Hi Kim,

We don't understand the nature of reality and the physical realm because of a primary limitation--we can know only what we experience. The experience happens in the mind. And so we can experience the look and smell of a rose, but to say there's a rose in a physical realm around is is impossible. All we know is the experience of red, the shape of a rose, and experience of the smell of a rose.

Many people blind from birth "see" during near-death experiences. Cases are in Kenneth Ring's Mindsight. One case, verified by Larry Dossey, was of Sarah, who had a cardiac arrest while on the operating table, was dead for awhile, and while she was not able to sense anything because her brain was flatlined, rose out of her body, read the scrawls of notes on the operating room wall, described the colors of the nurse's hair and sheets, went to the room down the hall where physicans were waiting to use the operating room and described them, and even described that her anesthesiologist had on two different colored socks. All of her descriptions were perfectly accurate. But the most amazing thing was that Sarah had been blind since birth.

The experience of seeing the anesthesiologists two different colored socks happened in her mind while her brain wasn't working and she was completely blind. No physical realm was necessary to give her sight. In the same way, when people transition out of the body when the body stops functioning, they are able to see and hear perfectly well--better than they could while in the body. The experiences exist apart from the body.

In dreaming, we have experiences, but there's no physical realm in the dreams. But the experiences are real to us.

What all that means is that we are our mind, and our minds have experiences, but beyond that, we can't suggest there's really a physical realm out there. We can have experiences without it.

Love and peace, Craig