deas about Near-Death Experiences in the Ancient Indian Epic Literature (based on Mahabharata): Coparison with Modern Western Experience

Abstract

In cross-cultural researches of near-death experience comparison of this modern western experience to it’s descriptions in the ancient Indian epics was carried out (“Mahabharata” became a material of our analysis). It was revealed, that at Mahabharata’s descriptions of neardeath experience – alongside with cultural specificity – there is the overwhelming majority of elements of the western near-death experience, thus similarity concerns not so much the concrete contents of elements on itself, but their role in realization of the universal script of traveling to the world of dead.