Makes sense... people have used dreams and hallucinatory dream-states to invent religions, so why not near-death hallucinations? Interesting link, thanks.

I'm especially interested in something that Jason at Damn Interesting brings up - the differences in NDEs across cultures. Here is a page that discusses a lot of the hallucinatory aspects of near death experiences, including many examples of cultural differences.

In the South Pacific region known as Melanesia, the province of Western New Britain lies just east of mainland Papua New Guinea. Here even the hunter-gatherer culture of the Kaliai cannot escape the influence of Western globalization. In her survey of near-death experiences from this region, anthropologist Dorothy Counts found that the NDE world "is a land that is described as having factories and wage employment. It has an appearance that reminds me of the view approaching Los Angeles from the air" (Counts 130).

It even has a chart of the generally accepted "consistent elements" of NDEs (such as the light, the tunnel, etc.) as encountered (or not encountered) in non-Western cultures.

Interesting. My current field of study is on the interplay between dreaming and consciousness; but in the form of lucid dreaming. A lot of LDers talk of OOBE; which makes me wonder if there's any connection.

Thanks, taz.

Oh, this is too cool, taz... dream states have always fascinated me.