Review Dr. Bruce Greyson AFTER
Credit the progression of the Near-Death Experience (NDE) over the past 50 years from an event that raised eyebrows about the experiencer’s sanity to a phenomenon that merited serious consideration by scientific and medical professionals to the curiosity and persistence of Dr. Bruce Grayson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, among many other professional credentials.
Dr. Greyson’s interest in near-death experiences began in medical school when he encountered a patient in the emergency room who stunned him with an account of leaving her body while unconscious, an event that challenged his orthodox beliefs about the mind and the brain and thus led him on a lifelong journey to study near-death experiences scientifically. He went on to co-find the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and serve as editor to the Journal of Near-Death Studies for 27 years.
As a writer myself who focuses on reincarnation and the paranormal, I found IANDS ten years ago, have attended several of its events, read widely on the subject, and observed related research by Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona. This is not to blow my horn, but to give some standing in reviewing and recommending Dr. Greyson’s recently published (March 2021) memoir/autobiography of his work with NDE’s, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond. To those with considerable experience, direct or indirect, in the subject, Dr. Greyson’s work might, as a top Amazon reviewer put it, appear to be “interesting, not groundbreaking,” qualifying such bluntness by saying: “You will not be disappointed if you approach this book as a biography of Greyson and a late-in-life summation of his work and perspective on the NDE phenomenon. It isn’t by any means technical or groundbreaking. It touches all the bases, but not in a deep or challenging way.” A left-handed compliment but the type of innuendo that Dr. Greyson as an academic working in a non-traditional field must be used to, and one I see as more of a positive than perhaps intended. After is indeed not highly technical or overburdened with jargon; Greyson is an experienced teacher introducing his subject in a way that novices to the concept of the NDE, his target audience, can readily absorb. That same reviewer also takes issue with the author holding to middle ground: “Greyson bends over backwards – and beyond – to maintain at least a façade of objectivity between the extremes of insisting NDEs are full-blown experiences of the afterlife and insisting they’re products of natural processes.” Again, a left-handed swipe that can be seen as a compliment to Dr. Greyson’s ability to encourage the reader to think independently and synthesize the opposite sides of the argument for himself. He does this so elegantly when he writes: “One of the fruits of that open-minded attitude is an appreciation for things we can’t explain. Studying things that fit our preconceived ideas helps us understand their fine points better. But studying things that don’t fit our preconceived ideas is what often drives breakthroughs in science.”
And I believe he is plenty bold enough in stating what is obvious and incontrovertible about the NDE experience: “Whatever NDEs were, they were changing people’s lives as surely as our psychiatric drugs and psychotherapy. What’s more, they seemed to do this much faster, more profoundly, and more permanently. And beyond that, NDEs changed not only the experiencers’ lives, but often the lives of others who came into contact with them—including me.”
He takes on the tough, perhaps unfathomable, questions, a key one of which in his own words is: “What’s a better way to think about the relationship between the chemical and electrical activity in your brain and the thoughts and feelings in your mind?” He then points out the need to differentiate the mind from the brain, citing NDE phenomenon as evidence to that separation in the human makeup, a conclusion he is then content to leave open-ended: “We may eventually come up with another explanation, but until then, minds and brains as separate things, with brains acting to filter our thoughts and feelings, seems to be the most plausible working model.”
After is Highly recommended for those newly curious about to the subject of NDEs (there are also dozens of books with supportive case studies and alternate analyses) but equally valuable to the already initiated as a summary of the subject from a master and a well-crafted handbook for use in presenting this difficult but critical element of the life process to those who need to know about it. And if NDEs are as frequent and impactful as Dr. Greyson proposes they are, who shouldn’t know as much as can be known about them?
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