Where Is My Mind? - Ep. 6: The Life Review

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

"What do you hope to see?" Featuring host Mark Gober’s interviews with Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Raymond Moody, Dannion Brinkley, Dr. Bruce Greyson, Dr. Jude Currivan, Dr. Larry Dossey, Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dr. Penny Sartori, Dr. Jan Holden, Jeff Olsen, Rupert Spira, and Dr. Alan Hugenot.  Listen to all of Mark’s interviews here: https://markgober.com/podcast/ Check out Mark's book, "An End to Upside Down Thinking": https://www.amazon.com/End-Upside-Down-Thinking-Consciousness/dp/1947637851 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the last episode, we discussed near-death experiences, NDEs. We went through an abundance of evidence suggesting they aren't hallucinations. So we are of the opinion that NDEs might be real, but what does that mean for regular people? That's what we're talking about today. Here's one of the preeminent scholars on NDEs, Dr. Raymond Moody. Here's one of the preeminent scholars on NDEs, Dr. Raymond Moody. Everywhere I go, I hear the same thing, and that is that people say, look, there aren't any words for this. I do think that near-death experiences are like a portal into another dimension of reality.

A portal into another dimension of reality. I love that phrase. Yeah, it sounds cool, but what does he actually mean? It all comes back to the central theory of our show, that consciousness doesn't come from the brain. That's why we've looked at telepathy, remote viewing, and precognition, now near-death experiences. Let's revisit Dr. Bernardo Kastrup's whirlpool analogy. We're getting some serious mileage out of this analogy. We're saying consciousness is beyond the brain. We are connected as part of the same stream of universal consciousness. And remember, in an NDE, the brain is severely damaged or completely off. But when people have NDEs, they have amazing experiences that they report. Our theory is that when the brain is out of the way, we gain new access to other parts of the stream. Maybe this is the higher reality that Dr. Moody is referring to.

Make sense? Kind of. But what I'm thinking about now is how you concluded the last episode. And you said that the stuff in this episode changed your life. What did you mean by that? Well, to be clear, Matt, everything discussed in every episode of this show changed my life, especially when you put it all together. But this next topic definitely impacted me more than others. And the topic is the life review. One of the most mind-blowing stages of near-death experiences. In one way or another, the person typically says that they had an experience of a panoramic

review of every moment of their life. And yet, the whole thing happens extremely quickly, which it can function that way only when consciousness is not limited by our physical body. That was Dr. Jan Holden. She's an NDE researcher from the University of North Texas. People who study NDEs typically reach the same conclusion. The life review is simply part of the living and dying process, meaning we should all prepare for it. Here's NDE survivor and former Harvard neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who we heard from in the last episode. The thing people need to remember is that life review is something you will be encountering.

So when people say my life flashed before my eyes, is that basically a life review? Kind of. It's more than that, though. I spoke to Daniel Brinkley, who has had four near-death experiences. Four. His case is extremely unusual because in each NDE, had a life review and he remembers all four of them. Everybody has to get ready no matter what. These are the lessons that you'll learn. You will see your entire life passed before you in a 360 degree panoramic life review and you will realize that you have missed nothing. This feels really big, Mark.

It is. But the most interesting part of the life review is that you review your life through the eyes of the people impacted by your actions. If you actually do review your entire life and its impact on others, doesn't that mean that what you do in your life actually does have consequences,

and therefore purpose? In this episode, we're focusing fully on the life review. We'll hear from researchers and also from people who experienced life reviews themselves. No matter how many times I hear these stories, I still react emotionally. Remember, only about 20% of people in cardiac arrest studies, for example, report NDEs. And of that small group, not everyone remembers their life review. For example, Dr. Alexander, who you just heard from, doesn't have a memory of one. Okay. But does that mean we should ignore these life review case studies? I think it would be foolish to do so. I mean, if a patient walks into a doctor's office and says, I have a headache, should the doctor say, hmm, I'll need a controlled double-blind study to prove that?

Of course not. Controlled studies have their place, but so do case studies and anecdotes, especially when people all over the world are saying the same thing again and again. The point here is, we're a little fuzzy on the life review, what role it plays in living and dying, and I'm not sure it could ever be quote-unquote proven, although one day we'll all know. Having said that, the implications of what the life review actually means are so undeniably important to anyone who's ever lived, and for the planet today, that I think it's worth discussing. I want you to think about something, Matt. What if we do have life reviews? What if you will? What if I will?

What if what you're doing every day really does have consequences? What if the impact of each of our lives is way bigger than we ever thought? This is Where Is My Mind. I'm Mark Gober. Let's start by drilling down on this idea of reliving your whole life in a short amount of time. This is probably the hardest thing to grasp for most people. It's sort of going back to what we talked about in episode 4, that consciousness is beyond space and time.

So maybe in this other dimension of reality during the near-death experience, time functions differently. Or, more accurately, maybe our human brains are blocking our understanding of time. Albert Einstein talked about how time can move at different speeds in different situations. It's part of his famous theory of relativity called time dilation, like in the movie Interstellar. Mark, a pop culture reference. Where did that come from? All right, Matt, calm down over there. In Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey goes to another planet with high gravity, which makes his time slow down relative to time for those on Earth.

When he returns to Earth, he hasn't aged much, but his daughter is an old woman. That's time dilation. In the near-death experience state, in this other dimension of reality, you're reliving your whole life in what feels like a short amount of time. Is it a little bit scary that everything you've ever done and thought can potentially come back to you in just a few moments? I think it's natural to hear this and then immediately think about all the times we've acted poorly and could have done better. Whatever do you mean, Mark? What the Life Review is suggesting, Matt, is that we are accountable to ourselves for our actions. I guess you can look at it two ways. You are forced to relive your life or you get to relive your life. Take it from Dr. Eben Alexander. The life review is a very stunning and strong and

powerful ingredient of these journeys that's been described for thousands of years. You can choose to do things to others that you would not like done to yourself, but you're going to end up facing the consequences of that. And in fact, I believe a painful life review for someone who's handed out pain and suffering to others is where our concept of hell comes from. Here's NDE researcher Dr. Penny Sartori. In fact, people feel like they literally relive their life in very great detail. And sometimes they'll remember the significant things they've done. And sometimes they also remember the insignificant things that they've done. The sometimes they also remember the insignificant things that

they've done. The life review isn't just your wedding day or the day you graduated from high school. It's every single moment, even the moments that don't seem like they matter. Let's hold on to that thought for a bit. The reason these life reviews are so fascinating, though, isn't just that we relive everything we ever did. We relive our lives in an entirely new context. And that brings us back to our theory of interconnectedness. I'll let Dr. Alan Huguenot explain. You heard about his NDE after a motorcycle accident in the last episode. You review your entire life and it goes very rapidly, just zips right by you. But basically, you get to now feel in the the life review, what they felt.

It's pretty humbling. People report reliving events through the eyes of others. They get to experience what others felt. Remember from episode three, the idea of quantum entanglement? The idea that the universe is connected at a level that we can't see with our eyes? This was the thing that Albert Einstein called spooky, and he tried to disprove it, but he couldn't. In my conversation with cosmologist Dr. Jude Curvan, she summarized the implications of quantum entanglement very concisely. Entanglement is showing that our entire universe is interconnected, is non-locally interconnected at a fundamental level.

The life review might be another demonstration of our collective entanglement. If your consciousness can jump from your vantage point to someone else's, how can you explain that other than saying our consciousness isn't native to our bodies and we're all connected? Think about it. Our blindfold is off. We no longer are tied to our single whirlpool. So why couldn't we see what it's like to be in other whirlpools? Here's how Dr. Alexander explains it. So the important thing to note about a life review is you don't experience it from your point of view so much as from the point of view of those around

you. It's a beautiful demonstration of how the boundaries of self in many ways are false. And that we're all sharing in this dreaming of the one mind. We're not so much separate from each other, we're just different facets on that same diamond of that same one mind, all participating in this beautiful drama. Dr. Alexander brought to mind one of my favorite quotes from the Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist, Erwin Schrodinger. He said, in truth, there is only one mind. Really, every big topic we've talked about on the show,

they're all demonstrations of the one mind, the one stream. But the Life Review really crystallizes it. Medical doctor Larry Dossey, who we've heard from before, even wrote a book called One Mind. Schrodinger said that consciousness has no boundaries, either in space or time. And as such, you can't separate it from other consciousnesses, so that in some dimension, all of these consciousnesses come together to form what he called the one mind. In truth, there is only one mind. In other words, separation is an illusion. So what does it actually feel like to see things from the inside of someone else's whirlpool? Here's Dr. Bruce Grayson, an NDE researcher from the University of Virginia.

One woman that I know quite well, she was abused by her mother in childhood. And in her life review, she experienced that from her mother's perspective and came away from her near-death experiencing saying to herself, no wonder she was like that. She had no choice. That's what she had to do because of the way she was raised. If we're all one mind, then it makes sense that in this other dimension, you see things from the perspective of others,

and you gain knowledge you could have had no other way of knowing. the perspective of others and you gain knowledge you could have had no other way of knowing. So in the life review, you not only see every little moment in your life, but also every little moment in someone else's life that potentially affected you? You make an interesting distinction here, Matt, in that you're saying we relive everything. We don't just relive the things we want to relive or the things we don't want to relive, nor do we even know what we're going to relive because our actions have such wide-ranging impacts. When you think about it, there's true weight to every single moment.

Here's Dr. Huguenot's summary. You're seeing every time when you could have done more and you didn't. When you could have been loving and you weren't. When you could have gone the extra mile and chose not to. You know, you've got times in your life you look back with the regret that you should have done something else and you didn't. Well, you're going to find out what the person felt like when you didn't do what you should have done.

He's talking about everyday stuff. How often do we think, I should do that for this person, and then we don't follow through? All the time, right? We're only human. But apparently, those are the moments that we review, not whether you got a promotion or won the award or whatever. Because we're all one mind, you're reviewing how you affected others. Think about how powerful that is. I like to put it this way. The little things are actually the big things. Here's an example from Dr. Holden. And when she says NDE-er, she's referring to a person who's had a near-death experience. Like one person said, they were going through a grocery line one

day. And in just a brief interaction with the clerk, the NDE-er had been very nasty and then experienced not only how the clerk felt, but also how that put her in a bad mood and how she affected all the people who came through the line after that. The NDE-er felt that as well. So they feel the repercussions of their actions. So people come away from near-death experiences and especially the life review generally tending to believe that life has purpose. Human life on earth is purposeful. You smile at the clerk, ask how her day was, and thank her. She then goes home to her family and is in a good mood because you made her feel good. Because she's in a good mood with her family, everyone in her family is in a better mood. Then they go out in the world and they're nicer to their peers, who in turn feel good.

It's a ripple effect. The little things are the big things. I think our society today focuses so much on grand gestures or material success. Look, my own life is a good example. I felt it. In high school, I focused on getting good grades. I was a competitive tennis player and eventually a captain of the tennis team at Princeton, got a New York investment banking job after Princeton, etc., etc. Lots of striving for material goals, lots of material achievements. But what I've learned is that those sorts of achievements aren't what matter in the life review. When we evaluate our own lives, what we

care about instead is how we treated people all along the way. And that's changed my perspective. I think at a subconscious level, I've always known what really matters. My achievements were never actually that fulfilling at all. Maybe they felt good for a short while, and then pretty quickly I'd move on to the next thing I was striving for. There's a term in psychology called the hedonic treadmill. When we get something we want, our happiness soon returns to baseline,

and we're ready for the next thing we're striving for. I was feeling that. But to be clear, looking back, I always felt like I had an instinct to want to treat people well and to care for others. That always felt important, and I think most people feel that way too. But it felt optional. What if everyone was aware of the possibility of a life review? What if everyone knew the little things were actually the big things? That the clerk at the store matters more than your grade point average. I'm looking at you right now, Matt, and I interpret with my eyes that there's a me here and a you there. On the other

hand, the life review and the ripple effects we see, it's all a demonstration of the one mind showing that at the level of consciousness, we aren't so separate. The listeners have heard plenty out of us, Matt, and we haven't even had our life reviews yet. How about we hear from some people who actually have? Right after this. Remember, I've been through four of these. 1975, 1989, 1997, and 2018. 1985, 1989, 1997, and 2018.

Struck by lightning. Open heart surgery. Brain surgery. Open heart surgery. But, you know, I'm smart. You don't have to kill me but two or three times before I catch on. That was Danny and Brinkley. Again, many NDEers don't remember their life reviews,

so I was thrilled to talk to him about his. Everybody has to get ready, no matter what. These are the lessons that you'll learn. You will see your entire life pass before you in a 360 degree panoramic life review, and you will realize that you have missed nothing. You've never missed anything. You know how many hairs was in the nose of the doctor who pulled you from your mother if that's what you were focused on. And you know how many leaves was on every tree. You know how many hairs was in the nose of the doctor who pulled you from your mother, if that's what you were focused on. And you know how many leaves was on every tree. You know every label. You know the badge name of every nurse.

Everybody's in that room. You don't miss anything. You see some of the dumbest things that anybody could possibly do. But you also see some of the smartest things that you could have done. And it's like a friend talking to a friend. My key takeaway in the life review, nothing gets by us. It seems like we're forced to confront all of it. The good, the bad, the ordinary, the spectacular. You see your childhood, you see yourself from birth. You will watch yourself from a second person point of view as though you were your own best friend. And then you literally become every person that you ever encounter.

And you feel the direct results of your interaction between you and that person. And what does that tell you? The universe is fair and just. And nobody gets away with anything. So the comfort that people can draw from it is if someone has hurt you in your life, they will know that. And if someone's brought you joy, they'll also know that. So basically, all the not-so-good things he did, he's relived them four times. The worst part about going to the other side is the panoramic life of you doesn't pick up where it left off.

So you've relived certain things four times. Right. That's why I always say, you know, I have a pretty good understanding of how this all works. I think for any person that could be difficult because no one's perfect. For Daniel, though, it was more extreme. He was a Marine in the Vietnam War, so you can only imagine what he had to relive. This is intense. I was vicious, Mark. I'm a big guy, and I was tough.

The more damage I could do, the better I felt, until you have a panoramic life of you. I got to be every person that I had ever encountered, and it was horrible. They don't let you forget that you have done your time in the earth plane, and that's a good thing. To be clear, he relived his time in Vietnam through the eyes of the people he impacted. He relived the deaths of the people he killed through their eyes.

I can't even fathom that. He not only saw himself in the war, he saw the people that he killed, but because we're all one mind, he also felt the pain of the people who were close to the people he killed. And I got to feel what people who would never see that person again went through. And then children who will never see their dad again. I mean, those kind of things bear on you when you have to keep going through it. So killing anything but self-defense is wrong

and nobody gets away with it. In truth, there is only one mind. My interview with Daniel Brinkley really rocked me. It's an hour and a half long, and listeners can access it at markgober.com slash podcast. Another one of the most impactful interviews I did was with Jeff Olson, who had a near-death experience following a tragic car accident. I saw my life. I saw the things that I had done, and I was like, oh no, that was a mistake. I saw the things that I had done. And I was like, oh, no, no, that was a mistake.

And yet the communication flowing through me said there are no mistakes. I saw things I had done and I knew they were wrong and I did them anyway. And yet what I was feeling was that's your judgment of it, not ours. And judgments and comparisons literally went out the window. And therefore, if that was true of me, I felt this expansion. I knew that was true of everyone, that we were all connected, that we were all loved, that it was like the entire universe had surrounded me in this unconditional love. Imagine having this totally new perspective on life, and then trying to live your life

in the same world we all live in. What would you do with yourself? Daniel Brinkley's life changed dramatically. I became a hospice volunteer. I could be at the bedside of veterans and I could help them find closure and cross over. He's walking the walk. I mean, just listen to his priorities now. You start looking at your life when you open up your eyes in the morning. Your job is to make the divine difference

that opens that door, that pets somebody on the back, that smiles, that gives the person that support, that gives the guy on the corner a dollar. That kind of stuff is the big stuff that matters in the panoramic life of you. Fortunately for us, we have an opportunity to learn these things without almost dying ourselves. And what we learn from the life review is that how we treat others is more important than anything else. I want to repeat something you said, Mark. How we treat others is more important than anything else. Here's something I've been thinking about. There have been lots of debates in science about altruism.

Why do we do it? What's its purpose? Why does it feel good to help someone else? Evolutionary biologists tie everything back to the survival of the fittest. We survive so we can reproduce and pass on our genes. Then where does helping others fit in if all that ultimately matters is

the survival of our own genes? Researchers like former Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins have argued that our genes are selfish. So when helping others is helpful to your own survival, then it makes sense to be altruistic. Maybe there's an element of that. But what if altruism is something much deeper? If we are all the same, all part of the one mind, then when you help others, you are helping yourself as part of the same consciousness. So in this context, altruism is the highest expression of selfishness. Think about what that means. It's not just good to help others, it's required and rational. And on the other side of the coin, hurting others becomes completely irrational. Why would you want to hurt another if at the core level of reality, you're just hurting yourself?

Look at the world around us. We see violence, political unrest, social prejudices, interpersonal problems. At the core, I think those problems stem from the belief that we're all separate, so people act accordingly. The problems we see in the world, to me, those are symptoms. Fixing the symptom, like putting someone in jail or electing a new official won't cure the disease. The disease is the underlying belief in separation. The disease is a misunderstanding of reality. And the disease comes from the belief that we have an individual consciousness that comes from a brain. And on this show, we're showing science suggesting that separation as we conceive it isn't real. What if we can correct this misunderstanding about separation?

How might people act? Would it make sense to harm or mistreat anyone else? Why would it make sense to harm the planet? It literally wouldn't be rational to mistreat anyone. It's not just me making this argument. Hear it from Dr. Raymond Moody. But whatever people were chasing in their life review when they have the near-death experience, they say, what this is all about is learning to love.

More from Dr. Penny Sartori. The underlying message of the near-death experience is to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. Dutch cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel told me something similar. So when they come back,

it's the main thing after having had a life review to have unconditional love and compassion and empathy first towards yourself to accept the negative aspects everybody has

and then to have unconditional love and acceptance and empathy towards others, toward nature, toward animals, toward plants and toward the endangered planet earth. And a final word from Dr. Eben Alexander. It teaches us not to do things to other people that we would not like done to ourselves. It's basically the golden rule written into the very fabric of the universe. We've been hearing about the golden rule since we were kids. Treat others how you want to be treated. Can it really be that simple? It might be, Matt. If we're all connected as part of one mind, one stream, then it actually makes a lot of sense. I spoke about this with Rupert Spira, who I consider to be one of the great philosophers of our era.

Imagine if any two characters in conflict were to discover that the person with whom they were in conflict was their very own self. Not similar to or the same as their very own self, but their very own self. That they were two facets of the same infinite and indivisible being. That, that discovery alone, in my opinion, must be the foundation of world peace. How would the world be different if people adopted this attitude, treating others like they are literally themselves, just for one single day?

Look, I'm not saying I had this figured out. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. But I am saying we can all prepare as though our life review is coming. At least that's what Daniel Brinkley says. People have to understand. At least that's what Daniel Brinkley says. People have to understand you only hear a short time and you got to practice setting an intention of what you want to achieve and persevere through it, good and bad, so that you can see how to be caring, compassionate and heart centered. It's not about who makes the most money. I've never seen a U-Haul on the back of a hearse.

It's about how much kindness and how much love and how much compassion that you put on this earth. And when people are kind and loving and caring, you remember them a lot longer than you remember the billionaire or the legacy that they created. Here's some practical advice from Jeff Olson following his NDE. Many people come to me and say, I want the near-death experience. And I say, no, you don't.

You really don't. I think the one thing that's very important is you don't need to have a near-death experience to get connected. I often tell people, if you want to simply go to a quiet place and ask, ask, what can I do for someone else today? Almost always people know exactly what to do and who for. And yet it's very subtle. And many people say, well, I was making that up. That was just my imagination.

But if you do that exercise, you know, just be still and ask, what can I do for someone else today? Watch what happens. And then the key is act on that. Even if it's, gosh, I get to call mom today. I haven't talked to mom in a week, you know. When you act on it, suddenly it seems to open up a space where more and more of those messages come. And I think it makes a big difference. All right.

Let me speak up to the listener for a second. I've expressed doubts about a lot of things we've talked about in this show. And then we come to this point. I've asked Mark a million times, what if he's wrong? Well, what if he's right? In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy describes prosaic moments of kindness as joys so small they pass unnoticed like golden sand. What if these little things are really the big things? What if it all comes back around? And after hearing all this, how could we not take steps to incorporate that philosophy into our own lives? Starting right now.

This has been a heavy episode, Matt. Yeah, you could say that. I think it's time to wrap this up. And I think I know who should do it. Let's hear one last time from Danny and Brinkley. I'd like to tell everybody who's listening that I love them and that I appreciate them. And the more knowledge that you have about this inevitable guaranteed event, the more powerful and empowered you will be in your life.

In this short lifespan, we have an opportunity to be as caring, as creative, as conscious, compassionate, and as loving as ever. And it has so much meaning to the unfoldment of a universe. Always remember, you're going to be everybody you ever encounter. And when you see you, what do you hope to see? See you next time on Where Is My Mind? Thank you for listening to Where Is My Mind? The show was written by me, Mark Gober,

and the show was produced at Blue Duck Media by Matt Ford and Gabe Goodwin, with help from Antonio Enriquez, Zuri Irvin, and Ben Redmond. The show is edited by Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Cadence 13, particularly John McDermott and Patrick Antonetti. Also thanks to Bill Gladstone and Waterside Publishing. All of my full-length interviews are available at markgober.com slash podcast. We'd like to thank our sponsors, and if you'd like to support the show, please consider supporting them on our behalf. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes,

and if you'd like, tell a friend to subscribe and spread the word. See you next time.