“Have you stood at the gates of doom? Or looked through the gates of death? Have you been to the edge of the universe?” In the Old Testament, The Voice from the Whirlwind poses these questions to Job. The implied answer is no, for these seem to be divine prerogatives. For humans, heaven is a gated community, and we typically can’t even peer through. This is one reason (among many) near-death experiences inspire awe: They seem to give us a “God’s eye” view of what really lies beyond. They take us to the edge of the universe.

While it’s not exactly a scientific term, most of us have an agreed understanding of what “near-death experience” means. Obviously, an N.D.E. takes place in a “near-death context” — a situation in which one’s life is in jeopardy. Most who have studied or discussed them agree that to count as an N.D.E., the experience must occur while the individual is not wakefully conscious and have a significant number of these aspects: an “out of body” experience in which one seems to be floating above one’s physical form and can see it and its surroundings; a life review; guidance by deceased loved ones or revered religious figures toward a “guarded” realm (a light in the darkness, a gated or fenced domain, the other side of a river). Many people who have had an N.D.E. report being profoundly transformed — less anxious about death, more spiritual and more “prosocial” (including more concerned with morality).

These sorts of experiences have been reported throughout history and across cultures. Plato described one in “The Republic” — the Myth of Er. They are partly dependent upon the particulars of an individual’s life situation, religion and culture, but there are common elements as well. For instance, the religious figures may be different — a Christian would see Christian figures, a Buddhist would see Buddhist figures, Hindu gods and goddesses would appear in a Hindu’s N.D.E., and so forth. Yet at a deeper level there is guidance by respected figures, a voyage led by trusted mentors from the known to the unknown. This time it is perhaps the most daunting journey, from life to death. Loving guidance on our last journey, or the last leg of our journey, is deeply resonant.

In popular literature, N.D.E.s are almost always interpreted “supernaturalistically.” They are interpreted as showing (or “proving”) that the mind is not the same as the brain and can continue after the brain stops functioning, and also that the mind has contact of some sort with a “heavenly” or nonphysical realm. The titles of popular books about N.D.E.s proclaim that “heaven is for real” or that we have a “proof of heaven.” Medical doctors and neuroscientists writing about these issues claim that N.D.E.s offer “evidence for the afterlife” and “consciousness beyond life.” They think of them as round-trip tickets to the Good Place — the trip of an afterlifetime.