AFTER

This is the most important book to be published in the field of near-death studies, certainly since Consciousness Beyond Life by Pim van Lommel. Bruce is professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioural sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was a co-founder and president of the International Association for Near Death Studies, as well as editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies for many years. His research extends over nearly 50 years. To say that this book is authoritative would be an understatement, all the more so on account of its measured and balanced approach.

Like many of us, Bruce read Raymond Moody's Life after Life when it appeared in 1975 and coined the term near death experience. However, his first encounter predated this and contained verifiable information from one of his patients, which was impossible to explain through normal perception. He begins from a sceptical and open-minded materialist position inherited from his chemist father and reinforced by his medical education, but which he found challenged by near death research: the more he learned about them, 'the more they seem to cry out for an explanation beyond a limited understanding of our everyday ideas about the mind and the brain.' This new way of thinking 'challenges our concept of who we are, how we fit into the universe, and how we might want to conduct our lives.' In other words, NDEs have metaphysical, epistemological and ethical implications. The view that humans have no nonphysical aspect is an article of belief undergirding scientific materialism. Bruce speaks as a scientist sharing what he thinks the data suggest, while noting that 'pretending something didn't happen just because we can't explain it is the exact opposite of science.' (p. 13)

A series of detailed chapters examines the phenomenology and impact of the NDE, with many vivid accounts in narrative style. This includes experiences of timelessness, the divine, the life review, OBEs, positive and negative experiences, after-effects, as well as competing explanations. These considerations lead in turn to the key question of the relationship between brain and consciousness, and whether it can continue after death. Researchers familiar with the field will know that Bruce created the classic Greyson Scale of elements of the NDE in the late 1980s, and his own story includes a watershed encounter in which the chair of his department tries to pressure him into desisting this research. Luckily for us, Bruce persisted.

He asks the question about the reality of NDEs, with some of his colleagues maintaining that they can't be real because they contradict current beliefs about how the brain works. Bruce takes the view that neuroscientists can only maintain their scientific integrity by engaging with NDEs, and proposes that the old brain-mind model is useful only under certain conditions, as William James observed in the late 1890s. Many advanced researchers are now coming to the conclusion that the brain is in fact some form of transducer rather than the generator of consciousness (p. 118). It is also undeniable that experiencers themselves insist on the hyperreality of the NDE, and their memories are remarkably consistent over time. Moreover, the after-effects are consistent and robust, even if these can also lead to domestic disruption. Bruce gives detailed arguments for not equating mind with brain, building on the work of Bergson and Penfield as well as Huxley. This leads to considering the possibility of the continuity of consciousness beyond death. Here Bruce tactically limits himself to NDEs rather than venturing into survival research and the University of Virginia studies of children who remember previous lives. This means that his arguments are less of a stretch for sceptical colleagues, who still have a lot of explaining to do when it comes to accounting for veridical OBEs.

I myself have written extensively about the ethical implications of the NDE, based on unitive experiences of Love and Light (pp. 156-7) as well as the life review, which suggests the existence of a Universal Mind of which we are all microcosms, as proposed by Emerson's Oversoul and discussed in detail in Larry Dossey's One Mind. This means that, at a deep level, we are one another, and provides the philosophical underpinning of the Golden Rule, as Bruce also concludes. All this is reflected in the effect of NDEs on attitudes, beliefs and values in 90% of the cases that he has studied. As one experiencer put it, 'the biggest change in my life is my unconditional love and compassion for all mankind' (p. 176), which also gives a sense of meaning and purpose, and initiates 'a quest to connect with something greater than themselves.' At this time of division and corresponding calls for unity, this message of empathy and caring for each other could not be more important. It gives us a new meaningful and ethical view of reality that brings together science and spirituality in complementarity. Bruce also reminds readers that NDEs 'are ultimately not about death, but about transformation, about renewal, and about infusing our lives with purpose right now.' (p. 216) And, as he learned in an encounter with the Dalai Lama, while science may seek mastery and control, Buddhists seek understanding of this deeper reality 'in order to live more harmoniously with it.'

This is also the message of the NDE, that 'life is more about meaning and compassion than about wealth and control' and that it can 'change the way we see and treat one another.' I could not agree more, as this was also the central argument of my 1990 book republished in 2017 as Resonant Mind that the oneness of mind entails an ethic of interconnectedness. If you only read one book on this topic, this classic exposition should be on top of your reading list.