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$160.00 $80.00
All 4 weeks
White Paper - The End-of-Life Co-Experience
Some people encountering End-of-Life Co-Experiences want only recognition and language. Others feel drawn to explore the wider psychological, spiritual, and theoretical context in which these experiences sit.
For those who wish to go deeper, a white paper is available: The End-of-Life Co-Experience, written by Diane Elliott.
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The paper introduces End-of-Life Co-Experience (ELCE) as a relational and transpersonal phenomenon and explores how such experiences may be understood across psychology, neuroscience, spirituality, and cross-cultural perspectives. It differentiates ELCEs from Shared Death Experiences, proposes a field-based model of consciousness, and situates ELCEs within the Seven Transpersonal Stages framework, with attention to ethical and clinical considerations.
This paper is offered as a theoretical and reflective exploration, not as a definitive explanation or belief statement. It is intended for readers who are curious about how these experiences might be understood within wider conversations about consciousness, end-of-life care, and Transpersonal Psychology.
What the paper covers:
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A. What ELCE is:
End-of-Life Co-Experience (ELCE) refers to a relational and transpersonal phenomenon in which a person who is present with, or emotionally close to someone who is dying, may experience a shared shift in awareness, presence, or consciousness during the end-of-life process.
ELCE does not describe the experience of dying itself, but what may arise between people at the threshold of death.This bridges academic language and lived understanding.
B. Why ELCE is different from Shared Death Experiences:
While Shared Death Experiences are often described as moments in which a bystander witnesses aspects of the dying person’s experience, ELCE reframes the event as a co-experiential and relational process. Rather than receiving images or emotions from the dying person, the Co-Experiencer may enter a shared field of awareness in which boundaries between self and other temporarily soften.
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C. The relational (not belief-based) nature of ELCE:
ELCE is not dependent on religious belief, spiritual training, or prior expectations. Accounts suggest it arises naturally in conditions of deep presence, relational openness, and reduced analytical attention, often during moments of stillness rather than heightened emotion.
D. Why this matters for grief and end-of-life care:
Many people who report End-of-Life Co-Experiences describe lasting changes in how they relate to death, grief, and meaning. Rather than intensifying distress, these experiences often bring a sense of peace, continuity, or reduced fear of death - even when the loss itself remains painful.
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E. Closing:
ELCE offers a way of understanding death not only as a biological event, but as a relational threshold - one that may be encountered collectively as well as individually.
Reflections and Clarifications
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The End-of-Life Co-Experience (ELCE) framework introduces the idea of a shared field of awareness to describe how experience may arise relationally at the end of life. Because this language can raise important questions, the reflections below are offered to clarify how the term is being used.
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Isn’t this just imagination, projection, or grief?
Psychological processes such as imagination, memory, and grief are always part of human experience, particularly around death. What distinguishes accounts described as End-of-Life Co-Experiences is that they are reported as occurring at or around the moment of dying, and as involving a shift in awareness that feels relational rather than internally generated. Referring to a shared field of awareness does not deny psychological processes; it names how some people experience a temporary reorganisation of attention and relationship that does not feel reducible to imagination alone.
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Is ELCE making a spiritual or metaphysical claim about reality?
No definitive metaphysical claim is being made. The term shared field of awareness is used phenomenologically, to describe how experience is reported, rather than to assert what is objectively occurring. Different readers may understand this language through psychological, relational, neurobiological, spiritual, or philosophical lenses. ELCE does not require agreement on explanation in order to recognise the experience itself.
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Does the idea of a shared field of awareness risk romanticising death or influencing end-of-life decisions?
ELCE does not suggest that such experiences will occur, nor that they should be sought or expected. Many deaths are sudden, painful, or traumatic, and nothing in this framework diminishes those realities. The language of a shared field of awareness is intended to acknowledge experiences that are sometimes reported when death is approached with presence and relational openness, not to idealise death or to promote any particular approach to dying.