Heaven is real, says neurosurgeon who claims to have visited the afterlife

[foggyb]

Don't have a link, however I remember reading about a study of near death experiences.  The study found that most of the people who glimpsed the "afterlife" in these experiences were religious beforehand...

Most people are religious. Go figure. It doesn't take a study to deduce that.

Good point. Atheism has a very small minority. How about that, amencon? Studies show....

[foggyb]

Yeah, your mind makes itself distort the senses, altering reality.  Reality is malleable with your mind, because we are spiritual beings.

Dank, that means you can't know anything to be real, including the theory itself. If what you say is true, then what you say, can't be true.

I believe that we can mostly trust our senses, our minds function reasonably well and we can know many things to be true.

[mobodick]

Religion ≠ spirituality.

Life is eternal, you only change forms after death, back to your original state as a soul.

Death is the rebirth of your spirit, it's a beautiful thing.  Though you may never physically see a passed one, in this reality, again, a bond remains between your soul and those who are close to you, after death.

When my Grandma passed away, my cousin, very young at the time (5-7?) picked up the phone, a few days later, and told her Mom that Grandma had called her.  Spiritual happenings are often experiences by kids, as they are young and much closer to the pure, conscious state of mind.

spirituality ≠ real actual universe.
Start by understanding the instrument which we use to observe the universe (our brain) and you will understand that what you call spirituality is a product of the grey stuff in your head and not a property of the universe as a whole.

[mobodick]

Don't have a link, however I remember reading about a study of near death experiences.  The study found that most of the people who glimpsed the "afterlife" in these experiences were religious beforehand...

That reminds me of a study about astroloy and birthsigns.
It showed that people who knew the concept of birthsigns (but do not nessesarily believe in them) showed more resemblance to their sign than people who have never heared of this concept.
The problem with people is that we all think that we are in control while we usually are driven by a lot of instinct-like stuff that we then try to rationalize afterwards to make it seem we understand ourselfs and the world around us.
Big fire coming from a mountain? Sure, it was the gods. It must have been because noone is capable of doing such big things.

[dank]

Religion ≠ spirituality.

Life is eternal, you only change forms after death, back to your original state as a soul.

Death is the rebirth of your spirit, it's a beautiful thing.  Though you may never physically see a passed one, in this reality, again, a bond remains between your soul and those who are close to you, after death.

When my Grandma passed away, my cousin, very young at the time (5-7?) picked up the phone, a few days later, and told her Mom that Grandma had called her.  Spiritual happenings are often experiences by kids, as they are young and much closer to the pure, conscious state of mind.

spirituality ≠ real actual universe.
Start by understanding the instrument which we use to observe the universe (our brain) and you will understand that what you call spirituality is a product of the grey stuff in your head and not a property of the universe as a whole.

Can you explain on that?  Grey stuff makes people have spiritual experiences?  What about consciousness?

I'm curious as to how many people that talk about spirituality on here have even tried something like meditating, let alone astral projecting.

[mobodick]

Religion ≠ spirituality.

Life is eternal, you only change forms after death, back to your original state as a soul.

Death is the rebirth of your spirit, it's a beautiful thing.  Though you may never physically see a passed one, in this reality, again, a bond remains between your soul and those who are close to you, after death.

When my Grandma passed away, my cousin, very young at the time (5-7?) picked up the phone, a few days later, and told her Mom that Grandma had called her.  Spiritual happenings are often experiences by kids, as they are young and much closer to the pure, conscious state of mind.

spirituality ≠ real actual universe.
Start by understanding the instrument which we use to observe the universe (our brain) and you will understand that what you call spirituality is a product of the grey stuff in your head and not a property of the universe as a whole.

Can you explain on that?  Grey stuff makes people have spiritual experiences? What about consciousness?

I'm curious as to how many people that talk about spirituality on here have even tried something like meditating, let alone astral projecting.

Yup, that too.
Try being concious while your brain is not working.  
In fact, it gets incredibly weird.
What we call conciousness is really an aggregate of several more or less independant parts of the brain. Some people have a disfunctioning 'aggregator' and their conciousness is not singular but consists of multiple parts concerned with the different parts of the 'being' experience.
And there are loads of cases where people with specific brain damage have specific changes to what they experience as consiousness. It's interesting to see, for instance, what happens to people when their brrain is split (the link between the two halves is severed). These people have a unique way of functioning that alows us to map certain subconcious operations of the brain.
It shows, for instance, that we have a part in our brain that no matter the quality of given information will allways come up with an answer, but it doesn't care about how accurate that answer is. Hence we humans have the capacity to think of a possible story even if we don't know the actual facts. You should realy look that up on the internet, it's incredibly fascinating.

I wonder how many people who do astral projecting can verify it scientifically.
It should be easy, project yourself to a place where you can identify something without having seen it before.
Well, there have been a shitload of these tests with people claiming they can do extrasensory shit and all.
And guess what, no actual effects on the actual real universe in all cases.
Noone who claimed they can project themselfs somewhere was able to guess the subject any better than random chance.
James Randi has some good information.
Incidentally, the foundation he started is still (for at least 30 or 40 years now) offering a very large sum of money to anyone who can show an actual real effect of their presumed psychic powers. Needless to say, lots have tried and noone has succeeded.

[mobodick]

Religion ≠ spirituality.

Life is eternal, you only change forms after death, back to your original state as a soul.

Death is the rebirth of your spirit, it's a beautiful thing.  Though you may never physically see a passed one, in this reality, again, a bond remains between your soul and those who are close to you, after death.

When my Grandma passed away, my cousin, very young at the time (5-7?) picked up the phone, a few days later, and told her Mom that Grandma had called her.  Spiritual happenings are often experiences by kids, as they are young and much closer to the pure, conscious state of mind.

spirituality ≠ real actual universe.
Start by understanding the instrument which we use to observe the universe (our brain) and you will understand that what you call spirituality is a product of the grey stuff in your head and not a property of the universe as a whole.

Can you explain on that?  Grey stuff makes people have spiritual experiences?  What about consciousness?

I'm curious as to how many people that talk about spirituality on here have even tried something like meditating, let alone astral projecting.

BTW, meditation is a good way to achieve states of disbound conciousness.
Even easily achievable things like a trance state allow you to decoulpe ego from the subconcious.
Dancing is a prime example of that.

[dank]

Yup, that too.
Try being concious while your brain is not working.  
In fact, it gets incredibly weird.
What we call conciousness is really an aggregate of several more or less independant parts of the brain. Some people have a disfunctioning 'aggregator' and their conciousness is not singular but consists of multiple parts concerned with the different parts of the 'being' experience.
And there are loads of cases where people with specific brain damage have specific changes to what they experience as consiousness. It's interesting to see, for instance, what happens to people when their brrain is split (the link between the two halves is severed). These people have a unique way of functioning that alows us to map certain subconcious operations of the brain.
It shows, for instance, that we have a part in our brain that no matter the quality of given information will allways come up with an answer, but it doesn't care about how accurate that answer is. Hence we humans have the capacity to think of a possible story even if we don't know the actual facts. You should realy look that up on the internet, it's incredibly fascinating.

That's fine, but science does not disprove spirituality.  Being conscious while your brain isn't working would be to return to our pure conscious energy form.

I wonder how many people who do astral projecting can verify it scientifically.
It should be easy, project yourself to a place where you can identify something without having seen it before.
Well, there have been a shitload of these tests with people claiming they can do extrasensory shit and all.
And guess what, no actual effects on the actual real universe in all cases.
Noone who claimed they can project themselfs somewhere was able to guess the subject any better than random chance.
James Randi has some good information.
Incidentally, the foundation he started is still (for at least 30 or 40 years now) offering a very large sum of money to anyone who can show an actual real effect of their presumed psychic powers. Needless to say, lots have tried and noone has succeeded.

That's because they're trying to prove supernatural happenings for their ego, for money.  It only occurs in absence of ego.

Astral projecting is not necessarily traveling our reality.  While I have heard of it, I have only traveled other realities.

Again, you can't verify or disprove spirituality with science, science is limited to our reality.  Perhaps we will find a way, besides quantum physics, to further validate the alternative forms of energy around us.

[mobodick]

Yup, that too.
Try being concious while your brain is not working.  
In fact, it gets incredibly weird.
What we call conciousness is really an aggregate of several more or less independant parts of the brain. Some people have a disfunctioning 'aggregator' and their conciousness is not singular but consists of multiple parts concerned with the different parts of the 'being' experience.
And there are loads of cases where people with specific brain damage have specific changes to what they experience as consiousness. It's interesting to see, for instance, what happens to people when their brrain is split (the link between the two halves is severed). These people have a unique way of functioning that alows us to map certain subconcious operations of the brain.
It shows, for instance, that we have a part in our brain that no matter the quality of given information will allways come up with an answer, but it doesn't care about how accurate that answer is. Hence we humans have the capacity to think of a possible story even if we don't know the actual facts. You should realy look that up on the internet, it's incredibly fascinating.

That's fine, but science does not disprove spirituality.  Being conscious while your brain isn't working would be to return to our pure conscious energy form.

That would make sense if by 'pure conciousness' you mean 'no conciousness at all'.
Science cannot disprove a belief.
It would be the same thing as asking science to disprove the green elephant that has been living on my ceiling for over two months.
But you should realy look up Randi as he will show you that science does disprove claims of spirituality.
Noone claiming that there is something more than the brain operating has been able to show any, and i mean any real world effects.
So i can say i believe there is this elephant, or the spaghetti monster, and science cannot disprove it.
If i say that i have real world evidence that this elephant is there then science can take a look and verify this.
And this has been tried and tried over and over again and there just are no real world examples of spirituality acting on the universe. It is inside your head (and since we as a species are genetically very similar, other peoples heads).
You realy need to realize that your brain is much more special than you want it to be and that is the only source of what we experience as conciousness.

I wonder how many people who do astral projecting can verify it scientifically.
It should be easy, project yourself to a place where you can identify something without having seen it before.
Well, there have been a shitload of these tests with people claiming they can do extrasensory shit and all.
And guess what, no actual effects on the actual real universe in all cases.
Noone who claimed they can project themselfs somewhere was able to guess the subject any better than random chance.
James Randi has some good information.
Incidentally, the foundation he started is still (for at least 30 or 40 years now) offering a very large sum of money to anyone who can show an actual real effect of their presumed psychic powers. Needless to say, lots have tried and noone has succeeded.

That's because they're trying to prove supernatural happenings for their ego, for money.  It only occurs in absence of ego.

Astral projecting is not necessarily traveling our reality.  While I have heard of it, I have only traveled other realities.

Again, you can't verify or disprove spirituality with science, science is limited to our reality.  Perhaps we will find a way, besides quantum physics, to further validate the alternative forms of energy around us.

Yeah, that's the nonsense explanation that most 'believers' come up with as their first reaction.
But consider this: Why didn't anyone not driven by ego or greed step up and picked up the million dollars to give to charity?
Well, in fact, there were lots of such people who genuinely thought they had the powers and wanted to use the money for a good cause. These people also failed the test.

Ok, now let me predict your next thought on this. You'll think the tests are flawed.
And so goes the story of a believer that chooses to believe above knowing and understanding.

BTW, Randi is an ex-magician. He understands deeply the flaws of human brains as he exploited them for magical effect.
People are very capable of completely deluding themselfs by believing irrational things, even when presented with evidence to the contrary...
I myself produce and mix music as a hobby and i can tell you (as can any professional that makes decisions heavily based on their direct experience) that stuff like confirmation bias are your worst enemy because your brains are screwing with you big time all the time.
It took me years to understand why a mix sounded so good in the evening but turned out complete rubbish when listening to it the next day.
Same goes for adiophiles, they are also believers that cannot get their claims confirmed through proper ABX testing. It is all between your ears.

I agree that this is not an easy truth to digest.
Take it slowly and comb for evidence.

[mobodick]

Astral projecting is not necessarily traveling our reality.  While I have heard of it, I have only traveled other realities.

But the funny (or sad) thing is that this is exactly where you would need to travel to not make it detectable by science.
The problem is that when you look at history you can see how science has cleared up our view of the universe.
People used to believe (very strongly and convincingly, just like you believe in astral projection) that there were gods living in the clouds.
Once we got to the clouds we found there were no spiritual beings there.
So the gods moved to the stars.
But when we started looking beyond the stars we found, again, no gods or spiritual beings.
So now the only place for these feelings is some abstract universe outside the universe or similar things.
The failure to produce real world effects is the biggest failing of any proponent of any spiritual system.
Believers of any kind have been driven into a corner and their only escape is outside of the real world.
But, you know, no reason for stopping believing in things that are not in our real world... 

[dank]

You're still taking the presumption that your lack of experience indicates lack of existence.  I don't see why a spiritual world and our world can't coexist.  My interactions with the spiritual realm, throughout my life, has given me the experience to believe in it and know it's existence.

If you ask anybody who has had a divine spiritual experience, they'll tell you it's more real than our world is.  The question then becomes, if our reality is real, why was the spiritual reality more real?  Is our reality real?

[mobodick]

You're still taking the presumption that your lack of experience indicates lack of existence.  I don't see why a spiritual world and our world can't coexist.  My interactions with the spiritual realm, throughout my life, has given me the experience to believe in it and know it's existence.

If you ask anybody who has had a divine spiritual experience, they'll tell you it's more real than our world is.  The question then becomes, if our reality is real, why was the spiritual reality more real?  Is our reality real?

I've had a divine spiritual experience and i have learned a lot from it.
But do i think it is more than a burp of my brain? Nah.

Reality is real BY DEFINITION.
You can't go about and change the meaning of words because it suits your feelings better. (well, you can but you would not make much sense)
If you define something outside of reality you are indicating that it is not real.
And besides, give me one example, one tiny fact (which does not come down to how you feel) that indicates that reality is not somehow real.
Spiritual world more real than reality?
I've experienced hallucinations that were more 'real' than reality, yet i don't think they actually were real somehow.

If you experience something that makes you feel it is real does not automatically make it real.
It is just how our brain works and it has been shown ad nauseam.

[dank]

How about quantum physics?

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
- Max Planck

You're assuming there is only one reality.

[foggyb]

Reality is real BY DEFINITION.

If you define something outside of reality you are indicating that it is not real.
And besides, give me one example, one tiny fact (which does not come down to how you feel) that indicates that reality is not somehow real.

Sure. Lets talk about what we think are solid objects. Did you know that 'solid' matter really is 99.99% empty space? Its true! Atoms are VASTLY empty, its the electrical field generated in the atom that gives us the illusion of solid objects.


Diameter of a nucleus is around 10^-12 cm.
Diameter of an atom is on the order of 10^-8 cm (up to 5*10^-8).

Taking the smaller range of the atom, the ratio is:

atom/nucleus = 10^-8/10^-12 = 10^4

Thus, if the nucleus was 6cm in diameter, the atom would be:

6cm * 10^4 = 60000cm = 600 meters in diameter


See the Rutherford experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_experiment

This isn't news, that experiment was done in 1909!

Could that mean that our current "reality" is not real in the way we perceive it to be? Could our reality be an overlay on top of a base system? I believe so.

[mobodick]

How about quantum physics?

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
- Max Planck

You're assuming there is only one reality.

It's not an assumption, it's a definition.
There is nothing outside of reality.
If you find soumething you think is outside of reality it is actually somehow part of reality.
There are no un-real things.

[Atlas]

Reality is Reality.

A = A

Oh my god, it's Ayn Rand all over again.

[mobodick]

Reality is real BY DEFINITION.

If you define something outside of reality you are indicating that it is not real.
And besides, give me one example, one tiny fact (which does not come down to how you feel) that indicates that reality is not somehow real.

Sure. Lets talk about what we think are solid objects. Did you know that 'solid' matter really is 99.99% empty space? Its true! Atoms are VASTLY empty, its the electrical field generated in the atom that gives us the illusion of solid objects.


Diameter of a nucleus is around 10^-12 cm.
Diameter of an atom is on the order of 10^-8 cm (up to 5*10^-8).

Taking the smaller range of the atom, the ratio is:

atom/nucleus = 10^-8/10^-12 = 10^4

Thus, if the nucleus was 6cm in diameter, the atom would be:

6cm * 10^4 = 60000cm = 600 meters in diameter


See the Rutherford experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_experiment

This isn't news, that experiment was done in 1909!

Could that mean that our current "reality" is not real in the way we perceive it to be? Could our reality be an overlay on top of a base system? I believe so.

So because things we see are actually the effects of EM fields makes them less real?
The scale of the stuff in the universe is incredible.
But that is not important for establishing reality.
What IS important is consistency.
Things behave consistently at every level. That's why we can extract laws of nature from stuff.

Reality is CERTAINLY not as we perceive it with our senses.
Our senses are incredibly ill-equipped to see the universe in all its glory.
What's even worse is that our brains are very flawed in certain ways.
We can overlook things that are there and we can think something is there when there is nothing.
That is why we extend our capabilities of poking at reality with scientific instruments.
Telescopes allow us to see deep into the cosmos, even up untill the point it started.
Microscopes allow us to see things smaller than we could have with the naked eye.
Particle accelerators allow us to see inside of atoms and confirm that they are mostly 'empty' space.

And all these instruments show a pretty consistent view.
So if you believe that you exist and that other people exist then you will have to ask yourself why everyone that cares to look at the universe sees something that is behaving the same way as what others can see.
Apparently we all share this existence and it's physically very consistent for everyone.

[foggyb]

So because things we see are actually the effects of EM fields makes them less real?

No. Knowing about EM fields tells us we have a lot to learn about what is real.

Apparently we all share this existence and it's physically very consistent for everyone.

Yes it is consistent physically. We are designed to perceive it as such. That doesn't prove there isn't another underlying reality.

[ccohen322]

This was a fascinating read, thanks for sharing!

[mobodick]

So because things we see are actually the effects of EM fields makes them less real?

No. Knowing about EM fields tells us we have a lot to learn about what is real.

That is the consequence of looking at something as vast as the universe.
But that doesnt make complete fantasies any more real.

Apparently we all share this existence and it's physically very consistent for everyone.

Yes it is consistent physically. We are designed to perceive it as such. That doesn't prove there isn't another underlying reality.

Yes, but if there is an underlying 'reality' than it must somehow be part of our reality otherwise it could not be underlying it. So there must be a physical effect on our 'reality' otherwise it is just fantasy.
Anyhow, show me anything un-real that is appreciable outside of your own brain or thought and i will agree with you.
Also, you can look for ways for your consiousness to have an effect on the world without a physical body, or better yet, without a brain.