What Is It Like to Be Dead?

Studies of near-death experiences show that such experiences not only provide a new certainty of post-mortem survival but often function as a call for fundamental change in the present. Reported aftereffects encompass changes in attitudes beliefs and life orientation. It is said that experiencers have lost their fear of death found their purpose in life or become more spiritual. The experience - often declared to be indescribable inexplicable or ineffable - is held by many to be the most important of their lives and moreover the best proof available for matters transcendent. <p/>In <em>What Is It Like To Be Dead?</em> Jens Schlieter argues that to understand recent testimonies of near-death experiences we need to be aware of the history of innumerable reports of earlier near-death experiences that were communicated and handed down in scores of newspapers journals and books. Collections of such testimonies have been published for more than 150 years accompanied by attempts to classify and interpret them. Schlieter analyzes the religious relevance of near-death experiences -for the experiencers themselves but also for the growing audience attracted by these testimonies. Near-death experiences bear ontological epistemic intersubjective and moral significance ranging from reassurance that religious experience is still possible to claims that they initiate a new spiritual orientation in life or offer evidence for the transcultural validity of afterlife beliefs. This study is the first to document and analyze four centuries of near-death testimonies before the codification of the genre in the 1970s offering the first full account of the modern genealogy of near-death experiences.<br>