The Lost Secret of Death by Peter Novak

Author:Peter Novak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

8

That's Why They Call It a Blind Spot: Cognitive Illusions in Afterlife Experiences

The victims of the best con men never even realize they've been conned.

—Contemporary folk saying

In chapter 1, when we read about cultures that once subscribed to the binary soul doctrine, we learned that many of our modern religions, as different as they now seem, originally painted much the same picture of what happens after death. In chapter 2, we discovered that science subscribes to a similar model of the human psyche, and that if the mind actually did survive death but split apart in the process, as the ancients believed, such a division would account for both the traditional Eastern and Western models of the afterlife. In chapters 3 through 6, we found that the data emerging from modern research into NDEs, PLRs, OBEs, ghosts, and poltergeists conforms well to the binary soul doctrine. We have seen, in chapter 7, that many statements of humanity's most famous and celebrated psychics and mystics are also in accord with this hypothesis.

Yet, despite this wealth of evidence, many in the field of afterlife research object to the split-mind model of the binary soul doctrine being used to explain the data coming in about NDEs, PLRs, ghosts, poltergeists, and so on. I wonder if this isn't because most people are in denial about the existence of the unconscious. Although the unconscious accounts for at least half of the human mind, most people never take it into account in their attempts to explain any of the conditions or experiences in their lives. Without this crucial piece to the puzzle, we often find ourselves scrambling to come up with alternative explanations for situations life throws at us. And then we defend those explanations, sometimes even in the face of tremendous evidence to the contrary.

He was wrong. She was wrong. They were wrong. No, I didn't say that. If I had said that, I would have been wrong. I would have been wrong. Isn't that right?

—Mr. Waturi, from the motion picture Joe vs. The Volcano

We sometimes find ourselves doing mental gymnastics to reassure our-selves that our minds are still whole and undamaged, that our interpretation of things is accurate and reliable, that we are not wrong. We all do this. We all have blind spots. We are all expert at deceiving ourselves.

In fact, whenever we get to know another person, sooner or later we come to identify some of their blind spots, yet often it never crosses our mind that we may have our own. We end up on intimate terms with the blind spots of our husbands, wives, bosses, and friends, but miss our own.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

—Matthew 7:3-4

So long as people do not acknowledge the

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