Every account was read twice, by two independent readers working from the same rulebook. The first figure for each experience is the share of people both readers marked. The second is the share at least one of them marked. The gap between the two is how far apart they landed.
Both readers marked it. The two worked separately from the same rulebook, neither seeing the other's answers and neither seeing anything else already recorded about the person. Where they both marked the same account for the same experience, the experience counts as clearly described.
This is the careful figure. It answers: how often did two people, reading the same interview under the same rules, agree that this was there?
At least one reader marked it. This figure holds everyone in the first figure, plus everyone the two readers split on: one of them saw the experience in the account and the other did not.
It answers: among all people, how far might this experience reach? A wide gap between the two figures is not vagueness in the person telling the story. It is two careful readers drawing the line in different places, which is worth knowing about before leaning on any single number.
Unity or oneness, the loss of a separate self, and overwhelming love or bliss are the three most widely described experiences here, and all three sit close together at around of people. They are also the three our two readers agreed on least. Where one reader heard a description of oneness, the other often heard someone teaching about oneness. The most universal experiences turn out to be the ones people reach for the same abstract words to describe, which makes them the hardest to count and the easiest to over-count.
Being conscious outside the body is usually filed under near-death experience. Nobody in this collection nearly died, because those accounts are studied separately. It still appears in to of people. It is also one of the features our two readers agreed on most closely, so the figure is dependable. Leaving the body is not only a thing that happens to the dying.
of people clearly described hearing guidance during their experience: an inner or audible voice, or a message they could put into words, such as "go back" or "you are not going to die". On the wider count it reaches . It is one of the most common experiences in the collection, not a rare one.