Hi Jules,
I should have been more precise and stated that NDE researchers do find cross-cultural differences, but 1) the similarities outweigh the differences, and 2) more relevant to this particular point we're talking about, for the reasons enumerated in my post above, in PMH Atwater's words, "the claim that near-death responses are biased because of personal or cultural expectations doesn't hold up" (
The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences, p. 210). As I wrote, leaving aside even atheists meeting Jesus or whatever:
NDErs (often) report encountering a reality completely contrary to their pre-NDE beliefs*, children encounter scenarios that are like the adults' when they're too young to have been conditioned, adults experience similar scenarios whether they're familiar or not with NDE reports.
*Example. A fundamentalist Christian may not experience anything remotely biblical, and instead a truly belief-shattering experience, where he/she experiences a Source that communicates a Total Knowing that doesn't even include any notions of morality or progress, etc. See, for example, Wayne Hart:
http://whitestaghealing.com/Near_Death_Experience.html
(I think we also have to be careful when we talk about how NDErs "interpret" their experience. We may mean and mix up different things when we say that. You can sometimes/often detect when an NDEr says that they saw a being of light and for them they think it was Jesus, and others where the being encountered
told them he was Jesus. In the second case, the NDEr is not "interpreting" his experience. At most, you could argue that the consciousness, whether manifesting something on its own or being made to experience something by higher powers, or a combination of both, is receiving a symbolic interpretation of an ultimate reality fitted to his or her understanding.)
Jeff Long, among others, makes the same point, perhaps a bit too strongly stated, but true in some sense: "
Preexisting cultural beliefs do not significantly influence the content of NDEs. Near-death experiences from around the world appear to have similar content regardless of the culture of the country that the NDErs live in. This is certainly consistent with our findings... that very young children, age five and younger, who have received much less cultural influence than adults, have NDEs with content that is the same as that of older children and adults." (
Evidence of the Afterlife, p. 150)
Anyhow, I really don't want to distract this thread further: please back to abduction experiencers! :)