A "Near Death Experience," or short "NDE," often happens to people who have been clinically dead or in other ways been close to death, whereby the term “near death.” However, similar or identical experiences also happen under different circumstances that are in no way near to physical death but closer to the experience of ego death and share many similarities with religious or spiritual experiences.  

The term was first coined in 1975 when Dr. Raymond Moody released his study of these experiences in his book Life After Life, and with the explosion of interest in the subject today many books has been written and a lot of studies has been done to investigate the phenomenon.

A Gallup poll has estimated that about 8 million Americans has had a near death experience and there is substantial scientific evidence to support that these experiences are neither hallucinations nor stories that people simply make up.

As close as we can get to an actual proof of life after death, near death experiences share obvious parallels with both religion and spirituality. One NDE researcher, Rene Jorgensen, has recently released the book Behind 90 Minutes in Heaven, which is based on objective research of near death experiences and goes beyond Don Piper's personal and very subjective interpretation of his near death experience in 90 Minutes in Heaven.