Tim Newcomb (Popular Mechanics.com via MSN.com); Pastor Gerald A. Johnson on TikTok.com); Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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| Was this guy there, Pastor? |
In 2016, a Michigan-based pastor named Gerald Johnson suffered a heart attack. He says he had an NDE that sent him somewhere he never thought he’d visit: hell.
Recently, Minister Johnson took to TikTok to share the details of his traumatic NDE — far from the kind of warm, bright-light epiphany one might expect to hear from someone who temporarily ventures into the great beyond of the afterlife.
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| Will there be a result, a fruit of deeds done well and ill? Do karmic seeds ripen? |
“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” the pastor recounts in his viral video. “I don’t care what [anyone] did to me, no one deserves that.”
Pastor Johnson says that immediately after his heart attack in February 2016, his "spirit" [subtle body] left his physical body and went down to [a] hell, entering through “the very center of the Earth.”
Though he says “The things I saw there are indescribable,” he did his best.
Pastor Johnson claims he saw a man walking on all fours like a dog and getting burned from head to toe:
“His eyes were bulging, and worse than that, he was wearing chains on his neck. He was like a hell hound. There was a demon holding the chains."
Pastor Johnson also heard music in hell, including Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” — traditionally upbeat tunes. Only this time, demons were singing the songs to “torture” people.
[The lowest and most painful hells in Buddhist cosmology are said to be very ironic. So that such irony could occur there by the "wardens of hell," which in the West we would call demons or devils, torturing denizens.]
Who keeps a record of our karmic deeds? Yama? - ["Hell" is real? We don't know. But the texts say so. Were those descriptions added or embellished over the centuries by scholars, commentators, and subcommentators? Embellished maybe, but invented whole cloth? Not likely. We must report what the sutras and other texts say. The traditions describe at least eight hells (and a worse ninth in between universes, known as interstitial hell, a place of desolation and darkness, in some ways worse than the unimaginable torments of Avici or "the waveless deep."]
- [Does anyone at Wisdom Quarterly believe there are actually literal hells? Yes, we havee heard it firsthand -- not that that would be enough. A potential proof was provided. Anyone can verify whether such worlds exist by gaining the meditative absorptions and designating an area of ground then looking beneath it with the enhanced powers of perception provided by the temporary purity of mind/heart/consciousness that results from the powerful concentration of samadhi. This practice is taught by at least one meditation master in Theravada Buddhist Burma. Buddhist laypeople, for the most part, certainly believe in literal hells before being exposed to Western doubt and skepticism.]
- [Buddhist hells are not eternal, BUT rebirth there can be so long lasting as to seem like an eternity many times over. Given the length of a kalpa, or "aeon," when a day or even a moment there is too blistering an experience to get over, one can only imagine that "eternity" is the perfect if not literal word for how long one is there when one ends up there. What brings one to a hell? Bad karma. What brings one out of hell? Good karma performed in advance, as there is little to absolutely no chance of doing good karma (deeds) there -- not mental, verbal, or physical -- once one begins to undergo unending torment.]
- [Just as Buddhist "heavens" (sagga) are too delightful and distracting, there is no chance of doing much good karma in these places because one become too preoccupied with the good life, exquisite pleasures of various sense strands -- sights, sounds, smells, savors, sensations, and streams of consciousness, this last one not exactly being a physical sense like the others but a pleasant abiding in the vipaka or "mental resultants" of deeds, which are exponential compared to what seems like a single deed that is, in fact, according to the Abhidharma, countless impulsions (javanas) and mind-moments (cittas), each of which is like a seed that bears fruit (phala) in the future.]
Pastor Johnson says his hellacious NDE made him realize he needed to forgive people who had wronged him, instead of hoping for their punishment.
- [Indeed, in Buddhist terms, it is said that the historical Buddha taught, "Forbearance (khanti) is the highest virtue," meaning "To forgive and let go of that [poop] is best."]
Maybe Pastor Johnson’s story sounds far-fetched. But scientists say that while many of the most publicized NDEs have a positive spin, negative NDEs certainly occur as well.
The experts just aren’t entirely sure how or why.
Researchers — especially those from the International Association for Near-Death Studies — speculate that NDEs most likely happen due to a change in blood flow to the brain during sudden life-threatening events, like a heart attack, blunt trauma, or shock.
As the brain starts losing blood and oxygen, the electrical activity within it begins to power down. “Like a town that loses power one neighborhood at a time, local regions of the brain go offline one after another,” one expert told Scientific American.
During a NDE, the mind [which is not the brain and not fully dependent on the body] is left to keep working, but without its normal operational parameters.
Whether simply an oxygen shortage, some sort of anesthesia, or a neurochemical response to trauma, as hypothesized, an NDE leaves those who experience it with a real, sometimes traumatic memory.
We may not know how that memory happened — and unlike Pastor Gerald Johnson and his trip to [a very terrible tormenting] hell, victims may not want to recount it ever again — but it could change their life.
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