There Is Life After Death. Tom Harpur
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scientific paradigms.20 Moody, the acknowledged “leader on the cutting edge of this field,” began the book by saying: “We are no closer to answering the basic question of the afterlife now than we were thousands of years ago when it was first pondered by ancient man.” In other words, since the evidence provided by NDEs can’t be replicated on demand in a scientific laboratory, none of the amazing stories is firm proof of life after death. What the matter comes down to in the end is the authority or weight we give to mystical glimpses or visions of realities other than the empirical world we live in.
Zaleski argues that, like the arguments for the existence of God, the realities attested to by people who have had an NDE belong to a totally different sphere where the question is not so much can they be proven to be true as, do NDEs give insights which can be verified in one’s own experience? She concludes: “We may find no difficulty in respecting the testimony of those whose lives have been transformed by a near-death vision, but we can verify their discoveries only if, in some sense, we experience them for ourselves.”
I find the whole expanding exploration and research in this field and of consciousness studies to be one of the most exciting developments of our time. In my own thinking and research I find myself increasingly (though cautiously) positive about the validity of the NDE as a strong witness to invisible realities beyond. What carries most weight with me, as I have already suggested, is the consistency and clarity of the stories themselves, together with the undeniable evidence of dramatically changed lives. I know from my own pastoral experience the truth of what researcher Dr. Bruce Greyson has said. Psychiatry or therapeutic counselling often takes years to bring about only slight changes in people’s outlook and behaviour, but “the NDE regularly brings about a total transformation almost overnight.”
One final point. Mark Fox in his 2003 book, Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience, raises the question clearly and persuasively: Why have the churches and religious leaders in general paid so little attention to what, after all, lies very near to the heart of what they are all about? The NDE raises sharply the issues of the nature of the soul, the afterlife, our personal destiny and, ultimately, the very meaning of life itself. Like Fox, my personal belief is that this entire phenomenon offers a bridge between religion and the modern world that church leaders should be rushing to cross. It affords a common language today in a crucial area where meaningful communication has virtually broken down.
“Mediums claim the stimuli are there for all to perceive but they’re low level and subtle, and most of us are too distracted by the outside world as well as our own thoughts and feelings to sense them.”
– GARY SCHWARTZ, Ph.D.
The Afterlife Experiments
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