Atheists' reports of near-death experiences

[outerheaven]

Thanks for sharing, that was great.

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me - an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

Interesting ... I'm a bit surprised he found this process painful. I guess he meant more on a mental level than physical pain; it's painful because of the realization that his earthly-self is fading out of existence.

I know exactly what he's talking about though. In meditation a couple years ago, I had a revelation about a childhood trauma. The closest thing I can think of describing is what the scientologists call an "implant." Basically I had experienced something that left an energetic cord that ran through me, that was actually quite painful, and numerous thought patterns were built on top of it that defined and limited who I was. I had always recalled this event as no big deal, and something that was actually quite humorous to me.

But in this meditation, I was able to view it from a different perspective, and see the pain it had caused and realized it wasn't a laughing matter, it was an actual trauma. This realization was followed by an incredibly painful feeling as if something was being forcibly removed from my brain; I saw it in my mind's eye as a giant metal staple the size of a horse-shoe. This, in turn, had the effect of my spine buzzing like a guitar string being tightened to the point it might break.

That was immediately proceeded by a series of visions that spontaneously came to me at once -- they were the last living moments of several different people. Accidents, gun shots, stabbings, clubbings, etc. Just a variety of deaths, viewed one after another in the first person. I saw and "felt" the impact of each death.

And after each death I "remembered" what it is to die; how all your definitions and names and desires and short-comings and insecurities etc. all slough away like Jung said, and you are left only with the quintessential self. Those aspects of you that get left behind are all literally (IMO) the "distortions" Ra speaks of so often, and I could feel their energetic weight dropping from my being and it was tremendous.

That was the day that I knew I had died before; I had remembered the process of dying and how the only scary part is the moment before it occurs, but then it is at once a tremendous healing process. That was also the day I stopped fearing death.