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Originally Posted by ketzer
Maybe, but I think you are making some assumptions that though reasonable, are still assumptions. I don't particularly see why all past lives would need to be remembered. The loss of self does not necessarily imply the knowledge of the all. Perhaps a necessary ingredient, but not sufficient.
The fact is whoever conveys the experience to another is going to be doing so from the individual first person point of view at the time they convey it, as well as looking back upon it as something that happened to them (a self), which is again a first person point of view. Now they will say it was not like that, that they felt they were the entire scene, or one with everything and there was no self that was not part of the all, but unless one experienced what it was they experienced, one cannot say what it was, or know whether to believe them. There is an ineffability/unthinkability quality to the no-self experience when reflecting back upon it from the first person/ self POV.
Their memory of the experience may indeed indicate there was a self there, but not necessarily so. One can even have memories of things that never took place, it is the nature of memory. All we know is there is an impression after the experience that it happened to me, yet paradoxically they felt they were not a differentiated me at the time. But the memory is what is now be experienced, not the actual event, and the memory is generated in a state of mind when a "me" or "self" is definitely present. Memories are not records of events, but stories generated by the mind in the present moment, a mind that in this case is once again focused on ego and back in a "self" state as it generates the memory.
I think a limitation comes into play whenever two individuals, attached to egos, try to communicate about an event that when it comes right down to it, is said not to really involve either....or anyone for that matter. One who hears about the event may try to imagine what such an experience would be like, but from an ego based / self (I) view point, it would of course not be truly possible either. Maybe it is real, maybe they are just imagining it, or maybe they are nuts. I can't know for sure about them, nor even how much I can trust my own impressions of such events. The "I" POV is a necessarily limited one.
Anyway, I suppose this is several paragraphs that don't really get either of us closer to understanding the phenomenon. I expect this is why many will eventually stop trying and leave it in the mystical realm to be experienced (or not) but not explained nor even accounted. One tends to ramble on then just get frustrated and give up..... like I am going to do now. It really is a wonderful state of mind...state of being... whatever it is.
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I agree that we can't really know for sure because there are so many factors involved that an outsider does not and can not know.
One such factor is one's personal spiritual or religious beliefs, and faith which may include one believing in a collective or cosmic consciousness and/or believes brahman, god, or the eternal tao is the collective/cosmic consciousness.
Just to be clear, I only see/observe a problem/contradiction with out of body experiences when a person says or claims consciousness is not of the body/mind, yet when they say they experienced an out of body experience (to try to prove they experienced something spiritual, This could be what it is all about) they identify with and perceive their physical body while out of body when consciousness is supposedly not of mind/body. If consciousness is not of mind and body like these people think, these people would have experienced ultimate/absolute reality, heaven, nirvana or what have you, instead of their physical body, which they say and claim consciousness is not.
A little common sense, reason and intellect (intelligence) goes a long way to myth bust obvious contradictions and beliefs that are not true. This could be one of the reasons why some spiritual people do not want to use their brains, intellect and "ego" that "god" gave them. Ignorance really is bliss to them.