The title may sound a little strange, but maybe it's not as strange as all that.
When I was almost 11 years old, I fell out of a tree I had climbed — some 30 feet or so — hit a thick branch with the small of my back on the way down, hit the ground with a thud... and I died right there.
I was without breathing or a heartbeat for about seven minutes, before I was "jump started" back into life.
Technically speaking, that was the second time I had been "dead," the first having been in the delivery room when I was born and arrived without a heartbeat and the umbilical cord wrapped several times around my neck.
Having been "dead" is one of the strange common traits I share with Mrs. Denmarkguy.
She died on the operating table as a child during an inner ear tumor removal where she evidently had responded far more to the anesthesia than the anesthesiologist had accounted for. She was "away from this life" for about ten minutes.
She "died" a second time, many years later, as a result of severe adrenal fatigue that briefly turned into adrenal failure.
Some people call these "Near Death Experiences," but I'm not too sure what's an appreopriate name for them.
What I do know about such events — from experience, not from reading a book or pop culture — is that they change you, in subtle ways. Exactly how varies widely from person to person.
It's not stuff you can really talk to people about, for fear that they will call for the white van with the padded interior and cart you off as a certified nuthatch. So you generally don't talk about it, except on rare occasions, with fellow NDE experiencers.
For me, it has been dreams. I never dreamed much as a kid, until I fell out of that tree. Then my dreams became stunningly vivid and weird, and always in full color. I would dream of things — and still do — that included imagery I have absolutely no idea where came from. some dreams became... precognitive or prophetic in extreme detail.
For Mrs. Denmarkguy, it was her intuition that went off the charts. She was already intuitive-to-the-point-of-almost-being-psychic and her NDEs dialed it up, off the charts. I won't say more than that because she prefers not to talk too much about it.
Anyway, I got to think about it this afternoon because I was sorting some old photos, including a couple from the property where I fell out of the tree.
It made me thing about just how much there is in the world that we totally do not have an understanding of.
I watch how advancements in technology and science rocket along, and I can't help but think that some of the things people tend to call "paranormal" now will simply be explained by science within the next 50 years or so. Perhaps including what happens in people's brains while they are "technically dead" and come back feeling like they are not quite as they were before...
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
How about YOU? Have you ever "died?" Do you know someone who has? Did you — or they — seem "changed" as a result of the experience? What were the changes and circumstances? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
Greetings bloggers and social content creators! This article was created via PeakD, a blogging application that's part of the Hive Social Content Experience. If you're a blogger, writer, poet, artist, vlogger, musician or other creative content wizard, come join us! Hive is a little "different" because it's not run by a "company;" it operates via the consensus of its users and your content can't be banned, censored, taken down or demonetized. And that COUNTS for something, in these uncertain times! So if you're ready for the next generation of social content where YOU retain ownership and control, come by and learn about Hive and make an account!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT cross posted anywhere else!)
Created at 20211009 00:40 PDT
0365/1606
Thanks for sharing.
I've been doing a book study this semester with some of my students, of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's Science Set Free. We've been studying a couple chapters a week together for the past 4 weeks. This Monday will be our 5th and final study session.
In the book, he talks about the 'paranormal' actually being quite normal (i.e. the vast majority of people report having experienced such things).
He also argues that our reluctance to scientifically investigate such phenomena is actually hindering genuine scientific progress.
I am a skeptic at heart and chose this book for a book study because I expected to identify with Dr. Sheldrake's skepticism about 'modern science', and the perspective that, truth be told, we actually know far less than we think we do. And, I was not disappointed in that expectation -- we both share that same skepticism.
However, I started reading the book being equally skeptical about Dr. Sheldrake's personal theories and attempts to explain the unexplainable. To my surprise, however, I ended up concluding that most of his theories trying to explain the seemingly inexplicable actually match the observable world around us better than the 'modern scientific' explanations. I'm not saying that his theories are correct, just that he does a better job (imho) of presenting theories and hypotheses that match 'all' observations than anything else I've seen to date.
I agree with you that
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
I think what often bugs me about "modern science" is that the entire nature of science and scientific inquiry has changed over the past century or so.
Science used to be a field of curiosity and of exploration where the unlikely and impossible was postulated, explored and tested. These days, science seems to have become "fat, old and arrogant" and things are dismissed out of hand if they don't fit already established paradigms. It almost feels as if science has created a bunch of theories and explanations and avoids dealing with any questions that might result in those theories having to be revised or restated. From where I am sitting, that's hardly progress.
The things I always keep firmly in mind tend to be centered on "knowing" vs. "existence." Things like microwaves (the scientific concept, not the appliance!) have been around for eons and didn't just miraculously pop into existence when we were able to detect them. If you could have shown your smartphone to someone in the 18th century they would likely have called it witchcraft or the work of the devil. With that in mind, who is to say that today's supernatural won't be tomorrow's ordinary?
You should read Dr. Sheldrake's book, if you get a chance. His theory of morphic resonance is analogous to 'microwaves', but applies to thoughts, memories, consciousness, and animal heredity -- the theory is an attempt to explain phenomena that don't fit the theories of modern science.
That's not to say that his theories are correct. They are simply the only ones I've heard of that actually attempt to explain the 'inexplicable'. So, in that sense, he is much closer to 'true science' than 99.999% of today's 'scientists'.
Hence the title of his book, Science Set Free. When scientists embrace the seemingly inexplicable with true curiosity, science will be set free from historic dogmas and true discovery will again be possible.
Dr. Sheldrake kinda hints at this in the book, but my personal perspective is that science today is mostly driven by an atheist worldview whereas the science 'of old' was largely driven by a yearning to discover God's hidden truths -- i.e. many of the scientists 'of old' were theists who were actively seeking to understand the world God created, and were thus open to all possibilities (and believed that a humble search would be rewarded by revelations from God). By contrast, many (most, perhaps) scientists today are atheists who dismiss out-of-hand anything that might challenge the materialist worldview -- because doing so might leave open the possibility that a supernatural God is at least plausible -- or simply an arrogant belief that we have the power and intellect within ourselves to discover and understand all there is to know.
This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share 80 % of the curation rewards with the delegators.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
Read our latest announcement post to get more information.
Please contribute to the community by upvoting this comment and posts made by @indiaunited.
Thank you for the support; I appreciate it!
Science does seem to have a way of replacing ideas that were once used to describe the unknown much like spontaneous generation. However science is foundationally limited to what can be observed and studied so some things fall outside of the scope.