Foundations of Near-Death Research: A Conceptual and Phenomenological Map

By International Assoc for Near-Death Studies

Landmark Articles in Near-Death Research

This volume is the first of a new book series that draws on landmark articles published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS) to provide an overview of the past four decades of basic research within the field of near-death studies.

The anthology of which this vo

• Language: English
• Publisher: International Assoc for Near-Death Studies
• Release date: Oct 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780997560855

Book preview

Foundations of Near-Death Research

Foundations of Near-Death Research

A Conceptual and Phenomenological Map

Edited & with introductions by Alexander Batthyány

Foreword by Bruce Greyson and Janice Miner Holden

Landmark Articles from the Journal of Near-Death Studies

Volume 1

IANDS Publications

International Association for Near-Death Studies, Durham, NC

International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS)

2741 Campus Walk Avenue, Building 500

Durham, North Carolina 27705-8878

www.iands.org

© 2018 by the International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. (IANDS)

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9975608-4-8

ISBN-13: 978-0-9975608-5-5 (ePub)

The International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. (IANDS) owns the copyright to all of the articles printed in this book. As the publisher of the Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS), IANDS received consent from the authors of the original articles prior to printing them originally in JNDS. In the consent statement, the authors transferred and assigned to IANDS all author’s rights, titles, and interest in the article, including, without limitation, the copyright therein.

Cover design by Gail Kerrigan.

To the pioneers of near-death studies and to those early near-death experiencers who showed considerable courage to share their stories at a time when few were willing to believe them

Contents

Foreword by Bruce Greyson and Janice Miner Holden

Volume Introduction by Alexander Batthyány

1. Mapping the Territory: General Philosophical and Methodological Issues (Epistemology)

Chapter Introduction by Alexander Batthyány

Bruce Greyson, Can Science Explain the Near-Death Experience? (1989)

Carl B. Becker, A Philosopher’s View of Near-Death Research (1995)

Janice Miner Holden, Rationale and Considerations for Proposed Near-Death Research in the Hospital Setting (1988)

Daryl S. Paulson, The Near-Death Experience: An Integration of Cultural, Spiritual, and Physical Perspectives (1999)

Raymond L. M. Lee, The Reenchantment of Death: Near-Death, Death Awareness, and the New Age (2003)

2.1. Phenomenology: Experience and Content

Chapter Introduction by Alexander Batthyány

William J. Serdahely, Variations from the Prototypic Near-Death Experience: The Individually Tailored Hypothesis (1995)

John C. Gibbs, Surprise—and Discovery?—in the Near-Death Experience (1997)

Jeffrey P. Long and Jody A. Long, A Comparison of Near-Death Experiences Occurring Before and After 1975: Results From an Internet Survey (2003)

Alexander Batthyány, Complex Visual Imagery and Cognition During Near-Death Experiences (2015)

2.2 Comparative Phenomenology: Culture and Context

Chapter Introduction by Alexander Batthyány

Dorothy Ayers Counts, Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in a Melanesian Society (1983)

Feng Zhi-ying and Liu Jian-xun, Near-Death Experiences Among Survivors of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake (1992)

Arvin S. Gibson, Near-Death Experience Patterns From Research in the Salt Lake City Region (1994)

Todd Murphy, Near-Death Experiences in Thailand (2001)

Lee W. Bailey, A Little Death: Near-Death Experience and Tibetan Delogs (2001)

Allan Kellehear, An Hawaiian Near-Death Experience (2001)

Hubert Knoblauch, Ina Schmied, and Bernt Schnettler, Different Kinds of Near-Death Experience: A Report on a Survey of Near-Death Experiences in Germany (2001)

Gregory Shushan, He Should Stay in the Grave: Cultural Patterns in the Interpretation of Near-Death Experiences in African Traditional Religions (2017)

Satwant K. Pasricha, Near-Death Experiences in India: Prevalence and New Features (2008)

Cheryl Fracasso, Seyed Ali Aleyasin, Harris Friedman, and M. Scott Young, Near-Death Experiences Among a Sample of Iranian Muslims (2010)

Natasha Tassell-Matamua, Phenomenology of Near-Death Experiences: An Analysis of a Māori Case Study (2013)

Masayuki Ohkado and Bruce Greyson, A Comparative Analysis of Japanese and Western NDEs (2014)

3. Interpreting NDEs: Ontology and Eschatology

Chapter Introduction by Alexander Batthyány

J. Kenneth Arnette, On the Mind/Body Problem: The Theory of Essence (1992)

Raymond L. M. Lee, The Deconstruction of Death: Postmodernism and Near-Death (2004)

Michael Potts, The Evidential Value of Near-Death Experiences for Belief in Life After Death (2002)

Robert G. Mays and Suzanne B. Mays, Explaining Near-Death Experiences: Physical or Non-Physical Causation? (2015)

Index

About the Editor

Acknowledgments

Foreword

In 1977, when a small interdisciplinary group of scholars began the organization that was to become the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), and in 1981, when that organization began publishing the scholarly periodical that was to become the Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS), the academic landscape regarding near-death experiences (NDEs) was quite different than it is today. In fact, at that time, no identified field of study existed; only in retrospect can the early forays into research and theory on NDEs be recognized as comprising the nascent field of near-death studies. One of the primary reasons that early group of scholars founded JNDS was because at that time many established academics viewed NDEs with skepticism, such that pioneering NDE researchers and theorists had difficulty publishing their work in mainstream journals. From its origins to today, JNDS has provided an outlet for investigation and conceptualization on the forefront of the study of NDEs and related phenomena.

Over the years since JNDS’s inception, the circumstances, parameters, and dimensions of NDEs have become clear (Greyson, 2014; Holden, 2017). An NDE can be defined as an experience during an actual or anticipated close brush with death associated with illness or injury in which one has a typically real or hyperreal sense of one’s consciousness functioning—usually lucidly or hyperlucidly—apart from one’s physical body. Like human faces around the world, NDEs contain some universal features and also reflect cultural and individual differences. Among the universal features are that the experiencer (NDEr) may perceive the material world—usually the scene surrounding the physical body—and/or perceive and interact with transmaterial domains and entities such as deceased loved ones and/or spiritual/religious figures. NDEs vary in depth, containing fewer or more features of lesser or greater intensity. Although most NDErs report that the NDE was pleasurable—dominated by feelings such as profound peace, joy, and love—some report that the NDE was distressing—dominated by feelings such as terror, horror, or guilt. As many as 20% of survivors of close brushes with death may report an NDE, and these experiencers equally represent people of all demographics.

Beyond the defining characteristics of NDEs, most experiencers report a variety of aftereffects that they attribute specifically to their NDEs (Greyson, 2014; Holden, 2017). Psychological aftereffects include loss of fear of death, reduced interest in material acquisitions, and greater concern for others’ well-being. Transcendental aftereffects include greater interest in spirituality and the development of paranormal abilities such as precognition. Physical aftereffects include reduced need for sleep and the malfunctioning of electronic devices in an NDEr’s vicinity. Social aftereffects include changes in social relationships with friends and intimates and pursuit of more service-oriented careers. Generally speaking, the deeper the NDE is, the more transformative the aftereffects. Thus in the short term following the experience, many NDErs report feeling challenged to reconcile the experience with their prior worldviews and requiring time—sometimes years—to achieve integration of the experience and its aftereffects into new perspectives and ways of functioning. However, most NDErs reportedly perceive the ultimate outcome of this integration process to be positive: an enhancement of their pre-NDE lives.

In the decades since those early beginnings, the field of near-death studies has become established and has evolved. Articles on NDEs have now appeared in the most prestigious journals of a variety of fields, from philosophy to medicine to mental health (Sleutjes, Moreira-Almeida, & Greyson, 2014). Yet JNDS has remained a leader. In a recent analysis of refereed journal publications in the field of near-death studies (Loseu, Holden, Kinsey, & Christian, 2013), among the 29 periodicals with the largest volume of NDE-related articles, JNDS continues to be the leading publication venue by far, accounting for 42.6% of the total publications in the field (p. 193). And an overview of 266 articles on NDEs published in the highest-impact mainstream journals worldwide between 1977 and 2013 noted that that literature was dwarfed by more than 700 articles published in JNDS in the same time period (Sleutjes et al., 2014).

Now, nearly four decades after JNDS’s inception, seems a good time to look back at the publications that, in retrospect, seem to have made particular contributions to the foundation and evolution of the field of near-death studies. Of course, not all such publications appeared in JNDS. For example, the prospective Dutch hospital study of NDEs that appeared in the Lancet (van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers, & Elfferich, 2001) is widely recognized as a seminal work in the field; it is among the 30 most frequently cited publications in the field, all 30 of which appeared in non-JNDS journals (Loseu et al., 2013, p. 197). In addition, the leading author in the field, Bruce Greyson, who served as JNDS’s editor virtually from its inception until 2008, followed the scholarly convention to avoid publication in a journal for which one serves as editor and, consequently, published almost exclusively outside of JNDS (Loseu et al., 2013, p. 196). Despite this state of affairs, many important ideas and findings about NDEs first appeared in JNDS articles—a fact to which this anthology attests. In a sense, these works have not received the scholarly attention they deserve.

Perhaps precisely because JNDS articles are the most abundant yet the least cited in the field, an anthology such as this is especially needed at this time. In addition to highlighting seminal work that may deserve additional attention, this anthology will be of value to two categories of readers. First, those readers, both lay and scholarly, who are knowledgeable about near-death studies will hopefully find that the anthology brings a new level of coherence to the field with which they are already familiar. And second, those readers new to near-death studies will find in the anthology a relatively concise introduction with which to orient and familiarize themselves with the field.

This anthology of landmark JNDS articles is IANDS’s second publishing project following the publication of The Self Does Not Die by Titus Rivas, Anny Dirven, and Rudolf Smit (2016), which documents more than 100 cases of verified paranormal phenomena from NDEs. In addition to further volumes of the anthology, the IANDS Board plans to offer further publications of scholarly works that contribute to the field of near-death studies, particularly in the areas of health care practice, education about NDEs to medical practitioners and the public, NDE research, and the scientific investigation of the implications of NDE-related phenomena in other fields, such as consciousness studies.

We thank Alexander Batthyány for first suggesting this anthology to the IANDS Board of Directors and for serving as editor of the first volume. His brainchild promises to produce a series of works that will live as unparalleled classics in the field, bringing value to any future reader seeking a conceptual foundation to the scholarship of NDEs.

Bruce Greyson, MD

Editor, Anabiosis / Journal of Near-Death Studies, 1981–2008

Janice Miner Holden, EdD, LPC-S, NCC, ACMHP

Editor, Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2008–present

References

Greyson, B. (2014). Near-death experiences. In E. Cardeña, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds.), Varieties of anomalous experience: Examining the scientific evidence (pp. 333–367). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Holden, J. M. (2017). Near-death experiences. In R. D. Foster & J. M. Holden (Eds.), Connecting soul, spirit, mind, and body: A collection of spiritual and religious perspectives and practices in counseling (pp. 89–97). Alexandria, VA: Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling.

Loseu, S., Holden, J. M., Kinsey, L., & Christian, R. (2013). The field of near-death studies through 2011: An updated analysis of the scholarly periodical literature. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 31(4), 189–202. doi:10.17514/JNDS-2013-31-4-p189-202

Rivas, T., Dirven, A., & Smit, R. H. (2016). The self does not die: Verified paranormal phenomena from near-death experiences. Durham, NC: International Association for Near-Death Studies.

Sleutjes, A., Moreira-Almeida, A., & Greyson, B. (2014). Almost 40 years investigating near-death experiences. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 202(11), 833–836. doi:10.1097/NMD.0000000000000205

van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., & Elfferich, I. (2001). Near-death experiences in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands. Lancet, 358(9298), 2039–2045. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8

Volume Introduction

Alexander Batthyány

The Birth of a Research Field

In the early 1970s, a small group of medical researchers—among them Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Raymond Moody, and George Ritchie—began to develop what, in retrospect, looks like a concerted effort to establish a new research program dedicated to the experience of dying. In truth, however, the effort was hardly as concerted and systematic as it might appear in hindsight. Rather, the early pioneering work in this field was just that: early, pioneering work of individual researchers who frequently had to map their research territory while they discovered it (Bush, 1991).

To begin with, there was no academic discipline exclusively dedicated to the study of the experience of dying yet; neither was there funding available for this kind of work; nor were there journals, conferences, or professional research organizations. In other words, the hallmarks of an established academic discipline were lacking. However, when Moody first coined the term near-death experiences (NDEs), reported the first systematic study of these phenomena in his seminal work Life After Life (1975), and the book became an almost immediate bestseller, the lack of these traditional structures did not hinder the unfolding of what was to become the field of near-death studies. Soon, more researchers joined in—among them Kenneth Ring, Michael Sabom, and Bruce Greyson—and their work stimulated additional interest in the subject. Slowly, the field began to form, and experiencers from all over the world sought to connect to scholars working in the field and began to publish first-person accounts of their own NDEs.

Less than three years after the publication of Life After Life, the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS)—initially under the name Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena—was founded as a membership organization. Researchers, as well as near-death experiencers (NDErs), were among its first members. Although the formation of this organization represented the first step toward the scientific professionalization of the field, the founding members seem to have been aware from the beginning that the path ahead of them would hardly correspond to the conventional criteria of scientific research and professionalization. The composition of the members of the young organization bears witness to this awareness: Whereas membership in a scientific organization is usually dominated by academic representatives of a specific discipline or predefined cluster of disciplines, the membership of the fledgling IANDS was diverse, including academics from various fields, near-death experiencers, and members of the public interested in the phenomena of NDEs. This diversity reflected the fact that the field of near-death studies did not yet exist; indeed, it was just about to come into existence (Greyson, 1998, p. xv).

What is more, the question of who could claim interpretation—and research authority—in this field arose: Should it be those who had had an NDE or those who analyzed NDEs from a third-person perspective? These questions initially remained unanswered and were to remain unanswerable for a long time; there simply was not nearly enough experience in this young field to make informed decisions at the time.

Notwithstanding these many open questions in the beginnings of NDE research, several factors may account for the fact that, in the early NDE literature, few traces exist of a comprehensive, self-reflective discourse. For one thing, it seems, with hindsight, that the 1970s were first and foremost years of discovery in this field. This point is easily comprehensible: All at once there was a formal concept—and a name—for phenomena that were, as it turned out, historically reported numerous times and in a wide range of different contexts but that, for want of a generic term, had hardly ever been the object of systematic research. There was thus initially enormous pent-up demand for research—and so much to discover, so much to fathom, so much to understand—that perhaps there simply was not time—and it likely was not the right moment—for self-reflectively sounding out the possibilities and limits of research.

One might add that this ambivalence with regard to, for example, experience and interpretation authority, is inherent in the field, and a premature resolution of such ambivalence may have been detrimental to both the advancement and the diversity of research. Moreover, the young research field was fortunate in being born into a zeitgeist whereby an increasingly democratic, open concept of knowledge enabled experiences from a first-person perspective to be left in place on a par with research from a third-person perspective—along with all the ambivalence and uncertainty one is compelled to accept in consequence of such an approach as a trade-off (Fox, 2003, p. 36–37). The fact that the founding members of IANDS recognized this ambivalence and did not a priori try to eradicate it is a historical merit not to be underestimated. Therefore, anyone undertaking a literature review of the last 40 years of publications in the field of near-death studies will come across a diversity rarely, if ever, found in other subject areas—particularly when taking into account that these publications appeared within a period of only four decades.

It thus seems as if the pioneers in the field created the basis for something that corresponds in the best sense to the ideal, often striven for yet rarely attained even today, of interdisciplinary and epistemologically liberal, philosophically open-ended research. A glance at today’s discourse shows furthermore that our field never ceased to bring together a tremendous diversity of voices—voices and exponents that would hardly approach one another, let alone meet, were it not for the common denominator of their shared interest in NDEs. Although little else seems certain when it comes to NDEs, one thing seems clear: They are, or have, a unifying element that transcends disciplinary boundaries and proficiencies of near-death researchers and experiencers.

Just how unifying this element happens to be is demonstrated, for example, by the rather unusual membership structure mentioned above—researchers on an equal footing with experiencers—which implies that experience and research of NDEs are recognized as two equal pillars of near-death research. Although this approach should, for all intents and purposes, be self-evident for the exploration of any subjective experience, it remains a distinguishing feature of IANDS to have committed to such democratic epistemological principles from inception.

Furthermore—again as a unifying element—the existential momentum of the question, faced by both researchers and NDErs, of how dying is experienced, must be acknowledged. A further unifying question is whether NDEs may yield some clues regarding the nature of death itself and a potential future fate of consciousness after death—the survival issue.

Intellectual History and Development of an Extraordinary Phenomenon

Looking at this range of approaches and questions, it may become clear at yet another level why, with regard to near-death research, it is still preferable to refer to a field rather than a clearly defined discipline. It may also become apparent, or somewhat more comprehensible, why near-death research has remained, over a relatively long period of time, an enfant terrible within the scientific and research landscape—and why there is every reason to hope that it should also remain that way in the near future.

Early pioneers in this area thus had to convince their more skeptical colleagues in the first place that NDEs actually represented real phenomena and a legitimate focus of research—meaning that a critical number of persons actually produced a phenomenologically rich, complex, and structured experience while subjectively or objectively undergoing a physiological crisis, for the most part, impending death. For too long, it was thus insinuated that NDErs had been taken in by illusory memories, psychodynamic defense mechanisms, or other malfunctions and tricks of their own minds (French, 2005; Noyes & Kletti, 1976). At times, NDErs also faced accusations of having freely invented their experiences from beginning to end—just as researchers working in this area were accused of operating outside the scientific discourse, or even of being more concerned with esotericism and religion than with serious scientific research (Woerlee, 2005). The common external adversary of skeptical or altogether dismissive colleagues or a deprecatory public may have thus strengthened the field by uniting the NDE community internally, thus preventing serious frictions based on differences between NDErs and NDE researchers in terms of culture and social context within IANDS.

Against the background of the general academic skepticism and reserve vis-à-vis NDEs, there existed for a long time few possibilities to publish research results within established academic outlets. For many years, one of the few journals available for those who explored the subject of near-death was in fact IANDS’s Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS), issued originally from its inception in 1982 through 1987 under the title Anabiosis and published to this very date.

The situation has since changed. Works on NDEs meanwhile appear in the journals of medicine, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, theology, and philosophy. Indeed, one can justifiably state that the subject of near-death studies—long a niche topic within academia—has arrived at the forefront of research.

One intention with this volume is to trace this development, with particular emphasis on the research that paved its way. There are, however, two methodological paths to approach the development leading up to the present state of NDE research. The first approach focuses on the history of ideas; indeed, the field of near-death studies offers an opportunity, unique from a history of ideas perspective, to trace the remarkably well-documented beginnings and the developments and contours of a very young area of research. Moreover, the history of ideas need not be limited to a purely historical examination; it is also, for all intents and purposes, research in its own right (Skinner, 1969).

By contrast, the second approach traces the questions, methodologies, theories, models, and interpretations raised over the years in order to explore a complex and multilayered phenomenon (Gordon, 2012). The latter path thus also traces arguments and, to that extent, draws on data that have been recorded in the context of older works within the past 40 years—hence putting current research into a larger historical context. Its focus, though, is less on history than on current research.

Forty years after the founding of IANDS, it seems a good moment to pass in review the works that have been written in this area to date—and also to take into account and appreciate afresh those works that were pioneering in paving the way for near-death research to advance from a marginal area of investigation to a central aspect of the psychology of dying. Such a review is of interest from more than just a history of ideas perspective; it also makes available to current research additional material and provides an opportunity to gauge how far research has progressed. What is more, such a review offers an opportunity to make up for past negligence within large circles of the scientific community and enables evaluation of those works afresh that, in view of their scientific methodology and theoretical depth, did not at the time receive the kind of attention they would have deserved from the research community.

That making up for this negligence can be conducive to current research is indicated, inter alia, by the fact that the wheel seems to be frequently reinvented since the entry of near-death research into the mainstream: Much of what have since become new topics have been published years, if not decades, ago in JNDS, then a relatively small niche publication (for an overview, see, e.g., Fox, 2003, or Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009).

The Two Languages of NDE Research

The fact that NDE research is no longer exclusively pursued by a small group of pioneers may serve as a further impulse to reassess the role of IANDS. With the professionalization of NDE research, the social dynamics of interactions between different member groups within IANDS have considerably changed.

From its diverse membership, two core competencies, perhaps even branches, of contemporary IANDS have emerged. First of all, there is the research branch, whose primary publication is JNDS. Second, there is the grassroots branch, offering a safe haven for NDErs, for seekers of meaning and solace. This second group is concerned less with rigorous scientific research than it is with a sense of community and less with critical analysis than with unconditional acceptance. A review of IANDS annual conference contributions of recent years suggests that these conferences—and thus the public face of IANDS, alongside JNDS—have increasingly become the voice of the grassroots branch. In this context, a sense of community and belonging seems to be paramount, whereas rational critique and ideological restraint seem to be less central to conference delegates’ expectations. IANDS has sought to serve both groups at its conferences by designating a health care, education, research, and science (HERS) day or track alongside the more grassroots presentations—though the latter number of presentations outweigh the former by about two to one.

Apart from the significance of looking at IANDS’s intellectual history, giving an impetus for the renewed strengthening of the research branch of IANDS is thus a further motive for the publication of this volume. There indeed remains a lot of research to be done. Certainly, NDEs are generally recognized phenomenon today—that much has at any rate been achieved—yet many of the core questions of NDE research remain unanswered. This state regarding NDE research engenders the expectation, or at least hope, that IANDS will maintain its continued pioneering role and remain in the vanguard of research. There are more than enough research materials and data to justify IANDS’s continued leadership role in today’s NDE discourse, as this volume corroborates.

Such a revival of the research branch of IANDS does not need to, and should not, happen at the expense of the grassroots branch. Were IANDS to grow in both areas, it would do justice to the legacy of its pioneers and founding members and its history, for historically, the separation between the two branches within IANDS has not always been clear, and task sharing functioned reasonably well in the early days of NDE discourse.

Review and Outlook: 40 Years Later

Forty years is a relatively short period for an intellectual-historical review—so short, in fact, that the boundaries between research, meta-analysis, and reflection become blurred to the extent of making the above-mentioned choice between two approaches (intellectual-historical and analytical) practically irrelevant, if not impossible, from the outset. However, I will argue that it is precisely this ambivalence that provides a unique opportunity to comprehend the current state of this research area with this review.

Where, then, does the metareflection of the research trend begin and where does it end, when it becomes clear at close inspection, with the entry of near-death research into the mainstream, that many old motifs resurface and that the research questions are not just historical but highly topical at the same time? In other words, the boundaries between intellectual-historical self-reflection and current research are necessarily fluid when it comes to such reviews—and they are thus not strictly speaking mere reviews but a disinterring and rediscovering of sources that are frequently overlooked because they have appeared in a relatively low-circulation journal.

No later than at this point, the intellectual-historical project is thus turned into a topical research project, primarily relating less to history than to the present day. As Robinson (1995, p. viii) pointed out, however, this continuous topicality is in the nature of sound intellectual-historical research: When ideas and findings are traced in history, it soon becomes clear that arguments that were coherent or methods that were fruitful 30 or 40 years ago have remained so to this day, while arguments that were inconclusive 40 years ago will not have become more conclusive since. Thus many an approach to the phenomenon in question that has been forgotten, been neglected, or simply gone out of fashion with current research may at close inspection turn out to be applicable, interesting, and fruitful today and, therefore, worthy of rediscovery.

It thus becomes clear that an informed review is always more than that: It is potentially an outlook at the same time—as well as a way to honor early works in a research area that remains rich in queries, questions, and loose ends.

Against this backdrop, the present volume brings together several important works on the problem of NDEs that have appeared over the past 40 years in JNDS, the pioneering journal of near-death research.

Structure of This Book

Structure and arrangement of this book are strictly thematically organized and trace the stages in knowledge that must be passed when encountering any new phenomenon—or when encountering an old phenomenon for the first time in the context of systematic research. Whenever a new phenomenon is addressed, certain fundamental questions arise, leading the researcher to approach the phenomenon in a systematic and structured manner.

First are general thoughts, ideas, and hypotheses on the topic—a map, so to speak, of the territory to be explored, laid out before inquirants. The purpose of such a map initially is to determine which questions arise in conjunction with the phenomenon under investigation and how they can be methodically clarified. Such groundwork tends to be less concerned with capturing the phenomenon at hand than it is with attempting to define the research area itself: its possibilities, opportunities, and limitations—as well as its further implications.

In view of the depth of the topic of NDEs and their related existential questions—such as spiritual aspects of human existence, dying, and death, as well as the relationship between brain and spirit—this is an important research task. As I will illustrate, precisely this aspect has undergone what might be the greatest transformation in the course of the evolution of near-death research toward the mainstream. Indeed, it seems that a large proportion of the authors whose works appear on the subject in mainstream journals are extremely reluctant to approach the great metaphysical topics and to address the entire bandwidth of implications and objectives of primary near-death research.

Will this always be the case? Could the increasing de-tabooization of the spiritual within the medical and psychiatric fields (Koenig, 2000; Matthews, McCullough, Larson, Koenig, Swyers, & Milano, 1998) inspire hitherto reserved researchers over time to fathom the philosophical and metaphysical implications of near-death research? If so, the question remains if this progression isn’t so much a result of spirituality moving toward the focus of medical and psychological research as it is of the topic of NDEs itself progressively presenting researchers with such questions, the more they delve into the subject. An answer is difficult to predict—but in order to honor the legacy of the pioneers of IANDS, it seems appropriate to recognize that fundamental questions of human existence have been inseparable from near-death research from the beginning and are, thus, a central part of the catalog of questions.

After the general questions discussed in the articles of the first main section—namely, how research should be framed in methodological and epistemological terms—the articles of the second chapter turn to the phenomenon itself, examining it in a methodical and systematic manner. The question here is, How do NDEs manifest themselves?

The second chapter of this book thus deals with the general phenomenology of NDEs. The integrative assessment of these findings initially yields two main areas of focus. First is the experiencer’s experience of oneself—that is, the self-image, as well as self-experience, within NDEs. Second is the content of the experience itself. And not least, it concerns the question that arises for both these areas of focus—namely, to what extent the fact of observation retroacts on the experience itself—for example, how certain expectations are created and certain narratives develop with regard to NDEs and how they might influence concepts of NDEs. These three aspects are discussed in the chapter on general phenomenology.

The third chapter of this book deals with the question of how NDEs present themselves in a greater social and cultural context. As readers shall see, this is also a central question, insofar as it may reveal a great deal about the nature of the experience itself and to what extent biological or cultural elements shape NDEs (i.e., the nature-nurture debate). Whereas earlier authors have assumed a mostly uniform, cross-cultural model of NDEs, the research presented in the third part has helped correct that view to some extent. With this perspective, NDE researchers have adjusted to a general insight of human sciences: All experience is experience in context, and human psychology can never be reduced to mere generic categories of experience and behavior. Rather, mental activity always happens in a cultural, social, and private biographical setting. The question to what extent interpretation, description, and rendition are, beyond the experience itself, subject to cultural factors, also comes to bear. Comparative phenomenology is thus the study not only of phenomena per se but also of the appraisal of personal and collective circumstances in which the phenomena occur—first in the way it is experienced, second in the way it is remembered, and third in the rendition of this recollection. The third chapter includes works that deal with such research and address them in light of different cultural contexts of NDEs.

The fourth and last part of this volume deals with still more fundamental questions that arise within the context of NDEs—namely, their ontology and eschatology. The questions here are, What do NDEs mean? What do they point to? What metaphysical indicators do they yield—and what do they indicate, in particular about death?

This is, of course, a set of questions to which universally accepted answers cannot be expected any time in the near future. For if it were known, and not just surmised, what NDEs point to—whether, for instance, they are an indication of consciousness outlasting physical death—research in this area would soon have come to an end and, instead of NDE research, the focus would become NDE metaphysics. But even before an arrival at answers, such metaphysics is in fact a subsection of legitimate research—provided that it is characterized by sufficient epistemological modesty—precisely as demanded and typified by early representatives of NDE research. This is, therefore, an area in which a historical review can be particularly instructive, as it is also strongly contextual.

At this juncture, attention should be drawn to parallels in other, equally fundamental areas of research. One example is a question that became a contentious issue about 150 years ago—namely, whether light had the properties of particles or waves—a question that is not conclusively resolved to this day, unless one accepts as a final answer the ambiguity that it is both at the same time. The same applies to questions of the nature of time, of whether and how a universal theory of physics can be achieved, and, not least, of the relationship between consciousness and brain.

In all these and many other cases, a question arises that does not necessarily appear to be beyond an empirical approach. It is, however, a question that obviously has strong metaphysical implications that must be discussed not just in experimental but also in analytical terms.

Just as the mere fact that, due to advances in resuscitation technology, unprecedented numbers of resuscitants since the 1970s have led researchers to investigation of NDEs, it is possible in principle that further technological advances will open new frontiers that, in turn, lead to as yet completely uncharted territory. Such developments might make empirically accessible the metaphysical question whether NDEs are indeed only a final experience of the living or are in fact the starting point of an ongoing experience of consciousness after death. Again, an answer to this question cannot currently be known; rather, researchers at this stage can only analyze indicators. And thus it emerges as one of the great strengths of the pioneers of NDE research that engagement with precisely this question in the course of the past 40 years always oscillated between acknowledged lack of knowledge, speculation, the readiness to tolerate and accept uncertainty, and, at times, tolerance toward those who already see proof in available data, presenting and defending concrete answers to the questions touched upon here.

Whether NDEs have further metaphysical and possibly religious consequences will indeed not be conclusively answered in the near future; however, as the articles collected in the fourth part confirm, this is a question that implicitly reverberates through NDEs and, thus, cannot be ignored: It is already raised by the fact that a good proportion of people who have been very close to death experienced something rather than nothing.

Selection as History of Ideas

Now a brief note on the selection of the articles. Any selection of scientific works obviously is to some extent a selection of ideas. The same applies here: Numerous articles have been published in JNDS over the past 40 years. Therefore, the selection of articles that are representative yet also give impetus to current research was not always easy. The first selection criterion for the articles included in this anthology was purely thematic and was based on whether an article related to one of the focus areas discussed here: (a) methodology and philosophical foundations, (b) general phenomenology, (c) comparative phenomenology, and (d) ontology and eschatology.

In a next step, articles were checked for overlap, and more comprehensive and complete works were given preference. This approach enabled the greatest possible completeness while saving space. Furthermore, preference was given to works displaying a certain methodological variety. Finally, preference was given to works in which authors described approaches, research potentials, and methodologies that are not given much notice in the current discourse. After this first preselection by the main editor, further conferrals with the advisory board took place.

The result is a collection of works that, collectively and individually, seek to meet the two main intentions of this book: first, to retrace the contours of the research field of near-death studies, and second, to present research-relevant data, approaches, ideas, and suggestions for future works. The other intention is to rectify a historical omission—namely, to prevent this often-valuable research, some of which has not been sufficiently recognized simply because it was ahead of its time, from falling into oblivion.

But why is it important to rectify this omission? On the one hand, because a scientific and ideas-historical reappraisal should not obscure the fact that its historical growth has by no means been smooth or easy—but that’s only one side of the coin. The other side reveals itself when one examines the personal cost of this omission today, in review—for example, in the number of those people who, as patients or carers, have been personally confronted with NDEs and didn’t know how to deal with them because the phenomena were for so long generally ignored within the helping professions. Speechlessness is often a result of ignorance; ignorance can be the intended result of averting one’s eyes and blocking out, but it may also be the result of simply ignoring certain facts because one does not know better. The latter can no longer be pleaded today—and it is to a large extent thanks to the consistent and courageous effort of some pioneers whose works are collected here that members of the helping profession now know about the unusual phenomena some people experience in near-death situations.

What is more, it is probably no exaggeration to say that this development would not have taken place in this way without IANDS and its activities, perhaps most notably JNDS. IANDS has provided a professional body that enabled both researchers and NDErs to participate on an equal footing in exchanging views, discussing research results, supporting and encouraging each other, and debating with each other. It is therefore a further intention of this book to recognize this work—and also to encourage, if not actually call on, IANDS to promote further rigorous research in an area that remains rich in open questions.

All noble and higher aims notwithstanding, results tend to be more modest than intentions. And this outcome isn’t really a detriment or shortcoming. On the contrary, it is important to remember that an NDE is an experience that takes place when a person is in one’s most critical and vulnerable state: in an objectively or subjectively life-threatening crisis that often surprisingly reveals itself to be not just a crisis but also an opportunity and often a gift—the knowledge of this experience enriches not only the NDEr but also those who are willing to listen to the experiencer.

This listening represented the beginning of near-death studies; it was, as it were, the building material from which the IANDS edifice was constructed. Hopefully, those who carry the field into its future will never forget but always retain this defining characteristic: the ability to listen openly and without prejudice. As the articles collected in this volume demonstrate, one can unambiguously state for the first 40 years of near-death studies under the auspices of IANDS that this principle of listening with concomitant openness has always been the leitmotif of the research IANDS has supported through publication in its journal. In this spirit, it can be hoped that this tradition lives on with research that the association supports and seeks to bring to the mainstream, just as it has, over the 40 past years, supported NDErs and brought the phenomena of NDEs to the mainstream. If this volume can make a contribution to this legacy, it will have served its purpose.

References

Bush, N. E. (1991). Is ten years a life review? Journal of Near-Death Studies, 10(1), 5–9. doi:10.17514/JNDS-1991-10-1-p5-9

Fox, M. (2003). Religion, spirituality and the near-death experience. London, UK: Routledge.

French, C. C. (2005). Near-death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors. Progress in Brain Research, 150, 351–367. doi:10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50025-6

Gordon, P. E. (2012). What is intellectual history? A frankly partisan introduction to a frequently misunderstood field. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Retrieved from http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/history/files/what_is_intell_history_pgordon_mar2012.pdf

Greyson, B. (1998). Foreword. In K. Ring & E. E. Valarino, Lessons from the Light: What we can learn from the near-death experience. Needham, MA: Moment Point Press.

Holden, J. M., Greyson, B., & James, D. (Eds.). (2009). The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO.

Koenig, H. G. (2000). Religion, spirituality, and medicine: Application to clinical practice. Journal of the American Medical Association, 284(13), 1708. doi:10.1001/jama.284.13.1708-JMS1004-5-1

Kübler-Ross, E. (1991). On life after death. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.

Matthews, D. A., McCullough, M. E., Larson, D. B., Koenig, H. G., Swyers, J. P., & Milano, M. G. (1998). Religious commitment and health status: A review of the research and implications for family medicine. Archives of Family Medicine, 7(2), 118–124. doi:10.1001/archfami.7.2.118

Moody, R. A. (1975). Life after life. Covington, GA: Mockingbird Books.

Noyes, R., & Kletti, R. (1976). Depersonalization in the face of life-threatening danger: An interpretation. Omega, 7(2), 103–114. doi:10.2190/7QET-2VAU-YCDT-TJ9R

Robinson, D. (1995). An intellectual history of psychology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Skinner, Q. (1969). Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas. History and Ideas, 8(1), 3–53. doi:10.2307/2504188

Woerlee, G. M. (2005). Mortal minds: The biology of near-death experiences. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Chapter 1

Mapping the Territory

General Philosophical and Methodological Issues (Epistemology)

Alexander Batthyány

The first part of this volume contains articles by authors who sought to gauge possibilities of near-death experience (NDE) research, map out the coordinates of this research, name the various methodical research approaches to NDEs, and analyze to what extent the phenomena of NDEs can be depicted within scientific discourse and beyond.

The first article—Can Science Explain the Near-Death Experience? by Bruce Greyson (1989, p. 9)—offers an insightful overview on this subject. Greyson took stock after some 15 years of research in this field; his reflection, however, has lost none of its actuality 30 years later. Not only did Greyson address the radically skeptical question of the extent to which NDEs are scientifically approachable at all, but he also examined to what extent the classical scientific method might be applicable to NDEs. In doing so, Greyson initially distinguished between empirically accessible aspects of NDEs and, beyond that—but ideally informed by empirical data—philosophical reflections on NDEs. This division of competences already makes clear that NDEs are examples of phenomena that move between realms in equal measure—making different approaches necessary in order to do justice to the phenomena in their entirety: They are on one hand subjective, complex experiences that often have a profound impact on an experiencer’s personal world view and self-image; on the other hand, they provide scientific research data. Additionally, they are on one hand medical and psychological phenomena and, on the other hand, existential, possibly even otherworldly phenomena. It is exactly this complexity of NDEs that makes them such an interesting and intellectually and scientifically stimulating research topic while also making a reflection on the methodological approaches to NDEs indispensable.

In view of Greyson’s clarity in analyzing these fundamental methodological questions, one can justifiably recognize his article as a kind of manifesto even of current near-death research—as well as of its limits, for it is also worth mentioning that Greyson, in his systematic enumeration of research tasks, did not lose sight of the fact that the questions that are of real interest to many people exceed the realm of the merely empirical. It is indeed against this yardstick that he discussed the question raised in the title of his articles: Could science explain NDEs?

An answer to this question depends essentially on the way in which people interpret the term explain and how much authority people want to grant to the inductive method. The latter’s limits, however, soon reveal themselves, according to Greyson. If one is prepared to accept this limit, two possible avenues present themselves. The first avenue would be to permit a kind of anarchy of experience: The truth is, accordingly, what NDErs have experienced as true. This radically anti-intellectual and antiscientific temptation, however, has an antithesis, or at least an alternative: to extend the application of scientific notions into heretofore scientifically inaccessible domains—domains of human experience indicating that reality might be greater than what can be directly and repeatedly observed. Such territorial expansions do not require people to renounce hopes of a scientifically accessible cartography of the world; they do, however, require people to expand their methodology in order to be equipped for realms that have previously been considered imponderable. This is indeed what Greyson suggested: NDEs present a challenge not just as phenomena per se but also as an impetus for people to seek enlarged methods:

Inductive science obviously is not the ultimate tool; we are painfully aware of its limitations. History tells us that only in trying to explain phenomena currently beyond its reach does science evolve new methods.

I believe the NDE is one of those puzzles that just might force scientists to develop a new scientific method, one that will incorporate all sources of knowledge, not only logical deductions of the intellect, and empirical observations of the physical, but direct experience of the mystical as well. (pp. 20–21)

It is to Greyson’s credit that his call for an enlargement of scientific notions was not made lightly; above all, however, it seems that his call for enlargement was not a rejection of traditional research methods. In point of fact, Greyson proceeded in an evidence-based manner: He let himself be guided by NDE research up to that point while acknowledging that vast areas remained to be understood, having hardly been accessible using the methods of inductive science hitherto applied. He perceived, in other words, that research had to be deep as well as broad.

This review article is complemented by the second, more philosophically grounded article in which Carl Becker described A Philosopher’s View of Near-Death Research (1995, p. 23). Becker’s conclusions, based on 15 years of research, mostly within the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), were by all means critical:

The International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) is approaching its 15th year, and it has grown from a liberal bunch of long-haired or bearded interns and graduate students of the ’70s into a mainstream organization attracting renowned scholars to speak at its conferences and write for its professional quarterly Journal of Near-Death Studies. I am extremely gratified by this progress and depend heavily on the Journal both to keep abreast of the latest thinking in the field, and to publicize the legitimate scholarly nature of near-death research to colleagues and other professionals. Lest any of the following comments be misconstrued, let me first say that I am deeply grateful to the many authors, reviewers, and editors of the Journal for the efforts and energies they pour into this research and its publication. (p. 23)

Becker asked some fundamental questions of NDE research. Today’s reader will recognize many coordinates that also characterize the current debate. Indeed, much of his discussion seems all too familiar. However, a certain danger is often inherent in the familiar—namely, that certain premises are habitually taken for granted only because they are familiar and not because they are necessarily true. Becker elucidated this premise with an interesting example. He discussed the much-cited conflict between materialism and dualism and the question whether NDEs point to a nonmaterial basis of consciousness and, subsequently, to the question of the possibility of conscious survival of one’s own physical death. Becker pointed out, however, that even if such a nonmaterial basis existed—or was substantiated by NDE research—this finding would not automatically answer the question whether the mind can survive death. It is after all just as possible that a nonmaterial soul exists that decays at death alongside the body as that the mind can be explained entirely in neurobiological terms, yet a future of the mind in some shape or form remains conceivable—as certain Christian resurrection models and other religious conceptualizations of afterlife suggest.

Thus Becker’s plea is equally a plea for the return to the essence of what is addressed by NDEs. And that essence, according to Becker, is the potential to better understand the nature of dying and death while not necessarily resolving, or even addressing, the mind-body problem. In brief, the fact that other philosophical and theological research topics are also related or relevant in this context does not mean that NDE research should, therefore, necessarily take on these tasks; to do so would unduly enlarge its remit by undertaking more tasks than is in its interest—or even its powers—to achieve. On the contrary, according to Becker, scholars in the field were at risk of getting bogged down if they considered questions that philosophers had not been able to consistently solve in more than 1,000 years of research—the more so as there is a large consensus within analytical philosophy that ontological questions cannot actually be solved by empirical or case study research.

In this context, Becker also self-critically examined certain trends within NDE research that risked leading research astray—or, at least, not to particularly productive avenues of inquiry. These trends include the attempt to capture the essence of NDEs by means of analogies as well as attempts to somehow link other types of experience that are also unusual with NDEs in the hope that two unusual experiences might somehow be more easily explained than one alone. Not only is this latter premise questionable; it also distracts from the possibilities of NDEs as a window on dying. In short, Becker’s essay is, especially in conjunction with Greyson’s preceding article, an enriching piece of self-criticism as well as a call to order that aimed to relieve research from an unnecessary ballast that all too easily added to the central questions, thus obscuring what is really essential. Once stuck in this rut, the young field of NDE research ran the risk of being contaminated by old traditions of thought. Becker had the following advice for researchers:

The field of near-death research is not the place for debates about monism and dualism, which have occupied better philosophers than us for millennia, and whose resolution, even if possible, would have no immediate relevance to the survival question. It is also not the place for psychological autobiographies, polemics advocating particular religions, or articles that effectively discourage further discussion of NDEs and [out-of-body experiences (OBEs)]. (p. 30)

Becker thus simultaneously pleaded in favor of using the opportunity of NDE research for serious inquiry beyond philosophical positions and limitations. To achieve this goal, he proposed three steps: first, the collection of data; second, the systematic and organized testing of hypotheses; and third, opening up NDE research to the mainstream—which, according to Becker, would best be achieved if serious research was actually carried out in this area:

Let us set aside our philosophical differences and work (1) to assemble as much information as possible about NDEs and OBEs; (2) not only to make but to test hypotheses about these experiences using statistically significant numbers and methodologies; and (3) to make discussion of NDEs and OBEs increasingly acceptable to the entire academic community through the high level of our work. (p. 30)

This call, and the gauging of possibilities for serious research, is also the thrust of the third article in this part: Rationale and Considerations for Proposed Near-Death Research in the Hospital Setting by Janice Miner Holden (1988, p. 32).

This article addressed a concrete research question and its possible solution in the hospital setting: the question of veridical perception during NDEs—whereby an experiencer (NDEr) reports having observed phenomena during the NDE that, based on the NDEr’s physical condition, position, and knowledge base upon which to make inferences, should not have