What Happens After We Die? These UVA Researchers Are Investigating It. By Joan Niesen. 09/18/2025
Joan Niesen interviews psychiatrist Bruce Greyson and psychologist Marieta Pehlivanova from the University of Virginia. Both study Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) and explore the possibility that consciousness continues to exist after the body dies.
Survivors of an NDE often report common experiences such as a sense of harmony with the universe, disconnection from the body, seeing a bright light, or encounters with supernatural entities.
Niesen illustrates these experiences with an example from 1989:
In 1989, Joan Fowler was riding her bike along the Pacific Coast Highway when she was hit by a truck. Suddenly, she says, her consciousness floated above the scene.
“I could see my bicycle almost halfway under the truck and my body to the side… and I thought, ‘Wow, how fascinating!’” recalls Fowler, a Reconnective Healing practitioner from Silver Spring. “At that moment, as I observed, I felt a pull toward my right side. When I focused on that pull, I saw a beautiful white light. I felt warmth and love, and my physical boundaries disappeared. I felt truly expansive.”
Bruce Greyson recounts discovering that these experiences were more common than he had thought. He contacted Raymond Moody, who first coined the term NDE, and Ian Stevenson, who also researched out-of-body experiences. Greyson continued Stevenson’s work for several years.
Pehlivanova, decades younger, had always been interested in parapsychology and did not hesitate when offered the opportunity to work with Greyson. The psychologist received an email describing a life-threatening experience:
While kayaking on the Chama River in New Mexico, White was swept by rapids onto a large rock.
“She saw herself on the rock, watching her body being swept in the rapids beneath it. She saw her body floating downstream, hitting various rocks and getting bruised.” During this time, she felt warm and content, surrounded by three “beings of light.” She was happy to stay there “forever… It was so peaceful, lovely, and serene.”
But that feeling changed quickly. She saw the police arrive at her home, telling her husband and two children that she had died in the river. Her sense of calm vanished. “They can’t have a mother who dies prematurely,” she remembers thinking. “And the moment I thought that… it was as if I was returned to my body. I was cold. I was underwater.”
Greyson created a scale with 16 criteria to certify that a person had experienced an NDE under life-threatening conditions. He also observed that while some explanations involve factors like lack of oxygen in the brain, medications, or anesthesia, certain NDEs included observations that corresponded to reality when the person was clinically dead.
Both Greyson and Pehlivanova agree that whatever these experiences are, they permanently change the lives of those who experience them.
Òscar Llorens i Garcia
