Perspectives

Rachel and I were talking about near death experiences (NDEs) some time ago when we came to the question: should these accounts be understood as what will actually happen after death? To be clear, many of the experiencers do seem to believe everyone will experience something substantially similar to their NDE. At the time, I said to Rachel that I can believe NDEs are “real” (i.e., not hallucinations or lies or delusions) while also not believing they are photorealistic depictions of the afterlife. This is related to the rule I proposed in my post on speaking in tongues: never believe an experiencer’s explanation of their extraordinary experience. I’m circling around a way to understand strange experiences that: Rejects materialism (obviously!) Resists psychologizing Holds them to be true While rejecting any absolute truth claims made by the experiencer One way to do this might be through something like Amazonian perspectivism. Warning: my knowledge here is shaky. I first heard about…