I've been reading through the submitted NDE accounts on IANDS, NDERF, and near-death.com (the latter strikes me as rather troubling; the webmaster has the site loaded with the same sort of editorial commentary that Alex is so fond of, albeit near-death's is less combative). While reading these reports does seem to affirm the consistency of the NDE in a general sense, I've noticed that some of the most celebrated/notorious/detailed accounts contradict each other, sometimes quite wildly, on major points - what the afterlife is supposed to be like, what the Source/Light/God is like, how much of what makes us "us" survives, and claims of visions of the future (the world's, not personal).
I tried finding some studies/academic writing/informed questions on these contradictions by researchers, but a Google search for "NDE contradictions" and "NDEs contradict each other" generated a bunch of blogs or pop articles from Christian writers about how NDEs contradict Scripture.
Anyone have some useful links here?
Yea to be quite honest you need to take these accounts with a huge grain of salt.
For example, Dannion Brinkley is one of the famed NDE'rs who claims to had future events revealed to him during his NDE. However it turns out that Dannion Brinkley was more than likely making all that up.
Also it's impossible to know what the experience objectively witnessed. Their subjective report on it after the fact doesn't give us a direct glimpse into what they actually saw.
For example Sam Parnia says that some experiencers see Jesus, some see buddha or Krishna, but when you probe further you realize that they are seeing the same thing.
In fact their are NDE'rs themselves who say that people who see Jesus, or other religious figures are only identifying the being as that. For example:
http://ndeinfo.wmthost.com (You have to go to the one that says "Phil Donahue" with Viola Horton, and watch that. I don remember when they say it but I think it comes during the question and answer portion).
Also some NDE'rs say that initially the experience is more subjective for the purpose of making them feel comfortable. In fact the beings even offer to change form such as the case of Howard Storm I believe. Interestingly he also says that the beings who showed him future events qualified that it was only a possible future if things continued the way they did. So it could be that these future prophecies that these beings are shown are only possibilities.
For me, I take it as a huge red flag when an NDE is heavily focused on religion, or pushing a certain type of religion. By far the vast majority of the NDE's I have come across, the person afterwards is less inclined to religion as an absolute truth, but instead become more spiritual.
Regardless you need to keep in mind that since we don't actually know what these people are experiencing, we need to look at other ways of verifying whether these events give us any insight into the reality of an afterlife. The best way I think to do that is through "Peak in Darien" NDE's, and Veridical OBE's.
For me, even if all NDE's were 100% consistent, it wouldn't prove to me the reality of an afterlife. I would still place the most weight on veridical NDE's, and Peak in Darien cases, since they at least have an objective connection that can be observed by non-NDE'rs.