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near-death experiences, Christianity, and the occult
"In What Is It Like To Be Dead?, Jens Schlieter argues that to understand recent testimonies of near-death experiences, we need to be aware of the history of innumerable reports of earlier near-death experiences that were communicated and handed down in scores of newspapers, journals, and books. Collections of such testimonies have been published for more than 150 years, accompanied by attempts to classify and interpret them. Schlieter analyzes the religious relevance of near-death experiences -for the experiencers themselves, but also for the growing audience attracted by these testimonies. Near-death experiences bear ontological, epistemic, intersubjective, and moral significance, ranging from reassurance that religious experience is still possible to claims that they initiate a new spiritual orientation in life, or offer evidence for the transcultural validity of afterlife beliefs." -- Publisher's description
Introduction -- Outline of the argument and remarks on method -- Part I. Near-death experiences as religious discourse : Experiences of dying and death ; The formation of near-death experiences: Moody, Ritchie, and Hampe ; Near-death experiences and the religious metacultures of Western modernity -- Part II. The different strands of death: Western discourse on experiences near death (1580-1975) : Currents of early modern near-death discourse ; The integration of theosophical narratives on travels of the "spiritual body" (ca. 1860-1905) ; The advent of parapsychology and the figuration of "out-of-the-body experiences" (1880-1930) The theosophical discovery of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927) ; Consolidation of near-death discourse (1930-1960) ; The final configuration of near-death experience (1960-1975) -- Part III. "Near-death experiences" as religious protest against materialism and modern medicine in the 1960s and 1970s : Pushing near-death experiences (I): privatized death ; Pushing near-death experiences (II): reanimation, "coma," and "brain death" ; Pushing near-death experiences (III): LSD- and other drug-induced experiences ; The imperative of "individual experience": institutional change of religion in the 1960s and 1970s -- Part IV. Wish-fulfilling expectations, experiences, retroactive imputations: in search of hermeneutics for near-death experiences : Excursus: the death-x-pulse," or How to imagine the unimaginable? The survival value of the narratives? -- Part V. The significance of near-death experiences for religious discourse : The presence of religious metacultures in near-death discourse (1580-1975) ; The religious functions of near-death experiences.
Includes bibliographical references and index.