Dr. Eben Alexander's NDE

[Balder]

 

Hmmm...

 

A neurosurgeon's account of "heaven"...

[Mary W.]

Here's a related thread: OBEs, NDEs, and Brain Wars. 

[Mary W.]

A thoughtful response on Alexander's so-called NDE by Sam Harris

[Layman Pascal]

This story is edifying and suggestive to those who are not narrowly invested in the diminishment of subtle subjectivity (including those who wish to more precisely correlate realms)... but it is more interesting because of "why" it interests people.  

Why is it on covers?  Why is it discussed?

• Some of must be cynical "Christianity" and other believers who maintain a suspicious distance from the consensus of material science -- feeling as if their ancient, nostalgic, emotive habits are in danger from the industrial machinery of reason.  Here they feel, without anyone even saying, that a blow is struck for their team.
• Others are half-hearted, wafflers, undecided voters, who imagine themselves as maybe willing to agree that there are non-material planes but gosh they're just not sure... they are intrigued by any data that goes either way.  Whatever squeezes the knot in either direction.  They feel put upon to make a decision but endlessly unable to make it.
• Poor culture always invites a fight.  Therefore we also want to see who will strike back against this and how... in what way will neuro-materialists respond?  

In all of this, in the sense of the newsworthiness of the event, in the percolation of my own interest, I find a certain poverty-mentality relative to the subtle.  As if it IS news that some forms of reality are non-material?  As if death were the key issue!  As if "a scientific doctor" were the critical authority.  As if  popular acceptance might make a ruling in favor of the virtual domain and at last grant us deeper and fuller access to it!  

There is a very strange element in all this.  While I am keen for any new data which assists in the long-term project of technologizing the subtle (Hegel's project?!) I cannot overlook the weirdness of treating extra-neural experience and/or intangible realms as if they were a rumored deposit of rare minerals somewhere out in the desert.

This is something of a low level of sophistication relative to our understanding of subtle realms.  Does not the blueness of a blue sky occupy the same ontological status as whatever a culturally participatory neuro-psychological mind interprets as "the afterlife"?  In the journey of understanding we must lay hold of what is close at hand.  In the work of bridging realms we must be hungry for the 10 000 ways that they touch... and not merely the anciently fascinating question of "what does it look like when the body's brain goes off... as happens when we die?"  We are seeking something which must make all this look paltry.  We should already be hearing its drums beating in the distance.  

The old rational-mechanistic adage that affects are "secondary qualities" must be challenged in ourselves... must be challenged in the moment of our own interest in the affirming of secondary qualities.  What are we affirming against?  What we are we still believing such that counter-affirmation moves us so readily?

Who needs to jump in and insist that, compared to a rock's reality, heaven is unreal?  

Who needs to jump in and insist that "things not like rocks are real too!"

Doesn't everyone, in a sense, already agree that heaven is not "real like a rock"?  

This should give us a certain nonchalance with which to begin some serious investigations...