Bruce Greyson - Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview

>>Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My  name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump   is an ongoing series of interviews with  spiritually awakening people and people   who are experts in various topics that pertain  to spirituality or development of consciousness   and other such topics. We have done nearly  590 of these now. I should just start saying   six hundred. If this is new to you, and you'd  like to check out some of the previous ones,   please go to batgap.com and look under the past  interviews menu, where you'll see all the previous   ones organized in several different ways. This  program is made possible through the support   of appreciative listeners and viewers so if you  appreciate it and would like to help support it,   there is a PayPal button on every page of the  website. My guest today is Dr. Bruce Greyson,   MD. Welcome, Bruce. >>Bruce: Thank you,   Rick. I'm delighted to be here with you today. >>Rick: Great to have you. Dr. Greyson is the   Chester F. Carlson Professor Emeritus of  Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, and   Director Emeritus of the Division of Perceptual  Studies at the University of Virginia. He was one   of the founders of the International Association  for Near-Death Studies, and for 27 years edited   the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Dr. Greyson  majored in psychology at Cornell University.   When did you go there, by the way, Bruce? >>Bruce: '64 to '68  >>Rick: That was before my time. I used  to teach meditation in upstate New York.   I used to lecture at Cornell.  All right, I interrupted myself.   Okay. Majored in psychology at Cornell, received  his medical degree from the State University of   New York, Upstate Medical College, and completed  his psychiatric residency at the University of   Virginia. He practiced and taught psychiatry at  the University of Michigan and the University   of Connecticut (I'm from Connecticut, by the  way) where he was Clinical Chief of Psychiatry,   before returning to the University of Virginia  25 years ago. Dr. Greyson's research for the past   four decades has focused on the after-effects and  implications of near-death experiences (NDEs). He   is co-author of The Near-Death Experience:  Problems, Prospects, Perspectives; and   of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences:  30 years of investigation, co-author of   Irreducible Mind Toward a Psychology for the 21st  century; and author of After: A Doctor Explores   What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life  and Beyond. Okay, so let's get right into it.   Probably almost everybody listening to this  interview has an idea of what near-death   experiences are given the nature of my audience.  But just to make sure we're all on the same page   and understanding our terminology in the  same way, why don't you define, give us a   short definition of near-death experiences? >>Bruce: Sure, a near-death experience is   a profound event that people experience when they  are near death, on the threshold of death, or   sometimes just afraid they are about to die. And  they include such things as a sense of leaving the   physical body, going through some type of a tunnel  to another realm of light where they encounter   a loving being of light. They often go through  a life review and at some point may see other   entities such as deceased loved ones. And then at  some point, they come back to their bodies. They   choose to come back or are told to come back. But  the entire experience is infused with a sense of   peace and wellbeing which is in stark  contrast to the near-death state when   they are terrified, usually in a lot of pain. >>Rick: Are there ever any scary near-death   experiences where people are glad to  get back because it was so frightening?  >>Bruce: Well, there are some Rick.  It's hard to know how many because   people are much more reluctant to talk about  the unpleasant ones. But most researchers who   have looked at this think that between one in  5% of near-death experiences are unpleasant.  >>Rick: I think I remember either in your  book or somewhere hearing an account of   someone for whom it was very scary until  he or she finally just relaxed and stopped   fighting it, and then it got nice. >>Bruce: Right. That's actually   fairly common. Many near-death experiences sound  phenomenologically just like the positive blissful   ones, but they are experienced in a terrifying  way. For example, people may report being thirsty   or tumbling at blinding speed and then seeing  this flashing light. And they are terrified of   that. No matter what people report about an NDE,  a consistent feature is that you're not in control   of the situation. And if you're the type of  person that needs to be in control, that can be a   terrifying experience. So these people will fight  against it and struggle against it, at some point,   get exhausted, and just surrender. And as soon as  they surrender, it becomes a blissful experience.  >>Rick: Yeah, that sometimes happens  with psychedelics, too. In general,   I mean, I've heard many accounts of how having  a near-death experience, or having had one,   really changes a person's life. So let's  talk about that a little bit. Tell us   some ways in which near-death experiences  (even you could give specific anecdotes   if you want) have changed people's lives. >>Bruce: Right. Well, as a psychiatrist,   that's the aspect of the NDE, near-death  experience, that's most interesting to me.   Because I spend my life trying to help  people make changes in their lives,   and I know how difficult it is in here. And here  an experience comes along in a second or two that   can totally transform people's lives. It generally  makes them more spiritual, more compassionate,   more altruistic, and less concerned with physical  things like material goods, power, prestige, fame,   competition. I'll give you some examples of this.  One fellow I knew, he was a high school bully,   and his goal in life was to become a Marine. And  he eventually did become a Marine, this was back   in the seventies. He served in Vietnam, he was a  sergeant leading his platoon and he was shot in   the chest and had shrapnel all over his lungs. He  was air evaced to a hospital in the Philippines,   where he underwent surgery. And during that  surgery, he had a blissful near-death experience.   And when he awoke, he was a changed person.  He was kind, compassionate. When he recovered,   he was sent back into Vietnam, to lead his  platoon again, and he found that he could not   shoot his gun. The idea of hurting  someone was just unthinkable to him.   So he ended up leaving the Marines, coming back to  the States and becoming a medical technician. I've   heard story after story about this. About  policemen who had near-death experiences,   and again, could not partake in a violent life.  One person, he was a mafia employee and had to   give up that career. [laughing] I've also heard  from people who were in competitive businesses,   who came back from a near-death experience  thinking that competition makes no sense,   that we're all in this together, and what  you do to somebody else, you're doing to   yourself. They often come back with a sense of  the golden rule as being what it's all about.   And the idea is not, as they say, a goal that you  should aim for, as the rest of us do. But they say   this is, I realized, a law of the universe  like gravity, that what you do to someone else   you're doing to yourself as well. >>Rick: Why do you think it is   that a near-death experience produces  those kinds of personality changes?  >>Bruce: That's a great question,  Rick. I don't know the answer to that.   As I said, I don't know of anything else that is  that powerful in transforming people's lives. But   it changes their attitudes, their beliefs,  their values, and therefore their behavior.   I've talked to people in their nineties, who  had the experience as teenagers, and they say,   it's like it happened yesterday, that I've  never forgotten it and the changes stay with me.  >>Rick: Yeah, sometimes psychedelic experiences,  under the right circumstances will have those   kinds of changes. And as you probably know,  they're doing research at Johns Hopkins and places   like that, you know, people are getting over  alcoholism, or cigarette addiction or whatever,   with just one session. And meditation,  of course, can have that kind of effect,   but usually not in one sitting. Although in my  case when I learned in '68, I was a messed-up   kid and within a few weeks, my whole life had  changed. Mainly because the contrast was so great.   So how has all this study you've been doing  this for decades, actually impacted your life?   And this is a question from a friend of mine  named Bruce, who lives here in my town. He's   wondering what are the most profound effects  that doing all this research has had on you.  >>Bruce: Well, I started out in this career  as a diehard materialist. I grew up in a   scientific family, where all we talked about,  all they knew about was the physical worlds.   We weren't opposed to the spiritual it just never  occurred to us, is there anything beyond the   physical? So I went through college and medical  school thinking, what you see is what you get.   And when you die, that's the end of it.  There was nothing beyond the physical.   And then when I first started my internship in  psychiatry, within a couple of months, I was   confronted by a patient who was unconscious when  I tried to evaluate her in the emergency room.   And I ended up talking to her roommate in  a room down the hall to get some background   information about her. When I then saw the  patient again, the next day when she woke,   she stunned me by describing to me the  entire conversation I had with her roommate,   including what we were wearing,  where we're sitting and so forth,   not making any mistakes at all. And that  just blew me away, frankly, it terrified me.  >>Rick: You had a stain on your  tie, right? That was part of it.  >>Bruce: Yes. I had, just before I came to see  her see her, I dropped some spaghetti sauce on my   tie and covered it up with my lab coat, so no one  would see it. And when I talked to her roommate,   it was so hot in that room, I unbuttoned  the coat so that she could see it.   And the patient knew about that. >>Rick: And the only way she could do that with   a drug overdose in another part of the building >>Bruce: That's right. And the only way she could   have known about our conversation was if she  had followed me down the hall to that other room   and been with her. And that made no  sense to me. As far as I could tell   we were our bodies. How can you leave your body? >>Rick: Yeah. And her friend hadn't had a chance   to meet with her to recount the conversation? >>Bruce: No. She was in the intensive   care unit overnight with no visitors. >>Rick: Right. That's interesting. Well, that's   kind of, we're getting to what  motivates me to include -- near-death   experiences on this show. And I've had Anita  Moorjani and a bunch of other well-known people.   And that is that, well let me ask you a question  first before I say that, what percentage of the   population if you know, thinks that we are just  these physical bodies and that when you die,   that's the end of it, compared to the percentage  that thinks that life continues in some way?  >>Bruce: I don't know about the  general population, but I can tell you   something that surprised me that  three different studies of scientists,   one done in Scotland, one done in Belgium, and one  done in Brazil, have found that 50% of scientists   believe that the mind is something  independent of the body --something   non-physical that exists outside the brain. >>Rick: That's encouraging. And the reason I asked   that question is I ponder sometimes what it must  be like to live life if you think that this is all   you are. And when this dies, that's the end of it,  you know. It would be such a radically different   perspective than what I'm accustomed to. But  some people seem to be fine with it. Personally,   I think I would find it very disturbing. >>Bruce: Well, let me respond to that because   I started out life that way, the first 25 years,  and it was not disturbing at all. It was very   comforting to know that we have all the answers,  and there was nothing surprising out there.   And when you encounter something that  can't be explained by materialistic models,   it's quite unnerving. And it just requires you  to confront everything you thought you know.  >>Rick: Yeah. And it's a major issue in  the scientific world because one of the   main unanswered questions in  sciences is what is consciousness?   And so there's this big debate about whether  it's created by the brain or vice versa.   And this, I'm just saying - you know this- I'm  just saying it for the audience, but there's this   entrenched paradigm that of materialism, that  is resisting an ever-growing body of evidence,   anomalies that would overturn it. >>Bruce: Yes. Well, we all   say, I wouldn't say all of us, but most of us grew  up thinking that the mind is what the brain does   because it seems that way in everyday life. When  you get intoxicated, you don't think very clearly,   or when you have a stroke or hit your head  that affects your thinking. But it does seem   that in extreme circumstances, like a near-death  experience, when the brain seems to be diminished,   the mind seems to be doing better than ever.  And there are other examples of this as well,   including the studies done at Hopkins and  elsewhere in the last decade with neuro imaging   of psychedelic drugs, showing that the more  elaborate mystical experiences are associated with   a decrease in electrical activity in the brain. >>Rick: Yeah, the filters are removed,   so to speak. A question just came in  from my wife. She's sitting right here.   She emailed it over. What main  similarities are there in most NDEs and   are there any big differences in various NDEs? >>Bruce: Well, we have studied NDEs across the   globe from different cultures. And we also have  records of NDEs going back to ancient Greece and   Rome. And they all sound essentially the same in  terms of the phenomenology, however, how people   interpret what they experience is influenced  by their cultural background. An example is   most people report encountering a warm, loving  being of light that makes them feel welcomed and   well protected. And in Western countries, that's  often interpreted as God or Christ. And you don't   hear that in Hindu and Buddhist cultures. However,  even among Christians, they will say to you,   I'm going to call this God, so you know what I'm  talking about. But it wasn't the God I was taught   about in churches. It's much bigger than that.  I'm just using that word so we can communicate.  >>Rick: And probably the Hindus  and the Buddhists would say I   saw Krishna, or I saw Buddha or something, >>Bruce: Right or Yam Du or something right.  >>Rick: Have you read Michael Newton's books? >>Bruce: Yes.  >>Rick: So, what was interesting, just for the  audience's sake, he was a guy who specialized in   hypnotically regressing people to the period  between lives. And he did so many of them,   and there was so much agreement among the types  of things they said that he was able to map out   a kind of a topography of that territory,  of that realm. And his books describe that   in great detail. So it's kind of similar to what  we're talking about here, right? I mean, is there   anything you'd want to elaborate on that point? >>Bruce: Well, actually, some of my colleagues   here at the University of Virginia study  very young children, preschool children,   who claim to remember a past life. And in  Myanmar, there were a number of children who   report the period between lives as well. >>Rick: Why Myanmar of all places?  >>Bruce: That's a good question. Well, it's a  Buddhist country so that may have something to   do with their willingness to think about these  things. One of my colleagues did a study of   what the afterlife is like, from the  perspective of these children who describe it   and compare it to new death experiences from  Myanmar. And they were very, very similar.  >>Rick: Was that Ian Stevenson,  or the guy who has...  >>Bruce: No, Jim Tucker. Jim Tucker succeeded him. >>Rick: I'd like to interview Jim one of these   days. A minute ago we were talking about  people who have a hard time accepting that   there's anything other than the body, which  might account for these experiences. And,   of course, people have posited oxygen deprivation  or all kinds of theories, although it's very hard   to explain, being able to see what's happening  in another part of the building, [laughing] when   you're in a total coma by oxygen deprivation.  I don't know how they get around that.   But I do have a few questions here that some very  intelligent people who are skeptical in that way   sent in. I'd like to ask you those and see what  you have to say. One of them is by a fellow named   Kenneth in the Netherlands. And he said, there are  people who do not seem to have measurable brain   activity while they're experiencing an out-of-body  state or an NDE, I guess, Eben Alexander would be   an example. Do you think that it could be possible  to remain within a certain physicalist framework   if we will assume that consciousness is more  like a network, or a field distributed throughout   the whole body? So, in other words, remaining  functional aspects of the nervous system would   somehow be generating those, those experiences  even if the brain itself was shut down?  >>Bruce: Right, that's an interesting  question. And people have speculated about   other parts of our nervous system other than the  cerebral cortex being involved in consciousness,   such as the cerebellum, or the brainstem,  or our nervous system in the gut.   But these are just speculations. There's no data  bearing on that. And people have also speculated   about something outside the physical body, but  it's still in a physical framework somewhere.   So that is plausible, and as a skeptic myself,  I kind of like to entertain those ideas. But   there's no evidence that such a thing can really  happen. So we're stuck with what do you want   to believe? There's no evidence for any of it. >>Rick: Yeah. One metaphor analogy I find very   handy in explaining all this and explaining the  possible relation of consciousness to the body   is just that of the radio in relation to the  electromagnetic field. I mean, the radio isn't   actually generating the music, it's picking up  fluctuations in the field and giving us music.   And if you damage the radio, the  music stops, but it doesn't mean   the fluctuations in the field have stopped. >>Bruce: Exactly. I think that's a good analogy   for how the brain and the mind interact. It  makes sense in terms of evolutionary theory,   that the brain having evolved as part of our  physical body would have this filter function,   to let in from consciousness only those  thoughts and feelings that are relevant   to our survival in the physical world. How to  find food, shelter, and a mate, etc. And if the   brain is perceiving things about deceased loved  ones or a deity, those aren't relevant to physical   survival. So it sort of filters those out. >>Rick: Yeah. And that's kind of a blessing   in a way. If we could actually perceive everything  that was going on, we'd be completely overwhelmed.  >>Bruce: Like listening to every  radio station at the same time.  >>Rick: Yeah. I mean, as people who have  sometimes taken a psychedelic and then gone out   into public, where they should actually be in  a more secluded environment, will tell you,   it's just too much, there's just too  much coming at you. You can't handle it.   One handy way of understanding all this  and we'll see what you think about it,   is I'll just reference Vedanta here, but I'm sure  there are other traditions that talk about it,   is that we have these different levels to our  structure, that Vedanta talks about the kosha   sheaths, and there are five of them. And the  Annamaya Kosha is the physical body, but then   there's four other ones that are more and more  subtle. And when the physical body dies, these   other sheaths don't die, they just don't have a  physical body to function in. And so this might be   a good explanation for how NDEs work. You know,  the brain shuts down, and yet your subtle body   is actually perhaps then (since the physical body  isn't doing it much good) is actually a little bit   liberated and can go down the hall or something  like that, have out of body experiences. And this   will also account for reincarnation, where the  physical body dies, but the subtle body carries   on and eventually takes up another physical body. >>Bruce: Yeah. Well, I don't know that I can   comment on that meaningfully. I'm basically a  scientist. I like to deal with the data. And it's   certainly plausible. I don't know how you would  try to test that in terms of scientific methods.  >>Rick: Yeah, true, although yogis claim  to have come up with this idea through   direct subjective exploration and to have  concurred with one another after a lot of   them have had this kind of exploration. >>Bruce: Yeah, this is a problem also   with near-death research, because most of the  things people say happened in the NDE are things   that we cannot corroborate through talking to  other people. They're subjective experiences.   The only things we can corroborate are when  they see things outside their physical body   that they shouldn't be able to see or  hear. Or they come back from the NDE with   information that only a deceased person had. >>Rick: Yes. And there's, I mean, there's so   many accounts of that. And I know you tried to  do research where you set up targets in the room   that people would see if they had a near-death  experience. But I guess you decided that whole   research design was not that hot. Eventually. >>Bruce: Yeah [laughing] well you know,   when I described this to near-death  experiencers, they kind of laugh. They say   if you're out of your body for the first  time, watching your body being operated on,   why are you going to look around  the room for some target you didn't   know was there and has no relevance to you? >>Rick: Yes, like a pattern on a laptop, right?  >>Bruce: Right. >>Rick: Okay, here's some more of these kinds of   hard-core skeptical people. I have a friend  named Julian Walker, who is one of the guys   who do the Conspirituality Podcast,  which you probably haven't heard of,   but he's a very spiritual guy, dedicated  meditator, has been for years. And yet he is   very reluctant to accept any kind of woo-woo  explanation for things. He thinks sort of   a physical explanation can account for a lot  of these experiences. So here's his question.   Here is how he describes himself. He is fascinated  with the intersections of yoga, meditation,   psychology, science, and culture. And he has  three questions that I thought were all very good.   The first is, given that NDEs and other spiritual  experiences are common across time and cultures,   can we take the variety with regard to how  people interpret them based on their different   cultures and religious beliefs as evidence  that what we think an NDE experience means   is really more relative than objective? >>Bruce: Well, that's a great question.   I can't argue with that. I think it is evidence  that something about our perceptions is relative.   Whether that's the reality itself being relative,  or just the way we have of perceiving it being   relative is hard to say. You know, our  brains have only a limited range of what   they can do with material coming in. And that  is certainly influenced by what we expect to see   and what our culture trains us to pay  attention to. So I'm not sure whether the   relativity comes in our brains or in what's  really out there. Both are plausible to me.  >>Rick: Okay, good. Here's the second  question. Meaningful experiences can   be disentangled from literalist metaphysical  claims. Explaining them as altered brain states   need not reduce our sense of life-changing wonder. >>Bruce: Well, that's true. If you could explain   these things in terms of a brain change, that  would not mean they're not important spiritual,   profound experiences. However, we don't know  of any way that a physical event, a chemical,   or electrical change in neurons can produce a  conscious thought, or a feeling, or perception.   We've been struggling with this for  centuries, and no one's come up with a   plausible idea how this could happen. >>Rick: Yeah, and moreover,   as much as we understand the brain, so far,  there's no explanation, not only for why we   have consciousness, or thoughts or anything else,  but certainly no explanation of why someone,   in deep anesthesia with their chests  opened up, could see a red sneaker on   the roof of the hospital or something which  they had no way of knowing was there. [pause]  Okay, so here's the third question,  can the tightly linked subjectivity   of powerful altered states, experiences, and  metaphysical interpretations really stand as   scientific evidence? Might there be a third  option that honors the experience is real   without overreaching into claiming it is proof  of religious beliefs about life after death?  >>Bruce: Yes, I think you certainly can. You can  kind of throw up your hands and say, we can't   test on these metaphysical ideas. We'll just say  that they're due to physical changes in the brain.   But I think that's just as mysterious as  saying they're metaphysical. We don't know   how the brain could do these things. So we're  saying it's not testable at this point in our   current technology. So we'll just say, I believe  it can happen that way. And no way of testing   that any more than testing metaphysical ideas. >>Rick: I wonder why people are so resistant   to the notion that well, like you say,  it's maybe half the scientists believe   that the mind is somehow independent  of the brain. But the people who really   dig their heels in and resist this, what  is it that bothers them about the idea?   Maybe they just don't want to sort  of indulge in unprovable woo-woo.   But to me, the idea is very appealing, and there  does seem to be a heck of a lot of evidence for   it. So I'm not quite sure why the skepticism, >>Bruce: I can speak to that because I was   that way myself. And I still consider myself a  skeptic. But it's more than just the idea that   these woo-woo ideas are associated with mysticism  and religious ideas throughout the centuries.   It's the idea that, if the physical world is all  there is, then we can feel comfortable and safe   in knowing more and more about the physical world.  Whereas if you let in the idea of nonphysical   things, which we don't really understand, that  can lead to a much more scary conception of   the universe. And that can be terrifying for  people who are totally unfamiliar with that.   On the other hand, the vast majority of  people who have near-death experiences   tell me that the physical world is not  only not the whole thing but is a tiny   part of the whole thing. And that what is  out there is not something to be afraid of,   that the universe is basically a friendly  place. And that what awaits us after the   body dies, it's not something to be afraid of. >>Rick: Yeah. I mean, that seems so much more   inspiring than to think that we're just sort of  biological robots in a meaningless universe and,   that, you know, life sucks, and then you die. >>Bruce: Well, yeah, I can say that a lot of my   spiritual friends say that  materialism is a bankrupt   philosophy and leads to  meaninglessness. But having been there,   I didn't feel that was a problem at  all. I was very happy being materialist.   I wasn't feeling like it was meaningless. We  give meaning to life. And yet, I had to give   up my hardcore belief in materialism when I came  across hard data that contradicted it that could   not be explained in a materialistic framework. >>Rick: Yeah. And it's very, probably somewhat   courageous of you to do so. As a matter of  fact, I believe you told a story in your   book about how you basically had to leave a job  at a hospital and move to another state because   you didn't want to sacrifice this interest. >>Bruce: Well, yeah, it didn't feel so much like   courage as it did intellectual honesty. I couldn't  turn my back on this and pretend it didn't   happen and still face myself in the mirror. >>Rick: I think what you're doing is very   important, and all kinds of related things that  people are doing because I think we're undergoing   a major cultural shift. And it's  critical that we do so. And that   not only this understanding that you're offering  a piece of, but the experience that goes along   with it, which can be developed in a permanent  way through various practices, is the ultimate   leverage which might save us from extinction. >>Bruce: Right. You know, the near-death   experience is not by any means the only way to  get this type of enlightenment, it just seems to   be one of the most common ones, most reliable  ones in the current climate. But certainly,   you can do it through various spiritual practices,  through meditation. And it can come through,   as you know, from psychedelic drugs as well. >>Rick: Yeah. If the near-death experience   were the only way of doing it, you  wouldn't want to do it voluntarily.   I just meant to say that, anytime during this  conversation, when something pops into your   head that you'd like to bring up (and I'm  not asking a question about it) feel free   to just launch into it. >>Bruce: Will do that.  >>Rick: Okay, so you sent me some points that  we want to be sure to discuss. And even though   we've touched on some of them a little bit, I  think that many of them could be elaborated on.   Let's drill down a little bit more into  how we might know or suspect that NDEs are   real, and not simply some kind of dream due  to oxygen deprivation or drugs or whatever,   or our mere imagination. >>Bruce: Yeah, that's a great question,   Rick, because that's how I started out, assuming  these were just hallucinations or delusions.   And we tested one theory after another, for  example, the idea that oxygen deprivation   is causing these NDEs. And what studies in  the UK and the US have both found is that   people who report near-death  experiences actually have more oxygen   in their brains than people who don't  report NDEs in a similar new test situation.  >>Rick: Why is that? Why does the  brain have more oxygen for them?  >>Bruce: Well, it may be a factor that if you  have very low oxygen going to the brain, you're   not able to remember what happens in an NDE later  on. So you're less likely to report it. So it may   not be that better oxygen allows you to have  an NDE, but it allows you to remember it later.  >>Rick: Because I'm sure  that in some circumstances,   people have less oxygen going in the brain. >>Bruce: Definitely. The same is true also about   drugs given to people in a near-death situation.  The more drugs people are given, the less likely   they are to report on a near-death experience. >>Rick: Now I'm sharing these generalities because   Eben Alexander, for instance, his brain was full  of pus, and I doubt that he had more oxygen,   and yet he had this amazing experience. >>Bruce: Right. It would be nice to be   able to image the people's brains while  they're having a near-death experience.   But that's not really practical to do. >>Rick: Yeah, you're trying to save their   life, and hey, wait a minute, let me hook up these  electrodes. And again one could imagine all the   things NDE people are saying, but some of them  are verifiable, like the spaghetti sauce stain   on your tie, or the red sneaker on the roof of the  building or, many, many other things. And so, even   though you could imagine those very same things,  the fact that they correlate with real-world   circumstances rules out imagination. >>Bruce: Yeah, it's true. Jen Holden, at the   University of North Texas, actually studied almost  100 of these cases of people who left their bodies   and reported things that could be verified.  And what she found was that in 92% of them,   they were completely accurate. >>Rick: And the funny thing is a   lot of people who are skeptical or who will  dismiss near-death experiences and are not   even going to hear this or not even going to  look at the evidence because, there's that   phenomenon that seems to be happening -- the  Galileo effect -- where 'I'm not going to look   through the telescope, because there couldn't  be moons on Jupiter, so you're wasting my time.'  >>Bruce: Exactly. There must be some  trick because it can't really happen.  >>Rick: So I'm not even gonna look at  what you say is your evidence. But I   think that that attitude has a limited lifespan. >>Bruce: Yes. You know, they tend to discount   anecdotes because anecdotes aren't data. But in  fact, anecdotes are the beginning of data. All   science starts with anecdotes. And you collect  a bunch of them and find patterns in them,   and then develop hypotheses and test them. But  if you don't take the anecdote seriously, then   you've got nothing to work with. There was a study  done, published in the British Medical Journal   several years ago, a tongue and cheek article,  looking at whether parachutes are helpful when   you jump out of an airplane. They said  they're going to restrict their review   to double-blind controlled studies of  whether the parachutes are used or not.  >>Rick: So in other words, you'd have a  control group who didn't use parachutes   and see how it can protect. >>Bruce: Exactly, and they   couldn't find a single study like that. >>Rick: Yeah, they couldn't find any   volunteers to be in the control group. >>Bruce: Right. They concluded that   there's no evidence of parachutes help. >>Rick: Yeah. Good one. [laughing] Irene has   another question. Have you ever speculated as to  how an NDE might differ from a death experience?   And I could just elaborate on that briefly.  People sometimes say, Well, how do you know   anything exists after death? Because the NDE might  take you so far, but you're still alive. And maybe   when you really totally die, then there's nothing. >>Bruce: Well, that's a very good point. Because   these people that we're talking to came  back, and they weren't dead for very long.   And you could posit, this is plausible, that  we survive death for 10 minutes, an hour,   a couple of days. And then we stop existing, and  the NDE itself doesn't usually provide evidence of   eternal life. However, there are some new death  experiences in which people communicate with   deceased loved ones who've been gone for decades  and bring back accurate information from them   which would possibly imply that these people  are still surviving in some form, long after   their death. There are other interpretations. I  mean, the information from those deceased people   could be in some type of cosmic cloud that we  don't know about, the Akashic fields. And the   NDE somehow accesses them. But that's no less  unbelievable than the fact that people survive   and continue to live decades after their death. >>Rick: And when you say they bring back   information from deceased relatives, it's not  just stuff that they could have learned when   the relative was alive, but stuff they  wouldn't have had any way of knowing.  >>Bruce: Exactly, yeah. >>Rick: And also, I suppose if we   look at your research as one leg of the stool, and  then Ian Stevenson and his successors' research as   another leg of the stool, and there's probably  a few other legs, you put it all together,   then it's a pretty stable stool. >>Bruce: It is, and it all suggests that   we don't end our existence when the body  dies. And furthermore, that what happens   after death is not something to be terrified of. >>Rick: What about the whole Christian notion of   heaven and hell and you're going to go to  hell for all eternity. Do NDE people come   back with a different take on that, even  if they had been fundamentalist Christians?  >>Bruce: They usually do, not always.  But they usually come back with idea that   the spiritual world, if I can use that term,  the afterlife, is something that transcends   any particular one religion's dogma, and  people usually feel much more spiritual,   but not necessarily much more religious. And they  typically say things like I feel at home in any   house of worship of any denomination. >>Rick:   It's good, become more universal. Sometimes when  I think of religious fundamentalism and how the   religions on this little speck of dust are all  battling each other and killing each other for   so many 1000 years. Actually, my desktop photos,  which change every few seconds, are pictures of   galaxies because it kind of puts things in  perspective. And you think of probably the   likelihood of there being trillions of inhabited  planets throughout the universe and gazillions of   religions, each one of which thinks it's the only  one, and the whole thing gets a little absurd.  Okay, a lot of these questions, we will have  covered somewhat, but now we can consider that   to have been a main point introduction. And we'll  go into a little bit more detail. Are NDEs just   reflections of what we expect to happen when we  face death? And I could add to that by saying,   well, we've already talked about  people who expected nothing to happen,   but maybe people expected, you know,  heaven or Jesus or, or something. And   yet something very different happened,  which changed their conception of things.  >>Bruce: Yeah, it is actually very common  that people say that what they experienced   was totally different from what they were  taught to believe in. And I've talked people   who were diehard Christians and fundamentalist  Christians, who came back again with this more   non-denominational spirituality and saying  that it's not at all what I was led to believe.   We also did a study looking at people  who reported near death experiences to us   before Raymond Moody wrote his book  in 1975, which gave us that name,   and told us what to expect in NDEs. But  these were reports that people told us,   under the label of out of body experiences or  deathbed visions or apparitions. But today,   we recognize them as near-death experiences. And  we collected the best two dozen of those cases we   had from before the 1970s. And compared them with  a match group that we collected in recent years   matched in terms of age, gender, religion,  religiosity, how close they came to death.   And we found there was absolutely no difference.  What people reported before Moody told us what   to expect is the same as what they report now. >>Rick: Have you gotten any funding or financial   support for this research, or is this is  kind of like a sideline and not your day job?  >>Bruce: Well, it's a sideline, and I understand  that because if you're doing medical research, you   want to put the money where the biggest practical  payoff is going to be -- in heart disease,   or cancer or opiate abuse. So people aren't going  to waste huge bucks on something like, do we   survive physical death? So most of our funding  has come from private individuals in private   foundations who are interested in this area. >>Rick: Yeah. But then you're a psychiatrist,   and you get paid to help people feel better  psychologically and live a happier life.   And as we've been discussing these near-death  experiences tend to have that effect profoundly.  >>Bruce: It does. I tend not to bring that up  with patients spontaneously, but they often   Google me and know about my interest and ask me  about it. And if it's relevant to what they're   going through, I certainly will talk about it  with them, for example people who are suicidal,   who are struggling with what is death all  about. What's the meaning of life? We may get   into a discussion about near death experiences. >>Rick: Yeah, I mean, regarding suicide,   at a certain point, I kind of latched on to the  notion that people commit suicide, presumably to   escape from the unpleasantness of their life.  But if this life is not the end of it, and if   we continue on, and if reincarnation is true, and  we're going to end up taking on another life, then   I may be wrong about this, but my feeling is  that you actually make things worse, in the   long run. It's not like, Okay, I'll kill myself  and next life will be better. No, you've kind of   copped out, you've kind of ducked a challenge that  you failed to meet, and chances are, you're going   to have to meet, be confronted with it again,  and it might even be more daunting the next time.  >>Bruce: Yeah, well, this was a good point  because when I first heard from many near   death experiences, that the most profound after  effect of the experience was a loss of their fear   of death. I started wondering about whether  this is going to make people more suicidal,   because many people who are thinking of trying  to escape this life, are afraid of what's going   to happen when they die. But if you lose that fear  of death, is that going to make you more suicidal?   So of course, being a scientist, I did a  study of this. And I started interviewing   people in my hospital who were admitted after  a suicide attempt. I compared those who had   a near death experience as a result of the  attempt with those who didn't. And the ones   who had a near death experience were much less  suicidal afterwards. And when I asked them why,   they said, Well, you know, my problems  are still the same. But now I realize   I'm much more than this just one bag of skin.  I'm part of something much greater than myself.   And I see the meaning and purpose in the universe.  And in that perspective, the problems that I have   seem so insignificant, and instead  of something to be escaped from,   it's something to be dealt with and learned from. >>Rick: Yeah, life is for learning as Joni   Mitchell sang. I remember hearing, I think it  was Larry King interviewing James Van Praagh.   And he was talking about how his near-death  experience was so beautiful that he really   looked forward to dying. He wasn't at all  morbid or suicidal. It was like, alright,   life is great. I'm loving it, but when I die,  that'll be even better. It'll come when it comes.  >>Bruce: Right. Most near-death experiencers  say that when you lose your fear of death,   you also lose your fear of life. You're not afraid  of living to the fullest because you're not afraid   of losing life. You know, if something happens,  that's great, too. You seem to enjoy life much   more after a near death experience. >>Rick: That's interesting.   Okay, here's another little skeptical question  that people sometimes bring up and I'm sure you   have an easy answer to. Is the light people see  in NDEs just the light above the operating table?  >>Bruce: Well, you know, we see the light, just as  often in people who have NDEs not in the operating   room, who have a heart attack in the field or have  a car accident. So it's not just the light above   you, and many people are careful is tell you, it's  not a physical light, like a light bulb or the   sun. It's a living being that is generating light. >>Rick: And often people have their eyes taped   shut during operations. And they're  totally knocked out by the anesthesia.   Some of these questions -- I'll ask  this anyway -- are NDEs caused by   chemicals produced in the brain under stress? >>Bruce: Well, that's an interesting hypothesis   because as a skeptic, I started looking  at that. And it's certainly plausible that   there are some chemicals in the brain that are  released under stress. We know that endorphins   make you feel good. But at this point, there is  virtually no way of testing those hypotheses.   These chemicals like endorphins are produced  in very, very small amounts for a very short   period of time, and we don't even know where  in their brain to look, even if we could look   while someone's having a near death experience,  which of course, we can't. So it's an interesting   hypothesis. But again, even if it were shown  to be true, this would not establish any cause.   It may be that you need a certain chemical or  electrical activity in the brain in order to   permit us to leave the body and not causing  us to have the illusion of leaving the body.  >>Rick: And even if NDEs were caused by lack  of oxygen, or drugs, or chemicals produced   by the brain, that doesn't explain -- even if  there were some drugs you could take that would   reliably give you an NDE. But then you left the  body and saw things far away that you couldn't   possibly have known about, fine, I mean, the  cause of those NDEs, let's say someone comes   out with an NDE drug, couldn't possibly explain  how you would know things at a distance or see   your grandmother and so on and have her tell you  things that are true, but you couldn't have known,   all that stuff. So it doesn't really resolve the  whole conundrum about whether the mind or some   subtler aspect of it is independent of the body. >>Bruce: Exactly.  >>Rick: Because I think that's the main sticking  point that these skeptical questions are trying to   get at. People are troubled by the possibility  that you could actually go and see something   at a distance because it conflicts with their  notion about the way the universe works, about   what reality is, what we are. They're just  coming up with these different objections in   order to try to avoid confronting that evidence. >>Bruce: Right. And of course, they would deny   that that's evidence. They would say that that  didn't really happen. Just as, we used to say   that it's impossible for rocks to fall from the  sky, so reports of meteors are totally ridiculous.  >>Rick: You've probably talked to some of  these people. When somebody says to you,   when you have shown them all kinds of evidence  that people knew things that they couldn't have   known in an ordinary way, and then they  say, that's impossible, that couldn't have   happened. What do you say to them next? >>Bruce: Well, I sympathize with their   perspective, because I started that way. And I  didn't want to believe that these things happened.   But when you look into it, it happens  again, and again and again. It's not   rare by any means. So it's a matter of do you  want to deny what's really happening in front of   you in order to maintain your belief system? Or  do you want to accept reality and deal with it?   And to my perspective, that's what a scientist  should do. That's what a skeptic should do -- deal   with the facts, not refuse to look at them. >>Rick: So essentially, you're saying to them,   well, you can't say that it doesn't happen,  because it actually is happening, and I can   prove it to you. And so therefore, the question  is, why is it happening? Or how is it happening?  >>Bruce: Exactly. Yeah. How is it happening? >>Rick: But I imagine at that point,   they're gonna come back to well,  it isn't happening. [laughing] So   round and round you go. >>Bruce: Well, the problem is that we know   that it happens because of our perceptions. We see  and hear things, but we know our perceptions are   faulty. So it's plausible that we're all being  fooled. We're all being misled. But you know,   that's true of everything we do. I'm talking with  you now is something I perceive. Am I imagining   that you're there? Well, I can't disprove it. >>Rick: Right. They're all kinds of cool Zen   stories about this, you know, am I a man dreaming  I was a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming   I'm a man? And are we all sort of part of  some alien artificial intelligence machine?   You can play with all those notions. >>Bruce: We're living in the matrix [laughing].  >>Rick: Right. You can see why some people  sometimes find those ideas appealing because   there is a lot more to life than meets the eye, as  you've been dedicating your life to discovering.   So a lot of people really resonate with the idea  that what you see is not what you get. There's   something more being withheld from us. And often  they attribute it to the government or Bill Gates   or something like that. I think they're picking  up on something. They're just misinterpreting it.  >>Bruce: What NDE experiencers say is that  it's not that someone's hiding it from us,   but that our brains can't understand it. So they  just don't deal with it. They filter it out.  >>Rick: Yeah, and we're all filters. You  put a human and a bat and a dog and a cow   together and have them look at a tree, they're  all seeing completely different things. And yet,   there apparently is some kind of objective reality  that is the tree. I play with those ideas a lot.   They're fascinating. Some people think that  we create the tree by perceiving it, but then,   why are there so many different trees? Depending  upon what is perceiving and why is everybody   seeing a tree of some sort? There seems to  be some objective reality to it being there.   How do you think people managed to continue  thinking or experiencing with their senses   when their brain activity has stopped? >>Bruce: Well, if it's true that people   continue to think when their brain is stopped,  and I see evidence points that way, to me,   the only solution I can see is that consciousness  is not rooted in the brain. And the most   plausible explanation to me is that it is a  non-physical thing out there outside the body.   I can't prove that's the best explanation. That  has a lot of problems in it. For example, how does   this non- physical thing relate to the physical  brain? Because obviously it does in normal life,   and we have no answer for that. But we also have  no answer for how a physical brain can create   consciousness. So both the materialistic model  and the dualistic model have huge holes in them,   which says to me, we're probably not  asking the question in the right way.  >>Rick: And I would just distinguish between  consciousness and perception or consciousness   and thinking, because in both of those cases, you  have consciousness being conscious of a thought or   of perception. And so we're not only saying that  consciousness exists independent of the brain,   but we're saying that perceptual and cognitive  functions exist independent of the brain. And   that's interesting. The fact that that could be --  what does that imply? I think it comes back to the   subtle body thing, that the mind is one feature  of the subtle body, so is the intellect. So are   the senses. And all those things are said to exist  prior to and independent of a physical form. It's   only through the physical form that we are able  to use them in interaction with the world, right?  >>Bruce: Right. Well, we speculate  about subtle bodies and sheaths.   I don't know what to do with those things. They're  like metaphors for me that help you explain and   understand what's going on. But I don't know any  way of testing whether that's the right model or   not. If it's helpful, then it's a good model. >>Rick: It may be that whatever is actually   happening, let's say that's the setup, that there  are these five sheaths and so on; or maybe there's   some other reality to the way things work. But it  may be that whatever it is, it won't be testable   by scientific methods. Do you think? >>Bruce: That's entirely possible.   Being a scientist by training and by personality,  I don't want to believe that. What I want to   believe is that right now, our concept of science  is so limited that we're not able to do it at this   point. But at some point, we will be able to. >>Rick: That's a key point.  >>Bruce: That's a non-testable  hypothesis, a belief that I have.  >>Rick: Now one fascination I have always had  is -- well, I've always been interested in the   relationship between science and  spirituality. And I feel like each of them   contribute something which the other doesn't.  And that there would be a sort of a whole   that's greater than the sum of its parts,  if they could really collaborate and that   the human nervous system could possibly  be regarded as a scientific instrument   in and of itself. One could do research in  subtler states, or research in consciousness,   using the mind and the nervous system, and perhaps  various meditational spiritual techniques. It's   interesting to consider whether that could be done  in accordance with the scientific method, because   it's so subjective, and there's so many variables. >>Bruce: It is, but we study a lot of subjective   things by looking at their after effects. Our  emotions -- love, hate, fear. You can't study   those directly, because you don't know what's  going on in someone's own head. But you can   study how they respond to that, how their body  reacts to it, what they say, what they do. There   are some subatomic particles that exist for such  a short period of time, are so small, we can't   look at them directly. But you can shoot them  through a bubble chamber full of liquid nitrogen   or hydrogen and watch the trail of bubbles they  leave as they go by. From the trail of bubbles,   you can learn about them. So, same way, we  can look at these non-physical things like our   emotions and our spiritual aspects, and look at  the bubble trail, and learn about them that way.  >>Rick: And as a culture, in general, we don't  deny that love and hate and the things you   mentioned, exist, because they are such common  experiences. Everybody goes through those things.   But when you're talking about a more uncommon  experience, and there are all kinds of other more   uncommon spiritual experiences that people have,  that's where people have a problem. But if those   experiences became common somehow (I mean,  not that everybody should have near death   experiences), but let's say everybody  in the world took psychedelics or did   meditation or something, then it'd be  like, yeah, what's the big deal? We all   know that angels exist because we all see them. >>Bruce: Right. Everything we do has physical   and non-physical properties to it. You know, the  desk that I used to work at, is a physical desk.   It's rectangular, is made of mahogany. I can tell  you all the physical things about it. It's also my   grandfather's desk, that he left to me in his will  and has a lot of meaning for me in that regard.   And just understanding one aspect of it the  physical part, or the emotional part, doesn't tell   you everything about the desk. You need to know  both to learn about them. I think that's the way   science and spirituality interact. Neither one by  itself gives the complete picture of the universe.  >>Rick: And certainly what our senses reveal  doesn't give a complete picture of the desk,   because if you could go down to the molecular  or atomic or subatomic levels, you're not seeing   a desk anymore. It's a very different reality.  Here's an interesting question that came in from   Allison in Jupiter, Florida. I'm just curious.  Have you done any studies on people like   murderers, child molesters, human traffickers,  etc.? If so, did they come back saying their   experience was one with hellish content? Has  anyone you've studied had the nightmare sort   of experience on the other side? We touched  on that a little bit, but this is interesting   with regard to criminals of various kinds. >>Bruce: Right. We haven't done a study.   But I have talked to a small number,  maybe half a dozen people who were   chronic prisoners, serving life sentences. Some  were murderers who had near death experiences in   prison when they had a heart attack or something  like that. And they describe typical blissful   near-death experiences, from which they come  back with very different attitudes towards their   crimes. It's interesting that they don't report a  sense of a sin or being punished, but they report   a sense of having to relive those events in their  lives, from the viewpoint of their victims, and   having to experience what the victims experienced.  They come back very changed by that experience.  >>Rick: You're probably familiar  with Dannion Brinkley's story, right?   Dannion was a sharpshooter in Vietnam, and he  would kill people. And he had four near-death   experiences. In each one, he had a life review  in which he experienced the consequences of his   actions from the perspective of everyone  who was influenced by them. Life review.   Let's talk about life review a little bit. >>Bruce: Sure. About a third to a half of people   who have an NDE report reviewing their lives, and  they often report doing this in exquisite detail   remembering things that they hadn't thought about  in decades. They in fact report re-experiencing   and seeing and hearing things that they weren't  aware of seeing and hearing at the time.   But the most profound part of it is that many of  them report as Dannion did, re-experiencing the   events in their lives, not just from their own  perspectives, but from the perspective of their   quote victim or other people involved as well.  And to give an example of this. Tom Sawyer had   an experience in his 30s when a truck he was  working on, fell down and crushed his chest.   And he remembered his entire life, including  one incident when he was a teenager,   and he was driving his hot rod truck down the  road, and a drunk man ran out in front of him, and   he almost hit him. He stopped the truck, rolled  down his window, and being a hot-headed teenager   started shouting at the man. And the man being  drunk, reached his hand in the window and slapped   Tom across the face. That was enough for him.  He opened the door, got out and started beating   the man to a pulp, and left him a bloody mess  on the median strip, and then just drove away.   Well, in his near-death experience, he  relived that, from the perspective of him,   Tom, and from the drunk man. And he saw it from  the drunk man's eyes, what his face, Tom's face,   looked like turning red and getting angry, and  then felt each one of the 32 blows on his face.   He felt his nose getting bloodied, his teeth  going through his lower lip, and the humiliation   of being beaten by this kid. And he came back  thinking, what I did to him I'm doing to myself,   and that we're all one person. I hear this again  and again, that people who have relived events   from another person's life. Barbara Harris  had a near death experience when she had   a respiratory arrest in the hospital.  She relived being abused by her mother,   not only from her perspective, but from her  mother's. And she realized for the first time now   that her mother had also been abused as a  child and was just sort of replaying the   only way she knew to relate to her child.  And she came back with intense forgiveness   for her mother that she didn't have before. >>Rick: Interesting. People like Michael Newton   say that. That's the kind of stuff we realize  between lives, also after we've actually died,   and we're kind of assessing our life  and planning our next one, and so on.   We review these things and kind of really  see it from other perspectives. It's cool   that near death experiences could provide that  insight without having to fully die. I wonder   how a lot of people say, well, they  had this near-death experience,   and at a certain point, the grandfather, somebody,  came to them and said, you can't go any further.   You're not meant to die now; you have  to go back. And then they come back.   That would be something interesting  to talk about. But also,   if there's like a spectrum of fully alive, fully  dead, when you have a near death experience,   and you go part way, and then you're told you  have to come back. I wonder how far you've gone,   or whether there's really quite a bit  of the journey left to traverse before   you would be totally on the other side and  experienced the things you experienced there?  >>Bruce: That's a good question, because we used  to think that death was a single point in time.   And now we know that's not at all the case. Sam  Parnia is a professor of Critical Care Medicine   at NYU University, has described in detail how  the dying process is a very gradual process that   may take days, that different parts of the brain,  different types of cells will die off at different   rates. So that it's hard to tell when someone has  passed that irreversible point where they cannot   come back to life again. And you never know at any  given point how close you are to that irreversible   point. In terms of being sent back, many people  report making a decision, realizing that they had   some important work to do, or that they needed  to correct something they've been doing wrong.   And many others report being sent back either  by a deceased loved one or by a deity saying   it's not your time, or you have something  important to do. I'm sending you back.   And I don't know why some people  make the choice and some people   don't. I'm not sure that that really happened  or whether that's the way they're interpreting   what their experience was. >>Rick: In other words,   maybe they had no choice. They just had  to come because they were told to go back.  >>Bruce: Maybe. One person that I knew well was  an atheist, who believed there was nothing after   death, and there was no deity. He said in his  near-death experience he met some type of entity   that told him he had to make a choice. And he  chose to come back. But he said to me, I'm just   blown away because I don't know who made that  decision. Who told me that I had to make a   decision? If there's nobody else, who did it,  who told me I had to come back and make a choice?  >>Rick: Yeah. Sometimes they think that  some people have near death experiences   in order to prepare them for the mission in life  of talking about near death experiences [laughing]   and teaching people what they can teach them  based on that experience, it's sort of like   that was their little preparation. >>Bruce: Right. Sometimes we joke   about one of the after effects of a near death  experience includes writing a book about it.  >>Rick: We joke about that with  spiritual awakenings too. [laughing]   Okay. So, most of the people listening to  this won't have had a near death experience   and won't particularly want to have one, if  they can avoid it, but would like to have   the insights that an NDE provides. So what does  an NDE mean for those of us who haven't had them?  >>Bruce: Well, first, let me let me say that I  think it's likely that a lot of your listeners   have had near death experiences. >>Rick: And don't know it?  >>Bruce: Or know, and just haven't told you about  it. Research done both in this country and in   Germany has suggested that about 5% of the general  population has had a near death experience,   which is one out of 20. So probably somebody at  your workplace or in your classroom or in your   family has had a near death experience. And,  actually, I had the experience myself, once   my family found out I was doing this research,  I started hearing from aunts and cousins about   their experiences. And they had never told me this  before. They just keep them to themselves. Many   people feel that the NDE is something personal  for them, and they don't particularly want to   share it with other people, partly because they  don't want to be ridiculed or told they're crazy.  >>Rick: That kind of reminds me of something I  was saying earlier that if somehow this could   become more socially accepted, then a lot of  people might come out of the woodwork and start   talking about it, who are reluctant to do so  right now because they don't want to be ridiculed.  >>Bruce: Right. Now, I will say that  it's gotten easier over the decades I've   been doing this research. When we first  started talking to medical conferences,   back in the 1980s, it was rare for anyone to  know about NDEs before we'd give our conference.   And it would be unusual for anyone to say  anything in front of the audience. And now   when we talk to medical conferences, it's rare  that at least one or two doctors don't stand   up for the audience and say, let me tell you  about my experience. So it's becoming more and   more common to just talk about it. >>Rick: It's cool that they have   the nerve to stand up and say it publicly. >>Bruce: Right. There's still a lot of controversy   among doctors about what causes the NDE and about  what its ultimate meaning is, but they pretty much   except now that it is a phenomenon that happens to  a lot of their patients, and therefore they want   to know about them. But you asked before about  what NDEs means for people who don't have them.   And I want to come back to that, because that's a  very important point. There has been research now   looking at the effects of near-death experience on  people who don't have them, and people who learn   about them. And there have been four studies in  college students who take a course in near death   experiences. One study among nursing students >>Rick: An actual course on them?  >>Bruce: Yes, and actually one high school class  in which the teacher had a near death experience,   and then taught an elective class on near death  experiences. Every one of these studies show   that up to a year after the course, the students  were much more compassionate and altruistic in   their behavior than they were before. So I think  there's some evidence now that just learning about   near death experiences, lets you absorb some  of the lessons that the mind is not the brain,   that death is not the end, that what happens  after death is not something to be afraid of.   And that we are all in this together, that I'm not  separate from you, and what I do to someone else,   I do it to myself, and that  it makes sense, therefore,   to treat people with kindness and compassion. >>Rick: I had that experience myself, actually   back in the 90s. I read a lot of NDE books --  James Von Praagh, Betty Eadie, Dannion Brinkley,   probably a few others, Michael Newton's books. And  I found that just focusing on my attention on that   really kind of thinned, the veil or broadened my  perspective a lot, and it had a beautiful effect.  >>Bruce: I think that's true, that  we see certainly in people who   are in the family of a near death experiencer  often broaden their perspective as well   and come to terms with what this really means  to make life more meaningful and fulfilling.  >>Rick: Partly perhaps because they see a big  change in their family member, right? And they   think, whoa, what happened to this person? >>Bruce: Right, which isn't always   a positive thing. You know, I've seen  relationships break up because of a near   death experience. Just as I've seen careers  fall apart after a near death experience.  >>Rick: Yeah, there's some  story in your book where,   I guess it was the guy who was a truck driver, and  his wife was saying, this is not the guy married.   I want this meat and potatoes guy; I don't want  this woo-woo mystic. Have you ever heard of the   phenomenon of walk ins? What do you make of that? >>Bruce: I don't make too much of it. This is the   idea that when people die or come close to death,  their spirit may leave their body and be replaced   by someone who had died before and chooses  to come back for some benevolent purpose.   One of my friends who had a near death experience  was identified as a walk in, in a book written by   Ruth Montgomery about walk ins. She was furious  because she said, I'm not a walk in. I have all   the memories of the person I was before, I'm  still the same person, I just know more than   I did before. I'm not a different person. >>Rick: Yes, so interesting. Another theory   that some people say is that -- maybe we're  getting a little off track -- but this is kind   of interesting. Is that our soul, or whatever we  want to call it -- let's call it soul -- exists,   in some higher dimension, and only a portion  of it incarnates and we live our life with   that portion. And then we die. And it kind  of goes back to the mothership, so to speak.   I don't know if you have any comment on that. >>Bruce: It's an interesting hypothesis.   I don't know what you do with that. >>Rick: Yeah, I don't know. People even   say we could actually be living several lives  with different portions in different bodies.  >>Bruce: It kind of explains some of the unusual  things people report when they are out of body,   they seem to see things in a 360-degree framework.  They can see sometimes through walls. And one   explanation for that is that they're going to  a higher dimension, where they can see things,   look down on our three dimensions from a fourth  dimension, or a fifth or six, and see things we   can't see, in our three-dimensional world. >>Rick:   It's funny to kind of, we're  sort of drifting in and out of   different degrees of speculativeness. But it's  fun to kind of play with things. I take everything   as a hypothesis, and no hypothesis is  really off the table, it's just that   some have a lot more evidence to support  them than others. Isn't that what science   does? It seems to me you could take any  principle of any religion or mystical system,   and regard it as a possibility, which you  may or may not have the means to investigate,   but if you say no, that could not be, absolutely  not, then you're really not being scientific.  >>Bruce: Exactly. But the difference between  science and religion is that if you're   a devotee of a certain religion, you believe this  hypothesis, this speculation. And if you're taking   a scientific perspective, you will not say,  I believe this, you'll say, I think this is   plausible. Let me try to test it. And if you can't  test it, then well, it's a useful hypothesis to   explain things, but I don't believe it. >>Rick: Yeah. And I think spirituality   can be that way. It can be. You  don't need to believe anything,   in order to be a spiritual aspirant, except the  possibility that it would be worth your while to   pursue this. But any scientist does that, too.  He's not going to do some big experiment if he   doesn't think it's possible, it might bear fruit. >>Bruce: Right. This is what the Dalai Lama says   that Buddhism is like Western science, rooted  in experimental evidence, in empirical evidence.   And if you experience things that contradict  your belief system, then the beliefs are   probably wrong, and you need to modify them.  Just as Western scientists are supposed to.  >>Rick: I'm remembering a story about Einstein  who predicted the bending of starlight by gravity,   which would prove one of his theories of  relativity. And I think it was Sir Arthur   Eddington went to Africa during an eclipse  and proved this, that indeed it was bending,   and some reporter said to Einstein, what would  you have done if the theory had been disproven?   And he said, I would have felt sorry for the  dear Lord; that theory was correct. [laughing]  >>Bruce: You know, if you look back on what  scientists thought a couple of centuries ago,   we kind of laugh at their naivete. And we  know the science keeps getting closer and   closer to the truth, never quite reaching it.  All our models are wrong. But they're better   than the previous models we had. And it's hard to  believe that a century from now, scientists won't   look back on what we think and think how naive  and silly we were to believe these things.   I don't know how a scientist can have  the arrogance to say, we know this is   the way it is because obviously, we don't. >>Rick: Well, there's a history of arrogance   in not only science, but pretty  much all fields of human endeavor  >>Bruce: That's what people do. >>Rick: If you could draw a graph of the   progress of acceptance of the kinds of things  we're talking about, do you feel like the graph is   getting steeper faster? Or is it sort of a gradual  incline? Or what? How would you predict the more   widespread acceptance of this way of thinking? >>Bruce: I think it's been a gradual increase.   I think this increase started in the mid 20th  century. It was certainly increased by the   psychedelic revolution in the 60s. And bringing  over more and more Eastern mysticism into western   culture, it is gradually getting more and more  acceptable. But we have seen such waves like   this in the past. At the end of the 19th century,  there was great interest in Eastern mysticism,   and it rose to a certain height and then kind  of faded away. And the early part of the 20th   century was very much a materialistic model.  So it comes and goes, and I don't know how   long this current wave is going to persist. It  seems to me like it's going and going and going,   but I'm sure it felt that way 150 years ago, >>Rick: I don't remember having been around then,   although I might have been. But my sense is  that, just tracking this since the late 60s,   when I got involved in this kind of thing that  it's really becoming more and more mainstream.   It's dramatically more so than it was 50  years ago. And there's no end in sight;   there seems to be some kind of epidemic  of interest in spirituality and awakening.  >>Bruce: I think one of the big differences I see  now, is that unlike previous waves of interest in   spirituality, this one is including science in it.  And we're looking at science and spirituality as   mutually helpful disciplines, not  as contradictions to each other.  >>Rick: Yeah, that's really important. And  we also have tools now that we didn't have   in those previous waves, the internet  for one thing to spread everything around   quickly. And everybody's a publisher these days.  I couldn't have done this even 20 years ago, the   tools weren't there. So it's really snowballing. >>Bruce: We also have scientific tools we didn't   have just half century ago. And we also  have spiritual tools we didn't have either,   you know, things like the proliferation of  artificial psychedelic drugs is much more   efficient than eating a plant. So I think we have  ways of increasing both scientific and spiritual   exploration that we didn't have not too long ago. >>Rick: Yeah. That's exciting. And it comes   back to that theme of science and  spirituality kind of collaborating.   It might even be 100 years from now that it  seems antiquated to even think of science and   spirituality as separate, that they're actually  two legs of one body of gaining knowledge.  >>Bruce: In fact, it's the scientific  technology that's increased,   that allows us to bring so many more people back  from the brink of death, which has allowed us more   awareness of near-death experiences. >>Rick: Good point.   You're probably friends with Pim  Van Lommel, the Dutch cardiologist.   I mentioned him just for the audience's sake  because he's done a lot of study in this   realm as well, having experienced  so much of it as a cardiologist.  >>Bruce: Yes, right. He too, got started, not  as a spiritual person, but just looking at the   data his patients were bringing to him. >>Rick: Here's a cool quote that just   came in this morning from somebody  who just happened to send it to me;   I thought it might pertain to our discussion.  The whole secret of mysticism is this:   That man can understand everything by the help of  what he does not understand. The morbid logician   seeks to make everything lucid and succeeds  in making everything mysterious. The Mystic   allows one thing to be mysterious and everything  else becomes lucid. That's from GK Chesterton.   Okay, now I've gone through all my notes,  but I still have a printout of all the   chapter titles of your book. And I just want  to skim through that and make sure that we're   really covering everything that we could cover.  Maybe if I just read you the chapter titles, and   you could either elaborate a bit or say no, we've  already covered that, let's go on to the next one.   Okay. So, 'a science of the unexplained.' >>Bruce: I think we pretty much covered   that. I look there at how we study  things that are not easy to study.   Things that don't seem to be physical. >>Rick: Okay. 'Outside of time.'  >>Bruce: We haven't really talked much about that.  That's the sense of timelessness that people have   in a near death experience. Many report that in  this other realm, it's as if time did not exist,   or there was no concept of time. Everything was  happening all at once, or everything happened   in eternity. And when they come back and tell me  about this, it seems like a paradox because they   describe the NDE as a sequence of events.  This happened, and this happened, and this   happened. And I asked them, How can that be in a  timeless environment? How can you have a sequence   if there's no progression of time? And  the response I usually get is that,   yes, that's the paradox once you're back  here and your brain is thinking linearly.   When I was over there, it made perfect sense.  Here, I can't make sense of it. So again,   it's the idea of our brains being so limited,  we can't really describe or appreciate all the   things that happen in the other realm. >>Rick: Aren't there stories where   people will go through like a whole  detailed account of a 60-year lifetime   in minute detail that would have taken  perhaps, hours or days to go through.   And yet when they were revived, they were  only out for five minutes or something?  >>Bruce: Sure, most people who tell  you about their new death experience   can go on for hours and hours about what happened.  And of course, it happened in a matter of seconds.  >>Rick: Dreams can be like that too. You have  a dream, and there's so much detail and who   knows how long you're actually dreaming, >>Bruce: Time is very different when you're   not in our normal mental state. There was a  Swiss geologist Albert von St. Gallen Heim,   who, when he was younger, when he was in his 20s,   fell while climbing in the Alps. And he fell about  60 feet repeatedly crashing into the craggy rocks.   And he wrote about this saying that  I had previously watched people fall,   and it was terrifying to watch others fall. But  when I was falling, it was a blissful experience.   I was detached from my body watching it  getting repeatedly bloody and bloodier.   It wasn't bothering me at all, I was blissful. He  said time seemed to slow way down. So I had time   to think about all sorts of things like, should  I take off my glasses, so they don't get broken?   Or how can I move around, so I'll fall into  that snow pile and not the rocks below? Or   what happens to my class if I don't come back  and teach it? What happens to my loved ones?   And all this happened in a matter of seconds while  he was falling. He was so impressed by this that   he quickly asked his friends who had been mountain  climbers and collected 30 other cases just like   his and published this in the yearbook of  the Swiss Alpine Club in 1892. The first   collection we have of near-death experiences. >>Rick: Interesting. I think sometimes athletes   experience something like that, too, you know,  where they're in a very fast paced sport,   and how could they possibly react so quickly.  And yet their subjective experience is that   they're kind of in this zone. They're  in this kind of silent, coherent state.   And everything seems to slow down for them. >>Bruce: Yes. In the zone. I remember that.   When I used to run track in college, I remember,  as I was running, looking down at my legs,   wondering who's doing this. I was  not there and yet it was happening.  >>Rick: A couple of questions came in. This is  from a fella named Ravi. I think he's in India.   The life review seems to perform  a function of resolving karma.   Is there a continuum in your opinion? Some karmas  are taken care of during the life review and   other karmas may require reincarnation  in order to fructify and be resolved.  >>Bruce: That's interesting question. I  don't think I know the answer to that.   Certainly, everything is not resolved in  a life review. People learn from the life   review what they have to do when they come  back to life to resolve some of these issues.  >>Rick: Okay. Question. (Oh, he's in the UAE,  United Arab Emirates, that's where he's emailing   from.) I wouldn't hold you responsible for not  being able to answer all these questions. A lot   of them are very philosophical and speculative,  and people have been debating them for millennia.   The second question looks interesting. How  do you medically explain the lack of hypoxic   brain damage in some NDEs when the person has  been dead for some time before resuscitation,   such as Dr. Mary Neal, who was dead for over 30  minutes. We can also think of Eben Alexander whose   brain was mush but who is a very coherent  clear fellow again. He somehow recovered.  >>Bruce: Yeah. Mary Neal's  experience was quite remarkable,   because she was trapped upside down in  her kayak at the bottom of a waterfall.   And she wrote two fantastic books, To Heaven  and Back, and Seven Lessons from Heaven,   describing her experience and what she  learned from that. And by all accounts she   should not have been able to survive that at all. >>Rick: Was the water really cold? That helps.  >>Bruce: Yes, and it's true that you have this  cold reflex that slows your metabolism way down,   when you're in a cold environment. And yet she  had absolutely no brain damage that we could tell   when she came out of that. And this happens again  and again, that people, when Eben Alexander,   was in his coma, from a very rare bacterial  infection, the doctors thought he had a 1%   chance of surviving, and virtually no chance of  ever being functional again. And yet, when you   hear him talk, he sounds just like anybody else.  So we don't know how to explain this. But somehow,   the mind is able to come back without  being affected by damage to the brain.  >>Rick: Well, that brings up something that I  heard you discuss in one of your other interviews,   which I've heard about before, which is, you'll  give us the scientific term for it. People who   basically hardly have a brain; it's mostly like  spinal fluid or something in their skull, a little   thin layer of brain around the edges of the skull,  and yet they're accomplished mathematicians and   fathers, and tell us that story. >>Bruce: Yeah, a British neurologist named   John Lorber wrote about this, back in the 70s, and  80s, and published several scientific papers about   people who are born with massive  hydrocephaly, which is water on the brain,   basically, spinal fluid on the brain, who  have very little brain tissue at all. And yet,   they have normal IQs. He discovered this first  with one patient who was a college student,   a doctoral student in mathematics,  who came to him because of headaches.   And when he did a brain scan, he found he had  virtually no brain tissue at all. And yet he   had a high IQ, he was living a normal life, he had  a family, and there was no explanation for this.   He published several cases like this of people  who have almost no brain tissue, and yet seem   to lead normal lives. And again, you can raise  questions about how much brain tissue is required   to have a normal life and do other parts of the  brain sort of make up for the part that's lost.   Another example is something called terminal  lucidity, in which people who have end stage   dementia, like Alzheimer's disease, have  not been able to recognize family or   communicate for a long time, suddenly become  totally lucid in the moments before death.   We have no medical explanation for how this  could be, but they recognize family, they carry   on coherent conversations, and then they die. >>Rick: And if they have severe Alzheimer's,   their brain is like Swiss cheese,  but they still have this lucidity.  >>Bruce: Yeah, and there's no way the  brain can regenerate itself at that point,   and yet, they regain their functions.  We have no explanation for that.  >>Rick: Is this because like Jill Bolte  Taylor, for example, whose certain portion   of her brain was destroyed by a stroke, and  she couldn't talk or read or do anything for   quite a while, but then she regained it all. And  I presume that's because the brain can undamaged   portions of the brain can take on functions  that the damaged portion used to perform,   and then you can get right back in gear again. >>Bruce: Right. The technical term for that is   neuroplasticity, and the brain has a remarkable  ability to adapt to losses like that and take on   functions of the part of the brain that was  lost. In something like end stage dementia,   there's virtually no brain left that hasn't  been affected to take over that effect. And it   happens quickly. Neuroplasticity occurs over  a long period of time. You gradually learn   how the brain can take over those other  functions. It can't happen in a quick manner.  >>Rick: So this is we're getting a little off of  the NDE experience. But this is very interesting.   I don't know all the names of the different  parts of the brain. But obviously, there's   the hippocampus and the cerebellum. And you could  probably name a couple dozen of them. This guy who   only had a little bit of brain tissue around the  edges of his skull and all fluid in the middle,   did he have some kind of like little hippocampus  and other parts of the brain kind of squished up   against the edge of the center of the skull? Or  did he not, and yet he was functional anyway?  >>Bruce: Yeah, it was mostly the cerebral cortex,  which is the huge lobes on the top of our head,   so called the new brain only a few 100,000 years  old, that are associated with consciousness with   our conscious thoughts, and our decision making  and our perceptions. And that's the part that   was squeezed up against the outside of the skull. >>Rick: So the other components of the brain were   still in there somewhere. >>Bruce: The brainstem,   which controls our respirations, and  our heartbeat, and so forth, our bodily   functions was still intact, as far as I know. >>Rick: It would have to have been, I imagine.   Okay, back to your chapter titles. Let's see,  'the life review,' we've covered. 'Getting the   whole story,' did we just discuss that one? >>Bruce: Not really. Most of my early research   was with people who came to me and said, let  me tell you about my near-death experience.   I started worrying about the fact that these  were selected people who chose to come talk   to me. Are their experiences typical of  those who don't choose to come to me?   So I started doing research with  cohorts of hospitalized patients,   for example, everyone who was admitted  to the hospital with a cardiac arrest   and looked at what their experiences were  like. Are they the same as those who come   to me voluntarily? And the short answer is that,  yes, they were the same. The longer answer is that   the people who chose to come to me chose to come  because they wanted to share the experience, and   they had the verbal ability to do so. When I talk  to a random sample of people in the hospital, many   of them did not have the verbal skills to describe  it in detail the way the volunteers did. But what   they did tell me was just like what the people  who came to me to share their experiences said.  >>Rick: They just weren't  so good at describing it.  >>Bruce: Right. Or, as willing to describe. >>Rick: This one, 'how do we know what's real?'  >>Bruce: Hmm. Well, I still struggle with  that question. But we know that NDEs are real,   partly because there's consistency from  person-to-person across culture to culture.   They describe things accurately that  they couldn't have known about otherwise.   We looked at, as I said before,  experiences that occurred before   Moody wrote his book telling us what NDEs are  supposed to be like, and what NDEs are now,   and we find that they're the same. We've looked  at people who I've studied back in the early 1980s   and reexamined them now to see if their stories  have changed over the decades, and they have not   at all. We've also looked at the quality of their  memories of the NDE and looked at whether they   are like memories of real events, or memories  of imagined events, like dreams or fantasies.   And three studies now done in the US, in  England - I'm sorry - in Belgium and in Italy,   have come up with the same answer that these  NDE memories are like memories of real events,   not like memories of fantasies. And the Italian  team actually measured brainwaves of people when   they were remembering the NDE and the length of  brainwaves of people remembering real events.  >>Rick: Good. Then you have two chapters  that kind of go together 'out of their   bodies' or 'out of their minds.' We've  kind of discussed the 'out of their   bodies' one. What's the 'out of their minds' one? >>Bruce: Well, that's looking at the connection   between near death experiences and mental illness.  Being a psychiatrist, that of course came to my   mind right away. So we looked at the incidence of  near-death experiences among people who present   as psychiatric patients. And what we found is  it is the same as among the general population,   neither more common nor less common. We also  looked at the incidence of mental illness among   people who have NDEs. And we found again, it's the  same as it is among people who don't have NDEs.   So there does not seem to be any  connection between having mental   illness and having a near death experience. >>Rick: We probably covered this one,   'A near death experience is real.'  Anything more we want to say about that?  >>Bruce: No, I think we covered that. >>Rick: OK, then 'the biology of dying.'  >>Bruce: I went into detail in that chapter on  the different hypotheses that have been explained   that have been proposed to try to explain NDEs,  like lack of oxygen. Drugs in the brain, etc.  >>Rick: People aren't gonna have  to buy the book after hearing   that. This is a teaser. [laughing] But  there's a lot of great detail in the book.   'The brain death.' Same and we covered it. We  probably covered 'the mind is not the brain.'   Anything more you want to say about that? >>Bruce: No, except that this is not a new idea.   Hippocrates wrote about this 2000 years ago.  He wrote that the brain is the messenger or   the interpreter of the mind. And it's been a  minority opinion in neuroscience for 2000 years.  >>Rick: Yeah, and pretty much  every spiritual tradition   will tell you, the mind is not the brain, the  brain is just the body's a vehicle and so on.   We've probably discussed 'does consciousness  continue,' that's kind of like basic stuff. We've   discussed heaven and hell. What about God? >>Bruce: Yeah, like heaven and hell,   many people report seeing this warm, loving  being of light that's like a deity to them.   And many will call it God but will qualify  that saying it's not the God I was taught   about. It's much bigger than that. But  many others will say, you can call it God,   you can call it Krishna, you can call it  Buddha it doesn't matter what you call it,   it's all there is. And many will just refuse to  put a label on it at all. So I don't know what's   out there. But I think there is some being like  that out there, some entity that that out there.  >>Rick: You're saying that? >>Bruce:   I'm saying that I'm convinced from people say that  there is something we encounter when we go there,   but I don't know what it is. I think people  put labels on it and try to describe it to me,   in more or less concrete terms so I'll know  what they're saying. But I don't take it as   a literal description. >>Rick: Right.   I just say, I wouldn't say that it's out  there. I would say it's all pervading. So   it's in there. It's out there, it's right here. >>Bruce: They say that, yes. Maybe they'll say   that that we are part of it. It's like a wave  in the ocean. You're separate from the ocean;   you're a distinct, separate entity, the  wave, but you're part of the ocean as well.  >>Rick: And it's right in front of our  noses. I mean, you look at a single cell   under a microscope and look at how complex it  is. Look at the intelligence orchestrating it,   and tell me that's happening  randomly or accidentally.   An all-pervading intelligence, orchestrating every  little iota. You want to comment on that, or shall   we move on? Nope? Good. 'This changes everything.' >>Bruce: Yeah, that that starts with the after   effects, how people's attitudes, beliefs and  values have been changed, and even their behavior.  >>Rick: Just reading these chapter titles serves  as a good little summary of our conversation.   Even if we've already discussed the thing, we're  summing it up here. And in some cases, maybe you   want to embellish a bit. 'What does it all mean?' >>Bruce: Yeah, that goes into how we interpret   these experiences; what it means about  our conception of mind and brain and about   life and death. And I think  we did cover most of this.  >>Rick: 'A' new life. >>Bruce: Yeah, this is   as people's behavior and lifestyles change  after the NDE. Careers and marriages, etc.  >>Rick: 'Hard Landings.' >>Bruce: Ah, we didn't talk   about this. This is people who have difficulty  readjusting to life again, after they come back,  >>Rick: Because this world sucks compared to  what they had experienced, that kind of thing.  >>Bruce: A lot of it is because that they often  are depressed or angry that they're back. Or they   may feel they don't fit here anymore, and they  don't fit in their family anymore, in their career   anymore. And it takes a lot of effort to try to  learn how to live in this life again. I started   out trying to do sort of therapy with these people  and realized, much better than my trying to talk   to them is having other NDE experiencers, talk to  them. They get much more help from peer support.  >>Rick: Are there peer groups  for near death experiencers?  >>Bruce: There are. The International  Association for Near Death Studies,   that's IANDS.org. It has about 50 groups all over  the country and some in foreign countries as well,   where people can share their experiences and  how they dealt with some of these problems.  >>Rick: I'm sure there's tons  of online things like that.  >>Bruce: There are. IANDS  itself has online things, yes.  >>Rick: A lot of times when I've  read about near death experiences,   the person is told they need to come back.  And it's like, oh, do I have to? [laughing]   And then they're convinced that they have  to and so on. But there is this reluctance   because what they're experiencing is so sweet. >>Bruce: Particularly, if they're coming back   to a body that's been destroyed by  whatever brought them close to death.  >>Rick: Have you seen things like that? Where I  mean, you just alluded to it where a person is   permanently handicapped in some way  by what happened to them. And yet,   they're told they have to come back  and live in that handicapped body.  >>Bruce: Right. The most extreme example  is a fellow who jumped off a diving board,   hit his head on the bottom, and was terribly brain  damaged, was confined to a wheelchair without use   of his hands for the rest of his life. And yet, he  came back after a blissful near-death experience,   full of love and compassion for people. >>Rick: Hmm.   And he didn't regret having come back? >>Bruce: No, he did not. He was furious   at the time, during the NDE about coming  back, but once he came back, he was happy   to be back and, and serve his purpose here. >>Rick: That's interesting. That kind of alludes   to what I was saying earlier, where a lot of times  it seems like one has an NDE in order to qualify   as someone who can talk about profound stuff. And  in his case, it was a graphic example of someone   who should have been more miserable, because of  his condition, and yet it gives the impression   to everyone that there's a deeper source  of happiness, and he has access to it now.  >>Bruce: He actually became a painter. Learning  to do that by holding the brush in his teeth.  >>Rick: The paint brush. That's interesting.  Okay, we're getting down to the bottom here.   'A new view of reality.' >>Bruce: This is partly looking at   my journey and how it's changed my perspective  on my career and how I see the world around me.  >>Rick: We talked about that a bit in the  beginning. And finally, 'life before death.'  >>Bruce: Right. Although many of us look towards  NDEs to tell us about what happens after death,   many experiencers say that what's more important  is what they tell us about life before death,   about how we live in this current life. And  I go through in this chapter, the different   lessons people come back with, to how to make  life more meaningful and more fulfilling.   And a lot of it basically comes back to what  all the religions have told us for centuries,   that we're not alone. We're part of something  greater than ourselves. And basically,   you live by the golden rule, and you will  find life much more fulfilling and meaningful.  >>Rick: Which is a good teaching. I mean,  even if there's nothing after death, if you   live in the way you just described, life is  better. And if there is something after death,   then chances are, that would be better. Having  lived the way described, yeah, you can't lose.   Well, we've covered quite a bit. I don't think  any other questions have come in. Do you have any   other questions, Irene? She doesn't. Thank you so  much for your time, this is a great conversation,   and I have really looked forward to it. We'll get  in touch with your colleague there, Jim Tucker,   I'd like to talk about the  whole reincarnation thing too.   And you know, some people, they listen to this  conversation, let's say they're into non-duality.   And they say, you guys are just describing  the details of an illusion, maya. What's the   relevance of all this stuff? Because ultimately,  it's not true. Nothing ever happened. And Mandukya   Upanishad kind of stuff. But I think it  is relevant, because you can't just deny   your relative experience. And the great  spiritual traditions don't advocate that you do.   They say even though that ultimately the world  is kind of not what you think it is, you have to   take the so-called illusory world seriously  enough to live ethically and productively,   and so on. And that's how you really get out  of any sort of delusion that you may be under.  >>Bruce: Right, even if this is all an illusion.  We're here now in this illusion. So we need to   learn how to how to make the most of it. >>Rick: And it certainly has consequences,   at least in the illusory world. There was a  story about Shankara. I've told this many times,   but I'll tell it one more time here. Shankara  was a great non-dual teacher, founder of Vedanta,   and some king invited him to come and meet him,  and he decided to test Shankara. Shankara was   walking down the road to meet the king and the  king unleashed a wild elephant. And the elephant   came charging towards Shankara. And he climbed up  a tree. And then the king said, aha, you phony.   I mean that was an illusion, if the world's an  illusion, why did you bother to climb the tree?   And Shankara said, well, the illusory elephant  chased the illusory me up the illusory tree.   So, Irene is groaning over here. I've told  that story for many years. She's groaning   because elephants aren't like that.   They might be if they're wild. Never mind.  We love elephants. All right. Well, thanks,   Bruce. It's been great talking to you. And thanks  to those who've been listening or watching.   And as you know, this is an ongoing series.  If you would like to be notified of future   interviews, which happen just about every week,  you can do several things. You can go to the   upcoming interviews page on bat gap, and there's  a little thing to the right of each entry, by   which you can set a calendar reminder and you'll  be notified by your Google Calendar, Outlook or   whatever you use when the interview is coming up.  You can also subscribe to the channel and hit that   little bell after you hit the subscribe button.  And then I think YouTube will pop up a notice when   a live interview starts. You can watch the live  ones. And you can also subscribe to our email   list, and we send out an email notifying people  when a new interview is posted. So thanks for   listening or watching, and thanks again, Dr.  Greyson. It's really been fun talking to you.  >>Bruce: Thank you, Rick. It has been fun. >>Rick: Take care. Bye.

Channel: BuddhaAtTheGasPump

Views: 33,611

Keywords: NDE, reincarnation, suicide, brain, consciousness, timelessness

Id: y6ZmjVrdZxA

Length: 107min 17sec (6437 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021