NDEs from different cultures: Long excerpt #13

Radiation oncologist Jeremy Long writes in his article, "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights" - Portions of the NDERF website are translated into over 30 languages. Thousands of near-death experiences have been shared with NDERF in English and hundreds more in non-English languages from all around the world. This allowed the most extensive cross-cultural investigation of NDEs ever conducted. These studies found the core content of NDEs to be strikingly similar wherever they occur throughout the world, including in non-Western countries.

"I previously published an investigation of 26 near-death experiences shared in English, but with the NDErs living in countries where English was not the predominant language. These NDErs lived in different cultures specific to their country, yet were sufficiently fluent in English that they could share their NDEs and complete the NDERF questionnaire in English. The study comparison group was 583 NDEs shared in English from countries where the predominant language was English. The answers from the two groups to 33 survey questions from the prior version of the NDERF survey regarding the elements of their NDEs were compared. There was no statistical difference in responses to any of the 33 survey questions between the two groups. The study conclusion was:

The content of near-death experiences appears to be the same around the world. Such experiences, in both English-and non-English-speaking countries, include the same NDE elements. The elements appear to follow the same order of occurrence. In reading the accounts of NDEs from around the world, including those shared in English and those translated into English, I am impressed at how strikingly similar they are."

Jeffrey Long, MD, "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights." In the next several posts I will share excerpts from Long's 2021 article. Footnotes have been deleted. The complete text is available as a pdf at https://www.nderf.org.