Kenneth Ring
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Kenneth Ring (born December 13, 1935) is an American psychologist, born in San Francisco, California. He is the co-founder and past president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is the founding editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies.<ref name=lessons>Author biography in Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino, Lessons from the Light: What we can learn from the near-death experience, Needham, MA: Moment Point Press (1998).</ref> He currently lives in Kentfield, California.<ref name=lessons/>
BiographyEdit
Among his first publications was the book Methods of Madness: The Mental Hospital as a Last Resort. The book was released in 1969 and was co-authored with Benjamin Braginsky and Dorothea Braginsky.<ref name="Waxler">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Wax">Template:Cite journal</ref> Ring's book Life at Death was published by William Morrow and Company in 1980.<ref name=bass/><ref name="Asher">Asher, Catherine G. Book review: Ring, Kenneth. Life at Death: a scientific investigation of the near-death experience. Library Journal, September 15, 1980, page 1870</ref><ref name="Hamby">Hamby, Warren C. Reviewed Work(s): Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience by Kenneth Ring. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1982), pp. 289-290</ref> In this book Ring presented the Weighted Core Experience Index, a psychometric instrument constructed to measure the depth of a near-death experience.<ref name="Greyson 1983">Greyson, Bruce. The Near-Death Experience Scale. Construction, Reliability and Validity. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol 171, No. 6, 1983, pp. 369-375</ref> In 1984, the company published Ring's second book, Heading Toward Omega.<ref name="Buehler">Buehler, David A. Book review: Ring, Kenneth. Heading Toward Omega: in search of the meaning of the near-death experience. Library Journal, August 1984, page 1455</ref> Both books deal with near-death experiences and how they change people's lives.<ref name=bass>Sharon L. Bass. You Never Recover Your Original Self New York Times August 28, 1988.</ref>
In 1992 he published The Omega Project: Human Evolution in an Ecological Age, a book that dealt with near-death experiences and UFO-encounters.<ref name="Shields">Shields, Maureen R. Book review: Ring, Kenneth. The Omega Project: Human Evolution in an Ecological Age. Library Journal, April 1, 1992.</ref> 1998 saw the release of Lessons From the Light. What We Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience, co-authored with Evelyn Elaesser. The book discussed a wide range of paranormal phenomena, including out-of-body experiences, children's near-death experiences, near-death experiences in the blind, as well as healing and paranormal abilities in near-death experiencers.<ref name="Publishers Weekly">Book review: Lessons From the Light. What We Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience. Publishers Weekly, Oct. 26, 1998, p. 55</ref> Another co-authored release appeared in 1999. This time Ring co-operated with Sharon Cooper for the release of Mindsight: Near-death and out-of-body experiences in the blind. In the book Ring & Cooper discussed the possibility of sight and vision among blind near-death experiencers.<ref name="Twemlow">Twemlow, Stuart W. Book Review: Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind, by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 21(1), Fall 2002</ref>
In November 2008, Ring visited Israel as part of a peace delegation and subsequently protested the Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip as completely disproportionate.<ref>Richard Halstead, Marin has mixed response to Israel's bombing of Gaza Template:Webarchive, Marin Independent Journal, 29 December 2008. Accessed 2009-06-02.</ref> Kenneth Ring also is a co-author of Letters from Palestine (2011).