“The Buddha in hell! What kind of sense is that?” Near-death experiences which are frightening, alienating, and/or hellish are the hardest of all to understand. They are most often explained as punishment or evidence of bad character. Nancy Evans Bush, MA, President Emerita of the International Association for Near-Death Study and a veteran researcher of distressing NDEs, explores questions that swarm around them: Aren’t these things hallucinations? Or do they prove the existence of Hell as described by medieval Christianity? After seventeen hundred years, is that still all we have as explanation?

Evans Bush says not. From her own experience and decades of study, she brings straight talk and insightful commentary to a difficult subject, respecting both religion and science in this age of the Hubble universe. The book is not a collection of distressing NDE accounts but an exploration of finding meaning and purpose in them.

Her first book, Dancing Past the Dark, remains a key research-based exploration of distressing near-death experiences. In this new book, Evans Bush reminds readers of the actual data on disturbing NDEs, summarizes the development of hell as a concept (eye-opening!), with varying inter-cultural perspectives, and takes on religious issues and profound psychological insight as alternative ways of approaching the questions. Throughout, she draws on questions from blog readers, conference audiences, and correspondence with experiencers over the years, framing a more personal discussion of perspectives not often seen in the literature.
Longtime readers know Evans Bush’s writing as intelligent, engaging, and readable; she is unafraid to tackle the hard questions.