What Is It Like to Be Dead? Near-Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult |
|
| Author:
| Schlieter, Jens |
| ISBN: | 978-0-19-088884-8 |
| Publication Date: | Sep 2018 |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press, Incorporated
|
| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | AUD $63.59AUD $89.95 |
Book Description:
|
What is it Like to be Dead? offers the first full account of the modern genealogy of "near-death experiences," focusing on the functions of these experiences in the religious field of Western modernity. Emerging as autobiographical narratives, they were used in Christian, esoteric, and spiritist-occult traditions as substantial proof for the survival of death, or the claim that the soul is able to leave the body. Now widely disseminated, they serve functions ranging from reassurance...
More DescriptionWhat is it Like to be Dead? offers the first full account of the modern genealogy of "near-death experiences," focusing on the functions of these experiences in the religious field of Western modernity. Emerging as autobiographical narratives, they were used in Christian, esoteric, and spiritist-occult traditions as substantial proof for the survival of death, or the claim that the soul is able to leave the body. Now widely disseminated, they serve functions ranging from reassurance that religious experience is still possible to evidence for the transcultural validity of afterlife beliefs.