I don’t automatically believe nor automatically disbelieve what is called “private revelation.”
Hildegard of Bingen had them for over 70 years, and they weren’t “near-death” experiences either: they were intense visions that came to her, on and off, through all 5 senses, from age 3 until her death at age 81.
Even she did not consider them automatically worthy of belief. For a long time she was dubious, she didn’t know if they were a delusion or a gift.
I admire her sane and balanced point of view. God is capable of giving us visions; on the other hand, the brain itself is inconceivably complex, and capable of engendering convincingly fantastic other worlds.
But I want to ask the doctrinaire atheists this question: why and how would unaided materialistic evolution -— you know, that mechanistic process totally defined by survival and reproductive fitness -— have given us such powerful, apparently otherworldly, perceptions, capacities, and drives?
I ask you.
NDE's appear to occur across cultures and bear remarkable similarities. Beyond that, I don't know. They might be part of the dying process in which regardless of how bad a persons non-instantaneous death is, the final experience will be pleasant.
Very interesting indeed. Just this week, the Church made her a doctor of the Church.