* * Works for me :-)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Curtis' musings about Eagleman's musings about the nature of perception
> vs. reality for some reason reminded me of this line from the last Harry
> Potter movie. (I think at this point I can indulge in spoilers, since
> everyone interested in the HP 'verse has either seen the movie or read
> the book or both by now.) It's a line spoken in the Bardo. Harry is
> dead. Voldemort has smoked his ass REAL good.
>
> While dead, however, Harry's consciousness continues on, and he finds
> himself in an astral train station talking to Dumbledore. Who is
> also...uh...dead. Ignoring their own deadnessitude, the two of them
> manage to have a great conversation anyway, at the end of which Harry,
> about to have to make a decision whether to remain dead or go back to
> his life, asks that question:
>
> "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"
>
> Dumbledore replies, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry,
> but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
>
> One of the problems I have with the "When the brain dies I die" theory
> is that I'm not convinced that it's true. I've had experiences that
> convince me that it's not. True, I haven't died in a flatline,
> pushing-up-daisies fashion. But I sure can remember having died. And
> what came afterwards.
>
> One could say that these memories may be false. But, might I ask, what
> leads you to believe that *any* of your memories are true? If the
> brain's ability to lie to itself is so strong, enabling it to distort
> any data coming in to it, aren't *any* of your memories as likely to be
> false as they are to be fact?
>
> For me Dumbledore just nails it. Why can't the answer to Harry's
> question be "Both?"
>
