The majority of recorded claims link NDEs to feelings of joy and comfort. A statistician calculated that 69 per cent of the thousands of cases he investigated reported a feeling of overwhelming love. When he broke his subjects down by belief (Christian, Religious but non-Christian, Non-religious, New Age, etc) he found 100 per cent of people calling themselves atheists had experienced "tremendous ecstasy". Sixty-three per cent reported the life review experience.

Ayer's account of his own NDE, for a man of such formidable intellect, was surprisingly similar to most of the others on record, though more elegantly observed. He wrote of "a red light for governing the universe" and some barrier he crossed, "like the River Styx." The experience, he said, "weakened my conviction that death would be the end of me, though I continue to hope it will be."

I am optomistic, the species will outgrow this tendency.