Chemical "causes" of NDEs? Greyson's analysis.

Bruce Greyson writes: “I was recently part of a multinational research team that analyzed language usage and language structure in 625 accounts of near-death experiences and compared them to almost fifteen thousand accounts of unusual experiences of people taking any of 166 different drugs. We found that the drug states most similar to near-death experiences were those associated with ketamine. However, we were careful to note that other common effects of ketamine don’t appear in near-death experiences, which suggests that near-death experiences are not simply an effect of the drug. In a similar vein, Karl Jansen, the neuroscientist who has most fiercely promoted the ketamine model for near-death experiences, concluded after twelve years of research that he viewed ketamine as ‘just another door’ to near-death experiences, and not as actually producing them.”

Other scientists argue that “near-death experiences might be connected to serotonin, adrenaline, vasopressin, and glutamate, all of which are chemicals that transmit signals between nerve cells. But in spite of the theoretical reasons for thinking that brain chemicals might be involved in near-death experiences, there has been no research looking into this possibility.” Greyson says, “I don’t expect any such research to be done in the near future. Bursts of these chemicals in the brain tend to be very short-lived and localized, so to find them, we’d have to look at exactly the right time at exactly the right place in the brain—and as I discovered, we don’t even know where in the brain to look.”

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 109-110. 

In my NDE, "I felt free from my brain."

How might we explain near-death experiences in circumstances when the brain is incapable of processing the experience and forming the memories that a person has had? Bruce Greyson begins his answer by suggesting the “association between brain activity and mental function” does not necessarily mean the electrical activity in the brain has caused the thought or feeling. Maybe the thought has caused the electrical activity in the brain.” Saying, as many do, that “the mind is what the brain does is no more of an explanation than saying “making music is what a musical instrument does. Neither statement is an explanation. A relationship between the mind and the brain is a proven fact. “But the interpretation that the brain creates the mind is not a scientific fact.”

When eight years old, Steve Luiting nearly drowned. As an adult, he described to Greyson his near-death experience: I seemed to change points of view, as if I was changing location in a room. One second, I was the terrified person; and then I was the other calm one ‘watching’ the terrified one. I was both and yet not. The ‘real’ I was the calm one, but I had always identified myself as the other until now. My mind expanded to that of an adult capacity, and then beyond. I suppose, without the limitation of a child brain, it allowed my true nature to express itself again. It’s made me think that our understanding of the brain is actually backwards. The brain filters out everything and doesn’t help our thinking but hinders it, slows it down, focuses it. Maybe, because it is so good at filtering and focusing, we don’t remember our prior existence—or future events, either.

At the age of seventeen Michele Grown-Ramirez, while doing a jack-knife dive facing away from the pool, smashed her head on the diving board and fell unconscious into the water. Later, as an adult, she also shared her near-death underwater experience with Greyson: I ‘saw stars’ everywhere and gradually felt time go faster and slower at the same time, until it felt timeless. I felt a strange pull away from my body and realized I was dying. The pull was very strong, and I felt surrounded by presences, people who knew me and each other, but especially my two grandmothers. In that timeless span, I felt free and at peace. It was such a wonderful feeling, I felt like I could fly; towards a great Light that was God, and a future where I was loved and things made such profound sense. It was a realm of love, peace, calm, and acceptance, which had no space and yet was all space. I felt free from my brain! And the ‘thinking’ I had was very free, simple, and clear. It was remarkable to be going through a brain over-firing, or randomly firing, or down, or whatever, and yet to still be able to have free-clear thoughts, and suddenly feel this pull as if I was no longer being constrained to this world and its limits.

Greyson proposes that: “These two near-death experiences, and many more like them, suggest your mind—the part of you that experiences consciousness—is not the same as your brain—the mass of pink-grey matter inside your skull.”

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 Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 116-122.

"The plural of anecdote is data."

Greyson writes: "Quoting personal experiences is not objective evidence from a scientific perspective, and many scientists are dismissive of what are characterized as anecdotal accounts." Yet, he reminds us: “Most research starts with scientists collecting, verifying, and comparing anecdotes until patterns in these stories become apparent, and then from those patterns emerge hypotheses, which can then be tested and refined. Collections of anecdotes, if they are investigated rigorously, are of immense value in medical research. They were critical, for example, in the discovery of AIDS and Lyme disease, and in discovering unexpected drug effects. As political scientist Raymond Wolfinger said a half century ago, ‘The plural of anecdote is data.’”

Greyson adds: “Some of my medical colleagues dismiss near-death experiences as pure fantasy and for that reason regard any research on near-death experiences as unscientific. But what makes an investigation scientific is not the topic being studied. What makes an investigation scientific is whether it’s based on rigorous observations, on evidence, and on sound reasoning.” For instance, Greyson argues researcher Jan Holden: “reviewed ninety-three reports of out-of-body perceptions during near-death experiences and found that 92 percent were verified by outside sources as completely accurate, while 6 percent contained some error, and only 1 percent was completely wrong.” 

In Holden's study anecdotal accounts were confirmed and thus became objective evidence.

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (2021), 45-46 .

Farmer sees his father during his NDE

Greyson’s research also included interviews over a two-and-a-half-year period with almost 1,600 patients who “were admitted to the inpatient cardiac service, of whom 116 had had a cardiac arrest, in which their hearts stopped completely, documented in their medical records. Claude, a seventy-two-year-old farmer, was one of those whose heart had stopped. The day after he was admitted, I made my way to his hospital room, introduced myself, and asked if he’d be willing to talk with me about what happened to him. He gave me a puzzled look, as if it was perfectly obvious what had happened to him. But he agreed to talk.

“I told him I understood that his heart had stopped, and I asked him, as I ask every patient, “What was the last thing you remember before you blacked out?” “I was slopping the hogs,” Claude began slowly, “and I started feeling dizzy, so I walked back to the barn and sat down on a bale of hay.” He paused, and then added, “And that’s the last thing I knew.” “And what was the next thing you remember after that?” I asked. “I woke up in this bed, with wires on my chest and a tube in my arm, and I don’t know how the heck I got here.”

“Trying to sound matter-of-fact,” Greyson says, “I asked a third question that I put to all these patients: “And what do you remember in between those two times?” Claude hesitated, as if he was sizing me up, and then said, just as matter-of-factly, “I thought I was going to meet my maker, but my paw—he’s been gone maybe fifteen years now—stopped me and said I had to go back.” Greyson kept his voice calm and professional, although he was eager to hear a near-death account from an unbiased source. “Tell me about meeting your paw.” Claude looked at me patiently, and after a very brief pause, he said, “I just did.” I nodded and tried to figure out how to word a follow-up question. But Claude closed his eyes and said, “I’m tired. That’s all I have to say.”

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (2021), 45-46.

"I had been searching for this my whole life."

First, I saw black.

I was no longer connected to my body. This was not like an OBE where one would see oneself from above. This was my awareness, my soul - my essence completely checking out of the physical vehicle. Now imagine having your eyes closed, yet having no feeling in the rest of your body while feeling completely whole all the while. That is where I was at. It was like this for some incalculable amount of time that felt like an eternity and a split second all at once.

Second, I saw white.

It was a blinding light. It came at me from a distance as a pin point, and then grew to engulf my entire field of 'vision' (or, better yet, field of awareness). The effect was like that of going down a rabbit hole with a light at the bottom. As the white fully encased my vision, I felt a quickening sensation. One might describe this as flying, but it didn't feel quite like that. It felt more like being flung, without any choice, full speed into infinity. When the white had completely consumed me the feeling of inertia ceased. I felt a peaceful stillness and suddenly all was black again.

Next, I saw a rainbow.

I saw an enormous rainbow, the kind you would see in a children's book. I would describe it as a road, or a bridge. It was not an arc like you would usually picture one to be. At first it was far away, surrounded by blackness. As I slowly approached, it got larger. I felt incredibly attracted to it, almost like I knew I needed to get to it. I felt in all of my being 'The answer lies over the rainbow'. I was distinctly urged by another entity that I could not see, hear, or name, only feel, to 'Go over'. I felt resistance, but I wanted to go so bad. I kept pushing, mentally, to get closer to it. I struggled but slowly it was so close all of the colors filled my entire vision, except for a sliver of black at the top. Everything slowed down to what I can only describe as bullet speed, until I reached the climax. Really.

The Climax.

As I reached the blackness to 'over', everything became incredibly fast. It is hard for me to explain how much happened in this moment, when nothing really happened. It was blackness and the rainbow dropped away. Simultaneously I was filled with a soul shaking ecstasy that vibrated through my entire being. It was as if every cell in my essence had experienced, for lack of a better word, an orgasm. I felt as though I had broken through to this other side. I was experiencing some sort of free fall during all of this. However, it is hard to pinpoint any direction that I was travelling in because, well, there was no direction. It is hard for me to imagine now, even after experiencing it personally, how it could be that one would FEEL so much, yet only have awareness mentally with no physical. From this alone, I can assure you that after death you will feel completely as you do now, whole, even without a body.

Next, the Sea.

Slowly - one, then two, then four, and on, stars lit up in my vision. They were far away and very tiny. They twinkled white at first, and then as they grew in number and I felt I was getting closer there were colors. Colors I have never seen, colors I love, colors I am familiar with. At first, it was like looking at the sky, but as I became one with this sea it was more like a translucent river of stars and colors. They would breathe and undulate and seemed to be as one. They all interacted together like an ocean, with a tide, with waves - rising and falling lazily in space. I became aware of my place among them, floated and relaxed. The most important thing in this place was the feeling of bliss. I can only describe it as the feeling that comes right after climax, that unique relief and relaxation where nothing in the world matters. The only thing different about this was the feeling never waned. It stayed constant. It was the feeling of falling asleep on a summer's day on a hammock in the light of a warm sun. It was the feeling of drawing your child close to you out of love. It was the feeling of seeing a loved one for the first time in a long time. It was all good feelings, and it was ever present in this place. I felt like I would stay in this place for eternity. I felt a welcoming. I felt awareness around me and certainly did not feel alone. I felt that same entity again say 'You can stay here as long as you want'. I wanted to stay. I never wanted to leave. I had been searching for this my whole life. Why had I searched for this on Earth? I didn't care about any of that at the time though. All I cared about was this sea of energies. I felt the entity start to explain 'This is the source'. I watched the sea glitter, and then I saw the colors change. The colors went from many to few. One section of the sea turned purple and pink, the other blue and green. These two felt separated, yet still one. They danced together, rolling around on top of each other. It felt as if they were making love. I realized, this was love. This was a sea of nothing but love energy. This was 'Heaven'. 'Everyone is connected to the source. We come from the source, we return to the source' I heard, in a feeling kind of way.

Then this entity dropped the final few words on me. 'You cannot return to where you were if you stay'. Suddenly everything that I had forgotten, friends, family, physical pleasure, future goals, flooded into my awareness. What I was seeing and where I was had not changed, but I remembered that I was someone before this, and that someone had a life. Surprisingly, I still did not want to go. I became saddened at my dilemma and felt the sea grow further away from me. I sunk lower into sadness. The final straw was the thought of the love I had for my boyfriend at the time. The entity seemed to sigh in amusement, 'You can return later'. The moment I had accepted this answer I began to rewind through my experience. Backwards I went, over the rainbow, to the blackness, back up through the rabbit hole. I hit another patch of blackness and an enormous figure 8 appeared before me. As I got closer to it, I could see that it was a running line of this life's experience. The figure was sideways and made up of clips, like running videos, of different phases in my life. My birth and conception were at one end, with my elderly years at the other. I had a distinct feeling this entire thing had been played out millions of times before. I was suddenly crashing at uncontrollable speed towards these events I felt like I had some control over where I would land, but not total control. In those moments, I knew my entire life story, and I tried to pick a place in the loop to return to that I liked. Finally, I got down to one screen and entered.

I awoke to being resuscitated, surrounded by relieved medical staff and my family. The first face my eyes focused on was my boyfriend's face. He still remembers that moment to this day. I opened my mouth and said 'Here? This time? Seriously?' I scoffed in disgust and closed my eyes.

I have always felt, ever since that day that I picked the wrong time to come back to. I felt like I truly could have gone forward or backward in the line. I recovered just fine from the accident. 

NDERF.org, #6159

Time alters during a near-death experience

Greyson writes: "In 1892, Swiss geology professor Albert von St. Gallen Heim published the first large collection of near-death experiences in the Yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club. Heim himself had had a near-death experience two decades earlier, when he was twenty-two and mountain climbing in the Alps. As he fell sixty-six feet down a mountain, his body crashed repeatedly against the rocky cliffs. He wrote that he had watched people fall previously and found watching others fall to be a terrifying experience. But when he himself was falling, it was—to his shock—a beautiful experience. He reported being astounded that he was feeling no pain at all.

“Heim was so affected by his experience that he started talking to other climbers who had survived potentially fatal accidents, and he quickly found thirty others with similar stories. Heim described his thoughts speeding up as he fell: What I felt in five to ten seconds could not be described in ten times that length of time. All my thoughts and ideas were coherent and very clear, and in no way susceptible, as are dreams, to obliteration.

“Many other experiencers,” Greyson says, “reported the same rapid thinking. John Whitacre had a near-death experience at age forty-seven while recovering from surgery for pancreatic and liver cancer. Whitacre discovered: I also had the realization I had a body, which was very much like my physical body I left. I was aware of an enhanced state of consciousness, in which my mind was extremely active and alert to what I was experiencing. I was very observant during this state, and my thoughts seemed to go almost twice the normal speed, although very clear in nature.

In a near-death experience, Greyson reports, events seem to be happening at once, or to move forward and backward in time. Survivors say that “time no longer existed, that the very concept of time became meaningless. Among all the people who shared their near-death experiences with me,” Greyson notes, “three-fourths reported a change in their sense of time, and more than half said that they had a sense of timelessness in their near-death experiences.”

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 30-33.  

Greyson: a scientist studies near-death experiences

Greyson argues that from his perspective as a scientist: “there is no reason near-death experiences can’t be both spiritual gifts and enabled by specific physiological events. The scientific evidence suggests that both ideas can be true without any conflict—which allows us to move beyond the artificial divide between science and spirituality.” As a researcher, however, his data and experience clearly verify “that near-death experiences are quite real and quite profound in their impact and are in fact important sources of spiritual growth and insight—whatever their source."

The scientific challenge for Greyson has required clarifying what is actually evidence of being real. “Although scientists have made giant strides in understanding the physical part of our world, we also experience nonphysical things, such as thoughts and emotions.” These can’t be studied directly like physical objects, but instead: “we can study them indirectly, by looking at how they affect our words, behavior, and bodily reactions. For example, when we feel anger—a nonphysical emotion—our speech may get louder and more abrupt, our foreheads may wrinkle and our blood pressure rise, and we may slam things down on tables and counters. And from those observable effects, others can infer that we are angry. Respecting things that are difficult to measure, rather than dismissing them as unreal, is not rejecting science. It's embracing science.

His scientific approach has involved historical research as well as interviews. “One of the near-death-experience features that I found most puzzling was the extreme clarity and speed of thought. This is not what I would have expected of an experience that often occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen. I was skeptical that all these experiencers could really think as clearly and as quickly as they claimed when their brains were being starved of oxygen, so I decided to look into the full range of thought processes that experiencers were describing for me.”

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Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond, 8-12, 16-17, 22.