574. Ring, Kenneth. "Prophetic Visions in 1988: A Critical Reappraisal." Journal of Near-Death Studies 7 (1), 1988a: 4-18.
Those experiencing near-death often undergo a phenomenon called the life review, in which they in some sense "relive" certain experiences in a very realistic fashion, viewing them from a new perspective. Sometimes these experiences include previews of the future, or "flashforwards," in Ring's words.
These experiences are characterized by a sense that our common sense view of reality is inadequate and/or incorrect, to the extent that "mankind [is] breaking the laws of the universe" and universal suffering will result.
Ring cites more recent research than his own, that of Margot Grey (1985), showing that experiences in England replicate the interview material Ring gathered, even in detail. For example, "I saw a new consciousness emerging and mankind evolving in a new form. Thereafter I beheld a new Golden Age in which people would live in love and harmony with each other and all of nature." [It is interesting to speculate about this informant's vocabulary; her use of "beheld" suggests a deliberate attempt to sound Biblical and portentous.]
Ring finds all this "deeply disturbing." His interpretations include psychological projection of the informants' own death-and-rebirth scenarios onto a cosmic scene. Grof (1975, 1988) reports similar visions accompanying "ego-death" in psychedelic experiences; among Ring's respondents the experience is "taken literally." [Is it actually? If so, why don't these people start movements? Or do they?]
Another explanation attributes these visions to mythic themes in the Zeitgeist; yet another posits "alternative futures" which these visionaries have seen one track of, so their visions are not of inevitable events. [This begs several questions, among them being how they manage to violate the laws of thermodynamics in seeing a future at all; leaving this aside, why should all of them (we know of) happen to "see" the same choice among an unknown number of alternatives? Of course "the" future, at whatever level, is almost infinitely contingent. All predictions boil down to a statement bearing the implicit caveat "if present trends continue," which is the one thing they definitely won't do, change being immanent in the universe.]
Another explanation could be that these visions are perfectly accurate and that these Armageddons are inevitable. [I can think of another, offhand: there can be no greater "relative deprivation" than that which takes away life itself. If these people are actually flirting along the edge of that deprivation with some slice of consciousness recording the fact, then it makes perfect sense that they should construct a scenario of the future based on the myths (including those of, e.g., plate tectonics and evolution) which are current in their common culture. America and England do not significantly differ in their views of possible End-times. What would be really interesting would be instances of, say, Australian aborigines reporting identical visions.]
So these visions can be taken as "foreshadowing the need for a new myth of cultural regeneration" (p. 13). These visions reflect "the collective psyche of our time" [a concept which Ring baldly adopts unquestioned; can't we reasonably substitute "culture"?] and "a new messianic movement."
These visions do not only occur in the context of near-death. They are common in UFO encounters [and with this concept Ring does have difficulty but adopts it anyway]. Ring then embarks on a spirited but uncritical defence of the collective unconscious, discarding Occam in the process. As I have tried to suggest, it is only necessary to invoke culture as a body of widely shared information (of all kinds) to account for this phenomenon.
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