Godehard Brüntrup is a professor at the Munich School of Philosophy. He deals with consciousness phenomena and has had a Near Death Experience (NDE) himself:
“Well, one thing that is quite remarkable is the fact that people who’ve had near-death experiences often say that they’ve become more spiritual but less religious, which is quite uncomfortable for many religious representatives. However, they usually mean, and this can be a bit misleading, that religion is something that is assigned to a certain group. And with these groups there come certain holy texts and everyone else is excluded who doesn’t have this commitment to the holy texts. They oftentimes leave this narrow, maybe dogmatic – speaking in a negative sense – concept of religion behind, because they think that the reality of spirituality and of God is a lot wider. And they’d like to continue being part of their religion in a more intensified sense. And they wouldn’t be able to harm anybody anymore just because a person might be part of the ‘wrong’ religion. A deeply spiritual person has such a deep well, they see the same divine and spiritual power in all the other religions too, even in non-believing atheists, who have good intentions to live in a morally authentic way, and trying to live the best as well. People who’ve had near-death experiences often think that divine powers and energies are present everywhere. And this broadened horizon is typical of people who’ve had near-death experiences.
Interviewer: “Don’t you think that many established religious representatives might worry when there are people out there who’ve had a revelation outside of holy texts, so to speak?”
Yes, that’s very typical for Christian churches, such as Protestantism where it states, ‘the Holy Scriptures only.’ This doesn’t even include philosophy or other sources, but they would experience God and the approval of God just through the Holy Scripture. And then of course, you’re skeptical towards somebody who’s had a revelation outside of this Holy Scripture. This might happen a little less in the Catholic Church, but it also exists in the form of an underlying idea that there is a fear that private revelations can happen apart from the established revelations of the Gnostic and Illuminatidom. However, Saint Ignatius of Loyola – the founder of the Jesuit order – said that he had mystical experiences that were so enriching that he wouldn’t need the bible anymore. He said he was glad he had it but he could just live according to those mystical experiences. And this was stated by a saint of the Catholic Church. There are many more examples. I could tell you a lot more. But what I’m trying to say is that there is certainly room for this tradition of great mystical experiences in religions – also in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism & Islam anyway. Mystics have always been viewed a bit skeptically, but they’ve got their place in all major religions.
And I would like to categorize near-death experiences as a form of mystical experience. And a religion’s test for mystic experience has always been whether it proves itself useful in life. Somebody can claim she or he’s had a mystical experience but how can this be verified? And you can find the answer for this in practically every religious community: IF the person changes his or her life completely – becomes more caring, loving, less drawn to selfishness, has less ambitions for recognition and wealth, is less drawn to materialistic goals. The person becomes more sensitive in relationships, selfless and humble due to this experience, the experience was real.
And if you use this measurement method for near-death experiences, you can tell whether it was real. Because people really change to the positive after a near-death experience, speaking from a spiritual point of view. …
These are completely different from experiences with drugs. There you might have those out-of-body experiences every now and again, but they don’t have this clear message regarding the sense of life. There might be one or two drugs out there that are used for rituals by indigenous peoples, such as drugs that contain the substance DMT, which can also cause spiritual awakenings, but first of all, the interesting aspect is the content of this spiritual awakening.
And if you appreciate this rich content of experiences and understand them, then you can still ask, ‘How does this fit into our natural world?’ And here I would advise a sort of intellectual humility. Near-death experiences are obviously deeply mysterious. Death has always been viewed as something holy by religions because it is deeply mysterious. Near-death experiences suggest at least that death isn’t just a flame of life that is slowly burning down, but that it is once again a phase of life that is of extreme importance for life as a whole. Even if you can’t see any of this from the outside, but for the ones who live through this process of dying from the inside, it is of extreme importance and a moment of clarity of the consciousness.”
Near-Death Experiences and the Mysteries of Consciousness - Godehard Brüntrup in Conversation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSvfoKZnnYs
