Divine Encounters Episode 105 | Near-Death Experience Story
Dr. Greg Shushan says he began as an Egyptian archaeologist, and while reading ancient afterlife texts he kept noticing details that sounded familiar from modern near-death experience accounts. In this Divine Encounters episode he tells Alex Ferrari what he has found comparing near-death experiences across cultures and centuries, why they differ, and what that might mean for how we think about death.
Key Takeaways
- Greg says he started in Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology, and noticed near-death-like themes in the coffin texts, the Book of the Dead and the pyramid texts.
- He says he defines a near-death experience by its context, did the person die and come back to life, and not by what the person reports seeing.
- He describes a repertoire of experiences that individuals draw from, with cultural differences in how the journey is imagined.
- He says small-scale societies often describe walking a path or road, not rushing through a tunnel.
- He says life reviews are rare in the small-scale societies he studied, and that evaluations tend to focus on the community.
- He says cross-cultural differences challenge both a simple Western model and the idea that these experiences are only special effects of a dying brain.
- He encourages humility about what we know, and says people can learn there is probably not anything to be afraid of.
| Guest | Dr. Greg Shushan |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 105 |
| Background | Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology; MA comparing Egyptian and Vedic Indian afterlife beliefs |
| His focus | Near-death experiences across cultures and historical periods |
| What he says he found | Recurring themes, but cultural differences in the journey and in life reviews |
| Sources he mentions | Egyptian coffin texts, Book of the Dead and pyramid texts; the Rigveda and the Upanishads |
| A key difference | Paths and roads in small-scale societies, tunnels in the West |
| The message | Stay humble, and expect the unexpected |
From Archaeology to Afterlife Beliefs
Alex opens with his usual question, which Greg answers in his own way: he actually started out in archaeology, specifically Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean. He was in London, at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, learning hieroglyphs and researching ancient texts and afterlife beliefs.
He says that as he read the coffin texts, the Book of the Dead and the pyramid texts, he began to think: that sounds a little bit familiar. It was a general resemblance, not a one-to-one match, but it stayed with him.
What the Egyptian Texts Seemed to Describe
Greg lists what he noticed. The deceased leave the body and enter darkness. They travel through the darkness and come into a realm of light. They meet the Sun God, who is a being of light. The dead person is associated with Osiris, the god of the dead, and the deceased meets the corpse of Osiris in the other world. Because the person is also Osiris, it is like encountering their own corpse while out of their body.
That moment, he says, is what makes them realize “I’m dead, but I’m still alive, I’m still conscious,” and it lets them progress to the next level. Then comes an evaluation of their life on Earth, and a barrier they must transcend. These are very general things, he says, but similar to near-death experiences, and it got him thinking.
For a plain-language overview of the modern accounts he is comparing them to, see our complete guide to near-death experiences.
A Master’s Thesis and Some Resistance
Greg went on to do his MA, with a thesis comparing Egyptian afterlife beliefs with Vedic Indian beliefs, meaning the pre-Hindu, ancient Indian religious traditions, in relation to near-death experience. His department, he says, was completely fine with it.
The resistance came later, in religious studies. He says there is a real distinction between religious studies and theology. Religious studies is secular, anthropological and sociological, which is fine, but there is a kind of chip on its shoulder. Anything mystical or related to religious experience tends to be held at arm’s length. It is a long story, he says, but that is the short version.
Why Fewer Accounts From the Past?
Greg says near-death experiences go way back, but they were much rarer than they are today because of advances in resuscitation technology. That is part of why there are fewer from the past, and part of why it took until the twentieth century and Raymond Moody to put it together and name it. It is not that they were not happening, he says. They just lacked a name, and they were scarcer.
His approach is to determine a near-death experience by its context, not its content: “did the person die and come back to life.” We cannot measure that for an ancient society, so we take the culture’s word for it. If a Pacific tribe on an island says so-and-so died, they were preparing his burial, and then he came back to life and told them what happened in between, Greg accepts that as a near-death experience. Even if there is no being of light or tunnel.
A Repertoire, Not a Script
He points out that even Western accounts differ from each other. Raymond Moody himself recognized that in 1975, when he identified about 15 elements and said no single experiencer has all of them. So Greg looks at it as “a repertoire of experiences from which an individual draws,” for whatever reason, in their experience. Most of those elements, possibly all of them, turn up in different places around the world at different times.
There also seem to be culturally determined features. You can read more about how Dr. Moody describes the common elements in our conversation with Dr. Raymond Moody, and our glossary has a short entry on near-death experience.
Paths, Roads and Hollow Trees
In small-scale indigenous or tribal societies around the world, Greg says, it is very rare to have an idea of rushing through a tunnel, or even through darkness. The way to the other world is walking along a path or a road. Some people describe seeing the footprints of other spirits who walked it before them. Sometimes they see people who have just had a near-death experience walking in the opposite direction, back toward their bodies. The idea of dying and going to the other world is there. It is the means of conveyance that differs.
There are exceptions. He recalls an African indigenous example, though he cannot remember the culture, in which people go into a little hole in a tree, which is a kind of going into darkness, and then down to the underworld.
He thinks that whoever or whatever is creating the near-death experience, “even if it’s our own brains,” needs some kind of symbolic expression for us to understand it. The soul or consciousness might be moving from the body to another state. The way it gets there is irrelevant to him, but our minds need to process the journey. For some it is a road, for others a tunnel. People do not describe driving there or taking a cruise ship.
Where Are the Life Reviews?
Greg says you would expect the life review to be common across cultures, but it is not. In small-scale indigenous societies it is almost nonexistent. There is sometimes an evaluation, he says, but it is likely to be about the community: did you perform the right rituals, did you give to the poor. What is rare is the very personal review in which your life flashes before your eyes and you feel the emotions of everyone you interacted with. If you hurt someone, you feel their pain. For a short definition, see our glossary entry on life review.
He says that matters because many people want to see these experiences in a cut-and-dried way, following the Western model that the books describe. Many scientists studying death then use that model to build their theories.
The Dying Brain and What It Does Not Explain
Greg gives an example. A few months before the interview, he says, there was a study that monitored a man’s brain as he was dying, replicating earlier work with rats. They found the brain lights up at the moment of death, a burst of activity rather than just stopping. Scientists speculated that neurons firing might explain the life review, because the mind is flooded with memories.
His response is that if people in indigenous societies are not having life reviews, and the review is supposed to be a physiological occurrence, that could seem like a challenge to the idea that near-death experiences are real experiences of an afterlife. But he says it is just as much a challenge to materialist theories, because if they were only special effects of the dying brain, the special effects should be the same everywhere.
A Community Focus, and Over 100 Societies
Greg credits a scholar he refers to as Alan Kelly with being the first to look at cross-cultural near-death experiences, especially in small indigenous societies. Kelly found a very interesting nineteenth-century Hawaiian example and a few others. Even with five or six cases, Greg says, he guessed that these societies focus on the community more than Western ones do, which are individual focused, with selfies and social media.
Kelly predicted that more small-scale near-death experiences would not have life reviews. Greg says that is exactly what he found when he looked at over 100 Native American, African, Polynesian and Melanesian societies. He thinks the explanation must be that being individually judged simply is not relevant for them; if anyone is being judged, it may be the community.
A Boy Sent to the Underworld
Greg also talks about India. Hinduism, he says, is more like a bunch of religions, so a Vaishnava experience might include Krishna or Vishnu, and so on. He describes an interesting stream of journey-to-the-underworld stories going back to the Rigveda, which Western scholars date to around 1500 or 2000 BCE, and Indian scholars much earlier.
In the story, a father sends a young boy to the other world. In an early version it is to learn about the afterlife. In the later Upanishads version it is because the father is annoyed by the boy’s questions, and the sending basically means he kills him. Greg thinks it is probably based on an early knowledge of a near-death experience.
The boy, whom Greg calls Nathikita, arrives and finds that Yama, the god of the dead, is not there. He waits three days. When Yama returns, he apologizes, “I’m so sorry this lapse of hospitality,” and grants three wishes. The boy asks for his father’s love and attention, for the secret of a fire ritual connected with the soul’s journey, and for the nature of the afterlife and the secret of immortality. Yama hems and haws, then answers in obscure language. In essence, Greg says, the secret is the Atman, the inner, unchanging self that stays the same through however many incarnations. See our glossary on the Upanishads and on atman.
Humility, Science and Following Your Calling
Greg’s plea is for humility. He says people need to be “a little more humble about what we actually know and what we don’t know,” whether claiming to fully understand near-death experiences or to explain them away. He compares it to lucid dreams, which scientists once doubted. He does not see a division between science and religion. Things may well be explained by science, he says, but “science needs to be extended to be able to explain these things.”
Asked what he takes from all this, he mentions Joseph Campbell and following your bliss, which he does not mean as doing whatever you want, but as “follow your inner drive and what your calling is.” The closest he can conceive of the divine is the atman and Brahman idea, a kind of universal consciousness that is not fundamentally different from a human spirit. And for anyone who fears death because of toxic, fear-based beliefs, he says near-death experiences suggest “there’s probably not anything to be afraid of,” and that it will be “much more interesting and complex and mind blowing than we expect.” We share these views as his, not as medical claims.
Questions to Sit With
- Greg says people describe the journey in terms their culture gives them. What images of death did you grow up with, and are they still yours?
- He asks for humility about what we know versus what we believe. Where is that line for you?
- He suggests following your inner drive and calling. What is yours asking for right now?
This week, pick one belief you hold firmly about life or death and write one sentence beginning with “I might be wrong about this because.” Read it back gently.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Greg says near-death experiences appear to draw from a shared repertoire, shaped by culture.
- He says the way to the other world may be a path, a road or a tunnel, depending on culture.
- He says community focus can shape what is evaluated after death.
- He encourages humility about what we know and what we only believe.
- He says fear-based beliefs about death can be questioned, since it is probably more interesting than we expect.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Greg Shushan.
Guest Links: Connect With Greg Shushan
Listen to the Episode
- Watch this episode ad-free on Next Level Soul TV
- Download the MP3
- More episodes: Divine Encounters
- Listen to Divine Encounters on Apple Podcasts
- Listen to Divine Encounters on Spotify
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Dr. Greg Shushan?
Dr. Greg Shushan is a researcher who says he began in Egyptian archaeology and went on to study near-death experiences across cultures and historical periods. He speaks with Alex Ferrari in this Divine Encounters episode.
What did Greg find in ancient Egyptian texts?
He says the coffin texts, the Book of the Dead and the pyramid texts describe leaving the body, traveling through darkness into light, meeting a being of light, an evaluation of life, and a barrier to cross, which he says resemble near-death experiences in a general way.
How does Greg define a near-death experience?
He says he defines it by context, not content: did the person die and come back to life. For ancient societies, he says, we take the culture’s word for it.
Why are there fewer near-death experiences in the past?
Greg says they were much rarer because of advances in resuscitation technology since, which is also part of why they were not named until the twentieth century.
How do small-scale societies describe the journey?
He says they commonly describe walking a path or road, sometimes seeing footprints of earlier spirits or people walking back to their bodies, rather than rushing through a tunnel.
Do all cultures report a life review?
No, Greg says. Among the small-scale societies he studied, personal life reviews are very rare, and evaluations tend to be about the community.
What does Greg say about the dying brain theory?
He says cross-cultural differences challenge both a Western model of near-death experiences and the idea that they are only special effects of a dying brain, because such effects should be the same everywhere.
How many societies did Greg look at?
He says he found something like over 100 Native American, African, Polynesian and Melanesian societies.
What is the story of Nathikita?
Greg describes a story from the Upanishads in which a boy is sent to the underworld, waits three days for Yama, the god of the dead, and is granted three wishes, including the secret of the afterlife.
What is Greg’s advice about fear of death?
He says people with fear-based beliefs about death can learn from near-death experiences that there is probably nothing to be afraid of, and that what happens is likely more complex and interesting than we expect.
Does Next Level Soul say these accounts show an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences and the research around them as accounts and views told in the person’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate what they mean. Nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What a near-death experience is
- What a life review is
- What the atman is
- The researcher who described the common elements of near-death experiences
- A scientist on patterns across 1,700 near-death experiences
- A near-death experience researcher on the evidence
- A physician on what 5,000 near-death experiences reveal
- Browse more free masterclasses and the Divine Encounters podcast.
Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
Dr. Greg Shushan 0:08
I actually started out in archeology, and specifically Egyptian archeology and Eastern Mediterranean. And while I was doing that research, this was in London, at the Institute of archeology University College London, you know, you read learning hieroglyphs, and you're researching the ancient texts and learning about the afterlife beliefs and all that. And as I'm reading things like the coffin text and the Book of the Dead and the pyramid text, it's suddenly kind of thinking, Well, that sounds a little bit familiar in a kind of general way. And I started noticing, you know, they leave the body and they enter darkness. They travel through darkness, they come into a realm of light. They meet the Sun God, who is a being of light. There's a kind of association between the dead person and the god Osiris, who's the God of the dead. And the deceased person meets the corpse of Osiris in the other world. And because the deceased person is Osiris at the same time, it's kind of like they're encountering their own corpse while they're out of their body, and seeing their own corpse while they're out of their body is the thing that makes them realize, okay, I'm dead, but I'm still alive, I'm still conscious. And then that's also the thing that allows them to progress to the next level. And then there's the evaluation of their life on Earth. And then they reach a certain barrier which they have to transcend. So a lot of very general things that were similar to nds. And it just it got me thinking. And I went on to do my ma there, which I did a thesis comparing Egyptian afterlife beliefs and Vedic Indian afterlife beliefs. So like pre Hindu, kind of, you know, ancient Indian religious traditions in relation to near death experience, you know, specifically. And they were completely fine with it. It was only really kind of, when I went into when I went into religious studies that I encountered a little, you know, theoretical resistance. And is, it's a long story, but the short version is basically that there's this real distinction between religious studies and theology. Religious Studies is secular, and it's more kind of anthropological, sociological, which is fine. It's great that it exists, but there's a there's kind of a chip on it on their shoulder. They really want to make that distinction between religious studies and theology. So anything that has to do with anything mystical or like a religious experience or something, they kind of hold it at arm's length and think that, you know, you shouldn't really be taking these kinds of things seriously. We know about near death experiences going way, way back, but they were, you know, much rarer, I think, than they are today, because of advances in resuscitation technology and all that. So like, that's part of the reason why there aren't as many ndS from the past, and part of the reason why they kind of took until the 20th century and Raymond Moody to put this together and to name it. It's not that they weren't happening before that. It's just that they didn't have a name and they were they were much more scarce that they occurred. Essentially, the way I approach the whole subject is they don't determine if something's a near death experience by the content. I determine it by by the context, by basically like, did the person die and come back to life? And of course, we can't measure that from a past Society, an ancient society, or whatever. So we just have to kind of take this culture's word for it. So, you know, if there's a Pacific tribe on some island, and they said so and so died, and we were preparing his burial, and then he came back to life, and he told us what happened in between, you know, I accept that as a near death experience. So even if he doesn't talk about, you know, a being of light or a tunnel, or any of the kind of familiar elements, even between Western indies, the stereotypical ones that that we read about, that, you know, people write books about, I saw heaven and this kind of thing, even they're different. So the kind of first thing to take on, on board is, if it's this kind of universal experience, then why are they different, even within a particular culture? So any even moody recognized that. And, you know, 1975 he he said he identified what 15 elements, or whatever it was, and said, no single nd, or has all of those experiences in their nd. So it's kind of like this. I look at it as like a repertoire of experiences from which an individual draws, for whatever reason, in their nd. And most of them, possibly all of them, occur in different places around the world at different times. But there also definitely seems to be kind of cultural, culturally determined things that happen or don't happen depending on on the culture. So one example is in small scale societies, indigenous, you know, tribal societies around the world. It's very rare to have any idea of like rushing through a tunnel, even rushing through darkness or anything like that. The way they get to the other world is by walking along a path or a road. And they can even describe like they see the footprints of other spirits who had been walking that path before them. Sometimes they see people who have just had an NDE on their way back, walking in the opposite direction. So the person having the nd describing it, they're walking this way, and they're seeing people walk back this way, going back to their bodies, which is, which is pretty interesting. So the whole idea of, you know, dying and going to the other world is there. It's just the means of conveyance is different depending on the culture. There are examples. There's always exceptions that prove the rule. So there's interesting symbolics was like, there's an African indigenous example. I can't remember the culture, but they enter into a little hole in a tree, so that's kind of going into darkness, and then they go down to the underworld. So the it's almost like the whoever or whatever is creating the near death experience, even if it's our own brains or whatever, it needs some kind of symbolic expression for us to be able to even understand what's going on. So what might be happening is the soul or consciousness or whatever is moving from the body to some other state of being, the way it's getting there is irrelevant, but our minds need to process the journey there. So for some people, it's gonna be walking along the road. Others, it's going to be rushing through a tunnel. By the same token, there's not like people don't describe driving there or taking a cruise ship there, or whatever. There's also things like the life review you mentioned. We would expect that to be pretty common in different cultures, but it's actually not. And again, in small scale indigenous societies, especially, it's almost non existent. There's sometimes a kind of evaluation of the person's life, like, Did you you know that they might be questioned or kind of evaluated in some way to the effect of, did you perform the correct rituals? Did you, you know, it's always some something that has to do with the community, really, did you give to the poor or something like that? But like a very personal life review, where your your life flashes before your eyes, and often in in near death experiences that we hear about, the person will say they felt the emotions of everybody that they interacted with. So if you if you hurt somebody, then you're going to feel their pain during your life, review. And that just does not happen in in the small scale societies. And what's important about that is a lot of people will think it frustrates people, because a lot of people want to see the near death experience in this very kind of cut and dried way, and they want to see it according to the western model that the people who who write the books, tell us about but what's it? What's interesting and important about it is a lot of the scientists who are studying nd ease or studying death, and then make speculations about NDE's, they use that model in formulating their theories. So just to give an example, a few months ago, there was a study where they monitored a guy's brain as he was dying, and it replicated a study that they'd done with rats who were dying and that were dying, and different kinds of studies where they found that the brain lights up at the moment of death. There's this burst of activity, rather than just death, which is what they would expect. So the scientists speculate that, oh, that means neurons are firing in the brain, and that explains the life review, that explains the nd, because there's a burst of activity it's flooding the mind with all of your memories and whatever. So the response to that is okay, but if people in indigenous societies are not having life reviews, and it's supposed to be a physiological occurrence, it might seem like a challenging thing to the idea that near death experiences are real experiences of an afterlife. But at the on the other hand, it's a challenge to materialist theories, the dying brain theory that say, you know, it's just special effects of the dying brain, because the special effects should be the same everywhere. Whoever has a bird, there's been in the early days of near death studies. There's a scholar, Alan Kelly, here. He's the first one who started looking at the cross cultural nd ease and especially in small indigenous societies. He found a really interesting one from 19th century Hawaii, and a few others. But even based on the five or six, he found, he speculated that the kind of whole focus of of a person was on the community. They were very community focused, in comparison to Western societies. But we're very individual focused. Everything is about the self. You know, selfies and social media and everything is this kind of very, very individualistic. We don't we're not constantly engaged with what our neighbors are doing, helping our neighbors out, sharing things with neighbors. I mean, we do to a certain extent, but it's not like we're all living in this village based community with, you know, all our houses around a circle or whatever. So he kind of correctly predicted that when more indigenous and small scale NDE's are found that they're not going to have life reviews. And he said it's because of that kind of community focus rather than the individual focus. And I think that's got to be correct, and it's exactly what I found. You know, I found something like over 100 Native American, African and Polynesian and Melanesian societies. And for the most part there, there's very few life reviews. And I think that's got to be the explanation, that it's just not relevant for them to be individually judged in the afterlife, they're kind of maybe judging the community or something. But it's not like up to one person to be judged or not. You know, massive, diverse, polytheistic, I was going to say tradition, but it's really a set of traditions, like Hinduism is like a bunch of religions. So I think Vaishnava is going to have an NDE where Krishna or Vishnu or avatar Vishnu shows up. Same with Shiva, the ancient ones, the ones, there's a kind of interesting stream of journeys to the underworld. Texts in Indian literature, going back to the Rigveda, which is the earliest Western scholars date it to like 1500 or 2000 BCE, Indian scholars date it to like 10,000 so then it's a kind of this plot where a father of a young boy sends him to the other world to either learn about the afterlife, or, in a later version, in the Upanishads, it's because he's really annoyed with this kid who keeps badgering him asking questions. So he just says, you know, just get to the underworld, which, which basically, you know, ineffective. It means that he kills him. So it kind of develops over time, but I think it's probably based on, you know, an early knowledge of a near death experience. So in the Upanishads version, which is kind of the most fleshed out, the most most formed one, but the little boy goes to the underworld, and his name's nathikita, if anyone wants to look it up, he goes to the underworld, and the God of the dead, who's named Yama, isn't there, and so the kid's just waiting, and he ends up waiting there for three days. So Yama finally turns up, and he says, you know, I'm so sorry this lapse of hospitality, I know you've been waiting all this time. What can I do for you? I'm going to grant you three wishes. So he grants the boy three wishes, and the voice says, interesting. One of them is he wants the love of his father, basically the father who just killed him, to send him to the other world. He wants his the love and respect and attention from his father. The other one is he wants the secret of a fire ritual, which is related to, you know, the soul going to the afterlife and things like that. And but the main one is that he wants to know the nature of the afterlife and the secret of immortality. And basically what the afterlife and life and death are all about. And niama kind of hems and haws for a while. He doesn't really want to give him this information, but he eventually does. And I'm very kind of obscure, esoteric language, but it's essentially the secret that the self, which in Hinduism is called the Atman, it's like the inner, unchanging Self. It's always the same through however many incarnations that you have for people to act as if our knowledge at this particular little sliver moment in history is the best knowledge, and it's the same with nd ease, you know, anybody who claims to fully understand them or or that they're explained away by the dying brain. You know, we people need to be a little more humble about what we actually know and what we don't know, or actually what we know and what we believe is that sort of real distinction. 20-30, years ago, there was a skepticism about whether lucid dreams exist, and scientists were saying, You're not having a lucid dream. You're dreaming that you're having a lucid dream. The way I look at it is there shouldn't be any distinction between the two. I don't think science should be limited to not looking at things that were traditionally the realm of religion. You know? I just think it's, yeah, I don't see a division between them. And I don't think that even necessarily, that things won't be explained by science. It's just that science needs to be extended to be able to explain these things. They just don't have the theories and the evidence yet to be able to adequately understand them. The first thing that pops into my mind is doing what you want to do to Joseph Campbell, thing of following your bliss, I don't mean doing what you want to do in the you know, do what that will so be the whole of the law. Yeah. I mean, follow your inner drive and what your calling is, what your Atman is telling you. The closest thing that I could conceptualize is probably the the atman Brahman thing. The only way I can conceive of it is a kind of universal consciousness sort of thing, which is not a external thing that's fundamentally different from a human spirit. There's a wider more things on heaven and earth than you know we can conceive, and that if anyone is afraid to die from what they've been taught and whatever religion, I don't want to name names, but if there's a kind of toxic fear based beliefs about death, then I think people can learn from near death experiences that there's probably not anything to be afraid of, and that whatever your religion is teaching you is probably not what's going to happen. It's probably going to be much more interesting and complex and mind blowing than we expect.
Our Sponsors
- Next Level Soul TV: exclusive spiritual films, series, audiobooks, courses and events. Get the app.
- Earthing.com: discover the science-based healing powers of earthing and grounding.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, watch and subscribe to Divine Encounters on YouTube.
