Out-of-body experience that are associated with near-death events. People who have been resuscitated from cardiac arrest or have had life- threatening accidents have later made graphic claims that they have floated upward into a second body and were able to observe what was happening to their physical body on the bed below. Because of recent advances in modern medical technology, more seriously ill people are being, to use a metaphor, pulled back from the brink. Consequently, deathbed visions are beginning to be more of a common experience; doctors, psychiatrists, and others who look after sick and dying patients now have an opportunity of researching the phenomenon.
Whether or not one accepts that something mysterious is happening at this time, because of the subjective nature of the experience it is difficult, if not impossible, to find out what it is. Nevertheless, these claims are made and so must be taken seriously. The point at issue is not whether the informant is sincere, but whether the substance of the second, floating person is actually a separate nonphysical mind or soul that has escaped from the dying body below. If this could be proved, then the Platonic-Cartesian dualistic view of the nature of humankind would also be proved. If the phenomenon is purely a psychological one where the patient is involved in some form of death-imagining similar to, but not the same as, dreaming, then the dualist view must remain unproved.