Near Death experiences and the scientific method.

[Ben Dhyan]

Sorry but this is just word salad to me.

Ok, we may have to start with the basics if you don't understand the 'finger point at the moon' meme. Can you confirm if you do or do not understand its meaning?

 

[Ben Dhyan]

More word salad that doesn't seem to address what I said. No answers to my questions. More blaming atheists for your inability to answer questions or to demonstrate the veracity of your claims.


But then you'll freely go ahead and attribute other personal experiences you have to spirits.
Why assume spirits are responsible for anything?

My point and question stand.

In order to properly answer your question, to your mind what is the reality represented by your concept 'spirits'? You see if you want to know what spirit is, you must experience it, until you do, it really does not mean anything to you. So if you have not experienced spirit, conceptualizing about it is just make believe on your part. The real is on the other side of concepts. regardless of whether the conceptualization is that spirits are real or that they are not real. The important thing is the fact that if you are conceptualizing, you are looking at shadows on the cave wall!

 

[Ben Dhyan]

I'm definitely not attributing anything to spirits because I don't believe they exist. Because I've yet to see convincing evidence that exist.
This is getting tiresome.

All beliefs are conceptual, they are shadows on the wall, to see directly in the light, you must learn to go beyond thought.. Now thinking has its place, normal functioning in the world, but to grow and experience new things, you must have the experience itself, not the mind's thought or conceptualization about it.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

The pure atheist night912 does not have a position about the possibility of a spiritual realm.

The pure agnostic night912 does not know if the spiritual realm is possible or impossible.

Good, I understand clearly.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

I can't say this about all religious and nonreligious minded people but from from all the ones that I've engaged with, whether in person or online, it's actually the opposite of what you've said. The religious ones are narrow minded that they think it's impossible for imaginative things to not exist in reality. The nonreligious ones are open to the possibility that imaginative things don't exist in reality.

I understand what you mean about narrow mindedness of many 'true believers', my point about reality being on the other side of conceptualization/beliefs about reality applies to all, the true believers and the non-believers. Imagination is conceptual, it has its place in life, but experiencing reality directly is the crown of the creative process. If one can experience reality, all questions will fall away. How does this creative process work, go beyond the conceptualizing mind. When the mind is still and free of thought, what is is all there is, the experience is non-dual, it is not you experiencing something, just pure awareness.

 

[night912]

I understand what you mean about narrow mindedness of many 'true believers', my point about reality being on the other side of conceptualization/beliefs about reality applies to all, the true believers and the non-believers. Imagination is conceptual, it has its place in life, but experiencing reality directly is the crown of the creative process. If one can experience reality, all questions will fall away. How does this creative process work, go beyond the conceptualizing mind. When the mind is still and free of thought, what is is all there is, the experience is non-dual, it is not you experiencing something, just pure awareness.

What do you mean by, "pure awareness?"

 

[Ben Dhyan]

What do you mean by, "pure awareness?"

Pure awareness mean the experience of awareness without an experiencer. Non-dual state of awareness. Some use the expression awareness of awareness

 

[Mock Turtle]

Of course 'monkey see, monkey do' type learning has a role, but without applying the learning, there is no growing. You do not understand, all thinking, group or solitary is conceptual and prevents the real from being experienced. Only when the mind is free from thought will the real be present to the mind and soul. True, we have lives to will and that does require involving ourselves to some extent with conceptual thought, but if that is all we did with our lives, we would end it at the same level as we came into it, a level just above the animal kingdom, not knowing how the life came into being. By experiencing the real through some efficacious religious practice, one gains understanding as to what and who we really are in the bigger picture of universal being,

Mostly just meaningless words to me, since the bold cited generally means that you are trusting the words of others - which vary so as to form a spectrum - and as to which we can each make up our own minds as to their veracity and relevance. Some of us don't regard them as relevant (too old and man-made), and manage to live a life without the pitfalls of doing so - because they often cause division. You seem to think that what goes on in your head applies to all. Perhaps not so.

And perhaps what you experience as spirit others experience as something different - given that I have experienced all sorts of things that might be described as spirit but which I might have a better explanation as to such, just as psychology often does - as to simply being the way the mind works.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Mostly just meaningless words to me, since the bold cited generally means that you are trusting the words of others - which vary so as to form a spectrum - and as to which we can each make up our own minds as to their veracity and relevance. Some of us don't regard them as relevant (too old and man-made), and manage to live a life without the pitfalls of doing so - because they often cause division. You seem to think that what goes on in your head applies to all. Perhaps not so.

And perhaps what you experience as spirit others experience as something different - given that I have experienced all sorts of things that might be described as spirit but which I might have a better explanation as to such, just as psychology often does - as to simply being the way the mind works.

I have no idea how you drew that conclusion from the bolded words. An efficacious religious practice in the context I used it implies a practice that works to bring about the experience of the reality beyond conceptual reality.

You see, that is where you misunderstand, you say you experience all sorts of things that might be described as spirit, I have never experienced spirit, nor will I ever because it is not possible, the reality represented by the concept of spirit is not of this world, the I who experiences is of this world.

So unless you are prepared to cease all thought so there is no 'you' present, there is no way to realize that beyond this physical world.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I have no idea how you drew that conclusion from the bolded words. An efficacious religious practice in the context I used it implies a practice that works to bring about the experience of the reality beyond conceptual reality.

You see, that is where you misunderstand, you say you experience all sorts of things that might be described as spirit, I have never experienced spirit, nor will I ever because it is not possible, the reality represented by the concept of spirit is not of this world, the I who experiences is of this world.

So unless you are prepared to cease all thought so there is no 'you' present, there is no way to realize that beyond this physical world.

Nothing useful coming from your words I'm afraid.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Quite the contrary

Then why didn't you do so?

, only the direct experience is real,

The direct experience of a hallucination is also very real for the one having the hallucination.

for atheists to want objective proof of someone's subjective experience is impossible.

So even though you said "quite the contrary", the fact is that you indeed aren't able to demonstrate any of these experiences in such a way that they can be distinguished from sheer hallucination....

If you can't understand that the real is on the other side of any conceptualization, and that the only evidence there will ever be is when and if the atheist or whoever experiences reality themselves directly, then they continue to have their heads in the sand.

I'm not interested in your word salad and abstract mumbo jumbo.

Can you, or can you not, demonstrate the experiences you are talking about in such a way that they can be distinguished from sheer hallucination?

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Nothing useful coming from your words I'm afraid.

Just remember, the real is forever on the other side of those words. Don't be deluded by the shadow on the cave wall, it may be my shadow, but my shadow is not the real me!

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Then why didn't you do so?



The direct experience of a hallucination is also very real for the one having the hallucination.



So even though you said "quite the contrary", the fact is that you indeed aren't able to demonstrate any of these experiences in such a way that they can be distinguished from sheer hallucination....



I'm not interested in your word salad and abstract mumbo jumbo.

Can you, or can you not, demonstrate the experiences you are talking about in such a way that they can be distinguished from sheer hallucination?

I can't, not now, not ever, for as I've explained, the 'I' is of the physical body, not the non-physical. The experience of which I am talking about is not of this world, it is reality itself, not a secondhand claim about the real.

All the words you post here are mere concepts, you can't convey even one truth directly here on these pages, as an atheist, that is the limit of your experience of reality, the shadows on the cave wall, the thoughts about what is real, but reality itself evades your apprehension.

Of course it is possible to experience the real, but never in all eternity can it be experienced by the ego, the personal I.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Atheists equating the possibility of the reality of the easter bunny with reality God is just how their mind works, but to my way of life it is not only a waste of precious life time, it involves the mind's conceptualization of a nonsensical entity.

Instead of trying to read my mind and/or denigrate me, let's stick to the example. I'm talking about things that can be shown to exist. God claims are no different from any other claim of something existing.

I attempted to ask you what the difference was, when I said:

“What's the difference though? Just because one group is kids and the other is adults? So what?
They're two groups of human beings who believe in things.
To the adults, there is subjective evidence of God (personal experiences, as you say).
To the children, there is subjective evidence of the Easter Bunny (personal experiences: receiving chocolate, searching for eggs, seeing the Easter Bunny at the mall, etc.).


Millions, billions of people believe in various God(s) and millions more have believed in other Gods throughout history.
Millions of children believe in the Easter Bunny.
The number of people that believe in a thing has no bearing on whether that thing actually exists.”


You didn’t address this, and instead posed a question about trees falling in forests.

It would be nice if you would attempt to address this.

So what I will try to do going forward is to focus on reality and to discuss how to realize it, not conceptualize about it!

I’m trying very hard to focus on reality and what can be demonstrated.

How does one experience reality itself firsthand, not by drawing on some belief tradition, postulating, speculating, believing, etc.. Now since it not possible to convey any idea to another without conceptualizing, let us keep the conceptualizing confined to conveying the essence of how one can realize reality, not know it, or about it conceptually, but to be in reality as a non-dual experience.

Sorry but I don’t know what this means. It sounds like word salad to me.

 

[SkepticThinker]

This is still a conceptualization in your mind, not in mine. The reality of which I speak is the real, it is on the other side of the conceptual, it is the moon, not the finger pointing to it. Because the atheist mind is stuck in the conceptual mode of perception, you think this is a valid way to understand the greater reality using concepts as proxies for the real they are meant to represent. Nothing could be further from the truth, until you realize that on the other side of the concepts, you are living in maya, illusion, stuck in samsara. It's the moon silly!

So we just have to believe every single claim anybody makes, regardless of whether or not there is evidence for it.
No thanks. I'd be believing in a ton of false things if I did that, and I'm only interested in believing true things.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I do not attribute it to anything, only you are. You see, you try and conceptualize my experience, that which you have not experienced and then delude yourself into thinking that your conceptualization of my experience is a real representation of reality.

The real is forever on the other side of concepts, if you ever do have a spiritual realization, the worst thing you can do is think about to try and understand it, it takes you further away from the real back into the mental maze of conceptualization where the illusion of the past experience is so hypnotizing, the aspirant of truth gets lost in the maze. Don't examine the finger!

Yes you do attribute characteristics and actions to spirits, as though they are known to exist. You've done it several times in this thread.
The rest is just a repetition of the same old world salad.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Ok, we may have to start with the basics if you don't understand the 'finger point at the moon' meme. Can you confirm if you do or do not understand its meaning?

I think it's irrelevant.

 

[SkepticThinker]

In order to properly answer your question, to your mind what is the reality represented by your concept 'spirits'? You see if you want to know what spirit is, you must experience it, until you do, it really does not mean anything to you. So if you have not experienced spirit, conceptualizing about it is just make believe on your part. The real is on the other side of concepts. regardless of whether the conceptualization is that spirits are real or that they are not real. The important thing is the fact that if you are conceptualizing, you are looking at shadows on the cave wall!

There is no reality represented by an concept of spirit that I'm aware of. I keep asking people for evidence of spirits and spirit worlds, and all I keep getting is word salad.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Just remember, the real is forever on the other side of those words. Don't be deluded by the shadow on the cave wall, it may be my shadow, but my shadow is not the real me!

Yeah, but I see no value in chasing any shadows - hence why I am still agnostic to some extent. I prefer the more concrete things that we can change to make our lives better, and in my view many religious beliefs just don't help.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Instead of trying to read my mind and/or denigrate me, let's stick to the example. I'm talking about things that can be shown to exist. God claims are no different from any other claim of something existing.

I attempted to ask you what the difference was, when I said:

“What's the difference though? Just because one group is kids and the other is adults? So what?
They're two groups of human beings who believe in things.
To the adults, there is subjective evidence of God (personal experiences, as you say).
To the children, there is subjective evidence of the Easter Bunny (personal experiences: receiving chocolate, searching for eggs, seeing the Easter Bunny at the mall, etc.).


Millions, billions of people believe in various God(s) and millions more have believed in other Gods throughout history.
Millions of children believe in the Easter Bunny.
The number of people that believe in a thing has no bearing on whether that thing actually exists.”


You didn’t address this, and instead posed a question about trees falling in forests.

It would be nice if you would attempt to address this.




I’m trying very hard to focus on reality and what can be demonstrated.



Sorry but I don’t know what this means. It sounds like word salad to me.

Based on my understanding, there is no magical easter bunny, it would be an absurd waste of time discussing the possibility that one exists. However if you believe you have either subjective or objective proof that a magical easter bunny actually exists, I am prepared to hear you out.

You may be trying hard to focus on reality, but in fact you are not doing so, you are merely thinking about reality. There is a difference between the thought about reality and reality itself.

What I was trying to convey is that if you really would like to discuss how to experience reality rather than just thinking about experiencing reality, then we can. But from the get go, you must understand that reality can't be experienced through conceptualization, it's now up to you.