This program includes three bonus interviews with the author.
The world’s leading expert on near-death experiences reveals his journey toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness.
Cases of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death have been reported since ancient times, and are described today by 10% of people whose hearts stop. The medical world has generally ignored these “near-death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. But after his patients started describing events that he could not just sweep under the rug, Dr. Bruce Greyson began to investigate.
As a physician without a religious belief system, he approached near-death experiences from a scientific perspective. In After, he shares the transformative lessons he has learned over four decades of research. Our culture has tended to view dying as the end of our consciousness, the end of our existence—a dreaded prospect that for many people evokes fear and anxiety.
But Dr. Greyson shows how scientific revelations about the dying process can support an alternative theory. Dying could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another, not an ending but a transition. This new perspective on the nature of death can 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. After challenges us to open our minds to these experiences and to what they can teach us, and in so doing, expand our understanding of consciousness and of what it means to be human.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Essentials
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23 reviews for Amazon.com: After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (Audible Audio Edition): M.D. Bruce Greyson, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Macmillan Audio:…
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Afterlife
José Macaya –
Muy bien estructurado y escrito. Uno de los mejores libros sobre el tema de NDEs. Yo he leído ya 5-6 libros sobre el tema, por lo que mucho de lo que dice me era conocido. Pero a pesar de eso lo recomiendo incluso a los que ya están versados en el tema
Amazon Customer –
I can’t recommend this book more highly. It just might point us in directions we never thought possible, and so much for the better.
Akane –
NED is such a very interesting event for humanity. Before I met this book I was scared of death, but I’m not scared to die anymore. Whenever my life ends I will be happy and accept my death.
I have never had a NED in my life. However, while I was reading this book I felt so calm, peaceful, alive and could feel the experiencer’s feelings. Also, I feel like having more confidence than before. I’m not sure how I explain fully my feelings or thoughts. This book made me stronger and want to know more about our minds and brains. One day, I believe that this fascinating research will help and save a lot of people who have mental illnesses or traumas.
Amazon Customer –
A well written empirical demonstration that logically leads to the conclusion that mind transcends matter. This is important. If humans are meat machines and no better than a computer or a brick, then nothing can stop the modern psychopathic dictator from slaughtering humans in the name of a vile, miserable, and unholy state. The horrifying affects of institutional hostility towards God, Abba, Brahman, Atman, The Tau, Nirvana, etc., pick a name, are self evident. The immeasurable sum of execrable deeds and miseries wrought upon the innocents by religion completely pales in comparison to the abject horror unleashed by the totalitarian, atheistic state. These amoral states are the psychopathic children of metaphysical materialism. Consider the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, the Gulag Archipelago, the Killing Fields, The Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution, and the endemic, homicidal madness of this anti-spiritual, amoral civilization. If there is no divine Soul, then humans are objects.
Without consideration of NDEs, the purely mechanistic understanding of the Cosmos died 100 years ago. The equations used to describe quantum mechanics require a human observation to bring determinance to the system of physcial states of leptons, bosons and quarks. For example, paired electrons in an orbital are spin up and spin down, but either is neither until observed. Experiments verify this conclusion. Aurhur Eddington concluded that “the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.”
I have no religion per se. They all to bear the same beautiful wisdom. You shoukd know that you do not have to nearly die to find the same perfect KNOWING. If you learn to silence the brain you will experience the true wonder of your true Self and the One! You can experience the truth that Father or any other word or human utterance fails miserably. You can find that dear Father is insufficiently warm and familiar. In silent prayer you are overwhelmed by the subsuming tide of ineffable love. You will experience the exquisite joy and awe of His nearness. You will experience the startled bewilderment of every fiber of being, dissolving into inarticulate, wordless transcendence. Father is wholly inadequate. Words fail miserably! Consciousness dreams this world, walking infinity’s shore, gazing sleepily into the Deep, seeing without seeing. You left the infinite, diving into the finite. You left the infinite, tethered to the Soul. Spirit longs to merge with the infinite. Soul thirsts for union. In silent prayer and meditation you walk transcendence’s edge. Hints of the eternal touch the Spirit. You dive into the Infinite. There you find peace and forgetful joy. You are renewed and refreshed, though you cannot stay. You long and ache for deeper prayer with the One.
But I’m getting off the topic. Do yourself a great good: Read this book. Share this book. Even if you can’t learn to dive into the infinite, you won’t fear your departure from this finite pause. Fear, not pride, is the source of what humans call evil. Pride and greed are fear’s offspring. They create want, ignorance, and wrath. Each human who transcends fear makes this world a step closer to our beautiful destiny. Thank you for this fine book Doc.
Stoa Michael –
Der Autor ist ein Urgestein und hat die Forschung wohl ein ordentliches Stück vorangetrieben und Zweifler zum Nachdenken gebracht, zumindest ist das mein Eindruck.
Am Ende des Buches hatte ich sogar den Eindruck, dass er sich selbst überzeugen musste.
Am spannendsten fand ich jene Kapitel die sich mit der Frage auseinander setzt ob das Gehirn unser Geist ist. Der Ausschluss von sämtlichen oberflächlichen Erklärungen die man Menschen hört die sich noch nicht tiefer mit dem Thema beschäftigt haben. Damit bin ich bei meiner Einschätzung für wen das Buch geschrieben wurde. Ich sehe es als einstiegslektüre mit ganz vielen Schilderungen von persönlichen Gesprächen mit Patienten. Ich musste nicht überzeugt werden und so habe ich mich durch manches Kapitel kämpfen müssen.
Meine größte Kritik dreht sich um das Papier des Buches, was für eine unnötige Abwertung. Der Inhalt selbst hat damit aber nichts zu tun, weshalb ich bei 5 Sterne bleiben will.
Victor E. Smith –
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?
Accu laadt niet –
Goed boek, erg dunne pagina’s.
Pete –
Here are my takeaways from this book (some of which are nicely summarized in the last chapter):
1) Near death experiences (NDEs) are actually not uncommon. About 10%-20% of ppl who came close to death report such experiences. It happens to both religious and non-religious ppl.
2) Memories of NDEs are like memories of real events, in contrast to memories of imagined or hallucination events.
a. No correlation to mental illness, neither before or after
3) NDEs often lead to profound and long term changes to the experiencer’s life
4) NDEs reduces the fear of death and at the same time removes the desire for suicide (some NDEs are the result of a suicide attempt)
5) NDEs points to us being something more than just the physical brain. Our current understanding of the human brain does not accommodate for the possibility of the reported NDEs. Instead, it points to some form of continued consciousness after death.
6) Here are some of the common features of NDEs
a. The experiencers goes thru a “life review”, where the person’s entire life is re-played and experienced.
b. The experiencers often report indescribable peace, love, and bliss. They are often disappointed that
they did not die and are brought back to physical existence.
c. Some report out-of-body experiences
d. NDEs result in enhanced sense of meaning & purpose. These changes are long lasting and do not
fade with time
e. Most experiencers report encountering some kind of divine being. Some identify the divine being in
accordance with their particular religion, and some feel that any label is inadequate. (Chapter 14).
I appreciate Dr. Greyson’s approach to this research as a non-religious, data-driven scientist and practicing psychiatrist, which makes his work less vulnerable to biases.
kennyB –
An extensive review of the studies on NDEs, near death experiences, by one of the pioneers of their realities and some of the possible interpretations of what thousands of individuals have experienced. Greyson takes an appropriately skeptical attitude toward NDES, given his role as a medical practitioner and researcher, but seems to have been convinced by the thousands of cases he investigated. He provides descriptions of the NDEs of a very large number of people, and suggests quite a few ideas, theories of the possible interpretations of the experiences.
Diane Santos, Author –
Goed boek, erg dunne pagina’s.
Stoa Michael –
Der Autor ist ein Urgestein und hat die Forschung wohl ein ordentliches Stück vorangetrieben und Zweifler zum Nachdenken gebracht, zumindest ist das mein Eindruck.
Am Ende des Buches hatte ich sogar den Eindruck, dass er sich selbst überzeugen musste.
Am spannendsten fand ich jene Kapitel die sich mit der Frage auseinander setzt ob das Gehirn unser Geist ist. Der Ausschluss von sämtlichen oberflächlichen Erklärungen die man Menschen hört die sich noch nicht tiefer mit dem Thema beschäftigt haben. Damit bin ich bei meiner Einschätzung für wen das Buch geschrieben wurde. Ich sehe es als einstiegslektüre mit ganz vielen Schilderungen von persönlichen Gesprächen mit Patienten. Ich musste nicht überzeugt werden und so habe ich mich durch manches Kapitel kämpfen müssen.
Meine größte Kritik dreht sich um das Papier des Buches, was für eine unnötige Abwertung. Der Inhalt selbst hat damit aber nichts zu tun, weshalb ich bei 5 Sterne bleiben will.
Bernard Lavallee –
Interesting read but all anecdotal. Makes you wonder if it will ever be anything else but anecdotal. I prefer more science.
Stoa Michael –
NED is such a very interesting event for humanity. Before I met this book I was scared of death, but I’m not scared to die anymore. Whenever my life ends I will be happy and accept my death.
I have never had a NED in my life. However, while I was reading this book I felt so calm, peaceful, alive and could feel the experiencer’s feelings. Also, I feel like having more confidence than before. I’m not sure how I explain fully my feelings or thoughts. This book made me stronger and want to know more about our minds and brains. One day, I believe that this fascinating research will help and save a lot of people who have mental illnesses or traumas.
STW –
I met Dr. Greyson at a conference about 1.5 years ago when this book had not yet been published. At the time, I was familiar w/ Ian Stevenson’s and Jim Tucker’s work on reincarnation—which I discovered by accident—but didn’t know much about NDEs. I had barely heard about them. I had not read Dr. Greyson’s work prior and looked forward to reading this book. It doesn’t disappoint, from its coherent and logical layout to the conclusions he draws. He does not write as a “true believer”, but as one who, having studied the evidence, is almost reluctantly drawn into his observations that there might be more to life than what we now know. One possibility, for instance, is that we may be connected to something larger than ourselves. As such, this is the best kind of “science writing.”
When I discovered the initial JAMA article on Stevenson’s work years ago, I personally wasn’t in a good place, w/ two seriously ill children and a flagging career. In further exploring the topic, some hope did arise that there might be more than misery ahead for us. This book affirmed those thoughts—life might be more than a chancy jungle where the lucky and smart survive while the others (us) don’t. So, the book has achieved at least that one goal of its author, (for me) as well as the other goals he mentions.
Some critics have dismissed this book as a review of known research (known to who? I might ask). I’m less familiar w/ NDE research, so perhaps the critics are correct. Big deal. It’s the coherency of the presentation of even supposedly known fact in this book that makes it helpful. Also, this book is not written for a scientific audience so assumptions about a purported reader’s prior knowledge of the topic cannot be made.
That criticism and others I saw as the usual cat fighting among academics that is often based in envy. I was an academic, and I know more than I care to about this nasty behavior.
It’s a good book. Read it if you are interested. And thank you, Dr. Greyson, for writing it.
Sheila Wall, MD, MFA, CAc
Vital –
This book contains lots of NDEs, statistics from NDE studies, and Dr. Greyson’s personal story of learning about NDEs as a psychiatrist, all of which are very interesting. In addition, Dr. Greyson realizes that experience and interpretation of experience are distinct, which is very important when dealing with NDEs. He notes that true science is based on method, not claim under investigation.
The brain uses a lot of resources to maintain the body so it isn’t too surprising that out-of-body souls are confronted with subtle senses and boundary confusion. It would have been interesting to know how many maintain some degree of subtle awareness after reestablishing body consciousness.
The book says that less than 10% report going to hell or outer darkness. Many of these soul prayed fervently to God for help, only to be delivered by either a great Light or a being of Light. How beautiful is that!
For all its fine qualities, I almost didn’t give this book five stars because Dr. Greyson erroneously suggests that all paths lead to God. In reality, the goal of eastern religions is destruction of mind so that one’s energy can “merge” unobstructed into the Void (Buddhism) or non-qualified paramatman (Hinduism) while the goal of western religion is right living to merit eternal soul life in heaven; thus, eastern and western religions are antithetical to each other. They don’t even characterize God in the same way so it would have been insightful if he would have separated out the reports from practitioners of eastern religion from those of western religion. Nevertheless, he may be being witty since he claims that 90% of NDE reports says they met God or a godlike being.
Overall, thank you Dr. Greyson. A friend’s father died while I was reading this book and I shared some of the statistics with her. She said that it really helped.
Akane –
I can’t recommend this book more highly. It just might point us in directions we never thought possible, and so much for the better.
D. Natani –
Bruce Greyson has published many articles in journals, but now he is writing for us. It’s still good science, but humanized, still factual but with simple statistics. I LOVE that he answers the standard objections with references and studies, but leaves the soapbox in the closet. We can accept his findings or not, he’s just telling us all what he discovered, what he didn’t, and how it all was done.
Thank you, sir. You validated experiencers without ever setting out to do so, which is how you did. Even though, I am fairly certain, you, yourself, don’t think you did.
Annette Mackey –
After by Dr. Bruce Greyson was both deeply emotional and incredibly informative. I found myself connecting with many of the stories, perhaps because I have loved ones who have already passed on.
One of the most encouraging parts of the book is how much the medical community has changed. Where doctors once often dismissed or even ridiculed near-death experiences, many medical schools and nursing programs now teach caregivers to respect these experiences. Do to medical training changes, families are also better prepared for what their loved ones may experience as they approach death, allowing them to offer greater understanding and comfort.
What struck me most was the remarkable consistency of the people Dr. Greyson interviewed. Regardless of their backgrounds, so many came away with the same realization: love is the most important thing in the world, and life is a precious gift to be embraced. Whether you’re curious about near-death experiences or simply looking for a thoughtful, compassionate book that encourages you to cherish the people around you, I highly recommend After.
Accu laadt niet –
Der Autor ist ein Urgestein und hat die Forschung wohl ein ordentliches Stück vorangetrieben und Zweifler zum Nachdenken gebracht, zumindest ist das mein Eindruck.
Am Ende des Buches hatte ich sogar den Eindruck, dass er sich selbst überzeugen musste.
Am spannendsten fand ich jene Kapitel die sich mit der Frage auseinander setzt ob das Gehirn unser Geist ist. Der Ausschluss von sämtlichen oberflächlichen Erklärungen die man Menschen hört die sich noch nicht tiefer mit dem Thema beschäftigt haben. Damit bin ich bei meiner Einschätzung für wen das Buch geschrieben wurde. Ich sehe es als einstiegslektüre mit ganz vielen Schilderungen von persönlichen Gesprächen mit Patienten. Ich musste nicht überzeugt werden und so habe ich mich durch manches Kapitel kämpfen müssen.
Meine größte Kritik dreht sich um das Papier des Buches, was für eine unnötige Abwertung. Der Inhalt selbst hat damit aber nichts zu tun, weshalb ich bei 5 Sterne bleiben will.
Akane –
NED is such a very interesting event for humanity. Before I met this book I was scared of death, but I’m not scared to die anymore. Whenever my life ends I will be happy and accept my death.
I have never had a NED in my life. However, while I was reading this book I felt so calm, peaceful, alive and could feel the experiencer’s feelings. Also, I feel like having more confidence than before. I’m not sure how I explain fully my feelings or thoughts. This book made me stronger and want to know more about our minds and brains. One day, I believe that this fascinating research will help and save a lot of people who have mental illnesses or traumas.
Richard B. Schwartz –
This is an interesting, readable book, but it does not live up to the hype it has been given. I’m not sure that any book on so complex and potentially consequential a subject as this could. It concerns near death experiences, which Dr. Greyson has been studying for over four decades. The subjects involved are what my college classmates would have termed cosmic: the existence of God, the existence of an afterlife, the aspects of that afterlife which might be described and enumerated, the existence of a heaven and a hell, the meaning of life/death/experience, and so on.
The scientific method is interviewing/categorizing/calculating experiential overlap/summation. What did people experience in their NDE’s? How many people near death have NDE’s? Of what do they consist? What are the most common experiences? What conclusions can we draw from all this?
Needless to say, this is all of the greatest possible importance, but the evidence is perforce anecdotal, not anecdotal in the ‘that’s not science or real data’ sense (which he addresses at some length) but the kind of science represented by ethnology—the interviewing of individuals, the development of case studies, and so on. The investigator is limited by the number of ‘experiencers’, the nature and quality of their experiences and the degree to which concrete conclusions can be drawn from those experiences. This is not topology, particle physics or genetics though it may be more important than all of them.
Given the fact that the data are thus limited and that the book’s audience is a general one, the science is interesting and instructive but not as weighty and persuasive as we might like (particularly when readers are all personally invested in certain conclusions that might be drawn).
I found the first half of the book a bit of a slog. It is largely autobiographical (how I got into this, what it meant to my career, why I wouldn’t have gotten tenure doing it at the U. of Michigan, and so on). About halfway through, the book comes alive with the discussion of consciousness. Consciousness is the most complex and perhaps most weighty of the subjects facing contemporary neuroscience and the notion that NDE research suggests (proves?) that the mind and brain are separate entities, that the mind lives on when the brain ceases to function and that not only does the brain not ‘create’ the mind; rather, it takes its directions from the mind . . . this is all very heavy, fascinating stuff. He returns to this in the book’s interesting (8-page) conclusion. The problem is that the weight of the conclusions is perforce disproportionate to the weight of the evidence.
The bottom line is that for this reader (familiar with much of the popular neuroscience literature and the product of Catholic education, from grammar school through college) the book carries less weight than I would have liked, even though I am disposed to agree heartily with its conclusions. It may be that skeptical but passionate believers, like Samuel Johnson, e.g., always want more evidence, more rigor, something approaching a proof that compels belief, even though such a so-called apodictic proof may not be possible. I recommend the book, particularly for those who are new to the subject, but I warn those already familiar with it that they will come away wanting more.
Diane Santos, Author –
Dr. Greyson has done a phenomenal job writing this book. The personal accounts shared of NDE’s are a source of hope for what lies beyond the physical journey. I found his explanation of the difference between the mind and the brain, particularly fascinating and highly educational.
My interest in what lies beyond the physical world began following the sudden passing of the man I loved. His death and the grief that followed sent me spiraling into the grips of despair. Comfort was found in reading books written about NDE’s. The subject matter brought peace to my spirit and set me back on the path to life.
I have self-published two books on my grief journey, in the hopes of helping others. I am a firm believer that we are far more than these physical bodies we currently inhabit. We truly are spiritual beings having a temporary human experience. Thank you, Dr. Greyson for authoring such an amazing book. Your collection of data and the scientific methods applied in your research are easy to follow and not off-putting in any way. The language used is easy to understand and thought provoking. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject of what happens when we die. This book inspires HOPE, something we desperately need in today’s world.
Amazon Customer –
Muy bien estructurado y escrito. Uno de los mejores libros sobre el tema de NDEs. Yo he leído ya 5-6 libros sobre el tema, por lo que mucho de lo que dice me era conocido. Pero a pesar de eso lo recomiendo incluso a los que ya están versados en el tema