I'm curious, what does Ring say about NDEs in Mindsight and Lessons in the Light? Does he make such parallels (between NDEs and UFO events) in those books? I'd be buying them in a jiffy if he does. There really isn't much written on this topic. At least I thought. If you can point me in any direction on this type of literature, I'd be grateful. I'm interested in possible events masquerading as NDEs or "absurd" NDEs that really parallel "absurd" UFO experiences. The link cannot be ignored, in my opinion.
Mindsight is about a study of NDEs in the blind. I don't remember reading anything about UFO experiences in
Lessons in the Light either.
Mack references Ring in his 1994
Abduction book and talks about Ring's early 90s work where he posited "an encounter-prone personality". But I think that's been discredited (?), and that Ring moved on after that. On the dust-jacket of the Omega UFO book (which I have, I'll read it later this year most likely), it says "Dr. Ring posits the existence of 'an encounter-prone personality' - a distinctive, spiritually sensitive, and visionary psyche that may, collectively, represent the next stage in human evolution." Maybe in later years Ring backed away from such "the paradigm shift is about to happen, humanity is on the brink of an evolutionary shift" type of stuff.
These are the chapter headings of the Omega Project UFO book (not to be confused with his earlier
Heading Toward Omega book):
1. Another road to Omega
2. Varieties of UFO encounters.
3. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.
4. Near-Death Experiences.
5. The Omega Project.
6. Childhood Antecedents of Extraordinary Encounters.
7. Psychophysical Changes Following Extraordinary Encounters.
8. Beliefs and Value Shifts Following Extraordinary Encounters.
9. Heading Toward Oz: Demystifying Extraordinary Encounters.
10. Omega Revelation: Ecological and Evolutionary Implications of Extraordinary Encounters.
Ring's UFO book does reference Vallée extensively.
Meanwhile, forum member Ian Thompson runs the
www.newdualism.org website. It has many NDE scholarly articles, and you may want to check out these ones:
Lorraine Davis,
A Comparison of UFO and Near-Death Experiences as Vehicles for the Evolution of Human Consciousness (Journal of Near Death Studies, 1988)
http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Davis/Davis-Journal of Near-Death Studies_1988-6-240-257.pdf
K. Ring and C. J. Rosing,
The omega project: An empirical study of the NDE-prone personality, Journal of Near-Death Studies,
8 (1990), pp. 211-239.
http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Ring/Ring-Journal of Near-Death Studies_1990-8-211-239.pdf
This lecture followed the release of the UFO-NDE book: