Psience Quest

The next part of Shushan's book is Revelations in NDEs, where he examines the potential value for (and to a degree against) the Survival Hypothesis.

The big thing in this chapter is the way NDEs influence cultural and personal beliefs, as opposed to NDEs simply drawing from cultural elements that already exist.

He starts with noting the earliest documented NDEs are likely from China, with the Myth of Er in Plato's dialogues being unlcear as to being fictional or genuine. The NDE record of the local Chinese ruler Jianzi from 498 BCE also includes an account 150 years earlier (658-620 BCE) of the ruler Muh of Tsin. Both accounts include visiting the Emperor of Heaven who gives both men prophecies. Jianzi's account seems more of an adventure where he heard music and saw dancers and also fought & killed two bears. Jianzi also claims to recognize a man who he saw as a child during his NDE, and the man also corroborated the meeting.

Shusan continues with the story of Arda Wiraf/Wiraz, whose NDE is recorded in the Book of Arda Wiraf. From Wikipedia:

Quote:Here he is greeted by a beautiful woman named Dēn, who represents his faith and virtue. Crossing the Chinvat Bridge, he is then conducted by "Srosh, the pious and Adar, the yazad" through the "star track", "moon track" and "sun track" – places outside of heaven reserved for the virtuous who have nevertheless failed to conform to Zoroastrian rules. In heaven, Wirāz meets Ahura Mazda who shows him the souls of the blessed (ahlaw, an alternate Middle Persian version of the word ardā[4]). Each person is described living an idealised version of the life he or she lived on earth, as a warrior, agriculturalist, shepherd or other profession.[9] With his guides he then descends into hell to be shown the sufferings of the wicked. Having completed his visionary journey, Wirāz is told by Ahura Mazda that the Zoroastrian faith is the only proper and true way of life and that it should be preserved in both prosperity and adversity.[9]

Shushan then compares this journey of Wiraf with the NDE of Christina Mirabilis (Christina the Astonishing). From Wikipedia:

Quote:Her notability began when she was 21 years old. About to be buried and already in the church resting in an open coffin, according to the custom of the time, during the Agnus Dei of her funeral Mass she arose, stupefying with amazement the whole city of St. Trond, which had witnessed this wonder. She subsequently lived a long life, dying at the age of seventy-four.

Quote:he suffered a massive seizure when she was in her early 20s. Her condition was so severe that witnesses assumed she had died. A funeral was held, but during the service, "she arose full of vigour, stupefying with amazement the whole city of Sint-Truiden, which had witnessed this wonder. She levitated up to the rafters, later explaining that she could not bear the smell of the sinful people there."[4]

She related that she had witnessed Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. She said that as soon as her soul was separated from her body, angels conducted it to a very gloomy place, entirely filled with souls enduring such torments that it was impossible to describe them. She claimed that she had been offered a choice of either remaining in heaven or returning to earth to perform penance in order to deliver souls from the flames of Purgatory.[3] Christina agreed to return to life and in that instant stood up. She told those around her that she had returned to life for the sole purpose of bringing relief to the departed and conversion to sinners. Christina renounced all of life's comforts, reduced herself to extreme destitution, dressed in rags, lived without home or hearth, and not content with these privations eagerly sought out all that could cause her suffering. At first, she fled human contact and, suspected of being possessed, was jailed. Upon her release, she took up the practice of extreme penance.[2]

Next Shushan gives some more personal relevations, such as that of Yuan Zhizong whose NDE involves meeting a monk who cuts him up the way he prepared the dead animals he hunted. The monk ultimately washes away his sin but tells him not to eat animals again. Then he writes of the ancient Greek Eurynous who returns as a more just man but is apparently told to keep much of what he saw a secret.

Next post will get into some historical NDE cases which include empirical validation.

Thanks  for the thread. I’ve read it from beginning to end. Ultimately I too err on the side of survival, even though there are certainly a lot of holes one can poke in that idea by going over all the available data. But in the end I agree that trying to fit super-psi into every single paranormal account out there just gets too convoluted. And yes, the idea that the mind can project itself anywhere in space and seemingly even time but it still lives and dies with the brain simply becomes quite dubious.

(2023-04-17, 10:45 AM)adamkallin Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks  for the thread. I’ve read it from beginning to end. Ultimately I too err on the side of survival, even though there are certainly a lot of holes one can poke in that idea by going over all the available data. But in the end I agree that trying to fit super-psi into every single paranormal account out there just gets too convoluted. And yes, the idea that the mind can project itself anywhere in space and seemingly even time but it still lives and dies with the brain simply becomes quite dubious.

Glad you liked this thread - I really wanted to just compare Super Psi vs Survival so I didn't worry too much about whether the accounts were valid as that adds a whole extra dimension. I largely went from Braude's opinion of the cases, along with Chris Carter, Alan Gauld, and a few others.

I still need to add some more from other texts, will ideally do that soon - your post is a good reminder so thanks for that!

(2022-09-13, 04:50 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Next post will get into some historical NDE cases which include empirical validation.

Shushan gives us a few cases which are mentioned very briefly. To give some examples -

- 1913 NDE where woman, named Bertha, meets future daughters. (See here for more on NDEs that include visions of unborn children)

- 1923 NDE where man is forewarned about deaths of family members who will pass before his time comes.

- 1669 English NDE where girl has Peak-in-Darien experience of seeing a few people who were not yet known to have died.

- 1887 NDE of Native American girl of Deg Hit'an tribe who sees her father, only to learn upon waking that he had died. This NDE apparently led to new cultural feasts & funerary offerings were added to the tribe's traditions.

Nothing really new here so won't dwell on it. I do think that when deciding between Survival and Super-Psi, I would think the visions of unborn children would support Survival. Of course in today's time we would probably want a sketch of what the future child should look like...

There are also NDEs mentioned by Shushan that had cultural impact on religious beliefs, but most of these aren't really evidential. The cultural aspects are arguably more on the side of Super Psi, though Shushan does note a variety of commonalities across cultures that seem to occur often. Additionally he quotes historian Stephen Potthoff on how NDEs actually added to culture rather than just drew from it:

Quote:“The shared, communal Christian vision of the afterlife as paradise emerged and evolved over time, drawing its inspiration and validation from the near-death otherworld journeys of martyrs, monks, and ordinary Christians alike.”

He also notes that the research of religious scholar Åke Hultkrantz argues that many Native American traditions were born from NDErs as well as the importance of NDEs on Pureland Buddhism.

This is a tricky to parse - one could say artifacts of imagination can be somewhat novel but not prove there is a spiritual world, and I would agree with that. My guess is people prefer modern NDEs over some of these historical ones that seem at times to be altered to support one religion or another. Or if not altered then heavily influenced by the NDEr's prior beliefs.

That said, Shushan does give two examples of people who were naturalist/materialist in their outlook but changed to some degree after an NDE:

Quote:As mentioned in the Introduction, while publicly admitting only that his experience had “slightly weakened” his conviction that death is the end of consciousness, shortly after his NDE, materialist philosopher A. J. Ayer was so moved by his experience of seeing “a Divine Being” that he believed he’d have to reassess his life’s work (Foges 2010). Likewise, prior to his own experience in 1983, mathematical physicist and psychologist John Wren-Lewis (1995) regarded mysticism as a form of neurosis. Not only did his NDE run contrary to his expectations, it also resulted directly in new spiritual beliefs, namely “that proponents of the so-called Perennial Philosophy are correct in identifying a common ‘deep structure’ of experience underlying the widely different cultural expressions of mystics in all traditions.”

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (p. 62). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

There's also Jung's NDE, of which he said:

Quote:It is perhaps unsurprising that a person who devoted so much of his life and thought to theorizing about dreams, myths, religions, symbols, and archetypes would have an NDE that reflects these preoccupations. Nevertheless, Jung did not interpret the experience as a product of his own learned and fertile imagination, and in fact it seemed to have had a profound influence on his thinking about consciousness and the possibility of life after death. A few months after the experience he wrote in a letter, “What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.” In addition to revelations about the nature of the afterlife, Jung also revived with a premonition of his doctor’s death, which soon came true.

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (p. 68). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Admittedly the skeptic let alone Super-Psi advocate can say these may run counter to vocalized beliefs but in and of themselves are not proof of Survival.

Will keep going through the historical cases to see any that really push for Super Psi or Survival. Most really don't seem to offer much either way but the next chapter of the book deals with incredibly ancient NDEs so we'll see...

(2023-05-25, 10:59 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Will keep going through the historical cases to see any that really push for Super Psi or Survival. Most really don't seem to offer much either way but the next chapter of the book deals with incredibly ancient NDEs so we'll see...

Yeah wasn't much in here that hasn't been covered before. A lot of cultural differences but some core similarities.

Shushan notes:

Quote:...the beliefs and ideas summarized here have no known forebears or previous textual models upon which they could have been based, and thus contain the world’s earliest recorded conceptions of the afterlife. This means that any cross-cultural similarities between them cannot be explained by transmission from one civilization to the next. We must therefore look elsewhere for an explanation of their shared ideas.

With the similarities including:

Quote:Despite innumerable differences, on a thematic level all traditions reviewed here include descriptions of leaving the body and existing in non-physical or quasi-physical form, journeys to other realms seen as a return to the origin-point or “home,” experiences of both darkness and light, meeting deceased relatives, judgement or evaluation of one’s earthly conduct, an afterlife fate determined by the outcome, encounters with deities and other beings associated with light, obstacles or barriers, divinization or the association/union of the self with the divine or Ultimate Reality, and a preoccupation with the reconciliation of opposites suggesting transcendence. The notion of an encounter with one’s own corpse leading to the realization of survival after death was also common.

These are also some of the most commonly reported elements of NDE reports. This suggests that people across cultures may have been familiar with the phenomenon and that it influenced their afterlife beliefs – filtered, of course, through layers of culture, language, and individuality. The very existence of the cross-cultural similarities indicates that the experience preceded conception. To argue the reverse does not explain how a set of thematically similar ideas could be independently invented, or how it could influence/create spontaneous, unsought NDEs.

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (p. 102). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

It is definitely interesting but I am not sure if the similarities are specific enough to say they must have a common source. I do think it's worth digging deeper into ancient NDEs, but something for another thread.

I don't count this as strong evidence of Survival over Super-Psi, but if there are greater similarities in the most ancient civilizations that didn't have cross-cultural contact I think it would at least count more for Survival than Super-Psi.

Next chapter is Shamanic Experiences & NDEs in the indigenous traditions of Oceania.

(2023-05-26, 03:48 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Next chapter is Shamanic Experiences & NDEs in the indigenous traditions of Oceania.

A variety of OOBE experiences tied to shamanism and NDEs. Not much here to really weight between Super Psi or Survival.

The commonality and documentation of the NDE experience suggests at least some NDE knowledge preceded cultural mythologizing, OTOH a lot of NDEs seem to draw from mythological elements of their respective regions.

Quote:In both Polynesia and Melanesia, they explicitly allowed for the possibility of the soul returning to the body. In other words, the eventuality of NDEs occurring was built into the ritual and belief system surrounding death and the afterlife. In Hawaii especially, great care was taken to avoid premature burial, with bodies being checked periodically for a heartbeat for a number of days prior to interment (Green & Beckwith 1926: 177). Practices were similar on Tahiti, and much effort was expended in keeping alive those in danger of death (Oliver 1974: 488, 496). Maori burial was performed a minimum of three days after death (Frazer 1922: 20), and efforts were made to restore souls of the recently dead to their bodies (Best 1901: 10; Goldie, 1904: 20). This was also the case on Mota Lava in Melanesia (Codrington 1891: 266-267). On Kiwai and in the Tanga Islands, bodies were not buried until decomposition (Landtman 1917: 12; Bell 1937: 321-322). The Dobu of the D’Entrecasteaux Islands believed that otherworld spirits ensured that souls were truly dead by admitting only those whose bodies had begun to decay (Fortune 1963: 181–182). Such practices and beliefs likely facilitated the occurrence of NDEs, though it is important not to overgeneralize.

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (pp. 130-131). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Quote:In my book Near-Death Experiences in Indigenous Religions I examined how NDEs are incorporated into the beliefs systems of different indigenous societies around the world. I found that many cultures valorized NDEs, and even based their afterlife beliefs upon them. This was most often the case with Native American peoples across the continent. In contrast, while other cultures also incorporated knowledge of NDEs into their belief systems, they did so in very different ways. In many African societies, NDEs were regarded with fear, as something aberrant, dangerous, and perhaps even due to witchcraft and sorcery. The indigenous societies of Oceania can be seen as almost a microcosm of the findings of that book. As with the Native American model, some cultures exemplify the experiential source hypothesis – that NDEs gave rise to afterlife beliefs. Others, however, are more aligned to the African model – that NDEs are viewed as a possible threat to the natural order.

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (pp. 134-135). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Next chapter is Victorian Edwardian mediumship...though I can already say there isn't much new there I'll highlight a few bits of potential interest...

(2023-06-02, 04:33 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Next chapter is Victorian Edwardian mediumship...though I can already say there isn't much new there I'll highlight a few bits of potential interest...

The chapter goes through a lot of what we've already covered. Mediumship seems to be both blessing and bane to Survival, providing us with some very interesting cases of what I would consider to be Survival evidence but also a morass of odd claims and weird control spirits.

Shushan also notes cases where an unjust class structure continues in the afterlife, and some very questionable claims of supposed spirits of slaves saying how they enjoy continuing to be slaves after death.

Regarding Super Psi:

Quote:...The super-psi hypothesis would thus demand that we accept that the medium is able to telepathically determine and locate the appropriate living individuals, retrieve from their minds the data relevant to the anonymous sitter, and coherently present the results, often in language displaying the personal characteristics of the alleged spirit who was unknown to the medium in life. According to psychologist Alan Gauld (1982: 46, 56), the evidence from Gladys Osborne Leonard’s mediumship (see below) would require that she had “extrasensory access to any identifying detail whatsoever relating to any living or recently dead person in the whole of the Western world” – a scenario which he finds “grotesquely implausible.”

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (pp. 138-139). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Regarding Leonora Piper's NDE:

Quote:Leonora Piper appears to be the only Victorian medium to have recorded her own near-death experience. It is provided in full as an appendix at the end of this book.

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (p. 143). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Will try to see if this NDE is a matter of public record, if not will summarize it later.

Regarding relation to NDEs:

Quote:The social history of Victorian and Edwardian spiritualism provides a backdrop to the mediumistic afterlife descriptions. At the same time, despite all their dubious and idiosyncratic claims, the descriptions feature some of the most common elements of NDEs, many decades before Moody. These factors raise two important questions: If, as argued by some psychical researchers, these mediums were relating genuine spirit communications, what are we to make of such obviously culturally situated perceptions of the afterlife? And how can we explain the general but undeniable similarities between the mediumship accounts and contemporary and historical reports of NDEs cross-culturally?

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (p. 172). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Quote:It is especially significant that they correspond to some of the most common elements found continually in other afterlife-related experiential phenomena, namely the NDE and (as will be seen in the next chapter) reincarnation memories of states between lives. Indeed, while widely considered to be “untestable,” the descriptions in these scripts are, in fact, testable by comparison with these other experiential phenomena.

Shushan, Gregory . The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (pp. 180-181). White Crow Productions Ltd. Kindle Edition.

So the next chapter, as noted, is between life memories.

(2023-06-02, 07:17 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]So the next chapter, as noted, is between life memories.

There are two categories of between life memories Shushan highlights - those that come with CORT cases and those that are due to past life regression (PLR). While noting the issues with PLR he notes there are enough parallels to other afterlife descriptions that he wanted to include them.

I won't really touch on the PLR stuff because I am deeply skeptical of past life regressions via hypnosis and AFAIK there are no good evidential cases.

[Looking at PLR more deeply there are evidential cases...]

Shushan breaks the cases down by country, starting with Burma (I'm not putting all the cases, just enough to get the general idea)->

Quote:Spontaneous cases with intermission memories appear to be more common in Burma than elsewhere...

Quote:The boys described their intermission memories to Fielding: “After they died they said they lived for some time without a body at all, wandering in the air and hiding in the trees. This was for their sins. Then, after some months, they were born again as twin boys. ‘It used,’ said the elder boy, ‘to be so clear, I could remember everything; but it is getting duller and duller, and I cannot now remember as I used to do.’”

Quote:Most of this three months he spent dwelling in the hollow shell of a palm-fruit.

Quote:They found that the children often remembered being out of their previous body and seeing the preparations for their funeral. Some recalled attempting to communicate with living relatives but finding that they were unable to do so. The souls were then “directed by an elder or an old man dressed in white” to some earthly place, such as a tree or a pagoda, though some remained near the body or walked along a path. The children also frequently reported encountering the souls of other deceased people, and over half recalled “choosing parents for the next life.” Some followed their new parents home, while others were directed to them by the elder figure. Some recalled entering their new mother, usually being ingested into her body after “transforming into a grain of rice or speck of dust in the water.” Sometimes the water would be discarded before being drunk, or guardian spirits would prevent the new soul from entering, and the soul would have to try again.

Then Thailand ->

Quote:

Quote:Buddhists in Thailand claim to have experienced intermediate states comparatively frequently, though usually remember nothing about them. Those who do most often recall an OBE in which they witnessed their own funeral, and seeing a “man in white” – a sage who welcomes and guides souls, and helps them to decide upon their next birth. The deceased are often given food, usually fruit, which causes them to forget their previous life. Those who claim to remember the experiences say they did not eat the fruit (Stevenson 1983: 6-7). A Thai man named Bongkuch Promsin, born in 1962, remembered that prior to his reincarnation, his soul lived for seven years in a tree before following his new father home on a bus.

Then India ->

Quote:“Just before death I felt a profound darkness and after death I saw a dazzling light. Then and there I knew I had come out of my body in a vaporous form and that I was moving upwards.” She was met by four teenage males dressed in bright saffron robes. They had a rectangular vessel about ten inches in diameter into which they placed Shanti Devi’s soul and took her to the third plane. They told her that “those who aspired for a higher life sincerely, but who had committed fleshly wrong in this life, were dipped in the river before moving any higher.” They then proceeded to the forth plane where “all is open space” and “full of light … very mild, and smoothing and enlivening light.” There she saw “still more saints, brighter in appearance than those on the third plane.” With them was the deity Krishna, who “was showing each person a record of his activities on earth, good and bad, and accordingly what would be his condition in the future.” Though Shanti Devi did not recall much of his words, she did hear him read out “House Number 565,” which was her address in her new identity. The four saffron-robed saints then took Shanti Devi “to a place like a staircase where it was very bright.” After sitting there for a long period, she “was taken to a dark room, from all sides of which a very bad smell was coming out. I was made to lie down in a clean place there. … I did not feel any pain. I simply passed into a state of unconsciousness, and at that very moment I saw very brilliant light” (Rawat & Rivas 2005).

Then Sri Lanka ->

Quote:Disna recalled leaving her previous body and flying to a realm reserved for the morally good. There she met a kingly figure in reddish-colored clothes which never became dirty. He wore pointed shoes and lived in a glass palace with “beautiful reed beds.” Disna wore similar clothes, but of gold, and spent her time playing and materializing food which did not need to be consumed to satisfy her hunger. The king figure then decided that she should be reborn.

China ->

Quote:In an account from 8th century China, a man recalled that when his previous self died, his “soul hovered about in an uncertain state without leaving the house.” He observed his father, Huang Ku, reciting a verse of mourning he had written for his son. Moved by this, the boy decided, “I will again become a son in the Ku family.” He then felt himself “seized and sent before an Official of the Underworld,” who decreed that his rebirth would indeed be with his previous family.

Japan ->

Quote:More recently, a number of unusual Japanese cases have been identified in which children recall only the intermission prior to the present incarnation, without having memories of a previous life at all. One boy, aged six, remembered “flying in the sky, looking for my mother. Looking down. I could see my mother and chose her.” A nine-year-old girl recalled being in another realm before her current life, with souls of many other children and “a god, an entity with authority.” She described the entity as generous, and said “He was looking after us, like a counselor” (Ohkado & Ikegawa 2014: 477). A total of 21 such cases were researched, and it was found that most described the other world as “cloud or sky,” though others said it was a realm of light, “a wide space where you can see the Earth,” “like a star,” “where there are a number of levels,” “up there,” and “in the shape of a long ellipse.” It was a peaceful, joyful realm though “difficult to describe.” Most met a god or god-like figure who helped them decide on their future parents. Many saw their future siblings, and one described other souls as “light balls.” Seeing activities on Earth concerning one’s future family was common, and over half remembered the reason for their rebirth, which varied from helping people on Earth to having a better life than their previous one.

Turkey ->

Quote:A Turkish Druze boy named Nasir Toksöz began speaking of a former life at the age of two-and-a-half. The boy claimed that prior to his rebirth, he first “went to God and gave an account of his conduct to Him.” Stevenson (1980: 9-10, 324, 335) observed that the experience was comparable to the NDE life review. Despite its brevity, the account is important because it conflicts with local beliefs. The Druze believe that the soul transmigrates directly from one body to the next, meaning that any sort of state between lives is impossible, even including OBEs.

Native N. America ->

Quote:Numerous Native American cultures held beliefs in reincarnation. Accounts of cases with intermission memories form part of a wider, complex afterlife experience-and-belief system incorporating NDEs, afterlife myths with NDE themes, and shamanic journeys to realms of the dead. It is significant that all of the Native American accounts of intermission memories are found in NDE contexts, and most involved shamans. While there are no examples of research cases like those described above, a number of societies had systems to empirically validate reincarnation claims, including investigating evidential dreams, past-life memories, birthmarks, and personality traits consistent with the earlier personality. These include the Gitksan, Wet’suwet’en, Beaver (Mills 1988: 408), Tillamook (Boas 1923: 12), and Tlingit (De Laguna 1972: 776ff).

United States ->

Quote:A fuller account was given by a boy named Sam Taylor, who remembered being his own grandfather. Sam made several accurate statements about his previous life that he could not have known in his current one, and was able to identify “himself” (his grandfather) from old photos. He described how “his body shot up to heaven when he died.” He met an uncle there, and also met God, who gave him a card that had green arrows on it, which would allow him to be reincarnated (ibid. 232-35, 238).

Shushan makes some notes about Intermission Memories and the relation to overall Survival research ->

Quote:Comparing intermission memories in spontaneous cases around the world, Sharma and Tucker (2004: 108) concluded that “While the specific imagery may be culture-specific, preliminary study suggests that the phases seem to be universally applicable.” They also found similarities between the Burmese descriptions in particular and NDEs in both Asia and the West.

Quote:Furthermore, they made a startling discovery: that those who recall intermission states “tend to make more verified statements about the previous life they claim to remember than do other subjects of reincarnation type cases, and they tend to recall more names from that life.” This combination of apparently evidential anomalous information retrieval and memories of NDE-like experience between lives might lend credence to the accounts (ibid. 101). This is an important contrast to the mediumistic reports in which veridical cases rarely accompanied descriptions of the afterlife. The psychologist Titus Rivas et. al. (2015: 104) also noted “a striking similarity” between intermission memories and NDEs, including “the existence of a ‘heavenly’ realm of light and love, the decision to return to earth, and communication with other discarnate spirit beings.” They argued that combined with the evidence from NDEs, these descriptions alongside the “paranormal” aspects of reincarnation cases – in which children knew information that could not have been known by normal means – indicates that “these memories and NDEs are clearly related and convergent, and they collectively point to the reality of conscious discarnate existence.”

However, it's also noted that there are a great degree of differences across cultures, and memories that include trying to sneak into the future mother's womb are going to be suspect though I suppose one can think of this as a child trying to understand something more complicated or different from human expectation. However the universal aspects are curious ->

Quote:Stevenson (1975: 50) wrote that when subjects reported memories of intermediate states, they were clearly grounded in “local mythology” and were essentially “culture-bound fantasies.” While it was important to note the differences between accounts, as with NDEs, the similarities indicate that the intermission memories cannot have resulted purely from cultural imagination. They must have some cross-cultural (if not universal) foundational experiential elements upon which the cultural and individual interpretations are overlaid. The fact that a Druze case included intermission memories – a notion anathema to local beliefs – further demonstrates that these phenomena cannot be due solely to religion or culture.

I think we can say that with respect to the two options of Super Psi and Survival, Intermission Memories lean us toward Survival at least slightly.

The final chapter of Shusan's The Next World discuss[es] what kind of afterlife we might expect given the varied Survival evidence. Will cover that in my next post.

(2023-06-03, 03:23 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I won't really touch on the PLR stuff because I am deeply skeptical of past life regressions via hypnosis and AFAIK there are no good evidential cases.

James G. Matlock is similarly sceptical of regression cases. However I don't think he is so bold as to dismiss all of the evidence in one sweeping statement as you have done "AFAIK there are no good evidential cases".

At least one strong case has been covered a number of times on this forum but I understand this cause is lost so there's no point me bringing it up yet again.

(2023-06-03, 04:42 PM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]James G. Matlock is similarly sceptical of regression cases. However I don't think he is so bold as to dismiss all of the evidence in one sweeping statement as you have done "AFAIK there are no good evidential cases".

At least one strong case has been covered a number of times on this forum but I understand this cause is lost so there's no point me bringing it up yet again.

Apologies, my point was not to make a blanket dismissal but going by my own memory and what Shushan [wrote]. If you can link to the case I'm happy to read about it...was it the case of the female Egyptologist?

It is entirely possible that in the future some change in technique will result in many good evidential PLR cases, I am not saying the very idea is impossible.