Hey everyone,

I'd like to discuss distressing NDEs, or NDEs that take a darker turn than the blissful majority in the form of voids or hellish enviornments. Research into these darker NDEs has been incredibly limited compared to their nicer counterparts for a variety of reasons, from a lack of reporting to a general disinterest by researchers. What do you all think causes these NDEs to occur? The individual's morality can't really be counted as a causal factor, since several of them have been reported by normal people that haven't done anything to deserve such an occurrence, while there are blissful reports from criminals. It could be the manifestations of the person's fear, but this doesn't make much sense when you consider most NDEs don't involve this notion of conquering certain fears before the bliss. I hope to hear your opinions on this phenomena and possible explanations.

In addition to Doc's comments some people have suggested that a 'negative' NDE experience may be essentially an incomplete one; some 'positive' experiences have started in a dark state but lead on to some kind of resolution or insightful experience after time. Some negative NDE experiences have been attributed to certain medicines/drugs, such as those involved in birthing, and may not be NDEs in the strictest sense. A perplexing issue all the same.

'I've also read several interesting theories where these NDEs occur due to the individual's interaction with archetypal fears within the collective unconcious proposed by Jung'.

A kind of unplanned trip to a fear-based group belief territory in Monroe terms!

You raise a good point, and I agree that these experiences are more than the psychic projections of the individual (however I do feel that these, as well as the fears held within a sort of collective unconscious like I mentioned in an earlier post, help to build the experience). I feel that these hellish realms are real, but I'm unsure as to why this occurs to ordinary people and how long people generally stay stuck. As you mentioned, Storm was lured into one of these realms and able to escape through prayer, which gives us indications as to how people can end up here and, more importantly, a method of how to get out. That's why I feel it is very important to study these cases of dNDEs; they give us a fuller view of the afterlife and allow us to prepare accordingly for any complication that may occur during the transitioning process.
Berserk2 wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2014 at 8:54pm:

1, Are we entitled to reject as mere thought forms from Super-ESP those beings who repulse us with their evil and accept loving NDE family reunions?
2. Are evil people allowed to continue their evil ways after death?
3. Is Swedenborg right that hellish planes governed by the principle like attracts like?  are
4. Are NDE visits to hellish planes merely a warning to make better choices to shape our astral energetic makeup for higher planes? 

The personality fills up by the shortest and most economical route between its most distant existant opposing points. That is, between its most distant and diverse values and ideals in both their positive and negative form (values/ideals for and against things). So that that part or range of the personality that lies between these points exists in potential, even though it may not have been consciously practiced or triggered yet, and even though the individual may deny to themselves and others that such personality characteristics exist within their self. This is how we can know what another person will most likely think even long before they have thought it, and what they will most likely do before they do it, under given circumstances, and even though they think they would do something else, and this is because it exists on the gradient or spectrum between their opposing ideals. The opposing values/ideals form the periphery of the personality spread, with each pair of opposing points having a line of potential running between them through the centre of the spread. These lines of potential also run diagonally, not through the centre but between any two points on the periphery of the personality. And at the places where any of these lines cross and intersect with each other are places of high potency. For each point of high potency, be it the centre or anywhere else, there are environmental triggers or circumstances that would accommodate or draw forth the acting out of that personality quality.

A person may have never gone to a place/region in their personality, not in thought or behaviour, and may deny it exists, but as that region is within the range between their values and ideals then it does exist, like the numbers exist that lie between any two numbers, and like an island is shaped by its surrounding coast and all its inland areas exist because of the shape of its coast.

This is relevant not just to how a person will think and behave in life and to what sort of situations they gravitate to and how they behave there, but also to their general atmosphere of mind, what they sympathise with and discord with, and how and what they fear, what they dread, like and dislike, want and not want, what their reflexes of thought and emotion are, and this is in life and in death, for after they drop the physical body they still have their emotional and mental bodies in which they think and feel, and which gravitate towards particular circumstances, just like in physical life.

crossbow   

Rondelle said: "Howard Storm is an example of someone whose life, prior to his NDE, probably did account for his horrifying NDE.  In other words, he was "scared straight" and in such case the NDE was probably constructed to motivate him to change his ways.  And it certainly did!"

Recoverer responds: "Perhaps related to what Roger says above, P.M.H. Atwater has researched more than 3,000 NDEs including many negative NDEs and said that everybody experiences what they need to experience, including people who have negative NDEs. Different strokes for different folks? In many cases "constructed" could be a key word.

Albert

We have an interpreter here, there and everywhere that we experience ourselves as individuals. We are like children with imaginations that run away with us -- take a walk on the wild side/there's no place like home.

Apparently, later, we look back on all of "this" as great fun. But, it isn't real -- it's a story we create about ourselves.

If each one of us is part of the whole with greater understanding as we move along in our "dream" of uniqueness and physicality toward our actual selves, which are spiritual, immortal beings, it would be expected that we would partake of "pleasant" and "unpleasant" experiences along the way.

Eventually, I assume all spirits recognize themselves in the "other" and thereby learn/know what is and is not real.

Rawlings observations may be correct that hellish NDE are more common than what other researchers may think. 

The question that comes to mind is the state of mind various people are in immediately before their NDE?  Does being in a state of fear or a state of acceptance make any difference in what one may experience?

Thoughts?

btw Don, I have an off topic question for you and sent you a PM.

I do believe there is a lot of fear imbued in these NDEs.  I read one account by Rawlings where he was giving CPR and for a brief moment the patient regained consciousness only to say "don't stop! don't stop!  I am in Hell!  Pray for me!"  Only with a prayer did the patient calm down and "come back to his body." It appears that the patients identified Hell as a classic fire and brimstone place, and that the name of Jesus needed to be invoked on more than one occasion. 

Inherent in these NDEs is the notion that a normal, moral person is thrust, against their will into a hellish realm in some kind of mistaken judgement.  Most other NDE researchers and mystics, including ES do not support this view. 

I wonder what the belief systems of the NDErs played in terms of finding themselves in a negative NDE?  Why would one regain consciousness and demand a prayer for them, invoking Jesus's name, if the person did not expect that prior to the NDE. 

I have been present myself at many "codes" and resuscitation efforts early in my training (my medicine residency).   I have been present with at least 30 patients who were clinically dead and then resuscitated.  None made mention of a hellish NDE, though admittedly, none were asking them what it was like on the other side. 


M

Heis,

I actually came across an accounting of NDEs from an Asian culture in which people mentioned the seeing the gods of their pantheon, but out of many cited cases, there were no reports of experiences with a foreign religion.  Don has cited the example given by Atwater of a Jewish woman who saw Jesus in her NDE and said something like "this can't be, I don't believe in you."  But that woman obviously knew who JC was, and what he stood for.  I will try to dig this up.  This East Asian culture had no unexpected visits to Jewish, Muslim or Christian heavens or deities.  Rather, it was a Thai culture where the NDErs encountered Yama, lord of the dead and his servants or minions called Yamatoots or Yamaduts.  This deity was lord of the underworld in opposition to Buddha.  Going over this series of Thai NDEs; in none of them did the people encounter any Western religious figures or symbols. 

In some ways, this goes along with the NDE of an artist, Mellen-Thomas Beneict, who has also been mentioned on this forum, who saw a being of light, which seemed to morph into various deities including JC, Buddha and others.  Belief and education = expectation has a lot to do with how our mind perceives things on the other side.

This doesn't mean, (IMHO) that there is no ultimate truth or enlightenment.  Only that we initially run our experience through our perceptual belief system and try to make sense of things.  If we approach things with an open mind, perhaps it would lead to the easiest transition.

M

That is interesting, Roger,

Controlled experiments have shown that amnesia can be induced by stimulation of gaba receptors in the brain by agents such as Versed (midazolam) and other medicines.  So many types of anesthesia prevent the formation of short term memory in the physical plane.  The issue arises then, as to what we can remember if it occurs when our heart is stopped, and what the mechanism of memory is, when separate from the brain and body. 

I don't draw any firm conclusions as yet about why we remember certain experiences and not others.  Some may be mundane earthly or neurological reasons, and some reasons may be emotional or spiritual.

Re: hell
No one deserves to be in "hell" no matter what they do. We are all "victims" of ignorance in the physical world. It takes a different state of consciousness to achieve a different result, always.

To me, that is the most important thing I have learned in the last 10 years, perhaps ever. Change your state of consciousness and you change your outer circumstances too.  There is really no "inner" and "outer" because it is all of one piece.

with love, s


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-KAvPbO8JY

rondele wrote on Jul 26^th, 2014 at 9:35am:


According to my understanding of the Buddhist worldview and basic psychology, these "innate characteristics over which we seemingly have no or little control" are actually nothing more than conditioned behaviors that can be erased and rewritten with right effort and right view, which includes adopting an effective spiritual practice and letting go of the attachments and delusions of the ego. 

The main idea behind Karma the way the Buddha taught it is that although past actions are like seeds which are eventually sown into the experience of the individual, bearing fruit corresponding to the nature of the seed, every person has the freedom in the present moment to sow new karmic seeds, to change past habitual tendencies and create new wholesome thoughts and actions born from wholesome intentions which will lead to wholesome states. 

We are not powerless to change unwholesome patterns of thought and action.  Otherwise the concepts of free will and choice would be invalid.

If we remove any type of thinking which implies judgement or morality from possibility, an experience of "hell" or, to put it more blandly, of a "darker" kind, would be decidedly unpleasant to our human senses and emotions but not evil or wrong. In a place of "no time" this might appear to our limited/inexperienced/innocent personalities to be inescapable. Even if it seems silly to be expressed this way, to be taught as a human to be able to go to your "happy place" -- in other words, to train the mind -- might come in handy someday.