Scope and Clarity
Subjects frequently describe their experience as panoramic, 3-D or holographic. During a life review, the subject's perception is reported to include not only their own perspective in increased vividness, as if they were reliving a given episode itself, but that of all other parties they interact with at each point being reviewed. Betty Eadie's widely read account, in which she described the life as her best conception of hell, also described the life review as extending to ripples of one's life and acts out into further degrees of separation. Some believe this extension to have limitations.
The term 3D is employed to approximate the inclusion of different physical perspectives onto a scene; the intensity of a life review was described by one individual as enabling him to count every nearby mosquito; but equally common is the description of feeling the emotional experience of the other parties, including in one case virtually everyone in a room. While some accounts appear to describe scenes as selected, others more commonly narrate the experience as including things they had, probably naturally, long ago entirely forgotten, with "nothing left out." Experiencers commonly describe the intense vividness and detail as making them feel more alive than when normally conscious:
Most things were pleasant to see, some things made me very embarrassed. In fact, revulsion and guilt took away any good feelings, making me so very sorry for certain things I had said or done. I hadn't just seen what I had done, but I felt and knew the repercussions of my actions. I felt the injury or pain of those who suffered because of my selfish or inappropriate behavior.Read more about this topic: Life Review
Famous quotes containing the words scope and/or clarity:
“Each man must have his “I;” it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)