Studies

I cite the evidence of near-death experiences with some trepidation, because there are many books written on this subject which are not scientific or based on any clinical, cross-cultural, long term study, but rather on a few anecdotes taken to the extreme. Some of these nonscientific books have rather manipulative agendas, and some are quite cultic in character. These problematic accounts do not mitigate the excellent longitudinal studies that have been carried out by von Lommel et al, reported in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet,^[1] the two studies carried out by Kenneth Ring on near-death experiences^[2] and his later study of near-death experiences of the blind,^[3] Dr. Melvin Morse’s study of near-death experiences of children (reported in two articles in the American Medical Association’s American Journal of Diseases of Children),^[4] and Raymond Moody’s second (more comprehensive) 1988 study.^[5]There are additional longitudinal and methodologically careful studies reported in the Journal of Near-Death Studies published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies (peer-reviewed).^[6] I will give a brief summary of the studies of van Lommel, MD, et al; Morse, MD, Ring, Ph.D., et al; and Raymond Moody, MD, et al, mentioned above.

Before proceeding, it may be helpful to report the findings of George Gallup Jr. in a 1982 Gallup Poll.^[7] He discovered that approximately 8 million adults in the United States had had a near-death experience (a significantly large population from which to take accurate samples). The people sampled reported having some of the following ten characteristics, which appear to be unique to near-death experiences:

Out of body 26%

Accurate visual perception 23%

Audible sounds or voices 17%

Feelings of peace, painlessness 32%

Light phenomena 14%

Life review 32%

Being in another world 32%

Encountering other beings 23%

Tunnel experience 9%

Precognition 6%