Near Death Experiences often happen to people who have been clinically dead or in other ways been close to death, whereby the term “near death.” However, similar or identical experiences also happen under different circumstances that are in no way near to physical death but closer to the experience of ego death.  

The term was first coined in 1975 when Dr. Raymond Moody released his study of these experiences in his book Life After Life, and with the explosion of interest in the subject today many books has been written and a lot of studies has been done to investigate the phenomenon.

A Gallup poll has estimated that about 8 million Americans has had a near death experience and there is substantial scientific evidence to support that these experiences are neither hallucinations nor stories that people simply make up.

As close as we can get to an actual proof of life after death, near death experiences share obvious parallels with both religion and spirituality. One NDE researcher, Rene Jorgensen, recently released a book called The Light Behind God that investigates the parallels between religion/spirituality and near death experiences.