Beyond Death Ān sūy-e marg: the lectures of Hujjat al-Islam Aminikhah, with English summaries

Near-death experiences in Iran: a short review of the literature

1. Introduction

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are usually defined, following Greyson (1983), as profound subjective events with transcendental and mystical elements that occur to people close to death or in severe physical or emotional distress. Their study has been dominated by Western samples. In the first thirty years of the field, about 65 studies covered roughly 3,500 experiencers, mostly Western, while only some 275-300 non-Western cases had been published (Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009; Kellehear, 2009, both cited in Ghasemiannejad et al., 2014). Muslim populations were especially thin in the record. After searching the Muslim world, including by sending a student to the Kashmir earthquake area, Kreps (2009) found almost no accounts and suggested that NDEs "may be specifically designed for people who need them", with less need where faith in an afterlife and a Creator remains firm. That claim prompted the Iranian studies reviewed below.

2. The religious frame

Islamic tradition places the dead in the barzakh, an interval before the resurrection. The Qurʾān speaks of a person who asks to be sent back to do righteousness, and is told that "behind them is a barrier until the Day they are resurrected" (Q 23:99-100, Sahih International). Shiʿi tradition adds a developed account of the angel of death, of the presence of the Imams at the moment of death, and of intercession. In the philosophical school of Mullā Ṣadrā the barzakh is an imaginal world in which a person meets forms produced by his own deeds; the lectures on this site rely on that doctrine throughout (see especially sessions 17-28). This frame matters for the empirical work in two ways: it supplies the vocabulary in which Iranian experiencers describe what they saw, and it gives Iranian researchers and audiences an existing theory of what such accounts mean (e.g. Gerami, 2012; Saʿi & Ghasemiannejad, 2014; Mousavirad, 2023, all cited in Mohammad Sadeghipour et al., 2024).

3. The empirical studies

StudySample and methodMain findings
Fracasso, Aleyasin, Friedman & Young (2010)Arak; 30 volunteers, recruited in university classes and by word of mouth; Persian translation of Greyson's NDE Scale; 19 (63%) scored 7 or more.Light 62%, border or barrier 53%, life review 41%, out-of-body experience 32%. Reliability of the Persian scale was poor (alpha .54), so the authors report only descriptive results. Concluded that NDEs are not rare among Muslims and resemble Western ones. Two suicide-attempt experiencers wanted to return to the realm they had seen.
Ghasemiannejad, Long, Nouri & Farahnakian (2014)Shiʿi adults recruited through a Persian-language website; 46 questionnaires, 33 eligible; Persian NDE Scale (alpha .83) plus a gratitude scale; 20 (61%) scored 7 or more.Altered time or place 85%, out-of-body experience 60%, positive emotion 60%, light 50%, life review 40%, other beings 40%, unworldly realms 35%, tunnel 10%. NDErs scored higher on gratitude than comparison survivors (d about 1.0). Of three published narratives, one follows a war wound, one a suicide attempt (the person is turned back by two angry presences) and one childbirth.
Mohammad Sadeghipour, Rostami Nasab, Alavi, Yari Dehnavi & Mowzoon (2024)34 participants of the television series Zendegi pas az zendegi (drawn from 95 appearing in three seasons, 2020-2022), interviewed and analysed by Colaizzi's method in MAXQDA.Eleven themes. Twenty experiences were positive and fourteen negative. Distinctive features listed by the authors: religious figures such as Imams or martyrs at the tunnel stage; punishment tied to prohibited acts such as drinking; meeting the dead; and, on return, intercession and bargaining.
Rashidi, Maniey, Ebadi, Mowzoon & Bigdeli Shamloo (2025)Ten television interviews (52-88 minutes) chosen by the presenter as the richest; hermeneutic phenomenology (van Manen).Overall theme "rebirth", with four subthemes: support for a hard death (guardian angel, shame at deeds, attachment to life), soul journey, transformation of insight (acceptance of fate, "love of death", worthlessness of the world) and life afterwards, including growth, depression and reluctance to speak.

3a. Persian-language scholarship

Much of the Iranian discussion is in Persian and is not captured in the international databases. Three strands can be seen from catalogue entries and from how the English papers cite it. (1) Qualitative description. Ghasemiannejad Jahromi and colleagues interviewed ten experiencers and derived four components, cognitive, spiritual-religious, affective-emotional and extra-normal or non-material, which Mohammad Sadeghipour et al. (2024) adopt; the paper also notes that telling such experiences often met with unhelpful reactions, especially from medical staff (Journal of Qualitative Research in Health Sciences, 7(3), 2018). (2) Philosophical and theological evaluation. Saʿi and Ghasemiannejad (2014, Andīsha-yi Nawīn-i Dīnī, 10(38)) ask what an NDE is and criticise rival explanations, and Ghasemiannejad Jahromi, Kajbaf and Farahnakian (Kalām-i Islāmī, 85, 2013) use NDEs in an account of the soul-body relation; Gerami (2012), Rezania and Etemadi Nia (2022) and Mousavirad (2023) are cited by Mohammad Sadeghipour et al. (2024) for readings in Islamic terms, one of them arguing that NDEs alone cannot prove survival. (3) Clinical application. A group-therapy study with experiencers (Dānish va Pazhūhish dar Rawānshināsī-yi Kārburdī, 62, 2015) measured depression, death anxiety and belief in an afterlife. An Iranian affiliate of the International Association for Near-Death Studies also exists.

4. What the studies suggest

Prevalence and recognisability. Both survey studies found that people with NDE-type memories were easy to find (Fracasso et al.: within a month in one town; Ghasemiannejad et al.: through a website). This contradicts the claim that Muslim NDEs are rare, though recruitment of volunteers cannot give a population incidence, and the proportion scoring 7 or more (61-63%) reflects that both samples were self-selected for having something to report.

Core features. Out-of-body experience, light, life review, meeting the dead and being sent back recur. A tunnel is uncommon in the one study that measured it (10%), while the television sample reports tunnels, corridors and "green paths" often. Ghasemiannejad et al. conclude that Shiʿi NDEs are not very different from Western ones in their main elements, and Fracasso et al. suggest a cross-culturally universal phenomenon. The later studies emphasise instead what the culture adds.

Features shaped by the setting. The television studies describe (a) guides identified as angels, Imams, the Prophet or other holy figures; (b) accountability: a review in which the person sees his deeds embodied, in the negative cases as predatory animals; (c) compensation or intercession as the condition of return, with the Prophet, the Imams or martyrs interceding; and (d) a strong moral and devotional reading afterwards (acceptance of fate, loss of fear of death, giving up addiction or theft). Mohammad Sadeghipour et al. (2024) conclude that the elements are similar worldwide but that their quality is culturally shaped, and the lecture series gives this a theological reading of its own.

Distressing experiences. In the television sample 14 of 34 accounts (41%) were negative, much more than the figure of about 14% quoted from Western studies by Rashidi et al. (2025). The authors of the 2024 study connect this to feedback of one's actions. The difference may also reflect selection or the prominence of moral teaching in a religious media setting, which the studies do not test.

Aftereffects and difficulties. Reduced fear of death, gratitude and moral change are reported, as in the West. Suicide-attempt experiencers (Fracasso et al.; Ghasemiannejad et al.) report longing to return, and Rashidi et al. report depression, fear of darkness and avoidance of telling others for fear of being thought delusional.

5. Limits of the evidence

6. The lecture series in this context

The book Ān sūy-e marg (Jamāl Ṣādiqī, compiled by Muḥammad-Ḥusayn Ḥājjī-Dihābādī; Nashr-i Maʿārif, first printed in 1397/2018) reports three interview-based accounts of people who say they went to the barzakh and returned. Publishers' listings call it a bestseller with more than thirty printings and carry a warning that parts may be unsuitable for heart patients and the psychologically vulnerable. Its publisher is linked to the Leader's representative office, which is also the institution the lecturer is said to serve at his university. The book is not research data: its three narrators are anonymous, their accounts were edited by the book's authors, and the lecturer takes them as true. It does belong to the same cultural stream as the television accounts, and several of its themes parallel the findings above: a tunnel or cylinder of light, a review of one's whole life, figures of light, a guide or angel, a reckoning of one's deeds with embodied forms, a stage at which the person is returned, and a strong moral lesson. The third story is distinctive in making wrongs against other people (ḥaqq al-nās) the organising theme of the afterlife; the television papers report accountability for deeds and requests to compensate, but not this particular emphasis. The sessions are therefore best read as a primary source for how a Ṣadrian, seminary-trained thinker connected to the Leader's office interprets and teaches such accounts, alongside the research summarised here; a synthesis of that position is on the next page.

References