Transformative Near Death Experiences

Welcome back to Gnostic insights.

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of near death experience videos on YouTube. Have you been watching those? They really are fascinating. You can see that people have personalized experiences in their near death episodes. And by the way, in case you don’t even know what near death experience is, it’s when a person is clinically dead—no brain waves, no heartbeat—they can be dead for several minutes. They could be in a deep coma, a vegetative state, for months. However they get to be on the other side, it’s called a near death experience. And it’s not being mediated by the physical body because the physical body is shut down. And that’s a provable event by heart monitors, brain monitors—all of that.

And by now there have been thousands and thousands and thousands of people who have had near death experiences. There are many commonalities to everyone’s near death experiences, but then again, there are also personalized viewpoints of what their experience was for them and then what it means to them, just as all of us have our points of view in our walking around life. If I’m standing right next to you, you and I can both witness an event and yet we will tell it in our own words and in our own ways, perhaps even using our own metaphors if it’s a difficult thing to explain to someone else. And it’s no different with these near death experiences.

In fact, the near death experiences are so unusual and so out of the realm of our ordinary waking experience that people often have a difficult time even putting words to what they’ve witnessed. Some people come out of their near death experience all prepared to talk about it, but other people take years before they can put it to words and explain it.

So, I started watching these new death experiences on YouTube, and I’m making notes and whatnot. Then I decided, well, why reinvent the wheel? Why not look up a book where someone has already cataloged the near death experiences and written down their similarities and their differences, and written down some examples? So I went to a book called Evidence of the Afterlife. That was published in 2010 by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry, if you want to look it up yourself. And so I made notes out of that book.

First let me share with you a description of what I believe are Aeons by a 13- year-old who had just died. And it says she rose and found herself inside a bright white soft cloud type of thing. She felt the total embrace of love and felt great safety and warmth. Within and attached to the cloud were three Angel-type of beings. They had great peace about them and were part of this cloud as if attached directly to it. She felt their grandness and their joy. She felt happy, peaceful, and a desire to stay amongst them. Suddenly, a large hand came toward her, not threatening, glowing with overpowering light. A voice said, my child, go back for you have much work left to do, and she was instantly back in her body. She felt angry that she had to return. And the condition that had caused her to pass away was healed upon her awakening.

When I read this, I think that this bright white soft cloud type of thing is what we call the Fullness of God, which is where the Aeons dwell. That is a total embrace of love, safety, and warmth, because the Fullness of God is a direct emanation from the Father. The Fullness of God, the Aeons of God, are directly attached to the Son of God, and the Son is the first manifestation. That is what it means by being the only begotten Son of the God Above All Gods of the origin of consciousness. And we know that the God Above All Gods isn’t merely consciousness—this God is love. Our sensation of loving and being loved is a direct emanation of the Father of consciousness. So, this 13-year-old girl found herself embedded within this cloud of love and consciousness.

And she saw three Angel type of beings. It doesn’t say in the Tripartite Tractate that Angels is a synonym for Aeons, but I think it is. Angels are perhaps a certain subclass of Aeons, but when someone describes an Angel or an Angelic type of being, this is one of the Aeons of the Fullness of God. So she saw three of these Aeons. Now, it’s also my thought that all of us humans, all of us Second Order Powers, are particular combinations of Aeons or unique combinations of various Aeons. Your combination of Aeons is slightly different than mine. We overlap for the most part because we’re humans. However, my talents are slightly different than your talents, and our talents come from the Aeons. Also, if we are reincarnated beings, we are also slightly different because of our past life experiences and the meme bundle that we carry forward with us from life to life.

So, speaking of this girl’s miraculous healing of the illness that caused her to die, people are often healed out of the deadly condition that led to their near death experience. They have out of body experiences where they observe the events going on around their bodies while their body is lying there dead or unconscious. One near death experiencer was born with cerebral palsy and had never used his hand. After his near death experience, he was able to open and use his hand for the first time in his life. And of course there is a story in the New Testament that’s just like that. Jesus healed a man who had been paralyzed in his hand and had never been able to open his hand, and Jesus told him that his sins were forgiven and to go ahead and open his hand, which he did. That story can be found in Mark 3 verses one through 6, in Matthew 12, verses 9 through 14, and in the book of Luke, verses 6 through 11.

45% of the people who have had near death experiences report psychic, paranormal, or other special gifts following their near death experience. Basically, they report that when you are having a near death experience and you’re on the other side, you’re in this place. We all have these extrasensory perception type of experiences–that that’s the way communication is carried on when we’re out of the material world. When we’re down here in this material world, we have to use our senses—our ears, our vision, our smell, our touch—to perceive the world around us. It’s very difficult to just have a pure experience, although people who do have second sight or who are able to have out of body experiences or remote viewing, they’re able to harness these types of abilities. Well, when you’re out of your body and you are pure consciousness, you’re pure spirit form—it’s all like that. There aren’t any senses because you don’t have your body to sense reality through.

So people report unusual ways of perceiving the Fullness of God, or this other place that they are. And they talk about a 360° vision where you can see all the way around. They talk about being in the company of others and being able to know what the others are seeing and feeling and thinking all at once, without confusion. So when they come back into their bodies, and they’re revived, about 45% of them carry some of this ability forward with them.

Another commonality is a complete loss of fear of death. And that’s because they have a conviction that death is not final and that there is a wonderful afterlife and it’s real. And they believe this because they have experienced this.

It’s impossible for me to think that these are demonic visions—that these are evil. Satan, the devil, and also the Demiurge, being a different being but on that side—they are not able to manifest love. They do not know love because they came from that egoic side of Logos when he fell. The love and consciousness returned back to the Fullness and that which stayed behind here in this material world, which includes that split off side—the dark side, the negative side, the side of Logos that does not remember the Father or the Fullness—I’ve been identifying that as the ego of Logos—it stayed behind. It doesn’t remember the Father. It doesn’t remember the love and the consciousness of the Father or its brothers up in the Fullness.

Now, we Second Order Powers, which is every living thing in this cosmos—every  living thing is called a Second Order of Powers—the First Order of Powers are the Aeons of the Fullness. We are their fruit, which is another way of saying that we are their children. They do remember the Father. The Second Order Powers have a dim remembrance of the Father and the Fullness. We know where we come from. That’s why all cultures around the world have a hope of Paradise. It’s not a cultural artifact of where they live and how they were brought up. It’s an inherent peace that’s deep within us. Satan doesn’t know that. Satan is not of the remembrance.

Satan is not a Second Order Power, so it can’t replicate the love of the Father. Satan’s version of replicating the love of Father is pampering the ego. Is pornography. Is rampant sex instead of love. Is satiety through overeating or through wonderful possessions and wonderful food. Good drugs. The high from heavy drugs is part of the Deficiency—Satan’s imitation of the Fullness above. These near death experiences, when you watch the videos on YouTube or you hear me talking about it here, they don’t have the same flavor. They don’t have the same tinge as the evil. I realize that Fundamentalist religionists, including Fundamentalist Christians, may think that what I’m speaking about is evil—is a deception of the lies of Satan. But if you have discernment of the love of the Father and belief in the saving power of the Christ, this is the same feeling as these near death experiences. It’s the right side of the Ledger, the virtuous side of the Ledger. It’s not the vice side of the Ledger.

As an aside, when I ran this episode by my brother Bill, he thought it odd that I dropped in the word Satan, since Satan doesn’t appear in the Tripartite Tractate. And that was because I was talking to Christians at the time that I made the reference to Satan here in this episode. But he’s right, Satan is not named in the Tripartite Tractate. However, there are Archons which are deputies, let’s say, of the Demiurge, and I’ve always thought of Satan as the chief deputy of the Demiurge. But you don’t have to be concerned about that right now. I think very soon I should have an episode about archons and the power structures of the archons.

Now, even people who are very deeply embedded in their fundamentalist religions can be deceived by Satan. They can be deceived by Archons. And the basic way you know that you’re being deceived by Satan or the Archons, or the Demiurge, is the lack of love. When you are motivated by anger, even if you call it righteous anger, even if you call it righteous indignation, that is not the love of God. The love of God is all forgiving. All embracing. “For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” not, for once we killed the bad guys, Christ died for us. That’s wrong. It’s not your righteousness and it’s not your anger with the sword that brings you into the Heavenly realms. It’s not through our deeds at all.

These people who died and had their near death experiences weren’t earning a glimpse of Heaven. They just died in the middle of whatever they were doing, the way we all do. And yet they were taken directly into the Heavenly realm, and these people were sent back because it wasn’t time for them to be dead yet. And when they come back, they bring the peace, love, joy, the conviction that death is not final. They have felt themselves in the warm embrace of the Father, or of Jesus, or of Angels. There was no anger there. There is no judgment there.

They see beautiful meadows or prairies and each blade of grass is a unique creature and happy. There are butterflies, birds, rivers. It’s wonderfully tranquil, is how they describe it. They report the light is beautiful, and we know that God is often described as light. “And in him there is no darkness at all”. This is this place we’re talking about and that’s why the light itself feels like love. Golden sunshine. The bright white light, scintillating and warm. It smells sweet and inviting, like cupcakes it’s described, or warm vanilla sugar. The light smells delicious. And in the Tripartite Tractate there is a fragrance of the Father that is described and the fragrance of God is sweet and inviting. It’s part of the homing beacon back to the Father.

They describe unearthly beings. Not extraterrestrial aliens from another planet. If there are extraterrestrial beings from another planet, these are not them. You can’t conflate the Aeons of the Fullness or the Angels with extraterrestrial aliens because they have a different way of operating; they have a different feel about them.

Now, pretty much everyone describes what is called a life review. Just like the stories, just like in the movies or in the books—you  hear about people’s life passing before their eyes. So the life review is described in much the same terms no matter who undergoes it, and pretty much everyone undergoes it if they stay dead long enough. And their life review is very interesting because it’s done in this 360° way of knowing. It’s not like watching a movie screen, it’s more like being there. But it’s not just you being there, reliving the experience through your own point of view and your own eyes as you did when it first happened, because you see it through everyone’s point of view and through everyone’s eyes who was in the scene at the same time. Not only that, but you feel it emotionally through everyone’s feelings. So if you had said something harsh to a loved one—maybe you’re aware you were overly harsh, or maybe you’re not aware of the effect you had upon the loved one–well, during your life review, you feel what the loved one felt. You feel their pain. And this is why the life review can be an extremely painful event.

But, if you were repentant of it here on Earth before you die, it won’t be painful like that because you did repent of it. That’s the purpose of repentance—you recognize and learn from your mistakes. And if you don’t do it during your life, then you will have to do it when you pass over. One of the episodes here on Gnostic Insights is called Overcoming Death. In that episode, I described the near death experience or the after death experience in terms of Tibetan Buddhism and what they call the bardos of death. And that’s an in-depth description in that episode of what people who are unrepentant experience after they die.

So, if you repent of it, if you know you goofed up, best to give it to Christ. That way those Third Order Powers can come in and replace  Second Order anger with Third Order love. This is how this works in terms of this Gnostic Gospel that I’m sharing with you.

Anyway, that’s the life review that goes on and everyone has the life review. And by the time you go all the way through your life review, you come out cleansed. You come out the other side purged. And then you move on. Remember, it is said that in Heaven, there is no darkness at all, so our negative emotionality and our mean spirits don’t go forward into Heaven. When we find ourselves up there after this material Earth, it’s all onward and upward. It’s all good. It’s all beautiful. It’s all bright and lovely. So these life experiences that are clinging to us, they have to be purged before we get up there. Makes sense? Then people reunite with their lost loved ones, and there’s no more bitterness or anger if there was when they passed away. It’s gone now. It’s purged and it’s all love.

Jesus hanging on the cross probably had one of these near death experiences that we’re talking about. And when he had his 360° life review, the only sins that needed to be corrected was all of our sins. This is what is meant to say that Christ took on the sins of the world. I’ll bet you his 360° review was all of our errors and regrets, and the Christ took care of all of them on behalf of Jesus in his 360° life review. This is an idea of how it is that Jesus on the cross took away the sins of the world.

These people who returned from their near death experiences report that the afterlife is for everyone. Not just for near death experiencers. And of course, I say that’s true too. And this is why I think this is a proof of life after death. And it’s a proof of universal salvation. We can go through the New Testament and point out everywhere that it says that we’re all going to Heaven. That we’re all forgiven and Christ came to die for our sins, period. Not just for the people who go forward and profess Christ while they’re alive, but for everyone. Because remember—we’re all from the Fullness of God, and if we don’t return to the Fullness, then God is no longer full. Do you see that? If God were shedding 80% of the people down here who have sinned and didn’t profess Christ before they died, God wouldn’t be full anymore. He’s not going to lose us. We are the Fruit of the Fullness of God. We are taken care of by the Father and by the Christ. It’s their job to save us.

People report that the experience they have in their near death experience is realistic and it is greater than ordinary perception. It’s consistent and logical, by the way. People who have been blind, even blind from birth, can see in the afterlife. Well, of course they can, because they’re no longer attached to their material eyeballs in their body that don’t work. The life reviews include long forgotten events, so it’s not like they’re dredging them up and working on it. It’s coming to them. Boom, boom, boom. The relatives and friends they encounter on the other side are all deceased; you don’t run into live people up there. They are consistent across all cultures and all locations and children have the same near death experiences as adults.

And the powerful after-effects of the near death experience consistently change people’s lives for the better. They come back being better people, which to me is another proof that this is not a demonic lie. This is not a deception of Satan, because Satan doesn’t make people better. Satan doesn’t make people more loving. Satan makes people more egoic, more self-centered. More me, me, me. That’s what Satan wants you to be. True love—the love of the Father, the love of the Christ, the love of the Fullness of God—causes you to be open and giving and loving to other people. To be self-sacrificial. To want their good as much or more so than your good. So this evidence seems to point to an afterlife and a universe that is guided by a vastly loving intelligence, and we are part of that intelligence. We are fruits of the Fullness of God and the Fullness of God is a direct emanation of the Father, the God Above All Gods.

Before we finish up this topic, let me read from a list of bullet points I made concerning the transformative changes that people carry through when they come back to life after their near death experiences.

Transformative Changes from Near Death Experiences

• Stronger sense of spirituality
• More self-confidence
• Reduced interest in material gain or status
• Greater appreciation of life
• Belief in the sacredness of life
• Sense of God’s presence
• Awareness of meaning and purpose in life
• Increasingly aware of the needs of others and willingness to reach out to them
• Live life more fully and joyfully
• More religious, increasingly committed to preexisting religious practices
• Or less interested in traditional religious practices
• Most find their aftereffects to be positive and life-enhancing
• A change in values may lead them to re-evaluate their occupations and to leave cut throat jobs. Or to emphasize positive interpersonal interactions and serving others.
• They may end negative and unloving relationships.
• They often seek out positive and loving relationships more in line with new values
• Increasing loving and compassionate interaction with others results in stronger marriages and relationships
• Aftereffects increase over time
• No fear of death. Strong belief in afterlife.
• Love and compassion for self, others, and nature
• What you do to others will come back to you, whether hatred and violence or love and compassion
• Increased intuition
• Increased value of loving interactions. Being kind and courteous.
• Patience, empathy, discernment.
• Increased love for Self. No more suicide attempts.
• Miraculous physical healing. Rapid recovery from deadly disease.
• Realization we are loved. Suffering is not necessary.

 Wow. Sounds like it’s from the afterlife to me. Sounds like that is a message from the God Above All Gods. What do you think?

Until next week—onward and upward, and God Bless Us All.

If you come away confused, please write to me for clarification.Feel free to write to me privately using the Contact Us form at gnosticinsights.com. Or you can write to me via Comments at the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Public comments are encouraged at the Substack page so we can start up a dialogue on these things. I really appreciate the listeners who have written to share their stories with me.

We’re nearing completion of the publication process for A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel of the Tripartite Tractate. This will be a large, fully explanatory edition that lays out the gnostic cosmology from start to finish, with full color illustrations throughout. They have set the price around $30. I’m keeping my royalties to a minimum in order to lower the sales price for you. There is currently an inexpensive, black and white edition that I published myself that is available here if you can’t afford $30 or don’t want to wait to read it. The color edition will be available very soon.