The Nature of Experiencing of Returning to Life Near-Death and its Explanation based on Religious Foundations

SUBJECT AND OBJECTIVES: Those individuals who temporarily experience death, for some reasons, merely experience clinical death that is different from biological death. In the latter one it is not possible for their spirits to return to life while in the clinical death there is a possibility to return to the bodies and the material world. Thus, the present research attempts to explore clinical death incidents as a qualitative phenomenological study.METHOD AND FINDING: Among those who participated in producing the “Life After Life TV Series” of the ۲۰۲۰-۲۰۲۲ seasons, ۴۱ participants were selected and interviewed using the purposeful sampling method. In addition to television interviews, the complementary data were gathered using conducting semi-structured interviews. Implementing Colaizzi’s seven analysis steps, the data were analyzed using MAXQDA, the ۲۰۲۱ version.CONCLUSION: Findings show ۱۴ extracted codes identified as the “the nature of returning to life”. The codes were categorized into four main themes: ۱) Negotiation and being convinced, ۲) Having a choice and a discretion to return to the body, ۳) Asking to return to compensate indemnifications in the world, and ۴) Pleading for intercessions. Overall, it is concluded that in comparison to the other world’s experiencers, Iranian experiencers’ cultural factor and their religious beliefs are different from their counterparts in the world.

Keywords:

Near-death Experiences (NED) , Returning to Life , Religious Foundations