Continued from: Near death experience part 1

In the first post on this topic, I discussed four near death experiences. The first and currently only commenter posted this

“Seems to me your just using NDE because you lack a better term to express the substance of the experiences.”

I used the term NDE for one reason only. Until I had begun to do some research on the subject, my only knowledge of the concept of a person’s life flashing before their eyes preceded the death experience.

The first near death experience I underwent was while trying to actually create a controlled and directed out of body experience. The resulting experience of leaving my body, returning and waking up to my life flashing before my eyes gave me the impression that I was working directly with the life-death-spirit mechanism of being alive.

The second NDE was the foggiest. Upon intense recollection and some memory reconstruction, it seems that while most of my OBE seemed *real* to me, there was missing elements to the scene. Years later, I realized that when I was watching my body being loaded into the ambulance from across the street, there were no cars. The ambulance was in the emergency lane ( I think) and slightly off the road. The road itself was a rural highway. I was found somewhere between 10 am and noon, I no longer remember exactly. Either way, the highway should have had constant traffic for the time of day and I don’t remember any cars passing in either lane while I was being loaded in physically, and witnessing this spiritually.

The third NDE happened while I was on a motorcycle. I was not at all suicidal at the time. I was not ODing on drugs, I was not screwing around with the occult. I did not have any near death experience signs and symptoms, other than my life flashing before my eyes.

In the moments before having my life recalled, I was staring into the sun, I had surrendered to fate, and my spine was being pushed by the G force and the acceleration into the seat. My eyes were staring, well, into the light.

After this occurred, I felt as though the sacredness and spiritual nature of my first two near death experiences had been greatly diminished. It seems the mind can be tricked into thinking that death is imminent and through some trickery of neurological functioning, the brain commences the death process to some degree or another.

This was in important experience and an equally important realization although I did not know it then. (circa 1996-97) It turns out that air force pilots in G stress tests have NDEs and OBEs too. They know they are not dying but the body produces the death experience if triggered. I will get more into that in a moment.

My final NDE I labeled a Near Life Experience. The experience had nothing in common with my overdose OBE and nothing in common with the motorcycle NDE. In fact, my last NDE was caused by similar forces as my first NDE. The first NDE, I was striving to project myself out of my body like a whole body chi gung exercise. It was something I did by focusing my awareness, my intention and my concentration in a certain way. The final NDE, I was doing the opposite. I was striving to fully inhabit every nanometer of my body. I was possessing myself. I was doing the most intensive energy work with my consciousness that I have ever done.

During the process my life paraded one more time across my inner eye. The work I was doing was technically quite different from a deliberate attempt at out of body projection. Yet it was fundamentally the same in that I was expending effort to fully engage my own presence by focusing on my awareness, my intention and concentration in a certain way.

The first and the last NDE were the most real to me. The suicide attempt OBE remains surreal and not entirely clear. The motorcycle NDE was very subtle, had no residual aftereffects and did not elevate my consciousness at all. On the first and last NDE I was utterly clean and sober. On my suicide attempt, of course my mind was screwed up from anti histamine psychosis basically, and I was probably mildly stoned on the motorcycle seeing as how I was 20 something and could not function without pot.

Again I dance around the final NDE because it was less a near death experience, as I have said before, and more of a near life experience. The circumstances were pretty unique. It requires it’s own telling, when I am good and ready to tell it.

I would like to say that, Near Death Experience is a sacred deeply spiritual and intimately personal event. When it happens to you, it can be mind altering. It can permanently change your outlook on life. It can be shocking.

The reality may be much simpler and less grandiose than all that. I want to restate that if near death experiences only occurred when you were generally near death I would still see my experience as somehow meaningful. I no longer do though. I don’t think it was supernormal uber spiritual phenomena. The phenomena of experiencing NDE/OBE can occur when you practice the occult, chi gung and or meditation. It can occur when you are on drugs and you think you are dying. It can occur when you think you might die on the back of motorcycle. It can occur when you find yourself deep inside.

OBE can also happen when a soldier fumbles a grenade and the grenade turns out to be a training dud.

NDE can happen when you are pulling high G aerial combat maneuvers in a fighter jet.

NDE/ OBE can happen for a variety of reasons and although no two persons NDE/OBE are exactly alike in every detail, there are for a lack of better naming convention, Universal Details, anecdotes of people who experience NDEOBE that are surprisingly similar.

The first is the rapid life recollection. This has happened to me four times.

The second is the closing down of the body and exiting from body, usually from the front, top or back of the skull. This has happened to me three out of the four times.

The third is discorporation or being out of body, feeling as though one is spirit and separate from the flesh. This has happened to me three out of the four times.

The final and fourth is afterlife experience. This is where experiences diverge. There is a segment of the NDEers that find themselves in peaceful surroundings feeling serene and in the company of relatives (not just the deceased, but also the living interestingly enough).

There is a segment of the population that experience the afterlife precisely according to archteypes, images or beliefs they have been exposed to during their lives. The most common usually being that of some kind of heaven and on occasion, hell.

Some of the experiences included communing with angels or with a presence filled all encompassing white light. Some include detailed conversations with dead relatives.

None of that ever happened to me. When I had my near death experiences that included being out of body, I never once entered a place of light and hope or fire and brimstone. I never talked to a dead relative or to an angel. I never heard Jesus or Satan. I experienced nothing. If I experienced anything worth telling it is this. There is naught but the eternal darkness from which all things came. That is what I experienced. Eternal nothingness. A void beyond awful or awesome that marches straight out into infinity in every direction. That’s what I saw. A whole lot of Nothing.

I had been raised Catholic, a lay Franciscan. I underwent several deconversions and reconversions from Satan worship, to Wicca and paganism. I knew of the Green Man. The Horned Elder, The Earth Mother and the Moon Goddess. I traded one idea for another.

I know now, that once I stopped believing in Abrahamic monotheism, I never truly believed in anything again. When I experienced the suicide NDE I was truly a nonbeliever, somewhere between and agnostic and atheist with a dash of dualism thrown in.

I tried to understand what I had seen. I turned to the Tibetan Book of the Dead to understand why I did not find myself in Elysium or Dante’s Hell or the Pearly Gates.

From the Bardo Thodol I learned of the concept of maya and the endless Plane of Illusion that the spirit dwells in that has not escaped the wheel of reincarnation. The dreams and spirits that visit you when you are between lives will depend on the contents of your mind at death. Whether it is angels or demons that visit you in your private matrix, the nature of that matrix and the personalities you experience while in it is based on what you really believe deep down.

When people come back from near death and speak of heaven or hell they experienced their own illusions.

This is born out by one simple and undeniable fact. There are no cross cultural religious conversions. It never happens.

What I mean by that is this. If you ask a Christian what happens when they die. They might say something about Saint Peter, Jesus, sitting in judgement, heaven, purgatory, whatever. When a Christian has a NDE/OBE, thats exactly what happens to them. Even to supposed atheists who had stopped observing religions for decades as an adult. They have a NDE and suddenly they are born again. Deep inside their minds they forgot about being 8 years old and attending CCD or Bible Study. They had a fantasy about what they would see and they returned to the only after life scenario they knew of. They defaulted to the long forgotten heaven and hell paradigm they were schooled in as kids.

What does not happen is this. A Christian never comes back saying they spoke to Shiva or Shakti.

A Hindu never comes back saying they spoke to The Horned God or the Earth Mother.

A Muslim never comes back with a story about meeting Moses, Jesus, Mary, or any saints like St Francis, St Paul, St Peter. Etc.

Nor do Muslims or Hindus or Christians come back from near death experiences with tales of Mount Olympus or Nirvana. You never hear about encounters with ancient heroes either. Despite the number of people that believe they are the reincarnation of Merlin there seems to be no accounts of running into him on the other side (perhaps because his soul is quite stretched out amongst the new age past-lives culture.)

You don’t hear about Christian Fundamentalists coming back from the dead having met Gilgamesh or Cuchulain.

You don’t hear about Islamic Fundamentalists coming back from near death having met Thor, Hermes or Aphrodite

You don’t hear stories of Hindus coming back with tales of encountering Rhiannon or Michael the Archangel.

You definitely do not hear about isolated Abrahamic Monotheism amongst typically primitive polytheistic tribal people. Granted the very primitive peoples of the world may not have access to the internet or be able to post a youtube video. Yet we have video popping up from all over from third world countries and still, no independent cross cultural conversions.

One would think, that if the Christians were correct. If the Bible was the unquestionable final word on the afterlife, that everyone anywhere in the world, that has a near death experience, should come back converted to Christianity. If heaven, Jesus and all that awaited everyone on the other side. Then Hindus with NDE should come back converted to Christianity. Muslims with NDE should come back converted to Christianity. Sooner or later a sheltered pocket of Christianity among a remote and primitive tribal culture could conceivably occur.

I am talking about walking into a relatively unknown and previously undocumented culture with a Christianity based religion already there.

It does not happen and it did not happen. When the explorers encountered primitive people in South American, Africa, Australia, pacific islands, etc they invariably found polytheism. The only way primitive peoples even know of the existence of something like Christianity is when Christians send missionaries.

It’s not like Captain Cook landed in Hawaii and found the natives worshiping the Holy Trinity.

I am trying to make the argument that what Christians see when they have a near death experience is what everyone should see, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans and snake eating fire worshipers alike. The same arguement can again be made for any of the others. If the Quran was correct. If the Quran and Islam was the only and true real faith, the Hindus and Born Agains and Mormons would all run into Muhammed when they got to the other side. It never happens.

I find that to be both expected and reassuring. I think it would be pretty scary if Captain Cook landed in Hawaii and natives were found worshipping Jesus, Virgin Mary and Co. That would be pretty conclusive evidence in support of the Christian paradigm. That is not the case. When the explorers discovered the aboriginals in Australia, the aboriginals were not Hindus.

The reason of course that these people eventually end up Christian or whatever is due to the efforts of missionaries.

In the final analysis, when a person has a religious flavored near death experience involving experiencing an afterlife, the details and contents of that afterlife predictably and invariably are whatever they were raised to believe it would be, period. The only place those realities exist, is in the mind of the believer, or there would be cross cultural religious conversions.

In my opinion, the lack of total cross cultural religious conversions following near death experience is the the strongest evidence against all religions on earth. The implications of that fact are inescapable. There is no faith or religion with the real deal knowledge of what is on the other side. Otherwise that reality would be inescapable for everyone. Let’s assume that the Hindu pantheon of gods is the only true religious paradigm. Sooner or later Christians and Muslims would come back from a near death experience permanently and unswervingly devoted to Hinduism.

What actually does happen is that typically, the person’s relationship with the faith they hold dear to them is strengthened, not weakened by their experience on the ‘other side’.

The Sunday church Christian has an NDE during a routine medical operation and returns with a fanatical devotion to Christianity, a deeply born again faith, stronger than before. Why? Because they saw exactly what deep down inside, they believed in, nothing more nothing less.

As I said towards the beginning of this rant. The sacred spiritual nature of the NDE is lost to me now. There is ample and increasing evidence that the mind can trick the body into NDE and NDE happens even when the subject is no where near real death. NDE may be nothing more than the experience of neurological brain activity, oxygen deprivation or subconscious states induced by believed peril.

I give you these links to a series of skeptical, scientific and rational inquiries into the supposedly spiritual nature of the near death experience.

Near Death Experience and the Afterlife

Gravity: Triggers for NDE/OBE

Skeptic Dictionary and OBE

Skeptic Dictionary and NDE

Softpedia: Near Death Experiences explained

How Stuff Works “Has science explained NDE?”

Out of Body Experiences CBS report

Internet Infidels discussion forums:

Science and Skepticism, “Does Consciousness survive death?”