Near-Death Experiences & Suicide - The Formula for Creating Heaven on Earth

I Often Dealt With Suicidal Thoughts

“It took my spirit longer to recover than my body, though that in itself was a long time. I was very depressed, for many years, and often dealt with suicidal thoughts because the desire to be ‘home’ was so great. I was confused for the longest time. I was afraid. I found being in a body painful, restricting and limiting. I am still greatly uncomfortable with it…”

— Near-Death Experiencer Rachel Finch

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NDE Researcher Dr. Jeffrey Long On Suicide

“Due to the overwhelming percentage of loving and warm experiences reported in near-death experiences (NDEs), I occasionally receive emails from people, often in a depression, wondering if they should try suicide in order to induce one. I immediately respond: ‘Absolutely not!’ I encourage those who are depressed to seek counseling and also to discuss their life issues with their health-care team. People who had near-death experiences as a result of suicide attempts almost uniformly later believe that their suicide attempts were serious mistakes. An NDE should never be sought by creating a life-threatening event.”

— NDE Researcher Dr. Jeffrey Long, page ix, God and the Afterlife

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Near-Death Experiencer Dr. Eben Alexander On Suicide

“Scientific studies of spiritually transformative experiences (STEs), particularly research focused on near-death experiences occurring to persons who have survived suicide attempts, tell us that those who commit suicide deeply regret the choice they made to end their own life. They wish they could take it back and find a way to persevere against all obstacles, no matter how great. We also know from research into STEs that the meaning and purpose of life is to love one another.

“Bodily death comes to everyone and everything eventually and inevitably. Yet, consciousness survives bodily death and lives on eternally. When death comes as the natural conclusion of one’s life on Earth, it is a transition from this reality to the greater all-encompassing absolute reality that awaits us ‘on the other side.’ Such observations describe, but do not glorify death.

“Life is a precious sacred gift. It has a transcendent purpose. It is meant to be lived and enjoyed to the fullest. To end it prematurely is a refusal of that gift and a denial of all the opportunities for spiritual growth that could have come throughout one’s natural lifetime. Each new day brings new opportunities and possibilities. Try to see beyond the moment and know that the emotion and despair you may be feeling right now can and will shift in time. Tomorrow is a new day.”

— NDEr Dr. Eben Alexander‘s Eternea website

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More From Dr. Eben Alexander On Suicide

“Dr. Raymond Moody has reported that one of the few categorically true observations to be made about suicide is that, if one attempts suicide and experiences any of the features of an NDE (encountering brilliant light and an overwhelming sense of a divine force of love in the universe, meeting souls of departed loved ones, etc.), then he or she will never attempt suicide again.

“The commonly encountered pattern is that those who fail in suicide attempts are generally doomed to repeat their attempts. So this powerful effect of NDE elements preventing future suicide attempts is remarkable, indeed. NDE reports from observation across the veil also suggest that, during the life review, those who succeed at suicide likely witness a profound sense of love that others and the universe at large have for them, and gain comfort from that revelation, but they also realize the deep pain that many felt in their loss.

“In short, suicide is never the right answer. The more we can nurture a sense of connectedness and purpose in our lives (of ‘spirituality’), the less likely people will be tempted to ‘end it all.’ The other fact of this discussion is that suicide will never work as an escape from worldly problems, especially as one comes to realize that modern consciousness studies imply the reality not only of the afterlife, but of reincarnation. That particular dodge (of suicide) doesn’t solve the soul’s challenges and necessity of facing the issues at hand — if ignored or avoided, they will only be repackaged in a different form for one’s next incarnation. The world of transpersonal psychology is filled with such stories of soul challenges arranged over multiple lifetimes — all with the purpose of growth and learning. NDE experiences clearly show that the guiding compass of our soul journeys is one that acknowledges the binding force of love that connects us all.

“There is no way out, but through. It is better to deal with the big challenges in this lifetime, never resorting to suicide as an exit plan. Together with medical or mental health treatment, as appropriate, meditation and centering prayer often yield access to our higher soul, and to guidance in helping us see this grander vision of our challenges, and of their solutions…”

— NDEr Dr. Eben Alexander – Suicide Epidemic Relates To Spiritual Vacuum

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Near-Death Experiencers Who Died From Suicide Never Attempt Suicide Again

“When I was in psychiatry, we used to say that if you had a roomful of 100 people and you ask how many of you have at some point in your life thought about suicide, that 90 percent of the hands will go up. And that what you can infer from that is that 10 percent of the people in the room are lying. Because it’s just a human reality.

“Now, as a subgroup of people who had near-death experiences, I’ve had quite a bit of experience over the years talking with people who had their near-death experience as a result of a suicide attempt.

“The near-death experiences of people who attempted suicide are no different at all in their content from the experiences that people who come close to death from some other cause.

“The patients who attempted suicide, almost died, but were revived and did have a near-death experience, when those are followed over a period of time, there’s an essentially zero rate of any further attempts at killing themselves.

“They say that they never would attempt suicide again because they learned from their experience that even when times are tough, life does have a purpose.”

— Dr. Raymond Moody

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PMH Atwater On Child Experiencers & Suicide

“Child experiencers of near-death states do not respond to their experience in the same manner as do adults. Children compensate; they do not integrate. For that reason, it is not unusual for a child experiencer to take 20 to 30 years or more before they begin to ask questions about what happened to them and why they have always been a little ‘different’ from their peers. Once they ‘connect the dots’ and recognize how their experience really did have a tremendous affect on their lives and the choices they made, they begin to open up in healthy, new ways. In my research base of 277 child experiencers, 21% attempted suicide within about eight years to get back to The Other Side. None of those I had sessions with thought they were doing anything negative or hurtful by taking such action; they just wanted to return to the bright worlds — the place of their homey home. I discuss this conundrum at length in my book, Children Of The New Millennium. Micellanea’s case began with an attempted suicide and included many other attempts later on. What Micellanea went through and why should inspire all of us to get the word out, educate people, about the special needs of children. Whether their experience was fun or frightening, kids could use a little extra help processing what they went through.”

— PMH Atwater – Michellanea – “Getting Back to the Other Side”

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NDE Researcher Raymond Moody On Suicide

Excerpted from “Life After Life“
By Raymond Moody

Have you ever interviewed anyone who has had a near-death experience in association with a suicide attempt? If so, was the experience any different?

I do know of a few cases in which a suicide attempt was the cause of the apparent “death.” These experiences were uniformly characterized as being unpleasant.

As one woman said, “If you leave here a tormented soul, you will be a tormented soul over there, too.” In short, they report that the conflicts they had attempted suicide to escape were still present when they died, but with added complications. In their disembodied state they were unable to do anything about their problems, and they also had to view the unfortunate consequences which resulted from their acts.

A man who was despondent about the death of his wife shot himself, “died” as a result, and was resuscitated. He states:

I didn’t go where [my wife] was. I went to an awful place. . . . I immediately saw the mistake I had made. . . . I thought, “I wish I hadn’t done it.”

Others who experienced this unpleasant “limbo” state have remarked that they had the feeling they would be there for a long time. This was their penalty for “breaking the rules” by trying to release themselves prematurely from what was, in effect, an “assignment” — to fulfill a certain purpose in life.

Such remarks coincide with what has been reported to me by several people who “died” of other causes but who said that, while they were in this state, it had been intimated to them that suicide was a very unfortunate act which attended with a severe penalty. One man who had a near-death experience after an accident said:

[While I was over there] I got the feeling that two things it was completely forbidden for me to do would be to kill myself or to kill another person. . . . If I were to commit suicide, I would be throwing God’s gift back in his face. . . . Killing somebody else would be interfering with God’s purpose for that individual.

Sentiments like these, which by now have been expressed to me in many separate accounts, are identical to those embodied in the most ancient theological and moral argument against suicide — one which occurs in various forms in the writings of thinkers as diverse as St. Thomas Aquinas, Locke, and Kant. A suicide, in Kant’s view, is acting in opposition to the purposes of God and arrives on the other side viewed as a rebel against his creator. Aquinas argues that life is a gift from God and that it is God’s prerogative, not man’s, to take it back.

In discussing this, however, I do not pass a moral judgment against suicide. I only report what others who have been through this experience have told me…

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NDE Researcher Raymond Moody On Suicide

Excerpted from “Paranormal: My Life In Pursuit Of The Afterlife”
By Raymond Moody with Paul Perry

Excerpt from Chapter 15:

In my office I opened the bottle of Darvon and poured the pills out onto my desk. Then I began to take them several at a time with gulps from a can of Coca-Cola. I took about two dozen of the pills and then sat down at the desk. For some reason I called Paul Perry.

“I’ve done it,” I said with a note of finality.

“Done what?” he asked.

“I’ve taken pills and I’m dying,” I said. “I want you to be the last person I talk to.”

I could hear the controlled panic in Paul’s voice as he started to ask a series of questions: “What did you take? How many did you take? Where are you?”

I became somewhat angry at the line of questioning. I could tell that he wanted to get enough information to somehow intervene from Arizona. But I didn’t want an intervention. What I wanted was good conversation in the final moments of my life.

“Look, Paul, I have researched death, and I know it’s nothing to be afraid of. I will be better off dead.”

And that was genuinely how I felt. Myxedema madness had put me in the throes of a paranoia and despair so great that I felt everyone would be better off if I was no longer around. No amount of talk could convince me otherwise. Paul suggested a number of possible solutions to my problems, including an agent and CPA to straighten out my money problems and a new press tour to arouse interest in the book. I would hear none of it. I was ready to die.

“You know, Paul, being alive holds more fear for me than being dead. I have talked to hundreds of people who have crossed into death, and they all tell me that it’s great over there,” I said. “Every day I wake up afraid of the day. I don’t want that anymore.”

“What about your children?” Paul asked.

“They’ll all understand,” I said resolutely. “They know I’m not happy here. They’ll be sad, but they’ll understand. It’s time for me to leave.”

I could hear someone jiggling the office door knob as we spoke. Then there was a pounding on the heavy wooden door, a couple of raps at first and then a persistent drumbeat. Then a loud voice. “Campus police, open the door.”

I ignored the demand and kept talking to Paul, taking a few more pills as we spoke. Within seconds a key was slipped into the door lock and the door sprang open. Policemen rushed in and before I could say much of anything they had put my hands behind me and sat me on the floor.

One of the policemen picked up the phone and began talking to Paul. Apparently Paul asked about the presence of pills, because the policeman began to count the pills on the desk. When he did that, he dropped the phone on the desk and from his police radio he dialed 911.

An overdose of Darvon has little effect on a person until it reaches a critical blood level. Then the painkiller overwhelms the heart’s beating mechanism and quickly stops it cold. A dentist friend who had seen someone overdose on Darvon said it was like falling off a table: the person was operating fine until he just dropped to the floor. I knew that the same thing would happen to me shortly. All I had to do was wait. I sat patiently on the floor as EMTs charged up the stairs with their gurney and equipment.

“Are you okay?” asked one of the EMTs.

“Sure,” I said, and I was. Never better actually. I was not afraid of death, but I had obviously become very afraid of life.

Things began to happen fast after that. My chest felt very heavy, and I had the feeling of slipping into a dark blue place. They hoisted me onto the gurney and strapped me in and rolled me quickly down the passageway to the waiting ambulance.

As they loaded me into the ambulance the world around me began to fade. The concerned EMT was in my face, trying to keep me awake. Another EMT was drawing something into a very large syringe, probably adrenaline to inject into my heart. “Better get going,” shouted one of the policemen as he slammed the rear doors. I could feel the ambulance accelerate, hitting speed bumps hard as we headed for the hospital. An elephant was sitting on my chest. My eyes were closed, or at least I think they were. Either way, I could see nothing.

My heart stopped.

What happened next is almost indescribable, but I will do my best to make it less so. I could feel myself separate from the world around me. In a funny way it was almost like cellophane being pulled off a smooth surface, one reality separating from another.

I sensed spirits around me, helpful presences, who were there to guide me through this separation. I tried to see these spirit guides, but I could not make them out because I was surrounded by a light that was not of this world. I could hear them speaking, and although I couldn’t make out what was being said, their presence was soothing and calm and I felt a radiant love from them. I didn’t have an opportunity to examine myself in this state to see what I looked like or was made of. And I didn’t have the time I would have liked to try to make contact with the spirits either. Instead, I felt myself “start up” again as the doctors pumped my stomach and gave me a shot of a stimulant to the heart. The light went away, the spirits were there no more, and I came to in an emergency room.

That’s what it’s all about! I said to myself as I lay there on the bed. I didn’t feel I’d been dead long enough to have a classic near-death experience, but at least I got close enough to see the city limits. I was oddly pleased. After defining, naming, and studying near-death experiences, I could now say I’d had one and, yes, it was real.

I lay in the bed reliving the experience. There was nothing unreal about it. If anything, it was almost mundane, as though I had opened a door and walked into a strange room. I wondered what would have happened if my heart had been stopped longer. Would the spirit beings around me have become visible? And were they people I knew and loved? Would the light have changed and become that palpable and mystical light so many talk about? Would my life have come back to me in a review? Would I have been introduced into a life after life?

I puzzled over these questions for some time and then settled on what I knew — that an extraordinary transformation of consciousness had taken place at the point of death. I did not go into a blackness, as so many assume will happen. Rather, I found myself in a richer, deeper, and more real state of consciousness. I had gone somewhere that so many have described as heaven…

I have found one positive side to my suicide attempt. Now, when people come to me with suicidal thoughts, I can talk to them with firsthand knowledge about this horrible urge. I freely share my own story of attempted suicide and tell them why I am glad I didn’t succeed. I also bring in the data about people who have tried to commit suicide and had near-death experiences before being revived. These people say that they will never again try to kill themselves, not because they fear going to hell, but because they have learned that life does have a purpose.

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NDE Researcher Kevin Williams Describes Kenneth Ring’s NDE Suicide Research

Dr. Kenneth Ring, in his book, Life at Death, analyzed the near-death experiences of 24 people who attempted suicide. Among them, no one reported the tunnel phenomenon, or saw a brilliant but comforting light, or encountered a presence, or was temporarily reunited with loved ones who had died, or entered into a transcendent world of heavenly beauty. Instead, the suicide-related NDE tended to be truncated, aborted, and damped down. It began with a feeling of relief or peace and continued with a sense of bodily detachment to the same degree as non-suicide-related NDEs. But it tended to end, if it got this far at all, with a feeling of confused drifting in a dark or murky void — a sort of twilight zone. Dr. Ring’s research strongly suggests that the suicide-related NDE does not reach completion; instead, it tends simply to fade out before the transcendent elements characteristic of non-suicide related NDEs make their appearance…

In Dr. Kenneth Ring’s study, he found that no one who had attempted suicide reported that it was predominately unpleasant. The only possible exception is that a few people did describe some unsettling hallucinatory images, but these appear to have been qualitatively different from the feeling-tone of non-suicidal experiences. Certainly, no one felt that he was either in or was on his way to hell. This is not to say that suicide attempts never lead to unpleasant experiences, only that there is no strong evidence for this proposition among the 24 suicide NDEs in Dr. Ring’s study.

— Source

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NDE Researcher Kevin Williams On Suicide

“Near-death experiences reveal the quality of our lives after death is not determined by HOW we die, but by how we LIVE. Unfortunately, many suicides cause devastating emotional damage to families lasting a lifetime or more. This is the REAL tragedy and the problem with committing suicide. While near-death experiences show that suicide, in itself, has spiritual consequences which are no different from other ways of dying, it does show there are penalties for hurting others. This is why people who decide to justifiably end their life must do the research and prepare themselves and those around them.”

— NDE Researcher Kevin Williams, Near-Death Experiences and Suicide

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For more information about Emanuel Swedenborg and his prolific, pioneering, multi-faceted life and work, including his remarkable spiritual experiences, go here.

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Near-Death Experiencer Sandra Rogers

“As my life review continued, I encountered again all of the pain and hopelessness of my next several years; a series of bad relationships, pregnancies, miscarriages, broken marriages and suicide attempts. I saw myself as a young woman of twenty-five, married and divorced three times and hospitalized for drug overdoses six times. I felt how I hated my existence and could not understand how a loving God could allow these things to happen.

“I was aware as I relived each of these terribly painful events in my life that the Light, which was with me as I watched, felt all of my pain and sorrow and never judged me, but instead understood and loved me.

“The love I felt from the Light was overwhelming and I never wanted to leave it. While I was in Its presence I had unlimited knowledge about anything I wanted to know. I was given the choice of remaining with the Light, provided I return later to the physical world and experience all that brought me to the point of shooting myself, or I could return now and pick up my life where it was. I was told that I would eventually have the family and love I so desperately yearned for. I was also told that I could only take back the knowledge I needed to sustain myself, although I would be given insights to help others and me along the way as I continued my life journey.”

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Man Who Loses Entire Family Commits Suicide

On Life After Death
By Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Excerpt:

My most dramatic and unforgettable case of “ask and you will be given,” and also of an NDE, was a man who was in the process of being picked up by his entire family for a Memorial Day weekend drive to visit some relatives out of town. While driving in the family van to pick him up, his parents-in-law with his wife and eight children were hit by a gasoline tanker. The gasoline poured over the car and burned his entire family to death. After being told what happened, this man remained in a state of total shock and numbness for several weeks. He stopped working and was unable to communicate. To make a long story short, he became a total bum, drinking half-a-gallon of whisky a day, trying heroin and other drugs to numb his pain. He was unable to hold a job for any length of time and ended up literally in the gutter.

It was during one of my hectic traveling tours, having just finished the second lecture in a day on life after death, that a hospice group in Santa Barbara asked me to give yet another lecture. After my preliminary statements, I became aware that I am very tired of repeating the same stories over and over again. And I quietly said to myself: “Oh God, why don’t you send me somebody from the audience who has had an NDE and is willing to share it with the audience so I can take a break? They will have a first-hand experience instead of hearing my old stories over and over again.”

At that very moment the organizer of the group gave me a little slip of paper with an urgent message on it. It was a message from a man from the bowery who begged to share his NDE with me. I took a little break and sent a messenger to his bowery hotel. A few moments later, after a speedy cab ride, the man appeared in the audience. Instead of being a bum as he had described himself, he was a rather well dressed, very sophisticated man. He went up on the stage and without having a need to evaluate him, I encouraged him to tell the audience what he needed to share.

He told how he had been looking forward to the weekend family reunion, how his entire family had piled into a family van and were on the way to pick him up when this tragic accident occurred which burned his entire family to death. He shared the shock and the numbness, the utter disbelief of suddenly being a single man, of having had children and suddenly becoming childless, of living without a single close relative. He told of his total inability to come to grips with it. He shared how he changed from a money-earning, decent, middle-class husband and father to a total bum, drunk every day from morning to night, using every conceivable drug and trying to commit suicide in every conceivable way, yet never able to succeed. His last recollection was that after two years of literally bumming around, he was lying on a dirt road at the edge of a forest, drunk and stoned as he called it, trying desperately to be reunited with his family. Not wanting to live, not even having the energy to move out of the road when he saw a big truck coming toward him and running over him.

It was at this moment that he watched himself in the street, critically injured, while he observed the whole scene of the accident from a few feet above. It was at this moment that his family appeared in front of him, in a glow of light with an incredible sense of love. They had happy smiles on their faces, and simply made him aware of their presence, not communicating in any verbal way but in the form of thought transference, sharing with him the joy and happiness of their present existence.

This man was not able to tell us how long this reunion lasted. He was so awed by his family’s health, their beauty, their radiance and their total acceptance of this present situation, by their unconditional love. He made a vow not to touch them, not to join them, but to re-enter his physical body so that he could share with the world what he had experienced. It would be a form of redemption for his two years of trying to throw his physical life away. It was after this vow that he watched the truck driver carry his totally injured body into the car. He saw an ambulance speeding to the scene of the accident, he was taken to the hospital’s emergency room and he finally re-entered his physical body, tore off the straps that were tied around him and literally walked out of the emergency room. He never had delirium tremens or any aftereffects from the heavy abuse of drugs and alcohol. He felt healed and whole, and made a commitment that he would not die until he had the opportunity of sharing the existence of life after death with as many people as would be willing to listen. It was after reading a newspaper article about my appearance in Santa Barbara that he sent a message to the auditorium. By allowing him to share with my audience he was able to keep the promise he made at the time of his short, temporary, yet happy reunion with his entire family.

We do not know what happened to this man since then, but I will never forget the glow in his eyes, the joy and deep gratitude he experienced, that he was led to a place where, without doubt and questioning, he was allowed to stand up on the stage and share with a group of hundreds of hospice workers the total knowledge and awareness that our physical body is only the shell that encloses our immortal self.

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This Is A Hell Of Your Own Creation – Suicide Is Not An Escape

After 38 years, the pain, terror and shock of that momentous night in October 1960 still haunt me. Harder to explain is the awareness of God’s unlimited mercy and forgiveness which followed my suicide attempt and continued right up to the present day. What I am about to relate is definitely not hallucination or self-deception. I relate what happened and hope it may help someone somewhere to recognize and welcome God’s presence in his or her own life at a time when death may seem to be the only way out. If 38 years ago anyone had said I would walk the treacherous path of lost faith to the very pit of hell I would have laughed.

I had recently married back in 1948 a beautiful woman by the name of Pat. She was a popular girl and I felt very privileged to have won her. I was busy working on my goals as an accountant and was too busy admiring the silver-lining that I couldn’t even see the gathering storm clouds. In the ensuing years all my hopes, dreams and bright prospects eroded. Once a moderate and occasional social drinker, I started drinking more and more heavily and before I realized what had happened, I had fallen over the edge into serious alcohol abuse. The edge was a hell of lost faith, fears, impotence and self-pity.

After only seven months of what I thought was the perfect marriage, I found out my wife was cheating on me and that drove me further into withdrawal and booze. I too was to be blamed in wrecking our marriage. Every time a new affair came to light after that, whether it was just a short affair or a yearlong romance, I said many hurtful things and did all I could to make her feel very guilty. Even so, she was out on a date when I finally decided to do something about what I viewed as a completely hopeless and degenerating situation.

With Pat gone, probably for the night, I tucked our two boys and little girl into bed and listened to their prayers. Prayers at that time somehow seemed shallow and senseless to me. I found no assurance or hope in prayer. I had become a devout atheist. When the children were sound asleep, I collected the materials of what I thought of as my “final escape”; two bottles of sleeping tablets and a prescription bottle from the medicine chest, tranquilizers I had hoarded. With the addition of three bottles of booze, I thought I had everything I needed to make my great escape. I recall the doctor telling me not to mix booze with these pills or it could kill me. Back then, I had no desire to die, but still the conversation had planted a suicide thought.

I wrote a suicide note and shook out five tranquilizers. I mixed the drinks together with the liquor and I toasted my wife’s vacant chair. “Here’s to nothing, make that nothingness.” The capsules slipped down easily and the false warmth of the booze surged through me. “On my way” I thought and there was no turning back!!

My second drink finished off the tranquilizers and my fingertips and toes began to tingle. “Well, maybe the pills aren’t going to work after all” I said to myself. I felt, not drunk, but just a little dulled and a little lightheaded. I had a nagging fear that I would be stopped in my attempt as I had been in everything else I had come to consider important, so I downed another handful of sleeping pills. My hand was still steady as I poured the last of my bourbon. What can I do, what will I do if this doesn’t work? I felt a burning sensation building in my stomach.

My drinking habit had gotten so strong that a couple of drinks with lunch, a bracer on the way home, and two-fifths of vodka or bourbon when I finished off the evening were really hardly sufficient to dull my pain and frustration. I don’t want to wake up with just another hangover and all my problems still gnawing at me. I don’t want to wake up ever. I finished off all the booze and the pills and began to see a dark, cloud like formation and it was coming towards me. It was coming right through the ceiling of my kitchen and came in and engulfed me.

I felt myself moving through this tunnel at a very fast rate. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel and was wondering if this is where I was going. I didn’t know if I was dead or alive at that point, but I do recall looking back at myself passed out on the kitchen floor and I lay there completely oblivious to this other part of me which seemed to be heading towards something. “Is this what death is?” I wondered. “No!” came an answer from somewhere.

I was shocked to see a being of incredible beauty, radiating great love, great compassion and warmth. It was a being of beautiful, bright white light, which had silver threads emanating from the center. I was hesitant to say anything, and then I realized that my thoughts were being read by this incredible being of light. “No!” he repeated again. “This is not what death is like. Come, I will show you.” I remembered floating with him over to a pit of some sort that contained a very depressing scene of a landscape devoid beauty, devoid of life, where people shuffled around with their heads down and their shoulders bent forward in a depressed, resigned manner. They kept their heads down and looked at their feet and wandered around aimlessly, bumping into each other occasionally but they kept on going. It was a horrifying thought that I was going to be cast down with these confused lost souls, but the voice seemed to understand my terror and relieved it with the following words: “This is a Hell of your own creation. You would have to go back to earth eventually and experience a new life all over again faced with the same difficulties that you faced in this lifetime. You will stay with these lost and confused souls until then. Suicide is not an escape.”

I was shown a panoramic view of my life. The last five years which had become so burdened with alcohol abuse were the most painful things, the most painful memories I could even imagine. I was shown a picture of the effect that alcohol had caused on my young children’s life and the effect that it would cause in their future. I saw the sorrow that my children would feel at the loss of their family and me. I was shown that their mother would not take good care of them and eventually they would be put into a foster home. I also was given a preview on how my alcoholism would influence my children’s life if I continued to drink in the manner I had become accustomed to and stayed in that family relationship. I saw that all three children, two boys and a girl, would follow my poor example and each would eventually use the bottle to escape life’s day to day on-going stresses until each would then in turn become alcoholics also. The sight of my precious young daughter growing up, marrying a fellow alcoholic, who would eventually beat her and force incestuous relationships on their four daughters, was more than I could stand. It was like a slap in the face. A huge reality check.

I saw that if I shaped up my act and began behaving like a responsible father and role model, all three children would grow up to be happy and productive. That doesn’t mean completely free of the struggles of everyday life, but they would have a chance at making their own way, independent of any substance abuse. I saw how my oldest son was going to be able to become an important influential person in his time if I stayed around and behaved like a real father. I saw the down side of this future if I stayed in their relationship as the drunken weak father that he would eventually turn to drugs and end up in prison for crimes that he committed while trying to get money for drugs. It was terrifying to me and I decided right then and there this was not what I wanted for my children, or myself. I was shown if I continued as a hopeless, pathetic drunk that I would not be able to escape. Having to relive all the trials and traumas that brought me right up to the point of suicide, I would have to face those again in another life and it just seemed more terrifying than I even wanted to admit. I cried.

The being of light seemed to understand that I was filled with a sense of remorse, compassion and loving. He said in a stern voice but that was still like a father speaking to a son, “Your life is not to do with as you please. Did you create yourself, give yourself life? No. Neither can you choose death.” I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I cried even more. This presence in voice must be the Holy Spirit sent to me, I thought. The voice, now softer continued, “I’m not done with you, your work isn’t finished, go back and do what you were meant to do.”

The first thing I saw when I awoke was relief flooding my daughter’s face. Nancy had awakened during the night and struggled vainly to keep the spark of life burning inside of me. “Oh daddy” she said,” I was so afraid we lost you. You were so cold and I couldn’t even feel your heart beat.”

In the kitchen my wife was getting lunch. “Come and get it kids”, she called, “and you can have some too if you can stagger your drunken self over to the table” she added sarcastically. I felt completely exhausted and very hungry but not at all hung over. For some strange reason I didn’t have the gut wrenching pain that I had felt the night before after taking such an over dose of pills. Best of all I still felt that inner love and peace and caring that had come from the night before.

It would be pleasant to relate that life since then has been all perfect but that would be a lie. Separation and divorce were heart breaking although I did keep the children. I wanted the children and they wanted me and my wife’s boyfriend didn’t want them. I ended my job as an accountant and went on to become a professor at a local college and it was tough going.

Using all my savings and retirement funds to pay bills and keep the family intact during a month long job search cost me what security I might have had, and learning new job skills was both challenging and scary at times. Still the peace and comfort I first knew while standing at the edge of the pit of Hell have never left me or allowed me to lose my renewed faith and trust. Some friends can’t understand why I don’t feel bitter; best answers lie in the twenty-third psalm: “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.”

Since my experience, I have found that I no longer fear death, that I have a much more spiritual outlook and I take my responsibility of raising my children very seriously now. I am there for them and I am proud to announce that their lives are coming along much better now that I have become the father I should have always been and I have met and married a beautiful women who is beautiful on the inside and who is giving me strength and courage to get through all of life’s trials and tribulations. I will never forget my experience on the edge of Hell and what it has taught me.

The negative Near Death Experience is not negative when good comes out of it. I am now a pastoral counselor and do some bookkeeping for small businesses on the side. My children are on their own and have happy, busy, productive lives. I feel at peace.

— Near-Death Experiencer 10046 Suicide NDE 14

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George Ritchie’s Three Classifications of Suicide
By NDE Researcher Kevin Williams

Source

Dr. George Ritchie, author of Return From Tomorrow and My Life After Dying, learned during his near-death experience what happens to some people who commit suicide. According to Ritchie, the quality of life a person initially finds after suicide is influenced by their motive for committing it. He classifies suicide in the following three ways:

1. The first classification are those people who kill themselves in order to hurt someone, get revenge, or who kill themselves out of anger for someone else. They arrive in the earthbound realm out of hatred, jealousy, resentment, bitterness and total distain for themselves and others. Ritchie writes, “I want to make clear that it was impressed upon me that these were the ones who had the same type of powerful emotions which people who committed murder have.” (p.25) Ritchie says such people mistakenly believe they are not committing murder which their religious training tells them is a worse sin than suicide. Their motive for killing themself is, “If I can’t kill you, I will kill myself to get even with you.” According to Ritchie, such people “haunt” the living by being aware of every horrible consequence their suicide had on others.

2. The second classification includes those who, because of mental illness, confusion, or a terminal illness, take their own life. Ritchie states these people are allowed many opportunities from God to grow in love just as any other person would who had not committed suicide. In other words, there are no negative consequences for them.

3. The third classification includes those who kill themselves from drug, alcohol, or any other addiction. According to Ritchie, these people can become stuck in limbo trying in vain to satisfy their addiction until eventually something frees them. This condition is also called an earthbound condition.

Concerning souls belonging to the first classification, Ritchie writes:

“I understood from what I was seeing that these people and the average murderer also are confined in a state where they are given a chance to realize two very important facts. One, you can only kill the body, not the soul. Two, that only love, not hate, can bring them and others true happiness. I believe once they fully understand this, they are given the opportunity to continue their spiritual and mental growth.”

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I Could See Clearly How I Had Created The Problems In My Life

“I landed on the edge of a shadowy realm, suspended in the darkness, extending to the limits of my sight. I knew that I was in a state of hell, but this was not the typical fire and brimstone hell that I had learned about as a young child. The word purgatory rose, whispered, into my mind.

“Men and women of all ages, but no children, were standing or squatting or wandering about on the realm. Some were mumbling to themselves. The darkness emanated from deep within and radiated from them in an aura I could feel. They were completely self-absorbed, every one of them too caught up in his or her own misery to engage in any mental or emotional exchange. They had the ability to connect with one another, but they were incapacitated by the darkness…

“Sitting next to me was a man who appeared to be about sixty years old. This man’s eyes were totally without comprehension. Pathetically squatting on the ground, draped in filthy white robes, he wasn’t radiating anything, not even self-pity. I felt that he had absorbed everything there was to know here and had chosen to stop thinking. He was completely drained, just waiting. I knew that his soul had been rotting here forever. In this dark prison a day might as well be a thousand days or a thousand years.”

“The way out of these hellish realms is to have a willingness to see the light and seek love for others and God.”

…

Excerpts from the above video:

“Hell is a manner of suffering, and I was in hell long before I took my life. Where I went was just a manifestation of what I was already experiencing. I wanted so badly to just to end my life and to be done. And what I found was that I took all that with me, and it was multiplied, just intensified, beyond anything that we can even have the power of understanding in this life. And so, it was absolutely the worst thing I could do. There was no escape.”

…

“They were all kind of mumbling to themselves, completely self-absorbed, caring nothing about anybody else there or about anything but themselves. What was going on was that these people were reliving this worst experience over and over and over again, reliving this agony that they were in, this turmoil whatever it was, that had caused each of them to take their lives.”

…

“God said, ‘You can’t take your life. It’s not yours to take. Life is supposed to be hard. You have to pass through these things.’ As He spoke to me, I was filled with understanding about the purpose of life and what we are doing here and how important it is to think about how you treat other people.”

….

“I didn’t get there because other people had done things to me. Instead, I had chosen not to overcome the things that are intentionally given to us, problems, things that we need to overcome so we can grow. I still have trials that I have to overcome but the important thing is to find happiness and to actually make happiness.”

….

“I was told that it’s the little things we do that lead to good and light in the world.”

…

“After my near-death experience I could see clearly how I had created the problems in my life and quite easily how they could be avoided.”

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Why did Angie write her book?

1 – “Suicide is not a solution. I don’t care what your belief system is, whatever it is, suicide is just not a solution because that’s just not how — look for the evidence around you — that’s not how it works…

2 – “It was seeing all these so-called positive near-death experiences where people go to a pillar of light, tunnel of light, all that, and I knew that’s not the only way that it can go. I felt completely, strongly that people need to know that it’s not always like that.”

…

“The big message I got was, wow, this is just a second [snapping her fingers] in the grand scheme, it’s just a moment. Even those who are experiencing the worst of the worst that our planet has to offer people, it comes to an end and it’s like it was a dream. And there is complete healing. And complete exoneration. And everybody that ever harmed anybody gets to see it from their point of view and there’s a redemption, if you will, where we all see from each other’s perspectives. And when you see from someone’s point of view, there is nothing but forgiveness, gratitude, love. That’s all that’s there.”

….

“Another question people ask me is ‘What about my loved ones? What about my sister? What about my husband? who ended their life by suicide?’ Here’s the thing: What I experienced was what I experienced and it was definitely something I wanted to share with people. But that’s just where I went based on my life and what I’d been doing and what I was up to, based on my background and belief systems. Every near-death experience is completely packaged for you as an individual. Now there are commonalities, certainly. And one of them is don’t kill yourself. That’s one of them. The powerful thing you can do for someone who has crossed over by way of suicide is forgive them and talk to them, ask them to come talk to you. I know four separate people who have lost loved ones to suicide and those loved ones have returned and said ‘I’m OK. You should know I’m OK.’ “

…

“I really do believe that every human being at the bottom is good. And that everybody wants to be happy. I do believe that every human being, if you were to take away all the bad things that had happened to them, wants to make a difference. And if you want a way out of hell, that’s it: service. It changes us.”

…

• Angie Fenimore Website
• Angie Fenimore On Facebook
• NDE Stories On Angie Fenimore
• Near-Death.com On Angie Fenimore

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Emanuel Swedenborg On Suicide

To learn more about Emanuel Swedenborg, go here.

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“You Forgot That I Love You”

I asked the voice, are you God? And the answer I got was “Yes.”

The voice sounded masculine, but it was as if a waterfall or mountain could talk, if that makes sense. It sounded like no human voice I have ever heard before.

I had to ask this. I asked “Does Jesus exist?”

The answer I got was “Jesus is God.”

And then I realized that must be who I was talking to, the spirit of Jesus.

I even asked again to confirm. “Jesus is God?!” I asked.

And the response was “Yes.”

And this is going to sound silly, but I let it slip that I hated Christianity. And this voice of God laughed! God has a great sense of humor! Then I realized I didn’t hate Christianity and definitely did not hate Jesus, I just did not like some of his followers.

I asked this question, “Why am I so depressed all of the time?”

The response I got was “You forgot that I love you.”

As I spoke with God, His love for me, this intense love that I can’t explain, was making me feel powerful. I think for a little while God let me see through His eyes. I suddenly felt love for everyone.

— Krystal Winzer describing her spiritually transformative experience

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Boom! The Life and Times of a Suicide Near Death Experiencer
By Chris Batts

Amazon Description:

“This is the true story of how I tried to kill myself only to learn to love myself and be happy because my near death experience (NDE) was the best thing that ever happened to me. My NDE amazed me. I didn’t think such things were possible. I never expected to meet God or those I call my guardian angels, but I did. And I never expected to be able to communicate with my guardian angels on an ongoing basis as a result. BOOM! is the true story of my life before and after my NDE from jumping out of a moving car. BOOM! also includes insights and guidance from my guardian angels on the spiritual realms and how to improve our lives on earth.”

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