Lord it up with death; because death is no longer a nightmare! By Halifax Student (UK) Sceptics will find this book tiresomely new-age quackery like all the other bloated` I don’t wanna die’ pseudo `proofs’ for survival after death. Thus they will only take a glance and not bother studying what is inside. But this is only because there is New Age pollution everywhere, and thus books like this will inevitably get painted with the same Oprah brush. I too was once sceptical. I used to think that the notion of consciousness without a brain is as nonsensical as the notion of digestion without a stomach. Some clever dick in uni once tried to give me a good argument that when I die, a something passes on, because it is inconceivable that I just fall out of existence. But I argued, how can my spirit see without eyes or hear without a brain? This is what Dr Lommel is claiming, that your soul, hovering over your body, can detect sound waves without the machinery of the brain, or it can see without eye balls; I mean, we need eye balls to detect the necessary light waves, as this is how we see. So when I’m hovered over my dead body, I’m looking and I can detect sounds without my physical ears and see without my eyeballs. This book tackled these questions and answers these epistemological problems with logical rigour. So now I know how my spirit will be able to interact with light waves and atoms. Maybe this, and not Simon Cowell, is the big antidote for our spiritually broken lives. This new science of existence is an easy morsel to digest. In this version of what happens, the dead girl’s individuality (soul) rises up from her cadaver, floats away from her body and flies to heaven; with Mozart strings playing in the background. The fresh soul will leave the body to holiday in an egalitarian universe; one in which all humans transcend. This is the happy ending in which you, I and the guy sweeping the streets all go to a personal afterlife. It is all in here. But the sceptics will say that these are just New Age elements and these elements are forever popping up in books claiming to have discovered something outside of scientific materialism. It fills the metaphysical need in all of us. This applies whether the discussion is about NDE’s, UFO’s, Big Foot, the paranormal, quantum gods, quantum cancer cures and my favourite, channelling a long dead politician from Atlantis! People just buy this stuff up and hungrily too, like starving ghosts, hungry for an escape from mundane reality. As to why they need to escape? Well maybe all scientific materialism reveals really is a vacuous void, and the idea of labouring away till death was not such a good idea after all; and, understandably, realising this can sometimes can be a bit harsh. But this is only with New Age rubbish. This book is not like that! Well I found a way out of my dread and I have certainly been persuaded of the validity of consciousness surviving my brain. However, sceptics also note that classic out of body experiences are so grounded in the everyday ego that they cannot have any true resonance to the real after death state. From the thousands of near death experiences we read, we get the picture of experiences so mundane compared to the shock of say, a DMT flash, that one is staggered by how boring the other place can be. All Mozart strings and pigeons flying already roasted until we all die again, of boredom. Thus it is very likely that during these, be it fascinating, near death experiences, the brain is still in control; it may be dreaming a troubled or glorious dream, but it is still a dream, bounded in cultural conditioning. This is why Christians see Jesus, why atheists see loved ones and why Hindus feel the breath of Brahman. This is the sign of a dreaming brain, trying to hold onto life whilst dreaming the dying process, rather than true dying. Notice that they always come back, obviously! So a near death experience on the hospital trolley is just the brain throwing out gestalts of meaning via a dream sequence. It’s amazing that sceptics will dismiss these experiences with the sloppy ‘its are mere hallucination’ fop doodle. What are hallucinations anyway? Is it the drug? How can a drug contain a Mozart symphony? The mind rests on chemicals, so is the world a hallucination too? Van Lommel’s subjects report images and sounds that are more real than this waking reality. They always report better than reality scenarios. Near death’ers report the most beautiful music and colours. They claim to hear intense heavenly music (the force of these symphonies brings tears to their eyes apparently), and the scientist says that it is the brain which is producing this music. But if we think about it, the person who had the NDEr is not a Mozart or a Beethoven, but he is hearing something amazing! So the obvious question is; where is the music coming from? Or, who or what is making the music in the dead woman’s head? Is the sound a mere hallucination? They ask, ‘how can my brain generate this’? This is the question. The visions near-death’ers experience are more than feelings of bliss; they are full throttle cascades of shape shifting Dali dream-scapes. Visions with more beauty than any artist can create. So what is generating all this beauty and artwork in the head? Many people brought back were not artistic types, so why would his or her brain generate a Divinity? Lommel says that this is similar to the old ontological argument in philosophy, which asks ‘how can little me experience such grand things’? The science in here is outstanding and answered these nagging question easily. The sceptics will struggle to criticise this unique book!
