Near-death experiences are known around the world and throughout human history. They are sometimes reported by individuals who have revived from a period of clinical death or near-death and they typically feature sensations of leaving the body, entering and emerging from darkness, meeting deceased friends and relatives, encountering beings of light, judgment of one's earthly life, feelings of oneness, and reaching barriers, only to return to the body. Those who have NDEs almost invariably ...

• Reveals the powerful influence of near-death experiences (NDEs) on the formation of religious beliefs, mystical literature, and ritual practices• Focuses on the afterlife beliefs of five ancient world regions: Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt, Sumer and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, Vedic India, pre-Buddhist China, and Maya and Aztec Mesoamerica• Shows how the similarities among afterlife beliefs and their correspondences with NDEs reveal that they both stem from universal trut...

• Provides accounts of ESP ranging from ancient Greek myth, traditional North and South American, African, and Polynesian stories to individuals like Rumi, Charles Dickens, and Carl Jung• Considers unexplained ESP-related happenings, including bilocation, the ability to locate lost items, early knowledge of one’s own death, and perceptions regarding the well-being of loved onesWhether a premonition of an impending event, a warning of potential danger, or an unlikely synchro...