Have you ever had a near-death experience (NDE)?  If you have had one, what was your experience?  Has it altered your perspective on life?  Do you now fear death more, or do you view death with acceptance?  Do you believe that consciousness transcends death or that the jaws of nothingness slams shut at the end of life?

If you believe that NDEs are just a DMT hit before you expire into nihilistic nothingness, that's Ok too, explain why you hold that opinion as well as what led you to believe the way you do?

I got the Bends while scuba diving in Egypt, unconscious etc. Didn't change my thinking after except i gave up scuba

Some might not call this one but feel it was.

I was on a deep woods Appalachian camping trip with friends at the site of a cliff (at age 15).

At night swallowed some "articles" that turned out be an unspeakably massive overdose. If I had to guess it felt like 100 times or more OD.

Experienced warp speed psychedelic hell and it seemed endless. Impossible to ever forget that.

My friends were aware and I guess were trying to help but I was beyond help. 

I felt like jumping off the cliff or what was known back then as doing a Diane Linkletter. I don't know exactly what stopped me as I don't think I was being physically restrained.

However, experiencing what I felt as endless hell in my brain and coming razor thin close to the big jump to me qualifies as a near death experience.

As as a result of that I did seek medical evaluation to determine if I had damaged my brain. They said no, but it was definitely changed.

NDE Every time I drive on Rama 2.

I have always been fascinated by NDE, there are books written about this topic.

Nearly smothered to death in Nana when big Nong sat on my face and would not get off 

19 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Some might not call this one but feel it was.

I was on a deep woods Appalachian camping trip with friends at the site of a cliff (at age 15).

At night swallowed some "articles" that turned out be an unspeakably massive overdose. If I had to guess it felt like 100 times or more OD.

Experienced warp speed psychedelic hell and it seemed endless. Impossible to ever forget that.

My friends were aware and I guess were trying to help but I was beyond help. 

I felt like jumping off the cliff or what was known back then as doing a Diane Linkletter. I don't know exactly what stopped me as I don't think I was being physically restrained.

However, experiencing what I felt as endless hell in my brain and coming razor thin close to the big jump to me qualifies as a near death experience.

As as a result of that I did seek medical evaluation to determine if I had damaged my brain. They said no, but it was definitely changed.

So that's what your avatar means! Groovey!

Brain hallucinations, you dont come back from dead

Several.

Just now, dinsdale said:

Several.

 

When you got the bill in a karaoke?

When Trump won I nearly died.

every month when my condo hands me my bill  

19 minutes ago, Flyguy330 said:

So that's what your avatar means! Groovey!

Well related but that cheery avatar doesn't reflect the visit to hell that I experienced.

36 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Some might not call this one but feel it was.

I was on a deep woods Appalachian camping trip with friends at the site of a cliff (at age 15).

At night swallowed some "articles" that turned out be an unspeakably massive overdose. If I had to guess it felt like 100 times or more OD.

Experienced warp speed psychedelic hell and it seemed endless. Impossible to ever forget that.

My friends were aware and I guess were trying to help but I was beyond help. 

I felt like jumping off the cliff or what was known back then as doing a Diane Linkletter. I don't know exactly what stopped me as I don't think I was being physically restrained.

However, experiencing what I felt as endless hell in my brain and coming razor thin close to the big jump to me qualifies as a near death experience.

As as a result of that I did seek medical evaluation to determine if I had damaged my brain. They said no, but it was definitely changed.

why would you not identify the drug involved?

and a bad trip is hardly a near-death experience, though it would certainly leave a psychic mark

1 minute ago, madone said:

why would you not identify the drug involved?

and a bad trip is hardly a near-death experience, though it would certainly leave a psychic mark

Use your imagination. 

Yeah I presumed many wouldn't agree that it was but to me it was a miracle that I didn't jump off that cliff.  That would have actually been the "rational" thing to do at the time. Also take your perception of what a "bad trip" is and increase that exponentially. 

1 hour ago, madone said:

why would you not identify the drug involved?

and a bad trip is hardly a near-death experience, though it would certainly leave a psychic mark

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Timothy Leary's dead.
No no no he's outside, looking in.

I was almost killed by a giant boulder on Mt. Rainier.

 

I am still the man I was.

 

But, I have given up mountain climbing.

 

20 minutes ago, connda said:

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Timothy Leary's dead.
No no no he's outside, looking in.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

 

 

13 hours ago, Cameroni said:

I have always been fascinated by NDE, there are books written about this topic.

there's also a lot of folks on youtube claiming they had NDE and explaining what they saw.

it's like alien abductions ... how do you know if you should believe any of it or if people are deluded or making it up? 

 

I was stung by a box jellyfish about 3 years ago on Koh Phangan.  I knew that the previous 2 victims of box jellyfish stings on the island had both died of heart failure in 10 minutes...

 

As I lay writhing on the floor of a beach restaurant, the owner was smothering me with vinegar all over my body since we weren't sure where the sting was, I looked up at her.  She had a huge knife stuck between her teeth as she shouted for more vinegar, and decapitated the head of the plastic vinegar bottle in one blow.

 

The local Thais all gathered around me and said to each other in Thai (I speak Thai) "Look at the farang - he will be dead in 10 minutes...)

 

The ambulance came and threw me in the back as fast as possible. 2 nurses cared me as the vehicle sped along. "Oxygen" I cried out, having difficulty breathing.  One pretty nurse grabbed the oxygen cylinder, only to find that someone had forgotten to refill it!.

 

The 2nd nurse was the campest ladyboy I've ever met, who kept on shoo-shooing me for making too much noise!  God, I thought.  The last thing that I see on this Earth is a camp ladyboy!

 

I made it to the local hospital, where the young doctor gleefully announced that they had no medicine for box jellyfish stings, and that they would put me into bed and if I died, then I died, and if I lived, then I lived.

 

Happily I lived. but I 100% thought that I was going to die 🙂

I haven’t had an NDE, but I once had a vivid experience during deep meditation that felt completely real, until I later recognized it as a lucid dream or a hypnagogic state. The brain can create incredibly immersive experiences, especially under stress.
 

For context, the hypnagogic state is the transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep. It’s when you’re just starting to drift off, blending wakeful awareness with dream-like experiences. This state can produce vivid hallucinations, such as flashes of light or phantom sensations like floating or falling. Some people even experience creative insights in this phase, and it’s often used by lucid dreamers to enter dreams with awareness.
 

That’s how I see NDEs, more likely a neurochemical response than proof of anything beyond. The common themes, light tunnels, out-of-body sensations, align with what we know about the brain under extreme conditions. 

It doesn’t make the experience any less profound, but I lean toward a physiological explanation.

Just 4 serious ones.  2 where i was unconscious ,  1 a motorcycle accident,  and 1 a

razor knife being held to my neck  .

 

the few  mishaps with the opposite sex here in Thailand I will just put down to "experience gained"  in the learning process .   gives my answers to posts regarding 

relationship red flags here in LOS a bit more authenticity .  😉

Went in for a couple of stents. "Coded" during the anesthesia, going into cardiac arrhythmia, then crashed. Doctors called my sister saying they didn't think I was going to make it.  Being the contrarian that I am I was compelled to prove them wrong.  Woke-up the next day feeling like I'd been run over by a train; 12" line of staples in my chest, the fortunate recipient of a triple by-pass. Walked out of the hospital six days later. 

 

My luckiest NDE was in Colorado in 1976.  My GF and I had paid for a camp-site in a campground in a river canyon.  We then drove our van up into the nearby mountains, exploring old mines and ghost towns.

 

The steep mountain roads and high altitude caused my van to overheat, fortunately near a lake.  We waited at the lake for it to cool down enough to put cold water into the radiator.  By the time we were able to do that, it had started to get dark, then it began to rain so hard, we didn't dare drive down the steep dirt mountain roads to get back to the campground.

We spent the night in the van, heavy rain pounding on the roof.

 

About 6am, we were suddenly awakened by pounding on our van...it was a park ranger. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded.  We told him what had happened.

 

"Well, God was with you because everybody in that campground is dead!  There was a flash flood last night and the whole canyon was wiped out" 

 

This was the 1976 Thompson Canyon Flood:  144 people died that night.  If our van had not overheated, it would have been 146.

Way back in the eighties I was flying from Sydney to Hobart in a small aircraft ( beech Baron ) . The weather was pretty poor with rain and low cloud but my crew and I had to be there that day so we took off asking for storm information from Sydney Tower, sorry, radar out at the moment was the answer.

Full power and take off and we were in the clouds in seconds, instrument flying only, luckily the Pilot was my flight instructor and a very cool unflappable chap. We got to 1500 ft and suddenly we started going down at 3000 ft per minute, raising the nose only reduced the airspeed bringing us close to a stall. I remember watching the altimeter winding down until it got to 300 ft., house roofs appeared through gaps in the clouds and were very close and I was expecting a painful end.

My thoughts which seemed totally rational were not uttering prayers , all I could think of was my Wife and two Daughters were going to be financially secure, thank goodness I listened to my Accountant and took out a policy which covered me for all eventualities.

All of a sudden we were going up faster than any Baron has ever climbed and four minutes later we were above the clouds looking down at a beautiful layer of blinding white which matched all of our faces, it turns out Sydney had vectored us into a microburst and we were lucky that we flew from the centre to the updraft before hitting the ground.

Someone asked me did I believe in God, I suppose the answers no, I could be wrong....

cardiac arrest 3 times in the space of 1 hour... total flatline time was 8 minutes.

 

Is that an NDE ?

2 hours ago, save the frogs said:

there's also a lot of folks on youtube claiming they had NDE and explaining what they saw.

it's like alien abductions ... how do you know if you should believe any of it or if people are deluded or making it up? 

 

Well, there are scientific studies of NDE, it would seem unlikely all people have made the many reports up. But it is good to be sceptical.

Motorcycle accident in ‘82-3 

OD in ‘82-3

Robbed at gunpoint 85-6

Robbed at knife & hatchet point in 86-7

Car accident 88

 

No real after effects mentally, but the bike accident really took the fun out of riding. 

 

3 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

I was almost killed by a giant boulder on Mt. Rainier.

 

I am still the man I was.

 

But, I have given up mountain climbing.

 

I almost glissaded into a crevasse on Mount St. Helens pre-eruption.  Don't have to worry about it anymore.  That side of the mountain isn't there anymore. 

1 hour ago, Ralf001 said:

cardiac arrest 3 times in the space of 1 hour... total flatline time was 8 minutes.

 

Is that an NDE ?

NDE are generally an experience of consciousness after clinical death.  You were clinically dead as far as your heartbeat, just not conscious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience

I got caught in a cycle of 3 to 4-meter breakers. I was coming in from past the breakers as I had done many times, but somehow I ended up on the crest of the breaking wave. The wave slammed me into the sand and the undertow pulled me back out and placed me on the nose of the next breaker. It did this two more times. I remember thinking this is it when the waves got tired of playing with me and threw me up on the beach. It beat me up good and I was sick the whole next day. The feeling was more of resignation than of fear. I'm with Jingthing-- a bad trip could easily give you a heart attack.