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Conspiracy Unlimited with Richard Serrett

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On this episode, the world's leading expert on near-death experiences reveals his journey toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness.

Dr. Bruce Grayson is a professor emeritus of psychiatry and neuro-behavioral sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

He served on the medical school faculty at the University of Michigan, Connecticut, and Virginia.

He was co-founder and president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, an editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies.

A distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he's received national awards for his medical research.

His brand new book is After, a doctor explores what near-death experiences reveal about life and beyond.

Dr. Grayson, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing fine. Thank you for having me on your show, Richard.

My pleasure. I find the most powerful stories with regards to near-death experiences come from former skeptics, hardened skeptics.

Take me back 50 years ago before that fateful plate of spaghetti when you were a hardened skeptic. What would you like back then with regards to near-death experiences?

Well, I was raised in a scientific household where there was never any talk about anything non-material.

We just assumed the material world was all there was. It's not that we were opposed to spirituality or religion.

It just never came up on our family. So I went through college and medical school, assuming that the civil world is all there is.

And when you die, that's the end. And I wasn't opposed to anything like near-death experiences. I just never heard of them.

And back in those days in the 1960s and early 70s, no one else had either.

But when I finished my medical school program, I started training to be a psychiatrist and just a few months into that.

I was confronted by a patient in the emergency room who I come to see because she had overdosed and she was totally unconscious.

So I talked to her roommate to get information about what was going on in her life.

And then arranged to see the patient when she eventually woke up the next morning.

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