177. Nancy Evans Bush on Encountering Near Death Experience Hell (Podcast)

[alextsakiris]

Interview with author and past president of the International Association of Near Death Studies examines research into negative near death experiences.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Nancy Evans Bush, author of, Dancing Past[...]

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[anonymous]

I agree that if you are going to recognize the spiritual nature of positive NDEs, you have to accept the negative ones too. However you have to consider the content and circumstances of the experience. For example, if someone took an overdose of a psychedelic drug and almost died and had an NDE - you would have to form a opinion on what part of their experience was spiritual and what was an hallucination. Now consider Nancy's NDE, yin yang symbols telling her she is nothing. Does that really qualify as an NDE? Without knowing more than what was in the podcast, I have no problem calling that a drug reaction. That doesn't explain other negative NDEs and it doesn't require one reject positive NDEs either.

[Philemon]

Alex,

Thanks for having Nancy on. I've been looking forward to hearing her speak for some time now.

Anonymous,

You said:

...if someone took an overdose of a psychedelic drug and almost died and had an NDE - you would have to form a opinion on what part of their experience was spiritual and what was an hallucination. Now consider Nancy's NDE, yin yang symbols telling her she is nothing. Does that really qualify as an NDE? Without knowing more than what was in the podcast, I have no problem calling that a drug reaction. That doesn't explain other negative NDEs and it doesn't require one reject positive NDEs either.

I don't think this is a situation of having to reject positive NDEs on account of negative NDEs. What I got out of the interview was that Nancy is borrowing from the Sufis here and positing an "imaginal realm", a term she used outright. The bit about Shinzen Young and the giant grasshoppers points to that - and many people have those types of experiences without the use of drugs (and without being psychotic, either).

The Jungian analyst Jeffrey Raff spends a lot of time discussing the imaginal in his books, and discusses another realm he terms the "psychoidal." These experiences of freestanding external-seeming entities fits perfectly with Raff's concept of the psychoidal, of which he instructs people how to access for themselves. Additionally, it jives pretty well with all those experiences of ritual magicians of various stripes from all over the world who conjure beings into triangles to barter for a new muffler or less tangible goodies.

Part of our problem here, I think, is that we have inherited a very strong sense of "this life" and the "afterlife" from Christianity, if not all the religions and myths. That divide was probably strengthened by contemporary religion acquiescing to materialism - which strengthened the sense that the "paranormal" is some wildly separate thing from the "normal" - normal as defined by materialism.

The truth is probably that things are far less clean and clear than that. We probably live in more of a "demon haunted world" than even believers like us suspect.

[gabriel]

Originally Posted by Philemon

That divide was probably strengthened by contemporary religion acquiescing to materialism - which strengthened the sense that the "paranormal" is some wildly separate thing from the "normal" - normal as defined by materialism.

The truth is probably that things are far less clean and clear than that. We probably live in more of a "demon haunted world" than even believers like us suspect.

Yes, that's true. One of the recurring features of NDE reports is that death is a myth, or an irrelevance. That suggests the veil, to the extent to which it exists, may be more permeable than we think.

[Open Mind]

While I don't believe the Christian heaven or hell divide .... it may be the case that just about anything can occur upon brain death .... subjective experiences like dreams .....dreams shared and created between more than one person .... to realities (like earth) with many people sharing the same objective reality.

Materialists might scoff but then they talk seriously about achieving an almost identical concept with computer virtual realities .....to them, nature could evolve anything including consciousness but just couldn't evolve survival of consciousness, only materialist man with his classical machines can do it! When the computer virtual game is over, they still survive... but nature just couldn't work the concept of realities within realities, only evolving ape-man.

Will our future computer virtual realities have only 2 programmes? One called 'heaven' and one called 'hell' for religious people? Or countless? Will materialists refuse to play anything but their favorite 'earth laws' game? Will those who experience a higher level game level be dismissed as anecdotal stories, errors and fraud? Will those who forget it is just a game and behave like insects, hit a lower level and begin to look like one?

I am not a Christian, wasn't raised in it, never believed it, still don't ... but if their master said 'I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, you may be also' .. why is that impossible? (It is possible on a future virtual reality computer game) .... it might be a safer game plan than 'team Randi' ... I mean they sometimes dress up like ghouls just to scare you off investigating ..... I never met a Jesus, and Randi doesn't shake hands with proponents ..... so I think I'll not follow anyone until I know where they've gone ... try and be good, hopefully find a light tunnel and keep an open mind.

[RabbitDawg]

I'm in the midst of listening to the interview while reading along. To my dismay, I noticed that the link to Nancy's website / blog is wrong. The current link is to an article at IANDS. Her website is at http://www.dancingpastthedark.com/

Now, on with the interview...

[Michael Larkin]

Alex's questions at the end of the interview:

1: How do we approach the paranormal, which mainstream science says is impossible, and at the same time avoid falling into the trap of thinking it's all real, however off the wall? How do we keep a balance that's consistent with actual data?

2. What can we say about the "malevolent forces" of distressing NDEs? Are they spiritual or demonic? Don't we have to at least consider and explore the territory? How are we going to process the dark side of the equation?

[Michael Larkin]

Originally Posted by Michael Larkin

Alex's questions at the end of the interview:

1: How do we approach the paranormal, which mainstream science says is impossible, and at the same time avoid falling into the trap of thinking it's all real, however off the wall? How do we keep a balance that's consistent with actual data?

2. What can we say about the "malevolent forces" of distressing NDEs? Are they spiritual or demonic? Don't we have to at least consider and explore the territory? How are we going to process the dark side of the equation?

To be honest, I haven't given much thought to distressing NDE experiences. So I'll have to start from scratch. First, the question I ask myself is whether we are actually dealing with apples and pears, but, because the sublime and the distressing occur under similar circumstances, we are assuming they are part of the same phenomenon--the yin and yang of that phenomenon, as it were.

OTOH, are they totally different phenomena that can occur in circumstances of clinical death? It'd be nice to know how much they share in common. Do both typically start with the dark tunnel, for example, and start going in different directions thereafter? How do their respective phenomenological descriptions relate, if at all? Can they only be conceived of as different sides of the same coin?

If they are separate phenomena, is it possible for both to occur and get intermingled? I seem to recall reading about one experience where at some stage the narrative was initially distressing, but later became blissful.

We are (in the West, at any rate) to some extent saddled with the Judaeo-Christian idea of heaven and hell, even if we happen to be atheists. It wouldn't be surprising if our altered consciousness during NDEs dyed the tapestry of our narratives with the colourations of that.

Actually, thinking about it, one wonders if, to some extent, the Judaeo-Christian eschatological themes might have arisen out of particular interpretations of such experiences in the first place. Experiences that needn't necessarily be only associated with NDE's, but possibly also with serendipitous circumstances, or ones occurring during deep meditative states.

I'm just thinking aloud here, and throwing out ideas without being a proponent of them. This interview has certainly started me thinking, and hopefully will stimulate an interesting discussion. I look forward to hearing what anyone else might have to say.

[Michael Larkin]

Originally Posted by Philemon

I don't think this is a situation of having to reject positive NDEs on account of negative NDEs. What I got out of the interview was that Nancy is borrowing from the Sufis here and positing an "imaginal realm", a term she used outright. The bit about Shinzen Young and the giant grasshoppers points to that - and many people have those types of experiences without the use of drugs (and without being psychotic, either).

Hi, Philemon.

I have a long-time interest in Sufism and so I'm interested in this "imaginal realm" you associate with it--I'm not actually familiar with the term as applied in this context. Could you perhaps expand a little on this?

[David Bailey]

Alex,

I very much agree with what I think both you and Nancy were saying - that we need to let the data speak - consciously resisting the temptation to bend it to fit a preconceived interpretation.

It is terribly easy to explain away these hellish experiences, or indeed the experience of most people (80%) who go into cardiac arrest - total oblivion.

Recently I happened to be chatting with two people who mentioned that their hearts had stopped. I gently asked them if they had any recollections from that time - but neither had.

I was wondering how her NDE ended. Did she just 'wake up', or did her NDE have some equivalent of the 'must go back' moment of most NDE's?

David