People who actually die and go to Heaven through so-called Near Death Experiences tell us that Heaven is an otherworldly dimension where we exist in another state of being that is defined by profound feeling of peace, joy and love. This evidence is pointing us in the direction of the essence of heaven through what people experience as the core of their near death experience. This essence is the profound feeling state in another dimension rather than an actual place or meeting with some specific religious figure.

   This means that behind whatever visions or images that are experienced in heaven, still we find that expanded awareness seems to be the essence of the experience of heaven. It also means that behind whatever being or religious figure we meet, the feelings of peace, joy and love are at the heart of the experience. 

   Some fundamentalists will say that if people do not meet Jesus or do not have a Christian experience of heaven in their NDE, then that must mean that they are not going to heaven at all. But as we have seen, by far the majority of people experience the Light as the heart of heaven that is described through a heavenly and blissful state of being. And when we add to this the positive life-changes that happen to people after this heavenly experience of the profound love of the Light, then there is no reasonable way this can be rejected as Satan or going to hell.

   NDE research tells us that the best way to understand this is to see the near death experience and the experience of heaven as a co-created experience. As we have seen through cross-cultural studies experiences of heaven vary widely and are often determined by the pre-existing belief system and religious background of each individual. This belief system or religious conditioning is then projected into the experience of heaven.

   Dr. Carlos Alvarado from the University of Virginia makes this same conclusion. He tells us that people who have out-of-body experiences, where they experience another dimension say that it is a real dimension on a different plane, but at the same time it interacts with the mentality of the individual.

   This interaction with our mind becomes the symbolical relationship with the Light, which means that we create the content of the experience within the Light. Thereby the many personal and cultural differences we find in NDE research are explained as a co-created experience of both personal and impersonal events, where the preconditioned mentality of each individual interacts with the unconditioned true nature of the Light, or this unearthly dimension.

   Ultimately this means that not only images and visions but also the experience of ‘other worlds’ within the NDE are projections. As I found in my own study that 92 percent of the people said that what they experienced was non-physical and 79 percent who said that heaven is an unearthly dimension of energy, we find that projections within the Light that appear ‘physical’ are ultimately not considered real.

   Atwater explains this about Stage 5 of entering the Light in the Evergreen Study:

Stage 5 also carried the meaning that within this light were “worlds” from which the light originated. The researchers received no reports confirming this. Instead, the light seemed to be non-physical; and if anything, the “worlds” had their origin in the light, not vice versa. They suggested renaming the fifth stage “the inner setting”—“a location of great natural beauty such as a garden, valley, or meadow.” This “inner setting” was where the experiencer spent time before deciding whether or not to return.

   Another researcher, Michael Grosso takes this further by explaining that the Light is a symbol of consciousness and that the meetings with deceased relatives, out-of-body states, and life-reviews are all manifestations of the Light. These manifestations are “extensions of consciousness,” as the Light is both pure and formless while at the same time it has forms within it.

   Grosso compares this explanation to Jung’s concept of the self, in that the basic structure of the near death experience does not seem to be conditioned by the personal, but at the same time there are conditioned variations in the detail of the content as part of the co-creation. This, he says, is equal to Jung’s distinction between the archetype as a form without content (non-perceptible), and the archetype as mediated by personal experience (perceptible).

   Jung himself told us about the subjective experience that,

If we approach this task with psychological views that are too personalistic, we fail to do justice to the fact that we are dealing with an archetype which is anything but personal…As archetypes, these figures are semi-collective and impersonal quantities, so that when we identify ourselves with them and fondly imagine that we are most truly ourselves, we are in fact most estranged from ourselves…The personal protagonists in the royal game should constantly bear in mind that at the bottom it represents the “trans-subjective” union of archetypal figures, and it should never be forgotten that it is a symbolical relationship whose goal is complete individuation.

   The conclusion in NDE research is that personal psychological archetypes are incorporated into the experience by the beholder in order to help make sense of the experience. This psychological interpretation may seem far from religion on the surface but if we go back to what we have looked at earlier; that God is within, then this does make a lot of sense. In this way, Heaven is a state of being beyond our 'ego' and personal conditioning -- a state of being that is experienced within through our connection to God as our true nature.