Materialists embraced spiritual values after NDE

In research with psychiatrist Surbhi Khanna, Bruce Greyson found that experiencers “described a greater sense of well-being from their new spiritual attitudes and strivings, which helped them cope with challenges. They also reported more daily spiritual experiences, such as feelings of awe, gratitude mercy, compassionate love, and inner peace than people who had come close to death but didn’t have near-death experiences. Our studies and the research of others also found that people who have had near-death experiences report a heightened sense of purpose, increased empathy, awareness of the interconnectedness of all people, and a belief that all religions share certain core values. Near-death experiences often lead to a paradoxical decrease in devotion to any one religious tradition, despite a greater awareness of guidance by and connection to a higher power.”

Greyson says he found “spiritual growth most striking in those who were materialistic before their near-death experiences. For example, “Naomi, a pediatrician who had always considered herself an atheist, described becoming more compassionate and less competitive after her near-death experience at age thirty-four when she bled out due to hemorrhaging stomach ulcer.”

I remember, she writes, the spring after this event occurred with startling clarity. Everything in the environment took on an almost magical quality, as if I was seeing everything for the first time. Trees and flowers blossoming took on new dimensions that I had not ever appreciated before; I almost felt as if I was on a chemically induced high. I will certainly never take being alive again for granted. I also felt that when faced with death again I would be fearless, as this was clearly not a negative experience. I have used this insight to help the families of many of the handicapped and terminally ill children I take care of, with good results. I also developed a strong spiritual sense and now strongly believe in a higher power, where I had previously been essentially an atheist.

No other experience to date has had such a profound impact on my life. I am must less striving in the workplace. I also feel that material goods, although nice, do not define the spirit or essence of the individual. My life is more balanced than ever before. I am much more open to meditation and other ‘alternative’ medical techniques. I am now attempting to use lifestyle modifications and not medication to control my medical problems. I feel I have developed more compassion for my patients and have become a better doctor for this I am still integrating many aspects of this experience, and find it is good to contemplate it from time to time to refocus myself and see the larger picture. I suspect it will always be a source of growth for me.

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 176-181.

NDE survivors are more spiritual and satisfied

Bruce Greyson writes in After: “Experiencers tend to see themselves as integral parts of a benevolent and purposeful universe, in which personal gain, particularly at someone else’s expense, is no longer relevant. They also report feeling greater understanding, acceptance, and tolerance for others.” Greyson concludes: “The most positive changes in attitude following near-death experiences were a more favorable attitude toward death, toward spirituality, and toward life, and a sense of meaning or purpose. Slightly lower increases, but still significantly improved, were attitudes toward other people and toward oneself. Attitudes toward religion and toward social issues were only slightly improved, and attitudes toward worldly things were more negative than before the near-death experience. All of these changes were virtually identical after the twenty-year lapse. None were significantly changed since the first time the experiencers were asked."

Greyson also compared those who’d had near-death experiences with others who’d nearly died but didn’t have near-death experiences—because nearly dying is such a huge event that it can bring about life changes. He explains: “I used well-accepted, standardized questionnaires that measured various aspects of spirituality, like satisfaction with life, connection to something greater, and a sense of purpose. What I found was that those who had near-death experiences were significantly more satisfied with life, more open to positive new directions in life, had more positive changes in relationships with other people, felt more personal strength, had greater appreciation for life, and felt they had undergone greater spiritual growth as a result of their near-death experiences. In addition, many people reported that since their near-death experiences they’d felt driven to engage in a quest for further spiritual growth.”

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Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 169-173.

Encounters with deceased and divine beings

Bruce Greyson affirms in After: “More than two-thirds of the experiencers I’ve studied say that in their near-death experience they encountered at least one other person. Two-thirds of those say they met a deceased person—an experience that offers at least the potential for some verifiable information. But almost 90 percent of them say they encountered some kind of divine or godlike beings.” He was surprised to find, however, that among those experiencing a divine being only “one-third identified the being as an entity consistent with their religious beliefs, while double that number—two-thirds –said they could not identify the god-like being.” 

This evidence seems to weigh against the suggestion that near-death experiences simply reflect a person’s cultural and/or religious background.

Greyson argues: “The important point seems to be not how experiencers identify or label the divine beings, but how they feel in the presence of the divine. Regardless of the label or the surprise, they consistently describe feeling peaceful, calm, tranquil, ‘at home,’ grateful, and, most of all, loved.”

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

Greyson confirms veracity of NDE memories

To test the veracity of old near-death memories, Bruce Greyson writes that in 2002: “I began tracking down people I had interviewed about their near-death experiences in the early 1980s, asking them to describe their near-death experiences for me again.” Greyson found “there were no differences between what the experiencers told me in the 1980s and what they told me decades later. 

This suggests that experiencers’ memories of near-death experiences are reliable. And by extension it also suggests that studying experiences that happened years ago is as valid as studying recent near-death experiences.”

“Several researchers have found consistent changes in experiencers’ perception of self, relationships to others, and attitude toward life. Experiencers return from near-death experiences with a new or strengthened belief in life after death, a feeling of being loved and valued by some higher power, increased self-esteem, and a new sense of purpose or mission. This new sense of purpose or mission in life is often related to an experience of having been sent back, or having made a choice to return to life, to complete some work.'

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

Physicians confirm Alexander's severe coma

Bruce Greyson writes: "Skeptics have also suggested that Eben Alexander was never 'in danger of dying' during his coma. With two other physicians, Surbhi Khanna and Lauren Moore, Greyson reviewed the complete medical record of Alexander’s hospital treatment. All three of us concluded independently that he had been extremely close to death, with a brain as disabled as it could have been, and that while that was happening, he witnessed things that a comatose person should not have been able to perceive. The date showed that his coma had not been related to the drugs he was given. The medical record noted that he was rapidly falling into a coma by the time he reached the hospital, before he received any medication. And six days later, he came out of the coma before the medications were stopped.

“According to our current understanding of how the brain works, it should not have been possible for Alexander to have had any experience at all during his deep coma—let along the most vivid and memorable experience of his life. And yet, he did. Furthermore, he is not the only person to have had a vivid and profoundly memorable experience during such a medical crisis.”

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 113-114. 

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.