A refreshingly honest perspective on death and suicide from a suicidal NDEr

I encountered the follow gem from a guy on the sub-reddit r/SanctionedSuicide, and I'm just going to copy-paste most of his posts here into a single coherent text divided into four parts:

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What if death is better than living a life filled with hardship?

From my observation, we are living on a planet that has created great confusion about the death process. From the moment we are born, we are indoctrinated by institutions and society into accepting viewpoints that sell death as something to be avoided.

For example, scholarly history portrays the ancient human as someone that lived in caves and had to fight wild beasts for survival, claiming that this instinct for survival is the base of who we are. Psychology then uses these "instincts" to explain human behavior, giving them weight and acceptance as a concept.

In religion, the [catholic] church portrays death as the ultimate judgment, and spreads fear that if you commit suicide, you will be cast to hell for eternity (claiming that suicide is "a wasted gift from god"). In historic-Europe, if you committed suicide you would be excommunicated from the church and not given a catholic burial. Besides labeling the act as wasteful and cowardice, it would also bring great shame to the surviving family (further stigmatizing suicide in society).

In criminal law, assisting anyone with suicide is illegal. In many regions, even attempting suicide yourself is illegal (if you survive), punishable by imprisonment or confinement to a mental ward.

The obsession with life is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche, that from my observations, the resulting side-effect is that millions/billions of people are willing to live in sub-human conditions consisting of: severe poverty and financial slavery; chronic bodily pain and mental anguish; complete social isolation from community; missing limbs or bodily function. Humans are willing to live under these excruciating conditions because they believe there is more value in being alive, even under extreme pain and suffering, than going through the death process.

Why is it like this?


I think it makes simple logical sense that a person who is destitute should be free to escape the suffering and torture of "the human experience". For example, an uninsured low-income earner who walks away from a USA hospital with $120,000 in debt. With no access to higher education or better paying jobs, that person is forced to work the entirety of their remaining life to settle that debt. Never will they have a penny to enjoy being alive. So not only do they have extremely limited prospects of enjoying the planet, but their future has already been set in stone, and now they are nothing more than a debt slave.

How does a person handle such a situation? Depends on what they believe happens in death. If they believe that death is a ceasing of existence, or worse, eternal torture -- they would be more inclined to stay alive and learn to cope with the hopelessness, debt-slavery conditions, and lack of meaningful experiences.

On the other hand, if they believe that death is a liberation from all pain, or even better, an experience of peaceful eternal bliss -- they would be much more willing to "throw in the towel" and commit suicide.

Who benefits from either case?


It seems quite obvious that confusion about death benefits the parasites, including governments and "royal" families, that have profiteering interests. At the top of those organizations are a handful of families, enjoying lavish and effortless lifestyles, that pass on the accrued wealth from generation-to-generation, ensuring that all worldly power remains in the hands of a few people.

For example, we have federal governments that see humans as a commodity. Each human is a taxpayer, or a battery as "The Matrix" puts it, that can be used to fuel the GDP pipeline. Whenever a person commits suicide, that is one less taxpayer to profit the local economy. So it's in the interest of governments to ensure that people fear suicide, and more than that, the ones who are suicidal are coaxed into staying alive. And more than that, that these people are coaxed into getting back to work (through the use of "mental health" facilitators like psychologists, psychiatrists, and pharmaceutical companies).

There are the medical systems that profits from suicidal candidates being referred for "treatment". Hospitals make money from emergency patients being brought in by police from a suicide attempt. Later these patients are transferred to a "mental health" wing that profits from routine appointments with a psychologist/psychiatrist, charging an average of $300 per hour. Further we have the pharmaceutical companies which are pushing suicide as a "depression" and "chemical imbalance" that should be medicated. If you refuse to believe that your desire to kill yourself is a "chemical imbalance", they even have the power to incarcerate you to an expensive but ugly hotel called the "mental ward". So we have plenty of behemoth organizations in the medical pipeline, well connected with politicians and universities, that are profiteering from suicidal people. And in many of these cases, the candidates are not insured so the state is left footing the bill. So care for people with the "suicidal disease" ends up at the taxpayer, which translates into a guaranteed income for these huge organizations. Corporate parasitism in its ultimate form.

We have religious institutions that not only rely on church-goers for donations, but they also actively recruit new members by targeting the destitute population. Churches host a day each week dedicated to "feeding the homeless", which gives them an opportunity to spread their message to new candidates. Church organizations will go so far as to appear around the sites of tragic accident, like a bombing, to distribute informational pamphlets that take advantage of the candidate's vulnerable state to trick them into fear-based religious beliefs, including fear of suicide (and in many religions, the aspect of "divine judgment" creates a fear of natural death too).

Then we have public schools that work hand-in-hand with politicians to indoctrinate children into politically and socially correct views while the children are most vulnerable -- young, inexperienced, unable to use simple logic, and powerless to defend themselves when in front of an authority figure -- ingraining ideas and beliefs on minds that are ripe and easy to manipulate. This includes references made by the authority figure between learning activities, in reference to political and world news, as a time to sell the children on ideas about the necessity for war, how to spot a "terrorist", and of course the answer to "what happens when we die?" As well, this is a good time for the authority figure to sell children on the idea that humans have historically been driven to survive, from the time we were fighting wild-beasts and living in caves. So above all else, "you MUST survive! Do you homework, graduate from university, get a job, PAY YOUR TAXES! And if you want to kill yourself because you think all of this is pointless, go see a doctor, so we can string your brain through the medical machine. Hopefully we confuse you so much that you forget you have the desire to kill yourself."

What elements allow for this to happen?


From my observations, it seems like FEAR and CONFUSION are the elements used to trap the human in this life of servitude.

Fear of death casts doubt in the suicidal person, and that doubt is enough to stop them from going through with the action. It's important for the survival of these systems that the candidates are ingrained at an early age, long before they start being suicidal. And then it is also important that these ingrained ideas are activated on a routine basis, with each activation making them more real and dominant.

For example, that could be something as simple as "the system" publishing a TV show or Movie where the main character deals with suicidal thought, and the movie ends on a "positive" concept (positive in terms of the goal), like "survival above all else"; perhaps selling ideas of luck and perseverance to create a sense of hope for the viewer.

Or on a grander scale, it could include a government-staged bombing on its own people, like a 9/11-type event, where the death of mass casualties has viewers questioning their own mortality, leaving them in a vulnerable state for a government official to push a belief (ie. "We will make you safe! Just please don't pay attention to the fact that we are taking away your right to privacy as we speak... Anyone who questions our authority is a terrorist, so DON'T - BE - A - TERRORIST!")
 
The other element is CONFUSION. The institutions will attempt to mask your suicidal urge by "shoveling on" levels of logical complexity, in an effort to bury your urge under a web of logic. The more complex they can make the idea of suicide, the less likely you are able to unravel the web and return to your root urge of "ending it all". This could include group or individual "therapy" where every thought of yours will be broken-down, analyzed, questioned, and processed through an "acceptable" filter of perception (acceptable as determined by the "educational" institutions). To further the idea that you're "making progress", you will simultaneously consume pharmaceutical medication that will target the "chemical imbalance" in your brain (cough placebo cough), so your new sense of progress (aka. that woozy feeling of being confused stemming from the fact that you're being tricked to deny your senses), has a physically identifiable reason (the pill) that will justify your improvement to be able to function better at work so that you can pay your taxes. So please continue paying our parasitic company for our expensive placebo, and don't forget to PAY - YOUR - TAXES!

We also see CONFUSION at play in the educational institutions, where your desire to kill yourself is discredited as an uneducated response. "Surely, if you had studied philosophy from the best thinkers of all time, if you had studied psychology to build an understanding of YOUR MIND, you wouldn't be thinking such foolish things!" The psychologist or psychiatrist, with his years of education, will try to convince you that he is more qualified to decide on your behalf the question, "is my life worth living", more qualified than you are... as he retreats to his mansion in the hills, and you return homeless to sleeping underneath a bridge (...but good luck getting any sleep as you're constantly harassed by police and junkies).

Understanding the urge

It seems to me that beyond the systems of indoctrination that we face since birth, there's always a part of us that is just beyond all the stupidity and cannot be tricked into submission. I would call that our intuition. Even as children in the moment of being terrorized by authority figures (who terrorize us instead of respecting us as equal beings), we feel our own willpower supersede all attempts at indoctrination. We have this innate understanding that we have free will, and that no one can WILL us into another decision, unless we ourselves give them permission to act on our behalf. Through all the screaming and arguing, you always have the right to choose your own destiny.

What do I stand to gain?

If I was to no longer fear death, and I was no longer confused about my urge to kill myself, I would be able to access unimaginable freedom. Because no longer would I need to worry about paying the bills, working like a dog, allowing people in authority to punish me. If life would ever become so unbearable that there wasn't a shred of happiness or hope to keep me going, I would be able to leave of my own volition. I would be free from the many types of torture that this planet is capable of applying. I would have no commitments to this world that would stop me from exercising my right to death; I would only be here on a temporary trip to have whatever good experiences were available to me, and when all those options are depleted, I would leave like I would leave any other attraction after closing time.

Imagine that you are a consciousness-based being, hopping between worlds and bodies, as easy as it is for you to go to sleep and dream. And with each dream, you access a new world of experiences and constraints. In some cases, you become aware during the dream that you are sleeping, so this gives you great power to mess around with the constraints and really have fun with it. At other times, you were in the middle of a painful nightmare, and upon becoming aware that you are sleeping, you immediately opt to wake-up. When you awake, the pain disappears instantly, and you re-emerge into your "true" form (the sleeper in the bed, not the character in the dream).

So if you are this consciousness-based being, would you enter a new realm, if in the case of being launched into a nightmare, you didn't have the right to wake-up? As-if accepting to be born into this realm obligated you to live until you "naturally died". To me it seems a tad silly to obligate people to live through a nightmare. In fact, I don't think a free-will being would ever choose to enter a world where the right to wake-up wasn't guaranteed. I would think that such a being would prefer to put his inter-dimensional journeys on hold until conditions improved a little bit. Personally, I just can't see any logical reason for allowing myself to be needlessly tortured.

My personal story

I had a rough start to my earthly existence. The childhood experience was extremely unsafe, full of suffering, living in poverty, insufficient levels of love and happiness to keep me going. However, I was always a very strong-willed child. My parents were very indoctrinated into the institutionalized systems, including catholicism. This just created a further rift where my freedom was being challenged at every level of my being, but beyond all the repercussions, I was able to maintain a strong connection to my intuition.

Regardless of my strong intuitive guidance, living in complete opposite to the institutionally accepted beliefs and values is a life of constant struggle. It's much easier to accept the indoctrination and live within the system, then it is to stick to your moral compass. Because if you have to challenge the system, you are an individual fighting an army of sheep and authority-figure actors, so it's a constant battle just to survive. And being a human you are limited by the financial systems, where you have to act within them to maintain any stream of food or shelter. So you have to live on this planet integrated as a part of it, as a person that disagrees with every fundamental belief, including the most basic -- that each person should have the right to death at own volition. It's a life full of struggle and very little reward, if you could imagine.

So by the time I was 16 I really wanted to die. I had enough of the torture and I just didn't see any hope for conditions to improve. At this point I had completely broken free from the catholic indoctrination for about 3 years, but there was still the doubt at the back of my mind that -- if I kill myself it may result in eternal damnation. So this idea kept me from going through with the suicide.

Then I had an experience that changed everything. The instant I "came-to" I wrote everything down to be sure I would never forget the details.

It was a Saturday morning where I could see the light coming through the window in my room, and I could hear my siblings were already awake watching TV in the living room below. I had what appeared as "sleep paralysis", my eyes were open but I couldn't move. It started to freak me out, so I wanted to scream for help, but couldn't. I wanted to bang on the floor, but I couldn't move my arms. I was panicking. But then my heart stopped beating, and I just knew "THIS IS IT!" When you're about to die, there is no doubt, you just intuitively know. It's like you're being called/summoned from the other side.

Next followed suffocation. With the heart and lungs no longer functioning, I could feel the oxygen completely cut off. Couldn't breath. At this point I remember from my religious indoctrination that "if you accept Jesus on your deathbed, you can still get into heaven." So at this point I'm like "YES, YES, JESUS, I'LL OPT-IN ON THAT!" Moments later everything around me turned into white light and I was traveling through a tunnel. I could feel myself being squeezed, almost as-if I was moving through a tight-straw. It was shown to me (I understood) that my body was heavy and dense, and that I would have to leave it behind. So this squeezing experience is one where only the "light" part of you gets sucked through.

Appearing on the other side, I find myself overlooking earth from space. Not sure if that's where I was; if anything, it's how I conceptualized the idea of heaven (being above earth, somewhere out there in space), so this concept was used to illustrate my position in the ethereal world. Most noticeably, I feel incredibly light and calm. All the burdens of the world got left behind with the body, and all that is left of me is the calm thinker. I feel I am in a place of incredible love and happiness. Being here feels so good, it energizes my soul just being present, after all those years of sadness and despair on the planet it's a huge difference.

A voice speaks to me. Not sure where it's coming from, somewhere off there in space I suppose. I recognize the voice instantly as my guide. The voice speaks with great wisdom, and I feel he has more insight than I do. As the voice speaks, it is not through sound, it is through thought-blocks. We are somehow connected, and as he sends the thought-block, I understand it in its entirety. It is an understanding that goes beyond words, includes everything like memories, emotions, and concepts. As soon as the voice speaks, I instantly recognize and understand everything that is being said.
 
Starts off by telling me that the voice (and others present) have been watching and are fully aware I want to kill myself. This thought-block unravels layer-by-layer instantly in a split second, just experiencing this communication through thought-blocks was remarkable in itself. But I see that they have been observing me living in great pain and anguish. They see I haven't had any happy in my life. And they also see I've been confused about suicide and "eternal damnation" and all the crap.

So they showered me with love, just a cloud of pure love, and it felt like my core self was bathing-away all the earthly nastiness in that love. And instantly I knew that there was absolutely no judgment. I knew that they fully understood the pain that was my life, and they loved me so much, they would never want me to be tortured. They showed me that -- yes, I'm allowed to kill myself; and when I do, I don't have to justify my actions, because they already understand. They showed me there would be no judgment, because there is only complete understanding. And with complete understanding of the person -- mind, emotions, memories -- there is nothing to explain.

Next, the voice asked me, "Do you want to go back?" It was perfectly clear that this decision was up to me, I wouldn't be forced to live if I didn't want to continue.

As that thought-block unraveled, I could see that I chose to be born in the first place. I remembered the memory I had before I was born -- I was looking down on planet earth from this ethereal place, and I actually had other ethereal friends too, and we joked about how the people on earth were so forgetful. I could see the people running around on earth, busy with their lives, but many of them living very sad unfulfilled lives. But they were so caught up with life, they forgot who they are at the core (ethereal beings too), as a result living without freedom. We laughed because the beings that got born in always said the same thing, "I will remember who I am, I won't let the world make me forget." But by the time they were about 10 years old, almost all of them were so heavily indoctrinated by the world, that by age 10 they had completely forgotten the truth. We laughed at how some gave up sooner than others. I don't know, you had to be there to get it. Playful teasing.

So as I was joking with my buddies, I felt ready to go back (in my previous life, I had died in a world war with a bullet to the head). I told them "I will go in there and I will remember who I am. And then I will remind others who have forgotten about the truth as well, so that they too can be free." But here I was, 16 years old, and the world had beat me down so much that this is where I found myself again.

So when the voice asked me, "Do you want to go back?", I instantly remembered this memory that I had before birth and of the intention I had set. And in that instant I felt that there was more I wanted to experience, I felt incomplete, and so I entertained the idea of going back. Not just to fulfill my mission, but at the time I was also a virgin, and I really didn't want to die before seeing what all the fuss was about.

I told the voice I would go back under two conditions. The first being that I would be allowed to remember our conversation. It was important for me to take this memory with me so that I wouldn't fall back into the confusion of the system. In that moment I remembered that in fact, I had several experiences like this one before, when I was younger -- at least 2 or 3 occurrences at different ages where I was pulled out of the body and consulted my guide. Each time I would be so excited at remembering of this place of pure love, saying "the moment I go back, I will tell all my friends and family, this is so exciting they just have to know!" But the moment I wake up, I would sense that urgency to tell them all of something important, but what? I would no longer remember. Each time I was sent back, they blocked the memory from being accessible. So this time I said I'm not up for it anymore. Either they allow me to keep the memory, or I'm not a willing participant.

The second condition was that I never wanted to work. The whole experience of working looked so dull and lifeless, I just told them straight, I'm not going to be doing that. And I'm tired of being poor, so you better get me some money.

So they agreed to my conditions (at least the first one, I don't know whatever happened to that second one). I woke up instantly after that, mind completely blown. I rushed to my computer and quickly wrote down all the details from our conversation. I still have the original file from my computer. That was 11 years ago.

After I finished writing down all the details, I walked downstairs to the living room. My sister was there watching TV and I told her, "You didn't hear me knocking on the floor or screaming?" And she didn't hear such a thing. So I told her, "Well, I just died in my sleep, heart stopped beating, and I was sucked through to the other realm where I met with my guide, and basically granted me permission to kill myself." As I told her the other details she was blown-away to say the least.

In the 11 years since then, I have looked through a lot of spiritual material to make sense of my experience. Up to that point the only exposure I had was to catholicism. I find that "Abraham Hicks" teachings are the closest representation of what is really going on "behind the curtain". I'm pretty sure that life is not "a test", it's also not a limbo where you are forced into life to have a "learning experience". We only come here to have some fun, because there are experiences you can have in the physical world that are not available in the ethereal world.

But at no point was that supposed to turn to a subscription for "the boring club", where every day you are bored out of your mind, or "the torture club", where every day is pain and suffering. If you're not having fun, you have the right to leave.

I'm not the only one

There are other people like me too. If you search for "near death experience" on Google and YouTube, you will find many similarities between our experiences. For example, similarities you can expect: 1) was pulled out of the "heavy/dense" human body and taken to a place that felt weightless; 2) was in a place of pure love (or joy or bliss); 3) spoke with a voice who asked, "Do you want to go back?"; 4) being in this place of pure love felt so good, that it was hard to agree to go back, but decided to go back because "felt there was something more I needed to complete".

Having observed the systems and institutions on this planet, I personally fear that the full potential of this world is being held back because of this confusion about death. I feel that if everyone knew about "the truth", as well I know about it, I feel that would begin a schizm where the masses would stop putting up with the bullshit of the powerful few. It starts with a nice quick "fuck you" to the boss, a big finger to the politicians, a "suck my dick" the the police officers. These systems are not worth preserving. They spread lies/confusion and turn human beings into soul-less cogs. War, mutilation, torture, terrorism, poverty, feminine, homelessness, disease, greed, rape -- this is not what the human experience was meant to be.

And I think the starting point to change is to recognize that -- we as consciousness-based beings are so FREE that we have the "right to death", the ultimate escape from pain, slavery, and torture -- and we can activate this right in the case that this planet does not give us the happiness and love that we deserve.
 
[...]

Absolutely. Earth is the scariest roller-coaster in the theme park. The most difficult level of the video game. BUT, I think by the time you get into suicidal intention and/or planning (which is one step beyond just suicidal thought), I think that is a clear indication that you are ready to opt-out of the nightmare experience.

It's like a grandmother going into the "haunted house" at the theme park. She's so freaked out within the first few steps she feels like she's going to have a heart-attack. So she tells the children "you kids run ahead, since you seem to be having fun, but I'll just head back to the entrance and meet you outside."

[...]

Why would someone come here just to suicide out after a short time?

It was fun at first, like getting on the scariest roller-coaster at the theme park. But eventually it became more than you could handle, and all you wanted to do is vomit from the nausea. Well you're lucky, because this is a special roller-coaster where you don't have to wait until the ride ends before getting off.

Without taking into account that once you're here, you have no memories and you've most likely been indoctrinated to see suicide as deserving of hell.

We always have intuition guiding us. So no matter how indoctrinated we become, there's always a part of us that knows "this just doesn't feel right." Indoctrinated people have learned to ignore the voice, but it's always there. They start to call it their "conscience", because by that point in life, they're so "out there" with all the ridiculous beliefs they're holding onto, that the intuition actually looks like something foreign/external to them.

And then there are near-death experiences. In my experience, I know I was pulled out several times before they allowed me to keep one of the memories. So I would presume that everyone is having these experiences where they consult with a guide, but for one reason or another, the memory was covered-up. There is the possibility that not everyone is meant to see "behind the curtain", because it would take away from an immersive physical experience.

And let's be honest here, not everyone needs to know. Some people have a good human life. They have money, a loving family, they're having fun. Those people don't need to be shown "behind the curtain". It would take away from some of the fun.

On the other hand, there are people who have had enough of the human experience and they want to die. And to keep the truth from these people is only furthering their torture. So to have laws that prohibit the right to death, and institutions that create fear in these already vulnerable people, that is something that needs to change.

[...]

But you're right, life isn't nearly as delicious as death. So that feeling we all had when we were in school, one night before the essay is due for class and we haven't even started, and we get the thought "man, would be so much easier just to kill myself." Yes, that is completely accurate, death would be far, far, far more enjoyable than writing a pointless essay. Death would be an experience of freedom, liberation, and joy. While writing an essay is submissive to an authority figure, fearful of the future (grades and consequences), fearful that if you don't go to university you won't be able to have the good life that you deserve. So even in an experience like that, your intuition was showing you that school was bullshit, and this isn't the life experience that you signed-up for.

There's a reason why suicide is so popular in the teenage years. That is the time where parents are pushing the child out the door to fend for himself in a terrible world. And for many of them, it's just a matter of not wanting to deal with all of that bullshit. The resources aren't there to secure a safe life environment anymore, so the teenagers choose to opt-out. When I was 16 is also when I first dabbled with my interest in suicide.

[...]

If anything, alcohol and drugs are a tool that was planted here for humans to be able to reconnect and remember their true nature, allowing them to liberate from deceit and servitude.

[...]

That “full potential” you're talking about, that's a fantasy.

No, it's a reality. When you're "dead", you experience eternal immense happiness. If this pain, anguish, and servitude is all that this world has to offer, it only makes sense that suicide should become more popular in the coming years.

The truth is this universe is so shitty that people will do everything they can to suppress it.

No, only this planet is shitty. The rest of the existence is actually pretty good. The cover-up is only to make this hellish life on earth seem like it is something worth maintaining. And the longer we allow this lie to persist, that death is a horrible experience, the longer we spend living on a planet that is not worth our attention or presence.

***

What are your thoughts on his lines of reasoning and what he was shown? I thoroughly agree with him (although not the part about prescription pills being placebo, but that's a minor detail).
 
This guy is not an NDEr. NDErs don't generally come back expecting to win the lottery or meet girls as a reward for coming back. Let's face it, the reported bliss of that existence is far greater than that of sex. Sounds like a kid too afraid to move out of mom's basement. NDEr's tend to want to engage in life when they return, not hide from it.
 
This guy is not an NDEr. NDErs don't generally come back expecting to win the lottery or meet girls as a reward for coming back.

It wasn't a reward, it was just something he wanted to experience. And who said anything about the lottery? He just didn't want to work, which is more than understandable.

Let's face it, the reported bliss of that existence is far greater than that of sex.

Where does he deny that?

Sounds like a kid too afraid to move out of mom's basement. NDEr's tend to want to engage in life when they return, not hide from it.

Tend to, yes. There are many exceptions. See for instance Peter Fenwick's reply to that reasoning of Alex here:

***

Alex: Let me interject, Dr. Fenwick, because I would question whether you really even believe that. I think the implications for survival of consciousness are so vast and so widespread – and let’s take it out of the medical profession, move it into psychology. Certainly, and my wife is a psychologist, but every aspect, every area of psychology is turned upside down if you have this different view of consciousness and survival of consciousness. I’d take it one step further and I was mentioning to you before that I had a very interesting interview with a gentleman, Dr. David Lester, who’s not only one of the leading authorities on suicide and is on all these boards and whatnot but is also the author this book Is There Life After Death.

This goes to my point that I don’t think we can explain it just from what the practical applications of it are because here’s a guy who’s investigating suicide on one hand, he’s investigating and writing a book on is there life after death. There’s just this lack of scholarship that’s kind of dumbfounding.

If I can, let me play for you a clip. Can I play this clip for you?

Peter: Yes. I’d be interested to listen to it.

(Start of interview with Dr. David Lester)

Alex: What do you make of the fact that in Dr. Bruce Greyson’s research people who have attempted suicide, had failed, and have had a near-death experience are dramatically less likely to try suicide again and that they tell them that I’m not afraid of death and I want to live and all these other things?

David: I’m not sure what to make of that, even to speculate. It actually doesn’t really make sense to me that those who attempted suicide and have a near-death experience don’t feel suicidal afterwards. I would expect that if the experience is that pleasant they might be more prone.

Alex: But that’s not what the data shows.

David: I know, so it’s counterintuitive to me. When you me why do you think it might happen is like I really don’t know because I would have thought the opposite would happen.

(End of interview with Dr. David Lester)

Alex: Okay, so a nice enough guy and we had this chat but I just have run across this so many times. Here is a guy who’s in a position, he’s one of our authorities. He’s in the position of being a scientific authority. How can there be this disconnect? How can there be this lack of scholarship to just be so disconnected from the research?

Peter: I think there are several points there. The first point is he’s right. He’s right in the sense that some suicide patients, if they have a near-death experience want to get back to that place again. I’ve had referred to me one or two people who set out to commit suicide again because it was such a nice experience. This world, beside the NDE world, looked very tawdry and non-inviting. There was one patient who we had to have in hospital for over a year while she came to terms with the fact that it was a near-death experience and she had to get on with her life. I can think of another person who after his near-death experience would sit in his chair all day just saying that he wanted to die to get back to where he’d been. [Emphasis added]

But that is not the general feeling. The general feeling is that you lose your fear of death and you’re less likely to commit suicide. But Bruce Greyson has done some work on the accounts of spirituality after near-death experiences. But he’s also looked at those people who’ve had a very close brush with death. For example, cardiac arrests without near-death experience and they share the same thing but not to the same extent.

So if you look to this people who are very close to death do get a change in attitude. They do become more spiritual in the wider sense of the world, although those who have a near-death experience become more spiritual and have a much greater understanding of life than they did before the near-death experience.

***

So there are a few NDErs who have a real hard time accepting this world after coming back, in light of the light, so to speak.
 
This guy is not an NDEr. NDErs don't generally come back expecting to win the lottery or meet girls as a reward for coming back. Let's face it, the reported bliss of that existence is far greater than that of sex. Sounds like a kid too afraid to move out of mom's basement. NDEr's tend to want to engage in life when they return, not hide from it.

Well, tantra yoga and sex magick tend to combine sexual ecstasy with spiritual bliss, transforming the former into the latter. No inner contradiction here.
 
Well, tantra yoga and sex magick tend to combine sexual ecstasy with spiritual bliss, transforming the former into the latter. No inner contradiction here.
Why would someone experiencing that total bliss and BIG LOVE of an NDE feel the need to return to life just to experience the faint shadow of that experience? That's why I question this account. It sounds more like the rantings of a disillusioned kid than the experience of an NDEr. I'm not suggesting that NDErs don't have difficulty integrating their experiences in order to live their lives after their NDEs. They often do have difficulties afterwards. That's why so many researchers look at the after-effects of NDEs and other STEs. But nothing in this account suggests an actual STE.
 
From the moment we are born, we are indoctrinated by institutions and society into accepting viewpoints that sell death as something to be avoided.
I agree with this, and often share those feelings of revolt about it.
No, only this planet is shitty. The rest of the existence is actually pretty good. The cover-up is only to make this hellish life on earth seem like it is something worth maintaining. And the longer we allow this lie to persist, that death is a horrible experience, the longer we spend living on a planet that is not worth our attention or presence.
This, however, is a claim that isn't corroborated by most NDEs or STEs. In fact the opposite is often stated. If this planet is not worth our attention or presence, why did we choose to incarnate here? Surely it has at the very least the value of a "school" (as in "of hard knocks").
 
Interesting stuff Hjorton. I think a lot of times we try to reassure ourselves that things are better on the other side, and a lot of NDErs maintain this so it's definitely grounded in experience...

But there seems to be at least a few times when people have had darker experiences, and the psychedelic experiences suggest the possibility of positive but also highly negative realities.

Suicides, from what I recall, seem particularly vulnerable to negative experiences. There was that story from the physicist who believed in these other realms, and in an OBE he ended up at what he seemed to think was a pocket dimension reserved for the souls of suicides. It seemed they had developed a certain parasitic madness, existing in an idyllic setting to trap unwary travelers. Maybe it was all a dream, but it did seem a particularly disturbing place to end up.

Now this isn't to say suicide is a sin, or that every suicide ends up in a bad place, or that the right to die is completely invalidated....but I would think some caution might be warranted in light of such possibilities.
 
Addendum: Here's Fred Alan Wolf's account of what he claims is the "astral plane of suicides" - I posted it in the Accounts from Other Realities thread as he goes into some other stuff of interest. Of course this might all be creative lucid dreams rather than genuine encounters, though Wolf doesn't believe this to be the case.

Suddenly I realized where I was and announced to myself, i.e., thought to myself, I was on the astral plane of suicides. These people had committed suicide on earth and were waiting to reincarnate - to return to earth and be reborn. But there was a slight problem. In order for them to return they had to be acceptable to all the "normal" nonsuicidal souls they will share a body with. That is why they were here: to await humanity's decision.

Just then I noticed "her." She was sitting on the wall facing me and, gulp, she was looking directly at me and smiling. I heard her reply, "Oh, you know where you are? Who are you? Where do you come from?" She approached me in an overly friendly manner. I boasted, "Yes, I know where I am and I can return home any time I want to."

"You can, can you?" She asked with great interest as she came close to me. I was getting frightened. This was my first trip and I didn't know what danger I might be in by my just being there. Then I looked at her eyes. I don't quite know how to describe what I saw, but her eyes began to spin. They appeared to me as rotating pinwheels of spiraling colors. She was now too close for comfort. I knew then that I had to leave and I exercised the "leaving ritual," the only one I knew would get me out of there fast. I yelled bloody murder.
 
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Why would someone experiencing that total bliss and BIG LOVE of an NDE feel the need to return to life just to experience the faint shadow of that experience? That's why I question this account. It sounds more like the rantings of a disillusioned kid than the experience of an NDEr.

But he didn't say he needed to return to life for those experiences, he just wanted to see "what all the fuss was about". That doesn't mean that he thinks sex is in any way comparable to the love of the NDE realm, it's just that it's an obsession of humanity that he wanted to experience before feeling that he was done with earth life. But it could have been anything, like he hadn't tasted a pizza yet and wanted to try it, or raise a kid, or travel the world. He remembered having set intentions before birth, and he wanted to follow through with them, that's all.

nothing in this account suggests an actual STE.

Everything in this account suggests an actual STE. His view of the world is way more mature than most people's view is. I think you just have an axe to grind with some of his beliefs about society, and that's why you want to label him a rebellious teen so that you can dismiss him instead of taking him seriously. But calling a 27 year old a kid is a little bit ridiculous.

This, however, is a claim that isn't corroborated by most NDEs or STEs. In fact the opposite is often stated. If this planet is not worth our attention or presence, why did we choose to incarnate here? Surely it has at the very least the value of a "school" (as in "of hard knocks").

I agree. Not all NDErs get the whole purpose of life package incorporated into their experience, and he seems to have gotten the reason why we want to experience challenging things left out. But I do think he brings another perspective to the suffering. Let me elaborate.

I don't think we should avoid aiming towards a utopia just because suffering is part of why we came here. Because even if we do create a utopia here, a perfect society working in harmony, there will still be diseases, accidents and drama in our lives. That's something that will never ever go away anyway. So I don't think we have to worry about saving some of the suffering of this world, for there is no way to forever eradicate it. Coming to this planet, a lot of people are guaranteed at least some degree of hardship in one way or another. But even if we don't experience hardships on this planet once we reach a utopia, so what? If suffering isn't offered to us in this lifetime, then it isn't why we came here in the first place. I don't think it's something we have to worry about.

Just because we know that we chose to come here, in this age and into this society, does that mean we should just accept all the shitty things that society throws at us, or should we actually try to make it a better world anyway? It is a valid question, and I think he is going for the latter. If we all start realizing that there is a wonderful afterlife (instead of merely believing it, which is what religions do), and also realize that there's nothing wrong with killing ourselves to get there whenever we want, then we can make a change for the better in this world, collectively, very quickly. If all slaves or people forced into living in sup-optimal conditions start killing themselves as a protest against the needless suffering imposed by our contemporary society, things will have to change for the better. Don't you agree? Wouldn't such a society be forced to function a lot better? There would be no reason not to call bullshit whenever we see it ever again.

"Look, either we get real about this, or I'm out. Your call."

I think it sounds reasonable, and to be frank, unavoidable. We like to think that there's an afterlife on this forum, but few of us actually ponder what the consequences of such a conviction actually are. And this, I would assert, is one of them. As we realize that there's a paradise awaiting all of us around the corner of a ceased heartbeat, we'll also realize that we can get there whenever we want. As such, in such a world it stands to reason that people will start killing themselves when they're tired of their life. And why shouldn't they? When we are tired or bored of any other activity in life, we tend to quit on it and few people think that it's irrational to do. "Yeah, she got tired of playing soccer or bored working at her company, so she quit." I see no reason for why the same way of reasoning shouldn't apply to life as a whole as well.

Already now, 0,5-1% of all deaths are due to suicide, and this is in a world where people de facto believe that death is a neutral or bad thing. I think it's naive to assume that that number wouldn't skyrocket if everyone knew that death is the best thing that could ever happen to anyone. As one NDEr put it,

If I lived a billion years more, in my body or yours, there's not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as being dead. Nothing. - Dianne Morrissey

Interesting stuff Hjorton. I think a lot of times we try to reassure ourselves that things are better on the other side, and a lot of NDErs maintain this so it's definitely grounded in experience...

But there seems to be at least a few times when people have had darker experiences, and the psychedelic experiences suggest the possibility of positive but also highly negative realities.

Yes, really dark places can be explored with psychedelics if the set and setting isn't the best (and even still, in some cases).

In my observation, however, psychedelics aren't an instant portal to the afterlife. There are so many layers between this world and the afterlife, and so much to explore in between and in our own minds, that I don't think that they can be compared with NDEs. Yes, if you go in the right direction on a really, really heavy dose of the right psychedelics (mushrooms, DMT/Ayahuasca), you might experience aspects of the afterlife, but it's not something that happens on demand as far as I can tell. Might be wrong, though.

Suicides, from what I recall, seem particularly vulnerable to negative experiences. There was that story from the physicist who believed in these other realms, and in an OBE he ended up at what he seemed to think was a pocket dimension reserved for the souls of suicides. It seemed they had developed a certain parasitic madness, existing in an idyllic setting to trap unwary travelers. Maybe it was all a dream, but it did seem a particularly disturbing place to end up.

Now this isn't to say suicide is a sin, or that every suicide ends up in a bad place, or that the right to die is completely invalidated....but I would think some caution might be warranted in light of such possibilities.

Addendum: Here's Fred Alan Wolf's account of what he claims is the "astral plane of suicides" - I posted it in the Accounts from Other Realities thread as he goes into some other stuff of interest. Of course this might all be creative lucid dreams rather than genuine encounters, though Wolf doesn't believe this to be the case.

Well, this seems to be more of a dream rather than an actual visit to another place, and I've read many actual NDEs of suicides that instantly end up in the light anyway, no judgment or anything. And I think this dream that Wolf had fits with the cultural belief that suicide is something bad that has terrible consequences in the afterlife. That conviction goes deep in the collective psyche in this world. Just like our world is collectively fucked in the head when it comes to the issue of sex from centuries if not millennia of religious brain washing, so too we still see suicide as a sin for the same reason - it's ingrained in most people's minds. It's hard to shake something that has been believed for centuries by your society. The roots go fucking deep, man ;)

But let's think on it rationally. Why would a spirit world possibly have a problem with us committing suicide? I mean I've tried and tried, but I can't think of a single reason for why it should be regarded as a bad thing. "Oh, he didn't want to continue living this particular life and took actions to end it? DAMN HIM, PUNISH HIM HARD!!!!!!!" Huh? I mean, we have deep NDErs coming back and saying that murderers, rapists and even politicians are accepted unconditionally in the afterlife, as it's all just a role-playing exercise being here anyway, and we chose these roles in advance. And if we choose to come here, why can't we choose when we want to leave as well? If we don't want to grow and/or learn and/or play any more in a single lifetime, why should we be forced to? And isn't to think that our return ticked home is conditioned upon our performance here in any way to miss the whole point of unconditional love and acceptance? If we're unconditionally loved and accepted for who we are, eternally, then there couldn't be anything we could do wrong, ever.

And as I've said before - if there was even the slightest possibility that we might not end up back home again after an incarnation if we did X instead of Y during the lifetime, then who in their right mind would leave the afterlife, a place of infinite and eternal bliss and joy, for such a needless risk?
 
I don't think the spirit world necessarily has enforceable rules - why I don't think going to a place like the plane of suicides would be a punishment.

It might instead just be something that happens, perhaps due to variables we can't see from our vantage point. Think of people apparently reincarnated due to suffering violent deaths. These people seem bound to the material plane by trauma rather than choice. Similarly, it seems possible - if not plausible - to me that violence to one's self might yield similar repercussions.

Again, I'm not trying to argue that suicide is a sin, or that assisted suicide should be illegal in all cases. I'm just saying that if there is a spirit world, it's not clear there's simply the material world and the paradise of light that NDErs often see. With respect to psychedelic experiences I was thinking of Pinchbeck seeing a dark wasteland overrun by sorcerer cabals while on a drug (DXM if I recall). Admittedly that might just have been a hallucination based on too many D&D sessions, but various spiritual traditions seem to agree on spirits who want to prey on humanity as well as taboos that are less about morality and more about causal relations.
 
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Every decision we make has consequences. It seems reasonable to me that terminating a life, including our own, would have some repercussions, if we survive.
It has consequences for our family and friends... or even some stranger who finds the body... whether or not we survive. NDErs so often tell us that what really matters is how we treat one another in this life. Abandoning those closest to us is hardly without consequences.

Pamela Heath has written a fairly comprehensive book on suicide that covers a lot of these issues. She found that in cases of severe illness, that those who committed suicide were less likely to regret that choice. But in most other types of cases there were repercussions.

http://books.google.ca/books/about/Suicide.html?id=iDjT3_T5mmoC
 
Yes that's an excellent book. Very comprehensive IMHO. I suspect the consequences depend on the motive for suicide.
 
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http://www.mylastbreath.com/
Matthew Dovel has already died...twice! At the age of twelve he drowned in a neighbors swimming pool, went into a white light, came face to face with the creator of the universe, only to be sent back into his body.


Matthew Dovel confused, turned to alcohol and drugs and by the age of 25 had developed a thousand dollar a week drug habit. A few weeks after his 25 birthday he decided to commit suicide in an effort to return to what he says was heaven in his first near-death experience.


As a result of his attempted suicide he had a second near-death experience but, instead of a heavenly experience, he spent three days in hell...literally!


Upon his deliverance from the dark pit of hell, Mr. Dovel quit a $1,000.00 a week drug habit cold turkey, and then dedicated his life to helping suffering alcoholics, those that are addicted to drugs, the suicidal, and those that have lost a loved one to a suicide.
 
... I feel incredibly light and calm. All the burdens of the world got left behind with the body, and all that is left of me is the calm thinker. I feel I am in a place of incredible love and happiness. Being here feels so good, it energizes my soul just being present, after all those years of sadness and despair on the planet it's a huge difference.

A voice speaks to me. Not sure where it's coming from, somewhere off there in space I suppose. I recognize the voice instantly as my guide. The voice speaks with great wisdom, and I feel he has more insight than I do. As the voice speaks, it is not through sound, it is through thought-blocks. We are somehow connected, and as he sends the thought-block, I understand it in its entirety. It is an understanding that goes beyond words, includes everything like memories, emotions, and concepts. As soon as the voice speaks, I instantly recognize and understand everything that is being said.

Starts off by telling me that the voice (and others present) have been watching and are fully aware I want to kill myself. This thought-block unravels layer-by-layer instantly in a split second, just experiencing this communication through thought-blocks was remarkable in itself. But I see that they have been observing me living in great pain and anguish. They see I haven't had any happy in my life. And they also see I've been confused about suicide and "eternal damnation" and all the crap.

So they showered me with love, just a cloud of pure love, and it felt like my core self was bathing-away all the earthly nastiness in that love. And instantly I knew that there was absolutely no judgment. I knew that they fully understood the pain that was my life, and they loved me so much, they would never want me to be tortured. They showed me that -- yes, I'm allowed to kill myself; and when I do, I don't have to justify my actions, because they already understand. They showed me there would be no judgment, because there is only complete understanding. And with complete understanding of the person -- mind, emotions, memories -- there is nothing to explain.

The bit I've quoted above certainly sounds a lot like a classic STE to me, although the bit after goes a little off track for me - perhaps the bit after has been an unconscious attempt to later revision/rationalise the experience with their previous beliefs and feelings.

In my own childhood STE whilst asleep I certainly recalled similar ideas... it wasn't that I was forgiven... I was specifically made aware that all that had happened during my life on earth was simply unimportant, and all that mattered was my return. They just loved me, and were overjoyed to have me back, and the feelings were completely overwhelming - I awoke wracked with sobbing and soaked with tears.
 
If I lived a billion years more, in my body or yours, there's not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as being dead. Nothing. - Dianne Morrissey

And as I've said before - if there was even the slightest possibility that we might not end up back home again after an incarnation if we did X instead of Y during the lifetime, then who in their right mind would leave the afterlife, a place of infinite and eternal bliss and joy, for such a needless risk?

Why? Well, that's easy.

To laugh mirthfully in the faces of the slave drivers and puppeteers and declare to them that their attempts to control and use you, to drag you down into the abyss with them, have all utterly failed, that you are now completely beyond their reach. To pull off the impossible dream, and live nirvana here in 3D. I'd much rather pull that off than to drift effortlessly off into some heavenly void somewhere-I mean where's the challenge in that?
 

This is interesting. I wonder sometimes about whether hell is a metaphor for a mental - or possibly spiritual - state. Hancock also discussed how Mother Ayahuasca showed him the hell that awaited him...supposedly due to his pot smoking. On a grand moral scale, it's hard to see a pothead deserving eternal damnation. (It's hard for me to see anyone deserving it, but that's a whole other discussion.)

I'm reminded of Calvino saying the Inferno is the one we experience in this life. Or to quote HBO's Game of Thrones, "There's only one Hell - the one we live in now."

Possibly optimistic, given what might be out there beyond the Veil?...And of course if the afterlife is supposed to get us to union/transcendence of opposites things might just be too incredibly strange for us to understand from our perspective:

"For I have seen the virtuous in Hell and the wicked in Heaven. And I swear to you, brother, the scream you hear in the one and the sigh you hear in the other sound the same."
-R. Scott Bakker, The False Sun
 
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