A leading researcher of distressing NDEs for four decades and an experiencer herself, Nancy Evans Bush, MA, is President Emerita of IANDS, the International Association for Near-Death Studies. A teacher, author, and grandmother of seven, she lives with her partner on a salt marsh in coastal North Carolina.

"e;The Buddha in hell! What kind of sense is that?"e; With this book, veteran near-death experience (NDE) researcher Nancy Evans Bush explores questions raised by some of the most troubling spiritual encounters. Not a collection of NDE accounts, the book brings a wealth of straight talk and insightful commentary about finding meaning in a difficult subject. It is now clear, though not frequently said out loud, that a significant minority of near-death experiences (NDEs) are harrowing--frightening, alienating, guilt-producing, and/or hellish. Their images are often bizarre, as old as myths and as recent as the nearest emergency room. The way we interpret them shapes religions and philosophies, New Testament doctrines and New Age ideas, computer games and movies, and goes with us into our dying. Such NDEs and their spiritual cousins have been seen in Western thought as punishment, proof of the hell described by medieval Christianity. After seventeen hundred years, Is that still all we have as explanation? Over more than three decades, Nancy Evans Bush, MA, has emerged as a leading voice in the search for answers to that question. Her first book, Dancing Past the Dark, remains a key research-based exploration of distressing near-death experiences. Now she draws on questions from her blog readers, conference audiences, and correspondence with experiencers over the years, framing a more personal discussion of perspectives not often seen in the literature. She reminds readers of actual data on near-death experience and follows it with an overview of the development of hell as a concept (eye-opening!), with varying inter-cultural perspectives. The book concludes with religious issues and profound psychological insights, alternative ways of approaching the questions. Longtime readers know Evans Bush's writing as intelligent, engaging, and readable; she is unafraid to tackle the hard questions.

"e;The Buddha in hell! What kind of sense is that?"e; With this book, veteran near-death experience (NDE) researcher Nancy Evans Bush explores questions raised by some of the most troubling spiritual encounters. Not a collection of NDE accounts, the book brings a wealth of straight talk and insightful commentary about finding meaning in a difficult subject. It is now clear, though not frequently said out loud, that a significant minority of near-death experiences (NDEs) are harrowing--frightening, alienating, guilt-producing, and/or hellish. Their images are often bizarre, as old as myths and as recent as the nearest emergency room. The way we interpret them shapes religions and philosophies, New Testament doctrines and New Age ideas, computer games and movies, and goes with us into our dying. Such NDEs and their spiritual cousins have been seen in Western thought as punishment, proof of the hell described by medieval Christianity. After seventeen hundred years, Is that still all we have as explanation? Over more than three decades, Nancy Evans Bush, MA, has emerged as a leading voice in the search for answers to that question. Her first book, Dancing Past the Dark, remains a key research-based exploration of distressing near-death experiences. Now she draws on questions from her blog readers, conference audiences, and correspondence with experiencers over the years, framing a more personal discussion of perspectives not often seen in the literature. She reminds readers of actual data on near-death experience and follows it with an overview of the development of hell as a concept (eye-opening!), with varying inter-cultural perspectives. The book concludes with religious issues and profound psychological insights, alternative ways of approaching the questions. Longtime readers know Evans Bush's writing as intelligent, engaging, and readable; she is unafraid to tackle the hard questions.

Almost one in every five near-death experiences (NDEs) is not a visit to heaven. Some are marked by alarm, emptiness, threat, guilt, or even the terror of hell or psychosis. How to understand them? Here is a book that gives readers more to go on than old wives' tales and medieval theological images.Dancing Past the Dark is a comprehensive overview of near-death experiences in general and disturbing NDEs in particular, presented by an author who knows her topic both from the inside, as one who had a reality-shattering NDE, and from her role as administrator and participant in the early decades of near-death research. Nancy Evans Bush, MA, President Emerita of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, brings ways of thinking about death, dying, and suffering that will be new to many readers.All NDEs, she says, even the most painful, have astonishing potential to enrich and clarify life here and now. She remains straightforward about the profound difficulty in this type of NDE and knows first-hand the pressing need for information: What do they mean? Are they real? What does science say, or religion? NDEs change lives, but to what extent can they be believed?She presents such research findings as exist about these NDEs and explains why the study data are so sparse. She interweaves thoughtful scholarship, common questions, conventional wisdom, and anecdotal bits from the early years of near-death studies. From reporting data she moves on to opinion, including the diversity and perpetual changing of ideas about an afterlife. She looks at the impact and range of cultural influences and religion. She devotes a chapter to approaches to recovery following such a PTSD-promoting experience. An appendix is made up of first-person accounts of deeply distressing NDEs.The book covers a lot of ground, yet is "engagingly written," as one reviewer said. It is not about Evans Bush or her NDE, though she details her own experience; rather, it is a fact-filled overview of the struggle for understanding.Overall, the book presents a compelling case that to see these events only as messages about death or an afterlife is largely to miss their point.Author Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire) posted to her blog readers about Dancing Past the Dark: "I want to once again draw your attention to this brilliant book. Put aside whatever you think you know about NDEs and read this...I cannot reccoment it enough."