An Intellectual Journey:
Humanity, Near-Death Experiences, and the Afterlife
Late 19th through mid-20th century:
Psychical research – the SPR, Myers, James, Barrett, and Stevenson brought empirical methods — case collection, controlled mediumship studies, statistical surveys, cross-cultural fieldwork — to survival claims, treating them as testable hypotheses rather than articles of faith or abstract philosophical positions.
(1975–2000)
Clinical NDE research – Moody, Ring, Sabom, Greyson, and van Lommel transformed NDEs from a topic of psychical research into a medical and psychological phenomenon, developing standardized measurement instruments, prospective methodologies, and the first large-scale clinical datasets.
1990s–present
Neuroscience and consciousness studies – Blackmore, Blanke, Jansen, Parnia, and Borjigin brought the tools of neuroscience — neurochemistry, brain stimulation, EEG — to bear on NDE phenomenology, generating mechanistic explanations that compete with, but do not necessarily eliminate, survivalist interpretations.
Historical Chronicle of Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife
I. Ancient and Classical Foundations
TIME PERIOD- Ancient through medieval
Mythic and religious accounts: Afterlife narratives served cosmological, moral, and social functions. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Myth of Er, the Bardo Thödol, and Dante’s Divine Comedy established the imaginative vocabulary — judgment, reward, punishment, journey, transformation — that still shapes NDE discourse.
Egyptian Book of the Dead (c. 1550 BCE onward)
The Egyptian funerary texts — including the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead — constitute humanity’s earliest systematic afterlife cosmology. The Book of the Dead provided spells and instructions to guide the deceased through the Duat (underworld), culminating in the “Weighing of the Heart” ceremony in which the dead person’s heart was weighed against the feather of Ma’at (truth, justice) before Osiris, Lord of the Underworld. This judgment motif — moral accountability determining postmortem fate — would echo through later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions (World History Encyclopedia; Wikipedia).
The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100–1200 BCE)
The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh contains one of the earliest literary meditations on mortality and the afterlife. After the death of his companion Enkidu, Gilgamesh embarks on a quest for immortality, ultimately learning from Utnapishtim that “Life, which you look for, you will never find.” Enkidu’s vision of the underworld as a dark, bleak place — where the dead exist in dust and darkness regardless of their earthly status — established a somber Mesopotamian counterpoint to later Greek and Egyptian afterlife imaginaries (Britannica; Wikipedia).
TIME PERIOD – Greek Mystery Traditions and Orphism (c. 6th century BCE)
The Orphic and Eleusinian mystery cults developed doctrines of soul purification, reincarnation, and postmortem judgment. The Orphic tradition held that the soul was divine but imprisoned in the body as punishment, and could be liberated through ritual initiation and purified living across multiple incarnations. These ideas directly influenced Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato, and introduced the concept of moral purification as a precondition for favorable postmortem destiny.
Plato’s Phaedo and the Myth of Er (c. 380 BCE)
Plato’s dialogues represent the first sustained philosophical arguments for the immortality of the soul. In the Phaedo, Socrates presents four arguments — from opposites, from recollection, from affinity, and from the Forms — to argue that the soul is immortal and imperishable. The dialogue, set during Socrates’ final hours, frames death as the liberation of the soul from the body, establishing a dualist framework that would dominate Western philosophy for two millennia (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Wikipedia).
In Book X of the Republic, the Myth of Er recounts the story of a soldier named Er son of Armenius, who is left for dead on a battlefield but revives on his funeral pyre twelve days later. Er describes a journey through the afterlife: souls are judged, rewarded or punished, and then choose their next incarnations. The Myth of Er is widely cited as the earliest recorded narrative resembling a modern near-death experience, complete with an out-of-body component, a judgment scene, and a return to the body (Wikipedia; St. Andrews University Repository).
TIME PERIOD – (4th–3rd century BCE) Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics
Not all ancient philosophers affirmed personal survival. Aristotle treated the soul (psyche) as the form or actuality of the living body — a hylomorphic theory that made the soul inseparable from the body and thus non-survivable in any personal sense. Epicurus argued that death is nothing to us, since when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. The Stoics generally held that the soul could persist after death but was ultimately dissolved back into the cosmic logos, with some Stoics (like Cleanthes) affirming survival and others (like Chrysippus) denying it. These positions established the materialist and naturalist countertraditions that would recur throughout the history of afterlife thought.
TIME PERIOD – (c. 19 BCE) Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI
Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid — Aeneas’s descent into the underworld guided by the Sibyl of Cumae — became the most influential literary depiction of the afterlife in Western literature for over a millennium. Virgil synthesizes Greek underworld geography (Styx, Charon, Tartarus, Elysium) with Roman moral themes, creating a hierarchical afterlife of judgment and purification. Dante would later adopt Virgil as his guide through the Inferno, cementing this text’s canonical status (Wikipedia; SparkNotes).
II. Religious and Medieval Developments
TIME PERIOD – (c. 8 BCE – 1CE) Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism
The Hebrew Bible’s afterlife concept evolved significantly over time. Early Israelite religion knew Sheol — a shadowy underworld where all the dead exist without distinction. During the Second Temple period, influenced by Persian and Hellenistic thought, Jewish theology developed concepts of resurrection, final judgment, and a differentiated afterlife (reward for the righteous, punishment for the wicked), as seen in the books of Daniel, 2 Maccabees, and Enochic literature. This trajectory would be foundational for Christian and Islamic afterlife doctrine.
Pauline Resurrection Theology (c. 50–60 CE)
The Apostle Paul’s letters, particularly 1 Corinthians 15, established resurrection as the central Christian afterlife doctrine. Paul argued that Christ’s resurrection was the “firstfruits” of a general resurrection to come, and that the resurrected body would be a “spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon) — transformed rather than merely resuscitated. This theological framework became the backbone of Christian afterlife belief and remains central to Christian theology across denominations.
TIME PERIOD – Augustine and Aquinas (4th–13th century)
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) provided the most influential early Christian philosophical treatment of the soul, arguing for its immateriality and immortality while framing the afterlife in terms of the City of God. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) synthesized Aristotelian hylomorphism with Christian doctrine, arguing that the soul is the form of the body but can subsist separately after death by virtue of its intellectual operations. Aquinas’s position — that the separated soul awaits reunion with the body at the final resurrection — remains the official Catholic doctrine.
TIME PERIOD – (c. 8 CE; compiled 14th CE) The Tibetan Bardo Thödol
The Bardo Thödol — known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead — is a funerary text from the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. It describes the experiences of consciousness during the bardo, the intermediate state between death and rebirth, and is recited to guide the dying person toward liberation or a favorable rebirth. The text details successive stages of postmortem experience — from the “clear light” of the death moment through terrifying and peaceful visionary apparitions. Its 1927 translation by Walter Evans-Wentz introduced it to Western audiences, and it became influential in 20th-century psychology, comparative religion, and even psychedelic research (Britannica; Wikipedia; Oxford Academic).
(c. 1308–1321) Medieval Vision Literature and Dante’s Divine Comedy
Medieval Europe produced a rich tradition of otherworldly journey narratives — the Vision of Tnugdal, the Vision of Thurkill, and Bede’s account of Drihthelm’s otherworld journey — in which a living or briefly dead person tours heaven, hell, and purgatory and returns to report. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, completed c. 1320, is the supreme synthesis of this tradition. Combining Virgilian descent with Christian theology, Dante’s journey through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso codified the medieval Christian afterlife imaginary — its geography, its moral architecture, and its vision of divine justice — with such literary power that it shaped popular conceptions of the afterlife for centuries (Wikipedia; Khan Academy).
III. Early Modern Philosophy and Mind-Body Dualism
TIME PERIOD – (15CE-17CE) Descartes and Substance Dualism
René Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) established mind-body dualism as the central framework for subsequent survival debates. Descartes argued that the mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa) are radically distinct substances, and that the mind is indivisible and therefore potentially immortal. While Descartes claimed only to demonstrate that the mind is distinct from the body — stopping short of proving full immortality, which he acknowledged would require additional argument — his dualism provided the metaphysical scaffolding for centuries of afterlife philosophy. It also generated the “interaction problem” (how can an immaterial mind causally affect a material body?) that remains a central challenge (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Immortality).
(1689) Locke on Personal Identity
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke argued that personal identity consists not in the identity of a substance (soul or body) but in consciousness and memory. A person is the same across time if they can extend their consciousness — via memory — to past actions and experiences. This “psychological criterion” of personal identity became foundational for afterlife philosophy: if what matters for personal identity is psychological continuity rather than bodily continuity, then survival of bodily death is at least conceivable in terms of transferred memories and consciousness. Locke’s framework directly anticipates modern debates about what “survival” could mean (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; PMC).
(1755; published 1779) Hume’s Skepticism
David Hume’s essay “Of the Immortality of the Soul,” written around 1755 but published posthumously in 1779, mounted a systematic skeptical challenge to afterlife belief. Hume argued that the three traditional grounds for belief in immortality — metaphysical, moral, and physical — all fail. He contended that consciousness appears to depend on bodily organization, that moral arguments from divine justice are circular, and that the soul’s nature provides no evidence of survival. Hume’s essay became the canonical skeptical position against survival and a touchstone for later naturalistic and materialist philosophers (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
(1788) Kant’s Postulates of Practical Reason
Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), argued that the immortality of the soul cannot be proven by theoretical reason but is a necessary “postulate” of practical (moral) reason. Kant held that the moral law demands the pursuit of the “highest good” — the union of virtue and proportionate happiness — and that this requires an endless moral progress, which in turn presupposes the soul’s immortality. Kant’s position — that immortality is rationally necessary for morality but not theoretically demonstrable — became the dominant liberal theological framework and deeply influenced 19th-century religious thought (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Kant).
IV. TIME PERIOD – Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and Psychical Research
Edward Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871)
Edward Burnett Tylor’s two-volume Primitive Culture (1871) introduced “animism” — the belief in souls and spiritual beings — as the theoretical foundation of religion in the academic study of comparative religion. Tylor argued that belief in the afterlife originated in primitive peoples’ attempts to explain dreams, trances, and death through the concept of a separable soul. While Tylor’s evolutionary framework is now dated, his analysis of afterlife beliefs as human universals rooted in psychological experience was foundational for anthropology and provided a naturalistic genealogy of survival beliefs (Wikipedia; Ohio State University; Encyclopedia.com).
Albert Heim’s Fall Survivor Reports (1892)
The Swiss geologist Albert Heim (1849–1937) presented the earliest systematic collection of near-death experiences to the Swiss Alpine Club on February 26, 1892. After surviving a near-fatal mountaineering fall himself, Heim collected accounts from approximately 30 survivors of serious Alpine falls. He reported that these survivors recalled feeling no anxiety or pain during the experience, but rather a calmness, a sense of rapid mental acuity, and a panoramic review of their lives. Heim’s report, “Notizen über den Tod durch Absturz” (Notes on Fatal Falls), is now recognized as the first systematic study of near-death experiences, predating Moody by over 80 years (Psi Encyclopedia — NDE Overview; British Psychological Society).
The Fox Sisters and Modern Spiritualism (1848)
On March 31, 1848, in Hydesville, New York, sisters Margaretta “Maggie” Fox (14) and Kate Fox (11) reported hearing rapping sounds they attributed to the spirit of a murdered peddler. This event launched the Spiritualist movement — a mass religious movement based on communication with the dead through mediums and séances. Spiritualism spread rapidly across the United States and Europe, attracting millions of adherents and creating a cultural infrastructure of mediumship, automatic writing, and spirit photography that would provide the empirical raw material for the later psychical research movement. In 1888, Margaret Fox publicly confessed that the rappings were fraudulent, though she later recanted the confession (Smithsonian Magazine; Britannica; BBC).
Allan Kardec and Spiritism (1857)
The French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, writing under the pen name Allan Kardec, published The Spirits’ Book (Le Livre des Esprits) on April 18, 1857. Kardec systematized spiritualist phenomena into a coherent doctrine of Spiritism, incorporating reincarnation, moral progress across multiple lives, and the possibility of communication with spirits through mediums. Spiritism became particularly influential in France, Brazil, and other parts of Latin America, and remains a significant religious movement. Kardec’s codification of survival-of-consciousness beliefs into a structured philosophical system represented a major attempt to reconcile afterlife belief with rationalist methodology (Wikipedia; Psi Encyclopedia — SPR; Britannica).
The Society for Psychical Research (1882)
The founding of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London in February 1882 marked a watershed: the first learned society dedicated to the scientific investigation of “that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical and Spiritualistic.” The SPR was founded primarily by a Cambridge group of scholars including Henry Sidgwick, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Edmund Gurney. Its establishment institutionalized the empirical investigation of apparitions, mediumship, telepathy, and survival of bodily death, bringing elite scholarly rigor — including census surveys, experimental protocols, and case-collection methods — to phenomena previously dismissed by mainstream science (Wikipedia; SPR History; Psi Encyclopedia — SPR).
Phantasms of the Living (1886)
Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore published Phantasms of the Living in 1886, a two-volume work that constituted the SPR’s first major empirical contribution. The book compiled and analyzed hundreds of cases of apparitions, crisis visions, and telepathic experiences, using a “Census of Hallucinations” methodology to estimate the statistical frequency of such experiences in the general population. While criticized for methodological limitations, Phantasms of the Living established the case-collection approach that would define psychical research for decades and represented one of the first attempts to apply statistical reasoning to survival-related phenomena (Library of Congress; Cambridge University Press; Internet Archive).
William James and Leonora Piper (1885 onward)
The American philosopher and psychologist William James began investigating the Boston medium Leonora Piper in 1885. James controlled virtually all of Piper’s séance arrangements for eighteen months, arranging for friends and relatives to attend without Piper’s knowledge. He concluded that Piper offered the “dramatic possibility” that her mediumship was genuine, though he stopped short of claiming proof of survival. James’s investigation of Piper was instrumental in the founding of the American branch of the SPR (ASPR) in 1885, and his approach — treating survival as an empirical and philosophical question rather than a matter of faith — established a methodological standard for subsequent mediumship research. His 1886 “Report of the Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena” remains a landmark in the field (Psi Encyclopedia — William James; Skeptical Inquirer; Psi Encyclopedia — Leonora Piper; Sage Journals).
V. Early Twentieth Century: Survival Research and Deathbed Visions
1902 William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James delivers his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1901–1902, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902. The book framed extraordinary religious experiences — including mystical states, conversion experiences, and phenomena resembling NDEs — as psychologically and philosophically serious, deserving of empirical study rather than dismissal. James’s pragmatic approach and his argument that religious experiences have intrinsic authority for the experient created the intellectual climate in which later NDE research could be taken seriously by the academic community (Wikipedia; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Harvard University Press).
1903 F. W. H. Myers – Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death
Frederic W. H. Myers, who had died in 1901, left behind a manuscript that was published posthumously in 1903 as Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. This two-volume work was the most ambitious synthesis of psychical research to date, analyzing phenomena including automatic writing, precognitive dreams, trance mediumship, and genius as expressions of what Myers called the “subliminal self” — a broader consciousness operating beneath ordinary awareness. Myers argued that these phenomena collectively pointed toward the survival of personality after death. The book’s influence extended into mainstream psychology; William James praised it, and Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and Freud’s notion of the unconscious both bear traces of Myers’s ideas about subliminal consciousness (Internet Archive; Nature; Psi Encyclopedia — Frederic Myers).
1926 William Barrett’s Death-Bed Visions
Sir William F. Barrett, a physicist at the Royal College of Science in Dublin and a founding member of the SPR, publishes Death-Bed Visions: The Psychical Experiences of the Dying posthumously in 1926. This was the first systematic study of a phenomenon that would become important in end-of-life research: dying patients reporting visions of deceased relatives or religious figures appearing at the bedside. Barrett documented cases where dying persons appeared to see and recognize deceased individuals whose deaths they could not have known about, and cases where the timing of the vision coincided with the actual moment of another person’s death. The book opened a research line that would be extended decades later by Osis and Haraldsson and by the Fenwicks (Internet Archive; Wellcome Collection; Psi Encyclopedia — Barrett; Psi Encyclopedia — Deathbed Visions).
J.B. Rhine and Experimental Parapsychology (1930’s – 1960s )
Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980) establishes the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in the 1930s, developing experimental methods — particularly Zener card tests — for quantifying extrasensory perception (ESP). Rhine launched the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937 and is considered the founder of modern experimental parapsychology. While Rhine’s work focused on ESP and psychokinesis rather than survival directly, his institutionalization of parapsychology as a laboratory science created the methodological and organizational infrastructure that later survival researchers would draw upon. His work also generated intense scientific controversy, with critics questioning replicability and experimental controls, debates that would recur throughout NDE and survival research (Britannica; Psi Encyclopedia — Rhine; Duke University).
1960s–2007 Ian Stevenson’s Reincarnation Research
The psychiatrist Ian Stevenson (1918–2007) begins investigating cases of children who claimed to remember previous lives in the early 1960s, traveling extensively in India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Brazil, Turkey, and among the Tlingit of Alaska. His landmark book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, first published in 1966 as volume 26 of the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research and reprinted by the University Press of Virginia in 1974, documented cases in which young children reported detailed memories of deceased individuals, including verifiable names, locations, and circumstances of death. Stevenson compiled over 3,000 such cases over four decades. In 1967, he founded the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia School of Medicine — the only research unit at a mainstream U.S. medical school dedicated to investigating phenomena suggestive of survival of consciousness after death. Stevenson’s work remains the most extensive systematic investigation of reincarnation-type claims, and DOPS continues to operate under later directors including Bruce Greyson and Edward Kelly (Wikipedia — Twenty Cases; Psi Encyclopedia — Ian Stevenson; UVA DOPS; Psi Encyclopedia — DOPS).
1930s–1960s C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, and Mid-Century Analytic Survival Philosophy
Several mid-century analytic philosophers treated survival of death as a serious philosophical question. C. D. Broad (1887–1971) analyzed the logical structure of survival arguments and the concept of personal identity, carefully distinguishing different senses in which “survival” might be possible. H. H. Price (1899–1984), in his influential 1953 essay, spelled out in considerable detail a notion of disembodied souls existing in a “world” of something like dream-images — images that would be shared between surviving minds. Price argued that the concept of a disembodied life subjectively similar to our own is at least intelligible, countering the usual skeptical dismissals. These philosophers brought the tools of analytic precision to survival questions, establishing the conceptual framework that contemporary philosophers of religion and mind continue to use (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Afterlife; University of Maryland, Baltimore County).
VI. The Birth of Modern Near Death Experience Studies
Mid-20th century The CPR Revolution
The development of modern cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the 1950s–1960s — including the introduction of external chest compressions, mouth-to-mouth ventilation, and later defibrillation — created the conditions for modern NDE research. For the first time in human history, large numbers of people who had experienced clinical death (cardiac arrest with cessation of heartbeat and respiration) were being returned to life. This medical revolution meant that experiences occurring during the dying process could be recalled and reported by survivors, transforming NDEs from rare anecdotal curiosities into a statistically significant phenomenon available for systematic study.
1969 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Modern Thanatology Movement
The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying in 1969, based on interviews with terminally ill patients at the University of Chicago’s Billings Hospital. The book introduced what became known as the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (DABDA) — and fundamentally transformed the medical and cultural understanding of death. By insisting that dying patients be treated with dignity and listened to, Kübler-Ross helped create the hospice movement and the field of modern thanatology. Her work was pivotal for NDE research because it normalized the discussion of death and dying within clinical settings, making it possible for patients to report extraordinary experiences without fear of dismissal. Kübler-Ross herself later became interested in NDEs, eventually arguing that they constituted evidence for survival of consciousness (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation; NCBI; Wikipedia — Five Stages of Grief).
1972–1977 Noyes and Kletti’s Fall Survivor Studies
The psychiatrist Russell Noyes Jr. and psychologist Roy Kletti published “The Experience of Dying from Falls” in OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying in 1972, building directly on Albert Heim’s 1892 work. Noyes and Kletti collected and analyzed accounts from survivors of falls, drownings, automobile accidents, and other near-death events, identifying recurrent themes of altered time perception, depersonalization, panoramic memory review, and a sense of calm. From 1975 to 1977, Noyes further developed these findings, arguing that the experience of near-death corresponded to a “transient syndrome of depersonalisation.” This research represented the most systematic scientific investigation of near-death experiences prior to Moody, and Noyes and Kletti were also responsible for translating and disseminating Heim’s original 1892 work to an English-speaking audience (Semantic Scholar — Noyes & Kletti 1972; British Psychological Society; Psi Encyclopedia — NDE Overview).
1975 Raymond Moody’s Life After Life
Dr. Raymond Moody publishes Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon — Survival of Bodily Death in 1975, based on interviews with over 150 people who had undergone near-death experiences. In this seminal book, Moody coined the term “near-death experience” and identified common elements — including a sense of peace, out-of-body experience, traveling through a tunnel, encountering a being of light, a life review, and encountering deceased relatives. The book sold over 13 million copies worldwide and is universally recognized as the founding text of modern NDE studies, establishing both the vocabulary and the research agenda for the field (Wikipedia — Life After Life; Wikipedia — Raymond Moody; Religion News; BYU Religious Studies Center).
The International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) was originally founded in November 1977 in Charlottesville, Virginia, as the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena, and begins formal operations in the spring of 1978. IANDS becomes the premier institutional home for NDE research, publishing the Journal of Near-Death Studies (the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to NDE research), organizing annual conferences, and providing support networks for NDE experiencers. Its founding marked the transition of NDE studies from a topic of popular interest to an organized academic field (IANDS About; Wikipedia — IANDS; PMC).
1980 Kenneth Ring’s Life at Death
The psychologist Kenneth Ring publishes Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience in 1980, based on interviews with over a hundred people who had come close to death. Ring develops a five-stage model of the NDE (peace, body separation, entering the darkness, seeing the light, entering the light) and applies systematic psychological research methods to the phenomenon. Ring’s work represented the first major attempt to move beyond Moody’s qualitative approach toward a more rigorous, quantitative framework, and he became one of the most influential academic figures in NDE research (Ken Ring — Publications; Psi Encyclopedia — Kenneth Ring; New York Times).
1982 Michael Sabom’s Recollections of Death
The cardiologist Michael Sabom publishes Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation in 1982, based on a five-year study at the University of Florida involving interviews with 116 resuscitated patients. Sabom’s work was notable as the first cardiologist-led clinical investigation of NDEs, lending medical credibility to the field. He documented cases of apparent veridical perception — patients who claimed to have observed their own resuscitation from an out-of-body vantage point and described medical details they could not have known from their physical position. Sabom argued that these cases challenged purely physiological explanations and supported the possibility that consciousness could function independently of the brain (Wikipedia — Michael Sabom; SciSpace — Historical Perspectives; Sage Journals).
1983 Bruce Greyson’s NDE Scale
The psychiatrist Bruce Greyson develops the NDE Scale in 1983, based on the reports of 74 individuals who had experienced full-blown NDEs. Drawing from an initial pool of eighty commonly reported characteristics, Greyson collated a 16-item scaled-response questionnaire — each item scored 0, 1, or 2 — providing the first standardized research instrument for measuring and classifying near-death experiences. A score of 7 or higher (out of a possible 32) was established as the criterion for labeling an experience an NDE for research purposes. The NDE Scale turned NDE description from anecdotal narrative into a quantifiable, comparable dataset, and remains the standard research instrument in the field. It was subsequently validated through Rasch scaling analysis, confirming its unidimensional measurement properties (PubMed — Greyson 1983; Psi Encyclopedia — Bruce Greyson; UVA Health).
VII. Clinical Consolidation and Cross-Cultural Research
1971 Osis and Haraldsson’s At the Hour of Death
The psychical researchers Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson published At the Hour of Death in 1971, reporting the results of a large-scale cross-cultural study of deathbed visions. They surveyed physicians and nurses in the United States and India, collecting thousands of reports of dying patients’ visions. Their findings suggested that deathbed visions — apparitions of deceased relatives, religious figures, and otherworldly landscapes — occurred across cultures with remarkable consistency, and that they could not be easily dismissed as drug effects or hallucinations. The book has been translated into fourteen languages and remains in print (Wikipedia — Karlis Osis; Psi Encyclopedia — Karlis Osis; Psi Encyclopedia — Erlendur Haraldsson).
1980s–1990s Melvin Morse’s Pediatric NDE Studies
The pediatrician Melvin Morse conducted pioneering research on near-death experiences in children, beginning with a 1986 study published in the American Journal of Diseases of Children in which four of seven children who survived cardiopulmonary arrest reported NDEs. Morse argued that children’s NDEs were particularly significant because young children were too young to have absorbed cultural expectations about death and dying, making their reports less susceptible to the “cultural conditioning” critique often leveled at adult NDE accounts. His 1989 book Closer to the Light became a New York Times bestseller. Morse’s work established children’s NDEs as a distinct and important subfield (Wikipedia — Melvin Morse; PubMed; Psi Encyclopedia — Children’s NDEs).
1990s–2000s Peter & Elizabeth Fenwick’s End-of-Life Research
The British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick and his wife Elizabeth Fenwick conduct extensive research on end-of-life experiences (ELEs) and near-death experiences in the UK. Their work, published in The Art of Dying (2008) and numerous academic papers, documented deathbed visions, coincidental experiences at the moment of death, and the desire of dying persons to reconcile with estranged family members. They found that these experiences were not psychotic, not drug-induced, and showed no unitary brain pathology. Peter Fenwick, as president of the British branch of IANDS, became Britain’s leading clinical authority on near-death experiences (PubMed — Fenwick 2010; PMC — End-of-life experiences; Psi Encyclopedia — Deathbed Visions).
VIII. Neuroscientific Explanations and Skeptical Models
1993 Susan Blackmore’s Dying to Live
The psychologist Susan Blackmore published Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences in 1993, providing the most influential materialist explanation of NDEs. Blackmore argued that the characteristic features of NDEs — tunnels, lights, out-of-body experiences, life reviews, and feelings of peace — are natural phenomena generated by a distressed brain. She proposed that the dying brain, deprived of oxygen and subjected to neurochemical changes, produces these experiences through predictable neurological mechanisms. Blackmore’s work became the standard skeptical counterpoint to survivalist interpretations, and her willingness to engage seriously with NDE phenomenology (rather than dismissing it) made her critique particularly influential within the NDE research community (Psi Encyclopedia — Susan Blackmore; Susan Blackmore — Dying to Live; Goodreads).
The psychiatrist Karl Jansen proposed that NDEs can be reproduced by ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, through blockade of receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate. In a 1997 paper in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, Jansen argued that conditions that precipitate NDEs — such as hypoxia, ischemia, hypoglycemia, and temporal lobe epilepsy — release a flood of glutamate that overactivates NMDA receptors, and that the brain may release endogenous ketamine-like compounds as a neuroprotective response, producing NDE-like experiences. A 2019 study by Martial et al., analyzing approximately 15,000 reports linked to 165 psychoactive substances against 625 NDE narratives, confirmed that ketamine consistently produced reports most similar to NDEs. The ketamine model remains one of the leading neurochemical explanations of NDE phenomenology (Journal of Near-Death Studies — Jansen 1997; PMC; University of Liège Repository).
2002–2005 Olaf Blanke and the Temporoparietal Junction
The neurologist Olaf Blanke and colleagues at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne demonstrated that electrical stimulation of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) in the brain can induce out-of-body experiences (OBEs). In a landmark 2002 paper, Blanke reported that stimulation of the TPJ in a patient undergoing epilepsy evaluation produced the sensation of leaving the body and viewing oneself from an external perspective. Subsequent research (2005) showed that the TPJ is a crucial structure for the conscious experience of the normal self, mediating the spatial unity of self and body. Blanke’s work provided a neurological mechanism for one of the most dramatic components of NDEs — the out-of-body experience — and became a cornerstone of neuroscientific explanations of NDE phenomenology (PMC — Blanke 2004; PubMed — Blanke 2005; Sage Journals; TIME).
2006 Kevin Nelson’s REM-Intrusion Hypothesis
The neurologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky and colleagues publishes a study in Neurology in 2006 proposing that REM sleep intrusion contributes to near-death experiences. In a case-control study, they found that people who had reported NDEs had a 2.8 times greater incidence of REM intrusion — the phenomenon of REM sleep states (such as sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations, and muscle atonia) intruding into wakefulness — compared to age- and sex-matched controls. Nelson argued that the brain’s arousal system, which governs the transition between waking and REM sleep, may predispose some individuals to both REM intrusion and NDEs, providing a neurophysiological explanation for the vivid, dream-like quality of NDE phenomenology. The REM-intrusion hypothesis joined the ketamine/NMDA model, the TPJ stimulation findings, and the anoxia hypothesis as a leading neuroscientific explanation of NDEs (PubMed — Nelson et al. 2006; Neurology; PMC — Nelson 2015).
IX. Prospective Cardiac-Arrest Research
2001 Van Lommel et al. — The Lancet
The Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel and colleagues publishes the first prospective study of NDEs in cardiac arrest survivors in The Lancet on December 15, 2001. The study followed 344 patients who had undergone cardiac arrest in Dutch hospitals, finding that 18% reported a near-death experience during the period of unconsciousness — a time of clinical death with cessation of heartbeat, respiration, and measurable brain activity. The study included a notable case of a patient who accurately recalled the view of his dentures during the period his brain had been non-functional. Van Lommel’s prospective methodology — interviewing patients shortly after resuscitation rather than relying on retrospective accounts — addressed the criticism that NDE reports were embellished over time. The study became one of the most cited clinical NDE papers and established the prospective cardiac-arrest paradigm as the gold standard for NDE research (PMC — Van Lommel; The Lancet — Van Lommel 2001; PubMed; Psi Encyclopedia — AWARE Study).
Parnia and Fenwick — Resuscitation Research (2002)
Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick publish a study in Resuscitation in 2002 titled “Near death experiences in cardiac arrest: Visions of a dying brain or visions of a new science of consciousness?” This study examined cardiac arrest survivors and documented cases of patients who reported the ability to “see” and recall specific detailed descriptions of their resuscitation, as verified by resuscitation staff. Parnia and Fenwick framed the question in explicitly epistemological terms: whether NDEs represent the dying brain’s last gasp or evidence for a new science of consciousness. This paper helped establish the research program that would culminate in the AWARE studies (PubMed — Parnia & Fenwick 2002; Wired; Google Scholar — Sam Parnia).
2014 The AWARE Study
The AWAreness during REsuscitation (AWARE) study, led by Sam Parnia and published in Resuscitation in December 2014, was the first large-scale, multicenter prospective study of awareness and NDEs during cardiac arrest. Conducted across 15 hospitals in the UK, US, and Austria between 2008 and 2012, the study enrolled 2,060 patients who experienced cardiac arrest. Of the 330 who survived to discharge, a subset were able to undergo structured interviews. Among those interviewed, 39% described a perception of awareness during the period of clinical death, though most did not have explicit recall of specific events. Approximately 9% had full NDEs, and 2% described awareness with explicit recall of seeing and hearing actual events related to their resuscitation (out-of-body experiences). The study included one verified case of a patient whose auditory perception during cardiac arrest was corroborated, though the study’s design (which included hidden visual targets) did not produce a confirmed case of veridical visual perception. The AWARE study was hailed as the most rigorous attempt to date to test whether consciousness can persist during cardiac arrest (PubMed — AWARE 2014; University of Southampton; NYU Langone; Psi Encyclopedia — AWARE).
2022–2023 AWARE II and the Dying Brain
The follow-up AWARE II study, continuing Parnia’s multicenter resuscitation research, examined the relationship between brain resuscitation quality and neurological, functional, cognitive, and consciousness outcomes following cardiac arrest. A key finding, reported in 2022–2023, was that in a subset of patients who received brain monitoring, nearly 40% showed brain activity that returned to normal or near-normal from a “flatline” state, at points even an hour into CPR — a finding that challenged the assumption that the brain is entirely inactive during cardiac arrest. Of 28 survivors interviewed, six reported NDEs, though none explicitly recalled the hidden images or auditory stimuli used to test veridical perception. The study also documented intra-arrest bursts of organized brain activity on EEG, including brain signatures associated with consciousness (delta, theta, alpha, and gamma rhythms). Parnia’s team interpreted these findings as suggesting that the dying brain may be capable of generating neural correlates of heightened conscious processing, while the survivalist implications remain debated (NYU Langone — Consciousness; Elsevier Press Release; PMC — 2025 AHA Symposium; UNT Digital Library).
2013 The Borjigin Rat Study — Surge of Neurophysiological Activity
In 2013, Jimo Borjigin and colleagues at the University of Michigan published a study in PNAS showing that within the first 30 seconds after cardiac arrest in rats, the brain produced a transient surge of highly synchronized gamma oscillations — high-frequency brain activity associated with conscious processing — that exceeded levels found during the conscious waking state. The gamma oscillations were global, highly coherent, and exhibited increased anterior-posterior-directed connectivity. The authors concluded that the mammalian brain is capable of generating neural correlates of heightened conscious processing at near-death. This study provided the first neurophysiological evidence of organized brain activity during the dying process and became a foundational reference for neuroscientific explanations of NDEs. Greyson, van Lommel, and Fenwick commented that the study had “profound implications” for understanding NDEs, though its interpretation — whether the surge represents the neural correlate of NDE phenomenology or merely a terminal brain event — remains contested (PubMed — Borjigin et al. 2013; PNAS Commentary — Greyson 2013; NPR; Yale Scientific).
2022 The Dying Human Brain — EEG Case Report
In 2022, a team led by Raul Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia, publish the first continuous EEG recording from a dying human brain, obtained from an 87-year-old patient who underwent cardiac arrest after a traumatic subdural hematoma. Published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, the study revealed that 15 seconds before and after the patient’s heart stopped, the brain exhibited gamma oscillations and cross-frequency coupling (modulation of gamma activity by alpha and theta rhythms) — patterns associated with memory recall, dreaming, and information processing. The authors suggested that a dying brain may replay life memories, consistent with the “life review” component of NDEs. A 2023 follow-up study by Borjigin’s group, published in PNAS, documented similar gamma surges in two of four comatose patients who died in the hospital, strengthening the evidence for organized neurophysiological activity in the dying human brain (Frontiers — Vicente et al. 2022; PMC — Borjigin 2023; Frontiers Commentary).
X. Contemporary Philosophy of Consciousness and Survival
1976 John Hick’s Death and Eternal Life
The philosopher of religion John Hick (1922–2012) published Death and Eternal Life in 1976, a major philosophical-theological synthesis exploring Eastern and Western conceptions of the afterlife. Hick argued that scientific and philosophical objections to the idea of survival after death can be challenged, and he developed an afterlife hypothesis combining elements from Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions — proposing a continuation beyond this life of human moral and spiritual growth, potentially through multiple lives (reincarnation) and postmortem environments. Hick’s work represented the most ambitious 20th-century attempt to construct a philosophically defensible, religiously pluralistic afterlife theology, and it remains influential in the philosophy of religion (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — John Hick; John Hick — Books).
1984 Derek Parfit on Personal Identity
The philosopher Derek Parfit (1942–2017) published Reasons and Persons in 1984, revolutionizing the philosophy of personal identity with direct implications for survival. Parfit argued that what matters in survival is not personal identity (which is an all-or-nothing, one-to-one relation) but psychological continuity and connectedness (the “Relation R”), which can admit of degree and may be one-to-many or many-to-one. On Parfit’s view, the question of whether we “survive” death becomes less about whether the same person continues to exist and more about whether sufficient psychological continuity is preserved. This dissolution of the importance of strict identity opened new conceptual space for thinking about what survival could mean, and it remains the starting point for contemporary philosophical discussions of personal identity and the afterlife (MIT OpenCourseWare; Britannica — Derek Parfit; Oxford Academic — Survival and Identity; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Afterlife).
XI. Synthesis and Unresolved Questions
What Changed Over Time:
UNRESOLVED TENSIONS: The field remains defined by several deep and unresolved tensions:
- Veridical perception:
Reports of patients observing events during cardiac arrest that they could not have perceived from their physical position remain the strongest empirical challenge to purely neurobiological explanations. The AWARE studies’ attempts to test this under controlled conditions have produced suggestive but not definitive results. - Timing of experience:
If NDEs occur during the period of cardiac arrest — when brain activity is measurably absent or profoundly diminished — this challenges the assumption that consciousness requires ongoing brain function. However, the possibility that NDEs occur during the onset or recovery of cardiac arrest, rather than during its deepest phase, has not been definitively excluded. - Brain-based models vs. survival hypotheses:
The neuroscientific explanations (anoxia, NMDA receptor activity, TPJ stimulation, gamma surges) explain many features of NDE phenomenology but do not address the veridical perception component. Survival hypotheses explain veridical perception but lack a mechanism and face the broader challenge of mind-body interaction. - Cross-cultural variation:
While the core elements of NDEs appear across cultures, specific content (beings of light, religious figures, judgment scenes) varies with cultural background, supporting both the view that NDEs are neurologically generated and shaped by expectation, and the view that they represent encounters with a reality interpreted through cultural frameworks. - The hard problem:
The persistence of NDEs and the afterlife as live questions reflects the deeper, unresolved “hard problem” of consciousness — the explanatory gap between physical brain processes and subjective experience. Until this gap is bridged, NDEs will remain a contested boundary between neuroscience and the philosophy of mind.
Landmark Studies and Pivotal Developments
While this is not intended as an exhaustive account of Near-Death research, the following studies are among the pivotal points that provided major advances and developments in NDE research
1975 – Raymond Moody names the phenomenon
Psychiatrist Raymond Moody coined the term “near-death experience” in his seminal book Life After Life, drawing on interviews with more than a hundred people who had come close to death or been revived after clinical death. He described recurring elements, including feelings of peace, a sense of leaving the body, a tunnel, a bright light, and a review of one’s life. The book drew public and scientific attention to the subject, though it rested on collected accounts rather than a controlled study. Life After Life becomes a best-seller: over 20 million copies sold to date.
1980 The first systematic research – Kenneth Ring
Psychologist Kenneth Ring set out to test Moody’s observations with a more structured approach, studying 102 people who had survived close brushes with death. In Life at Death, he reported that the experience often unfolds in recognizable stages, with feelings of peace the most common and the later stages reported progressively less often. He also documented lasting changes among experiencers, including a diminished fear of death and a greater appreciation of life. Ring went on to help found the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS).
1982 A cardiologist takes a look – Michael Sabom
Cardiologist Michael Sabom’s Recollections of Death was among the first investigations led by a physician. Drawing on interviews with patients he had treated, he compared their descriptions of what happened during resuscitation with their medical records, bringing a clinical, record-based approach to the question of what people can recall from the edge of death.
1983 Measuring the experience – Bruce Greyson
Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson published the Near-Death Experience Scale, a 16-item instrument grouped into four clusters (cognitive, affective, paranormal, and transcendental). Each item is scored from 0 to 2, and a total of 7 or more out of 32 is the accepted threshold for identifying an experience as an NDE. It gave researchers and clinicians a shared yardstick, and it remains the most widely used measure in the field.
See our page on The Greyson NDE Scale.
1992 Not every NDE is peaceful – Bruce Greyson & Nancy Evans Bush
Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush described distressing near-death experiences, which had received far less attention than the peaceful ones. They identified three types: inverse experiences, which share the features of peaceful NDEs but are felt as frightening; void experiences, marked by a sense of nothingness or emptiness; and hellish experiences. The finding matters clinically, because people who have had a frightening experience may be especially reluctant to talk about it.
2001 Prospective studies of cardiac arrest – Sam Parnia and colleagues
Two studies set out to find NDEs as they happened rather than rely on memories collected years later. In Britain, Sam Parnia and colleagues followed 63 cardiac arrest survivors, and about 11 percent reported memories with features of an NDE. In the Netherlands, cardiologist Pim van Lommel and colleagues included 344 consecutive survivors across ten hospitals; 62 (18 percent) reported an NDE, and 41 (12 percent) described a core experience. Having an NDE was not associated with how long the arrest lasted, with medication, or with fear of death beforehand. Follow-up interviews at two and eight years found lasting changes in the experiencers that differed from those of survivors who recalled no experience. The Dutch study appeared in The Lancet.
2013 Looking at the dying brain – Jimo Borjigin and colleagues
Neuroscientist Jimo Borjigin and colleagues recorded brain activity in nine rats undergoing induced cardiac arrest and found a brief, highly synchronized surge of gamma activity within the first 30 seconds, activity associated with heightened conscious processing. Other scientists cautioned against drawing conclusions about human experience from animal data. A 2023 follow-up recorded brain activity in comatose patients as life support was withdrawn and found a similar gamma surge in two of four patients, a small sample that its authors said needs further study.
2014 Testing awareness during resuscitation AWARE study, led by Sam Parnia
The AWARE study, led by Sam Parnia, tracked 2,060 cardiac arrests across hospitals in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Austria. Of 140 survivors who completed interviews, 46 percent recalled some form of memory, with recurring themes such as fear, family, and a bright light; 9 percent had experiences that met criteria for an NDE; and 2 percent described explicit awareness of events during their resuscitation. The study also placed hidden visual targets in resuscitation areas to test claims of perceiving the scene from above, but the arrests happened too rarely in those rooms for the test to be conclusive.
2020 Looking at content, not just depth C. Martial, B. Greyson, and colleagues
Charlotte Martial, Greyson, and colleagues at the University of Liège developed the Near-Death Experience Content Scale (NDE-C), a 20-item measure with five underlying factors. Where the Greyson Scale helps determine whether an experience qualifies as an NDE, the NDE-C was designed to describe what people actually experienced, including negative and distressing content.
See our page on The NDE Content Scale (NDE-C).
2023 AWARE II: brain activity during CPR Sam Parnia et al
A larger follow-up, again led by Parnia, monitored 567 in-hospital cardiac arrests with brain-wave and oxygen recordings. Fifty-three patients survived and 28 completed interviews; 11 of them described lucid experiences during resuscitation. None of the 28 identified the images or sounds used to test for perception. In some patients, near-normal brain-wave patterns appeared for as long as 35 to 60 minutes into CPR, which surprised the researchers and which they say needs further study.
What This Research Means for Clinicians
Taken together, these studies point to a few consistent conclusions. Prospective studies generally find that roughly 10 to 20 percent of cardiac arrest survivors report an NDE (Greyson, 2003; Parnia et al., 2001; van Lommel et al., 2001), although estimates vary with study design and with how an NDE is defined. The experiences tend to be remembered clearly, and they are often followed by lasting changes in values, relationships, and attitudes toward death (Ring, 1980; van Lommel et al., 2001). Some are distressing (Greyson & Bush, 1992).
Researchers still disagree about what causes NDEs. Explanations range from purely physiological accounts to views in which consciousness is not wholly dependent on the brain, and the studies above do not settle the question. Neither AWARE study has produced confirmed perception of the hidden test images or sounds, though both documented survivors who recall lucid awareness during resuscitation. For a clinician, that debate does not need to be resolved in order to take a client’s experience, and its aftereffects, seriously.
Continue Exploring
For clinicians: Treating Near-Death Experiences
New to the subject: Understanding Near-Death Experiences
Had an experience of your own: Share Your Experience
References
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