Near Death Experiences: A Dummies' Guide

[Jack Shaftoe]

ALL RIGHT FINE, getting so many DMs about this (I'm not, but still) the hypnotherapist thing.

This is the mum of one of my daughter's friends, who I had down as a bit of a hippy because she lived on a boat, but ahhh, this is the bit in the film where the protagonist realises that as well as having to re-examine all their preconceived notions about life and death and identity, they also need to examine their prejudices a bit closer to home, because Daughter's Friend's Mum (DFM) is not a hippy at all. She has at least one psychology degree and her hypnotherapy practice is extremely focused and clinical, mainly centred on dealing with phobias and anxiety. I really liked her talking about things in terms of sessions: 'I can do fear of flying in one, giving up smoking in three'.

Mostly we talked about the subconscious and the use of storytelling in therapy, and I was a bit embarrassed to bring up the woowoo stuff, but past life regression is clearly a thing, so in the end I brought it up.

DFM was a little bit cagey about whether she considered it to be 'real' or not - from her POV it's more a useful tool when people can't deal with stuff face on, so you gradually move towards doing a session on regression (third session at the very earliest, she's very down on just piling into it) and then when the subject come up with something about being a blacksmith in the Dark Ages whose whole family died of the plague or whatever, it's easier for them to talk about an abstract version of themself who's had to deal with grief and loss or whatever. So it doesn't matter if it's verifiable, what matters is whether it's helpful.

Which makes sense, but to me the verifiability matters enormously, because... it just does, doesn't it? It's fascinating. But I held back on that because I didn't want to sound like a loon.

My partner has a similar outlook, which is 'Does it matter if it's real? Can't really do much about it in this lifetime even if it is', which I get, but maybe... I just need it to be an option more than she does.

[Ray Travez]

Reading is going great, I've gone back to the OG text: Raymond Moody's 1975 'Life After Life', which was the first book to really look at the phenomenon and coined the term 'Near Death Experience'.

Yeah, I've definitely read that one, though I remember little about it now. Used to have a shelf full of books, maybe 30 or so, near death experiences, OBEs and so on. When I lived with gypsies, my landlord saw it through the caravan window, and told me about his near death experience. It's weird when you've become interested in it, you start attracting people who have something to say on the matter.

I had a think about this conversation when I last went 'extra-curricular', and the message was "there is no death." Not an easy one to explain, but it's there in writings- Shakespeare for instance-

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on,
and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep

Anyway, thought it might give some comfort to you, but probably not ;)

By the way, I remembered the name of the policewoman who had an NDE and reported her experience in a factual way, whilst her rational "cop" intelligence questioned everything she was saying. P. M. H. Atwater. I liked her, must have done as I read three books by her. I wonder what I'd make of her now?

From the off, people were saying 'well, it's just lack of oxygen to the brain' for example, but that doesn't stand up. If the brain's not getting any oxygen, as is clinically the case with a lot of these, there simply shouldn't be anything going on at all in the brain, let alone patients accurately describing how they observed surgical procedures or repeated conversations that were going on two rooms away. Also, that should mean you could induce NDEs when you deliberately reduce the oxygen supply to someone's brain (divers, test pilots etc) and although they sometimes get a bit of tunnel effect, it's never more than that.

No, you're right, it isn't that. People really try to make that fit, like jamming the wrong jigsaw piece into the hole, but it doesn't square with the facts. If anything, I'd say an NDE is a gateway to the Mystery. What is obvious here, is that consciousness is absolutely not dependent on the physical body. This is known absolutely, beyond question.

Now, I'm fully prepared to say that I've become emotionally attached to the idea of NDEs, bumping into deceased friends and family (well, some of them), getting a life review, meeting your past lives and being asked if you want another pop at it, because it's just more interesting that just... nothing, isn't it?

Yes, absolutely. Although I think a lot about nothing as well.

It's certainly unpicked this crippling fear that I don't get certain things done before I die (okay, fine, gender transition), I'll be thinking of my life as an empty meaningless waste in the second or so before I dissolve into nothingness, which is nice.

That's great! I'm not sure what to say about gender transition within the context of NDEs. But I relate to that feeling of potential disappointment- I wanted to do X in my life, and due to lack of confidence I've instead done Y. If I died tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd feel it had all gone especially well. At the same time, I'm OK with that. A phrase came to me a while back- creating sculptures of indescribable beauty on the lower decks of the Titanic.

[Ray Travez]

DFM was a little bit cagey about whether she considered it to be 'real' or not - from her POV it's more a useful tool when people can't deal with stuff face on, so you gradually move towards doing a session on regression (third session at the very earliest, she's very down on just piling into it) and then when the subject come up with something about being a blacksmith in the Dark Ages whose whole family died of the plague or whatever, it's easier for them to talk about an abstract version of themself who's had to deal with grief and loss or whatever. So it doesn't matter if it's verifiable, what matters is whether it's helpful.

Which makes sense, but to me the verifiability matters enormously, because... it just does, doesn't it?

I probably agree with your partner, does it matter if it's real? It's probably in the realm of things that cannot be known or proved, but this doesn't remove its value.

...But maybe you need a 'proper' past life therapist, someone who is serious about it, otherwise you might feel a bit unsupported when you're discussing your experiences and what they mean.

[Jack Shaftoe]

(edit: thanks for those names, will check their books out)

DFM not into doing hypnotherapy with friends or family anyway, which is sensible. Also her stuff is very focused on dealing with trauma and anxiety and I'm okay in that regard these days, so it would feel a bit self-indulgent. I'm sure she could recommend me someone, but I'm quite happy pootling about at the edges for the moment, to be honest.

I feel like a lot of interesting possibilities have been opened up and I'm very happy reading loads, poking about and trying to find patterns and all that, but I'm not sure I really need to go deeper into it right now, if that makes sense - a big part of me wants to go wheeeeee get a tarot reading, see a medium, go the nearest spiritualist church, all that, just to see if I get a single 'oh wow, how did they know that' moment, but that feels unearned somehow. I'm currently enjoying the dopamine hit of chatting to friends/acquaintances and finding out we have this interest in common and seeing what comes up organically.

It's very odd how even just considering all this stuff as a possibility rather than even believing it necessarily has rewired my brain a bit, just taken away this edge of panic and despair that I'm running out of time and made all the wrong choices, even if those choices were the best available to me at the time.

I'm still thinking about the past life regression thing and whether it was anything more than a daydream that just happened to tick some boxes about things things I have emotional reactions to without ever quite knowing why. It certainly didn't have that extraordinary vividness I experienced in a dream a while back, where I was perfectly conscious of everything unfolding in 8K IMAX (if that's a thing) and waking up felt like I'd found yourself somewhere much less real. It was in really bad taste though, which is why I'm a bit reluctant to write it up here, although I probably will in a bit with spoiler tags or summat.

[Alberon]

An article in the Daily Telegraph about neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick and NDEs.

Apparently he was responsible for one of those experiments in surgical theatres placing objects you could only see drifitng around the ceiling.

Instead, with a colleague, Fenwick set up a study at a hospital in Southampton to test the phenomenon of bi-location, where patients report looking down on their prone bodies on the operating table, and, in some cases, report seeing events occurring at some distant location – the so-called veridical NDE.

Fenwick placed cards with writing and pictures on the ceiling operating theatres in the event they could be seen by patients leaving their bodies.

"Nobody ever went up and looked at the cards, except the nurses," Fenwick says. "We told them they were on no account to climb up and look at these cards in case they moved or altered them. But it wasn't long before they were using stepladders to go up and look."

Bloody nurses!

(talking about someone who claims NDEs are mostly down to anoxia)

"I love Sue," Fenwick says genially. "But she's wrong. The reductionist thinking is that there is only the brain and there is nothing beyond the brain. But quantum mechanics has given us an enlarged view of what consciousness is, and of the structure of the world that just does not fit into a reductionist framework at all.

"We live in a world that has the most wonderful things in it, and among those things are spiritual experiences. How are you going to fit that into a reductionist framework? You can't," says Fenwick.

He pauses.

"It's such an interesting question. What is individual consciousness? The evidence is very good that there is continuity of consciousness after death – that you retain your sense of individuality, your sense of self, all the way through the process of dying and then you will hop into a new coat, as it were. Individual consciousness as your marker on it. It's you."

I'd love him to be right, but I'm far from convinced of his logic here. The way brain injuries can cause vast changes in the fundamental personality of someone suggests our conciousness is just arising from physical processes. Even if quantum mechanics is involved (in fact it probably is) there's nothing I've seen to suggest there's anything beyond what is generated by the meat between our ears.

https://archive.ph/docgZ

Still, he's 88 and not at all afraid of death. I envy him for that at the very least.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Excellent, I was just thinking I was running out of NDE books (or at least the 'baffled medic investigates weird claims made by patients and starts to think there might be something in it' ones), so I've just ordered The Truth In The Light (oh god, those titles), ta.

Still, he's 88 and not at all afraid of death. I envy him for that at the very least.

I was driving this weekend and felt some sudden chest pains and instantly thought 'Ooh, heart attack!' all excitedly. Not 'oh no, a possible heart attack!' followed by 'I suppose this might be how you find out if this stuff is real or not' but straight to 'Yes! Heart attack! Brilliant!' Which was quite funny. It wasn't a heart attack in the end. Imagine the paramedics having to tell my wife and children 'I'm afraid his last words were 'Wahey, I'm out of here, bye losers!'

All the recent NDE books have a chapter on quantum physics, I find them completely impenetrable. To be honest, though, I'm not that interested in people's theory about why or how they exist or whether they can be scientifically proved or not, I just like the adrenaline hit from reading endless accounts from completely normal people who've experienced something way out of their understanding and have had their lives changed forever as a result. Bonus points for getting glimpses into past lives/reincarnations, obviously.

[Alberon]

I'd be very dubious about anything written about quantum mechanics by anyone who isn't a quantum physicist.

I'm an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to the universe, black holes, quantum mechanics, string theory and the like, but I can't even begin to pretend I truly understand any of the underlying theories.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Those chapters always feel like they've been cut and pasted from some journal or other, they seem perfectly sensible but my mind just slides off them.

In Our Time just had an episode on 'Panpsychism', the theory that fundamental particles have some level of consciousness, but once again, just impenetrable. I like the idea put across in a lot of NDE books that our brains could be receptors for consciousness, like radios tuning into a signal from elsewhere, I can just about work with that.

I think that's what I love about NDE accounts, actually. Being a bit on the spectrum, I've always had problems with metaphors, especially in religion, so when someone's saying 'no no, I literally floated out of my body and eavesdropped on some conversation three rooms down, then saw the doctor looking around for a tool he'd lost (it went behind the big plastic box thing by the way) then went back into my body' it gives me a proper dopamine hit.

[Ray Travez]

I'd love him to be right, but I'm far from convinced of his logic here. The way brain injuries can cause vast changes in the fundamental personality of someone suggests our conciousness is just arising from physical processes.

He's sort of in the right ballpark. Consciousness survives the death of the individual; the personality, the 'self' does not.

Putting it another way, the fundamental awareness is "I am", and then added to this are various details, for example- "I am a man", "I am a nihilist", "I work for the council" and so on. The "I am" part continues after death, "I am a nihilist who works for the council" doesn't, (obviously).

[PlanktonSideburns]

Although, with the way pensions are going these days am I right

[Ray Travez]

Heheh!

"Although dead, I continue to work for Shropshire County Council, and my nihilism hasn't helped me at all"

[JaDanketies]

• shooting through the stratosphere at rocket speed before presenting in front of a psychedelic demonic space alien who judged my soul with a thousand eyes

just realised that this space alien would be a 'biblically-accurate angel'

[Jack Shaftoe]

double post ffs

[Jack Shaftoe]

It totally would, which is interesting.

I keep thinking 'right, that's enough books about NDE stuff now,' and then I get an email from the library where another four books with Death, Life, After and/or Before in the title are waiting for me.

Booked a limited number of sessions with the therapist I was seeing last year even though I'm feeling much better about stuff these days, because a) I got paid so I can afford it and it's nice to chat with a friendly neutral person about stuff and b) just wanted to check with an actual mental health professional I haven't gone off the deep end or am just kidding myself.

So I brought up the NDE stuff and how it's kind of rewired my brain so I can think about various topics with none of the panic/anxiety I used to get and her eyes lit up, because she has a degree in gerontology (study of ageing) before she became a therapist, as part of which they did a whole thing on end of life care, NDEs and all that and she found it fascinating, which is pretty cool. This was towards the end of the session, so we didn't go into it much, but I hope we can talk about it more next time.

Current reading: Dr Penny Sartori's "The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences" based on her 2008 academic monograph, The Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalised Intensive Care Patients: A Five Year Clinical Study. It's awesome, obviously.

EDIT: spooky woo noises, went straight from this to reading about AL Jourgenson from Ministry's NDE experiences:

"The first death was the weirdest," Jourgensen says, talking about it as casually as a walk to the shops. "I was at a party and OD'd. When I came back after being defibrillated, everyone was astounded that I could tell where everyone was, even in different rooms. I'd been hovering above me, watching all the panic and mayhem below as they were working on me."

Yeah, but you were off your face on drugs and I'm going to need some verifiable data there, Al. Still interesting though. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/29/my-first-death-was-the-weirdest-ministrys-al-jourgensen-metals-great-survivor

[Jack Shaftoe]

Okay I'm spamming my own thread now, apologies, but I really loved this video from a channel which is nothing to do with hippy afterlife nonsense but 'dental education, seminars and continuing education classes to bring you the latest innovations in the dental industry'. It's part of a series of interviews with a very experienced cardiac surgeon - I guess because there are connections with oral infections and heart issues.

Anyway, the other videos are heart valves and all the stuff you'd expect - then there's this brilliant and rather emotional segue into discussing a patient who pretty much died then had the classic NDE experience. Somehow it's more impactful that the patient being talked about in the third person rather than someone telling you their own story. Also in the comments, one of the other surgeons who was present confirms the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1oDuvQR08&list=PLtvfVe67eFuvq3LTyjQUPVHmll9fqJ4H0&index=17

[PlanktonSideburns]

Personally love you spamming this thread tbh

[Jack Shaftoe]

Ha, I wasn't sure, but I'll keep putting things up every now and then if people are genuinely interested...

[McDead]

Personally love you spamming this thread tbh

Me too, great thread. The stuff about NDE thinking taking the pressure off has particularly resonated with me.

[Jack Shaftoe]

In which case, I'll continue with the therapy angle, because I recently went back for a few sessions, to check in but also to talk through the NDE stuff, because after immersing myself in it for a while all that anxiety and panic just... went, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't kidding myself. Talked it through with therapist and she didn't seem to think I'd gone off down a weird cul-de-sac or anything, or I had, it was working. I was supposed to have a couple of sessions left, but I've packed it in early, with her blessing, because the last session turned into more general chit chat and that's nice and everything, but it's not cheap.

I was worried that feeling a lot more chilled about everything might have killed off my creative drive, which I do sort of need to make a living, but after a couple of false starts, I'm working on a new thing, so that seems to be okay.

It's very very strange how just thinking about all this stuff - and not even 'believing' it as such - seems to have rewired my brain a bit, untangled lots of stuff, like I've taken so much pressure off myself, s'nice.

I've done a bit more reading, although I seem to have run out of 'books by a reputable clinician or scientist based on an actual research paper that had all the boring stuff taken out and given a New Agey title' and have had to head out to the weirder self-help areas, which, to be honest, are a bit dull, not to mention cringey, so I'll probably not be going much further down those avenues. Some interesting stuff here and there though.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Did I reccomend this one by a lad Bob Falconer about spirit possession?

https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-iv5ts-1cc2a441

Mad lad on a mad podcast, originally about integral type stuff, but at some point disappeared for a bit to become a monestary instead? This feels like your sort of thing

[Jack Shaftoe]

You did not! Excellent, I'll check it out, ta!

[PlanktonSideburns]

You did not! Excellent, I'll check it out, ta!

Oh Christ, sorry I forgot to mention! It starts with some deeply sad accounts of the interviewees experiences with child abuse - I think there's timestamps on there if that's something anyone needs to avoid, and it doesn't come up again

I am a twat, that is a hell of a thing to forget to mention

[Jack Shaftoe]

Noted!

[Buelligan]

Haven't been following the thread but felt like this might be the right place for this thing that happened today.  I've been working on a garden.  Mostly involving a lot of digging and soil preparation.

Working away, lovely warm sunny day, saw something metallic green gold in the soil, checked and found a beautiful scarab.  Found them before buried like that.  Assume they hibernate.  Lifted her out and placed her under the lee of a stone, somewhere a little shady and cool.  Thought she might be dormant and didn't want to shock her. 

Later on, taking a break, looked over and saw her rise into the air and fly off, glittering green into the sun and the young fire of the ash tree.

Buried and forgotten in the cold earth.

[JaDanketies]

I remember on the day my ex's dad died, a ladybird flew down from the sky and landed on my coat. And I said something like, "hey, there's your dad!"

Then, a miserable week later, we go to Manchester Museum, as our first attempt to have fun or do something entertaining and nice during the grieving process. And what flies out of my hood other than that same ladybird! Waiting until he could see his daughter was okay obviously.

It might be just something that humans do when someone dies, and there's a ladybird in my coat all the time. But I've also had a robin coming to the window that was my grandad; it was obvious as shit, we all knew it was my grandad.

I don't think my own dad ever made a reappearance after death, but then he was always a skeptic

[Jack Shaftoe]

Ah, these are lovely! Not quite as poetic, but I went to the dentist's yesterday.

HYGIENIST: Writing anything at the moment?*
ME: Yes, a script about near death experiences.***
HYGIENIST: (immediately) Ooh, my ex-boss had a stroke just before I left and he never said what happened but he became much nicer afterwards, completely changed his diet and got into fitness and everything, like it totally changed him as a person.
ME: GO BACK AND ASK HIM IF HE WENT THROUGH THE TUNNEL.

No I didn't say that but I really wanted to. I'm going to stay with some friends in a couple of weeks, one of whom just casually mentioned she once had an out of body experience (and she's the most sensible and competent person I know), although annoyingly she's now going to be away while I'm there. I must get her to write it down (or astrally project and tell me whenever suits, I suppose).


My dad passed away last year and he hasn't made a reappearance in any form, sadly, although I wasn't really expecting him to. He was a Freemason though, so maybe he's got a special pass to the afterlife, no backsies or something.




* everyone knows everyone round here.

** which is true but also a good way to bring up the subject without immediately sounding mad.

[Buelligan]

OK, I'll tell you one.  Not a tale about nearly dying but about death, what is it?  Or maybe, is it? 

It was a long while ago.  My mother was alive.  Me and my brother were helping her move out of her long time home.  It was the home where my grandmother died.  And my grandfather before her.  My grandfather's ashes were buried in a little wood next to the house.  In a steep small wooded ravine mum called the goyle.  Stream at the bottom.  Very steep.  My grandmother's ashes were in a sweet jar in the house.

Mum was very ill - that's why she was moving - she was very concerned about not separating her parents' ashes. 

Last day, late, late autumn.  Grey cloudy chill day, we picked the last ragged roses.  My brother carried mum down into the goyle, across the stream and up the other side to a small clearing where grandad was resting.

We stood there, a little ring, unrehearsed, unsure.  No plan at all. My mum poured out the ashes, we threw the petals.  The clouds parted.  A shaft of sunlight came down between us and roses, ashes, swirled up into the light.  None of us spoke.  None of us ever mentioned it again.  It was beyond weird.  And I'm not even lying.

[Galeee]

My flatline wasn't at all interesting, possibly because I was still conscious and (not literally) shitting myself.

But I had a strange experience with a group scattering a well known Wiccan's ashes at a stone circle.
The wind blew the ashes up and they appeared briefly to outline a few previously invisible people standing on the edge.
I checked with a couple of people that they saw it too. They did.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Oh man, those are both so great (edited because I can't call *everything* 'lovely). I'm so glad I started this thread.

Just thought of when I went with my mum to scatter my dad's ashes, which for some reason I'd been thinking of as a purely administrative tast: just pop along to the crem and find somewhere nice to dump them. Only when the guy in charge had led us to the gardens bit, said a few words and released the special thing did I realise there might be Emotions. Only a few and it was over fast, although there was a nice moment when we realised the little plaque for my mum's parents' ashes (we knew they were around somewhere but couldn't remember the exact place) were just a few feet away.

[Buelligan]

Don't worry.  I call everything lovely too.  Except when it's shite.  It's lovely.  Lovely story there 'bout the plaque and the proximity, I mean it.