Its not so much whether you believe in the paranormal, past lives, near death experiences, etc., but whether you can entertain them as a possibility. And by that I don’t mean just acknowledge such things in a broadminded sort of way – I mean entertain them with the full force of experience in the Theatre of The Imagination. This requires one, not to believe in a naive sort of way, but to entirely suspend disbelief, to throw yourself into what it would be like to wake up in the middle of an operation, exteriorized, watching the doctors and nurses working on your body; or to be a young child remembering how it was in a previous life and, for the child, like it was quite ordinary.
Nothing convinces like an actual experience; the next best thing
is to throw yourself into the hundreds of personal testimonies of those who
know a paranormal experience first hand. And they know, not from just some
theory – indeed, their experience often flies in the face of their established
beliefs – but because they cannot deny what actually happened to them.
I am not given to paranormal experiences – my ‘natural mind’ is
too well educated – but I am blessed with a powerful Theatre of The Imagination where I can virtually enter into the
experience of others – (which I suppose is a bit paranormal in itself!). This
is what I have been doing this last year or so in my researches into the
paranormal. Take for example the whole fascinating field of near death experience. A near death experience (NDE) can occur during an operation or accident or
illness. In a cardiac arrest the heart can stop beating for a few seconds or an
hour, during which time the person may find themselves looking down on their
body and the medical people working on it.
Then, typically, a NDE moves the person through a dark tunnel
heading towards a light that grows brighter as they move towards it. When they
reach the light it is common to experience being enveloped by warmth and love.
Very often during this process their whole life flashes before them at
tremendous speed; but their consciousness is so heightened that they are aware
of every detail in just a few seconds. Very often they don’t want to come back.
Sometimes the thought of their children and family turns them back, or they are
told by a figure that it is not their time yet.
It is remarkable that, in most of the thousands of recorded
accounts, the NDE experiences are similar. The above is the typical, but there
are interesting variations; and a very few NDEs are negative, carrying feelings
of despair and isolation. According to US, German, Dutch studies it seems that
around 4% of their populations have experienced a NDE or OBE (out of the body
experience)* With New Zealand’s
population at four and a half million this would mean that 180,000 (that’s 1 in
every 25 persons) would already know what I am talking about.
People are loathed to discuss this stuff for fear of being
thought crazy; and often the experience is so deeply soulful that it is too
precious to risk it. The result is that there is a general ignorance of how
normal the paranormal is.
Perhaps the most important aspects of a NDE is the effect it has
on the personality. There is a change in quality of life values. They now find
that they have more love and affinity for others, less interest in material
possessions, the quality of everyday life is enriched and they have little fear
of death.
Most of the theories about the paranormal leave me cold. What
does fascinate me are the people themselves, how totally surprised they are to
find themselves ‘outside the box’ with no explanation for it at all. I found my
attitude here confirmed by many researchers in the field. Prof. Neal Gossman
wrote: “Listening to an NDEr narrate a deep experience, especially in a one-one
setting, constitutes a profound experience for the listener and is more
psychologically convincing than just reading a whole bunch of studies”. 1
Professor Kenneth Ring found that there was ‘a powerful positive
effect’ that his course had on students who themselves had never had a NDE.
This is what I meant about the Theatre of
The Imagination and the suspension of disbelief.
It allows us to have a virtual NDE giving us at least some of the changes in
lifestyle that the real experience entails.
It seems to make no difference whether a person was religious or
atheist, good or bad, the experience and the effects are substantially the similar.
These changes are not brought about through faith, but from their experience.
1 Gossman, n. Journal of Near Death Studies. Vol 28, No.4
contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz
(03) 981 2264
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