What Are The Oldest Reports Of NDEs (Near-Death Experiences)?

[ginoide]

Hallo everybody, I was thinking these days that I don't recall ever reading reports of NDE that date before the '60s or '70s. Is it possible that it is a phenomenon strictly connected to the esprit of its time (New Age or new-agey stuff)? A bit like séances are a (more or less) Victorian thing and UFOs became big after WWII?
Or am I completely mistaken (and ignorant) and such reports have been around forever?
Thanks for your attention.

 

[EnolaGaia]

There are multiple types of experiences that have been called "near-death experiences." These include:

- Total Life Recall ("life flashing before one's eyes");
- Leaving one's body (Out of Body Experience; OOBE) and floating / flying (generally);
- OOBEs in which the person approaches or arrives at a sort of portal or bright light; and
- OOBEs in which the person interacts with a figure or presence (e.g., a deceased relative; an angel).

These variations can occur in combination, but there's no single protocol under which they all occur in a standard fashion or sequence.

To trace the history of such NDEs you'll probably have to trace the histories for each variant.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I can offer one clue about the history of the Total Life Recall (TLR; "life flashing before one's eyes"). It was in the late 1960s (I'd estimate 1968) when I read a book review (probably in TIME or Newsweek). A European (French?) mountain climber had miraculously survived a fall of more than 1,000 feet, during which he'd experienced the TLR effect. He was so impressed with the experience he collected stories from climbers and others who'd experienced the TLR, resulting in the book that was reviewed. That book was claimed to have been the first book dedicated to the subject (TLR).

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

I vaguely wonder if ancient accounts are recorded in the religious texts - Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or Moslem; however, the descriptions may not match current terminology.

 

[AmStramGram]

A classic one is to be found at the end of Plato's "Republic". So it dates back to ancient Greece.

It is known as the "myth of Er the Pamphylian".

Er was supposedly a Pamphylian warrior who was left for dead on the battlefield. He "woke up" several days or weeks later to the amazement of his friends, and told them of his travels in the afterlife.

As always with Plato, this story is used as an illustration of his ideas. Plato is also the father of the myth of Atlantis, and of the myth of the cave. The myth of Er is less famous, but it is indeed a detailed and early description of a NDE.

There are probably many other ancient Greek tales dealing with NDEs, because "Mystery Cults" were popular in ancient Greece, and they often dealt with crossing the border between life and death. Although not a NDE, the myth of Orpheus deals with this kind of challenge. If my memory is correct, Hercules (Herakles) also visited the otherworld. And Pythagoras claimed he remembered his previous lives (he believed in metempsychosis). So Plato's description of a NDE seems to take root in this general curiosity about death, and the reversibility of dying.

As a side note, if the Egyptians could write their "Book of the Dead", we could presume that's because one of them had managed to come back to life to tell his story. Or, at least, he thought he had died and yet survived ... So there might have been very early NDE in history, which shouldn't surprise us if we consider these experiences might (or might not) be products of the human brain, and that the human brain hasn't evolved significantly during the last three thousand years.

 

[EnolaGaia]

FWIW ... Here's the Wikipedia summary of the history and nomenclature for near-death experiences. I'd forgotten that the life review (TLR) version had been addressed back in the late 19th century. The rest of the summary indicates (published professional) interest in NDEs coalesced in the 1960s, and the label "near death experience" arrived in the 1970s. This chronology matches my recollections for NDEs other than the specific TLR phenomenon.

The equivalent French term expérience de mort imminente ("experience of imminent death") was proposed by French psychologist and epistemologist Victor Egger as a result of discussions in the 1890s among philosophers and psychologists concerning climbers' stories of the panoramic life review during falls. In 1892 a series of subjective observations by workers falling from scaffolds, war soldiers who suffered injuries, climbers who had fallen from heights or other individuals who had come close to death (near drownings, accidents) was reported by Albert Heim. This was also the first time the phenomenon was described as clinical syndrome. In 1968 Celia Green published an analysis of 400 first-hand accounts of out-of-body experiences. This represented the first attempt to provide a taxonomy of such experiences, viewed simply as anomalous perceptual experiences, or hallucinations. In 1969, Swiss-American psychiatrist and pioneer in near-death studies Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her book On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families. These experiences were also popularized by the work of psychiatrist Raymond Moody, who in 1975 coined the term "near-death experience" as an umbrella term for the different elements (out of body experiences, the "panoramic life review", the Light, the tunnel, or the border). The term "near-death experience" had already been used by John C. Lilly in 1972.

References cited in the Wikipedia history / etymology review:

Egger, Victor (1896). "Le moi des mourants", Revue Philosophique, XLI : 26–38.

J. Bogousslavsky, M. G. Hennerici, H Bazner, C. Bassetti (Eds.) (2010). Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists, Part 3. Karger Publishers. p. 189. ISBN 9783805593304.

Greyson, Bruce (2014). "Chapter 12: Near-Death Experiences". In Cardeña, Etzel; Lynn, Steven Jay; Krippner, Stanley (eds.). Varieties of anomalous experience : examining the scientific evidence (Second ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. pp. 333–367. ISBN 978-1-4338-1529-4.

Green, C., Out-of-the-body Experiences, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968.

Schlieter, Jens (2018). What is it like to be Dead? Near-death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 205-6.

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience

 

[EnolaGaia]

I vaguely wonder if ancient accounts are recorded in the religious texts - Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or Moslem; however, the descriptions may not match current terminology.

Certain elements of NDE lore (e.g., OOBE movements; arriving at a portal into a presumed afterlife locale) can be found in a number of religious texts - most especially all the much-elaborated Christian writings and artworks concerning the afterlife, resurrection, etc.

As AmStramGram noted, there are mythological accounts of persons traveling to the world of the dead (or at least a world outside of ordinary life) dating back to the ancient Mediterranean cultures.

These ancient / earlier accounts tend to embed a person or character within a general narrative involving transfer / transport, wandering about, and in some cases a return to the ordinary mundane world.

Speaking only for myself, I consider these distinct and different from later / modern accounts which focus on an incident as something sensed / perceived / experienced by an individual subjectively (as opposed to some activity or "trip" the individual experiences in the more objective sense of being a traveler).

 

[Salmonellus]

I suspect that one reason NDE reports became a lot commoner in the 1960's was that CPR techniques had only just become widely accepted, meaning that a lot more people were being brought back from cardiac arrests. Prior to that, patients who suffered 'near death' experiences weren't very likely to come back and talk about them. They didn't experience 'near death' - they just experienced death.

But as other posters have noted, there were occasional reports prior to that.

Didn't the SPR look into some of these spontaneous cases? It sounds like the sort of thing they would have been interested in.

 

[Frideswide]

I'm (pretty) sure that some saintly visions, conversions after sickness and so on within the Christian canon would fit.

Edut ti add: possibly found one. My beloved Julian of Norwich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich

In 1373, aged 30 and so seriously ill she thought she was on her deathbed, Julian received a series of visions or shewings of the Passion of Christ. She recovered from her illness and wrote two versions of her experiences, the earlier one being completed soon after her recovery—a much longer version, today known as the Long Text, was written many years later.

So I think it would be worth studying her IHTM as shown in her written accounts.