Near-death experiences observed and studied today are interesting to me not just because of what they tell us about the individuals who have these experiences, but because of the light they potentially shed on older historical accounts of mystical experiences in general.  For instance, in a class I took last semester with Professor Parsons, we studied a book written by the 16^th century Spanish Saint, Teresa of Avila.  In the book, Saint Teresa repeatedly mentions that when a holy person reaches the level of contemplation that allows for contact with the divine, that person often appears to be dead—that is, their bodily senses no longer seem to be picking up information from the outside world.  Many other accounts like this exist throughout history and across many different religious traditions, such as Buddhist monks who enter so deep into meditation that they no longer have a perceivable pulse and indeed appear dead to onlookers.  Similarly, ascetics of various religious traditions often undergo means of self-mortification for the purpose of inducing an “ego-death,” so as to give life to a higher self that is more in touch with the divine.  Perhaps in such cases, even when the person is not physiologically near death, he or she may be psychologically near death, which ultimately amounts to the same response.  In other words, it may be possible to self-induce NDEs by making the mind believe that the ego—biologically the most important part of the psyche, and therefore the most crucial to physiological survival—is at the brink of death, thus tricking the mind into a perceived imminence of bodily death.  Is it possible that the religious experiences of many mystics have actually been NDEs that were self-induced through similar means?  How much religious wisdom can be traced back in some way to an NDE?