Best Proof of Life After Death. Near Death Experience Expert! | Dr. Jeffrey Long

To say that consciousness lifts itself out of a body is a very bold statement.

Yes, near-death experiences are for real. About 45% of people having an NDE do indeed describe consciousness above their body. By the time I see that in thousands of experiences, you've got to go back to that core scientific principle that what is consistently observed is real. We have scores and scores of these out-of-body experiences where their consciousness can travel city blocks, observing ongoing earthly events, retaining that information of what they saw, almost invariably accurate down to the finest details.

Now, Dr. Long, you're very comfortable talking about these things because you've studied this for decades and decades. But any one of those things sounds unbelievable. I've studied over 150 times in near-death experiences where they described awareness or encounter with Jesus. Jesus is very different from how people would understand Jesus reading the Bible. Jesus is essentially never giving the commandments. Jesus just simply wants to convey that love, that peace, that presence. That was a person born totally deaf. He had a remarkably vivid near-death experience. He was communicating as virtually everybody communicates when they're in a non-physical, non-earthly realm. And that's telepathically.

Like, if this is true, what's going on?

The implications of consciousness, apart from the body, are just radically important. Is there any way that we can duplicate that without having a life-threatening event? What does that say about to be a human?

[Music]

Hi, I'm Mim. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. What happens after we die? We have all the answers. Clear as day. This is a different kind of dive into our understanding of NDEs. Um, we're going to be speaking with, uh, Dr. Jeffrey Long. He's a, um, radiation oncology physician, uh, practicing in Kentucky, and he founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation, ndf.org. It's a website that's available in over 30 languages and it serves a global audience. It has allowed him to study over 4,000 accounts of people having near-death experiences. And, um, the intricacy and the complexity of near-death experiences is what we're going to talk about today. We're also going to talk about some of the possibilities for explanations for near-death experiences, as well as a deep discussion about what it could mean to have consciousness leave the body. Uh, what it could mean for consciousness to leave the room and travel outside of our physical being. And what does it mean that thousands and thousands of people report such similar, um, phenomenal experiences in a brain and a body that is not producing any cognitive information?

Mim and Dr. Long explain and give anecdotes, uh, of very powerful near-death experiences. Um, someone who is able to see even though they are blind and have sight unlike anything anyone has ever had before, someone who has telepathy as their near-death experience, and people who have come back with extra-sensory abilities that are really hard to explain.

Um, we're going to be discussing evidence of the afterlife, the science of near-death experiences. Um, we'll also talk about Dr. Long's other book, which is "God and the Afterlife." At one point in this episode, Mim starts to ask about complicated relationships people have in the physical realm and how those change when people have a near-death experience, go to the afterlife, and they're greeted by love and compassion. She starts to talk about the power of God and the ability to forgive and love. And literally, lightning strikes Dr. Long's hotel and shuts off the power. Bear with us. You don't want to miss what happens next.

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable the timing of this lightning strike. So, the episode gets a little bit truncated at that point. Um, but we hit all the points that we wanted to, discussing, um, God, love, and experiences in the afterlife. And, uh, please stay tuned for, uh, this incredible conversation.

Break it down.

Hi, Dr. Long. Welcome to the breakdown.

Hey, greetings. It's the breakdown crew. This is awesome.

I wonder if you can tell us what, what was your first introduction to the fact that people encounter something extraordinary in some cases when they are near death?

Absolutely. It was over 30 years ago. I was in my medical residency training. I'm a full-time practicing radiation oncology physician still, but decades ago, I was in residency training. And this was so long ago, we didn't have internet. If you wanted to look up a cancer-related article for taking care of patients, you had to go to the medical library, and there are these big, thick, bound medical journals. So, here I am flipping through a medical journal and completely by accident, I run across an article that has the title "Near-Death Experience," and it was in the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the world's more prestigious medical journals. But I'd never heard of that topic before. So, I, I, everything I knew as a doctor in my training, you're either dead or you're not dead. So, what's this near-death experience? So, fascinated, I read the article and was immediately astonished. Here was a cardiologist, Dr. Sebagh, who was had a number of his patients who had cardiac arrests. Their heart stopped and they should be comatose, completely unconscious. And yet many of them had a near-death experience and described consciousness apart from their body where they were able to see and hear ongoing earthly events. And they were accurate down to the finest detail. I was astonished. I remember thinking vividly, if, if this is real, if this is true, this changes my whole view of the universe. And I remember also thinking somewhat prophetically, why aren't more people studying these fascinating experiences? So, several years later, when I had a college friend and his wife visiting me where I was at, Iowa City, Iowa, I heard my first in-person near-death experience, and I was hooked. I said, "I have got to study this." I set up my research website, NDERF.org, and started out with a very detailed survey using the best scientific methods to study near-death experiences and answer that burning question that I had: Are near-death experiences for real? Well, that was about 5,000 near-death experiences ago that have been shared on my website. So, I can answer that my burning question I had then unequivocally today. Yes, near-death experiences are for real. We have a lot to talk about regarding that.

One of the things I, I wonder if you can sort of start us out, um, to help people understand, you know, when people think about that statement, like you're either conscious or you're not. You're either comatose or you're not. You're either awake or you're not. So, there's a, a number of different fascinating regions of the brain and nervous system that are extremely important for, uh, things like breathing, uh, things like, um, you know, respiration patterns and changes and temperature regulation. There's all sorts of different regions. Can you, from a clinical perspective, describe what is happening when someone is, in theory, let's just say unconscious under anesthesia? Because many people have near-death experiences from being under anesthesia, and this isn't the case where it's, quote, "not enough anesthesia," and people are waking up and, you know, kind of screaming inside. The people who report NDEs under anesthesia are reporting very similar NDEs as people who have an accident or, you know, something like that. But can you describe, from a clinical perspective, what's going on in the brain and nervous system that makes us say, "Okay, that person's conscious and they're awake," or, "They're not"?

Right. That's a great question. I've actually studied near-death experiences under anesthesia, and I have about 60 of them. And just exactly like you said, there, the content of what occurs in a near-death experience while under general anesthesia is basically the same as near-death experiences under all other circumstances. And by the way, when they have a near-death experience while they're under general anesthesia, where they shouldn't have any conscious remembrance, the near-death experience is generally, nearly always induced by cardiac arrest. The heart stops. And of course, that's very carefully monitored when you're under general anesthesia because that's the job of the anesthesiologist and others in the room there. So, at that point in time, uh, it should be, if you will, with a heart stopping under and being under general anesthesia, it should be doubly impossible to have a conscious remembrance. It's actually had, there's been a, a fairly large number of good medical studies that under general anesthesia had EEG electroencephalogram measurements of brain activity. Under general anesthesia, uh, very clear from the EEG measurements, the cortical brain electrical activity, which is what it measures, is absolutely off the chart, distorted, incoherent, nothing like what's observed in a conscious state. So, we know darn good and well, not only clinically from talking to patients that have been under general anesthesia, or I'm certain a lot of the viewers here, you know, that you are under general anesthesia, it's a blank spot and then you wake up. But we know that clinically validated also through EEG measurements. Um, under general anesthesia, there's absolutely no coherent cortical function which should even begin to allow even fragmentary conscious experience. And, and of course, you add in the, the heart stopping, and that's also been, by the way, studied. When the heart stops, immediately blood stops flowing to the brain, and 10 to 20 seconds after that event, that EEG measurement of brain electrical cortical activity goes absolutely flat. Again, no measurable coherent cortical brain activity that is necessary for an organized conscious experience. So, especially under near, under general anesthesia with near-death experiences, it should be doubly impossible to have any kind of conscious experience. And yet, by the scores, people that have near-death experiences do report that phenomena. And I might add, that's some of the strongest single line of evidence for the reality of near-death experiences not being due to physical brain function that I can think of.

MB Alex Breakdown is supported by BetterHelp.

You know, running a podcast with a mental health and wellness focus, we see a ton of mental health content come our way. There's so much on social media, and some of it can be misleading. Some of it's blatantly false. Also, there's just so much of it. How do you know what to follow? Cold plunge, gratitude journal, screen detox. Trusted resources and talking to a live therapist can give you personalized recommendations and help you break through all of that noise. It's so wonderful that there's so much information out there, um, that we can now access. But there's nothing like talking to a therapist live, one-on-one. There's nothing like it. It's a level of intimacy and vulnerability that is so important. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of five for a live session, based on over 1.7 million client reviews. It's convenient. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. And you can switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/break. That's betterhp.com/break.

[Music]

My breakdown is supported by Symbiotica. So many people are struggling right now with stress management, with sleep issues, disrupted focus. Well, Symbiotica is coming to the rescue with high-quality supplements that you can trust and that your body can actually absorb. Jonathan and I love magnesium L-threonate from them. It reduces brain fog, it calms and balances mood, and helps support restful sleep. So magnesium L-threonate is the salt that's formed from mixing magnesium and threonic acid, a water-soluble substance derived from the metabolic breakdown of vitamin C. And the delivery is liposomal, which means faster nutrient absorption. And its patented compound effectively crosses the blood-brain barrier. Plus, we're big fans of the yummy vanilla cream flavor. I love how stress-free Symbiotica makes sticking to healthy habits, even during vacations or road trips, 'cause the packets just fit in your bag whenever you need support. Stay consistent this summer with Symbiotica. Are you feeling off? Give it a try. Made a huge difference for us. Go to symbiotica.com/break for 20% off plus free shipping.

That's symbiotica.com for 20% off plus free shipping.

My Alex Breakdown is supported by Defender.

Are you a trailblazer, a risk-taker, someone with countless tales of epic adventure? Well, I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. If you're looking to take on a challenge, the Defender is too. It's a vehicle built for drivers capable of great things. Whether they're headed toward uncharted territory or just a weekend getaway or maybe just to the supermarket, adventure seekers won't want to miss Destination Defender, an epic weekend festival designed for Defender owners and enthusiasts in Port Jervis, New York, from May 16th through the 18th. This unforgettable weekend includes inspiring talks, off-road driving courses, chef tastings, and live music. To learn more, go to destinationdefenderusa.com. A vehicle built for the modern explorer, the Defender 110 is a vehicle built for extremes and has the endurance to take you further. It's got five seats with the option of seven. 3D surround cameras with ClearSight Ground View let you see underneath the vehicle. ClearSight offers an unobstructed rear view. Driver aid technologies make driving and parking simpler. The next-generation Pivi Pro infotainment system helps make more of your world, and intuitive driver displays are customizable to your journey. Design your Defender 110 at LandRoverUSA.com. Visit LandRoverUSA.com to learn more about the Defender 110.

Explore Defender 110 at LandRoverUSA.com.

[Music]

When we had Elizabeth Cone on the episode, you know, she was struck by lightning. She was on the pavement for a couple minutes, right? And she had, I mean, an experience that that takes hours to explain in terms of what she encountered. So obviously, there's this sort of notion of, you know, what is happening in this short period of time that could lead to such a tremendous download of information. So I'm going to go ahead and ask, you know, these kinds of questions. Could it be that there's activity? You know, is the thalamus kind of unfiltering? Right? The thalamus is a region that sort of filters. Is the thalamus released from the normal filtration system and everything's just flooding through? Is there a possibility for brain stem activity? Are there any other regions of the brain besides the cortex, right? Because there's so many different regions. I'm just trying to like play the skeptic here. Is there any other brain region? Because for short-term recall, you need certain regions of the hippocampus. You need to be coding information that in some way is being stored in a way that you can then present it linguistically upon awakening, right?

Right. Okay. Let's talk about some of the terms you use. The thalamus is a portion of the upper part of the brain stem, and you mentioned brain stem. That's sort of the deeper part of the brain we all have that results in, you know, automatic bodily functions, heartbeat, respiration. Uh, could activity in those areas and not in the cortex produce conscious, lucid experiences like we see in NDEs? Absolutely not. Let me give you a good line of evidence for that. Don't forget when you're under general anesthesia, you're shut down to the level of the brain stem. You're not breathing spontaneously, and that's why generally under, uh, adequate anesthesia, you're artificially being ventilated. I mean, you may have a mask on, and people, I've done this a lot. You sit here squeezing a bag because if you didn't, you'd die. So, literally under general anesthesia, you're shut down, uh, all the way. Literally, the portion of the brain stem left functioning is that allowing heartbeat. But there's absolutely no chance that that could account for any kind of conscious experience, period, let alone the highly lucid, organized experience often with conscious remembrance that as Elizabeth vividly described, uh, could last for over an hour while you're unconscious or clinically dead for minutes. So, there's absolutely no way, hippocampus, thalamus, brain stem, in function alone or in combination with those lower brain activities, could possibly account for any kind of lucid, organized conscious experience. That's literally medically impossible.

It's not even a question for you to say that NDEs are real. You know, what would it mean to say they're not real? Meaning, what, what do skeptics say about what people report when they return from having a near-death experience? Like, what could explain that?

Yeah, that's a great question. Skeptics over decades have proposed over 30 different skeptical explanations of how near-death experiences can occur as a result of physical brain function. Now, you might say, gosh, over 30? Why are there so many skeptical explanations? And the answer to that is very simple. There's no one or several of these skeptical explanations attempting purportedly trying to justify how NDEs occur due to physical brain function that make sense even to the skeptics as a group. I mean, think about it. If the skeptics had any explanation for how near-death experiences occur from physical brain function, you wouldn't have over 30 different explanations floating around and seeming a new one every year or two. If we get into the details of what happened during a near-death experience, and Elizabeth was a real good example of that, uh, I think virtually everyone listening is going to understand what physical brain function can't explain any of the details of the content that happens during a near-death experience, let alone the totality of the multiple types of things that are observed. Technically, skeptical explanations are best conceptualized as a hypothesis. In other words, they're saying, okay, skeptics say, could it be due to, uh, reduced oxygen levels, hypoxia, increased carbon dioxide, hypercarbia, electrical activity, seizure activity, brain stem function? Those are all reasonable things to postulate as a hypothesis. I, I've studied, uh, pretty much every skeptic explanation I get my hands on, and they don't even begin to explain the, uh, what is described in a dear ne, near-death experience. In other words, the empirical evidence is what's so consistently described in my own series of thousands of near-death experiences, concordant with what thousands of other near-death experiences have been reported. Uh, the skeptics just simply can't, can't begin to explain physical brain functioning accounting for near-death experiences. Now, obviously, you know, one could posit, um, and I am not this person, but one could posit that people are writing these beautiful, creative stories and they share common themes because the themes of near-death experiences are known, right? Um, I, I think that you, you have to put that aside, right? If you're going to engage.

I, I don't, I have, I think that's another very legitimate skeptic concern, concern, and I think it's worth addressing. One of the glorious things about the research I do on the NDERF.org website is we post the full text of every near-death experience. So people all around the world, by the way, we have the website and the experiences posted in over 30 different languages. So literally anyone in the world can look at those near-death experiences and decide for themselves, is there any reason to believe they're copycat experiences? Is there any reason to believe a theme or themes or language reporting a specific aspect of near-death experience is propagated over and over and over again, suggesting that people are reading experiences, hearing experiences, and then incorporating that into their own experience and propagating it what they share? Answer: A vivid no. Uh, I, anybody that's curious, all you have to do is read near-death experiences from my website or literally or from published scholarly review articles on near-death experiences that have examples, but vividly. Uh, near-death experiences, while over and over we say they're strikingly similar in the content, and they absolutely are. And yet, each person, it's a unique experience. No two near-death experiences are the same. And you can vividly see that when you read a large number of near-death experiences. In the 25 years we've had our research website up, anybody who's read any number of the near-death experiences has never approached me and said, "Gee, I think I see a copycat. I see a recurrent theme. This sounds redundant like it would be a copycat." Absolutely no shred of evidence to, uh, justify that concern.

So talk to us about some of these incredible common themes, um, common threads that run through, I mean, NDEs across cultures, languages, age demographics, um, you know, how do we distinguish this from other phenomena?

Sure. Well, let's talk about what happens during, if you will, a typical detailed NDE. Just so everybody's up to speed here, if they're not as familiar with NDEs, um, first thing is that life-threatening event, so severe is the physical compromise that they're unconscious or maybe clinically dead with an absent heartbeat. So, at that time when they should be, well, the dictionary definition of unconscious is not conscious. So, literally, they shouldn't be having any remembrance. But at the beginning of a near-death experience, a common theme described is what's called an out-of-body experience. Consciousness rises up from their physical body, you know, often laying on the ground. And from that vantage point, they can see and often hear ongoing earthly events. I might add, when they check out the accuracy of what they saw later, almost always they're accurate down to the finest detail from that conscious vantage point above. And by the way, that's even true if they're making conscious observations far from their physical body.

But this is the point when, like in a hospital scene, they're like, "We lost this patient." Like people report seeing the scurrying of nurses and doctors being like, "We lost them." And they're like, shocking, like they are witnessing what happens when they're coding, basically, right?

Yeah. Absolutely. And it's, it's not like Hollywood there. These, there's going to be crash carts, don't magically appear. There's a lot of panic, a lot of unprofessional behavior. Unfortunately, it's often doctors.

They're freaking the [ __ ] out because they just lost a patient.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, thank you. That, that's exactly what is the reality of of an unexpected code. So, again, as a physician, you know, I've been through a number of codes. I get it. That's not like Hollywood. That is the reality. Uh, the gripping drama in all its complexity and emotion of a real code. Um, just jumping ahead a little bit, get back to your prior question. After that, they may pass into or through a tunnel, variably described, often at the end of the tunnel, there may be a bright, mystical light. It's described, some frequently as being bright, even more brilliant than the sun, and yet never hurts their eyes during the near-death experience. When they pass into this light, they're in an earthly, often called a heavenly realm. And that's probably aptly described because it's beautiful, beautiful beyond anything on earth. There can be, uh, buildings there. There can be earthly in their beauty, uh, landscapes there. People have described colors that are so beautiful in this realm that there's literally no earthly correlates beyond description. At this time, they're typically feeling overwhelming love and peace, two of the most common descriptive words to talk about near-death experiences that they share. Uh, this is when they may have a life review, see part or all of their prior life. They may at this point encounter deceased loved ones. Uh, these are joyous reunions. There can be a lot of dialogue. And I might add, part of encountering deceased loved ones, it's not at all unusual that they encounter deceased beloved pets. And then often at the end of the near-death experience, there's that moment of decision where they have to make a decision. Typically, there's other beings around them at that time. And many of them, not always, actually, most of them are returned to their physical body involuntarily at the end of the experience. For the minority that have a choice, that moment of decision, interestingly, the great majority of people having a near-death experience do not want to return to that physical earthly body that they were so familiar with for literally the decades of their life. They want to stay in that beautiful, uh, heavenly realm, if you will. Uh, uh, feeling love and peace and, and often describing that as being a sense of their real home. So, that's, if while no two near-death experiences are the same, that would be a very, uh, detailed near-death experience with a lot of the common elements or trimmings of what happens.

Now, Dr. Long. You're very comfortable talking about these things because you've studied this for decades and decades. But any one of those things sounds unbelievable, not just in the experience itself, but in the, the fact that it's replicated across so many different experiences and cultures. So again, I'm, I'm thinking like, oh, oh, light at the end of the tunnel, like we all know about that. If this is some sort of psychological artifact, there is absolutely no reason why there should be so much coherence across thousands and thousands of reports. It just doesn't exist. And if it's not a neuroanatomical, you know, phenomenon, then the only other option is that it is this other category of realness as you describe it. You know, you say in, in "Evidence of the Afterlife," this is real. If you weren't sure, like, this is real. And, you know, when we talk to Jeffrey Kriel and he explains what it means to think impossibly, right? That instead of saying that's impossible, it didn't happen, which is, forgive me, what my teenagers say when I try to talk to them about these things. You know, what if we open up our, our perceptive ability to say, "What if the impossible is possible?" and how do we then fit ourselves into this world? But there's one thing that you mentioned with such ease that I think we need to talk about. To say that consciousness lifts itself out of a body is a very bold statement. Meaning, when we think of the words that you're using, those verbs are applied to physical objects. I'm lifting this glass off the table, right? I'm lifting my child up off the floor. How would you like us to understand consciousness? Right? If we know that it needs, for example, a neuroanatomical substrate for us to be able to say, "Yes, this is a conscious experience. Yes, this is an experience that's, you know, being encoded and filtered through the thalamic regions and there's limbic system input and then it's getting coded in the hippocampus and then it's being transported to, you know, a, a conscious available verbal communication center." If I don't have anatomy and I don't have a place where I can say this is conscious, we have an unconscious being that you're telling me has a consciousness separate from it. How do I wrap my head around it?

Yeah, I can sympathize with that greatly because the very first time I read that article we discussed, uh, before I even started my research, I was astonished. It didn't, I literally started my studies as a bit of a skeptic for exactly that concern. I mean, this just seems so apart from anything that we know during our earthly everyday life. It just seems, as you've said, impossible. So that's why you use the scientific method. A core of science anywhere in any discipline starts with observation. So you start with observing, recording what people have with a near-death experience. And it's about 45% of people having an NDE do indeed describe consciousness above their body. For the people that experienced that and then shared that, like Elizabeth and many others, that's easy because that, that was what they experienced, and there's no question in their mind what happened. From the scientist, I don't, I look beyond, like literally anecdotal or single experiences, and by the time I see that in thousands of experiences, you've got to go back to that core again, scientific principle that what is consistently observed is real. And so again, not only in my study of thousands, but again, thousands of other NDEs reported, no question about that, uh, as amazing as it seems, as as counterintuitive as it sounds for those of us that that live a conscious existence in our life using our physical brain, that is the reality of near-death experiences, that is extremely well documented. And it's not just a matter of consciousness being over the body. I studied that. I've studied hundreds and looked for any possible error in their out-of-body observations. Um, me and other researchers that do that have a very high bar of evidentiality. If there's even one observation that's off from what consistency would be, that kind of goes into the "not real" box. But even with that stringent criteria, I find 98% of these out-of-body experiences are describing things that appear to have no error, either to the near-death experiencer or to myself. Moreover, uh, we have scores and scores of these out-of-body experiences where the consciousness just isn't just above the physical body. It actually can travel city blocks. Uh, we have scores where it's like literally even over a mile away from their physical body. And here they are again, observing ongoing earthly events and aware of that, retaining that information of what they saw in great detail. And for even those that had consciousness vastly far from their physical body, no way they could see or hear anything that far away where their consciousness is, when they check it out again, almost invariably accurate down to the finest detail. Kimberly Clark Sharp, she was in Seattle at that time and a social worker, and she was in a hospital and she had a patient who whose heart stopped and recovered from that. But then the patient told Kimberly, "Gosh, while I had that consciousness apart from the body, I actually had my consciousness travel outside the walls of the hospital but nearby my hospital room. And from that vantage point, I saw a shoe on the ledge." And she described the shoe on the ledge in terms of location, color, and the, uh, uh, and the shoelace position. And Kimberly just had never heard of near-death experiences. No dang way. And so Kimberly went out and got a, and you couldn't see it, by the way, from the outside. Very important. This was like up a floor. So it's not like you had any way to know that even walking around the hospital grounds. So Kimberly, fascinated, got a ladder, and you know where this is headed. The shoe is exactly as that lady described, exactly that physician color, and the shoelace kind of oddly positioned, sitting on the ledge of a hospital outside of any possible external to the hospital view. That lady absolutely, uh, and by the way, Kimberly, of course, checked carefully to see if you could observe that part of the ledge from that room through a window or any other adjacent room in the hospital. Absolutely no way. So, just a vivid example of one more out of a myriad of highly documented out-of-body observations during near-death experiences.

[Music]

My Alex breakdown is supported by Blueland. Are you secretly cleaning with microplastics? If you're using detergent pods, your clean might not be as clean as you think. That's why we have made the switch to Blueland across all the cleaning products around our house. Their products meet the highest standard of clean. They're effective and gentle on our family and the planet. Blueland was also named an EPA Safer Choice Partner of the Year. From cleaning sprays and toilet bowl cleaner to dishwasher and laundry detergent tablets, Blueland's formulas are 100% microplastic-free. Made with certified clean ingredients, free from chlorine, bleach, and harsh chemicals that are safe to use around family, pets, and plants. I love not having to choose between the safe option and what actually gets the house clean. Blueland makes it so easy to make sustainable choices. Their hardworking, clean products allow you to do better for your family and the planet. Their products are independently tested to perform alongside major brands, and they're free from dyes, bleach, and harsh chemicals. They're certified by EPA Safer Choice Certified, EWG Verified, Leaping Bunny, USDA Bio-based, B Corp. We love Blueland. They are affordable, and everything gets clean. And that's two of my favorite things. Blueland has a special offer for our listeners right now. You'll get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com/break. You don't want to miss this. blueland.com/break for 15% off.

That's blueland.com/break to get 15% off.

My breakdown is supported by Element.

Element helps anyone stay hydrated without the sugar and other dodgy ingredients found in popular electrolyte sports drinks. Electrolyte deficiency or imbalance can cause so many things: headaches, cramps, fatigue, brain fog, weakness. Element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. Element's formulated for anyone on a mission to restore health through hydration. Everyone from famed Stanford neuroscientists to functional nutritionists to moms, exercise enthusiasts, everyone is incorporating Element into their daily routine. Summer activities like hiking or beach days, workouts can drain your electrolytes. And when I'm sweating more, I can feel that electrolyte loss in my body. Element's the quick and easy way to alleviate all of those symptoms by adding electrolytes into your system. Squeeze the most out of summer with Element's new limited-time Lemonade Salt. Salty, tart, and refreshing, brings you the best of summer wherever you are. Get a free 8-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com/mmy. Find your favorite Element flavor or share with a friend. The 8-count consists of two Citrus Salt, two Raspberry Salt, two Watermelon Salt, and two Orange Salt. Try Element totally risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll refund your order, no questions asked. Again, for your free Element sample pack, go to drinkelement.com/m a y i m. That's drinkelement.com/mom.

[Music]

I'm gonna play, I'm gonna play skeptic here, even though this is not, you know, sort of, again, my take on it, but, you know, as came up when we were discussing the telepathy tapes, for example, you know, because someone says something doesn't mean that it's true. And even this example, you could say any number of things. You could say Kimberly made it up. You could say all those things. But if we're going to put that aside, I'm going to put that aside for now, okay? I'm going to say that this woman told Kimberly and Kimberly literally found the shoe. Exactly. I'm, I'm into it. I'm now going to recruit Jonathan. Jonathan, who, um, is more versed, I think, in conversations about a consciousness plane, you know, Akashic records. Uh, we've had enough theoretical physicists on that I think Jonathan might even be able to to frame some of this. Jonathan, I'm going to put you on the spot. I want you to give us the kind of consciousness exists as a fractal plane perspective of what's happening. How did she see that shoe? Like, I want you to describe it, and I want to see, I think Dr. Long's probably going to agree with you to some extent.

The simplest example is she left her body, traveled around, had a look, saw that, came back. And maybe the shoe is like the smallest example. I actually get stuck on like, why a shoe? You know, she couldn't have seen something more interesting.

Why not?

If you were, let's say, teaching a class on energy work, and people would say, "What does it mean to leave your, to leave your body and travel outside of the?" How do you do that? Because consciousness is a grid, and you just travel on the grid. What is it?

Yeah, you know, you just, you just go. We've spoken to a variety of people here who, in physical waking life, claim to have the ability to separate their consciousness from their physical being. Um, and I would posit that a lot of people are moving around in some form where their consciousness is not solely focused or tethered directly to their conscious, uh, to their physical experience.

Like remote people who do remote viewing. I would say remote viewing is an example of someone who is trained to go traveling. But I would actually take it one step further and say that we are often in one physical location and our mental activity is not in that physical location. Whether or not that is clairvoyance or the ability to look around in a situ, in a different environment and bring back that information with clarity is, is I think another, another point entirely. What I'm struck by in the experiences of people who have near-death, um, where they're able to have such clarity in the information that comes back. Often, what I would say is that people are traveling and moving around in the, in, in an unconscious way without being able to have clarity in what they're seeing when they come back. But the fact that these people are disconnecting consciousness from their physical bodies, moving around the world, and then having such clarity of remembrance is really, really striking. So on a theoretical level, I, yeah, I think it is becoming understood, either through physics or in energy work, that we do have the ability to have sight through our imaginative capability, through, uh, shifting our consciousness to be able to focus on something else. In waking life, I think people get that information differently. Maybe it's an intuitive sense of something going on, or they use their body as a mirror where they tune their consciousness to someone remotely, um, and tap in and say, "Well, how is this person doing?" And you can get information. But to see so clearly with your normal senses as though you were there is truly quite profound.

I mean, I think they should take back my PhD in neuroscience. I don't know what to do with it. Like, if this is true, like, if this is true, maybe they could update it. I, I mean, look, there's people, I mean, I went to school with Sam Harris. Like, there's people studying all sorts of amazing things, but I, I just, like, I'm trying to, I really want to wrap my head around it. Dr. Long, how close is Jonathan to sort of an understanding, you know, from your experience and your research in explaining what it means for consciousness to leave the body and travel outside of the room that even the body that's housing it is in?

Okay. I love what Jonathan just shared, and let me explain why. When you start talking about thousands of examples of well-documented and consistently observed among children, older people, and cultures all around the world, once you have that body of evidence, you really have a phenomenon that is just begging for further understanding, clarification about mechanisms, processes, and I love that Jonathan just shared that insight. What we don't know about near-death experiences far exceeds what we do know. So having that dialogue, that discussion about possibilities about what could happen is still very, very important. Uh, I, you know, again, I, I'm giving you descriptions of consciousness apart from the body. But the implications of that are just radically important. I mean, how can we, and Jonathan was getting into this, you know, is there any way that we can duplicate that without having a life-threatening event? U, how often can people do, you know, is there any use like remote viewing? Is there something that we could use for the good of humanity in terms of having consciousness apart from the body, and what does that say about to be human, about being who we are, uh, beyond just physical bodily brain functioning individuals? I mean, these are just radically important concepts. Um, I don't know why everyone on the planet's not just absolutely fascinated, and I think the more consideration of possibilities and discussion and options we get into, the better. So, thanks, Jonathan.

Absolutely. And the point of, um, having these experiences without having a near-fatal experience for me is key because what happens is that these people are, their lives are in danger, in jeopardy in some way, and and it feels like they're messengers. They go through that very difficult time in order to bring back this information to indicate, wait a second, there's more possible without having to almost die.

Well, I mean, that's kind of where I wanted to to go next. And, you know, there's sort of two questions in here. Um, you know, the first, we know from Elizabeth Cone, she, um, experienced sexual abuse as a child and was forced to learn to dissociate as a young child, which she feels, uh, possibly helped her. And by helped her, I'm thinking of, you know, uh, laid down neurological pathways, perhaps, you know, that were in some way, I don't know, primed her to be able to access that when she had this near-death experience. So, this was sort of, you know, one of the questions, and this is sort of like, this is the million-dollar question. Not everybody who, you know, flatlines and is brought back reports a near-death experience, right? Although, it could be like dreams, right? Some people are like, "I don't remember my dreams," but everybody's having them, so it could be, right? That, but not everybody is reporting NDEs. Um, even if they're coming back, some people are just like, "Whoa, what happened?" Um, and, and, and of the people though who are experiencing them, it seems that there's a tremendous amount of commonality in the richness, the complexity, the emotional depth of the experience. What is it right about these people that allows them access to it? And this comes up throughout the book here and there, throughout, um, "Evidence of the Afterlife." You know, some people do recall having traumatic experiences where they knew how to dissociate, or where they had been placed in situations where they had to leave their body, right? When we think about, you know, historically what prophecy is, right? When we think about people who are gifted in certain communities, when you think about shamans, when you think about medicine men and medicine women in communities, these are people who typically have access to leaving this plane of conscious experience in order to deliver a message that they are bringing back from some beyond, right? Is it possible that people who are reporting these NDEs are containing some, you know, neuroanatomical or neuropsychological capabilities that are allowing them to deliver this message? Is that what's going on?

Well, let's start with dissociation, which is, as Elizabeth had, a protective mechanism, uh, when you face this horrific abuse. People have actually studied, uh, large numbers of near-death experiences to see if they have a common commonality of dissociation. And the answer is no. Uh, even with very careful prior published scholarly literature, uh, number one, the great, great majority of people that have a near-death experience have no prior life history of dissociation. Uh, number two, even the skeptics would agree about this. Near-death experiences are nothing like a pathological psychological origin. I mean, that's really pretty much off the plate, even among the died-in-the-wool skeptics. So, we've got all that going on. Um, but then thirdly, some time ago, I co-authored a scholarly book chapter where we asked that very question: Is can we identify anything demographic, psychological, any predisposing factor to help explain why it's about 10 to 20% of people have a near-death experience where they nearly die, meaning 80 to 90% of people don't have a near-death experience? So, could we find anything that would help explain who's going to have a near-death experience, or for those that have a near-death experience, can we predict what the content will be? And so, I'll tell you, with the review of the all published literature that we had at that time, and and two other, uh, scholarly co-authors I had on that chapter, the bottom line is no. Even after reviewing everything, there didn't seem to be any demographic, age, belief system, religious upbringing, thinking, or even whether they'd even heard of near-death experience previously that predicted if they were going to have one. And certainly dissociation, you know, mercifully, that's a very uncommon pathological, psychological diagnosis, but, uh, you know, certainly nowhere close to explaining near-death experiences for among the great, great majority. I hope that answered your question.

Yeah. No, that's great. So my next question is, and, you know, we've had a lot of people here talking about various methods of transcendental experiences. Uh, some of which are achieved through rigorous and very specific meditation practices. Um, and many are achieved through psychedelic means. Um, so I'm, I'm going to ask the question this way: What part of a near-death experience has not been reported from a transformative psychedelic experience?

Okay. Right. Well, let's talk about psychedelics and do they, are they not related to what happens during a near-death experience? Okay. Number one, um, there is, uh, the most common in this day and age, uh, psychedelic drug that is most people point to as potentially recapitulating what happens in a near-death experience is DMT. So that's sort of the, the, the psychedelic drug that seems to be the most active and that people talk about the most. So, for anybody that's interested in comparing the content of near-death experiences to the content of DMT experiences, I've got a great resource. I've got, here's your homework, folks. If you're interested, you can go read any number of near-death experiences that were posted on my website, NDERF.org, and compare that directly with first-person shared DMT experiences on the website, erowid.org. They literally have thousands of first-person shared DMT experiences. And for anybody that goes through that, uh, effort of reading a number of near-death experiences and a number of DMT experiences, you, as I will discover, will be absolutely struck at the striking difference between what the difference is. DMT experiences, uh, like other or common among psychotropic brain-acting drugs like that, they're far more likely to be frightening than near-death experiences. The, what is described is hallucinatory. In other words, there may be DMTs talk about, uh, elves, machine-like beings, which is essentially unknown in near-death experiences. Uh, psychedelic experiences, as with dreams, have the events skip around. It's not like you have in near-death experiences that continuity, logical flow of events, which would be like, you know, the life is without any gaps or breaks or, you know, completely changes an environment. So, DMT experiences are radically different for anybody that wants to compare head-to-head first-person accounts. But second of all, uh, we've had a number of people that have

shared with my website with their near-death experiences and then will volunteer that they've taken psychedelic experiences. I ask a survey question, has anything in your life reproduced any part of the near-death experience? And some people will volunteer, well, yes, I use psychedelics. We may get, you name it, I've heard it. LSD, DMT, psilocybin, uh, as I mean, they they do it. But in general, for those people that had a near-death experience and then compare it to their own personal experience, they will generally say, "No, these were two completely different experiences."

And in fact, one of the leading academic near-death experience researchers, a Dr. Eban Alexander, who was a Harvard neurosurgeon, had a very vivid near-death experience. It's not widely known that as part of an investigation, he actually took DMT as on a controlled basis in order to see and write up in a scholarly journal the comparison of his near-death experience with DMT. >> And I read the article and I've actually talked to Eban directly not related at all, radically different experiences.

So, uh, there doesn't seem And then last but not leastly, I know I don't want to beat this one to death, but I will, I guess, a little bit because it keeps coming up. Um several years ago I co-authored a scholarly article uh published in the proceedings of the New York Academy of Sciences and in this major journal there was a huge effort to study the published scholarly reports of psychedelic drugs and in this very meticulous scholarly comparison they compared that to like over 40 different things that they found in near-death experiences predominantly on my website. So published in that scholarly journal very clear the conclusion the experiences of near-death experiences radically different radically unlike psychedelic drugs based on review of the scholarly literature. So uh you can see for all those three points there's really not le much left standing for DMT to reproduce these.

Well, first of all, you know, it it um it highlights the exquisite uniqueness of the near-death experience, which I think is is important. Um but, you know, obviously the reason that I want there to be overlap is because we can more easily and ethically study the mechanisms of what's going on, you know, under the influence of um these kinds of drugs. And you know many people are using therapeutic environments right to explore trauma and healing and you know all these things. So we we have you know kind of a a way that we can um try and look at them.

Um so I guess that would be a question. So the difference between let's say and I want to get into the blind NDEES and deaf NDEs. Um, you know, one of the the things that, you know, distinguishes those experiences is there's a difference between hallucinations and visions, right? I guess you could say. So, hallucinations are going to engage, if they're visual hallucinations, they're going to engage the occipital cortex, right? If they're auditory hallucinations, you're going to see activation in the auditory cortex. But when we have an NDE, when people are reliably reporting sites, sounds, there's no activation of these cortices, right? like they're they're they're I mean obviously we can't put them in a scanner while they're having the NDE but but presumably given the electronphilographic data given all of the other measurements that are done when a person is dead or has flatlined or coded we we we know that you know the only other explanation would be some sort of like explosive set of you know neuronal cascade AIDS, but that would not account for the linearity. It would not account for the the review of life events, the way that people describe them. It's like insane. It's like a rolodex of your entire life flashes before you. But what what almost everybody reports is that they are experiencing the emotional content of what happened at each of those events both for themselves and other people. So even negative things that they experienced, they're processing both sides of it simultaneously in this sort of like like you can't say, "Oh, when the brain dies, it's like here here's everything I've got." It would not line up in any linear fashion because we know enough about how computers work and the brain is essentially a very very fleshy delicious computer, right? So if you were to say to a computer, I'm going to unplug you. What would happen? All I picture cuz I was born in 1975 is like a green cursor just blinking that box, you know? That's all I would picture. You wouldn't picture like, oh, the computer's going to generate a saliloquy about the meaning of its life as a computer. You wouldn't present and be able to recount that kind of information from the computer that is the brain. Correct.

>> Right. That's a great analogy. I love it. Yeah. one of the most kind of I I I don't even understand how to think about this, which I'm sure that for someone who's been blind from birth, they also had a tremendous difficulty and you can tell in how you recount this and how they wrote about their experience. Um, imagine if you've never seen and then you have an experience where you have visual perception. It's I mean, the phenomenology of just like understanding what is even happening and how you describe that is amazing and to have someone who's deaf from birth have auditory experiences and they're trying to explain it but it's like I don't even know what I think it was seeing and hearing right? Can you talk about how we can wrap our heads around the realness of NDEs and the support of people who are blind and deaf having essentially the same experience that people who can see and hear from birth are having.

>> Sure. The uh lady I interviewed that was born blind was Vicki. Uh she was born blind and to her vision was unknown and unknowable. And she went along with her life until her early 20s when she was well she was a very talented singer and that was her vocation. She would sing at bars and one night she finished up her act at the bar and uh an inebriated patron was trying to drive her home and unfortunately had a severe auto accident. So the first time Vicki had vision, she was in that well we we talked about this that out-of- body experience. Her consciousness was over her body and she saw and she was in the emergency room at that time and she saw down below a body laying on on a gurnie and her initial emotional reaction was to be horrified because this vision was so unknown and unknowable to her. She just she didn't know what was going on and she literally didn't know who that was down there until she correlated what she'd only known her entire life by sense of feel was her long hair. Uh and interestingly she felt a ring that her father had given her. And then finally she correlated with her newfound vision that that was really her down there.

>> She got to see herself for the first time in a near-death experience.

>> Yeah. So this was I mean she was after she calmed down from from her shock at having vision she went through a tunnel and she had a life review like we talked about and uh but with Vicki interestingly enough she had what is described in many near-death experiences she had supernormal vision she had what we call 360 degree vision which means throughout her near-death experience she was simultaneously aware of visual information in front of her behind her right left up down um The proper geometric term would probably be spherical vision, but that's the term of art in the literature. So, she was literally seeing aware of spherical vision around her. And when I talked to Vicki about this, I said, "Well, you know, Vicki, for those of us living our earthly everyday life, our vision is constrained to basically a pie-shaped visual field because of the location of our eyes anatomically in our brain and in our bone sockets." And Vicki literally laughed at me. She said that's that can't be. She says, "Vision, I mean, it's vision is vision." And I said, "Well, no, no." So, I don't know if Vicki ever understood how we see vision. And so, you can certainly understand how complex it would be for us to understand Vickiy's 360 degree vision. But it's not just Vicki. We have many, many, you know, again, we're up to scores, many scores of people that also during their near-death experience have that exact same phenomena. They're seeing 360 degrees and once again what they're seeing from all directions vividly accurate down to the finest details if they check it out. There doesn't seem to be any constraining of their vision by the physical limitations we have in our location of eyes and our earthly everyday vision.

Oh, and getting back to death. Yeah, we could I'll jump onto that real quickly. the the only person who's been reported in the scholarly literature to the best of my knowledge was reported in my book and that was a person born totally deaf and he had a remarkably vivid near-death experience very detailed but as part of that he was communicating as virtually everybody communicates when they're in an unearly heaven non-physical non-early realm and that's telepathically so he was as virtually everybody else that has a near-death experience the best human English word is telepathy, but it goes beyond that. There's an instantaneous communication with other beings of all thoughts and concepts and context of those thoughts and emotions underlying those thoughts extremely quickly and in a way of of of such accuracy that there's no way for confusion or ambiguity. So, we hear that routinely in people that have near-death experiences. And that's what he described. So here he was never having heard or communicated uh through auditory function in his life. And yet here he is through that telepathic communication full complete absolute telepathic communication just like so many vastly many other near-death experiencers have had.

>> Who is he communicating telepathically with?

>> I I could tell you it's in the book. Yeah, it's it was he generally when you're in this non-early realm, you're not roaming around there alone and wondering what's going on. By the time you're in that realm, um it you know there could be landscapes, buildings we described, there's almost invariably you got your deceased loved ones there for about 20% of near-death experiences. But if they're not there, there's almost invariably going to be other beings. Uh they've been called spiritual beings. They can be humanoid, not humanoid. um they can have a variety of appearances. They can uh look similar to human humans, quite different, different heights, etc. So, but the one thing that is is almost universal when they encounter these these beings in the near-death experience, they're almost always described as loving. They can feel that sense of love. They can feel that sense of connection. There's never a fear of being around these other beings. And so it's it's common in near-death experiences that there could be often be some very detailed communication and you can certainly imagine all the questions you know what's going on where am I uh you know what uh am I dead uh you know can I stay here so these are a lot of the kind of or or interestingly just deep spiritual questions that were on their mind for their earthly life. So there's a lot of communication, a lot of sharing, a lot of information that goes on there. Uh virtually always through what's recognized as telepathic communic telepathic communication.

>> The way Elizabeth Cone described it is as soon as the question arose, the answer came. And this was sort of where she came up with this notion of like timelessness, like everything was like happening all at once. And especially with some of these experiences, you know, some of them do go on for quite some time. You know, um this is a more widely known case. The woman who was in, I think it was a kayaking accident and she was trapped under the water. And this was in a documentary series as well. Um, and she essentially saw the escape that they were trying to facilitate for her and was able to be told in her I have chills up the back of my head. In her NDE, like they told her basically where to hold on to to save herself. This often happens. People get instructions about one woman was in a car accident, a horrible car accident, which I really don't want to talk about because I think the details are too graphic for this. But she was told extremely specifically how to help the person in the car who was in the accident with her. Like with extreme detail, she was able to help him in a way that there's no other way that she would have known how to extricate herself from the car with him. And it is, I mean, unbelievable.

>> Talk about the details of how she helped him. He lost a part of his body and she was told precisely where to locate it and how to um help him not um forever be uh

>> without that part.

>> Correct.

>> Okay. I think the viewers may be able to guess and that connect the dots. But yeah, I mean, you rais a really good point there, by the way, uh that the communication is instantaneous, and you you got into a real critical aspect of near-death experiences, especially when they're in that unearly beautiful realm, and that's a sense of timelessness. We have a very direct survey question about the sense of time during their near-death experience. And virtually all of them will say, especially when they're in that unearly realm, time is either radically different from earthly everyday life, or much more commonly, they'll just simply say time doesn't exist. Uh it's that much of a different realm. So it's one of the myriad of descriptors of that unearly realm that makes it completely different from their entire prior life experience. And it's, you know, literally one of the minor lines of evidence for the evidentiality of near-death experiences. It's not anything they could have imagined or even conceived unless they actually had a near-death experience.

>> Yeah. And I remember, you know, Elizabeth Cone who said she had no concept of quantum, you know, or theoretical physics when she was a, you know, 28-year-old housewife like struck by lightning and having this NDE. She said she all of a sudden understood things about the nature of time and the universe that there's it was a download. There's no way that she like people study for years to understand the nature of time as a seven layer cake and what it means to slice into it. That's some of for me the most kind of compelling, you know, kind of evidence is that people are coming out of these experiences with an ability and an understanding. And we'll get into special abilities in a minute, but I wanted to I wanted to touch on one thing. And I have an explanation as a person of faith, but I don't know what the sort of general explanation is in, you know, kind of the the literature or in in your understanding. So, you know, Gabbor Mate estimates that, you know, roughly 60% of people have had adverse childhood experiences and, you know, having an adverse child childhood experience, you know, significantly increases your chances for all sorts of challenges in life. And um when I looked at the list, you know, obviously some of them is, you know, was someone in your family incarcerated? You know, some of them I did not relate to, but many if if not all of the people that I know, and I know a lot of people would probably check many off of the AC list. Meaning, were you around fighting divorce, moving homes? Did you know did you experience abuse? Did you see anyone be abused? Did you live in a neighborhood where these things happened? If if we're and and I don't mean to like kind of play the stats game, right? Because we're dealing with, you know, a small percentage of people who have episodes where their heart stops, right? Who are even having NDEs. But if if trauma either with a capital T or a lowercase T is as widespread as as people like Gabbor Mate talk about and many many others, what would be the explanation for a pretty much globally positive, loving, optimistic, warm experience in these NDEs, especially in situations where people are dying, bleeding out. I mean, one woman, God forbid, had a a ruptured ovarian cyst that bled into her abdomen, right? Like, these are just people going about their lives. But what what is your explanation for why there seems to be I mean, no reports in the thousands that we've heard of from you, from Dr. Grayson, from Dr. Tucker, like from these conversations. We're not hearing I, you know, met my abusive grandfather. We're not hearing it was horrendous and I was damned to hell. We're not hearing that all those visions, you know, that were the source of, you know, art for thousands of years, right? Since Christianity, you know, and since this notion of, right, like hell, like no one's reporting that. What's going on?

>> Yeah, that's interesting. You know, first of all, when we uh you know, certainly, you know, tragically, there's so many people that have had so many difficult childhood experiences uh often at the hands of parents, guardians, or or neighbors. When there's encountering deceased loved ones or deceased acquaintances when they're having a near-death experience, there's an overriding theme of forgiveness. I mean these even if the relationship was strained in the earthly life, it's not strained virtually ever when these persons are encountered deceased interactions in a near-death experience. So that's really interesting. That would certainly be a lot different from what a lot of people would think. I mean, there's almost never any apologies. Uh there's just an overwhelming sense that we're all in this together and there there seem, you know, forgiveness seems to be huge. In fact, you know, if they encounter other beings, people are often shocked and thinking, gosh, during this NDE, I've done things I'm not proud of in my earthly life. What if I'm judged? And there's essentially never a situation in an INDE where they feel external judgment even during that life review where they may be seeing a part or even all of their prior life like we discussed. So, I I hope that I hope that gets to addressing your question there.

I want to push a little bit harder because I can tell you what a lot of religious people would say. What they would say is this is because God is love, right? This is because we're having access to a spiritual experience that many atheists who have a spectacular psychedelic experience. Many atheists come out of it and say like, "Wow, did not expect to come out of that saying there is a higher being that loves all of us and many cultures call that God." Right? That would be one of the explanations is that the ultimate force in the universe is one of love, forgiveness, understanding, and compassion beyond what we can even comprehend as mere mortals. We are welcoming back Dr. Jeffrey Long in the middle of the conversation we were having because I was asking a very very specific question about God and no joke, lightning struck. Dr. Long is okay. The building that he is in is okay. It's not like he's in a part of the country where like thunderstorms never happen. He is in a part of the country where this does happen. However, it happened at such a spec like such a specific time and we we then were able to communicate with Dr. Long. We tried a different way to finish that episode. It happened again. So, we could not finish our episode in celebration of us picking this episode up. I'm wearing the same t-shirt so that when people see the episode, if they see me with a black hoodie, that is second version of the conversation. I mean, the real question is, is the devil trying to keep us down? Why is it that divine intervention has to necessarily be negative?

>> I was going to give the theological response, which is that it's only negative, it's only negative if you believe lightning and thunder are negative. Meaning the the only thing negative about them and this is also I guess kind of a Buddhist conception. The only thing negative about them is sort of how they damage things that we have created that we value and have attachment to including human lives. But again that's like a very theological perspective. Lightning and thunder just is just like in my belief God just is.

>> We were saying it was an anomalous event and anomalous like other paranormal phenomena. It has to be different from earthly everyday things. has to be highly unexpected, like lightning shutting off my Wi-Fi and cutting off our discussion. But that's how we learn about the paranormal is by studying these anomalous events, being open-minded, always asking why. Why did this happen? And being open-minded to the possibility that it might not be natural cause, but if you exclude carefully a natural cause, you're left with the paranormal. So it's literally how we all study paranormal not just near-death experiences but a wide variety of these other type of phenomena. So we have to have these unexpected uh you know sometimes you know frightening sometimes you know quote negative and I agree with you negative is a relative word and probably not absolutely true but it certainly helps us to learn about that greater picture of the universe we're in consciousness and everything by having this opportunity to be exposed to anomalous unexpected paranormal events.

>> Very well said. Thank you. Now for the third time can I ask my question? You sure can.

>> Jonathan, are you ready?

>> Yes.

>> Is everyone strapped into their seats? Valerie is half hanging off of her chair as she likes to. So, just to give a little bit of framework and um you know, we we were talking um specifically about the content of so many NDEs, thousands of reports, right? Um and the overwhelming and I don't know the statistical significance but I would say a statistically significant large vast proportion of the thousands of cases that you have studied through your website and through the research that you do overwhelmingly they are positive. They um communicate to the experiencer a feeling of love, a feeling of safety, a feeling of warmth. um you know those are the human words that people are using to describe this experience. My question which led to a lightning storm was what is your response and I'm curious your response both as a clinician and also as someone who spends a tremendous amount of time trying to understand things that we can't understand. Right? Is is the explanation that the reason people are reporting this overwhelming positive, warm, loving, safe, comforting feeling is because they are in fact getting in touch with the source of creation or the universe or God or whatever you want to call it and that indeed God is love. Right? That is what so many religious traditions talk about. God is love and that's a mantra. It's something to hold on to. These experiences seem to echo this notion. Is that what you think is going on? Is the answer God is love and these people are getting in touch with God because when you die you meet God.

>> Yeah. Uh the short answer is yes. But let me drill down on that.

>> That was easy. And we're done.

>> Okay. So, uh, exactly as you say there, a very one of the most common things people having a near-death experience describe is an overwhelming sense of love. I mean, we've all sensed love in our earthly life. We have a qualitative sense of that concept, but remarkably consistency. Uh, the people that have a near-death experience say it's love beyond anything earthly possible. It is so overpowering, overwhelming through them, within them, and in a way that they said cannot even exist on this earth. and and often defies literal English or any other kind of language to try to explain it because it's that powerful and it's so different from anything they've ever known or believe they could know. So this overwhelming sense of love is much more common not in the initial part of the near-death experience when they're as we've talked about that out of body experience consciousness over the body, but it it's more far more felt far more consistently when they're in that afterlife unearly realm. And that's where the great majority of near-death experiencers describe that overwhelming sense of of love. In fact, I have a survey question. I've asked over, well, gosh, at this point about 2,000 near-death experiencers, and the percentage that say that they encountered concepts regarding love in their near-death experience is well over half. Far more common than tunnels, life review, meeting deceased loved ones. So, it's really a core, especially of deeper near-death experiences that are more detailed. So I am convinced based on a mountain of evidence that this is a part of a understanding of the greater truth that indeed that afterlife uh God literally the universe is literally in a in a very real sense ruled by uh imbued with that type of unearly overwhelming love that seems to be a critical part of near-death experiencers describing the afterlife. And again, we're back to that basic scientific principle. What's real is consistently observed. And that's what's really struck me. This is, you know, you look for things where they feel anti- love, uh, where they feel something radically different from love. They're vanishingly rare. I mean, they're extremely rare. So, by the basic scientific principle, if it's real, you're going to see it consistently. We've got that in mountains in the concept of love and near-death experiences. And and also I should note that's not you know for people who are like I feel bristly about that. I don't know first of all God is just the human term that we ascribe to try and describe something that is indescribable. this sort of you know force depending on your religious tradition. You know I come from a tradition that has a a very well fleshed out mystical set of understanding around the unknowability of whatever this is that has many many different names in my tradition. Uh but also I want to point out and Jonathan I don't know if you have anything to add to this this notion of God is love right or um you know that whatever our source is it is positive it wants our highest good, you know, you hear this in many mystical traditions you even hear this from people like Thomas Campbell who are theoretical physicists talking about the quantum understanding and the fractal nature of everything and how all of the coding that we're receiving even even in a system where it's zeros and ones coming at you. What we are looking for, what we are seeking is our highest good, the most probable quote successful outcome. That's not inconsistent with this. I mean, Jonathan, I just I'm not looking to prove that God is love or to prove that God is real, but I really take Dr. Long's analysis very seriously that what we're observing from people who are having an experience that most of us will not get close to is not just a fantasy conversation. It's not a religious conversation and it's not even specific to a theological conversation.

>> Well, that's a lot of knots. Yeah. So, let me say uh sort of from from research and overwhelming evidence what is uh over and over when when people have near-death experiences, I've actually studied and I formally wrote up in a book. Uh over 260 near-death experiences in which they were aware of or encountered God. And again, we're back to that basic scientific principle. I I won't say it again. I mean, it's real. And there's overwhelming consistency in what people say that they encounter God or are aware of God. Uh especially in the detailed more detailed near-death experiences and especially in that unearly heavenly realm. God and near-death experiences variably described. Not a surprise. You're not in a physical three-dimensional earthly realm when you're in this non-physical timeless uh heavenly realm if you will. Radically different from what we know on Earth. So not surprisingly while there's some sign variability in what God's described the common theme that comes out is light. Light is the most single common descriptive word about God and it's a uh seems to be a light with a personality with an intelligence an intelligence vastly beyond anything that they knew beyond any of the other beings they have there. And what's remarkable is that intense love. Uh these are people that may have lived their life in fear of God because that's what they were taught with their religion. Well, if anyone's uh viewing and got that concern, here's some great news for you. Uh you essenti basically uniformly when near-death experiencers descri encounter God no judgment uh whatever however they've lived their life and overwhelming sense of peace, love, and they felt loved beyond anything they knew in their earthly life completely through and through. And interestingly, and this took me literally years to wrap my head around it. So I'm going to tell you one of the most common descriptors of God understanding it's a tough concept and that is they feel beyond connected even unified with God. There seems to be a connection that transcends uh they're more much more likely to use a stronger word unity than they are connection in describing this. And if you look in the dictionary connection is part of the core earthly understanding of love. So I think that sense of unity or being a part of God literally is simply that super love that simply beyond earthly words understanding that near-death experiencers encounter uh that is just simply part of that love uh beyond anything that we could know in our earthly life beyond words. And I might add too God is a loaded word that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So let's look at that specific word for a while. In the English language, it's the most common word that people use to describe that overwhelming being of love, compassion, and that that they feel a part of in the afterlife. But over and over, near-death experiencers will say that have encountered God, God is a human word. That can't even begin to do justice to this overwhelming, powerful, beautiful, uh, loving, uh, overwhelmingly uh, amazing being that they encountered. They said, "This simply is not describable in the English language." and that by using words you're actually limiting that which is unlimited that they encountered on the other side. And so that that helps put the concept of God is not like you would have uh almost certainly heard of in your earthly everyday life or frankly not like what religions generally teach. It's something very different. And the fact that we're seeing this so tremendously consistently in near-death experiences, which frankly isn't classic religious teaching, especially in the Western world where great majority of near-death experiences originate from. Uh, you know, this is one more line of it's it's consistently observed and yet not expected from prior religious or cultural beliefs. uh God and that tremendously good news literally for all of humanity is on top of everything else yet another very powerful line of evidence for the reality of near-death experiences that we really are connecting with the afterlife with the other side.

I I really I appreciate that and um you know, it's um you know, it's a big statement to say kind of we're getting God wrong you know, but a little bit it feels like if so many people have a hangup over this word in many cases it may be that the concept isn't big enough the way it's been described to me by a mentor is you can you can ask the universe for a bigger concept of God whatever you were raised with whatever they told you, whatever they beat into you or beat out of you about God and your obligations as a person on this planet. You as an adult person and even as a younger person, you can say that doesn't speak to me, right? What I want to believe in is larger than that. And these experiences, I think, are so they're so helpful, you know, and it's like it's an arena that I wish more of us were taught about. meaning I don't expect this to be for third grade Sunday school students you know what they're going to teach but I do think it's an important part of understanding the experience of being human to say there are exceptional circumstances and indeed in medical school I'm sure it's spoken about in some way but probably not as much as it should be in terms of this is an aspect of certain people's experience and we have to pay attention to it um one of the things that I love about um your website and if you have not checked out the website. You have to It's NDERF. So, like Neardeath Experience Research. Yes. Foundation. Did I name it right?

>> Yep. You nailed it. Got it.

>> Nderf.org. So, you can obviously if you've had an NDE, you can share it and there's a link and it's a whole questionnaire, but the stories, all of them are stellar, but there's a tab that you can click called exceptional NDEs. and I've spent a good amount of time in there. I want to talk about one. I don't expect you to remember every single um every single NDE that's here, but there's one that um I wonder if you can speak to in terms of how common this is. Um the case in case anyone wants to look it up. Um it's Jonathan S um NDE. Um it's coded as 5422. Jonathan SDE9980. So, it's one of the exceptionals. And um I believe what happened was he had sepsis and he had a slow um a slow breakdown of his faculties and he kind of started like passing out and feeling faint and he was still going about his business. He was like at, you know, Home Depot or whatever. He was still doing things. But there came um there came a day where he looked in the mirror and he said that he he he looked gray like he looked dead and he thought it might be a hallucination. Um but it wasn't. He he looked in the mirror and then he looked at himself and he realized something was going on. He ends up having a near-death experience and um he said that there was a lot of darkness. He said he could see 360 degrees. Something we have heard about before, which I think is really fascinating. Right, Jonathan? That notion that vision is not confined, as you spoke about, Dr. Long, kind of to the eyeballs, you know, pointing forward, unless you're a chameleon, in which case they're like on the sides, right? Um, and he has some exceptional, unbelievable things. Um, but what he said, he has a life review, and we've talked a little bit about life reviews, but what he said, "My life review did not focus on how many f-bombs I dropped, how many women I slept with, how much I drank, my abandonment of religion, porn, money, nonsense, or how I might have acted like a child. It didn't focus on really much of what we refer to as bad behavior here on Earth. What it focused on, in my case, was interactions with people. We looked at whether I get chills when I read this. We looked at whether I used my gifts and talents to help people and how I made them feel during those interactions. I was shown how we're all connected everywhere, everyone, everything. And how we're meant to be helping each other progress through our human existences. I was shown that our human lives are a collective movement, not an individual achievement. So, first of all, that's just very wow to me. And he goes on a very interesting story in that it it it has taken a very long time for him to recover because what um what sepsis does and organ failure and things like that are very complicated. Um, but I wonder if you can talk a little bit about this notion. Um Elizabeth Cone when we spoke to her and she talks about in her book she had a very distinct understanding that religion itself didn't get it right. Meaning it's not so much about rituals. It's not so much about what you do and are you following this, right? And so many religions make an issue of what's your life going to be like? Are you going to go to hell? Are you going to go to heaven? You know, she said it was really about the content of her character. Is this a common is this a common thing that people experience? This notion of the specifics of what I did don't matter, but how did I make people feel? What did I contribute to humanity? Is that really what we should be aiming for?

>> Absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up because that there there that is a very typical theme in near-death experiences and it's extremely important throughout near-death experiences. It is truly rare that there's a sense of judgment. So, as that near-death experience you read, not surprising to me that there wasn't a sense of judgment about here. Gosh, that must Jonathan that guy must have been a real bad old boy. Uh, and he knows it. But you notice that that wasn't the important thing, a judgment or a threat. So, in near-death experiences, it is essentially non-existence that there's judgment or a threat of punishment based on our earthly behaviors, which is very radically different from a lot of conventional teaching. And you're absolutely right, as Elizabeth said, and as as that near-death experience you read said, what seems to be by far the most important, you talked about interactions with other people and positive and helping them. We're back to what we just talked about earlier, love. Ultimately, it's that manifestation of that universal great truth of love, the glue of the universe, and in in the difficulties and challenges of our earthly life, finding a way, each of us in in our own way, with our own talents, to reach out to other people as lovingly, as compassionately as we possibly can. Over and over, we hear that that's literally the among the most important deep meanings of what we can do with our earthly life. that is really what we're here for and what's really going to make a difference. So again, it's all about love. God is love. Our earthly life uh optimally lived should be focused exactly on that love, compassion uh to other people, to oursel too certainly. But manifesting love uh throughout your earthly everyday life is is a huge deal and a great truth.

>> So here's here's the harder question. Here's the harder question. Ha has there been or can there be people who do not emanate love in their life? They maybe feel detached from love. Maybe they're disconnected. Maybe they're suffering from addiction or mental health challenges that prevent them from feeling love or feeling connected. Maybe they're not pursuing that. Do you have any examples of what happens when those people have an NDE? Because I am not trying to like make you tell the story of like I went and was told I was a piece of garbage by God. However, I am curious is is there a neutral experience? Is there an experience that's like you can do better? Like get back in there, get back in your body. Can you do better?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh that's interesting. There's been, you know, a significant interest by both me and other researchers looking our our uh scholarly phrase is pro-social and antisocial. So, you know, most people go through their life the pro-social. They have live live loving relationships. Don't go out of their way to do bad things. But then there is the antisocial people. And we just heard a little bit of an example of a person from near-death experience that had certainly some uh antisocial type of attributes. Uh what's interesting is during a near-death experience again even in the antisocial you just don't see that permanent threatening judgment. I mean you just that would be in fact that is so rare I would actually question a near-death experience where that was a dominant theme whether it really was an NDE. It's rare with that order of magnitude. But don't forget when you're having that life review and you go back and see everything that you did in your life or an awful lot of what you did in your life, you have the chance to make that own internal judgment as to, you know, what you saw and even when there's other beings around the life review. You there's still not going to be that external judgment. So we I think we live our earthly life and it's really to a large extent a learning thing. We're human. We're nowhere near that overwhelming uh knowledgeable, loving, compassionate, infinite, non-physical souls that we'll be in the afterlife. We are very attenuated as souls in our constraints of our earthly life. God knows that. They all know that. On the other side, they know we're going to make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. No one on earth today here is perfect. So, the good news is Earth seems to be, you know, if you will, a place where you can you can grow. You can learn. You can It's okay to make mistakes because you're going to learn and you're going to be a more it'll help your soul progression and and a lot of you do things right. you go your life review and go, "Wow, that little act of love, compassion of reaching out to that child, uh, petting that dog, uh, giving back the candy I stole, uh, or reaching out to other people and and and you know, extending yourself in some very prominent way to help those less fortunate. That seems to be again that's love. That's love manifest on earth. And that's very, very important. It's all again part of a learning process and it's all love and and there's not a shred of evidence of near-death experiences that that even the antisocial people are going to be condemned to some kind of permanent uh hellish realm. It's it's seems to be that on the other side they very astutely understand just how limited we are on earth and how much of a struggle it is to manifest love with all the constraints and limitations that we have in our earthly everyday life.

Um, do you use the word they intentionally? Do you believe that there's a plural entity on the other side?

>> Well, there's a lot of other spiritual beings. There's again, while we've talked about that connection and that unity, that's absolutely true. And again, that's why it took me a heck of a long time to kind of wrap my head around this and I'm asking people to kind of grasp it, you know, in a matter of of seconds to a minute or two. But there seems to be on the afterlife there's no question that we are individual souls. That memory that being that who we are in our earthly life carries forward to the other side. We we are that individual but just in in a blissful heavenly realm. Uh and yet also it is very much an exact reality that as you just said we are all connected. We are all one. And so there's there's both of those operant in in a way that's difficult to understand in our earthly life. So there is that concept of unity and I find that very empowering, very positive that we're not, you know, no man is an island, no woman. I mean, we really are all in this together. Isn't that yet another powerful reason why we should reach out to others with the greatest amount of love and compassion we can because we're literally in that connection we have? It's it's sort of like we're we're reaching out and loving to others and and it going to circle back to ourselves. So again, uh just all very important. I see you're holding my book there. What you got there?

>> So we we wanted to ask a little bit about um you know, it doesn't get a lot of um a lot of real estate in the book, but we do know that this is a field that gets a lot of real estate in other places. So we wanted to um give you the opportunity to sort of elaborate on it. And I also noticed this on the website. Um, so you did a study where almost 50% of people who were surveyed said that they had psychic, paranormal, or special gifts following the experience that they did not have prior. And um, you know, we've we've talked a bit here about precognition. Um, we've also talked in the Elizabeth Cone story and um, it comes up also on the website. Some people have, it even has its own little acronym, ADC, after death communication. This is a really hard arena, you know, for a lot of people to kind of take the next leap into. But it's undeniable from a clinical perspective that after a near-death experience, many people, at least roughly half from the study you did, come back different and they come back with abilities that in many cases they didn't even know they could access or didn't even believe in. You know, Elizabeth Cone described that she didn't even know what an aura was and after her near-death experience started seeing colors and like, you know, things rippling off of people's heads and was saying, "What is happening?" So, can you talk a little bit about what you most commonly hear of that people come back able to do after their near-death experience?

>> Sure. Understand that after a near-death experience, people are profoundly changed. I actually very recently published the largest study that's ever been done on what we call near-death experience after effects, the consistently observed changes for people. And it was a huge study. We had 834 near-death experiences. And one of the most common changes and they they described like their level of compassion at the time they had their near-death experience and then later when they shared it a 15 years later. And one of the most striking things was their increased self-described compassion. Again, we're back to that love. You

Know, it's like they took a little piece of heaven back from heaven into their life and are manifesting it. You want to look at it that way. But I think a significant part of their self-identified paranormal gifts is what the great majority of people have after a near-death experience, and that is they're a lot more compassionate. They're a lot more attentive to people. They'll pick up the verbal and non-verbal clues, and they are more attuned as part of that newfound compassion. And I think for many people, at least in my study of that, this sort of intuition is a lot of it due to just picking up those verbal and non-verbal clues in a way that they didn't do before and in a way which very few people do. So that can be a good part of it.

But again, look at Elizabeth. There's a lot of it that transcends that, and it's like auras or being aware of colors or other, you know, true precognition. Um, you know, these are all certainly things that people that have near-death experiences describe that really hasn't been studied in a scholarly way nearly as much as I'd like. You just reminded me that would be that's have to check that box off and start looking into that more. But it's a fascinating, uh, I mean, as remarkable as these abilities are that people describe, you'd think there would be a lot more study of it. But we, again, it's certainly a part of and a very common part of. You're right, it's about 50% of people answered yes to the survey question about returning with paranormal or other gifts that they did not have before the experience. So, this is real. Uh, and it's just a matter of clarifying, you know, more specifically what they are, how they manifest, how they change over time, and how they can best use those new gifts to help reach out lovingly to the world as they know is so important.

"No, that's very helpful. And I think one of the things that I'm, you know, most kind of curious about, and you have a couple stories in the book, and then as I said, you can find some online. I'm going to ask it. It's going to sound like a dumb question, but I want to answer it. Why might people who have had a near-death experience be able to communicate with the dead?"

"Yeah, that's a great question."

"I'm not being, I really want to know what is..."

"No. Gosh, no. They're called, as you said, after-death communication or the ability, either spontaneous or induced, to have communication with people that have been deceased. And there's many near-death experiencers that believe they're far more able to do that than they ever could before. I mean, we see that a lot. So, what's going on here? Uh, I don't have a good answer for that. I think once again, you know, if you've been in the afterlife, I mean, maybe they're attuned to that. I mean, don't forget, 20% of people actually encountered a deceased loved one in their near-death experience. So, I think they may that communication may continue that they may have that. Uh, another thing that may drive that, don't forget, the majority, a significant majority of people that have a near-death experience come back aware of that unity, that connection, that universal unity literally that we have with all of us. So, I think they may be manifesting that kind of awareness that they learned during their near-death experience and then they have years and years to develop it. But this is all a good example of what I've said over and over. What we don't know about near-death experiences exceeds what we do know. You, me, everybody that's watching this, we're all literally pioneers in coming to understand these amazing experiences. There's a lot of mysteries and a lot of what we don't understand. And that's part of what just makes it so darn exciting."

"Jonathan, I'm going to ask you to speak to this because I'm curious and I'm going to ask you to play a part. Jonathan, play the part of the person who like is totally vibing with everything that's happening."

"Like everyone listening."

"Like everyone listening. But what would be sort of an energetic or kind of like an akashic, like what would be the energetic explanation for that? Jonathan, is it about like tuning into a frequency? Like how would we frame it if we were, you know, going to try..."

"Firstly, just a slight tease. I think you like to just pepper the word akashic places."

"I know you're going to bring it up. I'll give you the akashic records."

"No, I mean, if I think about our conversation with Bruce Grayson and I think about what Dr. Long is telling us, someone's brain when they experience an NDE, someone's brain has a rapid and drastic change to the reality filtering mechanism. And once that mechanism is changed and they experience something beyond our current reality, which is the limits that we have set in order to survive and beyond podcasts and not be distracted by entities in the room. If the larger reality is actually made up of far more complexity than we can possibly process in any given moment, then once you've stepped through the door, there's no turning back. And actually, when people describe being asked to come back into their body, what I've heard a lot of is that the body feels too small to contain the vastness of the human spirit. And when that happens, the work is actually coming back into the body and integrating the reality that they've just experienced because now all of a sudden they've seen that the vastness of the soul cannot be contained in the human body solely, that we're actually probably traveling in multiple realms all the time and that we're just not aware of it. We've just blocked out that part of our interaction with that reality. And, you know, there's if we talk about internet trends, there's the trend that says, 'I'm going to blow your mind.' Our eyes only perceive, I don't know, what is it, 1/60th of the light that's available, the light spectrums that are available on Earth. And, you know, animals perceive so much more. So, you know, and then they use it as a way to describe the limits of our perceptive ability to say what else is possible. And when people go through a near-death experience, they then see what else is possible and they come back and they can't help but be curious or look again. And I think it's fascinating because they then sometimes struggle to not be overwhelmed by the extra-sensory information. And, you know, the work of some people is to expand beyond their limits and to allow themselves to imagine and then experience something beyond the material world. For other people, their struggle or their balancing act is to integrate that information because we are here having a physical experience. So, how do we open our minds wide enough if we haven't experienced the non-physical reality? And if we have, how do we then not get lost in speaking to dead relatives or how do we prioritize the extra-sensory information so that we can still be here on Earth, have a human experience and be integrated into the life that many of us are living and have to live and have to pay bills and continue on."

"You know, I think that's a real, you really hit the nail on the head there. Uh, a lot of people that do come back from near-death experience, I mean, you just, you know, for those, the great majority of us that have not had a near-death experience, I mean, just imagine here you are on a completely realm that defies words, outside of anything they ever thought was even possible. And then boom, they have to come back here. The integration is tough. I mean, you kind of yearn to go back, wouldn't you? I would, to a place of overwhelming love where there's no pain, no misery, where you feel connected, unified with one, you're with the deceased loved ones again. Uh, you know, certainly it would be a natural human instinct to yearn for that and to try to seek it out and to try to find anything through any mechanism of their cognition, their extra-sensory abilities to try to integrate, to try to recapitulate that experience, to explore it further. So, not at all. And certainly near-death experiencers absolutely do that. Um, you know, certainly I think that that explains why about half of them do have those paranormal gifts. I mean, they're curious. They are highly motivated to feel that again, to experience that again. And that can help them in time, either as true gifts or through their own efforts and development. You've got about half of them having those paranormal gifts."

"I'm also wondering in terms of understanding what might be different. And, you know, I'm really curious kind of from an anatomical perspective, what might be different if we wanted to try and find a brain region, right? What might be different in how the brain is processing information that might in some way explain the variety of changes we're seeing? And the answer may be, we don't know, it's too disparate, we'll never know. But part of me wonders, you know, I don't think I believe there's kind of like a special abilities region of the brain, right? But I'm wondering if there's, you know, we know that we can induce certain states that make us more likely to experience transcendental things. We know that, right? We know what parts of the brain are active. We can put people in scanners when they're having a variety of out-of-consciousness experiences or out-of-normal-consciousness experiences. What might be an explanation for what's happening? Obviously, when someone is struck by lightning, we can know, oh, there's certain electrophysiological things that we could kind of look to. But generally speaking, is there one area of the brain or one system? I mean, I think default mode network comes to mind as kind of a, you know, sexy term of sort of like that that constant, you know, for many of us, kind of like negativity and rumination that once that's lifted, we're open to a lot more. What's your thought?"

"Wow, that's a good one. I, uh, I don't, you know, certainly the core answer to that is we really don't know. That's a classic example where we need to do more functional MRI imaging. Uh, you know, we need to, you know, electroencephalograms that are actually looking for some kind of alteration in people that have had near-death experiences compared to a control group. So, I can tell you looking at near-death experiencers, they seem to be, you know, they're more compassionate, they're more loving, they're living life with less fear. Uh, I think that really involves integration pretty much in all the higher cognitive. So, I would expect there'd be some new integration transmission from the higher cognitive areas. And of course, let's not forget the hippocampal area that's involved with memory. So, we talked about life review. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some development in that as they contemplate what they were aware of during their life review. Uh, but it, I think it's just a good example of where I wish we had a lot more research for this fascinating. And I'll bet, I'll bet you if someone really did a good study and studied enough people, we'd find some differences in people that have had a near-death experience and have manifest the changes, the after-effects, in comparison to people that have never had a near-death experience."

"And also, you know, the research, some of the ketamine research, some of even the other, you know, psychedelics, the psilocybin and LSD research, you know, a lot of it is also pointing to concepts of neurogenesis, of, you know, differential pruning. Right? Could it be that some of these changes, some of the neuroplasticity that we're seeing from these kinds of experiences might be also potentiating further opportunities to see positivity, to be more compassionate? Right? It's kind of like if you have this extremely powerful, you know, multi-sensory and beyond sensory experience, it may be this kind of newly encoded memory, right? That is so integrated into the brain, into the nervous system, into the psyche, whatever that means, right? That it becomes more of a default, right? So that you're then open, right? Like you're open to seeing, feeling, like time feels different. It's like you're, I'm not going to say like you constantly feel like you're having a trippy experience, but you're in touch with something that many people have not experienced."

"And I think that's true. Getting, I just thought an important concept while we're talking about memory with near-death experiences. Even if they occurred decades ago, near-death experiencers remember their experience absolutely verbatim, in general, far more so than other ongoing earthly events around the near-death experience. Both prospective and retrospective studies have found that, amazingly, that memory persists and it's neither embellished nor forgotten over literally for decades. And so that again, shoot, that's not everyday earthly memory. There's some kind of memory with near-death experiences, or maybe some kind of memory induced by psychotropic or brain-acting drugs that has the same type of effect. But there's no doubt that near-death experiences are pointing us in the direction of saying you can have an experience, you can have a memory that affects the brain differently. It's encoded. It's embedded. And it's able to be recalled verbatim, literally decades later, in a way that essentially no other earthly memory can. So again, it's all part of that. You know, there is something going on. There is something going on in the brain. There has to be for that memory to be there verbatim decades later. So again, it's just a matter to find some anatomic or imaging correlate to that. But there's definitely something there that is an important part of what we could learn."

"Yeah. I'm sorry I'm no longer working in the department of neuroimaging at UCLA. I need to go back and do another degree. Um, I wanted to ask, another thing that comes up, it comes up sporadically, but enough that I think it's worth talking about. Me personally, I don't believe that there's one specific God that's given to each group of religious or ethnic tribes all over the world. Meaning I believe in the oneness of God, that is, just like there's one gravity, there's one God. So, you know, every religious tradition, and, you know, it is our right to do so, comes up with the words, the images, the prayers, you know, around the team that we're going to rally around, right? But for me, ultimately, there's kind of this one source. So when I read these NDEs, I'm like, 'Yep, sounds right.' You know, like one light. It's not like I'm the God of Abraham or whatever. It's a, you know, but some people do have very specific visions, and in many cases, people are seeing imagery, for example, of Jesus, of Mary. We don't, I mean, I don't know if this is blasphemous to say. I don't know that we know what Jesus looked like. I know there were no cameras at the time, and I know that there's artwork, but, you know, there's been a lot of conversation about the angle that many historical epics had to put on what Jesus looked like, right? I mean, I've heard a lot of people say like, 'He probably looks like just a person who might be from Yemen or like he probably was short, like darker skinned, right?' When people say that they've seen images, can you, is that because everyone has their own personal cultural framework? I mean, I've had interesting experiences where I have witnessed in altered states gods of other religions, meaning I don't all of a sudden feel like, 'Oh my gosh, I had it wrong this whole time.' To me, there's still this one God, but there are certain things that are just kind of like in the soup of the culture that we grow up in. Is that what you think is happening? I'm sure that if I were a religious Christian person and I had an NDE and I was like, 'I saw Jesus,' I would be so excited. I'd be like, 'I was right. He's our guy.'"

"Okay."

"Well, yeah, there's no doubt about that. It in earthly religions now and throughout history, there's been about 3,000 beliefs in God that are radically different from each other. So, our earthly awareness of God is literally all over the place in terms of God's nature, appearance, and everything else. That's what's so exciting about near-death experiences. Uh, while the appearance is variable, there are those consistent themes: light, and the nature of God, overwhelmingly loving, compassionate, connected, unity. I mean, we see this just overwhelmingly consistently. So, that's part of it. So, we get back to that. You know, what about the, and you brought up a good example about Jesus, and I'll just address that because I've studied over 150 times in near-death experiences where they described awareness or encounter with Jesus."

"Was he ever a short, dark Semitic man?"

"They, uh, it can be. Once again, interestingly, the appearance is significantly varied. There can be blue eyes, dark eyes, light hair, dark hair, wearing clothing, and everything is different. But that doesn't surprise me because again, this is not Jesus in a physical earthly life. This is Jesus in a non-physical, radically different from what we would go here. So, a couple lines of thinking about that. Uh, first of all, it's occasionally we see in near-death experiences that there will be an amorphous being or a sense or a light that will literally ask the near-death experiencer, 'How would you like for me to appear to you?' And so there seems to be some sort of co-creation of this experience. This isn't looking at Jesus in a way that you would have expected how he looked in earthly life. It's not earthly physical Jesus in near-death experiences. So that's one important concept that you really need to know to nail this down."

"Sorry, the comedian in me is like, if you ask me how I'd like to perceive God, I would say like Bing Bong from Inside Out."

"Here's an atheist who saw Jesus. The atheist lived all, you know, pretty much all his adult life as an atheist. So here he's having a near-death experience and, oh, by the way, when they encounter Jesus in near-death experiences, almost instantly they know it's Jesus. It's not like Jesus comes up and says, 'I'm Jesus.' That's very, very uncommon. There seems to be that knowing awareness, even with the variable appearance, even if the appearance is not like the classic pictures or classic art."

"I could pick out Jesus with my eyes closed."

"Yeah. There you go. Okay. So that's good. But, uh, so the atheist is just sort of instructive for understanding about how Jesus appeared in near-death experiences. So the atheist, they started talking with Jesus and the atheist said, 'Well, wait a minute. What are you doing? You got a business suit on. What's that all about? That's not you.' And Jesus said, 'Yeah, I know that. But I had to appear. If I had appeared in robes, you wouldn't believe me, right?' And they both thought that was very funny. So, I think part of understanding, and that's one of my favorite stories. But I think a sort of a big picture about how all this happens is when we had the near-death experience or encountering God at a hugely blissful experience and asking, 'Why me? Why was I chosen for this?' And God's very definite statement, 'Love falls on everyone equally. This is what you needed to live your earthly life.' So I think a lot of that variability is not seeing historically realistic things because that historical reality literally doesn't exist anymore, but seeing a manifestation that is considered to be out of an overwhelmingly loving, compassionate God and Jesus that's best for that person and that experience, that's best for them to understand and live their earthly life. So that's my understanding."

"That's beautiful."

"Uh, Jesus is very different from how people would understand Jesus reading the Bible. Wow. That was obvious to me. What you see with this Jesus is essentially never giving like the commandments you see in the Bible, 'Thou shalt go forth and do this with your life and build that.' There's essentially never specific information from Jesus or anywhere else in the near-death experience about specific life directions. Yes, you do see that, but it's rare, quite rare. Jesus also, interestingly, again, like God, you feel that overwhelming sense of compassion, not judgment. Jesus, in near-death experience, as one of his major roles, is clearly to listen, to be a part, to be that profoundly compassionate, loving being with them. Uh, interestingly, Jesus, as part of that free will which is overriding everywhere in near-death experiences, interestingly, Jesus does not advocate for Christianity. Jesus just simply wants to convey that love, that peace, that presence that you know that they are deeply throughout and through love. It seems to be as if Jesus leads by example, not by giving commands. And that's a great truth in Jesus. Again, this is over, you know, we're back to that principle. If it's real, it's consistently observed. And that's very strikingly consistently observed in encountering with Jesus. I mean, we could give a small shout-out to the tradition he came from, you know, like Christianity existed after, you know, kind of as a later iteration, but he, you know, Jesus came from a tradition, you know, in terms of Judaism, that had many different concepts of God, some of which were very punishing and which were very complicated. And, you know, there's kind of like four different kind of main themes we see and we have 72 names for God, but there's also like seven main ones that we use. Many are plural, some are feminine. Um, but this notion, you know, that, you know, perhaps what we look for in charismatic leaders, you know, as someone who, let's say, just for me personally, I don't believe in Jesus as a deity, but in terms of his teachings and in terms of the compassion, the love, the wisdom that he spread, that is what a religious leader should bring us to the best of love, compassion, connection. Uh, I mean, I may not be versed in the New Testament, but I know the kindness that Jesus spread, right? And so when people talk about this kind of Christ light, right? You hear that a lot in energetic circles. What do they call it, Jonathan?"

"Christ consciousness."

"Christ consciousness, right? Um, there's this notion that maybe that is something that, you know, a charismatic leader like that was getting, right? Was saying, 'Guess what? God is love.'"

"Yeah. It in near-death experiences, Jesus is, you know, that concept of often associated with light, that profound compassion, is very reminiscent of God in near-death experiences. Again, we're back to that connection, that unity, and you see that same kind of very critical, overriding theme in near-death experiences: love, connection, compassion, non-judgment, very strikingly consistently."

"One of the things you mentioned in terms of people's experience of, you know, like, 'Why me?' people who might experience that in an NDE of like, 'Why is this happening to me?' Do I have a choice to be here? Do I have a choice to go back? One of the other things that people talk about regarding choice, and we spoke to someone else who had a near-death experience who talked about this, there sometimes is this notion that the life you have is the one that was chosen for you, and in many cases, it was chosen a long time ago. And that the hardships that many people experience are seen from a different lens in an NDE. They're seen from a lens of, 'This was the struggle you had to go through, but you get to see the pain from another dimension,' right? Meaning, even if you experienced, you know, God forbid, abuse or addiction or, you know, really, really difficult circumstances, that you have a whole different perspective on it, and it is shown to you as something that was, in many cases, kind of chosen for you because that's your specific mission. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of chosenness?"

"Yeah. Um, it's interesting you bring up the concept that you have a life chosen for you and then boom, you come down to your earthly life. I will tell you that in what we call premortal existence or pre-early incarnation, we have a fairly large number of near-death experiences that describe that. And the great majority don't talk about lacking that free will choice. The great majority of near-death experiences actually say that they're choosing their parents, choosing their circumstances, choosing what they're going to do in their earthly life. Again, with that overriding concept that free will is paramount, both well, certainly in the afterlife. So that's far, far more common that people will choose parents, circumstances. And again, in the heavenly premortal realm, you're vastly more intelligent, vastly more knowing, what's important for your soul growth or what experiences you need, not just based on your tiniest slice of your eternal existence here on Earth, but from your soul, which is unending and eternal and unlimited. So, I think it's, at least what I'm seeing in my near-death experiences, and that's quite a few of them, it's a matter of choice that people have. I don't know that everybody has a choice. I know at least some seem to. It would be, I can't even hardly think of another experience where they were basically involuntarily selected into a life without having input."

"Um, our last question, hopefully won't be the hardest one, but I think it will be the most personal. Um, you know, Jonathan and I are very curious why pretty much every expert that we speak to does what they do, but we want to ask this from a slightly different angle as we close here. I'm assuming you were born in Iowa?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

"Well, no, sort of. I was born technically I was born in New York, but my parents, I wanted to be with my parents. So when they moved to Iowa when I was six weeks old, I went right along with them. So technically I grew up in Iowa. Yeah."

"I'm assuming that when you were growing up in Iowa, and I've been to Iowa many times, it's a lovely state. I'm assuming when you were growing up, you weren't thinking, 'I'm going to study near-death experiences so that I can speak to thousands of people about their encounters with God in another realm.' But now that you have lived the life you have, and also, you know, your day job, right, is also doing very difficult and holy work, right? Um, but in terms of the life that you've lived, the research you've done, what you've learned from an understanding of people's experiences and what you would argue is evidence for an afterlife and in many cases, a presence of God and an afterlife. What is your life like in terms of how you live with what you know, and how has it changed the way you lead your life and encourage others to do so?"

"Okay, that's a great question. Uh, studying near-death experiences now for over 25 years has changed me radically. I started out, if you will, as a skeptic. I make my medical decisions based on evidence and reasoning, and that's exactly how I went after this amazing, unearthly phenomena. I mean, how can you not start out as being a skeptic because it's so different from anything you encounter in life? So, it literally took me years of seeing this overwhelming consistency before I really intellectually grasped, yeah, this is the real thing. Uh, but as time has gone on, and 25 years is such an ongoing part of my life. I mean, just put yourself in my shoes a minute. Here I am, you know, multiple times a week reading these powerful near-death experience accounts that people share on the website, talking about their encounter with an afterlife, God, with love, with an understanding of life reviews, and it's important. I mean, it's really, in some way, I've taken that little piece of heaven that so many near-death experiences shared with me and taken it into my own life. And it has substantially made an impact on my being a physician. Uh, I was decades ago a much more cold, impersonal, at times unkind person and physician, both in my personal and professional life. And that's radically different now. Uh, I am deeply compassionate. I deeply care. I always go the extra mile for my patients that I serve with cancer. Press Ganey is the survey that you do for patient satisfaction. I mean, it's me and the group I work with. We're at like 99% on surveys for over two years. So, you know, we objectively can see how me and the group we have, you can reach out compassionately with care, going the extra mile, always letting people know that we're concerned about them, that we care for them, and that we want the best for them. So, that has helped radically with me in my professional life to be very successful because I care and I work with my patients a lot better. It's profoundly affected my personal life. Uh, it is far more compassionate. I mean, Jodie and I are literally soulmates with my wife. So we literally have this shared experience of both of us being aware of this and sharing them. My wife Jodie, she's actually the webmaster, posts all these."

"Whoa."

"So this is, so she is, I mean, what her perspective on this is, has just changed her radically too. So."

"We go forward obviously not fearing death, knowing darn good and well based on a mountain of evidence, there's an afterlife. You know, profoundly more positively living life out loud, sharing, compassionate, and, you know, continuing with what we consider to be a very critical mission. I mean, we are, Jodie and I are uniquely positioned in the world to have such a mammoth number of these types of experiences that we have the ability to share in love with the rest of the world, just as the experiences were shared lovingly with us. So it's a mission, if you will, that is a focus of ours and we take it very, very seriously. Uh, I'm frankly a little bit surprised I'm still working full-time as a doctor. I mean, my heart is really in my near-death experience and sharing it with the world. So that's a little bit about how substantially it has changed my worldview and my personal life, for certainly much, much for the better."

"So we shouldn't be afraid of death?"

"No, abs- Well, you know, I'm a, as a cancer doctor, I know we all can rightly be concerned about the dying process. We can be concerned about the death of the people we love, and that's loss. And obviously, that is going to be grief. But as far as having a fear of death in the sense of, is death going to be the end? Is there not going to be an afterlife? Oh, heck no. I know darn good and well based on, and we haven't even literally touched the surface of the mountain of evidence of near-death experiences and other experiences that I've studied over 25 years. No question, absolutely unequivocally, each and every person hearing this, we have an afterlife, a wonderful afterlife, and that's for all of us. May I add that critical understanding that there is that afterlife, or we're going to be eternal souls far more than we are here, is literally the most profoundly positive message I can conceive of to give to all of humanity."

"Unbelievable. Uh, the book Evidence of the Afterlife, highly recommend it. Please check out the website, and we just, we cannot wait to hear people's reception to this episode, and we'll be continuing this conversation over on Substack as well. Jonathan, I really wasn't sure if we were going to be able to finish this episode because first the thunderstorm, lightning storm, and Dr. Long is a very busy person. He's literally a radiation oncologist. He has patients. He does all these things. I was thinking we're never going to get him back. And I was right in the middle of this thread of really wanting to get into God's stuff, and I thought it wasn't going to happen. I am so grateful that we were able to get him really on consecutive days. Yes, I'm wearing the same t-shirt, but that's just the way it is sometimes. I was wearing something else this morning, but now I'm wearing this. Anyway, um, this conversation, it just dovetails so nicely. And if people follow us on Substack, they will get to know so many more things about some of the architecture of how these episodes kind of thread into our lives, thread into other episodes. Um, you know, for example, we recorded an episode in between our conversation with Dr. Long, part one and part two, that informed so much of this conversation, and we talk about those things over on Substack. So I really hope that people will open their minds to learning about Substack. If you don't know about it, it's really easy. You can select all your notifications. You can get what you want when you want, and we just want to share more content in a really different and intimate way. Um, also Jonathan has a Substack, which we recommend highly, Practical Spirituality, helping people navigate and connect with their inner compass, especially in a noisy world. Um, and I do lives there sometimes, but we have really, on the Bial Substack page, really been enjoying connecting with our audience more directly. We're able to answer questions, and the Breaker community has been just amazing to connect with. So check it out. Um, this episode particularly really blew me away. I love the notion of not fearing death. I always said I fear the dying process, but not necessarily the death. And, you know, thinking about that we are just souls being squished into this physical experience. Uh, a lot of the stuff, you may look at our channel and be like, 'Well, why do you talk about microplastics and vitamins and then near-death experiences?' And for me, it's because we're given these bodies as spiritual beings, and we have to learn to navigate them. There's no user manual up there when you're selecting your life on what vitamins are going to keep you healthy, and should you get enough sunshine or not, and what's your optimal vitamin D level. So I think all of this that we do here is to help us understand the physical, the spiritual, the emotional, and help us live a more integrated, healthy, inspired, and creative life."

"But if you do happen to have an NDE, we hope that you're okay and that you recover. But ask if we should be as worried about microplastics as Jonathan thinks we should be. I really want to know. Bring that information back. Post it in the comments. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time. It's my breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two fiction, and now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down."