M.J. Rose

Enjoy this lecture by Peter Fenwick – (thank you to Toward The Light for this link)

Science & Spirituality?: A Challenge for the 21st Century

The Bruce Greyson Lecture from the International Association for Near-Death Studies 2004 Annual Conference

Peter Fenwick, M.D., F.R.C.Psych.
Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London, U.K.
Mental Health Group, University of Southampton, U.K.

Peter Fenwick, M.D., F.R.C.Psych., is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London, and associated with the Mental Health Group at the University of Southampton. He is also Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the MaudsleyHospital and at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and holds a visiting professorship in Japan, where he spends three months of the year in advanced neuropsychiatric research. Reprint requests should be addressed to Dr. Fenwick at the Institute for Psychiatry, deCrespigny Park Road, London S.E.5, United Kingdom; e-mail: Peter_Fenwick@ compuserve.com.

This paper was transcribed and edited from Dr. Fenwick’s Bruce Greyson Lecture at the 2004 annual conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies by Janice Miner Holden, Ed.D., Professor in, and Coordinator of, the counselling program at the University of North Texas in Denton. Dr. Holden’s primary area of research interest is the transpersonal perspective in counselling, in general, and near-death and similar experiences – their veridicality and their role in personal and transpersonal development – in particular. She currently serves as president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.

A major and relatively rapid shift is underway in the field of medicine. In the past 10 years, medical professionals have gone from looking upon spirituality with a sceptical if not cynical eye, to embracing it enthusiastically. Consider these developments…

(for the complete lecture please click here.)

Thank you to author Josie Brown for answering this week’s Reincarnationist Q&A.

THE QUESTIONS:

What is your most marked characteristic that you believe could be a hold over from a past life?
When I was a teenager, the clothing, furnishings, and songs from that the 1920s and 1930s strongly resonated with me. I wanted to wear my hair in a Louise Brooks bob. (Not easy, when it’s as curly as mine is!) Thank goodness cap and dolman sleeves had made a comeback, as had wide sailor pants–and yes, I wore them! As a young adult, I purchased several antiques from that era, including a little booze cabinet. (Where the hell is it now? Where did I leave it?) And once, while in a flea market, I had an overwhelming desire to purchase an antique Victrola that came with about 400 records: all jazz and ragtime. One of my biggest regrets is that I talked myself out of doing so.

What is your principle defect that you believe may be inherited from a previous incarnation?
Fear of water, fear of fire, fear of heights. Then again, I’ve almost drowned three times in this life, so maybe it is a carry-over after all. Still, I love the ocean (from the shore!).

Which of your favorite heroes do you think you could have been and why?
I think I was an actress on the stage, or in the talkies. Maybe Jean Harlow, or Carole Lombard. I’ve studied that time period of history obsessively. I have a very large collection on biographies and books about that time period. In fact, I’ve begun writing a novel–a sprawling saga about that time period, but it’s still got some shaping to go. (200 pages and counting…)

What three people from history would you like to have over to dinner for a discussion about reincarnation?
Albert Einstein, Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi, and of course, Harry Houdini!

What do you think happens when we die?
I truly believe that our life force is energy in its purest form. Twice I’ve been visited by someone who has passed before me. He came to comfort me when irrational fear got the better of me. When you can so clearly hear a voice of someone you know and love so well, it’s hard to doubt that the deceased aren’t still out there; that we’re all on the reincarnation merry-go-round. Unfinished business is a bitch, ain’t it?

Josie Brown‘s next novel, Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives, will be out June 1, 2010. (Simon & Schuster/Downtown Press).

Josie’s website is: http://www.josiebrown.com

Please enjoy this treasury of podcasted seminars on long term thinking presented by the thought-provoking folks over at The Long Now Foundation. There is one talk in particular that I think you may really enjoy: the talk given by Daniel Everett on “Endangered languages, lost knowledge and the future”  (scroll down here to find Everett’s podcasted talk) –

Here’s a summary…

“Language Revolution

The Pirahã tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 miles.  An exceptionally cheerful people, they live with a focus on immediacy, empiricism, and physical rigor that has shaped their unique language, claims linguist Daniel Everett.

The Pirahã language has no numbers or concept of counting (only terms for “relatively small” and “relatively large”); no kinship terms beyond immediate children and parents; no “left” and “right” (only “upriver” and “downriver”); no named distinction of past and future (only near time and far time); no creation stories or myths; and—most important for linguists—no recursion.

A recursive sentence like “The boy who was fishing owned the dog” does not occur in the Pirahã language.  They would say, “The boy was fishing” and “The boy owned the dog.”  The eminent linguist Noam Chomsky has declared that recursion is an essential part of human language and is innate.  Chomsky’s former student Everett says that the Pirahã language proves otherwise.  The resultant controversy is profound.

The Pirahã language is the simplest in the world.  Speaking it and singing it are the same, and it can be hummed or even whistled, yet it can convey enormous richness.  Among other things, the wide variety of verb forms are used to account for the directness of evidence for a statement.  Everett originally went to the Pirahã in 1977 as a Christian missionary.  They challenged him to provide evidence for the existence of Jesus, and lost interest when he couldn’t.  Eventually so did he.  The Pirahã made him an atheist.

And the through him the Pirahã revolutionized how we think about language.

Some 40 percent of the world’s 6,912 known languages are endangered, says Everett, and that endangers science.  When we lose a language, we lose a whole way of life, a whole set of solutions to problems, a whole classification system and body of knowledge about the natural world, a whole calendar system, a whole complex of myths, folktales, and songs.

Everett spelled out what it takes to preserve a living language that is endangered.  The land where the speakers live must be preserved, and their health should be protected.  The language needs to be documented in detail.  And you could do worse than make a donation to the Foundation for Endangered Languages .” (S. Brand – The Long Now Foundation)

There are many more talks where this came from, on subjects as varied as “Machines and the Breath of Time” and “The Consequences of Human Life Extension”… Click here to explore.