Dancing Past the Dark ~ distressing near-death experiences

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Nan Bush

“Negative NDE” as insight, vitality, developmental thrust?

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May I suggest that you run, not walk, to Sheila Joshi’s Neuroscience and Psi blog, where her latest post is “Distressing psi is really misinterpreted insight, vitality, and developmental thrust.”

“I was very struck by how there are a handful of outpatient clinics in Europe and Argentina where people having distressing psychic or spiritual experiences can get help from professionals who are trained in both clinical psychology and parapsychology.

“In fact, I would go further and say that the data presented led me to think that the spontaneous psi experiences were distressing because they were being somewhat misinterpreted by the experiencers, and because they contained a developmental thrust that was very much wanted but which was also taboo.  To me, these spontaneous experiences really seemed like shoves from the Tao / infinite self / personal unconscious / spirit guides – or some combination of them all!”

An immediate question is, why has this information been so quiet–or so missing entirely–in North America?

The post also notes,

“The idea that distressing psychic / spiritual experiences might be driven by some kind of need to take the next step in one’s development parallels the strand in the history of psychology / psychiatry that has seen psychosis in a similar light.  John Weir Perry at the Diabasis center, R.D. Laing, C.G. Jung, Kazimierz Dąbrowski, the Anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960s, the Spiritual Emergency Network in the 1980s, etc. have avowed that psychosis is a crisis accompanied by much distortion, yes, but it is also an opportunity for radical healing if it is also interpreted as a source of truth and vitality.

“Why do these developmental thrusts appear in such negative guise, for example, as distressing psi or as psychosis?  One important reason…is that they involve change in self boundaries or ego …  And, unfortunately, we tend to fear this and fight it tooth and nail, even if it’s for our eventual greater happiness.”

Read the entire post here:

http://neuroscienceandpsi.blogspot.com/2012/03/distressing-psi-is-really.html

15 things we know about distressing NDEs

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With all the points of view about near-death experiences, it can be difficult to sift out facts from opinions. Here, for the sake of convenience, is a brief listing of what the research has shown about NDEs.

1. Reports of experiences like NDEs, both splendid and harrowing, have come from around the world, going back to antiquity.

2. Although the great majority of NDE accounts describe pleasant, even glorious, experiences,  a study of research reports indicates that as many as one in five may be disturbing.

3. Both pleasant and distressing NDEs are likely to include: an out-of-body experience; movement, often with a sense of speed, to areas with special qualities of light or dark; a landscape; encountering one or more presences; intense emotion; sometimes transcendence; sometimes a specific message. Some experiences include more of these elements than others. Distressing NDE reports typically lack three elements that may appear in a pleasant NDE: a life review, positive emotional tone, and loss of the fear of death. [Read more…] about 15 things we know about distressing NDEs

Felons and distressing death experiences

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Is it true that bad people get bad experiences and good people get good ones? I have been arguing against this bit of conventional wisdom for quite a few years now, claiming that there is simply no evidence to support it.

The view  that good gets good and bad gets bad is an outgrowth of “what everybody knows,” or the conventional wisdom. Every known culture is loaded with these conclusions that people get what they deserve, the assumptions that have shaped human thinking for thousands of years: the dutiful person will be rewarded and the wicked punished, the diligent worker becomes rich and the idle is destined for poverty, prosperity is given to those who do right and catastrophe befalls the wrongdoer. If you routinely kill the biggest antelope or own the big house in the best neighborhood, it must be because you deserve it; the guy eating prairie dog or struggling along in the trailer park must live wrong.

Right? Well…wrong.

We all know of situations in which that simply doesn’t hold up. But the conviction remains. Ask a half-dozen people at the post office or supermarket what kind of people they think would have a distressing near-death experience. One recent comment is that “Some people seem to have hellish experiences for no apparent reason, but most have done evil things…The distressing NDEs I’ve seen have been by males who were bullies and a female who was atheist and an agnostic.” So, not only are they seen as people who do evil things, they are atheists and agnostics as well. No conscience and no God or spirituality. Wow.

Into this scene comes Marilyn Mendoza, a Louisiana woman with a PhD in counseling and a curiosity about what it is like to die in prison. She also wondered if the deathbed visions of dying felons might be especially difficult. So far as anyone knows, deathbed visions differ from near-death experiences only in the fact that their experiencers don’t come back afterwards. Otherwise, the descriptions are virtually identical. Mendoza’s findings are therefore applicable to the study of near-death experiences and are reported in the latest issue of the IANDS newsletter, Vital Signs. http://iands.org

Her study population is housed at Angola, one of the most notorious of U.S. prisons. In her words, “Angola is a maximum security prison that has been called the bloodiest prison in America. It houses 5,000+ men whose crimes range from murder, rape, and armed robbery to drug offenses. The majority of men who come to Angola die there. Prisoners, like many of us, not only have a fear of dying alone but have an even greater fear of dying in prison.”

This is a population almost guaranteed to produce distressing experiences of all types. Not only have they all “done evil things,” but they approach dying in great fear. And as Mendoza puts it, “What better population to explore the question of who is likely to have distressing [experiences] than a population of murderers and rapists?”

One humane quality that makes Angola exceptional is that it is one of seventeen U.S. prisons to have a hospice staffed by inmate volunteers. It was they who provided the information for Mendoza’s research. What she discovered was this:

“Twenty-nine inmate volunteers were interviewed with a range of experiences with the dying from five months to 13 years…Volunteers were asked, ‘Of the dying you have been with, have any of them talked about unusual experiences or seeing people, places, or things that you could not see?’ Twenty-six of the 29 volunteers said ‘yes’…not everyone had [one] that they were aware of, but the vast majority of the men did.”

I am adding the emphasis in this next paragraph:

“As is common with most people, the majority of the [experiences] the caretakers described were pleasant. The most frequently seen visions were of family members. Caretakers reported that the dying saw mothers, grandmothers, sons, fathers, and other family members. The dying spoke of people waiting for them and calling them to come home. They told the caretakers about waiting for a bus and walking through a gate. One even spoke of seeing family coming to get him in a Cadillac. The dying also spoke of angels, beautiful gardens, gates and the Light. The men stared at corners of the room, at the wall and the ceiling. They reached for and called out to the deceased they saw. In other words, the dying prisoners saw and experienced the same things as the general population.

“The inmate volunteers did talk about some patients who were bitter and angry until they took their last breath. They were angry at everyone and everything, but especially at death. Only one account was given for a distressing experience for a patient.

I say it again, with renewed confidence:

There is not a shred of evidence that good people get good experiences and bad people get bad experiences. The conviction that types of NDEs and deathbed visions are tied to moral qualities and behaviors simply does not hold up. If it’s true at Angola, it’s true enough for me.

Distressing—even hellish—NDEs coming into their own?

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There’s an amazing, dam-busting conversation going on in the forums at the near-death.com site: http://ow.ly/8vfXj

Titled “The case for distressing/hellish NDE study,” the thread has grown to 104 posts in a week’s time. And they’re substantive, interesting (sometimes downright fascinating), mostly respectful posts. I called the thread “dam-busting” because of both its size and the richness of its content.

All sorts of sub-topics are emerging: questions of what constitutes “reality,” the nature of being, whether distressing NDEs are morally contingent, the role of personality and behavioral history. In short, it’s the kind of conversation we haven’t heard in the past three decades.

Even if you want simply to lurk, it’s worth sitting in. Read through the comments and see the range of discussion. It’s just great! Huge thanks go to RabbitDawg (yes, our own RabbitDawg) for opening the conversation. He really started something! And as always, thanks to Kevin Williams for the near-death.com site and its wealth of forums. See you there!

In local news, Bruce Greyson has returned from presenting an invited paper at a conference with the Dalai Lama at his compound in Dharmasala, India, and has sent the foreword for Dancing Past the Dark. The book’s index is almost finished, and it and the cover are expected by week’s end. Its appearance for Nooks, Kindles, and other e-readers is definitely coming closer! And because of that, I am awash in the major task of today’s authors, preparation for marketing the book. (If you Tweet, look for me at @nancyevansbush, or from your browser, type http://twitter.com/nancyevansbush ). It’s a whole new world out there!  There is no end to learning curves.