Peter Fenwick's Studies of End-of-Life-Phenomena

Another quote from the same interview:


Strictly speaking, these statements are a little ambiguous. He could be talking only about just the entrance to the beginning stages of the afterlife, during which the NDE OBE evidence does indicate that the individual personality persists at least temporarily after separation from the dying body. He may consider that in the overall long life of the soul eventually there is some sort of ending with a merging with all that is, in which indeed the individual personality is extinguished.

For myself I think there's a space between "the person you are in this life Survives" and "there is no personal Survival, only the Ur-Mind is what lives on".

There can be Personal Survival, but the person you think you are in this life will not really live on because in death you will recall all those other lives, enough incarnations that your tears and blood could overflow oceans as Buddha puts it. And it's possible that very little of this life will mean much. [I believe this is partly what some Gnostics believe when they say the pleroma is the part of you that is Divine but the physical body AND the psyche are part of the Prison.]

OTOH we do seem to have indications that the bonds in this life persist given people meet loved ones in NDEs, talk to them via mediums, or even incarnate back into their own family.

That's disappointing. I wonder whether he's answered it anywhere that you or other folk here know of. Otherwise, maybe it does need to be explicitly asked of him.

As far as I know, his comments on this topic have always been ambiguous.

For example, I wanted to know what Jurgen Ziewe thinks will happen to an individual who has reached "unity consciousness". In one of his videos he said that you don't lose your individuality or persona, and you will be able to e.g. distinguish your mother etc. So, that was good enough answer for me. I haven't seen any comments like this from Fenwick.

Another quote from the same interview:


Strictly speaking, these statements are a little ambiguous. He could be talking only about just the entrance to the beginning stages of the afterlife, during which the NDE OBE evidence does indicate that the individual personality persists at least temporarily after separation from the dying body. He may consider that in the overall long life of the soul eventually there is some sort of ending with a merging with all that is, in which indeed the individual personality is extinguished.

I think it is paradoxical in the way that at one level we intuit that our day to day conscious/identity in the  context of this world is who we really are. yet from my own experiences with STE's and observations of mystics that from the view of my awareness when in a heightened state from practices and substances, I experience an expanded sense of myself that feels connected with a larger mind or consciousness which includes my ordinary limited sense of self who remembers a truer more real awareness and understanding which seems to resolve this paradox – yet when locked into the mundane consensus reality there never seems to be enough data to know with any kind of certainty that who we think we are survives death.

Very interesting. Lots of good information and wisdom. The main sticking point for me was that he affirms that death is "non-dual", in which one merges with the universe - and presumably then loses individuality; a "real" death: the dissolution of the person. I'm skeptical that this is what happens, especially given evidence that the individual persists after death, such as from CORTs and mediumship, and even NDEs themselves.

Yes - and to amplify that, how can you meet your dead relatives if they have been absorbed into something?

I think it is significant that the first point when PF's talk didn't ring true was when he introduced philosophical ideas!

Leaving aside that quibble, I thought it was an excellent interview, and he speaks in a very lucid way - amazing considering he is 89!

David

Peter Fenwick has studied this subject for decades, so I'm confident he is aware of all the available evidence and simply interprets it differently than you do. He has also written a book on reincarnation.

He is however without any doubt a dualist. I think with “non-dual” death he means you loose the physical part of being “dual”. He doesn’t elaborate on what merging with the universe means and in truth we could probably never know (even if dualism is true)

I have come to realise that neither physics nor philosophy nor Christianity contribute anything to debates about spiritual matters!

Spiritual phenomena need to be understood, in the same way as our ancestors understood that falling was dangerous - no jargon, just basic awareness.

I think we should all settle on a minimalist philosophy in which there are either one or two realms, one of which is mainly physical, and the other is overwhelmingly mental, or does not exist at all. That would cater for your position (sometimes) and everyone else's.

Then we can simply focus on the evidence!

David

For myself I think there's a space between "the person you are in this life Survives" and "there is no personal Survival, only the Ur-Mind is what lives on".

There can be Personal Survival, but the person you think you are in this life will not really live on because in death you will recall all those other lives, enough incarnations that your tears and blood could overflow oceans as Buddha puts it. And it's possible that very little of this life will mean much. [I believe this is partly what some Gnostics believe when they say the pleroma is the part of you that is Divine but the physical body AND the psyche are part of the Prison.]

OTOH we do seem to have indications that the bonds in this life persist given people meet loved ones in NDEs, talk to them via mediums, or even incarnate back into their own family.

I think this leads naturally to the long held by me anyway observation that the deepest mystery is not whether or not there is survival, but rather what is it that survives. We humans typically identify ourselves in large part by our memories of our unique life going back to childhood and our current personalities derived from these countless experiences. While whatever it is that survives, presumably the soul, may at first in the process be mostly our ordinary self with some small degree of expansion, as in NDEs. But ultimately in the process this resultant "being" is more an "it" than a personal self in our sense at all, it is so expanded in consciousness and with the large number of other unique and different past lives now shared simultaneously in its memory, surely vastly changing its "personality". This "self" is now it seems to me something alien to our human consciousness. I don't see how at least from the human persective we can really identify ourselves with this "being".
 
If this analysis and point of view is the case, then by ordinary human definitions, there isn't really anything like long term "true survival" of our unique personal self, and we might as well get used to it and console ourselves that apparently the transformation process after death does not involve fear, but is gentle and loving, an involuntary indefinite expansion, opening up, of consciousness in a partially humanly consoling way analogous in small part to the long-term changes in personality and consciousness that take place automatically as a human matures from a baby consciousness to that of an old adult. Despite these vast changes in personal perspective, knowledge and some aspects of personality that took place over their prior life, most adults would still consider these former versions of themselves to each still be their unique personal self. 

This analogy fails, unfortunately, when considering that in the expansion process the soul supposedly consciously incorporates in its composite personality a vast array of different separate unique former Earth lives, a vast increase in differentness over the natural progression of growth from baby to old adult happening in Earth life.

As you say, there is, apparently, the survival of the unique human personal self for a limited period of time following physical death or near death conditions outside the body, before this transformation has taken place. This is evidenced by such paranormal phenomena as mediumistic communications, NDEs, and reincarnation memories of somehow what is remembered as the self choosing the next life. There are mediumistic communications with longer dead humans and they would along the lines of this model have to be explained as the greatly expanded soul being deciding (out of compassion and desire to console) to communicate by taking taking on the guise of a small part of its now hugely expanded self - the sitter's deceased loved one. This seems plausible to me.

I have come to realise that neither physics nor philosophy nor Christianity contribute anything to debates about spiritual matters!

Spiritual phenomena need to be understood, in the same way as our ancestors understood that falling was dangerous - no jargon, just basic awareness.

I think we should all settle on a minimalist philosophy in which there are either one or two realms, one of which is mainly physical, and the other is overwhelmingly mental, or does not exist at all. That would cater for your position (sometimes) and everyone else's.

Then we can simply focus on the evidence!

David

This might be nice save that STEM academia is quite willing to not even regard the evidence because of the negative reputation of Dualism.

As for philosophy, I'd even suggest the only reason we're seeing a bit more sympathy to Psi/Survival is because the philosphical flaws of Materialis[m]/Physicalism have been increasingly exposed.

Not a Christian myself but I think a lot of philosophical work as well as pushing the facts of Fine Tuning and criticism of Neo-Darwinism has been due to Christians?

I'm sure some scientists have simply looked the evidence in parapsychology and accepted the findings, but these seem few and far between? And many of these scientists, I suspect, are the ones like Parnia and Fenwick who did the work themselves.

This might be nice save that STEM academia is quite willing to not even regard the evidence because of the negative reputation of Dualism.

As for philosophy, I'd even suggest the only reason we're seeing a bit more sympathy to Psi/Survival is because the philosphical flaws of Materialis[m]/Physicalism have been increasingly exposed.

Not a Christian myself but I think a lot of philosophical work as well as pushing the facts of Fine Tuning and criticism of Neo-Darwinism has been due to Christians?

I'm sure some scientists have simply looked the evidence in parapsychology and accepted the findings, but these seem few and far between? And many of these scientists, I suspect, are the ones like Parnia and Fenwick who did the work themselves.

First let me say that I wrote what I did to suggest a direction for us here on this forum. My feeling is that we should downplay obscure philosophy in favour of the real facts.

It is, of course, mainly the Discovery Institute which have pushed back hard against RM+NS. I applaud them for this whether they are Christians or not. They have achieved their successes by deliberately keeping their science separate from their religious beliefs. However, if we think of PF's work, I can't imagine that they could make a positive contribution!

David

First let me say that I wrote what I did to suggest a direction for us here on this forum. My feeling is that we should downplay obscure philosophy in favour of the real facts.

I suspect that many here having agreement on the basics (Survival and Psi are true) leads us into obscure philosophy to consider what reality might be like if the paranormal is real.

Basically I'm apologizing in advance for inevitably posting some obscure philosophy down the line.

I suspect that many here having agreement on the basics (Survival and Psi are true) leads us into obscure philosophy to consider what reality might be like if the paranormal is real.

Basically I'm apologizing in advance for inevitably posting some obscure philosophy down the line.

I don't want to come across as a Luddite, but I think that all scientific and philosophical theorising has to satisfy Occam's Razor, and must be based on facts. Above all, it must not be capable of 'explaining' everything, or require that what people report is reinterpreted in some complex way - think of Bernardo discussing Idealism!

David