Despite the “love and light’ culture pervasive in new-age literature, one cannot ignore the darker side of near-death experiences and the afterlife experiences of spirits relayed through channeling and mediumship. Recently, I pieced together information from a dozen different books containing out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, life-between-life regression and spirit communications and wrote two out of three parts of “The Multidimensional Afterlife“, of which Part Two details the dark, depressing and hellish regions of the afterlife. The interesting hypothesis that emerged from all of these disparate sources suggested that the afterlife is a flexible thought-based environment that responds to our state of mind, ensuring that all souls are automatically attracted to afterlife environments that suit them. Dark souls filled with rage end up on the lower levels, surrounded by others of the same ilk until they begin to embrace love and forgiveness; their ticket upward into more beautiful climes.
Not included in the inventory of self-imposed hells that our own deeds can create for us, are descriptions of experiences in the enigmatic Void, a space of dark nothingness in which a soul is accompanied only by the quality of their character. While the lower astral realms, with its dismal reality seems to be a semi-permanent residence for some spirits, the Void seems to be a temporary stop-over after death before the spirit is consigned to their corresponding afterlife dimension.
Rarely, some experience the Void as a healing space; a place of quiet contemplation where an exhausted soul can rest after a difficult and painful life. On the other end of the spectrum, souls may experience the Void as an endless stretch of agony and torture. The purpose of the Void seems to be a space that amplifies thought and emotion. For spirits with unresolved negativity and a stubborn unwillingness to receive help, the Void forces spirits to confront and work through their anger and obsessive thoughts. Spirits may see others in the Void, but their purpose there seems to illustrative rather than communicative.
Does the Void really exist? Is the Void meant to punish, heal or instruct? I’m not sure. But the Void has shown up occasionally in different descriptions of the afterlife from the Victorian era to the present day, and may even correspond to the ‘outer darkness’ mentioned in the bible. I feel its worth investigating.
Near-death experiencers have often encountered the Void and describe it in varying ways:
This is an excerpt of a near-death experience by Angie Fenimore after she committed suicide as a teenager:
“Where was I? I was immersed in darkness. My eyes seemed to adjust, and I could see clearly even though there was no light. The darkness continued in all directions and seemed to have no end, but it wasn’t just blackness, it was an endless void, an absence of light. It was completely enveloping. I swung my head around to explore the thick blackness and saw, to my right, standing shoulder to shoulder, a handful of others. They were all teenagers. “Oh, we must be the suicides.” […] Suddenly, as if we had been waiting for a kind of sorting process to take place, I was sucked further into the darkness by an unseen and undefined power, leaving the teenagers behind. I landed on the edge of a shadowy realm, suspended in the darkness, extending to the limits of my sight. I knew that I was in a state of hell, but this was not the typical fire and brimstone hell that I had learned about as a young child. […] worse was my growing sense of complete aloneness. Even hearing the brunt of someone’s anger, however unpleasant, is a form of tangible connection. But in this empty world, where no connections could be made, the solitude was terrifying.”
By comparison, This near-death experiencer had a positive Void experience:
“I had traveled to another realm of total and absolute peace. With no physical body my movement was unencumbered. Thought was the avenue for travel. I floated up through blackness where there was no fear, no pain, no misunderstandings, but instead a sense of well-being. I was enveloped by total bliss in an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance. The darkness was warm and soft, a blanket of velvety love, stretching endlessly. The freedom of total peace was intensified beyond any ecstatic feeling I’ve ever felt on Earth. In the distance, a horizon of glorious white, golden light beckoned me forward”
Edgar Cayce, the famed psychic gives this description of the Void:
“After death, we may enter a region that is Void of love, life, and light, Void of everything. For some, this region is approximately their wish come true. Here they are truly alone with themselves. For some souls, this is a pain that is unbearable. In the absence of truth, love, gentleness, and kindness, some souls fill the Void with an irrational and unbelievable amount of pain and fear. It is so dark in the realm of outer darkness that the darkness hurts and panic grips them without knowing why. There are various degrees of darkness to this realm, and it is darker and denser at the center than at its outer fringes. The closer we are to the outer edges, the more interaction there is with others in the realm. The closer to the center, the darker and more painful is the solitude. Those who find themselves in outer darkness cannot travel across this dimension. They must grow through the levels of this realm. After death, one may find themselves in a particular degree of darkness that most closely corresponds to the degree of the absence of love in one’s life. Outer darkness is not a punishment. It is a region which operates lawfully for the benefit of those who are there. This region is not a realm which was created for any soul to experience, but one which came about as a consequence of the negative activity of souls in creation. So great has been the desire for self, so monumental across time and space has been the selfishness of some of God’s creatures, that this realm is the creation or manifestation of their own collective activities. Outer darkness and the reality with which it is associated were created and are held in place by collective self-interest.”
The most terrifying Void experience I read, however, came from the new book ‘Heaven and Hell: Updates from the World of Spirit’ by Dr. Stafford Betty. Below is a summation and an excerpt, but I highly recommend picking up this book and reading the entire chapter yourself.
The story is related by a spirit named Marie and told through medium James Lees through his control Aphraar in the late 1800’s. Marie’s story appears in Chapter 10 of ‘Heaven and Hell’ called: “The Law of Karma: A Woman in Hell”
The story begins, as Marie tells it, with her upbringing and the deeds committed in her life that sealed her fate in the afterlife. Not the so-called sins she committed, however, but the lack of understanding, love and remorse for her actions is what lands Marie in the torturous Void after death.
Marie is a young, rich, spoiled American young woman during the Victorian era. Her wealthy parents dote on her, giving Marie all that she desires. She soon learns to use her status and privilege to manipulate the people around her, especially the desires of young men. She develops a rather shallow friendship with Sadie, another child of wealth and status, though Marie thinks of herself as superior to Sadie. She and Sadie enjoy playing games with the young men of their town, stepping in to wreck relationships and break off engagements by shamelessly flirting with any available suitor. When the now smitten young men vie for their attention, they are met with laughter and scorn as Marie and Sadie move on to their next victim. The game is enjoyable not because they wish to have the attention of these men for themselves for they hardly entertain them, but only for the mean-spirited heartbreak of rival girls whose one chance at a decent match is now ruined.
Marie and Sadie agree that they should continue the game, neither girl taking on a husband for the time being in order to continue their ‘play’ as long as possible. When Charlie, a very eligible young bachelor from a family of wealth and good standing comes to town, all of the unengaged girls vie for his attention. Marie and Sadie decide also that they will play up their charms in order to deny the ambitions of any of the other girls in town. Marie and Sadie agree to keep to their game, planning to gain the young man’s attention before shunning and humiliating him.
Marie and Sadie played off one another well, but the young man truly falls for Marie and makes her a formal proposal for marriage. Marie tells us here that she was also quite secretly in love with the man, but for the sake of the mean game she was playing, she humiliated him for his offer. Even as the man enlisted the aid of her parents, Marie refused to budge. Marie was also quite sure that Charlie would continue to woo and fight for her, and thought that her game of ‘hard to get’ would “bring out the hero in Charlie”.
Days passed, however, and Charlie didn’t appear at Marie’s doorstep. When she questions Sadie, she learns that Sadie hasn’t seen Charlie either. Circumstances then prevent Marie from seeing Sadie for a month until the day of her birthday party. When Marie arrives, she finds that Charlie had proposed to Sadie, and Sadie accepted. The two are now engaged to be married.
“I stood speechless as a statue. In a moment my blood boiled and dashed through my veins in cataracts of maddened fury. Jealousy and disappointed love devoured me; my brain reeled under the strain; I fell and remember no more.”
In Marie’s zeal for mean-hearted manipulation of others and her absolute certainty that anything she wanted would be hers, she never thought she would lose Charlie, and especially not to her so-called friend Sadie. Sadie, of course, wizened up and accepted Charlie’s proposal when it was offered, but for Marie, the betrayal and jealousy filled her with an unreasonable hatred.
On the day of Sadie and Charlie’s wedding, Marie was hovering near death with a condition she calls “brain fever”. During her fever, she continually curses Sadie and Charlie. Marie survives her bout, and vows to never speak of them again. In her heart, however, was the white-hot desire for revenge. Sadie and Charlie had left town though, and Marie’s first task was to track them down.
“I would find them if I had to travel the world; I would return her betrayal fourfold and take him for her even if I died in the hour of my triumph.”
It would be years before Marie would find a link to Charlie, through an old college friend living nearby. She makes plans to visit and accidentally runs in Charlie. It wasn’t part of her initial plan, but better – she is alone with Charlie for the first time in years. She realizes that Charlie still has affection for her, and she plays it up. They begin to meet secretly in places and although she felt that she loved him, her real thrill was stealing Charlie away from Sadie. Within a month, Charlie abandons Sadie and their children and travels east with Marie. Marie knows she can’t be his wife, but that means little to her. She’s won, and is reveling in her victory. Marie’s revenge is complete.
Soon after, Marie again falls ill. She is ill for two years before her father finally tracks her down and reproached for the shame she has brought on the family name. Charlie is chased away by Marie’s father as a scoundrel and is threatened with his life should he return to see Marie. Marie’s father tells her that Charlie has abandoned her as he did with Sadie, and Marie – in a fit of fury – dies from her illness.
Marie, having died without remorse for her actions and little understanding at the cruelty she displayed toward others has already created the afterlife that she is soon to experience. In her retelling of the story, she laments of what she has done, admonishing others to avoid her torment by doing good works in their life. Even Marie will agree that what she experiences in the Void was necessary in order to see the folly of her ways and come back to the light. The Void teaches Marie by confronting her with her own obsessions, cruelty, jealousy and hate. It is a lesson that hopefully most of us will not require, but Marie was particularly stubborn.
Meanwhile, Marie has perished but doesn’t know it yet. The last thing she remembers is lying in her bed, dying with her father admonishing her about Charlie. The next memory is blank, then she awakens in total blackness:
“When I awoke it was dark, horribly dark. I could almost touch the blackness, and I was lying on a bare floor, cold as a block of ice. I called Charlie – my father – my nurse! But there was no response except the echo of my own voice, which seemed to mock and rejoice at the terror I felt creeping over me. Where was I? Great God! Was it possible I had gone mad, or that I had been placed under restraint to keep me from following Charlie?”
Marie is alone with her own thoughts in the darkness. She tries to move, to explore this new place of sheer black nothingness, but cannot. She has no strength. She simply can do nothing but lie there.
“I was a prisoner in the frigid domain of despair, beyond the reach of help, or rest, or pity; the playful toy of all the remorseless machinations that accompany such a state. I was slowly converted into a block of frozen – yet living – flesh, and my abnormal sense of feeling heightened as the infernal transformation went on. Why was it? Where was it? Where was I? Who were my relentless persecutors? How long before the morning would break? Would the day bring me relief, or wake me from the agonizing dream? […] Eventually my feet, my hands, my head, my eyes, my tongue, my heart, my brain were ice-bound. Then the furies boiled in my blood and sent it in maddened cataracts through my veins to top off the excruciating pain, which I could only suffer while lying motionless.”
Marie remains in this state, clueless to her own death for a very long time, ruminating on her misfortune, pining for Charlie and feeling persecuted. She eventually is able move and recovers some strength, but she remains in the inky blackness, alone with only her hateful thoughts.
Finally she sees something- a light, just a small pinpoint of light in the darkness. Marie moves toward it, flying at increasing speed and yet dreading what new persecution it might bring. Just on the precipice of the light, she stops. The light surrounds the one person she “had sighed, wept and groaned for.” It was Charlie.
Marie has a feeling that her ability to be with Charlie has something to do with his desire to see her, though she still doesn’t yet know that she is dead. She is overjoyed that she is reunited with Charlie even after all of “her father’s opposition and strategy”.
She walks into the circle of light and notices that Charlie has changed. His hair now is lined with silver, his strong back bowed and bent slightly. Marie stands next to Charlie and feels him thinking of her. Lost in thought, he doesn’t see her standing there. Of course Marie is a ghost, invisible to his eyes, but she is none the wiser.
Marie tries to shake him; to get his attention any way possible. She thinks Charlie has gone mad because she is standing right in front of him, and yet he is looking past her. She yells at him, “Charlie, Charlie! Don’t you know me? Speak only one word, and tell me so. I’ve been ill, but I’ve never swerved in my love for you. If you think I’ve done wrong, oh! my love, forgive me, and let me nurse you back again to health. We will be happy yet. Come, let’s go away. Say you know me and I’ll be content. Charlie! Just one word, dear; say you know me!”
Charlie, of course, doesn’t see or hear her. He picks up a book, seemingly ignoring her entreaties. “Marie recoils in amazement, dumb-founded.” She doesn’t understand why Charlie, her love, would treat her this way. Why wouldn’t he speak to her?
Marie, not knowing what else to do, simply stands in front of Charlie and continues to watch. Finally, he turns to someone and says “Will you tell your mamma I want to speak to her?”. Marie can’t see the child – Charlie’s child; she’s only focused on Charlie and the prospect of another woman.
“What was any other woman to him when I was present? Was is possible he had gone back to Sadie after all and wished her to be at hand to witness my humiliation? All my old jealousy was around at the thought, and a sudden frenzy carried me past all restraint in anticipation of the coming scene. I felt a stranger enter but couldn’t see or hear who it was, a fact adding to the mystery and terror that possessed me. Was I equally invisible and inaudible to her? It seemed so, for a while I heard every word Charlie spoke, and saw every movement he made, and could understand that the conversation made no reference to myself, I was ignored as completely as if I had no existence.”
Marie hears Charlie call this new woman, “Wife” and begins to suspect that Charlie and his new lover were playing a game at her expense, intentionally mocking her by pretending that she didn’t exist. Marie believes that Charlie knows that she is there and is choosing to ignore her, something that drives Marie to exquisite anger and jealousy.
Just when it couldn’t get much worse for Marie, a ghost standing invisible in the same room with Charlie and his new wife, Charlie and his wife decide to become intimate.
“He had brought me here so I might witness his happiness with a rival who had supplanted me, as I had taken him from Sadie – that he might laugh as he saw how the knowledge of it would torture me. This was too much. The certainty of his desertion maddened me; but to witness his love passages with a rival goaded me into a diabolical frenzy, and I made up my mind to kill him before her eyes. Alas! Before I had time to move, the light that surrounded him expired, and I was left again in that Egyptian blackness, afraid to stir because of the terror that came along with my blindness.”
There is worse to come for Marie, for even in the Void, she is left to listen to their love-making.
“Still I could hear him – worse, I could hear her; heard, without the power to stop my ears, or prevent my knowledge of what she said and called him. Rage and jealousy tormented and mocked my helplessness, until I prepared to follow the sounds and wreak my vengeance by laying them dead side by side! Horror! As soon as I made up my mind to kill them, I found I was as powerless to move as to see, and I had no choice but to stand and listen to his monstrous behavior, unable to make a sound to drown out the echoes of his caresses.”
Marie continues with fiery language to describe her torment in the Void. She realizes that she is somehow chained to Charlie and made to endure what she calls “indescribable chastisement, with every nerve quickened to a degree defying description.”
Forced to deal with her own obsession of possessing Charlie and faced with the hatred and jealousy she feels, Marie is truly in a hell of her own making. She cannot sleep, she cannot leave, she cannot find mercy or pity in the Void. She can only be; alone with her thoughts and emotions. As she says, “I was in all the agonies of hell without the poor consolation that I was suffering in company.”
Finally, in utter exasperation, she cries out to the darkness:
“Oh, God or devil! Any being of pity or remorseless cruelty, hear me, and end my torments! Take me, tear me, or destroy me. Drown my reason past all hope of restitution or, by one tornadic blast of torture, put an end to feeling and terminate my agony. Hell! Hell! In mercy take pity on my condition; open your gates and let me bathe my sufferings in your fiery lake. Hell! Hell! I say in mercy open and let me in!”
With that, Marie collapses. With her final plea of mercy, she frees herself from the Void and wakes in the company of her spirit guide, who begins Marie’s process of spiritual healing.
Marie was a despicable person to be sure. She felt no remorse that Charlie abandoned his wife and children for her, and spent her life in cruel manipulation of others. Even in death, Marie could only focus on Charlie and the wrong-doing and betrayal she felt. Because she was so hyper-focused on Charlie, she was able to temporarily descend back to earth when he thought of her, and yet she did not understand her own condition. She thought Charlie was trying to humiliate her, and she planned to kill him and his new bride. Marie spent 20 earth years in the Void. When she saw Charlie, he was much older and remarried, though to Marie who did not know of her own death, it had been as if no time had passed, so complete was her obsession.
Marie’s 20 years in the Void was self-imposed; a prisoner of her own negativity. It is only when she calls for help that she is open to the loving spirit guide, Azena, who has been with her the entire time, trying to break her laser-like obsession with Charlie and relieve her from the trap that her hate and jealousy have kept her in. Marie could not before see Azena for she was not open to love, charity or understanding at that point.
Marie is finally free of the Void, and is healing with her spirit guide. Part of her process of healing is to relate her story as a warning to others, now that she understands the error of her ways. Marie’s story is dramatic and terrifying, but every telling of it helps Marie’s soul through its warning to others. I encourage you to read it in its entirety.
If the void truly does exist in the afterlife, then its purpose is to hold a mirror up to those who refused to judge their own evil behaviors while on Earth. Even though Marie, through her status and wealth escaped punishment and chastisement in her earthly life for the cruelty and evil she doled out to others, she certainly did not escape the result of these deeds in the Void. The “affluenza defense” doesn’t work in the afterlife. Marie was selfish and self-centered, obsessed with Charlie beyond all reasoning and bent on revenge until she died. Marie’s spirit was a vengeful revenant who, when all of the bodily and material embellishments were stripped away, had only her hollow character to embody her. Marie’s story reflects the purpose of the Void; to amplify one’s thoughts and emotions without distraction. When used against her, Marie’s thoughts and emotions became a hell for her, one that she endured until her hate was exhausted and she was ready to receive help.
Marie’s story was told in the 1800’s, but the Void continues to be mentioned in near-death experiences and spiritual descriptions of the afterlife even today. If there is any lesson to be learned from negative experiences in the Void it is this: Tomorrow, when you wake up to another day on earth, be sure to look in the mirror – gaze deep into the character of your soul. Whatever lies within you lives also in the Void. Would you appreciate the company that you keep there?
“And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” – Matthew 25:30
The Search For Life After Death 
Very interesting. Of course there are traces of this concept in many cultures and religions. “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” and so on. The Egyptians even had a guide book/manual for finding their way through this – The Book of the Dead. The established religions grade the after immediate death experience according to moral behavior, though “sin” is often a matter of social rather than ethical value. These accounts seem to indicate that its more a matter of the psychological condition, which makes more sense. Sally.
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I believe i had a NDE void experience when i was young. 7 years old i suffered a seizure from lack of oxygen, i was described as pale with lips and fingertips blue. I was in blackness yet it was not horrifying at all for me if i had to describe the feeling during my brief time there i’d say it was calm, and was oddly intrigued by it yet i didn’t know it was the void until a few years later when i told my grandma. When i got back to my body i was calm and at peace and happy to see my mother. I’d guess i was just not old enough to see much in the void i’d also say time doesn’t really exist in this realm, I grew up in a family bloodline of psychics and in my family psychic abilities awakened at the start of puberty so 12 or 13 years of age. When i was 13 before my initiation as a full wiccan my gut said to convert to christianity to explore it. I did and realized something was dreadfully wrong about modern christianity, by my later high school years i associated with no one religion but couldn’t find a faith that had mixed beliefs like me or my grandma. That was before i met my uncle adam a New Age Spiritualist. I joined new age spirituality and stuck with it i thought to myself that this is my faith. To explore ones self and try to understand others. Since then i ceased to hate people themselves but rather the things about them. Such as bigotry, and ignorance of any form. ignorance leads to fear and fear leads to hate, i have yet to understand about why some people think racism or such is a good thing. Maybe its the concept of good or evil i should be exploring? I watched naruto and the words of Itachi Uchiha got to me.
“People Live their Lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That is how they define “Reality” . But what does it mean to be “correct” or “true”? They are merely vague concepts… Their “Reality” may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to be simply living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?”
“It is foolish to fear what we have yet to see and know.”
“Knowledge and awareness are vague, and perhaps better called illusions.”
“You Focus on the Trivial, and lose sight of what is most important, Change is impossible in this fog of ignorance. How can we Evolve when Regulation is all we know?”
“We do not know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That’s what death is, don’t you think?”
“If you want to know who you are, you have to look at your real self and acknowledge what you see”
“Obsessed with Organization, obsessed with the clan, obsessed with ourselves. A worthless compulsion that enslaves us and limits our capabilities, leading us to fear what we don’t understand.”
“Those who forgive themselves, and are able to accept their true nature…THEY ARE THE STRONG ONES!”
-Itachi Uchiha, Naruto Shippuden Franchise
Based on those quotes i began to think, “How must i go about this world of illusions? Is suffering real or just another illusion? Could this world just be lies? If So should i help this world become truth and set others free from the illusion of suffering? If so then how?” After i had those thoughts i asked myself what are root problems and how to set others free, my only conclusion as of far is to reject regulation and base my life on willpower and hope others can understand me and themselves to follow suit. I want to make everyone happy yet i know i probably can’t so i decided i won’t know unless i try. If i can’t get the whole world i’ll start here in my city then work up to the state, I ask others their beliefs and compare the beliefs to others and find the underlying connections because as long as those connections are made the beliefs that culminate from it don’t matter because they are both for a same purpose. I often found myself merging scientific theories with religious texts and fitting more and more together like a puzzle the universe’s secrets becoming clear, why our brains are modeled off the cosmic web, why matter exists what is energy and matter? what is dark matter and dark energy?
then i found it… Bodies don’t have souls, souls have bodies, matter is just super-condensed light. God is the light and we are created in his image. What makes us physically function? our brains! what are our bodies made of? Matter! Energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed only converted. this supports an idea of the afterlife i can go further into this but i think this post is long enough so i’m sorry. Also on another note i found out i’m an Indigo Child, i have found a few others and they all have the same traits, Autism, and Psychic abilities. I’ve read indigo children are the next stage in human evolution and are meant to help guide humanity to a new age of prosperity in the 7th age of aquarius after the next poleshift. I’ve also read about scientific theories stating those with autism are the next stage in the evolution of human consciousness, the way we think rejects current society, so that ends us up classified as outcasts by some but recently society has been opening up to us asking us how we think or feel so as to make the world more accomodating for us. This world is a beautiful place yet is cursed by ignorance and hatred, but that curse is slowly lifting in some ways.
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Hi Shea! Thank you for your comment and for sharing your NDE void experience. It can be very difficult to understand why we living in such a harsh and cruel world, but I have realized that we are all on our own paths. Some people just have more to learn and in that process of learning, they make mistakes. I try to be gentle with people, knowing that all souls are inherently good; just sometimes people get too stuck on the illusion of earth life and take everything too seriously. Based on your comment, I think you would probably really like the Seth channelings by Jane Roberts, if you haven’t already read them. When I was searching for spiritual understanding, Seth really changed my life. It just made everything ‘click’. I would recommend the first book, “Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul.” take care and hope to see you around!
~Jenn
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I believe i had a NDE void experience when i was young. 7 years old i suffered a seizure from lack of oxygen, i was described as pale with lips and fingertips blue. I was in blackness yet it was not horrifying at all for me if i had to describe the feeling during my brief time there i’d say it was calm, and was oddly intrigued by it yet i didn’t know it was the void until a few years later when i told my grandma. When i got back to my body i was calm and at peace and happy to see my mother. I’d guess i was just not old enough to see much in the void i’d also say time doesn’t really exist in this realm, I grew up in a family bloodline of psychics and in my family psychic abilities awakened at the start of puberty so 12 or 13 years of age. When i was 13 before my initiation as a full wiccan my gut said to convert to christianity to explore it. I did and realized something was dreadfully wrong about modern christianity, by my later high school years i associated with no one religion but couldn’t find a faith that had mixed beliefs like me or my grandma. That was before i met my uncle adam a New Age Spiritualist. I joined new age spirituality and stuck with it i thought to myself that this is my faith. To explore ones self and try to understand others. Since then i ceased to hate people themselves but rather the things about them. Such as bigotry, and ignorance of any form. ignorance leads to fear and fear leads to hate, i have yet to understand about why some people think racism or such is a good thing. Maybe its the concept of good or evil i should be exploring? I watched naruto and the words of Itachi Uchiha got to me.
“People Live their Lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That is how they define “Reality” . But what does it mean to be “correct” or “true”? They are merely vague concepts… Their “Reality” may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to be simply living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?”
“It is foolish to fear what we have yet to see and know.”
“Knowledge and awareness are vague, and perhaps better called illusions.”
“You Focus on the Trivial, and lose sight of what is most important, Change is impossible in this fog of ignorance. How can we Evolve when Regulation is all we know?”
“We do not know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That’s what death is, don’t you think?”
“If you want to know who you are, you have to look at your real self and acknowledge what you see”
“Obsessed with Organization, obsessed with the clan, obsessed with ourselves. A worthless compulsion that enslaves us and limits our capabilities, leading us to fear what we don’t understand.”
“Those who forgive themselves, and are able to accept their true nature…THEY ARE THE STRONG ONES!”
-Itachi Uchiha, Naruto Shippuden Franchise
Based on those quotes i began to think, “How must i go about this world of illusions? Is suffering real or just another illusion? Could this world just be lies? If So should i help this world become truth and set others free from the illusion of suffering? If so then how?” After i had those thoughts i asked myself what are root problems and how to set others free, my only conclusion as of far is to reject regulation and base my life on willpower and hope others can understand me and themselves to follow suit. I want to make everyone happy yet i know i probably can’t so i decided i won’t know unless i try. If i can’t get the whole world i’ll start here in my city then work up to the state, I ask others their beliefs and compare the beliefs to others and find the underlying connections because as long as those connections are made the beliefs that culminate from it don’t matter because they are both for a same purpose. I often found myself merging scientific theories with religious texts and fitting more and more together like a puzzle the universe’s secrets becoming clear, why our brains are modeled off the cosmic web, why matter exists what is energy and matter? what is dark matter and dark energy?
then i found it… Bodies don’t have souls, souls have bodies, matter is just super-condensed light. God is the light and we are created in his image. What makes us physically function? our brains! what are our bodies made of? Matter! Energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed only converted. this supports an idea of the afterlife i can go further into this but i think this post is long enough so i’m sorry. Also on another note i found out i’m an Indigo Child, i have found a few others and they all have the same traits, Autism, and Psychic abilities. I’ve read indigo children are the next stage in human evolution and are meant to help guide humanity to a new age of prosperity in the 7th age of aquarius after the next poleshift. I’ve also read about scientific theories stating those with autism are the next stage in the evolution of human consciousness, the way we think rejects current society, so that ends us up classified as outcasts by some but recently society has been opening up to us asking us how we think or feel so as to make the world more accomodating for us. This world is a beautiful place yet is cursed by ignorance and hatred, but that curse is slowly lifting in some ways.
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[…] my post on Sometimes You Don’t See the Light – The Void: A Place of Nothingness in the Afterlife for examples from NDEs and spirit […]
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AS a young child when going to sleep at night i would try to imagine what it was like to be dead and would just find myself in darkness, my eyes closed in a dark room, and would think it would be forever like that. That was frightening and would happen many nights. I slept poorly as a child for years. That was part of starting my life on my left foot.
But my question is, various mostly eastern spiritual schools, but not only, claim that a separate personality doesn’t exist, unless one has evolved or created a soul, and that all these NDE stories are an attempt of ego to maintain it’s separate self existence. And the idea is to enter the light and merge not hold on and return in another reincarnation. A reincarnation of not that being that lived but of the life energy in another form. The source for this would be the Tibetan book of the Dead, the American book of the Dead, EJ Gold, And Gurdjieff’s teachings that unless you create a soul or unique autonomous entity in a subtle body, thru the various efforts in life, there will be no reincarnating individual self.
Now the mass of reading i’ve done indicates otherwise. there is a personality of some sort that continues. If there is such as reincarnation i do not want to know my past life, this one has enough luggage already.
When much younger, 21, i had a drug experience where i “died”. Saw that there was no such thing as death and was ecstatic. then i could sense the difficult life that awaited me and thought about taking my life. then during a reverie i started to leave the earth and was in the high stratosphere leaving when i heard this wail of anguish coming from the earth and realized the i was of this and could not turn away and leave it. That i we do not have the choice to not continue living. I was depressed for some time after that, and much of my life, but for more complex reasons. This was before i’d learned of Buddhism and the Bodisatva vow.
Anyway have you heard anything of the void as a final resting place in the positive sense?
Don Juan of Carlos Castaneda fame said that Joy is the greatest accomplishment of a warrior. I believe it.
I remind myself daily of Anne Franks words “Whoever is happy will make others happy.”
This blog is like a natural resource. Thanks
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This is a great site, with lots of useful info properly researched and presented that make sense; but still, I don’t know… I mean, a couple of things don’t quite cut it for me. For starters, ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’ being an up to you state; because it that’s the case, then what if I’m like one of those mobsters that has a happily life besides including the obv occasional hit… Or a sociopath incapable of remorse or empathy altogether; or a judge, vigilante or executioner performing ‘social justice’, etc… I really like the thought of a personal standard virtual purgatory kind of deal, except that it doesn’t feel quite fair; at least to the wronged side. Yet anyhow, the other thing I wonder, which in my opinion is even worse, has to do with the ability to lit manifesting reality. Say, what if i recreate from memory the long gone on earth house I grew up in, doesn’t that obv conflicts any suspension of after-life disbelief… And what if I attempt to do the same with a pet or a person… I seriously doubt that their ‘real’ souls would somehow magically start to inhabit their new afterlife vessels; just because. Again, don’t get me wrong, it seems like a sweet deal in any case; but in the bitter end, it’s nothing more than a glorified fantasy. So if this description of the a.l. is accurate, then it would mean that is what’s actually preventing soul progression; making it more like stagnation to me. Assuming the development of an innate ability to want more out it, or just growing tired of it, seems conspicuously convenient, and not necessary causal. And if people are being truly helped, loved and accepted from beyond, then how come they feel a lot of the time so sad, hopeless, unbearable lonely, depressed, losers, failures, and even borderline suicidal… Just thinking about the void, and the afterlife in general, gives me vivid nightmares; lit&fig. If gawd and the angels/demons/spirit-guides don’t talk back to you, or help in any way shape or form, then isn’t that precisely confirmation of the latter… ie, distant spiritual beings that are only relevant after death and do not come to your terrestrial aide in your hour of most need are pretty useless guides IMHO. So in this uncertainly accursed lower energetic plane of existence, how’s that truly different of imagining it all, and getting high on your own delusions to begin with… Therefore, the whole sin, guilt, and forgiveness vicious cycle seems deliberately designed to create an addiction that’s nearly impossible to break on our own. So bottomline, the AL to me is just a progressive series of purgatories, or soul traps to leech off our spiritual energy. An overly convoluted way to sup&basically shred negativity and learn how to love; ie punish bad behaviours, and reward positive ones. Integration as an alternate solution, seldom considered. Although I’ve to admit I’m more afraid that there’s no al at all, with death being the abs end; so I guess something is better than nothing. Yet the problem remains, at least on earthlike realms, in that it remains almost pointless trying to be good, when the rest of the world means you harm. I understand the need to strive for greatness as a motivator, but you’ve got to admit that this is a ridiculous hard virtual game setting from the start. Where everything costs an arm and a leg. Again, here the problem is not that the majority of ppl are evil, and revel in it; it is that we live in a fixed material environment. Because sadly, there’s no escape; no salvation. No easy way to TP out of here on a whim’s thought, like on the rest of the higher al’s spaces…
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The void is not a place where you are necessarily alone; in the example of the story with Marie that I shared, there was a guide with her for the entire time she was in the void. Marie just couldn’t give up her obsession with revenge enough to know that her guide was there, desperately trying to get through to her. The void seems to be self-imposed by us if we just cannot get through something psychologically negative. Until we’ve exausted our anger and hate, we will be stuck. Now, it’s important to note that while the void does come up in NDEs from time to time, it’s rare. Most of us will not have a void experience at all. As for the way ‘hell’ works, think of the afterlife like layers of density. Unlike on earth, where people of all kinds are thrown together in one big mix, the afterlife naturally separates spirits according to their temperament. If you are mobster who loves to kill, then you are more than welcome to remain in a hellish place with other killers employing your craft for all eternity. You will only be with other people like you, though. Likewise, truly enlightened, kind, compassionate people inhabit a different layer together, working for a common cause as well. In the afterlife, like attracts like. If you are an angry, miserable person, you will find yourself in a place inhabited by angry, miserable people. The vast majority of us – who are not wholly good or wholly evil will find ourselves in the gigantic middle layers, where everything, by design, will seem rather earthlike and ordinary. The reason for this is because we don’t expect differently and we haven’t evolved past the need for certain earth comforts. Would you be more comfortable existing as consciousness without three-dimensional form around you? One day, perhaps, but I’m not ready for that yet. I wouldn’t mind getting to the afterlife and having a ski chalet to live in while I work on my spiritual progress. The afterlife seems to be a thought-based reality, and most of us who get there desire to have around us the things that we know – it is an unfortunate outgrowth of the materialism we are used to on earth. Once we evolve past that, we will no longer need the illusion of these ‘creature comforts’.
Jenn
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Jenn,
I want to again express my appreciation for the work you are doing.
I appreciate your excellent reading list also. I’d like to make some suggestions for additions.
Besides Robert Monroe’s second and third books which I’ve already mentioned I’d like to recommend, Life Before Life, by Helen-Wambach
Her mass hypnosis regression project where hundreds of subjects were brought through the birth event and to what was happening before birth. I think the most common item encountered was many peoples reluctance to return.
I read Michael Newton’s Journey and Destiny of souls books and had reservations about his results. Though again, if they are authentic and no reason to think otherwise, they were a little troubling for me. The after life was too neat in a way.
Another person who has a notable experience in another realm during an NDE, I believe was Judith White. She has some remarkable talents after her NDE.
http://www.talkzone.com/episodes/204/NDE061614.html
http://www.talkzone.com/episodes/204/NDE062314.html
Natalie Sudman experience were unlike any other NDE event and further substantiate a more complex view of the after life. She was likely an OBE but that doesn’t change her unique story. Maybe similar experiences are noted in other forms of communication.
The question I have is, none of this seems to agree with The Tibetan Book of The Dead, an explanation or presentation of what happens after death, or graduation as I like to call it.
From that source it recommends recognizing the Light as ones self-nature and by doing so one merges into it and does not have another reincarnation. And there seem to be further choice points, if one misses the first one, to merge again or at least have a better incarnation, by not shunning the brighter light colors and entering into the softer smokier lights.
The ideal seems to be recognizing ones current identity as unreal and so merging with the clear light.
With that said, the Tibetan’s have Lokas or worlds, of which the best is incarnation in is the earth world, from here further evolution is possible, but not at all or more difficult from any other world. Better even than the god, or heaven realm, where eventually your orbit decays and reincarnation obtains.
Personally this, merging with the light, seems like a good idea as I’d rather not return here if avoidable.
Dannion Brinkley states recognizing the light as himself during his second NDE experience.
Robert Monroe says the same thing in his third book as his experience and knowledge grows, further confirms that his individuality here was but something like a finger of a larger entity. Same is implied in Esoteric Judaism
Vedanta says there is an immortal soul, at least for the duration of these 4 cycles. The Buddhist say that there is not a permanent individual self reincarnating rather the life energy returning picks up ‘habits’, or skandas material form, or the physical world (rūpa), feeling or sensations (vedanā), perception (saññā), mental formations (saṅkhāra), and consciousness (viññāṇa)
This disagreement has ben going on for a long time. The Dali lama says to ignore it. Just be compassionate to one another.
And there is a third model coming from G I Gurdjieff, 4th way adherents.
This one says that everyone is born the ‘seed’ for a soul, but as with trees this does not necessarily mean that it will ‘sprout’ and become a ‘real’ soul or an autonomous being able to continue elsewhere after death. A soul is created through living a conscious life, which I’ll translate as facing life’s challenges, as a choice accepted, and so responsibly, which would deepen ones soul. (Certainly facing the challenges of life builds character.) Perhaps like Socrates, an unconscious reactive life, is a life unlived. Socrates’ claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living makes a satisfying climax for the deeply principled arguments that Socrates presents on behalf of the philosophical life. The claim is that only in striving to come to know ourselves and to understand ourselves do our lives have any meaning or value.
Of further note. From your quote of Seth on the reason for creation the word ‘clamored’ is used, ‘They clamored to be released into actuality’. An ND experiencer, Kimberly Sharp Clark, uses the word ‘clamored’ in the Lights answer to why we exist.
The clearest metaphor for how we are here comes from this NDE’er Rich Kelly
An amazing SF novel is Star Maker, by Olaf Stapleton, too much to describe.
Again my thanks for your work.
Karl
PS. I have, and so have others I’ve read or herd, do hear a voice in times of extremity. Helpful words like, “everything will be alright in the end”.
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Makes sense.
Marie’s negative emotions (or negative vibrations in terms of the Soul), engulfed her and sent her soul to the “void” which I can only guess for it to be a place of “Low frequency.”
It doesn’t matter if she “deserved it or not, you create an “aura of low-ness” where else would it be attracted to but a place that Made of it?
Just an opinion though
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In 2013 I died and went to the Void. (I only learned later what it is called and that others have experienced it.) It was complete nothingness. There was no matter, no time, no color or light. Just nothing stretching for eternity. And yet it was “pregnant” with unseen light and all creation. It was nothing and everything all at once. It is impossible to describe.
While I was there I felt total peace, love, and oneness with everything. I wanted to never leave. I had awareness but no identification with my earthly self. “Later” (after an eternity-instant) I woke up again as my earthly self. Shortly thereafter I was visited in a vivid dream by 2 guardian spirits (a young man and woman of unearthly beauty and kindness) who told me I had died. I asked to join them, but they told me not yet. This is a true story.
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Dear Dave,
Thank you so much for writing – you are the first person I’ve ever spoken to who has actually been to the Void, so I’m really fascinated by your story. Thankfully, you had a positive Void experience. It seems to go either way, depending on the state of your mind. Do you think you did actually die and come back, or do you think you had what they call a near-death-like experience? Either way, what an amazing experience.. it must have changed your life in some dramatic ways.
Jenn
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This sounds almost exactly like my experience. I also had absolutely no memory of this life – no concept of being human.” I felt I was a point of consciousness and I felt as if I was (almost imperceptively) gently swaying.
It was completely black – a warm, velvety black that I felt I had been suspended in “forever.” It was extremely comfortable, calm and blissful. I had a profound sense of connection to everything. I can also relate to the “stretching for eternity…yet pregnant.” Great description. There was no sense of time passing at all. I felt ancient and brand new at the same time.
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On a panel of doctors discussing NDE’s, I heard that dark NDE events were not uncommon in children and that those younger children with a dark light experience were normal as adults but were very very intelligent. I can’t italicise here so i repeat very, the doctor was emphatic. So there u have it. Keep oon keeping on.
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I experienced the void experience prior to entering a higher dimension( of vivid and brilliant multiple layered and hued light, extraordinary music, undulating consciousness experience and pure bliss). It was a place of pure darkness where I had to face my deepest fears, and it felt like it went on forever, until I embraced the love in my heart again, and reemerged into the ‘light’ of the higher dimension. After this experience I knew that I would be creating beautiful art and music as it was part of my heart experience:).
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Dear Bridget,
What an incredible, transformative experience. Your inspiration toward the creative arts reminds of something that I just read in “My Life After Life: A Posthumous Memior” which is a book written about Galen Stoller, who passed away but was able to communicate with his father. His father wrote Galen’s ‘memoir’ about what it is like in the spirit world. Anyway, he said this: “There is an under appreciation of the role of music, art, and literature as links to the higher dimensions. The tones, colors and qualities of music, art and literature are utilized by those who reside in the higher dimensions; therefore, it is through are, music, and literature that higher consciousness can be accessed.” I’ve heard this echoed in other spiritual sources as well. It looks like this was deeply ingrained in your soul after your experience. I’m sure you’ve felt that sort of divine consciousness that takes over when you have creative inspiration. Thank you for writing and best of luck with your creative endeavors – truly, they are gifts of the spirit made manifest.
Jenn
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Dear Jenn, “My Life After Life: A Posthumous Memoir” sounds a good read, and how true that creativity is born of the higher dimensions! Yes, I often feel divine consciousness when I am creating, as it just flows, often instigated by an internal nudge and surrender to the process. I do acknowledge these gifts and feel most blessed. I also communicate with those who have passed over, and have helped many transition and have acted as a messenger to their loved ones; it is not something that I chose, yet I am often ‘called’ . I also have a strong link with many of my own ancestors, and they have helped me at difficult times in my life. I believe like Jung said, when I worked in my family tree, I understood the strange communion of the destiny that unites me to my ancestors”, and that, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”Carl Jung, Aion, Page 43. I have had other experiences in the void too, and these are akin to ‘womb experiences’ in which the darkness is a place of waiting and nurturing, waiting patiently for the time in which the idea is ripe, so that it can be born into the light of day. Thank you for your good wishes, and all the best to you! I invite you to my page,where you can view, listen and read some of my creative works at your own discretion. Blessings, Bridget 🙂
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this is meant as a remark for shea’s comment.
On a panel of doctors discussing NDE’s, I heard that dark NDE events were not uncommon in children and that those younger children with a dark light experience were normal as adults but were very very intelligent. I can’t italicise here so i repeat very, the doctor was emphatic. So there u have it. Keep oon keeping on.
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For an exploration of the spiritual dimensions of the Void – and negative NDES in general, check out “Dancing in the Dark” by Nancy Evans-Bush who spent a career in Near-Death Studies from 1982–first as Executive Director, then long-term Board member and President, now researcher on distressing near-death experiences. See the website, http://www.dancingpastthedark.com.
She experienced the Void during childbirth, and the book was a result of her lifelong attempt to deal with the implications of that experience. The book does not present definitive answers per se.
My takaway from the book, which explored in depth the nature of spiritual interpretations, is that there are many things we cannot comprehend within human comprehension.
For this reason, I tend to resist categorical interpretations of such NDEs.
Nevertheless, the book was most reassuring for me after I went into a funk after my mother died.
The mystical tradition in Christianity alludes to the Dark Night, which is a Void-type experience that mystics must endure to prepare for Unity. That is explored by Evelyn Undehill and others.
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I concur with just about all your observations and everything you say here. I had a void experience that went no further.
I was in utter and complete bliss. I felt or rather “knew” that I had existed in that place/state always. It felt more familar than my hands as I type this. I understood completely what it was all about – what time was, etc. Undortunately, I don’t remember all the knowledge I had access to.
The thing is, what I didn’t have access to this earthly identity. There was no concept of this life or of ever having been in any other state than simply suspended in that velvety black bliss. Finally, I had an earthly thought and shot back into my body feeling horrified that I was neglecting a solemn and profound duty – participating in earthly life! I imagine that if I did bring my earthly ego along I could have easily been terrified throughout my void experience.
Also, my nde resulted from oral surgery and I “came out of it” pretty quickly. I often wonder what would have happened next.
Interestingly, I was under a great deal of stress at the time and dealing with an untenable situation. This didn’t seem to color the experience but I believe my lack of awareness of my human life did.
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Hi Patricia,
Not sure if you’ll get an update on this post but will go ahead to share anyways:
I had essentially an identical experience during an NDE. Your description really really resonates with the feeling I got from my time the blackness. Interestingly enough, my experience is similar to yours in the earthly circumstances (sort of) associated with how we ‘died’: I stopped breathing after using opioids (fentanyl).
I was in a endless expanse, not aware of my earth self, or anything related to it whatsoever. I felt no pain, no sadness, or lonely thoughts. I had no body. I was in absolute peace, comfort, quiet and cool tranquility. To me it seemed very cool there, but in a very soft, mentally comforting way. I awoke in a hospital bed about 2 days after overdosing, and one thing to note was that the hospital room was a bit cold, as usual. I had tubes in my throat (and my throat hurt, was really sore). My chest was very sore, and bruised from CPR maneuvers too. My mother told me that while I was out, I began to speak one night and my words were, “Are you an alien?”.
If I met an entity in my NDE, I have zero recollection of it. But it has always struck me as a sign that more happened there than I could remember.
After getting back to life in the following months/year, I slipped back into my drug addictions/habits again and eventually my health became very bad from heavy drug use. Around that time I began to experience supernatural activity in my presence, especially at night time, but also during the day. Seeing strange streaks of light zipping around my home, strange smells would fill the room following this. One experience involved an object moving following myself seeing the strange lights morphing just a few feet from me. The experiences evolved to the point of me considering them Demonic/negative in nature. I feel that my selfish, hedonistic lifestyle opened me up to and made me vulnerable to these energies.
After months of enduring very intense sessions of demonic oppression, it led to a spiritual reawakening in myself, and ultimately the demonic activity SAVED MY LIFE (or at least my gradual reaction to it did). I stopped using drugs as a result of this activity as I could no longer use without being attacked by whatever it was. The attacks actually involved physical activity that harmed my flesh. Cuts/scratches on my skin. Eventually I actually had some kind of entity enter my body from my sacrum (tailbone area)/…I hesitate to admit this, but for the sake of being honest…it was as if some kind of entity entered through my anus. It felt like something physical but was like a seething vortex of energy. It then spiraled up my spinal column, and felt like an electromagnetic field that was filling me as it ascended. I could consciously stop this force from climbing mind you, it was a combination of a physical and mental effort. Not difficult, but it kept trying to climb higher and higher. Researching demonic entities I found that apparently entities/demons entering via the anus is a commonly known phenomenon among occult practitioners, particularly those who follow the ‘left handed path’.
I’ll end this on a final note:
I had never practiced religion in my entire life until this point. I began to pray and read the New Testament in particular and it actually seemed to provide results. During the intense demonic oppression/possession period however my connection with Christ/the Lord was very weak, if even existent at all, and when I would pray out of desperation, it was as if the entity physically attacked my throat the moment I even thought of grabbing my bible. I had pains in my throat instantly. When I prayed it amplified the pains and felt like it was twisting my organs inside my body. But when I would pray during that night, it wouldn’t remove the oppression. It had a grip on me spiritually and I couldn’t seem to free myself entirely.
After my last experience with an entity entering my body in the same manner (from below), it terrified me. I could feel SOMETHING moving inside me. Was like it could to hack my sensory perceptions and induce visual/auditory hallucinations. That night I laid in bed and began to practice a self deliverance prayer, using legalistic language, dissolving any permissions/ties/connections/bonds I had permitted to any infernal spirits, and commanding them to leave by the Authority of Christ. I felt a cool feeling come down over me at this point like peace just flowed into me. I’ve been told this was the Holy Spirit moving upon me, but the feeling wasn’t complete. It was as if I still had a battle to fight. As I continued the deliverance prayers in my bed, the feeling of the ‘Holy Spirit’ seemed to keep growing and after some time I felt the dark entity/parasite leave my lower regions just like it had com. Was a significant moment, it felt like a gust of air/wind left me, and blew down and away from my spine/body. A few minutes later it was as if that entity attempted to force it’s way into my body again. Seemed like it was lingering in my presence and didn’t want to leave, like a criminal breaking into poorly secured home. Or a squatter feeling a right to be in a home they did not own. I repeated the deliverance prayers and AGAIN, it left me like a gust of wind or a forcefield leaving my body. This happened once more that night, and I was very tired. I then fell asleep, but was sort of worried it would accost me during my sleep. Hours later in the dreamscape I was in complete darkness and I suddenly heard the LOUDEST howling scream and felt a massive gust of wind blow upon me (from below). It was like a Banshee was screaming into my entire being and it terrified me greatly. I actually awoke screaming loudly in fear. I woke and could not go back to sleep as I feared being alone in my bed after that ‘dream’.
I feel that my selfish lifestyle precipitated these experiences so that I could cease to live in error. I’m currently off the drugs and pray daily for growth, self understanding.
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It’s really strange that I came across this post so long after both my original post and your response. As a former addictions counselor, let me first congratulate you on what I know is the journey of a lifetime in freeing yourself from addiction. If by chance you do read this, I hope that your sobriety is still greatly informing your personal/soul growth. I believe that the journey from addiction to sobriety is a life-altering gift.
It sounds to me like your substance use is connected to the negative energies you experienced. I think that there are negative energies that can “find a way in” when people check out of there bodies during times of severe inebriation. I definitely saw this with my clients. I am loathe to use the word “demonic” because I feel that it’s a purely religious way of explaining what I believe are mostly parasitic entities that feed on negativity – much like their material counterparts – lice, mosquitoes, etc. To me they are just part of the unseen ecology but we put our own “spin” on them. The more we fear and give them scary attributes, the more they can feed. I feel calling them demons, actually gives them power.
Interestingly, my experience had the opposite effect on me in terms of religion. I was raised in a very Christian manner and I learned to love the figure we call Jesus. I still do, although I no longer need to contextualize that love within the confines of religion. I also believe that no matter what your faith, Jesus is a very powerful and loving being who is filled with the light. He seems to be especially powerful when it comes to freeing us from these negative parasitical energies. It sounds to me that you have found this out! It is my fondest wish that your continued belief uplifts you.
My NDE Void experience is just one of many so-called paranormal experiences that have given me a unique perspective on life. In 2018 after the death of my best friend, I was overcome with the need to put my experiences in writing. Over the course of the next six months, I collected all the notebooks I had kept over a lifetime and put my story into writing and then into a book: Paranormal Ponderings (Kindle Unlimited) or it can be read on my website of the same name.
I couldn’t understand the powerful sense of urgency I suddenly had to publish these accounts but now I do. Within two or three weeks of publication, my house burned to the ground. Had I not published my stories, I would have lost them forever.
My life has been deeply touched by things just beyond my sight as all of ours have been. In my case, this started so early, that I had not yet been indoctrinated into a world that teaches us to ignore, deny, or ridicule these events. I believe that since I accepted them, they just kept coming.
I have been fortunate in that all of these experiences have taught me wonderful things about our reality, ourselves, and most of all, about the enormity of the powerful energy we have watered down so much that it fits on a Mother’s Day card: LOVE
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i was caught in a hydraulic and stopped breathing in the ocean. i did not drown, there was no water in my lungs, but also no oxygen in my blood. when i could no longer move my arms to wave for help, and could no longer hold my eyes open, i thought everyone in my life will be ok, i am ok, i am done (here in this life), and i let go. i described it as being where there was nothing, no light, no dark, no warm no cold, no wet no dry, no skin to feel, no eyes to see. but there was love, peace. and i understood everything. no other words describe it better than love. some knocked the breathe back into me. i was not ready to leave that place. i was sorta annoyed they brought me back. I still could not move. they thought i was unconscious, but i heard everything they were saying. i thought i had had a stroke or something and might have to live like this, being aware of everything but no one knowing, i thought that would be hell, and wondered why they brought me back from love. after they gave me oxygen i recovered, but never forgot that feeling of love. i don’t remember what i understood, but i know it was love.
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Wow 😳!!! Thank God I am working on FORGIVENESS NOW!!! In my heart of hearts iforgiveness was the hardest thing for me, but after four trips of my own to THE BLACKEST OF ALL BLACK VOIDS – where I could feel nothing see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing, taste nothing, touch nothing, and the blackest of all blackness was all around me in every direction to infinity – BEING THERE WAS SHEER HELL FOR ME – IT WAS THE WORST OF ALL SOLITARY CONFINEMENTS!!! And I didn’t know how I got there or how long I would be stuck there. On September 20th, 2018, I went into cardiac arrest and was without a pulse for over half an hour. They said it is a miracle that they were able to bring me back after working on me NON-STOP FOR OVER HALF AN HOUR. I wish I knew who these paramedics were who saved my life so I can thank them for giving me a chance to learn to forgive before I finally exit this life. I have forgiven both my father and mother – who was especially brutally violent with me as a child and adolescent. Forgiving her was the hardest act of forgiveness I will ever have to do in this life (so far)…
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Angelique, it sounds like you had a very challenging and life changing experience! When you were in the void, were you aware that you had just left your body? You mentioned that you had no senses. Was it just you and your thoughts in that void? That must have been really terrifying. I’m curious what emotions or thoughts you have had had while there. Thank you for sharing with us, void experiences are rare but you are not alone! They can be very powerful teachers about who we are deep inside. Wishing you all the best in your continued recovery. -Jenn
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Dear Jenn,
Thank you for your reply, and taking the time to read my brief account of what seemed like an eternity what for me was REAL HELL!!!
The Black Void Of Absolute Nothingness IS THE MOST TERRIFYING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED!!!
I knew I was there as a Spiritual Being/ Soul but I did not know why. First time I ended up there was when I was twelve years old, and my mother had picked me up with her hands around my neck, and strangled me to unconsciousness because I had not put the cap in the toothpaste back in while I was brushing my teeth. I distinctly remember a high pitched whine, and then a crashing over my head as if someone had smashed a thick piece of glass table too over my head. I don’t know how long I was there the first time but it was a relief to be somewhere my mother was not abusing me.
The second time I went into the black void I was eighteen, and upcountry in Sierra Leone buying rough diamond stones, and the asshole punk driver (Adrien) who totaled my dad’s Toyota Landcruiser drove us off a sharp turn in rainy season m, and down we went tumbling and all I remember was thinking “Oh Shit” and I clutched my bag which contained a parcel of rough diamonds worth $250,000. The last thing I remember was being smashed around in the vehicle with cash money in the back flying everywhere, and a case of malt beer smashing and going into my eyelids. I hated the smell of beer for twenty years after that…
But in the meantime I was thrust into this darkest of dark Universes, unable to see anything. First thought in my head was “Oh my God don’t tell me I am dead, because my mother is going to kill me”.
Then I remember thinking “wait a minute I am here, I am me, where am I? I MUST TRY TO SEE SOMETHING!” And then as if I somehow willed it to happen I saw a point of light, and then another, and then another, and then I was back in my body and the only one trapped in the landcruiser laying on its right side and I couldn’t get out. Fortunately I still had my handbag, and the villagers climbing into the wreck and taking all the cash plastered like wallpaper all over the inside of the car because of the malt beers, who also ripped my gold Jewellery off of me had no clue what was in my bag. The diver and my translator (Sierra Leone has 16 different tribal languages) were thrown out of the vehicle and I was dragged out over broken glass to sit on the grass next to my translator who had two ribs poking out that he asked me to push back in. We were all very young so I think that’s the only reason we survived this hellish ride back to the capital (FREETOWN). A year later I had to leave my diamond buying and high maintenance lifestyle behind because of the civil war that broke out in Sierra Leone and lasted ten years, with people getting their arms and legs chopped off by child soldiers.
I came to Manhattan in New York City, and found my “home away from home”. I became a high class escort and dominatrix ($500 an hour) and I specialize md in “party calls”… but after my sister DIANA betrayed me on her wedding day down at City Hall in front of the female judge marrying her and Alan, I fell deep and hard into smoking coke. I would tell my fellow crack cocaine/ freebase smokers that I wanted “to get so high I could see God”.
I watched my acting career go up in smoke, with a loaded crack pipe, while watching myself in a scene on the HBO show “The Wire”, with my CRACK DEALER and crack chef in tow, on the 41st floor of the Trump Building across from the United Nations. They all thought I was great in my scene with Dominic West, but I could see the writing on the wall that said “this shit is going to fuck in your acting career Ange”.
And it did. But not before I took such a massive blast that I passed out on the floor of some swanky hairstylist, and went into the darkness, only to return to my body in an epileptic shaking buzzing, and he and my crack chef/ “screenplay writer” buddy Scott were panicked and terrified leaning over me. What was the first thing I asked for? Another hit of cocaine… “INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE – INSANE IN THE BRAIN 🧠” was I. I lived the high life on 57th street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue from age 21 to 41, and in the course of my drug addiction and ensuing raging alcoholism, I lost the plot to my life, and gave up the fight to keep my rent stabilized apartment after three years and took a lousy $60,000 settlement to give up my home of half of my life. I did not know how badly uprooting myself from everything I knew, and becoming a nomad in Manhattan, would affect me.
Exactly four years ago, in August of 2016, I tried to commit suicide, by overdosing on ALL OF MY PRESCRIPTION MEDS, and took 100 pills – 60 1mg Ativan tablets, 30 30mg Librium capsules, and 10 300mg Seroquel tablets, all washed down with a pint of Georgi Vodka, in the bathroom of a women’s homeless shelter on 45th street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue – a stones throw away from the United Nations!!! Oh how far I had fallen – homeless and hipless (I’ve had two total hip replacement surgeries while homeless) – on crutches and nothing to live for and wanting out of my pain and suffering…
THE ONLY REASON I AM WRITING THIS RIGHT NOW IS BECAUSE OF A FUCKING FIRE DRILL THEY HAD AT NEW PROVIDENCE WOMENS SHELTER ON THE DAY I DESPERATELY TRIED TI COMMIT SUICIDE. Paramedics and EMT from the NYFD saved my life, as they found me barely breathing. This time I went into the blackest of black voids for what seemed like an eternity. I knew what I had done, and I was now in the worst hell of my own making. There was total senatorial deprivation of everything and every kind imaginable. I WAS ALONE WITH MYSELF AND NOTHING AND NO ONE ELSE ANYWHERE IN ALL DIRECTIONS!!! This was the worst solitary confinement possible for me – I would take hellfire and lashings and demons and screaming of other tortured souls just not to be so fucking alone with only myself in the blackest of dark black voids, surrounded by nothing, that extended infinitely in all directions. Give me the “hellfire and brimstone” any day over the nothingness of the Black Void!!!
I woke up three days later and the first thing I saw was the nasty silotex riled ceiling of BELLEVUE HOSPITAL, tethered to you massive machines, with two nurses sitting on either side of me – guarding me from myself I guess, for the next two days. I ended up the psych ward for two weeks because the doctor overheard me talking about taking 100 pills to end my insane life and suffering, and telling my case manager I was NOT HAPPY TO STILL BE HERE.
In May of 2016, three months before my suicide attempt, I met NICK RAYNES in the AT&T store on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 61st Street, a block away from Bloomingdales. It was the beginning of the most amazing relationship I have ever had with another human being, that tragically ended in Nick’s accidental overdose death of Heroin mixed with Fentanyl end of July 2018. NICHOLAS MADE ME HAPPY TO STILL BE ALIVE, and when I lost him I was shattered and devastated beyond any words in any language I know. I did not sleep for seven weeks – for 49 days I was a zombie and I went into cardiac arrest on September 20th, 2018, when I was allowed back into the apartment to get my things. I came into contact with the Heroin Fentanyl mix and all I remember was feeling like something was pulling me down on my left side. And back into the black I went.
Again I asked “what the fuck am I doing here???!!!” “Why am I not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel? Why is no one coming to get me?” AND THEN ANOTHER ETERNITY IN THE BLACK VOID, or what felt like it. I opened my eyes in an ambulance with my clothes cut open and defibrillators on my chest, Yhey told me they had been working on me for over half an hour and I had no pulse and it was a miracle that they brought me back to life.
Ive got blurry vision and chest pains since then, but NOW, I feel grateful to all these people who have given me a second and third chance at fixing my fucked up life. I realize that I HAVE GOT TO GET IT RIGHT, and get right with my creator, because I don’t want to go back to the worst torture of all time possible: THE BLACK VOID. I must go for now.
My girlfriend’s boyfriend jumped from the 12th floor of a hotel in Hawaii, and I just found out tonight. His name is/was William. He leapt to his death on Friday. Please say a prayer for him that he feels remorse for those he hurt while he was alive. I don’t want him languishing in the Black Void. I don’t wish that hell on my worst enemy. I should work on having no enemies when it’s my time to finally exit this life. Thank you for reading my story, and May the source of your creation bless you and keep you.
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Angelique Doudnikova,
I had the same NDE experience as you. It was back in 2012. I was trying to get off of xanax that a doctor recommended and prescribed for a couple of years. It was very physically addictive. He put me on it, but he certainly didn’t help me try to get off of it. I went through several gran mal seizures from going cold turkey. The insomnia was the absolute worst part. I had been telling my best friend that I felt like I was going to die for about two weeks prior to one of the seizures. One night, I was in my office working. I hadn’t slept in months. I could feel my self slipping into unconscious. I arrived in this place where people communicated telepathically. If you thought it, it was heard. I had a life review that started from birth to the present. It was like a flash and was over. I was judged by my depression among other things. After the life review, I fell into this pitch black vastness. It was cold and I was left with only my thoughts. It felt like the worst solitary confinement. Then, zapped back into my body. My best friend was sleeping over in the guest bedroom and I woke him up. I was absolutely terrified and ready to give away everything that I owned. I had a gran mal, two days later. I’m convinced that I had a seizure and died that night. I think my friend just shrugged it off as a dream. I’m so thankful to be able to read other relatable stories.
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Thanks for ur thoughts, Shea. I’m glad to see younger folks thinking. I ditto what Jenn said. The link below is of a lady who had a remarkable darkness experience. And how she has evolved since. a remarkable person.
And you might like what this woman is saying though some of it is political.
View at Medium.com
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You read the wrong books and listened to the wrong people. Chapter 22 of the book of Enoch gives us an accounting of what happens when we die.
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Kind of feels how my life is now. No moving forward. No going back. Here but not here. An occasional glimpse of light only having it turned off. Guilt knowing there are living people who want to use their light to the fullest but physically can’t. Will I take this with me? Will I still be in the dark? It’s not dark really. Just nothing. I’m hoping it’s like when a chick is hatching. I have to work to get out of the void but the light keeps growing no matter how long it takes.
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I will definitely check out the Book of Enoch, thank you for the recommendation. However, I don’t believe any one source or perspective holds all of the truth about our greater reality, or what happens when we die. I encourage everyone to read and study as much as possible, from religious texts to philosophy and everything in between. To me, it’s highly unlikely that the ‘truth’ lives in one book to the exclusion of all others, but I always welcome more options for research!
Thanks for your comment.
Jenn
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[…] Sometimes You Don’t See The Light – The Void: A Place of Nothingness in the Afterli… […]
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[…] apparatus to function on earth, spirits can become quite confused, resulting in a temporary void experience. I would presume that Siluan’s brother-in-law did not expect to die, or that death was […]
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So, even if you don’t commit suicide but you have brain damage to the reward centers from excess abuse, grief and a lifetime stress, when you die, even if you hung in there through it all, tried every medication, therapy, yoga,prayer, all to no avail because that part of your brain is damaged, got help but nothing was able to allow your brain to fully work enough to transcend the suffering…. Basically, f-u??
What about the many claims that when severely depressed (I’m not talking about a bad attitude. I mean straight-on confusion, catatonia, dementia+++ and don’t tell me all dementia patients are blissfully happy. I’ve experienced otherwise, personally! They are in HELL and don’t understand why, let alone can wipe their own butts) the spirits stuck there are assisted by higher beings who help them?
Are all of these claims just false?
I will find a way to undo my sentience. One way or another. Nothing anyone said will change my mind. I will find a way to destroy every fiber of this awareness.
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I’m truly sorry that you are hurting so terrible that you would rather have non-existence. I would urge you to speak with someone. It sounds like you’ve tried a lot to help your pain. I don’t know you said I won’t patronize you. I just hope you find something to ease your suffering without checking out all together. There is more to life than just this pain, and I hope you can find someone with the love and compassion to help you see that. Take care, Jenn
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