Albert Heim's near-death experience in the 1880s

Near-death experiences (though not yet called such) undergone by mountain climbers were so common that in 1893 a Swiss geologist named Albert Heim published an entire collection of them called Notes on Deaths from Falls. Heim has suffered such a fall and was astonished to discover, in the few brief seconds it took to occur, that his frame of reference shifted gears dramatically, allowing him to suddenly see his entire life as if from the position of a spectator: a spectator who was at once completely involved, and just as completely disinterested, in what was happening.

"I saw my whole past," wrote Heim in classic NDE fashion, "take place in many images, as though on a stage at some distance from me. I saw myself as the chief character in the performance. Everything was transfigured as though by a heavenly light and everything was beautiful without grief or anxiety, and without pain. The memory of very tragic experiences I had was clear but not saddening. I felt no conflict or strife; conflict had been transmuted into love. Elevated and harmonious thought dominated and united the individual images, and like magnificent music a divine calm swept through my soul."

Ptolemy Tompkins, The Modern Book of the Dead (Atria Books, 2012), 97, 113.