BETWEEN Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of materialism.
From the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man
This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown—Chrestos [Christos, The Higher Self].
The closer the union, the more serene man’s destiny, and the less dangerous the external conditions. This belief is neither bigotry nor superstition, only an ever-present, instinctive feeling of the proximity of another spiritual and invisible world.
This world, though it be subjective to the senses of the outward man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego.
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The foregoing words were written in Isis Unveiled, (Ch. 12) by H. P. Blavatsky her first first major work on Theosophy—examining religion and science in the light of Western and Oriental ancient wisdom, and occult and spiritualistic phenomena.
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“There is a mysterious power in these doctrines of karma and reincarnation,” Theosophical Society co-founder W. Q. Judge wrote, “which at last forces them upon the belief of those who take them up for study.”
“Each person is the concentration and result of karma, and is compelled from within to believe.”
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Musings
Jodie Foster in the Movie "Contact"
This is, Judge reasoned, because “the soul is itself the experiencer of rebirth and karma, and has within a clear recollection of both—and rejoices, as it were, when it finds the lower mind taking them up for study.”
“Remember that life is the outcome of the Ever-Living. Live well your life. Seek to realize the meaning of every event.
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“Strive to find the Ever Living and wait for more light. The True Initiate does not fully realize what he is passing through, until his degree is received.”
“If you are striving for light and Initiation, remember this, that your cares will increase, your trials thicken, your family make new demands upon you. He who can understand and pass through these patiently, wisely, placidly—may hope.”
-W. Q. Judge (Musings on the True Theosophists Path)
Chuck Gumpert - "Leaving the World For Awhile"
Ricky Bradshaw experienced first hand his own personal spiritual entity. Ricky was clinically dead for over an hour before any pulse was registered and he went on to endure twenty-four surgeries in two years.
His survival is one of the most miraculous in all medical history and he was featured in the television series “That’s Incredible.”
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Ricky Bradshaw
While dead, Ricky had both an out-of-body experience and a near death scenario, which was long and complex. asked how anyone might gain Ricky’s degree of spiritual enlightenment without dying to do it. Ricky’s answer was honest and insightful:
“Having a near-death experience does not make you enlightened. It is an introduction, perhaps more a hindrance than a help!”
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Life Goes On
Cardiologist Pim van Lommel did a monumental study of near-death experiences—which raises fascinating questions about life after death, DNA, the collective unconscious, and everyone’s karma. [Ode Magazine, December, 2005, Vol. 3, Issue 10.]
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Dr. Pim van Lommel, is the author of Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience. Join Skeptiko host, Alex Tsakiris, for an interview with Dr. van Lommel at the link below:
Click to play (40 min.):
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Note to researchers: the most reliable source of information on NDEs to date is IANDS, the International Association for Near Death Studies.
A New Paradigm
Dr. Pim van Lommel, Cardiologist and NDE researcher, believes that the brain is a receiver of consciousness, not a producer. Mel Van Dusen interviews the renowned cardiologist about his research into the near-death experience and it’s implications for a radically new paradigm for living in the 21st century.
“When the The Lancet published his study of near-death experiences,” writes Tijn Touber of ODE Magazine,
“Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel couldn’t have known it would make him into one of the world’s most-talked-about scientists.”
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During the Skeptiko interview Dr. van Lommel explains how he began his research, and how what he learned from his patients led him to a personal transformation. [Listen HERE]
When We Die?
The question is as old as time, but two women think they may know the answer. Pam Wedding and Barbara Harris-Whitfield don’t know each other, but they share a unique bond,” writes Beth Galvn of MyFox, Atlanta.
“Both women have gone to the very edge of life and death, and come back to tell their stories. They both say they know what it’s like to die.”
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Phoenix Fire Mystery
At the age of twenty, Pvt. George Ritchie apparently died in an army hospital and was pronounced dead twice by the doctor on duty. Nine minutes later he returned to life.
George Ritchie’s story is fully detailed in the comprehensive reincarnation book “Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery–An East-West Dialogue on Death and Rebirth from the Worlds of Religion, Science, Psychology, Philosophy” originally researched and edited by New York City Theosophists, Joseph Head and Sylvia Cranston.
“This classic anthology offers ancient and modern perspectives on Job’s question: ‘If a man die, shall he live again?’ Spanning over 5,000 years of world thought,” the publisher writes, “the selections invite consideration of an idea that has found hospitality in the greatest minds of history.”
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Return from Tomorrow
Dr. Ritchie wrote of his near-death experience (NDE) in the widely popular “Return from Tomorrow,” co-written with Elizabeth Sherrill (1978), and has been translated into nine languages.
In Return from Tomorrow, Dr. Ritchie tells of his out-of-body experience, his meeting with Jesus Christ, and his travel with Christ through different dimensions of time and space.
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Ritchie’s story was the first contact Dr. Raymond Moody, PhD had with NDEs during his undergraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Virginia.
This is what led Moody to investigate over 150 cases of NDEs in his book Life After Life and two other books that followed.
Dr. George Ritchie died on Monday October 29, 2007 at his home in Irvington, Virginia, following a courageous battle with cancer.
“Death is nothing more than a doorway,” he said, “something you walk through.
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Raymond Moody
Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D., the acknowledged “Father” of Near Death Experiences, a psychiatrist, is author of the classic Life After Life which sold over ten million copies. Dr. Moody’s book inaugurated research in the field of near-death studies. A professor of psychology at Wes Georgia College, he is also author of Laugh After Laugh and The Light Beyond.
“We are ignorant of the beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.”
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There is a kind of ‘noetic knowing’ which accompanies all true NDEs and OBEs. The ultimate OBE is, of course, experienced as a state after-death of the physical body, and the subsequent reincarnation of the individual soul.
What is the Character and quality of the near-death experience? Do such experiences represent an authentic encounter with a world beyond, or are they an artifact of our brain’s activity?
The common qualities of the near-death experience include feelings of profound peace, out-of-body sensation, meeting with ‘beings of light’ and with one’s deceased relatives, reviewing one’s life and a reluctance to return.
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Dr. Moody explores the significance of these experiences for our understanding of the collective unconscious, emphasizing the value of wisdom and love as being primary in human life.
Sharing Eternity
Dr. Moody’s new book, Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a loved one’s passage from this life to the next, on Shared Death Experiences was recently published.
Written with Paul Perry, this book provides numerous examples of the shared death experience.
Persons present at the death of a loved one experience leaving their own body, viewing the life review of their loved one and traveling part-way toward the Light.
Moody describes seven key elements of the shared death experience which are very similar to those of the near-death experience. Watch Dr. Moody’s interview with Paul Perry below:
Pam Reynolds
Pam Reynolds Lowery from Atlanta, Georgia was an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, at the age of 35, she had a near-death experience (NDE) during a brain operation. Her NDE is one of the most notable and best documented in NDE research.
During the “standstill” operation, Pam was considered “clinically dead” by three tests – her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain.
Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the “deepest” NDE of all Atlanta Study participants. She made several observations about the procedure which later were confirmed by medical personnel as surprisingly accurate.
”The dying being finds himself on a plane wherein there is neither past nor future, but all is one present.”
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“For a few seconds at least,” Blavatsky explains, our two memories (or rather the two states, the highest and the lowest state, of consciousness) blend together, thus forming one.”
Surgical NDE
Life in Dying
“How account for those bright flashes of memory, or the prophetic insight that comes,” Blavatsky wrote in the article “Facts and Ideations“, “the nearer one approaches death … brighter becomes their long lost memory and the more correct the previsions.”
“The unfoldment of the inner faculties increases as life-blood becomes more stagnant.”
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Pam Reynold’s famous near-death experience is considered by many, because she was literally ‘brain dead,’ to be absolute proof of the reality of the survival of consciousness after death, and of a life after death.
Pam’s out-of-body recollection is “the single best instance we now have in the literature on near-death experiences to confound the skeptics,” according to Kenneth Ring, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut and a chronicler of these episodes.
These video excerpts are from the BBC documentary “The Day I Died.” Pamela Reynolds Lowery died of heart failure at the age of 53 (1956—May 22, 2010)
The Day I Died
Communion
“That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a drowning man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life – as the landscape is revealed to the traveler by intermittent flashes of lightning,” Mme. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled (1:179):
“…is simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted in imperishable colors.”
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In this last video, a woman tells the stories of her two near-death experiences. The first one occurred after she had a car accident.
She had an out of body experience, and from above watched the scene around her physical body. Then she had a life review and met deceased relatives.
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Dr. Pim van Lommel’s research on NDEs is talked about briefly.
“At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden,” Blavatsky says in The Key to Theosophy (162), “sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego.
I have no problem believing in life on the other side. One day I was called to go to the ICU at the hospital. The gal I went to see had been stabbed 30+ times and was not expected to live. I got to her room in time to see the heart monitor go straight. I knew her spirit had left the body. One quick check of her pulse, there was none. Then I departed. I left the room went down a path, met by an elderly looking man and he led me to a rock where the lady who had just departed sat. Only she didn’t have any swelling or horrible looking face from her stabbing. She was healed. I told her no matter what brought this situation on, of her being stabbed, she was forgiven and that her 3 children really needed their mommy. I reached out for her hand and asked her if she would go back with me…..this box isn’t big enough for the rest of the story!!! But how did I know I was going back?? I had not died……..