The Near Death Experience
Our first stop in the exploration of life after death is to look into the Near Death Experience (NDE). Roughly 40% of those who have died temporarily and returned to life recall similar experiences. These reveal the first stages of what happens when a person‘s physical body dies and they return to the astral world.
The Nature of NDEs
Overview of NDEs
There is a well-established order of events that take place during a typical NDE.
It begins with the moment of physical death (generally the stopping of the heart), followed by a release and feelings of peace and painlessness. This is the start of an OBE, which may include local exploration and travel. The tunnel opens, and eventually the person travels through it and exits into a bright place, where they might meet people who have passed before encountering a being of light. Here they experiencing a life review. Then they may be shown various places in the astral world before returning to the body.
A Near Death Experience
Following is an example of a NDE:
While the doctors and nurses tried to jump-start my heart, I went up a tunnel that spiraled around me and vibrated with the sound of heavenly chimes. . . .
Soon I was in a paradise of brilliant light, a soothing illumination that bathed me in a love and comfort that made me feel as though I were as weightless as helium and as loved as a newborn child. . . .
A shimmering silver form appeared. It came like a silhouette through a fog. As it approached I felt a deep sense of love that became so intense that it was almost too pleasurable to withstand. . . . I had become translucent and shimmering, like water in a coral sea or a scarf made of fine silk blowing in a gentle breeze. . . .
[The Being of Light] looked as though it was composed of thousands of tiny diamonds, each glowing with the colors of the rainbow. . . .
As I admired the Being’s beauty I was engulfed, and every memory flowed from my mind as though a dam had broken. . . . In a great rush my life flowed past me and I was able to see it all, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful. (Brinkley 5-6)APitLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Near Death Is Death
Dr. Peebles: It was a death experience, Don. Wasn’t near-death; it was death. And if you had not chosen to come to the body, you just would have kept going right where you were. (Pendleton 148)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton
A person does need to be near death to experience an NDE. Of the 121 seriously ill children, not one of them had anything resembling a near-death experience. . . .
The experimental group, those children who had survived cardiac arrest or who had miraculously returned from deep comas, had another story all together. Most of these children had at least one of the NDE traits—being out of their physical bodies, traveling up some sort of tunnel, seeing a light, visiting with people who describe themselves as being dead, seeing a Being of Light, having a life review, and maybe even deciding consciously to return to their bodies. (Morse 21-23)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Length of Death During NDE
The progression through the stages of the NDE depend on how long the person‘s heart has stopped. Short deaths may result only in the initial OBE. Longer deaths result in the entire NDE, and may continue into extended journeys through the astral.
As a general rule, those who went deeper into the other world were people who had been dead for longer; those who simply reported leaving their body were usually patients whose life functions had failed for a period of less than two minutes. (Viney 202-203)SDresearcher • modern • Viney
Body Dead for a Long Time
The longest cases of temporary death run from hours to days. In “The Myth of Er” in Plato’s Republic, Er was dead for 12 days before returning to life.
Bayne left his body . . . for a period of several hours. More importantly, he has been pronounced clinically dead some time before he actually recovered. In both the case of the Vietnam GI and the Englishman who died in a Manchester hospital, all vital signs of life had ceased; the doctors . . . could in each case find no trace of heartbeat nor any evidence of respiratory functioning. (Viney 195)SDresearcher • modern • Viney
I once spoke to a Russian, for instance, who was struck by a car and sent to the morgue because he was believed dead. He was put into a refrigerated file drawer for three days, during which time his spirit left his body and roamed. . . .
The man was discovered to be alive just before the pathologist started his autopsy. He was sent to the hospital where he made a full physical recovery. (Brinkley 152)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Commonality of NDEs
TO DO: These are old statistics from 1985. Research more recent data.
Dr. Bruce Greyson, professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center, says that his studies indicate that as many as eight million Americans have undergone a near-death-experience that completely transformed their lives. (Steiger 158)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Using standard polling techniques, Gallup determined that eight million people in the United States had NDEs. Shortly after that, a subsequent poll expanded this number to thirteen million, an impressive population. (Rhodes 6)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
TO DO: Check if these 8 million numbers are all referring to the same study.
Even ten years ago NOTE: That’d be around 1985 a survey in the United States revealed that eight million Americans, or five percent of the adult American population, have had [an NDE]. And, in a prospective hospital survey conducted about the same time, it was found that in circumstances of near-death crisis more than forty percent of people report an NDE. (Sutherland 7)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Over 20 million people in the United States reported having had a near-death experience at least once in their lifetime. (Hinze 47)EtS-SBH • modern • Hinze & Hinze
Purpose of NDEs
NDEs are the first stages of the full death experience. As such there is no specific purpose. But sometimes a NDE is arranged by the higher self or a guide as a needed intervention for the waking self.
Subject: When [NDEs] happen it is usually because their guide has decided that they were heading towards a dead end in their karma. They were not really wanting to break out of their pattern. Something like that happens to really shake up their thinking, so they start on new patterns and can begin guiding their karma into new directions, hopefully more positive patterns. (Cannon 201)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon
Shared NDEs
If two or more teenagers or adults were in close physical proximity to each other when their near-death episode occurred—they tended to have either identical or similar experiences. (Atwater 183)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
According to Jack, he remembered nothing after one of his coworkers in the laboratory managed to shout a brief exclamation of warning before the explosion shattered the building.
“I was astonished when I saw what appeared to be the traditional representation of an angel flying off with what looked as though it might be Peter, my lab partner.
“And then I was even more astonished when I saw that I—or some part of me—was also being borne aloft by someone or something in what appeared to be a gown of shimmering white.” (Steiger 84)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
My encounter took place at St. Alphonsus Hospital in Boise, Idaho, when I was visiting a woman who had suffered a heart attack. . . .
When clinically dead, she had experienced an incident that went like this: She floated out of her body and into a dark tunnel, then headed through the tunnel toward a bright light ahead. Once the light was reached, she came to view a landscape of barren, rolling hills filled to overflowing with nude, zombie-like people standing elbow to elbow doing nothing but staring straight at her. She was so horrified at what she saw that she started screaming. This snapped her back into her body, where she continued screaming until sedated. . . .
As I patiently listened, two other people entered the room, an elderly man and woman, both walking with canes. . . . Both relayed substantially the same story as the woman I knew. . . .
Before I left, a nurse took me aside and said there was one more experiencer, a man recovering from surgery who was so shaken he refused to speak with anyone, but kept muttering words like “hills and hills of nude people, all staring.” (Atwater 39-40)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
These are all experiences of the void. It’s the frequency of consciousness for those who are entirely closed up within their own heads.
Experience Is Shaped by Beliefs
Beliefs Shape Our After-Death Experiences
Just as is the case in all astral experiences, we can project to varying degrees our own subjective expectations over the objective reality we find ourselves in. When we do, we experience those projections as the reality.
In this way, we have the ability to close ourselves off to any shared, objective reality and project any other reality in its place. As we open, our projections begin to slightly conform to the shapes and reality around us, though they are largely still painted over with our familiar forms. Fully open, we see astral reality as it truly is, without any physical forms.
The method by which this happens is the very same as when in the body. When we focus our attention through a past experience, that experience expands out around us, becomes our mental environment, even if we are not physically there. Without the physical body holding us in place, we are there. Those things in our physical environment which correspond even a little to our projection are incorporated into it. This is how, on a warm, sunny, peaceful day in the park, we can be miserable while focused on a negative past experience, and how things going on around us (a figure approaching in our periphery, for example) can be seen through that past experience and trigger heightened fear. This is how our subjective field interacts with the objective reality around us.
Angels (channeled): The way a person lives while in your world—their mythology and understanding of the workings of the universe—determines the form their transition will take.
However, every soul’s transition holds similar characteristics. The essence of all life—all truth—is the same. . . . The truth is filtered through each individual’s idea of how things work. . . .
Each soul, from no matter what culture or religious background, will experience the tunnel and unearthly music and living sounds that affect them profoundly. They each experience the brilliant light of Heaven and otherworldly beings—both familiar and unfamiliar to them. They each will experience a review of their most recent life. (Fairchilde 56)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
Dr. Peebles: When you die from the human body—you do have the encouragement and direct inspiration of friends and loved ones, teachers of the spirit world, to use as a resource. However [forcefully], you remain in control. Your free will remains dominant. . . . That’s the stubbornness we’re talking about. The desire to disbelieve . . . the reality of this or that, can be so strong—and supported through logic—that any manifestation and experience is secondary to the drive to remain safe. . . .
If you believe in hell, and that you deserve to go there—and you believe it so firmly that you are not willing to even blink your eye, then you will experience a place called hell. For a while. For the power of the divine within is so strong that you will be gathered with others of like mind, who insist on believing it as well, so you create that reality.
But if there is even a flicker of an eyelash of receptivity to an alternative, you begin to experience more light of a more objectified and consistent universe. (Pendleton 39)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton
It is not until age four and older that children start to incorporate cultural elements such as religious figures or visions of heaven into the experience. (Morse 3)VS-MMresearcher • modern • Morse
There may or may not be disorientation on your part, according to your beliefs and development. . . . Difficulties can arise when the newly freed consciousness seizes upon its ideas about reality after death, rather than facing the particular reality in which it finds itself. It can deny feeling, in other words, and even attempt to argue itself out of its present independence from the body. . . .
At this point many variations in behavior emerge, each the result of individual background, knowledge, and habit. The surroundings in which the dead find themselves will often vary. Vivid hallucinations NOTE: projections will form experiences quite as real as those in physical life. . . . [Thoughts and emotions] form the after-death experience. This does not mean that the experiences are not valid. . . .
Certain images have been used to symbolize such a transition between existences, and many of these are extremely valuable in that they provide a framework with understandable references. The crossing of the River Styx is such a one. . . .
It does not do to say that such a river is illusion. The symbol is reality, you see. Now, that particular map is no longer generally in use. . . . Christianity has believed in a heaven and a hell, a purgatory, and reckoning; and so, at death, to those who so believe in these symbols, another ceremony is enacted, and the guides take on the guises of those beloved figures. . . .
Then with this as framework, and in terms that they can understand, such individuals are told the true situation. (Roberts 123-124)SSchanneled • modern • Seth
Cultural Influences
Cultural and religious expectations project forms onto one’s experience after physical death. The one advantage of knowing nothing about life after death is that there are no expectations, and thus we can see what’s happening clearly.
The near-death experience is highly variable from person to person and culture to culture. For example, the tunnel and the being of light in East Indians are often depicted as the River Ganges and a specific guru. (Twemlow and Gabbard 68)JoNDE-TGresearcher • modern • Twemlow & Gabbard
In Japan, a study of four hundred near-death experiencers reveals that many of them see long dark rivers and beautiful flowers. Indians sometimes see heaven as a giant bureaucracy and are frequently sent back because of clerical errors. Americans and the English are usually sent back for love or to do a job while the natives of Micronesia say that the heaven they see is similar to a large, brightly lit American city with loud noisy cars and tall buildings. (Morse 127)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
A River or Sea Crossing
The river marking the frontier between our world and the Beyond consistently occurs in all cultures. According to the Haida Indians, the dead person, once he has reached the shore of an ocean bay, calls to the other shore from where a figure carrying a red staff sets out on a raft to take him to the other side. In Borneo they believe in a city of souls situated on an island in the Sea of Fog. The traveler has to use a vessel made of iron to reach it, because on the way there hot whirlpools of fire must be crossed. Sinners become very thirsty, because of the tremendous heat, but are only offered a pitcher of molten lead to quench their thirst, whereas virtuous people suffer fewer torments. With the Yugakir, there is an old woman standing on the bank of the river who asks whether the soul wishes to cross for good or only temporarily. The traveler then has to cross the river in a boat and is met by a dead relative on the other shore. . . .
In the Solomon Islands, the souls of the dead reached Totomanu, the river of Living Water, in which it bathes and is thereby transformed into a true spirit of the dead. For the Semang (Malaysian Peninsula) the road to the land of the dead at first has ordinary scenery, but then gets lost in spheres that are increasingly unearthly. A river appears, which marks the frontier between this world and the Beyond. After the soul has washed itself in this river it becomes aware of its destiny, picks a few flowers and then loses the longing to return to the earthly life. The Lakhers (East India) call this river “Lungo,” which can be translated as “without feeling,” and thus might be an allusion to the loss of the human status as a result of crossing it. . . .
To reach the underworld (Hades) Aeneas had to cross the river Styx. Charon, the ferryman and guardian of the river, wanted to refuse him the crossing, but in the end allowed him to cross as a result of the entreaties by the sybil NOTE: guide to the underworld accompanying him. Similarly, the Egyptians believed in an ocean or sea that separates our world from the underworld, and Sumerians had to cross a large ocean before reaching Sheol, the world of the dead.
The Ojibway Indians, too, have an ancient Orpheus myth, in which a river plays a central role. . . .
[The river] seems deep and wide to some, and narrow and shallow as a brook to others. (Kalweit 59-61)D&ISresearcher • modern • Kalweit
Tibetan NDEs
Traditionally déloks are people who seemingly “die” as a result of an illness, and find themselves traveling in the bardo NOTE: the astral. They visit the hell realms, where they witness the judgement of the dead and the sufferings of hell, and sometimes they go to paradises and buddha realms. They can be accompanied by a deity, who protects them and explains what is happening. (Rinpoche 330)TBoLDwisdom • Tibetan • Rinpoche
The idea of justice in the afterlife is an attractive and comforting one, and has been embraced by many religions. This belief causes some people to behave better in life. However, this is not how things work. We are our only tormentors, should we choose to be. Growth instead comes through increasing empathy and the growing knowledge that we are all one.
Lingza Chökyi was a famous délok. . . . She failed to realize she was dead. . . . She found herself out of her body, and saw a pig’s corpse lying on her bed, wearing her clothes. . . . When her children wept, she felt a “hail of pus and blood” fall, which caused her intense pain. . . .
After a while she heard someone whom she thought was her father calling to her, and she followed him. She arrived in the bardo NOTE: astral realm, which appeared to her like a country. From there, she tells us, there was a bridge that led to the hell realms, and to where the Lord of Death was counting the good or evil actions of the dead. In this realm she met various people who recounted their stories, and she saw a great yogin who had come into the hell realms in order to liberate beings. (RInpoche 330)TBoLDwisdom • Tibetan • Rinpoche
These cultural projections all correspond to true things, but in a very negative way. The pig’s corpse was her own body. The hail was the thought forms of sadness directed at her. Since a visit to the hell realms was a traditional part of Tibetan NDEs, she does so. The counting of good and evil actions corresponds to the life review, which actually happens without judgment. The liberating yogin is doing a common service in the lower astral known as rescue missions.
A Cheyenne NDE
Willow Dancing (channeled): My grandmother was there for me in her brightness. She held her hand out to me and pulled me away from the body that had housed my spirit. She then clothed me in my wedding dress and placed my story belt around my waist. These things had been lost to me in that time of sorrow and destruction for our people. But everything of beauty that is created in love and prayerfulness has a life in the spirit world, and so the song that my spirit sang through these things was not lost, but was given back to me filled with life and glowing with an inner light.
NOTE: She goes through a culturally-influenced tunnel - see “Tunnel Rationalizations” below
Then in a flash of brilliant light we left the sacred mountains and the Thunderbird set me down in the Land of Great Spirit. I could now see, but it was with new eyes. And what my eyes saw my heart embraced with great joy! For there was Wears a Feather. Three Elk was with her for he had met death shortly after leaving camp that night of the blue-coats. Together we walked toward the Great Council Fire, accompanied by the loving spirits of our ancestors who welcomed us with much celebration.
There were twelve Great Spirits around this Holy Fire, which lit up all of Creation. . . .
And then in the fire I saw my life as Willow Dancing. In that Great Light all things were made clear and whole and new. All the pain and anger and hatred of our white brothers that had come to walk with me when I saw what they did to the People, when I saw what they did to the Earth in their ignorance—all was burned away and in their place wisdom and forgiveness and, above all else, love now stood tall and strong in my spirit. . . .
Wears a Feather runs strong and free with many horses, their bodies sleek and light. There are buffalo as far as the eye can see, moving like a brown river through glowing golden grasses. Deer run swift as the wind, their tails flashing white as they leap with joy. And the Great Eagle and Mighty Hawk dance in the sky above me, all perfect and whole and made of light—the Light of Great Spirit. . . .
I am learning much here. There is only One Clan, and that is the Clan of the People—white, black, yellow, red—we are all one. (Fairchilde 51-53)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
The Experience is Individually Tailored
Another possibility is that the spirit guide or higher self meeting us on the other side of the tunnel helps to fulfill the expectations of the newly released soul to help with the transition. I think more often it’s the projections of recently deceased.
I asked my friend, and his friends, about death – what happens when we die?
They said that when a loving person dies, angels come down to meet him, and they take him up – gradually, at first, because it would be unbearable for that person to be instantly exposed to God.
. . . They know what each of us needs, so they provide that. In some cases it may be a heavenly meadow, and in another, something else. If a person needs to see a relative, the angels will bring that relative. . . . We see what is necessary for our introduction into the spirit world, and those things are real, in the heavenly, the divine sense.
They gradually educate us as spirit beings, and bring us into heaven. We grow and increase, and grow and increase, and shed the concerns, desires, and base animal stuff that we have been fighting much of our life. HSNDEr • modern • Storm
I believe this is often the result of projection. The guide “takes that form” only because the released soul is projecting that form onto them.
[Gloria] and the group of angels walked with her into a beautiful area of flowers, green grass, and a small stream. . . .
“This is not the true Heaven,” one of the angels cautioned her. “This is a construct that we have created for your good and your gaining. It is our intention that this experience will contribute greatly to the positive growth of your soul. (Steiger 50, 53-54)
Gloria said that she had always wondered about the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling with an angel. Could a man really wrestle with an angelic entity? . . .
“Jacob, you see, required a kind of physical act to accompany the spiritual blessing that he sought so desperately. So the angel wrestled with him as a kind of stimulus to accompany the blessing that he would have gladly and willingly bestowed anyway.” (Steiger 52)
Jack: “Well, if you’re supposed to be an angel, where are your wings?”
“If you want wings, you’ll get wings. I didn’t think such traditional trappings would appeal to a disciple of science such as yourself,” the angel replied. . . .
“If you prefer a business suit, I can arrange it with but a moment’s thought.” (Steiger 85)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
During the tenth [electric shock] treatment [Jeanie Dicus’s] heart went into fibrillation—nurse had forgotten to give her a necessary shot of potassium—and she died:
I was floating above my body. . . .
There was Jesus. I was stunned and said, “I don’t believe in you.” He smiled and said the etheric equivalent of tough shit, here I am. Looking at his eyes, I asked, “You mean, you’ve been with me the whole time and I didn’t know?” and his reply was: “Lo, I am with thee, always, even beyond the end of the world.” Now I wasn’t into lo so I said, “Hey, man, this is the seventies and we don’t say lo. Come on.” He kind of grinned, I guess I was amusing him, and answered, “You want to be reincarnated?” “Hey give me a break,” I yelled (only I made no sound). “I just died. Don’t I get a chance to rest?” “Take it easy, hold on, it’s alright. You can change your mind at any time.” I gasped, “I don’t even believe in you and now you want me to reincarnate. Help!”
Our conversation continued. He even asked me to kiss his feet. No way. I gave him a bear hug and kissed his cheek. I got the equivalent of a belly laugh. I was so happy with him that words were no longer necessary. We then communicated mind-to-mind. Suddenly I was aware God was coming. I came to know that I had needed a human-looking Christ to relate to so I wouldn’t be scared. . . .
The White Light in front of me . . . was so strong. . . . It was warm and it permeated every molecule of me. This was so delicious, I was crying with torrents of tears that didn’t exist. It was so enormous. I was loved. I didn’t feel irrelevant. I felt humble, awed, and amazed. (Atwater 63-65)
What we have here is a very funny spirit guide.
Pre-Tunnel OBE
The OBE at Death
The first thing that happens when the heart stops is the exiting of the astral body from the physical. This out of body experience is like those described in “Out of Body Experiences” in obes.php, except that the separation happens instantly.
Starnes: “In an operating room in Charlotte, N.C., I “died” for four minutes when my heart stopped, and in that moment my life changed forever.
“I found myself floating above the operating table, listening to the frantic voices of the doctors and nurses. . . .
“The very moment disinterest arose, I felt myself moving at an incredible speed through the ceiling, up, up, up into a wondrous Light that was urging me forward.” (Starnes 5)LFSchanneled • modern • James
It’s the interest (attachment, attention) which keeps us near the physical.
They felt as if they were “pure” consciousness. . . .
The majority of my subjects . . . did find themselves in another body. (Moody 47)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
See the whole of “Out of Body Experiences” in obes.php.
Jumping Out Before Death
When the physical body is in great pain, the astral body may jump out of it before death. This is possible any time there is unbearable pain, not just at death.
Souls often leave their human hosts moments before actual death when their bodies are in great pain. (Newton 10)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
If our deaths are traumatic, the spirit quickly leaves the body, sometimes even before death occurs. (Eadie 83)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Unaware of One’s Death
It‘s more common than you might think that someone is unaware of their own death. When they find themselves in what is apparently the same body, aware and alive in all respects, it may take some time to realize that things are somewhat different than before.
John: “When the physical passing is swift, frequently an individual will not even realize he or she has crossed over. . . . This is particularly true with individuals who have little or no consciousness, or desired consciousness, of the existence of the pattern beyond their own physical bodies.” (Ryerson and Harolde 241)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde
Subject: At one moment you’re in one plane of existence and you blink your eyes, so to speak, and you’re in another plane of existence. That’s about the physical sensation you have, and it’s as painless as that. . . . Your memories are intact and you feel the same, as if your life is continuing. Sometimes it takes you a little bit to notice that you’re no longer connected to your physical body, but usually that is noticed right away because your perceptions are broadened to where you can perceive the spiritual plane without the veil in the way. . . . What happens is that at first there is a period of orientation. You are still very conscious of the physical plane but you are exploring and absorbing the sensations of being aware of the spiritual plane, until you get used to the fact that you’re really on the spiritual plane and you are comfortable with it. (Cannon 15)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon
Private Dowding describes his own death, through the mediumship of Mr. Tudor-Pole:
“I heard the whizz of a shell. Then followed an explosion somewhere behind me. . . .
“Something struck . . . hard against my neck. . . . I fell, and as I did so, without passing through any apparent interval of unconsciousness, I found myself outside myself! . . .
One moment I was alive, in the earthly sense. . . . Five seconds later I was standing outside my body, helping two of my pals carry my body down the trench labyrinth toward a dressing-station. . . . I seemed in a dream. I had dreamt that someone or something had knocked me down. Now I was dreaming that I was outside my body. ‘Soon’, I thought, ‘I shall wake up and find myself in the traverse, waiting to go on guard.’” (Muldoon 307)PotABOBEr • Spiritualism • Muldoon
Many people find the notion of being out of their bodies so unthinkable that, even as they are experiencing it, they feel conceptually quite confused about the whole thing and do not link it with death for a considerable time. . . .
Most people report, at first, a desperate desire to get back into their bodies but they do not have the faintest idea about how to proceed. (Moody 43)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
There are numerous possibilities where one can get stuck in this state. see “Stuck in the Near Realm - Earthbound Souls” in returning-home.php.
The Corner Ceiling Rationalization
A common experience upon exiting the body at death is the return of our natural higher-dimensional perception. This includes Immersive Perception, in which we can see objects from every side and inside at once, and spherical 360° vision. Spherical sight is usually rationalized in human terms as perceiving from the corner of the ceiling, the physical viewpoint that shows the most of the room at once.
“Soon my mind began to take on a new feeling,” Fay wrote in his book, Into the Light. “I had a sensation of alertness or awareness that I had never before experienced. The room and each object in it seemed to take on a new sharpness of detail.” . . .
But then as his vision sharpened, he realized that he was viewing things from a very different perspective.
He now found himself looking down on his body as it lay on the bed, and his point of view seemed to be coming from the ceiling on the other side of the room. (Steiger 186-187)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
See “Understanding Immersive Perception” in higher-sense-perception.php and “The Corner Ceiling Rationalization” in higher-sense-perception.php.
Emotions While OB at Death
Note how in many of these examples, while OB the perspective switches to above the body looking down at it, often with spherical perception.
Although all affect NOTE: emotion experienced by the after-death self seemed quite muted compared to that of the regressed personality when it was alive, the after-death self seemed bound by the emotional experience of the past life. All emotions but fear carried over from life beyond death:
“The emotions that come up are related to the pain that person was feeling or the experiences they went through. Much of that has been . . . feeling a sense of loss for the loss of life that was wasted, or compassion for that person who was yourself and the pain they went through. Loss, grief, and compassion, and a sort of sense of love. It’s strong, but slightly removed from a current experience of loss.” (Subject 7)
“It’s a sense of awareness, of being aware in a complete way of what that life was about. . . . It’s relatively flat emotionally. . . . Fear is gone, but sadness can be there for a variety of reasons.” (Subject 2)
“[In one regression, my life] was very peaceful, a life of love, yeah, no regret. This was a peaceful life, and it [was just] time to move on. So that state is very dependent on past-life personality.” (Subject 5) (Wade 43-44)JoNDE-JWresearcher • modern • Wade
Initial Panic, Anger, or Sadness
The pattern here is initially panic, anger, and sadness. This is replaced by a feeling of peace as the light and perspective of your higher (frequency) self joins with you.
Alice Morrison-Mays: “From my position near the ceiling, I watched as they began to wrap both my legs from tips of the toes up to my hips, then my arms and hands up to the shoulders. This was to keep what blood remained for my heart and lungs. Then they tilted my body so my legs were up in the air and I was standing on my head! . . .
“I was furious about the way they had handled Manville’s birth. . . . I was venting my anger and frustration from the corner of the ceiling on the right side of my body. I can remember the anger vividly, fury at the powerless position this whole event put me in, and I was very ‘verbal’ about it—silently—up there, as my mind raced to express its reaction, worry, and concern. Their statements ‘We’re losing her! We’re losing her!’ frightened me and I’d get pissed all over again.” (Atwater 56)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
For her, the angry emotions only faded when the scene changed.
It was only when the disembodied man saw a white sheet being pulled across his own face that he fully realized he had actually died and was not simply dreaming. . . .
He felt a surge of emotion rise in his breast — there was no sense of alarm or panic just a profound sadness in the knowledge that his earthly existence was over. (Viney 200)SDresearcher • modern • Viney
Bertrand suddenly felt a moment of intense pain, which he interpreted as the throes of physical death.
When the spasm ended, Bertrand was bobbing above his body as if he were a helium-filled balloon on a silver string. . . .
The clergyman’s thoughts turned toward his students, and immediately he was with them, watching with great annoyance as they repeatedly made wrong turns. (Steiger 66)
Arnold experienced just a moment of panic when it occurred to him that he might truly have died.
“But then I looked behind me and saw this really beautiful being of pure light that seemed to be waiting for me on the other side of a crystal clear river. Somehow I understood that all I had to do was to cross over the bridge and join the Light Being—and that would be all there was to it.” (Steiger 23-24)
Lisa was convinced that she had died. “For a fleeting moment I felt upset and angered at the injustice of dying as the result of such a minor operation. I morosely attributed my death to the inadequacies of the hospital staff and the incompetence of my doctor.
“Then a warm wave of peace seemed to wash over me, and I thought how foolish it was to care about a continued existence in that painfully throbbing shell of flesh that lay sprawled out on the hospital bed below me.” (Steiger 20)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Feeling Great
Some don’t go through the negative experiences of attachment and simply feel great.
I had just relinquished a bed of final sickness, and . . . in casting off the physical body I had also cast off the sickness with it, and the new sensation of comfort and freedom from bodily ills was one so glorious that the realization of it took a little while to comprehend fully. (Borgia 11)LWUchanneled • modern • Benson
Case No. 683—Douglas Bader
He heard, coming from outside his door, a woman’s voice saying “Hush—there’s a boy dying in there!” His immediate reaction was, “So that’s it—that’s why I’m feeling so good!” (Crookall 68-69)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
Ruby: “I took in Mama’s anguish, but I was not a part of the emotional scene below me.
“I shall never forget the peace that I experienced when I was out of my body. I felt a dynamic kind of consciousness of joy and well-being.” (Steiger 183)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Calm Peacefulness
The endless fearful chatter of the physical world is left behind along with the physical and etheric bodies. I first experienced this beautiful, beautiful silence when I tried marijuana for the first time.
See “Marijuana - My First Time” in pure-essence.php.
A nine-year-old girl: “The next thing I remember is floating only an inch or two from the ocean’s sandy bottom in the midst of a great light. The light wasn’t the bright glaring sort of light that makes you blink. Instead it was incandescent, almost ethereal. I could see every indentation and curvature in the sand and minute details in the seaweed. . . . I felt absolutely nothing. Not the water, nor the sand, nothing. I was surrounded by silence, but I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to stay there forever.” (Morse 141-142)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Note how often people say “the next thing I remember”. This is the small consciousness continuity break while exiting the physical body.
In World War II, Snowden’s foxhole was hit by an artillery shell:
Snowden—or some part of him— was standing in the moon-shade of a large tree watching his physical body in the foxhole. . . .
“I remember anticipation, but mainly I felt calm—a calm such as I had never known before. It was a calmness that nothing could shake.” (Steiger 179)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
In the next experience, Beggs is himself drowning after saving a drowning boy:
Case No. 562—Tito Kyle Beggs
“Suddenly a mountainous wave broke over me. I went down, down, down into the quiet depths. I was so tired that I did not care. I felt peace settle over me. Well, I thought, I had tried, and I was so very tired. It seemed then that a wonderful transition occurred. I was no longer in the water but rather I was high above the water and looking down upon it. The sky, that had been so grey . . . was iridescent with indescribable beauty. There was music that I seemed to feel rather than hear. Waves of ecstatic and delicate color vibrated around me and lulled me to a sense of peace beyond comprehension. (Crookall 11-12)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
Detachment from the Physical Body
As I got closer to the face I knew at once that it was lifeless. And then I recognized that it was my own. That was my body on the bed. I wasn’t taken aback, and I wasn’t frightened; I simply felt a kind of sympathy for it. . . .
My new body was weightless and extremely mobile. . . . I now felt no discomfort at all. I was whole in every way—perfect. And I thought, “This is who I really am.” (Eadie 29-30)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
I could see my own body all tangled up in the car. . . . It was like [my body] was a completely different human, or maybe even just an object. . . . I knew it was my body but I had no feelings for it. (Moody 46)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Case No. 696—“R. E.”
“R. E.,” who was on the point of being struck by a car, said, “The true, conscious part of me seemed to jump out of my body. I soared high above the street and could see my body. I knew that car was going to hit me, but my real consciousness couldn’t care less.
“Then I saw my body sailing through the air. I didn’t feel pain and seemed to have a strange feeling of indifference: I was a dispassionate observer.” (Crookall 75)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
Experiences of this kind show an immediate change in perspective, as one is reunited with their higher self and the body’s fear and attachments are immediately left behind.
Those who have exited their bodies in an OBE sometimes feel reluctant to return. see “Not Wanting to Return” in obes.php.
A Gradual Brightening
Once out of the physical body, there is a gradual brightening of the ambient light. We are perceiving the light of our own attention as we open up and accelerate into our higher (frequency) self.
One person notes that the light comes from the tunnel. The amount of light is related to the size of the tunnel opening. The tunnel is the open connection (the energy bridge) between our physical self and our astral self. It’s a connection across the void between them. This void is what separates our memory, causing the experience of mostly separate selves at separate levels.
I’ve seen this kind of diffuse light of attention in many dreams. In the physical, I’ve seen it while on ecstasy and in the opening moments of my failed attempt to use DMT. It only got the level of being noticeably brighter, but it’s the same kind of light — it’s everywhere, in everything. It’s our own attention coming up through the microscales of the higher frequencies.
What is the radiant light so often reported during a near-death experience?
This is the higher-frequency light of the inner dimensions being seen by someone not accustomed to its brilliance. (Buhlman 87)ABtBOBEr • modern • Buhlman
A nine-year-old girl: “Then the blackness was gone and in its place was a beautiful soft pink light. All the weight was gone, and I floated back up into the room as light as a feather. I seemed to be filled with this same light, which was the most profound spirit of love that you can imagine.” (Morse 120-121)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
I floated on down the hall and out the door onto the screened-in porch. There, it almost seemed that clouds, a pink mist really, began to gather around me, and then I floated right straight on through the screen, just as though it weren’t there, and up into this pure crystal clear light, an illuminating white light. . . . It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love. (Moody 62)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Ace was falling from a tall tree:
The nineteen-year-old hurtled through the air, desperately flailing arms and legs hoping for something to break his fall.
Then the lights went out.
Ace Bauer wrote that he now floated in “a world of gray.” If he was dreaming, it was the most vivid dream that he had ever experienced:
“I do not know where I am. This world is gray, but it has a depth and is distinct, like the overcast grayness of clouds rolling over the mountains of northern New England.”
After an indeterminate passing of time, Ace sensed something to his left: “A golden light appears. Gradually it pushes the gray away. My curiosity intensifies as the light grows brighter, but try as I might I cannot shift faster to see its source. Slowly, ever so slowly, I understand that what is out of sight is not a something but a someone—a presence, radiating a tremendous force of warmth and love, divine joy. Joy swells in my heart, and I know this is no dream. (Steiger 25-26)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
The light feels like a presence because it is the light of consciousness, of attention. It’s the same feeling when you’re in a room with someone, or someone is looking at you lovingly. We know this feeling well.
The Light Overwhelms Everything
While this is not a typical part of a NDE, the light can overwhelm one’s perception of the physical even before entering the tunnel.
John: “There is greater and greater illumination that seems to fill the room, and those in the room about you slowly dissolve and mesh into a single pattern of light.” (Ryerson and Harolde 239-240)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde
Light and Sound
[The doctors] began operating. . . . It was at this moment that the whole room lit up with that beautifully peaceful, radiant light of the spiritual eye. Gradually it expanded until it seemed to fill all space. At the same time came the great, comforting sound of the Aum . . . spoken in the scriptures as “the sound of many waters”—the cosmic vibration that creates and sustains all things. (Mata 128)EtS-DMwisdom • Hinduism • Mata
Seeing Guides With You
This light is often accompanied by (or a result of) the appearance of a guide or someone close who has passed on. The guide may take on a familiar or known form to fit our expectations. The guide comforts the dying person and takes them through the tunnel.
Guides in the Light
The first story is of a little girl who had leukemia. Ann was four years old when her parents brought her home from the hospital to die. . . .
“I lay there for a moment waiting to go to sleep when I noticed a light coming into the room. It was a beautiful golden-white light which seemed to appear in the wall to the left of my bed.
“I wasn’t afraid, just curious about the light. . . . As the ball of light grew, the pain and feeling of illness suddenly left me. . . .
“I sat up and watched the light grow. It grew rapidly in both size and brightness. In fact the light got so bright that it seemed to me that the whole world was lit by it. I could see someone inside the light. There was this beautiful woman, and she was part of the light. . . .
“As soon as I was standing beside her we moved through a short darkness to a beautiful, even brighter, light. And then I saw . . . there was this astonishingly beautiful world before me.” (Ring and Gibson 5)VS-KRresearcher • modern • Ring
Arrival Through the Tunnel
[Katie] remembered nothing of the drowning itself. Her first memory was of darkness and the feeling that she was so heavy she couldn’t move. Then a tunnel opened and through that tunnel came “Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth was “tall and nice” with bright, golden hair. She accompanied Katie up the tunnel, where she saw her late grandfather and met several other people. Among her “new friends” were two young boys—“souls waiting to be born”—named Andy and Mark, who played with her and introduced her to many people. . . .
[Elizabeth] seemed to be a guardian angel to Katie. (Morse 7)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Guides Without the Light
Randy felt a moment of panic when he realized that he might be dying.
“But then this beautiful angel appeared beside me. . . .
“She told me not to worry. She said that she was with me and that she would stay right by my side. She took my hand, and I felt a lot better.”
Randy said that they soon approached a dark tunnel. When he held back and said that he was afraid to go into the darkness, the angel smiled and told him that this was the only way that they could get to their final destination.
“I could see a bright light at the far end of the tunnel, so I said, ‘All right, as long as you don’t let go of my hand!’
“She laughed and said, ‘I told you that I would never leave your side. I have been with you ever since you were born.’” (Steiger 60-61)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Joey (channeled): I thought I was holding on tight, but we hit this bump so hard. Then it was like I was flying up in the air, and the next thing I knew I was looking down at myself. There were people all around me and my head was bleeding bad. . . .
Just at that moment, I saw Gabe. Gabe’s my friend. No one can see him but me. My Emma used to say I had a great imagination when I would tell her about him, but he’s real! . . .
He took my hand and turned me around and I saw this really bright light. Then we were moving very fast through this tunnel. (Fairchilde 78-79)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
I knew for certain that my time had come to pass on, and I was full of eagerness to be gone. . . .
I suddenly felt a great urge to rise up, I had no physical feeling whatever . . . but I was mentally alert. . . . I found that I was actually doing so. . . . Turning, I then beheld what had taken place. I saw my physical body lying lifeless upon its bed, but here was I, the real I, alive and well. . . . I could still see the room quite clearly around me, but there was a certain mistiness about is as though it were filled with smoke very evenly distributed. . . . I had on my usual attire, such as I wore when moving freely and in good health about my own house. . . .
I was full of wonder at what was to happen next, for here I was, in full possession of all my faculties, and, indeed, feeling ‘physically’ as I had never felt before. . . .
I found myself joined by a former colleague—a priest—who had passed to this life some years before. . . .
The very conception of “judgment” and “hell” and “heaven” seemed utterly impossible. Indeed, they were wholly fantastic, now that I found myself alive and well, “clothed in my right mind.” (Borgia 10-12)LWUchanneled • modern • Benson
Our Guide May Be Our Higher (Frequency) Self
I wonder how often this is true. It certainly is in Monroe’s experiences.
“In some sense, I am the nonphysical aspect of yourself,” the angel told him. . . .
“We’ve more or less taken advantage of the accident to get you apart so that we can set you back on the path with greater equilibrium. . . .”
The angel smiled at him, and Jack was certain that he had seen his face somewhere before.
“Perhaps in dreams,” the being acknowledged. “And certainly when you were a small boy. You are my ward, you see.” (Steiger 85-87)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
The Velvet Black
The Velvet Black
Sometimes those in an NDE experience the odd phenomenon of a “bright” darkness, or a dark light. I’m familiar with this darkness. It’s black but full of energy. It’s a vivid black, and appears purple when less dense.
It’s peaceful, warm, nurturing, strengthening; a sanctuary, a home. It’s a state of consciousness just beyond reach of the chaos of the physical body’s fear and pain.
I believe this is the energetic darkness of the mind outside of our physical senses. It’s the awareness that remains as we pull away the mask of our physical perceptions. We’re feeling our own innate energy prior to its engagement in the physical world.
This velvet black is the boundary of the physical universe as observed by consciousness. This is what makes the tunnel between the physical and astral frequencies of consciousness black.
Kids have dark experiences, as well as bright ones.
Kids are sometimes bathed in “dark light,” rather than brilliant light.
The kids who had dark experiences talked about “The Darkness That Knows” with the same love and affection as they described their Real Home, their Homey Home, the place where God is, where they were before they had a body and where they will return once their body falls away: HOME-HOME.
Many of the young (once verbal) spoke of having been cradled in a womb-like darkness so purple-black that it shimmered, so silent that it knew all things, so peaceful and wonderful and bliss-filled and perfect that we adults would have named it “heaven”—yet it was devoid of light. (Atwater 6)
Dark Light: Pure black yet often with velvety tinges of dark purple - A shimmering peaceful depth . . . a source of strength and knowing, sanctuary; the womb of creation. . . . Dark Light gently reassured those it touched and left them with a sense of being nurtured and supported. (Atwater 7)VS-PMHANDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Children often report the presence of a comforting light which they describe as the “black black,” or the “dark dark,” a black light which is often tinged with purple around the edges. . . .
This particular black light is entirely positive. (Peyser 18)VS-RPresearcher • modern • Peyser
Alison: “The experience that I had was of just traveling so fast through black, and it was black. I can’t explain the black—it was bright, bright black.” (Sutherland 96)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
The next thing I knew I was completely immersed in darkness. It was so dark that it was beyond imagining . . . solid blackness. I didn’t feel as though I’d gone a great distance, but had just taken a step sideways into the darkness, like going through a doorway. My sense was that this darkness had always been there, right next to our world, but that we don’t know about it. . . . I was relaxed and in a state of great peace. IANDS-KCNDEr • modern • Crafton
KC then hears chimes and then sees the light.
Personification of the Velvet Blackness
About a year ago I became aware of an angel who is with me. This angel was introduced to me as Rab’ai, the Angel of Death. This angel is huge. And this angel is black. It’s the softest, gentlest black that one could imagine. It’s really quite indescribable. It just feels like one enters it and joins with it in the most sacred of ways, fully nurtured and cared for within this darkness. . . .
I described Rab’ai’s energy in almost the same exact terms as the descriptions of the dark NDEs. Rab’ai’s feathers have the same soft, velvety blackness as what I remembered and encountered when I looked back at my NDEs. (Moon 11)VS-CMresearcher • modern • Moon
From the Darkness to the Tunnel
When you are in the presence of enormous energy, you know it. I knew it now. A deep rumbling, rushing sound began to fill the room. I sensed the power behind it, a movement that seemed unrelenting. . . . I was filled again with a very pleasant feeling—almost hypnotic. I heard chimes, or distant bells, tinkling in the background. . . . Darkness began to surround my being. . . . The entire room seemed to dim, and immediately I was gently drawn up and into a great, whirling, black mass.
I felt as if I had been swallowed up by an enormous tornado. I could see nothing but the intense, almost tangible darkness. The darkness was more than a lack of light; it was a dense blackness unlike anything I had known before. . . . I felt myself moving forward through it, and the whirling sound became fainter. . . . The speed became so incredible that I felt that light years could not measure it. But the peace and tranquility also increased, and I felt that I could have stayed in this wonderful state forever, and knew that if I wanted to, I could. . . .
I felt a process of healing take place. Love filled this whirling, moving mass, and I sank more deeply into its warmth and blackness and rejoiced in my security and peace. . . .
I had never felt greater tranquility in my life.
I saw a pinpoint of light in the distance. The black mass around me began to take on more of the shape of a tunnel, and I felt myself traveling through it at an even greater speed, rushing toward the light. I was instinctively attracted to it, although again, I felt that others might not be. (Eadie 37-40)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Moira: I could feel all my strength going. And I can remember the exact second when I thought, “I can’t go on, I’ve just got to let go, this is the end.” Anyway, I let go and then everything was very black. . . . And it was warm, a warm sort of blackness. I felt as though I was enveloped in warm air.
And then I could see a light right at the very end of what looked like a tunnel. (Sutherland 122)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
The Blackness of the Tunnel
The blackness of the tunnel entirely blocks out all perception and sensation of the physical world.
An experiencer who attended one of my lectures on the NDE said to me, “Everyone talks about the dark tunnel. The one I saw wasn’t just dark; it was so black that it glistened!” . . . Many of the experiencers that I’ve talked with have struggled to convey what they went through . . . something “so black I could feel it,” or “a fuzzy, warm sort of blackness.” One NDEr stated that the tunnel “was so black that I could swim in it!” (Rhodes 37)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
The next moment I found myself traveling at incredible speed through a black, strange-looking tunnel. I did not look ahead because the walls of the blackness fascinated me. The blackness was deeper than anything on earth. I tried unsuccessfully to touch it. It seemed to possess life. I felt quite peaceful and safe.(Breaux 12 Vol. XVII, No. 2)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
The Tunnel
The Nature of the Tunnel
The tunnel is almost always experienced at death and during NDEs. It’s also sometimes experienced during OBEs, channeling, seizures, and mystical experiences. In each of these cases, the tunnel is related to switching focus between the physical and the astral. The darkness is the darkness of the void between the physical and astral frequencies that we pass through.
Imagine the physical body we’re wearing is a mask (something not far from the truth), and we’re taking it off, moving it slowly away. The physical scene the body’s senses provide is still visible through the mind but it’s getting further away, a smaller circle in the darkness around us.
We then turn around to see the tunnel behind us. We enter the tunnel and “move through” it without any change of position in physical space, though our environment changes dramatically. This is movement in consciousness’s terms — across the physical boundary into the astral frequencies.
This section will explain how the tunnel experience is really the experience of turning within oneself. It’s a phenomenon that comes from the return of our natural spherical perception, and an internal turning of our direction of perception. We turn back up our own tunnel to the Source.
It seems that the heart stopping is related to the appearance of the tunnel.
Observations obtained during controlled out-of-body explorations suggest that the tunnel of light is the opening of the nonphysical energy membrane separating the physical dimension from its parallel nonphysical neighbor. (Buhlman 87)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
All these people report a euphoric sense of freedom and brightness around them. Some of my subjects see brilliant whiteness totally surrounding them at the moment of death, while others observe the brightness is farther away from an area of darker space through which they are being pulled. This is often referred to as the tunnel effect. (Newton 9)
The tunnel effect they experience when leaving Earth is the portal into the spirit world. Although souls leave their bodies swiftly, it seems to me entry into the spirit world is a carefully measured process. . . .
Some newly dead people see it opening up next to them right over their bodies while others say they move high above Earth before they enter the tunnel. (Newton 17)
There are those highly developed souls who move so fast out of their bodies that much of what I am describing here is a blur as they home into their spiritual destinations. These are the pros and, in my opinion, they are a distinct minority on Earth. (Newton 19-20)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
Spherical Perception in the Physical
Imagine our consciousness as a spherical bead of water that has come into this particular physical universe through a pinprick in a flat dark membrane. The membrane is the omnipresent higher-dimensional boundary of the physical universe. As consciousness enters into the physical universe, it does so from this point, creating a sphere around it. We perceive through this sphere. We peer out into the physical universe from our higher, more fluid source on the other side of the boundary.
To best imagine spherical vision with a flat picture, consider a convex lens. A convex lens bulges outward [), showing a fisheye perspective. This brings our physical vision closer to our natural spherical perception by bringing more of the periphery into our physical range.
Extended range of perception through 180° convex lensing:
Continue this “convexing” of the lens, and we end up with a sphere — our spherical perception outside the body. This is a part of our emergence into any frequency domain. As we become clothed in its material, our perceptual “lens” pushes outward into that frequency domain like an opening eye until it is a sphere, and we find ourselves fully within that environment.
Now while we are in a physical body, our perception becomes habituated to (and limited by) the body’s sensory channels — particularly its visual perception through our eyes.
Upon death, we exit the physical body. Its perceptual limitations fall away, and we once again experience our original spherical perception. However, we have developed physical habits of perception which shape our experience — most notably, seeing in one direction at a time.
See “Spherical Sight” in higher-sense-perception.php.
It Opens Behind Us
Note that in almost all cases the tunnel is behind the person (or sometimes to the side) and they have to turn around to see it. This is due to our physical habit of focusing on the scene directly before us. At death, we “turn around” then to see the tunnel to our origin into the physical universe. This leads back to the origin of our own light, the greater consciousness of our higher frequency self. We’re turning around to travel back where we came from, back through our original tunnel-like projection into physical time and space, back up the vortex tunnel that is ourselves, towards the Source (see “We Are Vortex Tunnels” in flow-into-us.php).
In the image above, imagine the water creature’s face turning around within itself — it would find itself within the tunnel it has come through. This is how consciousness exits the physical.
A four-year-old girl: “The next thing I was aware of was being up near the ceiling over the foot of the stairs. The light was dim and at first I saw nothing unusual. . . .
“I noticed the dim light growing slowly brighter. The source of light was not in the basement, but far behind and slightly above me. I looked over my shoulder into the most beautiful light imaginable. It seemed to be at the end of a long tunnel which was gradually getting brighter and brighter as more and more of the Light entered it. It was yellow-white and brilliant. . . . As I turned to face the Light with my full ‘body,’ I felt happier than I ever had before or have since.” (Morse 119)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Then I was no longer afraid and a warm feeling came over me. I felt very peaceful and physically very comfortable. It felt like I was being drawn backwards down a long, dark tube, sucked past a wall of spongy black cotton. Over my shoulder I saw what looked like the sun, it had a soft yellow glow. (Rhodes 14)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
Joey (channeled): He took my hand and turned me around and I saw this really bright light. Then we were moving very fast through this tunnel. (Fairchilde 79)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
I had an NDE in which I found myself flying over the city and suburbs until I paused over my parents’ back garden. . . .
Then I became aware of a tremendous suction behind me, and, turning around, found myself being drawn into a huge, swirling dark tunnel that led slightly upward. (Beaumont 6)VS-FBNDEr • modern • Beaumont
Turning Within Ourselves
During the OBE of an NDE, we “turn around” to see the tunnel. We are reorienting ourselves towards our point of entry into the physical universe — the dimensional boundary. The dimensional boundary is the velvet black — a dark band between frequencies of consciousness. “Turning around”, then, is retracting our focus from the physical in order to turn inside ourselves towards the astral.
We begin to withdraw ourselves (that bead of water) back across the membrane out of the physical and into the more fluid astral frequency domain we came from. We do this by turning within ourselves.
frequency domain, and return through that
same tunnel in the opposite direction.
Our current spherical perception retracts back within itself and switches direction. We are now peering back at the tunnel through the dimensional boundary we came through from the astral. As we move into the tunnel, the darkness of the velvet black boundary closes around us like an umbrella. If we were to “turn around” or look the other way while in the tunnel, we’d find the physical world a receding circle.
Now fully within the tunnel, we experience its energy and sound. Soon the astral appears as a pinpoint of bright light ahead of us in the distance. As our movement continues across the boundary (and we become smaller), the point of light expands and eventually we emerge into the light of that higher dimension as it opens up around us. The tunnel shrinks into a black dot “behind us” and disappears. The tunnel is the result of this inward rotation of perspective. With spherical perception, we could see both forward and back in the tunnel at once, though habitually, we “turn” to see the other direction.
Each realm is a layer of higher sensitivity, a point where more moments of time are felt and thus more sensation. There is more feeling, more movement, more flow in each higher frequency domain. When we return across the physical boundary, we leave behind the big, rough, hardened parts of ourselves. These melt away. Each further crossing is made by peeling back an outer layer through successive acts of “turning within ourselves”. Each internal rotation (retraction) is done by withdrawing our focus, turning within, releasing ourselves, and moving across a boundary into greater sensitivity.
This perfectly fits the model of the energy bodies, where each body is an outer sensory layer corresponding to the frequency domains we’ve passed through.
The tunnel might well be the spine, and as our energy exits the physical body, it passes back up and out the spine. This has been perceived by clairvoyants (see “Disengaging from the Physical Body” in returning-home.php).
No Movement Required
The tunnel, being a change in perception as we exit the physical, doesn’t require us to move anywhere physically to enter it. It’s always there, a part of us. Our sense of movement and speed within is also a nonphysical change that is not related to physical space.
I looked toward the front of the ambulance to a spot over my dead body. A tunnel was forming, opening like the eye of a hurricane and coming toward me. . . .
I actually didn’t move at all; the tunnel came to me.
There was the sound of chimes as the tunnel spiraled toward and then around me. Soon there was nothing to be seen . . . only a tunnel that engulfed me completely and the intensely beautiful sound of seven chimes ringing in rhythmic succession.
I looked ahead into the darkness. There was a light up there, and I began to move toward it as quickly as possible. (Brinkley 9)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Six-year-old Lester: “I then went down a tunnel that was dark. At the end of the tunnel was a bright light. I wasn’t sad and I wasn’t happy, but I did want to get to the light. When I got to it, I met three men. One was very tall and the other two were short. Behind them was a rainbow bridge that stretched across the sky. They seemed nice, but I was afraid of them anyway.
“All of a sudden I was back in my body. I looked down at my feet and the men were there. Then they disappeared, and I was completely back.” (Morse 40)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
This is further evidence that the motion is frequency-based. The three men he saw in the light were right at his feet in the physical.
Becoming Smaller
The process of moving through the tunnel is a process of getting smaller, so that we can fit through the boundary into the astral. Remember, within the tunnel, we’re not moving through space. We are moving out of the physical, and the dimensions of time and space that belong to it. As we leave, we lose our extension in space, becoming smaller.
The Curvature of the Opening Tunnel
Beverly: “I went up and up and faded into a deep silver-blue surrounding. Then came something that looked like a big umbrella without a stick. This umbrella seemed to fold around me, and everything became very dark. Then, suddenly, I was in a very intense, bright light. I felt warm and loved in a way that I had never felt before.
“Then I heard a voice from the Light: ‘You have made a mistake. Your life is not yours to take. You must go back.’” . . .
Beverly was suddenly returned to her body. (Morse 159)
Paula: “I had a cardiac arrest as a result of an allergic reaction to the anesthetic. I saw myself rolled into a very tight ball of light. I saw myself being hurled at a very great speed through a conical-shaped space. The ball was rotating at a very high speed and glowing with a warm, bright light. Sticking out from the ball were a hand and foot. . . .
“As I watched them work on my body, the room became very light. Then a canopy of color grew above me, like the canopy that is over the front door of a nightclub. It was made of blue and silver rain, and there was a very bright light in the middle of it. The air sparkled around this light.” (Morse 139-140)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Notice the dome! That’s the effect of the curvature of space at the beginning of the tunnel. This dome-like curvature is also frequently experienced.
The Tunnel Is the Astral Cord
The astral cord is our own tunnel back to the light of the astral (and eventually to the Source, our origin). Picture the Source as a sphere, nearly closed, but open through a long cord to a different level or frequency, like a scuba diver into denser matter. As we pass outward into each new slower frequency domain, we take on an additional new body and the cord takes on another layer.
domains, taking on additional layers (bodies).
I went back through the tunnel and through the silver cord into the physical abode I had left behind. (Seelig 5)VS-MSKundalini NDEr • modern • Seelig
It Closes Behind Us
Next, I was abruptly thrown into an immense sphere of white, bright light with golden specks. It seemed alive and full of love—it loved me. The tunnel was a small dot, then disappeared. (Breaux 12 Vol. XVII, No. 2)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
This is exactly how the tunnel would appear when turning our perception inside out.
Tunnel Experiences
I just quit breathing. . . . I went through this dark, black vacuum at super speed. (Moody 39)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Case 3:
S: At first . . . it was very bright . . . close to the Earth . . . now it’s a little darker because I have gone into a tunnel. . . . It’s a hollow, dim vent . . . and there is a small circle of light at the other end. . . . I feel a tugging . . . a gentle pulling. . . . I think I’m supposed to drift through this tunnel . . . and I do. It is more gray than dark now, because the bright circle is expanding in front of me. It’s as if. . . . I’m being summoned forward. . . . The circle of light grows very wide and. . . . I’m out of the tunnel. There is a . . . cloudy brightness . . . a light fog. I’m filtering through it. . . . It’s so . . . still . . . it is such a quiet place to be in. . . . Thought! I feel the . . . power of thought all around me. . . . I feel . . . thoughts of love . . . companionship . . . empathy . . . and it’s all combined with . . . anticipation . . . as if others are . . . waiting for me. (Newton 18)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
A woman who suffered from asthma as a child remembered the experience she had when she was only three years old. . . .
“. . . and then I didn’t breathe anymore and I found myself at the top of the room near the ceiling, looking down at this body on the bed. I noticed it was small. Then all of a sudden I was in this tunnel, very dark expect for these rectangular mirrors of different colors. I started up the tunnel, slow at first, then speeding up, like the speed of light. The little mirrors were pulled with my increasing speed and pretty soon formed a focused light and all of a sudden I was in total white, standing on the steps of a cathedral that was like crystal. You could put your hand through the building, and it pulsed and shimmered.” (Rhodes 14)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
Suddenly, I was whisked away and found myself traveling rapidly through a vortex toward a beautiful white light in the far, far distance. I continued to experience an overwhelming feeling of love within me and around me. There was no fear, no anxiety, and no worry. I even felt as if I’d done this before and was remembering that I was going home. DGNDEr • modern • Goble
The Tunnel Increases Frequency
By pulling back up through our vortex tunnel, we increase our frequency so we are able to enter a higher frequency domain of consciousness. That sense of movement through the tunnel is a perception of our change from state to state. One can move through the tunnel while remaining in his bed.
During this transition, we’re shrinking down to fit into the pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. Many describe the tunnel as being very narrow.
The feeling of increasing to incredible speeds could be the sensation of movement as we shrink in size. If we are moving forward at a slow speed in a room, and then, because we are shrinking out of 3D physical terms, the room seems to expand towards infinity in size, then our feeling of motion will also seem to increase towards infinite speed.
This may even be the infinite energy tunnel that I experienced reaching a foot or two above my head in the Ecstasy Trance.
For many come over temporarily, and experience a movement through a tunnel and see the light at the other end, this is merely a change in the rate of vibration within the self. It is experienced as movement through space, but it is really movement through the vibrations of the inner self into higher vibrations, and therefore higher light-levels of energy. (McKnight 166-167)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight
The Tunnel’s Energy Beam
Traveling in the astral often comes with the feeling of traveling on a beam of energy. This can be felt while in the tunnel as well (see “Traveling on Beams” in movement.php).
SS/ROMC: “It is very narrow and I am rapidly shooting through this tunnel. Now I can see a point of light at the other end. . . . It is like I am on some type of light beam that is helping to propel me. I am coming out. I am going into a different dimension and I have just completely slowed down. And I am right at the opening of this point. And now I am gently coming through and everything is green. It is so bright that it is almost blinding because of coming out of a dark tunnel. It is a different feeling. Now it is a real strong energy that seems to be pressing against me. It is a great feeling now. This is a new energy level.” (Monroe 38)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe
Now I’ve gotten up to my Focus 12 platform. It appears to be very, very dark around me. . . .
I am moving rapidly through a tunnel, and I can see a point of light at the other end, which is getting larger and larger. It’s as if I’m on a light beam that is helping to propel me. . . .
I’m at the opening of the point of light, and I am coming through gently. . . .
In the tunnel I felt as if I was being propelled; now I feel a strong energy pressing against me. I’m at a new energy level. It’s so bright that it’s taking me a minute to adjust. Everything is shades of green, and the atmosphere seems to be throbbing. . . .
I can see a lake at the bottom of the hill I am on. (McKnight 198-199)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight
Energizing, Melting, and Opening
Going through the tunnel is much more than changing our location — it’s a changing of our state of consciousness. Our entire self relaxes, opens up, increases in energy and frequency in preparation for entering the stronger energies of the mid-astral.
Sandy (channeled): I was joined by my guardian angel, and together we entered the tunnel. . . . There is a very real sensation of movement, but it is different from any experience I ever had while in my physical body.
There was also a light within this tunnel, although it was nothing compared to the intensity of the light at the end. The light is perceived not only visually; you can feel it. It is a living essence. My body at this point was no longer what you would think of as solid. This light was able to pass through me, and it changed me. I began to feel lighter and lighter. All heaviness and any attachment to the reality I was leaving melted away. Vibrationally, I was being changed. Everything that could possibly prevent me from feeling love began to dissolve.
When I first left material reality and entered this tunnel, there was sound—there is always sound. The whole universe is made up of sound. This particular sound is overwhelming—a roar that moves from a very low to a very high pitch. It pulled me away and into the tunnel, and then suddenly ceased, and I was immersed in the indescribable harmony of Heaven. This celestial sound passed through my now changed body. I sensed it with my whole being, not just my ears. I heard it with my whole self.
When I reached the end of the tunnel, I was propelled forward with great force into a space of ineffable beauty and light. (Fairchilde 8-9)
Joey (channeled): Then we were moving very fast through this tunnel. It looked kind of black with lights flashing past us. And as I moved through the tunnel, I felt myself changing. It was like I was melting, but not melting in a bad way. Maybe like growing real fast and stretching like there was more of me there. That’s what it felt like. (Fairchilde 79)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
The instant she entered the tunnel, her spiritual body began to spin and twist at a very rapid pace.
“In what seemed less than a few seconds, I was somehow moving through the light. I felt as though I was being energized by all the love in the universe. It was a feeling of ecstasy beyond anything that could ever be dreamed of on the physical plane.”
The next thing that Evelyn knew, she was more or less floating near beautiful orchards and happy, cheery men and women were harvesting basketfuls of rich, ripe fruit. (Steiger 116)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
See also “Movement Due to Changes in Frequency” in movement.php.
Stillness and Peace
I felt a great surge of energy, as if I were literally being launched into space. . . . It seemed as if I was moving rapidly through a dark tunnel. Strangely, it also seemed as if I was standing still. . . .
Then, just as suddenly as my launch had occurred, I was suspended in a space of absolute stillness and isolation. An eerie feeling came over me, and I knew then what it would be like to be the last person on earth! . . .
Those few moments of absolute isolation seemed like an eternity. . . . This space was like a cleansing center to prepare me to enter a very different dimension. (McKnight 68)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight
Delaying the Tunnel
Our free will is paramount. While we may feel a pull to enter the tunnel and the light, we are free to resist it for as long as we like. We may remain in the velvet black or move about the physical world as we wish. Sometimes this is to say goodbye, and sometimes this is due to getting stuck emotionally.
Resisting the Pull
Case 2:
S: I’m ejected out the top of my head. . . . I’m drifting. . . . There is . . . a pulling . . . into a bright whiteness . . . it’s so bright! . . . I don’t want to go yet . . . but, something wants me to go soon. . . . A . . . kind of magnetic . . . force. . . .
Dr. N: Can your soul resist this pulling sensation for as long as you want? . . .
S: Yes, I can, if I really want to stay. (Newton 10-12)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
Lingering
I became aware of other people as well as animals traveling with me, but at a distance. I could not see them, but I sensed that their experience was the same as mine. . . . I did sense, however, that there were some who were not moving forward as I, but were lingering in this wonderful blackness. They either didn’t have the desire, or simply didn’t know how to proceed. But there was no fear. . . .
I saw a pinpoint of light in the distance. The black mass around me began to take on more of the shape of a tunnel, and I felt myself traveling through it at an even greater speed, rushing toward the light. I was instinctively attracted to it, although again, I felt that others might not be. (Eadie 38-40)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
After being hit by a car, Evelyn was in a coma:
“For what seemed like days, I was floating in some kind of mist,” she said. “After just kind of bobbing around in this nebulous state, I finally saw a light off in the distance. I somehow directed myself to float toward the light, but then I saw that it was at the end of a tunnel.”
The instant she entered the tunnel, her spiritual body began to spin and twist at a very rapid pace. (Steiger 115-116)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
See “Getting Stuck in the Near Realm” in returning-home.php for causes of lingering in the near realm.
Within the Tunnel
Tunnel Rationalizations
Those with firmly-established cultural and religious beliefs can project them onto the tunnel experience. This is essentially like dreaming over the tunnel experience. The one good thing about the West knowing almost nothing about death and the astral world is that their accounts of the tunnel in NDEs describe its true form, without painting over it with beliefs and expectations.
The following are experiences from Western cultures, with only slight rationalizations on the tunnel. For stronger cultural rationalizations, see “Cultural Influences” above.
Although NDEers in Western cultures tend to enter the realm of the afterlife by passing through a tunnel, experiencers from other cultures might walk down a road or pass over a body of water to arrive in the world beyond. (Talbot 241)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
The next thing of which [Shirley] was aware was that she was moving through a “dark railway tunnel.” Far off in the distance she could see a tiny point of light.
“I came out into the light, and I saw a green railway embankment on each side of a green road,” Shirley said. “The banks were covered with lilies and the fragrance was beautiful.” . . .
At the end of the road, she was delighted to see her maternal grandmother . . . who had been dead for seven years. (Steiger 37)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Dorrie: “All of a sudden I heard a buzzing sound, and then I was going through this dark, shallow sewer. I thought it was a sewer because I thought there was water. I was being propelled over the water. I felt fear, only fear, real fear!” (Rommer 14)VS-BRresearcher • modern • Rommer
While lying in a coma, [Terry] left her body and traveled down a tunnel. She said it was as though water were in the tunnel, and she was making her way through this mystical river in a small boat. . . .
Suddenly, she turned onto another branch of the river and passed under a glowing arch that led to a light “so beautiful that it couldn’t be called just a light. It represented love and peace and happiness and complete and utter joy.” (Morse 116)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Contextual Influences
The context of the death can also shape a NDE. In the following example, a man drowns, the idea of being in the water continues as he passes through the tunnel into a river that carries him to a distant shore.
Case No. 563—Peter Ballbusch
“I went through the strange and painful experience of drowning. It seemed to me that I was being shot from one huge anvil to another,—that big sledge-hammers were crashing down upon my chest. No doubt this terrible pounding was the exaggerated beating of my tortured heart.
“Then suddenly it seemed that I was swept into a glistening spiral-tunnel so narrow that it began to squeeze the last bit of air from my agonized lungs. This tunnel ended in a mere pinpoint of light, but somehow I knew that I had to squeeze through this tiny opening. . . . Finally I slipped through the opening and was released from all pain and pressure.
NOTE: This is likely the exiting of the body, since the experience of pain and pressure was still there. Once OB, he moves straight into a rationalized tunnel:
“I found myself floating in a strange ‘stream’ which wended upward into infinity. This ‘river’ carried me along. Its water and space and the stars seemed to emit a soothing music which penetrated my innermost being. It was incredibly beautiful and filled me with bliss and peace.
“I saw that the river reached a far-flung shore where people stood waiting in groups, like welcoming parties. The water eddied onto beaches, into coves and nooks and crannies. Hands reached out to pull some of the drifters out of the river. The waiting people hugged and kissed them as if they had come home from a long and dangerous voyage. . . .
“I almost touched mother’s hand, then suddenly I felt myself being pulled away. I seemed to sink into a whirlpool, and my mother smiled sadly as she watched me being sucked rapidly down. She became smaller and smaller until her figure was a mere dot, and then she vanished while a roar filled my ears and the whirlpool forced my chest to heave convulsively.
“Next I was aware of vomiting the water.” (Crookall 12-13)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
[The truck driver] described going through a long tailpipe with bright headlights at the end. (Horacek 6)VS-BHresearcher • modern • Horacek
Cultural Beliefs — Cheyenne
Willow Dancing (channeled): My grandmother was there for me in her brightness. She held her hand out to me and pulled me away from the body that had housed my spirit. . . .
I was now ready for my last journey as Willow Dancing. All that I knew—my body, the yellow-green grasses, the trees, the rushing waters, the lodges—even the cries of my people—were swallowed up in a great flash of light. And then I heard the thundering wings of the mighty Spirit Bird. This great being of fire and light swept me up and then we were moving faster than the fastest wind. We entered the darkness of the sacred mountain, and as I was carried through the heart of this mountain and into the Spirit World I could feel others of my people near. So many had ended their Earth walk in that time of flowing blood, of flowing tears. And so it was in a river of Spirits that I made my journey. I could see only darkness and light. I could hear only the song of the Thunderbird’s wings and his powerful cries, but I knew that my people were there with me. (Fairchilde 52)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
The thundering wings of the Spirit Bird was the rationalization of the roaring sound as one enters the tunnel. The sense of motion, the darkness of the sacred mountain are cultural forms of the tunnel experience.
Speed in the Tunnel
People move at different speeds through tunnels. Some feel they are moving very quickly, some feel they are drifting peacefully. Frequently people feel that the speed increases as they get closer to the light, often along with an increasing desire to reach the light (see “Speed Depends on Strength of Desire” in movement.php). Others are more trepidatious.
Some feel that the tunnel effect is a result of the speed (see “Space Curves With Speed” in movement.php).
Importantly, this “speed” isn’t related to spatial movement at all. One can be speeding through the tunnel and then stop and find themselves in the same physical location that they started from. This is a movement through frequency and scale.
Abbey: “I then felt myself moving off very fast, exceedingly fast, into what seemed like outer space. I always felt that it was the fact of going so fast that gave me the sense of being in a tunnel. And I was going toward a very bright light.” (Sutherland 199)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
I knew we were moving, yet there was no sensation of speed. (Moody 94)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Distance Measured by Time in the Tunnel
When souls travel to planets intergalactically or interdimensionally, they measure the trip by the time it takes them to reach their destinations through the tunnel effect from the spirit world. (Newton 197)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
Sides of the Tunnel and Passing Lights
Though some have seen distinct features in the sides of the tunnel, there isn’t one that stands out. As the light approaches, the sides of the tunnel sometimes become more visible.
Traveling at tremendous speed through this tunnel, I saw a speck of light in the far distance, and there arose a great desire to reach that light.
The light grew larger and larger until it was a glorious golden disc and the sides of the tunnel glistened with a million tiny stars. (Beaumont 6)VS-FBNDEr • modern • Beaumont
I looked down on myself from a place that seemed to be well above the ceiling. . . .
I was treated to a firsthand view of my own beating heart.
I don’t remember seeing any more. I rolled back away from the surgery and into a position that left me engulfed in blackness. I could hear chimes ringing, three sets of three with a tone at the end of each of them. In the darkness a tunnel opened. The walls of this tunnel were grooved like furrows in a freshly plowed field. These furrows ran the length of the tunnel toward the bright light at the end. They were silver-gray, speckled with gold. (Brinkley 185-186)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
As I drifted off to sleep, I suddenly became aware of a low, buzzing/humming sound INSIDE my head and body; it felt like my whole body was a motor, vibrating and buzzing. Next thing I know, I was flipped over (on my back), and speeding forward through some sort of a narrow tunnel. I had the perception of traveling at a very high speed, but I could not see where I was heading, except I ‘felt’ that I was moving through a tunnel. I could “see/sense” a wall or something whooshing by, like when you look out the window on a ride through the subway. OotWOBEr • modern • M.C.
I found myself in a tunnel—a tunnel of concentric circles. (Moody 40)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
I was also aware of a loud rushing sound. I was being taken up through this dark tunnel like (sic) enclosure. But it was more like being caught up in the middle of a whirlwind or tornado. The walls were of an appearance that one would see on a foggy night in the vicinity of yellow or amber street lights. The walls were not a bright light, but made to take on a golden or amber glow. As I approached the end I became aware of the brightest white light that I have ever seen. MNDENDEr • modern • Foreman
Passing Lights
Seeing lights in the tunnel is relatively rare, but it does give a reference point that allows people to gauge their apparent speed.
Dean: “I suddenly found myself standing up and traveling through a very wide tunnel. I couldn’t see any walls on either side, but still I had the feeling that this was a tunnel. I also had the feeling that I was moving very fast even though there was no wind blowing on my face. . . .
“I reached a certain point in the tunnel where lights suddenly began flashing all around me. They made me certain that I was in some kind of tunnel, and the way I moved past them, I knew I was going hundreds of miles an hour.” (Morse 28-29)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
I felt like I was out of my body. I felt like I was going a thousand miles an hour, just surging up a tunnel. I passed several lights and headed for a very bright one that got brighter and brighter. Then I stopped. (Brinkley 125-126)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Abbey: “I was going toward a very bright light. As I was traveling along I could see different-colored lights.” (Sutherland 199)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Case No. 680—Brother of Albert Tisder
“He felt paralyzed and suddenly felt ‘as if he were being pulled out of himself.’ He found himself ‘drifting down a tunnel.’ He was aware that he was awake, and the thought crossed his mind that he was dying. He was unafraid and saw patches of various colors passing before him, between him and the light.” (Crookall 67)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
Tunnel Sounds
Edwina: “It was like going through a tunnel, like shooting through something and seeing the light at the end. I heard a sort of whooshing sound, like fast wind or something like that—a sort of whshshshsh. It was like every wind and every sea combined in a torrent. . . . It was sort of like silvery moonbeams and the noise they’d make on water if they were going to make a noise. . . . A sort of brushing sound.” (Sutherland 46)
Olivia: “I went into something that appeared to be like a tunnel, and I was moving very fast. There was a roaring noise like a very high wind, yet I wasn’t really afraid.” (Sutherland 143)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Jim: “Suddenly, I found myself in a long dark tube, with some strange and different music. There was a continuous rhythm that reminds me of sound you can hear when you place your ear against the mouth of a long pipe.”(Morse 149-150)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
A man: “I wanted to venture into this experience, which started as a drifting into what I could only describe as a long tunnel of light. But it wasn’t just light, it was a protective passage of energy with an intense brightness at the end which I wanted to look into, to touch. There were no sounds of any earthly thing. Only the sounds of serenity, a strange music like I had never heard, a soothing symphony of indescribable beauty blended with the light I was approaching.” (Ring 54)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
Case No. 563—Peter Ballbusch
“I found myself floating in a strange ‘stream’ which wended upward into infinity. This ‘river’ carried me along. Its water and space and the stars seemed to emit a soothing music which penetrated my innermost being. It was incredibly beautiful and filled me with bliss and peace. (Crookall 12)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
Hearing Sounds from the Other Side
James Lorne: “I felt myself floating in the air and could clearly see my body lying down there. I landed in a long corridor filled with soft twilight. At the end a bright light was shining. I could also hear voices coming from there.” (Delacour 20)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
Others in the Tunnel
Guides
From within the tunnel:
Dean: “At this point I also noticed that there was somebody with me. He was about seven feet tall and wore a long white gown with a simple belt tied at the waist. His hair was golden, and although he didn’t say anything, I wasn’t afraid because I could feel him radiating peace and love.” (Morse 29)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
I ‘left’ and zoomed toward a brilliant and indescribable light. A man was with me who was very gentle. He took me into the light where I experienced a kind of love that I have never been able to explain. (Morse 154)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
Others Who Have Died
The average global death rate in 2026 is about 2 per second, though it likely varies quite a bit from moment to moment. This could account for several people appearing in a single shared tunnel at once. But I’m unclear why people in different physical locations would all be going down the same tunnel. It might be because we are withdrawing from the spatial differences that are a part of the physical universe.
I became aware of other people as well as animals traveling with me, but at a distance. I could not see them, but I sensed that their experience was the same as mine. . . . I did sense, however, that there were some who were not moving forward as I, but were lingering in this wonderful blackness. They either didn’t have the desire, or simply didn’t know how to proceed. But there was no fear. (Eadie 38)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Case No. 563—Peter Ballbusch
“When I opened my eyes I saw that the strange ‘river’ was filled with people of all races and ages. Men, women, and children drifted along and were carried up towards the stars along with me. They all had their eyes closed and seemed to be listening to the soothing music as I had listened. . . . I saw that the river reached a far-flung shore where people stood waiting in groups, like welcoming parties. (Crookall 12)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
The others in the scene above could be part of the projection. But not in the scene below:
As a female NDEer found herself moving through the tunnel and approaching the realm of light, she saw a friend of hers coming back! As they passed, the friend telepathically communicated to her that he had died, but was being “sent back.” The woman, too, was eventually “sent back” and after she recovered she discovered that her friend had suffered a cardiac arrest at approximately the same time of her own experience. (Talbot 242)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
Unusual Tunnel Descriptions
Spiral Tunnel
Most describe the tunnel as straight, but some describe themselves as spinning while in the tunnel, and some describe a spiral.
“Immediately, I was aware of shooting upwards (like Superman) through a narrow, spiral tunnel.” (Lugenbeal 10 Volume XVI Number 4)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
The tunnel . . . curled all the way around like a seashell and turned into light. (Morse 43)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
I feel I’m moving rapidly through the universe . . . through space. I can see points of light in all directions. . . . Now I’m going through a spiral—a kind of tunnel. (McKnight 121-122)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight
Downward Tunnels
This is probably simply due to the direction one is focused in when the tunnel appears. Since the tunnel appears behind a person, if they are laying down on their back or otherwise looking upwards, then the perception would be of a downward tunnel.
Minnie: “I found myself falling down a tunnel with colored ridges that led down to a bright light. I fell slowly at first and then began to fall faster and faster. The faster I went, the better I felt. I wanted to reach the Light but I couldn’t.” (Morse 121-122)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
The things around me in the hospital began to get further and further away. As they receded, I entered head first into a narrow and very, very dark passageway. I seemed to just fit inside of it. I began to slide down, down, down. (Moody 40)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Denise: “I was sort of first of all looking down over what was happening, but then it became an Alice in Wonderland type of experience, looking down a tunnel. I felt a black, spinning, falling sensation, but then it changed to a rising sensation. There was a momentum being gathered. It was very dark but not at all terrifying, and I was being pulled upward through a tunnel that became brighter and brighter. There was this light at the end of the tunnel.” (Sutherland 56)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Because she has already turned around to look downwards at herself, the tunnel opens below her, and so she starts falling down it. But after a moment, her orientation resets and she feels a rising sensation.
Bright or Colored Tunnels
When she was seven years of age . . . she got caught in the surf and was thrashing around in panic when suddenly she felt total calm, a great feeling of peace. “The next thing is the most incredible and vivid memory of my life. I recall traveling or flying through a tunnel of immense brightness, at phenomenal speed.” But the child was not scared. She met a man “of immense kindness, power, and love.” (Rhodes 69-70)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
A fourteen-year-old boy: “I wanted to venture into this experience which started as drifting into what I could only describe as a long, rectangular tunnel of light. But it wasn’t just light, it was a protective passage of energy with an intense brightness at the end which I wanted to look into, to touch. (Morse 120)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Then, immediately, I was moving through a tunnel, being pulled quickly through it head first. The tunnel was very big, round, and had a kind of robin’s egg blue color. And then, to my left I saw my mother.
My mother had died when I was 13 years old. IANDS-LLNDEr • modern • Leary
A Very Short Tunnel
I became aware of the sound of children’s laughter and singing behind me, and turning around found myself peering down a large grey metal pipe about a metre in diameter and two metres in length. Through it I saw a glorious sunlit garden full of happy children. Some were dancing in a circle, and two of them—a boy of about seven and a girl of about five—separated from the others and came across to the end of the grey pipe. Their faces were full of such welcoming love and joy as they looked at me.
“Come and join us!” they invited, and they called out my name as though they knew me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“We are your brother and sister,” they replied.
I was very puzzled by this because I had only one brother who was then six years old.
“Come on,” they urged excitedly. “Come and join us!”
Caught up in the joy of the moment and happy to escape from the abuse below, I eagerly tried to clamber into the grey pipe in order to crawl through to the lovely environment and those happy children.
The lady of light beside me gently held me back and said, “No, dear; It’s not yet your time. You must return to your body below.” . . .
My mother confirmed that she had lost two children by miscarriage—a boy three years before I was born and a girl one year before my birth. (Beaumont 14)VS-FBNDEr • modern • Beaumont
Notice that she “turned around” to see the tunnel — the place where she had come from. The physical body is a three-dimensional mask we put on. We pull back out of it (and the physical universe) through the tunnel.
Leaving the Tunnel
Looking Back Through the Tunnel
Though one has the sensation of “rushing down” or “shooting upwards” at great speed, when they look back, their body is still visible behind them. This underscores the idea that they are not moving (or moving far) spatially while in the tunnel.
I saw them put paddles on my chest and say ‘stand clear’ as they tried to shock life back into me. I seemed to have split vision because while this was going on, I was going down a long tunnel. . . . I came to the end of the tunnel which seemed to be in a hazy white mist. . . . It was cloudy, misty, and bright.
At the same time I could see myself below. I could see doctors working on me. I could hear fragments of conversations. (Morse 191)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
This experiencer was able to look back even after exiting the tunnel, though he never made it all the way to the definitive light. The “split vision” was his rationalization of spherical perception. He could see both ways at once.
In the following, Andrew drowns while swimming across a lake and sinks to the bottom:
I’m a chunk of black, frozen, excruciating panic and terror. I stop struggling. I let go. . . .
The second, the very instant, the exact moment that I let go. . . . I am rushing down a black tunnel. . . .
The freezing cold is gone! I AM WARM! The pain is gone! I FEEL WONDERFUL! The ringing in my ears and head is gone! I CAN HEAR THE SILENCE! The blackness is gone! I CAN SEE A LIGHT!
I look down and I can see my body in the weeds at the bottom of the lake! “Is that really my body? How can I see it through the blackness?” (Petro 6 Volume XVI Number 4)
Immediately, I was aware of shooting upwards (like Superman) through a narrow, spiral tunnel. I looked back, and down, and saw my body as it would look from maybe a hundred feet away. I remember thinking my body looked fatter/rounder than I had thought of it as being, then turned my attention back to my exciting flight through the tunnel. (Lugenbeal 10 Volume XVI Number 4)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
She was once again out of her body. She saw a tunnel and “I knew to head for the tunnel.” She remembers a “comforting” feeling in the tunnel, which was unusual for her since the tunnel was very dark and she was afraid of the dark. . . . After leaving the tunnel, she met a “guy” dressed in a burlap robe. . . . He did not identify himself, other than to say that he was there to “assist” her. . . .
She remembered that during this conversation she could look back through the tunnel and see her mother in the hospital. (Liester 241)JoNDE-MLresearcher • modern • Leister
At that time I was in a black void and I didn’t realize it was a tunnel. Then I seemed to look around and I saw this light. . . . I was flowing toward the light. . . .
It was then that I had the sense of being above the ceiling. . . . I could look down and see my mother in the dining room and my sister standing there with her. I could see them right through the walls. I could also see my body there on the couch. (Morse 149)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
Alternate Exits in the Tunnel
Those traversing the tunnel after death can exit it at any point in the astral world. Think of the tunnel as heading upwards from the darkness of the lowest astral to the brightness of the highest. Our attachments and desires determine how soon we get off the tunnel and enter the astral.
See “Getting Stuck in the Lower Astral” in returning-home.php and “Rescued from One Level, Attracted to the Next” in returning-home.php.
I believe this is the tunnel I experienced in the Ecstasy Trance. Our fears and desires pull us off to the sides, away from the light.
See “Love and Fear” in flow-into-us.php and “The Sphere and Beam Model” in flow-into-us.php.
I was going down a long tunnel. . . . There were also lots of different doors. I didn’t open any of them because they weren’t for me. (Morse 191)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
Stopping Before the Light
Benedict recognized what was happening as it was happening. The process was familiar to him because he had read many books about the near-death phenomenon previously. Just as he reached the light at the end of the tunnel, he shouted, “Stop a minute. This is my death and I want to think about this!” By consciously intervening, Benedict willfully changed his near-death scenario into an exploration of realms beyond imagining, and a complete overview of history from the Big Bang to four hundred years into the future. (Atwater 77)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Olivia: “I went into something that appeared to be like a tunnel, and I was moving very fast. There was a roaring noise like a very high wind, yet I wasn’t really afraid. . . . I almost reached the light, but then I stopped. I looked back and it was as though I was very, very high above the hospital. It was as though someone had taken the roof off a doll’s house—I could see all the little rooms. . . .
“It was a faster descent than it was ascent. I seemed to go back very, very quickly—it was like being drawn down a vacuum—and the first thing I remember was a sister saying, ‘I’ve got a pulse.’” (Sutherland 143-144)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
The further you are in the “turning within” transition — the tunnel — the smaller and further off the physical will appear, an increasingly small circle in a dark space. This feeling of vast space is a reflection of our diminished size.
Return Through the Tunnel
Communication was not with spoken words. The presence said, “So, you are going back.” I answered (the same way), “Yes.” The presence asked, “Why?” I answered, “Because my mother needs me.” At that moment, I started down what seemed like a dark tunnel. The light got smaller and smaller. When I could see it no more, I woke up. (Bray 13)VS-ABNDEr • modern • Kircher
Other Tunnel Causes
Tunnels for Mediums
Olivia: “I am a trance medium. . . . I was aware that I was going in very deeply. It was that same pulling feeling, of being pulled up, through something. . . . It was the same feeling of being pulled up through a tunnel, and there was a light at the top glowing. This time I did go through into it. . . .
“There was an enormous amount of love there.” (Sutherland 146)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Tunnels from Seizures
A reflex anoxic seizure is caused by a brief cardiac arrest that results from excessive activation of the vagus nerve in response to a sudden shock, pain, or other surprise. RAS is most common in babies and toddlers, and more common in girls (Stephenson, 1980). In a typical episode, the child suffers a shock. A few seconds later he or she will stiffen, clench the jaw, possibly jerk once or twice, and often become deathly white. Their eyes roll up into the head and they may have urinary incontinence. They may be unconscious for anything from a minute or two to more than an hour. . . .
I learned that before an attack Alan feels dizzy with a throbbing headache, like being hit by a hammer. He then frequently goes into a dark tunnel and is hurtled towards a light. On one recent occasion he was simply walking from the bathroom when he found himself already in the tunnel with the light coming towards him. The tunnel is clearly very frightening and unpleasant and he dreads it, but the “white light is nice, like a Christmas light.” . . .
At the start of an attack “people around me go into the distance.” On waking, the voices around him are much louder. He said, “When I come out of the horrid tunnel everyone is much bigger and louder; I feel smaller than when I went in.”
He reported hearing whistling sounds, seeing patterns like snakeskin, and seeing people from past periods in his life, adding: “They’re on the other side of the wall.” . . .
One 13-year-old girl told me that everything begins by feeling “all echoey and far away,” then during the attack itself, “Sometimes I can’t hear anything and other times I can. And when I can’t hear anything I get scared.” (Blackmore 113, 116)JoNDE-SBresearcher • modern • Blackmore
The Light
The Nature of the Light
The Nature of the Light
The light at the end of the tunnel is the light of our higher self’s consciousness flowing in from the Source. The light is generated by the Source at infinite frequency, stepped down in each frequency domain it passes through. The light is our true selves. This light of attention shines into the physical through our particular incarnated self. It is what we see and experience with, and it flows most clearly whenever we are present and focused in the moment. In this way, consciousness enters and experiences physical reality.
When we die, the light of our awareness is no longer locked into the slower frequency of the physical body and by turning within and traversing the tunnel, we increase in frequency and enter the astral filled with energy. In time we reconnect with our greater selves, a part of us that know more, that has a higher perspective. We reconnect with what we have forgotten, with who we really are.
Bruce: “[The light is] something which becomes you and you become it. . . . You’re all-knowing—and everything is a part of you. . . . It was eternity. It’s like I was always there and I will always be there, and that my existence on earth was just a brief instant.” (Ring 53-54)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
From the AUSTRALIANDS newsletter: It is the light-of-being, pulsating from each of us. And the sound! It is the sound-of-being, radiating from each of us to create a community of pure, sacred vibration! (Sutherland 171)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
At the moment of death, the Ground Luminosity or Clear Light dawns in all its splendor. (Rinpoche 323)TBoLDwisdom • Tibetan • Rinpoche
The Ground Luminosity is an important concept in Buddhism. It’s the light of consciousness, unblocked and unfiltered by the physical body at our slower frequency of experience.
The Blissful Feeling of the Light
The light is perfection. It can be experienced directly, without form, simply as light. Or it can be experienced in physical terms as a perfect being or a perfect environment. Either way, its most powerful aspect of all is the feeling it provides. Whether we see the light through a form or not, the feelings we feel from it are the most important, powerful, and transformative.
This feeling is what I refer to in my own experience as “The Pure Essence” — meaning the Pure Essence of every good experience we’ve ever had, unattached to form, experienced directly. It is the feeling that we allow through when we are having a peak experience.
This feeling is from a return to our natural nonphysical state. The physical body is able to block this feeling to direct our behavior into everything required for physical life. Hunger, thirst, discomfort, pain — all these and more need to be dealt with before we are allowed to feel these feelings.
See “The Conditioning of the Soul” in holographic-mind.php.
A fourteen-year-old boy: “As I reached the source of the Light, I could see in. I cannot begin to describe in human terms the feelings I had over what I saw. It was a giant infinite world of calm, and love, and energy, and beauty. . . . It was all being, all beauty, all meaning for all existence. It was all the energy of the Universe forever in one place.” (Morse 120)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Alfred: “The next sensation is this wonderful, wonderful feeling of this light. . . . It’s almost like a person. . . . It is a being of some kind. It is a mass of energy. . . . It just covers the entire vista before you. And it totally engulfs whatever the horizon might be. . . .
“There’s no temperature involved. Whatever your senses would feel absolute perfect—if it’s temperature, it’s a perfect temperature. . . . It’s so absolutely vivid and clear. . . .
“It’s total pure energy.” (Ring 58-59)
Joan: “Great waves of awareness flowed into me and into my mind. . . .
“Consciousness is life. . . . The purpose of life does not depend on me; it has its own purpose. . . .
“An intensity of feeling rushed through me. . . . The feeling was dynamic, rolling, magnificent, expanding, ecstatic—Bliss. It whirled around me and, entering my chest, flowed through me.” (Ring 75-76)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
A woman who nearly died in childbirth recalled her encounter. . . .
“It was a dynamic light. . . . It was an incredible energy—a light you wouldn’t believe. I almost floated in it. It was feeding my consciousness feelings of unconditional love, complete safety, and complete, total perfection. . . . My consciousness was going out and getting larger and taking in more; I expanded and more and more came in. It was such rapture, such bliss.” (Zaleski 125)OJresearcher • modern • Zaleski
One woman told me that when she found herself in the light, “the feeling just became more and more and more ecstatic and glorious and perfect. . . . If you took the one thousand best things that ever happened to you in your life and multiplied by a million, maybe you could get close to this feeling.” (Ring and Gibson 4)VS-KRresearcher • modern • Ring
As I existed in this white light, in this incredible love, I began to be rapturous. The rapture built. The bliss built. My consciousness began to expand with the bliss of it all. Suddenly there came into my field of consciousness an entire field of knowledge. It was like a whole block of knowledge that just simply came in and settled itself on me. . . .
Then I simply remember I became more blissful, more rapturous, more ecstatic. I was just filling and filling with this light and love that was in the light. The dynamics of this light are not static at all. They are so dynamic and so much going on in there of love and joy and knowledge. As you take it into yourself, or as it goes into you and you receive it, your ecstasy level just becomes tremendous.
I knew that I had lost all sense of having a body. It was just my consciousness, sort of pure and free floating, and I did not think at all during this part of the experience. I had no thoughts. I was a receiving station. I merely felt and absorbed and took in. JSDENDEr • modern • Smith
Edwina: “Then I remember being in the light, just suddenly being totally engulfed by the light. . . . And suddenly I had the feeling that everything was okay, everything was perfectly all right. That was the feeling I remember most. I had the sense that no other feeling in the world was worth that feeling. I can say it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve felt in my life.” (Sutherland 46)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
A Homecoming
The most common type of reaction I hear is a relieved sigh followed by something on the order of, “Oh, wonderful, I’m home in this beautiful place again.” (Newton 19)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
Moira: “As I looked through into this tremendous light, I could see there was a glorious garden. . . . And the whole thing was enveloped in a beautiful golden light. . . .
“It felt like a coming home, as though this was a place where I’d been before and, after a long journey, I was coming back to it.” (Sutherland 123-124)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
It was the most unconditional love I have ever felt, and as I saw his arms open to receive me I went to him and received his complete embrace and said over and over, “I’m home. I’m home.” (Eadie 41)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Higher Frequencies Are Brighter
There is not just a single frequency or brightness of light. It is an infinite spectrum. We experience only as high a level of joining in the light as we’re ready for. The higher the frequency, the brighter, more powerful, more intelligent the light is; we are. Because the light is consciousness — our consciousness, and as we let go of limitation, we rejoin that much more of ourselves — that much more light of consciousness, until we are one with everything.
Oh my, the light is alive. Yes it is. The higher you go, the more alive -- and intelligent -- it gets. . . . Imagine a giant hologram containing scans of every page of every book of the Library of Congress. If that hologram were shattered, every little piece would continue to contain the entire contents. I think that light is very like that -- small pieces of the Whole. ASOBEr • modern • Goodin
Its Intelligence
Another man who reached this point of entering the light describes it this way:
The sensation is of a being of some kind, more a kind of energy, not a character in the sense of another person, but an intelligence with whom it is possible to communicate. Also, in size it just covers the entire vista before you. It totally engulfs everything, you feel enveloped. (Rinpoche 324)
Appearance and Intensity
Appearance of the Light
This light [is] usually said to be white or “clear”. (Moody 59)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Margot Grey: “The light was really an absence of darkness. . . . This light was so total and complete that you didn’t look at the light, you were in the light.” (Rinpoche 323)TBoLDwisdom • Tibetan • Rinpoche
I was talking to this blinding white light that was all colors and no colors at the same time. (Morse 52)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
I’ve seen the light as a golden white glow, and I’ve also seen it as the all-color light, cycling rapidly through all colors.
See “The All-Color” in into-dreams.php.
Thousands of Tiny Lights
Some perceive the light as being made up of thousands of tiny sparkling lights.
An elderly woman in the Midwest: “This light was more than light. It was made of millions and millions of tiny, diamondlike sparkles that glittered and had feeling. I knew I was a part of this light.” (Brinkley 124)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
The Being of Light stood directly in front of me. As I gazed into its essence I could see prisms of color, as though it were composed of thousands of tiny diamonds, each emitting the colors of the rainbow. (Brinkley 10)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Brightness of the Light
I wasn’t sure when the light in the room began to change; Suddenly I was aware that it was brighter, a lot brighter, than it had been. . . .
I stared in astonishment as the brightness increased, coming from nowhere, seeming to shine everywhere at once. . . . It was impossibly bright: it was like a million welders’ lamps all blazing at once. (Ritchie 48)RFTNDEr • modern • Ritchie
I look up and I can see a Light! It’s bright, so very bright. It looks like a thousand suns all exploding at the same time! (Petro 6 Volume XVI Number 4)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
Hal: “I could see in the distance a pinpoint of light and it was coming toward me. The Light seemed to be coming from hundreds of miles away, coming at immense speed. And it just kept getting bigger and brighter. It was perhaps the brightest light I’ve ever seen. As the Light got closer the feeling of peace got even greater.” (Sutherland 169)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
A Diffuse Light
For some, the light appears less bright, more diffuse — but equally life-changing.
I was aware of shooting upwards through a narrow, spiral tunnel. . . .
Within a very short time, I saw and felt a light—The Light. . . . The Light was not so much bright as it was diffuse, enveloping and permeating. It surrounded, enveloped and entered me. What bliss!!! Upon first seeing The Light, my thought was “Oh! Home! I’m going Home!! Now I know why I was born. This is why!” This was more than just a thought; it was a knowing in every cell of my “being.” All my questions regarding existence were answered in that nanosecond. (Lugenbeal 10 Volume XVI Number 4)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
Power of the Light
Haisley Long . . . was sitting in his living room one day watching television. He got up, walked across the floor, looked out the window, returned to his chair, and was about to sit down when the room lit up and he found himself “on the outskirts of heaven.” . . . As he walked into this light-filled world, he was overcome by the power he encountered. . . . Waves of unselfish love and unlimited knowledge nearly blew him away.
I wondered how I was able to withstand this. It was like standing in front of a huge star, and being amazed at the power a star can pump out, then having the star go super nova and the power jump incredibly, but you’re not fried. It was total ecstasy. More and more waves came. You just cry and cry and cry, while waves wash you and clean you and remove what little pieces of humanity are left stuck to you, so that when you go into heaven you are as perfect as the environment you are in. . . .
I absorbed all the information, all at once. (Atwater 93)
I’ve felt this power, just the smallest fraction of it, and thinking of it is enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Permeated by the Light
“Suddenly I was through that tunnel and in a sea of bright, slightly golden, white light, that’s like an immense brilliant white fog, only denser and heavier. It was literally a sea of light that penetrated my every pore and atom, and interacted with every cell. That light envelops you, thoroughly penetrates and soaks your every sub-atomic particle. You are a part of it, and it is a part of you. I knew I had been a part of this light before, and was merely returning to my proper place where I belonged. This was home.” — Jarod (Rommer 13)VS-BRresearcher • modern • Rommer
“This light was so total and complete that you didn’t look at the light, you were in the light.” (Sabom, 1982, p.44) (Gibbs 265)JoNDE-JGresearcher • modern • Gibbs
Janis: “I gained strength from gazing upon [the golden light]. It’s as if by gazing upon this beautiful golden light the power that it was revitalized something within the depths of me. There was a transmission of a higher power, knowledge, understanding, and the ‘oneness with everything’”. (Ring 88)
“There was the warmest, most wonderful love. . . . Pure love. . . . [The light] was in, around, and through everything.” — an NDEr (Ring 55)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
“I had no sense of separate identity. I was the light and one with it.” (Grey, Return From Death, 46)(Rinpoche 324)TBoLDwisdom • Tibetan • Rinpoche
Those who experience the Light say that it is more than just light. There is substance to it that “wraps” them in a warmth and caring that they have never before felt. (Morse 115)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Merging with the Light
Randy: “And then we stood before this totally awesome light,” Randy said. “It was so bright and powerful that you really couldn’t look right at it.
“I looked at Areo, wondering what we were to do next. She said that we would enter the Light and become One with it. Before I could ask what that meant, she just gave my hand a little tug, and then we were inside the Light.
“That was really cool! I kind of felt as though my body exploded—in a nice way—and became a million different atoms—and each single atom could think its own thought and have its own feelings. All at once I seemed to feel like I was a boy, a girl, a dog, a cat, a fish. Then I felt like I was an old man, an old woman—and then a little tiny baby.” (Steiger 61)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
This is the state I call “becoming” (see “Attention Becomes” in attention.php).
“I was out of my body, floating up toward the ceiling.”
Gloria stated that she now perceived herself as if she were a shiny orange balloon with a silver string attached to it. . . .
“I felt something pulling me higher, farther away from the operating room.
“I thought of my husband and my three-year-old daughter in the waiting room, and I felt sad that I was leaving them. . . .
“I heard bells tolling, like they do after funerals; and then I saw my guardian angel coming down through the ceiling for me.”
The angelic being accompanied Gloria toward a bright light that appeared to be shining in the center of a great expanse of darkness.
“It was the most beautiful and compelling light that I had ever seen. . . . ‘Yes,’ the angelic being said. ‘We must now become One with the Light so that we may ascend higher.’
“I felt myself blending with the powerful energy of the Light, and it was as if my very essence were being separated layer by layer. It was as though I were this orange-colored balloon-onion kind of thing, and I was being peeled layer by layer. And it was wonderful! Like each layer of my essence was being bathed in soft, warm, soapy love.”
The next thing Gloria Novara knew, she was no longer a shiny orange “balloon kind of thing,” but she was herself again.
“I had on a lovely white robe, and all around me were beautiful angels in bright, shining gowns.” . . .
Gloria was told what a privilege it was that she had been permitted to advance to the Greater Light and to become One with its beauty. (Steiger 48-51)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
I hastened toward that Light and went smack into the center of it. I literally melted into it. (Kübler-Ross 7)EtS-EKR • modern • Kübler-Ross
One’s Own Appearance Within the Light
I looked at my hand. It was translucent and shimmering and moved with fluidity, like the water in the ocean. I looked down at my chest. It, too, had the translucence and flow of fine silk in a light breeze. (Brinkley 10)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
The light was all around and inside me. My hand appeared transparent, even ghostlike. I saw my arm and hand as a shadowy-like thing. (Breaux 12 Vol. XVII, No. 2)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
This is similar to what I call “Dark Mode” (see “Dark Mode” in nature-of-dreams.php).
Communication / Remembering
Communication with the light is through intuition, though it may be translated into physical forms.
See “Guidance from Our Higher Selves” in communication.php.
Forms of the Light
Translation to Physical Forms
Subject: When they go through the barrier all they see is the bright energy. And they feel like they are being cleansed because the energy is adjusting their own spiritual vibrations to be compatible with whatever level they have attained. . . . Once they get to the other side, at first in their adjustment period they may see scenes that resemble things they remember or imagined on the physical plane, but these are much more perfect and beautiful than they could have imagined. Then as they become adjusted they realize that these are really constructs of their own mind and they start seeing the level where they are as it actually is. But it is a very smooth transition because it is guided solely by what their minds are ready for. . . .
You may be in a particular type of energy field with various properties. And various events take place due to your interacting with this energy field and with the others who are also in this energy field. So it depends on what the plane is and thus it is difficult to describe. Sometimes you will see visual analogues to help you make connections with what you are seeing compared to what you have already experienced. (Cannon 201-202)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon
True Perception
There is a spectrum of translation of these experiences to physical terms. The following is a true, untranslated experience, like what Monroe experiences in his later journeys.
We started going faster and faster, out of the darkness. . . . I saw off in the distance something that looked like the picture of a galaxy, except that it was larger and there were more stars than I had seen on Earth. There was a great center of brilliance. . . . Outside the center countless millions of spheres of light were flying about entering and leaving what was a great being-ness at the center. It was off in the distance. . . .
Then he called out in a musical tone to the luminous entities who surrounded the great center. Several came and circled around us. During what follows some came and went but normally there were five or six and sometimes as many as eight with us. I was still crying. One of the first things these marvelous beings did was to ask, all with thought, “Are you afraid of us?” I told them I wasn’t. They said that they could turn their brilliance down and appear as people, and I told them to stay as they were. HSNDEr • modern • Storm
Michael (channeled): The world disappeared, and I was standing in this field of bright light with a couple of very impressive angels! . . .
We started to move through the light. A sound, very high-pitched, seemed to be propelling us faster and faster until I felt the outline of who I was blurring. And then, I was filled with an ecstasy I thought I would never experience. (Fairchilde 98-99)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
Lightly Translated
These only contains a few translations to physical terms.
Alice Morrison-Mays: “The scene changed and I was no longer in that room. I found myself in a place of such beauty and peace. It was timeless and spaceless. I was aware of delicate and shifting hues of colors with their accompanying rainbows of ‘sound,’ though there was no noise in this sound. It might have felt like wind and bells, were it earthly. I ‘hung’ there—floating. Then I became aware of other loving, caring beings hovering near me. Their presence was so welcoming and nurturing. They appeared ‘formless’ in the way I was accustomed by now to seeing things. I don’t know how to describe them. I was aware of some bearded male figures in white robes in a semicircle around me. The atmosphere became blended as though made of translucent clouds. I watched as these clouds and their delicate shifting colors moved through and around us. . . .
“Then I was aware of an Immense Presence coming toward me, bathed in white, shimmering light that glowed and at times sparkled like diamonds. Everything else seen, the colors, beings, faded into the distance as the Light Being permeated everything. I was being addressed by an overwhelming presence.” (Atwater 56-58)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
All forms are separations, boundaries. These disappear as our frequency ascends into the light.
The Light as an Environment
Here we see the light taking the form of a perfect physical environment. This is a very common experience when exiting the tunnel.
Josephine: “When I floated out of the dark tunnel, I was in an open area with blue skies and white clouds, and everything around me was beautiful beyond description.” (Steiger 106)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
As I approached the light I could see it was like a very bright but gentle sunlight. Then I found I could see into the light where there was a beautiful landscape: gently rolling hills, flowers, and grasses rippling in the softest of breezes, and all of this bathed in a golden glow. (Sutherland 118)
Moira: “I could see a light right at the very end of what looked like a tunnel. It was a long, long way away, just a very small light. And I knew without doubt that I had to get to that light—I felt a tremendous drawing power—so I started to go toward it. . . . Eventually it got bigger and bigger and I finally found myself at this light. It was like an enormous lit-up picture window. And there was a very high step to get over before I could get into it.
“As I looked through into this tremendous light, I could see there was a glorious garden. . . . And the whole thing was enveloped in a beautiful golden light. . . .
“I had the feeling that the place was teeming with life even though there wasn’t a soul to be seen. I felt that everybody must have been hiding behind rocks and trees and (laughs) it was a strange feeling, as if they were all just hiding there. I felt the warmth of them and the love of them, but they wouldn’t come out. I kept on struggling to get over this big step while all this thick air (or whatever it was) was pulling me back. . . . Then suddenly I made a really enormous effort, because I had to get into this garden. Then I heard a voice which said, ‘You’re too early.’ And with that I let go and I went back at a tremendous rate. I felt myself being drawn very swiftly back up the tunnel into the blackness. . . .
“It was the truest, most honest thing that had ever happened to me.” (Sutherland 122-125)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
She is experiencing the light only in terms of environment. She feels the presence because it is the light of consciousness, the light of attention, and rationalized that there must be people there, but hiding. It’s more common to see an environment along with people, to make sense of that feeling.
The Light as a Being
Why Some Prefer a Being
Many perceive the light as a being. The light is the light of consciousness, of attention, and as it flows into us, it feels as if we are in a presence. As such, a being is a natural form for us to project.
I have found it difficult to surrender to something that seems so overwhelming and totally “other.” . . . I have been able to choose a “mediator” between this overwhelming experience and myself; a mediator . . . who lends human and tangible qualities to it. (Sparrow 11)LDDCLLDer • modern • Sparrow
A Being of Light
The light can appear in the OBE before the tunnel. Sometimes this signals that it is coming from a guide or higher self who will accompany us through the tunnel, or directly to the light.
I wasn’t sure when the light in the room began to change; Suddenly I was aware that it was brighter, a lot brighter, than it had been. . . .
I stared in astonishment as the brightness increased, coming from nowhere, seeming to shine everywhere at once. . . . It was impossibly bright: it was like a million welders’ lamps all blazing at once. . . .
Now I saw that it was not light but a Man who had entered the room, or rather, a Man made out of light. . . .
This Person was power itself, older than time and yet more modern than anyone I had ever met. . . .
Far more even than power, what emanated from this Presence was unconditional love. An astonishing love. A love beyond my wildest imaginings. This love knew every unlovable thing about me . . . and accepted and loved me just the same. (Ritchie 48-49)RFTNDEr • modern • Ritchie
This really bright light came. It did seem that it was a little dim at first, but then it was this huge beam. It was just a tremendous amount of light. . . . It gave off heat to me; I felt a warm sensation. . . .
It seemed that it covered everything, yet it didn’t prevent me from seeing everything around me—the operating room, the doctors and nurses, everything. . . . The light’s what was talking to me, but in a voice.
It had a sense of humor, too. (Moody 62-63)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
By far the most common point at which the light takes form is at the end of the tunnel.
I looked ahead into the darkness. There was a light up there, and I began to move toward it as quickly as possible. . . . Ahead the light became brighter and brighter until it overtook the darkness and left me standing in a paradise of brilliant light. This was the brightest light I had ever seen. . . .
I looked to my right and could see a silver form appearing like a silhouette through mist. As it approached I began to feel a deep sense of love that encompassed all of the meanings of the word. It was as though I were seeing a lover, mother, and best friend, multiplied a thousandfold. As the Being of Light came closer, these feelings of love intensified until they became almost too pleasurable to withstand. I had the sense of becoming less dense. (Brinkley 9-10)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
A woman in Australia wrote to me of her experience while undergoing a major operation:
“I found myself flying over the city and suburbs until I paused over my parents’ back garden. My mother emerged to hang out some washing. . . . Then I became aware of a tremendous suction behind me, and turning around, found myself being drawn into a huge, swirling dark tunnel that led slightly upward. Traveling at tremendous speed I saw a speck of light in the far distance, and I felt a great desire to reach that light. It grew larger until it was a glorious golden disc and the sides of the tunnel glistened with a million tiny stars. Then, with a great burst of light, and rays of light like iridescent arms reaching out to me, I emerged from the tunnel to find a Radiant Being before me. He seemed to be made of love and His voice reached out to me like soothing, golden, liquid music, and I was engulfed in light and love.” (Rhodes 13-14)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
As I approached the end I became aware of the brightest white light that I have ever seen. It was brighter than looking directly at the sun. As I approached closer the light took on human form. The light was coming from where the face should have been. MNDENDEr • modern • Foreman
I was standing somewhere. The first thing I was aware of at this new ‘place’ was that there was a male person (being) there with me. I felt TOTALLY . . . at ease with him, and was no longer terrified; I felt like he was very holy and pure, and I KNEW that he loved me very much. . . . He felt more like a life-long friend. . . . He had a long white robe, flowing white hair, and he was glowing internally with a bright light. Looking back now, I think he was some kind of guardian angel or spirit-guide or something. This angel/being spoke to me without words — telepathically — and I could do the same. He told me not to worry -- and I did not. OotWOBEr • modern • M.C.
Its Personality and Humor
When translating the light into human terms, what really shines is its personality. It radiates unconditional love, and a lighthearted, supportive, and humorous personality.
It was a . . . being of light. . . . It has a very definite personality. The love and the warmth which emanate from this being to the dying person are utterly beyond words, and he feels completely surrounded by it and taken up in it, completely at ease and accepted in the presence of this being. He senses an irresistible magnetic attraction to this light. He is . . . drawn to it. (Moody 59)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
I look up and I can see a Light! It’s bright, so very bright. It looks like a thousand suns all exploding at the same time!
I am rushing toward the Light, and for some unknown reason I have no fear, and I love the Light. Oh what a wonderful, beautiful, enchanting, warm and loving Light. . . . It’s as if I’m being drawn by a giant magnet. Closer and closer. . . .
I am in the Light! Oh, God, I am actually in the Light, I am the Light! I see the Light and now it appears to have a human-like form. I’ve never seen it before, but, somehow, I recognize it. The Light speaks to me. The Light says, “Andy, do not be afraid. Everything is OK.” Then the Light says, “Andy, I love you. Andy, we love you.” . . .
I can see me in the unending Light. But I am still “Andy”. . . . The Light has a voice that I have never heard, but it is not strange to me. The Light has a smile that is indescribably beautiful, and I recognize it. The Light has an infectious laugh and we laugh together. The Light has all of the answers in the universe . . . and I don’t have any questions, because I know everything that the Light knows. . . .
I’m home! . . . I am home forever! . . .
Then the light says, “Andy, you must go back!” . . .
The next instant, the very next moment, without any pause or delay of even the smallest amount of time, I am back! I open my eyes and tears are rolling down my cheeks. The Light is gone! Oh, God, the light is gone. I am back on earth. I am so sad. (Petro 6 Volume XVI Number 4)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
“What about the insurance money coming when I’m seventy?” The words were out, in this strange realm where communication took place by thought instead of speech, before I could call them back. . . . If I’d suspected before that there was mirth in the Presence beside me, now I was sure of it: the brightness seemed to vibrate and shimmer with a kind of holy laughter. (Ritchie 54)RFTNDEr • modern • Ritchie
I’ll never forget the Lord’s sense of humor, which was as delightful and quick as any here—far more so. (Eadie 72)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Projection of Expectations
When we strongly desire to see something after death, or believe and expect that we will, we will project those forms over the true experience. Guides are aware of this, and may participate in acting as that person (see “Met by Projected-Upon Guides” in returning-home.php).
The propensity near-death reality has for molding itself into hologram-like shapes that mirror the thoughts, desires, and symbols that populate our minds, explains why Westerners tend to perceive the beings of light as Christian religious figures, why Indians perceive them as Hindu saints and deities, and so on. (Talbot 256)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
The following NDErs come from a Christian perspective. Some of these are quite clear in that the perceiver only thinks it must be Jesus. This assumption/expectation precedes the light taking that form. If one firmly believed that a Flying Spaghetti Monster would meet them after death, this would be what they experience. Deeply-set beliefs obscure the truth.
A woman in Chicago: “I saw a person of light that I think was Jesus. I couldn’t see his face, but he was glowing gloriously and furiously. Even when I couldn’t look at him, I could feel the glow, it was that strong.” (Brinkley 121)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Joey (channeled): And then I saw this beautiful, beautiful man, and I just knew that it had to be Jesus. So I asked Gabe, “Is that Jesus?” And Gabe said, “Yes, that’s Jesus, except we know him by many names here.” (Fairchilde 80)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
“I became aware of a tugging, a pulling, and I seemed to be being dragged into some kind of dark, dark tunnel.”
Although she could see a light at the far end of the tunnel, Carli was frightened. . . .
She fought an awful moment of panic, and then she perceived a glowing light beginning to form in the darkness of the tunnel.
“The light began to coalesce into a humanoid-type figure. . . .
“The image became that of Jesus. . . .
“His eyes were warm and kind, and I felt an overwhelming peace permeate every aspect of my being. His voice was soft and gentle.
“‘It is not yet your time to come home, Carli,’ he told me.” (Steiger 42-44)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
As I approached [the light], I noticed the figure of a man standing in it, with the light radiating all around him. As I got closer the light became brilliant—brilliant beyond any description, far more brilliant than the sun. . . .
I saw that the light immediately around him was golden, as if his whole body had a golden halo around it . . . [that] spread into a brilliant, magnificent whiteness. . . . I felt his light blending into mine . . . and I felt my light being drawn to his. . . . As our lights merged. . . . I felt an utter explosion of love.
It was the most unconditional love I have ever felt, and as I saw his arms open to receive me I went to him and received his complete embrace. . . . I knew that he was aware of all my sins and faults, but that they didn’t matter. . . .
There was no questioning who he was. . . . He was Jesus. (Eadie 40-42)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
The following experience is from the dream state:
I am with Alan (a close friend). . . .
At one point I see him standing in a doorway at the back of the auditorium, talking to someone standing behind the door. I know that it is Jesus! Anxiously, I walk through the door and look toward Him. At first I am only able to see a bright white light. But then the light abruptly changes into the clear form of the Master. (Sparrow 11)LDDCLLDer • modern • Sparrow
Dissolution of the Temporary Form of the Light
Jesus, the angels and platform, disintegrated into a giant sphere of light once Carter Mills no longer needed their shape or form to put him at ease. As the sphere grew it absorbed him, infused him with the ecstasy of unconditional love. “Sexual orgasms can’t compare. You are so high. Magnify that to infinity!” (Atwater 74)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Here we see the dissolution of the projected forms once fear is removed.
Resistance
Resistance to Death and the Light
This section reveals how resistance works and how it warps our experience.
Gloria Hipple: “I recall being pulled down into a spinning vortex. At first, I did not know what was happening. Then I realized my body was being drawn downward, head first. I panicked and fought, trying to grab at the sides of the vortex. All I could think of was my two children. No one would care for them. I pleaded, Please (sic), not now, but I kept moving downward.
“I tried to see something, but all there was to see was this cyclonic void that tapered into a funnel. I kept grabbing at the sides but my fingers had nothing to grasp. Terror set in, true terror. I saw a black spot, darker than the funnel and like a black curtain, falling in front of me. Then there was a white dot, like a bright light at the end of the funnel. But as I grew closer, it was a small white skull. It became larger, grinning at me with bare sockets and gaping mouth, and traveling straight toward me like a baseball. Not only was I terrified, I was really livid, too. I struggled to grab hold of anything to keep me from falling, but the skull loomed larger. ‘My kids, my baby is so little. My little boy, he’s only two years old. No!’ My words rang in my head and ears. With a bellowing yell, I screamed: ‘No! damn it, no! Let me go. My babies need me! No! No! No! No!’
“The skull shattered into fragments and I slowed in movement. A white light, the brightest light I have ever known or will ever see again was in place of the skull. It was so bright yet it did not blind me. It was a welcome, calming light. The black spot or curtain was gone. I felt absolute peace of mind and sensed myself floating upward, and I was back. I heard my husband calling me, off in the distance.” (Atwater 33-34)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
This is a very revealing experience. The black curtain was her closing up in resistance, but the brightness of the distant light was still visible through her barrier. The light is transformed through that closed barrier to reflect her fear, and it appears as a skull. This happens on the projection field — our own internal projection screen — the first thing we see before seeing objective reality. But the light was too strong and shattered her projections and resistance, revealing its true form (see “The Projection Field” in fields-of-perception.php).
I glanced at my physical body. It was the last thing I saw as I went through the wall.
I found myself in a region of total darkness up to my neck in water. My bodily pain, absent moments before, had returned. The water was very cold and moving around. I was quite panicky because I cannot swim. In my mind I asked, “Where am I?” In response I heard a loud, loving and beautiful voice, sounding almost as though it came from a megaphone, saying, “This is eternity! This is eternity! You are lost! You are lost!” In some way I knew that was God’s voice. “What is this?” I again asked in my mind. God’s reply was, “This is the river of death.”
Struggling in the darkness I suddenly found myself being carried into the upper portions of a large whirlpool. I fought to keep my head above water, but gradually was drawn lower into the pool where the water was whirling more quickly. By the time I was sucked into the bottom of the pool I was completely exhausted. Emotionally, fear and hopelessness had drained me. So, as I was going underwater for what I was sure was the last time, I completely gave up! It was then that I saw light enter the water around me. IANDS-LTNDEr • modern • Tutmarc
Resistance casts a negative interpretation on everything, causing the same experience to take negative forms. He struggles and fights, and doesn’t see the light until he gives up fighting.
Hiding From the Light
Spirits with evil thoughts avoid the light because they are too ashamed to have their life revealed. SRNDENDEr • modern • Rogers
Being Open to the Light
It is important to be open to the experience by letting go of resistance, fears, attachments, expectations. Remember, we are free to remain in denial and projection forever, if we wish.
Roads is speaking with his wife, Treenie:
“My intuition tells me that my experience is being guided or overseen by a Being of Light. . . . I am safer in this mystical realm than is possible in any physical reality. . . . If I can accept what I am experiencing this adventure will continue, while rigidity and denial will quickly bring it to an end. . . .
“I can feel myself accepting all this at a speed that I could never normally manage. I’m amazed at how calm I feel already.” (Roads 41-42)
Trusting an inner prompting so powerful that I can scarcely resist it, I dive into the river. (Roads 46)IaTROBEr, LDer • modern • Roads
“Surrender” may indeed be the factor that determines not only depth of [NDE] experience but who might possibly have one to begin with, i.e., people who refuse to relinquish the power of their will seldom report the phenomenon. (Atwater 32)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
The Life Review
Its Nature and Purpose
The life review happens when exiting the physical universe into a higher dimensional perspective. As we exit physical time, we see our whole life experience in quick succession. From this perspective we experience all sides of (and inside) the astral dimension of feeling. That means that in addition to our own feelings, we experience the emotional response to all our actions from the perspective of others. To the higher self, feeling is of primary importance (see “The Dimensions Of Feeling” in higher-sense-perception.php).
We are actually exiting the memory of our earth life. Exiting a memory typically gives a feeling of expansion as we rise out of it into our former, wider perspective.
Once we are settled in a higher dimension of being, our physical life continues to be available as a memory, which can be entered at any time, scanned through, studied, and re-experienced at will (see “Interacting with Memories” in attention.php).
The life review often occurs upon encountering the light when exiting the tunnel (a dimensional transition), but it can come at any time — when the light appears in the physical environment of the dying body, or even within the tunnel.
Also notice that like all experiences in the astral, it can take place in energetic terms OR physical terms (in a temple, viewing room, or through conversations with guides).
A Rapid Experience
As we are moving outside of the memory’s physical time and space, we can see the life we just lived all in one sweep. Our physical life becomes simultaneous from that higher perspective, and we view our life from the perspective of our higher self, who sees it with the understanding that it was a temporary mask that we wore in a difficult world.
The life review might be the very point that we entered and lived through our entire physical life.
The being [of light] presents to the person a panoramic review of his life. . . .
It is extraordinarily rapid. The memories, when they are described in temporal terms, are said to follow one another swiftly, in chronological order. Others recall no awareness of temporal order at all. The remembrance was instantaneous; everything appeared at once, and they could take it all in with one mental glance. . . .
Even for a period of time following their experience of the review they could recall the events of their lives in incredible detail. (Moody 63-64)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
“It’s like climbing right inside a movie of your life,” says on NDEer, . . . “It all happens in an instant.” “The whole thing was really odd. I was there; I was actually seeing these flashbacks; I was actually walking through them, and it was so fast. Yet, it was slow enough that I could take it all in,” says another. . . .
As an NDEer in 1821 put it, it is the ability to “simultaneously comprehend the whole and every part.” (Talbot 249)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
It seemed that it was less than five minutes, and probably more than thirty seconds. (Moody 66)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Steven B. Ridenhour: “I feel totally at peace and full of serenity in this timeless space. Next I go through a past-life review. It was like looking at a very fast slide show of my past life, and I do mean fast, like seconds.” (Atwater 61)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Attention and Expansion into the Moment
The light of attention becomes apparent to us during physical life when we are present fully again in the now of experience. It is at those moments that we allow our higher self to be present with us in the physical. Now, having left the memory of our physical life, we see it from the perspective of that higher self. To the higher self, it was only present when our attention was focused in the moment. Those are the times with extended scope in our life review, while time spent in habitual behavior without attention barely exist (see “The Light of Attention” in attention.php).
This expansion into psychological time occurred during a fear NDE:
Heim felt no fear during his fall, only peace and serenity. His mental activity, he said, increased ‘a hundredfold velocity’ and his surroundings were ‘transfigured in a heavenly light’. Though his descent could have lasted no more than three seconds, the climber apparently had time to see every major event in his life flash before his eyes, each incident suddenly acquiring a new, deeper significance. (Viney 191)SDresearcher • modern • Viney
Attention’s expansion into the moment during physical experiences is apparent when viewing the experiences in the life review:
Now I noticed that there was a large screen before me. I was being drawn into a three-dimensional slide show of my life that played out before my eyes chronologically, while I experienced every part of it from all points of view and all points of understanding. (Fenimore 84)
I was living my childhood all over again, literally from everyone’s point of view, including that of my adult self. . . .
I was surprised by how little effort it took to scramble around and by how quickly my attention shifted. . . .
As my life continued to progress in hologram style, I was beginning to understand that I had forgotten very important emotions and events of my past. As a little girl, I had felt secure in my home and in myself. I saw myself with pure, accepting eyes. My emotions were clear and intense, not muddled and conflicted. . . .
As my darker years approached, the images became less detailed. They had the same electrical charge, but I passed through them very quickly with confusion and detachment rather than with the full absorption and the emotional glow of my earlier memories. I was seeing single frames of my life from different time periods, with some events apparently being more significant than others because I went through them slowly. . . . I wasn’t permitted to stay in any of the later memories, so it seemed that this part of my life wasn’t being screened for my own benefit. And indeed, I became aware that I wasn’t viewing my life alone. . . .
I knew that the presence was male and that he didn’t judge my life—no condemnation or empathy emanated from him. The only feeling I got was, “This is the way it is. This is the life that you lived.”
The closer I came to the end of my life, the faster the pictures flew past me. (Fenimore 87-90)BtDNDEr • modern • Fenimore
This is an attention-based expansion of life events. The more attention we had in the experience while living it, the longer and more important it will appear in the life review. Conversely, the less attention we had at the time, the faster the experience will fly by in the life review.
The amount of attention on the experience becomes the experience’s extension into the dimension of feeling.
Memory-Like Holographic Experience
Many NDEers themselves use the term “holographic” when describing the experience. . . .
Again and again NDEers use the same adjectives to describe [the life review], referring to it as an incredibly vivid, warp-around, three-dimensional replay of their entire life. “It’s like climbing right inside a movie of your life,” says on NDEer. “Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall.” . . .
Failed dreams and aspirations—things they had hoped to accomplish during their life, but had not—also caused them pangs of sadness.
Thoughts, too, are replayed with exacting fidelity during the life review. Reveries, faces glimpsed once but remembered for years, things that made one laugh, the joy one felt when gazing at a particular painting, childish worries, and long forgotten daydreams—all flit through one’s mind in a second. As one NDEer summarizes, “Not even your thoughts are lost. . . . Every thought was there.” (Talbot 248-249)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
That thoughts are recorded is significant as well. Memories aren’t just recordings of physical events — they’re full recording of everything experienced by consciousness, including the full context of the experience — their knowledge and past experiences, and their changing focus of attention. This requires a full recording of someone’s mental state, which is why it works to re-enter memories and make different choices. The results are the 100% authentic and true responses the other characters would have had.
The Spherical Screen the Life Review Plays On
The life review takes advantage of our return to spherical vision. Our entire physical life is wrapped around us. We’re in the center of this sphere in which all our experiences play simultaneously at different places in the sphere. It’s the full higher dimensional experience — a memory, including all the thoughts and feelings of everyone involved. Whatever we focus on we experience fully.
Seeing a whole physical life at once is confusing to the physically-oriented mind, so this experience is sometimes given the physical form of a room covered with screens, each showing an important event simultaneously.
A small change in position can alter the organization from that of physical time to that of feeling.
“Where am I?” I’m inside an immense ball! And the inside of the sphere is like an enormous, unending movie screen. Everything is going on at once, all around me . . . left, right, up, down . . . wherever I look I see my life. I can not only see it, but I can also hear, feel and experience every event . . . past, present and future. There is no beginning! . . . Strange, there is no fear or judgement. . . . What incredible feelings, I can feel each and every thought, word and action all at once! . . .
Now I’m back in the tunnel again, speeding toward the Light!(Petro 6 Volume XVI Number 4)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
For into that room along with His radiant presence . . . had also entered every single episode of my entire life. Everything that had ever happened to me was simply there, in full view, contemporary and current, all seemingly taking place at that moment. . . .
The little one-bed room was still visible, but it no longer confined us. Instead, on all sides of us was what I could only think of as a kind of enormous mural—except that the figures on it were three dimensional, moving and speaking.
And many of these figures seemed to be me. Transfixed, I stared at myself standing at the blackboard in a third-grade spelling class. Receiving my Eagle badge in front of my scout troop. Wheeling Papa Dabney onto the veranda. . . . I saw myself a tiny two-and-a-half pound infant, panting for breath in the incubator. Simultaneously (there seemed to be no earlier, no later) I saw myself lifted by Caesarean section from the womb. . . .
Along with the cheerful scenes were miserable one. I watched myself getting beaten up by that boy. (Ritchie 50-51)RFTNDEr • modern • Ritchie
After reaching the light. . . .
Jeanie Dicus: “Then I was instantly zapped to a domed room with square screens up and down the walls, on the ceiling—hundreds of television screens. On each screen was a home movie of one event in my life. The good, the bad, the secret, the ugly, the special. Everything was going on at once; nothing was chronological. All was silent. When you looked at one screen, you focused in, and you could hear what was there. Not only words, but your thoughts, your feelings, everything; and when you looked at the other people or animals, you could hear their thoughts, their feelings, too. And you made the connection between these and the events which ensued. You were filled with, not guilt, but a strong sense of responsibility.
“God said to me: ‘I gave you the precious gift of life. What did you do with this gift?’ . . . I was the judge and I was satisfied. I guess that was what God wanted. . . . I was told that before we’re born, we have to take an oath that we will pretend time and space are real so we can come here and advance our spirit. If you don’t promise, you can’t be born.” (Atwater 65)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Its Clarity
Case No. 569—A.W. Osborn’s friend
“Only for a few seconds was I conscious of sinking [into the water], then dropping ever so rapidly through a pale green world through which . . . all the events of my life seemed to whirl around me. . . . All I had ever known was flung into this great whirl. . . . The memory of events became so clear that they were reexperienced . . . the final images—the sunlight on a blade of grass, the willows in bloom, etc. These were details of my life when I was five years old.” (Crookall 15-16)CBAPresearcher • modern • Crookall
The Flash Forward
A small percentage of NDE life reviews include a personal flash forward — a view of what’s coming upon their return to the physical body. Since they’re going back, their life isn’t over, and the experiences to come are part of the memory. A guide or the higher self determines if a flash forward is useful to growth.
Janis: “[The life review] went ‘click, click’ in a split second. . . . All chronological. . . . I was, yeah, more of a spectator. . . . After my whole life went by—in black and white—zoooom!—and the black and white ended and it got into color and it got into things that hadn’t happened yet. . . . Things that have happened since then. (Ring 60-61)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
See “Precognition and Free Will” in higher-sense-perception.php.
Seeing Your Life Truly
In the life review, we come into contact with our subconscious knowledge. At subconscious levels, we know everything — even while in the physical. We weave for ourselves an acceptable reality that we consciously believe, able to easily block out any subconscious knowing. The life review brings into conscious awareness all that has been subconscious. It is the full truth of ourselves, our thoughts, and our motivations.
This is possible because memories record all frequencies of the experience, even those we are not conscious of at the time.
See “Memories Record All Frequencies” in attention.php.
“He sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or self-deception.”
Key to Theosophy, H.P. Blavatsky, p. 109. Third Edition (Blavatsky 24)DAclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant
Omniperspective and Complete Empathy
In the life review, we experience the whole truth.
The life review happens in the astral plane, which is the frequency of feeling. Empathy is sharing the feelings of another, and as such it’s the focus here.
[People who undergo the near-death experience] experience, in fact, the complete range of effects their actions had on others and all the feelings, however disturbing or shocking, they aroused in them. . . .
I was the very people that I hurt, and I was the very people I helped to feel good. (Rinpoche 97)
[All souls] are allowed to move through, once again, every moment of the life they’ve just completed—and to experience it not only from their viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of everyone else who was affected by that moment. They get to rethink every thought, resay every word, redo every deed, and to experience its effect on every person it affected, as if they were that other person—which they are.
They get to know that they are, experientially. At this moment the statement “We Are All One” will no longer be a concept, it will be an experience. . . .
During your “life review,” as some have called it, you will not be judged by anyone, but simply be allowed to experience what the Whole of You experienced, rather than what the localized version of You that resides with your present body experienced. (Walsch 92-93)FWGchanneled • modern • Walsch
We get to re-experience our life with omniperspective. This allows us to experience it truthfully, from all perspectives. Nobody needs to judge us but ourselves when we have this more complete view.
During this instantaneous and panoramic remembrance, NDEers reexperience all the emotions, the joys and the sorrows, that accompanied all of the events in their life. More than that, they feel all of the emotions of the people with whom they have interacted as well. They feel the happiness of all the individuals to whom they’ve been kind. If they have committed a hurtful act, they become acutely aware of the pain their victim felt as a result of their thoughtlessness. And no event seems too trivial to be exempt. While reliving a moment in her childhood, one woman suddenly experienced all the loss and powerlessness her sister had felt after she (then a child) snatched a toy away from her sister. (Talbot 249)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
Acharya: On the other side, we see the full and complete results of all our actions; few of us do not suffer in the seeing and register a vow that in future lives we shall act differently. (Richelieu 31)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu
At that moment I was rapidly shown images of my life from a different perspective. It was uncomfortable. No matter how much I struggled I could not escape this way of seeing. The truth was very loud. . . . I was responsible for every decision, every action and every consequence to myself and others. (Redford 10)VS-LRresearcher • modern • Redford
My life appeared before me in the form of what we might consider extremely well defined holograms, but at tremendous speed. I was astonished that I could understand so much information at such a speed. My comprehension included much more than what I remember happening during each event of my life. I not only reexperienced my own emotions at each moment, but also what others around me had felt. I experienced their thoughts and feelings about me. . . . Then I saw the disappointment that I had caused others, and I cringed as their feelings of disappointment filled me, compounded by my own guilt. I understood all the suffering I had caused, and I felt it. I began to tremble. I saw how much grief my bad temper had caused, and I suffered this grief. I saw my selfishness, and my heart cried for relief. How had I been so uncaring? (Eadie 112)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Sandy (channeled): I relived the whole of my existence, only this time I saw it with a clear and understanding eye. I not only “saw” these events, I felt them. I learned the true impact of my actions by experiencing not only my emotions but the emotions of everyone I had interacted with. (Fairchilde 10)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde
I witnessed myself taunting a little girl. . . . I could feel her fear. (Brinkley 8)APitLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
At the end of the tunnel I was met by the Being of Light, the same one that greeted me the first time. . . .
He drew me toward him, and as he did he spread out, almost like an angel spreading its wings. I was engulfed by these wings of light, and as I was, I began to see my life all over again.
The first twenty-five years passed as they had in my first near-death experience. I saw many of the same things. . . . Watching these early years again was painful, I won’t deny that, but the agony was tempered by viewing the years since the first experience. . . .
One after the other, events both great and small were reviewed as I stood in this cocoon of light. . . .
One time for instance, I helped care for an elderly woman. She had lain in bed so long that she was stiff and could hardly move. I scooped her out of the bed like a child—she couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds—and held her while the nurses changed the sheets. To give her a change of scenery, I walked around the building with her in my arms.
I knew this meant a lot to her at the time because she thanked me profusely and cried when I left. Now, as I relived the event, the perspective I had in this heavenly place let me feel her gratitude at having someone hold her again. (Brinkley 187-188)
The life review that came with this second near-death experience was wonderful. Unlike my first, which was filled with mayhem, anger, and even death, this one was a pyrotechnic display of good deeds. (Brinkley 192)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Downstream Effects
Our empathy isn’t just limited to those we directly interact with, but with those who are effected by those with interact with. Our kindness or cruelty causes secondary effects as it‘s passed from one person to another, and we can follow those chains of causation in the life review.
In his life review, Brinkley saw himself giving advice to a man who was angry about his son:
Not only could I feel the way both I and the other person had felt when an incident took place, I could also feel the feelings of the next person they reacted to. I was in a chain reaction of emotion, one that showed how deeply we affect one another. (Brinkley 17)
NOTE: Brinkley is now reviewing an experience in Vietnam:
We surrounded the hotel with plastic explosives and leveled it at sunrise, killing the official along with about fifty people who were staying there. . . .
I saw this incident again during my near-death experience, but this time, I was hit by a rush of emotions and information. I felt the stark horror that all of those people felt as they realized their lives were being snuffed out. I experienced the pain their families felt when they discovered that they had lost loved ones in such a tragic way. In many cases I even felt the loss their absence would make to future generations. (Brinkley 22)
NOTE: Brinkley is reviewing a military engagement in Central America:
My task was simply to transfer these weapons from an airplane to our military interests in the area. When this transfer was completed, I got back on the airplane and left.
But leaving wasn’t so easy in my life review. I stayed with the weapons and watched as they were distributed at a military staging area. Then I went with the guns as they were used in the job of killing, some of them murdering innocent people and some the not so innocent. . . .
I remember watching children cry because they had been told that their fathers were dead, and I knew these deaths were caused by the guns I had delivered. (Brinkley 23-24)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
I relived this in the life review, only this time I was able to follow him home and see how my advice had affected his relationship with his son.
The man did what we had talked about, and before long his relationship with his son was better. (Brinkley 9)APitLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Less Positive Lives
As for Brinkley’s first NDE:
The Being of Light engulfed me, and as it did I began to experience my whole life, feeling and seeing everything that had ever happened to me. It was as though a dam had burst and every memory stored in my brain flowed out. . . .
At the time I thought I was funny. But now, as I relived this incident, I found myself in his body, living with the pain that I was causing. . . .
From fifth to twelfth grade, I estimate that I had at least six thousand fistfights. Now, as I reviewed my life in the bosom of the Being, I relived each one of those altercations, but with one major difference: I was the receiver.
I wasn’t the receiver in the sense that I felt the punches I had thrown. Rather, I felt the anguish and the humiliation my opponent felt. (Brinkley 12-13)
People who beat animals or are cruel to them are going to know how those animals felt when they have a life review.
I also discovered that it is not so much what you do that counts, but why you do it. For example, having a fistfight with someone for no real reason hurt me far more in the life review than having one with someone who had picked a fight with me. To relive hurting someone just for fun is the greatest pain of all. (Brinkley 17-18)
I was ashamed. I realized I had led a very selfish life, rarely reaching out to help anyone. . . .
As I gazed at the Being of Light I felt as though he was touching me. From that contact I felt a love and joy that could only be compared to the nonjudgmental compassion that a grandfather has for a grandchild. . . .
Again I was allowed a period of reflection. . . . I could see that for every good in my life, there were twenty bad ones to weigh against it. . . .
As the Being of Light moved away, I felt the burden of this guilt being removed. I had felt the pain and anguish of reflection, but from that I had gained the knowledge that I could use to correct my life. I could hear the Being’s message in my head, again as if through telepathy: “Humans are powerful spiritual beings meant to create good on the earth. This good isn’t usually accomplished in bold actions, but in singular acts of kindness between people. It’s the little things that count, because they are more spontaneous and show who you truly are.” . . .
The amount of love and good feelings you have at the end of your life is equal to the love and good feelings you put out during your life. (Brinkley 24-26)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
The Desire to Change
According to Whitton’s subjects the main purpose of the life review was to refresh their memories so they could more mindfully plan their next life, a process in which the beings of light gently and noncoercively assisted. (Talbot 247)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
We ourselves experience what the other person has passed through in the physical world. . . . And in having this experience a force rises up from our inner being . . . a force which makes us say: ‘You must compensate for this! You must make amends!’ (Steiner 111)LBDclairvoyant • Theosophy • Steiner
Once we realize the effects our actions have had on others, and feel it through their experience, the natural desire arises to make amends for the negative things we have done. This experience reinforces our understanding at the level of the higher self, which informs our intuition and tendencies in the next incarnation. This expanded understanding will influence our choices in that life.
What’s Important in Life
As my life passed before me . . . little things shown brightly. . . . There were times, for instance, when I bought somebody a meal, or helped them feel good about themselves. Even though these were brief moments in my life, they were significant and meaningful in this life review. (Brinkley 159)APitLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
What did you do with your life? . . .
The question . . . had to do with love. How much have you loved with your life? Have you loved others as I am loving you? Totally? Unconditionally? (Ritchie 52-54)RFTNDEr • modern • Ritchie
This is covered in detail in all of “The Purpose of Life” in purpose-of-life.php.
Support and Forgiveness
Only Self-Judgement
When we experience the full emotional results each of our actions has on others, there is no need for anyone beyond ourselves to judge our actions.
NDEers universally report that they are never judged by the beings of light, but feel only love and acceptance in their presence. The only judgment that ever takes place is self-judgment and arises solely out of the NDEer’s own feelings of guilt and repentance. Occasionally the beings do assert themselves, but instead of behaving in an authoritarian manner, they act as guides and counselors whose only purpose is to teach. (Talbot 250)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
At the end of every life . . . we serve as our most severe critic in front of teacher-guides. (Newton 51)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton
Every detail of twenty years of living was there to be looked at. The good, the bad, the high points, the run-of-the-mill. And with this all-inclusive view came a question. It was implicit in every scene and, like the scenes themselves, seemed to proceed from the living Light beside me.
What did you do with your life? . . .
There were no horrendous depths, there were no heights either. Only an endless, shortsighted, clamorous concern for myself. . . .
It was I who was judging the events around us so harshly. It was I who saw them as trivial, self-centered, unimportant. No such condemnation came from the Glory shining round me. He was not blaming or reproaching. He was simply . . . loving me. (Ritchie 52-54)RFTNDEr • modern • Ritchie
Then in the midst of my pain, I felt the love of the council come over me. . . . The council was not judging me. I was judging myself. Their love and mercy were absolute. (Eadie 112-113)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
Support During the Life Review
The higher self, guide(s), or friends and family with us provide only unconditional love and support as we experience the greater truth about our lives.
Then I was seeing my whole life from beginning to end, even all those little things you forget along the way. I felt the pain, the joy, the shame of it all, including how others, whose lives I had touched, had felt. Yet never once did the Being condemn me. He just said, “You were learning.” (Beaumont 6)VS-FBNDEr • modern • Beaumont
Next, they wanted to talk about my life. To my surprise my life played out before me, maybe six or eight feet in front of me, from beginning to end.
The life review was very much in their control, and they showed me my life, but not from my point of view. I saw me in my life and this whole thing was a lesson, even though I didn’t know it at the time. They were trying to teach me something. . . . We just watched my life from beginning to the end. Some things they slowed down on, and zoomed in on and other things they went right through. . . .
I could feel their feelings of sorrow and suffering, or joy, as my life’s review unfolded. They didn’t say that something was bad or good, but I could feel it. And I could sense all those things they were indifferent to. . . .
What they responded to was how I had interacted with other people. . . .
I got to see when my sister had a bad night one night, how I went into her bedroom and put my arms around her. Not saying anything, I just lay there with my arms around her. As it turned out that experience was one of the biggest triumphs of my life.
The entire life’s review would have been emotionally destructive, and would have left me a psychotic person, if it hadn’t been for the fact that my friend, and my friend’s friends, were loving me during the unfolding of my life. . . .
Every time I got a little upset they turned the life’s review off for awhile, and they just loved me. Their love was tangible. You could feel it on your body, you could feel it inside you. . . .
The therapy was their love, because my life’s review kept tearing me down. HSNDEr • modern • Storm
I didn’t actually see the light as I was going through the flashbacks. He disappeared as soon as he asked me what I had done, and the flashbacks started, and yet I knew that he was there with me the whole time, that he carried me back through these flashbacks, because I felt his presence, and because he made comments here and there. (Moody 65)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Forgiveness
Despite the horribly flawed life we had just witnessed, deep and meaningful forgiveness came to me from this Being. . . . I was bathed in the love that embraced me through the light, and had to give nothing in return. (Brinkley 29)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
What is the feeling of forgiveness? Simply a continuation of love. We are trained all throughout our physical life that when we do something wrong, people withdraw their love from us. This is how we are taught and conditioned. The fact that during the life review, love isn’t withdrawn upon seeing selfish, hurtful actions feels just like forgiveness.
Forgiving Others
After the life review was over, the Being of Light gave me the opportunity to forgive everyone who had ever crossed me. That meant that I was able to shake the hatred that I had built up against many people. I didn’t want to forgive many of these people because I felt that the things they had done to me were unforgivable. . . .
But the Being of Light told me I had to forgive them. If I didn’t, he let me know, I would be stuck at the spiritual level that I now occupied.
What else could I do? Next to spiritual advancement, these earthly trespasses seemed trivial. Forgiveness flooded my heart, along with a strong sense of humility. It was only then that we began to move upward. (Brinkley 193)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
Holding on to anger and resentment keeps us from moving on. That energy stays locked up in that focus, unavailable for new experiences.
The Boundary and Return
Physical Representations of the Boundary
In a few instances, persons have described . . . a border or limit of some kind. This has taken the form, in various accounts, of a body of water, a gray mist, a door, a fence across a field, or simply a line. (Moody 70)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
In most cases there is a definite sense of a boundary—whether visual, auditory or emotional—beyond which experiencers cannot pass. This can take many forms—steps, walls, rivers, bridges, angels, voices . . . are among the most common. . . .
The stream or river is a common boundary reported by Japanese near-death experiences. (Sutherland 119-120)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Streams
Warren: “Black clouds swirled all around me like I was in a heavy fog. Then suddenly, a point of light appeared. It moved closer and closer to me until the clouds suddenly cleared, and I was standing next to a narrow stream. I began to walk next to the stream until it got so narrow that I could step over it.
“The other side of the stream was extremely peaceful. There were hills on the peaceful side that were lighted from behind and looked beautiful.
“As I walked, I was approached by an old man. . . . ‘It’s not your time,’ he said.” (Morse 152)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Hal, a fourteen-year-old at the time of his experience, actually entered the “world of light.” But even in that realm there were boundaries beyond which he couldn’t pass. He saw a stream, and on the other side of the stream were departed relatives who called to him. But he found he could not cross over. As he said, “It seemed I was in another dimension.” He was, however, met on his side of the stream by two deceased school friends who showed him around. When it was finally time for him to go back to his body, his friend took him to a wall. Hal described what happened:
He took me over to the wall and said, “It’s nothing to worry about. You just step out, it’s like stepping out of a bubble. And you’ll see your body just as soon as you get out.”
I went straight through the wall, and I was out of that dimension and back into our own dimension, and I was all on my own. (Sutherland 119-120)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Other Boundaries
[Oleta] seemed to be floating away. . . .
When she stopped floating, she found herself at the edge of a wide chasm, “so dark beneath me. . . . I could not see the bottom.”
She experienced a great fear, then calm, when a bright “spiritual” light appeared on the other side of the abyss.
Oleta could make out the general form of a being in the midst of the light, but the illumination surrounding the entity was so brilliant that she could see no part of him from his shoulders up.
To the being’s left stood a dozen or so other beings in long, white garments. They all seemed to be telling her not to be afraid, that she could cross the chasm without danger and that they would be waiting for her on the other side. (Steiger 108)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
“I never saw the street more distinctly than I saw it then,” he stated. “Glancing around, I noticed that I was attached by means of a small cord, like a spider’s web, to my body in the house.”
Then all at once the doctor found himself soaring high above the neighborhood. . . .
Just as he was relaxing into his newly achieved emancipation from the confines of bodily flesh, however, Dr. Wiltse found himself on a road with steep rocks blocking his journey.
He attempted to climb around them; but as he was doing so, a black cloud surrounded him—and he found himself back in his bedroom, once more confined to an ill body. (Steiger 151-152)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Cindi: “I passed out in the car. The next thing I remember was floating above my body and watching the doctors pushing on my chest. . . .
“I then passed into a room filled with all of my friends. The room was very large and open at the top. It was like looking out at the sky. Sparks would fill the air and streaks of light zoomed up from the earth and burst into rainbows. I wanted very much to be one of those sparks, but I didn’t know how to lift myself up and become one.
“I wanted to leave the room, but the door was closed. I knew if I opened it, I could never return. I was afraid of the door but wanted to go through it too.” (Morse 37-38)
Rick: “I then left the earth and traveled down a long tunnel. I came to a bright opening and passed through it. Out in the brightness I was engulfed by fog. There seemed to be a border, something like a waterline on the beach that separated me from the true Light.” (Morse 153)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Saul: “I went through this tunnel, and it wasn’t a continuous straight tunnel, it was a sort of winding affair, and I saw a light at the end and I came to see a wall. . . . But people were going straight through it to the other side. They were just white shapeless forms, but I knew they were people. I hadn’t seen anybody till I got there, then they seemed to be passing me when I stopped. You know they’d sshhooo straight through the wall. While I was stopped there a voice said to me, ‘Well, if you go through the wall, you don’t get back. . . . Make up your mind- if you go through you stay.’” (Sutherland 137-138)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Choosing to Return
The sixth—and to date, final—near death experience was of a whole other order. I was beginning to succumb to a common strain of the flu one evening as I sat in an over-heated restaurant. When I stood up to leave I “fainted.” I must qualify the word “fainted” here, for at no time did I actually lose consciousness. My sentient self merely shifted focus, and I was once more being drawn down a dark tunnel toward a preternatural brilliance within which I encountered a being of light. . . . I was also embarrassed, because I knew I was in no danger of dying, and therefore—in a manner of speaking—had no business being there. All of this I explained to the being of light. As soon as I acknowledged that I knew my time for remaining in the light had not yet come, I felt myself being drawn back down. (Botting 3)VS-HBKundalini NDEr • modern • Botting
Vortigem: “I’ve been climbing a staircase to heaven.
“It was such a good and peaceful feeling. I felt wonderful. I was on a staircase, and it was dark, and I started climbing upward. I got about halfway up the staircase and decided not to go any higher. I wanted to go on up, but I knew I couldn’t come back if I went too high.” (Morse 27)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Being Told to Return
In many cases, it’s a relative that’s passed on that tells us it’s not yet our time.
[Bill] was siphoning gas out of a tractor when he accidentally inhaled it. . . .
“I found myself floating into a dark tunnel. . . . I got to the portal opening to the Light and was just ready to step through. . . .
“Suddenly, a hand reached out and grabbed me. ‘He’s a feisty rascal, isn’t he,’ said a voice. ‘Well, Bill, it’s not your time this time. You have a job to do.’
“Suddenly, I was above my body. I saw my brother below me. I saw my father rush to him and I heard him say, ‘My God, my God.’ . . . I saw Wadsworth shaking me, and I was spitting out gasoline and gagging and choking and then I came to.” (Morse 146)
Here is another case of someone facing their maker as the result of a gas-siphoning accident. . . .
Bob: “Suddenly, I was in a tunnel. . . .
“I reached the end of the tunnel, and a hand reached out and pushed me away. It was my dead aunt. She smiled at me and said: ‘No, Bobby, its not your time.’ The next thing I knew, I was floating about fifty feet above my body. . . .
“I watched a neighbor run up the road. All the way he was shouting ‘Oh my God’ until he reached my body. Then he began pushing on my chest.” (Morse 150-151)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Lester Gelin: “We found ourselves in a rose-colored world, a sort of fairy garden filled with wonderful flowers. Children were playing and laughing on every side. Suddenly I heard my mother whisper: ‘Pascal is here. See how happy he feels.’
“Now I saw him too: Pascal, my son, taken from us at the age of fourteen months by a tragic accident. . . .
“In my rapture I started to run toward Pascal to fold him in my arms. But when my hand touched him, everything around me changed. Both little Pascal and my father disappeared. The only one remaining clearly recognizable was my mother. . . . I began loudly to cry out in despair. Then I heard my mother saying to me, with an undertone of sadness: ‘Go now, Lester, it’s time, life is waiting.’ . . .
“I let out a final scream, opened my eyes, and knew I was still alive.
“My head was filled with a yawning emptiness, and I felt extraordinarily weak.” (Delacour 15-17)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
They began walking toward the bridge to the city, and Randy saw that the man standing awaiting them was his Grandpa Hansen. . . .
Randy asked his beloved grandfather if he would now be living with him in Heaven.
“One day,” Grandpa Hansen told him. “But not just yet.”
When Randy questioned his grandfather, he told him that he still had things to learn on Earth. (Steiger 62-63)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
The next thing of which she was aware was that she was moving through a “dark railway tunnel.” Far off in the distance she could see a tiny point of light.
“I came out into the light, and I saw a green railway embankment on each side of a green road,” Shirley said. “The banks were covered with lilies and the fragrance was beautiful. . . .”
At the end of the road, she was delighted to see her maternal grandmother . . . who had been dead for seven years.
“As soon as I saw Gram, all the pain and suffering from my long illness vanished. . . .
“I knew that I was walking but I could feel nothing under my feet. . . .
“The voice spoke . . . ‘Do not go to her. It is not yet your time!’ I knew that I must return.”
As soon as Shirley accepted the edict that she must go back to her physical body, she had a keen sense of some of the pain beginning to return.
“I turned and walked back into the darkness. As I passed the lilies, their edges curled and turned brown as if they were dying.”
It was at this point, Shirley explained, that all the pain rushed back upon her agony-wearied body. She found that her feet were hurting as she walked the path. (Steiger 37-38)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
Olivia: “After I came back to myself I was very aware that this was the hard end, and that the other end was very beautiful. . . .
“The second [NDE] happened after a hysterectomy operation. . . . It was virtually the same thing. . . . But the question wasn’t put to me that time. What I did hear that time was a directive that I had to go back, that it wasn’t my time. It had to be put that way because I’d made a conscious decision in my mind that I wanted to stay there. But I had to go back and I went back into my body very quickly.” (Sutherland 144-145)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
Perhaps that’s the common thread in all these cases — they are told to return when they wouldn’t otherwise want to.
Being Pulled Back
If the physical body is still alive, it can pull the astral body back to itself.
Michael Clifton: “I was wheeled into the operating room—and next thing, I was standing in front of a mountain all covered with flowers, all sorts of flowers. I saw a bright light in the distance, and this light approached me and filled me with a marvelous warmth.
“I heard sounds coming from this light, this warmth, music with a curious harmony. I saw people coming toward me. I wasn’t able right off to make out who they were. But when I looked at them more closely I recognized them and spoke to them. . . .
“Presently something took me by the shoulder, by both shoulders. I was pulled back, back from the mountain with the flowers, back from the friends I had been talking to. I felt as if I were suddenly sliding down a steep slope. It became darker and darker around me. Just before this I had been in a state of wonderful bliss, but now I hurt unspeakably.” (Delacour 92)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
Note how a forcible return to the physical happens by being pulled backwards, just as we are drawn backwards into the tunnel if we don’t turn around to face it.
Back Inside the Physical Body
Physical pain is felt again along with the body, the latter now experienced as a cage and possibly a source of torment. One has returned to the old world of time and space and its legion of restrictions. Our consciousness has once more contracted so as to live within the tiny confines of the ego. (Ring 90)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
Returning to the body seemed like death to me. (Seelig 2)VS-MSKundalini NDEr • modern • Seelig
As soon as I acknowledged that I knew my time for remaining in the light had not yet come, I felt myself being drawn back down and sucked into the claustrophobically small mass of cloying thick, black molasses that was my body. (Botting 3)VS-HBKundalini NDEr • modern • Botting
The Return of Pain
Tara: “I just remember the light becoming dimmer, and then a gradual awakening in a painful body. When I came to properly, everything somehow seemed too hard.” (Sutherland 187)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
The last thing Vicki remembers, once the life review had been completed, are the words, “You have to leave now.” She then experienced “a sickening thud” like a roller-coaster going backwards, and found herself back in her body, feeling heavy and full of pain. (Ring and Cooper 112)JoNDE-KRresearcher • modern • Ring
The body’s cumbersome weight and coldness were abhorrent. I started jerking around inside it as though many volts of electricity were pulsing through me. I felt the pain and sickness of my body again, and I became inconsolably depressed. (Eadie 124)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie
There was a strange, crackling noise, and Gloria saw the color of blood all around her.
“I realized after a few minutes that I was back in my physical body. I moaned with the pain of my illness and the surgery.” (Steiger 55)OwtLNDErs • modern • Steiger
AfterEffects of NDEs and OBEs
Aftereffects of NDEs and OBEs
The positive personal and emotional aftereffects of NDEs all come down to one essential thing: a huge reduction in fear. The other effects spiral out from this one. If we’re not just our physical body, and our life just gets better after our physical body dies, then what is there to be afraid of? Simply living, having experiences, and learning means we’re succeeding in life. Each breath is a success. Even dying is a success! We can fear, we can hurt, we can suffer, but in the end, we can’t fail. We will always find our way back home.
Note that the strength of aftereffects from OBEs and NDEs have a fair amount to do with the light. Typically the light in NDEs is far stronger.
NDEers are almost always profoundly changed by their journey to the beyond. They become happier, more optimistic, more easygoing, and less concerned with material possessions. (Talbot 268)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
All of the near-death experiencers with whom I spoke have a desire to get everything they can out of life. (Morse 27)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
I think the knowledge imparted through the NDE reduces not only our fear of death, but also our fear of life. (Brinkley 124)APitLNDEr • modern • Brinkley
According to Atwater, the most common changes to personality after a NDE are:
• Unconditionally loving and generous. . . .
• Unhindered, detached, childlike. . . .
• A heightened sense of the present moment. . . .
• Enhanced sensitivities and a greater awareness of the needs of others. . . .
• Expanded worldview, fewer worries and fears. . . .
• Knowledgeable of spiritual identity. . . .
• Accepting of a greater reality (Atwater 221)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Additionally, she finds the following aftereffects in some:
• Experiencers find they attract animals, birds, and small children to them just by their presence. Plants seem to grow better around them.
• Latent talents tend to surface along with a thirst for knowledge. Experiencers suddenly know more, laugh more.
• . . . Old memories seem to take longer to retrieve and are not as meaningful while recent memories are more lively and focused. . . .
• Experiencers find they are more creative.
• Whatever has been repressed or suppressed or ignored within the inner psyche surfaces. (Atwater 142-143)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Among the aftereffects of her own NDE are:
Intelligence increased and I developed an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Once memory disconnection and energy fragmentation were corrected, my ability to concentrate increased significantly. My mind now works like a laser beam and I can completely lose myself in whatever I am thinking about or doing.
The “newness” of life doesn’t wear off. No matter how many times I do something, hear or see it, I find myself caught up in a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity. Absorption levels have reached such a high degree that I have learned to be very selective about what movies and television shows I watch. Nothing is mundane anymore. (Atwater 244)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Similar effects are covered in “The Effects of Meditation” in skylike-awareness.php and “Transcendent States of Being” in skylike-awareness.php.
Intensity of Light and Transformation
The light melts away the divisions, the limitations, and you merge with the much greater you.
It is the intensity of the light, not length of exposure, that seems to determine the prevalence of many of the physiological aftereffects. . . .
The Light on the other side of death is more than life changing. That light is the very essence, the heart and soul, the all-consuming consummation of ecstatic ecstasy. It is a million suns of compressed love dissolving everything . . . into the one great brilliance of all that is and all that ever was and all that ever will be. . . .
You melt away as the “you” you think you are, reforming as the “YOU” you really are, and you are reborn because at last you “remember.” (Atwater 153-155)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Those who have experiences of light are the ones who have the greatest transformation. (Morse 68)
What they are surely seeing is a blast of the energy that powers their life. (Morse 147)
People who have a mystical experience of light—whether in a lucid dream or simply tripping into an altered state, without being near death—are just as transformed as those who have a near-death experience. (Morse 159)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
Interestingly, while I have not had a NDE or a perfectly clear OBE, I experience most of the effects and sensitivities of those who have, probably due to my psychedelic experiences of the light of consciousness and the Ecstasy Trance.
It seems that any experience of the light can bring about these changes.
Its Fading Memory
Back in the body’s typical state of mind, we retain the memory of what happened without being able to bring back the intense emotional quality of it.
Although I can say with humility and conviction:
“I am the Light,”
“I am the one Radiant Source of all,”
“I am the Unmanifest that ever was, is and shall be.”
Still the full knowledge and wisdom of those higher parts of myself, (and, of course, of All our selves) cannot be fully remembered nor comprehended while in the physical body. For our brain acts as a filter, and only in moments of revelation or cosmic experience and awareness do fragments light up the lower consciousness. (Beaumont 7)VS-FBNDEr • modern • Beaumont
Personal and Emotional Changes
Relationship with Self and Life
Self-Acceptance
Reconnecting with the Pure Essence of ourselves leads to an important realization — the energy we need is inherent in consciousness — we don’t need social conditioning to be happy. We don’t need to conform to scrape scraps of acceptance from others. We are freed from the happiness-draining beliefs of social conditioning.
See “The Conditioning of the Soul” in holographic-mind.php.
Someone who has confidence in and likes himself or herself doesn’t need to remain shy or care what others think of him or her. . . . This is precisely the case with NDErs. . . . After their experience, NDErs like themselves more. . . .
NDErs are less responsive to the opinions of others after their experience. . . .
Nel: “I have learned to accept myself as I am.” . . .
One discovers just who one is and thereby reclaims one’s true identity. (Ring 101-103)
NDErs do not tend to regard themselves as anyone special. Considerations of relative status and other social-comparison games are of no interest. Just as they tend to accept others as they are, so they accept themselves in the same way, and they present themselves to others as they are. (Ring 130)
Barbara was also one of those people who before her NDE lived to please others. (Ring 104)
Barbara, after her NDE: “I knew where Wadsworth was coming from. I knew all the connections. . . .
“All that rejection was in my own head. It wasn’t everybody else rejecting me. Everyone else was just coming from their own problems and hangups. . . . I could understand their beauties and their qualities. And it was like all the slates were being wiped clean. . . .
“Like the domino effect, the sudden realization from the beginning was going through and everything was shifting. Like each electron was jumping into another orbit. It was like a healing. . . .
“My whole life I was acting, because I always had the feeling that if people found out who I really was they wouldn’t like me. . . . I never felt accepted. I never felt like I was like everybody else. I felt that I was different and I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be normal. . . . I didn’t want to be crazy.” (Ring 106-109)
Stella: “I didn’t do any of the ‘don’ts.’ I thought that surely hell would open up immediately and swallow me if I did. Extremely fearful, controlled totally by other people. . . . Never any self-expression; never knew there was any such thing. . . .”
She also married young, had five children, and, as she now admits, played out the role of the “ideal wife.” . . .
Stella: “I realize now why [my earlier life] was so restricted. I didn’t do my own thinking. . . . My biological mother had rejected me. . . . Somehow it had been my doing—as a child would think. . . . It set up a barrier . . . that kept me from going past anything that was required of me in order to not be rejected in that way again. . . .
“Now I stand toe-to-toe and say ‘Reject me, if you will.’ I have the same power over you.” (Ring 110-111, 114)
Personality Changes
Our obsessions fade, our need for escapes and diversions disappear. We return full, free.
Most striking of all, their capacity to love expands enormously. Aloof husbands suddenly become warm and affectionate, workaholics start relaxing and devoting time to their families, and introverts become extroverts. These changes are often so dramatic that people who know the NDEer frequently remark that he or she has become an entirely different person. There are even cases on record of criminals completely reforming their ways, and fire-and-brimstone preachers replacing their message of damnation with one of unconditional love and compassion. (Talbot 268)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
Patience and forgiveness can replace former needs to criticize and condemn. Hard-driving achievers and materialists can transform into easy-going philosophers; but by the same token, those more relaxed or uncommitted before can become energetic “movers and shakers,” determined to make a difference in the world. . . . Personality switches seem to depend more on what is “needed” to round out the individual’s inner growth. (Atwater 131)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Being in the Now
Most experiencers come to develop a sense of timelessness. . . . They . . . display a more heightened awareness of the present moment and the importance of being “in the now”. (Atwater 130)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
I couldn’t agree more. The now is as close as we can get to what’s real.
More Open, Less Fear
What do we have to fear when we are filled with light?
• Near-death experiencers tend to look and act younger, are more playful. . . .
• Are more open and accepting. . . .
• Regard things as new even when they’re not, boredom levels decrease or disappear. (Atwater 140-141)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
No Fear of Death
Having passed through death and found our experience not only continuing, but becoming infinitely more fulfilling, how could we still fear death?
Relationships with Others
Another effect of discarding beliefs in social conditions is not applying them to others. Not only can we accept ourselves the way we are, we can accept others the way they are, too. We no longer need to perpetuate those beliefs.
[NDErs] tend to accept others as they are. (Ring 130)
Celia: “I very rarely meet someone I don’t like. And that’s because I accept them right away. . . .
“My joy comes from another’s smile. . . . I reach out and touch people more. . . . I have more insight into other people [now]. . . . It’s very difficult for me to lose my temper anymore. I can see the pain in other people’s eyes. . . . The most important thing that we have are our relationships and other people.” . . .
NDErs [claim] that they never (or rarely) lose their temper, that others with problems tend to seek them out, that they feel an inward desire to work with or for others in some capacity. (Ring 127)
An NDEr: “Take every opportunity to show love.” . . .
Another NDEr: “[An NDE] makes you more tolerant of other people, a little bit more understanding.” (Ring 128-129)
Many have remarked to me that I seem to have almost a calming effect on them, instantly, when they are troubled. And it seems that I am more in tune with people now, that I can pick up things about them faster. (Moody 85)LALresearcher • modern • Moody
Near-death survivors come to love and accept others without the usual attachments and conditions society expects. They perceive themselves as equally and fully loving of each and all, openly generous, excited about the potential and wonder of each person they see. (Atwater 129)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Universal Spirituality and the End of Religion
NDEers also become much more spiritually oriented. They return not only firmly convinced of the immortality of the human soul, but also with a deep and abiding sense that the universe is compassionate and intelligent, and this loving presence is always with them. (Talbot 269)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
Following their experience, NDErs are likely to shift toward a . . . spiritual orientation. . . .
- A tendency to characterize oneself as spiritual rather than religious. . . .
- A feeling of being inwardly close to God
- A deemphasis of the formal aspects of religious life. . . .
- An openness to the doctrine of reincarnation (and a general sympathy toward Eastern religions)
End of Materialism
An NDEr: “I’ve shared or given away much of the worldly goods that come to me.” . . .
Another NDEr: “My interest in material wealth and greed for possessions was replaced with a thirst for spiritual understanding and a passionate desire to see world conditions improve.” . . .
NDErs like the rest of us, enjoy their possessions, but are not particularly attached to them. They certainly don’t live for them. . . .
NDErs do have goals, but the things they aspire most to are not in either the social or the material worlds. . . . NDErs are likely to strive after meaning. (Ring 133-134)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
Wanting to Tell the World
When we discover, through firsthand experience, that so much of what we are told to believe is wrong, we want to tell everyone the truth. It’s so much better than the reality we were led to believe in.
After a near-death experience you want to talk about it, you want to tell the whole world that death ends nothing but the physical body. . . . You want to scream this news from the highest rooftop. You want to shake up a deluded world. (Atwater 212)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Or Reluctant To. . . .
You might consider your gift to be a secret to be carefully guarded. Depending on your social and personal environment, you might be right. I think 99% of the people who do this are reluctant to speak about it -- unless they get involved with an understanding circle of friends who share the gift. Those of us who write about the experience tend to have a weird split personality -- mega-nonverbal and mega-verbal at the same time (or able to switch back and forth easily). ASOBEr • modern • Goodin
I understand this well. At the height of an intense LSD experience, I looked deep into my girlfriend’s eyes and asked with total earnestness, “Do you know? Do you know?”
While I spend much of my time researching and writing, I rarely talk of this to anyone. It’s my secret self that I keep hidden. But not forever — not for very much longer.
To a certain extent, this state of being can only be understood by experiencing it yourself. Opening up about it to someone who hasn’t might lead to fear and misunderstanding.
Difficulty Returning to Regular Life
We see through the silliness of the superficial things people end up caring a lot about.
At an emotional level I had difficulties taking up my daily responsibilities at first. They felt senseless and lifeless. But I wished to continue my life in a normal way at any price and after about two months I managed to do so. (Mulder 14 Vol. XVII, No. 2)VSNDEr, researcher • modern • many
Atwater had challenges related to energy surges and memory:
Had difficulty at first handling the great sweeps of joy that would suddenly overwhelm me. Meditation and prayer enabled me to redirect this ecstatic energy into modes of healing and help for other people.
Memory seemed disconnected and hard to access at first, as if it belonged to someone else or somewhere else, and energy flows were fragmented. Exercises and effort corrected this. (Atwater 244)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Higher Senses
The departure from the physical body removes the connection to the brain whose slow, loud frequency held our focus in physical reality. However, habit kicks in immediately and we often continue to perceive at this slower frequency. This continues until we reexperience the light. That higher-frequency light fills us, lifts our frequency, and reminds us that our perception and knowledge goes far beyond the physical.
After the reconnection with our greater self, that higher perception may continue after the return to the physical body.
This opening up can also result from OBEs or altered states of consciousness from LSD, psilocybin, and marijuana.
Opening of Higher Sense Perception
Sensitivities enhance and expand, the intuitive opens up to the psychic. . . . If not psychic before, the experiencer becomes so afterward; if psychic before, he or she becomes even more so after. Out-of-body episodes can continue, the light beings met in death can become a daily part of life routines, the future is often known before it occurs, extrasensory perception becomes normal and ordinary! (Atwater 130)
• An ability to merge into things more easily, to become “one with” them NOTE: becoming. . . .
• Acquisition of the ability to “hear” plants and animals speak or voice their needs. Experiencers can also “hear” words not spoken and voices and music in the air when no one is nearby. . . .
• Synesthesia . . . occurs frequently. . . .
• The ability to sometimes “see” beings and/or scenes that are not physically present. . . .
• A new awareness of invisible energy fields and a sensitivity to electricity and geomagnetic fields. . . .
• Experiencers often develop “healing hands” and exhibit a charismatic “aura” around them. . . .
• An ability to know the future. (Atwater 142-143)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
NDEers often develop a marked fascination for the types of subjects discussed in this book, in particular, psychic phenomena and the new physics. . . .
[One NDEer investigated by Ring] also started developing various psychic abilities after his experience, which is not uncommon among NDEers. . . . [Bruce Greyson] found that there was an increase in virtually all of the psychic and psi-related phenomena he assessed. . . . “Telepathy and healing gifts are common.” (Talbot 269-270)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot
Psychic experiences NDEers have had: telepathy, precognitive feelings, precognitive dreams . . . remote viewing, being able to diagnose illnesses and sometimes even acting as healers. (Morse 97)
Over 10% of near-death experiencers report seeing ghosts or other apparitions after their NDEs. (Morse 97)TbtLresearcher • modern • Morse
In OBEs we are also spending time in the nonphysical, higher up the stream. This is where higher sense perception occurs, and the practice can make it available in waking life. The following comes from spending time having OBEs:
When I started practicing OBEs, I got an unexpected side-effect: I started also having psychic experiences. I started somehow reading people’s minds, having visions, some clairvoyance, etc. And I am a skeptic! OBEOOBEr • modern • Peterson
Although I wasn’t trying, weird things still happened to me. I started reading people’s minds. I started to “know” what song would be on the radio next.
I discovered that my psychic abilities fade in and fade out in cycles. At times they are strong, and at other times they seemed to fade out completely. I also learned that it’s possible to increase psychic abilities.
I discovered that when I became too wrapped up in daily life, I would have fewer psychic experiences. And if I took the time to meditate and explore altered states of consciousness, I would have more psychic experiences. OBEHWOBEr • modern • Peterson
Continued Contact with Guides
Melvin Morse found that 12 percent of his subjects continued to have regular contact with same guardian angels they saw during their NDEs, and more than 10 percent reported seeing “ghosts or other apparitions” following there NDEs. (Liester 234)JoNDE-MLresearcher • modern • Leister
To better understand higher (frequency) sense perception, see the entirety of “Higher Sense Perception” in higher-sense-perception.php.
Seeing the Light in Everything
With this reconnection with our higher self comes the awareness of a brightness, an additional light in the world. We’re seeing the higher-frequency light of our own attention shining out from us into the world around us. Our attention is more present as we’re more focused in the now. Psilocybin, LSD, and ecstasy (MDMA) also provide an experience like this.
Recall that the world is within your head, and as such, everything we experience is bathed in this internal light.
Patients who have had NDEs often report that the world looks fresh and new. (Morse 175)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
An NDEr: “There is a deeper love and unity with everyone and everything I come in contact with. . . . My earthly eyes have opened to see—really see—life around me. The simplest sights, a leaf, a tree, a blade of grass, a frog—EVERYTHING is a marvel of creation to me and I take the time to appreciate it because I feel the bond of life between us.” (Ring 220)HTOresearcher • modern • Ring
This is the perspective of our higher self peering out through physical eyes, just enjoying the experience of physical life, unencumbered by the concerns of the physical self.
I have since caught glimpses of this light in the splendor of nature, and I have felt portions of this intense light in people who love without judgement and who give without pretense. Occasionally I have felt the presence of spirits of lights, and it is this kind of light that comes from them. (Fenimore 101)BtDNDEr • modern • Fenimore
See “The World Is Inside Us” in fields-of-perception.php.
Sparks of Light in Everything
My experience has been of a diffuse, higher-frequency light everywhere. Some experience “sparks” or “pieces” of light everywhere.
Many patients describe the Light as continuing on, even after the near-death experience is over. One patient said that whenever she fell asleep as a child she would reexperience the Light. Another described her near-death experience at age two: “I saw a bright light that I knew was God. I had the deepest possible experience from being in the Light. When I was a youngster, I could still see sparkles in a dark room from when I first saw that light.” (Morse 133)
Listen to what [the children] have told me. . . .
“There was a beautiful Light that had everything good in it. For about a week, I could see sparkles of that Light in everything.” (Morse 181)
[Terry] knew that she could go no farther into it and still return to her earthly body.
That was when she decided to return. . . .
“When I came out of the coma in the hospital, I opened my eyes and saw pieces of the Light everywhere. I could see how everything in the world fits together.” (Morse 116-117)
I realized that the ability to see darkness and light remained with me. I could see little pieces of energy everywhere. I felt as though I could put my hand through the wall, and the molecules would part if it was my will. My potted plants had a visible glow to them. Richard had a great aura of energy about him. (Fenimore 134)BtDNDEr • modern • Fenimore
Physiological Changes
Changes in Physiology
Many of the physiological changes come from having more energy reserves. Increased sensory sensitivity comes from being more in the moment.
Atwater lists common physiological aftereffects:
• Near-death experiencers tend to look and act younger, are more playful.
• Have brighter skin, eyes that sparkle NOTE: that’s the light of attention. . . .
• Handle stress more easily and heal more quickly. . . .
• Metabolic changes—it doesn’t seem to take as long to digest food. . . .
• Blood pressure lowers and pulse rate can also decrease. . . .
• A new preference for open doors, windows, and shades; no locks; few if any curtains. . . .
• Experiencers become more orgasmic. . . .
• Heightened sensations of taste-touch-texture-odors. (Atwater 140-143)
NOTE: In addition to the above, Atwater has personally experienced the following:
Hair and nails now grow faster. . . .
Muscle strength decreased while energy levels increased. . . .
Hearing range has increased and I have become more tonal. . . .
Taste and smell more acute, can also taste words and feelings. Regularly display synesthesia (multiple sensing). . . .
No longer store stress in my body in the same manner as before. Can become “stressed,” but it’s easier now to release tension. (Atwater 243-244)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
More Energy
The following are from OBErs, but apply to NDEs as well:
These extra vibrations give one splendid strength and energy. We think and act during the day with unparalleled ease. . . . This state seems so natural that it is as if it had always been the case, and there seems to be no end to it. (Yram 58)PAPOBEr • Yram
When I return from an OBE, I usually feel more vitalized than ever! FOBELOBEr • modern • Peterson
Why Higher Frequencies Energize
Michael: Ultimately, all energy springs from the Tao NOTE: The Source. . . . [The causal plane] NOTE: mental plane vibrates more quickly than physical-plane energy. . . . The fact that it moved more quickly . . . does make it concentrated and catalytic. . . .
Because of [casual-plane energy’s] faster vibration, you experienced it as a stimulant, lifting you to a higher place. . . . Although this can be a catalyst for healing and change, you are not used to the “altitude,” so you get a little dizzy. In time, it becomes easier to stay alert in it. . . .
We experience an upliftment by an infusion of energy from planes higher than where we dwell. One would not want to live all the time in an energy not of one’s own plane because it would be much too intense, but higher-plane energy is valuable as an occasional boost. (Hoodwin 64-65)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin
Changes in Sleep and Dreams
What I noticed in my research was . . . a change in sleep patterning. Examples: adults who had to relearn how to recognize the need for sleep, kids who switched from naps to increased flow states, those who began to wake up during early morning hours as if “on cue,” and folks whose dream-life became so vivid and complex it was as if they lived a “parallel” life while asleep. (Atwater 16)VS-PMHANDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Rather, their dream recall increased, as their everyday consciousness was lifted closer to that state.
Sleep requirements lessened during [Monroe’s later period of OBEs]. However, when sleep appeared necessary, it became imperative to comply with the need. Non-compliance brought physical and mental debilitation. As little as five minutes of sleep brought major regeneration. (Monroe 239)JOotBOBEr • modern • Monroe
We essentially get called across the border to reconnect with that frequency.
NOTE: Additionally, Atwater experienced:
Body clock reversed to mornings (was a night person).
No awareness of tiring at first, would suddenly collapse with the onset of sleep. It took several years before I could adequately control sleep urges and withstand longer hours awake and active. (Atwater 243)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Changes in Diet
• A reduction in red-meat consumption or complete conversion to vegetarianism occurs. (Atwater 142)
Food flushes out of digestive system within fifteen to twenty minutes if in disagreement with my body or tainted. (Atwater 243)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Sensitivities and Difficulties
The increased sensitivity means it can take a lot less to get the same result. Some of our usual activities become overwhelming and require adjustment.
• Become more sensitive to light, especially sunlight.
• Become more sensitive to sound and to noise levels. . . .
At near-death conferences sponsored by IANDS, house lights are kept somewhat more subdued than usual, and sound systems are tuned to decibels lower than for regular conference settings. . . .
There is a greater sensitivity to household chemicals, the coatings used on fabrics and wood, food preservatives, sprays, and perfumes. . . .
• With the inability to tolerate loud noises, experiencers find themselves drawn to classical music and to other melodious/natural sounds. . . . They crave the longer, pure sine wave as opposed to short, choppy beats. . . .
• Increased sensitivity to . . . temperature, pressure, air movement, and humidity
• Experiencers become electrically sensitive. Their body energy interferes with electronic equipment, light sources, security systems, and the like. (Atwater 140-143)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Changes in Drug Metabolism
I had become painfully (literally) aware that my body has taken to rejecting chemicals. This includes alcohol, prescription drugs, caffeine, and evidently anything else my body says is unnatural for its operation. The rejection or allergic reaction takes the form of profuse sweating, vomiting and/or severe abdominal cramps. . . . Even a glass of wine begins the rejection process. . . .
We tried “laboratory”-quality mescaline and LSD on my system. Nothing happened. (Monroe 7-8)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe
Developed allergies to chemical medications to the degree that I switched to . . . natural remedies. I can no longer tolerate most pharmaceuticals. (Atwater 244)
It takes less of any substance for full effect. (Atwater 142)
I also want to call attention to the increased allergies, especially to pharmaceuticals. . . . Near-death survivors are still, even today, being involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards and institutions solely because they are exhibiting the typical aftereffects of the average experiencer . . . and they are being subjected to large, sometimes mega doses of various chemical medications. At a time when they can least handle even normal adult dosages, they are given full strengths—or stronger. (Atwater 144-145)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Miscellaneous
Imminent Death — Life Flashing Before Your Eyes
In order to avoid extreme pain and trauma, we sometimes jump out of our body. This can sometimes trigger aspects of a NDE even before death. The experience depends on how far we jump out. If we jump out to the OBE state, we remain near our body. If we jump out across the boundary to the astral, we may experience a rapid life review.
The experience of an NDE before an injury often happens under stressful conditions. . . . Skiers have found themselves in situations where they were flying through the air and felt that they would probably not survive the jump. Although they did survive, they had an NDE because of the intense stress from the expectation of death. (Rhodes 20)TtEresearcher • modern • Rhodes
Julian Milkes: “While I was picking the flowers, a car came whizzing by and suddenly headed straight for me.
“As I looked up and saw what I presumed would be an inevitable death, I separated from my body and viewed what was happening from another perspective. My whole life flashed in front of me, from that moment backwards to segments of my life. The review was not like a judgment. It was passive, more like an interesting novelty.” (Atwater 17)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Albert Heim fell seventy feet down a sheer rock face. . . . Heim felt no fear during his fall, only peace and serenity. His mental activity, he said, increased ‘a hundredfold velocity’ and his surroundings were ‘transfigured in a heavenly light’. Though his descent could have lasted no more than three seconds, the climber apparently had time to see every major event in his life flash before his eyes, each incident suddenly acquiring a new, deeper significance. . . .
“I was both hero and onlooker . . . then sounded solemn music as though from an organ in powerful chords. . . . I felt myself go softly backwards into this magnificent heaven.” . . .
[Heim] set about researching the recollections of other survivors of near-fatal falls. . . . Nearly all described sensations exactly like his own: an absence of anxiety or pain; an amazing expansion of time and a divine calm which swept through their souls. Even the instantaneous life review featured in more than half the cases. (Viney 191-192)SDresearcher • modern • Viney
Infant and Children NDEs
Mark’s story is among the most fascinating near-death experiences because of his age when it happened—he was only nine months old. . . . Mark had severe bronchiolitis. While in the emergency room, he had a full cardiopulminary arrest. For more than forty minutes, doctors worked to revive him and finally did. . . .
Mark first mentioned his near-death experience when he was three years old. . . .
He then reported seeing a long, dark tunnel and crawling up it. He said it was difficult to crawl without a helping hand, but he couldn’t say who was helping him. At the end of this tunnel was a bright light that kept him going.
At the end of that tunnel, he found a “bright place” and “ran through fields with God.” He was very animated when he described this run with God. (Morse 35-36)CttLresearcher • modern • Morse
Even at 9 months old, there is an established physical self that brings its physical way of traveling (crawling) with it into the tunnel.
Widdison tells the story about a little boy who had a drowning experience (which is the most common way children have an NDE). Upon resuscitation, he said to his mother, “Mommy, how come you never told me I had a brother named Michael?” The boy had been lovingly greeted by his brother, Michael, who had been born dead. The mother nearly fainted when her son revealed this information to her. (Peyser 19)VS-RPresearcher • modern • Peyser
[Ten-year-old Hans Borgmann] was crushed under a wall when it collapsed. . . .
“I felt wonderful. So wonderful, I only hoped never to lose the feeling. Twice I visited another county. There were a lot of children there playing outdoors and in big, golden cites. . . .
“The first time I went away I saw children outdoors, with such wonderful toys, I didn’t want ever to go away. They had instruments which they made nice music with and flowers that you could see growing.” (Delacour 109)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
This fits with the stories of children who die continuing to grow up in the astral (see “Children Growing Up in the Astral” in planes-of-consciousness.php).
Rare Frightening NDEs
Returning to the astral means we’re returning to a place without pain, but we may bring our fear of death and resistance with us. We may find ourselves unable to get beyond our attachments to the physical and end up in the lower astral frequencies where it is dark, cold, and lonely. We may also experience our own projections, of whatever nature, if our expectations are strong enough.
An article by Bruce Greyson and Nancy Evens-Bush, which surveyed fifty reports of distressing NDEs that were collected over a nine-year period, was published in Psychiatry. Greyson and Evans-Bush identified three types of distressing experience: the first (and by far the largest group) included experiences similar to the usual NDE but which for some reason were interpreted as frightening; the second (smaller group) revealed the experience of a void; and the third (the smallest group) included typical hellish images. . . .
Among the hundreds of near-death experiencers I have personally spoken with, I have only come across two who described anything that could be even vaguely construed as having a frightening element, and in neither case did the person concerned think of their experience as being “negative.” (Sutherland 94-95)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
The first category (normal but interpreted as frightening) is a NDE from a purely physical perspective — they are scared by the strangeness and the sensations of it, or are resistant to death. The second category (experience of the void) is the lowest location in the astral. The third category would be experiences of the lower astral or the expectations of hell that are projected out from the experiencer.
One out of seven of those I interviewed spoke of hell rather than heaven. (Atwater 7)
In the hell-like cases I’ve dealt with, seldom does anyone mention fiery hot or burning sensations; rather, most comment on how cold it was, or clammy or shivery or somehow “hard” or empty. Also mentioned is the dullness of the light, sometimes gray or “heavy” as if overcast, foggy. Many experienced a bright light beckoning to them initially, but when they entered the light it promptly dimmed or darkened. (Atwater 45)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Alexandra: “I just felt myself right up on the ceiling, and they were talking about changing the intravenous or something, and there was a little kind of conference. Shortly thereafter, I felt myself falling into an abyss. And it was a kind of, not flying, this was falling, this was out-of-control motion. It was very, very terrifying and seemed to go on for a long time. I felt like there was slush around me . . . and there was no air. It was moist and dark and there were sort of nasty shapes and smells. I visualized I was falling into some awful pit, but it was quite large and there were no walls . . . and there was less and less light. And then it was just pitch-dark. . . .
“I did, at that moment of what would call absolute terror and despair, of course cry out, rather helplessly, but I cried out. And I also remember I heard nothing, not in this part of the experience.
“But I finally seemed to land and what I landed in was like the size of a huge sort of bed, but it wasn’t a bed, it was two large arms. . . . I felt myself being held. I felt like I was being told, ‘You’re a child of God.’ And soon after I began to hear my grandmother’s voice. . . .
“I could feel her sort of soothing me, and she was saying, just quietly, “You must choose, you must choose.” And then in the middle of my indecisiveness, I got a glimpse of my body. It was like I was with her in this limbo stage, and yet I got a glimpse of my body, and I saw it separating out, like two replicas just floating apart. And I thought, ‘Ooh, if I don’t get back there immediately, that’s going to be it!’ . . .
“Immediately I was back in my body. . . . I remember that it was sort of a yank, and I remember seeing a connection between the up-here and the ceiling, and the down-there, almost like a little slide.” (Sutherland 106-109)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland
She remained above her body near the ceiling in the physical dimensions the entire time, while shrinking down and speeding up her consciousness into the astral frequencies.
Scary Dream-Like NDEs
Resistance from fear holds the physical self close, and can lead to projections.
The woman who came next described a terrible darkness in hers, and told of having to fight for her life while trying to escape from a violent whirlpool. Thunder raged throughout and wind shrieked, and she was frightened out of her wits. (Atwater 3)VS-PMHANDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater
Here the tunnel is interpreted as a whirlpool she was struggling against, and the roaring sound that of a storm.
In-Body Thought-Form Atmosphere
The typical NDE begins with the astral body separating from the physical body. When this happens, the pain and fear from the physical no longer reaches the experiencer.
However, sometimes one is afraid or unwilling to exit the physical body, and remains within. In these cases, the physical body continues to provide sensation for a time. The external environment outside the body may be viewed through a red mist — this is higher sense perception only slightly obscured by the physical body. It’s red because that is the color of blood and the body’s interior.
One might go into a dream reverie from this position inside the physical body. In such a case, the body’s sensations are integrated into the dream environment.
Here is an experience by Janine Charrat after being badly burned in a fire:
“I was overcome by a dizzy, whirling feeling, and I thought I was falling into a deep well. The fall seemed never to end. . . . When I finally felt ground under my feet, I could open my eyes again, which before had been shut fast by lids as heavy as lead. . . .
“I was alone in a strange and unfamiliar world, surrounded by huge licking flames. The flames got bigger, and their incandescent redness became so glaring that I thought I would perish of fear. . . .
“They seemed to be coming in a wild dance out of the interior of the earth, their bizarre shapes constantly changing. The ground under me was incandescent, a lavalike, boiling mud. . . .
“The glowing surface underfoot was only moderately warm. I came to a standstill immediately at the wall of flame encircling me, meanwhile remembering the fiery catastrophe I had just been through on the stage. As a believer, I have always prayed in dangerous situations, and that is what I turned to now.
“After saying prayers, I lifted my head and noted that the tall flames were no longer terrifying. They had become much smaller and only a rosy color, and almost transparent. NOTE: Fading thought-forms! Now all fear left me. I strode through the circle of fire and at once felt a great relief. Although I was aware of still having awful burns, I felt no more pain. . . .
“I caught sight of a woman in a silk dress. Her white hair was done up, her brown eyes were mild, and a kind, concerned smile played about her lips. . . .
“Now I did recognize my dead grandmother, and felt wonderfully happy to have her with me in my sorry state. . . .
“We walked along through a reddish mist and came into a big garden where there were many fantastic trees unknown to me, a place filled with a marvelous harmony. In the middle of the garden was a pond. The water in the pond was calm and clear and remarkably clean. The pond was like a mirror filled with light.” (Delacour 25-27)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
I suspect that the reddish mist could be the nonphysical view from inside the body. The pain of the fire had kept her focused within.
Charles Aznavour was in an auto accident:
“I tried to lift my right arm to my face, but the arm wouldn’t work. However, this didn’t bother me, for I was now in a quiet world filled with a vivid rose-colored mist. . . .
NOTE: Note the reddish mist again
“Suddenly I heard a voice say: ‘My God, he’s dead!’ . . .
“I screamed and screamed loudly, but nobody seemed to pay any attention, although I could plainly make out shadowy figures moving through the reddish mist. But suddenly I saw no more. All I could feel was something touching my eyes, and then a big black curtain sank down in front of me. It seemed to me that a policeman must have closed my eyes and spread a blanket over my body. . . .
“Then, like lightning, the thought came to me that I wasn’t at the accident site on the highway under a woolen blanket any more, but in my own coffin.
“A soft sobbing filled me with gratification: My first wife, Evelyn, had come to my burial service! She was standing beside the big silver-mounted sarcophagus in the little Russian church I knew so well. The Church was filled with people. Again I was shaken by feelings of dread, and the rosy mist made me very restless. . . . Although I was lying inside my own coffin, I could still see the outside of the sarcophagus. In short, I was consciously taking part in my own burial.
“Some people came up to me with censers of incense. . . . I breathed in the fumes with deep pleasure. . . . The mourners slowly left the church. I was carried out, which dispersed the strong incense odor and replaced it with a stale, depressing smell of rot. I now became aware that my body was decomposing. . . . In my coffin, carried out by people unknown to me, I shrieked and raved. . . . The smell of putrefaction, growing ever more penetrating, made it clear to me that my fate was sealed irrevocably.
“Then a voice pierced the stillness: ‘Calm yourself, please, Monsieur Aznavour.’
“My tightly shut eyes opened, and I saw that a nurse was bending over my bed and cleaning my face with a swab of cotton. That held the odor that had been horrifying me. Now again I felt severe pains, growing even more unbearable. . . .”
The nurse confirmed what had been going on through his head.
“You were far gone, way off, when we revived you. They’d already written you off as dead. Your heart stopped, and you didn’t begin to breathe again until it had been massaged.” (Delacour 106-108)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
He is perceiving through his body from within when he hears the voices and sees the blanket being laid over his body. Then he goes into a dream projection of his funeral. The foul smell of the cotton was integrated (rationalized) into his dream funeral scene until he awoke again in his physical body. Though he was dead, he never left his body.
Fred Phillips, in his death by electric chair:
“I bellowed out, ‘I will not die!’
“I kept on hollering this until suddenly I was in a completely green room, all alone, in a room that seemed to be lit up by the sun but which had no windows. And through one of the walls of this green space a creature came moving toward me. . . .
“When he got very close, I noticed his hair smelled as if it had just been singed. . . . NOTE: From his own singed hair from the electric chair!
“I shouted out into the green space:
“‘I want to live!’
“And every time I shouted like that, the walls shook, walls without any corners, round ones like the walls of a sphere. They shook every time I hollered and moved back a little from me. . . .
“Then I saw that the monster with the wide mouth and strange eyes was growing weaker under my hands, falling to pieces and shrinking all the time.
“I shouted and howled for my life and squashed the creature, now grown tiny, between my hands.
“The green sphere by now had become very wide—like a cathedral dome. I sat in the middle of this broadness and hollered for my life. NOTE: he is shrinking
“Then the green sphere began to turn—slowly at first, then faster, and finally went so fast that I got dizzy and had to shut my eyes. . . .
“In my eyes, which were now looking into blackness, darkness, sparks seemed to be coming at me from far off. They kept coming closer and turned into tongues of flame.
“However, I was not afraid at all of this fire coming at me.
“Finally I heard voices, people’s voices, hurriedly whispering directions to one another.” (Delacour 136-137)GotBresearcher • modern • Delacour
The voices were from nearby people as he wakes up.
There is something to this spinning that tunes him back into physical reality. It’s related to the frequency of consciousness. It’s possibly also related to the spinning mind of Master Control.
See “Relaxation and Energy Field Rotation” in nature-of-dreams.php and “Intervals of Perception” in flow.php.
NDEs and EEGs
The activity of consciousness may become entirely disconnected from the brain during a NDE, and no longer show up on an EEG.
Under normal circumstances whenever a person talks, thinks, imagines, dreams, or does just about anything else, their EEG registers an enormous amount of activity. Even hallucinations measure on the EEG. But there are many cases in which people with flat EEGs have had NDEs. (Talbot 242)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot