If NDE are real and not hallucinations, why doesn't everyone experience it?

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When dealing with the human brain, the process immediately presents itself as being fundamentally different. The most obvious difference is the capacity of the human being to directly oppose the basic survival imperative itself. This is especially apparent when the human being in question is completely normal and functional in every other sense as a corporeal organism. The truth is that a drive for self destruction is only widely exhibited within the Homo Sapiens species, and this drive is expressed in an impressive variety of ways. Clearly, this is not an aberrational development within a small subset of Homo Sapiens brains, but a large departure from the DNA-driven and defined management system that governs all other high functioning corporeal wholes that populate the Earth.

So, what could possibly explain this stark difference between how the Homo Sapiens (human) brain approaches the primordial issue of raw survival and how all other normal brains approach it? Obviously, if DNA information is what provides the basic directive suite for all other brains, there must be a competing information source involved in crafting the directive suite for the Homo Sapiens (human) brain.

This is where it might be good to examine the actual nature of the information that is generated by the two major types of corporeal brains – the human brain and every other brain that exists on this planet. Yes, we can draw the specific line here at this divide due to the fact that full human sentience is clearly that unique when compared to the response/reaction nature of what the animal brain produces as action-oriented information. No one really denies that the human brain’s informational product is completely unique and not simply a matter of degree of intelligence when compared to even the most sophisticated animal brain’s capacity. In fact, intelligence isn't even the issue when comparing human and animal brain production, and that question has been long settled. The fact persists that human intellect is unique, and that its capacity for full and textured self-awareness is – so far as we know – unique to the brain of the Homo Sapiens hominid, at least on this planet. What we need to do is take a good look at the direct and indirect ramifications of the fact that the human brain produces dynamic “action item” information that is capable of realizing its own physical existence.

And what are the ramifications of dynamic information that, when brought into existence, is immediately aware that it exists? Think about it for a moment. It exists as information. It has emerged as a result of the activity of the brain (the synapse events, if you agree with Prof. Greenfield’s theory) and is therefore not part of the brain itself once it has emerged whole and operational (as the dynamic interpretation of requirement that it is). This suggests that each synapse event (happening at whatever rate of action can be determined under the theory Planck’s Constant governing action consistency) results in a full burst of dynamic information on the heels of the last full burst of dynamic information (also the result of a synapse event within the brain). When considering the laws governing contextual association (in-kind associations versus isolations involving dissimilar items) each in-kind burst from the same authoring brain must seek association with all other in-kind bursts, since Association is a primary expression of the Survival imperative if such association can be achieved, which, in this case, it can. This suggests that if these bursts of dynamic information do persist, they must gather as a fully associated whole relative to all that exists as dissimilar. But do these bursts persist?

What is known is that if a fact emerges as the default result of a unit of action (Action A happens is a fact) then it persists (Action A happened) and can never not persist (Action A happened and can never NOT have happened). This means that information (which is what a fact is) once brought into existence by the event (action) can never cease to exist. The dynamic “action item” information produced by the synapse event of the brain is information, even if it is very different than the simple fact-centric residual information that comes into existence as a result of the event as simple action. This is because the brain translates residual DNA information into dynamic process directives that must then initiate specific activities that are not actually defined within the DNA information itself. This means that these synapse events are producing actual information directives that did not previously exist, that are whole and unique and capable of initiating event responses within entire areas of the corporeal body that are targeted as a result of the informational nature of the specific burst involved.

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Essentially, even in the simplest version of this dynamic information generation process, the burst itself contains information concerning the required interpretation; the specific action items themselves; the precise subsection of the body to be targeted; the coordination between that subsection and all other assemblies and sub-assemblies; as well as how that single burst of direction will coordinate with the single burst that preceded it and the single burst that will follow it. This level of sophistication can’t be accomplished by way of simple cellular DNA coordination, so these synapse events are definitely producing a true form of information that is then addressing the processes targeted by those events. The fact that these bursts of information are not establishing a default management (avenues of progressive development potential, as is the case with residual information) but are actively responding to instances as they present themselves, means that this is dynamic information; an actual hybrid existential form of physical existence that combines the event trajectory and information.

And as we noted, in the human being, this hybrid manifestation is fully self-aware, meaning that it knows that it exists. And since it knows that it exists (and as a persisting gathering of in-kind bursts no less) what prevents it from developing a vested interest in its own progressive development? Certainly not the cultural resistance to such a notion within anyone’s traditional belief of what can and cannot be possible. In fact, if survival is the base imperative that it proves itself to be in all other matters of existential development, the existence of this vested interest is more that plausible; it’s required by the same law “to survive” that governs all other forms of physical existence.

But, if information survives by default anyway, then what is the imperative expression that acts as a driver for this self-aware form of information? Where’s the danger of failing to maintain existence? As with most hybridizations, the whole is generally more than a simple sum of the parts. In this case, the drivers are provided by the dynamic half of the contributing pair – the event (action) itself. You see, the event unit (see Planck’s Constant for a full overview of how event units operate) faces immediate oblivion, and addresses that fact through a suite of survival imperative expressions (not consciously, of course) that we refer to as the event trajectory (or chain of events). The organized trajectory offers a defined Identity (the primordial survival definition) to each and every event unit that was (and will be) involved in the formation and manifestation of that trajectory as an identified event in its own right. The term “holon” works best in illustrating how this form of survival accomplishes what it accomplishes, and in my book TAKING DOWN THE CURTAIN I spend plenty of time on developing this notion to a logical certainty. For our purposes here, we’ll simply acknowledge the role of the event trajectory and apply its characteristics to how it impacts the hybridization between the event and information.

In short, what the event trajectory does is provide the only actual survival imperative drive that exists within this dynamic information hybrid, due to the fact that raw, residual information has no survival imperative drive whatsoever. So, by simple default, if such a drive exists at all within the combination that results in hybridization, that drive will appear as primordial within the hybrid, even if there’s no real requirement. This is because of the nature of the Hierarchy of Kind and how primordial influences work within all dynamic interactions. Of course, the degree of drive is subject to dynamics and malleable conditions, so the presence within each burst can vary depending on the entire range of influences involved with each specific burst.

What’s important is to understand that Identity is the most obvious delineator when determining the existence of anything and everything. If something cannot be Identified as unique and singular, it cannot be said to actually exist. This means that the primary effort of survival is the establishment and defense of inimitable identity. And this is what the dynamic information (Intellect) whole pursues once it has determined that it does, in fact, exist and that it is aware of that existence. As a primordial imperative driver, this requirement overwhelms all other considerations and persist beneath even the most immediate concern as one burst after another launches from the brain to accomplish its purpose and then join the rest of all previous bursts to complete the gathering Intellect whole to that exact instant of its progressive development. It’s this requirement that results in the establishment of the Personality development process, which radically alters the nature and function of the corporeal human brain.

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Dynamic Intellect

The reason and intent of brain generated information's existence is integral to the existential nature of that information and each burst of Intellect that is tasked with addressing survival issues involving the highest functionality requirement - cognition and consciousness - gathers in kind (See The Hierarchy of Kind) within the Intellect whole itself that persists after each burst event has ceased as an event to become part of the gathering informational continuum. It's this elite sub-set of the Intellect whole (containing those bursts that were generated to manage sentience and self-awareness as the survival skills that they are) that initiates and maintains the Personality process (forming and pursuing it as an ongoing event trajectory in its own right) that manages the development of sentience and sense of self (by vetting the data stream that's allowed to be loaded into the brain's short term memory) over the life of the corporeal brain. After all, this is the information that contains that awareness. So it’s no real surprise that it would be the subset within the whole that’s driven to focus on managing sentience and its consistency.

What is surprising is the efficiency with which this is accomplished, and how little actual interaction there is between this dynamic Intellect and the brain processes themselves. In fact, generally speaking, the Personality leaves no real “fingerprints” on what it does, since the impact it has on the cognitive generation process is never made by actually affecting any aspect of that process in any physical sense. As with all other information management processes, this Personality development effort works with inference and default, even if (in this case) the specific inferences and defaults are actively crafted by the Intellect Personality trajectory itself. Here’s a quick and broad overview of how the Personality development process works. As with any sort of overview of this kind, minute specifics are not indulged since each brain/Personality trajectory relationship will have its own peculiarities and exception doesn't prove the rule in this or any other case.

• The brain has been operational long enough for a substantial mass of Intellect bursts to gather in-kind as a result of that brain’s activity.
  
• That Intellect mass has achieved full sentience as a result of the organizational complexity of the brain – due, of course, to the DNA specifics of the corporeal whole involved (approximately 4-5 years by most estimates)
  
• Once full sentience has been achieved, the Intellect whole (now self aware) is compelled to initiate its own survival strategy – this features the development of inimitable Identity, the pri-mordial means by which any existential whole establishes itself as existent.
  
• The bursts that have emerged as the result of cognition and conscious awareness are gathered in-kind as a dynamic trajectory of activity (being the information/event hybrid that Intellect is) and focused on the process of managing the brain’s ongoing generation of all subsequent bursts of Intellect – this will profoundly affect the overall identity (character and quality) of each burst and as they gather; the whole of the Intellect mass will then be gradually crafted through the management of that whole’s evolving contextual composition.
  
• The actual management process involves manipulating the attribute specifics of each fact cluster that is allowed into the brain’s “memory cloud”; from which the brain will compare and contrast all incoming internal and external stimuli, and use that evolving information set to determine how it will manufacture subsequent immediate responses in the form of Intellect “action item” bursts.
  
• As each Intellect burst occurs, the actual event of that burst is represented by residual “fact” information concerning that burst, as is the case with all events that happen – this residual information is then vetted and included within the brain’s own “memory cloud” for use as critical experience of consciousness with a slight delay (depending on the workload as the Personality process manages the entire incoming data stream) of between .5 seconds to a full 7 seconds. Of course, this delay is synced up within the Personality process before introduction into the “memory cloud” and experienced as “immediate” memory within the 1st following burst of generated Intellect.
  
• The Personality management process (over time) develops trends and predilections, cognitive yeses and nos, weighting standards for categories of experience and perception translation, human archetype identity protocols and divergences involving interpretations of those protocols, specific survival strategies (corporeal and post-corporeal), and all manners of definitions concerning reality and corporeal consistency of progressive experience.

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• This is all accomplished before any fact cluster is ever allowed to exist within the brain’s “memory cloud” and available for the brain to apply to the business of survival.
  
• Keep in mind that this “memory cloud” exists as environmental residual information, and is not associated with the actual Intellect mass that manages its composition. The Intellect merely assigns each fact cluster artificial attribute identifiers to make some of them more significant (and therefore, more readily available to the brain) than others, with both corporeal and post-corporeal survival being the primary impetus for the entire vetting process.

So, how do we know that this process even exists? Let’s face it, while it sounds perfectly reasonable, how can anything like this be verified as being more than one version of an engineering solution that could exist given the requirements as they are? Well, we can take a look at the absence of the process and see if its elimination teaches us anything about its active and ongoing presence. We can also look at whether this Personality trajectory persists in the manner that self-aware information would if denied its constant source of ongoing information feed in the same way that energy ceases to manifest as a dynamic force within the physical realm if cut off from a source of potential (thereby examining the viability of the claim that human consciousness is, in fact, a form of energy and not a form of information). But first, let’s examine the claim (above) that each bit of memory is vetted and that this vetting process actually requires a period of definable time to complete. This lag in conscious experience would certainly be one indication (albeit, only one of many required) that the Personality process does exist and is ongoing as a process as the human brain manufactures conscious awareness.

Free Will?

In 2008, the following paper appeared concerning a consciousness study conducted by a team of researchers.

Published online: 13 April 2008 | doi:10.1038/nn.2112
Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain
Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, & John-Dylan Haynes
There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

The paper that this abstract refers to (offered as a download PDF that’s obtainable by logging onto www.nature.com... and paying a fee) details follow-on research inspired by Benjamin Libet's mid-80s controversial determination that the human brain has already finished deciding – a full 500 milliseconds – before the human being has experienced having made an A/B choice. These folks went Libet one better, and employing an fMRI machine, discovered an actual two-stage process that signals the intent to decide in one sector of the brain, followed by the actual decision in another sector, before sending the memo on to the conscious mind that selection A or selection B will be taken as the preferred choice between the two.

Now, some who've investigated this (and the actual lengthening of lead time that the brain achieved against the mind once modern technology was applied and some of the messier aspects of Libet's own methodology were cleaned up – as much as a full 7 seconds in some instances), have insisted that this is proof that the human being has no free will whatsoever, and that its conscious mind is nothing but a slave to the gray glop that sits behind its eyes. Others have pointed to this irresponsibly broad assertion concerning free will as just another indication that the secular humanist will go to great lengths to dismiss the true separation that exists between the mind and the brain – a notion that the nonsecular mind has so feverishly promoted for centuries.

Me? Well, I immediately saw it as evidence of my notion concerning the presence of the Personality vetting process. After all, that’s a lot of information to approve, weight and tag with the right attribute values. And the fact that this study indicates that the actual time it takes to experience consciousness varies from moment to moment suggests that this is a dynamic result of something else that is equally dynamic. Such as an ongoing and relentless process occurring between the brain’s activity and the mind’s experience of that activity. I know that there are other suggestions that have been offered to explain this unusual indication, but to be honest, none that I've read actually address the primordial impetus for all processes that occur naturally – raw, corporeal survival. For the examination of whether this vetting process does, in fact, address the simple corporeal survival imperative on behalf of the human being as a whole, let’s examine what happens when the immediate memory of a person is completely obliterated due to disease or brain injury.

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I Can’t Remember What It Is That I Forgot

There was a movie several years ago (Memento) that actually did a pretty good job of illustrating the experience of a complete absence of short term memory suffered by the protagonist as he battled its debilitating effects to revenge his murdered wife. The character struggled with anterograde amnesia, which isn't even a full loss of short term memory, and certainly not a loss of immediate memory, which is what the elimination of the Personality vetting process would (in a very real sense) present as an overwhelming survival issue for the human brain so afflicted. In the movie, the viewer is treated to a scrambled and disjointed experience that somewhat mimics the impact of chronic short term memory loss, but if the entire Personality vetting process did not exist for the human brain, the confusion and information chaos would be literally crushing; resulting in a complete collapse of the entire brain’s capacity to manage even the simplest processes. To be more precise concerning the importance of this process, extremely severe autism is probably the best example of the kind of impact that an absence of this vetting process would have on a human brain, with no means of filtering the incoming data stream for relevance, consistency of experience, synchronicity of progressive experience, survival significance, or any of the kinds of ways that information is processed by the brain on behalf of the business of simple survival.

So, it seems obvious that some sort of information management process exists, and that (more importantly) the process is a requirement. And with information itself serving as the default management function for all other dynamic processes, it stands to reason that the presence of an intimately related information source as an active and dynamically responsive management process (given the speed and complexity of functionality necessary) would be more than plausible, and actually more of a requirement in itself. But before we close our examination of the plausibility of the Personality trajectory’s existence, let’s see if this permanent form of dynamic, self-aware information has ever been identified as existent beyond a direct association with the corporeal brain’s very specific process of survival and Intellect generation. For that we need to take a look at the phenomenon of the near-death experience (NDE) and what has been determined, since this peculiar field of study in specifically focused on the survival of the Personality even in the face of the complete failure of the brain’s generation of conscious Intellect.

Life After Life?

When the corporeal life trajectory has completed, the Personality process is the actual sub-section of the Intellect whole that will manage the survival effort (as an ongoing rumination, comparison, examination trajectory within the contextual whole of the isolated Intellect mass itself) of the "mind" that persists as a permanent dynamic informational whole that is contextually isolated from everything else that exists within the full contextual environment. Traditional references to this “mind” include the soul, the spirit, the human essence, and other culturally determined labels, but how can we determine if this persistent form of dynamic information does persist, and more importantly, what evidence do we have that it is the consciously aware and defined person that developed over the course of the corporeal life in question? Some traditions suggest that the personality of the human being is discarded as the eternal essence of the soul is absorbed into an enormous singularity, with all unique, conscious experience summarily digested as a form of wisdom nutrition (for lack of a better analogy).

Perhaps the research into the NDE can help us better understand the true nature of the Personality as a real and dynamic something that is capable of persistence even after the brain itself has ceased functionality. At least we’ll have evidence that this sense of dynamic, conscious awareness is capable of maintaining a true continuity of experience devoid of the brain’s immediate support.

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When studying the phenomenon of the near-death experience (NDE) the focus is generally on the nature of the experience. While this is definitely the most important aspect of the phenomenon as a whole, there is one other aspect of the NDE that seems to be universally agreed upon, but that is also universally seen as either insignificant or as presenting a question that cannot be answered. This is the fact that only a percentage of people that have been resuscitated report having had an NDE of any kind. The percentages range from 15% in some studies to nearly 60% in less formal studies, with an overall average of close to 30% if one takes all claims within all studies into account. For our purposes, we’ll embrace this 30% average and move on to what, if anything, links those who have experienced NDEs together, and what, if anything, links those who did not have the experience while in the throws of the death process.

What has been well established is that a person’s core beliefs, age, gender, or circumstances at the time of the event have no impact on the likelihood that they will or will not experience an NDE, even if these specifics will generally inform the detailed nature of the NDE to some extent. Meaning, of course, that religiousness will often produce an NDE that features main characters that are identified as being religious icons (Jesus, Mary, Mohamed, Vishnu, etc) being central to the experience, whereas atheistic and/or agnostic individuals won’t populate their NDEs with such characters. It’s also been well documented that expectation plays no part in whether an NDE is experienced, since many such episodes were initiated by a sudden and completely unexpected initiating event (car accident, heart attack, sudden crisis while fully under anesthesia) and there is a body of evidence involving the vivid experiences of very small children who’d had no introduction to the concept of NDEs or life after death specifics.

So what does determine whether an individual will experience an NDE at the moment when death is imminent? Maybe it’d be good to take a look at other reported cases of the NDE that clash slightly with the classic narrative for clues, such as those NDEs that were experienced by people who were not actually at death’s door. Seriously ill perhaps, or facing a perceived moment of impending crisis, but not yet within the actual crisis itself. These instances have triggered NDEs as well in some reported cases.

In fact, the full-on NDE event has been reported by some people whose bodies and brains were never involved in the death process at all. In these cases, what was the mechanism involved? Or are all NDE events illusory? If we place the Personality trajectory right in the middle of this very perplexing issue, we suddenly realize that it may be true that its presence as the definer of reality for the corporeal brain itself might be the key to why some people have NDEs and others don’t. But first, we need to look at how the Personality ensures the survival of the corporeal whole again. As I suggested, it involves vetting the incoming information stream before it’s allowed to become immediate memory.

Conscious Awareness and Point of Perspective

Now, once that immediate memory is approved and properly processed, it is presented to the “mind” as consciousness. When this happens in congress with the corporeal brain, it is what I call the Corporeal Conscious Awareness (CCA). This version of conscious awareness is specifically structured to address the immediate survival requirements of the brain and body, even as the Personality includes the necessary vetting effort aimed at further developing its own inimitable Identity (its long term survival strategy). Clearly this serves the Personality trajectory’s (and the Intellect whole’s) own best interest since the brain is how the Intellect is brought into physical existence. Even though the brain itself isn't self-aware, it is the physical generator of that self-awareness, and that fact isn't lost on the Intellect’s Personality effort. Again, it’s all about survival of self, and the brain is the key to its own continued progressive development.

Admittedly, there are many cases where the Personality trajectory appears to purposely debilitate and even destroy the corporeal brain (sometimes in an aggressively demonstrative manner) but this can be explained by the nature of its primary Identity-crafting effort, and how some Intellect wholes have adopted human archetypes (as broad identity formatting guides) that are culturally appealing, but counterproductive to the corporeal whole’s own survival requirements. In these cases, the schism persists until one or the other (the Personality as a dynamic information management process or the brain’s own DNA protocols presenting instinctive “visceral” survival urges) succeeds in the struggle. In any case, the influence of the Personality process is always blunted by the brain’s own DNA directives if there is a clash between the two that occurs.

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So, generally, the corporeal “mind” (the CCA) is focused on the issues most relevant to the immediate survival of the body and brain. Issues like romantic love (DNA survival via procreation); hunger and thirst; safety and security; shelter and immediate comfort; rule, with longer term survival concerns, like making a living; establishing friendships and alliances; building a community identity; and competing for success (however it’s defined per cultural expression); emerging as required. This is because the Personality – which provides the human being with a Point of Perspective (POP) – is intimately engaged in corporeal survival issues, even as it also works to develop that inimitable Identity by way of how it manages that corporeal survival. We perceive reality and conscious awareness as it is being allowed into our brain’s “memory cloud”, and this is why our conscious awareness can be shown to have a brief lag time associated with it. This lag, of course, aligns with what we established earlier as we looked at the research of Soon, Brass, Heinz and Haynes and their fMRI machine. But what has this got to do with near-death experiences? Well, everything, actually.

Corporeal Conscious Awareness (CCA) is what we experience while our brains are alive and functional. When the moment arrives that suggests that the death of the brain is imminent, the Personality trajectory is presented with a clear choice. Either maintain the information processing effort, or disengage and let the corporeal system deal with its demise as the valuable but temporary system that it’s always been. In most cases, the Personality (and resulting consciousness POP) will hang in there and see if it can ride out whatever the situation presents. In this case, the individual blacks out and has no conscious experience whatsoever, since the brain’s capacity for immediate memory is nonexistent. If the brain is once again brought on line, the person won’t have had any awareness of what occurred while the heart was stopped and the brain’s EEG indications were flat lined.

However, there are those instances when a brain’s Personality trajectory does choose to disengage, and when it does, it immediately closes back into the Intellect whole itself, and the individual’s experience of consciousness is greatly altered due to the radical shift in Point of Perspective from the brain’s immediate memory to the mass of gathered Intellect bursts from where the Personality trajectory originates. This results in what I’ve termed the Post-corporeal Conscious Awareness (PCA), and the specific nature of this consciousness expression can be examined by reading the details of thousands of documented NDEs that have been collected by many studies over the years.

In the case of the NDE, the Personality Intellect trajectory has fully detached and its POP has relocated to its ultimate position as the “eyes” and “ears” of the eternal human being, but when the brain of the corporeal human is restarted, it has no choice but to reconnect at the previously established POP and to them continue to perform its vetting and processing effort in service of the corporeal brain. The relationship is much too established and direct for the Personality trajectory to have that actual choice, even though many NDEs claim that a choice is given to the disembodied person. In truth, what’s most likely is that a narrative is crafted in that small instant to logically explain why the Personality trajectory – the literal “mind” of the person – would choose to return to a severely damaged body, when it’s just discovered that corporeal death is not the end of it as a sentient being.

That said, there are those people who have trained their Personality trajectory to briefly disengage, with all sorts of subjective experiences claimed. As far as the validity of such claims, that’s a completely different examination. Still, the actual disengagement itself is entirely plausible, given the powerful influence that the Personality has over the overall Intellect generation process as a whole.

Summary

So, what have we proven? Strictly speaking, we've proven nothing. Still, we've taken the notion of the Personality trajectory as an Identity crafting effort of the generated Intellect whole from a complete fantasy to a point of being entirely plausible and maybe even required by the nature of the primordial survival expression Identity. It’s not proof, but it’s not insignificant either. But what does it actually mean to the average person and their own effort to get through a day without breaking a nail? If true, the existence of the Personality trajectory may be the most critical consideration that a person can maintain as a ongoing concern. Here, let me see if I can explain why.

When you were born, you didn't get to choose your parents. You didn't get to choose your gender, or your appearance, or your genetic structure, or the circumstances surrounding your birth. If your family was wealthy, then good for you, but you never had a say in what those circumstances were going to be relative to the life you had awaiting you. In fact, you never had any input on any of it, regardless of what the New Age self-help books try to claim. You came out of that placenta as the completed product of an entire process that initiated long before you ever knew what was happening. And as your life has littered out behind you, it’s always been clear that your level of success and failure, contentment and disappointment, and all the shades that have manifested between each of these polar extremes within your own daily life have been greatly affected by what occurred within that placenta. Well, if what I believe about the Personality trajectory is true, then the final version of who and what you are and can be is entirely up to you. And that is a pretty important thing to realize.

You get to shape and form the eternal you. You get to decide what is important, what is trivial, what is beautiful and what is divine. You get to be as strong and has noble and as wonderful and as transcendent as you want to be, but only if you actively focus on accomplishing what it takes to be exactly as everything as you wish to be. And the best part is that you really can become that wonderful version of yourself just by visualizing that wonderful you and being that you as you meet each trauma and opportunity that comes your way. Your strength is built as you weather each storm with dignity and self reliance. Your wisdom is built as you allow each failure to teach you what it has for you. Your power is built as you respond to each petty aggression with kindness and magnanimity of character. In fact, every decency you express is more power and brilliance added to the ultimate expression of the eternal human being that you’re crafting.

Yes, this is your ultimate opportunity and you are fully in charge of how well you leverage this opportunity. As you can see, the Personality trajectory and its crafting process isn't just some romanticized notion. It’s an entirely plausible explanation for most of what we know to be the nature of a human being’s corporeal existence. And all it takes to fully benefit from knowing of its existence is to be strong in character, resilient in the face of hardship and magnanimous is the face of both victory and defeat. The rest is nothing more than the simple effort of survival, and when that’s completed, you’ll be presented with the final reward; an eternal identity that you can be happy with.

link to essay

Just as there are a nearly infinite amount of ways to die the types of experiences one could have at death are likely equally close to infinite.

I don't know if NDEs are real or hallucinations, but if they are real and only some people have them I chalk it up the varied nature of human physiology, illnesses, injuries, and how close or far people actually are to death when they report these incidents. It may also have to do with the "other side" perhaps having some control over whether or not somebody gets to experience an NDE.

Severity of near death condition may preclude retention of memory of an NDE. Many people likely also just do not report what they experienced for one reason or another.

I have no idea. I'm just speculating. I hope NDEs are real and that they eventually get proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

reply to post by Frith


In my personal experience, I was without a pulse for over twelve minutes. And without CPR for the first several of those minutes.

I was clinically dead when I arrived at the ER. In fact once I was resuscitated my family was told to come into the room and to say their goodbyes as I was not expected to survive the night and, if I did survive, they were told I would almost surely be persistently vegetative.

That's, IMO, about as close as one can get to being totally gone and still retaining the ability to be brought back.

There is a possibility that the mind can retain a capacity to "think" past the point that science considers to be brain death. But, if so, no test or device is yet extant to measure that. So lacking scientific proof of concept for my inexplicable experience I can only, logically, conclude that there are aspects of individual consciousness that are beyond the understanding of current science.

IE just because science cannot prove that I have what one could call a "soul", my personal experience and observation leads me to believe that the science, in this regard, is probably lacking.

~Heff

reply to post by chelle21689


What if life is a hallucination? What if when you go to sleep and there is no dream - that IS the reality, and when you wake up or go to sleep and have a dream - this is all hallucination - bu reality is a more organized one?

Just a thought....

Originally posted by Cyprex
I saw a documentary on this a few years back, here is one source.

It is believed that a massive release of '___' from the pineal gland prior to death or near-death is the cause of the near-death experience phenomenon.

There is no hard scientific evidence that '___' is released upon death, nor is there any evidence that '___' is even produced in the pineal gland. So far it's just a hypothesis.

This (quoted here) is the point of my entire post (above) - dealing with why some people do and some don't experience NDEs.

The reason has to do with the survival imperative, and how the individual sees that imperative as integral within the whole of his/her own unique existence as a human being. Some people are less "material" in their own self identity than others (you can call it spiritual if you like, but I see them as less DNA driven due to the way they've been taught to think about life in general) and survival - in their case - depends less on clinging to a dying body and brain than the more "material" inclined folks. In both cases, religiousness plays no role whatsoever in how the person views the actual meaning of human survival, and it's this view that determines whether the mind will readily disengage from the brain/mind partnership or if it will stay engaged until all hope of the brain's survival has been lost.

The rest of that long, detailed post is to explain exactly why I've come to this conclusion. It does seem long (about 8,000 words) but the actual details take up about 40,000+ words and even that is when precise brevity is employed and nothing is reiterated.

In other words, this sh*t is dense, and there's nothing philosophical about any of it.

Originally posted by NorEaster
- continued

Corporeal Conscious Awareness (CCA) is what we experience while our brains are alive and functional. When the moment arrives that suggests that the death of the brain is imminent, the Personality trajectory is presented with a clear choice. Either maintain the information processing effort, or disengage and let the corporeal system deal with its demise as the valuable but temporary system that it’s always been. In most cases, the Personality (and resulting consciousness POP) will hang in there and see if it can ride out whatever the situation presents. In this case, the individual blacks out and has no conscious experience whatsoever, since the brain’s capacity for immediate memory is nonexistent. If the brain is once again brought on line, the person won’t have had any awareness of what occurred while the heart was stopped and the brain’s EEG indications were flat lined.

However, there are those instances when a brain’s Personality trajectory does choose to disengage, and when it does, it immediately closes back into the Intellect whole itself, and the individual’s experience of consciousness is greatly altered due to the radical shift in Point of Perspective from the brain’s immediate memory to the mass of gathered Intellect bursts from where the Personality trajectory originates. This results in what I’ve termed the Post-corporeal Conscious Awareness (PCA), and the specific nature of this consciousness expression can be examined by reading the details of thousands of documented NDEs that have been collected by many studies over the years.

In the case of the NDE, the Personality Intellect trajectory has fully detached and its POP has relocated to its ultimate position as the “eyes” and “ears” of the eternal human being, but when the brain of the corporeal human is restarted, it has no choice but to reconnect at the previously established POP and to then continue to perform its vetting and processing effort in service of the corporeal brain. The relationship is much too established and direct for the Personality trajectory to have that actual choice, even though many NDEs claim that a choice is given to the disembodied person. In truth, what’s most likely is that a narrative is crafted in that small instant to logically explain why the Personality trajectory – the literal “mind” of the person – would choose to return to a severely damaged body, when it’s just discovered that corporeal death is not the end of it as a sentient being.

HI Chelle, I have had a "near" near-a-death experience which I have posted about on this site. I am not sure why some experience the crossing over and others don't. I suppose it could be that our DNA could have something to do with it too. IF, we are really mutants of alien and human DNA from "a God from the sky" it might be related to how much "original" DNA we individually have...

It is kind of sad because I was hoping that the NDE is real but science has actually debunked this and the Pam Reynolds story...I can't find the article but I was able to on my bf's iphone...odd. I'm going to have to post it later.

Science also concluded that ghosts/interacting with spirits as hallucinations. The "bad" feeling you get is produced by low frequencies and have tested this.

=\ Too bad.

-

Science explains near death experiences...this is just one article
www.livescience.com...

Seeing deceased relatives/loved ones
www.scientificamerican.com...

I don't remember the link but there was also an article about an unknown chemical gas leak which made everyone hallucinate.

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by Frith

 

In my personal experience, I was without a pulse for over twelve minutes. And without CPR for the first several of those minutes.

I was clinically dead when I arrived at the ER. In fact once I was resuscitated my family was told to come into the room and to say their goodbyes as I was not expected to survive the night and, if I did survive, they were told I would almost surely be persistently vegetative.

That's, IMO, about as close as one can get to being totally gone and still retaining the ability to be brought back.

There is a possibility that the mind can retain a capacity to "think" past the point that science considers to be brain death. But, if so, no test or device is yet extant to measure that. So lacking scientific proof of concept for my inexplicable experience I can only, logically, conclude that there are aspects of individual consciousness that are beyond the understanding of current science.

IE just because science cannot prove that I have what one could call a "soul", my personal experience and observation leads me to believe that the science, in this regard, is probably lacking.

~Heff

Well Heff, there is no doubt that there are things in this world that science has not yet been able to explain. I think we are just really beginning to understand humans and everything it entails to be human. We don't know the bounds of consciousness and that science is left to religion which is human construct to say the least.

Glad to hear you made it back and continue poking us all in the eye philosophically to make us think.

Originally posted by Xaphan

Originally posted by Cyprex
I saw a documentary on this a few years back, here is one source.

It is believed that a massive release of '___' from the pineal gland prior to death or near-death is the cause of the near-death experience phenomenon.

There is no hard scientific evidence that '___' is released upon death, nor is there any evidence that '___' is even produced in the pineal gland. So far it's just a hypothesis.

I'd like to believe it is real but I remember reading that scientists have found out this because of studies...actual studies
www.scientificamerican.com...

Originally posted by chelle21689
It is kind of sad because I was hoping that the NDE is real but science has actually debunked this

Science has not debunked this. They have only recreated similar feelings/signals in the brain.

A camera can record the sunset, does that mean our brains don't exist because it can do a similar thing, or better yet does that mean the sunset doesn't exist?

I'm pretty much confused because scientists have found evidence of debunking this while another site that seems unbiased says that they haven't found it YET but hypothesize.

www.salon.com...