Looking For Afterlife Evidence...

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

"I can't help but believe" ---I know me, too.
I feel very glad science doesn't muddle my belief in that which is "unseen".
I know Dr. Raymond Moody didn't believe for years !

Scibat - do you know about the book "Life after Life"?
It is in most used bookstores. It's the pioneer book of afterlife experiences of children with documented "deaths" and revivals in the OR.

If you two had children would they be named Scicat or Zagabat?

Read it, I used to go to school where Dr. Moody taught and his book was one of the first ones I grabbed. Unfortunately in later years he's now saying NDEs are not necessarily proof of an afterlife. Which is the kind of mental snag I seem to always hit when researching this stuff :P

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Scibat

Read it, I used to go to school where Dr. Moody taught and his book was one of the first ones I grabbed. Unfortunately in later years he's now saying NDEs are not necessarily proof of an afterlife. Which is the kind of mental snag I seem to always hit when researching this stuff :P

Aaaa, what does he know!

"Read it, I used to go to school where Dr. Moody taught and his book was one of the first ones I grabbed. Unfortunately in later years he's now saying NDEs are not necessarily proof of an afterlife. Which is the kind of mental snag I seem to always hit when researching this stuff"

Huh! I was writing about the situation underlined above only recently in a response somewhere, maybe on anther forum, but had no idea that I wasn't on my own in suggesting this.

I don't doubt that so-called NDEs are real and that things happen which are just about impossible to disprove. Or prove.....

If only some of them reflect only some of what happens just before death they are important BUT what they don't do is provide evidence of the so-called afterlife. Not that I have a scrap of doubt about survival, only that these occurrences can't necessarily provide evidence of it....

Now consider other evidence of survival/the afterlife and treat NDEs as unexplained phenomena and we're good - neither provides the other with proof or disproof. They are independent of one another.

Trouble often is, though, that unrelated facts get linked by minds that don't properly understand 'em.

Then we waste effort debating the apparent relationship (or not) of things that actually aren't related.....

Scibat, mental snags are important. If we didn't work our way through them, we'd be inclined to believe everything and anything. Snake oil salesmen only sell to those who blindly believe and accept everything they're told.

But there's another important factor that many miss when trying to sort the wheat from the chaff - that we have free will, and that also means free will to think, ponder, consider, to believe and accept, or not. If everything was obvious, we'd have no choice but believe - and having no choice is NOT free will. We need to be offered both sides of everything so we have the opportunity to make up our own minds, and the wiser the soul, the more capable it is of doing so.

Consider the died-in-the-wool sceptics who just dismiss anything paranormal or metaphysical with a wave of a hand and a "nonsense!" comment. Do most of them take the time to think about it, or research it? Do any of them have any experience in any area of the paranormal? And even if they did - even if their dearly departed mother stood before them and spoke to them - would they accept it, or would they still just dismiss it as an illusion or a magic trick? I know many people like that, one was a paramedic who rode in the back of an ambulance with many dead or dying patients, only to be told after (if) they'd been revived what had occurred during the trip, but he still refuses to believe it and tells himself that they must not really have been dead, even though they had no heart beat, brain wave or pulse, etc.

Scibat, you're a wise soul who has reached the incarnation where you're ready to search and ponder, question and test, when you need not accept everything you're told, nor dismiss everything arbitrarily. That's an important step - the age of responsible free will. It's called conscious humanity - frightening thought, isn't it, when we grow beyond allowing others to tell us how it is and begin to form our own opinions and beliefs?

Never stop questioning and testing Scibat. Never accept or dismiss anything. As long as you do so, the answers will come, little by little, and when they do they'll be so blindingly obvious that you'll wonder how you missed them initially.

I started asking questions as a sceptical 15 year old when a friend loaned me an Edgar Cayce book called Many Mansions. I'm now 62 and I still have more questions than answers, but what little I've learnt I no longer have any doubts about. The most important thing I discovered in all those years is that anything is possible and everything is probable! Using that as a jumping-off board, the sky's the limit!

Originally Posted by Scibat

Read it, I used to go to school where Dr. Moody taught and his book was one of the first ones I grabbed. Unfortunately in later years he's now saying NDEs are not necessarily proof of an afterlife. Which is the kind of mental snag I seem to always hit when researching this stuff :P

It all depends on what you call proof, Scibat. It's like Mac's post that didn't agree with mine saying there wasn't such a thing as proof (grr gnash lol), it depends on what you call proof. For some, their own memories/beliefs are more than ample (for me they are). For others, if you can't stick a meter on the end of it then it isn't going to happen. If a buried coin is proof enough for Mac then so be it, but then it's just as easy to go into the whole does or doesn't that constitute as proof argument.

If it works for you then it's good enough.

"If a buried coin is proof enough for Mac then so be it, but then it's just as easy to go into the whole does or doesn't that constitute as proof argument."

I think you've muddled me with someone else on this "buried coin" business above..... And did I disagree with you?

Perhaps we can move on a little, though, with this point of 'proof'?

First may I re-state quite categorically that I have no doubts about the so-called afterlife? I don't believe in it - I feel totally certain and post extensively on many related topics.

I hesitate to return to religion in this general thread but here goes nothing. (Modern) Spiritualism's philosophy offers a reassurance that we all survive physical death, initially finding ourselves living on in a dimension where we also find we haven't changed into new people - we don't become angels dancing around in heaven!

More than that, however, Spiritualist mediums can sometimes (not on demand!) facilitate communication between those who have passed over and those still living in this world.

Such simple beginnings may lead a seeker to learn more and the abundance of evidence found, along with any personal experience, leads to a conviction about the data. The outcome won't meet scientific or mathematical criteria but on a personal level it's felt as proof !

No amount of debate and argument can change what a seeker experiences and learns and - I've found - no amount of discussion will convince some doubters until they are ready to be persuaded.....

I am in a state of mind,to be honest,where one minute I believe and the next,I don't.
So much evidence that the mind tends to flutter back and forth between decisions like
'Do I accept that there is life after death or not?'

The only proof I will accept is to see my late husband standing before me,looking as solid as you and I.

Deepsea

Great post Mac. Some dont have belief.. some have the knowledge! Proof enough over a period of time. Rock solid proof. I have, I know you have, and many more on SF have. I liken it thus.. imagine a building where everyone is. No windows, doors or anything. Some will believe that it rains outside because they were told by some one. Some will believe because they thought they may have heard it. And some will believe because they read it in a book by some one they trust. Then some person manages to actually get outside and stand in it. "Bluddy hell" they'd say, this stuff is real, I'm standing in it. They get the chance to go out in it more than once, dozens of times infact. They get back into the building and they tell the believers... and nine times out of ten the believers don't, cant, wont, believe that you have stood in the rain.. for real. They have to do it and find out for themselves.
Not a good analagy I know but hey.. it's the truth.. It is raining out there. Heavily.

G.

Originally Posted by glenos

Great post Mac. Some dont have belief.. some have the knowledge! Proof enough over a period of time. Rock solid proof. I have, I know you have, and many more on SF have. I liken it thus.. imagine a building where everyone is. No windows, doors or anything. Some will believe that it rains outside because they were told by some one. Some will believe because they thought they may have heard it. And some will believe because they read it in a book by some one they trust. Then some person manages to actually get outside and stand in it. "Bluddy hell" they'd say, this stuff is real, I'm standing in it. They get the chance to go out in it more than once, dozens of times infact. They get back into the building and they tell the believers... and nine times out of ten the believers don't, cant, wont, believe that you have stood in the rain.. for real. They have to do it and find out for themselves.
Not a good analagy I know but hey.. it's the truth.. It is raining out there. Heavily.

G.

Good explanation,Glenos,I like that very much.
Deepsea

Thanks J. And do you know what.., the people who do get outside more often than not pay a price to get there. Whether it's a rotten life, bereavments, or whatever it took to grind you fine enough to be able to get out. Mainly it's not given to you, you earn it one way or another and often it's the hard way. As is said.. "suffer the children to come unto me."