Paper illustrating the apparently providential timing and the healing character of near-death experiences (NDEs) and NDE-like episodes, through four case histories of persons whose lives, prior to their experiences, were marked by deep anguish and a sense of hopelessness.

Article looking back on the author's ten years of involvement with near-death studies and with the International Association for Near-Death Studies, reviewing some of the major questions and accomplishments of that decade both in understanding of the near-death experience and in service as an organization.

Article examining the meaning and developmental potential of the near-death experience (NDE) as a stimulus to inner exploration. The NDE as a prototype of the transcendent contact encounter offers a model for an evolutionary theory of religion. The author's experiences and contemporary portrayals of NDEs suggest that the experience is a vehicle for the mythic renewal of our idea of death as a journey rather than as a termination, and may be a stimulus for spiritual revolution.

Article arguing that as scientific research provides an ever-more-complete physiological explanation of the near-death experience (NDE), popular interest in NDEs will wane, because the transcendental interpretation, which holds that the NDE provides proof of an immaterial soul, an afterlife, and assorted paranormal phenomena, has always been the magnet that has attracted widespread attention to the subject.