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.
I am no longer afraid of death. I am not afraid of death. That's a huge thing isn't it?
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.
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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