1 I am indebted to Mircea Eliade for this term. 2 See How the Work Originated. 3 See Religious Faith & Empirical Validation. 4 For an excellent introduction to the ubiquity of the near-death experience, see Life After Life : The Investigation of a Phenomenon -- Survival of Bodily Death by Raymond A., Jr. Moody, Bantam Books, 1988.  For an exposition of the profound Buddhist teaching of transformation at death see The Tibetan Book of the Dead : The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, by Francesca Fremantle (Translator), Chogyam Trungpa (Translator), (February 1988) Random House, or see Transitions to the Otherworld: Transitions to the Otherworld. 5 See, for instance, the account of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, a 19th century physician, experience of Cosmic Consciousness.