Brush with the ‘afterlife’: Canadian study probes how near-death experiences affect careers

A pair of Canadian researchers have explored a little-known aspect of near-death experiences—a phenomenon that, as a whole, many believe offers insight into life, death, consciousness and even the nature of the universe.

Jamie Gruman, a professor of organizational behaviour at the Lang School of Business at the University of Guelph, has completed his study looking at how someone’s work life is affected after having an NDE.

Gruman interviewed 14 people who reported having an NDE and examined how it impacted their professional lives afterwards.

Gruman said the study’s results, which he completed with his research assistant Akierah Binns, were “interesting and highly practical.”

What is an NDE?

For those who may be unfamiliar, a near-death experience, or NDE, “is an oftentimes vivid and profound experience resulting from a close encounter with death,” according to the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS).

“Near-death experiences are often experienced by those exposed to extremely dangerous, life-threatening scenarios. This includes physical illness or injury, harrowing experiences like combat, or even being clinically dead for a period of time,” IANDS notes.

“There are also experiences quite similar or even identical to an NDE known as near-death-like experiences. These can be brought on by profound grief or in states of deep meditation or extreme physical exertion.”

Not everyone has or remembers a near-death experience — and researchers aren’t exactly sure as to why — but they can be life-changing for those who do.

Gruman said he has always been interested in “the cutting edge of knowledge” and NDEs fit the threshold.

Several years ago, he was listening to a radio program where there was a discussion on NDEs, which he had heard of but knew very little about.

He was fascinated by the conversation and it sparked a wider interest in the phenomenon.

“As a psychologist, I’ve always been interested in consciousness. What is consciousness? What does it mean to be alive?” Gruman told INsauga.com.

“And you know, there’s a lot of speculation about what it means to be conscious, but beyond speculation, these experiences potentially point to some more empirical ideas.”

Gruman said that while the mechanics of the experiences aren’t known — as is the case with consciousness overall — they could provide valuable insight.

“The potential for these experiences to enlighten us about the nature of consciousness, the nature of life after death, even, is … as I said, right at the edge of knowledge,” he said.

What is commonly experienced during an NDE and what Gruman’s study found

Those who have an NDE often say they’re extremely powerful — “more real than real,” as IANDS puts it.

“The characteristics of a near-death experience are more tangible and lifelike than everyday life,” IANDS says, adding they’re described as being unlike a dream.

While each NDE can be unique, they often have common characteristics, including intense emotions of peace and love, rapid movement through darkness and/or a tunnel towards a light, a feeling of being “somewhere else” like a spiritual realm, rapid and sharp thinking and observations, a flood of universal knowledge, and sometimes out-of-body experiences.

Other common characteristics include a sense of being beyond time and space, oneness with the universe, encountering deceased loved ones or religious figures, and a life review, in which the individual experiences how their actions affected others.

The majority of NDEs are positive, but they can be at least partly negative as well. Regardless, the common feeling of it being “more real than real” stands, IANDS says.

Having such a powerful experience can understandably have a huge impact on someone and Gruman said he wanted to find out what happens afterwards, specifically in regards to a person’s job.

“I’m a business professor, so my work has to focus on business. So I’m going to look in the context of business, or in the context of work. What are the aftereffects at work?” Gruman said.

He said no one had really studied this before, except once in a paper published in 1992.

“But other than that, there’s like virtually nothing on it,” he said.

Some of his findings, Gruman noted, are consistent with aftereffects observed in general following NDEs, but his study discovered “some stuff that was missed.”

In summarizing his and Binns’ findings, Gruman said that if you look at literature on what employees want in the workplace, it comes down to three main things: gainful employment (making money), meaningful work that allows them to grow, and high-quality relationships with colleagues and superiors.

“What our results demonstrate is that after an NDE, that first component, the gainful employment, making a lot of money, being successful, rising through the ranks, becoming a VP or a president, that completely falls away,” Gruman said.

“After the NDE, those extrinsic measures of success become unimportant to people.”

The other two factors — meaningful work and high-quality relationships — “fly off the radar,” Gruman said.

“What becomes important to them is basically love,” he said.

“They come to the realization that everything is one, that not only are we all in this together, we are all the same thing. And so exploiting others just becomes anathema. It becomes an impossibility… So having meaningful work, making a difference, doing something that provides value to the world, skyrockets. And building harmonious, healthy, compassionate, loving relationships with people, skyrockets.”

In terms of what this meant in a more practical sense, individuals lost motivation to do “unimportant” work, some even quitting or changing their jobs, Gruman said.

“Some of them changed jobs to better reflect the new priorities that they learned about as a result of their NDEs,” he said.

“Sometimes they didn’t change jobs, but it involved a psychological reorientation.”

Volunteer work was also taken up by some individuals after their NDE.

In terms of relationships with others in the workplace, personal interest in others went up.

“For example, you’re more interested in what they did on the weekend and what’s going on with their with their family, and (it) creates a different culture in the workplace,” Gruman said.

The meaning of “transactional interactions” — the exchange of money — also changed, Gruman said.

“Before the NDE work, the exchange of money was instrumental. It was, ‘I provided you with a service, and now you’re paying me,’ right? Business as usual,” he said.

“After the NDE, because the relationships changed, the transaction changed from being something instrumental to being something more relationship-oriented where it was, ‘I’ve given you the service. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for being with me.’ And so the whole nature of business transactions changed.”

Why did these changes happen?

As noted, NDEs can be very powerful experiences and the intensity of them — more specifically, the realizations that individuals say they have during them — are the driving force behind the life changes, Gruman indicated.

“People claim to have come into contact with the source of their being and … have learned about the nature of existence and the purpose of existence,” he said.

“And the purpose of existence is not to get rich. It is not to become famous. It is not to have a big SUV and boats and a big house. It is to love.

“And in fact, you know, one of my participants said, ‘Would I like a million dollars? Sure, but I would probably give it away and help other people.'”

Gruman said the individuals he interviewed had those common NDE characteristics. He also administered a scale to them to determine the “depth” of their NDE, and all met the threshold of the recommended cutoff.

“They were spine-tingling,” Gruman said.

“It was quite something. I’m changed as a result of it,” he added.

A major part of NDEs as well is that the experiencers are often “thoroughly convinced, beyond a shadow of doubt, that they have seen ‘the other side,'” Gruman said.

As a result, they no longer have a fear of death.

“In fact, many look forward to it and long to return ‘home.’ They know ‘in their bones’ that there is an afterlife,” Gruman said.

Gruman said his study has so far received positive feedback and he hopes to have it published in an academic journal, as well as present the findings at a conference in Copenhagen this summer.