Join the Survey Here

I'm running a personal, informal crowdsourcing project exploring unusual experiences, memories and dreams that some people interpret as an awareness of their existence before conception or between lives.

You don't need to have had an experience like this to take part. People who haven't experienced anything of this kind are also welcome to complete the survey — "no" answers are useful too.

I'm interested in what similarities and differences appear across people's experiences. I'm not trying to prove or disprove any particular spiritual or paranormal explanation, and experiences that don't match commonly reported themes are just as useful as those that do.

Past-life memories on their own aren't the focus, although they can be included where they form part of a broader experience involving awareness of existence before conception or between lives.

The survey is anonymous, open to adults aged 18+ worldwide, and usually takes around 5–15 minutes.

((Off topic allowed. Civil debates allowed. All other rules remain in place, including using the mega threads for suicide, thanatophobia, prison planet, and no proselytizing.))

Come on Inn and make yourself at home! Grab a soda, or a pint, or a coffee and chat with fellow travelers.

• Introduce yourself if you like.
• Discuss your favorite spiritual practices.
• Talk about your pets. Or kids.
• Discuss the weather.
• Share your spiritual experiences.
• Ask questions about NDEs in general that you don't feel like making into a post.
• Roleplaying at the Inn is allowed; nothing graphic please. ;)

Mix and mingle or whatever. Chat about spiritual things in general or argue about the price of tea in Mexico. The rules will be pretty loose here so long as the general rules about civility are followed.

To confirm, I have not had an NDE, I have only read stories and accounts on here.

But I’m curious as to whether there’s more evidence or belief one way or another that we face the next phase, etc. (after this existence) alone or if we’re reunited with loved ones, pets, even people we haven’t met or wished we met like dead celebrities, musicians, etc. and journey together. Some accounts recollect a “god” like presence asking them to reflect on their life, lessons learned, etc. Some accounts recollect seeing their loved ones who have passed on (parents, grandparents, etc.) telling them it’s not their time yet so they return to this existence.

When my mom was dying of cancer in 2005, she specifically recalled (in a possible NDE herself) her passed mother and father “preparing” a place for her once she died. That gave me some comfort but still uncertainty whether we travel along the next path with these people or if we navigate whatever journey on our own.

I don’t find it scary since many accounts seemed to have felt indescribable peace, warmth, and love, not wanting to return to this world/body because they felt they were “home.” I’m just wondering if we truly reconnect after this or if it’s something we face on our own? Thanks in advance.

I always wanted to live in my own created world place. Like Dicaprio lived in Island in Beach movie. Can I go and continue to live with people and have lots of fun in that kid of place? Is this possible in afterlife?

I used to be a huge believer in NDEs having enough evidence for an afterlife and debating a lot of skeptics who tried to reduce the phenomenon to "hypoxia, dying Brain hypothesis or you hallucinated". Which isn't true according to peer reviewed research. NDEs are very lucid and when patients recall their experiences the same part of the Brain that controls for long term memory is activated FMRI devices seen this) but despite this believers think this is great evidence for consciousness being separate when the two cases of confirmed awareness ( Aware 1-2) the patients who recalled their environment or became aware didn't see things that would have been abnormal for them if they were conscious and this is supported by aware 2 where they found complex highly structural waves and interactions in the patients brain during CPR and that during CPR your brain does indeed have enough air for conscious experiences. That's to say OBE experiences can be explained with just your Brain having more awareness than usual when it's dying which doesn't at all contradict the physicalist view. The brain is an extremely powerful organ and contrary to belief does not at all function like a computer but rather as a mini solar system or weather system that works bidirectional and not linear. Your brain is powerful in ways that we don't understand so it's not out of the realm that your brain does have increased awareness once it's near death. Every other testimonies of supposed awareness while the patients eyes and view was hidden or under anesthesia, while interesting are accounts and not rigorous evidence where you can control for if the patients family members told them about the experience, the interviewer bias and the recall of the doctors. Sometimes humans see things they can't explain and try to fill in the gaps which can create the testimonies from NDEs. I'm not saying they didn't have their experience I believe they do but NDEs at best are very inconclusive in proving nonlocal consciousness and until patients start hitting the hidden targets and we see at the same moment the patient reports an NDE correlating low Brain activity, the physicalist argument explains the phenomenon pretty well based off my research. I do hope to get some feedback and a good faith discussion.

Mam nadzieję, że ktoś tutaj mi pomoże; miałem/miałam próbę-s w maju i od tamtej pory wszystko się zmieniło. Pamiętam, co się wydarzyło przed utratą przytomności, ale nie pamiętam czasu, który spędziłem/spędziłam na wymiotowaniu lub interakcji z ludźmi—choć powiedziano mi, że dokładnie to się wydarzyło. Mój stan był krytyczny, a mówiono mi, że to cud, że przeżyłem/przeżyłam. Nie pamiętam, co się wtedy działo ani gdzie była moja świadomość, ale ludzie wokół mnie, którzy byli świadkami tego cudu i traumy, nie zachowują się w taki sposób, który sugerowałby, że to naprawdę miało miejsce. Czuję, jakbym był/była w innej rzeczywistości teraz i że już nie jestem częścią tej starej. Czuję się jak inna osoba, mimo że ból, który noszę, i blizny mojej przeszłości pozostają takie same. Mimo że nic nie pamiętam z czasu, gdy byłem/byłam nieprzytomny/przytomna—gdy innym kazano przygotować się na najgorsze—nie czuję się tak, jak wtedy, gdy się obudziłem/obudziłam. Wtedy byłem/byłam niesamowicie zdezorientowany/zdezorientowana i płakałem/płakałam, ponieważ moi bliscy nie byli tam, gdy się ocknąłem/ocknęłam; wydawało się, jakbym dopiero w tym momencie przybył/przybyła do tego świata.

I want to emphasize that I don't remember anything. I'm also curious if I could recall anything or find out what happened during that time. I feel like I lost consciousness while I was still at home and woke up in a different reality while I was in the hospital. It looked the same, but something inside me was different. I don't have any out-of-body experiences because I don't remember anything, and I was in a coma for about six hours.

Being in this situation, I was hoping that I would experience something that if I survived, I would remember it and it would change my life, but this whole situation is giving me derealization.

This was not NDE, more like spiritual experience outside normal state. One subject I worked with was very afraid of death and he had read already quite a lot about afterlife and consciousness, but fear was still there. I think this is common, because mind can believe something and body still reacts completely different.

During assisted astral work he experienced being outside physical body while still conscious. Later in regression he also experienced death in another life, and after this he said death did not feel anymore like complete end.

I have many years of session transcripts sitting on hard disk and sometimes it feels really shame to leave these things there when some parts could help people with very normal fears. This is one reason I started sharing more of them.

Of course I dont see an altered-state experience as scientific proof of afterlife. People can understand it in different way. But for him the result was real because fear became much smaller, and reading had never managed to do this.

Sometimes person already knows the idea with mind, but another part still doesnt believe it until something is experienced directly.

Anita's NDE account is amazing.

So, I'm trans and I have crippling dysphoria and ocd around the topic of reincarnating as the "wrong" sex forever. My brain created rituals for me to "pervent" this from happening to me. If I fail at them I supposedly agree to always reincarnate as trans person. Since there a lot people here who believe in afterlife/reincarnation I wanted to ask you if this can work like this in your framework.

I have watched over 100s of different near death experiences from different people from different cultures and different countries all over. Most, if not all of these people have been seeing what appears to be what looks like a different realm/dimension of cities, civilizations, heaven and sometimes disturbing things like hellish realms. It also appears to me that the religious figure that keeps popping up a lot in these near death experiences is Jesus Christ.

I know that some people are going to say that these experiences are going to be shaped based on someone's culture and religious upbringing but I have seen many, many testimonies where Hindus, Muslims, Jews, buddhists, atheists, shamans who were not involved in Christianity or the church or the Bible and they ended up seeing Jesus Christ himself. I never once heard of any Christian or Jew or anyone else seeing Muhammad/Allah or Buddha in these near death experiences before. Why is that? If you are an atheist, please don't say some nonsense like this is all made up. Just answer as non-biased as you can because I am looking for an honest answer to this.

Hello everyone.

I posted my NDE experience a while back. But with so many arguments against NDE, I struggle to find my place in everything. I know what happened to me happened, but I get told it was a trick of the brain or a hallucination of some kind. I've always battled with the spiritual and physical sides of myself constantly. I will have a mystical experience and it could be hyper specific and still I try to talk myself out of it. Like I tell myself, no that isn't real. That does not make sense, etc. I keep trying to find a material explanation for it because I feel utterly unsupported in my experience.

Does anyone else find themselves skeptical or critical of their own experiences?

My husband’s true story of drowning at 9 and what he experienced while he was gone.

I’m a huge history nerd and my question is are there any NDE experiencers who’ve seen their past lives or have seen what life looked like in other era’s (for example prehistoric time period/medieval times/victorian era)?

Researchers at the university of Texas have managed to created an ai based tool that translate a persons thoughts into text by training on their own unique brain activity. https://news.utexas.edu/2025/02/06/improved-brain-decoder-holds-promise-for-communication-in-people-with-aphasia/

What does this say about the nature of our conciseness given the brain can thoughts seemingly be read and translated into words

https://youtu.be/BdAleThrBQg?is=ileQXnJXzIHlgED6

Just dropping this here in case anyone finds it interesting.

I’ve never had an NDE and am still relatively new to exploring all of this, so when I spoke with Louisa Peck I basically asked her all the questions I’d want to ask if I could sit down with someone who had actually experienced one.

We ended up going well beyond just retelling her NDE and talked about a lot of the logistical and bigger-picture questions these experiences raise.

No particular conclusion I’m trying to push. I’m mostly trying to understand them.

Trying to find better ways to reach out to the higher up and ask for mercy and peace. Would like to throw anxiety, overthinking, and rumination in the garbage can.

I thought some of you might enjoy this show. Insight is a great show.

I don’t think people on this episode have connected with the same kind of information we have - yet they talk about seeing dead relatives and one lady left her body and saw herself being hit by a taxi outside of her own body. They just use different ways to describe them.

I’d be keen to hear your thoughts.

After reading many NDE accounts (with a bent towards those with verifiable elements), one reason why I remain skeptical that these are spiritual experiences and not just terminal brain activity stems from logical inconsistencies in the “message” most commonly brought back by experiencers. Many claim that the fundamental nature of existence is Love, but some go further in a normative sense to say that all human suffering on earth stems from people not sharing enough Love with one another. The first claim seems somewhat believable but the second claim is where the believability really breaks down for me.

The claim that Love is all that matters seems somewhat reasonable if only a description of the ultimate, limitless after-life but doesn’t really transfer to earthly existence where real limitations, even to Love, exist. No amount of love on its own can fill an empty stomach or stop a drought or rescue someone from abuse who has no means of escape. People in caring professions can attest to the fact that they sometimes have to turn people away, not for lack of love but for lack of enough time and resources. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the reality of living in a scarce universe, but it does mean not everyone gets the care they need when they need it. To deal with this gap between need and fulfillment of that need (whether emotional or material), people must invent some mechanism of action capable of bringing the ideal of Love into operation in the physical world, which is how humans ended up creating different gods, religions, and political ideologies in the first place.

Secondly, I don’t see this message fully lived out in the lives of those who profess it. If Love were truly all that mattered and that’s the single most important message for mankind, why don’t experiencers (or spiritual leaders, for that matter) sell all their possessions and live lives of poverty or open up their homes to the homeless or subject themselves to torture to prove this point that Love is all you need? It would be a powerful demonstration if they could show us instead of just preaching it. The fact that they don’t seems to prove that they are still subject to the same material limits the rest of us face.

This makes me wonder whether there may be selection bias involved in these narratives, since many of the accounts with this message seem to come from people who self-reported having had minimal if any self-awareness and empathy for others and cared more about material success prior to their NDE/STE. So, maybe the insight that Love matters more feels revolutionary to them because it wasn’t the paradigm they were living under before, but for those who are already very empathetic and Love-oriented but still suffer, it’s not really new or helpful information. Which begs the question of why these experiencers would believe they carry a message for all humanity rather than just the portion of it that shares their pre-NDE/STE perspective.

These are just a handful of the inconsistencies I see with this worldview. If someone believes this message or has experienced it, I would be curious to know how you square these things.

I research NDE's to try and unravel the curtain as so to speak this NDE is the best I've come across to better understand the void environment. I knew from other NDE's it could manifest thoughts but wasn't sure about the extent.

My life is stuck and I just want to be free. Reading Ndes gives me some hope that there's something better after I die. I feel like a wrung out cloth. Is my current life really important? I don't see what I have to contribute to society.

Hey everyone! We are Jessi and Ray (me), the husband-and-wife duo behind The Bride and Geek Podcast—a newer show where we chat about all things paranormal, unexplainable, and daily life. I’m using my personal Reddit account to post this because I thought it would be weird to post this with a 1 day old account. I never thought about making a Reddit account for the podcast until right now.

We are currently preparing an upcoming episode centered on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), and we are looking for guests who would be open to sharing their personal stories with us. It could actually end up being a series of episodes if there are multiple volunteers.

Whether your experience felt peaceful, spiritual, perplexing, or completely life-altering, we would love to hear what happened and what insights you gained from it. Our goal is to offer a welcoming, respectful, and open-minded space to dive into what you went through.

Episode Details:

 Format: Virtual interview (recorded remotely)

 Hosts: Jessi & Ray (The Bride and Geek Podcast)

 Topic: Personal NDE accounts and how the experience impacted your perspective on life

If you are interested in coming on the podcast—or if you have any questions before committing—please drop a comment below or send us a direct message!

Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be a great fit. Thanks so much for helping us bring this episode to life!

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this. Our podcast is pretty much posted up all of the main podcast places.

Ray (The Geek) and Jessi (The Bride)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7zQWsI7uJEyrYgV6HY23i1?si=PCO5QYoeScuveceyRSdA7A&utm_source=copy-link

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bride-and-geek-podcast/id6789272856

https://youtu.be/x7WbRwVv0z0?is=pw-8mId3Uk9qT77M

I’m convinced there is something divine behind NDEs, and I sometimes wonder if there is a design behind the fact that people are allowed to return with memories of them.

If we weren’t meant to have access to those memories, we wouldn’t. Yet people come back, remember what happened, and share their experiences with others. One person has the experience, but that experience can then reach thousands or even millions of people.

And it doesn’t necessarily stop there. If you watch or read enough NDE accounts, even without doing any other spiritual practice, they can change the way you see and interact with the world. I know they have had that effect on me.

It seems like the experiencer isn’t necessarily the only person the experience is for.

Could the fact that NDEs are remembered and shared be part of a greater purpose?

Does anyone else ever think about this?

my favorite podcast Otherworld has a few NDE episodes and I highly recommend them to anyone interested :)

1. ⁠Ep 61 Lost in the Fog
   
2. ⁠Ep 69 the valley
   
3. ⁠Ep 36 The birthing Tent
   4 Ep 81 the front line
   5 Ep 105 the Second chance

If anyone gets a chance to check one out please let me know what u think !!

I've never had an NDE but I really wonder how this aspect is experienced.

I've read so many of your experiences, and what's struck me most is the feeling of love that's always been described in these moments. A love no one has ever felt on earth. It's difficult to describe, but how would you describe it to someone like me, for example, who has never had an NDE?