Due to private reasons I’m reading a lot lately about the nature of reality, what happens after death, etc.
Currently reading a book by a scientist about near dead experiences. I wonder if anyone here has ever experienced one, and if yes, did it have any resemblance with a lucid dream?
I ask this, because reading the experiences remind me of some profound LDs I had, but I never had a NDE (not that I recall, I might have had one when I was a baby if 6 weeks but no conscious memory of that)
I have never been close to death (knock on wood) but my late uncle was.
He suffered from something called cluster headache, which causes extreme pain, and experimented with more or less legitimate drugs in hope of relief from it. One of those experimental treatments went wrong and he was rushed to hospital with very low blood pressure. His heart stopped and he was revived with CPR.
What he described was two things: Complete peace, and extreme clarity.
When he stopped feeling his own body, he felt peace of a kind that was impossible to describe. Everything was OK. He said he could feel the love of his family and even the ones who had lived before him. It was like being at home. He didn’t want to leave this state.
He could also remember his life in vivid detail, all the way from childhood, in a way that wasn’t linked to time. This was difficult for him to describe in words and probably impossible for me to retell without having experienced it myself.
He has since passed away. I believe that he has found this peace now. He did mention lucid dreams while he lived, but they were more of a “I’m watching this, this isn’t real, this is harmless” type.
My grandfather had a heart attack and was clinically dead but successfully revived. Later, when we asked him if he felt or saw anything during that time, he said that there was “absolutely nothing, just blackness”, and then he was back.
My boyfriend has had several surgeries, and he told me of an experience that is more OBE than NDE, but it’s interesting. He was telling me what a horrible experience a total anesthesia was for him, and he said he remembered suddenly hearing a high-pitched sound, and the muffled voice of a woman telling him he needs to “come back”. Then his perspective changed and he could see his body on the operating table, and remembers in detail who was there and what they did. He says he described it all later to his doctor and his mother, but they dismissed it.
I also met a woman who claimed she was a psychic, and she said she got her abilities after a NDE. She was in a car crash, and suddenly she was looking at a dreamlike meadow filled with flowers, a city of white marble in the distance. She said that someone – an angel she says – approached her and told her it was not her time yet, and that she needed to go back. Maybe this one is the closest to a LD. She was a very sweet old lady and she seemed honest enough.
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As for her “predictions”, she told me that I’d eventually give up tasseography (back then, people were dragging me to their friends’ houses, and then their friends’ friends, which is how I met her) but find other ways to help people. I rarely use any sort of divination these days, but we’ll see if she turns out to be right about the other part.
On a side note, I haven’t had a NDE, but in my own dreams, both lucid and regular, I’ve sometimes had “boundaries”, a portal or a line for which I was told (or sometimes just heard a voice in my head) that crossing them would lead to a final death.
That’s really interesting Siiw. Calm, euphoric state…probably has some change in brain chemistry during a situation like that? Interested in hearing more near death experiences.
I haven’t had one myself. Closest I’ve been was probably when I was a kid and fell from a tree with my back hitting a root. All my muscles tensed up, I couldn’t move or breathe for a solid minute. In my mind I was screaming BREATHE and that’s all I focused on. Being a kid, fear of death was present, but I was probably not even close.
I am also interested if there is anyone with NDE experience (mainly flight through tunnel, light, boundary, seeing own body from above).
± 1.5 year ago I was reading books about NDE. I did not understand what people mean with tunnel, light experience, in fact most of these things are not imaginable if you did not experience them. One night, after reading such book I had a dream. I simply knew I was dreaming. I was looking at me, lying on the floor (real past experience). Then there was a tunnel, or say flight through chimney … very intense experience, I almost forgot this is just a dream during the “flight”. Then light “turned on” (not bright like in “light experience”) and then scenery of medieval castle, all imaginary, nice LD, I was able to walk there, look at bricks, etc.
After some experiments in the LD I thought about the tunnel experience, it perfectly matched description in NDE books. I thought about having that experience one more time … and BOOOM ! Again in the tunnel, again very intense, I ended up in a war time, following a group of people walking long way (many of them injured, my feelings were sad for them). I lost lucidity there, but then gained it later again and woke up to make notes.
This was one of most interesting experiences I had during sleep (there are more, one of them - similar to NDE - is light experience with feelings of acceptance from “the light”).
So I would be VERY interested to talk to someone with NDE to compare details…
