The mystery of death

The mystery of death

Natalia Vorontsova, MA 

Natalia Vorontsova explores the mystery of death and its relationship with non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as tukdam and NDEs, including those reported by young children.

Interesting article, but a bit too biased towards Absolute (No-Self) Idealism

Are we always in infinite consciousness or mind-at-large, having a localized human experience, striving to know itself [4]? Or are we just finite bio-robots whose biochemical and bioelectrical brain processes produce a local epiphenomenon called consciousness?

To be honest I struggle to find the difference between Absolute Idealism and Physicalism in terms of relevant difference. Is it any better to be in the dream of Mind @ Large where all individuality is illusory than it is to be a "bio-robot" under Physicalism?

I would even suggest both suffer from the same problem, taking the obvious reality of our conscious experience in the Here & Now as somehow illusory while what is real is somehow beyond our actual immediate Present.

However, Tibetan monks practicing 8-stage Tantric mediation who reach the final 8th stage of ‘clear light’ describe each stage to researchers in great detail, including the process of dissolving into the larger field of consciousness itself [5].

Can mainstream science dismiss these experiences of consciousness as hallucinations, defined medically as delirium? Undoubtedly, especially since brain activity is registered in meditative states. However, near-death experiences (NDEs) show that many people have effectively died and returned to share their richest, most profound, and most transformative experiences from the time when they had no brain activity at all. Can they also be considered hallucinations? Medical professionals, such as cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel, who have studied NDE cases extensively, stress that hallucinations cannot occur in a brain that shows no measurable activity [6].

But surely the key here is that there is a Self who is having the NDE and reporting it, and if fact even the monks who are [entering the reported states are speaking as an individual Self.]

What if, metaphysically speaking, the tables were turned? What if consciousness or mind-at-large is the primary and fundamental basis of reality, which most children experience during their NDEs as “loving nothingness or living darkness” [7]?

I'll have to double check this as I have doubts about this. But I think focusing on NDEs that agree with one's metaphysical position and ignoring the others isn't a very good argument.

I should note that I lean toward both the Self and No-Self "doctrines" being wrong in some way, but here I am just noting what feels like a bias toward the No-Self "doctrine" that I feel cherry picks the Survival evidence.

Even Faggin's Idealism, from what I have read of Irreducible so far, seems to break with Absolute Idealism. I've seen Essentia Foundation claim Faggin and Kastrup's ideas are the same, but Faggin's book makes me think he is closer to Edward Kelly's Idealism w/ Personal Survival.

Couple relevant quotes from Irreducible:

Many sages throughout history have suggested that we are beings of light that will not die with the death of the body, because we are here to learn and grow. I think we are here to learn to collectively create new worlds in which to operate at a much higher level of cooperation, creativity, and fulfillment than we now can at this early stage of our spiritual evolution. The possibility of experiencing our true nature is already supported by the enlightened personal experiences of millions of people around the globe, and by countless “anecdotal” facts and events that science hesitates to investigate. If we open ourselves to this potential that is dormant in us and ask our greater self to show the way, we may soon be able to experience an unsuspected unity in our lives, the early signs of humanity’s awakening to its true power and purpose.

A conscious being is therefore represented by a quantum system that is in a pure state. If such an entity can transform its own state by maintaining its purity and can create a classical memory of its experience, we have defined a special quantum system which I call seity...

...A seity is endowed with a unique and permanent identity because she knows that the conscious experience she is having is her own, and thus she can direct her experience...

...I call this Whole, One, to distinguish it from the unified field of physics, because from One emerge the conscious fields with free will, the elementary seities that I call consciousness units (CUs), rather than the inanimate fields of the elementary particles of physics that interact in accordance with preestablished laws. In this new conception, the CUs communicate with each other, and from their interactions emerge both the laws of physics and new fields (higher-order seities) that are quantum combinations of CUs like atoms are combinations of elementary particles.

...The seities can create many different worlds which are all interconnected and exist one inside the other. Their fundamental connections are determined by the universal language created by the first-level seities, the CUs. This is the world that contains all other worlds, the language from which all other languages have emerged, and through which One can explore every possibility of knowing Itself.

It isn't exactly clear what the One is here, but it seems Seities are immortal selves with genuine volition?