Profound question, Raoul. I've wondered about it, too, but I'm more in the wading pool than the deep end. Doesn't stop me from pondering.

I'm sort of like Woody Allen. I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

I don't think most people are afraid of dying, as such. I think the fear is of not having lived, of having needs which are unmet and now never will be. Sort of a "if this is all there is it's not fair!!"

I can remember taking a trip with my best friend while we were in high school. A calm, reasonable guy, All-State athlete two years in a row, wouldn't run for Student Body President because he said he got enough attention. Would have won.

Anyway, we were talking about death, and he said he wasn't afraid of it. Told me that if his time had come, it had come, and was probably none of his business. In high school he said that. Took me years and years to understand. He has always, always thought he has had all his needs met.

Anyway, I think the NDE is oxygen deprivation, the "rapture of the deep" sort of thing. If one can breathe and still not get enough oxygen one does get kind of giddy. It's a "high", comfortable, non-threatening. And some of those folks have had narcotics, a great way to feel comforted.

I've tried to compare my experience when I was bashed up and losing consciousness with that. On several occasions my lack of judgement and/or impaired mental and physical capacity has led to some distress. Once it was bad guys, but I didn't have to be there. Judgement thing.

They weren't NDE, but a few were pain and losing consciousness. When I lost consciousness I usually didn't remember much excepting the event starting. I remember once thinking "that dumb SOB, that's a left", then a brief bit of pain, confusion, and waking up. (It turned out he was left-handed. Severely bruised the poor guy's knuckles. Could have broken his hand.) No hell except when waking up and trying to put myself together.

On the others, there's damage assessment, ("I can't breathe, I'll suffocate, OK, I can breathe, my shoulder is broken, damn, OK, it'll move, my thumb is dislocated, ouch, that hurts"), sorting it out, then denying the importance of the problems, "just a sprain, not broken". The brain seems to prioritize things, scan, rate, does a pretty good job. Everything is on autopilot, and very busy. No time to experience hell.

I don't know what's going on with the people whose minds relax and experience something else.

All my thinking, all my trying to learn from those, gets me nowhere. However, if there is a spirit, I think it's a bit like water. Before we're born we're in sort of an amorphous spiritual cloud. Conception or birth might be like the creation of a raindrop. At that point we become concerned with how different we are, separate, look at the other raindrops and wonder who is the bigger, smarter, prettier, and who has the best place to be falling. Some raindrops fall longer and farther, and all hit the ground somewhere, sometime. And then return to the larger pool, join the other raindrops in one large, undifferentiated mass.

Been fun. Better get busy. Say "Hi!" to Europe. Saw an interesting set of figures last night.

"The three best aid providers, measured by the foreign aid percentage of their gross domestic products, are Denmark (1.01%), Norway (0.91%), and the Netherlands (0.79), The three worst: Australia, Portugal, and Austria (all 0.26), UK (0.23%), USA (0.10%)." You guys do good.

Arf