The Near-Death Experience: A Glimpse of Heaven and Hell?
David Lorimer
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks 1995 DOI: 10.1057/9780230375970_14 (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 the near-death experience challenges materialist assumptions that mind is merely a by-product of brain function and cannot survive brain disintegration, and that it also encroaches on religious ideas about an afterlife threshold. Contends that the radical transformation of being and values reported by many experiencers is scarcely consistent with the idea that NDEs are an evil deception. |
Abstract
The near-death experience (NDE) is a challenging and even disturbing phenomenon: it calls into question the assumptions of a materialistic science and medicine which insists that mind is a by-product of brain function and that it cannot, therefore, conceivably survive the disintegration of the brain; it also impinges on the ecclesiastical territory of the afterlife — or at least of its threshold — by purporting to describe the transition from a material to a nonmaterial reality. Some Christians would be inclined to dismiss the whole episode as an elaborate and fanciful piece of self-deception engineered by the fallen angel of light, Lucifer himself; but ‘by their fruits shall ye know them’, and in the aftermath of the NDE many experiencers undergo a radical transformation of being and values scarcely associated with evil influence.
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 |