What Really Happens After Death - Doctors & Nurses Are Afraid To Tell You

Mayim Bialik (0:00)

Dr. Jeff O'Driscoll was working in the ER the night a man was airlifted to the hospital following a severe and tragic car accident. He wasn't assigned to this particular case, but a nurse named Rachel grabbed his arm and told him he had to come to the trauma room. When Dr. O'Driscoll entered the trauma bay, he saw doctors and nurses rushing around the patient, but what he and Nurse Rachel saw was a woman with curly blonde hair and flowing white clothing hovering above the man on the table. It wasn't a physical being, but she was clearly in the room. Skeptics often say that near-death experiences are likely hallucinations caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain, a spontaneous release of DMT, but nothing else. But how does that explain people who are alive and healthy, witnessing absolutely unexplainable phenomena like what Dr. O'Driscoll and Nurse Rachel saw? It has a name in the clinical literature. It's called a Shared Death Experience. And for thousands of years, across numerous cultures, people have reported experiencing death along with a person who is transitioning. What's the purpose of a Shared Death Experience? What's the message that we receive? And how can it change the way we view life and the nature of our purpose here?

Martha Jo Atkins (1:08)

Let's find out.

Tara Swart (1:10)

Observe.

Jonathan Cohen (1:11)

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Tara Swart (1:13)

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Tara Swart (1:21)

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Bruce Greyson (1:26)

The highest form of approval.

Tara Swart (1:28)

No haggling.

Mayim Bialik (1:30)

No hassle.

Raymond Moody (1:31)

No one called him boss.

Tara Swart (1:33)

He's still on the couch.

Raymond Moody (1:35)

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Tara Swart (1:36)

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Jonathan Cohen (1:38)

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Mayim Bialik (2:51)

Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

Jonathan Cohen (2:52)

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

Mayim Bialik (2:54)

And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're going to be talking about a unique and fantastic phenomena known as a Shared Death Experience. Most of us have heard of Near Death Experiences. There's a tunnel, there's light, a feeling of leaving your body. Maybe there's a life review, meeting deceased relatives. But what we're going to talk about today is what a lot of people are afraid to talk about. You don't have to be the one dying to have an experience of death.

Jonathan Cohen (3:22)

Healthy people, conscious people, doctors, nurses, family members sitting at the bedside. And in some cases, family members thousands of miles away report experiencing what the dying person is going through in the moments before death.

Mayim Bialik (3:38)

Sometimes it's sharing in the trauma surrounding an accident preceding death. Sometimes it's experiencing a person ushering the dying person into the next world. Often there's sounds, mist, a light floating around the deceased person.

How can we start to understand why someone who is not dying would share any part of the transitioning experience with someone who is dying? How can we explain that sometimes numerous people in a room will witness the same thing? It seems like the only explanation would be something supernatural. It's ghosts. It's a joint psychosis. It's so hard to wrap your head around it.

Jonathan Cohen (4:17)

The best place to start is with Dr. Raymond Moody, who coined the concept of near-death experience in his book Life After Life in 1975, where he interviewed more than a hundred people who had been described as clinically dead in medical terms but then came back.