People Disappearing Into Balls of Ether Never to Be Seen Again

Mo Med. 2014 November-December; 111(6): 486–491.

Distressing Near-Death Experiences: The Basics

Bruce Greyson, Md

Bruce Greyson, MD, is the Chester F. Carlson Professor of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences and Manager, Segmentation of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia School of Medicine

The great majority of almost-expiry experiences (NDEs) reported publicly over the past four decades have been described as pleasant, even glorious. About unnoticed in the euphoria nearly them has been the sobering fact that not all NDEs are so affirming. Some are deeply agonizing.

Few people are forthcoming about such an outcome; they hide; they disappear when asked for information; if inpatient, they are likely to withdraw; they are under great stress. What do their physicians need to know to deal with these experiences?

Varieties of Distressing Well-nigh-Death Experiences

Nosotros have documented three types of distressing NDE: inverse, void, and hellish.^one The brief descriptions below illustrate the types. All examples are from the authors' files unless otherwise indicated.

Changed NDE

In some NDEs, features ordinarily reported in other NDEs equally pleasurable are perceived every bit hostile or threatening. A man thrown from his equus caballus plant himself floating at treetop superlative, watching emergency medical technicians working over a his torso. "No! No! This isn't right!" He screamed, "Put me back!" simply they did not hear him. Next he was shooting through darkness toward a bright calorie-free, flashing past shadowy people who seemed to be deceased family unit members waiting. He was panic-stricken by the bizarre scenario and his inability to affect what was happening.

A adult female in childbirth felt her spirit separate from her body and fly into space at tremendous speed, then saw a small ball of light rushing toward her: "It became bigger and bigger as information technology came toward me. I realized that nosotros were on a collision course, and it terrified me. I saw the blinding white light come right to me and engulf me."

A adult female collapsed from hyperthermia and began re-experiencing her entire life: "I was filled with such sadness and experienced a great deal of depression."

The Void NDE

An NDE of the "void" is an ontological run into with a perceived vast emptiness, often a devastating scenario of aloneness, isolation, sometimes annihilation. A adult female in childbirth found herself abruptly flight over the hospital and into deep, empty space. A group of circular entities informed her she never existed, that she had been allowed to imagine her life simply information technology was a joke; she was not existent. She argued with facts about her life and descriptions of World. "No," they said, "none of that had always been existent; this is all there was." She was left alone in space.^{ii , pp. one–5}

Another woman in childbirth felt herself floating on water, but at a certain point, "It was no longer a peaceful feeling; it had become pure hell. I had go a lite out in the heavens, and I was screaming, only no audio was going forth. It was worse than any nightmare. I was spinning effectually, and I realized that this was eternity; this was what forever was going to be…. I felt the aloneness, the emptiness of space, the vastness of the universe, except for me, a mere ball of calorie-free, screaming."

A adult female who attempted suicide felt herself sucked into a void: "I was existence drawn into this night abyss, or tunnel, or void…. I was not enlightened of my body every bit I know it…. I was terrified. I felt terror. I had expected pettiness; I expected the big sleep; I expected oblivion; and I establish now that I was going to another plane … and it frightened me. I wanted nothingness, but this forcefulness was pulling me somewhere I didn't desire to go, but I never got across the fog."

A man who was attacked by a hitchhiker felt himself ascent out of his body: "I of a sudden was surrounded by total blackness, floating in zero but black space, with no up, no downwardly, left, or right…. What seemed like an eternity went past. I fully lived it in this misery. I was just allowed to recollect and reflect."

Hellish NDE

Overtly hellish experiences may be the least common type of distressing NDE. A man in heart failure felt himself falling into the depths of the Globe. At the bottom was a set up of high, rusty gates, which he perceived as the gates of hell. Panic-stricken, he managed to scramble support to daylight.

A woman was being escorted through a frighteningly desolate landscape and saw a group of wandering spirits. They looked lost and in hurting, but her guide indicated she was not allowed to help them.

An atheistic university professor with an intestinal rupture experienced being maliciously pinched, then torn apart by malevolent beings.³

A woman who hemorrhaged from a ruptured Fallopian tube reported an NDE involving "horrific beings with gray gelatinous appendages grasping and clawing at me. The sounds of their guttural moaning and the indescribable stench still remain 41 years later. There was no benign Being of Light, no life video, nothing beautiful or pleasant."

A woman who attempted suicide felt her body sliding downward in a cold, dark, watery environment: "When I reached the bottom, it resembled the entrance to a cave, with what looked like webs hanging…. I heard cries, wails, moans, and the gnashing of teeth. I saw these beings that resembled humans, with the shape of a head and body, but they were ugly and grotesque…. They were frightening and sounded like they were tormented, in agony."

Three Types of Response

These NDEs are traumatic in their realness, their rupturing the sense of worldly reality, and the ability of the questions they raise. 3 mutual responses cutting across all experience types: the turnaround, reductionism, and the long booty.²

one. The Turnaround: "I needed that"

A classic response to profound spiritual experience is conversion, not necessarily changing one'south religion simply in the original sense of the Latin convertere significant "to plow around." The terrifying NDE is interpreted as a warning about unwise or incorrect behaviors, and to turn i's life around: "I was being shown that I had to shape up or ship out, one or the other. In other words, 'get your human action together,' and I did just that."^{4 , p. 46}

Movement toward a dogmatic religious community is mutual in this grouping. Clinical social worker Kimberly Clark Sharp observed, "All the people I know who have had negative experiences take become Bible-based Christians…. They might express information technology in various sects. But they all feel that they have come up back from an atrocious situation and have a second chance."^{5 , p. 85}

Fear may remain a powerful influence, merely a strict theology may offer a way out. The atheistic professor above who experienced being maliciously pinched, so torn apart past malevolent beings left his university and attended seminary.³ Others also reported newfound devotion, "I've stopped drugs, moved back to Florida, and at present I'm in Bible college. I used to have a casual attitude toward decease, only now I actually fear it more. So yeah, it was a warning. I was permitted another chance to change my behavior on world…. I've taken my fear of death and given information technology to the scriptures."^{4 , p. 43} Since so, I take dedicated my life to the most loftier God Jehovah, and spend 60 hours a month speaking and teaching near the Creator of Heaven and globe and all living creatures. I'chiliad not worried at present about when I die, because now I know that God has promised united states of america something far more."

2. Reductionism: "It was merely …"

Equally a response to a lamentable feel, reductionism has been described as the "defense [that] allows ane to repudiate the meaning of an event which does not fit into a safety category" and to "treat the event every bit if information technology did non matter."^{vi , p. 35}

A woman whose anaphylactic reaction precipitated an NDE with both loving and frightening elements ended, "There are actual rational explanations for what I experienced…. The encephalon, under stress, releases natural opiates that stop pain and fear…. Lack of oxygen disrupts the normal activeness of the visual cortex…. As well much neural activity in the dying brain causes stripes of activity…. Our optics, even closed, translate those stripes of action equally … the sensation of moving forward in a tunnel…. There are more brain cells concentrated in the middle of the cortex than on the edges and so as nosotros get closer to expiry, the brain interprets all those dense cells with their crazy activity every bit a brilliant light in the centre of our visual field. It's all very scientific."^{seven , p. 95}

Her conclusion is that, based on the scientific testify, the experience had no ontological meaning. Whatsoever lingering anxieties will go unaddressed.

A adult female who had a terrifying experience during childbirth likewise dismissed the reality of the experience: "Perhaps it was the effect of the ether and not an NDE." A woman attacked by a lion dismissed the memory of her NDE every bit hallucinatory: "I ofttimes wonder if, in the shock of the assail, my mind played tricks on me, and that I may take merely been unconscious and my encephalon deprived of oxygen."

A man who for many years had spoken publicly about his radiant NDE had a second experience, in which he felt attacked by gigantic, sinister, threatening geometric forms, leaving him with a deep-seated pessimism and terror of dying. Learning that drug-induced hallucinations include geometric forms, he concluded that his second NDE was "only a drug reaction." This may exist an advisable conclusion clinically, simply the experience remains. Reductionism provides a temporary buffer to mask questions and anxieties, simply does naught to resolve them.

3. The Long Haul: "What did I do?"

Other experiencers have difficulty comprehending or integrating terrifying NDEs. These people, years afterwards, still struggle with the existential implications of the NDE, "I had an experience which has remained with me for 29 years…. Information technology has left a horror in my heed and I take never spoken most it until now." And, "After all these years, the nightmare remains vivid in my mind." "For some reason, [31 years subsequently] all the memories are back and brilliant…. It's like living it all once again, and I don't want to. I idea I had it all resolved and in its identify, merely I'1000 having a actually bad time trying to put it away this time.

Besides, "For the next 50 years, I would effort to repress the memory of the black, threatening experience, because it felt so real information technology continued to be frightening, no thing how old I got." And, "I've been married for 33 years and I practice non fifty-fifty discuss the experience with my husband…. Yet information technology is as clear to me today equally it was when it happened." Additionally, "I just buried the whole thing as deeply as possible, got very busy in civic affairs, politics…. It seems pretty clear to me now, though the specifics aren't in identify, that in that location's some core issue that still needs dealing with."

"I see this vision as flashbacks constantly. I cannot get this out of my head…. I even so see it in my mind from my own optics. It has been two years, still I take never talked about it. My husband does not fifty-fifty know…. I desire to put this behind me, but am unable."

This grouping is oftentimes articulate people haunted by the existential dimension of their NDE, searching for a cognitively and emotionally grounding explanation. They find a literal reading of the result intellectually unacceptable, but reductionist explanations but assign a cause without addressing meaning. They struggle to make sense of the distressing NDE without destroying them (and their trust in the workings of the world) in the process.

More others, these experiencers enter psychotherapy, some for many years, though without data, this may indicate nil other than openness and financial means. Besides often physicians prescribe medications to mask questioning and dismiss the NDE as fanciful or pathological; therapists volition non address the matter or leave the client feeling blamed or romanticize spirituality and cannot bargain with its dark side; and clergy have no thought what to say or turn down the experience outright.

The religious element of their NDE is often an absence:

"I was filled with a sense of absolute terror and of being past the aid of anyone, even God."

"I looked effectually me. Consciously searching for … God or some other celestial creature, merely I was alone."

"I expected the Lord to be there, merely He wasn't… I chosen on God and He wasn't there. That'south what scared me."^{4 , p. 53}

Overwhelmingly, their questions include some variant of "What did I practice to deserve this?" or "What are the rules, if the rules I lived by don't work?" Not for a long time, if always, do they lose their fear of expiry." The homo above attacked by a hitchhiker still struggled with the aftermath, "I've pondered if I was in that hell, volition I get back on my death? Was I sent in that location for something maybe I'll exercise in the future, or something I did in the past? … I don't believe in a hell, but it was such a strong experience, at that place is ever that underlying dubiety and trouble and fear."

Posttraumatic Growth

The psychological literature on posttraumatic growth did not exist in the early on years of our study of distressing NDEs, and so that aspect of response remains underreported. As a growing number of studies make clear, fifty-fifty the most devastating life event, "similar the grit that creates the oyster, is oftentimes what propels people to become more truthful to themselves, take on new challenges, and view life from a wider perspective."^{8 , p. 7} This is a promising and as yet underdeveloped approach for clinicians working with those who report struggling after a deplorable NDE.^nine

Seven Things to Know well-nigh Distressing Near-Death Experiences

1. Distressing NDEs occur nether the same broad range of circumstances and feature most of the aforementioned elements as pleasant NDEs. What differs is the emotional tone, which ranges from fright through terror to, in some cases, guilt or despair. The reports typically lack ii elements mutual in pleasant NDEs: a positive emotional tone and loss of the fear of decease.

2. A notorious reluctance to report a pitiful NDE may lead to long-lasting trauma for individuals as well as limiting the data on occurrence. A literature review covering thirty years of enquiry concludes that every bit many as one in five NDEs may be predominantly distressing.^ten

3. The etiology of all such events remains unknown. Despite decades of clinical studies, none so far adequately explains either the cause or function of NDEs. Further, NDEs cross then many clinical circumstances and demographic bases, there is no way to predict who will have what type of NDE. No evidence supports the conventional assumption that "proficient" people get pleasant NDEs and "bad" people have deplorable ones. Saints have reported extremely disturbing NDEs,^{11 , pp. 63–75} while felons and suicide attempters have encountered elation.^{12 , pp. 41–44}

4. Pleasant NDEs tend to convey universal messages of compassion that cantankerous religious and philosophical systems. Lamentable NDEs typically have less focused messages but follow the aboriginal shamanic blueprint of suffering/expiry/resurrection, which in less metaphoric terms tin can be read equally an invitation to self-examination, disarrangement of core beliefs, and rebuilding. In practical terms, a common estimation of a distressing NDE is that it is a message to plough one'southward life around.

5. The description of any NDE is shaped by the experiencer's pre-existing mental categories and vocabulary. As example, although the archetype of a benevolent guide is common in NDEs, individuals typically place the presence according to their ain cultural vocabulary. Any report identifying an archetypal individual by name is a perception that may or may non be factually truthful but cannot exist confirmed as such. Understandably, it is facts similar these which religious groups and materialists alike may observe troubling. Secular Westerners oftentimes believe an NDE indicates a psychotic episode.

6. The master effect of many NDEs is a powerful and indelible awareness that the concrete world is not the total extent of reality. Considering this perception runs so deeply counter to Western materialism, and conversely because its implications affect some dogmatic theological teachings, the new conviction commonly overturns experiencers' personal life and social relationships abruptly and permanently.

7. A major challenge for physicians and other scientists dealing with reports of virtually-death experience is to manage this intrusion of non-materialist religious and philosophical language and understandings into the difficult information of clinical thinking. Curiously, it is at the extremes of religious fundamentalism and material scientism that one finds literalism an upshot. For fundamentalists, the accounts are believed to be literally, physically actual; for convinced materialists, they must be dismissed equally lunacy considering a literal, physical actuality is incommunicable and no alternative concept is adequate.

Raymond Moody, in the commodity introducing this series, observed, "The best practice for physicians is to stick strictly to clinical and enquiry concerns."^{xiii , p. 371} The post-NDE convictions of patients and their family members with whom physicians must interact are likely to make that a difficult suggestion to follow. Non-judgmental listening may be the near workable culling.

Summary

Similar the better-publicized pleasurable NDEs, distressing nigh-death experiences are both fascinating and frustrating as altered states of consciousness. Because of the deeply rooted concept of hell in Western civilization and its Christian clan with eternal concrete torment, they pose serious challenges to the individuals who must shape their lives around such a profoundly durable event, and to their families, friends, and physicians. In the absence of clear-cut clinical data and universal cultural views, physicians are advised that neutrality of opinion and conscientious listening are likely to constitute best professional practise for addressing these hard near-expiry experiences.

Biography

•

Nancy Evans Bush, MA, (left) is President Emerita, International Clan for Near-Decease Studies. Bruce Greyson, Doctor, is the Chester F. Carlson Professor of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences and Director, Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Contact: moc.liamg@5hsubnan

Footnotes

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6173534/

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