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NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE a phenomenon reported by people who have been declared clinically dead by medical experts, or passed close to death through accident or illness, but who are revived. They report an altered state of consciousness where they feel they are traveling through a tunnel towards a warm and bring light, or they are floating above their body watching medical effects to revive them.

Intriguingly near death reports from different cultures around the world are typically consistent and in many instance agree well with the essential features of the post mortem state that is described in 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'. There is also a marked similarity to reported inner journeys of shamanism and astral travel.

The term 'near death experience' [NDE] was coined by American doctor, Raymond Moody in the 1970s to describe the above phenomenon. Prior to the publication of Moody's book 'Life after Life' in 1975, NDE was not openly talked about, but afterwards it became more acceptable, and in 1982 a Gallup poll suggested that as many as eight million Americans had had some kind of NDE.

Moody and a number of other NDE researchers like Kenneth Ring, a psychologist and founding member of the International Association of Near Death Studies at the University of Connecticut, were able to identify a number of traits in common to NDE, even thought the experience was always unique to each individual. They concluded that in a NDE people typically experience one or more of the following phenomena in this sequence: a sense of leaving the material world behind [being dead], or an out of body experience in which they fell they are floating above their bodies looking down; cessation of pain and a felling of great calm and peace; traveling down a dark tunnel towards a light a the end; meeting spirit being, many of whom are dead friends and relatives; meeting a spirit guide who takes them through their life story [see life review] and puts their life into perspective without any negative judgment; and finally an abrupt, and sometimes reluctant, return to life.

The great majority of NDEs are described as positive and uplifting; around 3 per cent are described as negative or frightening. Almost anyone can have the experience and it is not limited to the religious, although many people who have experienced an NDE do become more spiritual or develop a belief system afterwards. Almost all say they lose their fear of death and it is replaced by a strong belief in an afterlife. Many discover a new meaning and purpose to their lives that they may have previously lacked. In some cases the NDE leaves a person with a heightened intuition or psychic powers.

On the negative side some people find adjusting back to life difficult after an NDE. Feelings of anger, guilt, depression and disappointment because they have to return to life are common. However, many people are thrilled by the wonder of the unique experience and intensely grateful and empowered by it, as well as humbled.
Research by Ring and his colleagues indicated that people with a difficult or traumatic childhood could be more prone to NDE than others due to their personality and psychological make up. Ring also suggested that an NDE may be a form of enlightenment and can have a tremendously positive effect on the world if enough people experience it or assimilate the lessons that can be learned from it.

Even though millions of people claim to have had an NDE it is impossible for researchers to scientifically Lance report reference here.

According to skeptics the NDE, is a dream or hallucination caused by lack of oxygen, the release of the body natural painkillers [endorphins] or increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood stream as the brain dies. NDEs were reportedly produced by Ronald Siegel, a researcher at the University of California Los Angeles School of medicine, when LSD and other drugs were administered to subjects. NDE supporters stress that drug-induced hallucinations and NDEs are totally different things, such explanations do not take into account the fact that many people brought back to life can give accurate accounts of their resuscitations or procedures carried out, or report conversations they overheard at the time they were allegedly dead. This suggests that some part of consciousness can separate from the body at death.

There is also the argument that people are simply making the whole experience up. A Dr Sabom, a Georgia Cardiologist, interviewed 100 hospital patients who had narrowly escaped death. Of these, 61 per cent reported experiencing classical NDEs of the style closely resembling those described in 1975 by Moody. By the end of his investigation Dr Sabom administered that before he started to investigate he felt sure that NDEs must be 'conscious fabrications, either on the part of those reporting them or those writing about them. However, once he began to investigate he was surprised by the genuineness of the phenomenon.
Another respected cardiologist who - add section on Lancet report to confirm reality of experience.

Typical near-death experience

NDE researchers Raymond Moody found a striking similarity in accounts of 150 people who claimed to have had an NDE - so much so that he was able to identify 15 different elements that recur again and again in these reports. He constructed a typical experience that contains all of the NDE elements:

A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud whining or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this he finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator, he watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage pint and is in a state of emotional upheaval.
After a while he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a 'body', but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before - a being of light - appears before him. This being asks him a question, nonverbal, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing his a paranormal instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he find himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by own he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of job, love, and peace, despite his attitude, thought, he somehow unites with his physical body and lives.
Later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place, he can find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly experiences. He also finds that others scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his view about death and its relationship to life. [Raymond Moody, Life After life].

NEGATIVE ENERGY according to psychics it is through energy that spirits are able to communicate across the boundaries between the earth and spirit planes. Positive energy, created by good deeds, love, harmony, spirituality and respect is uplifting and enlightening, whereas negative energy is dangerous, unsettling and draining.

Albert Einstein in his watershed publication, 'Relativity: the Special and General Theory' [1918], described all existence as energy, although it takes many forms. According to the theory of relativity all matter, from people and plants to tables and chairs, is comprised of energy structures -atoms, molecules and electrons - that vibrate at different frequencies. The energy of matter that forms an object we consider solid, such as a table, vibrates slowly that we are able to physically perceive its matter. The energy of matter we cannot see, such as the air we breathe, vibrates very fast. Einstein's theory is in fact a very new age concept.

Psychics and energy healers believe that the physical body vibrates slowly enough to be tangible, while energy on the spirit plane vibrates so fast that it doesn't seem to have an appearance e or present at all, unless a spirit chooses to represent itself in a tangible form. So when it comes to spirit contact the spirit needs to lower its energy vibration and the medium needs to raise his or her vibration so communication can be made.

According to psychics, negative energy can be disastrous to a person's life and can cause bad luck and poor health. There are a number of ways to cause or generate negative energy. For example, a persons thoughts can create negative energy. On a physical level, constant pessimism can lead to low self esteem and the unhappiness such negativity attracts, and on a magical level pessimism can also be damaging as magical will responds best to optimism and good intention. In some cases [see psychic attack] enough concentrated negative thought about oneself or another person is believed to cause negative things to happen to oneself and/or others. Illness can also generate negative energy, as can negative thoughts about others, arguments, criminal acts, injustice, tragedy and violence.

Many mediums believe that spirits often come through because they want to make amends for negative energy that they once spread in their lives. They may also come through because the negative energy generated by intense emotion or acts of violence, trauma or injustice has somehow trapped them and they can't break free.