Blobs of Order - Overcoming the fear of the void

[Hedge90]

There's a new video on the Essentia Foundation website titled "Blobs of Order".
While scuba diving Dr. Geerken got into a situation where she got totally disoriented and isolated from her friends and everything that was familiar to her. She describes how that primordial fear of "being totally alone in a vacuum, without a way to reach out to others" stayed with her for a time, until it struck her how nature is a structure of "blobs of order", of which she is one blob, and where no one is ever really alone.
I admit to having very similar fears on a metaphysical level, so this presentation really spoke to me. Maybe it will for you too.

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/seei ... -of-order/

[Lou Gold]

There's a new video on the Essentia Foundation website titled "Blobs of Order".
While scuba diving Dr. Geerken got into a situation where she got totally disoriented and isolated from her friends and everything that was familiar to her. She describes how that primordial fear of "being totally alone in a vacuum, without a way to reach out to others" stayed with her for a time, until it struck her how nature is a structure of "blobs of order", of which she is one blob, and where no one is ever really alone.
I admit to having very similar fears on a metaphysical level, so this presentation really spoke to me. Maybe it will for you too.

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/seei ... -of-order/

What really spoke to me was the notion of nature as a structure of "blobs of order". Those words directly led my imagination to the incredible contemporary paintings of Flora Yukhnovich. Check out more of Flora's works here.

[Eugene I.]

There is a huge number of so called "NDE of Void" on the NDERF.org, many of those indeed involve the feelings of fear and isolation that you described, but many others are very peaceful and profound. I made a collection of quotations, very illuminating:

"I hit a place where i didn't experience the white light like a lot of people describe, no angels, no devils
It was a very interesting environment in that it didn't have an environment,
it was no sense of light, no sense of sound
It was an intuition of a choice
It said, "Do you want to continue doing this? Do you want to stop?" ...
But it was a choice, it was literally, if you wanted to give it a label, i'd say 'pure neutrality'
It wasn't into the light, it wasn't into the darkness
There was no form, there was no structure, there was no light, there was no sound
I didn't hear anything
It was basically a sense that here's your choice:
Have you had enough? Do you want to play any more? Do you want to stop?" -- Glenn Parker
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NDES FROM NDERF.ORG
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I then felt myself being pulled up out of my body and out of the hospital into this vast void that was both dark and light. It was silent and still, strange but peaceful... More consciousness and alertness than normal The moment I entered the void. -- Jen C
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During the first experience, I found myself slowly drifting out of consciousness until I was completely in a void of darkness. I had no sense of time or space. I watched as a bright light came out of the darkness toward me. I joined with the light. Then I became conscious and found myself on the ground.
The second near death experience built upon the first. This time, after I had joined with the light, I noticed how everything came to be. There was nothing in the void. All of a sudden, the light was created from the void. Then I came back to consciousness, lying in my bed, and not knowing how I had got there.
The third experience built upon the other two. I found myself alone in the darkness. I was the one particle of light in the void. I became lonely and bored, so I split myself into two parts. Then I split into four parts, then eight parts, and then sixteen parts. I kept doubling myself, repeatedly, until I became everything and everyone. I came back to consciousness from being passed out in the driveway...
n the end it is all meaningless. We as humans have been created in our own image. We are God split into separate beings. -- Kyle W
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A strange sense of duality from time as physical beings perceive it. As if time had absolutely no real meaning in this form. So much was exchanged, and yet.....seemingly nothing at all. As if EVERYTHING was ''known'' to me, but that there was NOTHING at all. It was like being a part of absolutely everything at once, having no sense of a individuality, but also like a total void of anything, save a sort of sense of peace and contentment. So very hard to express. A glimpse into both everything and nothing I guess. -- Anthony S
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When I first passed out, I entered the void-darkness-abyss. It was everything, yet nothing. It felt as if it were raw un-manifested energy. I didn't feel loneliness or any negative emotions, nor positive emotions, either. I felt in balance between the two. -- Trevor O
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I was aware that I was dying but there was no sense of regret, for there was no sense, as I said, of past (to regret) or future (to despair for). I just existed, and it was beautiful. As I was, in pain, and suffocating, but none of it mattered, for I was transcending eternity and in the void and I was the void and the void was me - and I would be in this place where I was forever - and if forever were to be an instant or a thousand years was immaterial and irrelevant. I felt, 'Abide with me, here, now, for I am at peace, and we are one'. I felt a oneness with whoever was in the room with me, and whoever was unconscious with me, and I was dying, and it was good.
It was just that - good. Nothing fabulous, miraculous, or brilliant. Just 'good'. Perfectly, clearly, good. I could have spent a trillion years right there, with that presence, whatever it was. But the hard thing to explain is that there was no 'trillion years'. There was just NOW. I had no sense of future. It's only now that I am alive that I know that I could have been content with an eternity like that. At the time, any concept of 'eternity' was beyond my experience, for 'time' was beyond my experience. The glorious euphoric peace, the presence, and the empty, falling, now-ness with no past or future - I can't recapture it, and it has changed my life. I need to talk to others about it, and as a scientist, I know that it was probably 'just anoxia' - but there is so much more to it that cannot be explained - and yes, it has changed my life. Not what I saw, or heard, but what I felt.
My priorities lined up, my values came into focus, everything in that void where one would think 'Nothing' existed - the only reason it is called 'Nothing', I believe, is that there is no Time, and existence is purely Being. That was my experience. Perhaps this is what the existentialist philosophers tried so hard to communicate, this 'being-in-the moment', this awareness of self - what they stated was paltry compared to this. What I felt was powerful and intense and life changing. It transcended any mere 'moment'. When I die, if this is what I will feel for all eternity, I await it. -- Alison D
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I then found myself floating in a void. It was neither dark nor light. It was just nothingness. I was lying on my back, looking up, floating. No thoughts. No Emotions. Within me was complete emptiness; I seemed to be completely free. I have a hard time finding words to describe this experience. For example, I don't know if this sense of weightlessness within would be called a 'feeling' or what. It was just peace. -- Giselle V
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The experience was void and yet all-encompassing at the same time. It was a state of de-manifestation with the seeming power to re-manifest should I choose to introduce thought. It was kind of like this; I wasn't thinking but if I did think, I would become what I was thinking. Therefore, I dared not think about anything because that would have meant that I would have manifested out of total awareness and bliss. Being in this state was beyond bliss, you want to stay there and not do anything to disturb it. I lost awareness of my body -- Victor C
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I found myself in a black void completely at peace. I had no self-awareness, no memory of who I was but I somehow knew that I was separate from the void. I cannot describe the feeling of completely peace: no pain, no worries, no sense of self, it was fantastic...
While I was in the void, I was aware that I was somewhere but not aware of me. There was no ‘me’ or ‘I’. No awareness of having been anything before the void but I knew I was separate from the void and was travelling through it...
There was nothing to see, just a complete void which, although I describe as 'black' was actually nothing so I don't know how to compare it with human vision. I could 'see' that I was somewhere but not with my eyes because I had no form... there were no sounds in the void...
A vast, never-ending void where, although I was separate from the void; there was no earthly ‘I’, just peace; blissful peace...
In the void there is nothing but it is a peaceful, one could almost say, loving nothing...
Being (or rather not 'being') in the void was blissful and peaceful in a way that no words can really, usefully describe. I had always been scared of death and dying; having been dead and experienced the complete peacefulness of it, I am no longer afraid. -- Bonnie W
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Yes It was hard to believe by others as I saw myself or felt I was walking around outside of the car, but also experienced being highly conscious in a dark void, but I was not afraid. Although it was dark, I felt I could see. There was no up, down or sideways - no sense of direction. I was alone; apparently the Buddhists call this the Bardo. -- Howardena P
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During the time, I was out, I remember being in a pitch-black void, with me glowing softly within it. I felt complete relief, love, warmth, security, acceptance and many other things that I can't really describe. I was able to surrender to this darkness without fear. Since I don't have family or children, I had a feeling that it was okay that I stay in that void forever; everything would have gone on without me just fine... I was conscious and alert the entire time I was in the void... Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning My experience in the void seemed to last a lifetime, and at the same time lasted only a second. -- Karen H
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It amazes me that a dark space, void of people, and being all alone, was the most beautiful loving experience I could ever have... When I was in that place/void I realized that my beliefs about God weren't real. Well they were real, but completely limited by the mind. I found out that God was love, like air. We absorb it, heck we are it! -- Vanessa W
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It was a void, darkness but yet I felt it contained all light at the same time...What I remembered was that I had completely merged again with God. It was a void, darkness, but unconditional love. I was no longer a separate being. I was where I belonged, where I came from. It was perfect. When it was time to return I had to again differentiate from God and become a separate soul again. Yet I was still a part of God. -- Gwen J
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As I flew through the air, I was transported to a dimension of void or limitlessness where everything was very quiet and peaceful. I felt an overwhelming sense that this was indeed my death, and it did not bother me in that space one bit. Time was incredibly distorted, and for about ten minutes I watched the void, waiting for what came next.
An indigo light appeared as a field surrounding me from the furthest reaches of this 'space' and I became aware that I was a luminous body, transparent and gossamer. This indigo light was very far away but surrounded me on all sides like a bubble. It briefly turned orange and then began to close in on me, getting closer and closer over the course of the next twenty minutes. As it surrounded me closely, I could reach out my luminous arm and submerge it in this 'light of death' up to the elbow. I lost my sense of calm and fearlessness and became agitated.
Turning every which way, I found myself unable to escape the field which surrounded me. As the light crept inside my luminous body and towards my heart, I screamed a silent scream 'NOT MY TIME YET' and simultaneously stuck my middle finger up at the light. I mentally invented a surface under my ethereal feet which I pushed off of backwards in a back flip motion, looking backwards and upside down into this blinding white light. All of a sudden, I was back in my body, still flying through the air and I landed in the middle of the highway, almost run down by another car...

a void space without time or dimensionality in the classical sense. i have often wondered if it was xibulba of the mayan cosmological worldview, or a black hole???...

Upon realizing the truth contained in the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead' (which I had not read before having my NDE) I adopted the doctrine of Vajrayana Buddhism, swore a bodhisattvas vow, and dedicated my life to the benefit of All. This is because the experience I had matched the description of the passing through the bardo of death described in the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead'. -- Michael H, FDE
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hen you make all the quadrants of the Universe as a grain of sand and the Void is bigger than the universe, if the universe is a grain of sand... When I was the vast void, let’s say: normal is 11 or so lines of coded information. The vast void had a millions lines of coded information... This is what you did not know yet. This thing, this is it, this is the bridge between my love unexpressed and you. This is the bridge between all that energy unexpressed in the void and you, this field’. -- Mary D
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I then made a seamless transition to another space. I found myself in a void; I can only describe it as an endless plain of nothingness as if space without the stars or planets. I had no physical body and saw through something other than a set of eyes. Everything seemed to be coming or existing from the same complete source that I seemed to be a part of now. I was no longer aware of, nor needed to be aware of, the mechanics of what was taking place, for all was accepted for what it was, and what it existed as.
I was immediately bombarded with information that came to me from all directions, through multiple dimensions (as so it seemed). The information rushed at me like the last stages of some type of completion. It was perfecting the harmony in which I was part of now. It was as if my being had become a vacuum, opening up, allowing everything that ever was, or was to ever be, inside. Within what seemed to be a blink of an eye, the information retention was over.

I can only do my best at this point to explain what took place, for words fall miles short of the actual feeling. I will do my best to explain it as this. I now understood everything that ever was, or was ever to be. I didn’t need to think or even question anymore. I was complete; I was what I believe was the highest existence of peace that could ever be, for my mind was silent and I was simply being, and nothing more. I was a part of everything that ever was and with that I had no expectations nor thought, I was existing within everything and had no form or shape, just a complete perfect state of being. -- Burke
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Calm, peaceful knowing. I was happier there in the void than I'd ever been on this planet. There was assurance, wonder, and almost a bliss. I accepted coming back to the body, but would have preferred to stay there. -- Patti D
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I didn't exist, actually. I was aware that I existed only as a thought, and I quoted to myself, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ I thought about Descartes and wondered what he knew when he said that, and that I understood now what it meant. Wherever I was, it was neither black nor light; it was perhaps a void. I fancied myself like a genie as I hovered there. I was perfectly lucid in thought, but was aware that I was nothing more than thought! I considered it as being curious. I was not afraid; everything was peaceful beyond understanding. Then it ended as suddenly as it began... I didn't sense a specific entrance to anywhere. I was just there. Either in my Uncle's hospital room, which was not unearthly, or in the Oneness, or in the void, or near the light that I chose not to peek at. They were all a little different. -- Jennifer J
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Then, total darkness but not in the sense of a darkness that prevents the eyes from seeing, because we don't need eyes here. Darkness is just a word to describe the “void” (of possibility, lack of limitation, complete wholeness), where there is no need to see. I understand that all is well, and this is all far more real, beautiful, sensical and loving than the material world I had previously thought was “life”... When focusing on the question of returning or not, I separate from what I can now describe as “natural wholeness” or “sky-like essence” - this is when thinking starts in a language form - I begin to narrow, specify, limit focus to what can be understood within "normal" context. There is no value judgment or sense of purpose and I am not really sure why I decide to return - it is like I already understand, on a level that requires no dialogue, so I don’t need to go through the process of getting an explanation.-- Traci
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After this, I found myself in a black void. I felt nothing, thought nothing, knew nothing. I had forgotten all about life and earth and anything I'd ever known. This wasn't necessarily unpleasant, it was neutral. It felt like I was there a very long time: or, in a timeless type of way. It felt like I'd always been here and would always be here. I did not possess a mind it seemed. Then, suddenly and far off, as if it could barely be heard, I heard the cries of my newborn baby and all at once, I remembered everything and returned to my body at once. Once back, I felt strange and unreal, like I'd been gone for eons of time... Also the sense of timelessness, once I came out of it and back into my body, it seemed I was in there (seemed I was dead) for forever. It's like I could have been in that void for eons and eons and eons. -- Sarah
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All I could see was darkness with a void of light, so it was like black and white, except the white was strangely illuminated. -- Julie K
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I also experienced total darkness that wasn't darkness, a void that wasn't a void but was everything and everywhere all at once. No time, no space. In that absence of anything I could be anywhere at any time just by thinking about it. All I had to do was to have a thought and I was there. Everywhere all at once. It was the most amazing, profound, deep experience that I have ever had in this human lifetime.-- David G ADC
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I was in a 'nothingness', a blackness or a void, and I was alone as in I didn't see anyone else, but I didn't feel alone because I felt unity with everyone and everything. I knew without even a hesitation that everyone and everything in the entire universe is connected into one; that we are each a part of everything - I knew that I was eternal (and I remember being so thankful to discover that eternity is true and has never been a lie or myth). I remember thinking, 'Oh my God. I am dead!!!!!!' And I remember thinking that it was the most beautiful thing that could have ever happened to me - the happiest day of my entire existence - there was nothing sad about it, like I always thought there would be. The only emotions I felt were pure joy, ecstasy and bliss at receiving the knowledge of immortality. It wasn't a feeling or a thought, it was a knowing.-- Christine
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I felt no fear, only peace. I then remember being resuscitated and waking up from a very peaceful infinite void. --Scott S
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In The Beginning was the VOID, before thought, before mind, before time was created and before any physicality.
In The Beginning there was Great Divine LOVE in that Void. Consciousness was totally immersed in that Great Divine Love in the Void. Our Consciousness. One Consciousness.
Actually, this state existed before our understanding of The Beginning in a place called Eternity. Also, this IS before The Beginning. Eternity is NOW and always IS. Eternity IS after The End as well, beyond the Alpha and the Omega. The smoky vapor of Duality intentionally clouds our eyes from perceiving Eternity most of the time.
The VOID is not Nothingness. The Void is not empty, nor is it full. It is a spacious state of BEING beyond time and number. The VOID is not a scary place. My limited mind likes to think it is closest described as, "No mind, all heart." It is closest to the heart of the deepest meditation.
There is also something behind the Void, but that is another tale for another time once we have taken full ownership of our latent Divinity. How may we even speak of this Reality beyond the Void if we don't even understand The Void yet? I only suggest it now as a promise of something more. This is our Second Great Promise because we are ever growing. -- Twin Flames Vision
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First thing I remember is traveling through a dark tunnel that seemed it would go on for eternity. The darkness was so heavy it was like tar, like a void, complete lack of creativity; the Great Nothing in Never Ending Story, a space of indifference. Finally the dark tunnel ended and I was floating over my body. Looking back, that tunnel may have represented the space between awareness of this life and the life to come. I could see all dimensions of my body. -- Sebastian X
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Peace. It is all at peace, except when they showed me the grey-things, in the ‘void.’ I never remember asking, but I must have. It was light and grey, light and shadow or absence of light, or just less light. All creatures / beings are of light, but some have more light, some less. I'm not sure if where I was, was heaven, but I was at peace, I was loved, and I was HOME...
I've met other friends, who are believers in only the VOID, and I've even been in love with some of them. Yet, I was thinking of the emptiness they embrace always makes me cry; and I wonder what will happen when they die. When I go HOME, will I ever see them again? Will they have consciousness? Will they have alertness? Much of what I knew when I was HOME was taken from me when I returned, or at least it faded somehow. At times bits and pieces seem to return. While I was HOME, I was more alive and at peace than I have ever been here. -- Carl D
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Off to my right, at the crossroads, there was light, but not like a light from the sun or an electrical source. I tried to explain it at the time as a void, or place that was neither light nor dark, of no dimension, or infinite dimension and form. Not easy even today to describe it. When I hear other people describe the light of NDE, my interpretation is that their minds put this no-dimension into a known experience for the sake of making sense of it. I am satisfied describing it as no-dimension. -- Hal B

[Hedge90]

I didn't have the time to read it all yet, but the first one made me think of how this feeling of "choice" is also pretty common. My own grandfather, after being under a life-or-death operation, told that while he dreamt that he was sitting on the roof of his childhood house, right on the top. He said he knew he had to get down on one side of the roof. One of the sides was very inviting and he felt a sense of great release and bliss from that side. The other side had pain and struggle below. He chose the latter.

[Eugene I.]

I didn't have the time to read it all yet, but the first one made me think of how this feeling of "choice" is also pretty common. My own grandfather, after being under a life-or-death operation, told that while he dreamt that he was sitting on the roof of his childhood house, right on the top. He said he knew he had to get down on one side of the roof. One of the sides was very inviting and he felt a sense of great release and bliss from that side. The other side had pain and struggle below. He chose the latter.

Yeah, we all made that choice, that's why we are here