I don't know. For years I was a diehard atheist. Then for a shorter period of time I believed in God and prayed. Now I'm pretty much an agnostic.
Near-death experiences. There's something happening if eight million people in America alone admitted to such an experience in a Gallup poll from the early nineties. That something could be of either physical or spiritual origin. It's not for me to say. My readings on the subject aren't completely conclusive either way.
Some interesting anecdotes:
My great-grandmother had an experience published in a book,
Hidden Channels of the Mind (1961). In a nutshell, she dreamt that her husband, chief engineer for a steamship company, ended up dying after his ship was torpedoed. Upon waking, she immediately went to the pier and convinced him to get permission to get off the ship. Her dream ended up coming true, down to the details she recalled, except her husband's life did not end.
(If anyone is interested, I can post the excerpt; we have a copy of the book around here.)
My neighbor's niece had a near-death experience as a little girl. She and her sister were hit by a car while playing in the street. While pronounced dead, this woman encountered both her sister and another, unknown little girl. The unknown girl claimed to be her sister who had passed away years before. Eventually her known sister asked if she would be coming with them. My neighbor's niece said no, she wouldn't be coming, and was shortly rescuscitated.
It turns out her sister, the one who had asked if she would be coming with them, had died. She asked her parents about the other sister she encountered. They were quite disturbed, eventually revealing they had a third daughter. This daughter had died before the other two girls were born. No one had ever mentioned her to either the daughter who underwent the near-death experience or the daughter who passed away that same day.
Years ago, I woke up to find my mother sobbing in the living room. She claimed to have dreamt that a woman who babysat both her and her two sisters had died. Later that day, we received a phone call that the very same woman had indeed passed away.
Some "visions," or whatever, have occurred in my immediate and extended families, all involving people who had died. My own experience involved someone who passed away several years before I was born. I'll also note that all but one of the folks in my family who have spoken of such experiences were raised without religion. I was raised in a secular household.
Someone very close to me passed away recently, and the circumstances were terrible. I ended up alone for a while. My outlook was ****ty and I felt horrible. Somehow, a kind of grace fell over my life. No uncanny experiences, but that feeling was palpable. Eventually I went to pieces, blah blah blah, but that feeling of "grace" left an impression on me.
So, yeah, I don't know but I keep an open mind.
02-28-2007, 02:54 AM
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