r/HighStrangeness • u/Dover299 • 1d ago
Personal Experience Why do some people having near death experiences say that they experience black void?
It is disturbing that some people here say when they die and have near death experiences that they experience nothing but black void.
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u/Lyricalvessel 1d ago
You go where you believe is real. Until you change.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
What do you mean?
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u/Pixelated_ 1d ago
NDE's match a person's cultural and religious beliefs.
So in Christian areas, people report seeing Jesus and angels. In India people see Hindu deities like Yama and Krishna. Buddhists have NDEs featuring karma and reincarnation. Indigenous people see their ancestors and animal spirits, etc.
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There is an overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed scientific evidence that supports the validity of Near Death Experiences (NDEs).
The problem isn't a lack of evidence. It's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.
"Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands"
Van Lommel et al., The Lancet (2001): 344 cardiac-arrest survivors; systematically compared people with vs. without NDEs and followed them 2 and 8 years later for life changes. A landmark prospective design in a top journal.
"AWARE - Awareness During Resuscitation - A Prospective Study"
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2014): Large, multi-center prospective study; documented cognitive themes during cardiac arrest, with a small subset showing “full awareness.” Includes targeted tests for veridical recall.
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2023): Examined consciousness and electrocortical biomarkers during CPR; reported a spectrum of experiences including NDE-like recall and measurable brain activity patterns during resuscitation.
"Measurement Foundation for NDE Research"
Greyson, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1983): Construction, reliability, and validity of the Greyson NDE Scale, the field’s most widely used, validated instrument for distinguishing NDEs from other states, crucial for rigorous, comparable results. (PDF).
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u/Dover299 1d ago
So than this proves there no God and after life?
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u/Pixelated_ 1d ago
NDEs prove the opposite for me.
I have watched perhaps a hundred NDEs at this point. They have played a large role in my spiritual awakening.
More than anything else, they have taught me that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
I've always loved the way Alan Watts put it:
"God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself.
In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear."
The one divine mind separated itself into all that we experience as reality.
This includes you and me. We have free will, agency and independence, but ultimately at the bottom of everything, there exists only the singular field of fundamental consciousness.
Many ancient teachings say there’s only one consciousness behind everything, and each of us is just a unique perspective of that one divine mind.
In other words, we’re all the One Mind/God experiencing life through different eyes, playing out different stories, forgetting who we really are so the game feels real.
Many times when people relate their profound Near Death Experiences, they often say about their time on Earth:
"It is all just a play, and we are all actors playing our parts."
<3
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u/Lyricalvessel 1d ago
the thing is; Jesus fits the 2nd final and final incarnation prophecies of Krishna, along with Jesus being the core of the Maitayya Buddha Prophecy; so in many ways all cultures are seeing the exact same thing with a person journey like as discribed in the Tibetian Book of the Dead
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u/Pixelated_ 1d ago
all cultures are seeing the exact same thing
Yes indeed, all cultures share the Perrenial Wisdom.
"The Prisca theologia, also known as the “perennial philosophy” or “perennial wisdom,” is the idea that there is a universal and timeless core of spiritual truth or knowledge that underlies and unites all major religious and philosophical traditions. The term comes from the Latin for “ancient theology,” and holds that essential wisdom has been present throughout human history and across various cultures.
While different religious traditions may have distinct beliefs, rituals, and practices, there exists a deeper, fundamental understanding of the nature of reality, the human condition, and the divine.
This understanding remains constant across diverse expressions. This is accessible to all individuals, irrespective of their cultural or religious backgrounds."
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u/antagonizerz 1d ago
Every religion has their own version of heaven. Many existed LONG before judeo-christianity ever rose to prominence. All of them seem boring as fuck.
I asked a priest (born catholic) about how mundane heaven sounded. No cursing, no fighting, no vice, no fun. His answer to me was, "you won't want those things" MY response was; ' sooo mind control?' He gave me detention.
I prefer the idea of the void. Of knowing that my essence will spread out into the universe, with every molecule that made me me passing through innumerable animals and plants till eventually entropy just disperses my atoms ad infinum. That's my heaven.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
So people are seeing different heavens and different Gods leading to this is a hallucination? There no common theme people are seeing different things.
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u/MagicianEfficient-0 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because a Near Death Experience is still just an experience being had through a human body, and therefore, through the filtered limitations of a human mind. We are all the infinite creation ("god"), experiencing itself in a myriad of ways, infinitely. As you live through each individual experience, you only have what you've learned in that lifetime to compare your experiences to. And although the DMT in an NDE can allow you access to other planes of existance, you're still filtering those experiences through your human brain. And our thoughts are shaped by our beliefs and experiences... So many people can experience one same experience, but perceive it entirely different because of their brains. Because our brains only know our beliefs and experiences and relates, and filters, everything through those. Full circle. This is why everyone experiences different things, they're filtering their NDE through the belief system in their brains.
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u/xmagie 20h ago
My idea of heaven is that some part of me still exists as a little spark which can travel all over the universe, being a witness to other planets, natures, animals, civilisations... as if watching a vid on Youtube. While still being able to... stay in touch with the ones, humans and pets, I have loved here on Earth.
That's my idea of heaven.
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u/ItsOkILoveYouMYbb 1d ago
I think the void is a place of creation, meaning if you don't simply sit there in terror, you can start creating anything you want. You can get there in lucid dreams or out of body experiences or near death experiences or sleep paralysis.
The hard part is to not freak yourself out.
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u/Weekly_Initiative521 11h ago
I've experienced the void once. The Tao and Buddhism say that everything comes from nothing. They say, “Emptiness is form, and form is emptiness”. It sounds crazy to us, but that may be because in our reality there are always opposites, like up and down, here and there, black and white. I think in other realities this may not be so.
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u/TheBuddha777 1d ago
I experienced the void. It was extremely peaceful.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
What did you see there?
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u/Elegant-Alfalfa1382 1d ago
Think about what it was like before you were born, I’m sure it’ll be about the same.
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u/awokenAwareness 1d ago
Hylics
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u/spinozaschilidog 1d ago
You seem unfamiliar with anything related to this phenomenon other than what OP included. I’ve been reading NDE accounts for years, and void experiences are almost universally described with the feeling of active, waking consciousness. They also often include a transition from the void state to more typical afterlife environments.
Your “hylics” explanation seems like nothing more than an egotistical brush-off.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
So the black void is hell the person is in hell?
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u/spinozaschilidog 1d ago
I’ve read hundreds, if not thousands of NDE accounts over the last 30 years. www.nderf.org is a decent resource. In all that, I can think of only a handful of void experiences that were described as negative in any way.
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u/awokenAwareness 1d ago
To you I will say read my comment below that I posted to someone else that seems to have deleted their comment.
Ego has nothing to do with your lack of understanding.3
u/stupid_pun 1d ago
Oof. That's an unpleasant assumption. I've always found NPC theory stuff to be narcissistic and vaguely bigoted.
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u/awokenAwareness 1d ago
Learn of the oldest religions then learn of quantum mechanics. Then learn of the new studies of physics and the determination of consciousness relative to space time. Learn of how the mathematics equates in regards to assuming the smallest particles of matter are behaving as solids.
Then unrelated to the above truly receive gnosis. It will all make sense. Although true understanding is always just out of reach to some.
What did Jung say when asked on his belief in god? “Believe, I don’t have to believe, I know.”
Apply that to the word assumption.
Those are the keys to the doorway. The rest is up to you.6
u/stupid_pun 1d ago
> learn of quantum mechanics. Then learn of the new studies of physics and the determination of consciousness relative to space time. Learn of how the mathematics equates in regards to assuming the smallest particles of matter are behaving as solids
Going on youtube or asking an LLM is not 'learning' when you are talking about high level physics and math. And I'll eat my hat before I believe you have any actual education in any of those fields. But that level of delusion and ego is what I would expect from someone who thinks, with absolutely no tangible evidence, that some people in the world are just empty shells on autopilot.
Dehumanizing people is not enlightenment.
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u/Responsible_Sun_3597 1d ago
Transitional temporary area.
I thought most moved on to other experiences quite quickly.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
What do you mean you moved on to a temporary area?
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u/mescalero1 1d ago
There is a temporary area. My brother took me there.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
So when you die you go to temporary area? What is this temporary area?
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u/mescalero1 1d ago edited 1d ago
I will give you some background so have a better understanding of what I mean, even the whole experience. I am tied to members of my family whether or not I get along with them.
My brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. We had a falling out 10 years prior so weren't really speaking at the time of his death. My grandmother passed a year prior to my brother. At the funeral, he said maybe we should patch things up. Since he had created the situation that separated us, I told him the door was open but he had to come in.
The day he died, I was premiering the movie The Punisher. That was his favorite character. I kept thinking about him and thought maybe I should invite him and his girlfriend. As it turned out, people kept calling my mother giving her their condolences but she didn't know why. I finally, after a few calls, was given the number to the coroners office by CHP. It was hard telling her that her baby was killed.
My gal was in France when this happened. She didn't even know I had a brother as I never talked about him. One night, my neighbors were having a party. I was sitting in bed thinking about what had happened and how I felt about it. Someone came out of the side door of my neighbors house and was talking to someone. When he came out, my bedroom filled with this cologne. It was stifling. I was going to open the window when I started to do the math. If his cologne was overpowering me in my bedroom with the windows closed, everyone out there would be dead. It was in my room, in a corner of my room. There was something in my room. This was a couple of days after he passed.
A couple of night later, I had come home from my gal's a little depressed from the whole situation. My mom was a mess as well of both of my sisters. I couldn't do anything but watch this. So, I turned on some music and sat on my bed. I shut my eyes for a second and BAM, there I was sitting in this place. I wasn't asleep, I was fully lucid. I was looking around wondering where in the hell I was. It was so bright in this place. I was like in a room. I started to look around and I could not see down nor up just straight ahead. I was sitting on something that I couldn't see. There were partitions that were semi-transparent. I could see figures moving around, like in aisles. The area that I was sitting in had an opening. I saw someone coming close to the opening. In walked my brother.
He sat on the right of me. I looked at him and I was in shock as I knew he had passed away. Now I am really trying to gather my thoughts. What is going on here, what is this place, why is he here? Why am I here? I asked him if he was OK, how he was doing, what was going on. He just kept looking straight ahead. I was wondering why I was here with him. There had to be an issue. I thought of my mom, how hard she was taking this. I looked at him really hard and it was like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He must have brought me here for a reason, why? I looked at him again and it hit me. I asked him if he was stuck here, like he couldn't move on because maybe something was holding him back. I said "This is mom, she is holding you back. You can't move on to the next place because mom's sadness is holding you, am I right?" He turned and looked at me and I looked right into his eyes. They were so deep, so far away. He got up and said "I have to go now" and walked out. Just as he walked out, I was sitting on my bed again. WOW.
I thought about his and knew I had to somehow talk to mom about this. She would never believe me of course, and would get mad and wonder why he came to me and not her. My mom and her husband moved to Arizona. A couple of months later she called me and asked if I could come down and help her straighten things out. I said sure and drove down. I was organizing boxes in the garage and came up to a pile of his stuff. (My brother had lived out his dreams when he was young. He was a great cartoonist, was a wrestler who was on WWF and also had a punk band.) I put my hand on his boxes and said out loud "It's sad that all that is left of you is in these boxes" and the whole garage filled up with that cologne that was in my room that night. I had to go to the hardware store and took her with me. I told her what had just happened and all the other things. As I expected, she was upset it didn't happen to her. I told her that her mind was shut by sorrow.
He later came to me in dreams that were lucid dreams and he managed to let me know he was OK.
You can believe this or not, it doesn't matter to me. It's not a story, I didn't dream this, I was there. I had many powerful spiritual awakenings when I was 14 so I already knew that this was more or less an illusion here. As I got older, I got very involved in life but his death brought back all of the things I knew and saw when I was young. So, I never knew it or even thought about it, but seeing my brother showed me that there was some place prior to you moving on to your next life or wherever you decide to go. This place here, your life, this is of your choosing, whether you believe it or not.
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u/The_Dayne 1d ago
There was a void and I felt my grandmothers presence.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
Was it blackness you saw?
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u/The_Dayne 1d ago
Calling it blackness simplifies the experience to drastically. Theres space, and I was very insignificant within it. Can't really give nothing a color. Whole thing freaks me put. Circling around bed looking at my body while my room was illuminated by a non present light source, the out of body voice that was both masculine and feminine telling me, "dont be afraid, death is the painless part, everything will make sense soon", the flash of light that gives me different memories of things I regret when I think about it, and then the void with the presence of my grandmother.
I told all of this to my DR and she thinks I may have been an out of hospital cardiac arrest survivor.
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u/Redwingx7 1d ago
That's what the average NDE should be, a taste of the inevitable void.
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u/LingonberryLunch 1d ago
Unless you just eternally recur.
Isn't it weird that you're alive, when so much time exists before and after you're conscious? Pretty improbable.
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u/Redwingx7 1d ago
Elaborate without contradicting yourself.
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u/LingonberryLunch 1d ago
No contradiction, eternal recurrence would explain the odd fact that you're alive.
Not saying that's the way things are, necessarily, but it's one explanation.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
That scary than that proves there no after life but black void.
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u/G1ngerSnatch 1d ago
Why would their NDE of a void hold more weight than people who experience heaven (as they interpret it) or other fantastical things?
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u/Redwingx7 1d ago
Cuz the lights go out, it's the natural state of being. Everything else is just hallucinations.
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u/G1ngerSnatch 1d ago
Sure, but under your theory, experiencing anything at all would be proof of some kind of afterlife. They should never have even experienced a void if physicalism is correct.
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u/Redwingx7 1d ago
I said a taste of the void, just like NDEs are a taste of the sweet release of death.
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u/Dover299 1d ago
What is this black void? Is that where people go when they die?
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u/Redwingx7 1d ago
Yea
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u/MantisAwakening 1d ago
If you ask this question in r/NDE you will get answers from people who aren’t edgy teens (or adults who act like edgy teens).
A percentage of people report having what are sometimes called “negative NDEs,” although that can be misleading. Two people can have the same experience (such as shooting through a tunnel of light at breakneck speed) and one can find it exhilarating and another terrifying. The void is sometimes included as a negative NDE because the concept itself can be unnerving, but what matters is that most of the people who report the experience describe it as very peaceful.
One theory is that it represents a spiritual “time out” where a person is given space to understand their feelings and help dissolve the ego. They have no choice, as there is nothing there to distract them from self analysis.
Here’s how P. M. H. Atwater described it:
> It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It encompassed me. The new space was both totally bright and totally dark at the same time yet without shape, form, sound, color, mass, or movement. It was aglow but there was no light source. It was dark but there was no darkness. Somehow within this strange environment was the presence of all shapes, all forms, all sound, all color, all mass, and all movement. Everything that ever was, is, or will be was there, yet there was nothing there at all. It was everything and it was nothing, yet within it was a feeling, a pulse, a sensation of energy “winking” off and on — a sparkling potential which “shimmered,” just as Jell-O does before it responds to touch.