Hell & Underworld

What you're about to read is hard to believe. . . We're going to examine the place the Bible calls hell. We'll present documented evidence for a place called hell. Don't take what you're going to read lightly. If what you read is true ? YOU COULD BE IN SERIOUS DANGER!

Several years ago a book was published, entitled Beyond Death's Door by Dr. Maurice Rawlings. Dr. Rawlings, a specialist in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease, resuscitated many people who had been clinically dead. Dr. Rawlings, a devout atheist, "considered all religion "hocus-pocus" and death nothing more than a painless extinction". But something happened in 1977 that brought a dramatic change in the life of Dr. Rawlings! He was resuscitating a man, terrified and screaming ? descending down into the flames of hell: "Each time he regained heartbeat and respiration, the patient screamed, "I am in hell!" He was terrified and pleaded with me to help him. I was scared to death. . . Then I noticed a genuinely alarmed look on his face. He had a terrified look worse than the expression seen in death! This patient had a grotesque grimace expressing sheer horror! His pupils were dilated, and he was perspiring and trembling ? he looked as if his hair was "on end." Then still another strange thing happened. He said,"Don't you understand? I am in hell. . . Don't let me go back to hell!" . . .the man was serious, and it finally occurred to me that he was indeed in trouble. He was in a panic like I had never seen before. "(Maurice Rawlings, Beyond Death's Door, (Thomas Nelson Inc., 1979) p. 3). Dr. Rawlings said, no one, who could have heard his screams and saw the look of terror on his face could doubt for a single minute that he was actually in a place called hell!The Bible continually warns of a place called hell. There are over 162 references in the New Testament alone which warns of hell. And over 70 of these references were uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ!...

For centuries, Amazonian shamans have used ayahuasca as a window into the soul. The sacrament, they claim, can cure any illness. The author joins in this ancient ritual and finds the worlds within more terrifying—and enlightening—than ever imagined. I will never forget what it was like. The overwhelming misery. The certainty of never-ending suffering. No one to help you, no way to escape. Everywhere I looked: darkness so thick that the ideaof light seemed inconceivable. Suddenly, I swirled down a tunnel of fire, wailing figures calling out to me in agony, begging me to save them.

Others tried to terrorize me. "You will never leave here," they said. "Never. Never." I found myself laughing at them. "I'm not scared of you," I said. But the darkness became even thicker; the emotional charge of suffering nearly unbearable. I felt as if I would burst from heartbreak—everywhere, I felt the agony of humankind, its tragedies, its hatreds, its sorrows. I reached the bottom of the tunnel and saw three thrones in a black chamber. Three shadowy figures sat in the chairs; in the middle was what I took to be the devil himself. "The darkness will never end," he said. "It will never end. Youcan never escape this place." "I can," I replied. All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded. I returned to my body, to where I lay in the hut, insects calling from the jungle. "Welcome back," the shaman said. The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished. Giant blue butterflies flutter clumsily past our canoe. Parrots flee higher into treetops. The deeper we go into the Amazon jungle, the more I realize I can't turn back. It hasb......

Volcanoes fascinate us, such towering symbols of man's helplessness in the face of nature's destructive power. Every year around the world, 60 volcanoes erupt, including Mount Merapi in Indonesia, which is currently in the throes of an eruption. Some do little more than remind us of their potential force should they choose to use it, others kill and change the global temperature for years.Mount Hekla, standing at nearly 5,000 feet high is one of Iceland's most active volcanoes. It was known to islanders as the "Gateway to Hell" - with good reason. When it erupted in 1159BC theeffects were felt hundreds of miles away.

In Scotland the whole of the west coast was devastated.A sulphuric cloud of ash and acid rain fell on the land, a tsunami raced across the sea and the sun was hidden for years. Such an event immediately changed the lives of the inhabitants of what we now call Scotland and may well have permanently changed their way of life. When Krakatau, in Indonesia, erupted in 1883 – possibly one of the most destructive eruptions in recorded history - the noise was heard hundreds of miles away. Alistair Moffat, author of Before Scotland, has no doubt that when Hekla blew, the west coast inhabitants must have heard the boom and panicked. "The rumble and roar of the tsunami, the black cloud … it must have been an appalling time. The old and young dying first. Prehistoric people must havethought that the world was ending." After the terror came the fear. Moffat thinks they would have been in no doubt that the god's were angry. The eruption would have been heralded with ferocious electrical storms and the weather would have changed. These people, who we think lived by gathering food from the sea, would have seen their livelihood disappear. The sea changed, crops would have failed and afterwards, for a generation, there was no summer. "We know it happened because of dendochronology," says Moffat, referring to a method of dating which involves examining and counting the rings of trees. "By measuring tree rings in ancient trees you can see that it was a climate-changing event. It shows that for 18 to 20 years there were no summers." Faced with this, Moffat maintains that the people would have had little choice. Theymus......

(from the Spring '92 Journal of Near-Death Studies Vol.10, No.3)
P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) P. O. Box 7691 Charlottesville, VA 22906-7691
© 1992 P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.)

ABSTRACT: The percentage of hell-like near-death experiences (NDEs) is probably much larger than has been previously claimed. In this article, I discuss current research into what are now termed "distressing" or "unpleasant" NDEs, and my own findings from interviews of over a hundred such cases. I compare this information with earlier reports from Maurice Rawlings (1978, 1980), mythological traditions about the concept of hell, and renderings from The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1957). Finally, I detail four types of NDEs -- initial, hell-like, heaven-like, and transcendental -- and what seems to be an attitudinal profile characteristic of each type.

My plane was late. That meant I had to run lengthy corridors at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., to catch my next flight. As I ran, another woman scurrying in the opposite direction yelled, "I know who you are; you're the woman I just saw on television. You're the gutsy one who talks about negative near-death experiences. Keep doing it. Don't stop." I was so startled by her comment, I momentarily slowed my pace and yelled back, "Who are you? What do you mean by that?" Her answer surprised me. "I'm a surgical nurse at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. We have lots of near-death cases there, and almost all of them are the negative kind. You know what I mean --people who wind up in hell!" Before I could respond further, she was out of sight. I wanted to go after her and ask more questions-- What hospital? How many cases? How long has this been happening? Why haven't you reported it? but my pressing need to hurry convinced me otherwise. I barely made my connection. This incident happened in 1989, a year when I was nearly overwhelmed by reports from people who experienced a hellish environment at the brink of death, rather than a heavenly one.

Most researchers of the near-death experience (NDE) report that unpleasant cases are quite rare, numbering less than one percent of the thousands thus far investigated and of the eight million tallied by a Gallup Poll during a survey on the subject published in 1982 (Gallup and Proctor, 1982). Yet my experiences interviewing near-death survivors since 1978 have consistently shown me otherwise, suggesting an abundance of such cases: 105 out of the more than 700 I have queried.

At the 1990 Washington, D.C., conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist noted for his long-term commitment to near-death research, admitted that people like himself had not been asking the right questions to identify those who might have undergone "dark" or distressing episodes . He confessed: "We didn't try to find them because we didn't want to know." His comment underscored the fact that, for the most part, published reports of near-death studies have side-stepped "negative" accounts. Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush, President of IANDS, have recently completed a descriptive study of 50 terrifying cases they have collected over the past 9 years (Greyson and Bush, 1992). Others whose work has acknowledged the existence of such experiences include British researcher Margot Grey (1985) and sociologist Charles Flynn (1986). Cardiologist Maurice Rawlings and myself, however, have actively pursued near-death reports of a hellish nature since the very beginning of our involvement in the field.