Dualism or idealist monism as the best model for survival after death data

If this model is true, we shouldn't expect, however, bodyminds to have crossed over to be necessarily fully "enlightened". Therefore we shouldn't expect most NDEs and mediumistic communications to have this knowledge. (I'm speculating, of course, but according to the logic of the model.)

There are some NDEs, channels, mediumistic communications, it seems to me, that speak of different levels of reality. (Spiritualism - see planes of reality, summerland, etc, the higher mental spheres, I forget the classifications!)

Yeah I am looking a bit at Spiritualism right now - it seems influenced by ideas of unification though it seems this isn't exactly clear whether it confirms ideas about re-uinification into One-ness or was merely inspired fiction. There's definitely some overlap with NDEs as well. What's difficult is the cases that are evidentiary don't necessarily communicate a lot about the afterlife, and we know mediumship is so rife with issues of confabulation it's the primary reason we have the "Super Psi" hypothesis.

But I think it would be strange to say NDEs and other afterlife communications that disagree are experiencing an illusion - this seems t[o]o much to me like the materialist who stamps his foot and insists consciousness is illusory...this would seem to be the Idealist version of that?

[Ninshub]

What if we say another level of reality rather than an illusion?

I wonder if words get us lost, and also if the complexity of ultimate reality is just beyond our understanding.

Edit: I hate to bring her up all the time, but on the topic of levels of reality or perspectives or understandings, NDEr Nanci Danison distinguishes, from what she allegedly learned (or rather remembered) and experienced during her NDE, human perspective from Light Being perspective from Source perspective, and it kind of fits in somewhat with this view.

I'll do my best!

This refers to how, in my original post on the topic, I wrote:


The philosophy of Sankara (or of which he is a major representative) has two levels of truth. I'll quote Richard King in his book Indian Philosophy that I've referenced in this thread a few times already:


*Please remember, as I posted earlier, that this so-called "faulty perception of reality" continues after the death of the physical body. We continues on as souls or subtle bodies on that empirical level, but at a deeper level of reality this is all Brahman.

It's not easy for me to wrap my own head around this topic. It's funny that you pick up on this because I was rereading a few pages of this book, at this very point, and was earlier today wondering if I should share it privately with you, nbtruthman, Valmar, whoever is interested, to help make sense of it, if you can. (It's copyrighted so I don't want to share it on the forum.)

Sankara clearly propounds a realist theory of perception and attacks the Yogacara position in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya for their apparent denial of the reality of the external world of objects existing independently of our experience of them. In that sense one can describe his position as a form of empirical realism. However, he maintains a distinction between two levels of truth and believes that our ordinary perception of reality is faulty*, being based upon own ignorance. His final position then is that the empirical world is an illusion (maya). The world is empirically real but not absolutely real. Although one can talk of the world as an effect of brahman, it is really just brahman... Our experience of a world of separate things, therefore, must be 'sublated', that is, overturned by the higher knowledge of brahman.

(Richard King, Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought, Georgetown University Press, 1999, p. 156.)

*Please remember, as I posted earlier, that this so-called "faulty perception of reality" continues after the death of the physical body. We continues on as souls or subtle bodies on that empirical level, but at a deeper level of reality this is all Brahman.

To me, the Richard King commentary seems to "nail it" so to speak (I assume his interpretation is correct).

What if we say another level of reality rather than an illusion?

I wonder if words get us lost, and also if the complexity of ultimate reality is just beyond our understanding.

Edit: I hate to bring her up all the time, but on the topic of levels of reality or perspectives or understandings, NDEr Nanci Danison distinguishes, from what she allegedly learned (or rather remembered) and experienced during her NDE, human perspective from Light Being perspective from Source perspective, and it kind of fits in somewhat with this view.

It would seem that some NDEs, and also some Spiritualist mediumistic communications, infer that Sankara's "empirical" but ultimately illusory realm of reality (of which our material physical world is the lowest level) itself is complicated and has multiple levels such as the "summerland" so often described by discarnates, in addition to both higher and lower levels of the spiritual subreality.

[Ninshub]

To me, the Richard King commentary seems to "nail it" so to speak (I assume his interpretation is correct).

Does this mean it's possible some kind of interactive modified Cartesian dualism is true, but acting within some Advaita Vedanta-like framework? Surely many (Eastern and Western) philosophers' heads would explode!

What if we say another level of reality rather than an illusion?

I wonder if words get us lost, and also if the complexity of ultimate reality is just beyond our understanding.

Edit: I hate to bring her up all the time, but on the topic of levels of reality or perspectives or understandings, NDEr Nanci Danison distinguishes, from what she allegedly learned (or rather remembered) and experienced during her NDE, human perspective from Light Being perspective from Source perspective, and it kind of fits in somewhat with this view.

I think to some degree one can talk about levels of reality, but it still remains unclear to me why we would think there is a level of reality that is apparently much simpler than the perceived reality...possibly to the point that this higher reality kinda-sorta makes the "lower" levels illusory?

I understand the basic Idealist / Cosmo-Panpsychist / Neutral Monist / Subtle-Materialist position that all realities would be made from a singular stuff at the level of fundamental Ground. This is of course appealing in some sense. But it seems to me this is possibly a desire for a simplicity that cannot be drawn from the paranormal data, which gives us minds that can do physical stuff (PK), spirits that can be seen and sometimes make contact with the physical (ghosts, OOBErs), physical stuff that can affect minds if not spirits (DMT/Ayahuasca + other substances used by shamans to alter their mental state), even seemingly physical entities for whom physics can be at times ignored (aliens). Even stuff that seems outright physical can serve a spiritual purpose, such as when Rolling Thunder is witnessed to transfer sickness from a boy into a pair of steaks. Add to this that everything "physical" is observed within the phenomenal...

So we cannot easily differentiate substance along causal axes, because there seems to be selective causal participation where the "physical" and "mental" overlap yet also instances where they seem to maintain their distinction. For this reason I have trouble thinking there is a fundamental Dualism. I realize the Idealist can say all of these disparate phenomena are ultimately mental, but this IMO seems to make too much light of the causal rules we see - in some sense Idealism's inability to be falsified works against it in the same way that one can always find a way to justify the Simulation Hypothesis. It's also not clear if Idealism can work when it comes to giving a full accounting for the stability in, at least, our consensus mundane "physical" reality - is there One True Subject, a God that thinks up the stabilization, or is consensus maintained through Inter-Subjectivity?

So setting aside Dualism and Monism (Idealism or otherwise)...Could there be multiple substances with certain axes of causal interaction that challenge Dualism's claim of a clear distinction between mental/spiritual & physical...but not a complete unity that would entail any of the aforementioned Monisms? This is sort of where I lean to, but it also isn't fully convincing and doesn't quite fit the claims of unity we see in some mysticism + (iirc) NDEs where everything is ultimately made by Light, or God, or Mind@Large, or...

[Ninshub]

is there One True Subject, a God that thinks up the stabilization, or is consensus maintained through Inter-Subjectivity?

Good points to ponder, Sci.

Regarding just this one point: if we envision a OTS or God that creates the universe or reality through the unfolding of itself - like a carpet that is unfolded but that remains the carpet using one classic Hindu analogy I'm reading about - couldn't part of that creation be Subjects that through their intersubjectivity/consensus create realities within that Reality? So that "they" create the sub-realities, but at the same time "they" remain characters within God's ultimate play/reality and/or part of that God/Source?

I don't know if that contradicts the arguments you're making.

[Ninshub]

Just going back a second to the parenthetical topic I posted about earlier of Advaita Vedanda (according to Sankara) envisioning a continuation of the subtle body (or bodymind) after the death of the physical body (and not just dissolving into cosmic oneness - although that is already the case at an underlying ontological level, so it says)...

I'm just listening to this exchange between Rupert Spira and a questioner. It's not about this topic specifically, it's about how trauma subsists as a reality (in the localized bodymind) even in a non-dualist perspective (or the one Spira espouses). Spira is not a pure Advaita Vedantist, but Advaita Vendata is at the core of the Direct Approach he (and others who follow this approach) teach.

It's interesting listening to this exchange because at 14 minutes the discussion leads to talking about how the finite mind is beyond what goes on in the waking state, which Spira says is called the "soul" in the Christian tradition, and then he goes to speak of a realm, after the death of the body, where this finite, personal mind continues to exist. It does not directly dissolve or go back to "infinite consciousness or God's infinite being". (Nice bit afterwards also about the interconnectedness of the localized minds.)



So another caveat at equating non-dualist teachings (or some of them) with dissolving into oneness at death.

Just quoting myself because I came upon this thread from January 2021 where Kamarling wrote:

I have similar trouble with Spira who tends to agree with his good friend Kastrup. I would describe myself as an idealist and in broad agreement with them but I think they jump ahead too far and too quickly. I do think that we are all fragments of the same consciousness and therefore reality is ultimately non-dual. However, I also think that the fragmentary nature of consciousness which is responsible for our individual personalities does not dissolve at death or shortly thereafter. I think that we go on developing as individual souls or as gestalt souls over a great span of time (which is part of the illusion of separation too). I think that we evolve from and into different forms, both physical and spiritual.

Just to say this video I posted maybe puts another spin on this understanding of where Spira specifically is at.

I'm also hoping that by posting this I'm *pinging Kamarling to come join this thread from wherever he is. Hope you're well David.

[Ninshub]

I also want to add this. Just because Spira and Kastrup are friends and share similar views, doesn't mean they'd agree on everything.

I don't know if Kastrup would entirely buy into Shankara's Advaita Vedanta as it's been elucidated here. (I've seen him in a video say from what he knows about AV, it's probably close to his views, but he doesn't know that much about it). (And of course, there are different AV's. I'll maybe post about this later, but later Indian religious philosophers in the AV tradition went beyond Shankara and changed the definition of "maya" so that metaphysical realism no longer held, whereas it did with Shankara. An important distinction.)

Coming back to Kastrup. Again not to defend his views, but I did find a statement of his on NDEs that make it sound like he is perhaps open to the notion of the survival of localized consciousnesses after bodily death (in other words, the survival of the personality after death, albeit enlarged).
 
In a 2016 essay called "The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death", published in an issue of the Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research dedicated to "Theories of Consciousness and Death", he wrote

The hallmark of dissociation is “a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal
integration of consciousness, memory, identity [and] emotion” (Black & Grant,
2014, p. 191). Therefore, the end of dissociation can only entail a reintegration of
“memory, identity [and] emotion” lost at birth. This means that bodily death,
under idealism, must correlate with an expansion of our felt sense of identity,
access to a broader set of memories and enrichment of our emotional inner life.

This conclusion is the exact opposite of what our mainstream physicalist
ontology asserts. Moreover, there is nothing in the popular dualist alternative—
mainly found in religious circles—that requires it either. So idealism is not only
unique in its ability to explain reality more parsimoniously and completely than
physicalism and dualism, it also offers a unique perspective on death.

Circumstantially but significantly, much of the literature regarding near-death
experiences (NDEs) seems to corroborate this prediction of idealism (Kelly et al.,
2009). To mention only one recent example, Anita Moorjani (2012) wrote of her
felt sense of identity during her NDE: “I certainly don’t feel reduced or smaller in
any way. On the contrary, I haven’t ever been this huge, this powerful, or this all-
encompassing. ... [I] felt greater and more intense and expansive than my
physical being” (p. 69). It’s hard to conceive of a more unambiguous
confirmation of idealism’s prediction than this passage, although Moorjani’s
entire NDE report echoes the prediction precisely.

Does this mean it's possible some kind of interactive modified Cartesian dualism is true, but acting within some Advaita Vedanta-like framework? Surely many (Eastern and Western) philosophers' heads would explode!

Exactly. Of course I don't want for their heads to explode, but they need to open up their mental bounds of possibility.