Near-Death Experiences in India

The authors report some features of 16 cases of near-death experiences that they investigated in India. After presenting brief accounts of four such experiences, the authors describe and discuss features in which the Indian cases differ from a larger sample of American cases. They note that some of these features seem to be culture-bound, but they caution against accepting this observation as adequate evidence that the case derive only from culture-bound beliefs. Some differences may derive from the effects of a person's beliefs on what actually does happen after death, and some different features may, on closer examination, be found to be basically similar in nature if not in detail.