"Corrie" wrote
(pac plyer) wrote
An interesting concept in its own right, as the next poster
illustrated. The great swordsman Miamato Mushashi spoke of "the mind
of no mind." When he was in combat, he was not "aware" of anything,
really, not as most people would define awareness. He simply reacted
to his opponent. Physically, he was likely in a high-alpha-wave state
that researchers call a "flow" or "fugue" state. Subjectively, he was
not thinking. It may have something to do with "spiritual" feelings
or trance states. But it would be an error to assume that the
perception of a spiritual reality is the *result* of an alpha state,
and therefore does not objectively exist. It may be that the
objectively-real spiritual realm can only be perceived when the brain
is in a certain relaxed state.

I dunno, you're starting from MM tried to articulate, interpreting it,
speculating an explanation and drawing a conclusion from that....

Any athlete (myself included) can tell you about training and muscle memory
and reflexes... no need to conclude a spiritual world/existence/state based
on that.

I suspect that when we die, the mechanism that measures time is
altered. As your brain decomposes, seconds turn to years, minutes
turn to infinity...

Interesting idea, but AFAIK studies of people who have had near-death
experiences does not bear this out. The "floating above by body on
the operating table" experience doesn't have an altered sense of time
passing - persons report watching events in real-time. The "floating
towards a warm white light" doesn't seem to be correlated to belief
system, at least as far as I've read. Interviews with survivors of
drownings don't indicate an altered sense of time (read "The Perfect
Storm" for an interesting and harrowing description of what it's like
to drown).

You both might be interested in reading Susan Blackmore's explanation of
near death experiences (NDEs) and the biological explanation for the
similarities (and differences).

Eric