Is all this stuff real? or not? The skeptic vs believer within ourselves

There should be a forum for the reflective/emotional or psychological aspect of all this... so , without knowing exactly where to put this or if anyone cares to participate (please feel free to move this to a more ideal forum)..

Does it seem interesting to you that more people don't seem to be interested or at least concerned about the topics we explore here. Specifically, the soul or life after death, meaning ,purpose, etc. Maybe some are not interested in aliens or bigfoot, but we are all gonna die and those we love, will too. Maybe more people do wonder about this stuff and one may never know, just as most wouldn't know my feelings on these topics, except a close few... but there is "thinking about it" and "dwelling on it." I dwell on it. I have a unique psychology on it as well. Despite a strong bias and emotional need to believe in life after death and many things considered "new agey," I have a recurring obsessive and compulsive thought and behavior to poke any and all holes , to the extreme, on how something could be incorrect. In other words, I'll read something, emotionally "believe" or "I feel filled with hope/happiness" but then I mentally become doubtful, skeptical , poking holes in it. It's like I'd almost rather convince myself these things arent real, because If i believe and feel they are real, and at some point learn it is not real and I was wrong, would be more painful than not believing to begin with. "Losing" the belief or feeling, is more painful than never feeling it or believing it at all, i guess. 

Weird huh?

So, I obsessively read blogs, articles, books, watch and listen to all these topics, then feel good about everything, only to go back to doubt, skepticism and disbelief.

If this thread gets going, I'll share some of the types of "skeptical" thoughts and "doubts" that constantly creep up

**Edit.. I dont know why I made it seem like I would wait., I will share one of those thoughts now..

Why are so many experiences similar to the experiences one has in an NDE but people dont typically think of a literal soul leaving the body. For example, someone who is being sexually assaulted. Or someone who is being physically attacked, someone experience a PTSD type of "flashback or moment," or perhaps someone who suffers from de-realization or de-personalization disorder. What if one who is close to death, (or thinks they are), has various forms of disassociation. Maybe in less extremes, someone has their vision or hearing distorted, things seem far away or shrink down, etc.. and maybe in more extreme versions, people feel or perceive themselves as "out of body." I know I have read that one book about 100 verified experiences , the self does not die, i think it was called, i have read bruce greyson's book and his experience with the sauce on his tie, the alleged "mary's shoe," all of that. I get it. Thats my point. I have thoughts, and feelings on both sides and they battle with each other all the time. There are stories of people allegedly being out of body and verifying something they saw while out of body, but then other stories of people going to check on what they saw while out of body and they were incorrect about what they saw. It makes no sense!

I think there is a natural sense of resistance even (especially?) among proponents. 

I wonder about this myself - if I believe in this stuff why don't I try to become a shaman? Why don't I try to experience the spirits? I keep telling myself I am going to really take lucid dreaming seriously but never seem to maintain interest.

It's odd...I suspect there is a combination of apprehensiveness ("if you can see them, they can see you") and as you say a worry that hoping too much will only let me down.

There are stories of people allegedly being out of body and verifying something they saw while out of body, but then other stories of people going to check on what they saw while out of body and they were incorrect about what they saw. It makes no sense!

Hi, Bill ! It's very rare for that (the bolded) to happen. If you have any examples from a reliable source, I'd be happy to look at them.

Hi, Bill ! It's very rare for that (the bolded) to happen. If you have any examples from a reliable source, I'd be happy to look at them.

Hey Tim, I will try to remember and find the link. One I just read the other day and I cannot recall If it was on NDERF ,  but the NDE’er stated while out of body, he observed it to be snowing , only to return , ask Someone later if it had been snowing and it had not . The other story regarded someone who claimed to be out of body and after flying over a rooftop and observing the top of the roof , he was able to check out the rooftop later on and it did not match what he saw. 

Another strange one I remember reading or hearing about , but unrelated , was someone dying , being told it was not their time ,  being able to come back and report this, only to pass away … for good … within hours . So he wasn’t meant to die 6 hours prior ? U know what I mean? Just weird stuff .

Hey Tim, I will try to remember and find the link.

No worries, Bill !

One I just read the other day and I cannot recall If it was on NDERF ,  but the NDE’er stated while out of body, he observed it to be snowing , only to return , ask Someone later if it had been snowing and it had not

I'm sure most of the reports on there are probably authentic but they're not verified (usually) and that's why I don't  personally read them.

Another strange one I remember reading or hearing about , but unrelated , was someone dying , being told it was not their time ,  being able to come back and report this, only to pass away … for good … within hours . So he wasn’t meant to die 6 hours prior ?

I've seen that kind of report, too. I don't know what to make it of it and I won't try and make excuses but it doesn't detract from the fact that the overwhelming majority of the OBE's during NDE's are accurate. Jan Holden did very good work on this.

I don't have any answers really. I've had a few anomalous experiences, so I had a few opportunities to find the end of a piece of string, and follow it as far as it went. In my searching to make sense of them, I've found connections that have meaning for me, and been able to build a bit of a different story about the world, that makes sense to me. This doesn't change any of my everyday observations, but it does change how I think about them, how I connect them together. I enjoy the searching, I enjoy making the connections...

But my everyday day experience performs so well, and hides so well these different ways I've spotted that things might connect together, that it seems very hard to find a radical way to use them, that works better than the way I generally have learnt to function in the everyday world today. I still have to sleep, find shelter, dress warm, eat, drink, pee, crap, earn money, meet friends I like being around, fill in the census...

If anyone alive knows a better way... they ain't telling! Sony ESPER did all this on telepathy, I'm pretty sure they proved it to their satisfaction, but couldn't find a way to make use of it, that was more effective than the the ways we have to communicate with each other today... lol.

Small moves ellie, small moves...

[Ninshub]

In other words, I'll read something, emotionally "believe" or "I feel filled with hope/happiness" but then I mentally become doubtful, skeptical , poking holes in it. 

I wonder if part of this isn't just reflective of the conditioning we've had all our lives in our current culture, as well as the human animal/ego experience/drive of feeling like a finite self where survival is the only thing that matters, based on fear, which implies threat, danger, to begin with. So it's as if our soul part is clashing against the animal that only lives in a world of physicality and eventual annihilation. Just a thought.

I wonder if part of this isn't just reflective of the conditioning we've had all our lives in our current culture ...

I was thinking alongh the same lines.

I have tried to talk about these subjects with friends and family and I am often up against a wall of indifference. It seems to me that we are conditioned, from an early age, to avoid talking about death, spirituality or the possibility of an afterlife. Part of this is due to the materialist bias inherent in the education system but a lot has to do with materialism of the other sort - the focus on accumulating enough material wealth in order to live a comfortable life and provide for our families.

Religious people, quite surprisingly, are also reluctant to talk about spiritual matters. They seem to concentrate on how Jesus (or God or whatever they worship) can help them live in peace and comfort while finding reasons to judge others who don't share their beliefs. I can't seem to determine a consistent religious approach to death and the afterlife.

Lastly, we who do dwell on these subjects often have a nagging doubt back there that maybe we are the irrational fringe and that the materialistic consensus has us categorised correctly. The skeptics probably do not have the opposite nagging doubts because they feel secure in belonging to the consensus view. I also have to remind myself, over and over, that the evidence we discuss here is solid and rational and that the skeptical attempts to dismiss it all is, by far, the more unlikely to be true. Skeptics are actually the fringe; most of the unconvinced are those I described above: the indifferent.

If anyone alive knows a better way.

I think it's difficult to get out of the "race" we're in (the need to grab some money somehow, the need to survive etc)  impossible for most, but I'll bet there are far more advanced civilisations where they don't behave like we do.

they feel secure in belonging to the consensus view

 
That consensus view is now incorrect, though, so they are going to have to change it, whether they like it or are reluctant to or not. The findings of the relevant clinical research are that NDE's are not hallucinations, illusions, delusions or tricks of the brain. 

As Gerrman neurologist Wilfred Kuhn states :

"The dying neurons firing off, oxygen deficiency (causing hallucinations). These are their explanations, but they are not proven. There are now numerous pointers that allow for the conclusion that near-death experience cannot be fully explained neurobiologically.

The verified cases are not enough for them. Pim van Lommel once said that if we had ten cases, my colleagues would demand a hundred !  If one admits that near-death experiences are not hallucinations, one would have to recognize a parapsychological phenomenon. I have been familiar with the sceptical arguments for 40 years. There are always people who say that it doesn't exist. There will always be people who doubt everything. Also because most argue on a completely different level, for example in Internet discussions.  They have hardly read any of the literature, they only know it superficially and they have a materialistic worldview. Anyone who has worked intensively with this subject,  as a scientist, rather says: There's something else. Or: We cannot explain it yet."