Time, Reality and an Experience of Death

Categories

Human Potential

Science

The Austrian Nobel physicist Schroedinger pointed out in his essay "Mind and Matter", that the physicist, in an effort to "objectivate" observation, excludes himself as well as the whole world of the mind, from the "objective" scientific reality that is said to exist independently of human interaction. Schroedinger saw a great paradox in this separation of the world into subjective reality - the mind and the spirit - and objective reality the "physical" world around us. To him, "it is the spirit which constructs the real external world of natural philosophy (as well as our day to day world) from his own, that is spiritual, matter." Schroedinger adds that "the spirit can only handle this gigantic task [of creation of reality] with a simplifying trick: by excluding himself from it, by withdrawing from his creation, which thus no more contains its creator."

As the vedic scholar Markus Schmieke points out in a recent article in the German raum&zeit, this separation of reality into "subjective" and "objective" keeps us from fully understanding physical reality.

In classical physics, especially in its relativistic incarnation, time is merely a vector of the sequence of events and is associated with space in "four dimensional space-time". It has been relegated to being a passive ordering parameter and no qualitative distinction is made between the past, the present and the future. Physics does not consider the "here and now", the moment of the actual happening of events, to be any different than a point in the past or one in the still uncertain future.

In accordance with vedic wisdom, says Schmieke, time is what brings the spirit into the world of physical manifestation, establishing a firm link. He cites Ilya Prigogine and his thoughts on the paradox of time and says that the big bang proposed by conventional physics is where a real event, one that requires the existence of a moment of "here and now", breaks the illusion of time being a mere parameter of orderly progression in an essentially pre-determined world. "The big bang hypothesis has led human thought and especially physics into a deep crisis."

As Albert Nickitin wrote today,

"for some reason intuitively it seems, that in all our 'scientific' search for more and more exotic substances we absolutely ignore the multiregularity of our World, taking it into account only as a time "coordinate," invented by mathematicians, which in real physical terms must remind us of the mystical spells of barbarians. At the same time, quite substantially following from Einstein's General Relativity, the presence of a 4-th coordinate and by that of a plurality of worlds similar to ours, is skipped and is subconsciously considered to be nothing but fictition...    

If this neglect was not so apparent, we could go on for a long time finding ever new and different patterns, basing ourselves solely on SURFACE effects and appearances. For now, we probably are quite similar to those obviously unreasonable fish living in the river, who seriously figure that the leaves that from time to time appear before them, have arisen out of the water's volume (their "world"), and who are not thinking about any other possibility."

My question is: Can one man's experience of death help us get a better grip on the reality that composes our physical world? I believe it can at least strengthen our personal balance by letting us glimpse the - admittedly subjective - experience of a world that clearly lies on the other side, a world that is quite separate from our own "objective" physical existence but that may just be of crucial importance if we want to understand.

Please bear with me in reading this highly interesting account of Mellen-Thomas Benedict, who went and came back to describe that "other world" outside of the physical.

MELLEN-THOMAS BENEDICT'S NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

For the latest updates on Mellen Thomas:
Mellen Thomas Near Death Experience NDE
The official website of Mellen Thomas

Mellen-Thomas Benedict is an artist who survived a near-death experience in 1982. He was dead for over an hour and a half after dying of cancer. At the time of his death, he rose up out of his body and went into the light. Curious about the universe, he was taken far into the remote depths of existence, and even beyond, into the energetic void of nothingness behind the Big Bang. During his experience, he was able to learn a great deal of information concerning reincarnation. Because of his near-death experience, he was able to bring back scientific discoveries. Mr. Benedict has been closely involved in the mechanics of cellular communication and research dealing with the relationship of light to life called Quantum Biology. This research is providing dramatic new perspectives on how biological systems work. Mr. Benedict has found that living cells can respond very quickly to light stimulation resulting in, among other things, high speed healing. He is a researcher, inventor and lecturer who holds six U.S. patents. 

Mr. Benedict's Near-Death Experience is reprinted here by the permission of the authors Dr. Lee Worth Bailey and Jenny Yates. Their excellent book entitled "The Near-Death Experience: A Reader", published by Routledge, New York, in 1996, is highly recommended by the webmaster. A portion of his near-death
experience also appears in P.M.H. Atwater's book, "Beyond the Light". Concerning Mellen's near-death experience, Dr. Ken Ring remarked, "His story is one of the most remarkable I have encountered in my extensive research on near-death experiences."

.............

Dr. P. M. H. Atwater Writes:

(on this site)

Mellen-Thomas Benedict's case is part of my original near-death research; a brief version of it appears in my book, 'Beyond the Light'. I can attest that his case is genuine and his claims about the brain tumor and the conditions of his death are true. I have met his mother and step-father, been in his and their homes, and have followed his life since -- his struggles and his accomplishments -- as he sought to find a way to integrate his experience into his daily life while still honoring the mission he felt guided to fulfill.

What you are about to read has a hint of mystery to it, and this is the mystery: this version of his story (which reads like an article) is actually a transcription of a tape made of a talk he gave about a decade ago. Whoever did the transcription then put the story on the Internet for free distribution. Five different people sent it to me, so I contacted Mellen-Thomas to discuss the situation. He and I both felt it was as if the Universe, his soul, God, was saying to him. . . 'It's time now to open up and share your story. You have something to say that needs to be heard.'

Whoever put his material on the Internet did the man a favor, actually, did all of us a favor, and not just because his is such an interesting case (it truly is) -- but because of how he has matured since and what he has learned. Should you wish to contact him, he has given me permission to publish his address and telephone number:

Mellen-Thomas Benedict
P. O. Box 1898
Soquel, CA 95073
(831) 427-5554

------------

MELLEN-THOMAS BENEDICT'S NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE
By Mellen-Thomas Benedict
near-death.com

In 1982 I died from terminal cancer. The condition I had was inoperable, and any kind of chemotherapy they could give me would just have made me more of a vegetable. I was given six to eight months to live. I had been an information freak in the 1970's, and I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. So, since I did not have a spiritual basis, I began to believe that nature had made a mistake, and that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. I saw no way that we could get out from all the problems we had created for ourselves and the planet. I perceived all humans as cancer, and that is what I got. That is what killed me. Be careful what your world view is. It can feed back on you, especially if it is a negative world view. I had a seriously negative one. That is what led me into my death. I tried all sorts of alternative healing methods, but nothing helped.

So I determined that this was really just between me and God. I had never really faced God before, or even dealt with God. I was not into any kind of spirituality at the time, but I began a journey into learning about spirituality and alternative healing. I set out to do all the reading I could and bone up on the subject, because I did not want to be surprised on the other side. So I started reading on various religions and philosophies. They were all very interesting, and gave hope that there was something on the other side.  

On the other hand, as a self-employed stained-glass artist at the time, I had no medical insurance whatsoever. So my life savings went overnight in testing. Then I was facing the medical profession without any kind of insurance. I did not want to have my family dragged down financially, so I determined to handle this myself. There was not constant pain, but there were black-outs. I got so that I would not dare to drive, and eventually I ended up in hospice care. I had my own personal hospice caretaker. I was very blessed by this angel who went through the last part of this with me. I lasted about eighteen months. I did not want to take a lot of drugs, since I wanted to be as conscious as possible. Then I experienced such pain that I had nothing but pain in my consciousness, luckily only for a few days at a time.

I remember waking up one morning at home about 4:30 am, and I just knew that this was it. This was the day I was going to die. So I called a few friends and said goodbye. I woke up my hospice caretaker and told her. I had a private agreement with her that she would leave my dead body alone for six hours, since I had read that all kinds of interesting things happen when you die. I went back to sleep. The next thing I remember is the beginning of a typical near-de