Q&A: "I Was Dead" — Adi Ashkenazi
"I Was Dead" — Adi Ashkenazi.
Question
Hello Rabbi,
There is a new six-episode series called "I Was Dead" on Kan 11 with the comedian and actress Adi Ashkenazi.
Adi Ashkenazi tells the story of how she went through clinical death and a powerful spiritual experience, about being drawn toward the light and leaving the body.
In the series she interviews different people for and against God and the existence of the soul, and speaks with quite a few people who claim they had a life-changing experience.
She asks difficult questions and ends with:
"I don't know." Although it seems that she leans more toward believing that there is a God and a soul.
Watching the series made me think, when I saw completely serious people seriously claiming to have had a spiritual experience — people who had never been involved with the soul or spirituality at all.
Are testimonies about clinical death good evidence for the existence of God, and even of the soul?
But when the "scientist" started explaining how everything begins and ends with electrical signals that explain it all, I no longer know.
What do you think?
If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it.
Answer
I haven't watched it, but I have read material about these phenomena. My impression is that usually this is not evidence of anything, because these could be experiences that are imprinted in us in such a state. But I haven't researched it in detail, and of course anything is possible. I assume you can find counterarguments on skeptics' websites.
Discussion on Answer
Of course they would say the same thing about prophecy as well. And that's in a case where they would want to judge the prophet favorably.
Well,
people really are talking about something else.
What do you mean by imprinted experiences?
You could say the same thing about prophecy too, right?
Adi Ashkenazi describes something that happened 16 years ago, and she still claims that nothing she has experienced in life comes close to the kind and intensity of that experience.