Near-Death Experiences among Indigenous Peoples
Near-death experiences are not just a western phenomenon. They are also attested in various indigenous cultures all over the world, even before they were influenced by Christianity and western culture. Early explorers, missionaries, and ethnographers have recorded the beliefs and practises of many peoples since the early modern period (from the ~1500s onwards). Gregory Shushan wrote a book about this a few years ago, where he compiles and analyzes these findings. This post offers just a few of my thought around it.
Old indigenous NDE accounts are both similar and different from modern western ones. But many of the main elements are there, making it possible for us to classify them as proper NDEs: dying, seeing one’s body from outside, travelling to another world, meeting deceased relatives, seeing beings of light or gods, feelings of bliss, reaching a barrier and hearing “it’s not your time”, returning to one’s body, and experiencing lasting effects in the years that follow.
Among the differences, I can note that the travel through a “tunnel” is often replaced by “walking on a path” or “sliding down a hole”. Facing some kind of trial or test of one’s character often takes the place of the standard “life review”. And of course, if the population has had little or no exposure to Christianity, indigenous NDEs don’t contain visions of Jesus.
One might think that cultures which believe that life continues after death wouldn’t care so much about dying. That they would be fine if a dear one passed away, since they would go on to a blissful afterlife anyway where they will one day meet again. And one might conversely think that cultures which don’t believe in an afterlife would value this life as much as possible. If this life is all there is, one would try to keep people from dying at any cost, right?
Turns out that’s not the case. Shushan found that in many pre-Christian and pre-Islamic belief systems in Africa, people didn’t have a clear picture of the afterlife. And they also didn’t care about the dying. Often they were just left to die on their own, or hastily buried while still warm. On the other hand, cultures that had firm ideas about a happy afterlife tended to care more for the sick and dying, wanting them to stay alive as long as possible.
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So it seems having a focus on this world makes us care less about this life. And belief in continued existence makes us value life more. Strange.
With time, NDE accounts turn into stories, which are elaborated into myths and legends. After generations, more creative and culture-specific elements are added. Some afterlife myths are filled with talking animals, magic stones, and whatnot. These stories can of course spread to neighbouring tribes and thus affect afterlife beliefs of many peoples. But when very specific story elements pop up in completely unrelated and unconnected parts of the world, then one wonders if they are not caused by different instances of the same kind of experience (such as NDEs or similar) rather than through diffusion from one common origin.
One striking example is that many stories about someone visiting the afterlife contain the following element. The person is told not to eat of the food offered, because if they do, they will not be able to return to this world again, but be stuck in the afterworld. This trope is found among native Americans, among the islanders of Polynesia, peoples around the Arctic, and in Sub-Saharan Africa. And it is not found in “ancient” stories alone. I read about one lady in the 1960 having an NDE containing the “food test”!
It’s not feasible to suggest that the “don’t eat the food” element originated in one single Homo Sapiens tribe’s story tens of thousands of years ago and then stayed around and spread through all the world. Nor can spread through trade in more recent times have dispersed it so widely. It is then tempting to suggest that it comes from similar alleged experiences of afterlife visits. But the element is completely absent from the vast majority of modern, western NDEs, making even this theory highly unlikely! So where then did it come from?
I’ve always thought of the afterlife as taking place in the sky. Heaven. But surprisingly many indigenous myths contain underground realms for the dead. The Greeks had their Hades and the Jews their Sheol. Turns out there are plenty of other cultures — in Africa, Oceania, and America — that believed the same. In fact, the reading I’ve done suggests that a heavenly afterworld is the minority view!
Maybe that’s not so strange after all. I mean, we bury our dead in the ground. It’s not a leap from that to believing that buried souls sink deeper and deeper until they arrive in an underworld. Or maybe it’s the other way around: That people had existing notions of a land of the dead in the middle of the earth, and that the practise of burial in caves and trenches originated in the idea that we should help the dead on their way by placing them closer to their destination.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Burial practises, or belief in the afterlife?
