Near-death experiences and hypnosis: two different phenomena with something in common

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are an intriguing and somewhat awkward topic in the scientific medicine. They can be defined as the memory of impressions occurring during life-threatening conditions, including a number of special elements such as out-of-body experiences, pleasant feelings, seeing a tunnel, a light, deceased relatives, or a life review. Their transcendent tonality leads one to consider them a priori as doubtful or non-existent, not relevant, or a matter of psychiatric or organic disturbances at most. The available interpretations of NDEs, despite being scientifically sound, so far remain only speculations or, at best, clues without any demonstration, while others are not even plausible or neglect facts incompatible with the ruling mechanistic and reductionistic view, showing the deep epistemological implications of their explanation. In the past few decades NDEs, hypnosis, relaxation, and meditation have been included among the so-called altered states of consciousness (ASC), together with other physiological and pathological conditions, such as dreaming, sensory deprivation, hypnagogic states, epilepsy, effects of hallucinogens, and psychotic symptoms. However, the very term ASC, semantically suggesting abnormality, looks to be questionable for physiological mind activities like hypnosis and meditation. NDEs and hypnosis appear as two entirely distinct phenomena, but some common processes probably tinge them. Hypnosis has seldom been used to evoke previous NDEs in an attempt to relive them; conversely, NDE-like experiences have been induced in hypnosis in the context of psychotherapy with the aim of approximating their transformational therapeutic aspects and facilitating both first- and second-order patient changes. Fortunately, an increasing dissatisfaction has emerged in recent years with our merely organic medicine, which has been paralleled by a growing interest in consciousness, subjectivity, and spirituality. There is an increasing need to reappraise our paradigm and the still mysterious mind–brain–world relationship; the so-called ASC also call for a broader approach, to reappraise them in a perspective, including their still misunderstood physiology, merging mechanisms, contents, and meanings in a whole without prejudices, not even scientific ones.