What does hell look like then? According to research of Near Death Experiences  beyond death and accounts by people who have actually been there, that depends on what cultural conditioning you bring with you into death and project into the experience. And how painful the experience of hell will be depends on how intensely your projection is inverted.

   Researchers Kenneth Ring and Margot Grey have suggested that the hellish NDE is simply a more intense version of an “inverted” NDE. This is supported by other researchers who conclude that the mind of each individual interacts with the Light and that each NDEr projects their cultural concepts and mental state into the Light.   

   If we go back to David’s testimony again from two chapters back, we can find that he gives us a hint in this direction:

In my life-review, I experienced a lot of things that I was judging – me – the humanness that came along with me that I hadn’t quite shed yet. Because I think dying is a process and I think that when we re-integrate into that light, it takes a while to distill some of our attitudes and leave it behind.

   He explains that the “humanness” that he brought along with him was something that he had to let go of to re-integrate into the light. If we translate this “humanness” into the cultural conditioning and mental state that we bring with us, this testimony makes a lot of sense in relation to the conclusion of NDE research.

   In her book Return from Death, Margot Grey explains that, “The hell-like experience is defined as being one which includes all the elements comprehended in the negative phase, only more so in that feelings are encountered with a far greater intensity.”

   In a painful experience of the NDE where a person experiences fear, anger, horror, isolation, or guilt, this person may become more negatively inverted, and thus, experience the unpleasant elements of the NDE with greater intensity.

   Relating to this intensity of the experience, NDE research generally identifies three types of the unpleasant or negative experience. These types can also be seen as levels of intensity of the negative or distressing experience within the NDE.

  The first level has all the common elements of a pleasant experience, only these are experienced as frightening. This is the inverted experience mentioned before. At the second level this inverted experience continues and all sense of meaning disappears where the person feels a sense of void. At the final level, people have hellish experiences that include hellish imagery, demonic beings and personal torment.

   Level one and two are very similar to pleasant experiences, only the response seems to be that of fear or abandonment rather than a positive state of mind. However, when we get to the last level where we talking about a hell-like experience with hellish imagery there is some evidence to suggest that these are illusionary.

   In my research into this area, I found that to the statement: “The visual images I saw were projections,” only 40 percent disagreed and 50 percent said that they were “not sure.” Also to the statement: “The visual images interacted with my mind,” I found that seven out of ten, 70 percent, agreed with having a sense of interaction between their mind and what they saw.

   The conclusion from this is not that the painful experience of hell is an illusion but that what hell looks like depends on cultural conditioning and what people project into their painful or distressing experience beyond death.