NDE Details:
Experiencer: John Wren-Lewis, a 60-year old British male.
Religious Background (Prior To NDE): John grew up in a very religious Christian household, where he was forced to attend Sunday-school, and had a superstitious mother who literally believed the theistic “God” had made one of their neighbors blind because he uttered the British curse word, “Gorblimey” (literally “God blind me”). As a child, he naturally rebelled against this and became a “fierce atheist” and later a “scientific skeptic.” In his career as scientist, he became an industrial researcher and independent writer in fields of psychology and religion, where he wrote very “humanistic,” “skeptic” and “anti-mystical” works. During this time, he saw himself as a “Freud-style sceptic about all things mystical,” who “dismissed all mysticism as neurotic escape-fantasy.” He had even read the best-selling book by psychiatrist Raymond Moody “Life After Life,” which contained NDE accounts from over 150 people—all of which John dismissed as "exercises in vivid imagination.” But, all of this attitude would change after a trip in Thailand in 1983, where he had his own mystical near death experience of a “Dazzling Darkness.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 5:10, 38:16) (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 54.) (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.).
NDE Cause: In Thailand in 1983, while on a trip with his wife and daughter, they all boarded a long distance bus. There, they met a seemingly friendly luggage thief who sneakily offered them poisoned candy likely laced with morphine and cocaine. Only John consumed it—turning his lips blue, making him drool, completely pass out, and stop his heart beat. After waking up in the hospital, hours later, he didn’t remember a thing. Curious, he decided to do a dream-recall exercise which enabled him to remember what he may have experienced while he was “out cold.” During this memory recall, he vividly remembered a Near Death Experience of a “Dazzling Darkness” that he identified with none other than God. This is his account of it, compiled from various sources.
Sources:
Table of Contents:
NDE Report (Edited Excerpts):
1. 
NDE Cause
Trip to Thailand with Family
“I had God consciousness thrust upon me in 1983, my sixtieth year, without working for it, desiring it, or even believing in it, and this has understandably given me a somewhat unusual perspective on the whole matter.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.)
“I had what nowadays is called a near death experience.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 0:33) “I didn’t even notice the change straightaway. My mind was too busy catching up on why I was in a hospital at night.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.) “I was the victim of an attempted murder, though I doubt that’s what the guy actually had in mind.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 0:46)
It all started when I “went for what he was expecting to be a nice quiet family rest in southern Thailand . . When Ann [wife] and I, with our teenage daughter, boarded a long-distance bus from Surat Thani in the east to Phuket in the west.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 54.) For “what was scheduled to be a seven-hour journey across the jungle-covered mountains (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.)
Given Poisoned Candy by Luggage Thief on Bus
But, “we knew nothing of articles in the international press about thieves plying travelers with drugged sweets or drinks before making off with their wallets and luggage while they dozed.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 55.) So, “we had no suspicions whatsoever of the nice young man who helped us with our luggage and then, on this crowded vehicle in broad daylight, offered us Cadbury's toffees.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 55.) “I’d suspected nothing, because the donor of the candy was a charming and well-dressed young man.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.) Little did we know, “he’s a young man who makes his living in Thailand by giving doped sweets to passengers on buses and trains with the objective of putting them to sleep and robbing them. In my case, he seems to have given a vast overdose. The doctors in the hospital said it had enough in it to knock off several people.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 0:46) “The poison, the doctors diagnosed, was probably a heavy dose of morphine laced with cocaine.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 2.)
I remember “[the candy] tasted distinctly musty, but I sucked on to the (literally) bitter end out of politeness; Ann, less inhibited, spat hers out, and thanks to this I am now alive to tell the tale.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 55.) And "when the thief saw Ann wasn't eating her sweet, he realized his plans were foiled and left the bus hastily at the next stop.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 55.)
John Goes Purple, Passes Out, and Loses Pulse
But, “I was beginning to feel drowsy. When my head dropped on my chest and I began to drool, Ann grasped what had happened but thought there was nothing to do now but let me sleep it off, so she stretched me out on the seat with a sleeping bag under my head. After a while, however . . she noticed with alarm that I was going blue around the lips and had no detectable pulse.
With difficulty she persuaded the driver to stop . . and after some hassle she and our daughter managed to flag down a van for a ride back to Surat Thani hospital. The doctors were not at all hopeful of saving me, but made the optimistic assumption that my total non-response to pain was due to the drug ( . . morphine, which is very cheap in Thailand) rather than to imminent death, and plied me with oxygen and antidotes by intravenous drip. It was about seven hours before I showed any evidence of coming round, and they decided to put us all up for the approaching night in a private room.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 55.) “It took them several hours not knowing whether I was dead or not.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 0:46) “There were some hours when the medical staff thought I’d gone beyond recall [not coming back].” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.)
Wakes Up Forgetting NDE, But Remembers It Using Dream-Recall Exercise
But, I “eventually resuscitated.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.) “The last thing I remember was going to sleep on the bus. And here I was at a completely different place and people were telling me I’d nearly died and had been the victim of murder.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 1:55)
“I began to wonder if I'd had some kind of NDE while I was "out," so I tried a technique which Ann and I have sometimes found useful when we wake up knowing we have just had a vivid dream but cannot remember any details. I lay on the bed, relaxed, and began to take myself back in imagination, by a series of steps, right to the point of coming round: "Here I am, lying on this bed, with my daughter asking if I want supper; here I am, with my eyes still closed, feeling my arm being shaken; here I am, just before that, and . . ."
Often this process brings back the dream one has forgotten from just before waking, but what came back this time was nothing like a dream memory.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 56.) “When I eventually "clicked back into it" by using the dream-recall exercise, I found it was still right there with me, even though not in quite the same way as when I was (from the doctor's point of view) unconscious.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 59.)
2. 
The Experience of the Shining Darkness
A Vast Bright Blackness
“By stages I became aware that when I’d awakened a few hours earlier, it hadn’t been from a state of ordinary unconsciousness at all. It was as if I’d emerged freshly made (complete with all the memories that constitute my personal identity) from a vast blackness that was somehow radiant.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.)
“It was some radiant blackness.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 8:23) “The shining dark void.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 60.)
“The darkness I experienced was somehow radiant, and I find myself wanting to use the paradoxical expression "deep but dazzling darkness" which the mystical poet Henry Vaughan applied to God . . Since the experience, Vaughan's line and a whole host of other statements made by mystics in all religions seem to make sense as word-straining attempts to describe the extraordinary state in which I found myself. For instance, the Hebrew poet's cry in Psalm 139 that "the night shineth as the day," . . or the assertion of St. John of the Cross that he encountered God as "a dark cloud illuminating the night.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” pp. 56-57.)
It Feels Like Aliveness and Made of Consciousness
It was “a kind of infinitely concentrated aliveness or pure consciousness…” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.)
It’s One with Existence
“That shining darkness seemed to contain everything that ever was or could be, all space and all time, and yet it contained nothing at all, because the very word "thing" implies separate entities, whereas what I experienced was an utterly simple being-ness without any kind of separation—the very essence of aliveness prior to any individual living beings.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 58.)
“It was so full of life. It was as if everything had crowded in on itself.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 7:11) “In the shining darkness there was no feeling of having gone anywhere—it was more like finding that everywhere had become present to me.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 58.) It “had no separation within it, and therefore no space or time.” (John Wren-Lewis, “Dazzling Dark,” p. 1.)
Cosmic Satisfaction — Everything He Wants His
“I no longer needed or wanted anything because everything I could possibly want or need was already mine.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 58.)
Feels Peaceful
“It was a "worry-free experience," "a very peaceful blackness,” . . it was "the peace of God that passeth understanding.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 58.)
Feels Safe
“I too felt utterly secure in my darkness, knowing that all life's struggles were over and I had "come home" to a state beyond all danger.” (John Wren Lewis, “The Darkness of God,” p. 58.) “There was a sense of security which has never left me.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 17:23)
Feels Like Home
“It [also] immediately made me realize that a lot of the things that are said in the literature, in hymns and mystical literature, about God—were based on an experience and not on somebody’s thinking, not on cosmological thoughts. One of the ones that was most real to me was the notion of God as our eternal home. I felt absolutely as if in this, I’d come home.” (Alan Neachell, 2022, 15:20)