Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
October 25, 2018
Renaud Évrard, Chloé Toutain, Jacob W. Glazier et al.
11 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are usually associated with clinical death, although this association remains controversial. A look back to the early understanding of these experiences, since the end of the 19th century, reveals a different picture than presented in contemporary descriptions. Indeed, the more historical accounts linked NDEs with various forms of intellectual and physical...
Journal of Religion and Health
October 1, 2018
Miyuru Chandradasa, Chamara Wijesinghe, K A L A Kuruppuarachchi et al.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are a wide range of experiences that occur in association with impending death. There are no published studies on NDEs in general hospital populations, and studies have been mainly conducted on critically ill patients. We assessed the prevalence of NDEs and its associations in a multi-religious population in a general hospital in Sri Lanka. A randomised sample of...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
Building on earlier conceptions of “metacultures,” this chapter defines four metacultures that are important for Western near-death discourse: Christian, Gnostic–Esoteric, and the Spiritualist–Occult, being religious in outlook; the fourth, however, the Naturalist metaculture, is of a nonreligious nature. The three former metacultures assign religious meaning to the content of near-death...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
This final chapter secures the result of the survey by discussing the religious functions of near-death experiences for affected individuals, but also the functions of the reports for the audience. It outlines (a) ontological, (b) epistemic, (c) intersubjective, and (d) moral aspects. It has been argued that experiencers feel closer to God, are less attracted to religion, and are significantly...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
Raymond A. Moody had been introduced to experiences near death by George G. Ritchie. The latter had reported of an experience in which he had encountered Christ. This chapter discusses Moody’s first book of 1975, its motivation and motives, and compares Moody’s description of systematized “near-death experiences” with Johann C. Hampe’s systematic account of the same year, characteristic for the...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
The final chapter of the discursive history outlines how Robert Crookall’s and Robert A. Monroe’s books on “astral projection,” but also C. G. Jung and other researchers discussing paranormal and parapsychological phenomena in the 1960s and early 1970s, already assembled almost all phenomena that Moody could bundle in 1975 under the new term “near-death experiences.” However, the chapter points...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
1 citation
This chapter focuses on a long-term development in Western societies addressed as “privatized death,” namely, the assignment of the dying into hospitals and other institutions. This trend, mirrored in the works of French historian Philippe Ariès and psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, so the chapter argues, served as a “push factor” for articulating near-death experiences. Near-death...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
3 citations
The similarities between the experiences near death and drug experiences have often been stressed. This chapter goes a step further in providing evidence that the consumption of morphine, hashish, and especially more potent hallucinogens such as LSD in the 1960s and 1970s are to be identified as a major component, or “push factor,” of the emerging discourse on near-death. Not only were several...
Oxford Scholarship Online
September 20, 2018
Jens Schlieter
1 citation
A second “push factor” for the increase of near-death experiences (and their reporting), emerging in the 1960s and 1970s, is the introduction of new reanimation techniques that increased the relative and absolute numbers of individuals surviving critical situations (such as heart attacks). In addition, the chapter discusses the impact of the broadly accepted new definition of death, namely,...
Oxford Scholarship Online
August 23, 2018
Gregory Shushan
Near-death experiences (NDEs) share many common elements worldwide, indicating that they originate in phenomena that are independent of culture. They also have many elements unique to the individual experiencers and their cultures, demonstrating a symbiotic relationship between experience and belief. There are numerous examples worldwide of religious beliefs originating in NDEs and other...