Well it certainly appears that the afterlife is BYOB or bring your own Bardo. From someone who comes from my Buddhist tradition that would not be too surprising. Distilled down to its most essential that conventional world we experience is permeated with illusions, or perhaps more clearly stated and incomplete view of reality. Traditionally it's held that there are two realities conventional reality and ultimate reality. Conventional reality is shaped by epistemological factors we see the world through our senses tied to our cognition. Another kind of animal in this world say a cat or a mantis shrimp receives the world differently because of its unique combinations of senses. Cats can't see several colors we can but it can see ultraviolet ligh andt smell scents that are not possible for us smell. Mantis shrimp is a whole different universe of sght. On top of that our cognitive processes utilize language which both limits and expands our view of objects. Years ago when I was studying with a Tibetan teacher I had a vivid dream of a Buddha realm in which all the trees were like jewels vibrating a mantra like quality all the beings were luminous and they were both genderless in actuality what could be either gender potentially in another realm. Of course near-death experiences are not death experiences they are the memories of people who have been in a state of clinical death according to our current understanding. I'm going to be old-fashioned and say that you're not really dead until you can't come back in this body and talk about it. Now if you're still attached to your body enough to return to your body even if year even if you were clinically dead then you would be attached to the memories within that body, during that time not to mention whatever chemicals were flowing through your body. As for evidence from psychics that too his modified by the medium (in more ways than one). Just the psychic medium as a worldview from which any impressions they receive are going to be filtered through. Therefore the most important information is that which can be verified but not always the way the medium conscrues it through their own worldview of the afterlife. In the late Dr. Ian Stephenson's work and his successor Dr. Tucker on reincarnation those subjects that they have found potential evidence of their claims of reincarnation being true, if they have any memories of the in between state vary greatly. In some cases the child will talk about choosing his parents and coming back down, some will talk about God others will not it shows as much variety as do the visions of the afterlife world

You ask me why I stay on the Blue Mountain I smile but I do not answer OH my Mind is at Ease Peach blossoms and streams pass without Trace How different from the mundane World LI PO In the point in the Dream where the dreamer is gone herself,where only the dream is there,without reference to language and word,objective and subjective. A tree is a Tree a brook a brook not outside or inside,not deep or far,not different, not same,there you will find the meaning.

The most concise lucid description of the dynamics of the internet "angry poster pathology" nice job Michal

The noble Abe Lincoln is a primal American myth that has little to do with how he was.A power politician,a white supremacist(like most in his era) A close look at Lincoln character does not reveal Saint Abe, more like LBJ on steroids. lIncoln was a great President in the same way Otto Von Bismarck was,her did not let ethics or the rules of war interfere with plans.

I have seen similar states from meditators on occasion, after long sesshins(Zen intensive one week meditation )

to the state the obvious I agree on almost all of his points.(which is why I wrote the forward to it)I hope it reach's a wide audience it is an excellent book

Sent you a family picture of Jack Pierce, just a heads up. Well we get more than a few bipolar types who fit that description in Zen. I had one guy who tried to a take off from Lindbergh field in San Diego without the benefit of a plane, he was running on the Tarmac with his arms extended.

It's definitely the term minions carries with it the kind of inherent contempt for the vulgar populace that is so common in Oxbridgians. I believe Chris Carter's work is medicinal in that it presents intelligently a position that is opposite of mainstream philosophical thinking. I have been around for quite some time now almost 70 years and have looked at death in the face, on more than one occasion. On any of those occasions my philosophical conclusions concerning the further existence of my consciousness were rendered irrelevant by the power of the moment. As a Zen teacher or Zen master if you will, I find intellectual endeavors worth while for the sharpening of the mind and for examination of our belief systems. However, that being said Zen eschews a highly intellectual approach to spirituality, or more often feeds our ego and are intellect than it does bringing us closer to the truth. A great Zen worthy once said if you wish to know the truth then cease to cherish your opinions, the same worthy said don't slander the sky by looking through a pipe. Academic philosophers are by nature intellectually combative and excessively opinionated. To put it bluntly they make lousy Zen students. For one thing they talk too much about Zen – we say in our tradition that such a person begins to stink of Zen. A long time ago Lao Tzu said those who know do not speak,but Chuang Tzu said why then old man Lao did you write 10,000 words?(the TAO DE CHING". In reading Prof.Suddoths blog I found a number of curious statements concerning what Nirvana is, put forward as if the author understood the concept completely and that there was only one interpretation of it. Certainly it is true that in Sanskrit and Pali it means to blowout such as the flame of a candle. However exactly who or what exists or does not exist is interpreted very differently by different schools of Buddhism, for instance.the Hwa Yen school or the Yogacara school of the Mahayana traditions. or what you might find in the earlier Theravadin traditions and the Abhidarma. I am sure that the good Professor would not claim he spoke for all of the analytic philosophy or theist theology and philosophy he would clearly state that his ideas are his position based on his studies. All that I wish all these people whether they be Susan Blackwell the paranormal debunker and quasi-Zen student, or Stephen Batchelor the expert in atheists Zen and countless others who speak for Zen without the requisite credentials., None of them have received sanction as a Roshi nor seen transmission from one tradition much less three as I have. Even then I speak for my understanding based on 50 years of practice and decades of Sutra scholarship wearing out my Monier williams Sanskrit dictionary. So I am not inclined to argue with the professor about Kants Critique of Pure Reason, or Adolf Harnack's History of the Dogma, however when he gets into the subject of Zen Buddhism it's another matter. Since the good Prof. seems to like Zen poetry here is one for him If there is no self then where is its boundary? If there is no boundary where is time? If there is no time where is eternity? Is it the cat chasing the tail? Or the tail attacking the cat? Yours in the Bowels of Minionhood Shogaku Zenshin Roshi

"lean" toward reincarnation but not in the Hindu,Buddhist or new age sense." Though popular Buddhism may sound like Hindu Reincarnation it is not. There is no moral agency to judge, Karma is merely "intent" separation of self from others I a primary delusion, so how can there be individual karma when there is no one to do it. That is an oversimplification but you get the picture

The Facebook option is I think the best. There is no point arguing with Scientism's true believer. It is like drinking moonshine gets you high for a minute then comes the hangover. Whatever you decide I will be reading

I have been doing extensive reading and research into the continuation of consciousness, survival, and afterlife whatever you want to call it. Not from the point of view of whether it exists, because that I am convinced of, given an examination of the evidence. I no longer even want to argue with people that have a worldview that precludes it. Scientific materialists or ontological reductionists are simply not open to the idea, for psychological reasons as well as philosophical ones. Well here is my "conguesture" as I like to call it. It comes about as a combination of what I think is the most solid evidence or survival, combined with a metaphysical/cosmological structure that would allow it and is not out of line with our deepest understanding of the physical world that is also our most successful scientific paradigm in human history quantum mechanics. When you look at the evidence you immediately notice that in the near-death experiences there is a culturally familiar context to the experience. People who are from the Western European tradition experience some things differently than those from India and the Far East. All this has been discussed here and elsewhere. cultural examples are such as the tunnel the light which is Western, the Indian God of death Yama's messengers bringing the wrong guy to Yama and having to return them and so on. Of course if the brain produces consciousness which is a theory that has not been proven, in spite of materialist grandiose claims, then the whole idea of an afterlife is absurd. I feel the afterlife evidence is overwhelming and that therefore there can only be one answer for the brain and nervous system's role in consciousness, it transmits consciousness into a local arena appropriate for the individual organism to survive. Carl Jung was very interested in the Yogacara (The Mind Only School) Buddhist idea of the Storehouse Consciousness. This idea fit well with his idea of a collective unconscious That idea also has some resonance with the Akashic records, the main difference being in Buddhism consciousness is always flowing and does not keep some permanent attributes that we would call a soul. Now if you are idea which is called the Alaya Vijnana there is used a metaphor of seeds being planted and being perfumed by our actions and experiences, which eventually flower into more actions and experiences including being reborn into a world of name and form (Nama Rupa) once the consciousness we use the limiting factors of the body it perceives things in their hold this and timelessness, since everything that has ever happened and every potential action is stored in the storehouse consciousness are individual perspective is stored as a stream but at this point we are not limited to its individuality because it has joined the river of eternity. Both in cases of rebirth recorded by Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker there is a consistency of people being born in the same culture though perhaps to people of different status or even different religion, for instance can do instead of Moslem are Christian and instead of either one. In cultures where they expect their relatives to be reborn in their family like some Alaskan tribes and also among the Druze of Lebanon that is exactly what happens. Obviously our conscious decisions are cultural expectations etc. play a Cosmo-genic roll in our future existence. This view of consciousness eternal, nonlocal (as experienced outside of the body) and entangled in the quantum physics sense so closely parallels the evidence that I believe consciousness itself is quantum. Now there have been a lot of rants and ravings by the skeptics about this that there was an invisible line in the sand as it were between the physical atomic/molecular Newtonian world and the sub atomic quantum one. However, research has completely breached that line we know now quantum effects do occur in the brain, we can actually produce quantum effects in sheets of metal. Quantum effects exist in the eye of birds and control their flocking behavior, in photosynthesis, and now an entirely new science,has emerged and is ascending, Quantum Biology . Albert Einstein though he was resistant to much of quantum mechanics had made a statement that "if this were true it would certainly explain such phenomenon as telepathy, he was particularly talking about entanglement. It's interesting that a movie critic would see things like projection a kind of modern-day Plato's cave shot in Cinemascope.

this idea was articulated by the Buddha 2500 years ago. The world as we perceive it is an illusion, not that there is nothing real in it but that we fabricate an imaginary world by our thoughts and senses. I think this is best stated in the words of the Tibetan sage LOngchenpa, Since everything is but an apparition having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one could well burst out into laughter.

What was it that Arthur Schopenhauer said if you think the joy in the world outweighs the pain a match and one animal eating the other, which is greater the pain of the animal eaten of the joy of the animal eating. Pessimism have been around for a long time as a philosophy and I think Ray Kurzweil and all the other physicalists and ontological reductionists,are essentially philosophical pessimists. The author did not keep up with the latest trends in philosophy and philosophy is is trendy as high fashion. This simplistic mind is the brain arguments of the Eliminative materialists such as Daniel Dennett, Pamela and Paul Churchland are no longer the cutting edge of a loss to the mind, the more like a greasy handle of the knife. We have now advanced into the age of quantum biology and the evidence is overwhelming that there are quantum effects governing party if not all of the mental process. Of course when you get into the quantum arena traditional physics and it's reductionism fails miserably. Now this has ramifications not only for philosophy of mind but for neo Darwinism in general because it implies that there may be other forces and natural selection driving evolution. As Thomas Kuhn elucidated so clearly the death of an oral paradigm comes only with screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The mythology some of neuroscience happen pretty well be constructed by many people including position Raymond Callas in his book Aping Mankind Darwinitis and nueromania. Of course Thomas Nagel nailed it down pretty thoroughly. Even when Daniel Dennett's book was at its height it was ridiculed by much of the philosophy community As Consciousness Explained Away. In the tunnel vision of western thought it seems there is only two alternatives for the exclamation of life one is neo Darwinism and the other is a create or in the Judeo-Christian image. This reminds me of current politics where you have to choose between the white self loathing liberals and professional on civil rights educators and their thinly-disguised Marxism or the I want to live in 1776 rape and pillage capitalist, let the poor starve, if they were in a state of grace and would be rich.