What can we learn from near-death experiences (NDEs)?

According to cardiologist Pim van Lommel, M.D., author of Consciousness Beyond Life, the main difficulty is to understand what it means to be the witness of one’s own clinical death – a phenomenon that challenges ordinary logic.

In this two-part video of a discussion with Mel Van Dusen, Dr. van Lommel explains what brought him to believe that, unlike the body or the brain, consciousness is “non local”, and why he thinks this constitutes evidence that consciousness is not the mere product of neural activity but rather has a thoroughly autonomous mode of existence.

Yet NDEs are not only a scientific enigma: their far-reaching ethical and spiritual implications remain to be spelled out.

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This is a short excerpt from the French TV program “Les Chemins de la Foi” (The Routes of Faith) broadcasted on March 27, 2011.

The significance of Ostad Elahi and Malek Jân Nemati’s spiritual heritage is discussed during an interview of two specialists of the mystical traditions of Iran: Leili Anvar, Associate Professor of Persian literature at the Institut National des Langues et des Civilisations Orientales (Paris), and Christian Jambet, islamologist and Professor of philosophy (Paris). Read more

James Morris, Ph. D., is professor of Theology at Boston College. A specialist of islamic philosophy, he has written authoritative studies on Ibn ’Arabi and Mulla Sadra’s metaphysics. His most recent publications include a translation of Ostad Elahi’s Knowing the Spirit (SUNY, 2006), a book which he also prefaced and annotated.

In this video interview, published by ostadelahi-indepth.com, Prof. Morris discusses the reasons that led him to study this particular work. He emphasises its relevance and place in today’s modern world, and explains why it is much more than a book of philosophical theology, engaging its readers to make an essential connection between Ostad Elahi’s views and their own personal spiritual experience.

Michael Newton, Ph.D., started as a California state-certified Master Hypnotherapist. He is the renowned author of several groundbreaking books on the subject of past life regression: Journey of Souls (1994), Destiny of Souls (2000), and more recently, Life between lives (2004). He is also the editor of Memories of the Afterlife (2009), which includes a host of case studies written by members of his growing network of Life Between Lives therapists.

As Newton recounts in the featured interview, being rather sceptical by nature and with no particular religious background, it is almost by accident that he got involved in the experience of exploring these uncharted territories. His patients originally resorted to hypnosis in order to relieve persistent trauma-induced pains. It is the consistency of their reports concerning the “spirit world” which brought him to seriously investigate issues related to the immortality of the soul, the afterlife and past lives.

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The e-ostadelahi.com editorial board has asked Prof. Bahram Elahi for an interview on the theme of altruism. Having spent more than forty years delving deeper into the philosophy and thought of his father while carrying out his own research and experimentation, he has made Ostad Elahi’s philosophical and spiritual work known to a wider public through his numerous publications. In this interview, he explains the meaning of altruism for those who are striving towards perfection and provides us with some keys to its reasoned practice.

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Jean During, a specialist in Central Asia and author of numerous books, here describes the particular characteristics of Ostad Elahi’s music, putting it in relation with his spiritual teachings. The questions examined are the following: Why is Ostad Elahi recognized as the “master” of tanbur? To what extent and how did he reinvent its musical tradition? What place did music have for Ostad Elahi? Can his music be qualified as “meditative”? Is Ostad Elahi’s spiritual teaching as singular as his music? The views presented in this brief interview, are more extensively developed by Jean During in The Spirit of Sounds: The Unique Art of Ostad Elahi (L’Âme des sons : l’art unique d’Ostad Elahi), 2003 by Rosemont Publishing and Printing Corporation.
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