Eugene I wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:37 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 2:30 pm
As it keeps happening, I will keep pointing it out - red assertion is completely contradicted by blue one. And the "collective subconscious" cannot be equated with personal "projections".
Obviously, from the perspective of unreliable NDE-OBE accounts further complicated by the fact that they are using abstract culturally-conditioned 2-D concepts to describe their 3-D and 4-D experiences, it will inevitably be "inconsistent" and seem as "dream-like projections" (also there is no reason to assume our actual dreaming states do not lift us into higher realms). These are truly trivial observations being made. The fact that you are still assuming Cleric has not factored this repetitive "point" into his understanding still astounds and confounds me.
IMO Cleric's knowing-experiences are similar to Franklin Merrell-Wolff and Bob Monroe and many others' and are similarly individual and collective subconscious projections/manifestations culturally conditioned by his Christian beliefs (so, in his case, projections of collective Christian faith archetypes). There is an abundance of similar visionary experiences from Christian mystics and ordinary believers over the history, for example,
List of Marian apparitions. I'm not suggesting they are personal hallucinations, it is more likely that there are beyond-physical realm beings participating in the manifestations of these evens, but what those beings are projecting to us is a manifested reality based on their collective conscious and unconscious intentions and beliefs.
Many NDE experiencers described the beyond-physical realm as the community of conscious beings voluntarily grouped in a variety of "groups of interest", every group having their own perspectives, values, intentions etc. This physical reality is governed by rather structured rules possibly imposed by the Source, but in spite of the seeming rigid rules and structures there is a lot of flexibility in how the physical reality is manifested, and all groups of interest participate in its manifestation and the way it unfolds. Also, there groups have their residential" sub-realms in the beyond-physical realm (so Christian souls reside in a paradise-like realm with Christ as their "Sun Man" local group leader, Buddhists reside in Pure-Land realms led by the Buddhas, Anthroposophists reside in the realm described by Cleric and also connected to and governed by Christ, and so on). So if someone, based on their beliefs and dispositions, belong to one of the groups (say Christian, Anthroposophical, Buddhis etc) they will experience the beyond-physical reality according to their groups beliefs, values and intentions. What this means that the beyond-physical reality is multifold and multi-realm, and a lot of NDE experiences confirm that quite explicitly.
So where are we all as a community of incarnate and discarnate souls heading, what is the telos of all this reality? Is it the integration into the highest Self of the Sun Man, of Buddhist nirvana, or Advaitic dissolution into the Cosmic Consciousness? Is there a common universal goal/destination where all creation is heading? I like the way Steve Petermann phraised it in one of his essays: "God chose to experience life in
all its forms". This is the telos of God's/MAL creation and life.
The point is, we can choose to ignore the NDE, OBE and clairvoyance evidences as unreliable, and that's fine, but in this case I don't see why we would be cherry-picking and rejecting the evidences of a huge number of these experiences while still holding the similar Cleric's experiences as true. But we can also choose to be open to these evidences, but in this case again why would we give more credibility to Cleric's experiences and discard the rest of the evidences?
I've addressed this several times already. In Spiritual training we quickly learn that to see into the invisible is not at all about gaining access to some complete and fully explained image. Think about what it would be for a man born blind who has an operation that restores his sight. Naively we may think that he'll immediately see like everyone else but this is not what happens. He would be confronted with a undifferentiated colorful amalgamation and would have to slowly and gradually learn to associate concepts with various color patterns. He may already have concepts like 'table' and 'chair' thanks to his other senses but he'll have to learn to connect these concepts with completely new color experiences.
We're in much the same situation when we begin spiritual training. The higher experiences can only slowly and gradually be connected with concepts. The more we do that, the more clearly we perceive.
NDEs, psychedelic experiences, etc. don't give us directly the proper concepts. We can only translate into understanding that which succeeds to connect with concepts that we already possess from our ordinary life. Nanci for example had read quite some New Age books, so she already had a rich conceptual palette when her NDE occured. So this is the first thing - every person can extract from NDEs and other such states, only as much as can be translated into their conceptual palette. (Even Terence McKenna said "Psychedelics Don't Work On Stupid People"
)
Another thing is that the astral world is not some place of pure truth. Everything there is living, made of living conscious beings but these beings are of the most varied kinds and have different goals of their own. Ironically, the beings that are the first to reflect their nature in Imaginations, to the person having the accidental glimpse, are those beings whose nature inspire in humans exactly these traits that we call lies and deception. They are the first to approach us, simply because our whole Earthly realm is tightly knitted with these beings. Everyone today realizes how much lies and deception reign everywhere in human life - starting with the relations with those closest to us, passing through immoral business practices, theft, fraud, going through politics ... We've enveloped ourselves in a thick aura of lies and deception that hovers like thick astral smog within the souls of humans. Without high ideal, without ever pondering the questions of good and evil, accidental visitors in the higher realms simply don't have criteria to distinguish true from false. If they are presented two Imaginations one representing a truthful fact about the higher realms, the other being just a fantastic picture, to which one would the human be drawn? Well, to the one that seems more sympathetic, that is more desirable. And this is rarely the truthful one. We don't even need esoteric science here. We can see these human qualities directly within the Earthly life. If people on Earth see clearly the truth and the lie, and still choose the lie because it will helps them, for example, to rise the corporate ladder, to get the woman they want, to put down their rival, and so on, how much more that same humans would choose the object of their desire in the invisible world, where they don't even readily see the difference between true and false?
That's why no attempts should be made for penetrating the higher worlds without strong moral feeling and healthy sense of truth. These qualities are developed in the sensory world first. If we can't think correctly, we don't stand a chance to recognize true from false in the higher worlds. We need to develop our thinking to such an extent that an incorrect thought should cause us actual pain. And on the contrary, truthful thought should be experienced as gladdening, giving us warm feeling. If in our ordinary life we place our sympathies first, if we simply follow our desires, true and false will be completely indistinguishable for us. We can only orient ourselves there if we have high ideal and we always place what is true, noble, beneficial for the whole, above our personal inclinations.
So it's not a surprise that NDE reports are very different and often conflicting. There are other factors too, but even the two above already give us quite a good idea why such reports should always be considered with the utmost caution.
Otherwise, the 'interest groups' and the 'flexibility' don't at all contradict what Spiritual investigation reveals. There really is differentiation of souls, even though they gradually perfect all their aspects. And about the flexibility - well, in reality there's no more restricted state that the one we experience in the moment. People think they are unrestricted just because they see around them 3D space that they feel can freely explore in all directions. But in reality, if we could draw a trace map of the points in space that we visit, we'll realize that we're actually much more puppets on strings than we have imagined. If we include also a psychic map we would find in horror that most of our daily states are actually quite determined much like oscillating as
Lissajous figures. We're treading the same old thoughts and feelings, repeating the same habitual movements. It's only because we don't perceive the looped forms we continuously experience, that we don't realize how restricted and channeled our lives really are. Even the lowest servant of the Kingdom experiences infinitely more freedom than this. As the wise Masters say "you haven't even begun to Live yet". And that's true, what we have here is only a preparation for the creative life of the Spirit. But we shouldn't forget that it is up to us to undertake the work that will lead us to that Life. We might as well succumb even deeper into mechanization and truly pre-programmed flow of states of being.
