BK's 'Phantom World' Hypothesis for NDEs

[Federica]

I think we should remember that in a sense the dissociative boundary is real, although not exactly of the nature that BK conceives.

In reality, this dissociation is simply the result of the excess forces of antipathy that still live in the soul. Upon hearing this, many may jump "But this is nonsense, I don't harbor any antipathy toward anyone, yet I'm still dissociated." This only shows, however, how little real self-knowledge man has today. As Ashvin explains in his commentary, our souls interfere. To enter consciously the spiritual world we need to become naked. We should be ready to find the thoughts and feelings of humanity within the same conscious space as ours. If we try to assess how much of our inner life we actually maintain only because we believe that it is secret and unknowable to any other being, we'll quickly realize that we very badly desire to be dissociated.

Thank you for the reminder, Cleric. I often try to prefigure the soul interference, that in Jupiter we are like extended Giacomo-of-Crystal, transparent through the entire archive of everything we ever said, did, felt, and thought throughout all our lives. Yesterday I was reading:

...
Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
Your fire of knowing must tame it.
...

It's surely a challenge to take responsibility for a past of less than pure and elevated thoughts, feelings and actions, not to mention the mystery of what one does not yet remember, in this or in previous lives... For example, Steiner says that our physical head is just as good as our overall previous life, and I have read somewhere else (maybe in Heindel, not sure) that a less than perfect sight, like mine is, reveals cruelty in a previous life. This is an excruciating thought, as I am not aware of such a trait in me (at the same time I am reassured to see pictures of Tomberg, Heindel and others wearing eyeglasses )
Anyway, as Steiner says, no regrets for the past. I try to focus on intention and action in the present and future. For example, I try to correct and counterbalance the wrong thoughts as they appear. I have also been mindful of micro-lies in work communications, like writing in an email: "Oh thank you so much" while feeling not exactly so very thankful. Or: "Sorry, I have another meeting at that time" if it's not true. There is much more, not to say these are the only parts of my inner life a part of me wishes they could be 'dissociated'.

But I don't fully understand why you brought this up at this particular point of this thread?

[Cleric K]

But I don't fully understand why you brought this up at this particular point of this thread?

Because we're mentioning the dissociative boundary. If that is postulated as unquestionable, as long as we're in the period between birth and death, we give our intellect the axiomatic excuse to endlessly speculate, while feeling completely at peace that this is the most we can do. We single-handedly legitimize our philosopher armchair (or should we say - the ego's throne?). I just wanted to remind that the apparent dissociation is indeed a fact within our fragmentary sensory states (as per the coffee house metaphor) but it is not true that our thinking spirit is axiomatically enchained into dissociation.

In other words, if we ask BK "What prevents you from seeking conscious experience of the higher regions of MAL in your meditations?", one answer would be a completely self-imposed chalk circle - "Because I postulated that this is impossible". In that case, what stands between us and the higher strata of MAL is our own postulate. If we realize the arbitrariness of this boundary, then we need to seek the true causes. These will quickly become apparent as a sort of emotional cocktail - fear, disgust (of feeling the inner life of other beings), and so on.

[Federica]

But I don't fully understand why you brought this up at this particular point of this thread?

Because we're mentioning the dissociative boundary. If that is postulated as unquestionable, as long as we're in the period between birth and death, we give our intellect the axiomatic excuse to endlessly speculate, while feeling completely at peace that this is the most we can do. We single-handedly legitimize our philosopher armchair (or should we say - the ego's throne?). I just wanted to remind that the apparent dissociation is indeed a fact within our fragmentary sensory states (as per the coffee house metaphor) but it is not true that our thinking spirit is axiomatically enchained into dissociation.

In other words, if we ask BK "What prevents you from seeking conscious experience of the higher regions of MAL in your meditations?", one answer would be a completely self-imposed chalk circle - "Because I postulated that this is impossible". In that case, what stands between us and the higher strata of MAL is our own postulate. If we realize the arbitrariness of this boundary, then we need to seek the true causes. These will quickly become apparent as a sort of emotional cocktail - fear, disgust (of feeling the inner life of other beings), and so on.

Yes. Don't you think that in this latest speculation BK goes somewhat in the direction of loosening the axiome of the boundary, although only with regard to sensory perceptions and feelings?

[AshvinP]

He is projecting man's intellectual consciousness and its associative intelligence onto MAL and saying the latter cannot help but create this phantom world out of the memories it gathers from the reassociated alters, as if that is the full extent of its purposes.

Yes, he’s anthropomorphizing MAL, but this was already the case before, at least implicitly, which is why the dissociative boundary comes in handy in the model - to partition the flat sea of “mentation”. So I don’t think it’s a new way. It’s only a speculative extension of his old way, specifically to incorporate NDEs.

He hasn't even stopped to consider how radically different consciousness would be in the absence of the brain-sensory scratchboard. In that sense, I think it is another major step in his backward intuitive direction. He is finding new ways to solidify MAL's instinctive nature in his thinking and intellectually erode the mystery of experiences across the threshold, which may otherwise lead one to explore them further and more intimately.

He hasn’t even stopped simply because the dissociative boundary is not the final add to a theory that starts from monistic idealism. I believe his reasoning process starts from human sensory experience, then postulates the boundary, then goes to a vague idea of MAL/nature. It may not be formalized in this way, but I believe this is his intuitive process. So, I believe he hasn’t even stopped to consider the various options for MAL for the simple reason that he hasn’t really arrived there (yet) - to a serious consideration of MAL. That is the frontier.

In this sense, I am a bit less negative than you seem to be. Sure there's dualism, but I’m not sure that the phantom world is a third element, making things worse than what he previously theorized. It’s just a more explicit speculation on the nature of MAL as he had already imagined it. The phantom world is MAL itself.

In any case, I agree that in a way or another, in the background of all this, there is “the subconscious desire that the spiritual should not be concretely known during life and made more transparent within and through the physical.” The desire to cling to the infancy of humanity, in other words to stay some more in the protective womb of Nature. Curiously, I have a distinct such impression when I watch him talking and argumenting.

Imagine someone has overcome materialist axioms, realizes all must be experiential qualities and activity, but also feels inclined to the speculative dissociative boundary. They simply see no evidence that the higher layers of MAL are accessible to our consciousness during life (except maybe via mystical introspective reduction). But then they come across NDEs and this stirs some questions in them - clearly, people are having lucid experiences of some sort across the threshold. What is the significance of these NDE facts? What does it mean that a person can loosen from the physical body, have lucid experiences, and then return to the body and continue living as normal?

But now they come across BK's hypothesis and think, "ok so this all fits with instinctive MAL... these people haven't glimpsed some objective spiritual reality that we all experience after death, only constellations of memories from the dissociated state that have been associatively assembled by MAL". In other words, there is nothing to see here, no further insight into the nature of our reality to be gained by contemplating the NDE phenomenon further. This is what I mean when I say it is a regression. Of course, I am not suggesting the content of the NDE accounts themselves would give people proper orientation to spiritual existence, but simply the fact that it is a real phenomenon that is a mystery and needs to be investigated further in some way.

[Federica]

He is projecting man's intellectual consciousness and its associative intelligence onto MAL and saying the latter cannot help but create this phantom world out of the memories it gathers from the reassociated alters, as if that is the full extent of its purposes.

Yes, he’s anthropomorphizing MAL, but this was already the case before, at least implicitly, which is why the dissociative boundary comes in handy in the model - to partition the flat sea of “mentation”. So I don’t think it’s a new way. It’s only a speculative extension of his old way, specifically to incorporate NDEs.

He hasn't even stopped to consider how radically different consciousness would be in the absence of the brain-sensory scratchboard. In that sense, I think it is another major step in his backward intuitive direction. He is finding new ways to solidify MAL's instinctive nature in his thinking and intellectually erode the mystery of experiences across the threshold, which may otherwise lead one to explore them further and more intimately.

He hasn’t even stopped simply because the dissociative boundary is not the final add to a theory that starts from monistic idealism. I believe his reasoning process starts from human sensory experience, then postulates the boundary, then goes to a vague idea of MAL/nature. It may not be formalized in this way, but I believe this is his intuitive process. So, I believe he hasn’t even stopped to consider the various options for MAL for the simple reason that he hasn’t really arrived there (yet) - to a serious consideration of MAL. That is the frontier.

In this sense, I am a bit less negative than you seem to be. Sure there's dualism, but I’m not sure that the phantom world is a third element, making things worse than what he previously theorized. It’s just a more explicit speculation on the nature of MAL as he had already imagined it. The phantom world is MAL itself.

In any case, I agree that in a way or another, in the background of all this, there is “the subconscious desire that the spiritual should not be concretely known during life and made more transparent within and through the physical.” The desire to cling to the infancy of humanity, in other words to stay some more in the protective womb of Nature. Curiously, I have a distinct such impression when I watch him talking and argumenting.

Imagine someone has overcome materialist axioms, realizes all must be experiential qualities and activity, but also feels inclined to the speculative dissociative boundary. They simply see no evidence that the higher layers of MAL are accessible to our consciousness during life (except maybe via mystical introspective reduction). But then they come across NDEs and this stirs some questions in them - clearly, people are having lucid experiences of some sort across the threshold. What is the significance of these NDE facts? What does it mean that a person can loosen from the physical body, have lucid experiences, and then return to the body and continue living as normal?

But now they come across BK's hypothesis and think, "ok so this all fits with instinctive MAL... these people haven't glimpsed some objective spiritual reality that we all experience after death, only constellations of memories from the dissociated state that have been associatively assembled by MAL". In other words, there is nothing to see here, no further insight into the nature of our reality to be gained by contemplating the NDE phenomenon further. This is what I mean when I say it is a regression. Of course, I am not suggesting the content of the NDE accounts themselves would give people proper orientation to spiritual existence, but simply the fact that it is a real phenomenon that is a mystery and needs to be investigated further in some way.

Sure, Ashvin, I get what you're saying, the conscious conclusion of this new BK speculation is "there is nothing to see here", right. But there was nothing to see in MAL before either, as per BK's model. The difference though, in this new speculative extension, is more interconnectedness between humans, across the simple boundary of the people present during the NDE, through the associatively assembled medium of blind MAL. It's a bit better than it used to be, as a feeling, at least, as unconscious orientation, or at least this is my speculation on the speculation. The fact that perceptions in a living human can leak through their boundary into the MAL context so as to be received by the NDE experiencer is new.

Notice that BK calls that temporary state of interconnectedness "death" for the experiencer of a NDE. On the one hand, this is convenient for him, for all the reasons you already mentioned, knowledge only comes after death, etc. But on the other hand (we will see if and how this develops further) it opens a whole new area of intuition for BK, in terms of connection with the dead. That's kind of new, and kind of mildly promising, don't you think?

The real dead, I mean, not the NDE experiencer.
Because, as per this extension, the experiences and feelings of the dead logically fall back into MAL. Also, a one-layer dissociative boundary now seems to be rather porous. So if he does A + B based on his own new speculations, one conclusion would be a possibility for living humans to commune with the dead.

[AshvinP]

Yes, he’s anthropomorphizing MAL, but this was already the case before, at least implicitly, which is why the dissociative boundary comes in handy in the model - to partition the flat sea of “mentation”. So I don’t think it’s a new way. It’s only a speculative extension of his old way, specifically to incorporate NDEs.




He hasn’t even stopped simply because the dissociative boundary is not the final add to a theory that starts from monistic idealism. I believe his reasoning process starts from human sensory experience, then postulates the boundary, then goes to a vague idea of MAL/nature. It may not be formalized in this way, but I believe this is his intuitive process. So, I believe he hasn’t even stopped to consider the various options for MAL for the simple reason that he hasn’t really arrived there (yet) - to a serious consideration of MAL. That is the frontier.

In this sense, I am a bit less negative than you seem to be. Sure there's dualism, but I’m not sure that the phantom world is a third element, making things worse than what he previously theorized. It’s just a more explicit speculation on the nature of MAL as he had already imagined it. The phantom world is MAL itself.

In any case, I agree that in a way or another, in the background of all this, there is “the subconscious desire that the spiritual should not be concretely known during life and made more transparent within and through the physical.” The desire to cling to the infancy of humanity, in other words to stay some more in the protective womb of Nature. Curiously, I have a distinct such impression when I watch him talking and argumenting.

Imagine someone has overcome materialist axioms, realizes all must be experiential qualities and activity, but also feels inclined to the speculative dissociative boundary. They simply see no evidence that the higher layers of MAL are accessible to our consciousness during life (except maybe via mystical introspective reduction). But then they come across NDEs and this stirs some questions in them - clearly, people are having lucid experiences of some sort across the threshold. What is the significance of these NDE facts? What does it mean that a person can loosen from the physical body, have lucid experiences, and then return to the body and continue living as normal?

But now they come across BK's hypothesis and think, "ok so this all fits with instinctive MAL... these people haven't glimpsed some objective spiritual reality that we all experience after death, only constellations of memories from the dissociated state that have been associatively assembled by MAL". In other words, there is nothing to see here, no further insight into the nature of our reality to be gained by contemplating the NDE phenomenon further. This is what I mean when I say it is a regression. Of course, I am not suggesting the content of the NDE accounts themselves would give people proper orientation to spiritual existence, but simply the fact that it is a real phenomenon that is a mystery and needs to be investigated further in some way.

Sure, Ashvin, I get what you're saying, the conscious conclusion of this new BK speculation is "there is nothing to see here", right. But there was nothing to see in MAL before either, as per BK's model. The difference though, in this new speculative extension, is more interconnectedness between humans, across the simple boundary of the people present during the NDE, through the associatively assembled medium of blind MAL. It's a bit better than it used to be, as a feeling, at least, as unconscious orientation, or at least this is my speculation on the speculation. The fact that perceptions in a living human can leak through their boundary into the MAL context so as to be received by the NDE experiencer is new.

Notice that BK calls that temporary state of interconnectedness "death" for the experiencer of a NDE. On the one hand, this is convenient for him, for all the reasons you already mentioned, knowledge only comes after death, etc. But on the other hand (we will see if and how this develops further) it opens a whole new area of intuition for BK, in terms of connection with the dead. That's kind of new, and kind of mildly promising, don't you think? The real dead, I mean, not the NDE experiencer.

Not at all promising, I think

What's promising is only when the intellectual constraints are loosened and allow facts of living experience to modify and enliven the conceptual framework rather than the other way around, i.e. when the facts are forced to fit into the calcified framework. Reality itself is constantly presenting opportunities for thinking to be enlivened and orient itself vertically. As human consciousness expands into the 'vacuum' left by the evolution of other beings who were creatively managing the intuitive curvatures along which it flows, new sorts of experiences and corresponding questions arise that can point toward the thinking process itself. As long as we explain away those experiences with our rigid frameworks, we are avoiding the opportunities and digging deeper into our horizontal trenches.

It doesn't really matter if he stumbles upon some concepts that reflect intuitive realities, such as the possibility of communicating with the dead (and therefore explaining away the phenomenon of mediums for ex.) - that stumbling is inevitable because all concepts precipitate from intuitive reality. It is all about how he is allowing the intuitive reality to entrain his thinking or, conversely, how he attempts to entrain the intuitive reality with his concepts. In the latter case, everything remains as floating abstract mental images without any connection to the living flow of experience that can inspire inner transformation. On the contrary, it demotivates such transformation because we feel the mysteries have been adequately encompassed by our intellectual mind container. The ego elevates its imagined throne further.

[Federica]

Imagine someone has overcome materialist axioms, realizes all must be experiential qualities and activity, but also feels inclined to the speculative dissociative boundary. They simply see no evidence that the higher layers of MAL are accessible to our consciousness during life (except maybe via mystical introspective reduction). But then they come across NDEs and this stirs some questions in them - clearly, people are having lucid experiences of some sort across the threshold. What is the significance of these NDE facts? What does it mean that a person can loosen from the physical body, have lucid experiences, and then return to the body and continue living as normal?

But now they come across BK's hypothesis and think, "ok so this all fits with instinctive MAL... these people haven't glimpsed some objective spiritual reality that we all experience after death, only constellations of memories from the dissociated state that have been associatively assembled by MAL". In other words, there is nothing to see here, no further insight into the nature of our reality to be gained by contemplating the NDE phenomenon further. This is what I mean when I say it is a regression. Of course, I am not suggesting the content of the NDE accounts themselves would give people proper orientation to spiritual existence, but simply the fact that it is a real phenomenon that is a mystery and needs to be investigated further in some way.

Sure, Ashvin, I get what you're saying, the conscious conclusion of this new BK speculation is "there is nothing to see here", right. But there was nothing to see in MAL before either, as per BK's model. The difference though, in this new speculative extension, is more interconnectedness between humans, across the simple boundary of the people present during the NDE, through the associatively assembled medium of blind MAL. It's a bit better than it used to be, as a feeling, at least, as unconscious orientation, or at least this is my speculation on the speculation. The fact that perceptions in a living human can leak through their boundary into the MAL context so as to be received by the NDE experiencer is new.

Notice that BK calls that temporary state of interconnectedness "death" for the experiencer of a NDE. On the one hand, this is convenient for him, for all the reasons you already mentioned, knowledge only comes after death, etc. But on the other hand (we will see if and how this develops further) it opens a whole new area of intuition for BK, in terms of connection with the dead. That's kind of new, and kind of mildly promising, don't you think? The real dead, I mean, not the NDE experiencer.

Not at all promising, I think

What's promising is only when the intellectual constraints are loosened and allow facts of living experience to modify and enliven the conceptual framework rather than the other way around, i.e. when the facts are forced to fit into the calcified framework. Reality itself is constantly presenting opportunities for thinking to be enlivened and orient itself vertically. As human consciousness expands into the 'vacuum' left by the evolution of other beings who were creatively managing the intuitive curvatures along which it flows, new sorts of experiences and corresponding questions arise that can point toward the thinking process itself. As long as we explain away those experiences with our rigid frameworks, we are avoiding the opportunities and digging deeper into our horizontal trenches.

It doesn't really matter if he stumbles upon some concepts that reflect intuitive realities, such as the possibility of communicating with the dead (and therefore explaining away the phenomenon of mediums for ex.) - that stumbling is inevitable because all concepts precipitate from intuitive reality. It is all about how he is allowing the intuitive reality to entrain his thinking or, conversely, how he attempts to entrain the intuitive reality with his concepts. In the latter case, everything remains as floating abstract mental images without any connection to the living flow of experience that can inspire inner transformation. On the contrary, it demotivates such transformation because we feel the mysteries have been adequately encompassed by our intellectual mind container. The ego elevates its imagined throne further.

Allright, flawless - I agree. But I was trying to probe a larger perspective. Consciously it's exactly as you say, but what about the unconscious perspective (and then I'll stop insisting with this )

I mean, it was definitely a floating abstract mental image that brought me to this forum. My doubts about BKs theory where no less abstract mental images than the critiqued aspects of the model. Nonetheless, one could say now in retrospective that they were 'promising' from a larger perspective, I guess? It was unconscious for me at that moment, but it was surely not random. One could even say that I should thank BK, because it's through his philosophy that I have discovered all that I have later discovered. So maybe - even if for now he is only elevating the ego's throne further up - unconsciously he could be on a way towards new realizations, through the opportunity offered by what he has stumbled upon and intellectually reasoned out. After all, you said you wanted to write a comment to his post? This could be an example of promising eventline, there are surely many more promising possible flows of becoming ahead for him. I was striving to take a larger perspective.

[AshvinP]

Sure, Ashvin, I get what you're saying, the conscious conclusion of this new BK speculation is "there is nothing to see here", right. But there was nothing to see in MAL before either, as per BK's model. The difference though, in this new speculative extension, is more interconnectedness between humans, across the simple boundary of the people present during the NDE, through the associatively assembled medium of blind MAL. It's a bit better than it used to be, as a feeling, at least, as unconscious orientation, or at least this is my speculation on the speculation. The fact that perceptions in a living human can leak through their boundary into the MAL context so as to be received by the NDE experiencer is new.

Notice that BK calls that temporary state of interconnectedness "death" for the experiencer of a NDE. On the one hand, this is convenient for him, for all the reasons you already mentioned, knowledge only comes after death, etc. But on the other hand (we will see if and how this develops further) it opens a whole new area of intuition for BK, in terms of connection with the dead. That's kind of new, and kind of mildly promising, don't you think? The real dead, I mean, not the NDE experiencer.

Not at all promising, I think

What's promising is only when the intellectual constraints are loosened and allow facts of living experience to modify and enliven the conceptual framework rather than the other way around, i.e. when the facts are forced to fit into the calcified framework. Reality itself is constantly presenting opportunities for thinking to be enlivened and orient itself vertically. As human consciousness expands into the 'vacuum' left by the evolution of other beings who were creatively managing the intuitive curvatures along which it flows, new sorts of experiences and corresponding questions arise that can point toward the thinking process itself. As long as we explain away those experiences with our rigid frameworks, we are avoiding the opportunities and digging deeper into our horizontal trenches.

It doesn't really matter if he stumbles upon some concepts that reflect intuitive realities, such as the possibility of communicating with the dead (and therefore explaining away the phenomenon of mediums for ex.) - that stumbling is inevitable because all concepts precipitate from intuitive reality. It is all about how he is allowing the intuitive reality to entrain his thinking or, conversely, how he attempts to entrain the intuitive reality with his concepts. In the latter case, everything remains as floating abstract mental images without any connection to the living flow of experience that can inspire inner transformation. On the contrary, it demotivates such transformation because we feel the mysteries have been adequately encompassed by our intellectual mind container. The ego elevates its imagined throne further.

Allright, flawless - I agree. But I was trying to probe a larger perspective. Consciously it's exactly as you say, but what about the unconscious perspective (and then I'll stop insisting with this )

I mean, it was definitely a floating abstract mental image that brought me to this forum. My doubts about BKs theory where no less abstract mental images than the critiqued aspects of the model. Nonetheless, one could say now in retrospective that they were 'promising' from a larger perspective, I guess? It was unconscious for me at that moment, but it was surely not random. One could even say that I should thank BK, because it's through his philosophy that I have discovered all that I have later discovered. So maybe - even if for now he is only elevating the ego's throne further up - unconsciously he could be on a way towards new realizations, through the opportunity offered by what he has stumbled upon and intellectually reasoned out. After all, you said you wanted to write a comment to his post? This could be an example of promising eventline, there are surely many more promising possible flows of becoming ahead for him. I was striving to take a larger perspective.

Yeah, from a higher vantage point, it could all work towards promising developments. There is no doubt that everything BK has ever thought through and written about could be redeemed in a flash if he awakened to the experience of his real-time thinking activity. The ideas would all become living testimonies to the 'shape' of his ever-unfolding intuitive envelope within the overarching context of human and Earthly destiny. And I am also immensely grateful for all the wisely guided eventlines that made it possible for me to be in this gradually awakening position today, such as encountering BK's philosophy and forum.

Practically speaking, though, what made the difference for you, me, and all others who step on the inner path was our initiative to sacrifice all that we thought we knew about the 'nature of reality' and move our thinking in entirely orthogonal directions to the familiar pathways. We had to consistently resist the alluring temptation to write off spiritual reality as fantastical nonsense or some other conventionally explainable phenomenon. We were fortunate that we hadn't spent many years and written many books investing ourselves into certain conceptual frameworks because that investment makes it that much more difficult to resist the ingrained channels of flow, the paths of least resistance for our thinking.

I simply don't see any indication BK is resisting the usual flow, taking the initiative to choose paths of greater resistance for his thinking. In a certain sense, the mere fact of writing a brief essay purporting to 'explain' the NDE phenomenon (even if only a tentative hypothesis) is quite unimaginable from the perspective of living thinking oriented to the intuitive depth context. It is something we would never think of doing because we know how little we know about those depths and how disorienting and misleading it can be for others to contemplate such spiritual experiences through such a rigid framework. I don't think the fact that he is expanding the tentacles of his analytic philosophy into these domains is promising. Although I mentioned writing a comment to his post, this discussion has helped me see there are much better ways to spend my time

But perhaps you may take a shot at it and share the results with us! Regardless of how BK responds (or, most likely, ignores), we can always find spiritual value in exploring these topics like we are doing now.

PS - do you know if your copy of What Barfield Thinks ever made it to his vicinity?

[Cleric K]

Yes. Don't you think that in this latest speculation BK goes somewhat in the direction of loosening the axiome of the boundary, although only with regard to sensory perceptions and feelings?

BK is generally open to speculations. He has always seen the dissociative boundary as 'porous'. In one of the last interviews he again mentioned that he's open to the possibility of hierarchical MAL but sees it as less likely (I think he used the parsimony argument). As you discuss with Ashvin, the main problem in all cases is that the intellectual ego is accepted as something that only exists on the surface of MAL so to speak (where surface in this case means the physical condition). One accepts that the intellectual self will dissolve at death, and then he'll see what happens. It is not understood that the higher self is also here. Not yet fully conscious of its higher nature but still instinctively using the intellectual self as a mask through which it expresses.

For what is worth, in his essay he at least has the intuition that the OBE states are not some magical eyeless perceptions of the physical world. This is correct logic - why would we need physical eyes if the exact same thing could be seen without them? Everything that looks like a sensory-like world in dreams, OBEs, NDEs, takes shape through the etheric body. It is all reverberations (they could be creatively molded) of the impressions within the etheric that have been imprinted through the physical organs.

In fact, what he calls Phantom World is really the etheric death-spectrum - the expanding etheric body that becomes embedded in the Cosmos. This expansion indeed makes it possible to experience something like remembrances that are inspired by the spiritual environment, yet the more the etheric body expands, the less it resembles the physical, and thus the perceptual experiences become less and less similar to Earthly seeing, hearing, etc.

[Federica]

Yeah, from a higher vantage point, it could all work towards promising developments. There is no doubt that everything BK has ever thought through and written about could be redeemed in a flash if he awakened to the experience of his real-time thinking activity. The ideas would all become living testimonies to the 'shape' of his ever-unfolding intuitive envelope within the overarching context of human and Earthly destiny. And I am also immensely grateful for all the wisely guided eventlines that made it possible for me to be in this gradually awakening position today, such as encountering BK's philosophy and forum.

Practically speaking, though, what made the difference for you, me, and all others who step on the inner path was our initiative to sacrifice all that we thought we knew about the 'nature of reality' and move our thinking in entirely orthogonal directions to the familiar pathways. We had to consistently resist the alluring temptation to write off spiritual reality as fantastical nonsense or some other conventionally explainable phenomenon. We were fortunate that we hadn't spent many years and written many books investing ourselves into certain conceptual frameworks because that investment makes it that much more difficult to resist the ingrained channels of flow, the paths of least resistance for our thinking.

Yes, and this makes me think about Cosmin Visan - I hope the investment into a conceptual framework is on this side of the inversion point for him!

I simply don't see any indication BK is resisting the usual flow, taking the initiative to choose paths of greater resistance for his thinking. In a certain sense, the mere fact of writing a brief essay purporting to 'explain' the NDE phenomenon (even if only a tentative hypothesis) is quite unimaginable from the perspective of living thinking oriented to the intuitive depth context. It is something we would never think of doing because we know how little we know about those depths and how disorienting and misleading it can be for others to contemplate such spiritual experiences through such a rigid framework. I don't think the fact that he is expanding the tentacles of his analytic philosophy into these domains is promising. Although I mentioned writing a comment to his post, this discussion has helped me see there are much better ways to spend my time

But perhaps you may take a shot at it and share the results with us! Regardless of how BK responds (or, most likely, ignores), we can always find spiritual value in exploring these topics like we are doing now.

OK I've done that. I'm not seeing it in the list yet. Maybe it's moderated first.

PS - do you know if your copy of What Barfield Thinks ever made it to his vicinity?

Is this a to OB or a genuine mistake?
The answer is I don't know. But I don't monitor his FB page, and I have noticed that's where he reports these kind of things - what he's reading, what he's doing etc.