Such experiences also have a suicide preventing effect. Death experiences like the ones mentioned with very similar personality changes have astonishingly been also reported by the most various cultures in the distant past. One finds for instance that the first positive near-death experience with tunnel, light and paradisical landscape, but also the first visions of hell, are recorded in the 5000 years old Sumerian Gilgamesh-Epos. New Testament parallels are found amongst other things in the conversion of the very devout Jew Saul after a vision of light who later also described an out of body experience with paradisical visions (2 Corinthians 12). Near-death experiences were also not a rarity during the Middle Ages. The first case files were collected by Pope Gregory in the 5th century. It practically contains all the elements of modern reports; only the designs vary. Negative demonic visions were somewhat more often reported about, but most of them turned into positive experiences; one more often encountered angels or saints instead of relatives; the confrontation with one’s own past in the form of a film of one’s life was replaced by a period of probation, a court scene or a book of life and the return to the body is usually commanded. The consequences are similar to todays death experiences, but they coincided with the prevailing mentality and religion: One lived more strictly according to the rules of salvation promoted by the Catholic Church and these experiences were reported to the Church to gain its support.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI1MzY3