Patients  visions of hell
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent





TERRIFYING accounts of gravely ill people who claim to have been dragged to the gates of hell by demons are to be studied scientifically for the first time by a British psychologist.

The existence of so-called Near Death Experiences (NDEs), in which dying people report having mystical sensations before being resuscitated, is now widely accepted by doctors and scientists. Their cause is unknown, but they typically involve a feeling of deep peace, followed by a sensation of floating up through a tunnel towards a bright light and into a beautiful kingdom.

But it is now becoming clear that for some people, NDEs are far from blissful. Instead of a feeling of floating upwards, they report being pulled downwards - towards a pit inhabited by demons.

The experiences of Evelyn Hazell, a London-based art historian, as she fought for life against meningitis, are typical. "I had reached a critical stage in the illness and was hovering between life and death - I was aware of being involved in an intense and very real struggle for my life," she told The Telegraph. "A three-legged being - rather like the Isle of Man symbol - was pulling both my legs down to infinite depths. I knew without doubt that if I relaxed and gave in I would be dead. I believe this struggle went on for some considerable time and I eventually managed to break away from whatever it was pulling me down."

Mrs Hazell went on to make a full recovery, but she has never forgotten her terrifying ordeal at the very threshold of death. "I do not believe it was a dream or hallucination. In every way I was lucid - I was just terribly ill. If nothing else, it did prove to me that in certain situations refusing to fight an illness will lead to death."

A similar experience continues to haunt Jane, a woman who fought for life after a miscarriage. "It was an awful feeling - like I was going down a big hole and I couldn't get up. I was going into this big pit. I was going further and further down, and trying to claw my way back up and kept slipping.".

Similar accounts are now being studied by a psychologist at Coventry University, who plans to use science to probe the nature of "negative NDEs". According to Tony Lawrence, lecturer in psychology at the university, research so far suggests that there are two basic types of negative NDEs.

"Some describe a kind of void - an absence of experience, a feeling that there really is nothing at all after life," said Mr Lawrence. "But there are also NDEs that are obviously very negative. They often involve a feeling of being dragged down into a pit, rather than a tunnel, and sometimes have demons involved. What little research has been done on them makes fairly clear that these 'hellish' experiences are very rare. What I am hoping to do is to find as many people as possible who have had negative NDEs and see if any consistent picture emerges which may explain their cause."

Over the years, various explanations have been put forward for the positive variety of NDEs, ranging from the effects of medication to the lack of oxygen reaching the brain in its final moments. Such explanations fail to explain, however, the consistency of the experience: hallucinations brought on by drugs or anoxia are typically completely random and senseless. Harder still to understand are reports of NDEs from hospital patients whose ECG traces became completely flat during resuscitation - showing that there was no activity in their brain.

The eerie parallels between the reports of NDEs and traditional views of heaven and hell also defy simple explanation, said Mr Lawrence. Attempts to dismiss the images as nothing more than cultural memories do not stand up. "In fact there seems to be a general lack of cultural factors determining the content of these experiences. People from many different cultures will describe meeting a figure of light. They don't meet Jesus or Vishnu or Buddha - although afterwards they may sometimes describe what they saw in that way. The cultural influences only seem to emerge in the interpretation of what was seen, not in the basic experience itself."

One comforting finding to emerge from the few cases Mr Lawrence has tracked down is a lack of any link between negative NDEs and a misspent life. He said: "There are no obvious reasons why these people have had their experiences - certainly they are not obvious sinners."

Alan.dont believe everything you see in on writen on paper.only your own experiences will set you free.Are you forgetting all the experiences the people have had on this form,website.You know that guy who said he will give us a million dolloers,if you can give prouf of the afterlive.He would not believe you even if you brought jesus christ with you for prouf.George

Greetings,

Lea's comment " When I did relax though and go through with it,
I was pulled through my body (down) was not lifted up and
what was on the other side waiting once I let go of the fear
was the greatest experience of my life"
points out that fear was a big factor.

Perhaps these people had something in their lives that caused them to greatly fear death before the experience. Then they used all the fearful images they could think of to express it to themselves.
I don't fear three legged beings because I've never heard of them. I think they'd be sort of cute, clamering around like little three-legged stepstools!    So it seems it was personal choices that account for the images they came up with. Just as for sailors of old it was Schylla and Charybidis (sic).

Like Lea, they would have risen to the heavens if they'd had time to 'give it up.'

Love, Bets

Hi, Don AND Others nice responses there1

Ahhh1 Don I am so glad you responded in the elequant way you did. I have had a Hell experience during an OBE that was so horrifying that I have not descibed it to the forum.

It convinced me that there is a real hell and we have eternal consequences for or eathly actions in the afterlife that go far beyond the idea of reincarnation and karma.

There is absolutely a judgement of some kind or the other especially for some power mad depraved monsters that have plagued the pathways of human history. I avoid the word evil as this seems a misnomer to so many. Maybe one should say those who have moved far from redemption, separated from god in abject blackness is hell, but this was not the hell I experienced, it was much more awful and typical of the biblical hell. I saw beings sufferring in this terrible place, yes place, it was not a figment of me imagination as this place did not exist hidden somewhere in the atic of my subconciousness, but was a hell beyond the abiliy of the human mind to peceive in reality.

alan

Good thread, folks:

I'm wondering, Don.....in your research of these experiences, has anyone looked into the different effects produced by the medicines many of these NDE people are on? I remember from my long ago druggie days that some drugs just weren't for me, since they'd produce an unpleasant "head" everytime. Others would produce a very pleasant experience. I simply learned which to avoid.

If I'm in an accident and the paramedics blast me full of pain killers, sedatives and such.........are these real "places" I'm experiencing or just the effect of the drug?

-Chuck-

  Good point Chuck, re: the drug issue. 

To me, this is similar to the issue of nightmares vs dreams to some extent.   A long time ago, Edgar Cayce's guidance talked about how nightmares were often the product of imbalanced body reactions, particularly in relation to bad digestion close to bedtime.  Yet, dreams and dreaming was given an almost exalted status in these readings, and seemed to most pertain to actual experiences in some other dimension or dimensions, which get a bit skewed in the remembering/translating into physical waking state.   

  I've talked to folks on different prescriptions, who report somewhat regular nightmares.    I haven't had one since i was little, and i believe that is because i've really cleaned up my diet since then (and almost never eat a heavy or hard to digest food or meal right near bedtime), and i don't take any drugs whatsoever, not even aspirin or the like. 

  However, at the same time, i would not be surprised if some or even most of these accounts are real, non body based accounts of temporary visits to the slowest vibrating hells. 

   

  I remember being a little kid, and being scared of the devil, because i would have nightmares about him coming after me.   At first i thought i had to fight the devil, spit in his eye so to speak, but later on i started to feel bad for "him" and started to think maybe i should try to help him somehow.

Hi, Don and others,-

Don Quoted

Quote:
(see "Heaven and Hell").

Yes Don this experience was not something caused by drugs  , altered states or nightmares as some would suggest. It was unspeakably horrifying real. Thank goodness I was not in this hell, but viewed it from the outside, like a person on a tour of a prison. This experience happened when I was wrestling with the enigma of evil existing together with a  supposed all powerful benign god. I personally think existence is a duality if we like it or not.

What I saw there supprised me. There where people there that I did not expect to be there and I clearly saw depraved beings of the like of Stalin, Nero, Hitler, Pol Pot, Hassien etc etc. I was somewhat supprised that people such as gays where not in this awful place as some fundamentals would hope. God appeared extremely merciful and said Hell was a place for the unspeakable depraved. Not only earth beings were in this place, but other sentient evil life forms confined there. Foever? I dont know as this was not revealed to me.

Quote:


Nothing to do with drugs although these can produce terrible nightmares , but these nightmares are a childrens picknick compared to what I saw.

alan

A provocative and interesting thread guys. I've no very negative experience to offer, but can share a view with some tough implications.

Observation tends to say that if we're to be honest even the lives of apparently quite caring and responsible people are in reality the result of a huge tension between heart and selfishness. One in which a moderately positive balance is just maintained. i.e. both 'tendencies' exist within them, what manifests is some aggregate. And that's before we think of the 'monsters' (the 'not me') of this world as we like to regard them.

At the universal level if one accepts the view that the total reality we with all the other beings of the cosmos inhabit is mind made ('with your minds you make the world'), and that this higher mind while not obviously so at our normal C1 level is actually at higher levels of awareness collective in nature (shared by all these beings) - then it seems inevitable that our higher mind must contain all the positive and negative potential that makes up the total cosmos.

Meaning that higher awareness must at least make possible access to what we might perceive from this level of form or C1 thought as some pretty nasty and negative aspects of this collective mind.

It seems highly unlikely to me that the afterlife (what happens after life) should be solely a 'happy happy' experience - that any such view must surely be more of the usual fear and ego driven denial we go on with in an effort to avoid facing reality.

It's fairly clear too that this universal mind must in this view contain absolutely the nastiest stuff we can imagine - if you can imagine it, it's by definition in there.

Quite under what circumstances we become aware the worst of this stuff I don't know. Tibetan Buddhism teaches that during the process of dissolution prior to rebirth in the afterlife we become aware of both the positive and then the negative aspects of our minds, and that depending on what karma we have generated in life this can be a pretty horrifying experience.

But on the other hand it seems to teach that this is largely personal mind and karma, meaning that we are not necessarily exposed in the afterlife (bardo) to the true depths of the nastiness of all that's potentially out there.

The good news I suppose is that it also teaches 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form'. Meaning that none of this stuff in the end has any ultimate existence or permanent reality, that it's just dualistic mind at play.

All of this talk of the negative must be getting to me. Last night for the first time I woke to find myself in my fairly typical velvety blackness, but with this sense of being menaced by something I couldn't see. Somehow I had the presence to head for the loving response, and after a few minutes it lifted and I fell asleep again...