[card_zero]

Here's Plato's thing, the "myth of Er":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er

What are the unaccountably unlikely commonalities that I should be noticing? Between this and the article, I see only: some kind of colored light, some kind of officiating beings, and a river (A.J.Ayer says he presumably had the Styx in mind, though amusingly in the actual ancient Greek account it's a different river and there's no need to cross it).

[BoardsOfCanada]

So it has the same stages as modern NDEs: - Out of body experience - Journey through realms - Bright/universal light - Life review - Encounters with spiritual beings - Reincarnation / life selection - A message of peace, well-being, and survival of consciousness

I've never heard of life reviews for example outside of NDEs, most of these things are not in the collective unconscious.

[card_zero]

These things are not really present, unless you do a lot of generalizing, squinting your eyes, and wishing. Besides which the ancient Egyptians influenced many of our shared tropes. There's that whole bit with weighing the heart while a monster (the Eater of the Dead) sits and watches. The Sumerians have a lot to answer for, too. You may now point to Amazonian tribes, but why shouldn't our tropes go all the way back to a shared past in Africa? Not to mention the convergent evolution of obvious ideas. South America (Maya? I forget) had flood myths of its own, and a world tree.

Yeah, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths . This does not mean that at some point there was a global flood brought about by a deity in retribution. It just means people throughout time knew the same stories or invented the same stories, and often thought about deities and floods. Similarly with your afterlife tropes. Memes are the freaky thing here.

[tsimionescu]

Where is the pressing need to help repair space itself that Ayer reports as such a big part of his own experience? And where in Ayer's experience is this life review, reincarnation, or message of peace?

[BoardsOfCanada]

It's obviously impossible to say. Why would there be a life review, reincarnation, or message of peace?

[tsimionescu]

You're the one who claimed that we should believe NDEs represent more than hallucinations because they all contain the same elements. I was pointing out that I can see major differences between two of these NDEs we are just discussing, instead of the consistency you were claiming.

[card_zero]

Well, the claim is only that several of them contain some of the same elements as others.

[twic]

Not long ago, a local mad church put a packet of pamphlets through my door, one of which was this magnificent tale:

https://avesselofhonour.com/2023/06/28/48-hours-in-hell/

Some of those features show up there too. Of course, this comes from a Christian background, and draws on that. But it does have a river, and there's no river in hell in the bible.

[booleandilemma]

Where is that story from? Is George Lennox even a real person?

[mock-possum]

Of course not, it’s proselytizing material, the sort of stories that might be illustrated in Chick Tracts, down to the admonition to repent and pray at the end - a ‘Ticket to Heaven’