Madeleine has a website here. She takes her work very seriously, she deals in "facts" all the time. There's no doubt that people have NDE's (fact) and no doubt that they have the perception of seeing their physical bodies (fact ref Blackmore).
http://www.madelainelawrence.com/
Since 1975 when Raymond Moody's book, Life after Life, was published a wonderful journey of discovery began about not only near-death experiences but also many other transpersonal experiences surrounding death. That's not to say these experiences weren't described before. Michael Tymn's book,
The Afterlife Explorers (Volume 1): The Pioneers of Psychical Research, describes well the early efforts of researchers interested in psychic phenomena.
Research in the 1970s in psychic and transpersonal experiences shifted from the study of the psychically gifted, but sometimes fraudulent, to healthcare patients.
From then on the research involved more stringent methods with unbiased patients as subjects, as surprised as anyone that these experiences had occurred to them.
The research remains in healthcare facilities like acute care hospitals and hospice. I believe it is time to enhance that focus. The research techniques we have learned to use to study these phenomena should be applied to individuals who are victims of disasters and catastrophic events.
Unlike doctors and nurses in healthcare facilities the first responders who attend to victims of disasters know little about these transpersonal events. If a victim reports going out of his or her body and going through a tunnel or seeing deceased friends or relatives, they are likely to be told they have PTSD or some other mental health issue. That is what we saw happen early on in the study of Near-death experiencers.
Disaster victims also are not always in their own communities when these events occur. Some local hospice programs open their bereavement sessions to others who have lost a loved one, even if they were not on the hospice programs. Disasters victims and their relatives have little support or information about bereavement help. They most likely would not be told about The International Association of Near-death Experiences (IANDS) where they could get assistance in understanding their near-death experience.
I am hoping we can see a strong movement toward assisting victims and first responders of disasters to understanding near-death and other transpersonal experiences WHEN they occur to them. There is no IF they will occur. The research that has been done points to the likelihood of these events occurring. My recent article Near-death and other transpersonal experiences during catastrophic events, has several examples.
Comments are welcome and encouraged on this topic!
![[-]](https://psiencequest.net/forums/images/collapse.png)
