Afterlife, how do our dead bodies live after death? What happens after we die, what awaits us after crossing the mysterious border between life and death?
This is actually a fascinating question that has puzzled and captured the imagination of humanity since long forgotten times.
There are not and cannot be simple answers, since there are many ideas about "life after death" and the mystery of the transition to the afterlife. Religions and philosophy present ideas that after death we ascend into some heavenly space, where we are met by relatives and friends who have previously died.
Another idea of "life after death" involves the rebirth of the deceased in a new body. Another sobering thought says that we just “blinked” our lives in this reality and went into the abyss of oblivion irrevocably. After all, no one knows what happens at the moment of death. For the most part, the Afterlife is covered with an impenetrable mystery, “life after death” is a huge sea of incomprehensible secrets of mankind.
One of the few clues as to what may lie beyond death comes from the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDEs). Typically, this is a phenomenon in which someone died or is on the edge of a steep ledge between life and death, but was revived and returned to the world of the living, often with an abnormal story to tell how he looked into "life after death."
Afterlife - the space of other worlds
Even in the short-term experience of "life after death" there are many different, very often contradictory evidence about what happens after, let's say, conditional death. For some, this is a way out of the body, when they "swim" at a height of 1-2 meters can see their own corpse. Some people who have experienced clinical death do not remember anything at all, only a gaping black void, as if they were in a deep, dreamless sleep.
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Others see a pleasant tunnel of light leading to some mystical area of space, or even the sky itself. Many who have experienced "life after death", reporting the fact of visiting this sphere, say how satisfied they were with the communication with long-dead relatives and friends.
But also, there are frightening reports from those who were not greeted by an amazing tunnel of light filled with love and friendliness, but rather collapsed into a terrible place of suffering that can really only be described as Hell.
Throughout a long history, people have reported strange visions in a state of clinical death, but this was not really seriously studied until the middle of the last century, existing only in the public consciousness. Indeed, it wasn't until 1975 that much discussion of the topic was raised with Life After Life, when author Raymond Moody first coined the term "near death" to describe the mystical, transcendental and very strange the experience that people experienced who survived their own death and then returned to life.
The fascinating phenomenon has attracted the attention of psychiatrists, psychologists and other scientific researchers who have subjected this experience to clinical observation. Many people, having looked beyond the threshold of death, had vivid visions of "something" that could be conventionally called "Heaven". But also, studies have identified a subset of the types of the phenomenon, which seem to show that in some cases people were far from a pleasant meeting with angels and deceased loved ones, and indicated that some really went to Hell, or the kingdom is akin to our understanding of this.
Life after death - an out of body story
One of the first widespread reports of such a terrifying "life after death" comes from George Ritchie since World War II, which was published in his book, Return from Tomorrow. Ritchie, dumped with pneumonia, was taken to an Army hospital in Richmond, Virginia, where he was pronounced dead, but was eventually reborn 9 minutes later with a frightening history of being in some gruesome place.
He claimed to have left his physical body and wandered around the city, where he was met by a mysterious character who gave George a tour of some rather disturbing places. One such place turned out to be a bar - people there desperately tried to drink, eat, or smoke cigarettes, but could not do any of it despite all the efforts.
Then, in his vision, he found himself in a barren wasteland, where spirits of all shapes and sizes were engaged in a battle among themselves: biting, kicking and slashing each other with angry attacks, they clearly could not stop. George would later write about this scary and dirty scene in the words: Even more disgusting than the bites and kicks they exchanged were sexual perversions, some feverish pantomime of horror.
This ominous experience would later inspire Ritchie to become a psychiatrist and write several books on the subject that would serve as sources and inspiration for researchers in the 1970s, and this experience remains one of the first popular experiences in life after death regarding going to Hell. … Of course, this cannot but be alarming, but since then it has been revealed that such horrific visions are more common than we might think.
A researcher named Nancy Evans Bush has calculated that one in every five NDEs (near-death experiences) is associated with terrifying traumatic experiences, feeling / seeing a black, cold void, general sensory deprivation, gaping chasms of loneliness, roaming monsters. And in general, visions actually correspond to Hell, as we understand it, explaining this space of the afterlife as follows:
No matter what form these visions of hell after death take, there is one thing characteristic of all these worlds - they are all terrifying, filled with pain and suffering. Take the story of Matthew Botsford, who was shot dead in 1992 while walking out of a bar in Atlanta, Georgia.
Shot in the head, Botsford was badly injured and bleeding, balancing on the brink of life and death. He was reportedly resuscitated three times on his way to the hospital. The doctors decided to introduce the victim into an artificial coma (medical, induced, medication) in order to reduce cerebral edema, where he will remain for 27 days. Matthew said that he did not remember anything about his actual death, except for a sharp, hot pain, although later he remembered what he experienced during a coma.
Afterlife, to Heaven or Hell - where are the judges?
Botsford argued that at first there was nothing; the unbearable emptiness of perfect blackness, which he described as "thick, black ink was poured over my eyes." This absolutely complete darkness gradually and slowly began to be illuminated by light that appeared from some luminous abyss below him, surging in waves of incredible heat and acrid smoke.
It was then that Botsford noticed and was horrified by what was happening - his arms and legs were chained, and he himself was "suspended" in the air among the heat and smoke with the help of some invisible force. In addition, he heard a chorus of anguished screams and eerie screams of unearthly suffering pervading the air around him, emanating from an endless sea of tortured and oppressed people.
In panic, looking into the dizzying abyss lying below him, he claimed that he could see strange snarling beasts with eyes glowing with demonic light. Smoke - every trickle of it contained a soul that writhed in agony. Throughout the time he watched this ominous scene, Botsford was overwhelmed by a crushing sense of utter loneliness and despair that pierced him to the core.
In addition to all this (as if that were not enough), Botsford said that hellish, relentless heat begins to char and mangle his flesh, and once he began to believe that he would be burned to bone, ash and nothingness, it was only the beginning to begin. painful process anew.
Even worse was the appearance of disgusting creatures, horned creatures with glowing oval eyes and sharp fangs designed to tear and gnaw at the flesh of his body, after which the flesh grows back, and the unthinkable torment begins again and again.
He was hanging and roasting over this red pulsing abyss, surrounded by snapping jaws of beasts, when suddenly glowing eyes appeared and a thunderous voice called "This is not your time." Coming out of the coma, Matthew did not even immediately realize that he was no longer in that terrible and gloomy place, but in a hospital ward with a headache. The whole experience was so disturbing and frightening that Botsford wrote a book called A Day in Hell.
Sad stories, aren't they? Afterlife, how do the dead live? Near-death experiences give us hope for "life after death", isn't that what we all want in our souls? Each of us probably believes that after death I will find myself in the prosperity of Paradise … but as you can see, the routes in the afterlife are different, and apparently, this is strongly influenced by the lifetime lifestyle.
