Although human beings have always been preoccupied with mysteries, one of these endures above all others for the sheer implications it raises: what happens to us after we die? Does human consciousness persist? Do our actions in this life incur metaphysical consequences to face after death?

These types of queries formed the bedrock for countless religious ideas, from early indigenous belief to antiquity and into the modern era. The importance placed on this, the greatest of all mysteries, invited layer upon layer of dogma, obscuring the issue in many ways.

If we strip away the arbitrary layer of human belief, however, we are left with a startling amount of evidence suggesting that, indeed, some aspect of the human experience perseveres following death. This statement finds an abundance of support from the testimonies of those who claim to have had Near-Death Experiences.

Current resuscitative techniques and other medical advancements have made NDEs easier to study and verify. This does not mean that they are an experiential artifact of modernity, however. A close examination of ancient and indigenous traditions from around the world demonstrates that little about the core experience has changed over time, which continues in the face of cultural disparities.

While the notion that consciousness survives death is confrontational in its own right, it seems that the NDE—itself already a threshold event—can potentially serve as a gateway to understanding other modalities of contact with the more-than-human world. When a comparative approach is applied, we see resonances with all varieties of contact experiences, including other altered states of consciousness and interactions with non-human intelligences.

Roughly speaking, this course is broken into two halves: the first half is an examination of the phenomenon itself, including support for its objective existence, while the second half seeks to dismantle boundaries between the NDE and other contact modalities not currently accepted by mainstream consensus.