ABSTRACT
Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, a number of studies began to appear which signalled a shift in researchers’ attentions away from the testing of the work of pioneers such as Moody and towards an examination of other aspects of the NDE. In particular, a large number of studies began to concentrate solely on the aftereffects allegedly produced by the NDE. Indeed, this new focus would continue to draw wide attention in the closing years of the twentieth century and on into the beginning of the twenty-first to such an extent that it is legitimate to see this aspect of the study of the NDE as constituting a separate phase of investigation. To be sure, attention had been paid to the consequences of having an NDE from the beginning of research into the phenomenon. Moody had noted in Life After Life that a number of NDErs had related how ‘they felt that their lives were broadened and deepened by their experience’ and consequently had become ‘more reflective and more concerned with ultimate philosophical issues’ (Moody 1975: 89). Similar conclusions were drawn by Sabom and Kreutziger who found that NDErs often reported dramatically new attitudes towards their own death in the years following their NDEs, a deepening of conventional religious faith and a renewed interest in loving and caring elements within human relationships (Sabom 1982: 172-81). However, it was Kenneth Ring, in his 1984 study Heading Toward Omega, who was to be the first researcher to explore such transformations systematically and in detail. At the beginning of his study, Ring drew attention to the fact that it was not simply the case that NDEs had the power to transform the way the West viewed death and dying; rather, thanks to the changes in outlook and lifestyle reported by NDErs and apparently occasioned by the fact of having an NDE, they also possessed the power to change views of living and of the meaning of life. In the years since the publication of Life At Death, Ring had begun to strike up often deep friendships with a large and growing number of NDErs at the Near Death Hotel, a counselling centre and meeting-place for NDErs centred upon Ring’s own home in Connecticut, where, by his own estimate, ‘more NDEs have been recounted after dinner than at any other single location in the world’ (Ring 1984: 25). Through such meetings and discussions,
Ring began to learn more about NDEs, concluding that to understand their true significance it was necessary to look beyond the fact of their occurrence to their after-effects: the ways – often profound and quantifiable – in which they had changed the lives of NDErs. For Ring, herein lay the real meaning of the NDE, and it was this realization that was to prompt Heading Toward Omega and which was to constitute its primary focus.
