Danny Jones Podcast - #244 - Best Evidence for Life After Death: World's Largest NDE Study Revealed | Jeffrey Long

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Watch all episodes uncensored & ad-free on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Jeffrey Long is a medical doctor specializing in the practice of radiation oncology, using radiation to treat cancer. Jeff has conducted the world's largest study of Near-Death experiences (NDEs) which includes over 4,000 experiencers. SPONSORS https://cutsclothing.com/DANNY - Refine your style & get 20% off with code DANNY. https://shopmando.com - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE & get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code DANNY https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://x.com/4nderf https://nderf.org FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Scientific evidence of near death experiences (NDEs) 08:56 - The problem with researching NDEs 20:46 - Near death experience vs. fear death experience 23:19 - Are NDEs religious? 34:54 - Scientific evidence of reincarnation 42:10 - How NDEs change people 47:11 - NDEs give people superpowers 52:58 - DMT vs. NDEs 01:05:19 - consciousness during cardiac arrest 01:11:09 - Blind people regaining vision during NDE 01:21:00 - Remembering NDEs 01:25:07 - Death bed visions 01:31:14 - Shared higher consciousness 01:35:23 - Hellish NDEs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, Jeffrey Long. Thank you so much for joining us today, sir. It's a real pleasure. How did you get so fascinated and dedicate 30 years of your life to studying near-death experiences? You know, I was in my residency training. I'm a physician. My medical specialty is radiation oncology, which is the use of radiation to treat cancer. So there I was 30 years ago in training and going to the medical library,

looking through this bound book called The Journal of the American Medical. Association, one of the world's most prestigious journals. And totally by accident, there I found in the title the phrase near-death experience. I'd never heard of it before. So immediately I was fascinated on first time in my life seeing the phrase near-death experience. I mean, how can you not be fascinated by wondering what happens when you die? So reading the article, I was astonished. Here was a physician, a cardiologist, a heart doctor who had studied several dozen patients that had a cardiac arrest. Their heart stopped, and I knew medically that it should be impossible for them to have any conscious remembrance at that time, but his study group did.

They had consciousness separating apart from the body and what's called out-of-body experience and what they were observing, while they were literally comatose after their heart stopped, when they came back and talked with Dr. Sabam, as his name, what they described was accurate down to the finest details. I was amazed. I said if this is real, if this is really something that happens consistently, this completely changes my view of the universe. And that was the dawn of my interest in studying this phenomenon of near-death experiences. So what do you do today? What is your day job? I work full-time as a radiation oncology physician serving actually an underserved area in Kentucky. So you see cancer patients on the regular? Mm-hmm. Yep. And so how do you integrate your interest in near-death experiences with working with these cancer patients? Do you let them know about your interest in NDEs and ask them if they're willing to share their experiences?

Or how does that work? I'm very careful not to intrude my beliefs about near-death experience onto the patients. So I'm very easy to find on Google or YouTube or anywhere else. So if anybody looks me up, they immediately read. realize that this is something that I've talked about literally hundreds of times. So if the patient or their family member aware of that, then wants to ask me about near-death experience or even share an experience that they had, well, certainly I'm very open to that and very delighted to spend the time talking with them as they share. And I've had quite a few patients, or family members

or friends with them, share their near-death experiences. And that's just sort of a fascinating additional thing I do as a physician. And it certainly helps them to feel like, here's a doctor, someone who's a very known near-death experience researcher, validating my experience, talking about it. And I think it really helps them not only to better understand the near-death experience, but it helps create a stronger bond for me to work with them professionally in their battle with cancer. And can you explain the competition that you were a part of with Bigelow? Ah, yes. Back in 2021, there was a billionaire by name of Robert Bigelow, and he had a huge contest where he was seeking an essay,

25,000 words, that had the best scientific evidence for survival of consciousness, or if you will, life after death. So over 1,000 people submitted essays because, well, the prize money was huge, and over 200 essays were selected for review by a very scholarly panel of judges. And so as a result of that, This is the 200 essays reviewed was some of the most stringent scholarly peer review imaginable for subject matter like that. And I was very honored to be in the runner-up group. I actually won $50,000. Wow. Well, I almost did. Almost didn't because I was going through my email one day and I saw the subject line, you won $50,000. And I think most people would immediately click and delete it, but I went, wait a minute, what's going on?

So I read it and like, oops, that really, that's real. And so I was very honored to be a part of the group selected as having an essay about near-death experience. And by the way, that's the material we'll be talking about today. And then above and beyond that, there was another group from Europe that looked at all the essays that won prize money in this essay contest. And I was honored to be one of the six that was selected as having the best scientific evidence for survival of consciousness in my near-death experience essay. So I want to emphasize, while what I'm talking about today may sound astonishing, please be aware that it is undergone perhaps the most stringent scholarly peer review imaginable. So this is the real thing.

So why was Robert Bigelow, a private aerospace CEO, interested in near-death experiences? I think he had a lot of things behind that. Tragically, his wife had died, and I think that had something to do with his interest. But I think he, like gosh, just about everybody else, don't you think, is fascinated about the concept of what happens after you die. So Mr. Bigelow has always had that interest in paranormal phenomena, and I think this was just a natural way for him to encourage that kind of scholarly essays by some of the world's leading researchers and share it with them. And we've actually got all the essays my own is actually on his website in totality. So anyone on the world can read some of the strongest evidence for life after death, the winners in this essay contest. So it makes me wonder.

I wonder if he wonders if there's any connection between UFOs and this near-death experience, like the UFO experience. Oh, absolutely. Mr. Bigelow is a very big proponent and has a great deal of interest in UFOs. Yeah, he used to own Skinwalker Ranch, I think. He sure did. So he's had that interest for a long, long time. And so that certainly is something where he could have, if you will, connected the dots and said there's some sort of bigger picture here. There's something phenomena, UFOs, life after death. So that relationship is something that me and other people have studied and continue to investigate. Did you ever have a conversation with him about it? Not on that directly. I've talked with him. A very brilliant guy. I have a great deal of respect for him. but never really got into talking with him about the connection of near-death experiences and UFOs.

What do you think is going on there? That's a good question. I think at this point in time, there's so much evidence for the reality of UFOs that that is part of, if you will, a bigger picture. I mean, these UFOs, there's obviously some consciousness driving them, some kind of much greater consciousness than we have here in our earthly everyday lives. And so I think that may be part of the bigger picture that near-death experiences points to, that being that there's a consciousness outside of our physical earthly bodies. So there's one of those situations where, you know, while I haven't done a lot of research about that, I and certainly a lot of other people have speculated about that.

A good example of where we really need some additional research, because I think there's a lot of untapped, fascinating material in that connection that we could discover if we continue to look. You said you had the most evidence, scientific evidence, of these near-death experiences. Well, certainly there were other people that have written about near-death experiences and have some pretty strong evidence. But in my research, I have by far the largest near-death experience database in the world. Okay. On the website that I have, the research website, N-D-E-R-F.org, we have over 4,000 near-death experiences posted. by far the largest.

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's been my good part of my, that's my second full-time job for 25 years. But it's also given me a data set that is unique in the world in terms of not only having so many near-death experiences shared with the website over that period of time, but they also fill out a very detailed questionnaire, most recent version of the questionnaire, over 80 different questions.

So we're learning from near-death experiences, not only from a huge number of near-death experiences, near-death experiences, but also looking at them in a depth with the questions we ask, allowing us to learn more about near-death experiences than was ever possible before. What do you hope to find with all these near-death experiences and finding, obviously, they're looking for correlating experiences between all these near-death experiences, but do you have any idea of like what the ends to all this is? good one. First and foremost, I'm a scientist, so I don't go through my research with any

preconceived agenda or preconceived notions about what the outcome will be. As a scientist, I'm always led by the evidence and the reasoning from that evidence, just like in my medical practice. So what I hope to find is the truth. I want to know about near-death experiences. I want to know, are we convinced based on evidence that consciousness can exist apart from a physical brain function. If we're convinced that near-death experiences are real, which frankly I am based on my research, well then near-death experiences consistently talk about an afterlife, that being a realm of existence after our earthly life. So if you really understand that near-death experiences are, you know, word, real, then that next question, very important question

is, well, if it giving us some evidence about the afterlife, what is that evidence? How sure are we about that evidence. And that's where my research really gets exciting. Well, the problem is it's all anecdotal, right? The problem is you can't actually study it. You can only get people's recount of a personal experience that they had. Well, and the problem with doing near-death experience research is that if someone dies permanently and irreversible, Danny, they make horrible research subjects. They won't answer any dang questions at all. So you really have to go with what you have. And anecdotal implies a limited number of case reports. We're way off the scale on that.

We have over 4,000. There's literally many, many thousands of more of near-death experiences that have been described by literally scores of other researchers. And it's a basic scientific principle that what is real is consistently observed. And we have that overwhelmingly

in near-death experience, not only in my study group of 4,000, but it's corroboration with the same things that people are observing other research data. set. So I think given that the, you know, the best we can do with near-death experience research, when you see that kind of consistency across many different researchers among the young, among the old, among people with widely varying prior religious or cultural beliefs, even not believing an

afterlife was possible, by the time you see that very consistent content of a near-death experience, how they change after the near-death experience, and how they consistently point to some conscious existence of life after death. I think you have to say you have to believe that based on evidence. Yeah, I agree with you. I guess what I was getting at is all of these stories or people that you have submitted the 4,000, I think you said, that have submitted their experiences. It's all subjective experience, right?

None of it. It's impossible to have a secondhand account of somebody's near-death experience or corroborate somebody's near-death experience, right? I'm not to say that they're making it up. I totally believe it. And I don't think that you can rely on the scientific method for everything. I think, you know, there's squishy science, right? There's obviously there's science out there that can't be measured and tested.

That is absolutely real. Well, actually, there is some line of evidence that indeed what is described in near-death experiences is likely that initial, very probably, that initial sequence of events for those that die permanently and irreversibly. that line of evidence, which is yet another line of evidence for the reality of near-death experience, is called shared near-death experiences. We have about 20 people where there were two or more people that simultaneously had a life-threatening event. And they both had consciousness apart from the body. Most of the time in this series, they're able to see each other, communicate with each other, and often have dramatic discussions like, wow, there's our bodies down there and here's our consciousness up above. So shared near-death experiences in my series of about 20 do exist. They're typical near-death experiences, but there's two people interacting that while their physical body is unconscious or clinically dead below.

In my series, virtually all of the cases, one of them goes on to have permanent irreversible death and the other person recovers. And when they get over that close brush with death, they can share with the world that shared near-death experience. Whoa. I was excited to start getting a series of those two. So, you know, that is probably the most direct observation that is possible of people who are ultimately going to permanently irreversibly die, sharing and interacting with another person with their consciousness apart from the physical body, existing non-physically, if you will. And one person goes on and it's permanently irreversibly dead. Very dramatic accounts. How do these people, can you walk me through how they describe these accounts? Sure. One example I share a lot would be a gentleman who was driving his fiancé. They were in Canada. He was driving along and he fell asleep. And so the car crashed. And then both him and his fiancé, their consciousness rose above the crashed car. And they were met by four beings. And they felt overwhelming sense of love and compassion. So when these two beings flanked, each up flanked each of them, the group out of the group of four beings, they separate. They actually went up above their car, their fiancés, holding hands. So the beings they encountered, with their consciousness, far above the car, gently separated their hands.

And they felt so, the gentleman who survived said he felt so much peace and so much love that he wanted to resist, but really didn't. And they could see off in the distance a landscape, an unearthly realm, if you will. Some call it a heavenly realm, but they saw that over there. and two of the beings took his fiancé and very gently started moving her toward that distant realm, which is, I know full well from near-death experiences at unearthly afterlife realm, and the other two beings gently led him back down to the car. So when his consciousness, physical consciousness, recovered in the car, the front of the car was on fire, and his fiancé was leaning,

and he instantly knew that that was, in his words, a shell, because she was dead and he knew that instant. and he'd left his fiancé with the other beings above. Whoa. Are there any other accounts similar to this? Yeah, we have quite a few. That are very similar with two people at the same time. Yeah, we've had, I mean, just to pull another one out of the series I have, there was, I think this was another car crash, and there were several youthful people, and the cars were crashed, and they were two basically friends, and they were up, sore consciousness.

Again, in your death experiences, it's by far most common when that initial part of the experience, when consciousness goes apart from the physical body, it's up over the body. So here were the two of them above the crash car, and they were looking down on their physical bodies down below and dialoguing, and kind of their reaction was, I think, were dead because they could see plain as day that their bodies weren't moving. But they were talking to each other? Yeah, they were communicating about the fact that those were their bodies, the two of them, down below. the crash scene and they appeared to be dead. And so they talked about that and had a dialogue. And then once again, that one of them went on and died permanent irreversible death. And when the other

one recovered from what nearly killed them in the wreck, he was able once again to share those uncommon, but we have a small series now, a shared near-death experience. Are there any of these shared near-death experiences where both of them survived? Now, that's interesting. I haven't really found that and I've looked. There was sort of a buzz about something that happened to a group of Arizona firefighters called the hot shots, but I haven't been able to corroborate that. And that was where two or more people survived and corroborated. But in the rest of the series we have, it's been one person, they were two people interacting. One went on permanent irreversible death and then the other person survived. But we've had, I mean, we've had the same thing. We've had building collapses and we've

had people, you know, up above their body, looking down, aware that they're down there and severely injured. But it's an absolutely fascinating study group of these shared near-death experiences. Yeah. So the story that Jeff Kriple told me about Elizabeth Crone, lady who was struck by lightning in front of her synagogue, was so astonishing because she described going to like a garden that she couldn't even translate into words. And she was having a conversation with like her grandfather or something. And she said it lasted for two weeks. And she was in this realm for two weeks,

talking with people and having a conversation with her grandfather. And she describes following, at the end of it, there was like a light that came. And she made a conscious decision not to go to the light, but instead to go back to her body. Like she had a choice. Yes. I know her well.

I've talked with her directly, and believe me, that near-death experience was a real thing. Just to sort of take a look at some of the parts of what you just said there, it's astonishing to some people that you'd be in sort of a near-death experience, a beautiful garden. Many people describe landscapes in their near-death experiences in these unearthly, heavenly realms that have beauty beyond anything on earth. There may be colors beyond anything that they say could possibly. have happened on earth, beauty that is indescribable. So it's not unusual that they literally don't have the words for what's literally an unearthly beauty and experience. Encountered or deceased grandfather, very common. The overwhelming majority of, like in my study, 94% or more, of beings encountered in these unearthly realms are deceased at the time of the experience. So that's

not unusual either. And it astonishes a lot of people to, as you describe, to talk with them for two weeks, and I need to explain that a little bit based on my study of near-death experiences. Please. Near-death experiences are a tremendously accelerated consciousness. The overwhelming majority of people having a near-death experience say that time is either radically different or simply doesn't exist. So in this non-physical, unearthly realm of the near-death experience, it's very hard to compare time, there to time on earth. But you can say, well, this, in the communication we had, it would have taken two weeks. So that's probably your best estimate. And you have to understand, too, that

consciousness or the ability to process information, share, talk with deceased loved ones, or just experience, this heavenly realm is something completely outside of earthly experience. For example, people may have during a near-death experience what we call a life review. They may see a part or even all of their prior life, often decades. A typical example is like it's flashing on multiple screens, but they're literally reliving, or if you will, at least being aware of all of their prior life while they're unconscious, typically around like minutes.

Well, there's the famous coined phrase, see your life flash before your eyes. Exactly. And that's happened to me. There's been a couple occasions where I've come very close to death, but I'd never lost consciousness, where I literally was about to die. In one instance, I was in underwater cave free diving, and I couldn't find the exit and I was almost drowned. And I had my whole life flash before my eyes, but it wasn't like anything like this.

Like I wasn't unconscious. There wasn't any visuals, right? It was just like panic, I guess, and then a sense of calm. Wow. But like, there's a clear difference, right? But that's something that's totally different from a near-death experience. Yes and no. We study those types of, first of all, wow, am I glad you got out of that? And that just gives me chills to be in an underground cave and go what you went through. Wow. Glad you made it. But I almost didn't. Oh, yeah. Those are called what you experienced firsthand is what we researchers call fear death experiences. You're afraid. You have that severe fright. And they're different from near death experiences. One common way is that fear death experiences, are far more likely to have exactly what you experienced, a life review, your life flashes before your eyes.

So I've compared scores of these fear death experiences to what occurs during near-death experiences, and statistically your fear-death experience, like what you had, is statistically more likely to have that life review or life flash before your eyes. There's some other differences, but on the other hand, many fear-death experiences can extend and have a deeper, experience and can have content remarkably similar to near-death experiences. I think both fear-death experiences and near-death experiences, as well as other types of experiences, are under that big umbrella, if you will, of spiritual experiences. So that would be how I process it. Another interesting thing about Elizabeth Crohn's near-death experience, and to what you were to your point about time dilation, she mentioned two weeks, I think Jeff Krippel said it was

two minutes. She was unconscious before they revived her. Luckily for her, she was in a synagogue, it was full of doctors. Yeah. Is there a doctor in the house? Like, everybody raised their hand. Here we go. And what Criple said, which was really fascinating, was that her recollection of the experience and the visuals were overwhelmingly Jewish. Hmm.

Do you see that? Do you see in people's recollection of their near-death experience? do you see any sort of correlation to their religious beliefs? Yeah, that's an interesting question, and I've actually looked very carefully as other researchers. First of all, and I actually co-authored, a scholarly book chapter on this, looking at all prior published literature some time ago. So first of all, looking at the big picture to address that important question, we can't really find any correlation with a person's pre-existing beliefs, religious beliefs,

belief about life and death, and we can't find a correlation between that and whether the probability of them having a near-death experience or not at the time of a life-threatening event or the content of near-death experiences. So looking at multiple prior published studies, there doesn't seem to be a real strong correlation, and yet there are certainly people that do have near-death experiences where I think part of it is it's, you know, if you see like a white light or you see the white light seems to have a consciousness, a presence, well, somebody with a strong Jewish background may identify that as a prophet. As a Christian may say, oh, I recognize that and connect the dots and say, maybe that's Jesus. So I think while the actual types of occurrences, the events, if you will, that occur in near-death experience are very consistent and consistently observed,

I think there can be some overlap with their prior beliefs, especially religious beliefs. And I think just to take that and run, for instance, we have a series of people having a near-death experience in this unearthly realm where they may meet an amorphous, unformed being, light, energy, presence, and they may literally be asked, in what form would you like me to appear to you? so then they can decide and make a decision. So I think that's some of the complexity of near-death experiences. When you have these events going on in a heavenly realm, it's not just your consciousness making it up. You are literally intersecting, interacting with another very great consciousness. And so there can be components of the experience based on the other consciousness,

which, thank goodness, is virtually always described as profound, loving, caring, compassionate. And so I think that may be part of why the near-death experiences are so strikingly similar in content, and yet they can have regularly described that individual-specific type of content. I think that explains that adequately. It's like the movie Contact at the end when she meets her dad. I love that. That movie just gives me, I'd had chills when I saw that because I'm well aware of, you know,

from near-death experience research, even at that time, I just said that's, geez, That really happens, yeah. That's bizarre, man. Have you heard of the brain filter hypothesis? I've heard of a whole, sort of my niche is to look at alternative or skeptical, if you will, hypothesis. So I'd ask you to explain that, put that in context. It's the idea that the brain is mediating states of consciousness, not necessarily producing them. It's the idea that the brain is a filter to help us.

tune out all the shit that we don't need to survive. Like the only thing, so we can eat and we can reproduce and we can survive. And the idea about this theory is that if you can find a way to shut down the brain, you can turn the filter off and bring in more. And what are some great ways to shut down your brain? You can do it with breathwork, you can do it with meditation. You can do it in a car crash. And it seems like there is a big correlation here to what's going on.

Oh, absolutely. No doubt about that if you sort of take out that buzz or ongoing information from all the ways you just stated there, car crash. You know, meditation has been described. So it is possible if you shut down that sort of background noise in the physical brain that you can have a mystical experience. No question about that. And I think that's part of what happens with near-death experiences. But near-death experiences seem to be something outside of the physical brain. In other words, the most common thing described is a soul, that part that's immaterial, non-physical,

that is continually present in our brain and seems to retain conscious memories. Because generally, when people have a near-death experience, they are who they are, everything that they were, and retain those memories. So there seems to be, I think it's both physical brain function seems to be exactly, as you said, a filter. And then there's also that non-physical component of all of us called the soul. That's the part that lives beyond physical earthly death. And it's the best I can tell is eternal. So what do you think happens to these souls when people die? Sure.

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The studio crew with Paul Bissonette cracking jokes and Wayne Gretzky breaking things down makes it even more fun to watch. Every shift matters and the personalities keep things lively. Watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, True TV, and HBO Max. Descriptions of separation from the physical body. Interestingly, most of the time they feel relieved to be apart from the physical body. They're free. They're immaterial. movement is non-physical, that what's often horrifically painful event that led to their near-death

experience is gone. Immediately they don't have any of that pain, and they often feel like this is their real self, which I think is very revealing. But then when they go on and have described an afterlife, there's basically a realm of other beings. The one most common word that has been used by people that have near-death experiences to describe what occurred during the experiences love. So generally, they feel overwhelming sense of love, of peace in this, we call it unearthly realm, but hey, most near-death experiencers are often described that that feels like the real home. And interestingly, in that relatively small percentage of people having a near-death experience, when they're in that unearthly beautiful realm, often with deceased loved ones,

movements, non-physical, communication, telepathic, in that minority of people having Inde's that are given a choice about whether they want to stay there or return to their earthly body, the great majority do not want to return to their earthly body, which is amazing. Think about that. Friends, family, loved ones, everything that they knew, all that they were. Typically for decades, they're willing to, but literally be apart from. And that's how enveloping, how deeply, profoundly beautiful, that

sense of love, that sense of connection, that sense of it being the real home, that's how deep it is for people having a near-death experience. And that's actually awkward because sometimes if they recover and have decided, you know, at least initially that they didn't want to return to their earthly body, but then later decide they do, that's very awkward to share with their spouse. And we've run across a bunch of people that, you know, if they're honest about sharing that experience and people generally are, they have to explain to their spouse, no, you don't, you can't understand that that's my real home. You'll be there too. We'll all be together there. But, you know, that was, and sometimes spouses are of the person that had the near-death experience can be very put out and unhappy and

and disappointed that they were so willing to leave. I get that. I've seen that, I think probably hundreds of times. Really? Oh, yeah. Again, it's a minority of near-death experiences given a choice, but by the time you have over 4,000 near-death experiences, even uncommon ones, events like that, you see a lot of. How many of the 4,000 were given a choice? Oh, again, I'd have to estimate, because I haven't. Yeah, if you were just to guess. Yeah, I would say it's probably somewhere between 5% and 10%, probably 10%, would be my ballpark figure. Yeah, so it's not unusual.

Most of the time, the significant majority, they're simply sent. back involuntarily. There's not a dialogue or not a choice given. But for that minority, there's, and what's fascinating too is when they're given a choice, there's often a great deal of dialogue. I mean, again, the great majority of people having a near-death experience do not want to return to that earthly physical body shell. They want to stay in that area of freedom, non-physical acceleration of consciousness, profound feeling of love and peace beyond anything they knew on earth. So not surprisingly, you know, they will do it. But the dialogue is fascinating.

There can be a great deal of discussion with other beings there. They literally can argue about wanting to stay there. So it's fascinating what leads to, and I actually have studied that in a small series, about why ultimately when they had a choice and at least initially did not want to return to their physical body, why did they ultimately decide to do that? And so probably the number one thing that in this small series was for children, If they had children, especially young children, that was a pretty compelling reason for them to come back. But also another reason would be your work's not done on Earth.

You have more things to do. We have more things to experience. One thing that is crystal clear in near-death experiences is that our earthly lives, however difficult they are, are profoundly meaningful and significant. And so as part of the decision about returning, that may be sort of a reason for many is that they have. have more to live their earthly life is important so boom they make that decision to return have you heard of uh i think this is another thing that cripple was telling me about but there's a phenomena with young children having memories of previous lives and they're they're having memories of like violence in previous lives or violent deaths and he is connecting um he made a connection

to trauma. So like violent or extremely physical or emotional traumatic experiences having to do with this brain filter opening up, right, and letting in more. And there's been many people, some of which I've had on this show before, who have had lives filled with trauma

and just terrible, terrible childhoods that now have these crucial, crazy, paranormal, phenomenal, unexplainable experiences in their daily lives. And these children, going back to these children who claim to have memories of previous lives, they all were overwhelmingly male in their previous lives.

And the reason he believed, Jeff believes, his idea of why this is, is because in the past, in history, males were far more likely to die violent deaths than females. Yeah. That's fascinating. You're getting into the topic of, in the scholarly literature, they call it cases of reincarnation experience or core,

but that's basically pointing at reincarnation. Right, right. And it's interesting that children have it. It's children that are like on the cusp, it's before they actually learn language. Yeah. Before they can actually speak and have a conversation in whatever language they're going to learn, right? Like there's some weird little pocket there where before their consciousness gets like hardwired to society or something.

And while that's absolutely fascinating, I would say there's been some very good serious research. You know, in addition to what Dr. Crippel's been describing, there's a Dr. Ian Stevenson that has done a great deal of study about this kind of cases of reincarnation. experience. There's literally been hundreds of these types of experiences identified in research like this. And I think it offers a very strong, compelling argument, but you're right, mainly it's children and often very young children. Other researchers are seeing that too. They remember their prior lives. Interestingly, as these very young children get older, they seem to lose that memory. And so they don't really retain it. It's very unusual. One reason I'm so fascinated about that is we have this

concept of reincarnation quite regularly expressed in near-death experiences. And I'm going to admit this, okay? When I started my near-death experience research, I thought, no way, reincarnation doesn't make any sense. I didn't believe in that stuff at all. However, I'm led by evidence. And so over and over, and we're talking about way over 100, hundreds at this point of near-death experiences I've studied, do talk about remembrance of a prior life. Now, in my reincarnation, evidence in near-death experiences, there's not that predisposition for males. They say their prior life or lives that they remember. Interestingly, even if they're a male or female in this life, they may have been a male or female in prior lives, or had multiple sort of different genders,

often going back. So I'm not really seeing that preponderance of males. And also in near-death experiences, there's not that preponderance of remembrance of a traumatic death. When you have reincarnation discussed in near-death experiences, and maybe that's the explanation, they're just living mundane lives. I mean, I wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe it if everybody talked about that they were Cleopatra in a prior life. Well, you just don't see that in near-death experiences. When they do remember and have some details of their prior life, I mean, they're very mundane, very, what you would have expected from decades to centuries ago. Nothing, what we'd call particularly special, but it is that remembrance and often a very detailed remember

of their life or prior lives. So again, near-death experiences times now hundreds, providing some further lines of evidence for the reality of near-death experience. And I guess to convince myself, because I was such a skeptic of reincarnation, I guess I kind of looked at it from the point of view that if you really believe we're in a universe of infinite possibility, then to say something is impossible or can't happen, well, you're on thin ice. And so I think that's part of the rationale that if we're really in a universe where anything's possible, well, that would, by definition, include reincarnation and now with near-death experiences and Dr. Cripple and other researchers, there's some really pretty solid evidence that that really

happens. Have you ever dealt with like a young child who had a near-death experience? Did those differ from older people? Well, glad you asked because I've actually studied that. So I'm very curious as a researcher about whether near-death experience, and very young children. My study group was age five and younger. The median and average age was three and a half years old. These are very young children. And shoot, Danny, they're practically a cultural blank slate at that young age. I mean, gosh, they almost certainly don't have any well-formed religious beliefs. They wouldn't understand death. They've almost certainly not heard about near-death experiences at that tender young age. So when people have a near-death experience at that young age, my interest as a researcher was, well, what about the content of these experiences? How does that compare to older children and adults? So I looked at 33 elements or questions in my survey that were related to what actually happens during the near-death experience in a group of, I believe it was like 23 that we found that were in that group compared to older children and adults.

And to my astonishment, I found there was no statistical difference in the response to any of those 33 questions. So amazingly, very young children seem to have identical near-death experiences as older children and adults. And in fact, there was a Dr. Sutherland who reviewed all prior literature about children's near-death experiences. Her conclusion, as with mine, is there doesn't seem to be in any way any effect of even very young age on the content of a near-death experience. Hmm, that's interesting. I do want to emphasize, you know, for the very, very young children, I mean, they, may be they're a lot more likely for instance to have a loving presence with them there may be you know you see sometimes a little bit of a hint or a signal that they're having this at a very young age when they

they don't have a lot of prior life right and to you know to remember to recall but as far as the actual things that occur during a near-death experience you know out-of-body experience encountering deceased loved ones light awareness of love etc etc then it's again strikingly similar to older children and adults. So what sort of after effects do these people experience after their NDE? Well, as you can imagine, having such a profound experience generally affects people very, very deeply, and very much affects them for the rest of their life. Interestingly, I'm just now putting the final touches on a manuscript, an article,

which is going to be the largest study of the last study. of near-death experiences ever reported. It's that group of 834 near-death experiencers that completed our most recent version of the survey that we have. So I looked specifically at changes in values, changes in beliefs, changes in belief about God. And in this study, I compared it to a group of 42 people that had a life-threatening event but did not have an experience at the time of their life-threatening event and looked at how their values and beliefs change, their belief about God. So what we're finding in this study with pending publication is the people that had a near-death experience had much more profound changes in their values and belief. They were much more compassionate,

they were much less materialistic, they were much more, you know, much more literally changed. They had a much higher belief in God, a much higher belief in the reality of an afterlife as compared to that group that nearly died but didn't have a near-death experience. So it shows that near-death experiences in these often profound changes, what we call after effects, is not due so much, in fact, hardly at all, to that life-threatening event, but it's due to the fact that they had that very profound, mystical, spiritual experience that seems to have guided them in changing, often radically throughout the rest of their life. So what is this, Steve? This is some sort of a census on people who had near-death experiences? I think this is it. It says this is the 834 survey. Oh, this is the study. I think this is what is. Before my experience, belief in God and the existence of God. Before the experience.

Okay. That's great. You've got it. Okay. Yeah, you can see, if you look at the very top, if you look at the time of your experience, okay. That's it. It went from 37% to, yeah, that's it. That's a group of 8 or 33.

Interesting. Before and then after. Wow, it went to 71% from 37% that God definitely exists. Yeah, you can see the profound. shift in having a near-death experience. So it's exactly what you said, that percentage. We see this over and over in these types of questions we asked. We asked them what their belief was at the time of their near-death experience, and then what their beliefs were at the time they shared their near-death experiences, which could be like 15 or 20 years later. So to have this kind of a shift...

Oh, it's usually that much later? Oh, yeah, yeah, it is. So this isn't something where they have a near-death experience and then share it quickly, although in modern times we're seeing people sharing their near-death experience a lot quicker after it happens. So I think, again, with the increased awareness and acceptance in near-death experience, we're really seeing people more willing to share their experience more shortly after it happened. But these are people that have shared, you know, 15, 20 years later is about an average. And yet, I can't think of any other single-life event that could so profoundly change people's beliefs and attitudes, double-triple. the percentage of people that state they're greatly compassionate in life. For example,

that's right in the study that we're developing for publication, you know, basically an overdubling of their belief in God, probably about a tripling of decreased loss of fear of death, or, you know, doubling, tripling of people that have a near-death experience as an after-effect believing that they absolutely believe in the reality of life after death. So this is something that isn't just a small change in their attitudes or beliefs. It is profound. And these are lifelong. In fact, often it's been observed by other researchers, their change in values actually continues to develop years to decades after their experience. And people, I might add, you don't change your values and beliefs that radically unless you know deep down in your heart

and with every fiber of your being that what you experienced was real. Yeah. You don't change, change to a event where you're doubting it really. You kind of think maybe it's hallucinatory, maybe not, no. You only change your life that profoundly when you're absolutely certain. And in fact, that corroborates with an actual survey question, I ask, and that is for people having a near-death experience, what do you currently believe about the reality of their experience? 93.8% had the survey option experience was definitely real. Near-death experience cures. near-death experience, disbelief almost uniformly. Are there any accounts in the people that have submitted on your website that are similar to

Elizabeth Crohn's superpowers that she claims to have, these precognition abilities and abilities to predict things that happen in the future? Yeah. We have quite a few of people that have submitted. In fact, we even ask a survey question during your... near-death experience, for example, did you become aware of future events? Now, that's sort of a mish-mash, and I was hoping we could find something where I could say, wow, they made a prediction or saw it had an awareness of a future event, but it's not really convincing enough that me scientifically

can say that that's a common part of near-death experiences. But many people, like Elizabeth, have, after their experience, it's sort of an after-effect that they have a strong sense that they're aware of or can pre-cognitive abilities, premonition abilities, psychic abilities. So we do see that, again, it's not uncommon, it's not common, but enough people have described that that I think it's fascinating. Again, I know Elizabeth personally, and for her, yeah, I think she's the real thing. What do you think's happening there? How is that, do you have any speculation? And I don't even know that people that have these special abilities know for sure. They just know before their near-death experience, they didn't have that ability.

After their experience, they do. So I think it's one of those things they just accept it as a gift, something that, how they changed. And, you know, I don't know that they can nail down a specific physical brain function. I don't know that there's a definite explanation. It's just observational. It changed, and that's their new ability. I wonder if it has something to do if you believe the brain function. filter hypothesis if some part of the brain maybe got broke, right? Or some part of the brain

permanently got tweaked. And now your filter is a little bit broke. And now you can, now you can do more. Now you can see more. That is just about the best possible explanation that I think anybody could come up with. You really are more open to those. First of all, you know, people that have a near-death experience to start having those abilities. They may have thought it was impossible that that would happen, and yet, boom, all of a sudden, they're having it. So I think it's one of those things, having an openness to the possibility of that happen is probably essential for them to actually experience it. And then a lot of it is confidence building. You have that sort of psychic ability, and you're sort of like right after your near-death experience,

you're sort of testing the waters. Is this real? It is possible? But I think for these very special people that have those changes and they test it and they find that it's real, then that becomes a confidence builder and then ultimately they can share it with the world and share it fearlessly that, yes, I can really have this very special ability. And certainly it could be that pulling away of the filter after their near-death experience is sort of after-effect of openness that keeps them, you know, certainly more aware of and more predisposed to have these kinds of unusual psychic experiences. Have you ever heard of a guy named Gary Nolan?

Dimly. Remind me of... Yeah, he's at the Stanford, and he has done studies on, I believe it's a fairly large group of people that experience different things from paranormal experiences to UFO phenomena. Okay. And he basically scanned their brains and tried to find any kind of correlate, correlates, evidence. And what he did find was that there was a specific part of the brain in the Codapetamon, I believe called the basal ganglia. I might be butchering this, but a specific

part of the brain that he says that the neurons in this basal ganglia are far more dense than the average person. And they said that that was something that was common throughout all these people that were witnessing these experiences. So his ideas may be that, you know, that is part of this, whatever's going on in that basal ganglia. And I forgot what the purpose of that part of the brain is. But maybe you can find that, Steve. What does the Codateopatame and basal ganglia do? So why would that part of the brain being so far more dense with neurons have something

to do with being able to witness phenomena, like paranormal or UFO stuff? You know, that's a great question. And first of all, that raises an important issue. We need to be doing more of that type of research, functional. brain imaging. We have several different mechanisms by which we can now image brain and its function and locations in the brain better than we ever did before as technology marches on. But it's interesting when they have that well-developed part of the brain in people that have those types of experience, psychic UFOs, more so more developed in that part of the brain than

other people's brains. What I think about as a scientist, well, is that cause or effect? Exactly. And so, you know, is it something that because their brain was more developed than average, is that predispose them to an experience? Or did they have the experience? And then in their processing, thinking about it, you know, developing learning from that experience, did that result in that brain getting more developed? So it's really, again, a good example of where research like that is at the leading edge frontier. And I sure hope we see a lot more of that. Because once again, what we don't know about that kind of phenomena and brain function and correlates,

that far exceeds what we do now. Right, right. There's people that talk about the similarities of a DMT experience to this near-death experience. There was one guy in a video that I watched yesterday who was basically playing it out. He said he had a near-death experience when he was a kid and he got in a car accident.

And then he smoked DMT like 10 years later or something on a mountain. And he said he met the same exact entity and said, you're not supposed to. He told him, he was like, you're not supposed to be here. and have you ever talk to people that have done both

smoked DMT and had an NDE? In the survey of over 4,000 people, we have scores that had a near-death experience and also described using psychotropic drugs. I mean, you name it, I've heard it, DMT, psilocybin, LSD, etc. So yeah, we have a fairly good-sized series of those. I think when you look at comparing DMT or other psychotropic drugs to near-death experiences,

you have to be aware that there's a bit of a bias in the sense that YouTube videos will become popular and you'll access them because they get a lot of clicks and they're interesting. So that's interesting. They had a near-death experience and it was similar to DMT. However, in the hundreds, over 100 for sure, of people that have had near-death experiences, and shared with our research website and then discussed and compared the use of psychotropic brain-acting drugs to their near-death experience, the substantial majority say that they were grossly dissimilar. They may be slightly similar in the sense that it was unworldly.

They may have strong emotions associated with it. They may feel consciousness as a part, but the great majority, and again, it's all, all these are posted into ease. anyone on the world can look them up and see this, they're predominantly very, very different. Above and beyond that, I co-authored a scholarly paper, Dr. Parnia, and as part of that, we looked at near-death experiences and what occurred in near-death experiences, and that was virtually all derived from my NDERF.org website, what occurs during experiences. and as part of that scholarly article published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, we had a group of the co-investigators look at all the scholarly literature on the effects of psychotropic drugs.

So this was actually a scholarly review of published effects of both near-death experiences and psychotropic drugs, and once again, the conclusion of this published peer-reviewed paper was that they're substantially different. And if anyone has any doubt about that, Where can we find that paper? It's at the Annals of the New York Academy of Science. It's about two or three years ago. Okay. But what anyone can do is go to the website Arrowwood.org, E-R-O-W-I-D,

which is by far the largest collection of first-person experiences with psychotropic drugs by the scores. I mean, there's some I hadn't even heard of. But if you go there and look up DMT or psilocybin or some of the more popularly named, substances that purportedly mimic near-death experiences, all you have to do is go there and then look up hundreds of first-person experiences, do exactly what I've done, go there, read 20 or 30 first-person accounts of psilocybin or DMT, and I think anybody can easily see quickly that the experiences are very different. These psychotropic drugs are far more likely to be hallucinatory, events in these psychotropic drug experiences skip around like dreams, no surprise.

DMT is in the top left, Steve. Yeah, and also in addition to that, you may find that, you know, DMT or psilocybin are more likely to be frightening, and they're more likely to be recognized as hallucinatory as opposed to near-death experiences where virtually all that have a near-death experience understand that it's real. So in spite of what you may see on YouTube or other media sites, this is the reality based on peer-reviewed public literature, and actual first-person experiences posted on the website and then coupled with people that actually had near-death experiences and hallucinatory experiences. But they're really different. What is the idea that in death or before death, the pineal gland secretes DMT that basically allows that person to have a psychedelic experience that essentially allows them to die?

Is that the theory of what the purpose of the pineal gland is? I would, you know, while that's a theory, I would have to say lots of people have had cardiac arrest, their heart stopped, and then they're resuscitated and they come back to life. I mean, you know, thank goodness we have thousands, probably tens of thousands of people even here in America that have survived that horrific close brush with death. I would say almost uniformly they don't come back and describe a hallucinatory experience associated with their heart stopping. So I think, you know, while we still need to study the effects of the pie, or other brain chemistry mediators, there doesn't seem to be any resuscitation of these people that come back and describe something that would be a hallucinatory experience due to the

pineal or anything else. But these people who their heart stops, they do have NDEs. Oh, absolutely. Right. When the heart stops a cardiac arrest, that's one of the more common listed precipitating events of a near-death experience. Near-death experience in my research, you have to be near-death. were so physically compromised that you're unconscious or clinically dead, like happens when your

heart stops. So to understand how amazing it is that they have a near-death experience at that time, you have to understand, if you will, the physiology of your heart stopping. Well, obviously, immediately, when your heart stops, immediately, blood stops flowing to the brain. 10 to 20 seconds after blood stops flowing to the brain, the EEG, electroencephalogram, which is a measure of brain cortical electrical activity goes absolutely flat. Danny, you haven't showered for like three days. How do you smell so good? Are you like magic? I'm not magic, Steve.

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and it's not loaded with sodium. Just delicious plant-based flavors you'll actually look forward to drinking. Shop ultima on Amazon or in store at Target and Whole Foods Market. Really? After 20 seconds. 10 to 20 seconds. That's very well documented in the literature. So after 10 to 20 seconds after your heart stops, there's no measurable brain cortical activity,

which is where your higher cognitive consciousness is. So it should be physically impossible to have a conscious experience at that time. And yet by the hundreds, people report near-death experiences after their heart stops far beyond that 10 to 20-second interval prior to anybody beginning CPR or efforts at resuscitation. So again, it's just yet another one of the stronger lines of evidence that after your heart stops and you have a near-death experience, absolutely medically inexplicable for that to be due to physical brain function.

How do we know that the brain stops 20 seconds after the heart? stops? Like, how many people have we measured with an EEG on their head when their heart stops? There's quite a bit of literature in the medical, various medical journals. I've actually cited that these are big enough series that that's generally accepted as being factual. That just seems like a crazy thing to study, right? Well, that's, you know, how would you be able to time that to have an EEG on somebody to be measuring their brain knowing their heart's going to stop? Well, it could be people, you know, they're in the hospital, they're having some neurologic situation.

They have an EEG on. Actually, interestingly, there was a very recent study by a Dr. Parnea called the Aware 2 study where they actually went out of their way to measure the EEG in people that, in a fairly good-sized series, that had a cardiac arrest. So that's by far the largest contemporary series of actual EEG measurements, and that was done prospectively. So that was published relatively recently, and they actually had targets placed, and they were, hoping that people among these cardiac arrest patients would have a near-death experience and be able to spot a target with their consciousness apart from the body.

Unfortunately, in this large study, basically only several people had a near-death experience and they weren't actually in that group having their EEG being measured. But among those that had cardiac arrest that did have an EEG being measured, unfortunately none of them had a near-death experience. So it wasn't really conclusionary, but you did know. that, you know, again, like we knew from prior research, once you have a cardiac arrest, your

measured brain cortical electrical activity is either flat or so disorganized that it should be absolutely impossible to have any lucid organized experience. What is this, Steve? This is from PubMed. Oh, this is the study you referenced in

awareness during resuscitation, a multi-centered study of consciousness and awareness and cardiac arrest. Right. He used a term recalled experience of death. Okay. That's been interesting. I've talked to other IDDE researchers, and none of the rest of us are using the term recalled

experience of death. Although, I want to emphasize when Dr. Parney, and he's, by the way, a friend of mine, when he coined that term, I think it was very appropriate because there's so many people calling so many types of experiences near-death experiences that aren't. We've had some people, especially in the popular media, say that it's a near-death. death experience, if it was a dream, if it was a dream, if it was something that occurred during meditation. Well, Dr. Parney, and I agree to in my research, you have to be so physically compromised that your unconscious or physically clinically dead. And that's where he said just to

separate these literally non-near-death experience researchers, non-near-death experience types of experience that so many other people. They want to be under that umbrella near-death experience. But really, if you just stick with that rigorous, basically foundational definition of near-death experience, that was started by Dr. Raymond Moody, who coined the term near-death experience in 1975. If you stick with that, I don't know that you really need to have a new term, recalled experience of death. Right. Yeah, I agree.

So this says the abstract of this paper's cognitive activity and awareness during cardiac arrest are reported but ill-understood. the first of a kind study examined consciousness and its underlying electro what does I say? Electrochortical biomarkers during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In a prospective 25 sit-in hospital study, we incorporated independent audiovisual testing awareness, testing of awareness, including explicit and implicit learning using a computer and headphones. Yeah, this is the definitive study of measured or prospectively evaluated consciousness. Bottom line, unfortunately, they had like only a couple people that had a near-death experience, and they couldn't really correlate that with any EEG measuring.

I'll jump ahead a little bit because I've read a lot on this. Right. Interesting. So, okay, so of the 567, 53 survived 29. completed interviews, and 11 reported CA memories and perceptions suggestive of consciousness. I want to emphasize that isn't necessarily during CPR. In other words, they did CPR, heartbait returns, so they may have a period of unconscious or returning to consciousness, and then after they were conscious enough to do the survey, then they remembered something. But that doesn't mean, I want to emphasize that that was occurring at the time. their heart stop, it occurred from the interval of them losing consciousness due to cardiac

arrest to being conscious enough to answer the survey question. So that doesn't really give what the kind of information we all would like, and that would be what about consciousness right when the heart stops. So that really isn't designed to, or at least the data they have, doesn't really directly answer that. Yeah. Well, it's interesting, you know, when you said earlier that these people that go into cardiac arrest, they said they don't experience any sort of hallucinatory experience. In general, yeah. In general. But isn't the pineal gland responsible for dreams?

It can't. I think, believe it's involved, certainly in dreams. So I wouldn't describe a dream as hallucinatory. Yeah, me too. I think most all of us have had dreams, events skip around. You can barely remember the, then you can not to remember them in the long run. And there's some crazy dang stuff that happens, certainly in my dreams and probably in others. And you wake up and you go, sheesh, how did that happen?

Right. Sometimes dreams feel very real. They don't feel hallucinatory like I'm taking a drug, right? So it's possible that the pineal gland could have something to do with it. Yet, you know, I don't know how, I don't know even what to think of the brain being completely shut down for that period of time. that would. You know, didn't you say the people that had the EEG with no brain activity, they did not have a near-death experience? So maybe there's a phenomena where maybe it's possible that these people that do go into cardiac arrest, their brains somehow stay on, like some sort of spark goes off,

and the brain stay on a little bit longer than usual, maybe for a minute, and that could explain these experiences somehow? Yeah, ordinarily, I mean, if you can, when your heart stops, first of all, that's based on measurement or clinical observations. So sometimes when you diagnose cardiac arrest or heart stopping, there may be what's called fibrillation of the heart and may be functioning at a low level, but just not enough you can detect a pulse. Right. So, yeah, there is some possibility that, you know, there could be, and I can't exclude that, but by the time you do EEG measurements, if there's no measurable cortical activity,

well, that's really necessary to have a conscious, lucid experience. And we've talked about near-death experiences being hyper-lucid, consciousness above and beyond normal. So to have that type of super-normal consciousness, which the majority about three-fourths of people having near-death experiences describe, that's just simply, you know. Super-normal. Yeah. Well, as we, okay, I asked a survey question. Let me explain that. We asked a survey question, again, the same 834 near-death experiencer group we've come back to.

So a key survey question was, how was your consciousness and alertness during your experience in comparison to your earthly everyday life? And the possible options in the survey question, you know, basically greater than, you know, normal, equal to earthly life or less than. In my research we have, I'd have to look up the percentage, right around 75%, right around 3.4th said that during their near-death experience, don't forget, their unconscious or clinical. technically dead. But during their near-death experience, their level of consciousness and alertness was greater than earthly everyday life. And about another 20% said it was the same, and only about 5% said that it was less. So astonishing. Here you are physically in the throes of nearly dying, unconscious, sometimes comatose, and yet here they are during their experience supernormal consciousness. And yeah, you can have some dreams where you believe your conscious or

even super normal conscious, but shoot, if you're anything like me, that's pretty darn rare. And to have that and that high a percentage of people that have a near-death experience, I think that's nature's way of telling us these are real experiences, this is real supernormal consciousness, is something that cannot possibly be explained by physical brain function. And you said, you mentioned something on our break about blind people. Yeah, yeah, I did. Are any of your studies on people that have that are blind? Yeah.

I'll start out with just, this is a single case report. Vicky was born totally blind. She was born prematurely, put in an oxygen tin as they did, unfortunately, in the 1950s. And that literally burned out their retinas, the back of the eye responsible for vision. So Vicki, you know, basically totally blind to her vision is unknown and unknowable. And moreover, you cannot explain vision in terms of the remaining four physical bodily senses. I tried when I interviewed Vicky, no way. You know, vision is a unique sensory perception totally outside of the other.

And there's no way to put it into words to make her understand it. Absolutely. I tried. And others have no way. If you have someone you know that's totally blind, especially blind from birth, I mean, you can try it yourself. But anyway, bottom line is, you know, with Vicki, vision unknown and unknown. So she developed some other senses, which often blind people do. She was a very gifted singer.

And so she professionally sang at bars and nightclubs. And so she was at a singing stint and was in a car on the way home. And I always say, because someone's going to ask, no, she wasn't driving. So we answered that one. But unfortunately, it was an inebriated patron that was driving her home. And so, boom, they had a bad crash. And so the first time Vicky saw herself, she had her consciousness above her physical body in the emergency room and saw her body on the gurney. Her initial emotional reaction was she was horrified.

She was frightened because vision was so outside of anything she ever knew. So she was literally terrified. And she had to calm herself down before she realized that body down there. She correlated the feel of her long hair. And interestingly, the feel of her long hair. ring that her father had given her, which she'd only know by the sense of touch, now she could see it. And she said, aha, that's what I felt for all these years. And so only with that was she aware that she was having vision. And she went on to have a very detailed near-death experience,

complete with highly detailed vision. And in fact, Vicki's vision is described as 360-degree vision. The many near-death experiencers described that, and she was simultaneously aware of visual She's like a hammerhead shark. She was like, yeah, right. She had, that's a good analogy. I think they got 360 vision. Well, okay. Wow, I still want to stay away from a moment.

I'll stay out of that field of vision. But Vicki described, as so many others described, that she's simultaneously aware of vision in front of her, behind her, right, left, up, down. Technically, the proper phrase would be spherical vision, because she was simultaneously aware of that. And so when I was interviewing with her, I tried to explain to Vicky that those of us,

here on our earthly life have, if you will, a pie-shaped vision because of the location of our eyes and the brain were limited by the things we can see as sort of a pie-shaped, limited visual field. So I told Vicki that, and she literally laughed at me because her entire life experience of vision was spherical, and it was impossible for Vicky to understand how we could have such limited pie-shaped vision. She didn't, she laughed, thought it was funny, couldn't accept it. it. But that's one example. We now have a small series of people that have been blind, including legally blind, and when they've had their near-death experiences, their vision is not only normal, but often super normal. Just yet another example. Marta is an example I often

share. She was a five-year-old girl, literally drowned in a lake, got loose from her mother, immediately lost consciousness, consciousness over her body, met a lady in white, and she, She went around the lake, and she was able to see Marta's own words, details on telephone poles, birds' feathers, birds' eyes, details in people's backyard. She called it far greater than 2020 vision. So she ultimately recovered. Now, that's mundane. Telephone poles, bird feathers? Now, to you and me and to everybody, I mean, like, is that interesting or exciting?

Well, it is. It is if it's a first time in your life you've ever seen it, as it was with Marta, who was legally blind. So we have a whole series of these, of people that are blind, legally blind, and when they, in every one of this small series, they have either normal or probably more often a super normal vision like Marta where they're able to see things. Details often for the first time in their life, certainly far better than their vision would have allowed to them to have at that point in their life. Wow. Yeah, it just makes me wonder why, you know, going back to the beginning of the beginning of the same, conversation when you mentioned Bigelow being interested in this stuff. Like, you got to, have you ever talked to anybody in any other disciplines that have been

interested in this besides, besides that contest that you did for the Bigelow thing? Like, what other industries or what other types of people are interested in this? Right. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have, I've co-authored a book about what we call the contact modalities. It looks at sort of this broader. spectrum of, you know, UFOs, mystical experiences. So I've actually been fairly heavily involved in that. You know, interestingly, I've done this for 25 years and people think it's kind of unusual for a doctor to do that and then especially to have such a mammoth series of near-death experiences.

So I've really been blessed with people reaching out to me or me reaching out to other people that have an interest in sort of the greater picture in all this. And it's just been a fascinating sort of life pursuit of mind to communicate with others, realizing that, you know, again, this sort of non-ordinary experiences, spiritual experiences, you know, UFOs, psychic phenomenon, there's just a whole world out there that we just don't understand well enough. We need to keep doing research in that. And there's, I think there's some very important, I know, that there's some important information just waiting to be discovered that's going to inform us enormously about consciousness, life after death, and abilities that we may all have

that we just aren't aware of, haven't developed, haven't really even explored scientifically yet. Yeah, and it's hard to explore it scientifically. There's no, there's no moral scientific way to measure this, right? That's a problem. You know, the big thing is there's just no dang funding. I'm self-funded all my life always have been. There's just an amazing posity of interest in is to the level that there would be some real funding for this type of research. I mean, is that amazing or what? I mean, here we are sharing today about some of the most amazing, profoundly important, conscious experiences, implications of life after death.

You would think, wow, obviously there's, you know, from a variety of sources, going to be a lot of interest funding in that support for that. Nope, we're all the lone wolves. I mean, so many other researchers. We do this because we believe it, because we love it, and because we love it and because we're convinced that the information we're getting is important for humanity and understanding of some of the fundamental questions. We all have about consciousness, life after death, and just really, you know, what other abilities do we have, experiences that we have for humanity, and what do they tell us about consciousness or who we are as human beings? Yeah, I'd be really interested to, I mean, I mentioned to you briefly when we were off camera about Andrew Gallimore, the guy in Tokyo who's this neuroscientist doing the DMD.

extended state DMT research. And that, it would be interesting to hear from somebody who's had a near-death experience who would be a part of that extended state DMT, where they're giving people an IV drip of DMT for a long period of time for like a whole day, and then bringing them out briefly, writing down what they're experiencing, and then jacking back into the matrix. Well, we do have something like that. We have one of the most well-known public near-death experience individuals is Dr. Eben Alexander, an amazing guy who was a Harvard neurosurgeon.

And he had a severe episode of meningitis. Actually, the two of us were on a Dr. Oz show once. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. We were so, you know, he's, again, a bud of mine. But here I am looking with Dr. Oz up on the screen, and there's the CT or CAT scan of Dr. Alexander. and I knew full well there was that meningitis. I mean, it was horrible.

The meninges inflamed, and I knew from my ability to read imaging studies, wow, I mean, you can't be alive. But he was, you know, had about a 2% chance of survival, and yet he did. And he had a profound near-death experience. He was actually involved in a study where he took a psychotropic drug, compared it to his near-death experience, and the gist of it is, well, there may be some minor similarities overall, no significant, overall. overlap with his, you know, in terms of similarities of the content of his psychotropic experience as his near-death experience. That's published in peer-reviewed literature.

What type of drug specifically? I can't remember if it was psilocybin or DMT. Yeah, I'd be interested to find out. It's published and it's out there. But again, that's not a surprise to me because we've seen that over and over when people shared their near-death experience on the research website and compared it to their use of psychotropics and generally very different experiences. Yeah, and it's also interesting

that they report it so much later. Yeah, they, well... Like the human memory is very fallible. Okay, I'm going to address that. Okay, so absolutely. You and I couldn't remember what we did 15 or 20 years ago. Right. I mean, you can have recollections of what happened.

You have a general memory, but oftentimes your memories of specific events get very distorted. Absolutely. that's just human. However, near-death experiences are a very special type of memory. There's been one good prospective study done by Dr. von Lommel, actually the largest prospective near-death experience study, and he had a group of near-death experiencers, and he interviewed them a month, a few weeks, after their experience, and then two and eight years later. And he found that

their remembrance of their experience was absolutely verbatim unchanged over that period of time. And then another larger study was done by a Dr. Grayson who did the same survey, the instrument, to assess basically what happens during a near-death experience, the content. And he had a study group, and we now have follow-up with a large number of them out 20 years. And remarkably, the assessment of their remembrance of the experience with this objective standardized test, again, no statistical evidence that they either enhanced their remembrance, in other words, embellished. their remembrance of it, added details, or forgot, diminished their experience. So near-death experience, you have to understand this is way different from the usual physical, earthly memories we have. It seems to be a special type of memory that is, well, deeply ingrained, far less likely

to be forgotten than any other, basically, earthly memory that we might have. Very different type of conscious experience. Now, you work with cancer patients on a regular basis, right? Right. What specifically do you do with those cancer patients? Sure. As a radiation oncology physician, we are involved in treating them with radiation therapy. Okay. Our modality, linear accelerator. You know, we do the consultation, you know, work to do the staging studies, find out where they have cancer or where they don't, and then work with our colleagues in an interdisciplinary manner. And typically, we work as a group to identify what we believe to be the best treatment approach for that particular patient, their particular issue with cancer.

and then boom we do it. Do you ever notice a change in state or a change in consciousness with people that have to confront this idea of death? And do you notice any sort of transformation in their psyche? Or what do you see? Yeah, absolutely. Cancer is a scary word. So not surprisingly, people that have that diagnosis, especially if it's advanced or especially,

if it's unlikely we're going to cure them. Not surprisingly, there's going to be a lot of anxiety, trouble sleeping. You know, they have to wrestle with when and how much they share with their friends, family, and loved ones about that. Most do. Some want the journey to be private. So it's a very emotionally trying time. And again, there's a whole spectrum in how people react. Some seem to adapt very quickly and seem to be relatively comfortable. And others, it's just terrifying, difficult experience all the way up to their time of death and everything in between. So cancer is a scary word, but fortunately with our modern day healthcare approach, we're working with patients if they have a lot. In fact, we check our patients now that we see in consultation.

We do what's called a distress score. And if there's something that they are especially distressed about their diagnosis, we can refer them to people that can help them deal with that emotional difficulty they're having with cancer. So we're now more than ever looking at the total patient, trying to help them in any way that we can, not just physically with cancer, but through the whole journey, including their emotional difficulties that may understandably come with that diagnosis. Have you ever heard of or seen any people that are, the closer they get to death, whether it be a cancer patient or not, having more of these paranormal or supernatural experiences? We study them. I have scores and scores of those types of experiences. They're called deathbed visions.

Deathbed visions. In the scholarly literature. So these deathbed visions are very well characterized. Again, not huge numbers of studies like with near-death experiences. But what I found, as with many other researchers are finding, and of course, don't forget, these are reported by the people that were with them at the time of death. You know, obviously these are people that are literally, you know, hours, days away, several days away from dying. So when you get a deathbed vision, once again, it's a very strong paranormal experience. It's not at all unusual for these people that are on the cusp of dying to see deceased loved ones. There may be light. There may be some of the aspects of near-death experience there. They may be surprised that others in the room with them don't see their deceased friend, family, or loved one up there are associated with light. And it's really glorious to see these people with deathbed visions. You know, here they are dying, and yet their eyes light up. They smile. It seems to be a very powerful experience that helps

that transition from life to death, and it could be very reassuring, not just to the person dying, but to everybody with them in the room. I mean, they realize that that's a peaceful transition. They can often very vividly, and they may even see that unearthly or heavenly realm and can describe it to those in the room. So a very powerful experience for deathbed visions. Part of that spectrum of spiritual experience is all converging on that further line of evidence that there really is life after death, a wonderful life after death for all of us. And I've heard that some cancer patients with terminal cancer have also been experimenting with like psychedelics, right? Like they've been giving people

like it like mushrooms or or different drugs? Well, under controlled circumstances, you give them carefully measured pharmacologic doses of it.

So this is, again, you need to be real careful with this kind of thing. There's no FDA or federal drug

administration for illicitly purchased substances. So you dang don't know what you're going to get. And sometimes it

can be very different from what is represented by the person pushing that drug. So, but there have been a lot of good, controlled, credible, well done, and even published ultimately scientific studies on this.

We're basically turning every stone to try to find ways to help people with advanced cancer, to better adjust to it, you know, and many of these people do have under controlled scientific study spiritual experiences as a result of this. They can have sort of experience that is so unearthly, it can indeed help them to make that transition. So this is still, there's nothing that's FDA approved for clinical use. I want to emphasize, but a lot of this research that's coming on certainly sounds promising, and I would expect in the years that come along as we do this, make absolutely sure ethically that the benefits of this type of treatment outray that were at risks and look very carefully at that. But I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see an increasing use of

psychotropics to help people near the end of life. So stay tuned. Yeah. No, I just, I just remembered too, I had a guy in here a couple months ago who was an army ranger. He got shot in the head during some military training, but he was wearing a helmet. So the helmet flew off and it knocked him off his feet and he had a near-death experience. And when he came back, he had to go get some psychological evaluation when he got back to the States. And he had severe head trauma. and after that he got admitted to the the CIA's remote viewing program and he started doing remote viewing

and training people in remote viewing and he was explaining this all to me and it was just it was incredible and a lot of these people had had similar experiences where once they had like a crazy life-altering event whether it be a head injury or a near-death experience these people were getting admitted to these black projects projects doing remote viewing. And I know Bigelow is really interested in remote viewing too.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this is just yet another vivid example you bring up there of what we don't know about human consciousness and the potential far outweighs what we do know. I mean, absolutely fascinating. And yeah, I know some people that were in the military remote viewing program. I know two of them personally, actually. And so I'm in, as with you, I'm intrigued. Again, you just wonder. you know more about that a good example where we need more research we need to have more people studying people that those rare people that have that gift and just seeing what its strengths are what its limitations are yeah it's just it seems like there is an elevated conscious realm that exists that people have the ability to tap into um that is completely separate from our sort of 2D reality plane of existence down here that is

if once you it seems like once you experience that it's world changing because this sort of existence or this whatever this consciousness

layer of consciousness is above us above our plane of existence it transcends culture it transcends religion it transcends nations everything. And I can

understand how that can really blow somebody's worldview out of the water. And there's a guy named Chardon who studied this and he had this

concept of a neosphere where it was the neospheres he described it as exactly that just a plane of consciousness a

a worldwide consciousness that exists above all of us and that we can all tap into and it's like once you can tap into that knowledge is just inside you right? You don't learn anything

it's just like everything is connected through this somehow. Okay. Exactly. Wouldn't it be awesome if through the further research or investigating with an open mind these kind of phenomena, what if we could come up with a way for anybody

on the planet to access that higher level of consciousness to experience that firsthand and just imagine the change we could have in humanity if that were something that we could access safely, reliably, just imagine how that would change the world. If everybody knew that there was that higher level of consciousness, that were far more than just physical brain conscious functioning, and that there's that bigger picture of consciousness. I think that's sort of the golden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you will, for this type of consciousness this research where it could really impact and be valuable to anybody anywhere in the world.

Yeah. Have you ever thought about ways to objectively study these NDEs? Do you think there will ever be a way to tap into one of these NDE's somebody has? I've spent hours thinking about. I would love to do that. You know, obviously we cannot induce a near-death experience. that would be not only unethical but illegal and dangerous. Among people that have a life-threatening event,

only 10 or 20% have a near-death experience, 80% or 90% do not. So you have to always bear that in mind too. So, you know, putting somebody into a lot, and people that attempt suicide and have a near-death experience almost never attempt suicide again because they know they don't want to risk taking their own life at any future time. They understand the value and meaning of earthly life,

So we know induction of a life-threatening event is wrong at many different levels in many different ways. But what if you could find some way to sort of bring, bring that little piece of heaven, if you will, that near-death experiencers note back down into everybody's earthly life? Well, I think part of it could certainly be reading about near-death experiences, and I encourage that. We've had people have their understanding of consciousness, their fears of death, all. for the best by reading near-death experiences, podcasts like this extremely valuable. I think a lot of people can come away with this knowing, wow, there really is that bigger picture, there's a life after death. We don't have to fear about my own mortality, their mortality of other people. So very, very important to get the word out in every way that we can because you're really

doing humanity a huge favor. What is the most bizarre near-death experience account that you've heard of? Oh, that's great. You know, out of over 4,000, I'd have to really search the old memory banks here. But we do have occasionally some very atypical near-death experiences, you know, circa 5%, just completely different from the pattern. I don't dang know why they are, but they can be sort of like anything and everything, and they're highly varied. It's not like these, what we call a typical near-death experiences have a particular pattern, so they don't really sink into my memory because they follow the pattern. But when you get into atypical near-death experiences, you can have sort of unearthly realms that aren't like heaven. You can have sort of experience can skip around.

You can have very rare. It can be anything. Has they never described like a terrifying experience like hell? Yeah. There's a very, very small percentage of near-death experiences in which they either are aware. visualize a hellish realm during their near-death experience or are actually a part of it. Impact, in other words, are actually in that hellish realm. So, first of all, these are very, very unusual.

Second of all, I've done a lot of writing on this, and at this point, I want to say that that's sort of the final frontier of my near-death experience research. I'm still actively looking at that. But as best I can tell at this point in time, there's a couple caveats to these awareness. or actually being impacted personally by these hellish experiences. Number one, I don't believe that in near-death experiences, there's a shred of evidence that we, you, me, anybody is at risk for a permanent, involuntary, being condemned to some permanent involuntary hellish realm.

That is absolutely unknown, and that's over 4,000 near-death experiences, my own and other credible researchers that have published on that. So what's going on? Well, as best I can tell, and this is again from talking to my own research and other near-death experiences that have had profoundly deep experiences, what I think is going on is that these are people that are in the afterlife that somewhat like some earthly people. They simply make a series of, and typically it's multiple sequential, very poor decisions that ultimately end up with them being there. I mean, these are people that even in the afterlife may be so retained so much hatred, anger, resentment to other people that they are literally comfortable being with others that have those values in the afterlife.

In other words, this paradoxically is for the people in those hellish realms, they're heaven because that's where they want to be. They choose to be there. They choose to be there because others are there that are like them. and that's what they want to do. One important caveat also of seeing people in these hellish realms is that some of the strongest line of evidence that even in the afterlife, free will predominates. Here on earth we can choose,

but if you can choose in an afterlife to be a party, to literally involve yourself in those hellish realms with other beings, that's some of the strongest evidence I can think of that you can choose as a being. as a spirit, even in the afterlife. And I want to also emphasize that many near-death experiencers say there cannot possibly be hell in that heaven or in that afterlife. And they're correct.

And I'll explain that. When they are aware of or observe these type of hellish realms, they're almost always sequestered. They are separated from the rest of the heavenly realms. In other words, they're all in a particular place, and the hellish beings don't directly. impact harm, interact with literally those other people that are virtually all others, spirits in the heavenly realm. So that's another important caveat. But I'm still, again, I want to emphasize I'm still actively investigating that and, you know, stay tuned. So those are some of my preliminary thoughts that I have about that seeming paradox of a universe overwhelmingly described

as loving and compassionate in the afterlife, and yet here are these hellish beings. I want to also say many people that are aware of or in these hellish realms have a sense that even in the people in the throes of this hell, again, one reason they've chosen to be there, backing up a little bit, is that in the afterlife in heaven, there seems to be a sense that you're known for who you are, what you are, everything you are. So you can understand it from the perspective of these hellish demonic beings if they were to be among other spirits. beings in heaven, they would be immediately known instantaneously for being the evil,

anti-social beings that they really are. And you can just imagine how they would be reluctant to do that. And so that helps explain why they tend to congregate together. So there's that perspective too. But many of the people that have had these hellish near-death experiences have the sense that all they ever had to do in this hellish realm was to, out of free will, request to leave, want to leave, sincerely desire to leave, and that they could return back to the typical heavenly realm. So again, back to that great caveat, me and other near-death experience researchers looking in this,

I don't know that hardly any of us, believe that we're at risk for a permanent, involuntary, hellish existence in the afterlife, and that's important. How many near-death experience researchers are there? Oh, gosh. You know, a lot of them, there's sort of like a core of some dozens of us that do a lot of research. and do a lot of talking about that, there's probably hundreds that have done either an article or, you know, done some research, shared a little bit, studied it and formally talked about it. So a lot of it's sort of a spectrum, people that are really heavily involved like me, there's a small group. Well, it's not that small.

Shoot, it's probably dozens of us. And then, you know, other people that do it sort of publish a few articles and then go on and do something else. and then just other people that sincerely study hundreds, maybe even thousands of near-death experiences, and share that with other people formally or informally. So there's sort of that spectrum of research interest. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming and explaining this stuff to me. This is fascinating stuff. Is there a place people can go to find more of your work in your research or even get in touch with you?

Sure. All right. The website, research website, the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, N-D-E-R-F-F. work yeah beautiful that you can go there and find over 4,000 posted near-death experiences and hey Danny let me tell you that it's portions of the website have been translated into over 30 different languages really so people oh absolutely we have by far the largest cross-cultural study of near-death experience ever possible and near-death experiences again strikingly similar worldwide even non-western country so wow look at that you can see arabic right and a big shout out and

Thanks to my wife, Jody, who's a webmaster of this huge website. Shout out Jody. Yeah, without her amazing talent and dedication to this. There's absolutely no way that I could be a full-time doctor, do my research, and even think about maintaining a website like this. Jody is an attorney, and yet she has stepped down her full-time practice to devote her full-time duties to this incredible outreach, because both of us believe so profoundly that this is a critical, if you will, path that we do to help reach out to all of humanity, sharing these important messages about near-death experience that we've learned over the decades.

Are you still getting these every day? How often do you get new experiences filled out? Bunches. Oh, we get, every time we do a big media event, we can get dozens, we can get scores. So whenever we do this, they come trickling in like, at least one every several days on the average. So it's actually a significant part of my duty outside of being a doctor is to continue to review these experiences, categorize them, near-death experience, probable N.D., possible

and I love doing that. I mean, it's a labor of love for both being Jody. We look at these experiences, and our goal is to share them back, other than correcting obvious grammatical and spelling errors to share back exactly. what has been shared with us lovingly to sharing that lovingly with the world. You'll notice on that website, by gosh, we don't have anything for sale and we're not soliciting donations because we think that would pull back from the credibility of our predominant focus, which is to make these fascinating and important experiences shared as openly as possible with everybody.

It's fascinating. I'll link your website and everything else below. Thanks. And thanks again, man. I really enjoyed this. Great interview. This has been fantastic. so much. My pleasure. Good night, everybody.