picklepuss

Hi eh;

In terms of physics, I don't know. You'll have to ask a physicist about massless particles.

But as for definitions of energy, they've been around for a long time, dating back way beyond 'the ability to do work; i.e., move a certain mass a certain distance'. Nowadays 'mass' isn't always applicable (eg., photons, etc.), so the word 'body' or 'entity' or some such is substituted.

In any case, energy can mean the power,potency, vitality, vigor, force, intensity, capacity or ability to do, to act, to form, to formulate, to make, to maintain, to destroy, or to create anything. Including ideas, and other non-material entities. It's not just a 'new age' thing.

And there is no requirement to use the physics definition of energy when not discussing physics. I don't think NDE's are properly the concern of physics, but rather psychology. But that's just me.

Seraphim

By Psycho Economist :

"The brain is not a monolithic organ. "It" doesn't "know" it's dying. The brain cells that aren't in their death throes keep doing their jobs, and that means interpreting sensory information, including garbage signals spat out by dying brain cells. Any particular brain cell doesn't know anything's wrong until it starts getting glutimate signals from its neighbors, but junk messages can get sent along active pathways the same as real data from the outside. "

My reply : This theory/medical explaination can be proven in a lab. You say that NDE occurs because of glutimate (produce by dying cells) get carried along with normal signals from other cells and get interpreted, right?

Drugs such as Ketamine induce NDE-like state, so all the scientists have to do is make a patient/a test subject go into NDE to a certain periods to a point that the brain has either enough Glutimate to be detected OR that the brain itself has varies dead cells. IF both (or at least one) of this condition is met, then it is proven that glutimate is cause of NDE.

This is my suggestion. If someone already done so, then please provide me with a link to his/her discover. Thank you.

By Heathen Dawn :

"How does the soul interact with the material body? How is it that drinking too much wine changes personality? How do you explain the classic case of Phineas Gage, whose personality changed because of an accident?"

My reply : That's simple. How do you have your personality? Were you born with it? No, you are what you made yourself to be. If your personality is a grumpy, old man who intolerant to other people, That what you made yourself to be.

In layman's term, we built our personality from scratch since we are babies (except some individuals carry some of their personalities in form of talents etc from the pervious life, but this is a rare things). In Gage's cases, his personality changed when part of the brain where this personality data kept was damaged, thus he lost some of his personality.

Proper analog for this could be a hard disk with bad sector. Even so most of the information stored in a hard disk is unaffected, but because of a certain bad sector, the whole hard disk is affected.

"Also, when a new baby is born, is he not a new personality? When the human population grows from a million personalities to a thousand million personalities, where do all these personalities=souls come from?"

My reply : No, the new baby is NOT a new personality. Personality is not something you are born with, it is something you made yourself. You were Heathern Dawn since the day you are born, you choose the name (or that particular personality) because of a certain factors (which you should know better than anyone else).

"And again, do other animals have souls? Did our souls evolve from ape-like souls just as our bodies factually evolved from ape-like bodies?"

My reply : Here, you are again mistakening physical appearance (via evolution) with the soul. Then again, I should come out with a proper explaination.

Imagine a graph with a vertical and horizontal line, the point where these line meet is 0. Let's assume a Soul when born is 0 (without any experience etc), when we do good, learn things etc, the Soul gains value - thus increasing from 0 upward to 1, 2, 3 etc.

When we do not gain any new experience, do bad things, be ignorant etc, we devalue ourself - thus loosing the value - decreasing from 0 to -1, -2, -3 etc.

Assume a person dies when his Soul reach value 3, it enters a new body with the same value BUT the Brain does not access this value TILL it encounters some sort of activity which the Soul familiar with in his/her pervious life, thus increasing again the value from 3 and going up (or down depending his personality which he acquired during his present life).

"People talk about the sovereignty of God over the fates of every creature, but where I look, I see only unsystematic fate and blind pitiless indifference. "

My reply : People talk such because they wish to understand what they couldn't grasp. If God created the Universe and we (as humans) live in a small, piece debris call Earth in one corner of the Universe with this small, full of emotional brain of ours, do you think we could able to understand it all?

"But I did that without looking at the calendar. I'd devised a method of calculation without having been trained in mathematics first!"

My reply : Maybe you were a mathametician in your pervious life ...

"I assume inborn talent. It happens that most humans are exceptionally good in one area or another without receiving training."

My reply : "IN" BORN? Which part of the developing brain of a child responsible for that?

"Consequently, the only way you can attribute an eternal soul to mankind is by attributing an eternal soul to all living beings. You then have to carry the soul scheme over to the general framework of evolution, and show how souls evolve together with bodies, and how they interact with the bodies. Is there any workable theory for the interaction of the "ghost" with the "machine"? "

My reply : Yes, logical to assume that IF humans have souls, then other creatures do have them as well - including micro-organisms.

Only workable theory I could think of is those of Mandala.

<a href="http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/online/mandala/" target="_blank">http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/online/mandala/</a>

Tibetan Monks debated about scheme of things thus created Mandala to explain how everything fits into a scheme. If you want modern theory, then I suggest Gaia Theory.

Seraphim

By ps418:

"What is your description of the soul based upon? Your imagination, your reading of new age books, or what? How do you know that souls were created by the same force which created the Universe? "

My reply : My description is based on reading OLD books, discussing with varies people from varies backgrounds and my own experience with NDEs.
As for where is souls created from part, that comes from Buddhism.

"The very idea of "nonphysical energy"
is incoherent. All forms of energy (kinetic, electromagnetic, etc.) are thoroughly physical, unless you've discovered a new variety. Ever heard of e=mc^2? What is your evidence for the existence of nonphysical energy?"

My reply : May I see a physical appearance of an energy please? Can you show me an example or a link that demonstrates that all energy (kinetic, electromagnetic etc) HAS physical appearances.

"So, soul-energy is nonphysical, yet it obeys conservation laws? And non-physical soul-energy
can somehow be changed to, say, thermal or electromagnetic energy, which is thoroughly physical?"

My reply : Wrong. When I said change, it means increasing or decreasing its energy level, NOT from one form of energy to another.
A Buddhist monk for example do all kind of things such as meditations etc to perserve and enhance his own energy (soul) so it will be in its optimun level when he embrace death. This is same as in Quantum Physics where an atom get enough charged ions to become excited enough to "jump" into the next stage of it's existence.

By beausoleil
"The evolution fallacy: every observed property of a species reflects some survival trait. Lots of things in the natural world are absolutely nothing to do with survival. Mind you, I don't find this any less convincing than some accounts given by evolutionary psychologists. "

My reply : Mind showing me some example of non-survival traits in the wild? The example must not be of a Human and must not be for sake of survival, food, shelter or sex.

By Oxymoron :
"You don't need a 'why'. Example 1: Televisions used to leave a white dot in the middle of the screen after you turned them off. Was this a design feature? I don't think so."


My reply : Good examples, but BAD interpretation in your part.

The TV screen reacts to charged particles been fired from within the tube which form the image by reacting with Phosphurus on the screen. When the power is cut off, the white dots form simply because the charge phosphorus discharge the last of it charged energy before it goes back to being uncharged. It is either defect in the screen nor unexplained phenomena, nor something simply happened.

As for software analog, I've created numerous application programming and I have YET to be surprised by any sudden outcome which I didn't expect. Most of the outcome is in form of syntax error for not doing something properly, other than that, nothing surprised me so far.
In your case however, if you're surprised with something you didn't understand in your program, it shows you didn't know what you were doing in the first place.

crocodile deathroll

One way around this problem is that we all emerged from a collective proto-consciousness because all our neurons in an embryonic phase share the same genetic information processes. The neurons on all of us when we were all little neural tubes are genetically preprogrammed to migrate to their respective positions in the brain. Then as we process more information we all fragment into trillions upon trillions of possible personalities.

We also do our thinking with the same chemicals and share that same physical material in our metabolism as the matter in our brains is turned over all the time and replaced with other matter that is very similar as our DNA is repaired and proteins are replaced with other proteins. So all the living matter is in our bodies are in a state of flux. This would be considered a kind of heresy about 10 years ago but Steven Rose through studying the nature of the brain through radioactive tracers have proven beyond doubt that this is the case. The physical material that you had in your brain about two years ago has been almost completely turned over.

eh

Doh. I recalled that photons are massless after posting. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there is still a big difference between the new age (and other ancient ideas) concept of 'pure energy' and the scientific definition. Perhaps we should ask for a more precise definition?

Seraphim

By eh :
"No, this one is clearly wrong. Tell me, how can there be a center of an infinite space?"

My reply : Because the Big Bang originated from ONE focus point. Assuming that it spread in ALL direction at the same time, the galaxies could be spread like jam on a butter.

Assuming of course that Earth and its solar system where form much later than other galaxies, we could be much closer to the centre than those galaxies which were born earlier than us. Big Bang is said to be occurred about 4.5 Billion years ago, but our Earth is only 1.3 Billions years old (I got the figure somewhere ... TV I guess, please correct it if it is a mistake), thus through this, I conclude that we are at the base where the explosion occured than galaxies which was created before.

All this is based on logical deduction and basic maths (and knowledge picked up from watching Discovery and National Geography), so don't ask for a link.

"Or better yet, try an experiment. Take a sheet of paper, and draw some galaxies on it. Then roll the paper into a cylinder. Which galaxy is at the center? "

My reply : Assuming of course that the Universe is shaped as sphere.

By crocodile deathroll :

"One way around this problem is that we all emerged from a collective proto-consciousness because all our neurons in an embryonic phase share the same genetic information processes. The neurons on all of us when we were all little neural tubes are genetically preprogrammed to migrate to their respective positions in the brain. Then as we process more information we all fragment into trillions upon trillions of possible personalities."

My reply : So personality is like circuit board which was made in embryonic stage and as more and more information gathers, it becomes more and more complete thus emerging as a individual personality. Make sense, but something missing here which I can't put my finger yet.

"We also do our thinking with the same chemicals and share that same physical material in our metabolism as the matter in our brains is turned over all the time and replaced with other matter that is very similar as our DNA is repaired and proteins are replaced with other proteins. So all the living matter is in our bodies are in a state of flux. This would be considered a kind of heresy about 10 years ago but Steven Rose through studying the nature of the brain through radioactive tracers have proven beyond doubt that this is the case. The physical material that you had in your brain about two years ago has been almost completely turned over. "

My reply : If my physical material (assuming cells which response to the memory) had been turned over (like erased?), then WHY do I still have memory of my childhood in me after 25 years? I still remember CLEARLY my old house even so I didn't see it for 15 years, still remember places I played CLEARLY, names of people and what we did (faces are fuzzy) and all those things. Where does this memory stored and why that took didn't get turned over?

Ms. Siv

So are you saying that if we dont know 100% about it, we should not know anything at all about it ? Why not ? Based on what evidence we do have re: NDEs, we can very well form and validate theories.

Grrrr. NDEs were not intended for anything. Period. They just happen. Its like the hard disk crashing. Some data gets lost, some gets corrupted, some remains intact. The computer probably experiences something like an NDE when it happens

Where is the objective evidence of people without brain disorders, stress and drugs experiencing NDE. The last I checked, there was none.

- S.

Seraphim

By Sivakami

"So are you saying that if we dont know 100% about it, we should not know anything at all about it ? Why not ? Based on what evidence we do have re: NDEs, we can very well form and validate theories."

My reply : Well form and validated theory?
Keyword - THEORY. Nothing more.

"Grrrr. NDEs were not intended for anything. Period. They just happen. Its like the hard disk crashing. Some data gets lost, some gets corrupted, some remains intact. The computer probably experiences something like an NDE when it happens "

My reply : So that's where it all pointed to ... it just happen. OK, I think this discussion can stop here since it makes perfect sense (Sarcasm in full blast ).

"Where is the objective evidence of people without brain disorders, stress and drugs experiencing NDE. The last I checked, there was none. "

My reply : Try <a href="http://www.mysteries-megasite.com/main/bigsearch/neardeath.html" target="_blank">http://www.mysteries-megasite.com/main/bigsearch/neardeath.html</a>

crocodile deathroll

No problem, a standard CD ROM may degrade after about 100 years but if you were to save the information on a new one every 50 years then the information will continue indefintely. So your brain can also store important information like the memories of you when you were 15 on healthy proteins as the old ones keep turning over to newer ones.

Ms. Siv

Sure ... gravitation and electromagnetism and the earth going around the sun etc ... all of them are just "theories". They still work ... all the time. If they didn't ... the theory wouldn't be valid anymore

To each their own ... if you respond to the truth with sarcasm ... thats totally upto you

I said "objective" evidence ... not anecdotal evidence.

- S.