[freddie]

First of all we need to seperate 2 things here: brain's reaction to a traumatic events (which might as well contribute to many of the phenomena described - tunnel & light vision for sure... plus some others) and actual philosophic discussion about life after death. Yes, most of the things we experience at death can be explained with a dying brain projecting nice images to us. But is that the ultimate proof there is no life after death? I don't think so. It's just a diversion. IMO we shouldn't really be looking at these side-effect things. If you really want to go about it scientifically there's really not much you can to with the reality as we know it (I totally agree with Killa's agnostic point of view on this... my idea here includes the theory of paralel universes, maybe a universes with different rules of physics (no 4 forces), but in reality it's completely beyond my comprehension.) So first things first: lets forget those damn tunnel vision side effects. LOL (Okay, though I have to admit I'm really curious why people feel at peace and calmed down, with no fear of dying after NDEs... I'm not saying it isn't a side-effect of the brain, but it's still interesting - drugs couldn't really recreate that feeling. Drugs usually lead to severe paranoia, violent nightmare-ish hallucinations and other unpleasent feelings in the long run rather than this soothing feeling people are describing.) Other than that - regarding what's been said already I agree with forre and killa completely.

These are my ... I shouldn't say beliefs... just my best guesses. I guess.

First of all let me point out that I have no evidence for these guesses. It's just my personal view-point on life the universe and everything.™ My beliefs are influenced by reading a few books, philosophic discussions, books on meditation plus various articles and reports. But ultimately it's what I "feel". It's just one of those things, where you feel something's right. Call it 6th sense or whatever.

As I mentioned before I don't believe there are coincidences regarding people we meet (and love) during our life-times. There are clusters of souls that stay together during many life-times and take on different roles, but always in mutual agreement. A cluster can be as small as just a 100 of souls to as big as millions. Reincarnation exists, but it's much more complicated than we could even imagine it to be. Everything needs to fit. A drunkard needs to live his current life so another mate from it's soul-cluster would meet him and would be influenced by his tragedy... now imagine billions of fates meeting up like that in a seemingly coincidental manner). A cluster of souls contains many souls that have been together since the begining of time (their perception of time is still linear, but we'll get to that later). The more lives individual souls of a specific cluster lead on Earth the more experience and knowledge they gain. Which leads towards greater unity of a cluster itself with the universal unity of souls, which exists on yet another level. Maybe this would be what we'd call "God", yet it's just a unity of inteligence, warmth and wisdom... a clusters that have moved on in it's wisdom from eternal cycles of reincarnation and learning to a higher dimension, where time and space no longer exist and where TRUE multidimensional living actually begins. We could call that the actual start of "existance"... without the illusion that time and space are a limited and linear. As I'll mention later this is not actually where souls are heading towards, btu also where they initially came from.

The universe itself in all it's glory - all the billions of galaxies and all the billions of stars those galaxies contain, along with billions of billions of planets that harbour inteligent life - is a fabulous testing ground for individual souls, soul clusters they belong to and soul groups in a wider sense of the word (like the groups of souls that inhabits the planet Earth specifically... as opposed to another group which for instance inhabits a planet revolving around Alpha Centauri). Rocky planets that revolve around the sun are like huge libraries of knowladge where a young restless soul is able to come to terms with who it is, what it's doing and where it's going. It's all about self-development in the purest sense of the word. When a cluster of souls evolves enough and reincarnations become redundant they can either choose to join the great unified entity in a higher dimension or decide (in solidarity with every individual soul inside the cluster), that they still have stuff to learn and take a leap into the great unknown - probably leaving Earth and heading towards another solar system and another planet (preferably with higher life-forms than on the former planet), to venture into another cycle of educational reincarnation process. While there's another cluster somewhere else on a different planet, who decided they learned enough on a planet inhabited with creatures who have the inteligence of early man and decide to look for pastures new, on Earth - thus taking the place of a cluster which just left to "settle" a planet inhabited by creatured of higher inteligence, or towards the great unified entity...

The greatest philosophic dilemma regarding reicarnation was this: since Earth's population is rising gradualy (from around 20-60 million 2000 years ago, to around 5000 million now), one would wonder where all the "new" souls come from to fill in bodies that are being born on Earth. The answer is... Universe is an (almost) endless mass of souls... there are more souls than there are stars, and as we know there are billions of billions of stars. They inhabit countless planets and move around from one solar system to another to start processes of reincarnation cycles. I know it sounds like a terrible logistical problem, but we shouldn't look at this from our limited earthly stand-points. It's all ran by a huge inteligence standing in the background of events - the before mentioned unified entity of higher evolved souls - a place where all of us will inevitably end. But not yet at death...

When we die, we just go back to our basic cluster - where other peers greet us and eagerly await to share the experience and knowledge we gained in the we just ended. After a soul spends a certain undefined amount of time in the astral world it's time to reincarnate into another life again. It's never a decision forced upon a soul. It always decides on it's own when the rest is over and it's time to go back again - I'd imagine it's quite a traumatic experience for a soul to leave it's bellowed cluster where it feels loved and protected, to go back to a vicious place called Earth, where it'd as well be surrounded by incarnated members of it's own cluster, but they'd artificially appear as complete strangers to them in the new life to come.

So basically I'd say there are 3 levels of reality:
1) our reality - physical world, time is linear, space is defined and limits us greatly...
2) reality of souls and their respective soul clusters - another dimension, but pretty similar to ours, time is linear, but runs differently from the one in our reality, space is defined but doesn't limit souls... this reality seems to be very closely connected to the universe we live in and it's just plausable it follows the basic rules of physics as well (at least the law of 4 forces, which probably define both dimensions)
3) reality of the great unity of highly evolved souls - no time, no space...or rather... all the time in the world. In this dimension everything is happening NOW... the past and the future are all part of the present - everything that did happen is happening now and everything that will happen is happening now as well... the only thing that still glues this dimension to the other two is the basic rule of 4 physical forces - they apparently represent tapistry of which the whole existence is made of. Other than that, this dimension seems to share little similarity to other two and requires a really enlightened soul-cluster to actually enter this realm, since a young and inexperienced souls would have problems comprehending it's wonderous nature.

Where did the souls initially come from? This is just an educated guess, but I'd say at certain point in time (or should I say at all points in time), the before mentioned unity of highly evolves souls, which was once probably just one super-inteligent entity decided to split into many pieces like a jig-saw puzzle and some pieces willingly submerged into lower dimensions in which they're limited by space and time, just so each piece of this giant puzzle would find it's way back to the original unity - while learning something in the process in the "lower" dimensions. This would actually be the initial reason for teh great collective unity to split - natural urge for knowledge and understanding. And what better training-ground to learn about itself than lower dimensions, like the realm of the souls and realm of the actual physical universe? So one migth ask then, where did the initial unified inteligence come from. The answer is... it's just been there forever. Don't forget the realm of the unified inteligence knows no time. The time in this dimension is always "forever" - all the moments happen at once and in every place of it's existence (no space limits). It's hard to really explain these mysterious, eternal properties of this dimension. Not even our souls (who already have - in Earthly terms - endless inteligence) can really grasp the wonders of it fully. Of course I wouldn't rule out there are more unified entities like this. Dosens, thousands, millions, billions? Each of those could submerge it's pieces into the great unknown of the dimensions limited by time and space... possibilities are absolutely fabulous and completely endless. But I'll tell you this much...

On a very bright night look up to the skies full of stars... notice that endless sea of twinkles emerging from the darkness of be background. Doesn't it feel like the universe is absolutely packed with all sorts of life all over the place? Doesn't it feel like it's like a busy metropolis bustling with activity? And futhermore don't you get that calming feeling like there's there some sorts of an unimaginable inteligence behind it? Something outrageously spectacuar and grand? I do.