Late Afternoon at the OK Club—Part 2—The Great Wheel



Walking out in the Garden for a smoke and some air

After having some early hors d’oeuvres, Ruby and I are playing pool, while drinking one of Martin’s concoctions—a Lime Cordial.

I have to remember from thirty years ago how to play pool: line up the shot but still see the cue ball and the object ball in one field of vision, stroke true and firm, and plan for good position on the next ball, presumedly having all easy shots thereafter until bad luck arrives.

Ruby Yacht’s gears were/are turning, prepared by she having lived a life of wonder, and long inspired by the actualities and philosophies of one of the first great polymaths of old, Omar Khayyam. She is also a scientist.

Ruby begins, after breaking the rack of balls, “There is no ‘Great Wheel’ mentioned, per say, in FitzOmar, although it’s greatly hinted at by ‘It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.’, but I found five Wheels in your retransmogrified Bodleian Manuscript Rubaiyat:

12
Worries seldom come true, but, if they do,
Thus they had to, so in them you must stew.
Past imperfect points to a future tense,
Yet ever only Nows does the Wheel brew.

41
What ‘IS’ can no more not exist than it
Can rule any of what goes on in it;
Impute not thy blame, shame, or fame to it—
Fate’s Wheel’s as helpless as all within it.

73
Dash quick away the trade of worldly gain,
Unlinking thy chain to the good and bane,
And with wine and kisses soothe ev’ry pain—
Till sky’s whirling Wheel doth your roll restrain.

129
Yon Heaven’s Wheel flings its comet portent,
The plot to end our lives unimportant.
To the lawn, love, for one day we shall be
As the grass that grows about our tent.

154
Fate’s Wheel soft whispers in my ear, “I know
What’s been decreed—just ask and I will show.”
Were mine the hand that made myself revolve,
I should have saved myself from reeling so.

Ruby continues, “So, the ‘Wheel’, ‘Totality’, ‘All’, ‘Fate’, ‘God’, ‘What is’, and the like are all referring to the brief ‘answer’ of the most often asked question of ‘Where did everything come from?”, and secondly, asking, probably, “Where did the ‘All’ itself come from?”

I answer, “Apparently, the Great Wheel doesn’t have any coming from, being ever, with no creation of it, as Parmenides indicates. And, of course, I can’t fathom a never-ending depth of ever lower and tinier causes and effects in an infinite regress, for the effect would never be able to surface, it taking ‘forever’, so, the buck has to stop somewhere, either with quarks or in something not far beneath them, it being suspicious that quarks have a charge of 1/3.”

“Yes, but that no-coming-from is only apparent since we have to accept that the basic Something exists already made without ever having been made; it’s just as paradoxical as it having a Beginning, as of the Something coming from Nothing, but for ‘Nothing’ not being able to be! I am being careful here, and will be, lest I state “maybe’s” as if they are fact and truth, as so often do the religious, which is far from honorable.”

“Well, Ruby, would you like to banish ‘Nothing’ once and for all by tentatively letting its proponents somehow have it to exist, as silly as that seems, for they will only ever keep on touting it as a source.”

“OK, Austin, let us allow for the moment that there was a total lack of anything, impossible as that seems:

1. This state of ‘Nothing’ would still be so; however, oops, there is something…
2. Yet they will answer that the Something came out of or from ‘Nothing’ or was spontaneousness, etc;
3. However, since this capability/possibility/potential
exists, then they didn’t really have an absolute ‘Nothing’
to begin with, as they claimed,
4. And so we are back to that of this capability then being
what is eternal and ever.
5. I rest my case, and thus still accept an Eternal Basis,
either way.



(to be continued)

The pyramid of the will bears nested dancers,
Each an expert in their field of laws and causers—
Through the land’s contours of memory’s sands of what was;
The King doesn’t decide, but his repertoire does.

Parmenides’ Unity in Multiplicity

Preface
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

‘What Is’ both must be (or exist), and it must be what it is, not only temporally but also spatially. For ‘What Is’ to be (or exist) across times is for it to be ungenerated and deathless; and for it to be what it is across times is for it to be “still” or unchanging. For ‘What Is’ to be (or exist) everywhere is for it to be whole. For it to be what it is at every place internally is for it to be uniform; and to be so everywhere at its extremity is for it to be “perfect” or “complete.”

Taken together, the attributes shown to belong to what must be amount to a set of perfections: everlasting existence, immutability, the internal invariances of wholeness and uniformity, and the invariance at its extremity of being optimally shaped. What Is has thus proven to be not only a necessity but, in many ways, a perfect entity.

Parmenides may be counted a “generous” monist. While he reasons that there is only one entity that must be, he also sees that there are manifold entities that are but need not be (what they are). Parmenides was a generous monist because the existence of what must be does not preclude the existence of all the things that are but need not be.

It seems preferable to understand ‘What Is’ as coterminous but not consubstantial with the perceptible cosmos: it is in exactly the same place where the perceptible cosmos is, but is a separate and distinct “substance.” On this view, ‘What Is’ imperceptibly interpenetrates or runs through all things while yet maintaining its own identity distinct from theirs.


On Nature
Poetic Fragment

The mares that carry me
As far as my spirit might reach
Were escorting me,

When guiding they placed me
On the much-informing road of the Goddess,
Who leads the man who knows through all.

There I was being carried,
Brought by wise mares who were
Straining the chariot,
While maidens were leading the way.

The axle’s nave shrilled like
The bright sound of a pipe, sparkling,
For it was pushed ahead by
Two whirling wheels at either end,
While hastening to escort me.

The Daughters of the Sun—
Having left the House of Night for the Light—
Thrust back with their hands
The veils from their heads.

Here are the Gates of the Paths of Night and Day,
And they are bound together
By a lintel and a stone threshold.

They are high in the sky
Blocked by mighty doors
To which avenging Justice
Holds the alternating keys.

Here the maidens implored with gentle words…
And knowingly persuaded her to push back quickly
From the gates the bolted bar.

And a gaping chasm of the doors
Was produced by the gates' opening
Which had set revolving in the sockets one after
The other the brazen axes fitted with bolts and pins.

Then, straight through them.

The maidens kept the chariot
And horses on the broad way.
The Goddess received me graciously,
Taking my right hand in hers,
And addressed me with the following words of counsel:

“Young man, accompanied by immortal charioteers,
And the mares who carry you to my abode, welcome.

“It is not an ill fate
Which has sent you forth to travel this road,
Though it is far from the beaten path of man,
But Right and Justice.

“It is necessary that you learn all things,
Both the unshaking heart
Of well-rounded, persuasive Truth
As well as the opinions of mortals,
For which there is no true evidence.

“But nevertheless these you shall learn as well:
How it would be right for the things of opinion,
To be provedly things that are altogether throughout.

“Come now, I will tell you—
And preserve my account as you heard it—
What are the only ways of inquiry for reasoning:
The one that IS, and that it cannot NOT BE,
is the Way of Persuasion, for it follows the Truth.

“The other IS NOT,
And that it is necessary that it NOT BE,
This I point out to you is a completely inscrutable path
For you cannot know that which IS NOT,
For this cannot be done, nor can you express it.

“It is necessary to say and to think Being,
For there is Being, but nothing is not.
These things I order you to ponder.
For from this first way of inquiry I hold you back.

“Behold things which, although absent,
Are yet securely present to the mind;
For you cannot cut off What IS
From holding on to What IS;

“Neither by dispersing it in every way,
Everywhere throughout the cosmos,
Nor by gathering it together or unifying it.

“But next from the way on which mortals,
Who know nothing, piece together two-headed;
For helplessness in their breasts
Guides their unsteady mind.

“They are borne along, deaf as well as blind,
Stupefied, hordes without judgment,

For whom to be and not to be are deemed the same and

Not the same; but the path of all turns back to itself.

“For never shall this be forced:
That things that do not exist;
But do you hold back
Your thought from this way of inquiry,
Nor let inured habit force you, upon this road,
To ply an aimless eye and ringing ear and tongue;

But judge with reason
The much contested argument
Which has been given by me.

“There is still left a single story of a way, that it is.
On this way there are signs exceedingly many—
That being ungenerated it is also imperishable,
Whole and of a single kind and unshaken and complete.

“Nor was it ever nor will it be, since it is now,
All together, one, continuous.

“For what birth will you seek for it?
How and from where did it grow?
I will not permit you to say
Or to think from what is not;
For it is not to be said or thought that is not.

“What necessity would have stirred up
To grow later than earlier, beginning from nothing?

“Thus it must either fully be or not.
Nor will the force of conviction
Ever permit anything to come
To be from what is not, besides it.

“For this reason, Justice permitted it
Neither to come to be nor to perish,
Relaxing her shackles, but holds fast;
But the decision about these matters lies in this:
It is or it is not.

“Therefore, as it is necessary,
The decision has been taken
To leave one way unthinkable and unnamable,
For it is not the true way,
And the other way to be and to be true.

“How could Being be hereafter?
How could it have come into being?

“If it was, it is not,
Nor if it is going to be in the future.

“In this way,
Coming to be has been extinguished
And destruction is unheard of.
Nor is it divided, since it all is alike;

Nor is it any more in any way
Which would keep it from holding together,
Or any less, but it is all full of what is.
Therefore, it is all continuous,
For what is draws near to what is.

“But unchanging in the limits
Of great bonds, it is,
Without start or finish,
Since coming to be and destruction
Were banished far away
And true conviction drove them off.

“Remaining the same and by itself
It lies and so stays there fixed.

“For mighty Necessity holds the bonds of a limit,
Which pens it in all round,
Since it is right for what is to be not incomplete;
For it is not lacking;
If it were, it would lack everything.

“Thinking and the thought that it is are the same.
For not without what is, in which it is expressed,
Will you find thinking.

“For nothing other, besides Being, either is or will be,
Since Destiny fettered it to be whole and immovable;

“Therefore, all that mortals posited convinced
That it is true will be mere name,
Coming into being and perishing, to be and not to be,
And to change place and alter bright color.

“But since there is a furthest limit,
It is complete on all sides,
Like the bulk of a well-rounded ball,
Evenly balanced in every way from the middle;

“For it must be not at all
Greater or smaller here than there.”

“For neither is there non-Being
To prevent it from reaching
Its like, nor is there Being so that it could be
More than Being here and less than Being there
Since it is all inviolable;

“For from every point it is equal to itself,
Staying uniformly in the limits.”

“Here I end my trustworthy account
And thought concerning truth.
From now on learn the beliefs of mortals,
Listening to the deceptive order of my words;…

“For they decided to name two forms,
A unity of which is not necessary—
In which they have gone astray
And they divided form contrariwise
And established characters apart from one another.”

Quantum superposition — elucid

Perhaps it is actually a very fast vibration between two places.

And if any belief is presented as being certainly true in any absolute sense that is intellectually dishonesty. — Janus

We were created to worship God.

More honestly stated:
If there is a God, which we can't show outright to anyone with no possible contesting, then perhaps this maybe God created us, and so it might be that His maybe purpose was so that we could worship this maybe God because perhaps this maybe God wants or needs to be worshiped, and so that is perhaps why we were put on Earth. We are for this notion out of our hopes and wishes that we call 'faith', and if we meant 'truth' we would have said that instead.

It appears, then, that honesty might not be the best policy for attracting believers and worshippers because the claim no longer has the impact that it did by its declaration supposing, but at least it isn't stated as truth for all any longer, and avoids the immediate indoctrination of children and unsuspecting adults, etc. to the ungrounded dogma.

Similar dishonesty: There is no God. This fails, too, since it cannot be shown.

a general problem with religious claims — Janus

The problem is, that although faith and mere belief often get mention in the church bulletin, in practice the belief and all its extensions and layers are taught as true.

They even couldn't help themselves later in the church bulletin, as it went on to proclaim that "We were created to worship God."

So, when the whole realm is not visible, the problem would seem to get worse.

To avoid dishonesty, both theists and atheists would have to admit "I don't know for sure," which is agnostic, or else lose credibility.

You mean if no evidence or argument for the truth of the belief is given? — Janus

One can't honestly claim that something is for sure that can't be shown, no matter the argument, even with indirect evidence noted, too.

For example: There was a Big Bang for sure. This isn't honest because we can't yet see through the darkness that there was up to 380,000 years, although we are trying to detect gravity waves and. have noted the expansion of the universe and the CMB radiation, etc.

The solution to Zeno's paradox is that time is an interval, thus cannot go to zero, meaning that since velocity is distance/time the distancing will still happen.

What can be honestly attacked in a belief system is the believer's stating of the beliefs as if they are true. If only a belief could make its object be true, but it can't. Will they go to jail for trying to mislead? No, not usually, but their integrity remains damaged and so they can be called on it. Will anger do anything? No, it only backfires. The same for generalizations without specifics.

Using anger to thwart an opposing belief
Does nothing positive to provide a relief
But negatively shows the inability
To directly and completely counter the plea.

happiness — TheMadFool

Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense.
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.

Happiness is a way of life that celebrates
A living aliveness—that then opens gates
To further adventure, friendship, and delights,
To joy, success, triumph, and greater heights.

The redundant free will thread redux lives on…

Now’s pen inscribes, based on what was there,
Its destined words phrasing our sentence here.
Although it may spell to us right or wrong,
Even one letter’s change hasn’t a prayer.

Since outputs always have inputs, so true,
Then what, we wonder, should we try to do?
It’s the other way around, oh, brain stew,
For cause, time, and the universe do you!

Outputs must have inputs, they in turning
Becoming inputs to more ‘fates’ churning.
In that sense, all is writ, on every path,
As in ours, so what must be will e’er spring.

What be: thy output must form from input,
For naught else can stride the moving foot,
And ‘randoms’ recede; naught from nought makes no.
The pen can’t revise its scroll; "we’re" caput!

The unborn future is inherent in the past,
It’s ‘will be’ is real, with no unreal contrast class,
As there’s no opposite to existence—no Nil;
It’s not just that future is going to exist.

The present now undergoes an updating,
In a fleeting swoosh that passes it away,
For the ‘now’ fades, consumed, as future becomes,
Yet, what will become past can’t just non-exist.

Is future connected to the present?
Yes, and in more ways than you’d want it sent,
As the consistencies you might resent:
All future flowers from seeds of the present.

As of now we hold reality’s attention—
This is the time of our present comprehension.
What is past exists only in our memory,
The future only in our imagination.

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.

But now, Science has whittled the material world down to intangible particles & invisible fields, and found that -- lo and behold -- the foundation of physics is grounded on immaterial metaphysics. — Gnomon

— Extrinsic Shadow, Intrinsic Light —

Physics, once more direct, is now but an
Immaterial science of math-shadows,
While mysticism, once but a fogged notion,
Claims the direct observation of the Light.

— The Mystical Realm —

It said, in my dreams, “Of ever waking,
It’s hard to convince you, in dream-language,
As when, in wakeful reality,
To tell you of that which is beyond telling.”

Neither Theism Nor Atheism Can Prove

Invisibles can neither be shown nor not,
So, one’s ‘agnostic’ toward the belief or not,
No matter the 'sure things' dishonestly said;
Thus, none can teach the belief as true or not.

So are you suggesting… — ZhouBoTong

Nah, it's just for fun and because you commented. 'Adonais' by Shelley is one of the best I've come across.

So, if 'God' is outside of time, as timeless, He can't change or change events, I suppose.

No, for one cannot be free of the will, for then what would one will with.

Late Afternoon at the OK Club—Part 1—More ‘Now’, plus ‘IS’ & ’Nothing’
 

(Click.)
Bora-Bora Bored in Tahiti

Ruby and I pour each other a glass of wine, and it tastes just as sweet in whatever whenever frame its ‘now’ settles in to.

Now

To future columns we stretch our present row,
By a lifeline of tenuously spun vow…
Oh. how soon the weighted web begins to fail;
The only real time under our feet is now.

Hectic and hurried, we rush to success.
Serenity can’t find us unless
We slow down, see shades, hear tones, feel textures,
Smell scents, and enjoy life’s loving caress.

See them hurrying hither and thither:
Oh, look at the time! I must go whither.
What sense the life that has no time to live?
Wherefore the wind that swirls in a dither?

A moment of eternity in hand,
Caught from a wingéd creature on time’s sand,
Yet put aside to later view in peace.
It flies. Now pursue it through Never-Land!

Let not the certainty of the present be
Held mortgage for the Deed of Futurity,
For tomorrow’s just a gleam from afar
And yesterday’s but a cold ash of thee.


(Ruby)

“Did you vote today, Austin?”

“No, but In my bridge game, I bid one No-Trump and my partner raised to two Clintons.”

“Ha-ha. There is a Rubaiyat of Bridge, you know.”

“I have it. I’ll post it one day.”

Election Day For the Eternal Basis

“What happens, from there being no election,
Of that which hath no point for direction?”
“Everything happens, for it e’er changes,
Revealing all faces of complextion.”

Ruby Yacht nods and says, see this quatrain:”

The sphere upon which mortals come and go,
Has no end nor beginning that we know;
And none there is to tell us in plain truth:
Whence do we come and whither do we go.
—Ahmad Saidi

“Has no end or beginning” seems to be right on target, as eternal/ever, since, given that ‘Nothing’ can’t be productive because it can’t exist to do anything. Therefore, what ‘IS’ must be ungenerated and deathless, as Parmenides indicates.”

She adds, “FitzOmar refers to Nothing four times, mostly as  some ultimate oblivion.”

“And his Nows are ubiquitous, and his 'Great Wheel' is 'What is'.”

There is, of course, also the possibility to consider that Benedict xii made a mistake when he decided to officially declare that the soul as an immortal entity does exist. What do you think? — Daniel C

These things can't be known for sure, nor the underpinnings of it and more as 'God'; therefore, it is dishonest to the max to declare truth. What happened to their honest word, 'faith'?

But I am not convinced that most people in this thread are even understanding what we are getting at...I certainly am not understanding what they are getting at? — ZhouBoTong

The adventurous Zhou was back in the light of day, wondering what the descriptions of 'God' had in common, but there was a paradox with the 'Eternal' being timeless and and 'God' seeming to do things in time, this perhaps making for some bad weather in the thread when it became known.

So, he takes a walk in the woods to clear his head of 'God' and from capital letters beginning verse lines…

BoTong sights an ominous type of cloud,
And shakes, hearing thunderous rhymes so loud,
Just having survived the meters’ melodies
And scans, and the ten syllables allowed.

He runs breathless through meadow and forest,
Fast pursued by the stings of wind and rain;
On and on he pushes, wild without rest,
Searching for haven from the forum’s pain.

The storm chases him till he can go no more;
He stands helpless, backed up against a door,
But falls through it before death can touch him,
Saved by the library admitting him.

He wanders deep, down the poetic path,
Aglow in the soft beauty that it hath.
He sees John Keats kissing Fanny Brawne,
As he spoke more than words but less than song.

And Byron, endowing form with fancy,
While Wordsworth pens his thoughts to Lucy,
And Shelley, plumbing depths of mystery.
He reads them all; they grow his poet-tree.

Deeper still he probes, looking in on it,
And hears Mrs. Browning reading a sonnet.
Poetically, he takes them all in, even
The shadowy Emily Dickenson.

As soon as the lightning storm is past,
Zhou Botong enters the courtyard so vast.

Here the secret garden, half as old as time,
Where poets live and write their words and rhyme,
While the nightingale creates the rose,
By moonlit magic, from their thoughts sublime.

Literary scenes unfold before him,
Such as music approaches and surrounds,
And builds on the vibrance which in one is—
To fill with beautiful visions and sounds.

His quick thoughts rise, mist wafting from the dew,
As living dreams unveil more than he knew.
From poetry’s light the garden grew,
Revealing mysterious wonders new.

There Zhou relaxes, up against a tree,
Savoring the feeling of the poetry,
Where all the flowers used in Shakespeare’s plays
Grow together in a living bouquet.

The reason I created this thread is about that eternal property of things. — elucid

There are no permanent temporary things but just the permanent eternal. What's thought of as a 'thing' is series of events, as a hub of relations, a process.

What is the basis of the semblance, you might ask. Nature is kind of a ‘possibility gestalt’, the whole world occurring anew each moment; however, the deeper reality from which the world arises, in each case, acts as a unity in the sense of an indivisible ‘potentiality’, which can perhaps realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states. But… who really knows.

Launch yourself into deep space and see if you keep on going?

your simple poem above took me two or three reads before I really understood all 4 lines — ZhouBoTong

I had to first look up the Zhou Botong character on Wiki so that the poem would make a little bit of sense.

Suppose, you are something that exists at time 12 pm. Once it is 12:01 pm, the guy (you), which existed at 12 pm is non-existent now. — elucid

There are no objects that are identical with themselves over time, although it appears to us that the world consists of parts that have continued on from “a moment ago”, and thus still retain their identity in time. There are little deaths of parts as well as little births of parts happening all the time, as atoms coming and going, and more changes.

The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems.
The moment-to-moment changes differ from Death
Only in degree. In essence, they are identical,
Although at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Crazy people trust their beliefs enough to jump off of buildings singing "I believe I can fly". — Sunnyside

I jumped off of the Empire State Building one time, and lived to tell about it because, luckily, I was only on the first step when I jumped. Geronimo!

do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. — Serving Zion

Yes, for there can be no 'taking' in what is freely given with no conditions.

So how would or should this play out for a physicalist or someone who thinks that the paranormal or the supernatural - as used as categories, not that they are named well - do not exist? IOW how should they attempt to find counter-evidence? — Coben

Someone, I think, Randi, offered a lot of money to whomever could show something, and though a lot of people tried no one showed anything.

Faith is an example of a belief held without knowledge, faith is often held only by personal experience and hope. — Sunnyside

Trust' is a step up from 'faith', meaning that you have at least seen something happen, such as morning dawning. 'Faith' adds zero to what is wanted.

I just have a general aversion to poetry. — ZhouBoTong

Zhou BoTong, trapped in a cave by a poem,
As by the writing on the wall stranded,
Was martially both right and left handed;
Such he slashed rhythms and rhymes from the stone.

It's a product of the brain and nervous system, — Swan

Consciousness/mind is a brain process, then, a product, with the objects in the mind also a product/result, making the mind to be a reflection of what's already been figured out a split-second ago, all this not allowing for the mind to figure anything on its own, and thus not a soul.

Hammurabi had a code of morality and rules in 1700 BC.

What manner of phenomenon is Sin?
An independent entity, akin
To noxious fumes, which God resolved to clear
By proxy, through his Son in human skin?

Or is it just a property, possessed
By people who have willfully transgressed?
If so, a scapegoat proves of no avail;
The remedy lies in the sinner’s breast.

“I love this detective school, Sherlock.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.”

“This class of opium is great, too!”

“High school, Watson.”

Sherlock Holmes — TheMadFool

Sherlock, the great logician, even as a baby just born in a dark cave could infer the universe from a grain of sand, and in the next moment derive the existence of Niagara Falls and the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans from a drop of water.

Do you find your stuff on the internet — Sunnyside

No; it's mine.

or just make it up as you go? — Sunnyside

Only sometimes.

Happy to see that you're not from the dark side.

Perhaps one may at first obey out of fear, but later get used to obeying, and even later reflect on what good it does, and then just be morally good about it. Kind of like how some discipline their children.

I just got a letter asking me to pay the toll for the Whitestone Bridge.

'tension' between 'chatter' on the one hand, and 'ineffability', — fresco

'Ineffability' is all there is for believers to push forward with, which doesn't really do anything, no matter how much babbling. Some, then, push back, such as against science. They want what they want, and so they repeat their wishes a zillion times in a zillion ways over and over again. That's human nature.

On and on they say of Who paved the way,
Then even tell the nature of such Theity,
And on and on they presume further upon,
In that support group: ‘On and On Anon’.

Laudable it certainly is, this is one of the most interesting discussions I have ever seen here or elsewhere. — Sunnyside

The reasoning spurred by investigations into 'God' even gives us the outline of The Theory of Everything:

TOE Bound

The philosophical strides leap and bound,
For the causelessness of All must be found,
Along with the unfree will that dooms a Mind;
It’s staggering: All goes round and round!

NDE tunnels of light and such can be explained by neurology, and OBE’s by a condition called sleep paralysis. They can also be induced, resulting in full blown episodes. Neither, then, are proof of a beyond, but of an altered brain state.

It is also the case that people of different religions see different religious figures during NDE’s, an indication that the phenomenon occurs within the mind, not without.

OBE’s are easily induced by drugs. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially produced chemicals means that there are naturally produced chemical in the brain that, under certain circumstances (the stress of an trauma or an accident, for example), can induce any or all of the experiences typically associated with an NDE or OBE. They are then nothing more than wild trips induced by the trauma of almost dying. Lack of oxygen also produces increased activity though disinhibition—mental modes that give rise to consciousness.

What about the experience of a tunnel in an NDE? Well, the visual cortex is on the back of the brain where information from the retina is processed. Lack of oxygen, plus drugs generated, can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs ‘stripes’ of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be ‘seen’ as a tunnel.

We normally only see clearly only at about the size of a deck of cards held at arm’s length (Try looking just a little away and the clarity goes way down)—this is the center of the tunnel which is caused by neuronal stripes. I am not really dying to go down the tunnel…