What Is It Like to Be Dead?: Christianity, the Occult, and Near-Death Experiences

336 Pages·2018·2.39 MB·English

by  Jens Schlieter

What Is It Like to Be Dead?
oxford studies in western esotericism
Series Editor
Henrik Bogdan, University of Gothenburg
CHILDREN OF LUCIFER
The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism
Ruben van Luijk
SATANIC FEMINISM
Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth- Century Culture
Per Faxneld
THE SIBLYS OF LONDON
A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Gregorian England
Susan Sommers
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE DEAD?
Near-Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult
Jens Schlieter
AMONG THE SCIENTOLOGISTS
History, Theology, and Praxis
Donald A. Westbrook
i

What Is It Like to Be Dead?
Near- Death Experiences, Christianity,
and the Occult
Jens Schlieter
i
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 088884– 8
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
i
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction xv
Outline of the Argument and Remarks on Method xxvii
Part one | Near- Death Experiences as Religious Discourse
1.1. Introduction 3
1.2. Experiences of Dying and Death 11
1.3. The Formation of Near- Death Experiences: Moody, Ritchie, and Hampe 17
1.4. Near- Death Experiences and the Religious Metacultures of Western Modernity 33
Part two | The Different Strands of Death: Western Discourse
on Experiences Near Death (1580– 1975)
2.1. Introduction 45
2.2. Currents of Early Modern Near- Death Discourse 53
2.3. The Integration of Theosophical Narratives on Travels of the
“Spiritual Body” (ca. 1860– 1905) 117
2.4. The Advent of Parapsychology and the Figuration of “Out- of- the- Body Experiences”
(1880– 1930) 135
2.5. The Theosophical Discovery of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927) 153
2.6. Consolidation of Near- Death Discourse (1930– 1960) 167
2.7. The Final Configuration of Near- Death Experiences (1960– 1975) 185
v
vi i Contents
Part three | “Near- Death Experiences” as Religious Protest
Against Materialism and Modern Medicine in the 1960s and 1970s
3.1. Introduction 227
3.2. Pushing Near- Death Experiences (I): Privatized Death 231
3.3. Pushing Near- Death Experiences (II): Reanimation, “Coma,” and “Brain
Death” 237
3.4. Pushing Near- Death Experiences (III): LSD- and Other Drug- Induced
Experiences 245
3.5. The Imperative of “Individual Experience”: Institutional Change of Religion in the
1960s and 1970s 251
Part four | Wish- Fulfilling Expectations, Experiences,
Retroactive Imputations: In Search of Hermeneutics
for Near- Death Experiences
4.1. Introduction 257
4.2. Excursus: The “Death- x- Pulse,” or: How to Imagine the Unimaginable? 267
4.3. The Survival Value of Narratives? 279
Part five | The Significance of Near- Death Experiences for
Religious Discourse
5.1. The Presence of Religious Metacultures in Near- Death Discourse (1580– 1975) 285
5.2. The Religious Functions of Near- Death Experiences 293
Bibliography 313
Name Index 337
Subject Index 341
Preface
i
An overwhelming majority of recent reports or studies on near- death experiences
argue that— in one way or the other— the “experience” provides a foothold for the belief
that there is survival of death. Having experienced the proximity of death transforms, it
seems, both the view of “death” and of “life” as expressed by Augustinian monk Abraham
a Sancta Clara: “Who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies.”1 Consequently,
“the experience” amounts not only to a new certainty of postmortem survival— it is a call
for fundamental change in life itself. For a substantial group of persons concerned, but
also for academics studying near- death experiences, the life- changing potential is cru-
cial. Reported aftereffects encompass fundamental changes in attitudes, beliefs, and life
orientation. Communicated through various channels, it is claimed that persons who
experienced states near or after death lost their fear of death, found their purpose in life,
or became “more spiritual” (and either less “religious” or less “materialistic”). The expe-
rience itself— often declared to be indescribable, inexplicable, or ineffable— is held by
many to be the most important in their lives, and, moreover, as such the best proof avail-
able for matters transcendent.
For the study of recent religiosity, near- death experiences and their narrative
embeddings are of crucial importance, but, from that perspective, still an understudied
phenomenon. Beyond question, experiences near death can be emotionally extremely
1 “Denn wer stirbt, ehe er stirbt, der stirbt nicht, wann er stirbt” (Abraham a Sancta Clara 1710, 244).
vii
viii i Preface
intense, disruptive, irritating, but also ecstatic and overwhelming. Especially in the late
decades of the 20th century, the institutionalization of self- help groups and networks
such as the “International Association for Near- Death Studies, Inc.” (IANDS) founded
in 1977, shows that “experiencers,” as they are now called, feel the need to share their
enlightening or disturbing experiences in these secure milieus, and, not to forget, to en-
dorse each other in handling the spiritual and social aftereffects. At the same time, the
at times depreciative and disenchanting reactions, or psychopathological explanations of
medical doctors, psychologists, priests, or society at large, have led some “experiencers” to
become cautious in disclosing their experience.
Near- death experiences are, for sure, in many cases dramatic and existential. At the
same time, descriptions of these experiences are instrumental in articulating “spiritual”
life orientations— especially in modern, secular societies. Memoirs of such experiences
may, however, encounter a fundamental paradox: to re- present an experience that was
nothing less but “pure presence.” Sometimes, it may be a pure presence that is later felt
intensely as absence: A crucial element of some reports consists of a praise of the “experi-
ence” and the unwillingness to return to the body and into the life lived. In sum, personal
memoirs of what the individual experienced while being (or expecting to be) close to
death form a structural compound, together with narratives of how the experience has
changed the respective individual’s life, and, finally, of how the experiences were often
rejected, medicalized, or even ridiculed. It is the latter quality, the experiences near death
as “rejected knowledge” (Hanegraaff), that fits very well to their often esoteric content.
These testimonies of near- death experiences, their aftereffects, and the appearance of
organized groups of witnesses and believers, such as the IANDS chapters, deserve serious
attention as a significant development of recent, late modern society. Nevertheless, for a
broader understanding of recent testimonies of near- death experiences, it is essential to
become aware of the historical tradition in which reports of near- death experiences and
their religious corollaries were communicated and handed down in scores of newspapers,
journals, and books. Astonishingly, no study published so far covered the last four
centuries, and especially the “long 19th century” (Hobsbawm), in which almost innu-
merable individuals reported such experiences. Only occasionally mentioned in recent
studies of near- death experiences, collections of such testimonies have been published
for more than 150 years, accompanied by attempts of how to classify and interpret such
experiences.
Two major obstacles in current research were especially inhibitive for a historical
survey. On the one hand, it is the opinion of transcultural and transhistorical universals
expressed in near- death experiences often to be found in near- death research. Such an
essentialism of assumed transcultural constants disposes of any incentives to analyze
the phenomena more thoroughly. Usually, substantialist presuppositions undermine
attempts to outline phenomena in their historical development. More specifically, ex-
tant studies were more engaged in uncovering the “common core” of modern near- death
experiences and, say, ancient Greek, Egyptian, or Early Christian and medieval accounts
Preface j ix
of journeys into the beyond and afterlife conceptions, respectively. On the other hand,
and in close interaction with the aforementioned, the majority of scholars were above
all interested in establishing near- death experiences as authentic visions of, or into, an
afterlife— spontaneously generated, authentic, and unconditional. For that matter, nei-
ther these experiences nor their reports will be in any way dependent on tradition. As
these studies were especially eager to campaign for the acceptance of these experiences as
veridical testimonies in the medical system (and other branches of modern society), they
saw no need to uncover the pivotal strands of Western spiritualism, occultism, and esoter-
icism that, for the historian of religion, obviously influenced— together with Christian
metaculture— a large number of more recent accounts of near- death experiences. To put
it more sharply: Since the invention of the generic term “near- death experiences” in the
1970s, we can witness a strong avoidance of disclosing the prominent precursors in the
19th and 20th centuries. Actually, the latter had already reported a large number of vi-
sionary and ecstatic experiences “near death,” yet, simply as only one of several situations
in which those experiences may emerge. In other words, these forerunners could still, and
straightforwardly, testify and communicate experiences near death as homogeneously
embedded in larger religious and spiritual cosmovisions. In consequence, they saw no
need to bundle various different experiences under a new umbrella term of “near- death
experiences.”
Viewed in this way, it is the changing environment that contributed its share to the
coming- together of near- death experiences: the largely successful institutionalization of
biomedicine and the process of functional differentiation in modern societies that led to
an increasingly autonomous subsystem of “religion” with clear demarcations. Modern
biomedicine, secular and empirical psychology, psychoanalysis, positivist philosophy, be-
haviorism, and other voices joined the polyphonic chorus praising scientific explanations
of religion in general, and the brain’s “hallucinations near death” in particular. Exactly
this environment, together with a decline of church- based religiosity and the ongoing
trend toward privatized dying in hospitals, led to an even stronger emphasis of individual
personal experience, of which experiences near death, “glimpses into the afterlife,” may
probably be the most meaningful.
Yet, to repeat, the experiences offered as suggestive evidence for a convincing answer
to the question “what is it like to be dead?” are still an integral part of Western religious
history. Although this study will confine itself to documenting and analyzing the gen-
esis and genealogy of near- death experiences up to the 1970s, here I will provide only
one more recent example. After having been comatose for several days and in very crit-
ical health in 2008, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander published a highly successful book-
length treatise of his near- death experience, “Proof of Heaven” (2012).2 A central element
2 O n Alexander’s narrative, cf. Fischer and Mitchell- Yellin 2016, 34–7 , 75– 7, 174– 5; quoting the reluctant recep-
tion by the current Dalai Lama (cf. 177– 8).