We often think the mind is a creation of the brain, or that the mind and the brain are one and the same. But when the brain is offline for a number of reasons, like illness or injury, the mind can sometimes still be very active.

Today on The Broken Brain Podcast, Dhru talks to Dr. Bruce Greyson about this phenomenon in the context of near-death experiences or NDEs. We have to remember that even just 20 years ago new scientific ideas were emerging that people thought were crazy. People are always skeptical of things they haven’t been taught. Now, the study of near-death experiences is pushing the boundaries of modern research.

Dr. Greyson is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the UVA School of Medicine. His award-winning research led him to become a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and to be invited by the Dalai Lama to participate in a dialogue between Western scientists and Buddhist monks in India.

Dr. Greyson’s interest in near-death experiences began just a few months after graduating from medical school, when he treated an unconscious patient in the emergency room who stunned him the next morning with an account of leaving her body. That event challenged his beliefs about the mind and the brain, and ultimately led him on a journey to study near-death experiences scientifically, leading to more than a hundred publications in medical journals.

In this episode, Dr. Greyson shares some of the most dramatic first-person accounts of near-death experiences from his book After. Dhru and Dr. Greyson discuss how NDEs reveal a lot about dying and what might come after, but they also reveal just as much about life and living, about the value of compassion and our interconnectedness with one another, and about what makes a life meaningful and fulfilling. They also talk about how NDEs can help to transform the fear of dying that pervades our culture—into a healthy view of it as one more milestone in the course of our lives.

In this episode, we dive into:

- Dr. Greyson’s first experience with a patient who had a near-death experience (4:32)

- A near-death experience story from Dr. Greyson’s book (15:51)

- What near-death experiences tell us about the mind-body connection (19:37)

- The parallels between psychedelic experiences and near-death experiences (29:06)

- The misconceptions around near-death experiences (34:58)

- How near-death experiences reduce the fear of death (39:08)

- How to get the benefits of a near-death experience without actually having one (41:54)

- The history of near-death experiences (46:51)

- Reincarnation beliefs among near-death experiencers (49:22)

- How near-death experiences change people’s lives (1:01:45)