#181 In this episode, Guy talked with Dr. Bruce Greyson, a retired psychiatrist and an author. He discussed the transformative effects of near-death experiences (NDEs). He explained how NDEs profoundly change people’s lives, making them more compassionate and less materialistic. Dr. Greyson shared compelling stories, including that of a Marine whose NDE made him unable to continue his military duties. He highlighted the growing recognition of NDEs in the medical community and the need for further research. The episode also delved into Dr. Greyson’s personal journey, the scientific challenges in studying NDEs, and the universal message of interconnectedness and compassion.
If you enjoyed this podcast, you may also like: Shine On: The Remarkable Near Death Experience | David Ditchfield
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About Bruce: Dr. Bruce Greyson is the Chester Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He was previously on the medical faculty at the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut, where he was Clinical Chief of Psychiatry. Dr. Greyson has consulted with the National Institutes of Health and addressed symposia on consciousness at the United Nations and at the Dalai Lama’s compound in Dharamsala, India.
Dr. Greyson’s interest in near-death experiences began just a few months after graduating from medical school, when he treated an unconscious patient in the emergency room who stunned him the next morning with an account of leaving her body. That event challenged his beliefs about the mind and the brain, and ultimately led him on a journey to study near-death experiences scientifically, leading to more than a hundred publications in medical journals.
He co-founded the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), an organization to support and promote research into these experiences, and for 27 years edited the Journal of Near-Death Studies, the only scholarly journal dedicated to near-death research. Through his research, he has discovered common and universal themes in near-death experiences that go beyond neurophysiological or cultural interpretations, as well as patterns of consistent aftereffects on individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, values, and personalities.
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Key points with time stamp:
- (00:00) – TOP Psychiatrist Studied 1,000 Near-Death Experiences — And What He Found Will Blow Your Mind!
- (00:44) – Podcast Episode Announcement
- (01:29) – Welcoming Bruce to the Podcast
- (02:09) – Bruce’s Journey into Near-Death Experiences
- (03:39) – The Impact of Near-Death Experiences
- (05:38) – Personal Stories and Scientific Exploration
- (09:20) – The Prevalence and Significance of Near-Death Experiences
- (10:08) – Challenges in Discussing Near-Death Experiences
- (21:21) – Spirituality and Western Society
- (24:38) – A Surprising Near-Death Experience
- (26:20) – A More Unusual Story
- (29:01) – Exploring Consciousness and Near-Death Experiences
- (32:18) – Skepticism and Scientific Inquiry
- (36:14) – Personal Reflections and Life Changes
- (43:39) – Final Thoughts and Reflections
Bruce’s Website:
www.brucegreyson.com
Bruce’s Book:
www.brucegreyson.com/after-a-doctor-explores-what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-life-and-beyond
About me:
My Instagram:
www.instagram.com/guyhlawrence/?hl=en
My website:
www.guylawrence.com.au
www.liveinflow.co
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Bruce: [00:00:00] After their near death experience, it made no sense to them to get ahead at someone else’s expense. They were much more compassionate towards their competitors and towards their employers. It’s even harder for people who have violent professions. For example, one fellow I knew who was a Marine and he went to Vietnam and he was leading a platoon into battle and he was shot in the chest and he was avac to a hospital in the Philippines where he had an operation to.
Get the strap in a lot of his lungs and in the operation. He had a near death experience and when he came back, the idea of shooting someone was just incomprehensible to him. He was rehabbed and then sent back into the jungle and, and found he, he couldn’t do it anymore.
Guy: The episode you’re about to watch has been republished. My podcast channel reaches a lot more people now and there’s certain episodes that have slipped under the radar and I wanted to bring them up for your attention ’cause I truly feel they are worth listening to. So please be sure, let me know where [00:01:00] you think of this episode in the comments below.
And of course, let’s continue to connect. Let me know where you are in the world and where you’re listening and tuning in from. Uh, I love reading it. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that we can do this. And the other thing I wanna say as well is find out where we are. If you wanna put your spiritual boots on and come and join us at one of our five day retreats or one day events around the world, links are below as well. If you wanna find out more what we’re up to. Much love from me. Enjoy.
Guy: Beautiful. Bruce, welcome to the podcast. Thank you,
Dr. Bruce: guy. I’m glad. Delighted to be here with you today.
Guy: I, um, I just wanna mention, uh, give Paul around a shout out. I had him on the podcast a few weeks ago and, uh, I was chatting to him off, off air afterwards and, and said, you know, Paul, you obviously know a lot of people.
Is there anyone you should, should suggest to come on the show? And he instantly said, you, Bruce. So I, which was wonderful and you’ve been on my radar anyway ’cause I know your book Good. Uh, came out in March. Good, good. Yeah. After. And, uh, [00:02:00] it’s always a, these topics just fascinate me. So I’m excited to see where this conversation, uh, leads us today.
So welcome. Anyway, Bruce. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. I ask everyone on the show starting out, and if we were at the intimate dinner party right now and you were sitting next to a complete stranger and they got talking to you and asked you what you did for a living at the moment, what would you say?
Dr. Bruce: I would say that I’m a retired psychiatrist.
Guy: Good. Beautiful. Do. Does, does the, the, um, do you ever bring forward the, near the, the NDE and the research around that? Or does it normally depend on the person? It, it depends on the person.
Dr. Bruce: That’s not something I lead with. There’s still, um, too many people who look at you strangely if you talk about that right away. So I get to know them first.
Guy: Yeah, fair enough. And on that, strangely, ’cause I, I gotta be honest, Bruce, I was, I was really, um. Nervous, [00:03:00] if you like, about coming out with Yes. Speaking about anything beyond the physical Sure. And, um, spirituality, and especially in my, in my old company and industry, I was kind of known for something very different.
And, um, when making the transition, I was like, holy shit, what are people gonna think of me? But I, I realized. I dunno. It, it was almost like people that cared really cared and people that didn’t, didn’t say anything. I dunno. What’s it been like for your experience when, like, especially bringing a book out? I mean, you’ve brought a book out. It’s not like you are hiding in the closet talking about this. No, but it actually,
Dr. Bruce: no, I’ve, I’ve seen a tremendous change, uh, in the half century that I’ve been doing this work. When we first started talking about near death experiences back in the early 1980s, no one knew what we were talking about.
And most people sort of raise their eyebrows and shook their heads, and now everyone knows about them. Everyone’s heard about them. And most people have [00:04:00] a friend who’s had a near death experience if they haven’t had it themselves. And I’ve particularly noticed a difference in health professionals that, you know, 40, 50 years ago, no one heard about these things and now everyone hears about them from their patients and they’re recognized as something that commonly happens to all patients and it profoundly affects their lives.
Guy: Yeah, it is fascinating. I was only looking at my YouTube channel a couple of days ago ’cause I’ve had now 150 odd conversations kind of exploring the science of and spirituality and these topics. And anyone that’s had near death experiences. There’s been about four or five conversations I’ve had on there. And they all had so many views. It’s not funny. Yes. Like there, there seems to be a real, a real hunger around it, which is wonderful. It’s a great hunger
Dr. Bruce: for this information.
Guy: What led you to look at it in the first place? I mean, 50 years [00:05:00] of looking at this is, is remarkable. Yeah, yeah. When you think about it. Well,
Dr. Bruce: I, I started out as a, as a mainstream scientist. My father was a scientist. Kind of told me that that’s the way you learn about the world through empirical observation, collecting data. But he also told me that, um, if you study things that we already know, pretty much, you can just move the decimal point a little bit, but you don’t really make any breakthroughs.
You make the great breakthroughs in science by studying things we can’t understand at all. So I went through, you know, college and medical school with that materialistic mindset that the physical world is all we have, and that when you die, that you die. That’s the end of it. And then when I started my psychiatric training, um, one of the first patients I was asked to see in the emergency room was a woman who had come in with an overdose.
And I was asked to go down and evaluate her, and I couldn’t because she was totally unconscious. I couldn’t arouse her matter what I did, but her roommate was waiting for me down the hall in another room. So I went down the room to talk to that patient, uh, the [00:06:00] roommate, and got information about the patient.
Um, what was going on in her life and what she might have taken. Now, this was, um, a very hot evening in, in late summer in, in Virginia, in the United States, and it was very sweltering hot. Back in the seventies, there was no air conditioning, and before I had just gotten the page to go down to the emergency room, I was eating dinner in the hospital cafeteria.
And when the pager went off of my belt, it scared the dickens outta me and I dropped my fork and spilled some spaghetti sauce on my tie. I couldn’t wipe it off, so I just put on a white lab coat to cover it up. But when I was talking to the room, the, the roommate down the hall, it was so hot in that room.
I unbuttoned the coat so I wouldn’t sweat so much, thereby exposing the, the stain, uh, for about 20 minutes. So I finished with the, the roommate, said goodbye to her and realized I better close up my lab coat again. So I did, went back to talk to the patient and she was still unconscious, so I arranged for her to be admitted to the intensive care unit overnight.[00:07:00]
And I came to see her the next morning and she was barely able to open her eyes. Then she was still very drowsy, drowsy. So I started to introduce myself and she stopped me and said, I know who you are. I remember you from last night. But that kind of caught me up short. So I said to her something like, I’m, I’m surprised ’cause I thought you were unconscious when I saw you last night.
And then she opened her eyes and looked at me and said, not in my room. I saw you talking to my roommate down the hall. But that. It just made no sense to me at all. The only way that could have happened is she had left her body and followed me down the hall, and as far as I could tell, I was my body. How can you leave it?
She sensed my confusion and started to tell me about the conversation I had with the roommate, what I asked, what she answered, where we were sitting, and finally she mentioned the stain on my tie. It just blew me away. I couldn’t, I didn’t, couldn’t make any sense of that at all. I was totally confused, but I couldn’t deal with my confusion.
I was there to deal with hers. So I tried to stuff my feelings away and [00:08:00] just dealt with her issues and get her settled. And in the next few days when I tried to understand what was going on here, I just couldn’t imagine what what had happened. And I thought maybe the nurses were playing a trick on me.
They had somehow clued with this patient to make up this story and you know, but I couldn’t imagine how that happened, but I just pushed it on my mind. I didn’t dare tell any of my colleagues about this. They would’ve thought I was crazy. For sure. So I just sort of tried to forget about it for several years.
And then about five years later, one of my colleagues at the University of Virginia, Raymond Moody, published a book called Life After Life, in which he gave us the name Near-Death experiences and described what they were like. And I realized for the first time that this story in my patient told me was not one crazy patient story.
It’s part of a huge phenomenon. I still couldn’t understand it, but. As a scientist, I thought, I need to go after this. I need to try to understand what’s going on here. So I started [00:09:00] collecting more cases and trying to make sense out of it, and here I am 50 years later, still trying to make sense out of it.
Guy: Wow. How many, um, how many reports do you know, are we talking about here? You know, is it like the odd one or two that just trickles in? Or, or are we talking A lot of people
Dr. Bruce: we’re talking about millions. Around the world?
Guy: Millions.
Dr. Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. Roughly one out of every, uh, five people in the general population. I’m sorry. One out of every 20 people in the general population that’s, that’s 5% has had a near death experience. That means someone in your family, someone in your workplace, someone in your school room has had a near death experience.
Guy: Why do you think then, especially with your academic background as well, that if it’s that common, which it, it’s mind blowing. Yes. And, and the more I’ve been [00:10:00] looking into this more, I’m like, oh my God, why, why aren’t we looking at this? Yes. Why aren’t we looking at this? What, what, what, what is the, the sticking point? Do you see? Well,
Dr. Bruce: people are still embarrassed to talk about it in public for the most part. And, you know, I, I’ve asked people about this, about why it’s so hard to talk about it, and sometimes they say quite rightly that they’re afraid they will be ridiculed or labeled as crazy or just, um, you know, not, not taken seriously.
And sometimes they say it was just too personal and sacred and experienced, and if I shared it, that would take something away from it. So they tend not to talk about it, um, until healthcare worker like myself. And demonstrates that we are taking it seriously and want to help them deal with it.
Guy: Hmm. Were you embarrassed to talk about it? Were there, was there a point in your life, especially with your background, because I’ve had a few, uh, doctors come on the show and quite often it’s been [00:11:00] towards the end of their career Yes. Before they’ve gone, you know what, it was a yes for you as well. Yes.
Dr. Bruce: It, it was, it was in fact, um. Uh, I, I basically lost one job because I wouldn’t stop talking about this. Um, but I was able to publish, uh, articles in mainstream medical journals about near death experiences by being, being very cautious about what I would say. And I would talk a lot about the after effects, how it affects people’s lives and so forth, and what was going on physiologically. But I couldn’t put into those medical journals anything about spirituality.
Or mind being separate from brain or, you know, god forbid spirit or soul or anything like that. Mm-hmm. Uh, and it’s not until I retired that I decided I want to really say something now. So I wrote this book after, uh, to describe to, uh, the general public what these things are all about and what we can learn from them.
Guy: Got it. And what, [00:12:00] what qualifies then. A near death experience because do you get people coming to you? Oh, no, that’s, that’s not a near death experience. That was just a bump on the head or something, or, yeah. You know, how do you fit it into a category?
Dr. Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. Well, these are experiences that, that many people have when they come close to death, or sometimes when they’re pronounced dead and they have, um, unusual experiences that are hard to explain, like a sense of leaving the physical body, uh, having a sense of overwhelming peace and wellbeing.
Um, sometimes leaving this physical realm behind and going to another realm or dimension that doesn’t seem to have space or time encountering other entities that they may interpret as being deities, God or deceased loved ones, reviewing their entire lives and sometimes then coming to a point of no return beyond which they can’t keep going and still return to life. And then they might make a decision to come back. Sometimes [00:13:00] they’re told to come back against their will.
Guy: Mm-hmm. Got it. What fascinates me about this is that there’s, like, as I was talking to you about offer earlier about, uh, an experience I had that that for me became no doubt that, um. There’s gotta be more to life than, than this, this physical aspect.
Right. That’s just my belief. Right. And, and it, it has fundamentally changed something within me that will never go back. Now I Is that what you are finding? Because I, I believe you, there’s over a thousand cases you’ve, you’ve researched and individual for this book, right? Is that one of the. The main things that come from this, because I, I don’t wanna throw too many questions at you right now. Let, let me just Sure. Start there first, [00:14:00]
Dr. Bruce: right? That, that’s almost universal among people who have near death experiences. They say life is, they never go back to the way they were before. Um, they realize that they are now part of something much greater than themselves. Um, they realize that we’re all interconnected.
That we have responsibilities to one another as well as to the universe, to the natural world. Um, and they can’t go back to living their lives as they always did. Uh, in some cases, um, you know, if you were leading a very spiritual life beforehand, then it may be completely compatible with the way you, you, you, you leave for life after the NDE, but many people are not.
Um, you know, I know many people who were in, you know, cutthroat businesses. Who were, you know, cheating and, you know, so forth. And after their near death experience, it made no sense to them to get ahead at someone else’s expense. And they couldn’t continue in that, that business. They had to either get out of the business or change the way they did their [00:15:00] businesses.
So they were much more compassionate towards their competitors and towards their employers and so forth. It’s even harder for people who have violent professions, for example, uh, police officers or military officers. I’ve known some of those. One fellow, uh, I knew who was, um, a Marine, I, I know him a bit when he went to high school.
He was a high school bully and his goal was always to be in the Marines and, you know, be a macho guy. And he went to Vietnam and he was leading a platoon into battle and he was shot in the chest and he was air evac to a hospital in the Philippines where he had an operation to get the shrapnel out of his lungs.
And in the operation he had a near death experience. And when he came back. The idea of shooting someone was just incomprehensible to him. Uh, he was rehabbed and then sent back into the jungle and, and found he, he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t shoot his gun, so he ended up leaving the Marines and coming back to the United States and ended up training to become a medical technician.
And I’ve heard that type of [00:16:00] story again and again from police officers and other military officers who had to give up that that profession. And go to some health profession, usually, you know, healthcare or clergy or teaching or social work, something like that.
Guy: Yeah, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I often wonder, uh, in, in what history tells us about connection. ’cause uh, in my, my, my opinion is now that as a western society, especially we, we’ve almost severed the connection to any practices. Um, that support something greater than ourselves. You know, we we’re very much evolved in consumerism and this, this hunger for more. And, and yet when you start to look at this work, you actually want for less. That’s right. Because you realize you, you have everything right here, right now. That’s
Dr. Bruce: right. That’s right. [00:17:00] It, it’s very common for people to say that they don’t care as much about. Uh, things of this world, not only material possessions, but power, prestige, fame, um, achievement. Um, those don’t matter anymore to them. They’re more concerned with relationships, with caring, with being altruistic, um, and they live their lives that way.
Guy: Yeah. Well. So for the listener, and I’m sure you must have been asked this question or, or somewhere around it, but let’s say you’re listening to this, you, you just commute into work. You’re listening to a great podcast and, and you think, and you’re pondering on this right now, right?
You’re like, wow, this like, really this, you know, and there’s like, what do I have to nearly die to actually then go and have this experience and, and have you found other. In your research, different ways or practices to, to at least feel that without having to go through the horrific things that people have had to [00:18:00] do to have those experiences?
Dr. Bruce: Yeah, that’s a great question guy. ’cause I think, uh, spiritual traditions throughout the centuries have developed techniques to try to have this spiritual experience. Um, most of ’em involve some sort of safe sensory deprivation, deprivation going out into the desert. Um, starvation. Hunger and so forth. Um, spinning around drumming meditation, meditative techniques, uh, and psychedelic drugs, various cultures of use, psychedelic drugs to try to achieve this other state.
Um, what we found in some research here is that, um, college students who are taught a class in near death experiences tend to have some of the same after effects in their lives. Um, they become much more altruistic, much more caring towards other people. Now, we don’t know how long that lasts. We know with near death experiences, it lasts for decades.
Uh, we’ve done follow up with these students for about two years, and it, it’s persistent [00:19:00] at least that long. But that suggests that just learning about these experiences can help make people make change in their, in their lives.
Guy: Wow. Well, that, that even reinforces and surely this, we should be at least educating people around this more.
Definitely. To create more harmony. Yes.
Dr. Bruce: Yes.
Guy: Within, within Western society. And
Dr. Bruce: that’s in fact why I wrote my book.
Guy: There you go. There you go. So for the skeptic, what have you, are there any correlations? Like it, it, it’s like, I’ve had a few scientists on here as well about. Measurements and Sure. And is there a w what, where are we at in terms of measuring the unmeasurable? Yeah,
Dr. Bruce: basically. Yeah. That’s, that’s a good question. You know, I, I started off as a skeptic and I like to think I still am a skeptic. Uh, not in the sense that I don’t believe anything that’s not skepticism, but I reserve judgment until I know all the [00:20:00] information. Um, so when I first started this, this, this research, I was coming from a materialistic mindset.
So I assume there had to be some physiological explanation for this. So we looked at things like how much oxygen is getting to the brain, what kind of drugs are given to people in this near death state, and one after another of these hypothesis, we collected data to test them and ended up disproving them.
For example, people who have, uh, a near death event, like a cardiac arrest and report our near death experience actually have better oxygen flow to the brain than people who don’t have near death experiences. And likewise, people who are given a lot of drugs as they’re approaching death tend to have fewer near death experiences than people who aren’t given as many drugs.
Um, so I mean, that doesn’t say that, um, uh, the drugs stop you from having the experience. Maybe it stops you from remembering them later on. Um, but they’re certainly not causing the [00:21:00] experience. Yeah. So there, there have been many hypotheses. Uh, involving different parts of the brain, um, different erratic electrical activity in the brain. And those that we’ve been able to test by collecting data have all been disproven.
Guy: Yeah. Okay. Where, where do you think this is going?
Dr. Bruce: I think as part of a larger movement to bring back spirituality into Western society. Um. You know, it’s always been a part of Eastern Society and it’s been interesting. I had to, I went to a conference in, in Dham Sa in India in the Dal Lamas compound, which was a conference between western scientists and Buddhist monks, uh, about their approach to okay to the world.
And the Dal lama made the point that both Buddhism and Western science are empirical endeavors. We both search for data, uh, as our, the basis for how we understand the world. But he said the difference is that Western scientists try to understand the [00:22:00] world so they can control it. Whereas Buddhists try to understand the world so they can live in harmony with it. And that really struck me that, you know, why are we, why are we doing this? Science is so we can manipulate and change the universe. Or is it so we can live better lives in this universe?
Guy: Uh, that’s, that’s a powerful point. And, and right now you, you, you really have to wonder which one
Dr. Bruce: Yeah.
Guy: We we’re heading towards. Yeah. You know. Well,
Dr. Bruce: I, I think events like, like, um, climate change are starting to make us question are, are materialistic compulsion to do more and get more and buy more and, and throw away more.
Guy: Hmm. And, and I even think with the, the pandemic that’s still going on, like we’re, we’re all in another lockdown here in Australia right now. And the, the amount of, um, fear yes, and anger and [00:23:00] hate that has been hurled around at each other. But if somebody’s got a, a, an opposing opinion to someone else yes. And the division that’s going on. And I often ponder on, wow, if we had more of these practices and more of these conversations and we, we were just removing the fear from our own mortality.
Because at the end of the day, we all have only a certain amount of time on this planet. That’s right. Like there’s no getting away from that, you know? And we started having deeper conversations and deeper support how we would be responding. Right now to everything that go, that’s going on in the world. Yeah. Yeah. It just blows my mind. Yeah.
Dr. Bruce: The pandemic has certainly focused people’s attention more on, on death and dying, and that’s made people much more anxious than they were before.
Guy: Yeah, yeah. Naturally so. Naturally, so, you know, with all the, um, I, I, I always love stories and, and hearing different, um.[00:24:00] Different things, aspects that come out it. And that out of the, over the thousand people you’ve researched and and done, have there been any ones where you’ve just kind of like, oh my God, really? Well, I, there are,
Dr. Bruce: there are hundreds of ’em like that. Make me say that. I’ll give you two examples. Um, and the ones that strike me most as a scientist are the things that have verifiable features. For example, if someone says, yes, I left my body and I saw what was going on in the operating room. That could be imagination, but sometimes they see and hear things that they couldn’t have anticipated. And an example was a guy I knew was a 55-year-old, uh, driver, and he was on his rounds one day and had a crushing chest pain.
So he, he made it to the, um, the, the hospital. And he was evaluated and found to have four blood vessels to his heart that were clogged and he needed emergency surgery around his heart. And he told me that in the middle of [00:25:00] the operation, he left his body and looked down on the operating table and he saw his surgeon flapping his elbows like he was trying to fly.
Now at this point when he told me this, I’d been a doctor for about 30 years. I’d never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. You don’t see doctors on television doing this type of thing. So I assumed he was hallucinating, but he insisted it was true. So a few days after the operation, I, with his permission, I met with the surgeon and asked him about this, and the surgeon was kind of embarrassed and said, who told you about that?
And I said, well, you know, Al did. The patient told me about it, uh, and he said, well, it, it’s true. You know, I developed this habit of letting my. My assistant start the procedure while I get my sterile gown and gloves on and let it go into the upper room and watch them for a while to make sure they’re doing it right.
And I don’t want to risk touching anything with my hands that isn’t sterile. So I place my palms flat against my [00:26:00] chest so I won’t touch anything, and then I point things out to them with my elbows so I don’t touch my finger with my fingers. And he demonstrated just the way the patient did. I’ve never seen any doctor do that, and he in fact said he’d never seen anyone do it either.
So how did the patient know about this? You know, I don’t know. I’ll give you a more unusual story. This is a fellow who, uh, he was 25 years old, a technical writer, and he saw a deceased person in his near death experience. Now, that’s not unusual. About 30 to 40% of people in an near death experience see a deceased loved one.
And that’s easily dismissed by Debunkers, by saying, well, that was, you know, expectation. Wishful thinking you wanted to see someone, so you imagined them. But this fellow was admitted to the hospital with, uh, bad pneumonia. He had respiratory arrest where he couldn’t get his breath. Breath. And his primary nurse that worked with him every day was a 21-year-old, um, [00:27:00] attractive woman who was kind of flirting with him, he thought, uh, and one day she told him she was gonna take a long weekend off and there’d be other nurses substituting.
So he wished her well and she went off. And while she was gone over the weekend, he had another respiratory arrest where he had to be resuscitated. And during that arrest, he had a near death experience and he found himself in a beautiful pastoral scene. And thereto is surprised. This nurse comes walking towards him and he does a double take and it says, Anita, what are you doing here?
And she said, oh, Al, you can’t stay here with me. You need to go back. You need to go back to your body. And I want you to find my parents and tell them that I’m sorry. I wrecked the red MGB, and that she turned and walked away. He then woke up back in his body in the hospital bed with complete memory of this experience, and the first time a nurse walked into his room, he started to tell her about it [00:28:00] excitedly.
She got very upset and ran out of the room. It turned out this, this nurse of his, the primary nurse, had taken the weekend off to celebrate her 21st birthday. And her parents had surprised her with the gift of a red MGB. This was in South Africa back in the 1970s where these were rare. She got so excited she jumped in the car and took off for a drive, lost control, and smashed into a telephone pole and died instantly just a few hours before he had his near death experience.
Now, there’s no way he could have expected her to die or wanted to see her in his inexperience, and certainly no way he could have known how she had died, and yet he did. So how do you explain this in terms of brain physiology or to the oxygen or something like that? He, he knew what happened to her, which implies that something about her survived her death and was able to communicate with him, which certainly makes you think about a spirit or a soul or something like that.[00:29:00]
Guy: Absolutely. W with your, like you mentioned, nearly 50 years of, of. Um, researching this now, what have, what conclusions? And you said you’re still skeptical as well. Yes. Which is wonderful and I think Skepticism’s the, the best place to come from. And being curious, what, what conclusions have you come to so far of what is consciousness? What, what are, what are
Dr. Bruce: we, well, let, let me, let me preface that by saying that, um, most near-death experiences will start by saying, there aren’t any words to describe what happened to me. I just, I just can’t put it into words. And then we researchers say, great. Tell me about it. You know, so we know we’re making them distorted by, by putting it into words.
And, and they, they cope with that by using whatever metaphors they have available to them, which are usually religious or cultural. So I don’t take literally as truth what they’re telling me. You know, I take it as sort of figurative. [00:30:00] So what they all talk about being in a blissful environment and that I can believe.
But when they talk about seeing this warm, loving being of light that they call God, I don’t know how to interpret that. I, I believe that they encountered something, but was it what we call God? Many of them say, well, it wasn’t the God I was taught about in church. It was much bigger than that. And in fact, I’ve talked to people who are raised in Hindu and Buddhist cultures who don’t give it that label.
They talk about a warm, loving being. Or they may give a different label, but they certainly wouldn’t call it God. And this doesn’t apply just to, um, just to the, the being of light. Uh, many people describe going through a long, dark, enclosed area to get from this physical world to this other realm. And in western societies, they usually call it a tunnel, but people in cultures that don’t have a lot of tunnels wouldn’t use that word.
They would say, I fell into a well, or went into a cave. [00:31:00] I’ve talked to one person who was a, uh, truck driver and he described, uh, going through a tailpipe and that was how he described this long, dark, and closed. So whatever metaphors you have available are the ones you use. So I can’t take literally what they say, but I understand it as figuratively expression.
So I do believe after all this research that that part of us that thinks and feels and perceives and lays down memories. Is not just our brains, because there are times when the brain is offline or sometimes totally flatlined, and yet our consciousness seems to be more vivid and more detailed than ever so clearly.
Sometimes, uh, the mind seems to be able to function without the brain and there seems to be some evidence that it survives after the body dies, as well as in the cases of people who see deceased, loved ones who seem to be be persisting. So I expect there to be something [00:32:00] after death. Uh, but I have no idea what it is.
Uh, I’m sure as most near death experiences tell me, it’s something that is beyond what I can imagine hearing this brain. My brain can’t process what they experience in the NDE, so I’m prepared to be surprised.
Guy: Yeah. Didn’t that happen to, um, uh, Dr. E Alexander? Yes. Part of his brain turned off Yes. Like,
Dr. Bruce: yes. He, he was in a, in a deep coma for, uh, six days and we have, uh, CAT scans from his, um, hospital stay. That show basically his inside of his skull was like s was filled with puss and there was no structure, his brain left at all. Um, unfortunately they didn’t, they didn’t measure his brainwaves during that time because they thought he was, he was a dead man.
Uh, he had a rare bacterial infection that has less than 1% survival rate. They said there’s no point in doing it. Eeg. He’s dead. He’ll never recover from this. And you know, as you know, he’s, uh, perfectly fine. Now he’s giving [00:33:00] lectures that are better than mine. Um, and he’s talks very eloquently about his near death experience and what he learned from that.
Guy: Yeah. I had him on the show about two years ago, I think, talking to him about it. I just recall what you said then with the, with the brain going offline. Yes. Yeah. We’re still very conscious about it. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I’ll tell you what is
Dr. Bruce: this? Lemme tell you one more
Guy: thing about this ‘
Dr. Bruce: cause um, there were popular magazine articles saying that he really wasn’t near death, that he was just given drugs to put him into a coma ’cause he was having seizures and so forth. And I, I wasn’t, as a skeptic, I didn’t take that at face value, but I also didn’t take his report at face value. So with his permission, I got the hospital records from the hospital where he was treated more than 600 pages worth. And I made three copies and I rated one and I gave two copies to other physicians, and we each independently examined the entire record and came up to conclusions about what really happened to him.[00:34:00]
And all three of us independently found that he was as close to death as you can be and still survive. And that he was in a deep coma at the time. He had his near death experience. He reported seeing things around his hospital bed so we could know when exactly when they happened, and we know that the medical records shows he was in a deep coma at that time.
Guy: Mm. There you go. Yeah. It’s fascinating. I even, um, remember speaking to Anita Moja Yes. Who has been on the show and the She’s got all the records Yes. From the, from the doctors as well that, just saying this, she, she’s like, breaths away from being dead basically. Yes. Same scenario. They didn’t
Dr. Bruce: expect her to survive. No.
Guy: Yeah. Wow. The, the, the thing that I’m trying to articulate, the thing that worries me is that we can be so dismissive and not, and just keep pushing this to, to one side. [00:35:00] And I, is that just a trait within Western medicine? It’s a, it’s my way or the highway kind of thing. Like there’s so many good qualities about it as well.
It’s not like I want to, I wanna sledge it or put it down. It’s been incredible for me over my years. Yes, yes. But I just wish there was more. Um, open to possibility where we could be having conversations on both sides to come up with what’s best to serve us moving forward.
Dr. Bruce: Well, the good news is that we are going in that direction. Um, you know, when I talk to, to medical students and, and, uh, trainees, they’re much more open to this than the more senior physicians are. Okay. ’cause they’ve grown up with, with this kind of mindset. Um, and even the ultra physicians, as they see more and more of their patients talking about these experiences, they’re more interested in learning more about them, whether they think they are, uh, hallucinations or not.
They recognize that they have profound after effects on the patient’s lives, and therefore they need to know about them. [00:36:00]
Guy: So it’s a generational thing. Yes,
Dr. Bruce: it is. It’s,
Guy: yeah. Yeah. It’s the next generation. Even though heard Obama in an interview speaking about the next generation that’s coming through will be a very different ruler to the ones that are in power now. You know, like what I am fascinated as well is how has this change affected your life from researching this work? ’cause you, you talk about. Anyone that looks at this?
Dr. Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, you know, I started out, I was incredibly arrogant and I thought we were gonna have all the answers and everything was solvable with science.
And, and now I’m quite comfortable with the idea that we’re not gonna have all the answers. That the unknown is not necessarily our enemy. Uh, they’re just things that we can’t formulate the right questions for. And we may have all the answers when we die. We may not, but you know that, that’s fine. Uh, I’m, I, I’m fairly convinced that the universe is a friendly place, [00:37:00] um, as most near death experiences say. And as Albert Einstein said, uh, and I’m, I’m comfortable with not knowing all the answers.
Guy: Yeah. Could have there been reports of a bad, the NDE was just like, oh, I don’t want to, I don’t wanna go through that again. Oh my God. You know, there,
Dr. Bruce: there are some reports of, of unpleasant experiences. Um, we don’t know how many there are.
Most people who have looked into this have found between one in 5% of near death experiences are unpleasant. But it’s hard to have any confidence in that because it’s so hard for people to talk about the unpleasant experiences. So there may be a lot more that we’re not hearing about. Um, you know, people who have them often say, well, no, there’s something wrong with me if I had this bad experience.
Everyone else is having a good one. What’s wrong with me? Um. And they’re just, they’re painful to relive, so they don’t want to remember them, so they try to forget about
Guy: them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I, I find that fascinating, uh, [00:38:00] because I did, um, a plant-based journey ayahuasca many years ago, about eight years ago.
And, um, uh, to be honest with you, I was terrified, but I, I wanted to confront my own fears Yes. And, and, and explore this, but there were elements in it that were really dark and heavy. And extremely painful. Yes. But I, but as I surrendered into them more on reflection when I, when I come out of it, the other side, they were actually all teachings.
Yes. They were all part of something much bigger than I could comprehend with my mind at the time. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, I, I look fondly put when I think about these things, that everything has a, a, a much bigger, um. Wisdom behind it, if you like. Right. Then, then sometimes we can comprehend. Right.
Dr. Bruce: Joseph Campbell wrote about the hero’s journey where you have to go through all sorts of travails before you finally get enlightened.
Um, what we do know is that it’s not true that, um, nasty people have bad near death [00:39:00] experiences and good people have pleasant experiences. Uh, there’s no correlation there, which shouldn’t surprise us because we have accounts from, um, Christian Saints. Who had horrible dark night of the soul experiences, St. Teresa of Avilan and St. John the cross and so forth.
Guy: Yeah. Have you, have you had any experiences yourself or it is it more purely just coming from an interest research and, and from. Uh, getting this message out there, or do you desire to, if that’s the other question, or you
Dr. Bruce: just, I, I don’t particularly desire to. Um, I kind of like having my, my rational scientific approach to things, and I, I’m pretty convinced that, uh, after I die I will have, uh, more, more awareness than I have now. Um, so I’m not in a rush to get there. Um, but I, I, I have been opened up a lot more to the unknown and to unusual experiences, and I think.
I’m not sure. I have more now, but I certainly recognize them more now. [00:40:00] I tend not to do, deny them, uh, when they happen to me now.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Your, your book after has been out, um, a couple of months, if I’m not mistaken. Yes. Um, how has it been received?
Dr. Bruce: Um, pretty well. Uh, yeah. Um, it’s gotten some good reviews.
I guess. People who don’t like it don’t talk to me about it, so I don’t hear about the, the negative reviews. Um. But it’s, it’s, it’s been selling at a pretty, fairly steady clip, uh, since it was published. And I’ve been very pleased with the reaction so far.
Guy: Yeah. Beautiful. And when putting this book out to the world, what is, what is your hope for it or your, your want for it? What is the intention behind it? What a reader will, will get to that?
Dr. Bruce: Just spread information about near death experiences. It’s partly, uh, as a thank you to all the thousands of near death experiences who talked to me, this is sort of a validation for them. That this is a real experience, that really is an important part of their lives.
But it’s also to spread the word to [00:41:00] other people who haven’t had the experiences yet that these experiences point toward basically the golden rule, um, that you should do unto others if you, as you would have them do unto you and most near death experiences say, this is a law of the universe. It’s not just a guideline we’re supposed to follow, but when you hurt other people, you hurt yourself.
There’s nobody to avoid that. It’s like law of gravity. You can’t, you can’t escape it. Um, and that we’re all interconnected so that, you know, helping someone else is helping yourself as well.
Guy: Yeah, absolutely. And so within the book there are, there are different stories and, and different people’s experiences and Yeah. It’s all broken down. Yeah. More than a hundred
Dr. Bruce: stories in the book. Yeah.
Guy: Wow. Fantastic. That’s good. I look forward to reading it. I look forward to getting into it. Um, Bruce, I, I ask, um, before we wrap things up, I ask, um, some set of questions Sure. On the show, and, and it’s more just to get to know you a little bit as well and, and for other people out there. And one, one question I I tend to ask is, um, what [00:42:00] has there been a low point in your life that has later become a blessing?
Dr. Bruce: Wow. Um.
Well, there’s certainly been been low points. Uh, I mentioned before, uh, losing a job and actually I was, I was at a, a research university, uh, teaching psychiatry, and they said, when you come up for tenure, you’re not going to get it because you’re studying near-death experiences and you can’t measure those.
You can’t put ’em in a test tube and you know. Do tests on it. Uh, so it’s not gonna account for anything. You need to do some, some serious research and stop this stuff. Uh, so I had the option then of, of doing that, of turning my back on near death experiences and just focusing on mainstream medical research.
And I could have done that and kept my job. And I liked the job. I love teaching, I love doing, uh, patient care, but it felt intellectually dishonest to me to do that. So. I [00:43:00] decided I was, I wanted to leave that university and find another university that had a more open attitude towards this. And that meant, at that time, uprooting my wife and my two young children and moving to another part of the country.
And that was a very difficult decision. We talked about it a long time, my wife and I, before we finally decided that was the right thing to do. Uh, and that was a very difficult time, a very challenging time. Uh, it ended up being good for all of us.
Guy: Amazing. Yeah. The, these are the things we don’t see, isn’t it?
Yes. You know, because you can, yeah. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Um, if you could have an intimate dinner, party yourself with a few guests, and your guests could be from anywhere in the world, from any timeframe, who do you think you’d wanna have a conversation with and why?
Dr. Bruce: Wow. Um. Well, you know, having, having [00:44:00] met the dial lama once, um, I could not get, wow, I could not get enough of him and I would gladly spend, you know, uh, numerous dinner parties with him. Um, I think Desmond Tutu is another character I’d like to spend a lot of time with. Uh, people who have both a strong sense of spirituality that’s inherent in their, in their sense of who they are, but also have an appreciation for science.
Um. I think some of our great scientists are as well. I think, uh, Albert Einstein was certain like that. I think, um, Carl Sachen was like that, know, he talked about, uh, science being a great source of spirituality. Um, so I, I think there’s no, there’s no contradiction between science and spirituality. I think they’re complimentary ways of looking at the world and, you know, you can’t, uh, get a good picture of the world without looking at both.
Um, it’s both. Uh, a scientific world and also a spiritual world. And if you ignore either one, you’re not getting the right, uh, the total picture. [00:45:00]
Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Last question, with everything we’ve covered today, is there anything you’d love to leave the listeners to ponder on?
Dr. Bruce: Well, I, I’d like to emphasize that these are common experiences, and furthermore, they’re normal experiences.
They happen to normal people. In abnormal circumstances, it had nothing to do with mental illness. And as a psychiatrist, I’ve studied this extensively and tried to, to tease it out, and there’s, there’s no connection. They strongly suggest that mind and brain are not the same things. That there are times when the mind seems to function without the brain, and therefore the mind may function after the brain ceases to exist after we die.
And finally, that near-death experiences suggests that we are all in this together. We’re all interconnected and that treating other people the way you wanna be treated makes life much more meaningful and fulfilling. [00:46:00]
Guy: Hmm. Beautiful, beautiful. It’s definitely a message worth spreading. The, um, your book after I’m assuming, is available pretty much anywhere.
Where would be the best place we can point people
Dr. Bruce: to? It is, uh, I have a website. Www bruce grayson.com. That’s Grayson with an e, uh, G-R-E-Y-S. You would spell it in Australia, but not here in the us. Um, and there are links on that website to various places to, to buy, uh, both the American and the British version of it. Yeah.
Guy: Fantastic. Fantastic. Is it on Audible?
Dr. Bruce: Yes, it is. Yes, it’s on Audible. It’s up through available through Amazon, through all, all sources.
Guy: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, uh, for anyone listening they can pause and the links will be in the show notes below anyway, um, if they wanna grab a copy. And Bruce, uh, just look, thank you so much for coming on today and, um, just sharing your wisdom and sharing your knowledge and, and putting a [00:47:00] book together like this and, and getting it out there to the world.
And, uh, it’s just been a, a wonderful conversation and just let that, you know, it’s, it’s deeply appreciated. So thank you. Thank you
Dr. Bruce: guys, and a pleasure talking with you.
Guy: That was awesome. Thanks.