Off-label use of ketamine as a mind-altering substance did not begin in the laboratory, but in the psychedelic culture that grew out of the 1960s counterculture movement. Whatever the risks and limitations of such experimentation, without them the remarkable therapeutic effects of the drug might well have gone unnoticed, and unresearched. The following personal accounts-both inspiring and...
Article presenting the Life Changes Inventory-Revised, a standardized version of the scale that embodies the accumulated knowledge culled from previous drafts of the LCI administered to disparate samples and from qualitative research into attitudinal changes reported by near-death experiencers.
Three informal surveys of college students enrolled in a semester-long course on near-death experiences (NDEs) suggest that exposure to information about the NDE may bring about substantial changes in beliefs about NDEs, life after death, and God, as well as reduce fear of death and increase one's level of spirituality. These surveys and previous research point to the importance of conducting...
Article discussing three varieties of frightening near-death experiences (NDEs), as distinguished in the typology of Bruce Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush.
Abstract: In this commentary, I discuss the responses to my paper on frightening near-death experiences (NDEs) written by Christopher Bache and Nancy Evans Bush, and I try to show that there are many points of agreement among us all. While Bache and I saw the ontological status of frightening NDEs differently than did Bush, all of us agreed on the psychological reality and importance of these...
Stuart Twemlow's article has made an important dual contribution to our thinking about anomalous experiences: first in offering a heuristic psychodynamic model in terms of which to view them, and second, in suggesting a definite link between near-death experiences (NDEs) and unidentified flying object (UFO) abductions. I consider his argument largely from the standpoint of my own recent...
Article offering a comparison of historical cases of Tibetan near-death experiences (NDEs) and contemporary Western accounts. A tradition of NDEs in Tibetan culture, the das-log experience, affords such a comparison. Modern NDEs differ from das-log experiences in ways that reflect their cultural context and may provide the foundation for a new Book of the Dead especially fitted to the...
Article offering a comparison of historical cases of Tibetan near-death experiences (NDEs) and contemporary Western accounts. A tradition of NDEs in Tibetan culture, the das-log experience, affords such a comparison. Modern NDEs differ from das-log experiences in ways that reflect their cultural context and may provide the foundation for a new Book of the Dead especially fitted to the...
Not long ago, I invited students in one of my undergraduate courses to participate in a simple experiment."I'm going to mention a word," I said, "and I want you to write down a number from -5 to + 5 in response to that word.The number you choose should reflect your gut feeling about this word.If you feel favorable toward it, choose some positive integer; if you feel unfavorable, choose a...
"In this paper the nature of personal identity is examined from two perspectives: observations reported by selected near-death experiencers (NDErs) and the viewpoint represented by the late English writer Paul Brunton (1898-1981)" (abstract). The paper explores the implications of these two perspectives.
Interviews with thirty-six persons who had been close to death as a result of a suicide attempt were conducted to determine whether such persons report Moody-type near-death experiences. Seventeen persons, or 47 per cent of the sample, related such experiences which were more common for men than women (p <.05). Although suicide-related near-death experiences do not appear different from...
This paper describes deep near-death experiences (NDEs). Personal flashforwards (PFFs) and prophetic visions (PVs) involve seeing events subsequent to the NDE, and seeing planetary-wide events, respectively. The paper describes PVs that depict major global changes.