{"id":197288,"date":"2019-11-02T15:29:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-02T15:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=197288"},"modified":"2019-11-06T06:07:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T06:07:35","slug":"life-after-death-a-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=197288","title":{"rendered":"Life After Death: A Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Darkmoon \u2013 Nov 2, 2019<\/h1>\n

By ARCH STANTON and \u2018SAKI\u2019<\/strong>
\nEdited by Lasha Darkmoon<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Consisting of comments made by two talented writers with a special interest in the philosophy of religion, Arch Stanton and \u2018Saki\u2019. This discussion arose in response to a poem written by the great Victorian poet Christina Rossetti who spent much of her life longing for heaven. Readers are invited to share with us their experiences of the afterlife, if they have had any, or if they know someone else who claims to have had contact with the dead.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the sun and moon should ever doubt,<\/strong>
\nthey\u2019d immediately go out.\u201d \u2014 William Blake<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
SAKI:\u00a0 Christina Rossetti is arguably the best female poet ever. She is certainly among the the most mystical poets writing in the English language, utterly steeped in Christian mysticism and drawing heavily on Plato and Dante as her main influences.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
The exquisite poem above (see\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0with accompanying video) touches on the universal themes of love and death, the two themes that interested Christina most, and which form the basis of the best lyrical poems in the English language.<\/h5>\n
Christina fell passionately in love like other women, but rejected all her suitors on religious grounds. She remained a reclusive spinster all her life, living under the shadow of her elder brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founder of the pre-Raphaelite art movement and himself a brilliant poet as well as painter. The portrait of Christina which you see\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0was painted by her talented brother.<\/h5>\n
ARCH STANTON\u00a0<\/strong>(a gifted American writer and political dissident)\u00a0<\/em>: One of the most chillingly sad poems I have read. I cannot decide if I am chilled, sad or both. We have a tendency to either forget, or ignore, the fact that all things pass away, making this life one of illusion. It is the youthful delusion of immortality that makes the world the way it is. If man had the image of death constantly visible by his side from birth, the world would be a much different place. Thus, I have long surrounded myself with images of death, lest I forget the outcome of my journey here.<\/h5>\n
SAKI<\/strong>\u00a0(to Arch Stanton)<\/em>\u00a0: I respect you as a person and enjoy reading your brilliant comments, but please note the following points:<\/h5>\n
There\u2019s no proof that there\u2019s NO AFTERLIFE, as you glibly assume, so it is NOT a \u201cyouthful delusion\u201d to believe in immortality. How can you prove there\u2019s no afterlife since you would first need to die to find out? And if you were right about death being the final chapter, how could you ever enjoy the satisfaction of knowing you were right?<\/h5>\n
ARCH STANTON:\u00a0<\/strong> My Dear Saki, you misunderstand my comment and have made mistaken assumptions about my character. My reference to the youthful delusion of immortality refers to the belief we all have in our youth that we are invincible, that \u201cit will never happen to me.\u201d\u00a0 Young males are especially afflicted with this idea, one that invariably remains until they are either involved in combat or some other truly life threatening experience where they are confronted with death, or old age finally confronts them with their frail mortality. Until that point, death is something that happens to someone else.<\/h5>\n
SAKI:<\/strong>\u00a0Christina Rossetti was no deluded youngster when she longed for heaven, a heaven she believed in passionately all her life. She died at the age of 64 still longing for heaven, preferring it to life on earth. You are really in no position to assume that your skepticism \u2014 no god, no afterlife \u2014 is a proven fact. A scientific fact. It is simply an opinion, a doubt rooted in existential angst which is a product of your personal psychology.<\/h5>\n
ARCH STANTON:<\/strong>\u00a0 You make the assumption that I hate.\u00a0 I do not. For example, I most certainly do not hate Jewish movies. There are good Hollywood movies and there are bad ones, with the bad far outweighing the good. The fact is, I even enjoy some of the\u00a0bad<\/em>\u00a0Hollywood movies Jews make. What\u2019s more, these movies provide valuable insight into the Jewish mind.<\/h5>\n
I am not anti-god, Saki.\u00a0 I am anti-religion.<\/h5>\n
SAKI:<\/strong>\u00a0 And you, Arch Stanton, assume falsely that those who believe fervently in God and in an afterlife have been brainwashed and indoctrinated\u00a0by religion<\/em>. Consider the possibility that YOU are the brainwashed one, indoctrinated by decades of liberal existentialism and Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism that is in the very air we breathe \u2014 as an \u201cideological pollutant\u201d. A toxic influence we must do all we can to resist.<\/h5>\n
Every movie you see, produced by the Jews you have told us so often you hate, has helped to form your mind and character and inculcate the godless values of the Jews you despise. Only, dear Arch,\u00a0 you are unable to see this!\u00a0 That it\u2019s YOU who are a victim of the age\u2019s promoted godlessness and existential despair. Not the people who believe in higher things because they have experienced them personally in mystical experiences called \u201cepiphanies\u201d, i.e. in \u201cborn-again\u201d experiences such as form the basic of William James\u2019 great classic, \u201cThe Varieties of Religious experience<\/span><\/a><\/strong>\u201d.<\/h5>\n
ARCH STANTON:\u00a0<\/strong>The Sufis say, \u201cGod is closer than your jugular\u201d. It\u2019s the priest that do not want you to find that out.<\/h5>\n
LASHA DARKMOON:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>(commenting aside)<\/em> : <\/strong>No, it is Allah himself who says this in the Qur\u2019an, and the Sufis simply agree with him. (Qur\u2019an 50:16). So how can the \u201cpriest\u201d, as you state, be trying to prevent you from finding this out if Allah himself has told you this in the Qur\u2019an through his prophet Mohammed? (Qur\u2019an 50:16<\/a><\/strong><\/span>).<\/h5>\n
The Persian mystical poet Rumi, another \u201cpriest\u201d of Islam, is repeating in different words what Allah says in the Qur\u2019an: \u201cI am nearer to you than yourself to yourself. (See here<\/span><\/a><\/strong>). So it\u2019s false to state that \u201cpriests\u201d are deliberately falsifying great religious truths. Bad priests, yes, but not good ones. Remember the sheep have good shepherds as well as bad ones.<\/h5>\n
God bless you!<\/h5>\n
ARCH STANTON:\u00a0<\/strong>When it comes to \u201cgod,\u201d I eschew the term. \u201cGod\u201d for me is a Jewish god, a wrathful, judgmental, murderously vindictive parental figure that rewards one when one is\u00a0 good and punishes one when one is bad. How childishly absurd to think the intelligence behind the universal design and creation would be a figure that small in stature!<\/h5>\n
SAKI:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0It may interest you to know, dear Arch, that the greatest minds of the ages\u2014scientists, philosophers, musicians, mathematicians\u2014have believed strongly in God and in an afterlife, based on PERSONAL EPIPHANIES (mystical experiences) or CONTACT with the divine or the paranormal. The co-founder of the Theory of Evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, believed strongly in a Designer God. His special brand of Darwinism is known as \u201cteleological Darwinism\u201d, i.e., that a Designer God made the universe and did so with a set PURPOSE. He called this Designer God the \u201cHigher Intelligence\u201d. Read this:<\/h5>\n
Wallace\u2019s \u2018Higher Intelligence\u2019 was not the Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator\/Saviour God of the Bible,\u00a0but some unidentified and unspecified \u2018superior intelligence\/power\u2019<\/strong>. Wallace had become involved with spiritism and believed that\u00a0departed souls could communicate through mediums with people living on Earth. In later life he ardently attended s\u00e9ances, where\u00a0he believed he received messages from dead relatives<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n
ARCH STANTON:<\/strong>\u00a0You must have missed my many comments concerning the \u201cBeloved,\u201d intelligent design and the Sufis.<\/h5>\n
As I have written previously, if you are looking for proof of intelligent design, all you have to do is walk out of your front door and take a look at the intelligent life surrounding you.<\/h5>\n
As for\u00a0the after life<\/em>\u00a0. . . There are countless stories throughout history, throughout all cultures, about the continual return to this life. I myself have experienced dim memories of my past existence that served to explain, and resolve, a number of mysteries in this life. I do not\u00a0believe\u00a0in an afterlife. In fact I do not\u00a0believe\u00a0anything. I simply have no faith in belief. Instead, I examine the evidence and shave daily with Occam\u2019s razor.<\/h5>\n
The idea of a repeated return to this life to work out one\u2019s \u201ckarma\u201d was never something I wanted to discover. In fact, I set out to find the opposite and was horrified by what I found. The information changed my life\u2019s path. Now I\u2019m Br\u2019er Rabbit, not relishing the thought of actually returning to this briar patch.<\/h5>\n
I am frequently amazed at how I misrepresent myself.<\/h5>\n
As for personal epiphanies, you should have been there when I had lunch with Jesus, where he said to me, \u201cArch old boy, I want you to tell the real story of my life and my mission. I want you to sweep away the cobwebs of magic and mysticism that religion has woven around my life. No one will listen and no one will believe it, but I want you to tell it anyway and let the chips fall where they may.\u201d<\/h5>\n
I stared in disbelief, asking, \u201cWhy me, Jesus? I\u2019m nobody, I am nothing. I have no authority, no degrees or qualification that might bolster such a story. No one will listen to a nobody like me! I never cared about you or the religion they named after your assigned title. In fact I never really believed in you at all.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Jesus just smiled and replied:<\/h5>\n
\u201cHe that fails to believe in me shall not perish, but shall return repeatedly until he tells my story.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just chalk it up to one of those \u201cmysteries of God\u201d which people are always talking about. you have been provided with all the talents required to tell my story. You have been given the information as well as the technical ability to write a publishable book. You are a wordsmith who has been given the gift of the written word, such as it is. And you sure didn\u2019t have that talent until I came along. So\u00a0 get to work! I\u2019ll call on you in few decades to see how you are coming along with my story.\u00a0<\/strong>Vaya con D\u00edos<\/strong><\/em>, Arch! By the way, watch out for the branches on that withered fig tree on your way out.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
SAKI:<\/strong>\u00a0 Brilliant comment, dear Arch! I certainly misunderstood you. Go in peace, dear fellow traveller! and may you find solace and a safe inn at the end of your journey!<\/h5>\n
SISTER MONICA<\/strong>\u00a0(moderator, to Arch Stanton)<\/em>\u00a0:\u00a0 An excellent comment, Arch.\u00a0 But why do you keep demanding proof for things that cannot be proved scientifically and that skeptics will\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0doubt.\u00a0 Those who have had mystical experiences and witnessed paranormal events (e.g., poltergeist phenomena, out-of-body experiences (OBE), and near-death experiences (NDE), have no difficulties believing in an afterlife.<\/h5>\n
LD<\/strong>: Sister, as you know, I have no problems believing in an afterlife, having experienced the miraculous and the supernatural more than once. My own mother was cured of an incurable disease instantaneously and she had psychic experiences that left me in no doubt that life continued after death in one form or other. My own experience of poltergeist phenomena has made me a witness to events for which there can be no rational explanation and which are completely beyond the laws of nature. The only defence the sceptic has against these bizarre narratives is all too predictable: \u201cYou are lying!\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n
The Doubters will always be with us. The blind need to step into the sea to know the sea is there.<\/h5>\n
SAKI:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019d be interested to know more about your mother\u2019s incurable disease and its sudden miraculous cure. Also about your poltergeist experiences. Can you provide some more specific details?<\/h5>\n
LD:<\/strong> I\u2019ve no wish to discuss my poltergeist experience here for two reasons. Firstly, it\u2019s an isolated experience that occurred only recently and I haven\u2019t had time to assess it and figure out its ramifications yet; secondly, no one is likely to believe me, as there were no witnesses to the event apart from myself. To believe in the paranormal you need to experience the paranormal yourself. Hearing about someone else\u2019s experience at second hand is seldom convincing, especially if you don\u2019t know the person involved.<\/h5>\n
As for my mother\u2019s incurable disease and its miraculous cure, I\u2019ve written about this at some length\u00a0 in an article about P.D. Ouspensky, the famous disciple of Gurdjieff. Scroll down to my comment here<\/span><\/a><\/strong>\u2014 the long passage in bold font beginning with my initials (LD). I hope this will suffice for the time being.<\/h5>\n
(A follow-up article by Lasha Darkmoon about the evidence for life after death will be published on this website next week. Ed.)\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

John Scott Montecristo<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n
November 2, 2019 at 1:42 pm <\/a><\/h5>\n
I\u2019d like our esteemed readers and commenters to take the weekend off by reflecting on a completely different topic for a change. Give politics a rest for a couple of days if you can and turn your minds to the eternal verities. Surely there is no subject under the sun of more importance to you than the subject of God\u2019s existence and the possibility of your continued existence after death.<\/h5>\n
If you have any personal experiences of the paranormal, please let\u2019s have them. If you are skeptical about these things, let us know why.<\/h5>\n
I\u2019d be interested to know why there is so much hostility toward the idea of God. Why do some people hate the Bible so much when others, whose intelligence can hardly be questioned, see the Bible as a source of great wisdom and are willing to die for the ideas it espouses? For example, Isaac Newton is hardly a fool. You would be ill-advised to make fun of such a great scientist for studying the Bible constantly and regarding it as a precious source of wisdom.<\/h5>\n
\u201cI have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the work of God,\u201d says Newton, \u201cwritten by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.\u201d<\/h5>\n
https:\/\/i.pinimg.com\/originals\/2d\/87\/31\/2d8731940d0ec278e8cb9d39f0f4be88.jpg<\/a><\/h5>\n
I find it strange there are so many Bible bashers on this site who think they are smarter than Newton.<\/h5>\n
Scroll to the foot of the source page to comment\u2026<\/a><\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An unfounded myth that defies scientific materialism? Or a living but intagible reality? Comments from two writers with a special interest in the topic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-The_Unexplained_esoteric_and_hidden_knowledge"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197291,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197288\/revisions\/197291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}