We have the pleasure of announcing a new book, Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind, by the noted NDE researcher Kenneth Ring and his colleague Sharon Cooper The book reports a pioneering investigation of the astonishing claim that blind persons, including those blind from birth, can actually "see" during near-death and out-of-the-body episodes. Ring and Cooper interviewed 31 blind and sight-impaired persons who had NDEs and OBEs, and found that the great preponderance of them reported "visual" experiences, some in detail. In-depth case studies are presented and carefully analyzed to evaluate these claims, including verification from outside observers in some cases. Ring and Cooper contend that some form of vision without physical senses, which they call "mindsight," appears to have occurred during these experiences. The book concludes with a consideration of theoretical approaches from the areas of consciousness research, transpersonal psychology and parapsychology that together appear to represent the most promising perspectives for understanding the extraordinary experiences described by the participants in this seminal study. The book includes a foreword by Dr. Charles T. Tart, and has already garnered strong endorsements and praise from leading researchers and scholars and has been chosen as the NDE book of the year on a well regarded NDE Web site. Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and co-founder and past president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies. He is also the author of several previous books about near-death experiences including Life at Death, Heading Toward Omega, The Omega Project, and most recently, Lessons from the Light. Sharon Cooper, M.A., is currently a Ph.D. candidate in counseling psychology at New York University. The book is published by the William James Center for Consciousness Studies of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, as part of its purpose to further the study of transpersonal topics reflecting the interests of William James, and we expect it to stimulate controversy and spirited discussion.
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