I haven't posted for a long time because I have been totally occupied with my PhD and other work-related business. That said, while reading through the proofreader's comments for my thesis (I am about to submit it), I listened to this episode and enjoyed it a great deal. I'll have to admit up front that I haven't read more than the first four responses in the forum, but my response is a general one, to Alex's question at the end.
Although there is a difference between NDEs and dreams, just as there is a difference between NDEs and psilocybin experiences, the results of Long's study are quite possibly 100% consistent with what I find in my dream journals, but the drug-induced experiences I have read about in Krippner and other places are quite different.
The so-called "mystical experiences" prompted by psychotropic tribes are, if anything, an extremely pale version of the kind of experiences described by Long, and the kind I have had in dreams. My impression is that such forced experiences diminish the quality of the experience greatly, possibly to the point of being useless, or at least dissimilar enough to be an example of something different, despite superficial similarities.
As for the "God" questions I saw in the first few posts here: when I read of people who interpret "a light" or "a kindly being" or "a powerful force" as God or Jesus (who they often conflate with God) I find myself a bit impatient because it reminds me of the difference between the psychotropic mystical experiences vs. the natural NDEs. Is God present or not? If you have to guess, or deduce that the thing you see is God, then as far as I am concerned, it probably isn't God. This is also true for those who assume that Jesus is God. If it is Jesus, then it is Jesus, not someone/something else. This is largely because in my dreams, God has appeared 15 times (out of 12,224 dreams). In each example, there is no questioning who or what he is. Maybe it is a mistaken identification, but there is no way to determine that from the information contained in the record (or my memory). In each case, it is a totally convincing, fully aware identification of God as a real being visibly before me. Anything less, I should think, should not be identified this way.
While working on my PhD, I also worked on the fifth of the five articles I set out to write before I get to work on my next dream book, and it is on a similar subject to Long's. However, after listening to this podcast, I think I've wimped out a bit because I am personally uncomfortable with how religious the material will look to some people, though I do not interpret it that way at all.
Anyway, that is my reaction, and hello to everyone!
AP