'Deadly Networks' out to get me?

Drift Net
Deadly Networks?
or
Mere Drifters

Google Images

I thought at first that I was being alerted by an email to the dangers of drift nets, as the words "Deadly Networks" caught my eye, but upon looking more closely and perceiving the subject heading, which read, "YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN PAID FOR," I realized that I'd just received my first death threat (YAWN) in my time as a blogger - in fact, my first death threat (YAWN) ever in my . . . uh, life. It's from someone or other calling himself "Serial Killer," and this is how his message opened:

Attention, I am very sorry for you, [it] is a pity that this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don't comply. As you can see we are the members of the Deadly Networks in the world, which is responsible for the bombing of twin . . . tower's in America on Sept. 11th and the bombing of London transport services on July 7th (AL-QAEDA NETWORKS WORLDWIDE), I don't have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL you and I have to do it as I have already been paid for that. (Bold italicized underlined emphasis mine - HJH.)

Let me get this straight. Deadly Networks is the official name of the larger network, or association of networks, that includes Al-Qaeda, and this 'Serial Killer,' who's already been paid to kill me (and therefore has to do it) happens to feel sorry enough for me to let me know that he's going to kill me "as soon as . . . [I] don't comply." Eh? How would he know when I've begun not to comply? And not to comply with what? My death? Am I supposed to make an appointment? And he promised to tell me how I'm going to die. Well, how then? He doesn't say. So . . . is he going to fly a passenger plane into me? Or will he leave a bomb on me - as if I were a seat on a subway train? Let's see more on this:

Someone who you called your friend wants you dead by all means, and this person have spent a lot of money in this venture, This person came to us and told me that he wanted you dead and he provided us with your name, picture and other necessary information's we needed about you.

Some 'friend' wants me "dead by all means." I guess that means by planes, trains, and automobiles, at least, along with everything else in this wide, wild, wonderful universe that can kill a man. Hmm . . . Let me address this hitman directly.

Ahem. This job sure sounds complicated for you, but if you would just let me know the name of this friend of mine, that'd simplify things for sure. As you see, I'm complying, not delaying, merely trying to make things easier for you. At the moment, I just need to know what stage you've reached in your obligation to kill me. You seem to relate that below:

So I sent my boys to track you down this including bugging of your phones with satellite tracking devices and they have carried out the necessary investigation we needed for the operation on you, and if you doubt this information [I] am going to give you all the necessary information about you back to you in your next reply so that you can believe me, and my boys are really on you but I told them not to kill you that I will like to contact you and see if your life is important to you . . . . I called my client back and ask him of your email address which I didn't tell him what I wanted to do with it and he gave it to me and I am using it to contact you now. As I am writing you this mail my men are monitoring you and they are telling me everything about you.

Well, you certainly sound as though you know what you're doing. I congratulate you on your professionalism. That clever trick that got you my email address was pure genius. The 'friend' of mine will never suspect the truth. Good thing he didn't happen to ask why you wanted my email, else you'd have had to make up some story, why, like, "I don't know, I just want it," and that might have made him suspicious. (Folks just don't seem to trust each other anymore!) Moreover, I have to admit that my life is important to me. You're quite insightful for a sociopathic hitman. Indeed, I'm willing to pay a huge amount of cash just to hear that I won't be killed. How much do you want?

Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? Since all program has be made and draw to kill you. Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your Life, $8,000 is all you need to spend in this process you will first of all Pay $3,000 and then I will send a tape to you which I recorded in every discussion I had with the person who wanted you dead and as soon as you get the Tape, You will pay the remaining balance of $5,000. If you are not ready for my help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up.

Only eight thousand dollars?! What an insult! My life is worth far more than a piddly 8,000! Of course, I want to live, but not for a mere 8,000 dollars! Get serious! I demand a more worthy proposal, or I won't pay a cent!

WARNING: DO NOT THINK OF CONTACTING THE POLICE OR EVEN TELLING ANYONE BECAUSE I WILL KNOW, REMEMBER, SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU VERY WELL WANT YOU DEAD! . . . . IN CASE I NOTICE SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT YOUR TELLING THE SECURITY ABOUT IT BECAUSE A GOOD LOOK IS OUT YOU AT THE MOMENT. DO NOT COME OUT ONCE IT IS 8 PM UNTIL I MAKE OUT TIME TO SEE YOU AND GIVE YOU THE TAPE OF ALL DISCUSSION WITH THE PERSON WHO WANT YOU DEAD THEN YOU CAN USE IT TO TAKE ANY LEGAL ACTION. GOOD LUCK AS I AWAIT YOUR REPLY

Don't shout at me, buster! And what's this about wishing me good luck? Don't you realize that my good luck is your misfortune? As for noticing anything 'funny,' rest assured that I'm not some sort of comedian! The only thing funny in all this is your ridiculously low estimate of how much my life is worth. I await your next offer, and it had better be serious.

Meanwhile, I'm putting all this on the internet by means of my blog so that you can easily find my response and know that I am deadly serious when I say that I have told no one about your email - and all my readers are witnesses to this fact.

(And yes, dear readers, just in case anyone misread my tone and thinks I'm being serious, let me set the record straight for you: I do indeed know that this death-threat email is a scam.)

First, Eben Alexander, Now Mary Neal Visits Heaven

Mary Neal

Christianity Today

Some weeks ago, I noted on this blog the near-death experience of Eben Alexander, about which I expressed some reservations. I've now learned of another doctor with her own near-death experience, recounted in Mark Galli's article, "Mary Neal Describes Her Visit to the Gates of Heaven" (Christianity Today, December 6, 2012). The 'visit' occurred when she was trapped upside down in her kayak beneath a waterfall for about thirty minutes:

In fact, when this happened, I was very calm. I'm a spine surgeon. I'm used to high stress situations. And I've certainly been under water plenty of times in my boat. I immediately started to do the things that would either free the boat or extricate me from the boat . . . . But the volume and force of the water was such that my torso was absolutely pressed to the front deck of the boat. I couldn't move at all.

I am very much a pragmatist. I recognized my predicament. I knew that I was too far from shore for anyone to get there. And I also have seen a couple of people drown in waterfalls in the years I've been kayaking. So I knew that even if they could get to me, the likelihood of their being able to get my body out of the boat in time was pretty slim.

She found herself surprisingly calm, reassured that all would be fine, and she began to review her life:

Then I went through a little bit of a life review -- not so much looking at events in isolation but looking at the unseen ripple effects of those events, how an event had an impact not just one or two degrees removed but 16, 20, 25 degrees removed. This was another profound aspect of the experience. It made me truly understand that every action, every decision, every choice, every human interaction really does matter. You may not know it, and almost always you don't recognize the impact. But everything really, really does matter.

That's an interesting insight. I've reached the same conclusion, so maybe I've died, too, without realizing it, and like Zhuangzi, am now a butterfly dreaming of being a man. Seriously, I have had the same insight. I've been contacted by people I barely knew and hardly remembered who tell me what an impact I had on their lives twenty or thirty years ago. One was a German woman who came to me in my dorm one day in the early 1990s for help with an assignment on Gnosticism. She must have asked me what opinion she should hold about Gnostic beliefs. I don't like to tell people what to think, at least not so directly, but I will tell them how to think, so I told her, "Think for yourself!" Those words were the only ones I recall from our conversation, but they had a profound effect on her, or so she implied when she contacted me again a couple of years ago. I've had other, similar experiences, and I don't doubt that some of the nastier remarks I've made at random moments have had ripple effects causing storms in people's lives. I've undoubtedly been Zhuangzi's butterfly, indifferently flapping my wings in some Amazonian jungle, oblivious to the hurricane I've set in motion. But like Zhuangzi, I'm impressed by how much I don't know, and by the brevity of a life in which I've tried to know as much as I can. I would like more time for that, hence my interest in near-death experiences, but like Zhuangzi again, I'm somewhat skeptical, especially when I read a report like this one and compare it to other reports:

Then I felt my body break away from the boat, and as my body was coming out of the boat, I could feel my spirit peeling away from my body. I rose up and out of the river. I was immediately greeted by a group of beings, spirits, people. I'm never really sure what to call them, because those words mean different things to different people. They were so overjoyed to see me and welcome me and love me, and I knew that they had known me and loved me as long as I existed. I knew -- and when I use that word know, it's a very different sense of knowing -- I knew at an absolute, core level that they had been sent by God and were from God and were there to welcome me and guide me and protect me. People have asked, "Protect you from what?" I don't know. I only know what I know. I don't know what they were protecting me from . . . . They had physical form -- head, arms, legs -- and they were wearing something like robes. They were absolutely brilliant, radiating. And they were exuding this incredible love . . . . [and] they were taking me down this incredibly beautiful path to this dome-like structure, which was exploding with color and this absolute pure love of God. I knew that was basically the point of no return. It was the entrance to heaven -- whatever, however you want to describe it, that was where I was going . . . . Eventually we did get to the big arched entryway, and inside I could see many, many other spirits, angels, people -- I don't know what they were . . . . When I arrived they looked up and had this same sense of absolute joy at my arrival . . . . [and] it became absolutely clear to me that these people were joyful not only at my arrival but at the arrival of every person who shows up. More importantly, I understood how God can actually know each one of us, love each one of us as though we were the only one, and can have an incredible plan for each one of us. That's something that before this experience was difficult for me to grasp. But during this time, it became absolutely clear to me how that can be . . . . I was ready to dive across that threshold. But as I was pushing to do so, the spirits who had taken me there said that it wasn't my time, that I had to go back to my body and back to earth, that I had more work to do.

She did return, and with an absolute certainty -- similar to Eben Alexander's certainty -- that she had experienced something real, and she estimates that her experience lasted for the nearly thirty minutes that she was 'dead.' I've read neither book, hers or Alexander's, but I note that the magazines' reports -- in which I have read about the experiences of each -- differ in their details, and I wonder why that's so. For instance, Alexander describes a rather different encounter with a 'spirit-guardian guide':

[W]e were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us -- vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again.

There's Zhuangzi's butterfly again, even millions of them! I don't mean to sound flippant about these sorts of experiences -- though as a fellow-butterfly, I must also flap my wings -- but I do wonder why one person approaches heaven astride a butterfly, whereas another seems to walk along a path.

I'm therefore left with questions. Maybe the answers await my own death, unless I really am already Zhuangzi's butterfly, dreaming that I am a man sitting at my desk on an early Sunday morning writing these words, in which case I can report that the afterlife's not much different, after all . . .

Eben Alexander's Proof of Heaven?

Proof of Heaven?

Amazon

Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who had an unexpected near-death experience that has convinced him of the afterlife, or what in Newsweek he calls "My Proof of Heaven" (October 15, 2012), the title of an article in which he describes his extremely vivid experiences undergone while lying unconscious in a coma for seven days, and not a near-death experience in just any coma:

I'm not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

He then expands upon this point:

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me. Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious during my coma, but -- more importantly -- the things that happened during that time.

Dr. Alexander describes an intriguing experience, one worth reading about, but two things strike me from his words above, that he was "under minute medical observation" and "[a]ccording to current medical understanding of the brain and mind," no scientific theory exists to explain his experience, for these strong points that direct us to a mystery -- namely, how could his brain have generated such vivid mental activity that went unrecorded by the finest scientific instruments -- are also simultaneously weak points, for they depend on current medical technology, which is imperfect, and current science, which is incomplete, leaving open the possibility that this 'proof' is no better than what is called "the God of the gaps," an expression referring to the gaps in our techniques and our knowledge that are used by some as evidence for God's intervention in the world and thereby for God's existence.

In other words, Dr. Alexander is saying that because science and technology cannot currently account for his experience, then his experience must be real. Granted, it seemed real enough to convince him, and I can't exclude the possibility that a similar firsthand experience would convince me -- nor can I exclude the possibility that the book, with its "hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey," might convince me as well if I were to read it.

But I have to maintain a sensible skepticism, reflecting both creatively and critically . . .

From Mona Simpson's Eulogy for her Brother, Steve Jobs . . .

Borrowed from the NYT opinion piece for October 30, "A Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs," Mona Simpson describes her brother, near the end:

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple. Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us. His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before. This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn't happen to Steve, he achieved it . . . . His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude. He seemed to be climbing . . . . Steve's final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve's final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

In the Greek drama Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, we find the reminder, "Call no man happy till he is dead." I suppose Aeschylus meant that so long as one yet lives, Fate and Fortune can still wreak havoc. Steve Jobs, beyond their reach now, was a happy man. He died at the height of his powers, a successful man, wealthy, mourned by millions, and beloved by his family, who kept watch at his bedside to the end.

Many have remarked upon his enigmatic last words, the thrice repeated "Oh wow." Perhaps last words are always puzzling. Goethe is reported to have said, "More light." Did he see more light as death approached? Or did he need more light as the darkness gathered? Those being his last words, he never had opportunity to explain. We can't ask Steve Jobs now, but if we read his sister's eulogy closely, we notice that his final words were uttered the day before he passed on. I therefore don't think that we should assign them any particular metaphysical significance, as though he were catching glimpse of an afterlife as he passed through some liminal stage toward death.

Instead, I think that Steve Jobs simply found himself nearly wordless with love as he gazed long at the members of his family. Why then did he look over their shoulders past them all to utter those final words, as though he saw something beyond? As his sister noted, his death was an achievement, and I imagine that he was aware of his actions. He had given each family member full attention, and to gaze at any one of them in voicing his last words would be to confer upon that one individual a special gift unshared with the others. By his final intentional act, he conferred that last living gift upon them all.

"Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius"

Orion Cough Drops

(목의보감)

Also in bags.

(Bionuri Cooperative Network)

And I am mad, too! I take one day off, and guess what happens. Orion nearly kills me with his slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

May the Scorpion take him!

My son, En-Uk, had chosen a bag of medicinal candy from among Orion Confectionery's fine selection to give me for my throat as a birthday present. He must have noticed my regular, mildly asthmatic cough, which seems worse here in Seoul than in other places that I've lived, probably due to the bad air and seasonal dust storms.

Whatever the etiology to my cough, the Orion drops seemed to be helping, so I had several as I sat checking the friendly messages left yesterday on my birthday blog. As I was reading Uncle Cranford's comment, I began madly laughing.

"What's so funny?" inquired my wife, who was laboring in earnest at her translation work.

Attempting to catch my breath and explain, I sucked into my windpipe a tiny drop of candy-flavored saliva, just sufficient for the upper trachea to clamp shut in reaction. Alarmed, I stood up, trying unsuccessfully to inhale. I coughed, emptying my lungs of air.

My wife stared at me. "What's wrong?"

I couldn't answer, couldn't breathe, couldn't cough.

My wife stood up. "What's wrong?

I could nearly have smiled at the irony. Here I was, about to die on my birthday, choking to death from a lozenge intended to stop my coughing. Well . . . it had stopped my coughing.

My wife, realizing that I couldn't breathe, grew alarmed. "Jeff!"

I finally croaked.

Not "croaked" as in "died," of course, or I wouldn't be writing about this, but "croaked" as in the creaky, cracky, deep-throaty sound of a great, big ol' bullfrog . . . or maybe a wheezy, middle-sized frog.

Then coughed a small cough. Wheezed. Inhaled a tiny gasp. Coughed again. Wheezed. Breathed a large breath. Coughed hard. Breathed better. Coughed more. Breathed. Looked at my wife. Smiled. Pointed at the bag. Said:

"I thought that these were supposed to help my breathing."

My wife grabbed the bag and threw it into a drawer of her desk, saying, "Don't have any more!"

To my mind, she somewhat overreacted to my near death experience . . . but don't trust me. I'm mad. Punished by the gods for my hubristic remark about leaving the defense of Western civilization to others for 24 hours -- as if I were its primary defender.

"Whom the gods would destroy..."

Christopher M. Moreman on 'Self-less-ness'

A Non-Self Walked Here

Buddha's Footprint

With Dharmachakra and Triratna

1st century CE, Gandhāra

(Image from Wikipedia)

Sogang University's Death, Dying, and Spirituality Conference is not yet over, but I'll be staying home today to recover from an intense and intensive three days. I also have get back to my regular duties, such as grading papers...

Yesterday, I responded to a paper titled "Experiencing the Numinous in the Face of Death," which I've commented on before in this blog without identifying the speaker because he hadn't yet spoken at that time. I suppose that I can identify him now. He's a young scholar at Saint Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, his name is Christopher M. Moreman, and he jokes that he's one of only three 'Moremans' in Canada -- which sounds like a claim that there are only three Mormans in Canada (an obvious untruth, of course, for there are at least 10 of them).

Anyway, Moreman gave a new twist to Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy, as readers of this blog may have noticed this new use of the mysterium tremendum a few days ago when I reported on this point in the entry "Death as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans?".

Today, though, I'm just going to cite a minor criticism that I made of a different point in Moreman's paper, one where he reaches for parallels about 'selflessness' across religions and religious experiences:

Moreman goes on to suggest a similarity between Buddhist and Taoist views of self-less-ness and the sort of selflessness that one finds in the thought of St. Paul and in the lives of people who have had Near Death Experiences, or NDEs. Moreman argues that when Paul speaks of dying to sin, one dies to self and is reborn sinless and therefore selfless. Similarly, those who have undergone NDEs live far more selfless lives, says Moreman, pointing to the results of a study by Cherie Sutherland (Sutherland, Reborn in the Light), as well as in other studies of NDE (e.g., Grot-Marnat and Summers, "Altered Beliefs"; and Greyson and Stevenson, "The Phenomenology of Near-Death Experiences"). This is an interesting perspective, but I wonder about it. While I can concede parallels in the de-emphasis upon self in Buddhism, Taoism, St. Paul, and NDE people, I nevertheless think that some equivocation in the meaning of the term "self" is slipping in. For the Buddhist and Taoist, the self is unstable, in flux, but for St. Paul and NDE people, the self is stable, even assured of existence after death. For the former, denial of self is an ontological issue, but for the latter, it is an ethical issue. The related term "selflessness" is thus also different, as is the implication of the term "selfish." Denial of self simply does not mean the same thing across the smorgasboard of religions.

That's enough for today, I hope, for I've got that grading to get to. Thanks to all who visit and read my musings...

Bibliography:

Greyson, Bruce and Ian Stevenson. "The Phenomenology of Near-Death Experiences." American Journal of Psychiatry 137. 1980. pages 1193-1196.

Grot-Marnat, G. and R. Summers. "Altered Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors Following Near-Death Experiences." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 38. 1998. page 110-125.

Sutherland, Cherie. Reborn in the Light: Life After Near-Death Experiences. New York: Bantam, 1995.