What Is It Like To Be Dead?

Abstract

This book offers a modern genealogy of “near-death experiences,” outlining the important functions of these experiences in the religious field of Western modernity. Emerging as autobiographical narratives in the legacy of Christian deathbed visions, narratives of near-death experiences were used in Western religious metacultures (Christian, Esoteric, and Spiritualist–Occult) as substantial proof for the survival of death. In its historical part, the study demonstrates how certain features of near-death experiences, for example, the panoramic life review or autoscopic out-of-body-experiences, emerged in Occult and Esoteric circles in the 19th and 20th centuries, experimenting with astral projection, drugs, and “clairvoyant” states. It was only in the 1970s, however, that Raymond Moody, popularizing the generic term “near-death experience” that had been introduced by John C. Lilly, could declare the different features to be elements of a single phenomenon. Other factors that paved the way were discussions on “brain death,” coma, and the increase of hospitalized dying, the crisis of traditional religious institutions in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the claim of individual religious experiences. In its systematic part, the study discusses the religious relevance of these experiences for the experiencers themselves, but also for the growing audience of such testimonies. These functions encompass ontological, epistemic, intersubjective, and moral aspects. Most central is the reassurance that in modernity, religious experience is still possible, and that near-death experiences may initiate a new spiritual orientation in life. In addition, they are held to offer evidence for the transcultural validity of afterlife visions.