Abstract
Since the publication of Raymond Moody’s popular book ‘Life after Life’ in 1975, a good deal of academic research [1] has been conducted into the nature and effects of the near-death experience (NDE), a characteristic type of experience that has been reported by many individuals who have been for a time in a state close to that of death, but survived to tell of their experience, often involving an apparent entry into other realms of existence. Many investigators begin with a sceptical position, but invariably come to the conclusion that the NDE exists as a phenomenon, although they differ in their interpretations, which range from the physiological and pharmacological to the psychological and the spiritual. These interpretations reflect the number of levels at which the NDE can be analysed across a range of disciplines; it is quite possible that they are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. The basic issue discussed in this paper is whether the NDE can be satisfactorily accounted for by materialist theories of mind.
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References
See Kenneth Ring, life at Death, Coward, McCann and Geoghagan, New York 1980; Michael Sabom, Recollections of Death, Collins, London, 1982; Kenneth Ring, Heading Toward Omega, William Morrow, New York, 1984; Scott Rogo, The Return from Silence, Aquarian, London, 1989; David Lori mer, Whole in One, Arkana, London, 1990; Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live, Grafton, London 1993; also issues of the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
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See Susan Blackmore, Beyond the Body, Paladin, London, 1982 and Dying to Live, Grafton, London, 1993.
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Personal communication
Quoted in Lorimer, David, Survival?, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1984, 249–250.
Eccles, Sir John, Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self, Routledge, London, 1989; The Mystery of Being Human In: Mott, Sir Nevill, Can Scientists Believe? James and James, 1991, 79–99.
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See Hardy, Sir Alister, The Spiritual Nature of Man, OUP, Oxford, 1976.
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© 1996 Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden
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Lorimer, D. (1996). The Near-Death Experience and the Nature of Consciousness. In: Ghista, D.N. (eds) Biomedical and Life Physics. Vieweg+Teubner Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-85017-1_39
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-85017-1_39
Publisher Name: Vieweg+Teubner Verlag
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