April 2, 2025 • 32 mins
A light at the end of a tunnel, your life flashes before your eyes, an angel speaks to you. Are these signs of an afterlife, or can science explain them?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My
name is Hoorge Champ, and today on the program, we're
tackling the question are near death experiences real? A certain
percentage of the population, when they're close to dying, report
coming out of their bodies. Some feel like they enter
a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it,
and some report having vivid conversations with people that are
(00:23):
already dead. But is it all real? Are they a
sign that there isn't afterlife or something beyond death? Or
can it all be explained by science. We're going to
hear from someone who's been through this experience, a psychiatrist
that's been tracking this phenomenon for decades, and a neuroscientist
who's going to tell us what happens to your brain
during your last moments of life. So don't leave your
(00:46):
body just yet. Stay with us as we answer the
question are near death experiences real? Welcome to Science Stuff, Hi, everyone.
So they were tackling the tricky question of whether near
death experiences are real. And it's tricky because it's a
topic that is in that kind of gray area between
science and nonscience. It dits a little bit into the paranormal,
(01:10):
and it's also a deeply subjective personal experience, So we're
going to do our best to keep this as scientific
as possible. Now, a near death experience is something that
happens to some people and they've come extremely close to dying.
Maybe their heart stops during a surgery, or maybe they're
in a combat situation and they get shot and bleed out,
(01:31):
or maybe they're involved in an accident or a drug overdose.
But then they're brought back to life, and when they
come back, the report having seen or felt things that
are really interesting and unusual. This phenomenon has been studied
by several people, but most notably by a psychiatrist named
doctor Bruce Grayson. Doctor Grayson is now a Professor Emeritus
(01:52):
of psychiatry and neurobehavior at the University of Virginia, and
he has been collecting and cataloging accounts of near death
experiences for almost fifty years. Here's how he explains getting
interested in the subject.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I think as a psychiatrist who makes my living trying
to help people change their lives. What captured me most
about new death experiences is that their incredible ability to
create profound changes in people's lives. It's much more powerful
than anything the tools we have.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We asked doctor Grayson to be on the show, but unfortunately,
due to a medical situation, he is unable to do
an interview. But he did give us permission to use
clips from one of his lectures and to talk about
his work. And his work is very interesting because in
his career, doctor Grayson has collected accounts from hundreds of
people who reported having near death experiences like this one
(02:45):
he got from a man named Bill Hernlund, a crash
rescue firefighter in the US Air Force who responded to
a call about a burning airplane and nearly died when
the plane exploded. Here's what he said. I was in darkness,
but fully conscious and vividly aware of my surroundings. I
would say some kind of tunnel that looked like what
(03:06):
a tornado funnel would be. From the inside. There was
a light in the distance, and I saw the spiraling
strings of blue green light coming and going like the
Aurora borealis. The light was drawing me to it. I
moved exceptionally fast down the tunnel. It seemed that time
was different or non existent. There. Wherever there was the
light was emanating from a being that was giving off
(03:28):
a very brilliant light as part of his essence. He
was beautiful to look at and projected the feelings of
unconditional love and peace. He asked, how do you feel
about your life? And how did you treat other people?
As he asked, every single event of my life, from
earliest childhood to the plane crash projected in front of me.
(03:48):
There were details concerning people and things that I had
forgotten about long ago. He told me to be in
peace and said that my work in this world was
not done yet and that I had to go back.
Pretty wild stuff. So, after collecting hundreds of stories like these,
doctor Grayson found that the stories had several things in common.
And here I asked a few of my friends to
(04:10):
read the accounts because I figured it'd be more interesting
than just having me read them. Here's what doctor Grayson
found first. In about half of the near death experiences
that he heard about, the person said that they were
able to think clearer and faster than usual. For example,
here's how a man named John Whittaker described to doctor
Grayson what he saw when he almost died during pancreatic
(04:32):
and liver surgery.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I was aware of an enhanced state of consciousness in
which my mind was extremely active and alert to what
I was experiencing. I was very observant during the state,
and my thoughts seemed to go almost twice to the
normal speed.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
So some near death experiencers, even though they're usually in
super stressful situations where they're literally dying, report feeling like
they could think super fast and super clearly, almost like
they're removed from the situation. Another thing in common that
doctor Grayson found in all of these near death experiences
was that three quarters of the people reported feeling a
(05:10):
change in their sense of time. For example, here's what
a man named Rob told doctor Grayson about the time
that he nearly died when he slipped and fell off
a ladder.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
The actual fall was slowed way down, almost like a
series of camera steel pictures being taken a sort of
clickficial progression, and then slowing down dramatically increased my thinking time,
which resulted in me being able to size up how
I could maneuver the ladder. Not only did the fall
slow way down, but my thinking became very clear. There's
(05:43):
wonderful slowing down which allowed me to think clearly and
split seconds was phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So during near death experiences, time slows down for some people,
like the world goes into slow motion or bullet time
from the matrix. Doctor Grayson also that in about two
thirds of the near death experiences he collected, the person
felt that they had extra vivid senses, meaning that they
were able to see or hear super clearly, or that
(06:11):
they could see or hear unique colors and sounds. For example,
here's how a woman named Jane Smith described to doctor
Grayson what she saw when she almost died from a
bad reaction to anesthesia when she was giving birth to
her baby.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
I found myself in a meadow, and this was a
beautiful green meadow with beautiful flowers, lit with this glorious,
radiant light, like no light we've ever seen. There was
sky grass, and I remember so well looking at them
and thinking I have never seen some of these colors.
I realized I was seeing the inner light of all
(06:47):
the growing things. It was not reflected light, but a
gentle inner glow that shone from each and every plant. Overhead.
The sky was clear and blue, the light infinitely more
beautiful than any light we know.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So some near death experiencers also get a heightened sense
of awareness. They can see tiny little details all around
them that they otherwise wouldn't even notice. They can see
things much more vividly, even though again they're in an
extremely dangerous and deadly situation. Next, doctor Grayson found out
about a quarter of all the near death experiences involved
(07:23):
a life review, which is basically when your life flashes
before your eyes. For example, here's what a man named
Greg Nome told doctor Grayson that he saw when he
almost drowned going over a waterfall.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
The images began with the living color scenes of my childhood.
It was as if someone else was running the projector
I was looking my life objectively for the first time ever.
I saw myself sitting in a baby's highchair and picking
up some food with my hand and throwing it on
the floor. Next, I saw myself at a lake in
a summer vacation we took when I was about three
or four years old. I was amazed at how many
(07:59):
scenes I was seeing that had long since been forgotten.
I also saw traumatic events in various ways. The images
continued at high speeds, Then the images ceased. There was
only darkness and a feeling of a short pause, like
something was about to happen.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:16):
So.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Near death experiencers also report seeing their life flash before
their eyes. This is very commonly portrayed in movies and
TV shows where someone's about to die and they suddenly
see this collage or montage of all the scenes from
their lives, and a lot of people report seeing things
they thought they had forgotten or things they feel they
shouldn't be able to remember. Finally, according to doctor Grayson,
(08:38):
about eighty percent of the people who report near death
experiences say they had an out of body experience, where
they say they could actually see their bodies from outside
of themselves, usually from the ceiling. For example, here's what
a woman named Jane told doctor Grayson about the time
she almost died during labor.
Speaker 8 (08:56):
My blood pressure dropped and nurses were in a panic.
When I heard an nurse say, oh my god, we're
losing her. I was out of my body at once
and on the ceiling of the operating room, looking down
watching them work on a body. It took me a
while to recognize the person I was viewing was me.
I watched my doctors arrive and procedures being done, heard
(09:16):
conversations and saw my baby being born.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
So some near death experiencers also reported out of body experiences,
meaning they felt like they left their bodies and they
floated up to the ceiling and they could see themselves
being operated on or being resuscitated. So those are some
of the common themes among the near death experiences or
MDes like doctor Grayson recorded. Now, what's interesting about these
(09:42):
near death experiences is that they seem to happen across
different cultures and across different times. Here's how doctor Grayson
describes it.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We found over the past fifty years studying NDEs from
different cultures, different religious groups, and throughout the centuries that
the cultural background and your religious background do not affect
whether you're going to have an experience or what type
you're going to have, but it does influence the metaphors
you use to describe it.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
So what doctor Grayson is saying is that near death
experiences seem to happen in different cultures, but different cultures
might describe them in different ways. For example, people from
one culture might describe the feeling of going through a
tunnel and seeing a light at the end of it,
but other cultures that are not as familiar with tunnels,
might describe them as going into a well or a cave,
(10:34):
or even through a pipe. And what's even more interesting
is that the people who report near death experiences, as
strange as those experiences might be, say that they felt
very real. In fact, some people say that their near
death experience feels more real than real. Here's how doctor
Grayson describes it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I've had people look at me after an experience to say,
my talking to God in the NDE is more real
than my talking to you right now.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'm not sure what that means. They don't know how
to judge what's more real than something else, but they
consistently say that.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
Now.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Doctor Grayson and his team of researchers have tested people
have had near death experiences with psychological tests that can
measure to some degree whether a memory is real or
whether you just dreamed it or hallucinated it. These are
tests that are used, for example, to tell if a
kid who says they've gone through a traumatic experience actually
went through that experience or if they imagined it. Here's
(11:32):
what doctor Grayson found.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
We find that the memories of the NDEs are like
the memories of real events, not at all as the
memories of imagined events. In fact, on this objective scale,
they look more real than the memories of real events.
It's more real than real. We did this research at UVA.
It was also replicated at the University of Liasian Belgium
(11:55):
and the University of Padua in Italy. And in fact,
the Italian group also measured the brain waves of people
as they are remembering their events, and they reported that
the brain waves of people remembering NDEs look like people
remembering real events, not like people remembering dreams or hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
So, as far as the researchers could tell, near death
experiences are indistinguishable or basically the same as real experiences.
Okay to recap. Near death experiences are strange and sometimes
impossible experiences that happen to people as they're dying or
as they're about to die, and they seem to be
(12:35):
a consistent and widespread phenomenon. According to doctor Grayson and others,
about ten to twenty percent of people who have close
brushes with dying report having a near death experience. Now,
some people say that because these experiences happen to so
many people and because they are sometimes inexplicable, they are
a clue that there is something beyond death, that somehow
(12:57):
our consciousness or our spirits can leave our body, or
talk to dead people, or exist out of time. And others,
of course, say that this can all be explained by
science and that there isn't anything supernatural going on. So
we're gonna do two things for the rest of the episode.
In the next segment, we're gonna talk to a neuroscientist
(13:17):
who's gonna tell us what are some of the things
in these near death experiences that science and brain science
can explain. And then in the last segment, we're gonna
talk about some of the things that science currently can't
explain about near death experiences. So let's dig into the
science and the mystery of near death experiences. But first
(13:38):
let's take a quick break. You're listening to science stuff. Hey,
welcome back. So we talked about what near death experiences are,
how often they happen, and how they feel more real
than real to the people that have them. I mean though,
(14:00):
that there are people whose consciousness has left their bodies
or that have gotten a glimpse of the afterlife. Like
I said, we're gonna do two things. First, we're gonna
talk to a neuroscientist to see what he thinks could
be behind these experiences that some people have. And then
later in the program, we're gonna talk about the things
that science can't explain about near death experiences. So to
(14:22):
break it down for us, I called my friend neuroscientist
Dwayne Godwin. Doctor Godwin is a professor of neuroscience at
Wake Forest University specializing in neurophysiology, addiction, epilepsy, and traumatic
brain injury. Doctor Godwin and I also co wrote a
book together called Out of Your Mind, which you should
check out. Here's my conversation with neuroscientists Dwayne Godwin. Thanks
(14:45):
for talking with us today.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Have you had any near death experiences lately?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
I try to.
Speaker 7 (14:50):
Avoid those as much as possible. I think most people
do well.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
First of all, maybe for folks, what is a near
death experience to a neuroscientist like you, Wow?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Well, you know.
Speaker 7 (15:00):
Near death experiences are these events that happen to people
where they see these really interesting and unusual things and
they bring these stories back from this rush with their
own potential death. There is this concept that it's probably
based in something that is happening in your brain. At least,
that's all that scientists can really speak to. It's not
(15:23):
to say that people's experiences aren't real to them, but
a lot of the evidence suggests that these experiences are
rooted in physical workings of the brain. You know, it's
not that hard to explain that when something weird like
that is happening to you, and especially when it's happening
to your brain, that your brain is going to try
to make sense of it, just like it tries to
(15:43):
make sense of everything else.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, here, doctor Godwin is talking about the idea that
near death experiences are caused by what is happening to
your brain in certain situations, because the one thing that
all near death experiences have in common is that they
happen near death. Here's how doctor Godwin describes it.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
They happen under extreme stress, and what's more stressful than dying. So,
you know, we're talking about things like oxygen deprivation, changes
in brain chemistry, the electrical activity going haywire not functioning normally,
so it's producing these weird sensations and perceptions. It's like,
you know, imagine your computer suddenly losing power. You might
(16:24):
get some weird glitches and error messages before it completely
shuts down. Is that kind of thing that's happening in
the brain during a near death experience.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So near death experiences could just be how some people's
brains react when they're dying. Now, this, of course is
hard to prove because it's hard to predict when someone
is going to have a near death experience, and so
it's really hard to test for it, at least in
a consistent and ethical way. But there is something scientists
can do.
Speaker 7 (16:53):
And there are several things that scientists have done to
try to provide a neurological explanation. So, for example, there
are overlaps with other brain states like those that are
induced by certain drugs and even some forms of epilepsy,
and all of those similarities suggest a common neurological mechanism.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
So how scientists try to explain near death experiences is
by pointing out common neurological mechanisms or things that happen
in the brain that are similar to near death experiences,
because then you can infer or reason that near death
experiences are caused by the same thing. So we're going
to break it down into two categories. The first is
the out of body experience, and the second are the
(17:34):
visions that people have during near death experiences. We'll start
with the out of body experience and actually scientists have
a name for it. It's called autoscopy.
Speaker 7 (17:44):
Autoscopy is this really interesting phenomenon where people have the
sensation of seeing themselves from outside of their own body.
So it's like you're watching a movie or yourself, but
you're also somehow still in the movie.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
This concept of otoscopy is important because you can get it,
not just in near death experiences. For example, about six
percent of people with epilepsy report feeling like they leave
their bodies when they have seizures. And actually scientists think
they found this specific part of your brain that gives
you that out of body experience. Here's what doctor Godwin said.
Speaker 7 (18:19):
Scientists have been studying otoscopy. They've penpointed a specific area
of the brain that seems to be involved. And this
area is really important because it helps you sort of synthesize,
you know, your sense of body and the rest of
your experiences. It's likely integrating the sense reinformation to create
a coherent sense of their body in space. It's called
the temporal parietal junction and it's located roughly above and
(18:42):
behind your ears.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So this area of your brain, the temporal parordal junction,
is a part of your brain that gives you that
sense of being in your body. It takes everything your
eyes and ears are seeing and hearing about the world,
and everything your skin and muscles are feeling, and it
tell us the rest of your brain okay, this is
where you are. And scientists note, this is what that
part of the brain does, because you can turn it off.
(19:08):
The note is that when people have epileptic seizures in
that part of the brain, those people suddenly feel like
they're leaving their bodies. They've also done experiments where scientists
can scramble or tweak that brain area and cause someone
to have an out of body experience. Here's how doctor
Godwin explains it.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
So there was this fascinating study where scientists use transcranial
magnetic stimulation. I'll call it TMS just because it's a
long word. TMS is basically a way to temporarily disrupt
the activity of specific brain regions using magnetic pulses. And
so these pulses scramble brain activity and when they targeted
the temporal parietal junction, people have trouble sensing the position
(19:51):
of their own limbs even when they could see them.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Wait, this sense like if I look at my arm,
I can I have the feeling that it's my arm,
that I can contry that it's a part of me.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
Yeah, But when you take out this particular brain area
in your ability to sort of integrate that sense of
your body is disrupted.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
So scientists can actually scramble this area of the brain
called the temporal parietical junction using special electromagnets and give
you that sense of not being in your body or
not knowing where your body is. Could that be what's
happening in a near death experience? And the idea is
that maybe when your body is freaking out because it's
dying or close to death, then somehow that part of
(20:32):
the brain gets affected or what.
Speaker 7 (20:34):
Yes, you know, nobody knows for sure, so we have
to be very careful about that. But I would propose
that TMS scrambling your brain is not that different than
death kind of scrambling your brain.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Okay, So now the question is what could be scrambling
that area during a near death experience? And this ties
into what is happening to your brain? In general when
you're close to dying.
Speaker 7 (20:58):
Brain death is a very complex thing that even physicians
don't always get right. They don't always make the call correctly.
It's not even sure that the brain dies all at once, right,
So some parts of your brain can die and other
parts remain alive and kicking it. But generally what happens, though,
is that the brain relies on a lot on a constant
supply of oxygen. The estimates are that the brain uses
(21:19):
about twenty percent of the body's oxygen, and when that
supply is cut off, things start to go downhill pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Without oxygen, doctor Godwin says, neurons lose the ability to
control how ions like calcium and potassium go into and
out of the neurons. And these are the same chemicals
that neurons use to activate how they talk to each other.
So basically, when you stop breathing or your heart stops,
your brain cells go a little haywire. How haywire Here's
(21:48):
how doctor Godwin puts it.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well.
Speaker 7 (21:52):
Recent research suggests that there's a surge of activity in
the brain right around the time of death. You know,
the brain doesn't just quietly fade away or just turn off.
It's a complicated set of events happening as it shuts down.
There's a lot of stuff happening with brain chemicals.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
So when the neurons start to go hey wire, they
cause other chemicals to go up, like the chemical serotonin.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
Serotonin, for example. We know that those levels spike in
the brain at the time of death, and this has
been observed in animals. Scientists do these experiments where animals
croak and when their heart ceases. They've observed that there
have been these spikes and serotonin activity.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Your brain makes more serotonin or releases more Yeah.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
Yeah, When I say spike, I mean like a rush
of serotonin happens right around the moment of death. They've
actually measured this increase as the animals were dying and serotonins.
But it's also linked to sensory perception, and this is
relevant because drugs like LSD act on the serotonin system.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
And this is where things start to get a little trippy.
We know that serotonin goes up in your brain when
you're dying, and we know that drugs like LSD and
magic mushrooms that give you hallacinations also affect how your
body reacts to serotonin.
Speaker 7 (23:08):
LSD and magic mushrooms, and these cause hallucinations. They affect
serotonin receptors in the brain, so that spike, that big
rush of serotonin at death is not that far fetched
to think that, hey, you know, maybe my brain is
tripping a little bit could be contributing to the altered
perceptions and all of those weird, vivid experiences that people
(23:30):
report with these near death experiences.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Meaning like, as my brain is shutting down dying, I
basically have the same experience as if I just took
a bunch of LSD or magic mushrooms. Yeah, okay, So
to recap scientists like doctor Godwin think that near death
experiences can be explained by what's happening in your brain.
When you die or are close to dying, things can
go haywire, which might turn off the parts of your
(23:55):
brain that give you that sense of being in your body,
and your brain also gets flooded with serotonin, which acts
on the same parts of your brain as LSD and
magic mushrooms. Another interesting clue is an experiment done in
twenty eighteen that very directly tested whether drugs can give
you the same experience as near death experiences, and this
(24:16):
involved a chemical called dimethyl tryptomine, or DMT, which is
the active ingredient in ayahuasca, a psychedelic drink used in
South American spiritual and shamanistic rituals. Here's how doctor Godwin
describes it.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
Yeah, so you had healthy volunteers given either a placebo
or DMT. So what they found was that the experiences
reported by people who took DMT had a really striking
overlap with the experiences reported by people had near death experiences.
Things like feelings of joy, a sense of timelessness, and
even in some cases out of body sensations. These were
(24:54):
more common in the DMT group compared to the placebo group, So,
you know, very telling. But it doesn't really prove that
nds are solely caused by something like DMT, but it
does suggest that similar neurochemical mechanisms might be at play,
and it provides some additional evidence that the experiences are
rooted in brain activity.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
And so that basically explains what near death experiences are.
But like I said before, there are some things about
them that science can't explain. So when we come back,
we're going to talk to doctor Godwin about what those
things are and whether we'll ever solve those mysteries.
Speaker 6 (25:32):
Stick with us.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You're listening to science stuff. Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 8 (25:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
We talked about what near death experiences are and how
science can explain a lot of things that people say
happen to them when they're close to dying, and now
we're going to talk about what science can't explain about
near death experiences, because there are things people say are
still inexplicable. The first is that about a quarter of
near death experiencers report seeing or talking to people that
(26:07):
are dead. For example, here's a well known writer and
war reporter, Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, describing
what he saw when he almost died when he lost
two thirds of the blood in his body due to
pancreatic aneurysm.
Speaker 9 (26:22):
I became aware of a dark pit below me and
to my left. The pit was the purest black and
so infinitely deep that it had no real depth at all.
It exerted a pole that was slow but unanswerable, and
I knew that if I went into the hole, I
was never coming back. And I was feeling myself getting
pulled more and more sternly into the darkness. And just
(26:45):
when it seemed unavoidable. I became aware of something else.
My father. He'd been dead eight years, but there he
was not so much floating as simply existing above me
and slightly to my left. My father exuded reassurance. It
seemed to be inviting me to go with him. It's okay,
there's nothing to be scared of. He seemed to be saying,
(27:05):
don't fight it, I'll take care of you.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Why do the dying and only the dying, Sebastian Junger writes,
keep seeing the dead in their last days and hours.
The other thing people say can't be explained by science
are when people who go through a near death experience
seem to know things they shouldn't know. For example, when
someone has an out of body experience and they report
knowing what was happening in the room or even in
(27:31):
the next room when they were unconscious and dying, or
when people are told secrets or things that haven't happened
yet by dead people they meet in their near death experience.
Here's doctor Grayson describing one such experience.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
One fellow I interviewed was hospitalized with severe pneumonia, and
he had one particular nurse, Anita, who was about his
age and one day she told him she was going
to be taking a long weekend off. While she was gone,
he had another respiratory arrest where he had to be resuscitated,
and during that one he had a near death experience
and he found himself in a beautiful pastoral scene. To
(28:06):
a surprise, Anita came walking towards him. She said, Jack,
you need to go back to your body, and I
want you to find my parents and tell them that
I'm sorry I wrecked the red MGB. When he later
woke up back in his body, it turned that his nurse, Anita,
had taken the weekend off to celebrate her twenty first birthday,
and her parents surprised her with the gift of her
red MGB. She got excited, jumped in the car for
(28:27):
a test drive, lost control and crashed into a telephone
pole and died instantly, just a few hours before his
near death experience. Now, how would he have known that
she died, or let alone how she died, and yet
he did.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
That is pretty spooky. So what does science make of
examples like these? I asked doctor Godwin, and he didn't
seem that concern about cases like these.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
This is what he said, I would say there may
be things about near death experiences that science can't yet explain,
or for which there there's not enough information to form
a rational hypothesis. Or maybe it's just that we don't
have the tools yet necessary to ask the question.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Basically, doctor Godwin says, just because science can't explain a
specific event, it doesn't mean that there isn't a reasonable explanation.
Maybe we see dead people because we're primed to think
about them if we are close to dying, or in
the case of the man who saw his dead nurse,
maybe he regained consciousness briefly and overheard someone talking about her.
In those cases, it can't just be that we don't
(29:31):
have enough information. But it did get doctor Godwin to
admit there is something science may never be able to
explain about near death experiences, and that is why do
we have them? Well, what would be the evolutionary basis
for near death experiences? Like why would that be something
that we evolved to have?
Speaker 7 (29:51):
Yeah, I don't know that it necessarily conveys an evolutionary
advantage because think about it, it would be very rare
for someone during the course of evolution to be able
to come back from death. It's only now, more recently,
when we have all these wonderful machines and drugs that
can help stimulate and bring us back, that we would
(30:11):
even note that these experiences happen. So from an evolutionary perspective,
it's almost like it doesn't matter. I guess you could
postulate that maybe some of those same genes that are
producing hallucinations during death, or genes that were very important
in life, and just at the end we get this nice,
(30:33):
non selective experience that helps us make sense of things.
What we can say, though, is that NDEs are real.
You know, they're real in the sense that people genuinely
experience them. They come back from this brush with their
own mortality with these stories, and there's no reason to
feel or to expect that they're being dishonest about it.
(30:53):
The emotions they feel when this happens to them, those
are real. They're not just making them up. But the
dance suggests that these experience sorts, at least the ones
that we can track down, seem to be rooted in
how the brain works, not necessarily evidence of an afterlife
or any sort of supernatural realm, but it's kind of
a reminder of the incredible complexity of the brain and
(31:16):
the way we have this amazing ability to create vivid
and meaningful experiences.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
All right, I think that's a pretty good answer to
the question. Our near death experience is real, the real
to the people that have them, even if it's all
just happening in their brains. Thanks for joining us, See
you next time. A big thanks to doctor Grayson and
the University of Virginia Lifetime Learning Office of Engagement, and
to Sebastian Junger. The audio excerpt is copyright twenty twenty
(31:45):
four by Sebastian Junger and courtesy of Simon and Schuster.
Audio from the audiobook In My Time of Dying by
Sebastian Junger, right by the author, published by Simon and
Schuster Audio, a division of Simon and Schuster Incorporated. Used
with permission and thanks to my friends for reading those
near death experience accounts. Monica, Paul Andres Vivan and Suluka.
You've been listening to science stuff. The production of iHeartRadio
(32:07):
written and produced by me Or hitch Ham, executive producer
Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram, and
you can follow me on social media just search for
PhD comics and the name of your favorite platform. Be
sure to subscribe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Hey, Welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My
name is Hoorge Champ, and today on the program, we're
tackling the question are near death experiences real? A certain
percentage of the population, when they're close to dying, report
coming out of their bodies. Some feel like they enter
a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it,
and some report having vivid conversations with people that are
(00:23):
already dead. But is it all real? Are they a
sign that there isn't afterlife or something beyond death? Or
can it all be explained by science. We're going to
hear from someone who's been through this experience, a psychiatrist
that's been tracking this phenomenon for decades, and a neuroscientist
who's going to tell us what happens to your brain
during your last moments of life. So don't leave your
(00:46):
body just yet. Stay with us as we answer the
question are near death experiences real? Welcome to Science Stuff, Hi, everyone.
So they were tackling the tricky question of whether near
death experiences are real. And it's tricky because it's a
topic that is in that kind of gray area between
science and nonscience. It dits a little bit into the paranormal,
(01:10):
and it's also a deeply subjective personal experience, So we're
going to do our best to keep this as scientific
as possible. Now, a near death experience is something that
happens to some people and they've come extremely close to dying.
Maybe their heart stops during a surgery, or maybe they're
in a combat situation and they get shot and bleed out,
(01:31):
or maybe they're involved in an accident or a drug overdose.
But then they're brought back to life, and when they
come back, the report having seen or felt things that
are really interesting and unusual. This phenomenon has been studied
by several people, but most notably by a psychiatrist named
doctor Bruce Grayson. Doctor Grayson is now a Professor Emeritus
(01:52):
of psychiatry and neurobehavior at the University of Virginia, and
he has been collecting and cataloging accounts of near death
experiences for almost fifty years. Here's how he explains getting
interested in the subject.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I think as a psychiatrist who makes my living trying
to help people change their lives. What captured me most
about new death experiences is that their incredible ability to
create profound changes in people's lives. It's much more powerful
than anything the tools we have.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We asked doctor Grayson to be on the show, but unfortunately,
due to a medical situation, he is unable to do
an interview. But he did give us permission to use
clips from one of his lectures and to talk about
his work. And his work is very interesting because in
his career, doctor Grayson has collected accounts from hundreds of
people who reported having near death experiences like this one
(02:45):
he got from a man named Bill Hernlund, a crash
rescue firefighter in the US Air Force who responded to
a call about a burning airplane and nearly died when
the plane exploded. Here's what he said. I was in darkness,
but fully conscious and vividly aware of my surroundings. I
would say some kind of tunnel that looked like what
(03:06):
a tornado funnel would be. From the inside. There was
a light in the distance, and I saw the spiraling
strings of blue green light coming and going like the
Aurora borealis. The light was drawing me to it. I
moved exceptionally fast down the tunnel. It seemed that time
was different or non existent. There. Wherever there was the
light was emanating from a being that was giving off
(03:28):
a very brilliant light as part of his essence. He
was beautiful to look at and projected the feelings of
unconditional love and peace. He asked, how do you feel
about your life? And how did you treat other people?
As he asked, every single event of my life, from
earliest childhood to the plane crash projected in front of me.
(03:48):
There were details concerning people and things that I had
forgotten about long ago. He told me to be in
peace and said that my work in this world was
not done yet and that I had to go back.
Pretty wild stuff. So, after collecting hundreds of stories like these,
doctor Grayson found that the stories had several things in common.
And here I asked a few of my friends to
(04:10):
read the accounts because I figured it'd be more interesting
than just having me read them. Here's what doctor Grayson
found first. In about half of the near death experiences
that he heard about, the person said that they were
able to think clearer and faster than usual. For example,
here's how a man named John Whittaker described to doctor
Grayson what he saw when he almost died during pancreatic
(04:32):
and liver surgery.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I was aware of an enhanced state of consciousness in
which my mind was extremely active and alert to what
I was experiencing. I was very observant during the state,
and my thoughts seemed to go almost twice to the
normal speed.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
So some near death experiencers, even though they're usually in
super stressful situations where they're literally dying, report feeling like
they could think super fast and super clearly, almost like
they're removed from the situation. Another thing in common that
doctor Grayson found in all of these near death experiences
was that three quarters of the people reported feeling a
(05:10):
change in their sense of time. For example, here's what
a man named Rob told doctor Grayson about the time
that he nearly died when he slipped and fell off
a ladder.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
The actual fall was slowed way down, almost like a
series of camera steel pictures being taken a sort of
clickficial progression, and then slowing down dramatically increased my thinking time,
which resulted in me being able to size up how
I could maneuver the ladder. Not only did the fall
slow way down, but my thinking became very clear. There's
(05:43):
wonderful slowing down which allowed me to think clearly and
split seconds was phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So during near death experiences, time slows down for some people,
like the world goes into slow motion or bullet time
from the matrix. Doctor Grayson also that in about two
thirds of the near death experiences he collected, the person
felt that they had extra vivid senses, meaning that they
were able to see or hear super clearly, or that
(06:11):
they could see or hear unique colors and sounds. For example,
here's how a woman named Jane Smith described to doctor
Grayson what she saw when she almost died from a
bad reaction to anesthesia when she was giving birth to
her baby.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
I found myself in a meadow, and this was a
beautiful green meadow with beautiful flowers, lit with this glorious,
radiant light, like no light we've ever seen. There was
sky grass, and I remember so well looking at them
and thinking I have never seen some of these colors.
I realized I was seeing the inner light of all
(06:47):
the growing things. It was not reflected light, but a
gentle inner glow that shone from each and every plant. Overhead.
The sky was clear and blue, the light infinitely more
beautiful than any light we know.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So some near death experiencers also get a heightened sense
of awareness. They can see tiny little details all around
them that they otherwise wouldn't even notice. They can see
things much more vividly, even though again they're in an
extremely dangerous and deadly situation. Next, doctor Grayson found out
about a quarter of all the near death experiences involved
(07:23):
a life review, which is basically when your life flashes
before your eyes. For example, here's what a man named
Greg Nome told doctor Grayson that he saw when he
almost drowned going over a waterfall.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
The images began with the living color scenes of my childhood.
It was as if someone else was running the projector
I was looking my life objectively for the first time ever.
I saw myself sitting in a baby's highchair and picking
up some food with my hand and throwing it on
the floor. Next, I saw myself at a lake in
a summer vacation we took when I was about three
or four years old. I was amazed at how many
(07:59):
scenes I was seeing that had long since been forgotten.
I also saw traumatic events in various ways. The images
continued at high speeds, Then the images ceased. There was
only darkness and a feeling of a short pause, like
something was about to happen.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:16):
So.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Near death experiencers also report seeing their life flash before
their eyes. This is very commonly portrayed in movies and
TV shows where someone's about to die and they suddenly
see this collage or montage of all the scenes from
their lives, and a lot of people report seeing things
they thought they had forgotten or things they feel they
shouldn't be able to remember. Finally, according to doctor Grayson,
(08:38):
about eighty percent of the people who report near death
experiences say they had an out of body experience, where
they say they could actually see their bodies from outside
of themselves, usually from the ceiling. For example, here's what
a woman named Jane told doctor Grayson about the time
she almost died during labor.
Speaker 8 (08:56):
My blood pressure dropped and nurses were in a panic.
When I heard an nurse say, oh my god, we're
losing her. I was out of my body at once
and on the ceiling of the operating room, looking down
watching them work on a body. It took me a
while to recognize the person I was viewing was me.
I watched my doctors arrive and procedures being done, heard
(09:16):
conversations and saw my baby being born.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
So some near death experiencers also reported out of body experiences,
meaning they felt like they left their bodies and they
floated up to the ceiling and they could see themselves
being operated on or being resuscitated. So those are some
of the common themes among the near death experiences or
MDes like doctor Grayson recorded. Now, what's interesting about these
(09:42):
near death experiences is that they seem to happen across
different cultures and across different times. Here's how doctor Grayson
describes it.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We found over the past fifty years studying NDEs from
different cultures, different religious groups, and throughout the centuries that
the cultural background and your religious background do not affect
whether you're going to have an experience or what type
you're going to have, but it does influence the metaphors
you use to describe it.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
So what doctor Grayson is saying is that near death
experiences seem to happen in different cultures, but different cultures
might describe them in different ways. For example, people from
one culture might describe the feeling of going through a
tunnel and seeing a light at the end of it,
but other cultures that are not as familiar with tunnels,
might describe them as going into a well or a cave,
(10:34):
or even through a pipe. And what's even more interesting
is that the people who report near death experiences, as
strange as those experiences might be, say that they felt
very real. In fact, some people say that their near
death experience feels more real than real. Here's how doctor
Grayson describes it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I've had people look at me after an experience to say,
my talking to God in the NDE is more real
than my talking to you right now.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'm not sure what that means. They don't know how
to judge what's more real than something else, but they
consistently say that.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
Now.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Doctor Grayson and his team of researchers have tested people
have had near death experiences with psychological tests that can
measure to some degree whether a memory is real or
whether you just dreamed it or hallucinated it. These are
tests that are used, for example, to tell if a
kid who says they've gone through a traumatic experience actually
went through that experience or if they imagined it. Here's
(11:32):
what doctor Grayson found.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
We find that the memories of the NDEs are like
the memories of real events, not at all as the
memories of imagined events. In fact, on this objective scale,
they look more real than the memories of real events.
It's more real than real. We did this research at UVA.
It was also replicated at the University of Liasian Belgium
(11:55):
and the University of Padua in Italy. And in fact,
the Italian group also measured the brain waves of people
as they are remembering their events, and they reported that
the brain waves of people remembering NDEs look like people
remembering real events, not like people remembering dreams or hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
So, as far as the researchers could tell, near death
experiences are indistinguishable or basically the same as real experiences.
Okay to recap. Near death experiences are strange and sometimes
impossible experiences that happen to people as they're dying or
as they're about to die, and they seem to be
(12:35):
a consistent and widespread phenomenon. According to doctor Grayson and others,
about ten to twenty percent of people who have close
brushes with dying report having a near death experience. Now,
some people say that because these experiences happen to so
many people and because they are sometimes inexplicable, they are
a clue that there is something beyond death, that somehow
(12:57):
our consciousness or our spirits can leave our body, or
talk to dead people, or exist out of time. And others,
of course, say that this can all be explained by
science and that there isn't anything supernatural going on. So
we're gonna do two things for the rest of the episode.
In the next segment, we're gonna talk to a neuroscientist
(13:17):
who's gonna tell us what are some of the things
in these near death experiences that science and brain science
can explain. And then in the last segment, we're gonna
talk about some of the things that science currently can't
explain about near death experiences. So let's dig into the
science and the mystery of near death experiences. But first
(13:38):
let's take a quick break. You're listening to science stuff. Hey,
welcome back. So we talked about what near death experiences are,
how often they happen, and how they feel more real
than real to the people that have them. I mean though,
(14:00):
that there are people whose consciousness has left their bodies
or that have gotten a glimpse of the afterlife. Like
I said, we're gonna do two things. First, we're gonna
talk to a neuroscientist to see what he thinks could
be behind these experiences that some people have. And then
later in the program, we're gonna talk about the things
that science can't explain about near death experiences. So to
(14:22):
break it down for us, I called my friend neuroscientist
Dwayne Godwin. Doctor Godwin is a professor of neuroscience at
Wake Forest University specializing in neurophysiology, addiction, epilepsy, and traumatic
brain injury. Doctor Godwin and I also co wrote a
book together called Out of Your Mind, which you should
check out. Here's my conversation with neuroscientists Dwayne Godwin. Thanks
(14:45):
for talking with us today.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Have you had any near death experiences lately?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
I try to.
Speaker 7 (14:50):
Avoid those as much as possible. I think most people
do well.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
First of all, maybe for folks, what is a near
death experience to a neuroscientist like you, Wow?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Well, you know.
Speaker 7 (15:00):
Near death experiences are these events that happen to people
where they see these really interesting and unusual things and
they bring these stories back from this rush with their
own potential death. There is this concept that it's probably
based in something that is happening in your brain. At least,
that's all that scientists can really speak to. It's not
(15:23):
to say that people's experiences aren't real to them, but
a lot of the evidence suggests that these experiences are
rooted in physical workings of the brain. You know, it's
not that hard to explain that when something weird like
that is happening to you, and especially when it's happening
to your brain, that your brain is going to try
to make sense of it, just like it tries to
(15:43):
make sense of everything else.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, here, doctor Godwin is talking about the idea that
near death experiences are caused by what is happening to
your brain in certain situations, because the one thing that
all near death experiences have in common is that they
happen near death. Here's how doctor Godwin describes it.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
They happen under extreme stress, and what's more stressful than dying. So,
you know, we're talking about things like oxygen deprivation, changes
in brain chemistry, the electrical activity going haywire not functioning normally,
so it's producing these weird sensations and perceptions. It's like,
you know, imagine your computer suddenly losing power. You might
(16:24):
get some weird glitches and error messages before it completely
shuts down. Is that kind of thing that's happening in
the brain during a near death experience.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So near death experiences could just be how some people's
brains react when they're dying. Now, this, of course is
hard to prove because it's hard to predict when someone
is going to have a near death experience, and so
it's really hard to test for it, at least in
a consistent and ethical way. But there is something scientists
can do.
Speaker 7 (16:53):
And there are several things that scientists have done to
try to provide a neurological explanation. So, for example, there
are overlaps with other brain states like those that are
induced by certain drugs and even some forms of epilepsy,
and all of those similarities suggest a common neurological mechanism.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
So how scientists try to explain near death experiences is
by pointing out common neurological mechanisms or things that happen
in the brain that are similar to near death experiences,
because then you can infer or reason that near death
experiences are caused by the same thing. So we're going
to break it down into two categories. The first is
the out of body experience, and the second are the
(17:34):
visions that people have during near death experiences. We'll start
with the out of body experience and actually scientists have
a name for it. It's called autoscopy.
Speaker 7 (17:44):
Autoscopy is this really interesting phenomenon where people have the
sensation of seeing themselves from outside of their own body.
So it's like you're watching a movie or yourself, but
you're also somehow still in the movie.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
This concept of otoscopy is important because you can get it,
not just in near death experiences. For example, about six
percent of people with epilepsy report feeling like they leave
their bodies when they have seizures. And actually scientists think
they found this specific part of your brain that gives
you that out of body experience. Here's what doctor Godwin said.
Speaker 7 (18:19):
Scientists have been studying otoscopy. They've penpointed a specific area
of the brain that seems to be involved. And this
area is really important because it helps you sort of synthesize,
you know, your sense of body and the rest of
your experiences. It's likely integrating the sense reinformation to create
a coherent sense of their body in space. It's called
the temporal parietal junction and it's located roughly above and
(18:42):
behind your ears.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So this area of your brain, the temporal parordal junction,
is a part of your brain that gives you that
sense of being in your body. It takes everything your
eyes and ears are seeing and hearing about the world,
and everything your skin and muscles are feeling, and it
tell us the rest of your brain okay, this is
where you are. And scientists note, this is what that
part of the brain does, because you can turn it off.
(19:08):
The note is that when people have epileptic seizures in
that part of the brain, those people suddenly feel like
they're leaving their bodies. They've also done experiments where scientists
can scramble or tweak that brain area and cause someone
to have an out of body experience. Here's how doctor
Godwin explains it.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
So there was this fascinating study where scientists use transcranial
magnetic stimulation. I'll call it TMS just because it's a
long word. TMS is basically a way to temporarily disrupt
the activity of specific brain regions using magnetic pulses. And
so these pulses scramble brain activity and when they targeted
the temporal parietal junction, people have trouble sensing the position
(19:51):
of their own limbs even when they could see them.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Wait, this sense like if I look at my arm,
I can I have the feeling that it's my arm,
that I can contry that it's a part of me.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
Yeah, But when you take out this particular brain area
in your ability to sort of integrate that sense of
your body is disrupted.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
So scientists can actually scramble this area of the brain
called the temporal parietical junction using special electromagnets and give
you that sense of not being in your body or
not knowing where your body is. Could that be what's
happening in a near death experience? And the idea is
that maybe when your body is freaking out because it's
dying or close to death, then somehow that part of
(20:32):
the brain gets affected or what.
Speaker 7 (20:34):
Yes, you know, nobody knows for sure, so we have
to be very careful about that. But I would propose
that TMS scrambling your brain is not that different than
death kind of scrambling your brain.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Okay, So now the question is what could be scrambling
that area during a near death experience? And this ties
into what is happening to your brain? In general when
you're close to dying.
Speaker 7 (20:58):
Brain death is a very complex thing that even physicians
don't always get right. They don't always make the call correctly.
It's not even sure that the brain dies all at once, right,
So some parts of your brain can die and other
parts remain alive and kicking it. But generally what happens, though,
is that the brain relies on a lot on a constant
supply of oxygen. The estimates are that the brain uses
(21:19):
about twenty percent of the body's oxygen, and when that
supply is cut off, things start to go downhill pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Without oxygen, doctor Godwin says, neurons lose the ability to
control how ions like calcium and potassium go into and
out of the neurons. And these are the same chemicals
that neurons use to activate how they talk to each other.
So basically, when you stop breathing or your heart stops,
your brain cells go a little haywire. How haywire Here's
(21:48):
how doctor Godwin puts it.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well.
Speaker 7 (21:52):
Recent research suggests that there's a surge of activity in
the brain right around the time of death. You know,
the brain doesn't just quietly fade away or just turn off.
It's a complicated set of events happening as it shuts down.
There's a lot of stuff happening with brain chemicals.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
So when the neurons start to go hey wire, they
cause other chemicals to go up, like the chemical serotonin.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
Serotonin, for example. We know that those levels spike in
the brain at the time of death, and this has
been observed in animals. Scientists do these experiments where animals
croak and when their heart ceases. They've observed that there
have been these spikes and serotonin activity.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Your brain makes more serotonin or releases more Yeah.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
Yeah, When I say spike, I mean like a rush
of serotonin happens right around the moment of death. They've
actually measured this increase as the animals were dying and serotonins.
But it's also linked to sensory perception, and this is
relevant because drugs like LSD act on the serotonin system.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
And this is where things start to get a little trippy.
We know that serotonin goes up in your brain when
you're dying, and we know that drugs like LSD and
magic mushrooms that give you hallacinations also affect how your
body reacts to serotonin.
Speaker 7 (23:08):
LSD and magic mushrooms, and these cause hallucinations. They affect
serotonin receptors in the brain, so that spike, that big
rush of serotonin at death is not that far fetched
to think that, hey, you know, maybe my brain is
tripping a little bit could be contributing to the altered
perceptions and all of those weird, vivid experiences that people
(23:30):
report with these near death experiences.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Meaning like, as my brain is shutting down dying, I
basically have the same experience as if I just took
a bunch of LSD or magic mushrooms. Yeah, okay, So
to recap scientists like doctor Godwin think that near death
experiences can be explained by what's happening in your brain.
When you die or are close to dying, things can
go haywire, which might turn off the parts of your
(23:55):
brain that give you that sense of being in your body,
and your brain also gets flooded with serotonin, which acts
on the same parts of your brain as LSD and
magic mushrooms. Another interesting clue is an experiment done in
twenty eighteen that very directly tested whether drugs can give
you the same experience as near death experiences, and this
(24:16):
involved a chemical called dimethyl tryptomine, or DMT, which is
the active ingredient in ayahuasca, a psychedelic drink used in
South American spiritual and shamanistic rituals. Here's how doctor Godwin
describes it.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
Yeah, so you had healthy volunteers given either a placebo
or DMT. So what they found was that the experiences
reported by people who took DMT had a really striking
overlap with the experiences reported by people had near death experiences.
Things like feelings of joy, a sense of timelessness, and
even in some cases out of body sensations. These were
(24:54):
more common in the DMT group compared to the placebo group, So,
you know, very telling. But it doesn't really prove that
nds are solely caused by something like DMT, but it
does suggest that similar neurochemical mechanisms might be at play,
and it provides some additional evidence that the experiences are
rooted in brain activity.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
And so that basically explains what near death experiences are.
But like I said before, there are some things about
them that science can't explain. So when we come back,
we're going to talk to doctor Godwin about what those
things are and whether we'll ever solve those mysteries.
Speaker 6 (25:32):
Stick with us.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You're listening to science stuff. Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 8 (25:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
We talked about what near death experiences are and how
science can explain a lot of things that people say
happen to them when they're close to dying, and now
we're going to talk about what science can't explain about
near death experiences, because there are things people say are
still inexplicable. The first is that about a quarter of
near death experiencers report seeing or talking to people that
(26:07):
are dead. For example, here's a well known writer and
war reporter, Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, describing
what he saw when he almost died when he lost
two thirds of the blood in his body due to
pancreatic aneurysm.
Speaker 9 (26:22):
I became aware of a dark pit below me and
to my left. The pit was the purest black and
so infinitely deep that it had no real depth at all.
It exerted a pole that was slow but unanswerable, and
I knew that if I went into the hole, I
was never coming back. And I was feeling myself getting
pulled more and more sternly into the darkness. And just
(26:45):
when it seemed unavoidable. I became aware of something else.
My father. He'd been dead eight years, but there he
was not so much floating as simply existing above me
and slightly to my left. My father exuded reassurance. It
seemed to be inviting me to go with him. It's okay,
there's nothing to be scared of. He seemed to be saying,
(27:05):
don't fight it, I'll take care of you.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Why do the dying and only the dying, Sebastian Junger writes,
keep seeing the dead in their last days and hours.
The other thing people say can't be explained by science
are when people who go through a near death experience
seem to know things they shouldn't know. For example, when
someone has an out of body experience and they report
knowing what was happening in the room or even in
(27:31):
the next room when they were unconscious and dying, or
when people are told secrets or things that haven't happened
yet by dead people they meet in their near death experience.
Here's doctor Grayson describing one such experience.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
One fellow I interviewed was hospitalized with severe pneumonia, and
he had one particular nurse, Anita, who was about his
age and one day she told him she was going
to be taking a long weekend off. While she was gone,
he had another respiratory arrest where he had to be resuscitated,
and during that one he had a near death experience
and he found himself in a beautiful pastoral scene. To
(28:06):
a surprise, Anita came walking towards him. She said, Jack,
you need to go back to your body, and I
want you to find my parents and tell them that
I'm sorry I wrecked the red MGB. When he later
woke up back in his body, it turned that his nurse, Anita,
had taken the weekend off to celebrate her twenty first birthday,
and her parents surprised her with the gift of her
red MGB. She got excited, jumped in the car for
(28:27):
a test drive, lost control and crashed into a telephone
pole and died instantly, just a few hours before his
near death experience. Now, how would he have known that
she died, or let alone how she died, and yet
he did.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
That is pretty spooky. So what does science make of
examples like these? I asked doctor Godwin, and he didn't
seem that concern about cases like these.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
This is what he said, I would say there may
be things about near death experiences that science can't yet explain,
or for which there there's not enough information to form
a rational hypothesis. Or maybe it's just that we don't
have the tools yet necessary to ask the question.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Basically, doctor Godwin says, just because science can't explain a
specific event, it doesn't mean that there isn't a reasonable explanation.
Maybe we see dead people because we're primed to think
about them if we are close to dying, or in
the case of the man who saw his dead nurse,
maybe he regained consciousness briefly and overheard someone talking about her.
In those cases, it can't just be that we don't
(29:31):
have enough information. But it did get doctor Godwin to
admit there is something science may never be able to
explain about near death experiences, and that is why do
we have them? Well, what would be the evolutionary basis
for near death experiences? Like why would that be something
that we evolved to have?
Speaker 7 (29:51):
Yeah, I don't know that it necessarily conveys an evolutionary
advantage because think about it, it would be very rare
for someone during the course of evolution to be able
to come back from death. It's only now, more recently,
when we have all these wonderful machines and drugs that
can help stimulate and bring us back, that we would
(30:11):
even note that these experiences happen. So from an evolutionary perspective,
it's almost like it doesn't matter. I guess you could
postulate that maybe some of those same genes that are
producing hallucinations during death, or genes that were very important
in life, and just at the end we get this nice,
(30:33):
non selective experience that helps us make sense of things.
What we can say, though, is that NDEs are real.
You know, they're real in the sense that people genuinely
experience them. They come back from this brush with their
own mortality with these stories, and there's no reason to
feel or to expect that they're being dishonest about it.
(30:53):
The emotions they feel when this happens to them, those
are real. They're not just making them up. But the
dance suggests that these experience sorts, at least the ones
that we can track down, seem to be rooted in
how the brain works, not necessarily evidence of an afterlife
or any sort of supernatural realm, but it's kind of
a reminder of the incredible complexity of the brain and
(31:16):
the way we have this amazing ability to create vivid
and meaningful experiences.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
All right, I think that's a pretty good answer to
the question. Our near death experience is real, the real
to the people that have them, even if it's all
just happening in their brains. Thanks for joining us, See
you next time. A big thanks to doctor Grayson and
the University of Virginia Lifetime Learning Office of Engagement, and
to Sebastian Junger. The audio excerpt is copyright twenty twenty
(31:45):
four by Sebastian Junger and courtesy of Simon and Schuster.
Audio from the audiobook In My Time of Dying by
Sebastian Junger, right by the author, published by Simon and
Schuster Audio, a division of Simon and Schuster Incorporated. Used
with permission and thanks to my friends for reading those
near death experience accounts. Monica, Paul Andres Vivan and Suluka.
You've been listening to science stuff. The production of iHeartRadio
(32:07):
written and produced by me Or hitch Ham, executive producer
Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram, and
you can follow me on social media just search for
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tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
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