Dr. Bruce Greyson: Near-death Experiences-Jeff Olsen shares his personal NDE

Wow what an honour to to be here and as Tracy outlined I'm not associated to dops but I admire the research I admire the researchers I read my er people who can hold the very sacred space of fact and the integrity of what is and what can be duplicated in what can be recognized Tracy grew up in a family of mathematicians and scientists I grew up in a family of farmers came from a long line of dairy farmers my grandfather not only ran the farm he worked construction and he was in the Great Depression he was a prizefighter at night he'd go out and bare-knuckle fight to pick up extra money to make ends meet until my grandmother found out and then that came to a rapid halt my my father who was also in the military and a cowboy he wouldn't pull out his napkin and pen he would set us around the breakfast table and he would count up the livestock well there's this many cows and this many calves and you've got that many horses out there and he used to refer to it as heartbeats he would look at his sons and I come from a family of all boys had two brothers quite rough and tumble he'd say you've got a hundred and forty-two heartbeats today to take care of and I expect you do that and that's how he would put us to work with this responsibility integrity that's what I love about the researchers they get that they know what responsibility and integrity is and they will hold that line so it's an honor for me to be here in this company to simply share my experience Tracy mentioned I have written a couple of books and became a best-selling author almost by accident I had no intention of being a writer I had no intention of being a speaker that was never on my radar I was an artist I loved art I was a creative director an ad agency I loved concepts and ideas but what happened to me many year ago years ago shifted everything and it has been almost 19 years in I had the accident and I was speaking to some folks before we got started here and the accident will become the pinnacle of everything that shifted in my life my life will forever be before the accident and after the accident and I'm going to share a little bit about what happened but it's interesting in doing that the only reason I ever wrote a book is that I was approached by a publisher now I'll get a little personal I teach a little Sunday School class on a Sunday morning and I was even reluctant to share some of the things that had happened to me in that setting this was many years ago and I mentioned just a little bit about it and there was a woman in the back that came up and said hey gosh I want to introduce you to a guy at the University at one of our universities there in Utah and she said he studies these things these out-of-body are unordinary experiences and I'd love to have you talk to him about what happened to you and I was reluctant after the accident I didn't speak about it to anybody I shared it with my closest immediate family members my brothers I had shared a little bit with my mom I hadn't even spoken to my father about it and I had held it very tight for a couple of reasons number one I didn't want people to think I was crazy number two I didn't know how to share it how do you articulate something that is unspeakable but I did reluctantly agree to meet with a fellow who was part of ions and Bruce is one of the founders you you started that whole thing and I shared with him what happened and he said gosh you've got to come speak to our group you've got to come to speak we have a group that meets every week I said no no no no no I can't you know I don't I don't talk about these things publicly and what he got me as he said people are grieving people are hurting the world's aching for this come and share your story with this group and I did so and it was a group about this size and there was a fellow in the back that came up that was a publisher and he says you've got to write a book and I thought oh goodness what have I started now and he was adamant about this and I went home still reluctant by Monday morning that was a contract on my desk of here's what it looks like if you'll tell your story and write a book and this was ten years after the fact to be honest so it would had been some time now some of the details of the accident in the hospital stay I had to go back and do research and look at but the mystical things the spiritual things those out-of-body things were like they were yesterday that way it was very fresh and and and and constant on my mind but when I saw this contract I um I went back to the scene of the accident which I had avoided for years it's a little lonely place mile marker 80 outside of a little teeny town called Parowan about two hours north of Las Vegas and given my experience and where I had gone I I asked I asked the universe I asked God am I really supposed to share this story am I supposed to write this book and I got a profound answer now these are the unexplainable things it was an answer that came so strong I could quote what I was told and it wasn't a voice from heaven it wasn't anything I heard with my ears it was a voice that speaks to the heart and I was told share your experience and if you do people will heal now it's interesting the power in those words nobody said to tell a story that was share your experience and that simply all I do is share my experience I realize it's an experience unique unto me it was for me it may have been by me to bring me through a very difficult time and there's really no agenda in sharing and I want to be very clear about that there's no agenda I will share my experience and the conclusion is up to anybody but the experience happened with an automobile accident and I was happily married madly in love to a beautiful woman who was a schoolteacher we had two sons beautiful boys healthy and we had taken a little road trip for Easter vacation we were heading back from that now there was reports of cross winds that were blowing a hundred miles an hour there was reports of a red pickup truck that was driving erratically on the interstate I had put the cruise control on 75 and was headed back towards Salt Lake City from a little town called st. George down in the Red Rock district of southern Utah and the most difficult part about this story is I believe I may have dozed off at the will for just a moment and when I say that those words are important too there's things I believe and I realize that's just a belief there's things I hope for and I also realize that's just hope but then there's things I know based in fact I believe I may have dozed off at the will just briefly swerved and over corrected the car and lost control it began to roll not off the road but down the road at 75 miles an hour I blacked out for most of that but when the car came to a stop I was completely conscious super conscious I mean it was probably the worst situation of mayhem the first thing I heard was my seven-year-old son crying in the backseat of the car and as a father I thought well I've got to get to him I have got to get to my son that's when I realized I could not move I was pinned either to the floorboard of the seat I was struggling to breathe I couldn't see very well and I did feel like I was going to pass out and what had actually happened is that both of my legs had been crushed and shattered my left leg was eventually amputated above the knee my right leg was a mess and still is pinned together my back had been broken in a couple of places but ironically the spinal column not damaged my rib cage had been crushed my lungs were collapsing my right arm had almost been torn off there was no muscle through the rotator cuff or anything still attaching it and then the seat belt had cut through my midsection and ruptured my intestines I was a mess I was unaware of that all I knew is I had a little boy crying in that back seat and I wanted to get to him and that's when things shifted in that absolute mayhem I realized no one else was crying it was in that moment that I knew that my beloved wife and my youngest son were were deceased and it was more than recognizing it was feeling it there was a feeling that oh my goodness they're gone now that's the worst hell a man could ever be in you know I'm pinned I can't breathe I've got a child crying I know half the family's gone and I was driving the car in that horror and mayhem suddenly there was calmness and I thought have I lost consciousness what has happened here I this calmness and it didn't feel like everything going black like you see in the cartoon it was as if everything became light it felt as if I was surrounded by light it was tangible and as it's as if this light was alive like it was comforting me and I began to rise above the scene of this accident now there was beautiful experiences there as I rose above it and realized I was okay suddenly my wife who I knew was deceased at the scene was there with me and that was confusing except it felt so good to say wow we're okay except she was saying you've got to go back you've got to go back you can't no no no you've got to go back now that was a moment of choice and it was a difficult choice here I was looking at the woman I loved more than life yet I knew I had a little boy crying in the backseat of that car and there was a conscious choice here's where I learned the power of our thoughts thoughts become things in my experience and as soon as I made the conscious thought that i'm going back i found myself wandering around a hospital and that was interesting too as I wandered I encountered all the doctors nurses the patient's the families the people around them and there was a new knowing about everyone I looked at I knew them I knew them perfectly I knew their love their hate their joy their peace their decisions their motivations It was as if I was connected to them there was a oneness I was them I had grown up in a Christian home and read biblical verse in fact as I was having this experience the famous verse it said in his li in as much as you've done it unto the least of these you've done it unto me which I used to think was a nice verse about being kind to people well that was experiencing something they different they were me they were me and I thought well boy the wise teacher and master that said that may have known this that perhaps he saw himself no better as the person in prison or the naked beggar in the street this connection was unbelievable now this has nothing to do with religion that was my upbringing and I realized that our consciousness is affected by our upbringing but I was having this profound connection to everyone I saw until I came to a bed where a man was laying and I felt nothing from that and in the waves of all this unconditional love I was experiencing and connection I found that odd so I stepped closer and looked to realize that was me or what was my body I was me I was here having this profound experience but there was the skin suit that I had gone through my life into that point well again thoughts are powerful and I had the thought to get back in the body and as soon as I had the conscious thought I was back in but then back to all the pain the grief regret the guilt the trauma I was ventilated I couldn't speak they had a you know a respirator down doing the work for my lungs my legs were obviously immobile my right arm was immobile they eventually tied down my left arm because I kept grabbing at all the medical equipment but I learned the meaning of be still I had nowhere to go there's nothing I could do and consciousness became a whole new thing I would experience my consciousness being in the body out of the body in this room in that room It was as if I had one foot in this room and one foot in another realm for many months I was in ICU for three months I was in the hospital for almost six months they did 18 surgeries in total putting me back together I had profound experiences even in one holding my deceased son my little toddler son that passed away in the accident in those other realms holding him and kissing him and saying goodbye when I felt as if the whole universe embraced me and in that moment everything made sense even though it was mayhem on this room I says if Heaven was there was as if I was in heaven holding my little boy and getting to say goodbye I hesitate to share that because I know how many people lose loved ones and don't get to say goodbye but I eventually healed I got well I was able to come home I was in a wheelchair you know my left leg was lopped off my right leg was in a brace my right arm was bound up but I could drive an electric wheelchair with my left hand and my surviving son the little guy that was crying the backseat of the car he'd been taken to the home of my younger brother and his wife and looked after he had visited me in the hospital but I worried about him you know the rough-and-tumble father that could run up the stairs and tickle him and toss him in the air now all of the sudden it was going to be different and my brothers who were very supportive they brought home they were lifting me out of the car to put me in the wheelchair I couldn't transfer with one arm and still two legs that weren't working one was gone but I saw my son looking out the window of the house as they were lifting me out of the car and putting me in the chair and he came running out as I situated myself and headed toward the ramp my brothers had put together and he ran toward me that he ran right past me and I thought well I knew this was going to be hard I knew this would be rough on him and I made my way toward the front door and turned to the chair navigating up the ramp and that's when I looked to see where he'd went and I noticed my little son had run across the street and was knocking on all the neighbor's doors he was saying come out come out my dad has made it home come see my dad in all my shame and grief and guilt here he was championing my return and he eventually made his way to me and he threw himself on my lap which just about killed me cuz I still had all the sutures and everything from the from the abdominal reconstruction and I wept and he hugged me and I I said are you going to be okay with this I mean I'm gonna be like this for a while I'll get better they're going to make me a really cool robot leg and they'll teach me how to walk again and but for now it's going to look like this and he he said dad if you were nothing but a puddle of blood I would still love you and I held him and I I realized an interesting shift in consciousness everything I had experienced in that other realm holding my deceased son and saying goodbye and arms that felt so divine and all that perfect love suddenly it was right there in a wheelchair holding my living son and I realized heaven was right here perhaps there was nowhere to go or anything to be but to open myself up to a higher consciousness of recognizing that perhaps we're more than human and that by being open to a higher consciousness perhaps love can flow in a way that shifts everything now I didn't heal immediately I had years of grief bereavement homesickness I kept looking for all the love I had felt up there and I expected people like my son to just love me enough to make it okay just you know be there I learned to walk I learned to go back to work I actually fell in love again remarried beautiful woman who is an earth angel really I mean they come and put the pieces all back together again somehow we adopted two boys and things appeared to be rolling along normally but there was still that big empty hole in me saying what happened how do I make sense of all that took place no it sustained me my out-of-body or you know near-death experiences and I've realized I may have experienced many of that I mean I had the near-death experience I had the shared death experience in saying goodbye to my deceased son and my deceased wife I certainly had after death communication through the process because I would feel them I would feel them I would I would get messages again unspoken but I knew that they were there in fact when I fell in love again that was interesting because I found myself from on my wife who had pasts graves sobbing my eyes out saying I don't know what to do I'm having feelings for another woman what am I going to do where are you how could you leave me all of that and I failed her as if she was right there now I'm sure you could say well you made that up it was your imagination but for me it was very real my experience was she said of course you are and I want you to I can't heal and move on until you do so live your life be happy and choose joy these things that happened I would write them down I would jot them and journal them down but I would never forget them they were beyond the commonplace and that brings me to you know today and what an honor it is to be here where there's research on these things I was a farm boy I didn't know what that all meant I didn't know how to make sense of it I didn't even know how to lie with my belief system because it didn't some of the things I believe were completely turned upside down I had been taught that there was a God and that God would judge me and I life was a test and you know and I was probably in trouble based on how things were going what I experienced was that there was nothing but pure unconditional love what I experienced is it we're all different we all come from different backgrounds different cultures different beliefs different races but they were connected I also experienced that life as a gift there's no test about it it's a gift every moment is sacred and we get to choose how to experience that moment what to do and how to be in that moment so beliefs kind of shifted my hope shifted to an absolute trust just trusting that everything's in perfect order no matter what it looks like here and there's still questions I know what I experienced but there are still questions how does it work how does that all happen you know how do we bring it together how do we make sense of it how do we talk about it in a way that anybody could understand it but that's what we're here for today and that's what I'm so thrilled and honored to be here for if we have consciousness that is not our brain if we are not necessarily our bodies and if there's something more the importance of the research is to embrace that as humankind and embrace the parts of it that's aren't necessarily human to raise the consciousness of the planet to take a stronger stand for love for connection for oneness for Brotherhood for sisterhood for Humanity to shift the world that's what I see the important of the research it's to change the world it's not just about perceptions it's about creating perceptions into reality where there's more peace there's more love there's more unity and I'm thrilled I'm honored to be with you I'm honored to hear what's going to go on today I'm giddy and I'm going to sit down quickly so that we can get to it but thank you for your time and thank you for coming and supporting god bless thank you thank you Jeff for sharing that beautiful powerful intense story it's no doubt life-changing for you and all those people in your life there there are times when I meet someone on this earth and I think I wish I could give them a near-death experience not wishing them debt I've got to take that the right way but to get that kind of perspective on the oneness I so it would be a beautiful thing but but nobody wants to have to suffer like Jeff did to get that well so Jeff mentioned the word shift we're going to shift from one person's amazing near-death experience to hearing from the man who's probably heard more stories like Jeff's than anyone on this planet that is not scientifically verifiable but it's a pretty good guess dr. Bruce Grayson the world expert on near-death experiences come on up here Bruce Thank You Pam as Pat mentioned one of the phenomena that we have been studying at the Division of perceptual studies at UVA at University of Virginia for the past 50 years is near-death experiences or NDEs which are similar to the one that you've just heard from Jeff the concept of near-death experiences has become quite well-known in in our culture but not all experiences are like Jeff's and they're not all the same there's a core that is similar in all and E's but each one is different each individual is different to make it even harder to study near-death experiences when you ask an experience what happened to them they often start by saying well it can't be put into words there are no words for this and we researchers say great tell me all about it so we know that by making them put into words we're distorting the situation and we're not studying the experience we're studying what they tell us about the experience which is not the same thing so let me start by giving you a general guideline of how we manage to understand these NDEs in studying hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these we've come up with four different groups of features in near-death experiences I should also say first that what an experience what Newton Springs is not a near-death experience is not just a close brush with death many people when they come close to death as Jeff did report profound experiences in which they seemed to leave their physical bodies and move beyond the boundaries of time and space Indies have been reported by many diverse ancient cultures they appear in the writings of Plato in the Bible in the writings of Tibet India Egypt China Japan in the folklore of the South Pacific and of Native Americans the interpretation of the experience may vary from one culture to another but the basic experience is the same over the centuries and around the globe these transcendental or mystical experiences that occurred near death were written about in the medical literature from the 19th century on they were described as a discrete syndrome in 1892 by Albert Heim a Swiss style geologists who had one when he fell in the Alps in the 1890s there was a flurry of literature about them in French philosophy journals in which the term near-death experience was first coined the term near-death experience in English was popularized by Raymond Moody who wrote a book in 1975 called life after life which you may have read and before that book virtually no one in the Western Hemisphere had heard of a near-death experience when Willy described about 50 such cases and outlined what he thought were the common features and that was essentially the model we have there's been a lot of controversy since then about the interpretation of NDEs which is partly due to the confusion over the criteria for death and in fact it's often very hard to tell when someone is close to death or how close to death they are however studies at the University of Virginia in the United Kingdom and in Holland have shown that among people who have had documented wealth rushes with their for example with a cardiac arrest between 10 and 20 percent will report near-death experiences that doesn't mean 10 to 20 percent have them that means 10 to 20 percent have them and can remember them and can put them into words and choose to do so so we have categorized the phenomena of near-death experiences into four components changes in thinking in thought processes changes in emotions or feeling the so-called paranormal features and the otherworldly features the first group the changes in thinking process include your sense of time being grossly distorted or missing entirely your thoughts going faster than ever before and often clearer than ever before a sense of life review or panoramic memory where your whole life may come back to you in a flash in a sense of sudden understanding or revelation let me give you a brief example a 44 year old man standing on a ladder leaning against his house suddenly fell backward he described this changes in his thinking as follows and snared in the backward sliding ladder the actual fall slowed way down almost like a series of cameras still pictures being taken a click click sort of visual progression during the next few seconds or fractions thereof I was unaware of any bodily sensations but rather saw my life flashed before me in a series of typical scenes and this slowing up dramatically increased my thinking speed so that I was able to size up how I could maneuver the ladder and not end up on the flagstones from 2 stories up not only did the fall slow way down but my thinking became very very clear in split seconds I remember wanting to head for the shrubs which though they might pierce my skin would break my fall so those are the changes in thinking they are typical of a near-death experience there are also changes in feeling or emotion which included an overwhelming sense of peace or well-being feelings of joy a sense of cosmic unity or oneness with everything and to encounter with the bright light which often is characterized by this unconditional love that Jeff mentioned a 74 year old woman described the emotional changes in her NDE during a heart attack in this way she said I seemed to be floating in a more or less confined space but there were no walls as we know them I was moving in and out of a building soft dark purple velvety substance it was beautiful sensual voluptuous sort of like falling into a great mass of soft satin and down feathers I was completely surrounded by this substance and I floated up and down restfully each time I got near the bottom I could see a great brightness at the end of this space the brightness was warm soft and so welcoming I didn't seem to have a body or a mind I didn't seem to be a person or even a thing I was peaceful happy contented I didn't seem to care about anything anymore it was not a feeling you can put into words no mind no body no boundaries only contentment sort of like an amoeba that had gotten into the ocean by mistake so the typical changes in feeling in addition there are what seemed to be paranormal features during the NDE your normal physical senses of vision hearing smell touch are much more vivid and much more acute than the everywhere before you may see colors that you've never seen on earth hear sounds that you've never heard they have frank extrasensory perception visions of the future and a sense of leaving the physical body a 26 year old woman who had a pulmonary embolism described her paranormal features as follows I drifted out of the body and hovered near the ceiling I viewed the activity in the room from his vantage point it confused me that the doctors and nurses in the room were so concerned about the body they had lifted on the bed I tried to tell them I was not in the body obviously they didn't hear me one of the most outstanding things about this experience is that my hearing became extremely acute I heard many things about the gravity of my situation some of them coming from the nurse's station many yards away I watched the hospital personnel at work I listened to their comments I began to feel sorry for them because they were working so hard when I felt so happy I was feeling no pain where I was so those are the paranormal features in addition there are what seemed to be otherworldly features of the NDE finding yourself in some type of mystical or unearthly realm of existence encountering some mystical being or presence seeing deceased spirits or religious spirits and finally coming to a border or point of no return beyond which you can't return to life a 26 year old woman who had an emergency cesarean section reported her otherworldly features in this way she said I heard my doctor say I've lost her she's gone then an angel was carrying me through her huge great auditorium the two large doors of the auditorium opened and we went out and up through space I saw a beautiful white city with a wall around it and a set of gates facing me as we got closer I heard excited voices they were questioning why the angel was bringing me now she was unperturbed by the excitement and continued to approach the gates I heard one of them say she knows it is not her time why is she bringing her here now and another one said to the angel it's not her time she can't come in all of a sudden I found myself back on the operating table my doctor said I'm so glad you're back I was crying as if my heart would break talking and I didn't want to come back I begged him to let me go again it was so beautiful it was the saddest time of my life and yet it was the most beautiful I've described these four four snippets of NDEs to illustrate the changes in thinking changes in feeling the paranormal and the otherworldly features but in fact most NDEs have some of all of these features in them and not all andis have one or two of these they're all different one of the problems we have in studying near-death experiences is that all research is retrospective that as we start with someone now today who songs about an experience they had in the past so we have to reconstruct what happened now in deers will typically say as mayor Jeff say is like it happened yesterday the vividness has not gone away at all but we know that our memories are faulty and we distort things over time so how do we know that the memories of NDEs are accurate some skeptics claim that these are all embellishments that the longer time passes after the nd the more elaborate it gets and particularly the more blissful it gets with retelling over time because we've been studying these nd s for five decades now we're able to address this question starting in 2002 I began tracking down people who might interviewed about and des in the early 1980s and asking them to again describe to me their and E's just as they had 20 years earlier and we found something very interesting these are scores the green scores are what people told me in the 1980s and the red bars are what they told me in the 2000s and the first column there there's there the first column is the total depth of the NDE on a scale that we use and as you can see it's virtually the same 20 years later certainly not embellished it may be slightly less but statistically the same the next bars are for changes in thinking changes in feeling paranormal phenomena and the transcendental aspects and in each case the from the reports are the same after 20 years so what this means is that NDE memories are reliable over time and therefore retrospective research is reliable another important question about these retrospective research studies is that all our experiences are influenced by our cultural beliefs and how do we know whether these nd reports are just determined by what you expect is going to happen to you we know that most of our experiences are influenced by culture for example many people in the West will talk about going with you were tunnel people in third world countries where there aren't a lot of tunnels don't talk about that but they will say went into a cave or into a well one near-death experience I interviewed who was a truck driver talked about being sucked into a tailpipe so the phenomenon is the same of going through a long dark and closed space to get to this other realm but you describe whatever cultural metaphor is available to you so where NDE is just reporting what they expect to have happened the dominant model in the West for the past 40 years has been Raymond Moody's but at UVA University of Virginia we've been collecting these reports from the early 1960s many years before Moody wrote his book telling us what we're supposed to have happen in the NDE we compared 24 of the best cases we had from before in 1975 when moody wrote his book with 24 cases from the last decade matched in terms of age race gender religion littie how they came close to death and how close to death they came and what we found was again essentially no difference the green bars are the reports we collected before moody wrote his book and the red bars are accounts we collected in the last decade and you can see without a body experiences feelings of peace meeting other entities being of light hearing music or noise left review all statistically the same before Moody wrote his book telling us what we're supposed to experience and after moody also wrote about the after-effects so we asked about those as well and again the green bar is before moody wrote his book and the red bars after every experience are in both samples 100% of them reported dramatic attitude changes they also reported all the bars aren't lingual there but they also reported less fear of death having difficulty telling other people increased belief in survival and people corroborating what they experienced out of body if they say I saw this happen people said yes that really happened with equal frequency after moody wrote his book and before moody wrote his book so the NDE reports are not influenced by the widespread public knowledge of Moody's model although the interpretation of NDEs may be influenced by your culture what metaphors you use to describe it the basic experience is not determined by your culture so how do we explain these experiences no variables that we've studied yet are able to predict whether you're going to have an NDE or what kind you're going to have we've looked at age gender race religion religion religious 'ti history of mental illness and none of those things are associated with NDEs or specific type of NDE there's been a lot of speculation about physiological causes that may be related to the NDE lack of oxygen and orphans temporal lobe seizures the bottom line with all these explanations though is that you can't reconcile the enhanced mental functioning the heightened perceptions the height the faster thinking the clearer thinking the detailed memories for the fact that the brain is not functioning so why should we care about these NDEs one reason is that they usually lead to a consistent pattern of changes in attitudes beliefs and values and we've studied these and confirmed them with long-term studies of NT years over decades and also by interviews with their significant others so it's not just the end-of-year tongue as that is their husbands and their wives and their children telling us as well and we find that there are a lot of attitudes that are consistently increased after a near-death experiences we see dramatic increases in spirituality in compassion and concern for other people in appreciation for life in a sense of meaning or purpose in life in confidence and flexibility in your being able to cope with stressors in belief in survival after death now some of these things will happen to anybody who comes close to death for example an appreciation of life usually enhanced no matter who they are if they've come close to death but others such as the constant confidence in being able to cope and belief in post-mortem survival are unique two ND ears people who come close to death but don't have n des don't have these things in addition to these attitudes that are increased there are attitudes that are decreased consistently after an NDE and years consistently report decreased or totally absent fear of death they report decreased interest in material possessions and physical things decreased interest in personal status power prestige Fame and decreased interest in competition more interest in collaboration and altruistic activities than a competitive activities sometimes these changes are so marked that the experience are seen to be different people than they were before the end ee a second reason that we should be interested in n des is for what they tell us about the possibility of survival after death as Pat mentioned the division of perceptual studies was founded in part to explore the possibility that something about us survives bodily death and near-death experiences do provide some evidence bearing on that is death the end of existence or is death just a change of state so what about the near-death experience bears on the question of whether we survive death first there was the enhanced mental functioning thinking faster and clearer than ever before when your brain is not functioning and one example of this is Pam Reynolds who had a huge aneurysm at the base of her brain that couldn't be operated on because to get to that would destroy the would burst it and she would bleed to death so they did an experimental procedure with her experimental then now it's more commonly used where they cooled her body down to 60 degrees and drained all the blood out of her body so he can go in and cut the aneurysm without risking her bleeding to death so she without any blood going to her brain no blood in her body at all for about an hour it took longer than they thought to do this procedure for various reasons so they have to cool their body and replace the blood faster than than they wanted to and as a result her heart stopped twice as they were trying to bring her back her brain was being monitored for the whole procedure and there was no electrical activity in her brain so we know she was having no brain function and she reported a very detailed near-death experience reporting accurately things going on in the surgery room some things that she found interesting sometimes things she found offensive in the room and she reported meeting deceased loved ones who told her she had to go back so this is something that you can't explain in a materialistic model that the mind is what the brain does you have no brain function and you have enhanced mind function secondly you have accurate perceptions from an out-of-body perspective if you're in your body how can you see things accurately from outside one of my favorite examples is Al Sullivan from Hartford Connecticut the truck driver had a quadruple bypass surgery in the surgery he left his body and look down and as he described it his surgeon was flapping his arms as if he's trying to fly that's not something you'd think of a surgeon doing during surgery not something they show you in television shows about surgery so I'll ask the surgeon when he recovered about that and the surgeon got very angry and said who told you about that I'll say well I was watching you the surgeon got very defensive and said well I must must have done something right because you're here aren't you I then I interviewed the surgeon myself because I in my medical career I'd never seen a surgeon do anything like that and he explained that he would let his interns start the procedure and then he would scrub in get his hands sterile put on the sterile gloves and then going to supervise them and he didn't want to risk touching anything that was not in the sterile field with his sterile gloves so put them where he knew they wouldn't get into trouble and then he would supervise you know pull over there more Lavar kind of you know more so we have lots of examples of these accurate out-of-body perceptions in fact John Holdren at the University of North Texas looked up I think she found 107 cases published cases of out-of-body perceptions that were potentially corroborated and more than 90% were entirely accurate no mistakes at all including the 90% of those that were corroborated by someone else other than the experiencer so we definitely have accurate perceptions when you're not in the body third we have information that was given to people during a near-death experience from deceased loved ones that they see often when near-death experience will say I saw my grandmother the skeptics say I was just wishful thinking of course you would but sometimes they tell us information we couldn't have gotten in any other way for example there are several cases of the deceased people telling these death experiencer where something was hidden an important document an important treasure there's a great case from plenty the elder in something like 30 BC a describing case like this where someone told his brother who is having a near-death experience where the money was hidden in some cases the deceased person that the near-death experiencer sees is someone who was not known to be dead and these are cases that cannot be dismissed easily as wishful thinking in one a typical case from our files an elderly woman was surrounded on her deathbed by her grandchildren and she seemed to be slipping away but then she suddenly opened her eyes and became very alert and said excitedly Oh will are you here and then she died there was no one named will in the room and the family is trying to figure out who was she talking about the only will they could think of was their great-uncle her brother who lived in England not long after her death they received word that he had died two days earlier Elizabeth kubler-ross told the story about a young girl who was an only child who almost died during heart surgery and she said that in her near-death experiences she met someone who identified himself as her brother when she told her father about this he was so moved that he confessed her that she had in fact had a son who died before she was born and she was never told about him we've identified dozens of cases of these type again dating back to ancient Greece that just can't be explained in terms of a materialistic model the bottom line is that near-death experiences suggest that mind and brain are not the same thing that mine seems to function quite well when the brain is not in fact maybe better when the brain is not functioning and that we need to question some of our basic assumptions about not only mind and brain but the universe and our role in it well it's about time for our break now so we will stick around for questions after the break but thank you you

Channel: UVA Division of Perceptual Studies

Views: 286,665

Rating: 4.7354498 out of 5

Keywords: Near death experiences, Jeff Olsen, Dr. Bruce Greyson, NDE Research, UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, UVA DOPS, DOPS

Id: kRmTYHcBXsk

Length: 51min 36sec (3096 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2016