Near-death experiences: myth or reality?

Near-death experience has always existed as the debate over its real existence. Currently, the definition of NDEs and its components, psychological and neurological theories do not sufficiently explain NDEs, raising more questions than answers. Consequently, the subjective nature of the NDE phenomenon makes objective measurement difficult which has impact on the credibility of the phenomenon’s existence. It is to meet this consensus need that meta-analysis and literature reviews over NDEs lucid memories, NDEs universality and post-NDEs lifestyle changes were constructed. Indeed, in this study, NDE incidence of 32.05% (95% CI= 16.4% to 50.06%) was found. Moreover, literature confirmed a similarity between NDEs memories and memories of real events, furthermore, NDEs memories would be stored as episodic memories. Additionally, among NDEs dimensions, two would be cross-cultural features and two other would be culture-specific features. Finally, a significant number of post-NDEs lifestyle changes was found. These can be ranked in four categories; self-transformation, transformations towards other, transcendental after-effects and other transformations. In conclusion, the direct attestation of the existence of NDEs cannot be established, nevertheless the answer can be moderated assuming that, with these four indirect evidences of NDEs existence, it is highly plausible that NDEs would exist as a reality and not as a myth.