When the famous English novelist, Somerset Maugham, was expiring in France, aged 91, he summoned the world-class atheist, A.J. Ayer, like a priest to his deathbed, to reassure him that there was no afterlife. Professor Ayer duly delivered the words of consolation Maugham longed to hear.

But when Ayer himself was dying two decades later, he wasn't so sure. Having choked on a piece of smoked salmon that stopped his heart for at least four minutes, the famed philosopher saw, and heard things he had spent a lifetime denying.

On his return from he knew not where, Ayer wrote a chagrined but enigmatic account of what has become known in Britain and beyond as Near Death Experience.

Millions of people say they have had an NDE, as it is now commonly known, while many more are thought to have had the experience but are too embarrassed to talk about it. A Gallup poll in the United States indicated 8-12 million people (approximately the population of New York City) claimed experience of life beyond the grave; in Britain, a Mori poll showed seven people out of 10 believed NDEs happened and constituted evidence of an afterlife.

An intriguing aspect of the claims is their similarity: a tunnel, a rushing sound, a brilliant light, a feeling of ecstasy and being told it is not yet time to die. Also frequent are: the out-of-the-body experience in which a person appears to observe his body from above - often watching medics trying frantically to revive his corpse; an instantaneous review of a person's whole life; and sometimes seeing dead friends and family. One woman said she met a brother she did not know she had. Her father told her later: "You did have a brother. I am the only one alive who knew about him."

Of the many testaments on record, that of Jack Foreman, a US naval technician, combines most of the common elements. Foreman was "cooked" by a radar leak and had major surgery for a large hole in his diaphragm. Several days later, he appeared to die. "I could look down on my whole body," he later reported. "One medic was applying electric paddles to my chest to shock me back and shouting ‘Breathe, you sonofabitch, breathe.’" They stabbed needles into his lungs to extract fluid and injected adrenaline direct into the heart.

Foreman says he saw his entire life pass in seconds: being in the womb, the ceremony of his Christening, an embarrassing incident as a small boy when he soiled his pants. He heard a loud rushing noise and appeared to be speeding through a dark tunnel with a light of unbearable brightness at the end. This light took human form and he received a message, though not in words, "You must go back." The tunnel experience happened in reverse.

Because of its radioactive status, Foreman's body had been taken to a cleaning room. He had a feeling that he re-entered painfully through his toes and when he spoke, the medics were totally shocked.

The majority of recorded claims link NDEs to feelings of joy and comfort. A statistician calculated that 69 per cent of the thousands of cases he investigated reported a feeling of overwhelming love. When he broke his subjects down by belief (Christian, Religious but non-Christian, Non-religious, New Age, etc) he found 100 per cent of people calling themselves atheists had experienced "tremendous ecstasy". Sixty-three per cent reported the life review experience.

Stories such as these are denounced as laughable by sceptics, who argue that some people copy what others have said or project their own childish ideas of heaven: a robed Jesus, joy, flowers, cottages, even reunions with deceased pets. The existence of an American society, Hello From Heaven, is seen as proof of the battiness of these gullible dreamers.

Scientific rebuttal usually refers to residual electrical activity in the brain cortex. Medics mostly argue that the feeling of peace could be caused by the release of endorphins in response to extreme stress or cardiac arrest and anaesthesia of the brain state; neural noise and retino-cortical mapping could explain the rushing sound, the tunnel and the darkness and light.

Ayer's account of his own NDE, for a man of such formidable intellect, was surprisingly similar to most of the others on record, though more elegantly observed. He wrote of "a red light for governing the universe" and some barrier he crossed, "like the River Styx." The experience, he said, "weakened my conviction that death would be the end of me, though I continue to hope it will be."

For Ayer to admit doubt about his life-long conviction Ð no God, no afterlife Ð shook the academic establishment in Britain. As a student, he had debated with some of the greatest minds in the country, including the Jesuit Fr. Martin d'Arcy who described Ayer as "the most dangerous man in Oxford University." Not bad at age 21!

Following the classic route of Eton, Oxford and the (Welsh) Guards, Ayer became that rare thing, a popularly-known philosopher, mostly through his appearances on the BBC radio programme, the "Brains Trust."

Serious research on NDEs has been going on since the mid-1970s. What put the subject back on the front pages was a new revelation concerning the Ayer experience. Many of his friends felt his published account reflected an academic's urge to embellish and tease Ð the classical reference to the River Styx, for example. What's more, the doctor who attended Ayer suspected the smoked-salmon story was meant to impress his friends. He found no salmon in his patient's throat, but if you want a truly high-class way of dying, you couldn't do better than choking on this expensive delicacy!

None of his circle, however, denied Ayer's claim to have had an extraordinary experience while his heart was stopped. And a year later, his wife said, "Freddie has been so much nicer since he died." What his friends questioned was whether his NDE account was the entire truth.

Now the surgeon who attended him has broken a long silence. He told an author who wrote a play about the affair: "Ayer told me he saw the Supreme Being." There was no further elucidation. The physician said simply that when Ayer recovered, "he told me he saw the Supreme Being."

His friends were astounded. Ayer had admitted there was a god! Was this another joke? If not, why did he withhold it from his story? Was it that he could not face the possibility that he had built a glittering career on a false premise?

In the post-Christian age that is Britain today, few people are ready to admit to belief in the supernatural, at least not if Jesus or God are involved, though stone circles and pyramid power seem quite acceptable. However, a London magazine last week carried a strange claim from one of those least likely to fall victim to delusion, a veteran journalist.

Robert Blair Kaiser is an author and a former correspondent for Time magazine. Reviewing a book about miracles he wrote: "In 1994, behind the wheel of my Mercedes, I lurched out of my driveway and was awakened from my dreamy preooccupation by the sight of a speeding car bearing down on me, not five feet away on my left. I knew I was a dead man.

"All of a sudden, that car was on my right. The driver weaved a bit, braked for a moment and then drove off, shaking his head in disbelief, as I was. For it was clear to me, there was no way he could have missed crashing into me, no way he could have steered aside. His car had flashed through my car, his steel and glass and rubber passing through my steel and glass and rubber like a ray of light through a pane of alabaster."

Kaiser ends his anecdote with a reflection: "This miracle moment was a turning point in my life, for I took it as a sign that God wasn't finished with me yet and that I had some new business to attend to."

Mr Kaiser may well be right. But has he reflected that maybe it was the other guy God wanted to keep alive?