Dying to heal: a neglected aspect of NDEs.

1834), the English Romantic poet, wrote, “If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he [awakes]—Aye, what then?” Coleridge’s scenario is not hypothetical. On the edge of death, millions of people have passed through what seems to them a paradise. This phenomenon has been known as a near-death experience, or NDE, since psychiatrist Raymond Moody’s 1975 book Life After Life sparked a revolution in popular attitudes toward the afterlife. On recovering, most NDEers report being awed by an idyllic experience of intense peace and joy. And they awaken from their paradisiacal passage with reminders that are far more meaningful than Coleridge’s flower in the hand. These tokens of paradise involve permanent lifechanging perceptions and behaviors such as the absence of the fear of death, a greater appreciation for the preciousness of life, higher self-esteem, greater love and compassion for others, a heightened sense of meaning and purpose, a desire to learn, elevated spirituality, greater ecological sensitivity and planetary concern, being