Near-death experiences are far from rare.

The aftermath of an NDE often includes an unnamed grief: the loss of a shared reality.

NDE experiencers can benefit from relational curiosity and people who can tolerate not-knowing.

A client who survived a near-death experience (NDE) came back with a word for everyone else: “muggles,” borrowed from Harry Potter, where it names people born without magic. She meant it affectionately, having learned that describing what happened to her exceeded what most people could psychologically receive.

My client wasn’t being unkind when she called folks “muggles.” Most people, in her experience, were living ordinary lives with little room for what she’d been through. After all, she essentially experienced firsthand a mythic unraveling and psycho-spiritual reconstruction in the face of existential annihilation. I think it’s fair to say this isn’t your average Tuesday. So, the beauty and terror of her near-death experience exceeded what most people in her life could take in, so they became “muggles,” unaware that another world had opened alongside the ordinary one they shared with her.

Near-Death Experiences

According to a scoping review, as many as one in three cardiac arrest survivors may have a near-death experience (NDE), which in a nutshell is an altered state of consciousness that can occur when a person is physiologically and psychologically close to death.1 The research evidence makes it clear these are not fringe events that happen to only a select few, and NDEs aren’t limited to cardiac arrest; NDE’s can occur in any circumstance where a person comes close to death. Scientists have not yet determined why some people have an NDE in these situations, and others don’t.

In my own clinical work, people have often described these experiences as “realer than real,” which is also what........

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