Shared Death Experiences: A Multicultural Survey

Abstract

Background Shared-death-experiences (SDEs) and after-death-communication-experiences (ADCEs) are non-ordinary mental experiences related to the death of a known or unknown person. Methods These experiences were investigated by surveying four samples with different cultural backgrounds: Italian, Mexican, Brazilian and Taiwanese people. One-hundred-twenty-one participants reported 146 experiences of this type. Results Among the main characteristics of these experiences, visual, visual-auditory and feeling experiences, which comprised 74% of all experiences, were experienced both in the dream state and a normal state of consciousness. Furthermore, most of these experiences were lived before (47.3%) or after (39%) the death of the person in relationship with the participants. More importantly, these experiences influenced the participants’ death interpretation favoring the belief that death affects only the body, but the consciousness of the deceased persons survives in another reality and sometimes can communicate with relatives and friends still alive in this reality. No substantial differences were observed among the different subsamples. Conclusion As to the origin of SDEs/ADCEs, we discuss that whereas for most of them, in particular those lived after the death of a relative or a friend, we can assume hallucinatory characteristics triggered by emotional needs, for others, for example those related to unknown individuals and/or those experienced before the death of the person still in good health, it is not possible to exclude their anomalous connections and a real encounter with a deceased person.

Editorial: Spirituality and Mental Health: Exploring the Meanings of the Term “Spiritual”

“…Dimensions of spirituality in health care and research can also encompass the empirical study of spiritual and paranormal experiences, usually referred to as anomalous experiences in the academic literature. For example, studies of altered consciousness associated with mediumistic and spontaneous spiritual awakening experiences have important implications for the intersection between physiology, consciousness, and spirituality (Maraldi, 2021 ; Tressoldi et al, 2022 ). Near-death experiences are also intriguing phenomena that defy purely materialistic explanations.…”