41. Bruce Greyson on Exploring the Nature of Life and Beyond

SPEAKERS

Greg McKeown, Bruce Greyson

---

Greg McKeown    

Dr. Bruce Greyson, what a pleasure to have you join us on the What’s Essential podcast. Thank you for being here with us today.

Dr. Bruce Greyson    

Well, thank you, Greg, I’m delighted to be here with you.

Greg McKeown    

Now you have written a book called after a doctor explores what near death experiences reveal about life and beyond. Not everybody does that. Why did you?

Dr. Bruce Greyson    

Well, you know, I grew up in a scientific household, where all we knew about was the physical world. And we assumed that when you die, that’s the end of it. So I went through college and medical school with that materialistic mindset. And then shortly after that, I started my psychiatric training, and started encountering people who had claimed that they left their bodies when they were unconscious and could see things accurately from an out of body perspective. And that just made no sense to me. I couldn’t imagine how it could be. I tried to just push it out of my mind saying this is a misunderstanding, or someone’s playing a trick on me. And then several years later, I read a book called Life After Life by Raymond Moody. And I actually met Modi, he was working with me at the University of Virginia. And in that book, he described the near-death experience and gave us that term, and describe exactly what my patients have been talking about for the last several years. And I realized this was not just isolated psychiatric patients talking about these things. But they were part of a much larger phenomenon that 1000s of people all over the world we’re talking about.

Greg McKeown     

What is the ramification of this just right from the beginning, if somebody’s listening to this, they’re busy, they have really too much to do in their lives. They are successful, they’re driven they’re capable that, you know, this is their life, it’s in the middle of a pandemic, they’ve got all these pressures, why should they care about the data that you’re bringing to the table?

Dr. Bruce Greyson     

They should care because in the middle of, of a pandemic, when we are dealing with death every day, near death experiences suggest to us that our fear of death, which is based on a misconception of what death is, really doesn’t have to exist, near death experiences tell us that death may not be the end of our existence. And in fact, what comes after is not something to be feared at all. Near death experiences are much more common than we thought they were. They happen to normal people, they’re not anything to do with mental illness. They suggest that death is not the end and not something that is fearsome. Furthermore, this is just that the mind is not what the brain does, the mind may be something that is separate from their brain, and therefore may survive death of the brain. And the final book, the punchline, I think, is that near death experiences universally come back with a belief that we are not alone, we are not in this alone, we are part of something much greater than ourselves. And therefore, it makes sense to live your life, as if treating other people kindly is the way to live, basically, the golden rule, and this makes their life much more meaningful and fulfilling.

Greg McKeown     

One of the things I think you are saying is that, in addition to the pandemic, there’s a secondary epidemic of fear of that has gripped I think lots of people, maybe even culture broadly. And behind that fear, a significant portion of the story is fear of death. This is the end the worst thing possible. And you’re saying that this perspective, looking at this data, these stories, these examples, these case studies, can help us to reduce the presumption of, of, of hysteria, or exceptional fear. When we think of dying, is that fair?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

That is fair, Greg, I think you’ve hit you hit the nail on the head. This pervasive fear of death has been around long before the pandemic occurred. It’s rooted in our materialistic view that the only thing that exists is the physical body, and that there is no nonphysical part of us so that therefore when the body dies, we stop existing. And that leads us to be frightened of what’s going to happen. And the fear of dying makes us realize or think that we have a limited amount of time on this world. Therefore, we have to get as much as we can in this time.

It drives us to collect things to become more materialistic, become more selfish, and to get ahead at all costs, even if that means hurting other people.  

Greg McKeown     

What was the tipping point story that pushed you to say, this isn’t just an outlier piece of data, that this shifts the scientific paradigm for you?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, I can’t point to one specific story. Because I’m basically a skeptical scientist. And one any one case is not evidential for me, I can always assume that there is some something I’m missing in this case. So what it took was 1000s of cases that built on each other, and all basically said the same thing. And it accumulates until you get such a massive data you can’t ignore the evidence anymore.

Greg McKeown   

If you’ve been gathering 1000s of stories, you must have deliberately been pursuing them at some point, that’s not the natural case, even for somebody who’s working in, in a hospital, in even end of life, care to have that amount of data. Tell me the journey that you’ve gone in gathering this?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Right well, as I said, I started off from a skeptical scientific perspective. And when I encountered these experiences that I could not deny were actually happening. They did not make sense to me. And as a scientist, that meant, I need to understand this. I think the opposite of science is to say, these didn’t really exist, let’s just ignore them. Well, that didn’t feel intellectually honest to me. I felt like I had to go towards them had to understand them. And here I am, 50 years later, still trying to understand them. Try still trying to make sense of them.

Greg McKeown     

Can you give me an example of a story one that’s that specific, what stands out to you as a good example of, of the kind of experience you’re describing?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, one of the most striking parts of the near-death experience is when people claim to have left their bodies and seeing things accurately from an outside the body perspective. I’ll give you an example of this. Will Solomon was a 55-year-old truck driver, who had an emergency coronary bypass actually, if quadruple bypass surgery for vessels that had to be corrected in his heart. And in the operation, he claimed that he left his body hovered over the operating room and saw his surgeon flapping his elbows as if he was trying to fly. Now, when he told me about this, I had been a doctor about 30 years at that point, I had never seen or heard any surgeon doing anything like this. I couldn’t imagine that it was real. So I assumed that he had hallucinated, because of the anesthesia maybe he was given. But he insisted it was true. So I, with his permission, I talked to his surgeon. And the surgeon, to my surprise, said, Yes, that’s exactly what I did. He had developed this idiosyncratic habit of letting his assistant start the operation. And he would get gowns and gloves and his sterols suit, and then come into the operating room. And he didn’t want to risk touching anything that wasn’t in the sterile field. So he planted his hands, his palms flat against his chest, where he wouldn’t touch anything. And then pointed things out to his assistants using his elbows rather than his fingers. So he wouldn’t touch anything. And this looked for all the world like he was flapping his arms trying to fly. Now, there’s no way Al could have known this he was out cold, and he had his eyes taped shut. So how could he possibly have seen this? And I’ve heard case after case of this people who in their near-death experiences when they were demonstrably unconscious, had seen things and heard things from an out of body perspective that were later corroborated.

Greg McKeown     

Hmm. Give me another example

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Of the same type of phenomena or something different?

Greg McKeown   

Yes, same same phenomenon. What else? Is it just in the the room where the surgery is taking place? And not at all?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Not at all. One woman I knew was a having an emergency surgery also. And her mother was waiting in the in the waiting room, very anxious about her daughter who was undergoing this chip, terrible operation. And the patient claimed to have left her body, watch the operation for a while and then moved down the hall to the waiting room where her mother was, and she saw her mother smoking a cigarette. And this stunner because her mother was not a smoker had never been a smoker. Later, when I talk to the mother, she said, Well, I don’t smoke, but I was so anxious about my daughter, that I borrowed a cigarette from someone else in the waiting room and try to see It will help me. now there’s no way that the daughter, having the operation could have guessed that she would do this.

Greg McKeown     

In your research what’s the furthest someone has gone from the place of surgery or place of that they are having the experience that they have known of things or observed things?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well uh George Ritchie, he was drafted in World War Two, he was a doctor at the time. He had a near death experience when he had pneumonia and stopped breathing. And he actually traveled 700 miles from the base where he was living to where his family were. So it doesn’t have to be in the local area, it could be farther away.

Greg McKeown     

What did he observe there?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

He observed the family and what they were doing what they were wearing. And he later corroborated that with what he saw was actually what they were doing at the time.

Greg McKeown  

Is there any theme you’ve noticed, as you’ve been gathering this data, these stories, these examples of what people’s concern is a what they they drawn to anything or are they just observing what seems like random things?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, they’re often drawn away from the physical world, they may hang around for a while and see things. And there’s nothing particular that catches their eye except things that are unusual, such as your search and flapping his elbows. But they often get drawn away from this physical scene into some other type of environment that they often call a different realm or different dimension, where they are greeted by a warm, loving being of light that makes them feel welcomed and safe and secure. And they make a want to review their lives to see other entities that they interpret as deceased loved ones. And that is very attractive to them, they get drawn to that area.

Greg McKeown       

What’s interesting, but I’m just extrapolating from just a few data points here, but it seems to be a connection towards family. Find your mother smoking down the hall, to go 700 miles away to see your family that see family somehow on the other side. Am I making a false connection?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

No, I think that’s true. And in fact, when they are in this other realm, they are sometimes given a choice of whether to come back to life or not. And they often make that decision based on loved ones they have left behind. And they think about what was going on with their family and what their family would feel like if they didn’t come back to life.

Greg McKeown     

That raises an interesting question for me of how many people have given the choice to go forward and say, yes, they’ll go forward, we wouldn’t know about that data. That’s right. Those aren’t near death experiences. Those are death experiences.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Yes there are a number of people who say I was not given the choice. I was just told, it’s not your time, you need to come back. But a lot of them say I was given a choice and I chose to come back. I do know one person who was given a choice. And he said, I’m going to stay here. And he was told, Nope, that’s the wrong choice. You’re going back.

Greg McKeown     

You’re given a choice, but it was really not a full choice. Exactly. That’s very interesting. I remember when I was a young man, hearing a woman who I knew reasonably well, a friend of the family who had had a near death experience. And she described some not dissimilar from the examples you have, especially of the idea of it being so such an experience of love and peace and so on.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Yes.

Greg McKeown     

That she really said it was the first time she talked about this. how disappointed she was to wake up again. Yes. And for the rest of her life. This is literally true. She could hardly talk of anything else. She wanted to go she wanted to go there. Is that corroborated by your experiences your data is that rare? What do you make of that?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

But a lot of people when they find themselves back in the body, particularly if they were sent back against their will are either angry or depressed at being back alive again. They may be confused by that. And certainly distressed by it wish they were back. But it usually doesn’t last a whole lifetime. When I’ve talked to people who have this this problem, I find that what’s most helpful to them is to have them talk to other near-death experiences who’ve been through the same type of experience. And they can talk about how they got past that sadness about being back. And it often comes down to crafting a life here, in which you manifest the types of values that you felt on the other side.

Greg McKeown   

Mm hmm. That makes sense that you that it creates a sense of meaning that you’ve experienced something different, better, higher, more accepting, more loving. And that having tasted that your job is to create that?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Yes. Let me say that as a psychiatrist, when I first heard people talking about how pleasant it was on the other side, and how death has nothing to be feared, I started worrying is this going to make people more suicidal if they hear about this? Because I know that a lot of people who have thinking or thought thinking about ending their lives are deterred by the fear of death or dying. So I did a study of people who made suicide attempts, and compare those who had a near death experience as a result of the attempt, and those who did not. And what I found was that those who had a near death experience were much less suicidal than those who didn’t have an NDE. And actually psychologists can rank did another study that showed the exact same thing.

Greg McKeown     

So first of all, let’s just back up a little bit. So this is somebody who is having a suicide attempt. Give us an example, somebody that that this happened to, they then went on to have a near death experience I that attempt.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Someone who had overdosed to, hopefully kill himself. And he found that when that happened, he actually stopped his heart and had a new death experience, and had the typical blissful kind of we’ve been talking about where he encountered deceased loved ones and a being of light that he interpreted as a deity, and was told that it’s not his time he needed to come back. And he did, convinced now that death is not the end, and that what’s waiting for him is something blissful. I found that when people have a near death experience, after I knew death after a suicide attempt, they are much less suicidal than people who don’t have near death experiences as a result of a suicide attempt. And when I asked them why that is, they say things like, when you lose your fear of death, you also lose your fear of life of living to the fullest, you’re not afraid of taking chances, because you’re not afraid of doing something wrong and loose and losing, losing everything, because you know, what’s coming next is better. So they end up enjoying life much more, they find them sterilized much more meaningful and purposeful. They often look back at the problems they had that made them suicidal, as insignificant now, because they realized that not just this bag of skin, there’s something much greater than that. And they see meaning and purpose in everything in life, including their own suffering. And it’s no longer something to be avoided, but something to be dealt with and learn from.

Greg McKeown     

Do you feel a reduced fear of death as a result of these examples? Or is the effect been something different for you?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, I’m certainly much less fearful of death now. I don’t know that I was ever very fearful of death. I just assumed that was the end of everything. But I’m very comfortable with the idea of dying now. It’s hard for me to say whether that’s due to my decades of studying near death experiences or just getting older and maturing. It’s true that people in their later decades are much less afraid of dying than younger people are, whether they’ve had an NDE or not.

Greg McKeown     

What’s the most surprising story for you of all these that you’ve researched and covered the one that hits you the most, that’s most life changing?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, many people in a near death experience report encountering deceased loved ones. And those are fairly easy to dismiss as fantasies if you assume that when someone thinks they’re dying, they would naturally imagine a reunion with deceased loved ones. However, there are a number of cases in which people meet deceased people, deceased entities who were not known to be dead. And we have cases this going back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Elder wrote about a beautiful case of this in the first century. We’ve got dozens and dozens of these I’ve published in a review article about 10 years ago. I’ll give you one example. This is a 25-year-old technical writer, who was hospitalized with pneumonia, and he had repeated respiratory arrests where he would stop breathing. And he had one particular nurse who was working with him most of the time, a 21-year-old girl, who he found got very fond of. And one day she told him, she was going to be taking a long weekend off. So he wished her well and said goodbye to her. And shortly after she left, the next day, he had another respiratory arrest and his lungs stopped working, and he had a near death experience. And in this near-death experience, he found himself in a pastoral scene. And he was very comfortable. And then he saw this nurse, Anita walking towards him. And he was startled, because, as far as she could tell, she was fine. She was totally healthy. So he said to her, you know, Anita, what are you doing here? And she said, this is where I am. Now you need to go back. And I want you to tell my parents that I love them very much and I’m sorry, I wrecked the red MGB and then she turned and walked away. He then a woke back in his hospital bed having been resuscitated. And the first nurse that he saw, he told about this event, and she started crying and left the room. Well, it turned out that this favorite nurses, Anita, had taken the long weekend off because it was her 21st birthday, and her parents had flown her in to surprise her with her gift, which was a red MGB she was so taken with is that she jumped in the car and took off down the hill, lost control of the car, and crashed into a telephone pole dying instantly, just a few hours before he had his near death experience. Now, there’s no way he could have known that she was dead, let alone how she died, the details of how she died. So I don’t have any way of explaining that unless you assume that somehow this nurse Anita was still living in some form and able to communicate with the patient.

Greg McKeown     

And not just alive in some form, not just but concerned again. Again, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but seems again, to be concerned about family here.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Exactly. She told him go back and talk to my parents. And I’ve heard that again and again from patients. So I think that is that is a common feature of these experiences.

Greg McKeown     

What other examples can you think of where somebody receives an instruction of what to do once they come back here?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, let me go back to the patient I mentioned before who saw his surgeon flapping his arms. Another part of his experience was that he was told that there was a young boy who lived on his block. I think it was around five years old, who had cancer, nobody knew he had cancer. But this patient was told, you need to go back and tell his parents that their son is very sick, has cancer, and they need to get it evaluated. So he, he barely knew this family. But when he came back, he told me that he couldn’t do it. He didn’t know how he could go to the parents and tell them that their son was going to die. He just couldn’t figure out how to do that. So he ended up not doing it. That was an example where it wasn’t a family member that he was told to come back for, but just someone he barely knew.

Greg McKeown     

And did he follow the story through, did he is that is that what went on to happen with that boy?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

The boy did get cancer and he eventually did die. And the patient never talked to the family. He felt too awkward trying to explain to them how he knew this.

Greg McKeown     

What are the other profound changes you’ve seen in people who have had this experience?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Almost every near-death experience or close back with an increased sense of spirituality, of interest in non-physical things, in how they relate to other people, they become much more compassionate, much more altruistic in their behavior and they become much less interested in things of the physical world. Material goods, in power, prestige, of fame, getting ahead of someone else’s expense, making No sense to them anymore because they know we’re all in this together, I can give you some dramatic examples of this. One, one fellow, I knew Steve price was always a schoolyard bully for a macho guy. And his career goal was to become a marine. And he actually did, he became a Marine, he was a sergeant in Vietnam. And he was shot to the chest, and that shrapnel throughout his lungs, he was medevacked to a hospital in the Philippines, where he had surgery to repair his lungs. And during the operation, he left his body and had a beautiful near-death experience. And when he came back from that, the idea of hurting someone else became totally unthinkable to him. He tried, he was sent back to Vietnam, and tried to leave his platoon but found he just could not shoot his rifle. So he ended up leaving the Marines coming back to the States, and retraining as a medical technician. And I’ve heard this type of thing again and again, from people who are policemen, who were involved in organized crime, and the idea of hurting somebody else became totally unthinkable to them.

Greg McKeown     

They seem to discover the complete oneness of people, that there isn’t a them and us. Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Exactly, exactly.  They also feel this from the being of light, which they often interpret as a deity. They say that I was made of the same stuff, that that being was, I’m not separate. And they often compared to being a wave in the ocean, that the wave maybe is distinct from the rest of the ocean, but it’s made of the same stuff, and it will merge back into the ocean.

Greg McKeown     

They felt that they themselves were made of something divine.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

That’s right. That’s right.

Greg McKeown     

It wasn’t just the day it over there. But I’m part of, I’m part of them. They’re part of me.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

There is a divine part of every one of us. And that’s also what makes them treat other people with greater respect and compassion. Because no matter how someone is acting, they can see the divinity in that person.

Greg McKeown     

Does it last for a long period of time with these people?  

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Oh yes it does. Really, the changes do not go away. I’ve talked to people in their 90s, who had the experience as teenagers, and they say it’s like happened yesterday, I’ve never been able to go back to the way I was before the new death experience. I’ve actually, since I’ve been in this business for so long, I’ve been able to test some of that I’ve gone back to find people that I interviewed in the early 1980s and interviewed them again. And the after effects are as strong now as they were 40 years ago.  

Greg McKeown    

Why do you think people experienced this?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, you know, I’m still a skeptic at heart. And I’m not sure my answers here. But I suspect that they experienced this because that’s what really happens. We hear the identical types of stories from people all over the globe, from different religions, different cultures. And if you go back in time, you see the same type of experience reported in the ancient literature of Greece, Rome and Egypt, as if they were happening today. So I think we are touching something that is real here, even though it doesn’t seem to be a part of our everyday physical life.

Greg McKeown     

It reminds me of a quote from the author of The Little Prince, it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Exactly I think near death experiences would resonate with that as well.

Greg McKeown    

Come back to me with this. How does it apply now? What does somebody do differently? They’re listening to this. They’re busy. They want to be productive. They’re trying to achieve their goals. They’re trying to go through life and then they hear. Well, look at these stories. Look at Dr. Grayson, he’s sharing these experiences, therefore what?

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Well, I think the answer is that we need to take a careful look at our goals, and why we are pursuing them. And if they are to put a crassly selfish goals, getting ahead at someone else’s expense, then maybe we should take a second look at why we’re doing these things. Because near death experiences tell us that if you treat people more compassionately, as if everyone is our brother and sister, then that makes your life much more meaningful and much more purposeful. Now, there’s a reason why every religion we know has the golden rule as one of us precepts; Treat other people the way you want to be treated yourself. Because most of these religions were founded by people who had mystical experiences like NDEs. And this was the secret they were given that life is much more meaningful and purposeful, when you treat other people compassionately. So several years ago, I was invited by the Dalai Lama to participate in a conference in Dharamsala with Western scientists and Buddhist monks. And we talked about the way we approach life and the way they approach life. And the Dalai Lama said that both Western science and Buddhism are basically empirical disciplines. We both look at the evidence and make our conclusions based on the evidence itself. And if the evidence contradicts what you believe, then your beliefs are wrong, and you go where the evidence shows. But he said, the big difference is, Western scientists seem to try to pursue the truth about reality, in order to control it, to master the natural world. Whereas Buddhism seeks to understand reality in order to live more harmoniously with it. And that made me think about what I’m doing with my life, about the research that I’m doing. And now instead of doing research in order to learn the answer, I asked myself with each research study, how is this going to help people? How is this going to make other people’s lives better? And if I can’t come up with a good answer for that, it’s not worth doing.

Greg McKeown     

You’ve just described a criteria actionable, useful for discerning through life whether something is a clear no. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t necessarily go far enough to make it a clear yes, because there are many things that fall under the category.  

Dr. Bruce Greyson

I no longer pursue research just to find the answer. It has to be an answer that will help people that will make people’s lives better. And if I can find a way this research is going to be helpful to people that I don’t think it’s worth doing. Now, the yes part is, therefore I try to find research that will help people that will make people’s lives better.

Greg McKeown   

It’s may seem like a subtle shift, but it’s a really important one for your work and I think we can apply that ourselves. By simply saying, just doing a thing because it’s on your schedule. That’s not enough reason being invited to go to a meeting. That’s not enough reason, being aware of a project, that’s not a good enough reason. But being intentional to pursue those things we believe, and we feel will actually be a benefit to other people that we are making decisions in service of others, is an important distinction between non-essential activity and essential activity. That’s what I hear you making a connection to here.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Yes, yes. And it doesn’t need to be a dichotomy between doing something for yourself and doing something for someone else, you know, scientists, which I am, we work in order to learn the truth to find out more information. And if that works, in the service of someone else’s betterment, that’s great. Similarly, if someone’s best is a businessman who feels his job, his mission is to make money to be successful. That’s fine as long as it’s also going to be helping people in some way.

Greg McKeown     

We no longer have to be at war between our goals and being a benefit to others into humanity. It’s about pairing those together, so that you can achieve goals that are important to you and make a contribution to other people at the same time.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Exactly. And living your life like that makes it much more fulfilling for you.

Greg McKeown     

And what I think you’re basically arguing, or at least reporting from all this data, all these stories is that that is reality, even if it’s not one that we are aware of yet, but it is in fact, how it works.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Exactly, exactly. You know when near death experiences talk to me about this. They say, for me, the golden rule is not just a goal to be followed it’s a law of the universe, I now experienced it in my near death experiences, just this is the way it is. When you do something to somebody else, you do it to yourself, there’s no distinction.

Greg McKeown     

I remember years ago, reading a document that expressed the golden rule from many different religious perspectives. Yes, that that that not only in Christianity where people might be more familiar with it in general within the US. So in Christianity in everything you do to others. Now my goodness, this is not even the quote that I’m familiar with. But anyway, so in so in everything do to others. What you would have them do to you for this sums up the law and the prophets. Okay, well, that’s Christianity. But Sikhism I am a stranger to no one. And no one is a stranger to me. Indeed, I am a friend to all in Taoism, regard your neighbors gain as your own gain in your neighbors’ loss as your own loss in Confucianism. Yes, one word sums up the basis of all good conduct loving kindness do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. In Buddhism, treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. In Hinduism, this is the sum of the Dharma. Do not to others which would cause pain if done to yourself same for the same in Islam, not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself. Judaism, what is hateful to you. Do not do to your neighbor, this is the whole Torah, or the rest is commentary, go and learn it. In Jainism. One should treat all creatures in the world, as one would like to be treated. In Zoroastrianism do not do unto others, whatever is injurious to yourself and we could go on,

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Right. It is not coincidence.

Greg McKeown     

I think most people would be familiar with the golden rule in one sense. But you’re really describing a shift from the concept, you know, the mental getting. it right hard to say it. It’s a very simple phrase. Once you’ve heard it once, pretty much you could repeat it, pretty much you could explain it. But that’s not the journey. That’s not the shift you’re talking about that these people experience. No, it’s the in the experience, it becomes reality. It’s not a nice idea. It’s not aspirational. It’s what is. So you’re just fighting against what is every day, you don’t understand that you don’t live it, you’re taking the hard path, the hard way in life, whenever you’re not living in accordance with this great truth, this great reality.

Dr. Bruce Greyson 

Right, in their near-death experience, they actually experienced that that’s the way it is. It’s not just that they were told it, they actually felt it experienced it.

Greg McKeown   

When I when the people listening to this conversation, you know, they they, they end the run that they’re on right now, or the walk or they’re, you know, they do the dishes so that when this ends, what’s the first thought? What’s the first step? You know, how do they make that journey from the logical comprehension to feeling it in their heart and becoming new creature a different, you know, a new experience.

Dr. Bruce Greyson 

I think for those of us who have not had a near death experience, the hard part is just remembering it thinking about it. Because it does not come naturally to us. We are biological animals and we have strong impulses to preserve ourselves. And sometimes that means it’s someone else’s expense. So it goes against our grain, to think of other people first, and to realize that we are more than just biological animals. We’re spiritual beings as well. And that what you do to somebody else you’re doing to yourself as well. So we need to think about that about everything we do in terms of those that that precept that why am I doing this? And what effect is it going to have on other people?

Greg McKeown  

It reminds me of a quote that I like. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Dr. Bruce Greyson 

Yes, that’s from Pierre Teilhard Desherdan, who was a Catholic priest and also a scientist.

Greg McKeown     

That’s one of the underlying themes that I love in this conversation is that truth can be circumscribed into one great hole. It’s not that it’s not that we have intellectual science on the one hand and spiritual experience and evidence on the other. It’s the pursuit of truth in all its richness

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Right. I think our scientific methods are excellent ways of learning more about the world and our role in it. And I think most spiritual traditions are a different way of doing the same thing. And they can be complimentary. They don’t seem to be in conflict unless we make them so. But they seem to be pointing us in the same direction.

Greg McKeown     

This has been fascinating conversation, not the kind of conversation you have every day. But a conversation you have every day.  And it’s been a real pleasure for me to have you. Thank you for being on the What’s Essential podcast.

Dr. Bruce Greyson

Thank you, Greg. I’ve been delighted to spend this time with you.

Greg McKeown    

The book is after a doctor explores what near death experiences reveal about life and beyond. And I’m sure that you will agree with me that this time with Dr. Bruce Grayson has been a great opportunity to be able to reflect in a very big profound perspective about what is essential right now. If we can make the shift from the conceptual understanding that we are one, that were connected the way interrelated the what we do to others, we are really doing to ourselves if we can make that shift and become somehow experiences ourselves with that. Even for all of us who haven’t had near death experiences, surely that will help us define in big, bold ways, what matters so that we can pursue it. Thank you for joining me on the What’s Essential podcast.