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

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori

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Speaker 1: with you. Let me tell you about our guest, Doctor

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Speaker 1: Bruce Grayson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at

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Speaker 1: the University Virginia School of Medicine, served at the Medical

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Speaker 1: School facility at the Universities of Michigan, Connecticut, and Virginia.

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Speaker 1: He was a co founder and president of the International

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Speaker 1: Association for Near Death Studies, editor of the Journal of

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Speaker 1: Near Death Studies, and most recently penned after this book,

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Speaker 1: based on nearly five decades of research about near death experiences.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Bruce, Welcome to the program. Good morning, George. Thank

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Speaker 1: you for having me in your show. And I noticed

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Speaker 1: you've got a lot of our guests have written snippets

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Speaker 1: about your book and they just love it, so congratulations

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Speaker 1: to you too. Thank you. How did you get involved

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Speaker 1: in this, doctor of psychiatry, neurobehavioral sciences, How did you

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Speaker 1: get involved in the afterlife? Well, not willingly, I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you that. Oh boy. I was raised in a very

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Speaker 1: scientific household that was purely materialistic. We had no clock

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Speaker 1: in our family about anything spiritual or non physical or religious.

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Speaker 1: We weren't a post that. It just never came up

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Speaker 1: in our in our life. So I came up with

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Speaker 1: that belief that the physical world resolved there is when

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Speaker 1: you die, that's the end. I went through college and

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Speaker 1: medical school like that, and I shortly after graduating medical school,

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Speaker 1: when I was starting my psychiatric training, I was confronted

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Speaker 1: with a patient that I went to see in the

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Speaker 1: emergency room one night after she had overdosed, and when

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Speaker 1: I went to see her, she was out cold. I

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Speaker 1: couldn't arouse her, so I went to talk to her roommate,

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Speaker 1: who had brought her in another room in the hospital,

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Speaker 1: and I asked through roommate about what was going on

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Speaker 1: in the patient's life, what stresses she had, when she

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Speaker 1: might have taken and when I finished with her, I

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Speaker 1: went back to the patient and she was still totally unaousable,

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Speaker 1: so she was admitted to the intensive care unit overnight,

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Speaker 1: and I ranged to see her the following morning when

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Speaker 1: she woke up. When I went to see her in

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Speaker 1: the morning, she was awake, but very very drowsy, and

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Speaker 1: I introduced myself and she said with her eyes still closed.

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Speaker 1: I know who you are. I remember you from last night.

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Speaker 1: I kind of startled me because I thought she was

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Speaker 1: out cold at the door. I said, I didn't know

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Speaker 1: you could see me las night. I thought you were asleep.

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Speaker 1: And then she opened her eyes for the first time

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Speaker 1: and said, not in my room. I saw you talking

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Speaker 1: to my roommate. Well, that really stunned me, and she

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Speaker 1: could see that I was confused, So she went on

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Speaker 1: to tell me about the conversation I had with her roommate,

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Speaker 1: what we were wearing, where we were sitting, what we said,

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Speaker 1: all my questions, her answers, without making any mistakes, and frankly,

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Speaker 1: I could not make any sense that at all. The

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Speaker 1: only way she could have done that is if she

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Speaker 1: had left her body. That's right, come to the other

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Speaker 1: room with me, and as far as I could tell,

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Speaker 1: I was my body. That made all sense at all.

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Speaker 1: But at the time I had a job to do.

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Speaker 1: I had to help her with her suicidal thing, and

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Speaker 1: I couldn't deal with my confusion, So I tried to

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Speaker 1: push that out of my mind and work with her.

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Speaker 1: And then in the next several days after that, looking

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Speaker 1: back on this experience, I just couldn't make any sense

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Speaker 1: of it. I tried to tell myself it was a trick.

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Speaker 1: I misheard what she was saying, I misinterpreted it. I

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Speaker 1: just tried not to think about it. And it wasn't

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Speaker 1: until several years later, in nineteen seventy five, that I

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Speaker 1: met Raymond Moody and he wrote a book called Life

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Speaker 1: after Life, which he gave us the term near death

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Speaker 1: experiences and described what these were like. And I realized

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Speaker 1: for the first time that this experienced the patient told

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Speaker 1: me about was not just one story from a crazy patient,

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Speaker 1: but it was part of the phenomenon that was happening

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Speaker 1: to millions of people all over the world. And as

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Speaker 1: a scientist and a syskeptical one, I couldn't understand this

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Speaker 1: at all. And I realized therefore my obligation was to

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Speaker 1: study it and try to figure out what's going on

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Speaker 1: with this. And here I am fifty years old, I

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Speaker 1: was still trying to understand it. And Bruce, prior to

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Speaker 1: this episode, were you a believer in wife after death?

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Speaker 1: Did you have any thoughts about that? It never even

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Speaker 1: occouraged me to think about that. So you thought, you know,

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Speaker 1: when you die, that's it. Yes, Yes, that's as far

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Speaker 1: as I could tell us what happened, That's what happened

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Speaker 1: to my pets, to my grandparents when they died. That

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Speaker 1: was it, And why was there any reason to think

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Speaker 1: anything else could have happened? Now, So the one episode

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Speaker 1: I think opened up your mind a little bit, but

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Speaker 1: may not have convinced you totally. When did you start

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Speaker 1: getting pulled in even more? Well? While I talked with

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Speaker 1: Raymond Moody and read his book and realized that there

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Speaker 1: were many, many more of these, I thought, well, we

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Speaker 1: don't have an explanation. I need to try to explain it.

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Speaker 1: So I started trying to study it, trying to collect

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Speaker 1: other cases. I still can't say I believed it. I

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Speaker 1: thought there must be some medical explanation, there, some physiological explanation.

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Speaker 1: It's a hallucination, something like that. And as I kept

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Speaker 1: collecting more and more cases and then trying to corroborate

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Speaker 1: the details they were telling me, I gradually became convinced

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Speaker 1: over the years that there was something more going on

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Speaker 1: just physical events. It was something we just couldn't explain

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Speaker 1: by the mitrealistic model, and there was no one event.

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Speaker 1: It was just the accumulation of case after case after

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Speaker 1: case thousands of cases over the decades. You know, there

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Speaker 1: was a point in my life, Bruce, where, just for

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Speaker 1: a brief, shining moment, I did not believe in life

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Speaker 1: after death. And a friend of mine had died in

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Speaker 1: a motorcycle accident, and I looked at this casket of

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Speaker 1: this body, and I'm going, this is it, this is it.

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Speaker 1: And I snapped out of it really fast. It's a

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Speaker 1: very cold, stark feeling not to accept the fact that

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Speaker 1: there's life after death. I don't like it. I don't

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Speaker 1: like that feeling at all. And I then, you know,

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Speaker 1: snapped out of it real quickly and realized, now there's

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Speaker 1: got to be something there. And one of the reasons

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Speaker 1: for me taking God out of the equation for a

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Speaker 1: moment is because of the complexity of life. We still

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Speaker 1: don't understand or get how we got here, why we're here.

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Speaker 1: I'm interviewing you on a national radio show right now,

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Speaker 1: what's this all about? And so I began to say

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Speaker 1: to myself, the fact that there could be life after

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Speaker 1: death with a soul moving on and reincarnation could be

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Speaker 1: very logical. We just don't understand it all. And so

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Speaker 1: my position today, especially after talking to folks like Raymond Moody, you,

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Speaker 1: Ebb and Alexander. There's something there. There's no doubt in

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Speaker 1: my mind there's something there. I don't know exactly what,

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Speaker 1: but it's there exactly. And as you said, George, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether you believe in God or not, you

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Speaker 1: can still accept the fact that we could we continue

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Speaker 1: after we die. Something about us continues living. And you

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Speaker 1: know it makes you not fear death as much as

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Speaker 1: you would if you think this is it. It was

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Speaker 1: an interesting point because almost every experiencer that I've talked

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Speaker 1: to has said that they are no longer afraid of

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Speaker 1: dying after their near death experience. No matter what they

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Speaker 1: thought happened to them after their bodies died, they came

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Speaker 1: back almost universally no longer afraid of death. And I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you that as a psychiatrist, when I heard that,

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Speaker 1: I started worrying about whether this is going to make

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Speaker 1: people suicidal if they hear so, I said to myself,

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Speaker 1: as a scientist, I have to find out whether that's

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Speaker 1: true or not. So he did a study of people

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Speaker 1: who made suicide attempts, and I compared those who had

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Speaker 1: a near death experience. As a result of the suicide

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Speaker 1: attempt with those who didn't. And what I found was

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Speaker 1: that over a period of a year, those who had

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Speaker 1: a near death experience were much less suicidal than those

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Speaker 1: who didn't have an NDE. And in fact, a psychologist

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Speaker 1: named Kenneth Ring repeated this study and found the exact

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Speaker 1: same results. And when I asked the near death experiences

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Speaker 1: why that was true, they said, well, when you lose

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Speaker 1: your fear of dying, you also your fear of living.

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Speaker 1: You become much less concerned about losing your life because

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Speaker 1: you know that nothing is happening afterwards, so you're more

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Speaker 1: free to appreciate life to the fullest, to find the

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Speaker 1: meaning and purpose and joy in life that you didn't

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Speaker 1: have before. Does science try, bruce to come up with

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Speaker 1: a rational excuse for near death experiences? Of course, of course,

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Speaker 1: and I did too. Again, I started this out as

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Speaker 1: a materialistic scientist, so I was sure there was some

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Speaker 1: medical explanation for this, and we've had many, many hypotheses proposed,

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Speaker 1: and when we look at the data, those ideas just

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Speaker 1: do not hold water. For example, we thought that maybe

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Speaker 1: lack of oxygen to the brain was causing these hallucinations, right,

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Speaker 1: people see the light in their brain because they don't

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Speaker 1: have enough oxygen or some exactly. But when you actually

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Speaker 1: do the research, what you'd see is that people in

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Speaker 1: any new death situation, those who have a near death

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Speaker 1: experience have more oxygen actually than those who don't have

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Speaker 1: an ease. And likewise, we thought maybe it's due to

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Speaker 1: drugs given to people when they're dying, but we find

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Speaker 1: that the more drugs you're given, the less likely you

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Speaker 1: are to report our near death experience. And this light

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Speaker 1: that I just mentioned, a lot of people report seeing this.

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Speaker 1: What is it? What do you think it is? Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure that they universally say that it's not

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Speaker 1: a static thing like a man made like a light bulb,

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Speaker 1: or like the sun. It is a living being that

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Speaker 1: radiates light and also radiates love, wideness, peace, and makes

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Speaker 1: them feel enveloped and cared for. And it's interesting that

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Speaker 1: at least you hear the same thing across the globe,

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Speaker 1: and actually across the centuries. We have reports from ancient Greece, Rome,

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Speaker 1: and Egypt that sound just like today's near death experiences,

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Speaker 1: and they all report the same phenomenon. But how you

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Speaker 1: were raised, what you were told to believe by your culture,

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Speaker 1: and your religion may interpret may determine how you interpret that.

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Speaker 1: For example, Christians in the United States may say this warm,

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Speaker 1: loving being of lightless God or Christ, where as people

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Speaker 1: who are born in a Hindu or Buddhist culture may

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Speaker 1: say this was Krishna or Buddha or something else, or

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Speaker 1: many just say it was a being of light. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, even those who call it God will qualify

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Speaker 1: that and say I'm using that word so I can

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Speaker 1: communicate with you, so you know what I'm talking about.

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Speaker 1: But it wasn't like the God I was taught about

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Speaker 1: in church. It's much bigger than that. A couple thousand

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Speaker 1: years ago, in Egypt and then in Tibet, they both

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Speaker 1: wrote books called the Egyptian Book of the Dead or

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Speaker 1: the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was almost like

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Speaker 1: a guide for the living to teach them what they

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Speaker 1: were going to go through when they died. So, since

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Speaker 1: the beginning of mankind, we've always wondered about the afterlife,

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Speaker 1: haven't we. Yes, we have, Yes, we have. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting that some of the debunkers who would like

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Speaker 1: to wish this away say that we invented the idea

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Speaker 1: of survivable after death to relieve our fears of nothingness.

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Speaker 1: But if you actually look back in ancient history, in

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Speaker 1: the Greek era, they believed in an afterlife and they

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Speaker 1: found it terrifying, and a group of philosophers developed the

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Speaker 1: materialistic philosophy in order to relieve people's fear of dying

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Speaker 1: and the idea that when you die that's the end

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Speaker 1: of everything that was comforting to them. So actually it

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Speaker 1: was the lack of belief in afterlife that was supposed

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Speaker 1: to be comforting and wish fulfilling, rather than a belief

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Speaker 1: in the afterlife. Some people have said that religion kind

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Speaker 1: of pushed the feeling of the afterlife in order to

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Speaker 1: control people, to make them live a nicer life and

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Speaker 1: you know, not be his darker, heinous in their life.

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Speaker 1: But I don't think that's the case. No. Well, if

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Speaker 1: you look at cultures that have a strong religious culture

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Speaker 1: in them and those that don't, you don't see less crime,

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Speaker 1: less of violence in the more religious cultures. Business, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any correlation between religious belief and morality.

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Speaker 1: Medically speaking, Take us through a death, if you would,

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Speaker 1: what's happening to somebody who's in a hospital room and

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Speaker 1: they die of some situation, whether it's a heart attack

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Speaker 1: or they stop breathing or something like that. And then

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Speaker 1: if you would bruce and it's all speculation, take us

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Speaker 1: beyond that physical death into what's happening to them. Well,

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Speaker 1: of course it'll be different depending on how they do

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Speaker 1: come close to death. But let me give you an

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Speaker 1: example of a heart attack or a cardiac arrest. When

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Speaker 1: the heart stops beating. As soon as it stops beating,

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Speaker 1: you stop getting blood circulated throughout the body. Of course,

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Speaker 1: death stops oxygen and fuel from getting to the brain,

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Speaker 1: so you go out right away, right someway, you don't

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Speaker 1: go out right away. We used to think that death

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Speaker 1: was a certain point, and now we know that it's

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Speaker 1: actually a process. And your brain functions gradually stop over

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Speaker 1: a matter of minutes as you get less, as you

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Speaker 1: use up all your oxygen in the brain, and within

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Speaker 1: about four or five minutes you start getting marked changes

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Speaker 1: in the brain waves, in the electrical activity in the brain,

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Speaker 1: and within about twelve minutes or so, you get complete

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Speaker 1: nothingness in the brain. They called flat lining, when the EEG,

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Speaker 1: the tracing the brain waves go completely flat. And at

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Speaker 1: that point as far as we can tell, there's no

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Speaker 1: metabolic activity going on in the brain. But more recent

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Speaker 1: research by critical care and medicine physicians such as Samparnia

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Speaker 1: in New York, I'm showing that it actually takes a

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Speaker 1: period of many of many hours sometimes for all the

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Speaker 1: brain cells to stop functioning. They go out bit by bit,

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Speaker 1: and it takes a long period of time before you're

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Speaker 1: totally quote dead. So is it conceivable physically speaking that

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Speaker 1: when you're so called dead, your brain is alive for

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Speaker 1: a couple hours. You sense things, you hear things, but

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Speaker 1: you can't move because you're just dead. Nope, there's a

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Speaker 1: difference between some of the cells being alive and it

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Speaker 1: being functioning and be able to think and process. Most

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Speaker 1: of our physiological explanations of consciousness suggests that you need

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Speaker 1: a fully intact cerebral cortex, the main large part of

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Speaker 1: the brain on the outside of the brain. Unless that

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Speaker 1: is functioning at a high level, you do not get

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Speaker 1: logical thinking, you not get perceptions of vision, hearing, and

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Speaker 1: you can't formulate thoughts and desires unless you have a

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Speaker 1: whole brain functioning. So you may get bits of cells

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Speaker 1: functioning which may keep you breathing and may keep your

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Speaker 1: heart beating or try to, but it doesn't produce consciousness.

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Speaker 1: That requires an attacked functioning brain. Okay, so once they

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Speaker 1: physically die, take us into the afterlife. In your opinion,

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Speaker 1: what's it like? Well, you know, again, as a scientist,

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Speaker 1: I can't see anything that's proven to me. But the

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Speaker 1: evidence seems to show from near death experiences is that

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Speaker 1: after you die, after the body dies, you have a

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Speaker 1: sense of leaving the physical body, and in many cases

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Speaker 1: you were able to look down at your body so

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Speaker 1: you can see it. Do you realize you're dead? Sometimes

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Speaker 1: they do, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. In fact,

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Speaker 1: many people report if they look down at their body

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Speaker 1: and did not recognize it as their own body for

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Speaker 1: a while until they saw some unique feature on it

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Speaker 1: a class ring on the finger, or a certain tattoo

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Speaker 1: or a mark on the body, and they realize with

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Speaker 1: a shock, that's my body, and then they realize for

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Speaker 1: the first time that they are dead. Often it's a shock.

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Speaker 1: They're confused by it. They often feel once they realize

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Speaker 1: what's going on, relief by that, in a sense of

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Speaker 1: freedom from it. Are they alone or are they visited

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Speaker 1: by their dead loved ones. Well, they're often alone at first,

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Speaker 1: although if they're aware of what's going on around the body,

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Speaker 1: they may perceive the events going about of the body,

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Speaker 1: for example, doctors trying to resuscitate them. And they often

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Speaker 1: see and report accurately very unexpected things. Which is convincing

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Speaker 1: this to me. That is not whose nations? Whose nations

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Speaker 1: do not produce accurate perceptions of what's going on, But

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Speaker 1: these people that described very unusual things that are happening

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Speaker 1: that they couldn't have known unless they were watching it.

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Speaker 1: And after a while, they may lose interest or get

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Speaker 1: distracted from the scene around the body by oth other

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Speaker 1: things going on, and they find themselves in another realm,

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Speaker 1: not the physical world, but usually a beautiful realm that

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Speaker 1: suffused with light. They encounter this being of light that

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Speaker 1: makes them feel peaceful and warm and loved, and then

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Speaker 1: they may encounter other beings, some of which they recognize

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Speaker 1: as de ceased loved ones. Would you say that this

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Speaker 1: is your soul that is doing this and going through

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Speaker 1: this process, Well, soul has a lot of baggage attached

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Speaker 1: to it. That word. People can call it soul or spirit,

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Speaker 1: or they just call it mind. I'm not sure label

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Speaker 1: to put on it, but it's definitely that part of

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Speaker 1: us that can think and feel and perceive and make

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Speaker 1: decisions and feel emotions. That these are things that usually

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Speaker 1: we think the brain creates, but clearly it can go

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Speaker 1: on without the help of the brain. So when they're

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Speaker 1: in this other state and they're seeing other beings that

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Speaker 1: have died and that they're there too, at what point

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Speaker 1: do we have the heaven and hell or do we

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Speaker 1: That's a great question because that, again is determined in

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Speaker 1: part by what you have been prepared by your culture

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Speaker 1: to believe. Many people don't report anything like that. They say,

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Speaker 1: I can't describe any physical characteristics of the afterworld. I

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Speaker 1: can tell events that happened there, meeting people and so forth,

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Speaker 1: and reviewing my life and so forth, but I can't

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Speaker 1: tell you what it was like. Other people do, and

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Speaker 1: they sometimes, very rarely will describe a heavenly or a

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Speaker 1: hell of scenario, usually consistent with what their religion has

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Speaker 1: told them to believe, but sometimes directly contradicting what they

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Speaker 1: are told that was going to happen. More often they

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Speaker 1: describe some nondescript pastoral scene. I was in a beautiful

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Speaker 1: valley with the wonderful flowers that I've never seen before,

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Speaker 1: colors I haven't seen, sounds I've never heard before, where

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Speaker 1: they may just describe feeling I fear in outer space,

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Speaker 1: and often they say there are no words to describe it,

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Speaker 1: so if I tell you what it's like, I'm distorting

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Speaker 1: it by using metaphors that can't put it into words.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every week night

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