Ever since I passed along to him a short anthology of Near Death Experiences compiled by a practicing physician my son has sustained a lively exchange with me on the subject. Being young he is impressed by such hard evidence" of life beyond the reality we know. (Our nations school system from bottom to top certainly hasnt given his generation any aesthetic or philosophical inkling of an empirical approachs inadequaciesso empirical testimony against mere empiricism becomes very powerful.) Personally Im always just a bit leery of the NDE. Its not that Im an incorrigible skeptic. On the contrary Im one of the few people youre ever likely to know with years of grad-school conditioning in his past who believes that extra-terrestrial life (or its projection through an ingenious fleet of robotic minions) has probably visited our solar system. I dont think Im particularly narrow-minded.
No the problem I have with the typical NDE is the implications that over-excited chroniclers tend to draw from it. The surrounding discussion often has the tone of boundless almost delirious optimism. You see? All is really sweetness and light! Its all lovelove for everyone! All is forgiven! Its just one great warm embrace! All is swept up into the... the cosmic All!" Okay lets stop and ponder that. No justice for mass-murderers like Stalin and Mao (add Hitler if you like... but dont forget Pol Pot Genghis Khan Attila the Hun and King Herod). No motive to try harder in this terrestrial existenceto seek the kingdom". No reason why sincere sorrow and repentance are anything but wasted time. Lighten up! All you need is love!
In their defense I will say of most NDE witnesses that their encounter is brief dazzling and (by definition) limned by the incomprehensible. Theyre not the ones who seek to graft sweeping metaphysical conclusions onto their out-of-clock-time ecstasy (a word which literally means standing outside of"). They were abruptly jolted from their body... and then they found themselves bathed in light and soothed by predeceased friends and family. As far as I know most of them havent borne back a message about how the universe is put together. They merely reiterate with John the Gospelist True love hath no fear."
Dr. Eben Alexanders kerygma from the Beyond is not so modest. My son forwarded this YouTube link to one of the good doctors many public presentations. Alexanders case has received special attention apparently because 1) he himself was a neurosurgeon who had practiced for two decades when a seizure caused his brain activity to flatline 2) he was thoroughly agnostic at the time of the incident and 3) his brain was so very moribund for days that no sort of short-circuiting or flame-out" could have accounted for his visions. Clearly something very extraordinary happened in this mans return to corporeal life if not in his hours of unverifiable transit through another life. He should have been deadquite dead. The feeding tubes had actually been removed from his body for days before his recovery. His revival was miraculous.
And yes Eben Alexander experienced virtually all of the classic NDE moments: the dark tunnel (in more static form) the indescribably bright light at its end an angelic chorus the warmth and limitless love of innumerable figures... but he claims to have been entrusted with uncharacteristically specific information besides. He was told (in a degree of detail that Dante would have envied) that the universe is unfolding according to a great planand that this plan involves reincarnation. We are to return to life in better-informed stages that collectively will set our planetand other planets in other galaxies eventuallyon a hyperbolic path of intersection with heaven.
An unimaginably beautiful woman (who was plainly not some morph of the divorced Mrs. Alexander) was the doctors Beatrice during this revelation. I note in passing that Ive never read of any other NDE where Miss Universe puts in an appearance and spiritually fondles her visitor.
Im being a bit facetious now. Its a way to send some of my irritation through an escape valve. In my opinion Dr. Alexander had a fully legitimate encounter with the unspeakable bliss that awaits us beyond this Vale of Tears... and he proceeded consciously or otherwise to finesse some of its contours into a form more marketable than the raw material would have been. His book has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for years. His speaking honoraria have likely dwarfed his surgeons income (which in itself constitutes a small miracle). He has chatted intimately with Oprah before a global audience and he routinely gives presentations even for medical personnel thanks to his lab-coat cred. I gather that he is involved in some sort of cutting-edge tech company that aspires to point the medical-scientific communitys nose more directly into metaphysics (or its ears: the technology has to do with harmonious sounds and healing). Life has become pretty good for Eben Alexanderand of course I mean life on this side".
How many of these dark terrestrial tunnels would be beaming with warm gold-and-silver light at the end if Alexanders testimony had remained (as NDEs usually do) within confines of direct personal experience without the peek at a cosmic playbook? Wouldnt that more typical result have smacked of... well Christian orthodoxy? Didnt the reincarnation" message sweeten it sufficiently that Oprah would line up to drink the Kool-aid?
On the one hand I fear that my response may be too caustic. After all Alexanders narrative is not so very far off the track of other NDEs. Maybe he just misspoke at key points or maybe I have misinterpreted something he said. I myself believe that the afterlife must surely be an occasion for linking up" with innumerable other soulsfor begging and granting pardons for getting the whole story of what happened for healing and growing strong as something yet more magnificent emerges. Perhaps the abuse of the word reincarnation" was this mans clumsy metaphor for a reality whose approach to God is so near and so ever-more-near that only the notion of an utterly regenerated body in an entirely different life can convey the thrill.
And yet that higher deeper life cannot be entirely different. This life matters. Morallyspirituallyit must matter. What we do is what we are: it is the here" from which we must depart to reach there". Its not a prison or need not be. Gods will is not that we suffocate forever within the folly of the narrow walls we build around ourselves. In the recognition of our folly however lies the key to the gate. We cannot become better than our fleshly formthat temporary cast in which we have so distorted Gods imageif we turn out never to have existed physically in the first place. Our human individuality must not become an irrelevancy.
Such cancellation of our individual worth as creatures is where I see Eben Alexander wandering dangerously off the track. He sings off-key. His hymn sounds to my ear like secular progressivism with a mystical tingle in the background. The confessional notethe admission of past error that signals true growth and also the joy of dissolving anothers guilt over injuries doneisnt audible. Instead we are ushered into a no-fault vision of things getting better and better and better... things on this earth since reincarnation is the engine driving the ascent. Alexander even offers the Gnostic heresys hint that souls are reincarnated as justification of his thesis and he tosses in the rumors of Christs day equating John the Baptist with the resuscitated prophet Elijah. A proper Christian faith apparently ought to become more Hindu.
The first time I encountered this infatuation of the theoretical scientist with the most ancient religions on earth was I suppose in Carl Sagan. It probably goes back much farther. Its pedigree at any rate must surely transmit a load of progressivist DNA through every branch of the family tree. The better here-and-nows the thingnot heaven not metaphysical bliss: no bring it down here and put us now on a path to reach it! Thats a slightly more spiritual version of launching the Starship Enterprise (but not reallyjust more spiritually adorned).
You see Dr. Alexander our world is not getting better and better in any way that I can discern. It may be getting worse and worse... but Im willing to attribute such pessimism to the filter of my own rather depressive predisposition. Its certainly not sprouting wings as more enlightened individuals return in new bodiesand by the way utterly purged of their former individuality. You say Dr. Alexander that many very curious cases of ESP involve children who recollect images or events from previous times and far-flung places. Yes those interest me as well. But wherein do you find evidence that these children a) preserve the character of Captain MacKay who died on the field of Culloden or more importantly b) display any moral awareness beyond their years? What are you thinking man? What world are you living in right now as you bow to your applause and shake Oprahs hand?
Do you consider that you yourself have become a better man than before though you have failed to learnOther World Journey notwithstandingthe moral necessity of individual coherence? Say youre indeed better; but you are still Eben Alexander are you not? So may we expect the better Eben within minutes of your eventual death as your soul flutters into a newborn? Right now thenmessage and allyoure just the old inferior Eben… have I got that correct? Or have you been permitted to transport certain revelations despite your lack of corporeal upgrade? I like much of what you propose. I too love the idea of using sound to access a clearer cleaner state of consciousness; Ive long suspected in my own life that our urban environment damages our minds with its sheer cacophony. But... but Doctor why must you insist that Beatrice bestowed upon you the secrets of this healing power so that we might go forth and Conquer the World for Goodness?
Oh how I dread that formula in all of its versions! World conquestand always always for goodness"! Millions of hearts have coddled it if their tongues have not exactly expressed it... and not all of those hearts by any means were bad ones from the outset. Yet none was ever made better after nursing such a spiritual virus. This world is imperfectable: at best we hold our own against sin. True hope lies elsewhere.
Perhaps Im especially distressed by Dr. Alexanders video because I have just published The Eternal Moment: Seeking Divine Presence in the Present on Amazon. You can read there at much greater length of my concern over future-worship" our times dominant form of idolatry if youre interested. I urgently suggest that you get interested. Beware of ascending" staircases whose bottom step rests upon todays earth and whose top step merely reaches tomorrows earth or the next days. Such climbs tend to go steeply downward from heavens perspective.
Ever since I passed along to him a short anthology of Near Death Experiences compiled by a practicing physician my son has sustained a lively exchange with me on the subject. Being young he is impressed by such hard evidence" of life beyond the reality we know. (Our nations school system from bottom to top certainly hasnt given his generation any aesthetic or philosophical inkling of an empirical approachs inadequaciesso empirical testimony against mere empiricism becomes very powerful.) Personally Im always just a bit leery of the NDE. Its not that Im an incorrigible skeptic. On the contrary Im one of the few people youre ever likely to know with years of grad-school conditioning in his past who believes that extra-terrestrial life (or its projection through an ingenious fleet of robotic minions) has probably visited our solar system. I dont think Im particularly narrow-minded.
No the problem I have with the typical NDE is the implications that over-excited chroniclers tend to draw from it. The surrounding discussion often has the tone of boundless almost delirious optimism. You see? All is really sweetness and light! Its all lovelove for everyone! All is forgiven! Its just one great warm embrace! All is swept up into the... the cosmic All!" Okay lets stop and ponder that. No justice for mass-murderers like Stalin and Mao (add Hitler if you like... but dont forget Pol Pot Genghis Khan Attila the Hun and King Herod). No motive to try harder in this terrestrial existenceto seek the kingdom". No reason why sincere sorrow and repentance are anything but wasted time. Lighten up! All you need is love!
In their defense I will say of most NDE witnesses that their encounter is brief dazzling and (by definition) limned by the incomprehensible. Theyre not the ones who seek to graft sweeping metaphysical conclusions onto their out-of-clock-time ecstasy (a word which literally means standing outside of"). They were abruptly jolted from their body... and then they found themselves bathed in light and soothed by predeceased friends and family. As far as I know most of them havent borne back a message about how the universe is put together. They merely reiterate with John the Gospelist True love hath no fear."
Dr. Eben Alexanders kerygma from the Beyond is not so modest. My son forwarded this YouTube link to one of the good doctors many public presentations. Alexanders case has received special attention apparently because 1) he himself was a neurosurgeon who had practiced for two decades when a seizure caused his brain activity to flatline 2) he was thoroughly agnostic at the time of the incident and 3) his brain was so very moribund for days that no sort of short-circuiting or flame-out" could have accounted for his visions. Clearly something very extraordinary happened in this mans return to corporeal life if not in his hours of unverifiable transit through another life. He should have been deadquite dead. The feeding tubes had actually been removed from his body for days before his recovery. His revival was miraculous.
And yes Eben Alexander experienced virtually all of the classic NDE moments: the dark tunnel (in more static form) the indescribably bright light at its end an angelic chorus the warmth and limitless love of innumerable figures... but he claims to have been entrusted with uncharacteristically specific information besides. He was told (in a degree of detail that Dante would have envied) that the universe is unfolding according to a great planand that this plan involves reincarnation. We are to return to life in better-informed stages that collectively will set our planetand other planets in other galaxies eventuallyon a hyperbolic path of intersection with heaven.
An unimaginably beautiful woman (who was plainly not some morph of the divorced Mrs. Alexander) was the doctors Beatrice during this revelation. I note in passing that Ive never read of any other NDE where Miss Universe puts in an appearance and spiritually fondles her visitor.
Im being a bit facetious now. Its a way to send some of my irritation through an escape valve. In my opinion Dr. Alexander had a fully legitimate encounter with the unspeakable bliss that awaits us beyond this Vale of Tears... and he proceeded consciously or otherwise to finesse some of its contours into a form more marketable than the raw material would have been. His book has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for years. His speaking honoraria have likely dwarfed his surgeons income (which in itself constitutes a small miracle). He has chatted intimately with Oprah before a global audience and he routinely gives presentations even for medical personnel thanks to his lab-coat cred. I gather that he is involved in some sort of cutting-edge tech company that aspires to point the medical-scientific communitys nose more directly into metaphysics (or its ears: the technology has to do with harmonious sounds and healing). Life has become pretty good for Eben Alexanderand of course I mean life on this side".
How many of these dark terrestrial tunnels would be beaming with warm gold-and-silver light at the end if Alexanders testimony had remained (as NDEs usually do) within confines of direct personal experience without the peek at a cosmic playbook? Wouldnt that more typical result have smacked of... well Christian orthodoxy? Didnt the reincarnation" message sweeten it sufficiently that Oprah would line up to drink the Kool-aid?
On the one hand I fear that my response may be too caustic. After all Alexanders narrative is not so very far off the track of other NDEs. Maybe he just misspoke at key points or maybe I have misinterpreted something he said. I myself believe that the afterlife must surely be an occasion for linking up" with innumerable other soulsfor begging and granting pardons for getting the whole story of what happened for healing and growing strong as something yet more magnificent emerges. Perhaps the abuse of the word reincarnation" was this mans clumsy metaphor for a reality whose approach to God is so near and so ever-more-near that only the notion of an utterly regenerated body in an entirely different life can convey the thrill.
And yet that higher deeper life cannot be entirely different. This life matters. Morallyspirituallyit must matter. What we do is what we are: it is the here" from which we must depart to reach there". Its not a prison or need not be. Gods will is not that we suffocate forever within the folly of the narrow walls we build around ourselves. In the recognition of our folly however lies the key to the gate. We cannot become better than our fleshly formthat temporary cast in which we have so distorted Gods imageif we turn out never to have existed physically in the first place. Our human individuality must not become an irrelevancy.
Such cancellation of our individual worth as creatures is where I see Eben Alexander wandering dangerously off the track. He sings off-key. His hymn sounds to my ear like secular progressivism with a mystical tingle in the background. The confessional notethe admission of past error that signals true growth and also the joy of dissolving anothers guilt over injuries doneisnt audible. Instead we are ushered into a no-fault vision of things getting better and better and better... things on this earth since reincarnation is the engine driving the ascent. Alexander even offers the Gnostic heresys hint that souls are reincarnated as justification of his thesis and he tosses in the rumors of Christs day equating John the Baptist with the resuscitated prophet Elijah. A proper Christian faith apparently ought to become more Hindu.
The first time I encountered this infatuation of the theoretical scientist with the most ancient religions on earth was I suppose in Carl Sagan. It probably goes back much farther. Its pedigree at any rate must surely transmit a load of progressivist DNA through every branch of the family tree. The better here-and-nows the thingnot heaven not metaphysical bliss: no bring it down here and put us now on a path to reach it! Thats a slightly more spiritual version of launching the Starship Enterprise (but not reallyjust more spiritually adorned).
You see Dr. Alexander our world is not getting better and better in any way that I can discern. It may be getting worse and worse... but Im willing to attribute such pessimism to the filter of my own rather depressive predisposition. Its certainly not sprouting wings as more enlightened individuals return in new bodiesand by the way utterly purged of their former individuality. You say Dr. Alexander that many very curious cases of ESP involve children who recollect images or events from previous times and far-flung places. Yes those interest me as well. But wherein do you find evidence that these children a) preserve the character of Captain MacKay who died on the field of Culloden or more importantly b) display any moral awareness beyond their years? What are you thinking man? What world are you living in right now as you bow to your applause and shake Oprahs hand?
Do you consider that you yourself have become a better man than before though you have failed to learnOther World Journey notwithstandingthe moral necessity of individual coherence? Say youre indeed better; but you are still Eben Alexander are you not? So may we expect the better Eben within minutes of your eventual death as your soul flutters into a newborn? Right now thenmessage and allyoure just the old inferior Eben… have I got that correct? Or have you been permitted to transport certain revelations despite your lack of corporeal upgrade? I like much of what you propose. I too love the idea of using sound to access a clearer cleaner state of consciousness; Ive long suspected in my own life that our urban environment damages our minds with its sheer cacophony. But... but Doctor why must you insist that Beatrice bestowed upon you the secrets of this healing power so that we might go forth and Conquer the World for Goodness?
Oh how I dread that formula in all of its versions! World conquestand always always for goodness"! Millions of hearts have coddled it if their tongues have not exactly expressed it... and not all of those hearts by any means were bad ones from the outset. Yet none was ever made better after nursing such a spiritual virus. This world is imperfectable: at best we hold our own against sin. True hope lies elsewhere.
Perhaps Im especially distressed by Dr. Alexanders video because I have just published The Eternal Moment: Seeking Divine Presence in the Present on Amazon. You can read there at much greater length of my concern over future-worship" our times dominant form of idolatry if youre interested. I urgently suggest that you get interested. Beware of ascending" staircases whose bottom step rests upon todays earth and whose top step merely reaches tomorrows earth or the next days. Such climbs tend to go steeply downward from heavens perspective.