The “Projection Model”… ALL of Them Are Right?

From: The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife - Gregory Shushan

From: Mind Beyond Death – Dzogchen Ponlop

 

An alternate modification to Price’s hypothesis is that the otherworld is as objective as this one, but that things there are only perceived differently according to the individual. Or, more accurately, the individual actually “projects” specific forms onto a general background structural experience. The generic otherworld features are “clothed” with coherent imagery by the psyche of the person having the experience. The otherworld and a soul’s experiences there are thus not generated by culture and individual, but nor are they separable from culture and individual. A person’s stock of images, memories, creativity, and ideas overlay the mostly featureless background experiences, bringing them to life, making them comprehensible and indeed experienceable. 

As outlined earlier, the combination of cross-cultural diversity and similarity of NDEs indicates different perceptions of the same phenomena. In the next world, it might likewise be a case of subjective interpretations being mentally projected onto the structural, thematic environment.

For example, everyone may travel to the same spirit village, but the dwellings would be perceived variously as wood-and-straw huts, adobe houses, skyscraper apartments, tipis, stone cottages, and so on. This brings us back to the Bardo Thödol as discussed in Chapter 1, in which the “Clear Light” in the otherworld is experienced by the soul as a culturally relevant identity, whether the Buddha, Vishnu, Jesus, Muhammad, or a generic “being of light”.

The afterlife thus “shares certain intersubjective features for all its ‘inhabitants,’ has various regions suited to various types of consciousness, and responds in its minor events to the thoughts and wills of its ‘inhabitants’ or experimenter/creators. 

As in Pure Land Buddhism, deceased relatives and other spirits would be real identities rather than illusory, and only certain details could be altered by individual souls.

Only objects, not people, are mind-dependent, and individuals retain consciousness and free-will. For example, if multiple individuals simultaneously desire to see the same person, that person cannot be forced to appear to any of them.

Becker found this model to be the best way to account for both NDEs and Mahayana Buddhist meditation accounts, and it is consistent with the evidence that NDEs themselves are composed of cross-culturally thematically stable features, experienced in culture- and individual-specific ways.

This “projection model” variation of the mind-dependent hypothesis is, in fact, often the conclusion reached by scholars who explore the problem from multiple angles, and who actually engage with both differences and similarities. Osis and Haraldsson (1986: 182), for example, hypothesized that scenes of idealized earthly beauty are “symbolizations” of the feelings of joy, peace, and calm typically reported by NDErs. The diversity of otherworldly landscapes is merely a reflection of the idealized local environment of the NDEr. Likewise, Greyson pointed out that cross-cultural diversity of NDE’s could indicate different perceptions of the same phenomena.

There is, however, simply no reason to believe that disembodied individuals would cease to process their experiences in their own idiosyncratic modes, including the use of personal and cultural memory, imagination, and visual metaphor.

Given the nearly infinite diversity of human life experiences on Earth according to individual, environmental, geographic, economic, racial, cultural, biological, historical, social, and familial circumstances, it seems inconceivable that such diversity would simply cease to exist in an afterlife.

The fundamental interpretation of NDEs appears to be universal – not only in general religious, mystical, or otherwise supernatural terms, but specifically in the belief that this is what happens when we die.

Accepting that experience is culturally mediated is not the same as accepting that it is entirely culturally fabricated

Exceptional experiences, such as apparently being out of the body, and travelling to another, realm, are commonly regarded by those who have them as occurring beyond the physical senses, and therefore not subject to physical laws, and that’s beyond our ability to understand through our usual constraining modes of materialist, analysis, and interpretation. In other words, while unmediated experiences is not normally possible, it is at least. Philosophically conceivable that in exceptional states it is.

It is more productive to see such experiences as having interconnected universal, individual, and cultural layers: universal “events” which are experienced by enculturated individuals who give them specific form. These individuals subsequently attempt to make sense of the experience according to their socio-cultural-religious situation, or indeed by innovating away from it.

 

In 16th century Chinese Pure Land Buddhist texts the afterlife is mind-dependent, though “the fact that everyone at death seems to report essentially similar imagery demonstrates that the Pure Land is indeed intersubjective and substantial rather than hallucinatory or illusory”

The Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead, c. eighth century CE) describes how souls undergo an expected set of intermediate postmortem experiences, though their character is determined by cultural and individual expectation. These involve leaving the body, an encounter with a bright light, having a “karmic body” formed by one’s “own past and deeds,” encounters with good and evil entities (including beings of light), darkness, fear, judgment, and punishment followed by rebirth. Afterlife images are mind-dependent manifestations of personal hopes, fears, desires and so on

 

From “Mind Beyond Death” – Dzogchen Ponlop

 

As we enter the second phase of the bardo of dharmata, the clarity aspect of the dharmakaya luminosity begins to become more vivid. The luminosity that arises now from the ground nature of mind is the luminosity of appearance. It is called spontaneously arising luminosity or the luminosity of spontaneous presence. It is self-arising wisdom expressed in an elaborate variety of appearances. This occurs when luminosity dissolves into unity. Unity, here, refers to the unity of appearance and emptiness.

Even when they arise in particular forms, our experience of those forms is a personal one. We may think that we all see in the same way, but actually we do not. For example, when several people look at the same object at the same time, the way in which each person sees it is completely individual. Why? Our experience is unique to our makeup because everything is mind, and mind has no absolute existence; therefore it has no fixed way of appearing. 

The deities that appear now are the basic truth, or intrinsic nature, of our mind. They are the reflection in space of the enlightened qualities that are inseparable from the primordial wisdom that is the actual nature of our mind.

The symbolic forms of the deities become a potent means of communicating the aspects of buddha wisdom they embody. 

At the time of the appearance of the deities, we also experience forms that are perceived as sounds. It is said that these sounds are extremely intense and powerful, like the sound of a thousand thunderbolts simultaneously resounding through space. The Tibetan term for this translates as “dragon sound.” Of course, since these are all symbolic teachings, the sounds you hear may not be exactly like that. However, at this time all perceptions are heightened and intensified. Sounds, too, may be so overwhelmingly sharp and clear that they inspire a sense of anxiety or dread.

The absolute deity that appears at this time is one’s own nature of mind, brilliant, luminous and totally empty. 

In the bardo of dharmata, the peaceful and wrathful aspects of the buddhas are nothing other than the wisdom energy of our own mind, doing the job of waking us up.

Such a manifestation can be stunning in its brilliance and overpowering in its intensity. It can appear so bright that we feel our senses cannot withstand it. 

Usually, when we talk about things like luminosity, clarity, or clear light, it is very conceptual and abstract. In the end, we are still wondering what luminosity really means. However, it is nothing other than what we experience as these strong emotions. 

We may talk about “light” and its “brightness,” or we can use words such as “emptiness” and “sacredness,” but the actual experience is beyond anything we can grasp intellectually through listening to teachings or reading books. The actual experience can be known only when it is present in our hearts.

All the appearances of the deities and mandalas, of the sounds and lights, arise from the basic nature of our own mind. Mind’s basic nature manifests in the form of clarity-emptiness, sound-emptiness and awareness-emptiness. There is nothing external, nothing outside of us.

When we can rest our mind in its natural state, we can feel the luminosity, we can feel the emptiness and egolessness; it is not an abstract experience. It is like an experience of taste—you know what something is when you have tasted it. There is no doubt. You know. It is that kind of knowing that we are talking about here as actual experience—even if it is only a glimpse.

  

The things I marked in bolded above sound a LOT like NDEs, and explaining why they seem like a different realm and are always personally comprehended.  Gregory found that NDE’s are not cultural because the experiences can be different then the experiencer expected.  However, he said they culture filters and gives meaning to the experience for the person to understand it. A person can only understand what they can believe is real.

The Buddhist take is that the part of us that is aware of what is real opens up to be less limited, hence things in an NDE can feel “more real” as many people claim from an NDE. 

Since this “openness” is inherently in everyone, it is also why all cultures have the same similar themes of a greater realm.

It’s not a realm that is real, but a perfect sense of awareness of ALL.  It is this that is perceived as a “realm” for the person to comprehend, since in essence, the state of “greatest awareness” is nothing that can be comprehended, yet it is still fully experienced.

There are also parallels in the Vedas, which describe the heavenly realm (Svargaloka) as “a projection of the mind” and an intermediate state to be transcended by achieving moksha, or liberation (Panikkar 1977: 633). It is reached by traveling in a “chariot of the mind” according to the Rig Veda, or “by means of the mind” in the Upanishads. Indeed, the Upanishads characterize dreaming and lucid dreaming as analogous to the afterlife state, with the atman described as “that person who, as one sleeps, roams about in dreams.”

In general, the afterlife beliefs found in various ancient texts facilitate a mind-dependent or collective lucid dream interpretation when we consider the recurring importance placed upon themes of

(a) self-awareness and realization of the reality of the spiritual self; and 
(b) souls of the dead being continually associated with the divine – notably including creator-deities – while still retaining their discrete identities.

The concept of group souls is also found in indigenous societies. The idea of a post-mortem collective merging with the ancestors or other spirit beings was common in Oceania, including among Aboriginal Australians. In Hawaii it was believed that souls of the dead were “united in thought and all joined together … in harmony” with relatives, friends, and acquaintances. In the Cook Islands there was a belief in groups of souls ascending together with the sun-god. In Melanesia, the Kiwai believed that people from the same villages lived together in the spirit world.

The Wyandot, Ojibwe, and other Algonquian peoples believed in culturally divided afterlife realms for indigenous people and Europeans, while the Wyandot also believed in afterlife divisions based on social groupings. For the Pawnee, each family had their own afterlife village

In Africa, the idea of transcending individuality into “collective immortality” in the spirit world was common. It is typified by the Lango concept of “Orongo,” which is “the universal spirit from which the individual tipo [soul] derives its separate, though not entirely independent, origin.”

In summary, just as we dream in symbols – giving form and apparent “reality” to fears, desires, worries, hopes, and other abstract concepts without conscious intent or deliberation – it is conceivable that we manifest our afterlife experiences in the same way.

The most common features can therefore give us some idea of what the afterlife experience could be like, including OBE, darkness, light, heightened awareness and emotions, meeting spirits of the dead, personal evaluation, and so on – all given specific form by our individual and cultural particularities.

In any case, if we grant that NDEs are evidence for survival after death, that evidence tells us about a transitional period rather than about any ultimate fate. 

A mind-dependent afterlife could be merely an intermediate phase prior to some other state of being, or even annihilation, or a nirvana-like impersonal merging beyond consciousness.

It is also conceivable that different postmortem fates await different people, whether determined by culture, belief, or some unknown factor. Some may enter a mind-dependent state influenced by their state of mind and awareness at the moment of death. Others may find themselves in heavenly or hellish realms according to their actions and thoughts in this life (whether mind-dependent or otherwise). Some may remain on Earth in ghostly form, while others may reincarnate and perhaps eventually achieve a transcendent, transpersonal state. And some may simply die with the body. This kind of wide diversity of post-mortem possibilities could conceivably explain why up to 90% of those who come close to death do not report NDEs – perhaps some other fate awaited them.

There are grounds to believe in the veridicality of NDEs, reincarnation, and perhaps mediumship, and therefore there are reasonable grounds to believe in an afterlife.