Near-Death Experience Research, Dr. Jan Holden and her colleagues reveal their latest findings.

photo by: Steve Jurvetson

The question might sound crass, but then again, why should it? Dr. Oliver Sacks was one of the world's best known and beloved neuroscientists, but at the time of his passing he was also an outspoken opponent of scientific findings suggestive of an afterlife. So, should a question contemplating a reality he was never willing to consider offend? Our cultural reflex to respect the dead may be trying to tell us something about underlying scientific question -- what happens after we die?

Join Alex Tsakiris for an interview with near-death experience researcher and University of North Texas professor, Dr. Jan Holden, author of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences:

Alex Tsakiris: I was wondering if we could talk about the recent passing of the most famous neurologist of our time, Dr. Oliver Sacks. If anyone remembers the movie “Awakenings” with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro about this patient who’s experiencing these horrible, neurological conditions -- that doctor is really the Oliver Sacks figure.

And I wanted to talk about him because I hear what you are saying... about more people being open to looking at near-death experience science, but I juxtapose that against what mainstream science is saying, and what Oliver Sacks was saying before he passed into that next dimension -- NDEs are hallucinations. And they may have some nice language about how those hallucinations are formed, but they’re [still insisting that NDEs are] hallucinations. And I just wonder how much progress we’ve really made because science isn’t done in a vacuum. It’s a social enterprise. It’s a cultural enterprise--it shapes culture and culture shapes it. So this whole [endeavor] of NDE research boils down to NDE researchers and the people doing the science on one side, versus Oliver Sacks and the neurologists and the neuroscientists on the other side. [This is] because NDE science is a direct attack not just on their profession but ultimately on their livelihood... Maybe do ourselves a disservice if we don’t understand and share with other people the extent to which the battle lines are drawn.

Dr. Jan Holden: I’ve wondered too what Oliver Sacks would say now--that he has actually moved into my way of thinking [or] an extension of physical life. But it’s hard to get people who stay dead to come back and participate in interviews so we may never know. But I do agree with what you’re saying Alex--the mainstream scientific perspective is that consciousness is a product of the brain--such that when the brain dies, consciousness dies. And what near-death research and especially in concert with research of other phenomena like after-death communication, nearing-death awareness, deathbed visions, reincarnation, and so forth. When cardiologists like Dr. Pim van Lommel calls a convergence of evidence, it points to the idea that consciousness exists essentially separate from the brain but of course extremely interrelated with it while we’re physically alive. In my view, first of all I think that culture changes slowly and as some famous person said it changes funeral by funeral.