Out-of-Body and near-Death Experiences : Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality?

Personalised Accounts of out-of-body (CBE) and near-death (NDE) experiences are frequently interpreted as offering evidence for immortality and an afterlife Since most OBE /NDE follow severe curtailments of cerebral circulation with loss of consciousness, the agonal brain supposedly permits 'mind', 'soul', or 'consciousness' to escape neural control and provide glimpses of the afterlife.

Professor Michael Marsh read medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford and became an academic biomedical research physician in Manchester. In 2006 he was received a Distinguished Investigator Award for his work on gluten intolerance (coeliac disease) and his classification of the intestinal responses which are now internationally adopted. While approaching retirement he took an Oxford degree in Theology, subsequently returning to Magdalen to write a D.Phil thesis on neurophysiological and theological approaches to near-death and out-of-body experiential phenomenology. He is now at Wolfson College and, in addition, a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford.