Near Death Expiriences (NDE) Thread

[thinkreadwritecode]

I've been watching some NDE (Near Death Experience) videos on Youtube. I've always been fascinated by the NDE but also disturbed. Everyone has a different experience and every experience is eerily explainable, in my opinion, by the way someone has lived their life and what they believe. Personally, and I have no evidence to the fact (nor do I feel like looking things up and posting links), I think the NDE is a hallucination of the brain through the dumping of DMT as things shut down. A last ditch effort by the mind-body to do something in the face of the worst experience we all dread. I think then that the DMT dose brings us into contact with our unconscious self and we experience the vast power of our own nervous system, which is typically not available in our day-to-day lived experiences.

I've read Seraphim Rose's book on what happens after death but it didn't dissuade me from this idea that everyone's experience is a reflection of their self. When he mentioned how Orthodox monks would see the Saints during their NDE instead of family members, I couldn't help but think that's exactly who one would expect them to see because that is who they want to see after a life of Orthodox living and believing. I listened to a Catholic woman who said she went to Hell but the Hell she described was nothing like what we think of as Hell. It was dismal, but every thing she described could be explained by her own life experience. Getting raped in Hell could have been her biggest fear in life, to be raped. A field of berries she was told to pick were berries that she knew how to pick and corrected a demon on how to pick them. She came across family members who had tables spread with food and told her she couldn't eat because the food was for the important people (so not her, because she wasn't important to her family). It just seemed as she went on and on how personal each experience was and being a Catholic she may have conditioned herself to think she was going to purgatory or still in danger of Hell.

I could go on with each NDE I've heard. My own mother had an NDE as a child and she was in a beautiful park and played with another kid but was given the choice to stay there (forever) or go back. Of course we will never hear from those who choose to stay because for every NDE no one is completely dead.

I'm curious about the thoughts of those on this board concerning NDEs.

 

[Rodion]

Something as mysterious and unknowable as NDE is exactly the kind of thing about which I submit to the witness of the Church. I don’t know, and know the spiritual dangers of trusting my own judgement.

I guess that’s a boring answer that doesn’t contribute to much discussion, but having read The Soul After Death as well as much of The Departure of the Soul by St Anthony’s Monastery, I believe that any NDE should be treated with extreme caution. The aerial realm is the realm of the demons.

 

[Iacobus]

My working theory is that NDEs are a state of spiritual vulnerability akin to psychedelic trips. Being spiritually vulnerable can open us to God but also opens us to attack from demonic forces depending on the state of our nous. This dovetails with Fr. Seraphim's teaching that these experiences can be exploited to deceive the experiencer of falsities such as that all are one, nothing matters, we all return to the monad regardless of our earthly actions, etc

 

[Vas Incrementum]

Your post reads like atheistic, counter apologetics, which leads me to ask you if you believe in God?

Nevertheless I, too, have had an abiding interest in OBEs and NDEs and recall one remarkable case that shuts down the NDE as hallucination argument. It's the case of Pam Reynolds who, in order to undergo a complex surgical procedure, was put into a controlled death state, yet still recalled details of equipment used in the operation.

OK, I've found the video. Better to watch and wonder.

 

[Blade Runner]

I appreciate the OP's candor. I lean towards hallucination (science speak) with the body/mind problem likely better stated as spiritual vulnerability, as Iacobus says. These are all over the place, though they do have some commonalities. A viral video right now is a preacher claiming all sorts of things about meeting God, that don't sound at all like what a saint would tell you, especially since he uses "wrath" and the message being that God didn't know him because he made other things gods, or idols, and one of them was the god "sell". Incidentally, that's precisely what protestant preachers are doing up there when they are yelling at people half the time - selling, scaring, guilting or "teaching" - usually with big egos. Thus, that video also fits OP's description of he saw what he was.

I've got something crazy for you, which I've noticed for a while now. I can see things like I'm watching TV in a half awake/dream state, usually in the morning (in fact it happened this morning). I'm very aware I'm watching something like a show, and it'll be crystal clear like on a TV. It's not a lucid dream though, I can't control whatever is there or what appears. Mostly between these states I see other random things that are monsters or types of weird faces passing by, none of which are scary unless I almost try to make them so. What else happens in the mornings? I think because your T is high you get bombarded with sexual thoughts. I've never heard anyone talk about this but I'm reporting it because it's real and the mind/hormone/body/neurotransmitter axis is definitely there, and they are all bouncing off one another in a strange state of consciousness.

 

[thinkreadwritecode]

Something as mysterious and unknowable as NDE is exactly the kind of thing about which I submit to the witness of the Church. I don’t know, and know the spiritual dangers of trusting my own judgement.

I guess that’s a boring answer that doesn’t contribute to much discussion, but having read The Soul After Death as well as much of The Departure of the Soul by St Anthony’s Monastery, I believe that any NDE should be treated with extreme caution. The aerial realm is the realm of the demons.

I do agree with what you have said. Perhaps I am inclined to think about the NDE as a natural phenomenon because I think we hardly know what consciousness is and our unconscious mind-body connection. When I finished The Soul After Death all I could think was that whatever anyone sees they have to assume it's a deception and I believe it may take an entire lifetime of serious spiritual development and soul searching to reach the point of being able to discern what is truth and what is false for what will come when we pass.

 

[loremipsum]

I've got something crazy for you, which I've noticed for a while now. I can see things like I'm watching TV in a half awake/dream state, usually in the morning (in fact it happened this morning). I'm very aware I'm watching something like a show, and it'll be crystal clear like on a TV. It's not a lucid dream though, I can't control whatever is there or what appears. Mostly between these states I see other random things that are monsters or types of weird faces passing by, none of which are scary unless I almost try to make them so. What else happens in the mornings? I think because your T is high you get bombarded with sexual thoughts. I've never heard anyone talk about this but I'm reporting it because it's real and the mind/hormone/body/neurotransmitter axis is definitely there, and they are all bouncing off one another in a strange state of consciousness.

I think it's called "hypnagogic clarity", I get it often as well. Makes you wonder what actually is eyesight if you can see clearly with your eyes closed.

 

[Blade Runner]

I think it's called "hypnagogic clarity", I get it often as well. Makes you wonder what actually is eyesight if you can see clearly with your eyes closed.

Wow, that blew my mind, though I had thought of it hazily before. Thanks.

I just looked it up - "hypnopompia" is what I see, as the sleep-to-wake state, which is the inverse of "hypnagogic", apparently. I don't get the drowsy stuff, unless hungover maybe and taking a nap, lol. I just fall right to sleep when I go to bed.

 

[TruthTeller]

I can only state my experience under psychedelics where the movie phenomenon is as clear as day. Now before I am reamed saying this is some type of demonic influence, remember many have been in these states. I even saw the shroud of Turin and Jesus’ face crystal clear in these states.

I once asked about God while heavily dosed (also note I get everything from a doctor, not off the street) and I received a strange but obvious reply.

God is sometimes unknowable to us.

 

[Thomas More]

I think it's called "hypnagogic clarity", I get it often as well. Makes you wonder what actually is eyesight if you can see clearly with your eyes closed.

As someone who does computer vision programming, I can tell you that what you think of as vision is really a visual model that is assembled from sensor images (eye retina nerve impulses). As you point out, you can close your eyes, and the model remains intact. In particular, you'll find that directional sound tracking is integrated with the visual-spatial model that your brain maintains. If you close your eyes, you can still picture the room around you, and you can hear the clock ticking or the refrigerator running, or a truck outside the window, and picture it almost as if you are seeing it.

You've probably noticed that your eyes can only really perceive detail in a very small field of view near the center of your vision, and yet you have a full field of view in your visual model. Much of what you perceive in the room around you is based on memory of what you saw earlier. If something moves, your eyes can perceive the movement, but they can't see the detail of what changed until you turn your head and center your vision on whatever moved.