http://www.btci.org/bioethics/2012/videos2012/vid1.html

Nonlocal Consciousness: An Explanatory Model for the Near-Death Experience -
Pim van Lommel, M.D.

So yes this research has over 500 individuals with no brain waves having NDEs, contrary to the claim made in the comments about no brain waves being not documented. You’ll have to watch the lecture for the details about neocortex eeg versus consciousness, etc.

Now I have personally researched similar scenarios that are touched on in this lecture that ascribes to non-local consciousness based on the empirical NDE data. In other words certain chemicals like DMT apparently produced by the pineal gland but also in plants — or like Salvia Divinorum — also certain meditation practices. This is not to limit NDEs in anyway — only that death is not the only path to seeing what consciousness really is about in the spirit realm. I recommend this study http://springforestqigong.com verified as real by the Mayo Clinic’s randomized, controlled research and the energy master heals spirits all the time — dead people that exist as coherent light forms shaped like humans. I have seen these dead spirits as yellow lights shaped like humans — floating in from outside and hovering around the qigong master to get healed and what I saw was corroborated by qigong master Chunyi Lin.

So I realize this topic is a big leap for people but amazingly the NDE research is coming along nicely. The skeptiko podcast does a good job debating the NDE issue but tends to get bogged down in details while losing the overall framework of evidence verified now for the first time in the above bioethics video link.

All I can say is until people watch this new video on NDEs then they are not fully aware of the amazing evidence out there. As for a great initiation into people’s NDEs watch the cable show “I Survived: Beyond and Back” on the biography channel on Sunday nights — amazing, riveting information about the after life. Yes Hell and Heaven are real….and more. I know this is a slippery subject and of course there are fraudulent mediums with the afterlife, etc. but this NDE bioethics vid is excellent.

As a species, we don’t know half of what we think we know, and I do recognize that. More importantly, for me at least, is the fact that you’ve related this story on many occasions over the past few years, and have done so without changing any of the details. There’s no reason not to trust that you’ve related an accurate version of the events noted from your point-of-view. I also haven’t seen any evidence that you’ve attempted to capitalize on it; you’re not trying to sell it to a fan club willing to believe all the details even after you’ve changed them. I certainly don’t put you in the same boat as I do those people who deserve and warrant such criticism. They’ve earned distrust — you have not. To my mind, that’s a very important difference.

I don’t know everything about modern technology and I don’t pretend to. But I do know how to test a man’s word, and you haven’t failed any such tests.

Personally, I think cattle mutilations are an effect of natural decomposition most of the time, and committed by humans the rest of the time. There is, in fact, a history of people doing exactly this type of criminal act for kicks — look up “horse-ripping” on Google for many, many examples of the phenomena. Abduction scenarios are also a very well-known psychological symptom going back thousands of years, and I happen to think they are easier to explain as a cultural facet of mental disturbance than an actual incident of criminal assault, although criminal assault would invariably have to be considered as well. On the other hand, given the weird world we inhabit, only a fool would immediately discount an explanation merely because of the “strangeness” that characterizes it, unless evidence of dishonesty and fraud has been properly assessed.

The incidents we’ve discussed are not examples of strange events or odd little quirks noted in the world today. They are examples of fraudulent behavior that has been proven on numerous occasions — proof that I for one am perfectly satisfied with. Evidence for distrust that is so overwhelming needs something more than the accounts we’ve been forced to listen to or reflect upon as a defense for such foolishness, and simply changing those details that necessarily lead one to doubt such claims does not qualify. In my opinion, only an idiot judges the story alone. We judge character, and we do it, because it’s an important factor in human communication and relationships. Every time a person relates an experience, his character is being measured, and that’s a good thing, because eyewitnesses of anything rarely have the knowledge and the data sufficient to reach useful conclusions. But character can be measured, and it can be properly and accurately assessed, and we know that because we do it every day in our mediocre discussions about something we’ve read in the newspaper and in our more important assessments that are made behind the doors of a courtroom. It’s how we learn what people can be trusted, and what people should be ignored as dangerously subversive or merely provincial liars, whether it’s obsessive behavior or not.

It isn’t difficult for me to trust another person’s accounting of an event. It’s extremely more problematic, however, when they reach socially actionable conclusions on the basis of those accounts, and then — sometimes over the course of years — tend to change the details of the original accounts in order to maintain the conclusions they’ve reached. When that happens, a character flaw has been revealed, and a revelation like that needs judgment, not understanding — at least in my opinion. Understanding does not give one the freedom to judge appropriately; it just gives you the desire to sympathize. And, frankly, sympathy is something is that I think has to be earned. Once you’ve decided to target an individual or your government, or the military that necessarily defends that government, sympathy is just a crutch to carry leniency further than one’s judgment would ordinarily allow. That’s why I’ve never bothered to try and “understand” what Hastings et al are doing; I’ve never tried to soften the blow by advising that it’s just possible they made a few errors and went off in the wrong direction. That’s just undeserved leniency, and it’s not functionally accurate. They lied. They have acted fraudulently. They have created and have profited from a hoax. That’s judgment — it’s accurate and it’s true.

I promise you, Drew — you are nowhere near that point, and it’s easy to trust your accounting of the incident you’ve related. One very simple reason for that is the plain fact that you let others reach their own conclusions. Dolan, Hastings, etc. do not. Their conclusions are the main point of the phenomena they’ve described, and they have proven themselves more than capable of making the most irresponsible, gut-wrenching and insulting accusations and leaps of untamed, oppressive, and imaginary feats of logic and mindless discourse to ensure that those conclusions are as universal as possible. And they very willingly change the facts of their little folk tales to maintain those conclusions. As I’ve said above, it’s an offense that’s also damn insulting. More importantly, the last paragraph of your previous comment tells me that you understand this as well.

I do have to state though that the “big black equilateral triangle” unidentified craft is one I did see up close — it flew from the horizon toward our house, close over a hill and over the trees — the craft going slowly and making a humming noise. It didn’t look like a dirigible although there are dirigibles with a similar triangle design. But according to the Belgian “big black triangle” mass sighting these craft are not dirigibles and do indeed involve some yet undisclosed technology — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave

I mean when I saw the craft in 1997 it was exactly like described in that wiki article on the Belgian sighting — at first I saw three lights on the horizon doing inexplicable manuevers. I had my sister look at them but she got bored. I ruled out any explanation I could think off but then the lights seemed to form into a triangle which I saw then moving slowly towards our land — the craft low just over the tree line, about 75 feet to 100 feet off the ground. Then it flew over this hill on our land and then over the trees off our yard — so I could have hit it with a slingshot but I didn’t dare take my eyes off it. The craft was a perfect equilateral triangle with no fuselage and lights on each corner.

Anyway at that time, that night, my sister and I had just finished watching an episode of the X-files and then later I learned that X-Files had actually shown this craft on it, but I had never seen it before. So at that time I had read a few UFO books starting with John Keel’s Operation Trojan Horse and Jacque Vallee books. Anyway I found Curt Sutherly’s book covering the big black triangle sightings and then I started finding stuff online. When I saw the craft I immediately thought it was a secret military craft and then my mom’s former worker at the newspaper showed me the local news clippings from a mass UFO sighting in our area in 1978. That got enough coverage because it also involved cattle mutilations and a lady was hypnotized after she had missing time and then she claimed she had been abducted by the aliens — based on someone from Hynek’s group out of Chicago.

So I do think there is some definite strangeness going on besides the flim-flam ET marketing to make a quick buck based on lies. I mean I think hypnosis is not credible for investigation and the cattle mutilations caused the rancher to move out but it’s too strange that they were reported along with the UFO sightings in 1978. Anyway Nick Redfern did email me that he has documentation of a triangle UFO sighting on a U.S. airforce base in the U.K. in 1952. So I do think there is some secret military technology going on but that’s only in the “unidentified” sense and in no way the “extraterrestrial” sense.

I’m not one to argue about compartmentalization in the military as I’ve been arrested half a dozen times protesting against U.S. corporate-state policies and so I can only defer to those with a more objective viewpoint. haha. I just think it’s tragic that such obvious lies about ETs are being spread for whatever reason people have. When Dolan says “I believe” then he is really throwing away his whole rationalist demeanor — maybe he’s a “post-modernist” scholar now. If Dolan wants to believe that’s fine but he shouldn’t twist around the evidence as he did by backing Hastings.

“It is conceivable that in the classified world, the development of technology has leapfrogged.” No, it isn’t! The “classified world” is not the big secret universe Dolan seems to think it is. There is ALWAYS somebody else who knows; they may have more authority, or they may just have a “need-to-know”. Because of this, any secret that has dual uses is shared. This is the way we do things in this country, because that’s the way you solve or prevent problems. You don’t keep technology a secret with the NSA when that technology can mean the difference from winning or losing a nuclear war. That’s why we were using the same micro-technology and the same components in our nuclear missile systems that we were using in NASA’s space exploration attempts. We needed the best for both, and NSA would have been part of it.

Dolan’s just another psychotic who can write well enough to hold one’s attention from one paragraph to the next; people believe it, because they don’t understand military secrecy, and that vacuum they have in their heads is just waiting to be filled. Anyone who gives it a little thought can figure out that he’s basically talking about nothing that has any bearing in real life. His admission that it all started (for him) with Timothy Good is a pretty importantr clue regarding its real worth. His book “Above Top Secret” is the same one that inspired Robert Salas’ garbage about Echo Flight, proving that all you need is “classified event”, and you can create anything you want around it, simply because the Department of Defense doesn’t correct mistaken impressions about classified materials. They’ll arrest you if you disclose it, but if you’re inventing it as you go along, they leave you alone. because making a public claim that gives out information regarding what a particular classified incident is NOT, is considered as much of a security breach as giving out information regarding what a particular classified incident actually IS. Without denial, they can make up anything they want, and so they do. And then they sell it to any idiot willing to pay for it.

As for Timothy Good’s methods, I’ll give one example: his book “Above Top Secret” contains a reference to some notes describing the “research” conducted by “NICAP investigator” Raymond Fowler. The notes by Fowler indicate that someone told him about rumors of a UFO incident that happened sometime “during the week of 20 March, 1967″. He didn’t talk to an eyewitness, and the two people who mentioned it to him worked with him on the other side of Malmstrom AFB, about 200 miles from the supposed UFO activity. There were no witnesses or names of witnesses — nothing that could be investigated, although Fowler certainly tried to look into it. He got nowhere. He found nothing — just these statements that could have been a joke, or a hoax, or a rumor. He gave the information to Dr. Roy Craig, who was an investigator with the Condon UFO Study at the University of Colorado. Craig looked into it as well, and also discovered nothing. He even talked to the UFO officer at Malmstrom AFB, and was told there was no UFO involved in the incident that Fowler had associated it with — a highly classified incident that Fowler had disclosed details of illegally. In any case, both Craig and Fowler looked into it and found nothing. NOTHING. They never even found an actual witness. A week later, another co-worker of Fowler’s told him that he had heard that a “nearly identical” incident had occurred the previous year. Again, there was no witness, and no further details could be tracked down. They found nothing, even though they were within 200 miles of the location of this incident, and worked for a corporation holding a contract for highly classified work with the USAF. They never talked to a single witness, because there weren’t any, and they never found anything to indicate an actual event had taken place. And yet, on the basis of these notes Fowler took, Timothy Good concludes that while neither of these two incidents could ever be associated with a UFO event, and even though no witness had ever been tracked down and interviewed or had come forward or had even been named as a “person of interest”, and even though Good himself didn’t even try to confirm any of it sufficient to put a simple DATE to either event, he saw “no reason to doubt” that these two UFO incidents had occurred just as Fowler had described them.

Sometimes God gives us the means and the intelligence to figure things out for ourselves. Unfortunately, I find it hard to hard to believe that Dolan or Good have even bothered to try. They discovered an audience and, therefore, a market, willing to believe literally ANYTHING they might want to discuss, and they’ve been milking it ever since. To be frank, I wouldn’t normally care that much about a couple of guys who just wanted to make an easy buck, but I’ve reached the conclusion that what they’re doing is dangerous. They are telling a few million people that their government is lying to them. What is Dolan claiming? “There is no upside for the powers-that-be in disclosing ET information.” I think NASA, a government organization that continues to have its budget slashed every year, would probably disagree. If they could prove that UFOs are real, their budget would skyrocket overnight, so I think there’s a very defintite “upside” for them, but that’s beside the point. Dolan doesn’t know what’s in those classified documents he and the disclsure fanatics are demanding the release of, so he has no idea whether there’s an “upside” or not, and yet he’s willing — on the basis of NOTHING — to make such a claim that there’s no upside for the government. Really? Based on what? He’s an ignorant man making claims on the basis of that ignorance — and he’s doing so to a bunch of people who are already dangerously close to considering that their government wants to keep them in the dark about what they are certain is the most important event in the world’s history! This is exactly the sort of thing that people riot over — that people take hostages to discover. It’s for reasons like this that people gather together and start wars over — and if you doubt that, then I ask you to look a little closer at this world’s history. You might start looking at one city’s history: Jerusalem. These clowns are trying to manipulate belief systems, and they are doing it for the worst of reasons on the basis of little to nothing. It’s offensive, and it’s insulting.

You’ve read what they’re saying. “Recently, the Obama administration reiterated that there is no evidence of life elsewhere in the universe and no evidence of a UFO coverup. The response remains lame and predictable. If they had said that there was a genuine mystery here, it would have caused an explosion.”

This isn’t true. The Obama administration said nothing at all in regard to “evidence of life elsewhere in the universe”. The White House statement merely affirms that “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet”, a far more limited scope. UFO proponents tend to do this a lot. They all too often distort those arguments contrary to their own as a means of attracting support from those who find it ridiculous to even consider such unsupported and meaningless claims such as “there is no evidence of life elsewhere in the universe”.

In the same manner, the White House did not assert that there was “no evidence of a UFO coverup”. The actual statement insists that “there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye”, the key word being “credible”. Given the quality of the “evidence” presented, in conjunction with the FOIA documents thus far released, this is not an innacurate assessment, making the response far from “lame and predictable”. What’s lame and predictable are the distorted arguments and elements falsely attributed to everyone who finds the subject of UFOs unworthy of further attention. These are arguments applauded by UFO proponents too lazy to confirm any claims made so long as they are in agreement.

There’s not much useful information in any of the claims thereby established.

This quality of affidavits allows Hastings and the Magnificent Seven to establish a pseudo-case file expressing their claims while preventing any rude opportunities for doubters to affix their doubt by asking questions Hastings and Company don’t wish to answer. It’s just another cheap shot milking alleged credibility where it fails to exist on its own merit.

In the cases of Hastings use of affidavits…they are simply legally nonbinding and worthless based on the numerous Notaries that I had contacted. Yet, it provides “red meat” to the faithful.

What is interesting is the number of individuals involved in any of Hastings’ claims THAT HAVE NOT SIGNED AFFIDAVITS.