Description
(pdf file, 7 ill.)
Persons who were revived after being clinically dead often report unusual and profound perceptions they had in the state of near-death. These experiences defy scientific and religious thinking alike. Some visual elements of near-death experiences (NDE) resemble one particular type of eye floaters, the ‘shining structure floaters’. The thesis of this article is that floaters and other entoptic phenomena are phenomena of consciousness which continue to exist in states of neardeath – and possibly even beyond death.
What is a Near-Death Experience?
Stories of individuals near to their death are known from many cultures and times. For Western people of past centuries, near-death phenomena attested to the existence of heaven and hell. At the end of the 19th century, such experiences became the focal point of individual scientists’ research. But it was only in the second half of the 20th century that this phenomenon came across a wider scientific and public interest. After preliminary work by researchers such as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Russell Noyes and Robert Crookall (cp. Corazza 2008), the philosopher and psychiatrist Raymond Moody published his book Life after life in 1975. It became a best-seller and initiated the popularization of the subjects of death and dying which were strongly tabooed in Western societies at that time. People from all social classes were encouraged to share their encounters with death. This development has led to a steady increase of NDE reports in the past thirty years.
According to different surveys (cp. Schick/Vaughn 2010), 18 to 60 percent of the patients having suffered a severe accident or cardiac arrest experience sensory and cognitive impressions during their “clinical death” – impressions that Moody collectively calls “near-deathexperiences” (NDE). In the literature, this term is sometimes confined against the “deathbed visions” that are experienced by sick and infirm people in the final stage of the dying process. Moody, after having compared dozens of near-death accounts, describes several elements that NDEs typically consist of…