One of the world’s leading experts on ancient Near-Death Experiences, Gregory Shushan, Ph.D., argues with compelling data for the Experiential Origins of afterlife beliefs. (Finally!)

There has always been debate about the causes and means of religious similarity across separate cultures. One of these means is called Cultural or Geographic Diffusion, requiring physical connection between peoples to explain similarities.

But there is another approach far more compelling from the standpoint of someone who has had riveting numinous experiences. This is the Experiential Origins argument. The idea that religious similarities do not require physical connection between cultures. Rather, in the natural experiences across the world, human beings have encountered the objective spiritual reality each in their own respective places.

I made this rough graph to demonstrate the difference. Both have and of course happen at once. But if scholars don’t credit the experiences underlying the religions they study with any possibility, their judgements will always be handicapped.