Of the Passage to the Other World

People who have had a near-death experience (NDE) use language that reveals how they conceptualize the journey to an afterlife, drawing on conceptual metaphors and image schemas. Analyzing Raymond Moody's and Eben Alexander's accounts, the author identifies a ten-stage idealized cognitive model of NDE based on Lakoff's and Barsalou's frameworks. Despite NDErs' claims that the experience is ineffable, they successfully depict the passage between worlds, with kinesthetic image schemas—pre-conceptual and inherently meaningful—serving as the true creators of that world. The article also draws parallels between NDE narratives and C. S. Lewis's analysis of stories in 'On Stories'.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The article focuses on the language employed by the people who went through a near-death experience (NDE) when depicting their journey to the other world, the Afterlife, as well as on C. S. Lewis’s essay ‘On Stories’ (1965) in an attempt to draw a parallel between the world that opens up after death, on the one hand, and the world of stories, on the other. Using Raymond A. Moody’s Life after Life (1975/2015) and Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven (2012) as my NDE corpus, I explore the linguistic vehicles and the underlying conceptual metaphors and image schemas used by NDErs when depicting the typical stages that make up their near-death experience. Starting from the assumption that the lexis provides us with points of access to the conceptual content and ultimately to a cognitive world, I use the analytical tools provided by Conceptual Metaphor Theory, namely conceptual metaphors and image schemas, so as to unveil the passage of the soul the other world. To this end, I uncover a ten-stage idealized cognitive model of NDE, based on Lakoff’s concept of ICM (1987) and Barsalou’s model of a frame (1992). One of the aims of the article is to evince that, despite the unanimous claim made by NDErs that their experience is ineffable, they do succeed in providing a depiction—as imperfect as it may be—of this passage between worlds, which results in a world in itself. At the discursive level, I argue that the true ‘creators’ of this world are the kinesthetic image schemas which are pre-conceptual in nature and inherently meaningful. What is more, I aim to unveil the convergences between the NDE narratives and stories as they are analyzed by C. S. Lewis in his essay ‘On stories’.