It seems the world is netting more and more NDEs by the day.
Some days I wonder if modern Near-Death Experiencers are messengers like the mystics or prophets of old, who returned from the wilderness (or the cloister) with messages from the Gods for the societies they lived in. They were vehicles in a sense, transporting and translating sacred messages to their communities from the Other Side.
With the advent of modern medicine more and more people are able to return to life after clinical death. In the past, when societies had massive monasteries and a steady stream of people committed to a lifetime of spiritual practices, perhaps there were many more NDE-like visions that arose from deep states of mantra, meditation, and prayer. People like Padre Pio, St. Francis, Milarepa, or Ramakrishna would have been a more familiar sight. Every town would have its local patron saint or shaman, sometimes celebrated but more often misunderstood, who lived on the outskirts of the city.
But in today’s world where major religions are in steady decline and the pews appear to be getting more and more empty by the year, it may just be that Near-Death Experiences are filling the gap in our modern society.
At the end of the day we are told by all religious and mystical traditions to cultivate a more conscious connection to the Other Side. And it turns out that one of the most helpful ways to do this is listening to people who have had an authentic and profound mystical encounter with the spiritual plane of reality. May we all continue to gain faith and trust on our journeys through life by the power and beauty of these stories.
Near-Death Experiences may just be the defining modern version of religious and spiritual experience.
William James and the Varieties of Religious Experience
Psychologist and philosopher William James published a seminal book in 1902 called The Varieties of Religious Experience. It was based on a series of lectures he delivered at the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 & 1902.
In the foreword of the book we read:
“Published in June 1902, The Varieties of Religious Experience was an immediate best-seller and brought about something of a Copernican revolution by looking at religion not as it appeared in the object (God or the universe or revelation) but as it appeared in the subject (the believing, doubting, praying, and experiencing person.)”
William James writes about his intention and purpose for the book (and the lectures that formed its basis):
“The problem I have set myself is a hard one: first, to defend… ‘experience’ against ‘philosophy’ as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life… and second, to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function.”
The core mission of this book that I believe James articulates - correctly - is elevating experience over philosophy.
What does this mean exactly?
Direct personal experience will always trump dogma or theory. That is what the Buddha taught. That is also what Jesus taught. And it is what Socrates taught. In fact all true mystical paths teach the importance of direct experience over theoretical knowledge.
All European explorers of the 15th or 16th century, after returning from the “New World” or remote regions of Africa and Asia, were respected and listened to far more than the anthropology professors in the universities – as all they had was theoretical knowledge from books. Likewise, speaking personally, I would never surrender myself to a surgery by a doctor fresh out of school who had only read about surgery but never practiced it. Experiential knowledge is far superior to theoretical knowledge.
James is correct, then, in saying that experience and not philosophy, not dogma or creed, is the real backbone of religious life.
Throughout the book, William James draws on a wide range of sources, including autobiographical accounts, religious texts, and the writings of mystics, theologians, and philosophers. He uses examples such as
1) Conversion experiences
2) Mystical experiences
3) Awakenings via religious revivalism
4) Psychological transformation
5) Healing and miracles – both of physical and psychological wounds
6) Religious or Spiritual vocation – those who are called to serve as ministers, missionaries or spiritual leaders
He uses many examples – Saint Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, George Fox (founder of Quakerism), and many more – to explore the diversity of religious/spiritual experiences and the ways they can lead to permanent and enduring transformation.
His book is a classic, and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. While dated and confined to a historical moment (roughly a hundred years ago), its wisdom and understanding of the core essence of religious experience is, well, timeless.
Varieties of Near-Death Experiences
I believe that if James were alive today, he would be absolutely fascinated by NDEs.
Why?
Because they are an example par excellence of a transformative mystical experience. They, like subjects in his book, are examples of people who have had direct subjective experiences of such intensity and potency that they have had long term impact on their personalities, worldviews, and behaviors.
Like James’s studies on religious experience, Near-Death Experiences are focused on subjective experience, and are therefore within the domain of psychology and phenomenology. The secret to NDE studies lies in seeking to understand inner experiences, thoughts, emotions, and perceptions of individuals undergoing religious or mystical experiences.
It is not about dogma. It is not about beliefs.
It is about experience. There is also an incredible variety and diversity of Near-Death Experiences. No two are the same. They seem to be what Donna Rebadow calls “designer” deaths, in the sense that they are uniquely designed for each individual person. Perhaps based on their own beliefs, history, and sensitivity they are given a certain experience that will serve them in the appropriate way.
Some people encounter deceased loved ones. Others see angels, or beings of light. Still others see neither but end up in a beautiful field of lush green grass and swaying trees, with colors they have never seen before. Some NDE experiencers see what they call God or the Creator, and yet many others have an experience of appearing to be alone but nonetheless receive “downloads” from an unknown source. Some travel through a tunnel, some see or merge with “the light,” while others encounter a velvety blackness or void, as did David Williamson.
What distinguishes NDEs as a mystical experience is their sheer vividness and overwhelming realness: the result of which is such a profound effect that they often permanently transform the individuals worldview and understanding of the world. These experiences are a direct encounter with what the psychologist Carl Jung called the Numinous – a Latin word, which means awe-inspiring, or the power to arouse spiritual or religious emotion.
These experiences can also change their behaviors – perhaps they get sober, change careers, or pursue what they have secretly been yearning to do. Often critics will say of NDEs (or religion/faith/spirituality in general) well we have no proof these experiences are real. Like, really real. They could simply be a malfunction or side effect of brain chemistry gone haywire. A last gasp of a dying brain ejecting some DMT out into the bloodstream.
But – we counter back – what about the transformative effect these experiences often have on these people’s lives? Getting sober? Changing careers to something much more meaningful? Shifting to being more loving, kind and compassionate? Beginning to serve others in the community on weekends? If that is a side effect of malfunctioning brain circuitry – I’ll take that any day of the week!
Some experience a conversion after their NDE, and join a religion or faith after being an atheist throughout their life. Others leave their religion because they feel that the creeds and dogma of their faith can’t hold the immensity and multi-dimensionality of their NDE.
Regardless of these differences people who experience NDEs are, quite simply, never the same.
“And that is the hallmark of a spiritual experience,” says Peter Panagore, “it is an experience that changes the course of your life towards love.”
So it turns out that the diversity and variation of NDEs doesn’t invalidate them, but rather substantiates their authenticity. In the same way we understand falling in love. Would we argue that because there are so many different ways to fall in love (fast and instantaneous, slow and thoughtfully, or completely out of left field with plenty of turns and twists of drama) that “love” or falling in love doesn’t exist? I would think not. Instead there is simply so many different variations of love and so many ways two people can find it together. Diversity is a feature not a bug, in other words.
Likewise the vast breadth of variation when it comes to NDEs signals an infinite field of potentiality. Out of that potentiality are limitless possibilities that can manifest in many different ways.
Challenges to Materialism
One common theme of NDEs to William James’ understanding of religious experience is the sudden shift for the individual from the ego (the daily personality) to a transcendent or transpersonal state of consciousness. Carl Jung wrote about the Numinous and true individuation being the life-long move from the ego to the Self – the spiritual component of the human psyche. Joseph Campbell wrote about the Hero’s Journey and the requirement of the Hero/oine to discover the cut-off and disowned aspects of the psyche in order to find wholeness.
This transpersonal domain is what allows us to access a sense of wholeness. It is where God lives, and therefore our true soul essence is hidden there. When we encounter it, suddenly and unexpectedly (as people do during an NDE), people’s very orientation to life, their worldview and understanding, are deconstructed and then completed rewired by it. It is the the doorway into a new life, and an initiation into a new way of being.
Rumi says:
When someone is counting out gold for you,
Don’t look at your hands,
Or the gold.
Look at the giver.
People are given a glimpse behind the veil and the true teaching it seems is to let that glimpse, that gift of gold, lead us to pursue the Giver. It is important not to become attached to the gold, to those spiritual experiences we have had.
This is why integration and making sense of one’s mystical experience (whether borne from an NDE, a religious experience, a psychedelic experience or a meditation experience) is the cornerstone to living up to the gift one has been given. Almost all people who have had major transformative experiences talk quite a lot about the importance of integration.
That is, to let the experience alter and transform one’s core beliefs, understandings and way of being in the world.
May we all be nourished and inspired by the many beautiful accounts of religious and spiritual experiences – especially those of people who have died, been allowed to visit the Other Side, and returned to share the tale.
Hi Jesse, I agree with your statement that James would be fascinated by the NDE phenomenon. I have long felt the same way about Jung too, especially in light of his own profound experience. I became interested in the phenomenon in 1996 and am astonished at the number of podcasts that have popped up in the last couple of years or so. I do think that the proliferation of reports of all kinds of spiritual experiences, including NDEs, have great potential for effecting a transformation of the collective God-image and we sure are overdue for an upgrade. They also help to legitimise personal subjective experience, which has long been denigrated as an inferior form of evidence. As you point out, the core message of James's book was elevating experience over philosophy and Jung too, was an advocate for personal subjective experience. The point you make about integration is an important one. It is not an easy task. Jung wrote in Answer to Job, about 7 years after his own NDE: "It is altogether amazing how little most people reflect on numinous objects and attempt to come to terms with them, and how laborious such an undertaking is once we have embarked upon it. The numinosity of the object makes it difficult to handle intellectually, since our affectivity is always involved." Aside from experiencers themselves sharing their firsthand experiences, academic research is gaining more credibility. Raymond Moody really started something!
Hi Jesse, Great article which I will comment on more fully when I have reread it but I also noticed the inclusion of names that I knew weren't in the book and the list needs further revision. None of the following are in the book: Julian of Norwich, Rabindranath Tagore, Thomas Merton, Thérèse of Lisieux. Sorry to be picky!