Events of the deep psyche can involve “the destruction of traditional and habitual patterns of perception and understanding, including religious belief structures and socially accepted concepts of the nature of human existence and behavior.”
Then you wake up the next morning and . . . what?
The words are from psychotherapist Alex Lukeman, in his review of Edward F. Edinger’s book Encounter with the Self. It does not surprise me that Lukeman is himself a near-death experiencer.
Nancy,
I’m so happy to see that you have a blog now, and I look forward to your book. Although there are many fine people involved in NDE research and education, you and Dr. Bruce Greyson have always stood out above the crowd to me.
Dr. Greyson has an level-headed, amicable style of coherently explaining the NDE field to folks of any social or academic standing, and you have almost single handedly spearheaded the need to pay attention to ‘distressing’ (doncha love those euphemism’s for “Hellish”?) experiences.
Too often we want to dismiss the ‘less-than-pleasant’ experiences with stories of sweetness and light. Yet negative experiences are as equally real and important to the people experiencing them, as visions an ineffably glorious heaven are to the positive experiencer’s. I’ve read and heard several of your observations, explanations and thoughts concerning the distressing NDE’s category, and I look forward to what you have to say in the future!
P.S. I followed the link to the Baroque in Hackney blog. You daughter is absolutely hilarious and insightful. I guess it’s true that he apple doesn’t fall far and all that 🙂
Yeah, the euphemisms get tired pretty fast–but nobody wants to scare the world away! Many thanks for your comment. Love your dog! Couldn’t do that with my spaniel.
I had an encounter with God 33 years ago, after a suicide attempt, though I wasn’t near death the effects and results of the encounter were just as deep as an NDE. I can relate so much to ND experiencer that I read everything I can on the subject.
This is how deep my encounter affected me. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God is absolutely, totally, unconditional love and his power is undescribable, I was in AWE. I lost complete fear of death. I quit smoking and drinking without any withdrawal symptoms or side effects. I had a total heart change, my values changed. I went from black to white. Most members of my family didn’t recognize me, my personality changed so much.
Since then I’ve gone through a lot, almost lost my faith at some point in time because of a certain experience but the thing that kept me going was this particular encounter with God a long time ago, that I knew to be true and nobody could ever take it away from me.
Fran, thanks so much. Someone asked me not long ago, “You don’t know the people who write in. How do you know they’re not faking?” And I said, “There’s a tone I’ve learned to watch for.” And in your comments today–bingo! Again, many thanks.
You’re most welcome and I agree with you when you say “There’s a tone I’ve learned to watch for”, I’ve read 100s of NDE and I’ve come across maybe one that I felt wasn’t quite right and I felt it was someone trying to install the fear of God through hellish experiences. I can’t see the good in that because, to me, only the love of God described in NDS and my own experience can literally make you “fall in love with God”. I’ve also had hellish nightmares that stayed with me for days and just creeped me out and I didn’t not understand why this was happening to me at the time, but today I believe it could have been an attack from the dark side to make me stronger.
I believe everything that happens to us here on earth is for learning not necessarily punishing unless you’ve done something really bad then you’re just reaping the consequences of your actions but then again you can learn from that experience and grow. I believe the same about hellish NDEs, I would certainly not condemn or judge the person who had them, on the contrary my heart goes to them. They must be strong people to withstand something horrible like that. I also believe that we’re given what we can take, God knows the heart, there must be something in these experiences that a person can profit by them, there’s always something positive to pick out of negative experiences, how else can we grow? I don’t pretend to understand everything, that’s just my two cents on it.
Hey, just ran into your site from digg. This isn’t not an article I would regularly read, but I loved your spin on it. Thanx for making a blog post worth reading!