On Religious Significance of the Near-Death Experience
The Journal of Daesoon Academy of Sciences June 1, 2005 DOI: 10.25050/jdaos.2005.19.0.10 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Near-death experience |
| Key points | Argues that near-death experiences offer a scientific perspective on life after death and that the accounts of experiencers, involving an encounter with a personal Light and lessons about love and wisdom, coincide with the essential teachings of established religions, thereby validating the importance of virtues such as compassion and forgiveness. |
Abstract
Until 1970's, mankind have not had definite perspectives on what life after the death was like, which is one of the most important problems for them. Their concepts of the 'life and death problem' has been distorted by the dogmas of the established religions such as Buddhism or Christianity on heaven and hell. But the mankind came to have wholly different views on the life after death thanks to the studies by Raymond Moody Jr. or Elizabeth Quebler-Ross in the mid-1970's. This is the studies on the so-called 'near-death experience(NDE)' which made humankind be able to have scientific approach to the life after death for the first time in their history. What attracts our attention at this point is, however, that the arguements of the NDErs on humman destiny accurately coincide with those of the established religions. In the NDE, most of the experiencers have an encounter with the personal being, symbolized by the Light, through whom they learnt that the devotion(or love) to the neighborhood and the gain of the wisdom are the sole meaning of life. With this result, we can recognize why essential virtues maintained by the established religions until now such as ultimate compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, or insightful learning are so significant, and that our studies of the NDE are very important in this respect.