Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - She Met God & Saw the Future

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Killed by LIGHTNING, meeting GOD, the afterlife, psychic-visions, and becoming a medical medium - Elizebeth G. Krohn's journey back from the afterlife is a TRUE STORY too unbelievable to make up.   In this jaw-dropping new interview, Elizabeth G. Krohn (author, Changed in a Flash and Eyewitness to the Afterlife) details her near-death experience after being struck by lightning, her 2-week experience in heaven, and the newfound knowledge and abilities she returned with.   A prior spiritual skeptic, Elizabeth provides visceral descriptions of the sights and sounds of the afterlife and its nonlinear nature, and discusses making the difficult decision to leave her “home” in heaven and return to the cloudiness and uncertainty of earth.   She explains why she thinks everyone’s experience of heaven is different, what changed about how she saw the world after her experience, how she revealed the unexplainable occurrence to her friends and family, and even how it changed the way she parented her children.   We learn about the pre-cognitive nightmares she experienced predicting natural and manmade disasters, the synesthesia and aura-reading abilities she acquired, why she is hesitant to utilize her psychic abilities with others, and how she handles responsibility of knowing what’s going to happen.   Jeffrey J. Kripal (Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, co-author of Changed in a Flash) helps us make sense of near-death experiences as he considers the patterns he sees throughout people’s experiences and attempts to apply scientific models to explain them.   Elizabeth answers ALL of our burning questions - why did this near-death experience happened to her? Is reincarnation real? Do we pick our parents before we are born?   See how Elizabeth's near-death experience can empower us all! Changed in a Flash, by Elizabeth G. Krohn & Jeffrey J. Kripal: https://a.co/d/26AiNNE Elizabeth G. Krohn's latest book, Eyewitness to the Afterlife: My Two Weeks in Heaven: https://a.co/d/dkOgg7B Find out more about Elizabeth G. Krohn: https://elizabethkrohn.com/ Find out more about Jeffrey J. Kripal: https://jeffreyjkripal.com/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I looked down at myself and I was like screaming in my head, get up. Get up. You're ruining your clothes. Get up. What are you doing? And then it dawned on me. Oh, well, shit, I'm not getting up. I'm dead.

I followed the light. I knew the kids were taking care of and I wanted to know what is this. You know, clearly I was wrong about everything. So I'm going to follow it. So I did, and the light led me to a place. I call it the garden, because to me it looked like a garden, but not a typical earthly garden. I do believe that was God, and I do believe that he was using my grandfather's voice,

so I wouldn't be absolutely terrified. And it worked. I wasn't. The first feeling that I had was a feeling. of overwhelming unconditional love. The word unconditional here means something different. I mean, I have children. I love them unconditionally.

But this was different. This was deeper. I was there for two weeks. Even before I finished the question, I had the answer. No matter what it was, whether it was about my family, family members, whether it was about what would happen in the future, He told me who was going to be playing in the next Super Bowl. The important stuff.

Yes. And who was going to be the next president. And it was clear from the beginning. The decision was mine to stay there or to come back. And he said, if you decide to go back, when these events happen, it will trigger a memory for you of the things you were told. And it worked. I didn't want to come back. It felt like that was home and this is hell.

It's like we're living in this muck here. You can't see your way clear to make your way through it. It's like this thick hell that we're living in on earth. And I had a happy life here. I do have a happy life. I'm not, it's not like I'm in some kind of personal hell here. I'm just saying in general, this isn't fun. Everything changed.

There was nothing about me that resembled the former me. I started having these pre-cognitive dreams, nightmares, really. They were nightmares. I would have a nightmare one night about some horrible event, and then a day or two later, it would be on the news. a plane crash or a tsunami. It's my ambiolyx breakdown. She's going to break it down for you.

Because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. We all have reasons, little excuses that seem big enough to put off the things that matter most. It's probably nothing. Maybe when things slow down. Can I keep going like this? Where would I even get started? When your body speaks, listen, no matter the reason.

It's time to check in. Blue Shield of California. Hi, I'm I'm Biolic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And I almost forgot that Jonathan Cohen is here because I'm so excited about this episode. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to. And this is the place where we break down the things that need to be broken down like... Psychic abilities, near-death experiences, the non-death experiences, the non-es,

nonlinear nature of time, reincarnation, speaking directly to God? It's all on this episode. And we have Elizabeth Crone and Professor Jeffrey Criple. They wrote a book together called Changed in a Flash. Elizabeth Crone was a 28-year-old wife and mother of two young boys when she was struck by lightning in 1988 in the parking lot of her synagogue. As she describes it, the person who was struck by lightning was not. not the same person who got up off the floor.

She had an encounter where she was gone for what she describes as two weeks in a matter of minutes. She met God. She met God was not a person who would have ever believed that this was possible or something she would even be interested in talking about, came back a completely different person. She has precognitive nightmares. She has... What is a precognitive nightmare?

She has predicted through horrifying, nightmares, many significant events that happened with tremendous detail. And she is not a person who is happy about her new abilities. She also acquired synesthesia and a variety of other physiological changes happened to her. She's worked as a medical medium. She has read oras. Jeffrey Criple is the chair in philosophy and religious thought at Rice University who heard Elizabeth's story and felt that he needed to know more about her. He is, an expert on the history of religious structure and wrote this book with her to try and explain how things that we believe are unbelievable are actually only unbelievable because we don't have

a framework to even put them in. He has a book coming up, How to Think Impossibly, about Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else. The two of them will talk about what happened to Elizabeth, what really happened to Elizabeth, and what her life is like as a person who would literally was changed from being struck by lightning. This episode is really quite at the intersection of science and spirituality, which is a topic that we like to explore a lot. So we really hope you enjoy it. It is a pleasure to welcome to the breakdown, Elizabeth Crone and Jeffrey Criple. Break it down. Well, thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm so honored.

Elizabeth, you haven't changed a bit from the photo in your book that was taken the day that you were struck by lightning. Sure. Thank you. In your book, changed in a flash, one woman's near-death experience and why a scholar thinks it empowers us all. The book is told in two parts,

and the first is many, many fascinating chapters of all of the different sort of dimensions of your experience, Elizabeth, starting from being struck by lightning and all of the things that sort of continued to unfurl in the years and decades since this. And the second part of the book is Jeff's very academic interpretation and understanding of a lot of the things that you yourself

would not have defined as philosophical or quantum theory. And Jeff really fills in kind of all those blanks. But Elizabeth, I'd like to start with you telling us what happened the day. that you were struck by lightning? Well, what happened was my husband, my ex-husband now, but my husband was out of town on a business trip, and it happened to be the first anniversary of the death of my grandfather. And in the Jewish religion, on the anniversary of someone's death, they read their name at services. So I was never overly religious at all. I was underly religious, but I wanted to take my two children to services that night. My whole family was going to be there. And my children were four

years old and two years old at the time, two boys. And so I got them in the car, got them all dressed up. They looked so cute. And I insisted to myself upon taking a picture of us because we were cleaned up and looked halfway decent. So we were running late for services because I had stopped to take the picture. And it had been such a pretty day. I mean, beautiful sunny day. It was early September, 1988, and we drove to the synagogue, pulled in the parking lot. And as soon as I pulled into the parking lot, it was like this black cloud just was over us and the skies opened up and this torrential rainstorm started. And it was thunder, lightning, just horrible, horrible storm. So I didn't want, I parked the car. I didn't want to sit in the car and wait.

for the storm to pass because we were already late for services and kind of what's the point of going if you're going to miss the reading of his name. So I told my four-year-old to get out, his name is Jeremy. I told Jeremy to get out of the car and I would watch him run to the awning at the door of the building. And he did that. I told him to wait there under the awning. and I climbed over the seat of the car. That was like 80 pounds ago when I could climb over the seat of a car. And I got my two-year-old out of his car seat, and I opened the car door, and I was trying to wrangle my purse and a two-year-old and an umbrella. And got out of the car, and I set him down.

It was pouring. And I had the umbrella, and I was holding it the stem of the umbrella. up at the top, the metal part and very close to my head. And I started walking. I had put Andy, my two-year-old, down on the ground to walk. I didn't think I'd be able to handle carrying him and the umbrella and the purse, and he could walk. So I put him down. I was holding his hand with my right hand.

I had the umbrella with my left hand. And we started walking. And I was looking at Jeremy, everything's fine. And suddenly, I thought, this is stupid. I shouldn't have an umbrella out here. I've seen lightning. This is a bad idea. And as soon as I thought that, someone that saw this happen told me later,

but he said a small finger of lightning, a small time off a larger bolt, touched the tip of the umbrella. And when that happened, it was right when I was thinking, let go of the umbrella. It paralyzed me. It didn't knock me out, but it paralyzed me. And my hand was frozen around the stem of the umbrella. And my wedding ring was touching the metal shaft of the umbrella. And I remember looking at that and thinking, oh, this is really bad, really, really stupid.

and as I was thinking that, the larger bolt hit the umbrella, and that was it. That was, that was it. And I thought everything was fine, except that now Andy was screaming and had his hands clamped to his head. And Jeremy was running back out toward us, and I was so mad because I had told told him to stay under the awning until we were there, and I couldn't figure out why he was running toward us. And he gets to us, and he grabbed his brother and started pulling him toward the building. And I'm thinking, what is going on? And so I followed them, and we went into the lobby of the building, the synagogue, and both boys were screaming. And I saw a man coming out of the

restroom to go back into services, and it was someone that we knew, that knew us. And he came over to see why the boys were screaming. And I just could not figure out why he was ignoring me. I mean, I was standing right there, but he was just talking to these two little kids. And I looked back out the window. I knew my umbrella was missing. And it was a new umbrella, and I don't know why I was focused on that, but I looked back out the window in the door of the synagogue to see if my umbrella was outside. And when I looked out there, I saw myself on the ground, on the concrete. And that was very disconcerting. I wanted to stop you really briefly. So you remember looking and seeing Elizabeth. Yes. You knew that you were having a conscious.

experience. You were observing your children, but your body was on the ground. Right. I saw what was happening inside the synagogue. I heard the man go into the sanctuary where services were going on, and I heard him, and I saw him from the back of the room, say, we need a doctor. And I saw like 40 men get up. Asked for a doctor in a synagogue. Yeah, a mile from the Texas Medical center. Yeah. And they all started coming toward the back of the room. And I saw all of that. And I heard it. And yet I was in a heap on the ground outside. Did you try to interact with them in that state? When you saw them, were you trying to, you were just observing? I was observing. It didn't even occur to me to try to interact. So when I knew that they were coming and I knew that my

family was there and could take care of my kids. I decided to go back outside and see, try and figure out what was going on. And so I did. And as soon as I thought, I want to go see what's going on, I was out there. As soon as I thought it, I was there. And I looked down at myself and I was like screaming in my head, get up. Get up. You're ruining your clothes. Get up. What are you doing? And then it dawned on me. Oh, well, shit, I'm not getting up. I'm dead. And it was really a bad day.

And so I realized I was dead. And I also realized, but wait, I'm conscious, which, I mean, everything I I thought I knew in that second, I realized I knew nothing. I really knew nothing. I was 28 years old at the time, and I thought, you know, you wasted 28 years. You didn't learn anything. You're an idiot. And as I'm thinking, you know, about what an idiot I was, this light appeared to my right

and kind of above me. And it was alive. The light was alive. And it wanted me to follow it. Okay, so I, who doesn't want to find out what happened when you followed the living light? But I'd like you to keep us, if you can anchor us in kind of the real world, meaning the concrete world, as the people. on it that you at that point were observing. And I believe you were hovering, correct?

I was. You weren't, right. So you're sort of hovering in real time. And to me, you know, I feel like this is all in the realm of real, meaning this is all our understanding of our existence, is everything that we perceive, experience. But in the concrete world, you were on the ground. You know how long it was until you came to. I'm going to say, just from what other people have told me, it was probably a couple of minutes. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine. Drink more water. There's no real data. There's no game plan.

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Superpower used to cost $499.99. Right now, it's $199 for the full experience, which is much more affordable than anything else out there. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiotic's breakdown to help support the show. So Elizabeth, as we knew her, was struck by lightning, which is a thing. I mean, the statistics are staggering and astounding. Many, many people will just die of cardiac arrest. Like, literally, the shock will stop your heart. It can also, you know, damage like the medulla, like the parts of you that make you need to keep breathing. People do survive. But the Elizabeth that we knew was struck by lightning. And for a couple of minutes was on. the floor and presumably you were, and from what you are told, you were brought inside. There was some, you were revived, you revived, and you didn't even go to the hospital. Is that correct?

That's correct. One of the doctors that was at services actually was a specialist in electrocution. So he went on a lot of whitewater rafting trips and was around people that were struck by lightning, not infrequently, I should say. And so he was there. And he had a medical bag with him. And he said, look, we can take you to the hospital and have you checked out. But they're just going to call me. And I'm in synagogues, and I'm here.

So we can do this here. So anyway, he did a complete exam. I had burns that he wanted me to have checked out in a doctor's office in the next couple. Your feet, correct? My feet and my hand. Where it went in through my ring, my hand was burned. And then you basically grounded it and it left through, you had gorgeous new shoes. I love the way you describe it.

off the soles of my shoes, but the bottom of my feet were just blistered. I mean, it was not pretty. It was ugly. Yeah. Got it. So that's what was happening here on this plane of existence. But I'm ready. Jonathan, are you ready for Elizabeth to tell us what happened with the light?

I also do want, I want to give a sort of disclaimer that you're very clear on in the book. And Jeff, you're also clear on both in your accounting of Elizabeth's existence and experience and also your own. You are not an individual Elizabeth who believed in fairies and unicorns and oras and psychic experiences. is you were a Houston mom of two at 28 who really thought you had a good understanding of the world around you. You were not a person who, if I would have asked you before this, do you believe in near-death experiences? You would not have, that wasn't your story, correct?

I probably would have laughed at you. I was such a skeptic. I mean, anything like that, just pardon the use of the word, but it would have struck me. as ludicrous. That can't be. Can't be. Yes. So in this state,

you see a light that you're, and I want to be really careful because you're going to use these words and these concepts a lot. There's a sense of knowing that is sort of a through line of information coming to you, information coming to you

in entire images, visions, even meaning coming to you in a flash. And this kind of happens throughout, and I'm going to go ahead and say that anyone who's had a dissociative experience, anyone who's had in particular a positive transcendental experience, even a psychedelic experience,

there's a notion of information coming in completely. And it sounds like when you said that there was this light and you're just like, it was alive, of course, and I'm going to follow it. That feels like one of the first indications of, what this journey would be. So go ahead and take us with you towards the living light. I call that that knowledge and that knowing. It was a download. It was just an instantaneous download of information. And you're right. That light was the first piece of it. So I followed the light. I knew the kids were

taking care of and I wanted to know what is this? You know, clearly I was. wrong about everything, so I'm going to follow it. So I did, and the light led me to a place. I call it the garden, because to me it looked like a garden, but not a typical earthly garden. It was different, but I don't know what else to call it. I mean, throughout the whole experience, I don't have the words. I can't explain what it is that I saw because the words don't exist. They just don't exist. But the colors and the flowers and the plants,

the colors that I saw don't exist here. They're not of this spectrum, I guess, this color spectrum. So I arrive in this garden and I see that the light is there, but there's a mountain range off in the distance, and the light moved behind the mountains. And where I was, there was a bench, and it was very ornate. It looked like a wooden hand-carved and polished bench. and a voice told me to sit on the bench. And the voice was that of my grandfather. Is this the grandfather whose Yartzai ceremony you were going to at synagogue when you were struck by lightning?

Correct. And he had a heavy French accent. And I would know that voice anywhere. So it was his voice. He told me to sit down and, hey, when you're dead, grandfather tells you to sit. You sit. I just do it. So I did.

And I have to say, the first feeling that I had was a feeling of overwhelming unconditional love. And when I say unconditional love, I don't, the word unconditional here means something different. I mean, I have children. I love them unconditionally. But this was different. This was deeper. It was a deeper. It was to the soul.

It was, I can't explain it. I'm sorry, I keep saying that. So I sat on the bench and he was sitting there with me. And we began a conversation. The whole conversation, I was there for two weeks, and I know it was two weeks because there was like a, I call it a calendar, but I knew that time was passing because of the way these three orbs were moving in the sky in relation to each other. I understood the passage of time.

I also understood that time wasn't linear, which really doesn't make sense. I think I have to think back to the whole experience in linear terms just so I can decipher what happened. Otherwise, I can't remember it straight. Can you, can you clue us into the orbs? There's three, are they planning? I don't know. They were bodies in the sky. They may have been planets.

They may have been moons. I don't know. They may have been asteroids. I don't know what they were. But I understood it was part of that download of information. I understood that I was supposed to understand that I was there for two weeks. Okay. A couple practical questions.

which I know don't 100% apply in this space time. So you say you heard a voice, it was your grandfather's, and then your grandfather was with you on the bench. Is he there only an audio form? Does he manifest in physical form at some point? How does that transition happen? No, I never saw him physically. I heard his voice.

I came to understand that that was not my grandfather. I do believe that was God. And I do believe that he was using my grandfather. father's voice, so I wouldn't be absolutely terrified. And it worked. I wasn't scared. So the voice stays the same as your grandfather's, but you quickly realize, or the voice changes. No, the voice went away. He told me that he was going to communicate with me just by putting the information in my head. I didn't hear anything after that. I just knew it. So it was knowing, does that knowing come with your?

internal thoughts? Does it also, it sounds like it comes with feeling as well? Like, describe the knowing a little bit to us. As soon as I could think a question, I had the answer. Even before I finished the question, I had the answer, no matter what it was, whether it was about my family, family members, whether it was about what would happen in the future. Super Bowl. Yeah. I He told me who was going to be playing in the next Super Bowl. The important stuff. Yes. And who was going to be the next president.

And I didn't argue. I'm not going to say I argued with God, but I did question it because I didn't care about the Super Bowl. I didn't ask about the Super Bowl. and in fact, I don't think I had ever watched a Super Bowl at that point in my life. And I also didn't particularly care about politics at that point. It didn't matter to me that he said George H.W. Bush would be elected president. I didn't care at that point in my life. And so I asked, why are you telling me this? I don't care.

He said, because if you decide to go back, and it was clear from the beginning, the decision was mine to stay there or to come back. And he said, if you decide to go back, when these events happen, it will trigger a memory for you of the things you were that you learned here of the things you were told. And it worked. It worked. I'm going to ask a question, a religious question, because I just want to, for anyone who's listening and for anyone who might be picking up on a couple things, were you a scholar of the Jewish religion before this happened? A scholar.

No. I was raised reform. Okay. I was raised reform. Which could mean anything, so was I. Yeah. And I hated going to services. I was not bat mitzvah.

It just, my parents took us to services on the high holidays, and pretty much that was it. So I'm just going to jump in here again, just because I think it's worth mentioning that I've already counted three. Jeff, you're actually a professor of such things. You may be counting more. You've already mentioned three things that are very prominent assets. of the religious tradition that you happen to come from. And I'm not saying this to be like, I've just proven that she really met God and the Jewish God wins. That's not what I'm talking about. But some of the imagery, like some of the things that you've mentioned are just so striking.

You know, there's a very specific mystical notion that no one can see God's face. And obviously, the anthropomorphize notion of God is something that, you know, many traditions, kind of shy away from, but in particular, you know, in the Jewish tradition, we don't believe that God has a face. God grants Moses the ability to see God's back. He says, I'll hide you in the cleft of the rock and I will pass before you. So there's this very mystical notion that like no one, and the larger philosophical concept is as much as you think you can know truth and you want with such certainty to believe in something, we actually can only see the back of it, the shadow of it. And Jeff, you discussed this in particular. I think you say it explicitly. Anyone who thinks they

understand anything, including God, you do not understand it. So that kind of unknowable concept just fits really nicely, mystically. But I did want to just mention that you don't have that framework, Elizabeth. This was just your experience. No, I, yeah. That was two things. You said there There was three things. The third thing is that in the desert, God goes by cover of cloud in the day and by fire in the night so that the Jewish people will always have some sort of protection and this notion of kind of storm and fire. Or, you know, I mean, if you want to say lightning and light, you know, are these two

kind of protective things. So this notion of the light as a leading force, which again happens in many. religious traditions, as I learned from the second part of the book that Jeff wrote. Just back to some practical stuff. Okay, go ahead. Sorry. You're sitting on the bench. You're talking to God. You're getting these downloads. And there's a decision to stay or go. Right. Is it a difficult decision? Are you hungry ever? You're just sitting for that whole time. You never stand up to stretch your legs. You're just two weeks downloading. Right. I never got up off the bench. It was a very difficult decision.

decision. And he told me it would be a difficult decision, but that he would help me make the decision by answering all of my questions. And part of the information that he gave me and what helped me ultimately to decide to come back. And let me just say, I didn't want to come back. This sounds crazy. I'm sorry. But it felt like that was home. And this is hell. That's what it felt like. It's like we're living in this muck here. You can't see your way clear to make your way through it. It's like this thick hell that we're living in on earth.

And there, it's home and it's beyond wonderful. So I didn't want to come back to this. And I had a happy life here. do have a happy life. It's not like I'm in some kind of personal hell here. I'm just saying in general, this isn't fun. This is not fun. And so I didn't want to come back yet. Part of the information I was given was that my husband and I would be facing a divorce in the future. And I knew that I did not want him raising our kids. And I was also told that I would have a third child, a daughter, and that she had already selected me and her dad as her parents, which was, I didn't even question

it when I was there because I just knew that's what happens. You know, you pick who your parents are going to be. I didn't question it there. Back here, I'm thinking, what? What? Did I pick my parents? That's all I'm thinking. Did I pick my parents, Jonathan? My mother's going to be listening to this. Who has a kid without the baby spirit picking them?

I didn't know that I picked them. All right. Well, here we are. Okay. For whatever reason. So I decided to come back. That is what helped me decide. I wanted to meet my daughter.

And I figured if she went to the trouble to pick me, I ought to be here. And so I decided to come back. Did you ever get a glimpse while you were there of what eternal life would be in this home place? And do you stay there forever? Is there like, you know, is there stuff beyond the bench? Do you just have to sit on the bench for the next eternity? Any sense of what happens there?

I did ask. I was curious about that. I was told that if I chose to stay there, there was a path. There was like a garden path that led to the mountain range. And I was told that I would go over the mountains, beyond the mountains, if I decided to stay. And I was not told what was over there. I don't know. Might not have been as nice as the garden.

Or it might have been nicer. I think it was nicer. And that's pretty much what I was told. Before we, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, and no, I didn't sit on the bench. I wouldn't have sat on the bench for all of eternity. There's your second sports reference. I don't know, Elizabeth.

But before we leave the garden, I would like you to share a really one of my favorite kind of revelations that you had, which also is very consistent with many mystical, many mystical religious friends of mine have a similar notion, arrived at it a different way. You don't believe that everyone goes to the garden, correct? Like there's different places, meaning you went to the garden, but there are other experiences that people have. Well, what I experienced was I was there. That garden is my version of heaven. That's my heaven. I did see other people in the distance. Everybody was paired up, I guess, like I was paired up with who was on the bench with me. And but I knew part of this information I was given, I knew that they, even though they were there and I saw them, they were in their own versions of wherever it was.

For example, if there was someone there that had been an Olympic swimmer, maybe he was in a swimming pool. and that's his version of heaven. Or I don't know. I can't really speak to what other people experience, and I don't want to try. It just seems like a very personal thing. All of these things could be sort of grouped as a near-death experience, and we have many, if you're a person who is interested in these things,

there are many accounts of these things. There have been a couple really interesting. documentary series that have tried to get at different aspects of this. And I'm just going to go ahead and say that anything that happens in a near-death experience, one could, I don't want to say write off, but one could encapsulate as that sounds incredible. And whatever physiologically was happening and whatever cognitive processes were going on, let's just go ahead and say, that's what happened in this person's near-death experience. Okay? We could just like tie it up and a nice bow, and you could have written a book about that, and we would say, well, that sounds

fascinating, and I wonder what we can learn from that. However, when you came back from this experience, and again, in the simplest scientific terms, when you were revived after whatever cognitive experience you came back with, which, quote, may or may not have happened, you were not the same person. There were changes not only to your psychological makeup, there were changes to your physiological makeup, and there were changes to kind of your spiritual makeup. And I've made my list of the things that changed. But I wonder if you could start by telling us how your belief system changed about, for example, the afterlife, God. Let's just, just start there. What changed about how you saw the world? Everything. Everything changed.

There was nothing about me that resembled the former me. I suddenly was a very spiritual person. I had never been spiritual before. And by spiritual, I do not mean religious. I, in fact, this entire experience made me, I don't want to use the word anti, but I don't put a lot of stock in any organized religion. It feels to me like each religion says, do it our way, and you'll be successful. And I know that's not true. Because I was not religious before, and I went to heaven. So I don't subscribe to any organized religion. I am Jewish.

I'm not saying I'm not Jewish. And in fact, I've recently found out that I'm a direct descendant of Isaac Loria. Which makes total sense, as he was one of the greatest mystical thinkers in the history of the Jewish people. So we did find that out recently. recently. So I became this very spiritual person and other changes started taking place that were so strange and so weird. I started having these pre-cognitive dreams, nightmares, really. They were nightmares. I would have a nightmare one night about some horrible event and then a day or two later, it would be on the news, you know, a plane crash or a tsunami. You started having these precognitive nightmares, for lack of a better word, and you actually started documenting them. You started emailing yourself what you would see. And one of the

interesting distinctions that you make is that you were very clear that these were not dreams, meaning a dream has a kind of particular, you know, physiological kind of course. This was a different experience that you were essentially having information, you know, downloaded in a similar way. And, you know, this is the part when I was, I have two teenage boys. And, you know, I was talking to my kids about this. And of course, you know, there's an alarming amount of skepticism that I think many people would have. And in your book, my favorite chapter of the book is The Layer Cake of Time. And you talk about

very specific flights. I remember the crashes that you speak about. You talk about, well, one of them is the Sully Sullenberger flight that you saw very, very specific, specific and undeniably unique images of, as well as very specific and very accurate details of the situations that these flights took place in. Also, the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 in Japan, as well as the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. So that would have been, you know, shortly after your strike. So what what I think a lot of people would say is, well, what about all the images you've seen that didn't happen? And I wonder if you can explain a little bit about how you see what you call this layer cake of time that you exist in. Again, not an idea that Elizabeth Crone had before she was struck by lightning.

But can you explain how that notion of time fits in? into what you believe are these kind of downloads that you're receiving from other aspects of space and time? I wish I could explain. I am not smart enough to understand the physics of the space time continuum. I'm not smart enough. I never studied physics. I studied law. That's it. That's about as far from physics. physics as you can get. But I do know that time is not linear, that time is simultaneous. Things are happening in different dimensions at the same time. And if you go to that spot in space and time, that same event will be happening

again and again and again because that is the spot in space and time. that that event lives in. I think that when I have these nightmares, and Jeff had a theory on this, that maybe what I was seeing was not the event itself happening, but like the reporting of the event on the news, Maybe I was seeing the news the next day instead of actually viewing the event. And that would hold possibly true for all of them except one.

I had one that would not fit. But did I have nightmares about things that didn't happen? Yes, definitely. But I think that a lot of that has to do with free will. You know, maybe the mechanic found the loose screw before the plane took off and tightened it. You know, I don't know. Those also could be things that have not yet happened. Could be.

Could be. Except that a lot of times I'll get a flight number. It's a very specific information about a very specific flight. So I don't know. All right, Jeff. Jeff, scoot up here to the table. We need Jeff now. So thank you, Elizabeth.

I do have a couple more sets of questions, but I want to talk to Jeff a little bit. So Jeffrey Criple, please tell us how you got involved with knowing about Elizabeth and also what your professional affiliation is. So first of all, I feel like the warm up band for the Beatles. Every time we do these things, we've done these things together a lot. Everybody wants to hear Elizabeth's story and no one wants to hear what I have to say about it. And that's okay with me. I'm really fine with that. I'm a professor of comparative religion at Rice University in Houston, Texas. I met Elizabeth at an event in the medical center across the street here on your death experiences

and what they might mean for health care and medicine. And I heard Elizabeth's story, and I was like, oh, my God, that is, that is a great story. And I said, you should write a book. And Elizabeth said to me, well, I don't know how to write a book. And I said, well, I know how to write books. And so we literally got together and we wrote this book together. I, you know, that's quite not, that's not quite fair. I study people's extreme religious experiences.

and I try to make sense of them as a whole, not individually. They're in fact, as you mentioned, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of these examples or these cases in the literature, and they're all different. But they share patterns and they share a lot. And I see it as my role or my discipline's role to try to make some sense of them. and to engage the scientific models for sure, but also to say when the scientific models really don't work. And I think both of those acts are really, really important.

So that's essentially what I do. So there's two aspects of Elizabeth's changes that I do want to mention. And I know you're not a neuroscientist. I know you're not a physiologist, but Elizabeth acquired synesthesia, which is a crossing of sensory systems. Yeah. We often hear about it from things like LSD, from other psychedelic experiences, this notion of, you know, seeing sounds is also referenced in the Old Testament that at the Revelation at Sinai, we saw sounds. And synesthesia also can happen from other lesions or damage to the brain.

It sometimes can happen as a novel artifact. Elizabeth describes her synesthesia as also almost having an emotional component, which people with synesthesia will also sometimes report the notion that numbers have different colors and often a different emotion associated with them. Elizabeth has a very elaborate presentation of synesthesia. She also, you know, it's either connected or not to a notion of being able to see colors and tones surrounding human beings. Now, in holistic circles, this is often called reading oras and can often lead to psychic abilities. And I do want to get back to Elizabeth's experience with that. But Jeff, my question for you is, you know, there are certain things we can

understand about what happens when people are struck by lightning in terms of the physiological changes that the body can undergo. But when you talk about things like synesthesia and you talk about, you know, a very specific, like emotional content to a shift in perception. what can you offer us in terms of where this fits into a religious context, in terms of religious studies? What is happening? Well, I mean, if we want to talk about synesthesia, I mean, I think the real example here is precognition, actually.

But let's stick with synesthesia for a minute. I think that most of us assume that what we perceive and how we perceive it is, what's real. And they would see synesthesia as something gone wrong, you know, as a cross-wiring. There's something wrong. But actually, there's nothing to say that the reality of the synesthesia is not real, just as the world of the frog or the world of the eagle or the world of the octopus is not a real world. They're just perceiving reality in a very different way, and they're picking up different signals and they're seeing a different reality essentially. And so the question I think that someone from the humanities would ask immediately is, says who? You know, they would

ask what we call the epistemological question. How do you know that? And why are you assuming that the way human beings know the world and sense the world is the only way it can be sensed and known. That's incredibly naive. And so just that basic idea, I think, opens all of this up in a really creative way. And I also think the other assumption we make, My name, is, I'll speak for myself here, but I think this is true, most of us, we assume that what goes on inside is subjective and what goes on outside is objective and that the sciences are studying the objective real material physical world and that literature or english or or or religion or philosophy studying subjective essentially illusions and why i loved elizabeth's story so much is the same reason i

love any precognitive story is it breaks that down and it suggests that some kind of subjective, knowing, can actually know the external world in a way that completely violates the way we think of space and time. And I think that's very healthy. I think that's very creative. And for me, the ultimate criterion is, frankly, comparison. You know, looking at these cases in the hundreds or thousands until you're just overwhelmed with the experiential evidence. And it's obvious it happens, the question then becomes, well, why is it always different? Why does, why is Elizabeth's experience of heaven or the afterlife different than, you know, someone else's? And of course, it is. And I think we have answers for that, too, but that'll take us down another path.

Well, can you talk a bit about how you see these precognitive, these precognitive nightmares? And there's a whole set of precognition also that Elizabeth experienced. is where does that fit in? I personally don't think time is linear. I don't think we're moving through. I think we have the experience of moving through time like an arrow, but in fact space and time is all laid out and already exists and that we're just sort of moving through this space timeline.

And I think what happens in a precognitive act is that the brain essentially precognizes itself down the space-time continuum, and data or information seeps back into what we call the present, but it seeps back always in coded ways to protect us, essentially. And that's going to vary for the individual and for their life experience. And also just, you know, in case anyone's curious, this is stuff that Einstein talked about. this is not Jeff making things up that he's pulling out of his tuchess. I do that, though, I'm sure you do that also.

No, but for anyone who has studied quantum mechanics, the notion of multiple realities existing at once is something that is an exercise as part of any training that you have in physics. I remember one of my favorite moments, you know, when I was studying, you know, upper division physics. in college was when I could literally explain how a parallel universe could be possible, you know, from a physics perspective. So this is, you know, while the places you take it can vary, depending on what you're

describing, this is not, again, in the realm of sort of, you know, hocus pocus. Well, I felt like we weren't done, Jeff's comment on the non-livinger nature of time as we're sort of the brain precognitioning itself into the future. want to hear more about that and, you know, the variability between like things getting adjusted in the future so that you may have a precognition of something that then, you know, someone adjust the timeline and, you know, like, and how do the multiple timelines interact with one another? I just want to hear way more about that. Well, first of all, I don't know, Jonathan. I mean, I'm like you, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in this timeline. But while I was working with

Elizabeth and we were writing all of these plane crashes and tsunamis and earthquakes down. I was also reading a man named Eric Wargo who wrote a book called Time Loops. And Eric, Eric is very much a materialist in the sense that he wants to come up with a materialist or physicalist understanding of everything. But he also is absolutely convinced that precognition is a real thing. And he studies it in all of these writers and intellectuals, and he shows how it works in real life. And essentially how it works for him is that it's not that Elizabeth is going to the plane crash over the river in New York City. It's that she sees that story on the television or on the Internet, and that feeds back into her brain the day before,

and it creates this dream scenario or this visionary experience that she takes as real and her being at the site of the crash. But in fact, it's her brain precognizing its own experience of the computer screen or the television screen. Now, that's an interpretation. I don't know if that is the case. But what tipped me on Elizabeth's examples is that all of these plane crashes were from the angle and the perspective of the television set or the internet. Or the images that would have been presented,

like the Loma Prieta earthquake, there's very specific images or the plane floating on the water. Those are images that would have been presented in the news. Or there's a police officer looking into a huge crack on the sidewalk. I mean, the visionary experience that Elizabeth is having is precisely what will appear on the newsday. Now, again, not in every case. And I don't think this works in every case, but it works a lot.

And it helps me, I mean, my goal as an intellectual is to keep as many things on the table as I can. I'm interested in models that keep things on the table. I am not interested in people telling me that these things don't happen. That is just not interesting to me because I know it's false and it takes things off the table. And so you can then explain everything on the table, but only because you've taken everything off the table that you can't explain. And to me, that's just a total cop-out. I want to put everything on the table.

I want to keep it on the table that human beings have experienced, and then I want to work towards some model of what's actually happening, even if we never get there. I think that that effort or that exercise is really important. I wonder if there's an element. of reading the news stories and having a pre-cognitive experience of seeing things in the news is connected to like there's a collective consciousness. And once it's in the news, there's an energy of all these people reacting, which, you know,

is almost like an extra sense that someone with precognitive abilities can have is that, oh, you can now feel the reaction of the world in a way that's sort of elevated, you know, same ways that animals may sense an earthquake happening prior to it happening. Like there's an energy that rises, especially if you're getting this hours or a day beforehand, there's almost something in the collective that then you're more tuned into. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's in the collective.

It's out there. I mean, we're all connected. It's all about the energy. And sure, it's out there. It makes me think of the Neil Thies episode. We spoke to someone who explained the science of how we're all connected and I do a very bad job paraphrasing it. But in that model, if we're all in some form of not harmonious but equilibrium that is shifting and adjusting as different events happen and sort of pop up, then the energy of sort of a large event will have a change in the force, field of the collective conscious that then someone in who has more attuned abilities is going to sort of pop on their radar and then that interpretation is going to be filtered in through a precognitive event and then share the message with you in whatever way that's possible yeah i see it as

a ripple it's a it's a ripple and yeah the i mean first of all that idea is in the literature you know for example there was a lot of these experiences around 9-11 and so that that idea has written about. On the other hand, there's a lot of people having pre-cognitive experiences which is very personal and very banal and minor and do not involve the collective. So I think, I personally think people are just set up differently. I think we're all different. I think trauma actually to speak to your your audience, Ma'am, I think trauma, I call it the traumatic secret. I think some people who are traumatized, it opens them up to, other realities, even if it can also destroy someone or create dysfunction. And I think if you want to

take a near-death experience, a near-death experience, by definition, is traumatic. I mean, you almost physically died, or you did physically die. And it's precisely the trauma that opens you up to whatever the experience is. So I do think there's a relationship here, but I do think it differs a lot from person to person. So that's actually where I wanted to go next. I want to ask Elizabeth and you, I'm trying to decide who to ask first. I would ask the Beatles.

I would go to the Beatles. Let's go to the Beatles first. We'll get to Pete Best second. That's a deep cut for those of you. Anyway. Elizabeth, so one of the things that you do choose to talk about, which relates directly to what Jeff just mentioned, is that for individuals who may have had an experience of a need to dissociate,

often because of a traumatic event, there's a notion that something is more receptive. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that experience for you. Well, my first traumatic experience that I remember happened when I was six years old. And for six years from the time I was six until I was 12, I was raped by a neighbor. And that is trauma. That by definition is trauma. And as it would happen, I would dissociate. I had to leave.

I could not be there for that. And so each time it happened, I was actually not there. I was walking on a beach and would come back when it ended. And I used that ability and that not. that I could do that when I was struck by lightning. And it was, I remembered that I could leave and I remembered how to leave, but more importantly, I remembered I could come back and how to get back into my body. And I think it served me well that knowledge that I could do that.

I don't know if it was just comforting to know that I could come back if I wanted to, or if it actually was the knowledge that helped me get back into my body. So that's very helpful. And Jeff, you know, your part of the book, you know, talks a tremendous amount about a variety of religious practices and cultures that, utilize people who have a very special sensitivity. And in some cultures, they're called prophets. And in some, they're called shamans. And, you know, the notion of a wounded healer, you know, someone whose job it is to do healing work, energetic work, those people, you know, I often grew up with this, you know,

kind of false notion that, like, oh, that's for people who are crazy. Like, crazy people are psychics and crazy people do energy work. Then I met Jonathan and I was like, well, he seems pretty insane. So I guess I have to revise. I remember I took psychological anthropology in college. And it was such a mind-altering experience to realize that what we consider, let's say, paranoid schizophrenia in our culture, in many other cultures, people are seen as seers. They're seen as people to be cared for as we interpret their visions. Jeff, can you talk? a little bit about where this kind of dissociative ability or access to other realms of consciousness, how that plays into people who historically are seen as interpreters of truth.

Yeah, I mean, what you mentioned earlier psychedelics, I think that's probably the most common entry point for some of your listeners into what we might call altered. states, altered states of consciousness and embodiment. And the fact is that the history of religions as a global phenomenon very much relies on altered states. The religious prodigy or the religious specialist is someone who's mastered these altered these states and who can induce these states, maybe not at will, but on a fairly regular basis, and can derive meaning and cultural meaning from these states. So I think that's what we're seeing in the very modern near-death experience.

And by the way, the modern near-death experience relies very much on biomedical technology for the most part. We probably always had these people always have died, by the way. By the way, we'll die. and lots of people have experienced things as they die but historically they never came back and so they didn't tell at least many of these stories

well now lots of people are telling them and we have books and podcasts and television series and the language is getting out there and so it's a new form of human experience I think but it very much relies on altered states as does

the origins of most religious ideas by the way There are very few religious ideas whose origins are not, I think, in altered states of consciousness. And that's why they sound so, I don't, you know, what's the right language? They sound so unbelievable unless you're in them. And then you're like, oh, heavens, it's true. I mean, this was Elizabeth's experience. I was wrong.

And it's because she was in a secular or egoic state. She was healthy. She was a healthy human being and suddenly she was dead and she was seeing the world in a completely different way. I appreciate you mentioning the psychedelic entry point

so much of what Elizabeth describes this notion of clarity which often accompanies usually psilocybin people report like everything was so clear. Usually it's because a lot of external stimuli is muted because those are receptors cannot function, but the cognitive, you know, human layperson's experience is like

everything seemed so clear. This concept of an unconditional, undefinable love, that safety, the sense that when Elizabeth talks about it, the deep knowing, you know, that kind of knowing of all of these things, and connecting to what she identified. as God. I mean, these are some of the, and also the notion that you cannot describe in word. There are no words. There are no words to describe the feelings, the colors. You know, these are hallmarks of many reports of psychedelic experiences. Jeff, I wonder if you have anything in particular, you know, kind of from your studies, because obviously there are religious traditions and indigenous traditions in particular, for which the entry point to a religious

experience is through this kind of medicine that gives these experiences. Can you speak a little bit to that? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of people speaking to this today. I mean, again, the history of religions, particularly among indigenous religions and shamanic religions, are often psychoactive. Their use of plants and plant medicines and drumming and chanting is, is is obvious and consistent. You know, to back up a bit, and I think to help people think about this, again, I think most of us work with

what I would call a production model of the mind-brain relationship. The idea is that the brain produces mind, full stop. And therefore, when you take a psychoactive plan, i.e. a drug, as it's called or miscalled, whatever is experienced is just a hallucination of the brain misfiring, essentially. If you talk to experiencers, if you talk to people who have actually taken a psychedelic, particularly psilocybin, as you mentioned, but also a mescaline, also a lot of other molecules or plants,

that is not their experience. Their experience is that what the psychoactive plant does is shut down the brain. and allows reality essentially to come online or to come into consciousness in a much fuller and real way. That's what we might call a filter model. The brain is there to essentially filter out most of reality and trick us, essentially, into thinking that this is all there is. It's just what we see. It's this hellhole we're in right now, where in fact, reality is multidimensional and unconditionally loving to use Elizabeth's language. but we won't realize that until something shuts down our brain and our body.

Very well said. One more question for you, Jeff, before I go back to Elizabeth. Can you describe sort of your framework concept? It's on page 159 in the book, for those of you who are following along. But I felt like the notion that things are unbelievable to us, especially when, we do not allow for a framework that would even allow them in. Can you talk us through the rocks falling from the sky model? Sure. Sure. Again, it's a fairly simple argument that what one considers possible and impossible

is a function of one's framework. It's actually not a function of reality. And the example I give is meteors. You know, 300 years ago, intellectuals in the cities of France thought the farmers were idiots for saying that rocks fell from the sky because, God damn it, rocks don't fall from the sky.

That's the dumbest thing you could ever say. And yet, the farmers were saying, I saw a rock. It fell from the sky. It landed in my field. Sorry, I saw it. It happened. And the intellectuals like, that's dumb. And then they're, they're friends.

framework for what outer space actually is changed. And they realized that actually rocks do fall from the sky, and it turns out the peasants, the uneducated fools in the countryside were right all along. And that's really what I think is at stake here with a near-death experience. I think the secular reductive neuroscientists are just wrong about this one. I think these things happen, and I think what we have to do is change our framework. And once we change the framework, then all these other things suddenly come online, and they're on our table, and then we can start to think about them. But just to leave a final idea, I think it really comes down to our model of the imagination, too, because these things are being imagined.

But again, we have this model that what's imagined is imaginary. And the imagination is not a medium or a filter. It's simply a producer. It's just making up shit. And I don't think that's actually happening here. I think we need to just quickly do a translation to like simplify this. This guy's awesome, by the way. Jeff, you're awesome.

Thank you. Here's what I heard. We all have reality very wrong and limited. We're trying to do. describe the nature of reality through science, which has many wonderful breakthroughs. We are very pro-science here, but it's missing the fundamental nature of the human condition. And whether it be understanding disease and illness, whether it be understanding the nature of time and the ability for us to see aspects that have not happened yet, whether it's the ability to feel

a sense of wholeness and completeness and love, whether it's the ability to also navigate problems and feel more connected to other human beings and ourselves, we're mostly missing the mark and are totally limited in how we're approaching them. Yeah, I would go further though, Jonathan, I would say that the really, really weird stuff really, really happens and that we have to come up with a bigger science, if you want to use that language, to incorporate that really, really weird stuff. So I don't think it's just about, you know, I don't think it's about being together and feeling good and being better citizens. I think it's about being cosmic human beings and understanding that we're in a very different reality than we're perceiving.

Let's turn back to Elizabeth's reality. That's a great place. I have many other followers, but let's circle back. I want to, because I want to, I just want, I want everybody to not forget what happened to Elizabeth. And, you know, again, I sort of like, I can, compartmentalize, you know, the near-death experience. Like, oh, that happened. And like, that's amazing. All the things that you saw. But I am more interested in who you were when you came back and sort of, you know, all of the changes that occurred. One of the most, you know, startling aspects of what you describe in, in changed in a flash, is this notion of being able to, you know, see, I mean, you wouldn't have called them oras had we not had. Had we not had.

that sort of framework for it in, you know, but you could see and kind of feel qualities about people. And before we get to what you did with that, and I wanted to remind everyone of that, and this is not to disparage your ex-husband, but I cannot imagine going home, you know, like having my husband come back from a trip and be like, you'll never guess what happened at Shul today. I had the craziest weekend. Crazy synagogue experience. Like, met all the doctors at Shul.

Oh, also God, and I died. And also, my feet hurt a little bit. Would you put some lotion on them? There was the bench, too. Don't forget about the bench. That's right, the bench. So you now have a four-year-old and a two-year-old. Your wedding ring has essentially been the source of electrocution

and life-altering experience. literally your wedding man. They always are. And so you also now have this notion that you're going to have a third child and that it's going to be a girl. Was there an ETA on that? No. No, there wasn't.

When you explain this to your husband... Do you try to explain this to your husband? What's that like? Wow. He is a big problem. It was a big problem, the fact that I was one person, one minute, and came back a few minutes later as someone else. And he hadn't changed. He was, and again, I'm not disparaging him.

We're good friends today, but he didn't change, and I did. And it wasn't going to work anymore. I mean, he never would have been drawn to someone like the person I became. I never would have been drawn to someone like the person I, I never would have been friends with someone like the person I became. That just wouldn't have happened. One of the big things that changed about me was the way I parented my kids, and that bothered him a lot. What changed?

I was candy for everyone all the time. Just take it. No, I was much more tolerant. You know, hey, if before, if I had said, you know, clean your room and they hadn't cleaned their room, I would keep on them until they did it. And now the new me was like, who cares? It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It really doesn't. No, it really doesn't. And that kind of bothered him. I think it bothered him that he didn't know who I was.

He didn't know me. It was like living with a stranger. And for me, it was like living with a stranger in my own skin. So that's a problem. That's tough. And so I think if that near-death experience had not happened, we would still be married today. I mean, we were happy before it happened. And I think the changes in me are what caused our divorce.

I mean, I guess a divorce is really a lot of things. It's a joint effort. It's a joint effort. So when did your daughter come along? She was born in 1990. And the near-death experience was 1988. So it wasn't that long, but then we did not get divorced until 97. So we really tried.

We tried. And what was your feeling towards him as this was happening? Because you were still dealing with really the immediate aftermath. I mean, I think it probably takes years to incorporate this set of experiences. And also, I mean, your entire worldview had changed and continued. to change. So I wonder, was there a notion of like, I need to snap out of it? Like, he's right. We need to just go back to the way things were, or was there a point of no return? No. I knew this wasn't something I needed to snap out of because I knew it had actually happened. I knew what I was

talking about. And there's no changing that. Once you've been there and you've seen it and no, really you couldn't convince me of anything else. So I wasn't going to change back and he wasn't going to accept where I was at that point. So, you know, move on. I wonder if you can talk about one of the things that was suggested to you was to do psychic readings. Like your level of understanding and reading humans

was such that you, and you vehemently, like you pushed it away, you were like, this is ridiculous, I don't believe in this. And can you talk about what happened when, and you wouldn't even do it in the town that you lived in because you don't want to be that lady. You said, I don't want my kids being like, my crazy mom is a psychic. So you would leave the state. You went hundreds of miles away. You had a connection of a woman who, it sounds like a woman who was a human.

herself, who saw in you the ability to do this kind of work. Can you talk about that experience, what that was like trying to literally use these newfound abilities and why you decided to stop? Yes. She was convinced. She was a family friend. She was convinced that I could do these psychic readings for people. And so I agreed reluctantly to, go to where she lived, which was states away from Texas, and try it. So I agreed to go for a week. She agreed to set up clients to see me. And I saw people in 30-minute or one-hour blocks of time and did these readings all day for a week, every day. And I did it three times. I mean, it was easy for me. You know, you sit down across the table from someone and they start asking questions

and I had the answers. So hold on. Hold on, Elizabeth. What do you mean? Like, if some stranger asked anything, I don't know that I know what, and I'm not saying this didn't have. I'm saying I want you to explain to us. What does it mean that you knew? It has to do with quieting. a certain part of my mind to allow the information in. And I'm able to do that where I can quiet the chatter and hear the true information. And I would just answer questions. I just sat there and answered the questions. And it was accurate.

It was pretty accurate. And I hated everything. every minute of it. Hated it. Does the information just download similar to the questions that you would ask on the bench? Is it a similar? Similar, yeah. It's not exactly the same.

The information is coming from somewhere else. It's not God talking to me, you know. Yeah. But yes, I did receive the information in a similar manner. Like it's just out there and you're just, you're grabbing it. I am. Yeah. Yeah.

I hated it. I felt like I was intruding on other people's lives. This is none of my business if your husband's having an affair. I don't want to know about it. Yet that's what people want to know. And they're asking the questions and I'm giving the answers and I hate it. Was there ever a time where people were asking maybe questions that felt more helpful? you know, like how can I improve my relationship or how can I improve my life or, you know, was it ever not about chronic disease? And if it was about, you know, something more positive, would it feel, you know, maybe easier to do? I would say 95% of the questions had to do with health, relationship, or money. Those were the big three. You know, my career, my, am I going to

make more money. What do I need to be doing? But nobody really said, how can I better myself? You know, things that really matter, they didn't come up. How can we improve this podcast to reach more people, not to make more money, but to expand the spiritual consciousness of humanity? Real question, you can DM me after. You can DM Jonathan after. I'm curious, in this, in the same, same way that I wanted to point out that you don't have, you know, religious or, you know, philosophy, training in terms of many of the things that you kind of alluded to and that, you know, Jeff kind of confirmed are part of a larger kind of religious framework. This is something really interesting when you talked about quieting your mind, you know, for people who, and Jonathan, correct me,

if I'm wrong, for people who study things like Reiki or even craniosacral work, you know, naturopaths. Any forms of meditation? Any forms of meditation. You know, this is a practice that takes years and years. It's like going to the gym and expecting you can, you know, curl 35 pound weights, which I, you know, it would take some building up to. The notion that you both got an ability and also you got all the tools that go with that ability

in terms of knowing how to use it. that's what's interesting to me. It's kind of like, you know, they describe it as those, the 3D images that were popular in the, you know, 80s and 90s, where if you blur your eyes, they will come into focus. The magic eye, yeah. So you not only, you know, kind of were upgraded, you know, your software was upgraded, with the ability to sort of know things and also to, you know, what we call reading oras. But you also got the ability to know how to utilize that and channel that. How do you explain that, either of you? I don't know.

I, you know, when I see, it's like, you're right. I was given the tools. I can see auras around every living thing, humans, animals, plants. So I have the tools to see it. I don't have the knowledge of what it means. If I see a certain color aura around someone, I haven't studied what those colors mean. And I don't know that it would be all that helpful for me to know that

because I think that that would be one person's opinion of what that color means. And it's also, just because I'm seeing a green aura, does that mean that the next person would also see green? I don't know. But what it does do for me and what I'm able to glean from it is more of an emotional feel to it. I can tell whether it's healthy or unhealthy or happy or sad or, you know, kind of the emotional part of it. You saw a dark aura. You saw, I believe it was a relative.

you don't name them in the book. You saw them, they pulled up next to you in a car and it was very early, I believe, after the accident. You saw that essentially that something was not well and this was a, by all intents and purposes, a well person. They died. Yes, it was a black aura. And I had never seen. What does that look like? Can you describe it? Well, it's not just the aura, the color. It all. also has to do with the consistency of the aura. You know, is it, is it real tight up against the person, you know, or is it kind of bigger and fluffier and more diffuse? You know, there's so many different things at play. But when I looked at him and I saw that aura, I knew he was about to die,

which was crazy. He was young. He was healthy. And within four hours, he had a massive heart attack and died. And, you know, could I have done anything? I don't think so. He felt fine. He looked fine. You know, what are you going to do? Run to the doctor and say, my crazy relatives here. My cousin was struck by lightning and says that I have a black aura. Yeah, what are you going to do? So, you know. Jeff, Jeff, help me here. What is happening? What is happening? What? What is this woman who did not even believe in or what is happening? Well, you know, I'm embarrassed to say it makes a lot of sense to me. It really, I mean, this is why we wrote the book together. I was like, well, I don't have that experience, but I've got the framework. And, you know, she's like, well, I don't have a framework, but I had the experiences.

So we got together. I think once you abandon the model that the brain produces consciousness, you can, you can understand a lot. of this stuff. So quieting the mind, all of these somatic practices, you mentioned, all these meditative practices, they're essentially about shutting down brain processing or accessing an external world. And once you do that, then other information can flow in because the brain is a receiver. The brain is a filter of information. It's not a producer of information. And I think once you make that move, a lot of what Elizabeth's talking about, it doesn't sudden, you can't suddenly explain it, but at least it becomes part of your possible world.

I think there was a huge hole struck in Elizabeth through the lightning strike, and she was opened up. And because she was opened up, she has all these experiences of things coming in that the rest of us don't have because we weren't, we weren't traumatized in the way that Elizabeth was. That's my, that's my quick explanation. Elizabeth, this might feel like a ridiculous question. Why you? Do you have an answer to that? I do. Isaac Luoria. I do have an answer, but I don't know if it's accurate, and I don't know if I just made it up to make sense as to why me.

But because of what happened to me, I firmly believe I'm going to say I know, because I do know, I know, that I agreed to this before I got here. I agreed to have a near-death experience to be struck by lightning. It was kind of like, I see it as a contract, and there's my law education, but as like a contract before we're born. You know, what do you want to achieve in this life? What are your goals here? You write it all down, you sign it, and boom, there you are, you're a new baby. And you've got the opportunity to make these advances that you agreed to. And I believe that for whatever reason, I must have had a good

reason, because like I said, not fun, not fun. But that's what I'm. But I think. You mentioned that in the contract there are goals. Do you have specific goals that you see that this is helping carry out? I see that things are happening. And I have to, for my own sanity, I have to say that must have been one of my goals. I'm doing it the reverse of what you just said. Yeah.

That makes sense. A couple more practical questions. Do you get information when you're just around people that maybe they haven't asked for? You know, I've heard people who have extrasensory ability. Maybe, you know, they're sitting next to someone and they just happen to can't help but tune into their energetic field or they get messages. And like, do you just sort of gather information and you're like, oh, what do I do with that? Yeah. One of the things that's distracting to me when I speak to a room full of people,

is that I see all the oras. It's like this crazy mass of color. And at the end of when I give a talk, there's usually a Q&A. And somebody usually says, do you see any black oras? Is anybody in here about to die? And I don't know. do I have a responsibility? Is there some duty to tell someone if I see something or sense something? You know, or am I messing up their contract by doing that? You know, maybe they're supposed to have these, you know, I hate to think, oh, well, you know, maybe they were supposed to be in that plane crash. I don't, I don't like to,

to think that. I don't want that responsibility. I don't want to know that. Yet, here I am, and I'm kind of stuck with it. I will say that as far as seeing the auras, it helps. It's much more prominent if they're against a white background. Because it's literally a visual experience for you. Well, it is. It is. And that happened one time when we were, Sure. At Esselin. At Esselin, yeah. You can tell what happened.

I saw everybody's aura, didn't I say? Yeah, we actually had a historian in the room with studies the history of Oras, and he had just, you know, read all about it, and Elizabeth was telling him all about his aura. It was very disturbing on one level. It was fun. It was fun. Do oras change when people are clumped together versus if they're individual? Like, do they change, obviously they change through state, but do they change in relation to one another?

No. I haven't seen that. Do you ever have precognitions of positive events or only negative events? Yeah, I cannot get the lottery numbers as hard as I try. I can't get them. But like births or like, you know, someone having a positive experience or like any of, it's only the tragedies? No, well, I mean, I don't know if you would. call it precognition. I knew I was going to be having a daughter. But that's because God told you,

Elizabeth. That's cheating. That's cheating. It was my little cheat sheet there. For you, for sure. I'm just wondering if that has continued out of the garden. And if not, I'm curious from Jeff, like what do we make of only that type of information coming in? Why are you asking Jeff? I'm right here. I think that I may get good information. you know, happy news. And I just don't pay that much attention to it. It, you know, I mean, a plane crash is a big, splashy thing that demands your attention.

Good news about, I don't know, a promotion at work, I don't know that I would be. Falling in love, someone is about to meet someone. I wonder if also we can tune to that. We as people, also people who have been traumatized, have a general attunement to catastrophe as a hyper-awareness. You know, just the nerdy answer to that is, first of all, there is a parapsychological literature on luck. And, you know, some people are just insanely lucky. And the idea is that they're psychically maneuvering through life with this kind of radar system that's much like you're talking about.

On the other side of the equation, you know, when they coined, when Frederick Myers coined the word telepathy, it means pathos at a distance. It means suffering. And it means emotional entanglement is really what it means. And from an evolutionary perspective, you would expect precognition to be adaptive and to get you out of trouble. And there would be no reason for good things to be precognized. So it actually makes a lot of sense from that kind of perspective. But again, that's an interpretive framework. I don't know if that's actually the case. Yeah, I'm speaking, you know, kind of in terms of the way I think of memories being coded and in particular traumatic memories being encoded, you know, there's a tremendous amount of stimulus. And I think in this case, it's evolutionary preferential to have that kind of coding

preferred in terms of attuning and attention. But I also think, you know, when I think of sort of the prophets, let's say, of the Old Testament, you know, the notion is they were often, you know, serving an historical purpose in terms of trying to prevent further catastrophe. So they were, you know, kind of tuned into that. But, you know, speaking of prophets, you know, Elizabeth, I do feel this certain element of you know, you experience something that, you know, when I think, you know, the prophet is Deborah. You know, I think of there's one female prophet in the Jewish tradition, you know, and they said she would, you know, stand on a hill and people would go to her and, you know, ask questions.

And I do want to ask you a question. And I have no reason to believe that you have the answer any more than anybody else, but of everyone in this room, I'm going to ask you. Here's my question. I mean, I got a million questions. But like I said, I feel like I'm going to ask. you. I'm making myself cry. Do we come back? Do we come back in other incarnations? Absolutely. Say more. Say more. When I say that we have these contracts of what we want to achieve, it's because we have not met those goals previously, in previous lives. And there are certain things that we have to learn along the way. And the only way to learn it is to really experience it.

So we have to keep coming back until we have achieved all of it. And I mean, this is the schooling. This is where we learn. So, yes, we have been here before and we'll come back again. That's my belief. That's what I keep saying, I know, but. Yeah, I believe you. So, Jeff, this notion, this is, you know, Zen Buddhism has this notion of, you know, a repetition of suffering.

I'm drawing a circle in the air for those of you who are listening and not watching. This notion that you will repeat these patterns, you will repeat a cycle of suffering until you exit. does that feel consistent, Jeff, with kind of how other religious traditions see reincarnation as a process? That's a huge question, Wayne. I know, but I'm asking it because you're here. So just to be nerdy about it,

there's a linear model, which is generally the monotheistic traditions, by the way. So Judaism is Islam, Christianity. It's you're born once, you know, you die once, you're judged. It's a one-shot deal. The Asian models tend to be cyclical. They tend to be reincarnation models where there are many lives. You're born and you die many times. But I think what a lot of people certainly in the West don't realize is that the purpose or the goal of the Asian systems is to get out of that cycle. It's, you know, reincarnation is not a cool thing.

It's something you don't want to happen. You don't want to be born again. And, The other thing I'll say, and I've tried to say this in different contexts, I'm not sure anybody's ever listened to me, is who's coming back? Because if you come back, you have a different body, you have a different gender, maybe, a different sexual orientation, a different culture, a different religion. I mean, how is that you? I mean, there might be an essence there or a soul to speak in religious terms, but the personality is completely different. So reincarnation is a really sophisticated model, is what I'm trying to say, and it recognizes that the personality is set up by the culture and the language and child rearing practices and everything, and that we then identify ourselves with that embodied identity or personality.

But what the reincarnation model says is that's actually not who you are. you're actually this reincarnating soul or spirit. And to go back to Jonathan's model, if it's all one mind or one soul, then it's just like God is reincarnating, you know, a gazillion times and experiencing God in a billion different bodies. So it gets very complicated, very quickly, is what I'm trying to say.

There are, there's a very large literature on small children who remember previous lives. Yes. I'm super into this. We know that reincarnation exists in Kabbalah, for example, and in monotheistic traditions that might surprise you. So it's not an either-or kind of thing. But there's the near-death literature, which tends to be a one-shot model,

and there's the reincarnation memory, which tends to be a cyclical model. And nobody really tries to put them together because it's difficult to see how to do that. Elizabeth, I want you to talk a little bit about you ended up remarrying. It sounds like from what you discussed in your book, you married someone who's very groovy with the way that you are, which is awesome in many ways. I'd like you to talk about one of your sons became an Orthodox rabbi. Is that correct? That is correct. He was the two-year-old whose hand I was holding. So I want to be respectful of his identity, his life. But can you talk a bit about, you know, what it's been like for your children? You know, he had a secondary, you know, experience of what what happened to you, meaning he was holding you and there's, you know, both energetic and also, you know, physiological impact of that. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about your kids and this daughter, you know, I want to believe you had like a fairy princess daughter who has

magical abilities and like just hovers about and, you know, like gold glitter comes out of her eyeballs, you know. She would like, yeah. Can you, can you talk a little bit about, you know, I mean, also I cannot imagine the expectation. You know, I can't imagine the pregnancy, you know, and just the expectation of like, I was told about this child when I went away for two weeks and now this is going to happen. I mean, I can't even imagine. Can you talk a bit about your kids? Sure. First, I want to say that before I even started working on this book with Jeff, I talked to all three of them and they were all fine with it.

I never would have done this without their support. They're, you know, that they were, behind me on this. And both husbands. And both husbands and my parents. Yes, especially my parents, because I was talking about what happened to me as a child, and they had a lot of guilt about that. They didn't know about it and felt very guilty about that. I think they were all involved in the production of the book. Yeah, Jeff met all of them, interviewed them before he agreed to work with me. I don't have that memory, actually. That's okay. And he asked them all the same question.

Is she making this up? No, I didn't actually. So my kids, they're all very different. Jeremy, he was the four-year-old at the day of the strike. He grew up to become a dad. He has one child and he is divorced. He was married for a short time. And then Andy was the two-year-old.

He grew up to become an Orthodox rabbi. So Andy and I butt heads all the time because I'm as far as you can get from an Orthodox rabbi. And he is not only Orthodox, he is Habad. Oh, yes. strict. So there's that. He's married with three children. And my daughter was born in 1990. She had her second baby two days ago. And she and her husband are, you know, raising a young family. And she actually is a social worker. Does she have any special abilities? No.

Is she synesthetic? Well, I'm curious, is she synesthetic? No, but my oldest son is. He does have synesthesia, a pretty strong case of it, actually, where you can, and I don't know what kind of synesthesia this is, but you can speak to him, a sentence, a long sentence. And he will immediately tell you how many letters were in the words in that sentence. And there's also, and he has a mixing of senses as well. I mean, that's a very, very interesting.

So your daughter, was there any kind of special attention that you paid to her, you know, since you had this specific, you know, kind of connection with the fact that you were going to have her? I'm just curious, like, does she, you know, always wear. ruby red slippers, you know, is there anything? No, not really. I mean, it's, I have that connection with all three of my kids. I felt like. And your mom and dad.

And my mom and dad. The whole family. But when Jeff says we're all weird. I did not say that. You did. You did. You did one time. As you did.

But my, my kids, each one of them, I felt like I knew them when they were born. You know, when I first held each one, I looked at them and it was like, oh, it's you. Like, I knew you. You know, oh, you're back. And I definitely felt that very strongly with her. But I did also feel it with the boys. And that was before the lightning. So I don't know.

I want to ask you a hard question, but I'm going to ask it because I know you're comfortable talking about it to some extent because you do talk about it in the book. You know, one of the most common fears that humans have is death. Dying, yes, but also death. And this notion, you know, this notion that, like, you won't be able to see your family anymore and you will be gone and you will be missed. What do you feel about death after your experience? experience? Well, I have no fear of death. Certainly, no fear of death. I don't look forward to

dying to the process, but the death itself, no fear. I know that you still have contact with people you love if you want to and if they want to. My mother passed away a year ago. It's in a year and a month, and I have contact with her, and I know she's contacting me. In fact, she said to me that she would contact me before she died. She told me we had talked about it, and she found it very comforting. That's another thing. You know, when I've talked to people that are in hospice and they know they're dying. It's very comforting to know that death isn't the end. It's not like you disappear and you were never here.

Consciousness continues. Your body doesn't continue, but you continue. So there's really nothing to be afraid of except pain. I hate pain. But once you're past that, it's all good. And Jeff, you know, the title of this book changed in a flash. You know, it says one woman's near-death experience and why a scholar thinks it empowers us all. As a closing question here, why do you think Elizabeth's experience empowers us all or has the potential to?

Because it gives us a bigger world and it gives us a much richer conception of what a human being is capable of. I think that's the short answer. I think that's essentially true. You mention that it is empowering in that we have the ability to change our afterlife, to change the afterlife that we live. Go ahead. Well, she just put the words of my mouth. I mean, the title of the second half of the book is how we're changing the afterlife. And I think we really are.

And I think we change the afterlife by interpreting it differently and by understanding it more. And I really mean that in a kind of active way. I don't mean it exists out there like a chair and we're all going to see the chair from different angles. I mean, we're actually creating our own afterlives. and as we speak on podcasts like this or read books or talk about these things. So I see it as a very creative, very real process. I think that's extremely powerful because the amount of actions taken in this world, in fear of some version of hell or the afterlife that's been created, are enormous.

And so if we begin to reimagine what an afterlife experience is, that can have huge implications on the present. I think it would change human civilization to be humble about it. Yeah, absolutely. I do wonder if your thoughts on, do people need to be struck by lightning to begin to have these experiences? What is the path for, you know, I have my own opinions about this, but what is the path for the everyday person to start to, you know,

be more in touch with aspects of maybe not precognition? but maybe, you know, feeling connected to something greater than themselves or having a deeper sense of intuition or starting to believe or see time as nonlinear. Like, what are the ways in which people can sort of break out of their traditional frameworks? Is that to me, Jonathan or Elizabeth? It's to both of you. I'm curious, you know, because I do see this as an evolution of human consciousness with Elizabeth being a prime example of someone who, you know, changed instantaneously. For a lot of other people, it happens through a...

different form of tragedy or it happens slowly over time that their consciousness changes. So I'm curious, you know, to hear both of your perspectives of how people are changing and how you may recommend that they go about changing. Because some people are like, yeah, give me the practical steps. Let me sign up. I have an answer to that. My own feeling at 61 is that these kinds of experiences are extremely common and that they exist in every family, but that we dismiss them and we roll our eyes and we talk about tinfoil hats and, you know, tabloids and blah, blah, blah, but if we would just listen to our loved ones and to our family members and then try to incorporate those experiences into our worldview, I think the culture or I think the world would

change pretty quickly. But there are just so many sensors set up to. prevent us from doing that, that it's, you know, that's a constant battle, of course. Elizabeth, how have you seen people around you change or, you know, gain more insight from themselves by seeing? I wish I could say yes, that I have seen that, but when Jeff and I first started working on the book together, he, I told him, if we do this, I'm afraid I'm going to lose all my friends. You know, I didn't talk about it. about this to anyone except my husband and my mom. That was it. And he said, well, you are. You will lose your friends, but you'll make new friends who are more aligned with your thinking now,

which is exactly what happened. Are you serious? Yes, I am serious. It was horrible. even to this day. I mean, now I talk about it all the time, but I'll run into someone at the grocery store that I haven't seen in 10 years, and they're like, hmm, you know, nah, I don't know what it is. It's the closed mind,

I don't want to think about it kind of thing. And it's sad. It's really sad. They're, you know, and until society, accepts that these things really happen, people are going to continue to shortchange themselves. That's what they're doing.

We'll be her friend. We're your new best friend. Thank you. I also, I just want to mention the book has changed in a flash, and we literally scratched the surface here of the depth of complexity of what Elizabeth experienced. what she now knows, and also the extent of the unusual and fantastic access to things that we have previously dismissed, not been able to describe or understand. I highly recommend the book.

I have already bought several copies and sent them out to people. So I really, the explanation also that you give Jeff, it goes so much deeper than what we touched on. Jeff describes the role of science fiction, the role that literature has played and cinema in our understanding of things and, you know, really, really pulls back the veil on the framework, you know, the reality we think we're living in and how much possibility is, is waiting for us. So thank you both for being here. This has been an absolute pleasure. And I just never thought I would ever get to speak to either of you much less both. Thank you so much. We believe you, or at least I'm speaking for myself. We believe you. And we really appreciate you taking the time. I think a lot of these stories get thrown

out, you know, because people's experiences sound too unbelievable. I think it's fear, you know, to answer Jonathan. Like, it's fear. People are afraid. They're afraid of things that they cannot explain. And I just really, such a pleasure to talk to both of you. Thank you so much. Thank you, ma'am. This is a pleasure. I feel, I feel, I don't even know what to say. You go first. We are in two different locations if you're watching on YouTube. It is like, I think it's a week and a half after we recorded the main episode with Elizabeth. We tried to record an outro that just failed. It just failed. And we're in the same studio.

We did it that day. And it's just like, it just did not encapsulate the episode. I cried after. I was so upset. You were like, that does not even do it. I don't know what happened. We just couldn't, we couldn't process it. And it was days.

It was overwhelming. It was overwhelming. And then we just sat down and we recorded what we thought was going to be the outro to this episode. And we ended up speaking for 45 minutes. we were like, that is too long as an outro. That is its own episode. Also, wait, not just that it was too long. It was too good. It exists as its own entity. I mean, we barely scratched the surface of oras. And we actually get into one of the most in-depth conversations. We have tried in the past to talk about oras. And we have failed. We've actually thrown out the content

because we couldn't get our thoughts together in an articulate way to not be cheesy about it and to not be, oh, it's all the colors that you see on the poster in the yoga studio. Like, there is a scientific merger here between spirituality and science that I think we get to in this episode that, sorry, I'm sorry, everyone that's listening. It's in an episode that you're not hearing right now. You will hear it. It will be released. It's going to be a follow-up episode to the Elizabeth interview, but it's going to be its own

thing. And so that's what we're coming on to tell you is that there is an outro that it is, got so outed that it jumped out of consciousness and became its own thing. And if I can add to that, we really hope you enjoyed this episode. I found it very, very moving, very thought-provoking. And honestly, it brought up so much conflicting emotions and theories for me that I really needed to flesh it out. And that's what we do.

So we really hope that you will tune in to hear a further discussion. of the scientific basis of oras of time, of the layer cake of time, and also what does it mean for us as a culture to be open to listening to Elizabeth, to be open to understanding the concepts that come up even if you feel limited by the way that it is presented. I am just so appreciative of you reading Elizabeth's book. It was synchronized that someone gave you this book without explanation. you said to me, why did they want me to read this? And the person who gave it to you was just like it just seemed like you would relate to it. And you did. Well, I did. It's really, it's really been

I mean, such an incredible journey to not only get to read the book, to get to share it with you, Jonathan, and then for Valerie to make this happen. Also, in the outro slash new episode, I blatantly ask you, I point. link. Have you perceived the future? And Myam's answer will surprise you. Well, thank you so much for being on this journey with us. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's My and Beallix breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down. We all have reasons. Little excuses.

that seem big enough to put off the things that matter most. It's probably nothing. Maybe when things slow down. Can I keep going like this? Where would I even get started? When your body speaks, listen, no matter the reason. It's time to check in. Blue Shield of California.