Episode 262: The Mind Beyond the Brain: Scientific Proof of NDEs!

Join Sandra as she delves into five decades of research from NDE pioneer Dr. Bruce Greyson.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you're here. Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Ghost Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for
podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural, and the unexplained ends here.
They invite you to enjoy all our shows we have
on this network, and right now, let's start with Chase
of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast, am employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do

(00:42):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi.
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each opp episode will discuss the reasons we now

(01:02):
know that our loved ones have survived physical death and
so will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife Today,
we have an incredible opportunity to take a deep dive
into one of the most powerful forms of evidence for
survival of consciousness. The near death experience. We're going to
explore the history, the science, and the profound spiritual implications

(01:27):
of NDS with a true pioneer, a man who was
there at the very beginning of this field of study,
doctor Bruce Grayson. But first, a quick story from a listener.
Tracy logged in a few minutes early to our Sunday
gathering to ask a question. She wanted to know my
thoughts whether this could be a normal behavior of a bird,

(01:50):
or if it could be a sign from her son.
She said her window was open and a bird flew
in and landed and stayed on her Sondeun's photograph. Then
she said, for approximately the last six weeks, the bird
has come to her window every day and just stays
and looks in. I know what my gut instinct is

(02:13):
telling me, But what is your gut instinct telling you.
I want to also share a wonderful piece of afterlife.
News entertainer Howie Mandell was recently interviewed by Graham Benzinger,
where he explained that he had never believed in the
afterlife until a remarkable encounter happened after his father passed away.
Someone gave Howie a book also called We Don't Die

(02:37):
by medium George Anderson, not as a believer, but as
an entrepreneur. Howie actually optioned the rights to the book,
hoping to develop it into a TV series. During a
business dinner with the medium, Howie, who had just been
told privately by his own doctor to stop eating bread,
reached for a piece of bread from the bread basket.

(03:00):
George Anderson immediately stopped him and said, your father is
mad at you. You were told by your doctor not
to eat bread. How He was stunned, explaining that there
was no possible way for the medium to have known
about that doctor's visit. He said, it was that one
impossible to know detail that turned him from a skeptic

(03:21):
to a believer and speaking of evidence. For those of
you who may not be familiar with his work, Doctor
Bruce Grayson is one of the most respected and influential
near death experience researchers in the world. He is the
Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Perceptual
Studies at the University of Virginia Health System. He also

(03:44):
serves as the longtime editor of the Journal of Near
Death Studies. Recently, doctor Grayson was asked to give the
closing keynote speech at the fiftieth anniversary Conference for Ions,
the International Association for Near Death Studies. It was a
monumental occasion, celebrating half a century of research into the

(04:06):
nd phenomena. I watched the conference of virtually If you're interested,
you can still watch the videos just click conference link
at IMS dot org. I want to talk to you
today about his incredible talk, and I found a comprehensive
academic paper he wrote titled Near Death Experiences and Spirituality.

(04:28):
I'll use both the paper and his speech at the
conference for our episode today. So I think we know
the answer to this. But what exactly is a near
death experience? Doctor Grayson quotes the man who coined the term,
of course, that's doctor Raymond Moody, defining them as profound
spiritual events that happen uninvited to some individuals at the

(04:51):
point of death. These are not dreams or simple hallucinations.
They are structured, often hyper realistic experiences that can all
so include a sense of separating from our physical body,
encountering a mystical or divine presence, and even meeting with
religious figures or deceased loved ones. Once thought to be

(05:11):
extremely rare. NDEs are now estimated to occur to about
one third of all people who have had a close
brush with death. That means millions upon millions of people
worldwide have had this experience. And while the term itself
is modern, the experience is not. Doctor Grayson's paper points
out that detailed accounts of similar events can be found

(05:34):
in the historical writings and folklore of nearly every culture
on earth. The modern investigation into this ancient mystery began
with one curious student that was Raymond Moody. In the
nineteen sixties, Moody was a university student studying Greek philosophy.
He happened to hear a lecture from a psychiatrist who

(05:55):
described his own profound experience while his heart had stopped.
Moody was floored. He immediately recognized that the doctor's story
was strikingly similar to a two thousand year old case
he had read about in Greek philosophers. That spark of
recognition changed everything. Later, when Moody went to medical school,

(06:18):
he began to gently and respectfully ask his patients if
they had experienced anything unusual when they had been close
to death. The stories started pouring in. He quickly collected
one hundred and fifty first hand accounts, which he compiled
into his world changing nineteen seventy five book called Life

(06:41):
After Life. It was this book that he gave the
phenomena its name, The Near Death Experience. Doctor Grayson emphasized
the book's impact, saying it brought near death experiences into
the public eye for the very first time. Suddenly, researchers,
doctors and clinicians from all over the world who had

(07:04):
been quietly encountering these stories in their own practices but
no one to talk to about them, they realized they
weren't alone. An informal conference was organized at the University
of Virginia to bring these pioneers together, and from that
first gathering, the International Association for Near Death Studies or

(07:26):
IONS was born. Doctor Grayson paints a wonderful picture of
those early days. He said, the group held the yearly
meetings at Raymond Moody's farm in a tiny, remote Virginia village,
and from that humble beginning flowed into this international association.
So the task of actually building IONS fell into the

(07:48):
hands of four brilliant young researchers who were in Doctor
Grayson's words, too naive to know what they were getting
themselves into. That founding group included psychologist Can Ring, sociologist
John Audette, and cardiologist doctor Michael Sabem. Their original goal

(08:08):
was simple to create a network where they could support
each other and give each other advice, because at the
time they were all feeling very alone in their institutions
where no one supported them. So what were these researchers
actually studying. In his book, Moody identified fifteen elements that
seemed to recur in the one hundred and fifty reports

(08:31):
he collected. These included things like senses beyond words, hearing
unusual noises or beautiful music, seeing a tunnel, having an
out of body experience, meeting spiritual beings or deceased relatives,
encountering a brilliant, white, loving light, and having a panoramic

(08:51):
life review yes, where your entire life flashes before your eyes.
Moody was careful to point out that no two experiences
were exactly the same, and no single experience included all
fifteen elements. To bring more structure to this, doctor Grayson
and other researchers eventually grouped the most common features into

(09:13):
four main components cognitive, effective, paranormal, and transcendental. I want
to focus on that first component, cognitive features, because they
directly challenge the idea that the mind is simply a
product of the brain. The cognitive features of an NDE

(09:33):
are those that reflect changes in a person's thought processes.
People report that their sense of time becomes completely distorted,
either slowing down to a crawl or ceasing to exist altogether.
Their thoughts often accelerate to an incredible speed, yet remain
perfectly clear and logical. Many report a sudden sense of

(09:54):
revelation or understanding, as if they're being given access to
all universal knowledge. And of course there's the life review,
where a person reexperiences their life's events. To make this concrete,
Doctor Grayson shares a powerful example from a twenty one
year old woman who had an MDE during a bicycle accident.

(10:15):
She said, I was riding my bike and failed to
see a car coming towards me until I realized it
would hit me, regardless of any maneuver I might make. Now,
stop and think about that for a minute. In a
split second crisis, you would expect panic, confusion, and fear,
But that's not what happened. That realization seemed to take

(10:36):
forever as it slowed way down, and I consciously decided
to let go of the handlebars, cover my head with
my hands and scream. Here we see that classic cognitive feature,
the distortion of time. A fraction of a second felt
like forever, giving her the mental space to make calm,

(10:57):
conscious decisions in the midst of a life threatening event.
Then the most remarkable part happens. She says, during the
next few seconds or fractions thereof, while the car hit
my thigh and the bike, I was unaware of any
bodily sensations, but rather saw my life flashed before me

(11:17):
in a series of typical scenes. I felt very peaceful,
and the thought, well, if I die, that's all right.
I've had a good life came very clearly into my mind.
I felt apart from my body at this time. This
single account perfectly illustrates these cognitive features. She experienced the
life review, accelerated yet clear thought processes, a feeling of

(11:42):
peace instead of panic, and even a sense of being
detached from her physical body. And this happened while her
brain was very likely in a state of shock and trauma.
This is why from the very beginning, NDEs presented a
profound challenge to mainstream science in the nineteen seventies. As
doctor Grayson explained, most clinicians were deeply skeptical. They dismissed

(12:07):
these rich, structured accounts as meaningless hallucinations, and they thought
the researchers studying them were simply being gullible. Because the
early accounts were so overwhelmingly blissful and peaceful. The prevailing
skeptical view was this had to be some kind of
psychological defense mechanism, our minds probably trying to create a

(12:29):
shield from the terror of complete annihilation. The debunkers insisted
that the actual moment of death must be terrifying, and
that any blissful memory is a fantasy created later, because,
as doctor Grayson puts their argument, you can't tolerate the terror.
This became the first great question for NDE researchers to answer,

(12:53):
Are these experiences real or are they just comforting stories.
The answer would require rigorous scientific investigation, and that's exactly
where we're going to pick up. Right after the break,
We'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the
Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast, a paranormal

(13:14):
podcast network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm

(13:35):
Sandra Champlain and we're looking at the work and research
of one of the four International Association for Near Death
Studies founders, his name doctor Bruce Grayson. Before the break,
we journeyed back to the dawn of the near death
experience stories and establish what a near death experience is.
We looked at the cognitive features, the incredible changes in

(13:58):
thought and perception through the eyes of a young woman
in a bicycle accident, and we left off with the
critical question that faced those early researchers. Are these profound experiences, real,
stable memories, or are they, as the skeptics claimed, just
comforting hallucinations our minds create to protect us from the

(14:23):
terror of death. This is where the story turns from
collecting accounts to rigorous scientific investigation. The first major challenge
to the hallucination theory came not from psychologists or philosophers,
but from pioneering cardiologists doctors on the front lines of
life and death, men like doctor Michael Sabem in the

(14:46):
United States, doctor Samparnia in the United Kingdom, and doctor
Pim Van Lommel in the Netherlands began to do something revolutionary.
They started systematically inter thanking their patients immediately after they
were resuscitated from cardiac arrest. What they discovered was a

(15:08):
game changer. These patients, sometimes just moments after their hearts
were restarted, would describe these incredibly blissful, peaceful, and life
altering experiences. This finding directly contradicted the theory that the
memory of a terrifying event gets embellished into something pleasant

(15:31):
over time. The blissful nature of the experience was there
from the very first moment the person could speak. As
doctor Grayson puts it so clearly in his talk, It's
not a retroactive elaboration, it's the way it really was
for them. This brings us to the second major component

(15:51):
of NDEs that doctor Grayson outlines in his research. The
affective features refer to the profound changes in a person's
emotional state during the experience. It's what gives the nd
its incredible power. These features include an overwhelming sense of

(16:13):
peace and well being, feelings of intense joy, a sense
of cosmic unity or oneness with universe, and most famously,
an encounter with a brilliant light that seems to radiate pure,
unconditional love. To truly understand this, I want to share

(16:34):
another story. Doctor Grayson provides in his academic writing. This
is the experience of a thirty one year old woman
during open heart surgery. She describes finding herself in a
dark space, but instead of fear, she felt something else entirely.
She says, I wasn't frightened. I had no pain, and

(16:56):
I think I was wondering, why aren't I afraid? But
I wasn't afraid. It felt neutral. I felt this feeling
of love. It was like, all of a sudden, I
could feel this whole feeling of love and joy, and
it was all around me. Then her attention was drawn
to the light. She continues, My eyes were automatically drawn

(17:18):
to the side, and I saw this circle of light
off in the distance. I'll never forget it. And I
could feel this love coming from that light. It was
all around me. It wasn't a beam, it was just
the feeling of it coming from that light. It was
so beautiful. I could never explain it in a million years.

(17:41):
And I went towards that light with my arms extended.
I just wanted to embrace it. Even the powerful love
she felt for her children on earth paled in comparison
to this divine feeling. She explains the conflict she felt
about returning. Don't you think you should go back and
take care of your children? I remember I said, no,

(18:03):
I love my children and I love them up there.
But it was a different kind of love. This is
the hardest part for me to explain. It's a true,
pure love, free of earthly worries, an absolute pure love.
This is a kind of profound emotional experience that skeptics

(18:24):
were trying to explain away. So they proposed a variety
of physiological and psychological models. Let's look at those theories
and see how the science has held up. The most
common theory you'll hear is that NDEs are caused by
a lack of oxygen to the brain or anoxia. On

(18:46):
the surface, it seems plausible, but doctor Grayson points out
a fatal flaw in this theory. Medical research shows that
oxygen deprivation doesn't produce peaceful, structured, life altering experiences. It
typically produces idiosyncratic, frightening, and often bizarre hallucinations. It leads

(19:11):
to agitation and belligerence, the complete opposite of the calm
and peaceful states reported in MDes. Actual studies of patients
near death found that those who had NDEs did not
have lower oxygen levels than those who had a close

(19:33):
call with death but did not have an MD, so
the oxygen theory simply doesn't fit the facts. The next
theory is that NDEs are caused by medications given to
dying patients, like morphine or anesthetics. Again, this seems plausible
until you look at the data. Multiple comparative studies have

(19:56):
found that patients who receive medications in the hospital well
actually report fewer NDEs than patients who receive no medication
at all. Other scientists have speculated about various brain chemicals
like endorphins, or specific locations in the brain like the

(20:17):
temporal lobe, being responsible, but as doctor Grayson clarifies, there
is little to no empirical evidence to support these as
a cause, and even if certain brain pathways are active,
he makes a crucial distinction. Those pathways might simply be
how the brain interprets or expresses the experience, not what

(20:42):
creates it in the first place. It's like saying that
because your TV's pixels light up to show a movie,
the TV must be creating the movie itself, which we
know isn't true. It's just receiving a signal. When the
physiological models failed, step Dick's turn to psychological explanations. The

(21:03):
biggest one is the idea of expectation or wishful thinking.
The theory goes that people's religious and cultural beliefs preprogram
them to see what they expect to see after death.
The psychologist Kenneth Ring perfectly summarized this hypothesis as believing

(21:26):
is seeing, But decades of research have shown that this
isn't the case. First, young children who are too young
to have fully formed expectations about death report the same
core ND features as adults. Second, cross cultural studies show
that while the interpretation might have a cultural flavor. For instance,

(21:50):
a Christian might see Jesus a Buddhist might see the Buddha,
the core elements of the experience, like the out of
body journey, the tunnel, the being of light, are remarkably
consistent across the globe. Finally, and most importantly, studies have
conclusively found no link between a person's prior religiousness and

(22:13):
their likelihood of having an ND. Self professed atheists are
just as likely to have one as devout ministers, so
belief is not a prerequisite. If NDEs aren't caused by
a lack of oxygen or drugs, or brain chemistry or

(22:34):
psychological expectation, we are left with the stunning possibility that
they are exactly what they appear to be a real experience.
To put the final nail in the coffin of the
embellished memory theory, doctor Grayson and his team conducted a

(22:55):
brilliant study. He and his colleagues went back to their
archives from the early nineteen eighties. They tracked down the
same people they had interviewed decades ago and asked them
to describe their NDEs again. They had them fill out
the very same scientific questionnaire, the ND scale, that they

(23:19):
had filled out thirty to forty years prior. Doctor Grayson
noted that not a single person even remembered taking the
questionnaire the first time. The results were astonishing. Back in
the nineteen eighties, the average score on the sixteen point

(23:40):
ND scale was fourteen point six. When the same people
took the test again describing the same event nearly forty
years later, the average score was fourteen point three. They
were statistically almost identical the passage of decades had no

(24:02):
impact on the content or the intensity of the reported experience.
This was the definitive proof the blissful, peaceful, and structured
accounts were not fantasies that grew more and more pleasant
over time. They were stable, reliable, and powerful memories. With

(24:24):
this finding, doctor Grayson could confidently state accounts are not embellished,
which means when you hear accounts of an event that
took place forty years ago, you can trust it. We
can say now with scientific confidence that near death experiences
are real. They are not a symptom of a dying brain,

(24:49):
but a consistent, powerful, and cross cultural human experience. This
leads us to the next, even more profound question. Experiences
are real, What is their purpose? What is their impact?
How are people changed by this glimpse into the world beyond?

(25:11):
And that's precisely what we're going to explore when we
get back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.

(25:44):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain.
In our last segment, we walk through the rigorous science
that has firmly established the near death experience as a real,
stable memory that cannot be explained any other way by
conventional physiological or psychological theories. We now know that NDEs

(26:10):
are not hallucinations caused by a lack of oxygen, they're
not side effects of medication, and they are not products
of wishful thinking or religious expectation. Near death experiences are
a genuine human experience. So this brings us to the

(26:30):
next and perhaps the most important question. If these experiences
are real, what is their impact? What happens to a
person who touches the world beyond and then comes back.
The answer is that they are often changed in the
most profound ways imaginable. The after effects of a near

(26:53):
death experience are so powerful and consistent that doctor Bruce
Grayson and his colleague say they meet the clinical definition
of a spiritual transformation, which is described as a dramatic
change in a person's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that occur

(27:17):
over a relatively short period of time. This is not
a new discovery. Doctor Grayson's research points to a fascinating
historical account from eighteen sixty five by a British surgeon
named Sir Benjamin Brodie. He wrote about a sailor who

(27:38):
was rescued from a near drowning. Upon his recovery, the
sailor proclaimed that he had been to heaven and complained
bitterly about being brought back to life. Before this incident,
this sailor had been regarded as a worthless fellow, but
after his rescue, his entire moral character was transformed completely,

(28:05):
and he became one of the best behaved and most
respected sailors on that ship. This story from over one
hundred and fifty years ago perfectly captures the transformative power
that researchers are now studying scientifically. To understand how this

(28:25):
transformation begins, we need to look at the third major
component of the near death experience that doctor Grayson identifies
called the paranormal features. This category includes apparent psychic phenomena
that occur during the experience. This can mean having extraordinarily

(28:48):
vivid physical sensations, witnessing future events, or the most well known,
the sense of being out of the physical body. This
out of body experience, also known as an OBE, is
one of the most compelling aspects of the near death experience.

(29:10):
Doctor Grayson shares a story of a twenty six year
old woman who had a pulmonary embolism, a life threatening
a blood clot in her lungs. She described what happened next.
The real me, the soul, the spirit or whatever, drifted
out of the body and hovered near the ceiling. I

(29:31):
viewed the activity in the room from this vantage point.
The hospital room was to my right and below me.
It confused me that the doctors and the nurses were
so concerned about the body they had lifted to the bed.
I looked down at my body, and it meant nothing
to me. I tried to tell them I was not

(29:53):
in the body. Obviously, they didn't hear me. Think about
that for a moment. This woman is calm, observant, and
feels a complete detachment from the physical form that the
medical team is desperately trying to save. Her account continues
with another common paranormal feature. One of the most outstanding

(30:16):
things about this experience is that my hearing became extremely acute.
She said, I heard many things about the gravity of
my situation, some of these things from the nurses station
many yards away. This experience is existing consciously outside of
the physical body, often with verifiable, accurate perceptions which is

(30:41):
a cornerstone of the transformation that follows. When you know
with a certainty that goes beyond belief that you are
more than your body, well, that changes everything. The research
has identified a consistent pattern of after effects that are deep, profound,

(31:02):
and lasting for many years. Doctor Grayson, doctor Kenneth Ring,
and other pioneers have meticulously documented these changes. They can
be grouped into several key areas. First are the changes
in a person's sense of self. The most widely reported
after effect is the complete and total loss of the

(31:25):
fear of dying or the fear of death. Doctor Grayson
notes that this is a critical distinction. People who have
had a close brush with death but don't have a
near death experience often come back with more anxiety about death,
but near death experiencers while they return with a calm

(31:48):
certainty that death is not the end, but just a transition.
This is accompanied by a strengthened an often absolute belief
in the after life life. One study mentioned in doctor
Grayson's paper found that definite belief in an afterlife skyrocketed

(32:09):
from twenty two percent before the near death experience to
ninety two percent after this newfound perspective gives their life
a brand new sense of purpose or mission. In that
same study, seventy three percent of experiencers reported that the
ND led them to discover their life's purpose. Second, there

(32:35):
are profound changes in their relationships and values. They consistently
report an increased sense of love and compassion for others,
and a decreased interest in personal status, material possessions, and fame.
Life is no longer about what you can acquire, but

(32:57):
about what you can do give. This represents a fundamental
shift from what researchers call an ego centered consciousness to
an other centered consciousness. The third area is a change
in their attitude toward life itself. Experiencers return with a

(33:20):
much greater appreciation for life, a renewed sense of purpose,
and more confidence and flexibility in coping with life's daily challenges.
But perhaps the most fascinating transformation is in the area
of spirituality. Experiencers almost universally describe themselves as becoming more spiritual,

(33:45):
but interestingly enough, not necessarily more religious. Doctor Grayson's work
highlights a remarkable study by sociologist Sherry Sutherland and Australia.
She found that before their ends ease, twenty four percent
of her subjects identified as religious. After their experiences, that

(34:09):
number plummeted to just six percent. In start. Contrast, the
number of people who describe themselves as spiritual soared from
just sixteen percent before the NDE two seventy six percent after.
They don't lose their connection to the divine. In fact,

(34:31):
it becomes the central focus of their lives. What they
tend to move away from is the dogma and exclusivity
of organized religion. They often come back with a powerful
conviction that all religions are valid paths to the same truth.
As doctor Kenneth Ring found, they tend to object to

(34:55):
the smug quality of some religious groups, not to the
base of worship or connection to God itself. Doctor Grayson
wants us to understand that these are not subtle, gentle
shifts in perspective. He emphasizes that the changes are often
so dramatic and disruptive that people cannot go back to

(35:17):
the same job, cannot go back to their same lifestyle.
Sometimes relationships and even marriages fall apart unless their loved
ones can adapt to what seems like a completely different person.
A high powered materialistic executive might come back with a
burning desire to work with the homeless. A cynical and

(35:41):
withdrawn person might become radically open and loving. Then this
raises a crucial question. Do these incredible changes last or
do they fade over time like a New Year's resolution.
To answer this, we go back to the study they
did of the people from the nineteen eighties that filled

(36:01):
out a form and then they revisited them forty years later.
This questionnaire was called Life Changes Inventory. The results were
just as definitive as the study on their near death
experience memories themselves. The scores measuring things like their appreciation

(36:22):
for life, their spirituality, their concern for others, and their
self acceptance were basically unchanged over the forty years. The transformation,
my friends was permanent. This led doctor Grayson to a
powerful conclusion the after effects, just like the near death

(36:45):
experience itself, does not change over time. So we are
left with a scientifically validated phenomena that permanently transforms people
in a positive and spiritual direction. It instills a love
for others, a purpose for living, and removes completely the

(37:08):
fear of death. What kind of experience could possibly do that?
How can a brief event that happens when the brain
is compromised lead to the most meaningful and integrated state
of a person's life. Well, this brings us to the
ultimate question of what a near death experience truly is

(37:31):
and what it tells us about the nature of consciousness itself.
We'll explore that when we come back. You're listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast,
a m paranormal podcast network. Welcome back to Shades of

(38:11):
the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Over the past five years
of the show together and the hundreds of episodes, we've
heard a lot of near death experiences, but it was
important for me today to share the scientific research from
an authority so that you are armed with information. If

(38:32):
anyone mentions negatively that near death experience might just be
a natural shutting down of the brain, etc. You have
the choice to let them know the truth or not.
I always say we don't push this on anyone, but
if people are open, we can certainly tell them the

(38:53):
scientific information. Over the last three segments so far, we
followed the incredible fifty year journey of near death research.
This leaves us standing before the biggest question of all
If these experiences are real and transformative, what do they
tell us about the nature of consciousness and the great

(39:14):
mystery of death itself. To begin to answer this, we
must look at the fourth and final component of the ND,
the transcendental features. This is where the experience moves beyond
our earthly understanding into a realm that can only be
described as mystical and often the most difficult to put

(39:36):
into words. Doctor Graceon shares an account from a twenty
six year old woman who had an end during an
emergency C section. Her doctor had lost her pulse. She says,
I heard my doctor say I've lost her. She's gone.
Then four angels were carrying me through a great, huge auditorium.

(39:58):
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. I was so excited because I
wanted to go through those gates. But it was not
her time. She found herself back on the operating table,

(40:19):
and her reaction was not one of relief, but of
profound grief. She said, I begged him to let me
go again. It was honestly the saddest time of my life,
and yet it was the most beautiful time of my life.
This kind of transcendental journey, happening at a time of
extreme physical crisis, poses the ultimate challenge to the conventional

(40:42):
scientific worldview. In our schools and universities, we are taught
a simple equation that the mind is what the brain does,
that consciousness is a product of complex chemical and electrical
signals inside our skulls. As doctor Grayson puts the materialist view,

(41:03):
it's like digestion is what the stomach does. That when
the brain dies, the mind is extinguished. End of story.
But the evidence from fifty years of near death experience
research makes this simple equation impossible to maintain. Doctor Grayson
presents a mountain of evidence for the mind functioning at

(41:24):
a higher level than normal, completely independent of the physical brain.
This includes the enhanced lucid and complex thoughts people have
during cardiac arrest, the verified out of body perceptions of
events that they could not have possibly seen or heard

(41:45):
with their physical senses, and the phenomena of terminal lucidity
where people with Alzheimer's or other forms of severe dementia
who haven't recognized their loved ones in years suddenly have
a brief period of perfect clarity with all their memory
to say goodbye just before they pass. How is this

(42:06):
possible if their brains are irretrievably damaged. This has led
doctor Grayson and other major scientists to a revolutionary new
model of consciousness. The brain's job is not to create consciousness.
The brain's job is to filter it. Think of it

(42:27):
this way. Our brains evolved for one primary purpose, to
help us survive in the physical world. To do that,
it has to filter out the overwhelming flood of information
that makes up a larger reality, allowing us to focus
on the basics, like finding food, seeking shelter, avoiding predators.

(42:50):
Consciousness is vast and non local, but the brain acts
like a reducing valve, letting in only a tiny trickle
that is useful for our day to day survival. Think
of your consciousness as a voice being broadcast and your
brain as the cell phone. You hear the voice through

(43:11):
the cell phone, but the phone itself isn't creating the voice.
It's just a receiver. If the phone's battery dies, the
voice doesn't cease to exist, you just can't hear it
through that same device. Anymore. In the same way, when
the brain begins to shut down during a near death experience,

(43:32):
that filter weakens, the reducing valve opens up, and the
person's awareness is flooded with a much larger, more expanse
of reality. This is why their thoughts can become clearer, faster,
and even more logical than ever before, even as their
brain is failing. This understanding has profound spiritual and theological implications. However,

(43:57):
as doctor Grayson notes, mainstream theologians have been largely silent
on this topic. This has left the doors open for
a wide range of interpretations. Some religious groups have tried
to claim NDEs as empirical proof of their specific doctrines,
but this has also led to what some have called

(44:19):
religious wars, with other groups, particularly some fundamentalist Christians, rejecting
NDEs as dangerous or even demonic. The core of their
argument is this the being of light in NDEs offers
unconditional love and acceptance to everyone Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, everyone,

(44:44):
regardless of their specific beliefs or whether they have ever
been born again. To these critics, this universal love contradicts
their interpretation of Scripture, which they believe promises salvation only
to a select few. Therefore, they conclude this all loving

(45:04):
being of light cannot be God. It must be a
disguised Satan appearing as an angel of light to lead
humanity astray. Doctor Grayson's research offers a powerful and elegant
rebuttal to this grim perspective, using a teaching from Jesus himself.
You will know them by their fruits. If an experience

(45:28):
is truly from a negative or deceptive source, it should
produce negative fruits like fear, selfishness, greed, and despair. But
the fruits of the near death experience, as proven by
decades of research, are the exact opposite. They are overwhelmingly positive,

(45:49):
an increase in love, compassion, empathy, service to others, humility,
and a complete loss of the fear of death. It
defies all logic to believe that a demonic deception would
result in millions of people becoming more selfless, loving, and

(46:09):
christ like in their actions. Another critique you might hear
is that NDEs promote a doctrine of cheap grace, meaning
the idea of unconditional forgiveness without any need for repentance
or changing one's ways. But again this is a profound
misunderstanding of the experience. The life review is not a

(46:33):
passive movie. Experiencers report that they don't just see their actions,
they re experience them from the perspective of the other
people they affected. They feel the joy they brought to others,
but they also feel with excruciating clarity, every ounce of

(46:54):
pain and sadness they ever caused. This is the opposite
of cheap grace. It is an experience of ultimate responsibility
and interconnectedness, and it is what instills in them the
unshakable commitment to return to their lives and be more loving.

(47:15):
So what is the ultimate meaning of this phenomena. Doctor
Grayson suggests that near death experiences can be seen as
spiritual catalysts. They are not an end in themselves. One
mystical experience does not make someone a saint, but they
are a powerful awakening, an invitation that can kickstart a

(47:40):
lifelong journey of spiritual growth and development. Doctor Kenneth Ring
takes this idea even further, suggesting that the ND might
be an evolutionary device. He speculates that as modern medical
technology allows more and more people to be resuscitated from
the brink of death, the cumulative impact of their transformative

(48:05):
testimonies could be fostering a spiritual evolution for all of humanity,
gently shifting our collective consciousness toward a more compassionate and
interconnected future. At the end of his powerful fifty year retrospective,
Doctor Grayson was asked a simple personal question by one

(48:27):
of the conference attendees. After all this time, after all
this research, how has it changed him? He answered with
the humble honesty that defines his work. He said that
he started his career as a firm materialist, a doctor,
and a man of science who was not afraid of

(48:47):
death because he believed it was simply the end. What's
to be afraid of, he thought, But after five decades
of looking at the ND evidence, he said, simply, I
can't believe that anymore. I think there is something after death,
but I've absolutely no idea what it is. He said

(49:09):
that because experiencers tell him that what awaits us is
beyond words, and he believes them because it is so
far beyond our brain's capacity to comprehend. He concluded by
saying that the biggest way the research has affected him
is that now he is more comfortable not knowing all

(49:32):
the answers, and perhaps that is the ultimate lesson for
all of us. Fifty years of research has built a powerful,
undeniable case that we are more than our physical bodies,
that our consciousness survives death, and that the universe is
woven together with a love beyond our wildest imagination. The

(49:54):
evidence is clear, the transformations are real, and the implications
a revolutionary. This brings our time together to an end.
Remember come visit me at Weedo'tdie dot com. Check out
our friends at the International Association for Near Death Studies
at IMDS dot org. I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you so

(50:17):
much for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the
iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal podcast Network.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost
Day and Paranormal podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.