Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions
Oxford Scholarship Online July 3, 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190872472.001.0001 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Traditional indigenous societies in Africa, North America, and Oceania |
| Topics | Near-death experience |
| Key points | Argues that near-death experiences are universal but are experienced and interpreted differently depending on cultural context, and that shamanic experiences share many features with NDEs. |
Abstract
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are indisputably part of human experience, known from accounts from around the world and throughout history. This book examines the role culture plays in how people experience and interpret NDEs, and reveals how afterlife beliefs often originate in such extraordinary experiences. It also explores the relationship between shamanism and NDEs. The book focuses on traditional indigenous societies in Africa, North America, and Oceania, drawing on historical reports of explorers, missionaries, and ethnologists. These sources indicate that though NDEs are universal, the ways in which they are experienced and interpreted vary by region and culture. In contrast, despite wide differences between shamanic practices across cultures, shamanic experiences often involve elements very similar to NDEs, including leaving the body, traveling to other realms, meeting deceased relatives, and returning with new insight or information. Through an interdisciplinary analysis incorporating ideas from anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive evolutionary science, this book explains the continuum of similarities and differences between these phenomena. It presents a fascinating and engaging journey through afterlife beliefs and experiences of indigenous peoples from three continents, presenting dozens of hitherto unrecognized NDE accounts. Along the way, it also explores themes such as possession, burial of the dead, lucid dreams, religious revitalization movements, out-of-body experiences, and implications for beliefs that human beings really do survive physical death.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on near-death experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times | 1987 | Historical analysis | |
| Neuroscience and the Near-Death Experience: Roles for the NMSA-PCP receptor, the sigma receptor and the endopsychosins | 1990 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Implications of near-death experiences for a postmaterialist psychology. | 2010 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Near-Death Experience as a Probe to Explore (Disconnected) Consciousness | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Near-death experiences between science and prejudice | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 13
- An Encounter With the Other: A Thematic and Content Analysis of DMT Experiences From a Naturalistic Field Study Frontiers in Psychology December 16, 2021
- This is your brain on death: a comparative analysis of a near-death experience and subsequent 5-Methoxy-DMT experience. Frontiers in Psychology 2023
- An encounter with the self: A thematic and content analysis of the DMT experience from a naturalistic field study. Frontiers in Psychology 2023
- Neuro-functional modeling of near-death experiences in contexts of altered states of consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology 2022
- Diversity and similarity of near-death experiences across cultures and history: implications for the survival hypothesis. International Review of Psychiatry 2025
and 8 more in the library