My friend is researching a book and asked me some questions based on my NDE. Here are my answers mixed with his questions.
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And are you less afraid than before, or unafraid of death now?
When I was around 12 years old I wrote a story at school stating how I was not afraid of death and could easily just slip away. I based a short and poorly written story on this idea. The teachers comment on the piece was “no one would think this”.
Now, what we have is an odd situation as: Of course someone would think this, as I wrote it for one, and two, roughly two thirds of the world have traditions based on a similar perspective.
4 billion to one against you teacher.
As for fear of death this is hard without a context. Would I if told I was about to die fear it? Would I fear it as I fear for the ones I would leave behind? Would this be worse if I was 20 years old and had one child who I was the only guardian as compared to if I was 90 years old and the last of my known relatives still here? Sure. Context paints the picture and explains a little how death is a concern.
What people fear is the thought of those left behind and the dissolution and end of their ego. Death is easy for the one who dies and hard on the ones left behind. It would be a great gift to let every person on earth know that when someone dies, this is not sad and not an end – that way both of these fears could be removed: No concern for those left behind and no last wrestling with the ego.
The NDE is a very powerful experience that does clear up these human concerns. It would indeed be a gift if it could be given.
Death is not an end and is no bad thing. If I died now I would die peacefully and in bliss.
As for these known repeated occurrences:
-Hearing sounds such as buzzing
No
-Feeling absolute peace and painlessness
Absolutely, and wonder and completeness.
-Having an out-of-body experience
Completely
-Traveling through a tunnel
Yes, for a time
-Rising into the heavens
Similar to above, not called heavens by me
-Seeing angels or dead relatives
Not as such, I met an old man who had invented Hinduism who was painting statues of deities he had made, his wife was there and he explained how inventing religion was a useful tool that had served a purpose, (Note later how my experience happened in India on a very sacred beach called Om beach and made of two bays that formed the left side of an Om when seen on a map. The location and books I had been interested in at that time may well have painted this meeting with the 'inventor' character of Hinduism). Also I sat in absolute silence with Buddha. This part seemed absolutely genuine and the message from the silence was of Buddhas recognition and mine that nothing need be said, all was complete.
-Meeting a spiritual being such as God
Not quite, but see above. As well as Buddha I did also interact with a Gaia type character, female voice only, but more importantly I reached a point of no beings, no separations, and pure completeness – no room for God, no duality.
-Seeing a review of one’s life
Not as such but not no
-Feeling reluctant to return to life
Not reluctant but happy, very happy to stay. In fact I welcomed the experience and to come back to what I find an amazing experience that is life and to now have a Death Experience to look back upon.
So I would have stayed and been perfectly at rest, but I welcomed and maybe even chose to return to a life that I found and still find incredible. Happy here, happy there, as I know they are the same oneness.
THE NDE
I call it a Death Experience not a Near Death Experience.
I experienced death, not near death. We are all near death, all dying and living. Living and dying are simultaneous acts that form life.
The build up
I had an experience in a forest with a tree and I recognised in that tree, perfection. This simple experience was profound and lasted years, at the time intense. I had further sub experiences at that time. One night I had one in a pub whilst staring into a beer glass and I went home and bought a flight to India (what would be my second visit).
I arrived there and spent the first seven weeks in a hammock. I met people and had conversations and some found my observations odd, some found them fascinating and I spent a lot of time alone, in the hammock, on the beach, quite complete. People asked me what I was doing in India, where I was going, what I had seen, where I had been – I knew and I said that there was no where to go, no where to be other than here and if I never moved an inch nothing would be wrong.
The reason I moved on after seven weeks was that two Friends arrived, two friends I had planned to meet and they had plans to move. We went across country and then over the sea (3 days on a boat) to the Indian owned Andaman Islands – Beautiful. One day we were fishing and the hook we were using was far too big, We caught nothing which was great as I did not like the idea of fishing. Suddenly my friend caught a fish and puled it up. The huge hook had gone in the fishes mouth and out of his upper head above its eye. My friend became squeamish and backed off leaving me and the fish. I wrestled with the hook to set the fish free. All there was was suffering and a worsening of the situation. I took my nearby “cutty” (a large knife we carried for opening coconuts) and chopped off the fish's head.
That day I became completely vegetarian and from that day on I felt much lighter and happier as vegetarian. Now I did not worry for the fish who had died but saw first hand the suffering required to put meat on a plate. If everyone had to kill their meal and prepare the flesh then over 90 percent of people, maybe more, would be vegetarian.
After the Andaman Islands we spent somewhere over six weeks in a yoga Ashram. I had an experience similar to my 'tree' experience. I was lying in Dead Man's Pose and a Lion, no shit, roared in a nearby area. The experience I had was deeply moving.
We had some more weeks moving up India to a very hot and rocky place and here I became quite ill. I have always been a slim build, India and switching vegetarian and the lower need to eat in a hot climate and so on had made me much slimmer. I got ill and barely ate a thing for over two weeks. I ate bits and they came back, I could hardly stomach water. I obviously took enough as to not die but I was sick and weak for all of this time. [It was a year until my body was close to normal again].
On Om beach one night after a couple of days hard travel to get there, very week, very tired. Very malnourished – I died.
The Death Experience.
This experience was a build up of the above, it was steered by the places I was in, the books I was reading, the journey I was on, certainly the Illness and certainly this: I took a large dose of liquid LSD that day.
Sick as I was I walked with my two friends to a house where a man was said to have acid. We spoke to him, payed him a small amount of cash. He dripped a dose of liquid LSD onto our hands and, even though it was absorbed into the skin we licked our hands to be sure of intake.
After that I was in the sea, after that I was walking on the beach, the daylight sky above was multicoloured, after that I was on my back, in the sand and the stars in the night sky where in crystal refracted 3D. I could reach and touch them. The sky itself took on unseen forms and – for sure this was an LSD trip, hours and hours passed. From an early morning dose to late at night were compressed into the previous couple of sentences.
My weakened body melted with the sand and I tripped on Om beach.
At some point I was tripping. At some point I was unconscious, at some point asleep, at some point – I had a unique experience that was death – this was not LSD. I have to ask you to put aside natural presumptions that would have you say that the experience was a 'trip' as: As I was the experiencer, I was and am able to differentiate, so much so that I had both on the same night, back to back and they were unique- the Death experience much deeper, much more real, much more long lasting.It came after the LSD trip had been wearing off for a time, when my weak body was back to realizing its suffering, when tiredness and weakness took over again,
[Strangely (or was it), as sick as I was, that is terribly so, for the two weeks before this event – I woke the next day, completely healthy, full appetite, and with all of my energy replenished.]
At some point that night I knew, for sure, I was dying, I knew when I was close to death, I knew the point I had accepted death, I knew, for certain, as with all of these stages, each one, what they were and what they meant. I knew when I was dead.
The bliss and completeness were un-put-into-wordable and I have accepted that now years on. The experience is with me now but language does not exist to paint it and nor can I find how to begin.
I tried on several occasions to write notes on “The Answers” that I was presented with on that night and I met responses of complete mystification or negativity whenever I tried to pass on these truths that had been unveiled to me that night.
I stopped trying to attempt to pass them on.
The basics of the truths that were clearly made to me that night are that: All is this, one, perfect. Life and death are nothing but ideas. The idea of separate self is an idea. We are like nodes of a complete net and each node is the whole net but for this experience only sees as far as the next few nodes – beyond that is mystery, yet beyond that is infinity and if anything is infinite, it is also you. You're infinite, you are me as I am you as we are one. The one.
Life and death are not separate but one action. The “universe” the “infinite” whatever you call it, is living, it has beings. These beings come and go, but their coming and going are not life or death. An infinite number beings have been born and will be born. An Infinite number of beings have died and will die. Yet in all of this living and dying, the infinite had no beginning and will have no end. And that infinite, is you.
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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao
