Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience

Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience is the most sophisticated philosophical and theological analysis of the NDE to appear to date. In his introduction, Mark Cox makes the point that the theological response to the NDE has been thin, and that no substantial study has appeared since Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys in 1987. I think that this lack of response has been in part due to a lack of interest in questions relating to immortality and more especially to a resistance against looking at data that might be associated with the 'paranormal'. There has been a similar general neglect by science of parapsychology.

After a brief history of the NDE and a survey of the few theological responses, notably those of the Badhams and Hans Kung, Cox considers how the core experience of the NDE is related to interpretation and language. The strongest position that he examines – and rightly finds wanting – is advanced by George Lindbeck, who argues that 'there is no possibility of any underlying, culturally neutral, 'pure' core experience actually existing and that all respondents are simply having different, internally generated, projected experiences'. This debate is part of a larger and contentious issue in the scholarship of mysticism between those – like Steven Katz – who claim that pure consciousness and unmediated experience are impossible, and those – like Robert Forman – who deny the more extreme versions of cultural or linguistic constructivism. While it is true that experience and interpretation are closely linked, and that language shapes experience, it does not follow that there can be no experiential core to the NDE. Cox is a sure guide through the maze of linguistic and epistemological issues, pointing out that unexpected elements in the NDE call into question the theory that it can be explained by prior cultural conditioning.

Next he asks if neuroscience can explain the core NDE. Here his analysis is rigorous and thorough, and he is persuaded by Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick's arguments that memory and model-building brain functions cannot operate properly during an NDE and that one would expect nothing more than a confusional state. He reviews the well-known 'single factor' arguments – anoxia, hypercarbia, endorphins, temporal lobe seizure – concluding that no such single argument is capable of explaining the data. This brings him onto an interesting discussion of the narrative quality of the NDE and its relation to narrative models of the self that are expressed in the process and sequence of the otherworld journey. . The NDE itself is a narrative, which may differ from the actual experience.

Cox's chapter about Ken Ring's work on NDEs in the blind is a penetrating analysis of the data and interpretation. He gives a full account of the evidence but does not feel that it is strong enough to support the claims made by Ken, especially in so far has he argues that NDEs require a revision of existing scientific and philosophical about mind, brain and self. Here we come up against the limits of Cox's own paradigm. Throughout the book he insists that NDEs cannot prop up what he regards as discredited dualistic theories of mind and body. He quotes with approval a remark by John Haldane that 'whatever the nature of the evidence, it cannot lend support to a view whose falsity has been established, and in such an event therefore some other explanation is called for'.

Cox does look carefully at the evidence, but Haldane's view hints at the more a priori and arguably dogmatic position that no form of dualism is coherent, especially when couched in the usual mechanistic format. For the most part, philosophers and scientists do not even consider evidence that might call into question their monistic materialism based on the premise that mind is localised in and produced by the brain. Hence dualism – and survival of consciousness – is unthinkable. Cox refers to other parapsychological data and to the survival question, but he does not address the strength of the evidence. He might argue that this is beyond the scope of his analysis, but I regard this as a serious omission since it does influence the way in which one understands the NDE. He might well conclude that here too the evidence is not of sufficient quality but it does give another perspective on his argument that NDEs have 'not established beyond doubt that something leaves the body'.

The last part of the book reports the data collected over thirty years by the Religious Experience Research Centre established in 1969 by Sir Alister Hardy. This section is a valuable addition to NDE research, with extensive quotations from case studies. The most significant finding is that elements of crisis experiences (CEs) resemble those of non-crisis experiences, thus complicating the debate about mind-brain correlations and setting the phenomenology of the NDE in a wider context. The final chapter assesses differing religious interpretations of the NDE, especially the contrasting approaches of the fundamentalism of Michael Sabom ('the truth of the Bible is my one presupposition') and the spiritual universalism of Ken Ring. My own sympathies lie in Ken's direction, but Cox is right to say that the NDE is protean in the sense that it can be accommodated within a number of traditions. More contentious, but consistent with his overall view, is Cox's assertion that NDEs are more a mirror of changing popular beliefs than a window giving a glimpse into the afterlife. However, whether one agrees with him or not, Cox's book is the most valuable addition to the literature of the NDE for some years.