An encounter with frightening, oppressive, or deeply disturbing states
An encounter with frightening, oppressive, or disturbing states — total darkness, suffering, threatening presences, or a perceived realm of anguish. A recognized but rarely discussed aspect of near-death experience; often underreported due to the distress and shame associated with it.
Appears exclusively within the NDE accounts. The narrow gap between the two numbers reflects that those who reported it described it clearly and directly.
The base level of reality I find is actually bliss. We're just obscuring it by our fears, our anxieties, our self-interests. The quickest way to get rid of darkness is by turning on the light.
There's a knowing and all those attributes are coming and going, shifting and changing, whereas this knowing is just shining always, there it is. So that was just like bombshell.
What I ultimately learned from the whole thing was that we were created to love one another. That's our job. That's the curriculum. That's the whole thing in a nutshell. And that's the only thing that matters.
The thoughts were the things that actually kept me in a low state and kept me in fear — if I had just let go of those thoughts I would have been able to just allow the energy, accept it when it's there, and then release it.
Among accounts that include hellish realm, these were the most common pathways that preceded it:
Experience types most commonly reported in the same accounts:
Among the 28 accounts that include hellish realm, these integration challenges appeared most often — shown as a percentage of those accounts:
Physical phenomena reported by people whose accounts include hellish realm:
First-hand accounts from people who described this experience — drawn from the interviews in this collection:
Jurgen C is a commercial artist and author who began having spontaneous out-of-body experiences early in his adult life, initially without a…
Watch interview →Christian was a 19-20 year old who had been practicing meditation and energy work since around 2014. In 2016, while doing shadow work at his…
Watch interview →Dr. Jeffrey Long is a radiation oncologist who became a leading near-death experience researcher after encountering NDE literature during hi…
Watch interview →Penny, a retired critical care nurse raised Catholic with a fear-based view of God, experienced a severe anaphylactic reaction that caused h…
Watch interview →Bruce Joel Rubin was an Oscar-winning screenwriter from Detroit who, in the 1960s, accidentally ingested a massive overdose of LSD, triggeri…
Watch interview →Peter Panagore was a 21-year-old outdoorsman and born-again Christian when he suffered severe hypothermia during an ice climb in Banff, Cana…
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