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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Man, welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.

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Speaker 2: Let me tell you about our guest. Gregory Shushan, PhD,

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Speaker 2: is a historian of religions, an award winning author, leading

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Speaker 2: authority on near death experiences and the afterlife across cultures

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Speaker 2: and throughout history. Doctor Shushan has conducted his research at

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Speaker 2: various institutions, including the University of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Center

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Speaker 2: for Science and Religion in London's Institute of Archaeology. His

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Speaker 2: latest book is called Near Death Experience in Ancient Civilizations. Gregory,

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Speaker 2: welcome to the program.

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Speaker 3: Thanks very much, George, appreciate it being on.

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Speaker 2: Looking forward to this. Tell us a little bit more

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Speaker 2: about yourself. Incredible background.

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Speaker 3: Oh well, thanks. I actually started out doing Egyptian archaeology

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Speaker 3: that was at the Institute of Archaeology in London, and

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Speaker 3: throughout the course of my research that it sort of

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Speaker 3: changed from being specifically archaeology being more like comparative religion.

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Speaker 3: I diffected at a certain point to religious studies, so

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Speaker 3: I could do these kind of cross cultural comparisons. But

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Speaker 3: the archaeological background, I think really helped to inform my

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Speaker 3: work and steer it in the direction that was going,

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Speaker 3: which is, you know, the importance of evidence, for example,

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Speaker 3: and doing things that are kind of methodical, scholarly sort

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Speaker 3: of way.

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Speaker 2: My late father would have been one hundred and two

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Speaker 2: this month, was born in Cairo and stayed there until

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Speaker 2: he was six years old. They weren't Egyptian, but that's

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Speaker 2: where they were when he decided to come out and

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Speaker 2: see the world. Wow. Yeah, it's amazing. Since you've been

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Speaker 2: doing this, what has been the most fascinating aspect of

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Speaker 2: your work.

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Speaker 3: That's a great question, and it doesn't have a simple answer.

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Speaker 3: I would say the most fascinating aspect is the similarities

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Speaker 3: across cultures of afterlife beliefs, and specifically the way those

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Speaker 3: beliefs correspond to near death experiences. So that kind of

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Speaker 3: my path is kind of trying to understand whether these

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Speaker 3: beliefs around the world have this shared experiential foundation to them,

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Speaker 3: basically that you know, they're the origins of the world

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Speaker 3: afterlife beliefs lying in mbes. But at the same time,

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Speaker 3: the other most fascinating thing is how they differ. So,

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Speaker 3: for example, near death experiences themselves differ quite a lot

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Speaker 3: around the world. We have very kind of stereotypical ideas

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Speaker 3: of what the near death experience is, and so one

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Speaker 3: of them, the kind of chief characteristics that come to

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Speaker 3: people's mind is speeding through a dark tunnel and then

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Speaker 3: coming out into bright light. But in some societies, for

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Speaker 3: example in Polynesia, they don't have a tunnel at all.

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Speaker 3: Instead they talk about walking along a path to the

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Speaker 3: other world, and they will even say that they they

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Speaker 3: were able to see the footprints of people who had

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Speaker 3: gone before them. So it's still this idea of trends,

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Speaker 3: you know, transferring from this world to the next world

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Speaker 3: in a spirit form, but there's no tunnel there. There's

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Speaker 3: a dirt passage dead. So that trying to understand those

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Speaker 3: differences in similarities, they think, is a really crucial question

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Speaker 3: in new death studies, which has really, i think not

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Speaker 3: been explored enough.

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Speaker 2: Two ancient writings of books that I've got to ask

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Speaker 2: you about, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the

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Speaker 2: Tibetan Book of the Dead, they seem to have a

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Speaker 2: pretty good handle on the afterlife.

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Speaker 3: Then, absolutely they do. Yeah, And that was one of

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Speaker 3: the things that made me think you know that they

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Speaker 3: got these ideas about in afterlife from new death experiences.

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Speaker 3: Because when I the way I sort of got into this,

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Speaker 3: I was reading the ancient Egyptian text actually earlier than

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Speaker 3: the Book of the Dead. I was working at the

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Speaker 3: pyramid texts and coffin texts from the Old Kingdom and

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Speaker 3: then the Middle Kingdom, and I started noticing that if

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Speaker 3: you strip away some of the cultural descriptions from them,

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Speaker 3: were left with something that looks very much like a

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Speaker 3: near death experience. So the soul leaves the body, it

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Speaker 3: leaves the mummy, It travels through darkness, through these different

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Speaker 3: caverns and caves, through the other world. It encounters being

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Speaker 3: of light in the form of the sun god ray,

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Speaker 3: and it meets to seize relatives. There's a review of

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Speaker 3: their life, to kind of understand what they did in

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Speaker 3: their in their life and what kind of afterlife they

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Speaker 3: deserve on the basis of their actions in their life.

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Speaker 3: And so these elements were very similar to a near

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Speaker 3: death experience, I thought, And so that was kind of

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Speaker 3: what made me think, if they's if they're that similar

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Speaker 3: in Egypt, where else, you know, how far can I

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Speaker 3: extend this? And so then I looked at India and

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Speaker 3: China and meso America and Mesopotamia to try to, you know,

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Speaker 3: untangle where these beliefs are coming from.

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Speaker 2: And the beliefs and mysteries are all over the place,

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Speaker 2: aren't they.

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Speaker 3: They are, Yeah, And there's pretty much almost every culture

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Speaker 3: has some kind of afterlife belief. I mean, I did

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Speaker 3: another study on near death experience in indigenous religions and

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Speaker 3: tribal societies from the Pacific and Native Americans and Africans,

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Speaker 3: and I found something like seventy examples of near death experiences,

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Speaker 3: and among those at least half of them, more than

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Speaker 3: half of them. In fact, the person who was talking

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Speaker 3: to the missionary or the anthropologist actually explained, we know

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Speaker 3: about the afterlife because so and so went there on

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Speaker 3: this particular date and he came back, came back to life,

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Speaker 3: and he told us what he actually experienced.

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Speaker 2: Did a lot of Shamans use the fear of the

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Speaker 2: afterlife or death to manipulate their population.

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Speaker 3: I wouldn't say Shamans did that. I would say Shamans

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Speaker 3: learn to negotiate the afterlife realm and the kind of

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Speaker 3: experiences that people who have NDEs have. So I think

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Speaker 3: essentially they were trying to replicate a near death experience

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Speaker 3: without having to die, without having to be near death,

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Speaker 3: and part of the reason for that was so they

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Speaker 3: could benefit. They could have the same benefits that people

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Speaker 3: who have NDEs have. People have nd they often come

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Speaker 3: back transformed. People say they've become a more charitable person,

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Speaker 3: a nicer person, They lose a fear of death, and

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Speaker 3: then in the kind of or supernatural claims, they have

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Speaker 3: healing powers, precognitive powers, to lepathy and whatever. So a

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Speaker 3: shamanic journey to the other world which is controlled, it's

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Speaker 3: a practice done within the culture. They can control that

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Speaker 3: and then come back to life, whereas a near death experience,

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Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty issy if the person's going to

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Speaker 3: come back or not.

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Speaker 2: Gregory, what does a near death experience mean to you today?

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Speaker 3: That's a good question. Yeah, there's a lot of confusion

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Speaker 3: about this term. It was invented by Raymond Moody in

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Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five. He wrote one of the first books

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Speaker 3: about near death experiences, called Life After Life, and he

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Speaker 3: actually came up with that term. So some people they say,

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Speaker 3: you know, I had a near death experience today. I

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Speaker 3: was walking in the street and I almost got hit

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Speaker 3: by a bus the end, you know, And that's not

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Speaker 3: a near death experience. That's really just like somebody almost

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Speaker 3: had a brush with death. The near death experience really

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Speaker 3: is when somebody either temporarily dies or they're sick to

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Speaker 3: the point of being almost dead, and they when they

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Speaker 3: return to life, they talk about experiences that their consciousness

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Speaker 3: had well di somebodied from their body that's lying there.

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Speaker 3: So they will say, for example, that their soul left

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Speaker 3: their body and they were able to see the operating

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Speaker 3: tables in the cardiac war to say out a heart attack,

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Speaker 3: or they're able to see the street with the car

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Speaker 3: wreckage if they were in a car accident. And then

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Speaker 3: they go to the other world and meet a being

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Speaker 3: of white and relatives and all the rest of it.

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Speaker 3: And then they're sent back to their body where they

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Speaker 3: just wake up in their body. And that's what makes

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Speaker 3: it a near death experience that they actually came back

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Speaker 3: and survived it, and they have that conscious awareness of

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Speaker 3: experiences that happened during the time they were temporarily dead

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Speaker 3: or almost dead.

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Speaker 2: I remember a story from one of our listeners, Greg

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Speaker 2: years ago where he had a after death experience and

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Speaker 2: he came back and told the doctor what he heard,

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Speaker 2: and what he heard was the doctor and the rest

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Speaker 2: of the staff laughing. Well, his body was on the gurney,

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Speaker 2: talking about him almost dying, but they were making a

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Speaker 2: joke out of it. They were having fun laughing about it.

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Speaker 2: And he came back and told the doctor, why were

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Speaker 2: you all laughing at me? And the doctor stopped, like

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Speaker 2: what he said, why were you laughing at me? I

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Speaker 2: was dying and I saw you, I was hovering above you,

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Speaker 2: and you were all laughing, and just shut the doctor

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Speaker 2: right up.

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Speaker 3: I help that. Yeah, yeah, there are quite a few

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Speaker 3: examples of things, like that famous case of Pam Reynolds,

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Speaker 3: where he was a musician who had perfect pitch, and

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Speaker 3: she was able to identify the particular notes that the

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Speaker 3: bonesaw made that was drilling into her skull, and all

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Speaker 3: kinds of what they call her ritical observation while she

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Speaker 3: was out of her body in the operating room.

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Speaker 2: How would you categorize your work different from most others?

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Speaker 3: I would say, because I'm coming at it not from

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Speaker 3: medical science or psychology or even parapsychology. I'm coming at

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Speaker 3: it from the history of religions basically. So my main

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Speaker 3: question isn't so much whether in your death experience is

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Speaker 3: our proof of an afterlife or not, but the ways

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Speaker 3: in which near death experiences have been responded to in

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Speaker 3: different religions around the world, and the way they've helped

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Speaker 3: create religions around the world.

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Speaker 2: How far back do you go?

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Speaker 3: The earliest I've looked at are ancient Egyptian pyramid texts

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Speaker 3: and coffin texts, so pyramid texts about nineteen hundred BCD

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Speaker 3: something like that, and then also ancient sumer early Mesopotamian texts,

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Speaker 3: and that's going around roughly the same period, seventeen hundred

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Speaker 3: something like that. And I should mention too that the

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Speaker 3: in need, even of the Egyptians, as you said, really

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Speaker 3: had a line on what the afterlife is going to

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Speaker 3: be like. They were pretty obsessed with this death and

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Speaker 3: the afterlife. There are no examples of actual new death

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Speaker 3: experiences from ancient Egypt, and I don't think that's because

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Speaker 3: they weren't having them. It's because they didn't have that context.

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Speaker 3: They didn't have any genre of writing about NDEs. Basically,

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Speaker 3: the only thing is writing were used for word priestly,

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Speaker 3: religious ritual texts and accounting and documentary things. And by

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Speaker 3: documenting you know, sales and divorce decrees and things like that,

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Speaker 3: and then royal decrees, so there's no case of somebody

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Speaker 3: sitting around writing, you know, dear diary, I had this

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Speaker 3: near death experience today. But what's interesting is ancient sumer

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Speaker 3: I think probably has the world's earliest near death experience.

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Speaker 3: Everyone's probably heard of the epic of Gilgamesh, which is

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Speaker 3: kind of entered popular culture quite a lot. There's a

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Speaker 3: particular episode of that epic that didn't actually make the

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Speaker 3: final cut, and it's when the king was called gilgames

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Speaker 3: that was his Sumerian name earlier, and that is essentially

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Speaker 3: an account of his near death experience. Who's lying on

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Speaker 3: his deathbed, his sogoes to the other world and it

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Speaker 3: meets the Sumerian sun god, whose name is YouTube, and

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Speaker 3: this god with a panel of other gods who are

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Speaker 3: also radiating light. They help him review his life and

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Speaker 3: they figure out what he's what his faith's going to be.

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Speaker 3: They decide to make him a judge in the other

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Speaker 3: world any means of deceased relatives, and then he set

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Speaker 3: back to his body. So that's you know, seven or

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Speaker 3: eight typical near death experience episodes that are just in

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Speaker 3: this one account.

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Speaker 2: What do we know about the afterlife today? Gregory that

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Speaker 2: the ancients did not know then, or do they know

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Speaker 2: as much as we do today.

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Speaker 3: I would be tempted to say they know more because

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Speaker 3: really in contempt, Yeah, I think so. In contemporary Western

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Speaker 3: culture there is a real resistance to anything that has

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Speaker 3: to do with death, and that includes an afterlife. So

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Speaker 3: I would say nine out of ten scientists or doctors

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Speaker 3: we talk to are going to say, no such thing.

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Speaker 3: This is ridiculous. I mean even my word.

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Speaker 2: What was that, when you're dead, you're dead?

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Speaker 3: Exactly? Yeah, I think that's the prevailing view in our society.

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Speaker 3: And I even had a I was applying for a

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Speaker 3: fellowship with National Endowment from the Arts or something, and

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Speaker 3: one of the reviewer's comments was the entire project is

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Speaker 3: based on nonsense, and that was it. So that's how

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Speaker 3: what hostility and ridicule. There's still is a near death experience.

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Speaker 3: And I'm not even saying, you know, necessarily arguing that

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Speaker 3: they're really true. I'm just saying, this is an experience

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Speaker 3: that people have around the world. So in that sense,

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Speaker 3: I think for the most part, we have lost a

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Speaker 3: lot of the knowledge and wisdom that ancient cultures had

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Speaker 3: about after life and near death experience. If you look

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Speaker 3: at the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which you mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 3: it's almost like a roadmap of what to expect, and

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Speaker 3: it reads very much like a near death experience.

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Speaker 2: How many of the ancients, Gregory used the substances to

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Speaker 2: put them in that position, like ayahuasca or stuff like that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, for some it's it's a little sketchy mysterious. We

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Speaker 3: don't really know if the Egyptians were doing that. I

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Speaker 3: think Sumerians had some opium, but as far as like

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Speaker 3: connecting them to their actual ritual practices, it's a little sketchy.

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Speaker 3: From these ancient times, definitely, the Metro American cultures did,

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Speaker 3: the Maya and Aztec and other Nwa cultures of that

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Speaker 3: that time and place. There was Chinese feminism for sure,

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Speaker 3: and definitely in India they had the mysterious drug called soma,

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Speaker 3: which was also the name of a god. So the

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Speaker 3: drug was like the deified version of the god which

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Speaker 3: they would consume and then have these, you know, otherworldly

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Speaker 3: sorts of visions which were very much tied into after

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Speaker 3: life realms. They would they would go and see these

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Speaker 3: after life realms in these hallucinatory visions.

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Speaker 2: What message would you like people to get from the

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Speaker 2: book Near Death Experience and Ancient Civilizations.

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Speaker 3: The first one that comes to mind, I think, is

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Speaker 3: that none of these religious beliefs after life beliefs or

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Speaker 3: NDEs around the world say that if you did something

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Speaker 3: wrong in this life you're going to suffer eternal damnation

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Speaker 3: in the other life. That's just not something that I

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Speaker 3: run across in NDEs. There's no binary heaven and hell.

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Speaker 3: It's it's just a transcendent experience in one of maybe

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Speaker 3: moving on to another realm or self development thing as

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Speaker 3: you're said, back to Earth.

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Speaker 2: Do they believe in God?

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, there's some pretty much always some kind

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Speaker 3: of God or God's in these accounts.

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Speaker 2: Even with the ancients, for sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: What does that tell you?

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Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, you know, the being of light,

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Speaker 3: which everyone talks about, I mean near death experience contemporary MDes.

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Speaker 3: Often people will say I saw Jesus, or I saw

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Speaker 3: the Buddha, or I saw Mohammad. In these ancient accounts,

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Speaker 3: it's the sun god Ray or the sun God Utu

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Speaker 3: or whatever shining radiant deity, you know, was relevant to

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Speaker 3: that particular culture.

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Speaker 2: How did you zero in on the civilizations that you

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Speaker 2: got for your book?

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Speaker 3: These particular ones I decided to look at because they were,

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Speaker 3: first of all, they all emerged kind of organically and

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Speaker 3: independently as their own culture where they were. They It

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Speaker 3: wasn't a case of like you know, the Romans growing

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Speaker 3: out of Greek culture, or Judaism and Christianity growing out

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Speaker 3: of the wider Mediterranean culture. They're really like these unique,

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Speaker 3: not isolated, but cirely independent societies. And the reason I

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Speaker 3: wanted to choose those types of civilizations was to minimize

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Speaker 3: this idea, that of diffusion. They call it an anthropology,

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Speaker 3: which is essentially one culture came up with a myth

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Speaker 3: and then it spread from there throughout the world. So

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Speaker 3: with the civilizations, I chose that it's just the the

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Speaker 3: monsterbley did not happen. So the earliest is Egypt and

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Speaker 3: sumer and there was no connection between them, like stanning

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Speaker 3: out to China and Mesopotamia. You know, that just didn't

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Speaker 3: happen chronologically or in any other way. So I thought

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Speaker 3: that was important because finding these similarities cross culturally meant

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Speaker 3: that they couldn't be explained in terms of one culture

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Speaker 3: borrowing from another, so what could explain it? And that's

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Speaker 3: why That's where I argue that the near death experience.

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