What Will Heaven Be Like?

[killabry]

say what?

[gerbick]

why not ask those people that claim they can talk to the dead?

[evan224]

I'm far too goal oriented for heaven... bring on pergatory for me, at least you have something to look forward to!

E.

[Subway]

I had just gone into my bedroom at 9.15 in the evening, I had turned my alarm on for the next morning and sat on the bed when I had a massive asthma attack. I fell back on the bed and tried to call out to my parents but didn't have the breath. As the attack increased in severity I found that I couldn't move. This part was entirely conscious.

As I blacked out (I guess through lack of oxygen) I heard a voice by my ear. The tone and cadence of the voice was one of absolute caring, and totally calm which was in stark contrast to the panic I was feeling at not being able to breath. The voice was not mine, and it told me not to worry, it was going to look after me and I was to follow it. At this point I left my body and was looking down on myself lying on the bed with my eyes open. I was now totally calm and unafraid. The voice told me it wanted to show me something and I felt myself traveling very fast toward a light, as I went through the light I found myself flying in another world.

Everything in this other world was made of what I can only describe as liquid light. Everything was alive, the ground, the mountains even the sky. The voice was still with me and during this experience never left me. It told me that where I was was the "real" world and that I had a job to do whilst I was there. I alighted on the side of a bare earth mountain, there were no trees grass or rivers etc. There was light everywhere but no sun, the light seemed to come within everything, even the air.

On this mountain about halfway up was a large boulder. On the boulder was a glowing golden brick (I know how this must sound...) The voice told me that I was to build a garden on the mountain and that every year a brick would appear on the top of the boulder and with the bricks I was meant to build a path up the mountain from the base to the boulder. I was told to plant trees which appeared as acorns etc at the top of the mountain.

I was there for a VERY long time, in which time the voice was always present, I never felt alone and I never questioned why I was there, I was totally at peace, and feelings of absolute joy and unconditional love pervaded me the entire time. I knew that the voice was the most trustworthy person/thing in the universe. As the years passed I watched the trees grow, the flowers and grass I planted also grew, the color of the flowers weren't of any color I have ever seen, like there was 20 different colors in the rainbow there, I couldn't describe them as_ there's just no frame of reference to what they looked like.

I was taught a lot of things, and was able to, for want of a better phrase, "see into people's souls" and understood in an instant all the ramifications of all our actions on each other, that anger is borne of pain or fear, and many other teachings about what I now think of as the human condition. And then I saw everyone on the planet interconnected on these lines, and a feeling of such overwhelming love and empathy went through me I felt like my heart was going to explode.

The last brick appeared on he boulder some 2,500 years after I had first arrived. I was aware of every year, this was not dreamlike, it was "real time" if that makes any sense. The path now stretched form the base to the boulder but over the years the boulder had gradually changed shape and now looked square like some sort of alter. The trees I had initially planted had grown and the bows and braches had arched and the trunks thicken to form what I can only describe as a temple at the top of the mountain. The voice told me that the first part of my job was finished and I now had to set foot upon the path. I went to the bottom of the mountain and put a foot onto the path.

At this point the most searing, unbearable pain tore through me but the voice told me not to step off the path. I asked what the pain was as it wasn't physical, it felt like (and this again sounds bizarre) but it felt like a spiritual pain. The voice told me that it was the pain of the least sin I would commit against my own soul. It was conveyed to me that this didn't mean sin in any religious sense, but specifically it was the pain of the wound to my own soul that I myself would commit in my lifetime. I continued up the path and each time I put stepped, the pain was worse than the one before until nearing the top I told the voice I could finish.

The voice was kind and patient and said that it was with me and that I would finish but I needed to learn the lessons it was teaching. I got extremely angry at this point and asked why I had been brought here for all this time in order to experience such terrible pain. I continued to the end of the path with the encouragement and presence of what was now I understood to be some higher spiritual being. I reached the entrance to the tree temple and went inside and saw the only other being I saw the entire time I was their. It had its back to me and was kneeling as though in prayer.

I was angry again and I rushed up to this figure saying that I now knew that everything was real so why did I have to experience all the pain. The figure stood up and turned around, and it was indescribable, a being of perfection and what I can only be described as made out of pure love. I knew that this was the source of the voice. I was dumbstruck after all that had happened and could only say "I can see you." The being touched me on my cheek gently, and said simply. "And now you know. It time to go back now." I was also told that the garden I had created would exist there forever, and I would return there one day.

As I walked with the being back out of the tree temple I saw for the first time other people coming to the garden and sitting on the grass, looking at the flowers, talking and laughing. The being smiled and said "See what you've accomplished here." I felt completely overwhelmed, but I was then immediately transported back into my body, which I immediately felt as being incredibly heavy and cloying and almost unnatural. The asthma attack had totally passed, and I checked the clock which said 9.23pm. The entire experience had taken about 8 minutes from my initial attack to being "back". I've never reported this before as I guess most people would say it was an hallucination. I can only say that it was more "real" than anything I have experienced in this world.

That's just one example of more then 1000 NDE cases I read. Some parts are very similar to other NDE cases and some are very unique.

I would love to create things in the afterlife too, as I love to be creative. That's why I post this example. Did you saw the Robin Williams movie? Behind the Horizone (?) ?

NDEs are really interesting, so anyway if you believe in them or not, they are a great read if you think about this kind of things.

Fredi

[gerbick]

heaven will be what you want it to be.

[Subway]

Originally posted by gerbick
heaven will be what you want it to be.

Maybe, but I think there are rules, too. It's just a different world where your target is to work on the next stage of your soul.

Fredi

[justice strike]

Originally posted by Subway
That's just one example of more then 1000 NDE cases I read. Some parts are very similar to other NDE cases and some are very unique.

I would love to create things in the afterlife too, as I love to be creative. That's why I post this example. Did you saw the Robin Williams movie? Behind the Horizone (?) ?

NDEs are really interesting, so anyway if you believe in them or not, they are a great read if you think about this kind of things.

Fredi

Ok this i've had with psychology, though it might seem real after one has passed out some physiological processes start in the brain creating these sort of "dreams"

there are several other things that look like this, one is called synesthesia (if i'm correct) this is one thing that can look weird to people. people suffering from synesthesia, appear to see the things they hear, or hear the things they see. (not all the time ofcourse). Though it might seem like a hallucination, these people really see these things, they arn't making it up. This is simpel to see with a cat scan. The visual cortex of the brain light up when one observes an object. When one imagines a object, then a other part lights up. However with hallucinations the visual cortex really thus light up. This points out that hallucinations really do seem as real as everything we observe (for real).

there is real evidence that those things people experience at near dead moments are infact nothing more then explainable processes in the brain. However try to convince someone that has experienced a nda that it isn't real. It's like convincing you that your whole childhood has never happened.

[Subway]

Originally posted by justice strike
there is real evidence that those things people experience at near dead moments are infact nothing more then explainable processes in the brain.

There are many cases of NDEs where the brain had zero activity and the heart stopped working for hours.

Just wanted to relate a personal experience. I used to be a 100% skeptic, but this happened to me and now I am more open & am looking for the truth. Please let me know your thoughts.

I am an emergency room nurse. About a year ago we received a patient by ambulance in full cardiorespiratory arrest. No pulse, no effective cardiac rhythm ( refractory ventricular fibrillation ). Patient had been in arrest for at least 15 minutes prior to arival. CPR/ACLS in progress on arrival.

To make a long story short, we worked him for about 25 minutes without positive response. The physician in charge stated that we would defibrillate one more time and if no response we would stop. One last shock, and his heart converted to a beating rhythm, and continued to impove from there, later being admitted to intensive care.

AT NO POINT DURING HIS STAY IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM WAS HE CONSCIOUS. Most of the time he was technically dead.

The next day, one of the ICU nurses called down and told us the patient wanted to see several of the ER staff. He named several of us by name, and described us to the ICU nurses. He said he wanted to see us in person "to make sure he wasn't going crazy".

During a slow time later that night we went upstairs and he called us by name without introductions. He told a story of floating out of his body, just below the ceiling, watching us attempt resuscitation. He said he knew our names from when we called out to each other while working on him. One thing I found especially fascinating was that he said when we defibrillated ( shocked ) him, he would be pulled back into his body for a few seconds, then end up back floating by the ceiling a few seconds after. The last time we defibbed him he was pulled back in and became unconscious. At this point he had a pulse and improved.

We have talked quite a bit about it here. Some of the staff think maybe he was actually semi-conscious the whole time, his brain remaining oxegenated and at least partly functional due to effective CPR. Something akin to anesthetized surgical patients retaining the sense of hearing and being able to relate the conversations of the operating team after they have been awakened.

Others in the group here believe it was a NDE. We reason that this would explain the out-of-body viewpoint and the retention of sight and cognitive abilities by the patient even though he was to all intents and purposes dead when we were together in the ER. There is no other way he could have known our names, either, as his family was not allowed in the room during the resuscitation.

None of us have any experience in this matter and when I stumbled on this newsgroup I thought I'd post and see what you all thought.

There is a particular methode to work on a brain. They cool down the body temperature and the heart will stop for hours so they can work on the brain. The EEG is flat during that period. Many had an NDE during this brain work and mentioned things they just could not know, thigs that happened during a flat brain!

Fredi

[mave_the_rave]

Hi..
I knew someone who went to heaven.

There is only one telephon there, but my old friend managed
to call me..

I asked him what it was like. ?

"Terrible" he replied. " I never get any rest. At night
I have to put the moon out. I then have to put all the
stars up in the sky. Then as soon as I have finished, it's
time to take them all down again.

Then I have to put the sun back up. then all the clouds.
I then have to move them all about.

I have to make sure the wind keeps blowing."

"Hang on", I said, " Why are YOU so busy " ?

He replied, " I am the only one up here. "

[CNO]

Sub, it's worth checking out this article

A related study is cited in the 2001 book Why God Won't Go Away. In it, Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and the late Eugene D'Aquili found that when Buddhist monks meditate and Franciscan nuns pray, their brain scans show strikingly low activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, a region the authors have dubbed the orientation association area (OAA). The OAA provides bearings for the body in physical space; people with damage to this area have a difficult time negotiating their way around a house, for instance. When the OAA is booted up and running smoothly, there is a sharp distinction between self and nonself. When the OAA is in sleep mode--as in deep meditation or prayer--that division breaks down, leading to a blurring of the lines between feeling in body and out of body. Perhaps this is what happens to monks who discern a sense of oneness with the universe, or nuns who feel the presence of God, or alien abductees who believe they are floating out of their beds to the mother ship.

Sometimes trauma can become a trigger. The December 15, 2001, issue of the Lancet published a Dutch study in which 12 percent of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death reported near-death experiences, some having a sensation of being out of body, others seeing a light at the end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives. Because the everyday occurrence is of stimuli coming from the outside, when a part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is thought to be the paranormal.

[Subway]

Interesting:

Nowadays people are reporting out-of-body experiences, floating above their beds.What is going on here? Are these elusive creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence adds weight to the notion that they are, in fact, products of the brain. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, for example, can induce all these perceptions in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. (I tried it myself and had a mild out-of-body experience.)

But that really don't proves in any way that the brain does that travel alone. It's similar to the Ketamine introduced NDEs. Maybe the soul just don't likes it and goes out of the body.

Fredi

[justice strike]

Originally posted by Subway
There are many cases of NDEs where the brain had zero activity and the heart stopped working for hours.



There is a particular methode to work on a brain. They cool down the body temperature and the heart will stop for hours so they can work on the brain. The EEG is flat during that period. Many had an NDE during this brain work and mentioned things they just could not know, thigs that happened during a flat brain!

Fredi

i timed out after having writeen aloooott and could get on the flashkit board for some time... but i really do have to reply to this.

first of all i wasn't talking about brainactivity, rather i was talking about chemical processes.

second of all, there isn't a way to record brain activity after the heart has stopped beating.

cat/ct/pet scans work on the principle that the blood that goes to the specific brain segments are being registered. if the heart stops beatin there isn't a bloodcirculation, hence you can't register where the blood goes to and thus you can't register the brainactivity.

with singlecell recording it would be possible, but it's a big nono especially on humans, because after the recording the subject undergoing this procedure has to be killed and his brain has to be examined to determine wich cell was recorded. mostly this is done with monkeys and such, but they can't tell you about nde's (certainly not aftyer being killed

then we have the meg/eeg type scan's... these measure the electrical and magnatical field. However with the brain having so little oxygen isn't it feasible to say that if there is brainactivity it would be of such a low grade that it can't be detected by these types of scans? a other very annoying thing about this type of scan is that you don't know where the activity is coming from (if there is any activity) thus you know it's there but you don't know where it comes from... very unreliable (spatially that is)

i can't really see how they can measure brainactivity with (conventional) scanning techniques.....


however this is unrelevant, as the nde is mostly due to the chemical processes that start after ones heart stops beating. This is loose from the brainactivity.

what's more btw most people believe floating above their body, this is however a perspective issue that is an error of the brain, they seem to float above however they never can see their own face. this is because their looking trough their eyes and the perspective makes it look as if you are floating. you seem to see your chest and legs as if they where far under you bit it really isn't.

but as i said trying to convince that to someone who experienced it is like trying to convince you that your childhood never happened

[Subway]

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html

There's a link to the red shoe research and the blind born research.

So the brain works better if you can't measure any brain activity?

Fredi

[justice strike]

Originally posted by Subway
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html

There's a link to the red shoe research and the blind born research.

So the brain works better if you can't measure any brain activity?

Fredi

i didn't say the brain works better i said that the brain activity could be so low that it can't be measured!


btw that's no proof of nda. This situation is very easy to explain. a person that is blind does have the ability to recreate a space in his or her mind. People can mentally visualise a room people etc.. the fact that they can't see it is not of any value. the visual cortex can be triggered by the mental visualisation (wich is actually the wrong way around but can happen) triggering a hallucinatory effect.

as i said people who have synestasia or suffer from hallucinations actually do see something (visual cortex is very much active) they can't distinguese real from not real. However the nerve from the eyes to the visual cortex is completely silent where does this come from... well i havn't learned that yet tough. Blind people could actually "see" if their visual cortex was active.

however i don't think this is any proof, it's more a story told by the ones that experience it. It is very biased by nature. It's not that i don't want to believe it, it's just that my study demands me to be very skeptical and always aasks that i find a possible other explanation for stuff....


however this is a very biased link! i don't think you can deny it... it's an interview, and has no such objective ratings on nde wich is a prequisite for a official psychological study. (ofcourse not a writing but then again a writing doesn't try to conclude stuff with abolute certainty)

[Subway]

Originally posted by justice strike
This situation is very easy to explain. a person that is blind does have the ability to recreate a space in his or her mind. People can mentally visualise a room people etc.. the fact that they can't see it is not of any value.

But if you're born blind then you not only can't see, but your dreams have zero visuals, too.

Such reports, replete with visual imagery, were the rule, not the exception, among Ring and Cooper's blind respondents. Altogether, 80% of their entire sample claimed some visual perception during their near-death or out-of-body encounters._Although Vicki's was unusual with respect to the degree of detail, it was hardly unique in their sample.

Sometimes the initial onset of visual perception of the physical world is disorienting and even disturbing to the blind._This was true for Vicki, for example, who said:

"I had a hard time relating to it [i.e., seeing]. I had a real difficult time relating to it because I've never experienced it. And it was something very foreign to me ... Let's see, how can I put it into words?_ It was like hearing words and not being able to understand them, but knowing that they were words. And before you'd never heard anything._But it was something new, something you'd not been able to previously attach any meaning to."

I was a real sceptic before (I believed in science and was a 100% atheist) I read all those NDE cases, I still see no 100% prove, but the path the NDEs draw are very hard to not believe in. I not saw any prove against a soul and against having no soul.

I had the luck to know someone with a NDE, actualy a good friend of me, he had no heartbeat for a long time after a car accident and he was clean for a long time then. He was a heavy drug consumer before and had experienced a lot of haluzinations and spiritual things that periode. What has me started to read all this NDE cases is that he sayd that the NDE was not like anything a drug can do, anyway if LSD, sugar or whatever. The NDE felt more real for him then he's life, something that many NDE cases say.

The other thing is that life gets much easyer if you can believe in an afterlife and I'm not talking about religions. NDE cases can give you much more then any religion can do cause it's not just a story in a book, it's something that thousands of peoples experience, anyway of what religion they are.

Fredi

[flipshark]

Originally posted by Jared1
DigitalOne's right. Everyone would LIKE to think Hell is the best, funnest, coolest place--but it's not. Sorry to burst your bubble, and whether you choose to accept that or not is up to you. Just realize that all plays part of Satan's lies and trickery. Nothing makes him happier than for you to think that you're headin straight for Hell, fun-city and land of eternal coolness.

Heaven will be perfect, and you can quote me on that, it's written in the Bible. Create your own picture of what "perfect" will be like, but think about what "eternal torment" means as well.

Again, all up to you. I respect everyone's opinions, but that doesn't mean I'd hesitate in agreeing with them.

First off I'm an atheist so I don't believe there's life after death.. but my hell comment I stick by.
Heck according to your bible things like blasphemy, sex, drugs, rock and or roll, are all evil temptations of the devil.

So it could stand to reason that maybe these are the methods of eternal torment used to torture souls for eternity. Now to me that wouldn't be very harsh.

don't get me wrong... I love god... but then again I love Santa Claus too, and that being said, I still wouldn't want to live in the North pole... but then again I don't believe either of them exist... although how Santa gets presents under the tree each year really confuses me ..
sorry I'm not trying to shake anyones beliefs in the almighty Santa Claus.. I'm just bored!

[justice strike]

Originally posted by Subway
But if you're born blind then you not only can't see, but your dreams have zero visuals, too.



I was a real sceptic before (I believed in science and was a 100% atheist) I read all those NDE cases, I still see no 100% prove, but the path the NDEs draw are very hard to not believe in. I not saw any prove against a soul and against having no soul.

I had the luck to know someone with a NDE, actualy a good friend of me, he had no heartbeat for a long time after a car accident and he was clean for a long time then. He was a heavy drug consumer before and had experienced a lot of haluzinations and spiritual things that periode. What has me started to read all this NDE cases is that he sayd that the NDE was not like anything a drug can do, anyway if LSD, sugar or whatever. The NDE felt more real for him then he's life, something that many NDE cases say.

The other thing is that life gets much easyer if you can believe in an afterlife and I'm not talking about religions. NDE cases can give you much more then any religion can do cause it's not just a story in a book, it's something that thousands of peoples experience, anyway of what religion they are.

Fredi

as i said before if the a spatial creation of the room is made wether it is visual or not and it is then transfered to the visual core, it doesn't matter if a person was blind all his life, most of his life or not blind at all. you WILL see that. that is the function of the visual cortex. Now don't mix up the visual cortex with really seeing stuff. if someone is blind most likely the nerves from the eyes are damaged, it is very likely (mostly it is the case) that the visual cortex isn't destroyed. This also explains why not all people see things in their near death events. if a person is blind due to a damaged visual cortex, it is likely he/she doesn't have a visual nde. however these cases are rare.

[indivision]

heaven is going to be "NEW"?

i'm kind of attached to what we already have. i like the rockies and the sahara!

[ViRGo_RK]

Well, heaven is an anchovie. Don't ask me, it just is.

Actually, I believe heaven (my version) is a earth sized lab of computers, all with their own DSL lines, running XP Profesional(Mac users, of course, don't go to heaven). Where you can romp with the three-legged antelopes, sit back, blasting terrorists on your copy of Splinter Cell (yes, what would heaven be without violence) that happens to be hooked up to the real world, where peoples lives are your pawns, and there's no saving. Where you can kick back, and yell "God, get me another margarita, and this time, NO SALT!"

[Jared1]

And what's to say you HAVE heard from someone there tellin ya how cool it is? My belief is in faith not sight--I don't need someone to write it out black and white for me to understand, accept, and believe it.