after (bruce greyson)

This non-fiction work is a studious account of the author’s investigation of near-death experiences (NDEs). Bruce Greyson is an academic who has studied NDE’s over the course of forty years, compiling exhaustive data. The book cross references experiences and anecdotes, seeking to get to the heart of the matter. The fact that in the end, it doesn’t seem to reveal as much as it promises to in the book’s blistering opening chapters is perhaps inevitable. This is the reality of the Meta-Physic, the thing that has happened that maybe hasn’t happened, the thing that might be beyond the body or might be a projection of the the mind, a mind which might exist outside of the body or might not. This moment in history, when death is so adjacent, could be a good time for Western culture to begin a more serious interrogation of the way we are conditioned to treat the issue of our passing, and Greyson’s book might be a good starting point to assist in this process. However, if there was one thing that disappointed slightly about the  book it was its reluctance to interrogate how many other cultures have incorporated the idea of the “after” into the present. For these cultures, there is no doubt about the existence of something beyond the grave. Perhaps this is material for another book, with Greyson’s focus here adhering rigidly to his attempt to situate the NDE within a Western medical-academic process, a focus that in the end leaves the reader as dependent on their prior assumptions as ever.