Terrifying accounts of gravely ill people who claim to have been dragged to the gates of hell by demons are to be studied scientifically for the first time by a British psychologist.The existence of so-called Near Death Experiences (NDEs), in which dying people report having mystical sensations before being resuscitated, is now widely accepted by doctors and scientists. Their cause is unknown, but they typically involve a feeling of deep peace, followed by a sensation of floating up through a tunnel towards a bright light and into a beautiful kingdom.

But it is now becoming clear that for some people, NDEs are far from blissful. Instead of a feeling of floating upwards, they report being pulled downwards - towards a pit inhabited by demons. The experiences of Evelyn Hazell, a London-based art historian, as she fought for life against meningitis, are typical. "I had reached a critical stage in the illness and was hovering between life and death - I was aware of being involved in an intense and very real struggle for my life," she told The Telegraph. "A three-legged being - rather like the Isle of Man symbol - was pulling both my legs down to infinite depths. I knew without doubt that if I relaxed and gave in I would be dead. I believe this struggle went on for some considerable time and I eventually managed to break away from whatever it was pulling me down."

Mrs Hazell went on to make a full recovery, but she has never forgotten her terrifying ordeal at the very threshold of death. "I do not believe it was a dream or hallucination. In every way I was lucid - I was just terribly ill. If nothing else, it did prove to me that in certain situations refusing to fight an illness will lead to death." A similar experience continues to haunt Jane, a woman who fought for life after a miscarriage. "It was an awful feeling - like I was going down a big hole and I couldn't get up. I was going into this big pit. I was going further and further down, and trying to claw my way back up and kept slipping."...

The conquest of fear is one of the primary reasons for life on Earth.

When people incarnate into this world, they leave behind an extensive soul family in the spirit realms. This family consists of the few souls who, in the entire universe, are the most like them, the ones who are exactly on their wavelength. Leaving the camaraderie of this intimate group of friends can be an act of soul-wrenching self-sacrifice.

Often, the act of incarnation is not carried out alone. In fact, it is usual for others from the same soul family to incarnate at approximately the same time so that they will experience the issues of their own generation together. Careful plans are made ahead of time to ensure that key friendships will occur during these incarnations. One of the ways this can be done is to be born into the same physical family as brothers or sisters.

A spiritual entity enters this world through the body of a new-born baby, takes a deep breath, and promptly inherits amnesia! All of a sudden, they don?t know how to walk, talk, dress themselves, or drive to parties. All of those things come later. Some simple functions are already present in the newly-formed baby?s brain, such as the ability to cry, drink milk, and cry louder. This almost total amnesia, combined with a brain?s focus upon the external senses, creates an environment where fears can potentially become enormous. In fact, the human body on the physical plane of Earth is the perfect place to experience fear in a wide variety of forms... and to learn to overcome those fears by gaining inner strength.

Let?s face it. If someone were attuned to the higher spheres of the spirit world and saw themselves as a wise and powerful spirit who just happens to use a physical vehicle, then the opportunity for fear just wouldn?t be the same. The threat of losing their physical body would be no more fear-invoking than the threat of losing the car that they use for driving to work. The fear of death today is all-pervasive. It is so ingrained in society that it gets avoided wherever possible. If death is mentioned, the subject is usually changed as quickly as possible.

In order to understand life, one should first study death. It is an inevitable conclusion yet holds many mysteries. The Near Death Experience is probably the most talked about subject in the scientific establishment, yet there remains differing views.

The story of Lazarus has been thought of as a fairy tale by many. However, if he was raised from the dead today, he would probably be regarded as neither fairy tale nor some type of miraculous recovery, just another one of those Near Death Experiencers. If we consider this seriously for a minute then there must be more Lazarus's walking about today than there were in Biblical times. A huge amount of people are raised from the dead every year due to the wonders of scientific medicine.

In the 8th century in this country a monk named 'Bede' told the story of a Northumbrian man called Cunningham, who died during the night. At daybreak he returned to life and suddenly sat up to see his friends and family weeping about him, they were so shocked they fled in fear. Cunningham later described how he left his body to find himself in a heavenly place accompanied by a handsome man wearing a shining robe. He was not at all happy when he was informed that he couldn't stay and that he would have to go back to the living. He explained how he was reluctant to leave such a place of overwhelming beauty, however, he would not dare to question his guide. Then suddenly he found himself amongst the living again. Cunningham also stated that he had seen his own physical body and people standing around and even spoke of their conversations.