Near death experiences can be non-life threatening, can be drug induced, can be induced on a sober body/mind, can be induced in a state of shock/trauma, can be induced in a state of peace, can be induced during a state of orgasm, can be induced in a state of pain, can be induced in a state of ecstacy...get the point?
An author explains this a lot better than I in a segment of his book...
If you want to know the truth, or at least have a better view of what is after death, or occurs in the near death experience, then simply continue to read.
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Ramana had an experience that changed his life irrevocably. Seated in a bedroom on the second floor of his uncle's house, he was suddenly overwhelmed with the fear of death and became fully convinced that death was imminent. This inexplicable feeling persisted even thought he was completely healthy. Shaking with fear, he began to ponder the significane of his death. Since he was alone in the room, he decided to act out his own death and inquire into the meaning of it. He laid down with his arms stiffly at his sides, held his breath, and said to himself:
"Now death has come but what does it mean? What is it that is dying? The body dies and is carried off to the cremation ground and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am I dead? Am I the body? This body is now silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the "I" within me, apart from the body. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. THe bod dies but hte spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means that I am the deathless Spirit."
How should we interpret this experience? One could argue that the youth was full of imagination and, through his ability to fantasize, produced the sensations of fear and imagined his death coming. However, from all later accounts, he was actually in a near-death state at the moment, even thought he was physically healthy. Can the mind produce such a state? The awareness of his "impending death" took full possession of him, not merely as an idea but at a deeper level that opened up his spiritual self-awareness. He suddenly became spirit and knew himself as that, no longer identifying himself as merely the body form that had been called Venkataraman. His self-realization was instantaneous, complete, and irreversible. His ego was lost in a flood of pure self-awareness.
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What happens when we die? The visible body disintegrates, this we know. But what of the innermost part of us, the mind, consciousness? Science says that since the mind is only a product of neurological and biological processes, consciousness is extinguished the moment those processes cease. But those who have been there tell a different story. They say that far from outward appearances, death is a transition, from our three-dimensional world to a vaster, timeless world of light. It may happen like this:
The victim of a serious accident is rushed to a hospital emergency room, and before his condition can be stabilized, his life forces flicker out. But at the moment of apparent death, he finds himself outside his body. From this new vantage point, he sees the attending medical personnel, their desperate attempts to revive a lifeless body, and recognizes the body as his own. He is at first startled by this strange state of affairs, but as he begins to come to terms with it, something stranger happens. The world of space around him collapses into a kind of tunnel through which he is drawn into another reality, a world of brilliant golden light.
Here, a being of light appears before him and fills him with feelings of love. THe being communciates with him telepathically and asks him to evaluate his life; he is surprised that he sees a panorama of it laid out before him, and not just his entire past, but aspects of his future as well. At the same time, he notices he istaking all this in with a strange, new sense, which makes him feel somehow united or one with all of creation.
He is told it is not yet "his time", and he must return to his life on Earth. He is reluctant to do so, as he never experienced such feelings of peace and love, and he also senses that, in some way, this is his real home. But the next thing he knows, he is back in his physical body and recovers.
The experience continues to affect his life profoundly. Something has been awakened in him, something greater, something spiritual. And he will never again fear death, for he knows it is not hte end. Yet when he tries to describe the episode to others, he cannot; there are no words to portray it-the experience is ineffable.
Ok, keep reading please...
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That is a model near-death experience (NDE), a composite of the main features found in thousands of such experiences reported world-wide (and these out of the many millions that may have actually occurred). Their number has increased dramatiaclly in the last few decades as moderm resuscitative techniques now almost routinely bring back accident and heart attack victims from the brink of death. In such numbers, they send a strong message. There is life after death, in the form of a shift to another, transcendental kind of consciousness and an entrace into another, higher realm of existence.
Death is merely the gateway or time of change for our currently earthly, human consciousness.
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But this creates a problem. It is impossible under the current worldview, which acknolwedges no such kind of consciousness or other realm of existence. Therefore, the near-death experience as described can't happen and skeptics say it doesn't. They attribute all near-death experiences to dreams, fantasies, wish-fulfillment of religious expectations, hallucinations, release of endorphins, sensory dteachment, autoscopy (a condition where one sees another self),hypoxia (oxygen deprivation), limbic lobe seizures, the effects of anesthetics, and so one.
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But taken individually and collectively, these "normal" explanations don't measure up.
Even thought no two near-death experiences are exactly alike, there is an uncanny similarity to them, whereas if they were dreams or fantasies, it would be just hte opposite: there would be a bewildering assortment of visions. The general content of the experience is also the same for the devoutly religious (of all religions and cultures), agnostics, and even atheists, which negates any religious wish-fulfillment theory.
As for the other explanations-hallucnations, anesthetics, seizures, and the like-the psychological states these conditions give rise to are all categorized as distorted, unpleasant, and widely varried, nothing like the one state of clarity, peace, and joy consistently described by NDErs. Furthermore, those who have experienced any of these states, and an NDE at another time, say they were altogether different, and that they could clearly distinguish between the two.
IN addition, NDErs have amazed their doctors by recounting exactly what was going on during their resuscitations, a period when they were unconscious and oftentimes clinically dead! They have accuratly described medical procedures, clothing worn by those present, and even what was going on in other rooms of the hospital. Still there's the aspect of the phenomenon that many find the most compelling-the sheer "realness" of the experience to the NDErs. Honest and sincere people from all walks of life describe it as "realer than here," or "as real as you and I are," while others say:
Are you still with me?
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- *"It's reality. I know for myself that I didn't experience no fantasy. There was no so-called dream or nothing. These things really happened to me. It happened. I know. I went through it."
Have any of you reading this, ever gone through it?-ate
*"I've had a lot of dreams and it wasn't like any dream that I had. It was real. It was so real."
*"I know it was real...I could swear on a Bible that I was there...There's no way you can prove it, but I was there!"
No appeal to scientific validation or what is possible under the current worldview is needed for these people. THey have been there, they have seen, they
know what death is, and no longer fear it. "I saw the place you go when you die. I am not afraid of dying...it is hard to explain because it is very different from life in the world." "After you've once had the experience that I had, you know in your heart that there's no such thing as death. You just graduate from one thing to another..." when I leave here...I've been there before."
I'm doing this to try and bring some light on to the subject that has occured everywhery, many times.
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Does a dream make a person lose all fear of death? A hallucination cause him to swear on a Bible that he was somewhere else? Can a lack of oxygen allow someone to see what is going on in other rooms of a hospital?(all documented btw-ate) Do anesthetics completely change people's outlooks on life and reality? Raymond A Moody Jr., the pioneer and unofficial dean of NDE research, says he has talked to almost every NDE researched in the world, and most of them believe that NDEs are a true glimpse of life after life. They just can't scientifically prove it.
Moody speculates that the real problem may be a "limitation of the currently accepted modes of scientific and logical thought." Kenneth Ring, probably the most prominent NDE researcher, echoes this sentiment and calls for a paradigm shift, or an "openness to concepts tha remain generally unacceptable to the scientific community (what do you think is going to happen in the next years?-ate)." He says:"It is my opinion that without such concepts the near-death experience cannot be understood."
Without science at least bringing some light on this subject, without some new understands brought into place to help support why we can't define exactly what is happening, yet why those experiencers of it seem to know exactly what is is happening, I don't think we'll get very far without experiencing it yourself. Unless of course a paradism shift occurs soon...
Please continue if you've made it his far.
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Moody and Ring are right. The NDe, like all paranormal phenonmena, doesn't work under the current scientific worldview or paradigm. But in an expanded framework of space, time, and consciousness, it not only works, it must be, for the most basic axiom of extra-dimensional theory is tha we are all extra-dimensional beings, and the greter part of us, our higher selves and consciousness, exists in higher space. Or as Ouspensky says:"We are ourselves beings of four dimensions, and really live in a four-dimensional world but are conscious of ourselves only in three-dimensional world." The near-death experience is the beginning of the transition to that higher self and consciousness, a transition we will all someday make.
In fact, all pathways to higher consciousness lead to this conclusion. Jesus said, "In truth, in very truth I tell you all, you shall see heaven wide open." What could he have meant by this? As one who accessed that higher, extra-dimensional consciousness, he saw that a part of us will exist after death in a higher reality. Mohammed said:"And those who disbelieve will not cease to be in doubt thereof until the Hour comes upon them unawares, or they come into the doom of a disastrous day." What could he have meant by this? That even is someone did not acquire the higher sense, to see this larger world sooner, they'd see it later, when they died.
Those with complete possession of a higher, extra-dimensional conscious? "You yourself, will see the universe as i have seen it," the "aliens" told one abductee, while Betty Andreasson was told that her real home was a world of light, where the "One" was, and that everyone would someday experience it (more on this later). Many abductees, their consciousness stimulated, in effect raised, by the experience, have sensed this, as Mack obvserves: "A number of abductees with whom I have worked experience at certain points of opening up to the source of being in the cosmos, which they often call Home (a realm beyond, or not in, space/time as we know it), and from which they feel they have been brutally cut off in the course of becoming embodied as a human being."
These are different paths that will cross many times in this chapter but leard to the same place: our place of origin and our destination. We are indeed more than flesh and blood; we are extra-dimensional beings whose real home is in a higher space, who enter this three-dimensional world as a point(birth), and exit as one(death).
Now, the next pages work to explain and recount The Out-of-Body Experience, The Tunnel, The World of Light and Higher Space-Home, Eternal Life, and the return from the NDE.
If anyone reads that, which I hope if you're reading this you will go back to read, or already have, and would like to understand or read more on this subject from this point of view then just say something so I can type it up. I really would like to because I feel if people haven't had such said experience, then they won't know.
