A Review of Bruce Greyson’s “After”
Life After Life?
What happens to us when we die? That’s a universal and age-old question. At my church, we talk about people who have died as moving from the “life beyond this life.” Whether there’s an afterlife or some sort of consciousness that exists in people after death, though, seems to be the great unknown. Or is it? Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson has been studying near-death experiences for more than 40 years and brings the results of his decades-long study of the phenomenon to the fore in his new book After. It’s a slightly complicated and challenging book because it is stuffed to the gills with stories from whom Greyson calls “experiencers” (those who have experienced a near-death or out-of-body experience) and conclusions on what data gleaned from these people might all mean.
How did Greyson — who grew up in a household without religion and is a self-described skeptic — come to study near-death experiences? One day some 50 years ago, and while he was eating spaghetti in a hospital cafeteria, his pager went off and startled him. He wound up getting a spaghetti sauce stain on his tie, which he promptly hid under his lab coat. He’d been called to see a young woman named Holly who had tried to commit suicide and was now unconscious in a bed in one room of the same hospital. He then went to a nearby room to talk to the woman’s friend about what had happened, and he unbuttoned his lab coat to reveal the stained tie. The next day, he went back to talk to Holly, who was now conscious, and Holly indicated that she had been in the neighbouring room as Greyson and her friend during the day before and had heard the conversation. Holly also mentioned that she had seen the spaghetti sauce stain on his tie. Greyson was puzzled. How could have Holly known about the stain unless someone had told her about it? And why would they mention this to her as part of a complicated plot to befuddle the doctor into believing she had been awake when she clearly hadn’t been? It just didn’t make too much sense. Why would anyone want to play such an elaborate trick? However, Holly’s insistence that she was in the same room as Greyson and her friend while she was actually lying unconscious in a different room, if true, didn’t make much sense, either.
This incident led Greyson to study near-death experiences as a bit of a hobby throughout his medical career. While he thinks the phenomenon is real, he’s most concerned about what the phenomenon does to experiencers. It turns out that there’s no way to scientifically measure whether or not there’s an afterlife where people will meet God or Jesus outside of their bodies before being told to go back to their physical bodies on the operating room table. This turns out to be a blessing because Greyson doesn’t beat you over the head with an insistence that Heaven is real, though I have since read an interview with him after reading this book where he concedes that it is plausible that there’s an afterlife. However, in After, Greyson simply presents his facts and his case about what might be happening and lets the reader come up with their own conclusions. Thus, there are no claims in this book that the near-death experience is a mystical or spiritual experience that proves that God exists. Instead, Greyson seems to think there is enough evidence to suggest that the brain is separate from the mind, and the mind can continue thinking after the brain has shut down and become clinically dead.
It’s a complicated theory to be sure, and, to be honest, I’m not sure if I understand it fully. While Greyson’s prose is easy to understand and meant for the lay reader, he also is guilty of forgetting that he isn’t talking to other doctors from time to time, and so the book could have been a little more focused and offered more explanation at times about topics such as the mind and brain relationship. The other thing that I could offer as criticism about this book is the fact that there are so many stories from experiencers in the volume that these anecdotes threaten to topple the entire book! Greyson might have been better served by using the stories from five or six main experiencers throughout the book whose experiences illustrate the points he is trying to make as a whole. Instead, we get page after page of testimony from what feels like dozens of different people — and the result is that we don’t get invested in these people as characters because they abruptly leave the text as soon as they enter it.
Still, After is entertaining and does offer some food for thought. I think I have more questions about near-death experiences now than before I read the book. I’m curious to know more about the link between these experiences and mental illness, and how different the two things are from one another. I also liked the point of the book: Greyson wants people to read about near-death experiences and take home the message that such experiences prove to everyone that it is important to treat each day as though it could be your last. After is just as much about living in the present, as it is an examination of whether God exists or if that existence could ever be scientifically measured.
All in all, I’d say that you should read After if you want to learn more about near-death experiences and what they mean. Just be prepared for more storytelling than clinical research. (In bringing up this criticism, I do concede that the book is meant for the average person, so it may just be that the stories are meant to make the work relatable to a wide audience.) I did enjoy reading about out-of-body experiences and learning how the mind might be processing these experiences. I also enjoyed learning more about the different types of near-death experiences and wondering about the similarities and differences between these experiences from person to person. In the end, After is both an informative and enjoyable read. Is it the last word on this fascinating subject? I don’t think so. Until then, though, what we have in After is a richly rewarding and sometimes confounding tale of life beyond life as seen from those who have come back from the brink.
Bruce Greyson’s After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond was published by St. Martin’s Essentials on March 2, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
