What do we know about Death from Near Death Experiences?

Originally Posted by Left Behind

Mine was posted in part to get some action going in the Spiritualism sub-forum.

My threads were censored by overbearing moderators, in spite of not breaking any rules.

As such I won't be putting much time into this forum any more.

[Xan]

Aquarian... I happen to agree that your project was inappropriate for the forum. But there's no need to leave because of it. You might just stay within SF's principles and values and enjoy what you can learn and give here.


Xan

Originally Posted by Xan

Aquarian... I happen to agree that your project was inappropriate for the forum. But there's no need to leave because of it. You might just stay within SF's principles and values and enjoy what you can learn and give here.

I'm still baffled that anyone would think that Jobs' family (who published the quote) would be a) members of this forum and b) offended by a handful of lightworkers attempting to describe his clearly positive experience when there are thousands of articles written on him in the last few weeks.

I did not receive a reply in response to politely pointing out that none of the arguments for deleting my threads held water -- and this lack of respect for my contributions makes me wonder what else might get deleted.

[Xan]

There's always something to be learned for oneself, Aquarian... not saying what that might be for you now.

Enough said about this subject in this thread.


Xan

[Xan]

Charcoal Corridor - excerpts

Part of me was in the hospital bed and part of me was walking down a long dark corridor. Actually, I had been walking down a corridor and reached a y-shaped junction at the end.

I understood that I had to choose between the left corridor and the right one.... I somehow understood that turning left meant choosing to die and leaving my current situation to move onto something else. Conversely, turning right meant remaining alive.

I peered down the left corridor. I couldn't see anything, nothing at all; it was too dark and the walls seemed to just stretch on and at the same time just fade into nothingness. But, I remember feeling this incredible sense of peace and comfort, warmth and security. It was as if all my cares and responsibilities just melted away.

Prior to then and since then, I have not experienced anything so incredibly peaceful and seductive. It was extraordinarily beautiful to me, though I could not see anything. I also remember thinking this must be what it's like to be in the womb before birth.

I was sorely tempted to turn down this hallway, but I stopped and thought "No. I'm not ready yet. There's still too much I want to do." So I turned to my right and peered around the corner at the other corridor.

Again, I couldn't "see" anything. However, waves of sensation rushed over me - frantic, frenetic, loud, confusing, frightening, flashing, bright, and overwhelming. The only way to describe the feeling is as if I were standing in the middle of Times Square just before theater time wearing a blindfold. It was really unpleasant. Cacophony is a good word for it.

I thought to myself, "This is life." It was really not attractive, but I also knew that it was what I wanted at that moment. So I summoned myself together against the noise and light and stimulation that were assaulting me and I took a "step" in that direction.

Suddenly the corridor, this dim, gray place that I was in, melted away and there I was lying in a hospital bed. I was sort of sad, too, because I realized that I had made my bed, so to speak, and now I would have to lay in it. I had chosen to return and deal with all the stuff that we all are confronted with day after day after day. And that was that.


http://iands.org/experiences/nde-accounts/451-charcoal-corridor.html

[Xan]

Tom S

I was suddenly in front of a great Light. It had to have been God! It was so powerful, no words can describe it. The closest I can come is to say it was like being suddenly placed a few feet from the Sun – but instead of feeling heat, you feel LOVE. Infinite Love. The Love emanated out in all directions in slow, gentle rays of light. Never can I forget it.

I felt as big as a galaxy. I knew, or could know, anything and everything I wanted to know. When I looked at my life on this earth, it was like looking at the life of an ant.

Definitely there is a more real world after this one. This world is like God's dream that we wake up from when we die and are "born" into the presence of GOD.


http://www.nderf.org/tom_s_probable_nde.htm

[Xan]

Back Home

[My neighbor's kitten I had played with died.] My mom then tried to explain the concept of death to me.... I understood that my body would one day get old and stop working but what would happen to my mind, my thoughts? You know, the essence of me. Mom never talked about the concept of a soul, yet my four-year-old mind knew there was more to me than just a body.

All the rest of the day I wrestled with the thought that one day I would just cease to be. It just seemed impossible to me that suddenly, in an instant, all of me could be snuffed out like a candle flame. That night in bed I kept ruminating about dying. I was upset and rubbed my eyes, pressing hard on my eyelids. All of a sudden I felt myself shoot out of the top of my head. I found myself floating in inky blackness. My body, if you can call it that, lacked definition. It felt like I was made of clouds. Even though I was in pitch- blackness, I was not afraid.

After a while I became aware of something below me to the left. I looked down and saw a large blue ball slowly turning. I saw shafts of sunlight shining on blue water and brown soil. Large white clouds floated over the whole scene. I knew that I was looking at the earth. It was quite beautiful and peaceful, but I felt no urge to go back there. In fact, I felt rather dispassionate about the whole image. It was nice to look at the earth but I had no emotional ties to it.

Time seemed to stand still. But after a while I became aware of something above me to the right. I turned my attention upward and saw a beautiful golden staircase backlit with the most spectacular warm, golden white light imaginable. Mere words can't explain how breathtakingly fantastic it was.

Even though I wasn't close to the stairs, I could see intricate carvings in the gold. I wanted to get closer to the staircase and as soon as I formed the thought in my mind, I started to float over to it. I had the definite feeling of movement when I looked at the stairs yet they weren't moving.

The closer I got to the staircase, the faster I went. I reached out with my arms to touch the stairs and my fingers started to tingle with anticipation. Just as I approached the bottom stair, I heard a booming male voice loudly yell, "You are not supposed to remember this!"

The next instant I found myself back in my bedroom. I started crying because all I wanted to do was go back to that beautiful staircase. I knew that if I reached the top that I would be home.

` ` `
I have often felt that I'm not of this world. It's hard to explain, but I feel out of place. Even though I love life and am so thankful for each and every day, part of me wants to be "back home."


http://iands.org/experiences/nde-accounts/443-back-home.html

[Xan]

Glow of Energy

I realized that according to what the doctors had said, I might be dead in a few hours.... When I accepted the unacceptable, my body shook violently as an intensity of energy moved through me. I opened more and more to it, and after one or two very long minutes it was complete. I felt a calm inside that I had not known before. All my senses were sharper. My vision was clearer. Colors were brighter. Hearing was clearer. Sensations were more alive.

I realized that I had released a perceptual filter that had been standing between the experience of life and me, and ironically, it had been the fear of death. Now that I had released that fear, I was experiencing more of life, more of being alive, even if just for a short while longer.

I thought of the life I had lived, and the things I could have done but didn't, and I found myself saying to myself, "I wish I had." There were a lot of "I wish I hads." I thought to myself that it was, in fact, a sad way to end a life, and that if I had to do it again, there would be a lot of "I'm glad I dids."

I had to decide what I wanted to do with the short time I had left. If I spent my remaining time worrying or feeling bad about what was, in fact, inevitable, I would have just wasted the rest of my life, thrown it away, and it was too valuable for that. I decided to spend my remaining time feeling good, and just thinking of things that helped me to feel good -- the color of the paint on the walls, the smell of flowers in the room, anything positive. I knew I could always find something.

Finally, the time came. I was taken to the operating room, and as I was being given the anesthetic, I thought that this might be the last experience I would ever have. I had no idea what might come afterwards. I had been agnostic, with no beliefs, believing in nothing that I had not experienced. Perhaps the next step after death was just oblivion.
I let go.

I began to experience vertigo, a sense of spinning, and it didn't feel good, so I stabilized myself in the center of it until I was still, and everything else was spinning around me. I was moving through the spinning scenes, which were memories from the life I had lived, memories that were calling for my attention. If I put my attention on them, though, I felt myself "pulled," because I was moving through these spinning memories, like being pulled through a tunnel, or falling down a well, but discovering that half-way down the well reaching for the walls would not work. My only hope would be to aim for the water at the bottom.

I had to withdraw my attention from these scenes, then, these memories, and put my attention on the place to which I was being drawn, aiming for it. I was headed there anyway, but aiming for it gave me more of a sense of being in the driver's seat, and that was a lot more comfortable for me. It was a bit like riding a roller coaster in the front car, and pretending that you're driving the thing along the tracks. It gives a totally different ride, I can assure you, than being swept out of control.

The ride was long, but I had nothing else to do but go for it. Finally, the end of the tunnel was in sight. I came out into a kind of space, stillness, where there was a glow of energy addressing me. It was like a spark of life, energy glowing with intelligence, not in a human form, just pure consciousness. It seemed that some distance away, there was another spark just observing the scene.

I felt as though I were having an exit interview, something like, "Well, your trip is over now, so complete things in your consciousness about that, and we'll move on." I looked back and saw my life as I had lived it, completed my thoughts about things that had happened, understood a lot of things differently, and then expressed that I was ready.

The Being began to move away. I began to follow, and then I paused. The Being quickly asked me what the thought was that had just entered my consciousness. I had thought that it would be a shame for my daughters to have grown up without their father in their life. I had spent a large part of my life without my father in it, and I would have liked my daughters not to experience that. Anyway, I was ready to go.

The Being said that because my reason for wanting to return was somebody outside myself, I would be allowed to return. Before I had the chance to express that I didn't really want to return, there was a rapid, confused movement, something happened, the other spark which had been "observing" was somehow a part of it, and then I was waking up in this body, in traumatic pain, with intense drama going on around me in the hospital.

I felt as if I had just jumped into a movie that had been underway, but that I had not been the one in the body before this moment. Because of the trauma and the drama, my attention was directed to things happening in the physical world, and the memory of what had happened before was somehow obliterated. I had other things happening which were demanding my attention, and besides, I did not have the belief systems that would allow me to accept what had just happened.

Over the next year, I began to explore ideas and philosophies I had no experience of before. I read books like "Life After Life," and "Life After Death," and other writings that described what people called, "Near Death Experiences," and I began to remember what had happened. I saw the similarities to what others had experienced, and I knew then what had happened to me. I thought also of the similarities to what we consider the "normal" birth process, where babies are born into bright lights and loud sounds and being slapped, and perhaps, their attention is so much directed to outer things that they forget their inner experiences just before the process of being born.

From time to time, I meet others who have made the trip, and we compare notes. "What was it like for you?" One woman said that before the experience she was certain there would be a Being on the other side with a big book, looking at what she had and had not done, and making checks and crosses, good marks and bad marks. When she got to the other side, there really was a Being there with a big book, just as she thought. The only bad marks she got, though, were for the things that she hadn't done. Her only sin was self-denial.


http://iands.org/experiences/nde-accounts/441-glow-of-energy.html

[Xan]

bringing this up...

Moody's book about NDEs was the first I read until I came across NDEs on the internet some 11 years ago. Another book worth reading is Pim van Lommel's Endless Consciousness.

The tunnel which is so often mentioned is our consciousness expanding according to one NDE I read.

There have been accounts of NDEs that have lasted for hours, even days.

After having read countless NDEs I came to the conclusion that the differences in experience could only be the result of the fact that each individual is unique. I later read that the owner of the near-death.com site had reached the same conclusion.

Surprisingly, texture is something that can very much be felt in Heaven. In fact, all of our five senses are very much the same as on Earth, only in Heaven, they are far more developed. We have the ability to smell, see, hear, touch and get ready .... YES!!! EVEN TASTE!!!!
[...]
When I got to Heaven, one of the first things I asked was about the very issue of bisexuality, as it had caused me a great deal of concern my whole life. My lady guide walked me to a room that had a large screen in it. On the screen, I saw two forms of Light conjoining with one another in the act of making Love. My guide then asked me to tell her which was the male and which was the female? I said, "I dunno!" She smiled at me and said it does not matter. She went on to say that the two Lights were what God saw when he looked upon us. She explained that God always sees us as our higher selves and that gender is a very temporary thing that will not be around forever.
http://www.near-death.com/andreason.html

"The drops in the river were each a different color yet all flowed together as one body of water. Nothing gave me the impression this was actually water or a river but this is the best descriptive example that can be given of something I witnessed for which there are no words.

"I understood (I use this term because I did not actually hear) the drops were the experiences of all who had lived. The experiences existed as separate items yet belonged to the whole. The whole was the collective knowledge of all.

http://www.near-death.com/experience...rch01.html#c01