NDEs can be profoundly transforming, but they can also disrupt personal relationships.  Divorce may follow.  The experiences have side effects.

    Passing from the living to the dead is marked by rituals in all cultures.  It is a “betwixt and between” period.  Anthropological theories of ritual and rites of passage offer much for NDE research.

    Earlier peoples knew that the demarcation between the living and the dead is not as clear and sharp as we assume it today.  NDEs, mediumship, reincarnation, ghosts, and spirits all blur the life-death distinction.  They call into question our assumptions about reality.

    The realm betwixt and between major binary oppositions (the life-death opposition is only one example) is also referred to as a “liminal” space.  Liminal conditions and periods are not governed by the usual rational rules.  Things are disrupted.  Typical expectations of what is proper and possible no longer apply.  This domain is governed by the trickster.

    Paranormal phenomena, including NDEs, are given little attention by establishment science.  There are reasons for that.  The phenomena are extremely problematic.

    Raymond Moody, in his book The Last Laugh (1999), seems to realize the difficulty in intellectually and scientifically grappling with NDEs, and he appears to have abandoned the effort himself.   The NDE fundamentally challenges the Western rational worldview.  But so does the trickster, and in a very similar way.

    Kenneth Ring’s book The Omega Project (1992) compared NDEs with UFO experiences.  Mixing the two seems bizarre.  It appears to violate categories in an almost irrational manner.  But Ring is not alone in seeing the connection, and in the late 1980s a number of people involved with IANDS became intrigued with UFOs.
Also, pychic phenomena are associated with both NDEs and UFOs, and NDEs have elements in common with shamanic and visionary experiences.  These unexpected links are illuminated with trickster theory.

    Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was perhaps the most publicly prominent advocate of the importance of NDEs.  But she was not untouched by the phenomena herself.  She regularly communicated with spirits, but she was also victimized by a phony medium.  Her life was marked by instability.  These are subtle indications of the side effects and dangers of interacting with the phenomena.  They also hint at why the scientific establishment shies away from NDEs.