Death-Related Experiences Record Type: Review   ID: 763
Whole in One: The Near-Death Experience and the Ethic of Interconnectedness Lorimer, David
Lorimer writes: "This book begins with a survey of memory and life review in the near-death experience (NDE), and then compares NDE life reviews with postmortem reports of the same experience. I then develop the idea of empathetic resonance through examples drawn from various disciplines such as medicine, psychology, and parapsychology. Travelling to the East, and back to the twentieth-century West, we consider moral order in relation to the theory of karma and reincarnation. Having completed the experimentally based part of the study, I then investigate the way in which, historically, moral order was introduced into the notion of the afterlife. Turning to Christianity, we look at eschatology and the idea of post-mortem judgement as the ultimate divine and metaphysical moral sanction. With the decline of religious belief and the rise of the modern scientific spirit, however, many people, have abandoned divine and metaphysical frameworks for moral order, falling back on social relativism. The concluding chapter draws together the threads to propose a new ethic of empathetic resonance, based on the essential metaphysical and divine insight that all our consciousnesses are interconnected. The ultimate moral order is the Golden Rule in action: we seek to benefit both others and ourselves, recognizing ourselves in the other. In a world moving towards a dynamic ecological and political interdependence, the study of spiritual and near-death experience shows us that we are connected on an inner level as well. Just as the planet seen from space shows us the oneness of life, so our explorations of inner space reveal the underlying oneness of consciousness." The Golden Rule, it should be pointed out, is one that many EHEers feel compelled to acknowledge and adhere to.
Publisher Information:	London: Arkana, 1990. 340p. Bibl: 318-334; Chap. bibl: 288-317; 3 figs; Index: 335-340

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