today we have the opportunity to sit down with Dr Jan Holden Jan is one of the leading scientists in the field of near death studies she's the president of the International Association for Nea studies and the editor of the scholarly peer-reviewed academic journal the Journal of near-death studies few questions have been as hotly contested throughout history as to what happens when we die all major religions have put forth an answer but finally science has weighed in on the subject what about to discuss today is one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century and has massive implications about the nature of life itself for over 40 years Dr Holden has studied people who have died but then under extraordinary circumstances came back to life what they report and the Striking similarities between them is nothing short of remarkable is there an afterlife does God exist what is the meaning of life let's find out J thank you for being here today it's my pleasure so glad to be here yeah I'm so glad we we get the opportunity to do this with you um I wanted to kick off this conversation by talking about science um and kind of what the word science means um because for years it was thought that you can't study things that exist outside of the physical world um but I think that the field of near the studies has has kind of changed everything um and it's kind of hard to express the magnitude of what we're talking about today um and what it means about the nature of reality um how it would affect people's worldviews um all of that stuff um so can you explain to me what science is and how the near field of NE death experiences uh field of near-death studies fits into that well um my understanding of science is that it's the process of creating hypothesis that um this is related to this or this causes that and then uh examining the evidence that either supports or refutes the hypothesis and so um of course it's easiest to do that with the material world because we can observe things and and uh see repeated processes that confirm or disconfirm hypotheses um but uh actually that can happen with the Unseen World as well and so for example uh when people have near-death experiences uh they um they report uh a pattern uh what what we now know is a pattern and and we know of that pattern because of the scientific method because we've studied now thousands of people who've had this experience and when we look at their narratives uh collectively we see see these patterns yeah I think one thing objection um maybe from people that uh are are considering this subject for the first time um and the role of science is the idea that you know we think about controlled experiments which as we'll talk about probably later like have been um tried to been conducted with with ndes but people thinking that the idea that because you can't necessarily study metaphysical things um in like a lab with like controlled experiments that makes it like unscientific people don't really realize that there are kind of many fields that people accept as science that it's virtually impossible to do lab experiments yeah it was in Dr Bruce gon's book he said um very few topics of scientific research can be studied with controlled experiments and there are many fields that everyone accepts the science even though laboratory experiments are difficult if not impossible feels like astronom evolutionary biology geology and paleontology um another kind of I guess you could call it criticism is that and these have been talked about as like anecdotes can you speak to that kind of feedback on it yeah yeah the the term anecdote is kind of a diminishing term because it makes it sound like it was just this spooky thing that happened uh as opposed to uh there's a book uh that the International Association for a near-death stud studies has recently issued the second edition called the self does not die and it's about uh the phenomenon of vertical perception that I know we're going to be getting into here and um and in we made the the um very purposeful decision to refer to cases because we investigated each of these cases and uh the only cases included in the book are those that have at least one credible witness to verify besides the near-death experiencer themselves so um so uh we we purposely avoided that term anecdote because of its you know diminishing implication yeah yeah yeah I mean there's a there's a few components or ideas if you will I feel like that are essential to scientific discovery um which involves obviously examination of evidence um through rigorous observation and then also the idea of like sound reasoning um being Incorporated in that and so I think what's interesting about this conversation obviously there's there's like really big um things at play here like Material World metaphysical things um but in terms of the scientific mindset obviously it it's inherently skeptical which I think is a great thing obviously um I think not accepting things at face value based on little to no evidence is important um and I think it it helps us establish fact versus fiction um and as well as governing processes of like the entire world and so like that process has helped get us to today but I think one of the more ironic parts of this conversation is that when whether it's scientists or just people in general avoid talking about the incredible evidence that we're about to get into um it's actually like in a way scientific because we're not using the same type of mindset when it comes to this stuff so yeah um science in in the western world has largely become equivalent to materialism the belief that everything has a physical basis and um and that and physicalism that that everything can be explained through physical processes and so if one starts from that assumption then uh topics like this are just uh off off base or off uh limits yeah to you know be be researched um but if one starts from a truly scientific basis of um creating and and then examining the evidence for hypotheses then uh topics like this are included and so that's why it's important for people to realize that um materialism as valuable as it is I mean it materialist thinking has led to amazing things you know antibiotics and that I probably wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the discoveries that arose out of materialism and that it also is an incomplete explanation for everything that we know happens yeah and so it's important for people to be able to make that distinction yeah yeah yeah I think that the idea of like studying things that don't fit our preconceived like ideas is is what um drives like breakthroughs in science yeah um and so yeah I I mean I'm excited to to get into that so so let's talk about the field the field of Na their studies uh now it's been almost 50 years um has a rich history um so so what is it and how did it start well in 1975 Raymond Moody who was at the time a medical student he's now a psychiatrist uh and he also has a doctorate in philosophy um wrote the book Life After Life based on his interviews of over a 100 people who had had this experience that he in that book he dubbed the term near-death experience that's what he called it and that term has pretty much stuck with it uh over these many decades and uh and in the book he identified uh patterns of um the experience and after effects and um and essentially in the intervening excuse me I have to clear my throat yeah so and essentially in the intervening time um all the research that's been done essentially for the very most part just confirms what he said in that book um but confirms it through you know he did uh he his book was not based on what we would consider rigorous research but that research has been done since then and confirms what he observed the reason that these experiences have become um so visible is uh advances in resuscitation technology during the 20th century and we are bringing people back from the brink of death in numbers just unprecedented in history so the opportunity for people to have near-death experiences also increased with that and uh we now know that these experiences have occurred throughout history and across cultures but um but obviously in greater numbers recently so what is a near-death experience what happens in a near-death experience is essentially during uh usually during a close brush with death and I can can come back to that point in a minute um the person perceives their Consciousness to be functioning apart from their physical body observing the material world perceiving the material world because they not only see and hear but they also like know what people are thinking and can see distance um things that are you know outside of their normal visual range and things like that um and all and or perceiving and interacting with entities and environments that are not of the material world yeah so um typically in a in a complete near-death experience um the person let might be for example on the operating table anesthetized and being operated on and suddenly they are conscious and outside of their body usually above looking down on the scene a favorite location is a ceiling corner of the room and um watching as the surgery is going on on their body and um in some cases the this is happening while they're in Cardiac Arrest they suddenly go into cardiac arrest um they become conscious outside their body watches the the medical team is screwing around um res you know doing the resuscitation and and uh and then in a as I said like a really complete experience the person might leave the uh the operating room go to other parts of the hospital like think um while the person's in the State of Consciousness movement occurs kind of like at the speed of thought yeah so they might think uh oh they know that their spouse is waiting in the waiting room wondering you know how they're doing the moment they think of that person jom they're in the waiting room watching as the spouse is there sitting looking really nervous in the chair or you know whatever and uh and then uh the P the person's Consciousness might leave the hospital go to other places um in the material world and then might also uh at some point find thems often there's this kind of transition thing of that involves rapid movement through space uh sometimes through a structure like a a tunnel is kind of structure and uh and at the end of that space they find themsel in a nonmaterial environment and uh that might be like this preternatural kind of thing where it's it's like a beautiful garden and their colors and um and uh every blade of grass has Consciousness and just kind of different things than happens in the material world colors that that uh the end of year will say they never saw on Earth and things like that and they may meet um entities that are not of the material world it might be deceased loved ones uh it might be other people that um they don't realize at the time is a deceased loved one but discover later and um and it might be other spiritual entities sometimes identifiable like Jesus but sometimes uh an entity that just seems to be like a spirit guide or an angel or something like that yeah I think what's what's interesting when you're talking about the resuscitation technology um Dr s paria who's a doctor here in New York um he he wrote when the experience occurs in the circumstances of cardiac arrest and the objective period of death I think near-death experience would more accurately be termed the actual death experience or ad um so I think you know people are listening coming from materialistic worldview like immediately we try to reconcile what you're talking about in a psychological framework we talked about this last night but I think for some people it might matter like sometimes these people are dead for minutes I mean in one book I was reading about I don't know how verifiable this one was there was someone who was dead for about 8 hours um can you speak to like the ranges of how long people were dead um for that you've seen people tend to be most convinced when the person was um in Cardiac Arrest no heartbeat no breathing for some period of time and what they observed seems to have occurred during the time that they were because um cardiologists uh like Pim van laml tell us that after 20 seconds of the heart not beating there's no more measurable brain activity so if the brain is not functioning and yet the person later reports things that happen during that time that they perceived from this position outside their body yeah it just um challenges everything we believe about you know it it it certainly challenges what materialists believe that conscious experience can only be the result of of the brain of brain activity yeah so um uh one of my favorite ndes uh for a couple of reasons one is that it's a a woman who's a um a a very successful surgeon in Wyoming her name is Mary Neil and she drowned in a um kayaking mishap um in Central or South South America um and uh she was her body was underwater for about a half hour and you go like when this happens right it's like you go brain dead in what minutes or right well that that as I said Pim van laml says after 20 seconds of no no uh respiration there isn't enough oxygen for the brain to function so there's no measurable brain activity okay yeah so so 30 minutes underwater um and uh and she in a you know making a much longer and more fascinating story very short she made a full recovery after this and she had a profound near-death experience in which she observed many things that um happened um that uh you know she shouldn't have known about except that she saw it yeah that's really fascinating I think you know we're going to we're going to talk about like the biology of dying um but I think what's so fascinating is when talk about the idea of like antidotes right um and like being stories um there's another this is another quote from Grayson he was saying most research starts with Scientists collecting verifying comparing anecdotes until patterns in these stories become apparent and then from those patterns emerge hypotheses which can be tested and refined and so I think what's remarkable about the field of near studies is that so many people thousands upon thousands of people have come forward essentially all saying the same thing um and so there are the aspects of near-death experiences that are verifiable like objectively but even when it comes to the personal element of these stories the sheer number of them um presents a case on its own for what they say that they've seen um so I think that that is like really interesting in itself and so um you know Moody and others obviously were at the Forefront of starting this in the 1970s but there's been tons of books research papers um and models to created to to explain this phenomenon um so you're the president of the International Association in NE studies and you're also the editor of the Journal of neust studies which is um scholar Journal so can you tell me about the uh the association first like what what that is and how that's been established sure well shortly after uh Raymond's book um a few researchers uh became really interested in your death experiences and uh found that there was no um vehicle for them to associate with each other you know communicate and so forth so they founded the International Association for near death studies and it was founded by uh predom by academics and medical professionals uh Bruce Grayson JN odet Bruce is a psychiatrist uh John odet and then Michael sabam is a uh cardiologist and Ken ring is a social psychologist and um and and as part of the organization they founded the Journal of near-death studies so the organ ation was really founded on research and um and they founded the journal because they found that their the research in this area a lot of journals wouldn't publish it just because of a prejudice against you know studying something that's unseen yeah and uh and they wanted to create a scholarly Outlet um since that time uh there are like hundreds of journals that have published research near-death experience so it's become much more accepted academically um so that's uh that's really gratifying uh for for the the founders um since that time the association has branched out also into uh education about ndes and support for people who've near had near-death and related experiences so um we have um sharing groups both in person and online for people who've had these kinds of experiences or have personal or professional interest and um and we do a conference every year uh that we're now that the worst of Co is over we're back to inperson it's always been the week of uh the weekend of Labor Day yeah uh around the country and we have a spring symposium that's online on a really um specific topic in this area so uh so we're doing you know just lots of things uh in addition to research now yeah for people that are obviously not in the scientific Community can you explain like why a scholarly uh Journal is important in the sense that it's like peer-reviewed that's right yeah so peerreview refers to that when I receive a manuscript that of somebody that wants to publish their work in the journal I said it out to at least two reviewers I have a a panel of uh people who are expert in the field of near- death studies and I send it out to to each of them to review it and then they send their review back to me which is you know criticisms suggestions and and even just assessing whether the the topic is appropriate for the journal and that sort of thing and then um I uh depending on what they recommend they can recommend that the um manuscript be accepted just as it is which is extremely rare or that there be minor uh revisions and then acceptance or major revisions or reject it yeah and so uh I use that um I give that feedback to the uh the author or authors it's all Anonymous so um they don't know uh the reviewers don't know who the authors are the authors don't know who the reviewers are I'm the only one who knows both of those and um uh so that people can be honest and um the reviewers in particular can be honest and um so that that processes the way any scholarly peer-reviewed Journal functions yeah yeah yeah I was just going to say that I mean this is like kind of a standard yeah process across all science like for example if there was a journal around Neuroscience you'd have peer reviewed like of of expert neuroscientists that were like reviewing like the the research and so yeah I think that's fascinating um one of the big things with this fields which I think is amazing is one of the greatest gaps in science is the lack of understanding about metaphysical M matters in the sense that like thoughts or emotions like what are thoughts or emotions and with Neuroscience we can observe through brain scans like physically what's happening there but um you know kind of kind of the the unknown is like we don't have an idea of how like a physical event like an electrical current or chemical change in a narrative can produce Consciousness right um yeah that's referred to as the hard question of Consciousness St yeah and so I feel like this field of NE studies like helps fill in those gaps which we're going to get intoh um there's been a lot of alternative explanations for what has H what what is happening with NE ethics experiences um throughout all the literature that I've read I don't know there's like seven eight different theories even if you go on the Wikipedia Pages you'll see certain things pop up um can you explain to me like what are some of the popular ones and why they don't work yeah so I'm going to have to dig deep because uh to to jump to the end of this no explanation has been generated that fits the evidence and there are always exceptions so for example uh people say that um maybe the person is generating these memories um while they're losing Consciousness while they're regaining Consciousness but not really having the experience while they're for those people who lost Consciousness while they were unconscious and um and that one gets refuted by cases where people are perceiving things that happened in the middle of a a you know substantial period of consciousness of a few minutes and um and uh people say well maybe maybe the person you know if if someone reports something that they saw that's later verified as accurate maybe they heard medical personnel talking about this you know while they were like in the process of being anesthetized or while they were in the recovery room and they don't remember where they actually got that information from they think that they they kind of reconstructed in their mind as something they observed when it was really something they heard third hand and the problem is that we've got lots of cases where people perceive things that it's just it's just stretch is it's too much of a stretch to think that people even would have talked about this yeah you know so um so those you know there as you say there are seven or eight theories out there that they're just exceptions that um that make those theories untenable yeah another one is just like I think it's called expectation theory yes what is what is that one well that that people will see what they expect to see and that's and that's refuted by all the cases where people saw things they didn't expect yeah um for example uh one G her name is Trisha uh she had uh her near-death experience um during surgery following a really awful car accident when she was 20 and um when during her near-death experience I'm only giving you a tiny little piece of what happened to illustrate this she um left the surgery area her her body was being operated on and she left the area and uh and went to the waiting room where her mother was saw her mother praying and could hear what her mother was saying in her prayers uh even though she was praying silently and then she and then Trisha wondered like where's my stepfather and she goes to this other part of the hospital and she sees him standing at a vending machine inserting a quarter and getting out a candy bar and she's like whoa that's weird because her parents were um like Health Food nuts and they never ate refined sugar and and uh and it later verified that he he was just so nervous that he just broke down and had a candy bar and um so it it defied her expectation um and there's no way like literally there's no way she would have known that information like they were in other rooms and but then there's a corroborative aspect of that right in the sense that they themselves like confirmed that that's what was happening later that's right and so that's what I find to be remarkable and so so we can't we can't uh attribute what people experience to expectation there just lots and lots of cases where people expected different things in fact I I joke and say you can think what you believe about what's going to happen when you die but here's what really happens you know that that um may or may not conform to your expectations yeah yeah I think to understand some of this you have to understand like kind of the biology of dying so what does it mean to be dead well you know this is where I I have maybe a different view than some people like like Sam peria um I think of death as the irreversible state so when a person reaches a point where they cannot be resuscitated they're dead yeah anything short of that I consider to be near death so they may be in the first moments of death the first um so they're temporarily dead they're temporarily dead and they're really dead I mean but only temporarily they're like dead dead yeah not they're not like dead dead exactly and so if they can be resuscitated then in my view they're near death and so um but it is a process and that that takes um actually ours you know there's research now showing that um there's sometimes spontaneous little firing of of things even hours after a person is pronounced yeah permanently dead um um but those are really random small things they're not um the kind of activity that we would expect to see when someone is generating uh complex Lucid perceptions like people report during near-death experiences well what would you say that makes me think what would you say to the people that would say that these experiences are the function just of the dying brain of like images or things that the dying brain is generating yeah well um you know there there first of all that question is based on the assumption that the brain produces Consciousness yeah which that's that is what near-death experiences kind of Defy is that um that uh people have these experiences while their brains are presumably not functioning at all you know well into CC arrest for example so um so the brain isn't like I mean it's it may be dying in the sense of final inactivity of the cells but in terms of the it the brain functioning in to any degree that we would expect to be associated with these kinds of complex Lucid experiences it just it doesn't explain how that that could happen defies that model so what happens to the brain at death within about 20 seconds of the heart stopping beating and and respiration stopping the brain shows no measurable activity now there may still be um lowlevel kind of like equivalent to a car idling you know for some period of time but not the kind of uh activity that make the car move yeah you know and and then over uh the as the minutes go by more and more brain cells just die and become yeah inactive and un unresuscitated yeah one of the things that uh Dr Jeffrey long who obviously is one of the the kind of leading researchers and and doctors in this field he said like that there's no chance with flat EEG that electrical activity in the lower parts of the brain could account for kind of the the highly lucid and ordered experience that that is described um through NES exactly so yep one thing that we've kind of been alluding to at this point um is that while all near death experiences are valid um there are some that um fit into the cases that are evidential um because they can especially if they're happening under like scientific evaluation in an operating room and people are reporting things um and I think these are fascinating because in these instances there's seems to be no logical alternative scientific explanation for what these people like reported um and so I want to get into that a little bit um you are kind of wanting the leader leading researchers and in the in the field of kind of um vertical perception um and so I find this to be like remarkable like such a huge Discovery like if you think about like science and you know things that have been discovered the past 50 years I don't know what trumps this and so can you tell me what vertical perception is um and what happens there yeah so the word veritical is the the closest meaningful word for people is verify uh so in other words during the near-death experience the person perceives something that they later report and is then verified as having been accurate and um and in some cases you know it's possible to explain away um what the person saw but in many cases it's not and so um so the cases that are Mo most convincing are those where there are at least one other credible witness who can verify that what the person saw was correct so like one of my favorites is um a a case that Bruce Grayson described in his book after which I highly recommend for people interested in this subject and um and he himself was the investigator of the case so he can speak very authoritatively about it and what happened from his point of view is that a um a nurse called him one day and said we have a patient who had one of those experiences that you studied and would you come over and and interview them so he immediately goes over this person had just um come out of uh surgery and had regained Consciousness and and described what happened during the surgery and that uh what happened was that he uh he the patient had uh gone into cardiac arrest and he was was outside his body watching and he saw his surgeon whom he knew he knew the surgeon but he saw the surgeon like flapping his arms as if trying to fly and and so Bruce is like taking notes and he's like okay you know that's weird um so then Bruce went and interviewed he he started with the uh people who were uh kind of the low-level people and and worked his way up to the actual surgeon himself and everybody he were interviewed them all individually and everybody said the same thing oh yeah doctor so and so yeah he he like does that then when Bruce got to the surgeon and he said you know the patient described this and the surgeon kind of laughed and he said yeah he said well the surgeon had been trained internationally and there they train people after you anesthetize your hands you put them on your sterile gown and you back into the operating room and you keep your hands here until your assistants have done all the opening and everything and it's time for you to do your stuff then you then you take your hands down well while he was standing there that day the patient went into cardiac arrest so he's saying get that scalpel move that tray you know do this do that he's he's using his elbows to point and tell his his assistants what to do yeah so to the to the ende it looked like he was like flapping his arms as if trying to fly uh but he was using his elbows to point and a very idiosyncratic thing for this surgeon no other surgeon does that because no other suron had been trained and where this and the guy was under the guy was under cardiac arrest so liter would be impossible for him to know that you would think that because not only is he fully anesthetized remember that that they always tape the eyes shut because uh we don't blink when we're under full anesthesia so you have to keep the eyes moist so his eyes are tape shut and um and so he could maybe hear you know at most physically he could hear things going on but how would he see this which makes no noise yeah you know so um so he's fully anesthetized he's in cardiac arrest his heart is not working presumably his brain isn't functioning within 20 seconds uh at least no me no measurable activity um how in the world could he have seen this yeah except that his Consciousness truly was outside his body observing the material world yeah and and in the book The self does not die it's a collection of over a hundred cases in fact over 130 cases um like this where the researchers have verified have gone to um uh the surgeons uh or gone to in in most of the cases the ible witness is a surgeon or another Medical Professional who was involved in this situation yeah yeah so I mean in simplest terms when we talk about vertical perception essentially the idea we're getting at is like someone floating outside of their body um and being able to observe their body while they're not in their body um and so again Dr Jeffy long um he did a sub about 1300 ND and 75.4% of the people had this experience of of floating outside their body one of the ones I cases I thought was just kind of insane was a kind of an early often cited account of Kimberly Clark MH can you tell me about that one yeah sure she was a social worker at a hospital in Washington state and a woman I believe it was a woman was brought in uh in cardiac arrest and uh once the woman was in the hospital they resuscitated her which is pretty unusual um but it did happen in her case and um she when she regained Consciousness after this was all over and Kimberly was a social worker just to come and see how she was doing she told Kimberly that outside of the hospital she had seen because uh when the ambulance was coming in she was outside of her body following the ambulance and she could see the hospital from the outside on a ledge at a a floor above where she was uh the emergency room is always on ground level um she saw a a shoe on the ledge on a a window ledge and it was a particular color it was turned upside down there was a shoelace kind of hanging off the edge that was a particular color and um she told Kimberly this and Kimberly was like you know okay but then uh it was kind of bothering her so she went up to the floor that the woman said that it was on like the fourth floor and she just would go into each hospital room and kind of say to the patients excuse me I'm just just need to look out your window for a second and she'd go look you know and and about the fifth or sixth room she came to she looked and there was a shoe and so then she had a maintenance person come and retrieve it and it was and she uh had the wherewithal to be a little bit scientific and she had it behind her back she went back and talked to the person and said now tell me again you know what kind of shoe it was the colors and all this kind of stuff and and then she said is this the shoe and the was like yes that's it you know that's the one I saw so she the woman had never been up to that floor of the hospital yeah and um and to and and her body had been in an ambulance until they you know got to the Emergen Merc room doors and opened and her body went in so she never saw the exterior of the hospital physically um so it's like and and nobody kind of had noticed that the shoe was there or they would have removed it yeah how the shoe got there we don't know but um but in any case it was you know a verified experience yeah cuz you know the the materialist in me would would start you know because again you hear these things and then you you run to okay let me explain this it's like okay so maybe she was up on that floor earlier she saw the shoe and now she's sit telling that but then I think you know almost when you have the visual of a um ambulance coming into the hospital literally you can't see out of the ambulance as a person and now you're coming and you're going into a floor and clearly she hasn't been to that floor she saw nothing and then she's telling that afterwards it's just mindboggling right and it's not as if she' driven by the hospital the you know day before or anything like that she'd never been near near the hospital before so um yeah so and there there's you know another case is uh again a physician I like I like cases involving Physicians because they're they tend to be very trusted and so they're trusted as credible Witnesses and uh this is Tom arhy I believe he's in uh he's an emergency room physician in Wisconsin and but when he was in medical school he was just starting out new he was being supervised by a um an experienced physician and one day um he this man came in in cardiac arrest and uh and his supervising physici was nowhere to be found and he was kind of desperate and um uncertain about what to do but he did his best and indeed the man survived but he didn't regain Consciousness for a couple of days so every day Tom would go in and check on him well one one day he went in and um the man was still unconscious uh his lunch had been delivered Tom hadn't eaten in ages so he sat there and ate the patient lunch and then he left and the next day or after the day after the patient regained Consciousness when Tom walked in he said ah you I know you and Tom's like uh and and he says yeah yeah he said you owe me a lunch and um and and then he said and also um I just want you to know that um you did fine even though you were really anxious that your supervising physician wasn't around you did great with me and Tom is like this man knew my thoughts Tom never voiced to anybody that he was anxious and actually kind of mad at his supervisor for not being there to help him and uh but the patient heard his thoughts and and knew um you know knew what he had been experiencing um silently so and that's not unusual that so you know people who are in uh medical situations need to be careful what they think because patients might yeah I cited the stats from Dr long but Dr Grayson also had reported 80% of his subjects um had experience in this and just to kind of recount it for the audience so you have these conditions when people are basically incapacitated um or verified clinically dead um and so they're not able to see or perceive anything and so then they're floating outside their body um they're reporting floating through walls they're all these different things that they're reporting and then the evidential aspect of it is the cross uh corroboration and the verification from other people that that is actually like what was happening in the room which I just find to be so remarkable yeah and and uh again to refer to this book The self does not die yeah go read yeah go by the book to read one case after another where like you said if you tend if you think well I wonder if this could be explained this way it's kind of like it doesn't then you read another case and another case and these are from Physicians primarily Physicians and medical personnel from all over the country and all over the world who had these experiences very isolated and report them and then uh only then discover that other people have had similar experiences so yeahh yeah I mean yeah definitely by that book I think cuz yeah when you're reading like you're trying to explain away from a pist standpoint okay this one this one no next one next one next one and so like the mounting of evidence of this with cross corroboration is just so overwhelming it's literally insane and so you actually directly conducted a study where you um reviewed reports of out-of- body perceptions and then um basically examined how accurate what they reported was can you tell me a little bit about that because that that's been cited in so many different books at this point so yeah well um a researcher named Keith and why I'm blanking on his last name had written an article about what he called um erroneous um perceptions from of this type and and was arguing that therefore um this you know this must all be nonsense which essentially means that what they were seeing was not correct was not cor exactly and um and he had I believe five cases he might have had six and um and so when I read this I was kind of like taken a b because it was like I hadn't really thought in an organized way about this but but I definitely had the impression that there were a lot of cases where what people perceived was accurate and what they perceived was contradicted their expectations it might be very idiosyncratic stuff that they couldn't possibly have imagined and I I it just got me really curious so it so happened that um the universe brought me a a young woman from Switzerland who was doing her uh um Master's thesis and and she just came and lived with me for three months and while I went off to the university she went through all my library to find cases where people supposedly perceive things from the material world that were later um either corroborated or not no and what what I found was first of all I found one more case that he hadn't even found that involved um uh error but I found so many more like more than 90% of the cases were accurate and um and and I was very like um personnic about what would be that if there was any error whatsoever for example this woman uh had a near-death experience while she was uh doing a a an international business stint that involved several months and while she was gone her brother had enlisted in the service and uh and which she didn't know and uh when she um and he all and he had um uh been fatally wounded and died before she was notified she had her near-death experience shortly after this after he died and before she had been notified in the in the Material World so in her experience she saw her brother in his uh military outfit and um she saw you know that he had these medals and other kinds of things on his uh on his uniform so um when her business and then of course she was later uh not long after that notified by her family that he had died in in combat and so when she got home uh she saw for the first time a photo of him in his uh uniform and everything was exactly as she had seen except where she had seen a medal or where she had seen a cross a Christian cross was actually a medal I counted that as an error all the positive stuff that's fine but if she anything was wrong I counted as an error and even then with that stringent Criterion I found so few that involved error of any kind and so um so the vast majority of these cases are involv accurate perception yeah I so I just want to recount the data again just to for the audience so again the two things we reference 75 to 80% people floating outside their body completely incapacitated or clinically dead um and then they're describing what they're seeing um and then this study that you directly conducted 92% of them were completely accurate of things that would literally be impossible for them to understand which is just just mind-blowing to me yeah I think there's there's a lot of words um thrown around like Consciousness um Mind Body Spirit um so kind of just to to tie this up do you do you feel like based on your Decades of studies and research has science proven that we have a soul I'm I'm a little reluctant to use the word Soul because it's associated with religion and um I prefer to use the word Consciousness that um that we each have a unique Consciousness and that uh what veritical perception indicates is that uh our con we have a Consciousness that can function independent of the physical brain mhm and then the implication of that it is that um that Consciousness might have preceded our physical Incarnation it might survive our physical demise and so the implication is a um an eternal Consciousness but the part that has been um indicated through scientific research so far is just the fact that Consciousness can function apart from the physical brain yeah yeah because I mean the the biggest piece of that again materialist worldview is that the brain produces the mind right so if if you're saying that the brain produces the mind um and that they're the same thing um this um is kind of and all the researchers and scientists that are in this field is kind of proving that the mind is separate from the brain or that the brain actually act acts as a filter for the mind yes would that be correct yes both uhhuh yeah so to so to um just take what you said a little bit further the implication of the materialist view that uh that the brain produces consciousness the implication is that then when the brain becomes nonfunctioning Consciousness also will just disappear yeah because you know if it if the brain produces it and the brain is offline then Consciousness can't happen um so this what this indicates is that Consciousness is essentially independent of the brain but obviously closely connected while we're physically alive to the brain yeah because we know that you know there when I think something that's going to show with EEG you know activity and there's a definite correlation between my conscious experience and brain activity yeah um it's just that uh what these ex veritical perception indicates is that Consciousness can function without brain activity and uh so yeah so then then as I said the implication is that uh that Consciousness can continue um it once the brain is absolutely completely irreversibly dead we're just just scratching the surface of what is actually going on here and so you know you have the the rical perception which is evidential um cross corroborated all of that things and then there are a number of I think Dr Jeffrey long and one of paper he did recently was there's about 12 different features of what happens next um and so in Grayson's work he said that 90% about 90% of his subjects reported um encountering a being of light like kind of as a next step of that and so and that people said that that was the most meaningful part of their experience um and it seems like everything I've read like every single researcher has reported this with high frequency so can you tell me about that a little bit the the being of light thing sure well the the being of light light which some people identify as like God but other people are um more cautious and just say you know here's here's what I experienced is this um light that is profoundly intense and yet does not hurt the person's eyes so to speak even though they're not perceiving it with physical eyes and that this light is a like a personality an entity that emanates AB absolute love um and and a complete knowing of the near-death experiencer so the experiencer feels absolutely known absolutely loved and it's a it's a profound experience people typically say a love like I've never experienced on Earth you know it's it's um and and therefore is very difficult to describe um often in the presence of this light the person experiences what's called a Life review and that's another aspect that they tend to say is most meaningful because what happens in the Life review is the person um reviews that is sees again and simultaneously re-experiences and simultaneously observes from a sort of third person perspective typically every moment of their life and experiences what anybody that they were relating to was was experiencing so like if Andy ears are right and we're all going to experience this when we die someday you and I will re-experience this moment and I will know what it is to be you and you will know what it is to be me this isn't just like imagining or kind of it's the ultimate sense of like empathy right it's it's yeah it's beyond empathy in the sense that um it empathy is in still involves some imagination it's a it's an experience of being the other person yeah and um and so when I've been nice to somebody I experience what did for them right when I've been mean to some somebody I experienced what that meanness was for them and um and that has a as you can imagine a profound impact on people when they come back to realize that um we are all connected and and every and and uh I should say too that in the Life review a lot of experiencers make the point that uh they experienced just like how they reacted to somebody when they were going through the checkout line at the grocery store and that they either said something nice to the checkout person or acted you know impatient with them and they experienced how that affected them and and how they how they went on to relate to other people as a result and um so to to realize the the awesome responsibility we have in how we relate to each other moment to moment and that um it it goes you know the the golden rule is actually something that is uh Universal among all religions you know essentially do unto others as you'd have them do unto you what what life reviews tell us is that um there isn't really an other and a you there is only us we're connected and that when I do unto you I am doing unto myself yeah um and so rule yeah the Golden Rule has lots of implications at every level from the momentto moment interactions we have to you know the decisions that are made at you know the highest levels of government and things like that yeah I mean I have a couple quotes here about the Life review thing from people um who experienced it for a sandwich I want to write uh read off um so one person said in every scene of My Life review I could feel again what I had felt at various times in my life which is what you just said um and I could feel everything everyone else felt as a consequence of my actions some of it felt good and some of it felt awful all of this translated into knowledge and I learned Oh How I Learned and then another person said in short the whole of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic review and each Act seemed to be accompanied by consciousness of right and wrong so I think that this finding is uh fascinating the sense of like the that actions do have consequences um I don't think you need to like uh necessarily learn about NDS to see see that in in the outward world right like um but this brings it home in a in a very real way right and that it is and what a lot of Indie ears say is not just our actions but even our thoughts can have effects and so there's this tremendous sense of responsibility yeah yeah I think and then in terms of the being of light what I find to be kind of most remarkable about this future you know obviously is how people describe this being um and so whether you're you're you're calling it uh calling it being God or or or creator or whatnot um there's been so many debates throughout history about the nature of what created us or or the source of what created us um and I think some of the theories have to do with like a distance or a Detachment from the actual creation or from Earth or the Universe um but I just find it so remarkable that they're talking about unconditional love um one person who uh basically died in a car crash described this and said peace tranquility Harmony Oneness well-being unconditional love and acceptance um is kind of the characteristics of of what they felt in the presence of that being so yeah yeah and that you know a lot of near-death experiencers come back with the conviction that this is the ultimate source yeah of everything and that um that anything that we see in the in Earthly life that is not an expression of of that love is just a um disconnection from what is our true source so um so it there's this conviction that this is this is the essence this is the the true nature uh fundamental nature of the of the cosmos so we have the vertical perception um being of light life r viw um some of the other features that people have kind of universally reported um P they die they pass through a tunnel um and then they end up in basically another realm um and it seems like from everything that I've studied with this that people say like that they feel like that is more real than this world and that that feels like their home and that this doesn't feel like their home that really interesting to me yeah yeah it is kind of amazing and again a very unexpected um phenomenon for the vast majority of people that uh they they experience um meeting um non-material entities and being in places that feel like coming home and uh a lot of uh near-death experiencers again people who didn't know each other use that term that they felt like they were home um really where they where they belonged and uh so for them it can be very challenging to come back to Earthly existence where there isn't unconditional love and uh and there's disconnection from from that um that source of of such joy and Bliss yeah yeah I think what's interesting um you know when we talk about evidential corroboration um I think the second big thing that has been widely talked about with the ndes um in terms of what you can verify is people entering this other realm um and they encountered deceased family relatives friends um and what's most remarkable is there are some instances where they received information or knew something that happened um that literally would have been impossible for them to know and then they they when they returned back into their bodies um and then continue on with life um they talk about that can you can you talk about that element of of sure because the um veridical material can come from the material world like the seeing the surgeon do this or the transmaterial world and uh there are cases uh many cases of people who like the woman I mentioned before who saw her brother and didn't know that he had died in combat um there's a a a case in the self does not die where um this this was in the days before cell phones and so the um this little boy was seriously ill he was in the hospital his parents spent the night at the hospital and finally um and and during the night he uh had a near-death experience he came back and he said that he saw his older sister who told told him that he had to come back but she was going to stay where where they met in this trans material um domain and the parents just thought you know he's hallucinating whatever so finally um he was stabilized and and the parents decided you know we're going to go home and shower and try to get some sleep and stuff when they got home they found on their answering machine like 20 some uh messages from the University where their older daughter was a student and they were calling to tell the parents that she had died the previous night just before midnight go in a car accident well his near-death experience happened in the middle of the night so he saw her in the transmaterial domain and she told him you have to go back I'm going to stay here he wasn't hallucinating he he um met someone that had died that nobody in his in the material world yet knew knew that she was dead that she was dead so there are lots of cases like that so the the the veritical information can can come from not just the material world but also the transmaterial world yeah yeah no that that and then what we just talking about with floating outside of our bodies like those two things are just completely dumbfounding the scientific Community um and then with some of these other features you you just get the breath and uh consistency across people that are experiencing these things and so when it came to encountering loved ones um uh Dr Jeffrey long again he wrote um you know they generally appear completely healthy even if they died of a disfiguring accident or illness um which is just remarkable because let just say someone had cancer or they had uh I don't know Alzheimer's or something and then now when they're in this other realm or existence now you're you're seeing them fully healthy and thriving once again um which is uh incredible the other thing um I thought was really interesting is a sense in Alteration of time um I think time is is an interesting subject in itself time is in the material world linear um so you know I'm in my 30s right now going to be in my 40s and' 60s 7s um but seems like when people die all sense of time in essence kind of like goes out the window can you can you explain that well one of the key features of near-death experience is that uh during the experience time either speeds up or slows down or loses all meaning and um and if you think about it our concept of time is so tied to the Earth revolving around the sun and the hours of the day the days of the week blah blah blah that um what if you're out in space and you're no longer you know in this this time elapsing um environment and so that's I think what happens is that people are free from the material world and the uh that what near-death experiencers say and and other like mystical exper expers and so forth is that time as we think of it doesn't really exist it's an illusion and that uh that actually everything is happening at once and uh but but we're in on Earth in this um as you mentioned before filtered experience where we where this illusion becomes a a reality yeah yeah it's like so fascinating um the other thing is is how people describe their not only heightened senses but also their bodies um and so there's a few characteristics that people um talk about with like if you want to call it upgraded bodies or whatever you want to call it in terms of like how they have a sense of themselves MH yeah and and different end ears have different different experiences in this regard some perceive that they have a kind of a kind of physic like their physical body but but different in um like maybe being translucent that sort of thing some people perceive thems as a um an energetic ball of light and some some say they just have no form whatsoever so um so it can vary from person to person about but it's but they certainly perceive thems to be different than identified with this physical body yeah yeah and then one of the other features obviously um so not all experiences were pleasant um that's right and uh which is just an uncomfortable thing to talk about um obviously the research around the pleasant experience is um is exciting it's love to hear about it um and it's convincing but then there's like there's there's two places that people go to one is a a pleasurable experience and then the other one is a a kind of distressing experience can you and it seems like I couldn't really get a a handle on the exact number but it seems anywhere between 8 to 23% of people is experiences can you tell me about what that is what's going on there yeah so um and and that's right 8 to 23 what I like to say is a just a General um concept is maybe 10% is and it could be a little higher a little lower um and and we can't know because some people don't want to talk about the experience it's so upsetting to them yeah but uh so we it's kind of hard to know but that's a good you know General guess and um what we know again from research is that distressing experiences take one of three forms the most common form has all the same featur is a pleasurable experience except that the the experiencer is resisting they don't want they find themselves moving rapidly through a tunnel they don't want to move through you know they're digging in their heels and um and in many of those cases the experiencer gets to a point where they just decide to surrender and then the experience turns pleasurable surrender to what surrender to the experience rather than resist it they just kind of like relax and okay whatever and then the experience turns pleasurable so um that doesn't happen in every case but in many in many of that type of cases the second type of distressing experience now I'm going from most frequently reported that I just described yeah next least frequently described is an experience where the person finds them out in a void absolutely alone forever so it's with this experience of absolute Eternal isolation and it is for the experiencers who've experienced it terrifying uh because they're fully conscious of being absolutely alone forever and that that the awareness of their absolute isolation is um is what they have and um and then and I can tell you a a story about um one of those cases but uh to go on just to give the overview least frequently reported is an experience of um some kind of Torment where the person is um experiencing pain and suffering uh that is you know happening uh being put on them uh and so um so the these you know what might be called hellish experiences although I've only seen out of all the cases that I've read and people that I've talked with I've only seen one case where there was actually Hellfire you know that that kind of um Hellfire and Damnation sort of view of of uh of hell um it's it more often takes the form of for example Matthew davl in his near-death experience uh part of it was that he was um experiencing it was kind of like the His Life review he was experiencing everybody he had ever hurt appear come and bump up against him they bump chess with them and when that happened he would relive how he had hurt them and that went on he said for uh three days and three nights during during his experience and uh it just one after another and it was absolutely excruciating um another near-death experiencer had an experience of being sort of um uh um violated by evil entities like their flesh ripped and their you know transmaterial flesh ripped and that's sort of thing so um uh interestingly in both of those cases it doesn't always happen but um once again uh there are many of those cases where the person uh eventually calls out with absolute sincerity to be saved um sometimes by Jesus or sometimes by some other benevolent entity and when that happens the experience ends and their experience turns Blissful doesn't happen for everybody but again in many cases yeah and the same thing with the void kind of thing the crying out yeah yeah that there there can be an outcry for for help and deliverance um but one of the things that we know from research is that even people who've had distressing ndes end up having the same positive a After Effects as people who had pleasurable ndes uh people we haven't gotten into After Effects very much yet but you know people become more loving less concerned about materialism more concerned about the well-being a others and that sort of thing so for many people not again not everybody but the I would say the great majority of people who have distressing experiences it's like a wake up call a course correction yeah in their life and and I think of it often as an analogy I'm not a parent actually but I know a lot about parenting because of being a a counseling uh Professor that um Sometimes some children are responsive to benevolent love like if you just look at them you know a little they kind of straighten up and fly right others need tough love and I think uh my my personal observation is that there's a higher wisdom at work like whatever that person is needing for their Spiritual Development is what they get yeah and so um that's so interesting yeah yeah yeah I think one one one interesting thing about the hellish experiences um which every piece of literature I've read on on this is that the rate at which people report these is far less because of the nature of them I mean just when you think about like um the experience in general I mean since because of the taboo because of the whatever like a lot of like you L out some for some people you have to like pull this out of them um even a pleasurable one so yeah how more so for like a hellish thing that you like don't want to talk about so I think from a logical perspective it would make sense that way more pleasurable ones would be reported then and that seems to be the consensus amongst the field yeah that's right that's right yeah I think I think people hear this um and then they automatically I mean there's so many different belief systems probably watching this right now but um they might run to what prior religious belief was or um and I think that like that in itself isn't necessarily and we talked about this indicative of um behavior um even if you're looking like the the Bible for example Jesus saying that not it says not everyone who says to me Lord Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven um basically saying that there be people that say they follow him um but might not enter in and so I think I think we're talking about the Life review we're talking about um uh our Behavior our character how our actions affect other people yeah and I think that like what's tough about this is that only you really know or only I really know like the content of what's going on in like my own heart and only I'm having the interactions with with people in terms of like how I'm affecting them and so yeah can you talk about that a little bit like that whole dynamic well let me let me uh I've had a few thoughts as I've listened to you uh just now one is that uh again from research we know that um there's no relationship between the kind of Life a person lived and whether have a pleasurable or distressing experience for example um there's a case of a woman who was a um drug addict manipulative prostitute Thief I mean she was like you know really a bad person and as we would consider it in you know our social perspective um had a profoundly pleasurable near-death experience and conversely a man who was an assassin for the US military who had killed many people um uh had a a pleasurable experience um also a woman who uh was a minister and had by all ways of measuring been like a really good person had a profoundly distressing experience so there's no relationship between um a person's life experience and what kind of near-death experience they're going to have and that's unfortunately not very comforting you know um for what everybody who's ever researched distressing experiences uh ends up concluding that anybody can have a distressing experience we don't really entirely we don't understand why I think the thing that's interesting is like what is a good person yeah what is a bad person you know I mean obviously you could have judgments on a particular people group or something like that um and from a societal standpoint you could be like oh well they're bad I'm good and we all we always tend to think that like we're we have a bias towards ourselves that like like we're a good person I do think what's again interesting about the experience is like these these are these are temporary deaths and then they come back versus like this is this wasn't a final thing and I think what you said about the Insight um is really interesting in the sense of like what someone needs for their own Journey um but there are people like uh there was one case his name I think is Howard storm he was featured in a a movie like last year who realized from a hellish experience that they weren't living well yeah that's not that's not the same thing as like they were totally 100% sure that like their behavior caused that experience but he came back from that experience realizing that he wasn't living well yeah yeah so and that's not unusual yeah yeah and even people who have you know quote unquote lived well in the Life review to to experience what others that I've interacted with experience they they uh go to another a new level of uh of care and commitment to be um you know kind and compassionate to other people so uh so there's that kind of um learning for you know for just about everybody another thought that I had while you were talking a minute ago is um about uh that uh quote from Jesus about entering the kingdom of heaven and um one of the things that I can say from near-death research is that uh it is not um pleasurable experiences meeting the being of light and so forth happens to people of all uh belief systems and all religions and so um there isn't a um a favoritism of people from one yeah religion or another what I found uh you know obviously we're talking about um you know living well all that stuff um what I found to be really interesting about these discoveries um is like the the mindset messages that people come back with which again we're like we're getting into kind of the after effects a little bit one of the most striking things that I found from this which are just I almost had like chill's reading this was this example in Dr Bruce Grayson's book he he had this case and this person gave this analogy of how we're in a huge dark Warehouse um and referring to our life on Earth right now we're in a huge Rock Warehouse we have like a a flashlight right and so like we could only see what's like directly in front of us with the flashlight that doesn't mean that everything else is not there it's just we can only see with that um and then she had equated it to uh imagine that one day someone flicks on a switch Yeah and then you know she said in a sudden burst of Brilliance and sound and color you see the the entire warehouse and it's nothing like you'd ever imagined you see colors you don't recognize ones you've never seen before the vastness complexity depth and breadth of everything going on around you is almost overwhelming um and I just love that analogy so much um it also speaks to the idea of like the mind and the Brain uh the filtering of the the mind um through the brain um and then it's like almost like some people have described it as that their mind had become free um through that experience and so I think that that is literal but it's also metaphorical of like the the message that comes back of like almost being um completely changed in your perspective of like like why I'm here yeah um and so I think there's a few themes of one of them is like the the underlying current of Love Can you can you talk to me about that well I would say that probably the the biggest take-home message that I I have gathered from near-death experiencers is that they they say that the purpose of Our Lives on Earth is to advance in our capacity to love we're here to develop our ability to love and and so you know like what does love mean well my definition of Love Is that um when when I love I'm invested in the survival and thriving of that which I love so if I love you I'm invested in you surviving and thriving I love myself I'm invested in my surviving and thriving and um and that that's really what we're we're here to develop and um and of course the challenges come when we encounter people who are don't have those intentions toward us and how can we remain loving toward them when they're not loving toward us and all that those are the the challenges that you know life um wonderfully brings us and so um so that's that's really it the the bottom line is me is love and uh and the second thing that Andy ears say is that we're also here to learn to advance in our knowledge that somehow when we learn things we're contributing to the the knowledge of the all and so uh so it boils down to loving and learning is why we're here yeah one person wrote um there's only one word that says it all love uh and the message is this just as I have loved you you must love one another this is uh irrevocable truth um which I think is so interesting when you think about um I don't know if you've done work in the area of like attachment Theory um and which essentially is is one another huge Discovery in the field of psychology in 20th century um you know that were hardwired for attachment from birth um another way of saying this is hardwired for the need to love and be loved and and have that care in our life and so there's there's these parallels that have been done in like randomized like like controlled studies when with attachment Theory it's just like entirely this this beautiful through line of like these messages that people are coming back versus what we're seeing in like in like psychology and the other thing is um time and so kind of how people are using their time how people are using their skills one person said uh immediately the thought was communicated to me that all the skills and all the talents and everything that had been given which I been very very very blessed with were for a purpose greater than the purpose I was using them for um it really makes me think about the Pursuits of life of of the Pursuits of money or fame right um or um I don't know success or all these things that outwardly that it feels like everybody is like pursuing these things because they feel like that is going to be the meaning in life that's going to be like the ultimate sense of happiness but it seems like people fun mentally come back with a different interpretation of their own skills and talents that's right yeah uh people become less materialistic more concerned about others so they tend to move into um service occupations afterwards after their near-death experience um so yeah there's a uh a and and that's not to say that people don't enjoy material things I'll never forget uh the warehouse analogy you you were mentioning came from Anita morani and one day at a a con an Ian conference a few years ago uh it one of my tasks was to pick up Anita and her husband Dany at the airport and bring them to the conference hotel and and the hotel happened to be in a complex with a Macy's and as we approached the hotel Anita was Amy's you know so here's this near-death experiencer who's just so excited about going shopping and and she said you know it's not that I don't enjoy material things but they're not my priority anymore my life isn't primarily about um material things I enjoy but um also there's this other um manifestation related to attachment about being attached to things and um and uh what ND ear say is I enjoy material things without being attached to them so if I lose them it's okay but while I have them I can absolutely enjoy them and that is one of the messages that a lot of people get in their nde is that we're also here to enjoy this life yeah you know we're um when we can not that horrible things don't happen and you know people um experience tragic um circumstances but that uh to the extent that we're able to we're we're meant to enjoy this yeah yeah yeah that's so that's so good um yeah I think where I kind of wanted to land um is to talk about the future of science um and based on the data and and the evidence at hand with with all this stuff um it seems that like materialism and we're defining that as like the the physical world is all that exists is not the best explanation of reality and you've talked about this in um some other interviews I've seen you um do and you suggested that the future of science should be rooted in idealism not materialism so can you tell me about that a little bit yes so idealism as I understand it because I'm not a I'm not trained in philosophy but it is essentially the idea that Consciousness and the brain are not um that the brain doesn't produce Consciousness that Consciousness is a and the the brain are essentially independent and that um it doesn't mean that uh it doesn't negate the uh discoveries that have come out of a materialist perspective it just broadens yeah broadens it to say that you know yes that and there's also this that there's also more more than that and that um that that is that that more is where a lot of uh meaning and purpose can derive that that eventually will bode well for for Humanity the Earth you know and all that yeah yeah that's good so I mean based on in in more pointed question based on like your research um and expertise in this field like over 40 years um do you believe that science has proved the existence of the afterlife Pim van LL coined this uh phrase um that the evidence comes from many phenomena not just near-death experiences and when you take this what he calls convergence of evidence from all of these different types of experiences it points very definit Ely to the survival of Consciousness after death I think when we're considering materialism versus idealism um you know a lot of people watching could be like an overwhelming amount of of information yeah um to kind of digest uh and there was this this uh quote in the beginning pages of the self does not die kind of addressing this um and how it is really understandable how people could respond emotionally or uh to the idea of like this is what my worldview has been this is how I make sense of reality and to consider that there's like something beyond that is like really could be distressing um and so you know you've you also are a counselor um and so what would you say to like to those people who are like trying to make sense of this um and yeah I feel like what we're talking about today well I guess the first thing I would say is relax yeah you know it's okay and also that um yes uh this evidence can fundamentally change a person's concept of who they are why they are here on Earth and what will happen to them after they die um the good news is that the message m is a fundamentally positive one and uh that despite some of the bumps in the road you know the distressing near-death experiences and some of the after effect challenges that people have after having near-death experiences um ultimately uh the messages are positive about loving and learning and that uh it can involve quite a um quite an adaptation to bring one's life in line with what we know and also that um to know that it's okay if we mess up because one of the things that happens in the Life review people say that whatever they did that that they in you know as they're watching it they're like oh my gosh they they just hate seeing what they did um and and feeling the effect of what they did on other people the being of light is absolutely Ely um accepting there's there's a a lot of Andie ears describe that the being of light conveys the sense that you know you were learning you were learning and that's this was part of your learning process so um so the the message is ultimately positive for people who can succeed in making this transition to this kind of perspective yeah yeah well thank you so much for your time being here today so welcome Matthew