I'm An Expert In Near-Death Experiences & Here's What I Learned From 50 Years Of Research

Bruce Greyson, M.D., started out as a skeptic. 

He went through traditional psychiatric training in medical school and described himself as a "materialistic scientist." So when he saw a handful of patients who described profound experiences when they came close to death—or near-death experiences (NDEs)—he wasn't convinced. "They claimed they had left their bodies and seen things that they could not possibly have seen," he shares on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast. 

They had to be delusional, he thought. Until Greyson started seeing patterns: Patient after patient would describe their experience with uncanny accuracy, and he later learned that millions of people (about 5% of the general population, he notes in the episode) have indeed had NDEs. Mysterious, yes, but they weren't something to dismiss as nonsensical or unexplainable.

Since then, he's researched thousands of NDEs, co-founded the International Association for Near-Death Studies, become the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, penned After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond, and even appeared in the Netflix docuseries Surviving Death. "As a scientist, my obligation was to study and try to understand this. And here I am, 50 years later, still trying to understand it." 

According to Greyson, those who experience NDEs "often find themselves in some unearthly realm that isn't the normal, physical world." However, he says, it's difficult to explain with our limited language and logic—the afterlife transcends the universe, after all, so it's hard for humans to paint an exact picture. 

That said, sometimes people interpret it as a tunnel—a long, enclosed area to travel from the physical world to the other realm. "But I've talked to people in less developed countries where there aren't a lot of tunnels, and they'll say they went into a cave or fell into a well." Again, people tend to use their own frame of reference to describe what they experienced, so it may vary depending on the person. 

On that note, many people who encounter NDEs have what Greyson calls "an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being." Considering this is in the context of dying, which is largely associated with fear or pain, it's a peculiar pattern. 

Another common pattern, Greyson notes, is encountering deceased loved ones in the other realm. Sometimes they describe it as physically talking to their loved one, but sometimes they simply feel a loved one's presence there with them. "Sometimes they say, 'I just knew her essence—that was her.'" 

We can't say for sure whether we recognize loved ones as discrete entities on the other side, or we simply melt into the same pool of consciousness as other people we've lost. Greyson compares it to waves in the ocean: "It exists for a certain period of the time and then disappears, but it's always part of the same ocean. When waves dissolve back into the ocean, do they recognize other waves as being discrete waves, or is it just part of the whole consciousness?" 

"The most interesting part of [NDEs] is the way they change people's lives," says Greyson. "They typically dramatically change people's attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior forever," no matter whether they have the experience as kids, teenagers, or later on in life. 

Particularly, they become less interested in the material world—things like power, prestige, fame, and competition, says Greyson—and more interested in the spiritual side of things, like relationships, compassion, and altruism. In other words: They have an increased sense of purpose. A study on NDEs even found that cardiac arrest survivors with NDEs had increased interest in the meaning of life, acceptance of others, and were more loving and empathetic1.

Finally, Greyson says that those who encounter NDEs come back fearing death a little less. It's one of the most consistent effects, he explains, as they realize they are OK on the other side—so they aren't afraid to return one day. "People consistently from all over the world say that the near-death experience leads you to a place that is not something to be feared."