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Page 164
Included in the personality-transforming illuminations of NDEs are the illuminations accompanying what Morse has called "fear-death" experiences (FDEs). These are dissociative reactions to intensely stressful or life-threatening situations. I consider myself to be a member of this latter cohort. I do not know whether or not my experience in the Philippines was actually an NDE, as characterized by Raymond Moody in Life After Life by such bodily symptoms as cessation of breathing or heartbeat, or drop in blood pressure or temperature. 18 Nonetheless, I experienced radical long-term changes in my worldview, values, and priorities due to a set of interactions "in the world of light." Spiritually transforming awakenings come in many forms, and nearly dying is only one of the circumstances that tends to be conducive to them.19
I am deeply grateful to all those who have researched and written of these transcendent experiences of light, as they have helped me to integrate my own experience into my life. An additional aspect discovered by Morse, in his study of people who had had such experiences, is that the illumined NDE group reportedly had more than four times the number of validated psychic experiences as did the well or seriously ill groups of people with whom they were compared. He described many instances wherein people who had experienced light as part of their near- or fear-death experiences were surprised by influxes of precognitive information, clairvoyant vision, and healing ability after their illuminations.
Other researchers who have conducted surveys of the range of aftereffects experienced by those with NDEs (NDErs) have also reported that a perceived increase in psychic phenomena is common, but those are not the most significant changes to come about in the lives of the experiencers.20 Far more important for them were the changes in life direction, and the focus on spiritual growth. These aspects have been true for me, as well. As Raymond Moody wrote in The Light Beyond:
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Upon their return, almost all [NDErs] say that love is the most important thing in life. Many say it is why we are here. Most find it the hallmark of happiness and fulfillment, with other values paling beside it.21

 
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