Updated 3 years ago
Suicide, The Birth Trauma, and the Near-Death Experience (NDE)
The suggestion that some violent suicides are scripted by a traumatic birth relates to theories that the near-death experience (NDE) is a re-activation of birth memories in symbolic form. Like birth, NDE’s involve travel through a tunnel into light. Some are blissful but others involve panic and paranoia. New data show foetal memory at 20 weeks, and adults have appeared to re-experience birth in LSD and Ketamine research.
The birth trauma frequently appeared as a core imprint, described by Dr. Stanislaus Grof in four parts:
Stage 1. The amniotic universe: no boundaries. The re-experiencing adult describes ocean, galaxy, heaven, cosmic unity beyond time and space. Arriving toxins or lack of nourishment link with images of poison, danger, and evil forces.
Stage 2. Engulfment and no exit: stage 1 of delivery. There are contractions but the cervix is closed so there is no way out. Symbolism includes engulfment and imminent disaster, expulsion from Eden, the sense of original sin (to have deserved this fate) and hell: entrapment in a claustrophobic, endless nightmare of pain from which escape is impossible.
Stage 3. The death-rebirth struggle: contractions continue but the cervix is dilated. The baby moves through the birth canal, struggling against suffocation and compression. Symbolism includes a titanic struggle with energy building up towards explosive release, cataclysm, with sadomasochistic, aggressive elements. The person may identify with both killer and victim, relevant to violent suicide.
Stage 4. The death-rebirth experience: Tension is released, the child is born into light. In adults, annihilation of all previous reference points, ego death, is followed by rebirth: visions of white light, arriving in paradise, and positive feelings about self, others and life. The stages may not be worked through sequentially, and may be repeated many times.
A ‘re-doing’ of birth within a therapeutic alliance allows some resolution of the trauma. Ego death can resolve a deep sense of inadequacy, an unrealistic need to be prepared for hidden dangers, and a compulsion to be in control linked to negative aspects of birth. NDE’s can be followed by more joy in living, less anxiety and neurosis, and a sharp fall in suicide attempts.
In over 1,000 patients, death-rebirth psychotherapy using ketamine has had good results at long-term follow-up.
The safe induction of NDE’s for psychotherapeutic purposes, as may be achieved with anesthetics and guided imagery, may offer a powerful treatment for those at risk: a brief ego death that may be lifesaving.
More on the Mechanism of the NDE
To believe that consciousness can survive the wreck of the brain, is like believing that 70 mph can survive the wreck of the car. — Frank Zindler
Now again I do not know if I trust this mystic I ran into but he told me that there is nothing in Nothing to be afraid of. He said “one way is to step gently into the void–it is only terrifying if you are clinging to your ego or form. It is safe” He also said in his humorous way “Turn your avoid dance into a void dance”
History of OOBEs
The notion of the human double has a long and colorful history. Plato gave us an early idea. He believed that what we see in this life is only a dim reflection of what the spirit could see if it were released from the physical. Imprisoned in a gross physical body, the spirit is restricted; separated from that body, it would be able to converse freely with the spirits of the departed, and see things more clearly. Another idea which can be traced to the Greeks is that we have second body. The spirit or some subtle body would be able to see better without its body. Aristotle taught that the spirit could leave the body and that it is capable of communicating with the spirits, while Plotinus held that all souls must be separable from their physical bodies. This ‘doctrine of the subtle body’ runs through Western tradition.
Homer regarded man as a composite being comprising three distinct entities, namely the body (soma), the ‘psyche,’ and the thumos; this last term is untranslatable, but is always closely associated with the diaphragm/midriff (phrenes), which was considered to be the seat of the will and feeling, perhaps even of the intellect. At this stage (800 – 750 BC) the term psyche had not come to mean personal soul, but rather it represented the impersonal life-principle which dwells in the body but which is unrelated to the intellect and the emotions. A fourth component, the ‘image’ (‘eidolon’), might also be included in human make-up; it was this aspect of self which acted and appeared in dreams, where it was considered as a real figure.
Dionysus’ early followers in Thrace reenacted his death and resurrection in a gruesome ceremony, where they tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth, and then roamed about the woods shouting frantically. Later rituals were hardly less barbaric and frenzied; all were calculated to induce a stage of religious madness or mania. They took place at night to the accompaniment of loud music and cymbals, thus exciting the chorus of worshippers who soon joined in with shouts of their own. Dancing was so violent that no breath was left for singing, and eventually the worshippers induced through their excesses a state of such exaltation and rapture that it seemed to them that the ordinary limits of life had been transcended, that they were ‘possessed,’ their soul having temporarily left the body. The soul was in a condition of enthousiasmos (inside the god) and ekstasis (outside the body); liberated from the confines of the body it enjoyed communion with the god.
Perhaps the most pervasive idea relating to other bodies is that on death we leave our physical body and take on some subtler or higher form. This notion has roots not only in Greek thought and in much of later philosophy, but also in many religious teachings. Some Eastern religions include specific doctrines on the forms and abilities of other bodies and the nature of other worlds; and in Christianity there are references to a spiritual body. Some religious works can be seen as preparing the soul for its transition at death.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thodol (meaning Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane) was first committed to writing in the eighth century AD, although the editor, Dr W. Y. Evans-Wentz, has no doubt that it represents ‘the record of belief of innumerable generations in a state of existence after death.’ It is thought that its teachings were initially handed down orally, then finally compiled and recorded by a number of authors. The book is used as a funeral ritual, and is read out as a guide to the recently deceased. It contains an elaborate description of the moment of death, the stages of mind experienced by the deceased at various stages of post-mortem existence, and the path to liberation or rebirth, as the case may be.
The Bardo body, also referred to as the desire- or propensity-body, is formed of matter in an invisible and etheral-like state and is, in this tradition, believed to be an exact duplicate of the human body, from which it is separated in the process of death. Retained in the Bardo body are the consciousness-principle and the psychic nervous system (the counterpart, for the psychic or Bardo body, of the physical nervous system of the human body) [Eva60]. Due to its nature, the Bardo body is able to pass through matter, which is only solid and impenetrable to the senses, but not to the instruments of modern physics; and the fact that the conscious self is not embedded in matter enables it to travel instantly where it desires. Flights of the imagination become objectively real, the wish comes true.
In his introductions to The Egyptian Book of the Dead — called in the language of that people ‘Pert Em Hru’ (‘Emerging by Day’) — Wallis Budge points out that its chapters ‘are a mirror in which are reflected most of the beliefs of the various races which went to build up the Egyptians of history.’ As all commentators have hastened to indicate, the Book of the Dead is not a unity but a collection of chapters of varying lengths and dating from different ages. A selection of these would be made for the deceased, and would be copied on the walls of the tomb or inscribed on the sides of the sarcophagi; or they might even be written on scrolls of papyri which were then laid within the folds of the bodycloths. The extracts meant to benefit the deceased in a variety of ways.
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the perishable physical body, preservable only by mummification, is called the khat. Next comes the ka, which is generally translated as ‘double,’ and is defined by Wallis Budge as ‘an abstract individuality or personality which possessed the form and attributes of the man to whom it belonged, and, though its normal dwelling place was in the tomb with the body, it could wander about at will; it was independent of the man and could go and dwell in any statue of him.’
The ba, or heart-soul, is depicted as a bird and is often translated as ‘soul.’ It is sometimes conceived of as an animating principle within the body, but elsewhere it is hinted that one only becomes a ba after death, when it either dwells with the ka in the tomb or with Ra or Osiris in heaven. The ba is often referred to in connection with the spiritual soul (khu), which was regarded as imperishable and existed in the spiritual body (sahu). The sahu was originally considered to be a more material body, and may have formed a part of an early and literal view of the resurrection, whereby the sahu, ba, ka, khaibit (shadow) and ikhu (vital force) all came together again after 3,000 years, and the man was reanimated. Gradually the sahu came to be regarded as more spiritual in its compositions, and the idea of physical resurrection lost its prominence. It was believed that this sahu was germinated from the physical body, provided that it was not corrupt, and that the appropriate ceremonies had been performed by the priests.
The Egyptians agree with the Primitives and the Tibetans in asserting a form of continued existence after physical death. Their notions are less psychologically consistent and subtle than those of the Tibetans, but much more complex and symbolically developed than those of the Primitives, whom they resemble only in the earliest stages of their civilisation. Their unique features center round the overwhelming dread of physical corruption and corresponding longing for the germination of the indestructible sahu in which the khu will exist ‘for millions and millions of years.’
One of the directly relevant ideas derives from the teachings of Theosophy. Within a scheme involving several planes and several bodies, the OBE is interpreted as a projection of the ‘astral body’ from the physical body. Theosophical ideas have influenced the thinking and terminology of many OBE researchers since many people reporting OBEs have found terms like ‘astral projection’ which derive from Theosophy to be useful in describing their experiences. Other researchers, however, find such terminology and the model it has been devised to describe to be unnecessarily biased in favor of a certain ‘esoteric’ interpretation of the actual experience.
