NDE transforms life of Mafia enforcer

Mickey, who collected money for the Mafia, communicated with a divine being and a beloved deceased brother during his near-death experience due to a heart attack. After his extraordinary experience, Greyson says, Mickey: “felt that cooperation and love were the most important things, and that competition and material goods were irrelevant. That change in attitude didn’t sit well with Mickey’s Mafia friends, but they let him leave the family circle. It was his girlfriend who complained when he changed careers and started helping delinquent children and victims of spousal abuse. One day after he was out of the hospital and they were eating lunch, she burst out crying and told him, ‘You’re not the same person anymore!’ When he asked her what she meant, she replied ‘You’re not concerned with things of substance anymore,’ meaning money and jewelry and fast cars. The relationship soon collapsed.”

In Mickey’s words: Before the experience, my attitude was that people have to help themselves. You know, if they don’t help themselves, to hell with them. I had a pretty cynical attitude toward people. I couldn’t imagine myself as any sort of helping professional before the near-death experience. But afterwards, I’d find myself counseling people. I’d find myself listening to people. They said, ‘You really listed to me. You really understand how I feel inside.’

Before, I thought, ‘I have to make my way the best I can Survive.’ Whenever I started to feel sorry for somebody, I’d say to myself, ‘Goddamn it, I’m not my brother’s keeper!’ I was hard-bitten. But after the near-death experience, my whole outlook changed. I can feel when people are in pain. Before, sometimes I had to cause people pain. I couldn’t do that anymore after my heart attack.

Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 187-189. 

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.