I've read hundreds of NDE accounts, and I have yet to find two that are identical.
Now, while your thirteen examples may pale in comparison to my hundreds, there is a common echo.
The stories differ. The imagery differs. The language differs. Culture, belief and personal history seem to provide much of the symbolic landscape through which an experience is understood and later described, not necessarily in what people see, but in what they feel.
Love. Trust. Freedom. Belonging. Connection.
The symbols may be the show.
The echo may be the feeling beneath them—the resonance, and perhaps resonance points toward another level of communication altogether.
Language may be one highly specialized form of connection, but it is not connection itself.
A tree doesn't need language to exchange resources with fungi, respond chemically to damage, orient toward light, or interact physiologically with neighbouring organisms. None of that establishes subjective consciousness in a tree, of course. But it demonstrates something important:
Relationship precedes language.
And perhaps consciousness—whatever consciousness ultimately is—doesn't create relationship.
Perhaps consciousness experiences relationship according to the form through which it is expressed.
Human form, one resonance?
Tree form, perhaps another.
I say that because of something that happened during my own NDE.
While outside my body, I encountered a huge maple tree. I remember wondering what it would be like to be a tree.
And then, as I experienced it, I was the tree.
What remains with me from that experience isn't a message the tree communicated to me. There were no words to translate. It was an entirely different way of experiencing relationship: sunlight on leaves, roots reaching deeply into the earth, drought, age, younger trees, interdependence and connection.
A different resonance.
And yet, somehow, recognizable.
That leaves me wondering whether we sometimes look for the Universal at the wrong level.
Perhaps it isn't found in identical teachings, identical symbols, identical experiences—or even in thirteen witnesses arriving at what appears to be the same destination.
Perhaps the differences matter.
Perhaps the symbol is the representation, the action is the expression, and relationship is the underlying condition.
The resonance may be how that relationship is experienced.
Different forms. Different symbols. Different stories. Different resonances.
And beneath them, perhaps, connection.
I don't know.
But if there is a Universal Echo, I wonder whether the most interesting question isn't who has spoken it, but what continues to resonate when the symbols fall away.
This will be a very interesting journey. I know so little about any of the first twelve, and anticipate learning about each of their visions of consciousness.
I've read hundreds of NDE accounts, and I have yet to find two that are identical.
Now, while your thirteen examples may pale in comparison to my hundreds, there is a common echo.
The stories differ. The imagery differs. The language differs. Culture, belief and personal history seem to provide much of the symbolic landscape through which an experience is understood and later described, not necessarily in what people see, but in what they feel.
Love. Trust. Freedom. Belonging. Connection.
The symbols may be the show.
The echo may be the feeling beneath them—the resonance, and perhaps resonance points toward another level of communication altogether.
Language may be one highly specialized form of connection, but it is not connection itself.
A tree doesn't need language to exchange resources with fungi, respond chemically to damage, orient toward light, or interact physiologically with neighbouring organisms. None of that establishes subjective consciousness in a tree, of course. But it demonstrates something important:
Relationship precedes language.
And perhaps consciousness—whatever consciousness ultimately is—doesn't create relationship.
Perhaps consciousness experiences relationship according to the form through which it is expressed.
Human form, one resonance?
Tree form, perhaps another.
I say that because of something that happened during my own NDE.
While outside my body, I encountered a huge maple tree. I remember wondering what it would be like to be a tree.
And then, as I experienced it, I was the tree.
What remains with me from that experience isn't a message the tree communicated to me. There were no words to translate. It was an entirely different way of experiencing relationship: sunlight on leaves, roots reaching deeply into the earth, drought, age, younger trees, interdependence and connection.
A different resonance.
And yet, somehow, recognizable.
That leaves me wondering whether we sometimes look for the Universal at the wrong level.
Perhaps it isn't found in identical teachings, identical symbols, identical experiences—or even in thirteen witnesses arriving at what appears to be the same destination.
Perhaps the differences matter.
Perhaps the symbol is the representation, the action is the expression, and relationship is the underlying condition.
The resonance may be how that relationship is experienced.
Different forms. Different symbols. Different stories. Different resonances.
And beneath them, perhaps, connection.
I don't know.
But if there is a Universal Echo, I wonder whether the most interesting question isn't who has spoken it, but what continues to resonate when the symbols fall away.
For you consideration https://glenroberts911399.substack.com/p/the-resting-place?r=1pgr4n&utm_medium=ios
Did you read https://substack.com/@theverticaldispatch/note/c-332809738?r=1pgr4n&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
This will be a very interesting journey. I know so little about any of the first twelve, and anticipate learning about each of their visions of consciousness.