ABSTRACT
Although the term “near death experience” was first used by psychiatrist and researcher Raymond Moody in his 1975 book Life after Life , the phenomenon goes back thousands of years. Plato’s Republic, from the fourth century BCE, includes the story of Er, a soldier who seemed to have died in battle only to revive ten days later on his funeral pyre. Er gave a detailed account of leaving his body and his disembodied soul traveling to a mysterious region where the righteous and unjust are separated. The Christian disciple Paul mentions knowing someone who “was caught up to the third heaven (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows)” (2 Corinthians 12:1–4). Across differing times and cultures, whether in ancient India, early America, or modern Egypt, near death experiences have been talked about and recorded.
