The reality of death experiences. A personal perspective.

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in reports of the subjective experience of individuals in severe life-threatening circumstances. These have been used to suggest that scientific facts are now in agreement with religious beliefs as to the survival of the personality after physical death. This paper presents a personal death experience viewed by the author as a "subjective reality". This is contrasted with "shared subjective reality," i.e., commonly held beliefs among groups of individuals which do not necessarily lend themselves to scientific verification and scientifically derived objective reality. Subjectively real death experiences are regarded as corollary to a toxic psychosis. The content of the psychosis, which is not under voluntary control, determines the subjective experience of having entered either heaven or hell.