Abstract
Near-death experience exhibits many attributes of mystical awareness. Assessing the mystical quality of psychedelic experience, Walter Pahnke identified a nine-category typology of mystical experience. It is used here to illustrate the mystical nature of near-death experience. The typology also describes the self-transformation which follows the mystical state of consciousness. Self-transformation results from near-death experience. Pahnke's mystical typology characterizes the near-death experience and allows for a definition of near-death experience as a mystical state.
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References
This has been proposed by Grof, S., and Halifax, J.,The Human Encounter With Death. New York, Dutton, 1977; Grosso, M., “Jung, Parapsychology and the Near-Death Experience: Toward a Transpersonal Paradigm,”Anabiosis, 1983,3, 1, 3–38; Ring, K.,Life at Death. New York Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1980; and Ring, K., “The Nature of Personal Identity in the Near-Death Experience: Paul Brunton and the Ancient Tradition,”Anabiosis, 1984,4, 3–20.
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Pennachio, J. Near-death experience as mystical experience. J Relig Health 25, 64–72 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01533055
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01533055