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I read an account of a near-death experience a couple of years ago from an atheist man. When he "died", he went out of his body and saw Jesus in the room with him. He asked Jesus if he was real, or just an illusion/dream.

The image of Jesus then transformed into a ball of light. This ball of light communicated to the man that it initially appeared as Jesus because the man had a Christian upbringing and was familiar with the character of Jesus. It was essentially to make him feel more at ease.

But how confusing that we might bring our human thought processes to an after life where we'd need to see Jesus to make us feel comfortable. Wouldn't it make more sense for an afterlife to be so different from our human experience that it's almost undescribable?

I'd like to think that young children who pass away aren't trapped in an adolescent mindset after death. Growing up in heaven is equally unbelievable.

Instead I think it's highly probably that these near death experiences are more similar to deep meditation where we explore our innermost selves.

If I remember correctly, the man said that he eventually went to another "realm" or "dimension" that was beyond words, but that he needed a sort of transition between the two level of consciousness. It's probably similar to how deep sea divers cannot go to the surface too rapidly.

Deep sea divers can’t come up too rapidly because the nitrogen will cause their blood to boil, not for any mental reason.

That was just an analogy to illustrate the idea of transition.

>It's interesting, and somewhat comforting, that the brain can have these intensely emotional and personally meaningful experiences in the moments before death.

Instead of our mind saying plainly, "we're soon to be fertilizer," its perspective on the world is one of obsessive self-importance--such an inconvenient reminder that we will recycle our carbon is manipulated into a motivational and awe-inspiring event to help us pass on our DNA in a time when we are clearly likely to die. Maybe it is both comforting, and absurd, in the same way as our other daily experiences? We're not the most important thing in the universe, but our mind can sometimes treat us as such, and it seems this leads to entirely strange experiences all the time, they just don't seem particularly absurd, compared to meeting Jesus, because they're so common.

Think about all of the injustice in the world. One's mind typically isn't going to get worked up about "I really should do something about getting off this planet, or what about that Gulf of Tonkin incident, if I don't do something that kind of awful thing could happen again in the universe (like maybe in Iraq)." But when your time comes, yes of course, the Universe and God have concern about You.

> The eternal human obsession with death explains our intense interest in the experiences that come as close to it as possible.

You could argue that "existential crisis" is the fundamental bedrock on which we all stand. From eating to sex/procreating to jobs to addictions to sports to escapisms to you know name it, existential crisis lingers over it all.

And it's been posited that this all derives from a fluke of the brain/consciousness. The consciousness's mistaken assumption that the "I" exists ( aka Illusion of the self ).