A dark tunnel, a bright light, an encounter with a deceased loved one.... Scholars are intrigued by how similar near-death experiences remain in spite of differences in the age, upbringing, cultural background, and religious beliefs of the people having them. (Jimmy Lin)

In 2002, two strangers came together at the urging of the Chou Ta-kuan Foundation, an organization that advocates "life education," and established the Taiwan Near-Death Research Institute. The first was an elementary-school principal who had been making the rounds talking about the beautiful afterlife she had seen during her near-death experience (NDE). The second was a psychiatrist who began conducting NDE interviews after a loved one had an NDE.

But while the general public in Taiwan remains largely uninformed about NDEs, researchers in the US and Europe have conducted a number of systematic academic studies into the phenomenon over the last 30 years. These studies have found that NDEs are neither hallucinatory nor psychological phenomena, but common, real experiences that occur without regard to nationality, age, gender, or religious affiliation. While science has so far failed to provide evidence of or an explanation for NDEs, researchers with backgrounds in medicine, psychology, physics, and neurology continue to be interested in them.

People meeting the pretty, exuberant Sophia Hsieh today would never guess that eig. When Yu began to recover from her cancer after a 1999 near-death experience (NDE), she picked up the pace of the volunteer work she'd taken up while ill. She became the executive director of the Chou Ta-kuan Foundation, organizing foundation events all over Taiwan. She also began delivering frequent talks on the changes her NDE had wrought in her life, started reading the international academic literature on NDEs, and established the Taiwan Near-Death Research Institute. "I came back so I could let everyone know that death isn't that frightening," says Hsieh.