeptical responses to this, and I can't pre-respond to all of them here, but I'll at least get a few of the main responses out of the way...

  • This wasn't just me dreaming, because I was consciously aware of the real world environment and was even able to interact with it.
  • This wasn't just a placebo because placebos don't call cats.
  • This wasn't just coincidence, if you knew my cat's behavior and routines like I do you'd know it to be a really strange coincidence for it to happen on que.
  • I wasn't just emotional about what I was experiencing, as I'm more than capable of distinguishing between physical touch and emotion. This wasn't being emotional about something, it was emotion touching something. It's hard to explain without experiencing it, but it's an important distinction to make.
  • It isn't something as simple as feeling a heartbeat, if that were the case my heart would've had to have been beating at least a 50 to a hundred times per second. I would most definitely be dead.
  • I wasn't on any drugs or alcohol, and I didn't eat or do anything out of the ordinary. The only thing I can think of that could've caused this would've been the fact that I had spent the past few weeks researching different states of consciousness, so I had things like this on my mind.

Now I'm a bit burnt after writing all this, and sad to say there's probly only a few people that'll ever read all this. I don't know if I left anything out or expressed myself in the best possible way, but I gave it my all here at what is now 1:30 am. :sleepy: 

I hope to those who did read it however find it at the very least to be an interesting read. And with that I bid adieu...

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1 hour ago, Aquila King said:

I hope to those who did read it however find it at the very least to be an interesting read. And with that I bid adieu...

I read it all and found it quite interesting. One possible interpretation of your event involving the cat is astral projecting. If you read Robert Monroe (astral projection author), a characteristic vibration feeling often precedes the experience. You can then explore the environment with your astral senses which are different than physical senses so there is no common language to really explain the sensations. If you are interested there was a gifted OBE subject (Keith Blue Harary) that was used in experiments to make contact with his cat during OBE with positive findings. 

(excerpt from provided link)

Using the name Stuart "Blue" Harary (before he changed it to Keith), his experiments tried to establish veridical proof of OBEs. In some of the experiments, he would travel in OBEs to another room where his cat (Spirit) was filmed. The scientists assessed his ability to remotely affect the cat by counting the number of meow sounds it made. And they got good results. The scientists noted that when Harary was visiting the cat in his out-of-body state, it became much more quiet, which seemed to indicate there actually was a real-world component to his OBEs.

Edited by papageorge1
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43 minutes ago, Aquila King said:

I assume you're referring to my own 'personal proof?' :huh:

Well it's not anything spectacularly significant like an NDE or some major singular event that's forever changed me if that's what you're asking. But there have been a number of things in my life that have led me to the conclusion that there is definitely more to this world then just the material universe. A good example of this is the story I shared in this very thread. But as for personal experience I'll tell you the most significant thing that has ever happened to me (in a metaphysical sense) that fully validates the existence of the spiritual, to me anyway.

I apologize for the length of this, I just felt it best to give as much detail as possible so you could understand it to the fullest. And with that said let me dive right in...

I grew up in the Southern Baptist Christian Church, but soon after high school I got into an extremely devoutly religious phase, and sought out a form of Christianity that was a lot more 'spiritual' or 'metaphysical' if you will. I became deeply entrenched into the Assemblies of God Pentecostal church, which emphasized 'gifts of the spirit' (a.k.a. spiritual/psychic abilities) alongside a more traditional Christian gospel message. It was big into faith healing as well as evangelism, and was much more active than the typical Southern Baptist Church that basically practiced just goin' to church on Sundays and that's it. I would later come to abandon Christianity entirely and was briefly a staunch atheist before opening myself up to charting my own spiritual path rather than stick with any specific religious or spiritual dogmas.

Anyway, during my time there, I experienced something I couldn't explain. Something that would haunt me for years to come. During some of the services there, the pastor or evangelist would call people up to the front of the church (usually as they were wrapping up) and they would begin to lay their hands on the heads of people who were there, and the people would fall back on their backs as if hit by an unseen force. The Pentecostals call this being 'slain in the spirit'. People who experience this claim to be overcome by the Holy Spirit and fall back under the sheer might of his power. Of course most of this is just a bunch of baloney, and has a lot of very simple explanations. One is hypnosis. People always tend to be 'slain in the spirit' at the end of a service. Why? Because they first have to spend literally hours playing monotonous religious music that puts people in a state of trance, and once in trance they can be influenced through the power of suggestion to feel and experience things they wouldn't normally feel. That's what happens most of the time. The second most common explanation is the placebo effect (feel free to chime in @XenoFish, I know you'd love to tackle this one ;)). When people believe in expectation of something to occur (especially if the expectation is a preconceived specific effect), then they will likely feel the effects of what they believe and expect to experience from it. And of course there's the other possible option of them just faking it and playing along. Personally I think the faking it tends to only happen on the part of the higher ups, y'know, the ones actually profiting off this BS.

Why am I bringing all of this up you ask? Well because (and I'm sorta embarrassed to admit it) but this actually happened to me. <_< I know, I know, how could I be so dumb? Well as stated above, I was later able to explain my experience as just merely hypnosis coupled with a runaway placebo effect. And I explained pretty much everything the Pentecostals did as just that during my Atheist days. However, there was one experience in all of that that just stood out from all the rest...

When the pastor/evangelist placed their hand on my forehead just before being 'slain', I felt a strong 'vibration' of sorts emanating from their hand. It was an 'energy' of sorts, and it flowed what felt like, right out of their hand, then in and throughout my body. I don't know how else to describe it because it was a sort of 'sensation' beyond words or verbal description. I didn't physically feel it per say, as it was again like a sort of separate vibrational energy or frequency that was channeled out of the hand, into and throughout the body. It was nothing like I had ever experienced before in my life. You may think: So what? The mind can be convinced to feel anything under the right circumstances. And you're right, that's true. However, what I made this experience so significant that it lingered in my mind as a burning question just waiting to be answered so many years after the fact, was that this experience had absolutely no physical 'real-world' thing in which to compare it to. It was a sensation I had not felt anything even remotely like prior to this experience, there was no 'real' physical experience to compare it to before or after and therefore nothing my brain could simply just conjure up by means of real-world association. Even now I'm greatly struggling in trying to accurately describe it to you, as it seems to be by definition indescribable. It must by necessity be experienced in order to understand... Nevertheless, I was still able to chock it up as mere placebo and hypnosis in the wake of my abandonment. Though as I said, the thoughts and feelings in association with this experience stayed with me until later...

Now this wouldn't sound all that significant as quote on quo 'personal proof' if presented on it's own, as this experience while definitely significant could otherwise be easily explained. However it was this later experience that ultimately rocked my world and forever opened my mind to the spiritual. Once again, this isn't as magnificent as some NDE experiences you'll typically hear on the internet or elsewhere, but this is my personal proof, and therefore I will happily present it to you...

I can't exactly tell you the exact moment I opened my mind to the possibility of the spiritual, as it happened kinda gradually. It was during my brief Atheist phase that I began to start seeing some of the New Atheist arguments as being a bit of a stretch, and felt as if they were going out of their way to just simply disprove just about everything whole stop. While of course defending their materialism without question. And so, in an effort to not trap myself in with anymore dogma, I decided to branch out and do some more research regarding the paranormal, metaphysical, spiritual, and so on. During this time I suppose you could call me an 'open-minded agnostic', or whatever you prefer.

What kept popping up in my research was this underlying theme of consciousness, as it was considered to essentially be the basis of all things spiritual. I began thinking about and studying the different states of consciousness, dreams and sleep, hypnosis, the subconscious mind, NDEs, etc. Of course I tried to look at both sides of everything as I had already become rather accustomed to the average skeptic sites and answers. Yet at the end of the day it was all just research, and reading and listening to the personal experiences of other people. I knew that I had had some rather strange occurrences myself in the past that I couldn't explain (such as the experience mentioned above), but they weren't anything that were above and beyond natural explanation... Until the night during all of this that something truly strange happened...

I was just laying on my couch one night with the T.V. off just laying there. I started to doze off for a brief second, but then for some reason I jolted myself awake. Yet I was somewhat paralyzed. Now I had heard of sleep paralysis before, my mother has had it multiple times and described it in detail to me before; but I had never personally experienced anything like it before. Only with this experience, I somehow inherently knew that I was able to sort of 'phase it' on and off. I could control it. I couldn't feel any part of my body except for my breath, and yet I wasn't afraid because I was in control. That's when I realized that the fuzzy looking 'fog' so to speak that I saw from the back of my closed eyelids, began to take shape and form an image. It wasn't special, just an image of a wooden floor for some reason. But as the 'fog' cleared I realized I could see every little detail of the wood, the wax finish over it, the round dark spots in some places, every line, every splinter. All as clear as it would look if it existed in real life. At this point I knew that I was about to start lucid dreaming. Unfortunately I didn't do that. But what followed was profoundly more amazing. Although my eyes were closed, I was still keenly aware of the sounds all around me. I could hear my dog barking in the hall, and my cat walking with her claws out (as she does rather often for some reason, idk...). I realized that I had the power and the control to either dive deeper into the beginning of a dream and disassociate myself from my everyday waking reality, or to essentially 'wake up' and resume waking life as normal. However something in me felt compelled to take advantage of this totally new opportunity. I realized I had total control, and so rather than just chose one state of being or the other, I decided to see if I could experience, something else. Something, in-between if you will. I didn't necessarily know what I was trying to achieve. In reality I guess I was just merely experimenting with a strange new exciting experience I had never had before. Either way, I knew I didn't want to just 'wake up', as I've experienced that my whole life; while at the same time I didn't want to 'go to sleep' or dream because I was afraid I would lose this state of total lucid awareness and fall back into just a regular ol' dream. That's when it happened. I sought a new path, and I felt those same vibrations again! But this time they were stronger, more fluid, and rather then entering and flowing throughout my body, they were emanating out from my body. It's hard to describe, because they were like waves, but at the same time they were flowing in what felt like little 'streams' like water. Once again, these vibrations were unlike anything I had ever felt before. However this time, there was something else that accompanied them... Now comes the part that is almost IMPOSSIBLE to describe in words, but I'll do my best... I was able to reach out and 'touch' or 'feel' my surrounding with these vibrations. It wasn't feeling in the same way that we feel with our skin, it was an entirely new sensation completely different from our five senses. This is why it's nearly impossible to describe, as there is nothing I can compare it to. It's like trying to explain the concept of color to a blind man who's never seen in his life. I was able to feel the world around be, and was able to expand these vibrations out from me further and further like a cloud. It was nothing like I have ever experienced my entire life. I could feel the texture of the arm of the couch, and the texture of the hardwood floors, and yet the feeling was almost like an emotion. It was as if my emotions were somehow expanding all around me outside my body, touching, literally touching, everything in sight. During all of this, I was still keenly aware of my environment (obviously), and I heard my cat walking around on the floor a slight distance away from me to my left. She had gotten up to get a drink of water and was going back to lay down in her little bed like she always does, when I had the crazy Idea to try and 'touch' her with these vibrations. So I 'reached out to her with them and that's when Things forever changed. Not only did I feel her, but the moment I did she instantly stopped. The moment she stopped I instantly was shocked and became EXTREMELY excited, and the moment I felt all of these emotions was the moment these vibrations started pulsating like crazy. That's when I knew that these things were my emotions. I decided to call out to her for her to come closer to me using these new sensations I had, and to my own shock and amazement she came running to me meowing like crazy. She was aware of something I was not. I realized that these vibrations weren't something I was using. These vibrations were me. I never left my body, but I expanded my awareness and was able to 'touch' my surroundings with something that had somehow remained dormant inside me my whole life... After I eventually 'woke up' so to speak, I vowed to discover what on earth these vibrations exactly were, and how to access and utilize them in the future.

Now I know, there are probably a million skeptical responses to this, and I can't pre-respond to all of them here, but I'll at least get a few of the main responses out of the way...

  • This wasn't just me dreaming, because I was consciously aware of the real world environment and was even able to interact with it.
  • This wasn't just a placebo because placebos don't call cats.
  • This wasn't just coincidence, if you knew my cat's behavior and routines like I do you'd know it to be a really strange coincidence for it to happen on que.
  • I wasn't just emotional about what I was experiencing, as I'm more than capable of distinguishing between physical touch and emotion. This wasn't being emotional about something, it was emotion touching something. It's hard to explain without experiencing it, but it's an important distinction to make.
  • It isn't something as simple as feeling a heartbeat, if that were the case my heart would've had to have been beating at least a 50 to a hundred times per second. I would most definitely be dead.
  • I wasn't on any drugs or alcohol, and I didn't eat or do anything out of the ordinary. The only thing I can think of that could've caused this would've been the fact that I had spent the past few weeks researching different states of consciousness, so I had things like this on my mind.

Now I'm a bit burnt after writing all this, and sad to say there's probly only a few people that'll ever read all this. I don't know if I left anything out or expressed myself in the best possible way, but I gave it my all here at what is now 1:30 am. :sleepy: 

I hope to those who did read it however find it at the very least to be an interesting read. And with that I bid adieu...

Actually drew a few parallels there AK. 

I grew up a heathen, til around 9ish and my mom checked us into an evangelistic country church, middle GA ish. I bought it, hook to the sinker and became a youth minister at 15.

I had many revelations during that time, i swear i would sound crazy posting them all, but in a revival when i was 16 i witnessed the slaying in the spirit thing. I had no interest to be slain but my mom was hoping for physical healing.

Mr. Wilbur touched my moms forehead and she went out for a good 15 minutes, crying and shaking in the floor. When she come to, aside from being quite shaken, she knew she had not been healed.

The next day she told me that she had experienced infinite sadness for what seemed like an eternity before fighting her way back to wakefulness. She expressed she did not feel it was of god.

Interestingly enough, i had phrophesied this very revival a full two years before it happened. I also told my then pastor that i would be responsible for the closing of the church during said revival. A change of pastors occured between the prophecy and the revival.

Long story short, god had laid it on my heart to read from the bible a particular set of verses on the last night of the revival, so i did and all he** broke loose. Punches were thrown as well as curses and they closed the doors of the church that night and put it up for sale the following week.

I never set foot in a church again, but i have experienced enough to know there is more to it than i can fully explain. I was angry with god for putting me in that position, as well as a few other things.

She described the vibration much like you did, hard to explain and nothing to relate to.

Pretty cool on the AP, havent been able to do that. I am not adamently against the unexplainable, just looking for it... And i want my experiences with it to be true.

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I have a lot I could say to both of you but it's incredibly late and I'm incredibly tired. :sleepy:

Thank you both for taking the time to read all of that. Made it worth writing. I'll properly respond sometime tomorrow, K?

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16 hours ago, Aquila King said:

And this is exactly why I find it irrational to dismiss NDE's as mere oxygen deprivation.

btw, I listened to this on headphones, and for some reason the audio only works the left one. :blink: Bout gave me a heart attack. I thought my $30 headphones I just baught recently broke already, Lol. :lol:

 

Hehee ... I should have warned you ;)

 

By the way, I think it's important to mention that the tennis shoe could only be seen from a helicopter's view of the hospital!

 

 

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8 hours ago, Aquila King said:

 

I was just laying on my couch one night with the T.V. off just laying there. I started to doze off for a brief second, but then for some reason I jolted myself awake. Yet I was somewhat paralyzed. Now I had heard of sleep paralysis before, my mother has had it multiple times and described it in detail to me before; but I had never personally experienced anything like it before. Only with this experience, I somehow inherently knew that I was able to sort of 'phase it' on and off. I could control it. I couldn't feel any part of my body except for my breath, and yet I wasn't afraid because I was in control. That's when I realized that the fuzzy looking 'fog' so to speak that I saw from the back of my closed eyelids, began to take shape and form an image. It wasn't special, just an image of a wooden floor for some reason. But as the 'fog' cleared I realized I could see every little detail of the wood, the wax finish over it, the round dark spots in some places, every line, every splinter. All as clear as it would look if it existed in real life. At this point I knew that I was about to start lucid dreaming. Unfortunately I didn't do that. But what followed was profoundly more amazing. Although my eyes were closed, I was still keenly aware of the sounds all around me. I could hear my dog barking in the hall, and my cat walking with her claws out (as she does rather often for some reason, idk...). I realized that I had the power and the control to either dive deeper into the beginning of a dream and disassociate myself from my everyday waking reality, or to essentially 'wake up' and resume waking life as normal. However something in me felt compelled to take advantage of this totally new opportunity. I realized I had total control, and so rather than just chose one state of being or the other, I decided to see if I could experience, something else. Something, in-between if you will. I didn't necessarily know what I was trying to achieve. In reality I guess I was just merely experimenting with a strange new exciting experience I had never had before. Either way, I knew I didn't want to just 'wake up', as I've experienced that my whole life; while at the same time I didn't want to 'go to sleep' or dream because I was afraid I would lose this state of total lucid awareness and fall back into just a regular ol' dream. That's when it happened. I sought a new path, and I felt those same vibrations again! But this time they were stronger, more fluid, and rather then entering and flowing throughout my body, they were emanating out from my body. It's hard to describe, because they were like waves, but at the same time they were flowing in what felt like little 'streams' like water. Once again, these vibrations were unlike anything I had ever felt before. However this time, there was something else that accompanied them... Now comes the part that is almost IMPOSSIBLE to describe in words, but I'll do my best... I was able to reach out and 'touch' or 'feel' my surrounding with these vibrations. It wasn't feeling in the same way that we feel with our skin, it was an entirely new sensation completely different from our five senses. This is why it's nearly impossible to describe, as there is nothing I can compare it to. It's like trying to explain the concept of color to a blind man who's never seen in his life. I was able to feel the world around be, and was able to expand these vibrations out from me further and further like a cloud. It was nothing like I have ever experienced my entire life. I could feel the texture of the arm of the couch, and the texture of the hardwood floors, and yet the feeling was almost like an emotion. It was as if my emotions were somehow expanding all around me outside my body, touching, literally touching, everything in sight. During all of this, I was still keenly aware of my environment (obviously), and I heard my cat walking around on the floor a slight distance away from me to my left. She had gotten up to get a drink of water and was going back to lay down in her little bed like she always does, when I had the crazy Idea to try and 'touch' her with these vibrations. So I 'reached out to her with them and that's when Things forever changed. Not only did I feel her, but the moment I did she instantly stopped. The moment she stopped I instantly was shocked and became EXTREMELY excited, and the moment I felt all of these emotions was the moment these vibrations started pulsating like crazy. That's when I knew that these things were my emotions. I decided to call out to her for her to come closer to me using these new sensations I had, and to my own shock and amazement she came running to me meowing like crazy. She was aware of something I was not. I realized that these vibrations weren't something I was using. These vibrations were me. I never left my body, but I expanded my awareness and was able to 'touch' my surroundings with something that had somehow remained dormant inside me my whole life... After I eventually 'woke up' so to speak, I vowed to discover what on earth these vibrations exactly were, and how to access and utilize them in the future.

Now I know, there are probably a million skeptical responses to this, and I can't pre-respond to all of them here, but I'll at least get a few of the main responses out of the way...

  • This wasn't just me dreaming, because I was consciously aware of the real world environment and was even able to interact with it.
  • This wasn't just a placebo because placebos don't call cats.
  • This wasn't just coincidence, if you knew my cat's behavior and routines like I do you'd know it to be a really strange coincidence for it to happen on que.
  • I wasn't just emotional about what I was experiencing, as I'm more than capable of distinguishing between physical touch and emotion. This wasn't being emotional about something, it was emotion touching something. It's hard to explain without experiencing it, but it's an important distinction to make.
  • It isn't something as simple as feeling a heartbeat, if that were the case my heart would've had to have been beating at least a 50 to a hundred times per second. I would most definitely be dead.
  • I wasn't on any drugs or alcohol, and I didn't eat or do anything out of the ordinary. The only thing I can think of that could've caused this would've been the fact that I had spent the past few weeks researching different states of consciousness, so I had things like this on my mind.

Now I'm a bit burnt after writing all this, and sad to say there's probly only a few people that'll ever read all this. I don't know if I left anything out or expressed myself in the best possible way, but I gave it my all here at what is now 1:30 am. :sleepy: 

I hope to those who did read it however find it at the very least to be an interesting read. And with that I bid adieu...

Hi,

An experience like that will indeed provide you with what many call 'personal proof'. The experience was real and very powerful. Yet it can not be placed in a lab and examined the way a true skeptic or scientist would like to do.

There are different states of consciousness. It is good that you are opened minded enought to research what you can on these things.

Your telepathic animal communication was nice to see. Have you tried to do that without being in this higher state of extreem awareness. I suspect it will work. Animals are receptive to telepathic communications, humans not so much.

John

 

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7 hours ago, XenoFish said:

What am I supposed to be chiming in about?

I figured you'd have your own take on the whole placebo thing since you love talkin' bout placebos so much.

Perhaps I'm just usin' this new feature I found a bit too much... :wacko:

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4 hours ago, John from Lowell said:

Hi,

An experience like that will indeed provide you with what many call 'personal proof'. The experience was real and very powerful. Yet it can not be placed in a lab and examined the way a true skeptic or scientist would like to do.

There are different states of consciousness. It is good that you are opened minded enought to research what you can on these things.

Your telepathic animal communication was nice to see. Have you tried to do that without being in this higher state of extreem awareness. I suspect it will work. Animals are receptive to telepathic communications, humans not so much.

John

Yeah, that's why I don't use my personal experiences when discussing with skeptics because it precisely can't be tested. That's why the proof is indeed strictly personal.

I've come sorta close to replicating it a few times since then but I haven't been able to fully replicate it yet. It seems to have been just a one time fluke. Though hopefully not for long.

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11 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

I read it all and found it quite interesting. One possible interpretation of your event involving the cat is astral projecting. If you read Robert Monroe (astral projection author), a characteristic vibration feeling often precedes the experience. You can then explore the environment with your astral senses which are different than physical senses so there is no common language to really explain the sensations. If you are interested there was a gifted OBE subject (Keith Blue Harary) that was used in experiments to make contact with his cat during OBE with positive findings. 

(excerpt from provided link)

Using the name Stuart "Blue" Harary (before he changed it to Keith), his experiments tried to establish veridical proof of OBEs. In some of the experiments, he would travel in OBEs to another room where his cat (Spirit) was filmed. The scientists assessed his ability to remotely affect the cat by counting the number of meow sounds it made. And they got good results. The scientists noted that when Harary was visiting the cat in his out-of-body state, it became much more quiet, which seemed to indicate there actually was a real-world component to his OBEs.

I'm actually already a huge fan of Robert Monroe! :D I love studying his work on OBEs and the afterlife. I've tried using binaural beats to help instigate another experience, but so far nada. :(

But, I'm not giving up just yet. ;)

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11 hours ago, Wes4747 said:

Actually drew a few parallels there AK. 

I grew up a heathen, til around 9ish and my mom checked us into an evangelistic country church, middle GA ish. I bought it, hook to the sinker and became a youth minister at 15.

I had many revelations during that time, i swear i would sound crazy posting them all, but in a revival when i was 16 i witnessed the slaying in the spirit thing. I had no interest to be slain but my mom was hoping for physical healing.

Mr. Wilbur touched my moms forehead and she went out for a good 15 minutes, crying and shaking in the floor. When she come to, aside from being quite shaken, she knew she had not been healed.

The next day she told me that she had experienced infinite sadness for what seemed like an eternity before fighting her way back to wakefulness. She expressed she did not feel it was of god.

Interestingly enough, i had phrophesied this very revival a full two years before it happened. I also told my then pastor that i would be responsible for the closing of the church during said revival. A change of pastors occured between the prophecy and the revival.

Long story short, god had laid it on my heart to read from the bible a particular set of verses on the last night of the revival, so i did and all he** broke loose. Punches were thrown as well as curses and they closed the doors of the church that night and put it up for sale the following week.

I never set foot in a church again, but i have experienced enough to know there is more to it than i can fully explain. I was angry with god for putting me in that position, as well as a few other things.

She described the vibration much like you did, hard to explain and nothing to relate to.

Pretty cool on the AP, havent been able to do that. I am not adamently against the unexplainable, just looking for it... And i want my experiences with it to be true.

I also want these experiences with it to be true. I'm not saying of course that I'm just believing it cause I want to believe in it, I'm just saying that I want to be accurate with whether or not these experiences of mine are or are not true. I want to live my life as close to what is objectively true as possible, no matter how much the truth hurts.

I can understand fully about the 'all hell breaking loose' part, because I didn't explain how exactly I left that Pentecostal church.

I made a speech one Sunday Night at the church subtly emphasizing that good deeds should ultimately take precedent over spiritual gifts. Of course immediately after my speech, the pastor took the mic and did a complete 180 of what I said, politely emphasizing spiritual gifts. I realized the message went right over everyone's heads. That If I wanted to get my message out to them, then I had to do it as direct and to the point as possible. So I made a video expressing my grievances with the church detailing why Pentecostalism is wrong, and posted it on Facebook (I had just about the whole church as friends on Facebook at the time). Needless to say I was ostracized and lambasted like crazy over it, with the pastor calling me a messenger of Satan leading people through the gates of Hell.

Looking back though, I wasn't courageous enough to say all of this to their faces in church and take the heat there, I did so from the comfort of home. Though regardless it still hurt me greatly, and it haunts me to this day. Of course all o this was all my fault in the first place, but I can't exactly change the past. It is what it is...

Anyway, thanks for sharing your story. Nice to know I'm not the only ex-holy roller on here. ^_^

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24 minutes ago, Aquila King said:

I figured you'd have your own take on the whole placebo thing since you love talkin' bout placebos so much.

Perhaps I'm just usin' this new feature I found a bit too much... :wacko:

I need some kind of context as to what I'm supposed to voice an opinion about. As to this topic; dead is dead and if you're conscious after death, you ain't dead. You're still a half conscious almost corpse. The end.

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Just now, XenoFish said:

I need some kind of context as to what I'm supposed to voice an opinion about. As to this topic; dead is dead and if you're conscious after death, you ain't dead. You're still a half conscious almost corpse. The end.

:mellow: And I think you've voiced your opinion quite clearly now. Thank you.

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Most of the people in this thread seem to want it to be something magical or supernatural. I could honestly care less. We'll all find out one day. Some of us for a third time.

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When I saw the title of the thread, I thought it was about politicians.

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13 hours ago, Aquila King said:

I have a lot I could say to both of you but it's incredibly late and I'm incredibly tired. :sleepy:

Thank you both for taking the time to read all of that. Made it worth writing. I'll properly respond sometime tomorrow, K?

In an actual death, the consciousness goes once the kidneys begin to shut down, when the body is operating from the brain stem. 

A near death experience is just that it is "near death" not and I repeat not the actual death process because there is no coming back from that. 

I am a Hospice liaison caregiver, trained in the physical death process and the person who is facing their death or thinks they are says a lot things, thinks a lot of  things, believes a lot of things, but once the organs begin to shut down, and the death gurgle becomes present there is no talk, there is no consciousness, no ability to respond, or any turning back, the body is in the process of ending itself, this is death, period. 

 

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1 minute ago, Sherapy said:

In an actual death, the consciousness goes once the kidneys begin to shut down. 

A near death experience is just that it is "near death" not and I repeat not the actual death process because there is no coming back from that. 

I am a Hospice liaison caregiver, trained in the physical death process and the person who is facing their death or thinks they are says a lot things, but once the organs begin to shut down, there is no talk, there is no consciousness or any turning back. 

When a radio stops working, there's no longer any sound being produced by the radio. Therefore someone who doesn't understand the science of radio waves could easily look at that and claim that the music died with the radio. But the truth is that the music was merely information riding on radio waves all around us, and that the radio was merely picking up on this information and converting it to sound. Therefore it makes perfect sense why there'd be no sound once the radio 'dies'.

This is just an analogy of course so don't go too far into it, but you get my point.

Just because consciousness ceases at the moment the brain starts shutting down doesn't necessarily mean that consciousness is generated by the brain. It could mean that, but this other scenario is just as possible as well. I would personally argue that this materialist hypothesis is implausible, of course. But nonetheless...

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1 minute ago, Aquila King said:

Just because consciousness ceases at the moment the brain starts shutting down doesn't necessarily mean that consciousness is generated by the brain. It could mean that, but this other scenario is just as possible as well. I would personally argue that this materialist hypothesis is implausible, of course. But nonetheless...

We need quantifiable evidence of that consciousness or self truly exist past physical death. A lot of people want to fall back on quantum physics at the answer to this, all that does is 'woo' bait. Once or If the LHC finds the Caspar particle that makes up ghost, then I remain highly skeptical that any form of afterlife exist. 

Just for thought experiment purposes, if you want to extend this to reincarnation you could say that an "afterlife" is just rebirth in another sphere of the multiverse. But even that is pure speculation. 

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Just now, XenoFish said:

We need quantifiable evidence of that consciousness or self truly exist past physical death. A lot of people want to fall back on quantum physics at the answer to this, all that does is 'woo' bait. Once or If the LHC finds the Caspar particle that makes up ghost, then I remain highly skeptical that any form of afterlife exist. 

Just for thought experiment purposes, if you want to extend this to reincarnation you could say that an "afterlife" is just rebirth in another sphere of the multiverse. But even that is pure speculation. 

And why pray tell do we need no quantifiable evidence that consciousness is generated by the material brain? Yes, you can give evidence to support your position, but I guarantee you that I can look at that exact same evidence and use it in support of my hypothesis as well.

It's awfully convenient that you materialists always demand evidence and insist that we have none, despite the fact that we can and do give you evidence (most of which mind you is the exact same evidence you use but with merely a different interpretation of it) of which you are always so ready to dismiss as no evidence at all.

It all comes down primarily to interpretation. All scientific data requires interpretation. All scientific conclusions are drawn from a human interpreter.

It's inherently biased and unfair that the materialist hypothesis of consciousness is necessarily assumed, while the spiritualist interpretation is dismissed off-hand all while both positions are based primarily on the same evidences.

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1 minute ago, Aquila King said:

And why pray tell do we need no quantifiable evidence that consciousness is generated by the material brain? Yes, you can give evidence to support your position, but I guarantee you that I can look at that exact same evidence and use it in support of my hypothesis as well.

It's awfully convenient that you materialists always demand evidence and insist that we have none, despite the fact that we can and do give you evidence (most of which mind you is the exact same evidence you use but with merely a different interpretation of it) of which you are always so ready to dismiss as no evidence at all.

It all comes down primarily to interpretation. All scientific data requires interpretation. All scientific conclusions are drawn from a human interpreter.

It's inherently biased and unfair that the materialist hypothesis of consciousness is necessarily assumed, while the spiritualist interpretation is dismissed off-hand all while both positions are based primarily on the same evidences.

To be honest I wouldn't even have bothered posting in this thread if you hadn't mentioned me. I could honestly give a flying F. 

And what I quoted from you is why I honestly hate subjects like this. Believe whatever the hell makes you happy. I'm done with this. Getting really tired of these pointless discussions. Have a good day or whatever.

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1 minute ago, XenoFish said:

To be honest I wouldn't even have bothered posting in this thread if you hadn't mentioned me. I could honestly give a flying F. 

And what I quoted from you is why I honestly hate subjects like this. Believe whatever the hell makes you happy. I'm done with this. Getting really tired of these pointless discussions. Have a good day or whatever.

Very well, sorry to bother you.

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