[Review of the book Transformed by the light: Life after near-death experiences, by C. Sutherland].

Abstract

In accordance with Murphy's Law-that whatever can go wrong will-two important authors on near-death research have chosen the same book title, Thansformed by the Light at the same time on opposite sides of the world. It is to be hoped that this won't prevent either work from getting the full international recognition it deserves. Certainly Cherie Sutherland, whose name will already be familiar to readers of this Journal from her three major papers in recent years (Sutherland, 1989(Sutherland, , 1990a(Sutherland, , 1990b, has written something of an international land mark work in the field, in at least four respects.In the first place, this work is quite a landmark in academic recogni tion of near-death studies. Of course, individual academics of high authority have been active in near-death studies right from the early days when Raymond Moody (1975) coined the term "near-death experi ence," or "NDE." But those have been peaks on a vast plane of scholarly indifference, with relatively few mounds of interest elsewhere.It is another matter altogether when a university not previously associated with the field is prepared to award a scientific Ph.D. for near-death research, and perhaps especially so in Australia, where scientific noses tend to be harder than almost anywhere else in the world. The University of New South Wales, in particular, has an John Wren-Lewis, a retired mathematical physicist and industrial research executive,