Can We Trust Anything Near-Death Experiencers Say?

Not long ago a reader named David submitted a Spiritual Conundrum to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life asking about near-death experiences (NDEs), why they’re so contradictory, and whether we can trust anything near-death experiencers (NDEers) say. He is also struggling with hellish NDEs. Is hell really the horrible, hopeless place described in some NDEs and in traditional Christian literature? Doesn’t this contradict how Swedenborg describes hell? David is so distressed about all the conflicting claims that he’s struggling with fear, and with his faith.

I’ll post David’s full spiritual conundrum in a moment. But here are a few basic points to get you started. I’ll cover them one by one after presenting David’s full question:

• People’s experiences in their NDEs and their beliefs are two different things.
• Angels use our existing beliefs to motivate us toward love and understanding.
• NDEs are only a brief taste of the spiritual world, not a comprehensive tour.
• NDEs take place in “the world of spirits,” not in heaven or hell.
• The world of spirits is customized to our current beliefs and state of mind.
• NDEs, including hellish NDEs, are more like movies than real life.
• God and the angels know who will die permanently and who will return to earth.
• NDEs give people the experience and message they need for their continued life on earth.

About Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) vs. NDEs, keep in mind that Swedenborg spent almost three decades regularly visiting the spiritual world and traveling throughout heaven, hell, and the world of spirits, where we first arrive after death. Unlike NDEers, who spend anywhere from a few minutes to a few days in the spiritual world, Swedenborg had ongoing experience of the spiritual world that continued for many years. Based on that extensive experience, was able to gain a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of its workings and the lay of the land.

In short, NDEs are a valuable source of varied first-hand experience about the afterlife. But if you’re looking for a solid understanding of the afterlife, Swedenborg is your guy.

Struggling for understanding and faith

Here is the full Spiritual Conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by David:

Hi Mr. Woofenden,

My name is David. I first found your website back around 2021–2023, back when I had first discovered Swedenborg. Ever since, I’ve had Swedenborg as my baseline interpretation of what the afterlife was for a while, but after going down the rabbit hole of NDEs and what not, I found that a lot of things about NDEs tend to be extremely contradictory. This scared me, as I realized that I couldn’t really trust anything anyone was saying, and the fear eventually boiled over into what I could only describe as a panic mode conversion to Christianity after I had fallen down another rabbit hole of overtly hellish NDEs.

I’m well aware the vast majority of NDEs are about love and light and all things groovy, with some even overtly saying that reincarnation is real and that everyone will be saved eventually, but the thing is I just don’t know what to think anymore. On one hand, the hellish NDEs and NDE like stories that I found are scarily consistent, detailing that hell is eternal separation from God and that the worst thing about being there is the soul crushing guilt and despair from the knowledge that you’ve permanently screwed up and that God can do nothing to save you anymore, a commonality found even in accounts of hell from as old as the Catholic Saints, yet against everything Swedenborg said about hell. And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that non-Christians can see Jesus in their NDEs. Yet at the same time some people who have had positive NDEs have claimed that everyone sees something different when they come to the other side, implying that all of these, even the overtly religious ones are just God “giving us what we need” to help us understand him better.

In my search, I also discovered online testimonies about people having visions of people that they know burning in hell, or experiencing possession by demonic forces. I know I can’t really trust these accounts either, but I also think that it’s both dangerous and unfair to just dismiss them as lies, dreams, schizophrenia attacks, or misinterpretations of spiritual events.

While I’m becoming increasingly scared that it’s an open and shut case, at this point, I’m just tired, man.

Thanks again, David, for your thoughtful and heartfelt question. I am sorry to hear about your struggles in the face of all the conflicting beliefs pushed by people who have had near-death experiences, and about whether you can believe anything at all.

I am also glad you sent in your question, because there are good answers, which I think and hope you will find helpful and comforting. Much of it has to do with how the spiritual world works. The spiritual world is the world of the human mind—which is a complex and often confusing landscape. However, the experiences and principles Swedenborg lays out bring a clarity to it that is not found anywhere else.

Let’s lay out some of those experiences and principles so that you and others can gain a better understanding of the confusing welter of reports and opinions of those who have briefly visited the spiritual world.

Experience vs. belief

Picture it: Two sports teams are in the final hard-fought game that will determine which team is that year’s champion. The referee makes a controversial call on the game-winning score. The fans of the winning team say it’s a brilliant play and a correct call! The fans of the losing team say there was no score, and their team was robbed of the championship by a bad call! When the instant frame-by-frame replays come out, the fans of the two teams continue to fiercely debate whether it was or wasn’t a legitimate game-winning play.

Even with today’s fancy high-tech millisecond-fast video technology, this is a surprisingly common occurrence. See, for example, “The 25 most controversial calls in sports history,” by Chris Mueller. Two groups of people see the exact same event and come to the exact opposite conclusion about its meaning.

This illustrates the reality that our experiences and our beliefs are two distinct things. Everyone in the bleachers saw the same play. But they interpreted it based on their own desires and beliefs about the superiority of their own team.

The very same thing happens with near-death experiences. Two people have NDEs. One of them comes away from it saying that reincarnation is real; the other comes away saying that it’s not. Obviously, one of them must be wrong.

Does this mean that we can’t trust their experiences as real? Does it mean that these people must be hallucinating, or worse, lying about their experiences?

Not at all. It means that people will interpret their experiences very differently based on their beliefs and inclinations.

This is why we can accept the experiences of NDEers as real, while not accepting the beliefs that they attach to their NDEs. For reasons that will become clear as we cover the rest of the points I made above, NDEs are a very good source of experience about the spiritual world, but a very bad source for beliefs about God and spirit.

Angels and spirits work with our existing beliefs

People commonly believe that their thoughts, desires, and beliefs are their own, and nobody else knows anything about them unless they say something.

That’s not true at all.

According to Swedenborg, the angels and spirits who are with us all the time have access to everything in our mind and heart. Our “guardian angels” are aware that these are our thoughts and feelings, and they work to bend our thoughts and feelings toward what is good. The evil spirits with us, meanwhile, think that these are their own thoughts, and they delight in the evil and false ones, encouraging us to indulge in them even more, which gives them great pleasure. Here is one particularly vivid passage from Swedenborg along these lines:

The spirits with us also adopt our false convictions, whatever those may be, as has been borne out for me by much experience. They adopt our delusions not only on public and private issues but also on spiritual questions of faith. Plainly, then, when spirits are with people who subscribe to heresies, to fallacies and delusions regarding religious truth, and to outright falsities, the spirits have the same bad thinking and do not waver from it a hair’s breadth. The purpose is to leave people in freedom and prevent a spirit’s own ideas from causing them trouble. (Secrets of Heaven #5860)

In other words, our false beliefs are shared with the spirits who are around us in the spiritual world—so much so that as long as they are with us, they believe exactly the same things we do, right down to the smallest details.

What this means is that if we become aware of their presence, as often happens in NDEs, they will affirm everything we believe, swearing that it is true, and giving us an unshakeable conviction that our beliefs are absolutely true because we heard them from the spiritual world. For the very same reason, contacting spirits either directly or through mediums is not only a bad source of truth and understanding about God and spirit, but is likely to cause us to cling to our false beliefs even more strongly than we did before. See:

What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?

But it’s not only evil spirits who glom onto our false beliefs and assure us that they are absolutely true. Angels themselves will protect and defend our false beliefs when evil spirits attack us because of them:

Angels constantly defend us and deflect the evil that the evil spirits intend against us. They even defend the falsity and evil we have in us, because they know very well where we obtained the falsity and evil: from evil spirits and demons. We never produce anything misguided or wicked out of ourselves. It is the evil spirits with us who produce it and at the same time cause us to believe that it comes from us. Such is their malevolence. What is more, at the same instant that they are filling us with these things and making us believe this way, they are also accusing and condemning us. . . . As angels are aware of this, during the trials of regeneration they even defend our falsity and evil. Otherwise we would suffer defeat. (Secrets of Heaven #761)

The angels with us are well aware that these beliefs of ours are false. But they protect and defend them because these are the beliefs we have, and that is what’s available for them to work with in leading us toward living a good life. This is why, even if we are sure that it is angels who are affirming our beliefs, that still isn’t a good reason to believe that they are absolutely true.

For more detailed explanations of how and why angels use our existing beliefs, and specifically people’s belief in reincarnation, to lead us toward living a good life, see my comments in response to readers here and here. These are in the comments section of my main article on reincarnation, which itself is worth a read if you’re troubled by the widespread belief in reincarnation:

The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation

What does this mean for the beliefs of people who have had NDEs?

Whatever people already believe, or are inclined to believe, when they have a near-death experience, they will be among spirits who share and affirm that belief. Even the angels guiding them through the experience will not challenge or contradict their beliefs. Instead, the angels will use NDEers’ already existing beliefs to give them the experience and learning they need to move forward on their spiritual path.

This is why, once again, while NDEs are a good source of experiences about the spiritual world, they are a bad source of beliefs about the spiritual world and our spiritual life.

NDEs are snapshots of the spiritual world

Some friends of yours go on vacation to the Swiss Alps, and send you photos and videos of their trip. It looks incredible! A beautiful lake with crystal clear water surrounded by inspiring snow-capped peaks. A cozy chalet nestled into the side of the mountain, complete with a soft, puffy bed and a luxurious jacuzzi. Friendly locals showing them around and catering to their every wish and whim.

Do you now have a comprehensive, accurate understanding of the nation of Switzerland and all its human and natural complexities?

Hardly.

What you have is a snapshot of a highly curated visit to a corner of Switzerland that specially caters to foreign tourists. If you think, based on those snapshots, that you could move to Switzerland tomorrow, and that’s what your life will be like, you have a rude awakening coming.

Near-death experiences are brief visits to the spiritual world. And as we shall see, they are curated visits that cater to the NDEer’s particular spiritual wants and needs. It’s not that the NDE is a “fake” experience. It’s that it is a brief, tailored visit to the spiritual world. It is not what it’s like to live in the spiritual world, just as a tourist’s experience of the Swiss Alps is not what it’s like to live in Switzerland.

If you want a comprehensive guided tour of the spiritual world that will give you a real understanding of how the spiritual world works, and what it is like to live there, your best source is Swedenborg’s book Heaven and Hell. This book is based, not on a quick tourist trip to the spiritual world, but on years of extensive travels throughout heaven, hell, and the world of spirits in between, talking to angels and spirits, visiting them in their homes, and seeing all the people, communities, and activities of daily life there.

As I said at the beginning, if you’re looking for a solid understanding of the afterlife, Swedenborg is your guy. For more on Emanuel Swedenborg and why he is a credible source of information and understanding about God and spirit, please see:

Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?

NDEs take place in the world of spirits

Everyone talks about heaven and hell. But that’s not where we go right after we die, and heaven and hell are not the parts of the spiritual world that we are most closely connected to while we’re living on earth.

In between heaven and hell there is a vast area of the spiritual world that Swedenborg calls “the world of spirits.” This is where we go right after we die. It is also the part of the spiritual world that we are directly connected to while we’re still living on earth. In the world of spirits people who have died are still in a similar state of mind, and are still living the same way, as they were on earth before they died. That’s why it is the part of the spiritual world that is closest to us.

You see, the spiritual world is not organized by fixed landscapes spread around the globe as the material world is. Rather, it is organized by mindset. People who think and feel similarly live together in the same area and community of the spiritual world. People who think and feel very differently live far apart from each other.

That’s why hell is in the opposite direction from heaven. In heaven, everyone loves God and their fellow human beings most of all. In hell, everyone loves themselves and their own possessions and power most of all. Since these are opposite mindsets, the angels of heaven and the evil spirits of hell live on opposite sides of the spiritual world.

No, that’s not quite right. It’s not opposite sides. It’s up and down. Angels live in the higher parts of the spiritual world, and evil spirits live in the lower parts of the spiritual world, above and below the neutral, or mixed, area represented by the world of spirits.

People who have near-death experiences are, of course, people who are living on this earth, and who therefore have a mixed, earthly mindset. This means that when they go to the spiritual world, they will not go to heaven or to hell, but to the world of spirits in between. There, they will be met by angels or spirits who are in a similar mindset to their own, and who think in the same way they do. That’s why people who have NDEs tend to see things that affirm their already existing beliefs. Christians may see the Pearly Gates. Hindus may see the wheel of life in action. And people who are very selfish and greedy may have a very . . . unpleasant experience.

In the world of spirits, people of all different beliefs and mindsets are still all mixed together, just as we are here on earth. So when we have a near-death experience, we’ll easily find and make connections with angels and spirits who think and feel similarly to us. Sometimes they will be friends or family members who knew us well. Other times it will be people we never knew on earth, but who we feel an immediate connection to.

Either way, it’s not an objective view of the spiritual world, nor is it an experience of heaven or of hell. It’s an experience of the world of spirits, where good and evil still mix, and where there are whole groups of people who are still partly connected to earth, and still think the same way they did on earth, because they haven’t fully made the transition to their eternal homes in either heaven or hell.

Are these the best people to turn to for information about the spiritual world? No, they’re not. They’re still figuring it out themselves. And even if we do encounter angels, often experienced as “beings of light,” we are not meeting them in their homes in heaven. No, they have come to the world of spirits to greet us and guide us. And as I said above, they adapt their minds to our way of thinking, and speak to us in ways that harmonize with our already existing beliefs and leanings.

The world of spirits is a customized experience

Another way of saying this is that when we have a near-death experience, it is a customized experience, not in heaven or in hell, but in the world of spirits in between. Everything we see and experience there is adapted to our own mind and heart, and reflects our own desires and beliefs.

Again, this doesn’t mean it’s a fake experience. Rather, it means that it is a curated experience. We are being shown, and given an experience of, the things that we need to see and experience to move forward with our own spiritual life.

This is why, as David points out, so many people come away from their NDEs with so many different, even conflicting experiences and ideas. The NDEers themselves may believe that they are getting a universal picture of what the spiritual world is like. But that’s not what is happening at all. In fact, that’s hardly even possible in such a short period of time. Rather, what they’re getting is a brief spiritual experience that is tailored to their own current spiritual, mental, and emotional state.

Once again, the experience is genuine, but its meaning is different for each person, because each person is different. Yes, there are common threads that run through NDEs. The spiritual world is not a chaotic, disorganized, anything-goes sort of place. But by its very nature, the spiritual world adapts to our mental and emotional states. That’s why different people have very different experiences there.

NDEs are like spiritual movies

You walk into a darkened theater. Suddenly the screen lights up. Playing out before your eyes are scene after scene building a story created to convey a message—perhaps one of hope and joy, perhaps one of despair and doom. Some people love a creepy horror flick. Others go for the romcoms. Others want an exciting combat or adventure film. Even the same people will watch different kinds of movies at different times depending on their current mood.

Having a near-death experience is like going to a spiritual movie theater, only instead of a 2D screen with sound, it is a fully immersive holographic experience, like the Star Trek holodeck. It feels completely real. And in a sense, it is! But it is the reality of the theater of the human mind, not the objective reality of walking around in the streets outside the movie theater.

What about those hellish NDEs in which people either see others tortured with flames and pitchforks, or experience it themselves?

These, too, are not actual experiences of hell. They are spiritual movies about hell, only they are fully immersive movies, like virtual reality headsets that Google and Meta only wish they could produce. It feels so real that it might as well be real. But it is not an actual experience of hell, nor are good NDEs actual experiences of heaven. They are like spiritual movies that people who almost die and come back to tell the tale experience during their brief excursion into the spiritual world.

This is why hellish NDEs don’t match Swedenborg’s description of hell. People who have hellish NDEs aren’t really in hell. They are in the lower part of the world of spirits, not far from hell, where they are given a hellish experience that draws on their already existing beliefs about what hell is like. And since the popular idea of hell in circulation among Christians and non-Christians alike tends to involve lots of fire and pitchforks, that’s exactly what their personalized spiritual theater serves up for them.

Even though people who have hellish NDEs may see and experience flamy tortures, the fire they experience is symbolic, no matter how real it may feel in their spiritual movie theater. Fire, in a negative sense, represents the blazing mutual anger and hatred of evil spirits in hell, and of evil people here on earth. From a distance, it looks exactly like fire and smoke. It’s not wrong that hell is a fiery, smoky chasm. It’s just that this is the way hell looks visually from a distance. For those who live there, it looks and feels very different.

I should add that people in hell can get burned by fire. That may happen from time to time. But they do not spend eternity roasting naked on spits over perennially stoked fires as depicted in some of the more lurid traditional Christian illustrations of hell. For what hell is really like, please see:

Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?

Hell as “eternal separation from God”

Oh, and one more thing about hell, in response to this part of David’s conundrum:

On one hand, the hellish NDEs and NDE like stories that I found are scarily consistent, detailing that hell is eternal separation from God and that the worst thing about being there is the soul crushing guilt and despair from the knowledge that you’ve permanently screwed up and that God can do nothing to save you anymore, a commonality found even in accounts of hell from as old as the Catholic Saints, yet against everything Swedenborg said about hell.

This is a popular notion of hell that is common among traditional Christians. However, it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of hell and its residents.

Yes, in a sense hell is eternal separation from God. But that’s because the people in hell have separated themselves from God, and they continually turn themselves away from God. The part that’s missing from the traditional Christian view is that people in hell have freely chosen to reject God, and they have no interest whatsoever in changing their mind about it. God continues to love them just as much as ever. But the feeling is definitely not mutual.

This also means that people living in hell do not feel “crushing guilt and despair,” they do not believe they have “permanently screwed up,” and they certainly don’t want God “saving” them. All of this presumes that they still have a sense of conscience.

But the residents of hell are there precisely because they have no conscience, and no desire whatsoever to do anything good for anyone. They completely reject the very idea of right and wrong. They are driven entirely by their own selfish and greedy desires. Far from thinking they have “screwed up,” they think they are the greatest, smartest, strongest, and best people ever, and they resent and hate anyone who says otherwise.

They especially hate God. The last thing they want is for God to come down and “save” them. They have already rejected all efforts by God and the angels to get them to change their minds throughout their entire lifetime on earth. They have made their choice, and they view people who try to tell them that the way they’re living is wrong as obnoxious, naïve do-gooders who should get the hell out of their way and let them live the way they please.

So no, hell is not hell because of guilt and despair. It is hell because the people there love only themselves and their own power, privilege, and possessions, and they hate and despise anyone who stands in the way of their selfish and greedy desires.

Really, that traditional Christian version of hell is about convincing Christians who are still living on earth not to choose hell. As with everyone else, angels use these Christians’ faulty and false beliefs about hell to move them toward living a good and kind life that leads to heaven instead of an evil and selfish one that leads to hell.

Now back to the points about near-death experiences.

God knows who will return to earth

There is a common assumption that what NDEers experience is exactly the same as what people who die permanently will experience. But that’s not necessarily so.

Keep in mind that God, being omniscient, knows everything that to us is past, present, and future. (If that confuses you or causes cognitive dissonance, please see, “If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?”) When people have near-death experiences, God knows that they will not be staying in the spiritual world permanently, but will return to their lives on earth.

Angels know this also. NDEers themselves commonly report being told by beings in the spiritual world that it is not yet their time to die, and they must return to their bodies. Often the NDEer fights against this, not wanting to leave this beautiful place and go back to the dark and painful world of earth. But of course, every single near-death experiencer does come back, or they would be dead people, not near-death experiencers, and we would never hear their story.

Since God and the angels know that this or that person will be returning to his or her life on earth, that changes the whole meaning and purpose of the experience.

For those who have died permanently, the experience of dying is arranged to provide a peaceful transition from one world to the next, and to lay the groundwork for the next steps in that transition. When Swedenborg describes the experience of dying in Heaven and Hell #445–542, he is providing a sample experience of what it is like to die permanently.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will experience it exactly the way Swedenborg did. For one thing, he himself says that his experience was different because he was able to keep his rational, observational mind active throughout the entire experience so that he could report it to people on earth. Different people will likely experience the passage of death differently.

However, the experience Swedenborg narrates is a description of the process of dying permanently, not a description of a brief experience of the spiritual world before returning to earth. That is why we shouldn’t expect people’s near-death experiences to follow the pattern that Swedenborg described for the dying process in Heaven and Hell. Yes, there are similarities. But these are two different kinds of experiences.

For some additional and compatible perspectives, here is a Q&A video from the Swedenborg Foundation’s Off the Left Eye YouTube channel, time-stamped to a section that addresses a question about the differences between near-death experiences Swedenborg’s experiences in the spiritual world:

NDEs are geared toward continued life on earth

Specifically, near-death experiences are organized and overseen by God and the angels to provide people with tailored experiences that will move them forward on their spiritual journey on earth. And NDEers commonly do come back with a completely changed outlook on life, and a new or renewed commitment to living a more thoughtful, loving, and spiritual life. Even hellish NDEs, such as the well-known one described by Howard Storm, commonly bring about huge changes in the lives of the people who experience them.

This is also why different people’s NDEs are often so different, and why they may even present conflicting and contradictory pictures of the afterlife. These experiences are not intended to convey information about the afterlife. They are intended to give each person who has them an experience that will move him or her forward on that specific, unique person’s spiritual path.

If we think of near-death experiences in this way, and with all these considerations in mind, we don’t have to get sucked down the rabbit hole of all the different experiences, interpretations, and beliefs presented by all different NDEers. We can understand that each person who had an NDE had a unique experience specifically tailored to his or her spiritual and emotional state at the time. We shouldn’t expect them to all be the same and agree with each other any more than we should expect every movie in the movie theater or on Netflix to show the same scenes and deliver the same message.

Swedenborg is still the go-to guy

To David and all the other people out there who are confused by the welter of different experiences, opinions, and beliefs of the different near-death experiencers, I say: relax. It is to be expected that different people will see and interpret even the same or very similar experiences quite differently, often in conflicting and contradictory ways. That is the nature of our pluralistic world and its wide variety of people holding to all different belief systems and living all different kinds of lives.

Given the huge variety of people and beliefs, it would be highly suspicious if they all reported the same things from the spiritual world. Keep in mind that the spiritual world is inhabited by everyone who has ever lived and died on this earth. All the varieties of culture, lifestyle, and belief that exist here on earth also exist in the spiritual world, because it’s all the same people, and they carry those vastly different cultures, lifestyles, and beliefs with them into the spiritual world.

Again, the spiritual world is not a chaotic, disorganized free-for-all in which anything goes. True and false beliefs do have consequences. And people who go to heaven do let go of any completely false beliefs that they may have carried with them into the spiritual world. Falsity has its home in hell, not in heaven.

Still, all the religions of the world do have a kernel of truth in them. (See: “If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?”) Hindus do not all suddenly become Christians after they die. But they do move on to a deeper and more spiritual understanding of their own religion in which, for example, instead of believing in literal, physical reincarnation, they believe in spiritual rebirth, which is what the mistaken idea of reincarnation is pointing towards.

Meanwhile, once again, if you want the real story and reliable information about what the afterlife is like, Swedenborg is still your go-to guy. No one else in the history of humanity had the sheer length and depth of experience of the spiritual world that he did. That’s not accidental. Swedenborg was specially selected by God to bring the trustworthy and reliable information about God, the spiritual world, the Bible, and the life that leads to heaven that people on earth have been pining for.

Get yourself a copy of Heaven and Hell and read it. Once you understand how the spiritual world works, all the confusion about different NDEs and different belief systems will fall into place. Confusion melts away in the presence of real understanding.

This article is a response to a spiritual conundrum submitted by a reader.

(Shorter video version coming soon!)

For further reading:

• The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
• What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?
• What Happens To Us When We Die?
• Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
• Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?
• Death and Rebirth: Introduction
• Heaven and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg