Theos-Talk Archives (December 1995 Message tl00479)

I came across the following little piece in the Theosophy-Science Group
Newsletter #29 Dec 1995 published in Sydney Australia and thought
it worth sharing.

_Brain-Mind Bulletin_ for 199505 carries an item on an article by
professor John Wren-Lewis in the _Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology_ about the effect of his near death experience NDE and
the general significance of such events. He is well known to members
of Blavatsky Lodge where he has spoken on a number of occasions.

John was poisoned in Thailand some years ago. When he awoke from a
coma the world had suddenly changed for him. It was the most alive
state he had ever known - intensely happy and absolutely peaceful. He
found himself seeking mystical language to describe his new sense of
perception. This state has never left him and has changed his whole
outlook on life and sharply lessened any fear of death.

He has researched and analysed other accounts of NDE's and has
developed his own suggested explanation for such experiences. He says
that a highly developed survival mechanism which focuses our
consciousness so strongly on the business of survival forces us to
shut out access to the underlying universal consciousness. This
mechanism relaxes as the point of death approaches. He calls for
transpersonal psychologists to research techniques for circumventing
_this fundamental malfunction in humanity's "software"._ He says that
the experience does not answer the question of survival so much as
render it unimportant by intensifying the vividness of every living
moment.

Malfunction or not I find the naturalness of this approach refreshing
and realistic. I have long thought that the question of survival after
death debated so sharply and in materialistic terms on both sides in the
past must soften and lose some of its significance as public conceptions
evolve and the number of inwardly-sensitive people increases. Not to
mention the number of NDE'ers in the population.

This kind of "explanation" would also relate to visions that
terminally-ill people sometimes have as they approach death the content
of visionary and meaningfully-symbolic dreams and some of the
experiences of meditation itself.

Murray Stentiford