Near death experience only personal heaven or hell? - And what comes after?

I have read articles about number of Near-Death-Experiences (NDE) and what always bugged me, was, that the experiences weren't consistent with each other. It's like everyone experienced a different heaven or hell. But if we want a real proof of life after death - shouldn't all people have the same experiences?

I stumbled upon following explanation on this www.near-death.com... html:

some skeptics do occasionally present the argument that because there are so many differences between NDEs suggests they are not afterlife experiences. Their reasoning is similar to arguing the case that because the testimonies between a group of criminals are inconsistent means they are lying.

This is not quite correct. In my opinion all these people come to a common denominator if they elaborate it, even if they tell the story from their own perspective. However in NDE's the only common denominator is that they have the perception to be detached from the body. Everything else sounds like a mixture of religious dogmas and fantasy.

The world of the NDE has been described as the realm of pure mind where all things are possible. It is possible that if a person desires a mansion after death, they will get it. Or, if a person desires food after death, they will get it.

Our lives are primarily the result of our own past actions and thoughts. NDEs generally show that people are not forced to heaven, hell, or anywhere. Our destiny is totally up to us.

In many experiences, Christ appears; but he does not appear in all of them. Again, one might jump to the conclusion that if NDEs are real afterlife experiences, Christ would appear in all of them. However, there is evidence to suggest the reason Christ appears in many NDEs in western civilization is due to the dominance of Christianity in the west. In Buddhist countries, people meet Buddha. In Hindu countries, the god of death may appear. Jews may meet the Messiah. This suggests that at death, people carry all their perspectives and religious biases with them. It also suggests the NDE is often described in context of one's own religious perspective.

Actually I expected all people to experience the same heavenly or hellish realm when they are death. This would be an undeniable proof. But with an explanation like above, it simply states we all experience only our own personal heaven or hell. Nothing else. Only our own mad mind. To be honest that sounds kinda depressing... you are stuck with creations of your own mad mind. Even if your mind is shaped by good and nice things... there should be an exchange with other mindsets every once in a while, or it gets boring and isolated.

Now I wonder if and what comes after that? After that personal illusion of heaven or hell. A real afterlife? A real paradise? A real encounter with god? What comes after? Anyone knows? Any NDE experiences which actually describe the "real afterlife"?

People get stuck in 'hells' of their own mind, while alive...some cosmologies describe the period/s after death in exactly the same way...most NDE's are experienced like this, and those who do not return to tell a tale, find out what the imagination is really capable of...or so I have read...

Å99

a reply to: anotherdaytoday

Now I wonder if and what comes after that?

After that . Nothing , no blackness , no ride to heaven , no paradise , your dead , end of story .

My experiences while in the midst of a very long cardiac arrest in 1985 were what I would personally call "Hell", but were nothing like the descriptions of Hell we have been told about.

My experience was of being gently pushed away from the warmth and light into absolute and total darkness. Pure sensory deprivation. Very, very cold, dark and without any sounds at all. It was like floating in outer space but without any light at all. No stars. Just pure black.

Was I in some Limbo, purgatorial place? Or was I simply conscious of my dying body as my nervous system shut down?

I honestly cannot say exactly what it was. Though I tend to think the former because, through it all, the clarity of my awareness never dulled nor faltered. My mind was crystal clear at that point.

But that is also where things get difficult.

I was resuscitated after around twelve minutes without vitals and lay in a coma for the next three days. For those three days and for roughly the next month after, I was on constant slow drip morphine. The CPR had broken ribs, my shoulder, my clavicle and had bruised my heart so badly that it swelled substantially.

For that month I have transient amnesia. I remember a few bits, here and there, even some of the hallucinations I was going through due to the morphine. But not much.

Years later a memory came to me... a memory of screaming "I promise!" at the top of my lungs. I honestly cannot say if this happened while I was dead, or comatose, or during my month of hallucinations. For that matter, I can't even be sure it happened at all, and that it isn't just a false memory caused by my mind desperately wanting to fill in the blanks from the transient amnesia.

One thing I will say, without doubt... I fully and truly believe, in my heart, that there is something after this. Even the part of my mind that prides itself on being rational and detached is convinced that the cold, dark, silent place was real. That I was there.

I think all telepathic information that surfaces thru the mind is in some way using the words on the mind to make itself understood. So preconceived ideas can be in the way.

I went thru a increased awareness without any real belief in religion so I had no connection to Jesus having to be right. I read Buddha, Rumi, Nanak and Yeshua afterwards and they seem to say the same thing from my point of view. But then I see the words Christ and Messiah as meaning anointment. Something real that changes the experience of the physical body to seek and find out the hidden reality.

How many level ups there are in this game I do not know. I only know of "the first one". It is a game changer.

I have low level receiver ability and low level energy manipulation ability. I have meet empaths and psychics that are higher lever receiver ability and energy manipulation ability.

Firstly, one man's heaven is another man's hell. No two people have ever experienced the exact same life, why should any two people experience the exact same afterlife? When you die, you get what you expect. At first.

For example, Mormons will die and go to Mormon heaven, because that's what they expect. Some souls may linger in that mindset for eons because they are so firmly rooted in their beliefs that they would accept nothing else. However, they neglect to realize that in an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities. The afterlife is not as black and white, heaven and hell, as most people would like to think. There are infinite shades of gray and you will go where you fit.

What happens after that initial death experience depends on you. When you are ready for it, you will graduate the constructs of your own mind that you had built for yourself and the truth will be revealed to you at a rate that you can handle. That's why forgiveness is so key. Until you forgive everyone including yourself, you will not move beyond that inner hell that you created. That holds true in both life and death.

a reply to: anotherdaytoday
I have pondered the idea that if there is life after life, it may very well be a personal experience first, before it becomes a collective experience. Which is why everyone has a unique experience. Few ever reach the second stage. And of those that do, fewer still, come back from it.

Its because the traditional models of the universe are completely wrong, and there are infinite frequencies and heavens. Infinity would be a much better subject for both science and spirituality to study and base things on as that is platform, and its incredible.

Its always a frequency match, so work on self. And its not an ism, ie religious or political house or belief. So free the mind and turn the dial up high on love and work at perfecting flaws that prohibit being a good helper, counselor, healer, teacher. Its always about us failing, never blaming others, and always working on handling things better. Achieving Higher Mind thoughts, and behaviors.

From this point of view, you wouldn't expect it all to be homogenized upon death.

about 50% of Heff's experience, I too had,,, but the cause for the NDE and 2 week coma was a brain hemhorrage

I thought I had floated to a darkened waiting arena of sorts--- there was no Lord or Pearly Gates just a disembodied voice which asked me if I wanted the state of ecstacy I was in to continue (I guess I was talking through the anesthetic of the operation or the morphine drip that came later during or after the 2 week coma.
I told the disembodied voice in the darkened cavern 'disposition station' that I had more pain and stress/suffering to do on Earth than getting drugged into bliss & put in a cocoon existence for however long it would be

I follow the Buddhist philosophy that we live to experience and deal-with & overcome pain and distress for 'karma' points on our lifetimes scorecard


the disembodied voice from all around me could very well have been the physician that was putting 2 clamps on blood vessels in my now open skull...he may have been telling me if I lived I would have a 50/50 chance of staying in a permanent coma or I could right then and there decide to give-up on survival... who knows

I am certain I never went to heaven or hell in my NDE there were no Christ/Buddah/Allah/Gaia or even Spiritual beings in robes or togas & wings in my 1997 NDE


~but my 1972 NDE after being run over by a car ....it was different, I did see the Pearly Gates, St. Peter and my journey through a tunnel (like the Shamans' passage to the upper or lower worlds) towards the bright light...
I suddenly sprang up after a week of coma, ripping the stitches out of my chest and shoulder screaming my arm-is-caught
but it turned out to be strapped down to the hospital bed... so I never floated back down-to-Earth in a gentle way -> I was POOF, suddenly back in body

It seems obvious to me that NDE are a purely physical phenomenon, explicable in terms of human biology were the precise mechanisms properly understood.

For a start, 'near death' is a misnomer. You can't be 'near' or 'far' from death; only dead or alive. And since those who have experienced this were obviously alive to tell the tale, then it's simply a 'life experience'.

The big giveaway is that patients experience stuff which is culturally significant to them (ie Christians claiming to meet Christ and so on), so it is the brain interpreting the data in a way which has special meaning for the individual.

I agree with the OP - for NDE to 'prove' the existence of an afterlife, then everyone ought to be experiencing pretty much the same thing, but they're not.

Interesting answers and experiences.

The theory of the 2 different stages sounds reasonable, if one ought to make sense of it. With first stage being a personal heaven or hell - influenced by culture, and only the second stage possibly a collective afterlife. But again it's only a theory.
As for the common denominators I forgot to say, that the "I", the "self" seems to persist as well, aside from being detached from the body, and floating around "somewhere".

Not sure what to make out of it. I wished people reached that 2nd stage and tell that story. Maybe they actually did, and it's just difficult to filter that out. It could be that part when the light opens up and they come into that nice landscape with all much more brilliant colors and whatnot.

a reply to: Hefficide
It is real you were there.
I went to hell during a "good time" once. I mean real hell. It was terrifying. What happened was it was total saperation alone ness absute. It wasn't dark but I swear to god if I had to explIn it it was like a fire but not a burning fire.

I was learning about ritual and religion and heavily involved in meditation and otherc practices and Indian sweat lodges for a few years. Oddly enough I had many many many otherworldly experiences that have never been replicated since.

On one such occasion after a sweat lodge, during the night I was sleeping and an angel appeared to me and silently hand me a lotus flower. When the flower was in my hand it opened beautifully and the angel was gone. Clear as day. The next second I was awake sweating panicking in my room.

On another occasion after a Crowley ritual what I can only describe as a demon attacked me in the form of a white blanket and was suffocating me not allowing me to talk. I couldn't breath move or speak. I began freaking out and finally I was able to scream "Jesus Christ!" At which point I woke up screaming in my bed sitting up and my girlfriend at the time screamed and ran out of the room.

On another occassion I had been brought out of the universe into what I can only describe as an abstract wave form with energy frequency densities that contained or explained consciousness and material being. Apparently this is the material universe and what it exist as. I cannot extrapolate on that any further.

I'm with CJ, it's a physical process and tends to be culturally relevant.

What comes after? Death. Not much further off is pure oblivion; the wiping of any reminiscence of your existence having ever occurred.

Relax, a hundred billion come and gone without issue so far. The pain is for the living.

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: anotherdaytoday

Now I wonder if and what comes after that?

After that . Nothing , no blackness , no ride to heaven , no paradise , your dead , end of story .

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
I'm with CJ, it's a physical process and tends to be culturally relevant.

What comes after? Death. Not much further off is pure oblivion; the wiping of any reminiscence of your existence having ever occurred.

Relax, a hundred billion come and gone without issue so far. The pain is for the living.

Wow cold . Wouldn't you rather think there is something after death ?
If it's true that for a time you get what you expect after death i would not want to be walking in your empty shoes. Have fun in the cold lonely oblivion of your own making !

a reply to: Jeroenske

That's a rather bizarre take on my stance.

Would you think it "warm" to be filled with fuzzy beliefs of an afterlife just cause?

The exclusions within my personal belief system does not affect my ability to be compassionate and loving while alive.

I choose to keep to what is reasonable while alive, and if that brings me an unpleasant last experience, it's certainly worth it in my book.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

It's just that you cannot know for sure while alive. I would rather take the positive stance that consciousness continues.

a reply to: Jeroenske

We can infer based on what is relayed back. The most logical conclusion is that it's a purely physical experience that is personally relevant to the underlying currents that shapes one's psyche.

It's much more important for me to remain true to my reasoning capacities than fold for belief comforts.

To each their own.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

I totally disagree.

As above so below.

Awareness exist on all levels in all forms.

An addendum to my post, to help flesh it out.

My personal desire is and always has been that there not be an afterlife. I do not fear the end, in fact I think it's rather calming to know that one day I might go to sleep and simply cease. To never again be aware. To never again hurt or have to worry. A moment of horror and pain that gives the gift of never having to face horror or pain ever again. An afterlife, to me, robs us of that hope. Eternity implies a negative to me.

I realize that wish puts me in a very small minority, but it does speak to my experience. The guy who wanted nothing got something... which takes some of the argument away from the folks who feel it was probably a desperate mind trying to manifest a predetermined desire.