Personal Development

Learnings from 1,000+ Near-Death Experiences — Dr. Bruce Greyson, University of Virginia (#774)

25 October 2024
Bourahima


Illustration via 99designs

“I was taught in college and medical school that the mind is what the brain does, and all our thoughts and feelings and perceptions are all created by the brain. And I cannot believe that anymore. I’ve seen people whose brains were either offline or severely impaired telling me they had the most elaborate experience they’ve ever had. So I’m inclined to think that the mind is something else and the brain filters it.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

Bruce Greyson, M.D. (brucegreyson.com), is the Chester F. Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences and Director Emeritus of the Division of Perceptual Studies at The University of Virginia. He is also a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and one of the founders of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.

Dr. Greyson’s research for the past half century has focused on the aftereffects and implications of near-death experiences and has resulted in more than 100 presentations to national and international scientific conferences, more than 150 publications in academic medical and psychological journals, 50 book chapters, and numerous research grants.

He is a co-author of Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century; co-editor of The Near-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Perspectives and of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation; and author of After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond.

Please enjoy!

This episode is brought to you by Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic broad spectrum 24-strain probiotic + prebiotic, Helix Sleep premium mattresses, and Wealthfront high-yield cash account.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube here.

Listen onApple Podcasts
Listen onSpotify
Listen onOvercast

#774: Learnings from 1,000+ Near-Death Experiences — Dr. Bruce Greyson, University of Virginia

This episode is brought to you by Seed’s DS-01 Daily Synbiotic!  Seed’s DS-01 was recommended to me months ago by a PhD microbiologist, so I started using it well before their team ever reached out to me. Since then, it’s become a daily staple and one of the few supplements I travel with.I’ve always been highly skeptical of most probiotics due to the lack of science and the fact that many do not survive digestion. But after incorporating two capsules of Seed’s DS-01 into my morning routine, I have noticed improved digestion, skin tone, and overall health.  Why is it so effective? For one, it’s a 2-in-1 probiotic and prebiotic formulated with 24 clinically and scientifically studied strains that have systemic benefits in and beyond the gut. And now, you can get 25% off your first month of DS-01 with code 25TIM.

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2024 by Forbes, Fortune, and Wired magazines and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders at HelixSleep.com/Tim.

This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront is a financial services platform that offers services to help you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.5% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Brokerage Cash Account through its network of partner banks. That’s nearly ten times more interest than a savings account at a bank, according to FDIC.gov as of 07/15/2024. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.5% APY interest on your short term cash until you’re ready to invest. And when new clients open an account today, they can get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim to get started.

Tim Ferriss receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of Wealthfront Brokerage. See full disclosures here.

Want to hear another episode that ponders the nature of consciousness? Have a listen to my conversation with Professor Donald Hoffman here, in which we discuss the science of consciousness, how perception may influence the physical world, the holographic model of the universe, panpsychism (and influential panpsychists), cosmological polytope, the use of hallucinogenic drugs to tap into deeper reality and interact with conscious agents, QBism, the probability of zero that humans evolved to see reality in full, and much more wild stuff.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with Dr. Bruce Greyson:

Website

SHOW NOTES

  • [06:00] Bruce’s scientific upbringing and his attraction to psychiatry.
  • [09:03] Bruce’s first encounter with a near-death experience (NDE) that changed everything.
  • [15:37] Development of the NDE scale and its characteristics.
  • [19:59] Challenges in studying NDEs and distinguishing genuine experiences.
  • [21:31] Examples of NDEs and out-of-body experiences verified by third parties.
  • [29:16] Attempts to explain NDEs through biological mechanisms.
  • [33:58] Does the manner of someone’s misadventure have a bearing on their NDE?
  • [36:54] Prevalence and consistency of NDEs across cultures and time.
  • [40:42] How new tools may deliver scientifically viable NDE evidence.
  • [51:23] What’s happening when people report seeing dead loved ones during NDEs?
  • [52:49] What can research tell us about the practical applications of NDEs?
  • [52:49] Are there reliable ways to simulate an NDE-like state?
  • [59:35] What’s really happening during an out-of-body experience?
  • [01:04:43] Mind vs. brain.
  • [01:09:42] Bruce’s career challenges and motivations for studying NDEs when few would.
  • [01:12:36] Can studying twins find a genetic component to NDE susceptibility?
  • [01:16:24] The difficulties of replicating out-of-body experiences in controlled settings.
  • [01:20:58] The mysteries of terminal lucidity phenomenon.
  • [01:23:01] The concept of time in NDEs.
  • [01:25:01] Auditory hallucinations after NDEs.
  • [01:26:33] Researchers who demonstrate open-mindedness and rigorous skepticism in NDE studies.
  • [01:28:07] The irreducible mind concept.
  • [01:29:08] Want to read Bruce’s books? Start with After.
  • [01:29:49] Common characteristics and after-effects of NDEs.
  • [01:30:37] Parting thoughts.

MORE DR. BRUCE GREYSON QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“If you study things that we pretty much understand already, you can make little inroads here and there about fine points. If you really want to make some impact, you need to study things we don’t understand at all.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“I started out as a materialist skeptic. After 50 years, I’m still skeptical, but I’m no longer a materialist. I think that’s a dead end when it comes to explaining near-death experiences and other phenomena like this.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“I’m not a philosopher. I’m an empiricist. And when people say to me, as many do, ‘If you have this non-physical mind, how does it interact with a physical brain?’ And I have no idea. On the other hand, if you take a materialistic perspective and say, ‘How does the brain, the chemical and electrical changes in the brain, create an abstract thought?’ We have no idea about that either.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“Whether you’re an empiricist, a materialist, or not, we can’t explain how thoughts arise and how they get processed to us. What we do know is that all our experiences are filtered to us through the brain.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“I was taught in college and medical school that the mind is what the brain does, and all our thoughts and feelings and perceptions are all created by the brain. And I cannot believe that anymore. I’ve seen people whose brains were either offline or severely impaired telling me they had the most elaborate experience they’ve ever had. So I’m inclined to think that the mind is something else and the brain filters it.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“About five percent of the general population — or one to every 20 people — has had a near-death experience. Secondly, they are not associated in any way with mental illness. People who are perfectly normal have these NDEs in abnormal situations that can happen to anybody.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“The more I learned about [NDEs], the harder they seem to understand. So I’ve gotten more comfortable with not knowing all the answers.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“Right now, people are listening to us and there’s electrical activity in parts of their brain that process hearing. It always happens when they’re hearing us, this part of the brain always lights up. That doesn’t mean that electrical activity is causing our voices, it’s just a reflection of it. So when you find these physiological concomitants of a near-death experience, you’re finding perhaps the mechanism for it, but not the cause of it.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“Most people who study near-death experiences, whether they’re spiritualists or materialists or neuropsychologist or philosophers, they agree on the phenomena — they don’t agree on the interpretation of it, of what’s causing it and what its ultimate meaning is.”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

“Many near-death experiences have tried drugs afterwards to try to replicate the experience, and they universally tell me it is not the same thing. One person told me, ‘When I was on psilocybin, I saw Heaven. When I was in my near-death experience, I was in Heaven.’”
— Dr. Bruce Greyson

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it’s been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.