What near death experiences teach us about living more beautiful lives

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Episode Transcript:

Lian Brook-Tyler  01:10

Hello, my beautiful people a huge warm welcome back to the show. In today's crazy modern world, men and women are living shallow, disconnected, and fulfilling lives. So, we created the path for those who are ready to reclaim their wildness and actualize their deepest gifts. We don't currently have any openings for you to join us in walking the path awake in the wild, all our crucibles are full until next year. But if you want to be the first to hear the next opening, make sure you're on our Facebook group facebook.com/group/primal happiness and subscribe to our Moonly news primal happiness.co/moonly and plus, you get to keep in contact with us see all the other things that we're offering and sharing and can join in with in the meantime.

And now on to this week's show is with Dr. Bruce Greyson. Dr. Greyson is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was a co-founder and the president of the International Association for near death studies and editor of the Journal of near-death Studies. Dr. Greyson has published more than 100 scholarly articles about near death experiences in peer reviewed medical journals and three academic books. He has addressed more than 100 national and international professional conferences. His research for the past four decades has focused on near death experiences and particularly their After Effects and implications. His book "after a doctor explores what near death experiences reveal about life and beyond" is his first trade book bringing his scientific research to a popular audience. In this conversation, Dr. Greyson and I explored what near death experiences teach us about life. We talked about experiences that people have the research that shows what might be creating these experiences, and what happens to people afterwards, we explore why understanding near death experiences could benefit all of us. This was an incredible episode. It was so impactful for me, just even in the conversation, not even so much the facts and the research, but just being in a conversation about things of this nature was so affecting to me, and I really hope it is that for you too. There is something so beautiful. So healing for us to hear this kind of exploration that I believe is something that really is the truth of us as humans. So let's dive in. Hello Bruce. Welcome to the show.

Dr Greyson  04:02

Well, thank you, Lian. I'm delighted to be talking to you today.

Lian Brook-Tyler  04:05

I am thrilled, as I was saying to you, and I can't really understand why perhaps we were just waiting for you to come on the show. We've never spoken about this topic before. And it seems such a such a beautiful fit for the show. I think there's so much can be revealed in near death experiences. So I'm like why have we never talked about this before? But I think we were just waiting for you to come along.

Dr Greyson  04:31

Right? I agree I think is very, very relevant to your show.

Lian Brook-Tyler  04:35

I'm really so looking forward to this. When I realized, we were going to talk today all day. I've been thinking I can't wait; I can't wait. So, before we start to like really dive into the topic itself, I would love to know I mean, it's not exactly an average line of work. In fact, I was just imagining if people say what do you do you try to explain that. Why on earth led you into this one. What gave you this passion?

Dr Greyson  05:02

Well, I came to the to the topic, sort of unwillingly. I was raised in a scientific household in the United States, a very materialistic household. My father was a chemist. And I went through college and medical school with that mindset that the physical world is all there is. Anything that's not physical is not real. And I entered, then my psychiatric training after medical school, thinking that the mind is just what the brain does. And that's all there is to it. And in the first weeks of my training, I was confronted by a patient who was brought into the emergency room after an overdose. And I was supposed to evaluate her that evening. And she was unconscious, I could not talk to her, could not arouse her, but her roommate had brought her in, and I went down to the hall to talk to her roommate in a different room, got information about the patient from the roommate, and then sent the roommate home and then went back to talk to the patient again, and she was so unconscious. So, she was admitted to the intensive care unit overnight. And I saw her the next morning when she was awakened. And she was still very groggy. And I said to her at that point. Good morning, I'm Dr. Greyson. And she opened one eye and said, I know who you are, I remember you from last night. kind of startled me because I she was unconscious the night before. So I said something like, you know, gee, I'm surprised I thought you were out cold. And she said, not in my room. I saw you talking to my roommate down the hall. I couldn't Imagine what she was talking about. The only way that could have happened is she left her body and follow me down the hall. And as far as I could tell you or your body, how can that happen? She saw how confused I was starting to tell me about our conversation with a roommate, where we were sitting with a room look like what we were wearing all the details completely. I didn't know what to make of this. I was I was just stunned I was very frightened by it. So, I realized

Lian Brook-Tyler  07:08

very would you say is your first week on the job

Dr Greyson  07:12

as a new doctor, trying to look professional, you know I I realized

Lian Brook-Tyler  07:25

I am so glad we started this whole interview with this story.

Dr Greyson  07:32

I didn't know what to do. But I realized I can't deal with my confusion I could deal with us. My job is to deal with her confusion. So I brought it back to her. I talked to her about why she tried to overdose and so forth and arranged for her to be admitted to the psychiatric unit. And then tried to put it out of my mind I tried to think about it could make any sense that I thought someone was playing a trick on me, this can't be real. Maybe the nurses, maybe your roommate, somebody's pulling the trigger, couldn't figure out how it happened. I just sort of put it out of my mind. And then in the next couple of years, I heard a couple of more stories from my patients who had similar stories to tell about leaving their bodies when they were near death and seeing and hearing things they shouldn't have been able to. I thought well, you know, they're their psychiatric patients. Maybe they're just crazy. Who knows. 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 term near death experiences and told us what they were like. And I realized for the first time, this isn't just a couple of crazy patients, this is something that's happening normal people all over the world. I just couldn't make any sense at all. But I'm a scientist. So, I figured I need to study this. Now a true scientist doesn't run away from things he can't understand. He goes towards them and tries to figure them out. So, I started collecting cases and trying to understand what's going on with you have this experience and how can we make sense of it? And now half a century later, I'm still trying to understand it. Wow,

Lian Brook-Tyler  09:05

oh my goodness, what a fabulous story. It feels just so when I hear things like this, I just think it feels so much these things are destined like for that to happen so early on in your career to that just completely then took you in that direction. Yeah. Amazing. And again, real testament to you that that's what you're you know, she said, you know, a real scientist that goes towards something rather than runs away from it. I love that so much. Wow. So, I kind of feel like where to start. I guess I'd like to know I guess almost a sort of like lay some, I guess sort of foundations to have the conversation on. Did you start to see any commonalities as she was studying In these cases, did you see commonalities in terms of like, was there a particular reason you started to see show up in terms of, if not types of people, you know, points in their life or something like that we would suggest people are more likely to have near death experiences. If... Did you see any correlations like that

Dr Greyson  10:23

I did not. You know, they happen to people of any gender, any race, any ethnicity. Doesn't matter how they came close to death. They all have the same basic phenomena. We looked at things like what were their religious beliefs beforehand. What were their cultural background like, and that didn't seem to be correlated at all with whether they haven't experienced or what type they have? Consistently, people have the same stories to tell us about their thoughts being clear and faster than ever before, while their brains were apparently not working. Having powerful emotions, feeling overwhelming peace and well-being. having what we call paranormal experiences, for lack of a better words, sense of leaving the body, having extrasensory perception, and in some cases, seeming to leave the physical world and go to some other realm or dimension, where they may see other entities that they recognize as deceased loved ones, or which they label us as deities. And at some point, they decide to come back and whether or sent back against their will sometimes.

Lian Brook-Tyler  11:35

it's so interesting how, again, I mentioned this to you before we started recording, but at this point, we've recorded topics and all kinds of things, often things that are really dismissed as nonsense by mainstream. And the interesting thing is, so many of the people that I interview on these supposing nonsense topics, are scientists. And I just keep marveling at the way that we've got all this evidence now to suggest these things are happening. And yet they've not been accepted as real, kind of like mainstream level is still seen as quite fringe. I'd love to know, before we start to dive more into the, I guess what those experiences are and what they might tell us. I'd love to know your thoughts in terms of how far have we come in the research that you and I guess other other people that are in your line of work that do? How close are we get into that having some kind of more, I don't quite the word is mainstream, but you know, like, I can't think the word, you know, like acceptance in a way where it's not just seen as something that only exists on the fringe.

Dr Greyson  12:51

Yeah, well, we have come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. But I've seen a great difference in the way my colleagues accept this phenomenon over the last several decades, I have the advantage of working in a medical setting, which is different from a basic science area where people are so locked into materialistic mindset, that that's all they can see. And they they may not accept anything that doesn't fit into their worldview. But doctors or nurses in medical settings, are concerned with helping their patients. So, whether they can understand something or not, if it helps them feed their patients, they want to know about it. So, I've seen doctors nurses saying, Well, I understand this, but I see that my patients are having it. And it affects their attitudes and beliefs. So, I need to know about it. So, you know, when we when we would talk about this in medical conferences back in 1980, we get polite silence from the audience. And I just gave a talk of the American Psychiatric Association last month. And when I finished, Doctor stood up in the audience said, let me tell you about my near-death experience. So, it's very accepted. They still have a lot of questions about what causes it what it means, but they accept that these are real experiences that happened to many, many patients, and have profound effects on them.

Lian Brook-Tyler  14:14

Hmm, oh, wow. I love that so much. Something I have in the reading I've done on near death experiences and then the kind of sort of counter arguments for what I've seen one of the one of them is this sense of its although people are having these, you know, supposedly like mystical experiences is really just a function of I'm gonna use really clumsy nonscientific terms here. It's just a function of parts of the brain kind of like closing down and therefore kind of restrictions on you know, our experience of self, where normally we're kind of contained in sense, we then don't have the same sense of like being within the parameters of the body. But it's not because there is kind of anything paranormal happening. It's purely a kind of function of the brain. I suspect probably far better articulated than I've just done. I suspect you're very familiar with those kinds of arguments. I'd love to know what's what have you seen? That would suggest that isn't what's going on? That's not all thats going on? Yeah, I don't think it's just something in the brain or just something paranormal, I think it's both. And, you know, we usually are taught that the mind is what the brain does that all our thoughts and feelings are created by the brain. And the reason we think that is that when your brain is injured, you don't think very clearly, you know, when you get intoxicated, or you have a stroke, or get hit on the head, that affects your thinking. So we assume that means the brain is causing or creating your thoughts. But that's not the only interpretation of that correlation. Let me give you an example of a television set. There are hundreds of television programs being broadcast to you all the time. And if you tried to watch them all, you wouldn't be able to understand them, because you're seeing them all simultaneously. So we have a television set, which receives the shows from outside and filters out all those except the one you want to watch. And it translates those into visions and sounds, you can hear them. So we see that the television seems to be creating the TV show. And if the TV set is broken, you don't see the show. But then we know that the show is not created inside the TV set is created somewhere else, and the TV set just interprets it for us filters before us. I think the brain can function in the same way. Thoughts are out there somewhere in our mind. And the brain receives them, filters out the irrelevant stuff, like seeing deceased loved ones, and seeing God and so forth. And just, let's say in the things that are important to the brain, which means how do we survive in the physical world? What will help us find food and shelter and a mate and avoid predators? That's all the brain wants to do. keep us focused on that. So when you have something like a near death experience, and the brain starts shutting down, what gets shut down? Is the filtering out of all the irrelevant stuff. And then you can perceive these other entities, these other realms that you normally get filtered out and don't see I love that. So that's such a such a great explanation. Yeah. Wow, that makes so much sense to me. And so, do you have a guess, particular examples you can share that would show that's what's happening. And not just that the brain is kind of creating that as a phenomenon. But that's not what's happening.

Dr Greyson  17:56

Well, if it was just the brain, creating illusions or hallucinations, then people wouldn't be able to see things accurately from an out of body perspective. And let me give you an example of one of these, a fellow I knew was he was in his mid 50s. He was a delivery driver. And when he was on his rounds, one day, he started having terrible depression chest pains. So he managed to get himself to a hospital. And in the emergency room, they did some evaluation to found that he had four vessels to his heart completely blocked. So they rushed him to the operating room for an emergency quadruple bypass surgery. He later told me that in the middle of the operation, he rose up above his body, looked down and watched what was going on. And, to his great surprise, you saw his surgeon flapping his arms like he was trying to fly. And he wiggles his arms to illustrate that for me. Now, at that point, I had been a doctor for about 30 years I couldn't imagine this really happening. So I said to him, you know, maybe you were hallucinating because you were anesthetized? And that was picking your brain said, no, no, you talk to my doctor, he'll tell you did this. So, with this permission, I talked to his doctor. And the surgeon who did this procedure said, well, yes, I did do that, you know, I let my assistants start the procedure. And I put on my sterile gown and gloves, and then walk into the operating room and watch them and supervise them. And while they're doing that, I don't want to risk touching anything that's not sterile. So put my hands where I know they wouldn't touch anything fell on my chest. And I point things out to them using my elbow, so don't touch anything. And he wiggled his elbows just like the policeman did. I've never seen any of a doctor do this. You don't see doctors on television doing this type of thing. And patients thought, we've got many, many cases of this one of my colleagues,

Lian Brook-Tyler  19:50

coincidences are pretty far-fetched.

Dr Greyson  19:55

No, skeptics will say, yes, it's a coincidence. It's lucky guess. You know, it's rare. occasion. But one of my colleagues, Jan Holden, at the University of North Texas, studied about 100 of these cases of people who claim to leave their bodies and see things. And she found that in 92% of them, what they said happened was confirmed by a third witness a party who was in like a surgeon in the operating room confirmed. So in almost every case, they were completely accurate. And that should not happen if it's just a hallucination.

Lian Brook-Tyler  20:27

And it can't be explained also where I don't know, they are still able to hear and process but not you know, if they these are things that are also visual, and you know, the patient had their eyes open.

Dr Greyson  20:40

Right, yeah.

Lian Brook-Tyler  20:43

How common is it for patients to have that kind of near-death experience where they are able to witness things that they shouldn't have been able to?

Dr Greyson  20:54

Well, let me say first, that near death experiences occurred about 10 to 20% of people whose heart stopped. So, it doesn't really,

Lian Brook-Tyler  21:02

yeah, but quite a sizable number.

Dr Greyson  21:06

Yeah, yeah. And of those who have a near death experience, about a third of them will report leaving their bodies and seeing things that can be corroborated by other people. So it's a lot of people.

Lian Brook-Tyler  21:19

It really is that's really surprised me. Yeah. I think that sense of kind of almost, I'm sure you've felt this so many times, almost like frustration with like this, this degree, you know, this quantity and this degree of evidence, it's baffling me that it takes so long for these things to be accepted. But like you say, it's definitely changing. Certainly changing.

Dr Greyson  21:44

Yes, yes. Well, scientists generally want to understand how it happens, what, what, what lets the wherever you are, leave your body, and how does whatever this is you are, then connect with the brain and talk to it. And we don't have an answer for that

Lian Brook-Tyler  22:00

yet. No, unfortunately, that's how it takes us into the sticky problem of consciousness. Now, that makes sense. It's like, yeah, without knowing the how it's really hard then to accept it. But it's gonna be some time before we do understand the how, yes. So what have you seen to be the actually, before I asked you this question, is there the sense in in some of them, or maybe many of the patients that have had this experience, that they come back with a sense of knowing why they had it?

Dr Greyson  22:41

I'm not sure they know why they had it. Many of them feel like it was a gift given to them, or that they were somehow off track in their lives. And this is a chance to do it again. But they generally feel like they've been sort of blessed by having this experience and are glad to have it when they come back. Now, as a psychiatrist, what interests me most about these experiences is how this changes people's lives. Yes,

Lian Brook-Tyler  23:09

that was the question I was going to ask you next. And I just wondered if they almost had a kind of sense of that, even before they really started to see that play out in their lives but carry on. So I'm about to ask you that question.

Dr Greyson  23:19

Almost all of them have profound changes in attitudes. And the most common thing we hear is that they're no longer afraid of death and dying. Yeah. And you know, fear of death is so pervasive in our culture. And it affects so much of what we do and death and come back and say, I'm not afraid of death anymore. They also have along with that, an increased joy in life. It's as if when you lose your fear of dying, you lose your fear of living, the attempt to jump in with both feet and live in the now and really enjoy life to the fullest. Because you're not afraid of dying. So why not take a risk? Yeah, I will say that almost anybody who comes close to death will value their life more. If you haven't had a near death experience, that tends to make you more cheerful, more cautious, more restricted, because you're afraid of dying. If you have any death experience, it expands your life enriches it, it makes you feel much more connected to the universe and safe. Along with this often goes, an increase in spirituality. And when people say that they say, I don't mean more religious, I've been more spiritual. And what they mean by that is more connected to other people to the natural world to the divine. And that gives them a sense of compassion for other people as well. They tend to say, you know, the religion that I was brought up in, kind of hinted at the truth, but it's just a distorted portion of it. And I feel equally at home in any house of worship or even just out in nature. I've also seen this from people who were atheist before the near-death experience and they come back saying I dont understand it. But now I know there is a God, and I am part of it. And that's along with, along with this increase in spirituality is a decrease in concern for worldly matters. And that includes not only material possessions, but also power, prestige, fame, competition, these things no longer have any meaning for near death experiences.

Lian Brook-Tyler  25:26

Hmm. I really make sense. I mentioned before we started recording that I've got a particular interest in this topic, even though it's not. Even though I've not experienced one, and it feels very related to what you were saying there about death.  And my my start on this path of kind of, I guess you could say spirituality came about with a sudden death of my father, which was 10 years ago this year. And he died very suddenly, in a road traffic accident. And the day he died, we had a very, very strong bond, he'd been brought me up as a single father, we had such a strong bond. And the day he died, the experience I had was, I'd kind of like my almost as if I'd had a near death experience, it was like I had this kind of almost like just being blown open to the sense that there wasn't just this material relm, it was like I was starting to experience his experience, in a way is probably the best I can describe it. And then about a week after he died, so I was having all these sorts of strange experiences where I was like, This is not how I was expecting to feel when I've just lost my dad unexpectedly. And then about a week after he died, a friend of his recommended you may have heard of the book, journey of souls by Michael Newton.

Dr Greyson  26:56

Yes, yes. And I read that.

Lian Brook-Tyler  27:01

And it was just started to kind of like, give me some sort of like more tangible understanding of the things that I was starting to have an experiential understanding of, yes. And I then went on to have kind of like one of the past life regression with one of his sort of practitioners. And I haven't really felt the need to then sort of continue in that like vein of research. But it really was what led me to do all the work I do now. And as you can probably hear, it has a really strong link to everything you're describing, even though I didn't need to have a near death experience myself, it was like I somehow experienced it in a different way. But it certainly gave me that completely different relationship to death. And that even though I hadn't had that experience of near-death experience, losing my dad, and then realizing it hasn't, you know, it hasn't had the negative effect on me. It's hard. But it's also done something different. It's given me this opening to understand there is something beyond death, right? And then complete. I mean, my whole life changed. Like, you know, I left my job, I started on the path I'm on now. So it was like I had like what you're describing, it's happened to me. So I just wanted to share that because it, everything you're saying is giving me almost like another level of understanding of what happened to me and why it happened.

Dr Greyson  28:25

Yes, yes. Well, a near death experience is just one of the most common ways today to get this type of spiritual experience. But there are many ways of doing that. And most of our religious and spiritual traditions have developed technologies over the centuries to help you do that, whether it's meditation, or using psychedelic drugs, or drumming, dancing, so forth, or sensory deprivation, sometimes going out into the desert on a vision quest. But we develop ways of getting beyond the limits of the physical body. And realizing there's a lot more to myself than just that. And, you know, one of the differences with near death experiences and with your experience is that you weren't prepared for it. People who go through some spiritual tradition, are guided by it, and they're training for it. They're trying to get it, but it was near death experiences. And with your experience, it came unexpected, and you were totally unprepared for it. And that maybe has more of an impact than if you had been trying to get get it.

Lian Brook-Tyler  29:25

Yeah, that's so interesting. And it's interesting what you said about people who have had those near death experiences see it as a blessing or gift. Yes, it feels strange to say this because you know, clearly I'd much rather my father still be around but the way I experienced his death very much felt like a blessing. Yes, it really was. And, and I think because it was so unexpected. It really I mean it was like just overnight transformation. And again that I guess that's why maybe I asked you did the people who've had these Near Death Experiences kind of come back with a sense of almost like this was meant to happen. For me, it probably took me time to kind of feel that way about how I experienced it. But over time I've really seen like, I see it really as a soul contract between me and my father, like, that was how it was meant to happen.

Dr Greyson  30:20

Right? Right. Well, people usually come back from India, with the spirits saying that this was designed for me. It's personal for me, and I was sent back here to try to do things, right. And they come back with this idea that we're all connected with this. And that makes them much more compassionate, much more altruistic in their behavior. And that drastically changes their lives based on what they were like before, you know, if they were very spiritual before, it may not change them very much. But if they were in a very competitive business, they come back saying this doesn't make sense anymore. Getting ahead of someone else's expense because we're all we're all part of the same thing. And either change how they work or get out of the profession. And they often go into some helping profession, health care, teaching social work, clergy, something like that. It's even more pronounced in people who have violent professions, for example, career police officers or military officers who have a near death experience and then can't even think about shooting somebody even in self-defense, just for them. And that can wreak havoc in their lives and their families as well.

Lian Brook-Tyler  31:32

Yes, yeah. I mean, it certainly did in mine. And I wasn't doing a violent profession. Now I can imagine, oh, my goodness, it changes what you think is important in life to do? Yes, completely. Yeah. Wow. I feel like I want to ask you so many different questions. I'm struggling to what what's what's? How are you doing this work? What's this provided to you personally?

Dr Greyson  32:06

Well, I can't say that I was afraid of death before I started this, I don't think I was I thought there was death was nothing you live your life you die, is the end of it. And that's not something to be afraid of you just not there anymore. And now I can't leave it anymore. I've seen so much evidence that we persist after death. And let me give you an example about this. Many people in Indonesia have experienced say they encountered deceased loved ones. And that's easy to dismiss as wishful thinking, or expectations, you know, I'm gonna die. I want to see my father. So, they imagined him. But there are a number of cases where people see in a near death experience someone who is dead, but who is not yet known to be dead. So, you don't have any expectation. And I'll give an example of one fellow I knew he was from South Africa. About 25 years old. He was a technical writer. He was hospitalized with severe in pneumonia, and he kept having respiratory arrest where he couldn't breathe at all. So he was hospitalized for a few weeks. And his primary nurse who worked with him every day was about 21. And they got very close. In one point, you said, I'm going to be taking a few days off, so the other nurses substituting for me. So, she went away. And while she was gone, he had another respiratory arrest and had to be resuscitated and had a near death experience. And he found himself in a beautiful pastoral scene. And then to a surprise, this nurse Anita comes walking towards him. And he does a double take and says Anita, What are you doing here? And she said, You can't stay here, Jack, need to go back to your body. And I want you to find my parents and tell them I love them very much. And I'm sorry, they wrecked the red MGB. And then she turned and walked away. When he later woke up in the hospital room, yet total memory of this bizarre experience. And he tried to tell it to the first nurse who walked into his room, and she got very upset and ran out. It turned out that his primary nurse, taking the weekend off to celebrate her 21st birthday, and her parents surprised her with a gift of a red MGB. She got excited, jumped in the car, took off for a drive, crashed into a telephone pole and died instantly. A few hours before he had his near-death experience. There's no way he could have expected her to die. Nobody could have known how she died. And yet he did. And I mean, and this is not this is not a new thing. Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian wrote up a case like this in the first century. So these go back, you know, centuries. And we have very well documented cases now where people encountered deceased individuals that no one yet knew had died. And I don't know how to explain that in terms of the brain creating our thoughts. No Clearly, after this woman died, something about her was still able to survive and communicate. How do you how do you listen to these stories and not be affected by it? Yeah, wow. It just does feel it's such a such an important message. It's really does. So, so important. So for people listening, what would you say is I mean, there's, there's so much to be seen in everything you've said, that feels, you know, for me and again, because I've kind of had an experience in a different way of so much what you're talking about. For me, it's almost just like further confirmation of that. But for someone who's listening to this, and perhaps, either hasn't really known much about what we can learn from your death experiences, or perhaps we've just been really skeptical about it, what would you say?  Well, there are a number of things. One is just to be aware of how common these things are. About 5% of the general population have had a near death experience one out of every 20 people. So someone in your workplace, in your classroom, in your extended family has probably had a near death experience. And they're also not in any way connected to mental illness. As a psychiatrist, I started thinking about that. So we did studies looking at how common are near death experiences among the mentally ill, and how common is near death experiences or mental illness among people of near death experiences. And there's absolutely no association between the two. It's also important to realize that these experiences have profound aftereffects on people's lives, on their attitudes on their behaviors, and their lifestyles. And although they sound like they're good changes, they also create havoc in the patient's lives sometimes and need to be addressed. They also strongly suggest that our minds are not our brains, there's something separate. And that really has profound effects on how we think about who we are and what we are. And if the mind can function when the brain is shutting down, that opens the possibility that I can still function after the brain has stopped. And we've seen lots of evidence that people who whose bodies have died are still functioning in some way. But the most important thing I think people get from a near death experience is a sense that we are all interconnected. People have come back saying that I know now of the golden rule. Do unto others as you have them do unto you, which is part of every religious religion we have. It's not just a guideline we're supposed to follow. This is a law of the universe. This is what happens when you hurt other people, you hurt yourself. When you help other people, you're helping yourself as well. Let me give you a graphic example of this. Tom was a 35-year-old fellow who was working on an under his truck in his driveway one day, he had the truck jacked up and he was underneath it. And it fell it crashed and crushed his chest. And he had a very elaborate near-death experience. And one part of it was a life review. He went through everything that ever happened in his life. He relived it not just suffer, we lifted in my new detail, not only from his eyes, but through the eyes of other people as well. For example, you remember being a teenager and driving his truck down the street, and an intoxicated man walked out in front of his truck, and he almost hit him. He was furious, hot-headed teenager. So he stopped the car, rolled down the window, and starting yelling at the man. And the man, unfortunately, being intoxicated, reached his hand in the window and slapped him across the face. That was too much of this hot headed teenager. So he gets out of the truck and starts beating the man up and left him a bloody mess in the road, and then got back in his truck and drove off. Well, when he had his near-death experience, he relived this not only through his own eyes, feeling the adrenaline rush and the rage. But also through the eyes of the man, he beat up the intoxication, the humiliation of being beaten by this teenager, his nose getting bloody his teeth going through his lower lip. And he felt every one of Tom's 35 blows against his face. Now Tom could have told you it was 35 but reliving it through the eyes of that man, he counted them he knew. And he came back saying, I realized that that guy and me were the same thing. There's no distinction here. So when I was hurting him, I was really hurting myself. And that totally transformed his life.

Lian Brook-Tyler  39:47

Goodness me Wow. This is probably wow. Going beyond what You can sort of strictly know through kind of, you know, I'm guessing you've had a lot of time to really try to make sense of some of these things. But how do you personally, I guess, hold this? Do you see it? As kind of thinking about it, for example, in Michael Newton's work where, I guess, in simple terms would describe it as kind of, we do have like some sense of separate consciousness that you could call, say, individual souls within soul family kind of groups. But then within that we're all interconnected. It How would you would you regard ascribe? It's what you've kind of been able to make sense of? Would you describe it something akin to that or something different?

Dr Greyson  40:49

Yes, I Well, let me tell you what the Near-Death Experience is telling me. Some say it's like looking at your your hand, if you look at the fingers, there are five separate entities, we've looked at the whole hand, you see, they're all connected at the bottom and the palm. And that's the way we are, we're all part of the same thing. Although we have some differences. All this will say it's like being a wave in the ocean. The wave is made of the same material, the rest of the ocean is where it has a separate structure and shape and size and so forth, temporarily. Because we know after a while, the wave will fade back into the ocean, and you're part of the whole thing again. And that's the way they talk about their relationship to other people to the universe to the divine. We're all part of the same thing, with temporarily isolated as a separate, separate individual. But that's only temporary. And we know there's more to it than that.

Lian Brook-Tyler  41:40

Wow. Do you get to I love how you you talk about the ways you talk about these things in the metaphors I really do illuminate so clearly. And when you say that, that sort of temporary nature of of things. Do you have a sense of? How temporary Do you think that is? Is it kind of you know, one life's worth? Is it many life's worth before you go back into the whole?

Dr Greyson  42:06

Yeah, I don't know. I'm a scientist. I'm not a philosopher. But the way near death experiences talk about being beyond the body. They're part of some universal Godhead, or something, some universal consciousness. And yet, they still retain something of their individual identity. And it seems like a paradox. But you know, many things that they talk about, they will say, I can't really explain it to you, and where it doesn't go into words, I can't explain it. And we say great, tell me about you know, so we forced them to use metaphors to describe what happens. For example, many people will see a warm, loving, being of light and feel welcomed and protected by it. And when they tell me that they'll say, I'm going to call this God. So, you know roughly what I'm talking about. But this is not the God I was taught about in church, it's much bigger. But I don't know what I suppose I'll call it God. And people from different cultures will give it different names, but they all describe the same feeling of being warmed and loved, and protected and accepted by this, whatever it is. Yeah, that's why you got such good metaphors, because you're hearing so many of them.

Lian Brook-Tyler  43:21

That really makes sense. And do you have a sense from what people who have had near death experiences tell you? The kind of purpose of us being here as humans?

Dr Greyson  43:39

Well, that's a good question. I asked him about this. Because if things are so great in this other realm, why do we come back to this horrible physical world or somebody problems, you know, and they usually say something like, we came back here to learn something, it usually comes down to learning how to love in that other realm. Love is all around, you're part of it all. It's very easy its natural. But to come to this world, and feel that same and express that same unconditional love is very difficult. Because people are nasty here. They're not you know, there's all sorts of problems here that make it hard to love. And you can't learn how to do that in a world where love is all around. So we come here really, our task here is to learn how to love in spite of all the problems here.

Lian Brook-Tyler  44:35

That does then begs the question. If love is all around when you are not in the physical realm, why would you need to learn to love?

Dr Greyson  44:48

I can't answer that

Lian Brook-Tyler  44:50

I had a feeling you wouldn’t. What's your sense of that though? Because it is kind of paradoxical, isn't it? Like why would you need to learn something that you could effortlessly do when you're not here?

Dr Greyson  45:00

Yeah, yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But that's seems to be part of our journey is to learn how to be better in some way.

Lian Brook-Tyler  45:12

Oh, my goodness, I am so enjoying this conversation I really am. So, in the I have no idea if I suspect the times been flying. Yes. So, we're almost out of time. What would you feel is something to share that we haven't touched on yet that you've for us has been kind of one of the, I guess, most helpful or surprising aspects of the work you've done?

Dr Greyson  45:43

Well, it's all been surprising. But the way it's changed me most is made me more comfortable with the uncertainty of life. I went into this field as a scientist thinking we're going to have all the answers, just ask the right questions, you do the research, you get the answers. And now I'm well convinced that we're not going to because our brains can't understand it. Your death experience will say that. When I was in the other realm, I had access to all the information there is. And now that I'm back in my body, I can't understand anything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know it was there, but I can't recapture it. So, I think you know, that, number one, we're living in our brains as we do everyday life, we just can't understand what's really going on here.

Lian Brook-Tyler  46:38

And number two, we're not meant to, we're not meant to,

Dr Greyson  46:41

we don't need to; we don't need you. Yeah, you know, I, I believe from what they tell me that the universe is a friendly place, and that we belong here. And that there's nothing to be afraid of. So if we don't understand, that's okay, just go with it.

Lian Brook-Tyler  46:57

What was just occurring to me, as you were saying that it's there, it feels, to me there's a kind of nuanced that perhaps We've really lost contact within our modern culture where we've become so closed, to be able to experience this kind of interconnectedness of everything that are the conditioning we've received has created much more of a closure to it. And so that, to me, doesn't necessarily feel natural, let's say it's hard to ever say these things, because, hey, it's where we are. But that that degree of not being able to understand it, I think, is probably the cause of so many of what we're currently seeing as problems in our world. And if we look at, like my own, my own kind of path is in shamanism where this way of understanding the world like an animistic perspective is, is the norm, as we see in you know, pretty much every indigenous culture we've understood. And it seems to me that it's far more natural for humans to have some degree of understanding of that interconnectedness. But not to the level where that's fully how we're, you know, it's kind of like an opening, but not a full opening, like, we are meant to have a sense of like, here I am on this current, you know, realm, being a human. And I have a sense of interconnectedness that feels to me much more of the kind of sweet spot for humanity.

Dr Greyson  48:33

Right, I think you're right, you know, when you think about an infant, who was totally bonded with the mother, just like there's no distinction there between the infant and the mother, and they just totally merged. And it feels blissful. And then as we age and get older and go to school and get indoctrinated, we realize, oh, no, I'm a separate entity. I'm not, that's, that's different, I'm different. It becomes so important to us, especially in our Western culture, yes, to be in control of our lives. And to define who we are. I'm a certain age, I'm a certain gender or a certain nationality, and to separate yourself from other people. And in a near death experience, people will find themselves not in control of anything, and not having a gender and ethnicity and age and so forth. And they feel better than ever. They don't need those things. And when they come back, what they retain when they come back, is the sense that I don't need that stuff. I am who I am, regardless of my gender, my age, my rationale, and my nationality. And it's fine not being controlled, because we're part of the same thing. And that I don't need to be competitive. I don't need to be fighting other people. I don't need to be collecting material goods. That's not important. What's important is actualizing The connection with other people. But living the golden rule about helping other people are about being bonded with others.

Lian Brook-Tyler  50:14

This has been such a delightful conversation. It's one of those. It's one of the episodes where I feel like I've changed during the course of this conversation. Is this something in what you're talking about the way you're talking about it, I can kind of feel myself kind of opening further into experiences, again, that were present for me, but I can feel there's a there's deepening happens just listening to you. Yes, such incredible work you're doing. So unfortunately, we are coming up on time. What would you? What would you suggest to listeners? So I'm hoping that our listeners by now at least if they haven't got kind of like, absolutely, you know, that will make sense to me, that's definitely what's happening, they may at least have an opening to the things you're talking about. What would you suggest to them as don't necessarily have to be like practical next steps, but like next steps they could take having listened to this?

Dr Greyson  51:17

Yeah. Well, I've written recently written a book called "after - a doctorate explores what near death experiences reveal about life and beyond". And I talked about most of the things we've talked about today, but also go into the research that shows that you don't have to have a near death experience to absorb some of these insights. And just learning about near death experiences can change you and open you up to the spiritual world. And there's been a lot of research done with college students, high school students, nursing students, who've been taught about near death experiences, and then have profound attitude and behavioral changes. That's partly why I wrote this book to spread the word, let people know, this is out there for you. So if people would like to read that book, or go to my website, which is www.brucegreyson.com. Or tell your audience that Greyson's with an E because I have to tell Americans that.

Lian Brook-Tyler  52:15

Yes, yeah, we spell it the right way anyway.

Dr Greyson  52:17

But it just remain open to other possibilities, because they are out there. And they often may be make your life more fulfilling and more enriching to absorb them.

Lian Brook-Tyler  52:37

It feels there's something so profound in in saying not just having a near death experience, but the ripple effects of them onto other people's lives. Again, I could feel that just happening as you're speaking to you, even though you've not had a near death experience, you speaking about near death experience, I can feel that having that effect on me. So what you just said, there really isn't surprised me. And there is something just so gorgeous about as you're saying, as medical professionals are learning about near death experiences, it has a positive impact on them. There's something just so beautiful about that, isn't there? Right? And

Dr Greyson  53:19

it makes doctors and nurses more open to listening to their patients. And valuing their experiences. Yeah, for sure. Well,

Lian Brook-Tyler  53:29

I'm, I'm so glad you're doing the work you're doing. It's so so needed as so powerful. And so yeah, I've got so much gratitude for you just doing what you're doing. And then for coming into sharing that with us. Well, thankyou

Dr Greyson  53:45

you so much, Lian, I'm very glad that you're doing this work you're doing as well, spreading the word to the universe. Really.

Lian Brook-Tyler  53:52

Thank you. Thank you. I think we both ended up on the path we were meant to end up on. Thank you so much.  Wow, what a show what a show. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Here are all my best bits. The evidence on near death experience, show that what takes place can't solely be explained by shutting down to the brain. And therefore, just creating a different kind of experience, as Bruce said, is really a combination of that and something else that shows us that consciousness isn't created in the brain. Bruce said that the thing he hears over and over from people who have had near death experiences is they now understand why there's the golden rule in all religions, do unto others as you would have done unto you. It's because whatever we do to others, we do to ourselves because ultimately, we're all one. We don't have to have near death sort of experience personally in order to benefit from them. Simply learning about near death experiences and what they suggest about our universe. Kind of in itself bring a deeper sense of peace and security, which as I said in the intro, wow, I experienced that even just being in that conversation. And if you'd like to get the notes and links for everything we spoke about this week, I went over to the show notes and there at primal happiness.co/episode 376. And this is the last show for a couple of weeks. Jonathan and I are taking our usual month off in August to rest to be in ceremony to spend time with our loved ones. And so, our invitation is that you take some time over the next month to do the same. And then we're back in the last very last week of August with the next show. And if you don't want to miss out on that one, make sure you're subscribed at Apple podcast stitcher or your app of choice. Hit that subscribe button, and then you will get each episode automagically straight to your device as soon as it comes out. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. Catch you again much later this month.

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