1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,400 From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes. 2 00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:13,440 They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped. 3 00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:18,120 And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my 4 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:21,320 physical body because I was somewhere else. 5 00:00:21,320 --> 00:00:27,400 The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't 6 00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:29,400 anything else to be felt. 7 00:00:29,400 --> 00:00:32,520 I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. 8 00:00:32,520 --> 00:00:34,160 I'm back home again. 9 00:00:34,160 --> 00:00:38,560 Incredibly safe and felt at home. 10 00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:45,160 Welcome to RoundtripDeath everybody and I am so, so excited for this show today because 11 00:00:45,160 --> 00:00:50,760 we have Dr. Raymond Moody and Paul Perry here live with us. 12 00:00:50,760 --> 00:00:52,080 Say hello. 13 00:00:52,080 --> 00:00:53,080 Hello. 14 00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:54,080 Hi. 15 00:00:54,080 --> 00:00:56,280 Thanks for listening in. 16 00:00:56,280 --> 00:01:01,720 If you are students of near-death experiences, you've heard of these two people. 17 00:01:01,720 --> 00:01:07,120 If you're not, let me just give you a very brief background so you realize who we're 18 00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:08,520 talking to here. 19 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:14,160 Dr. Moody is the leading authority in the world on near-death experiences. 20 00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:21,400 In fact, he was the one that coined the phrase near-death experience back in 1975. 21 00:01:21,400 --> 00:01:23,280 Or I think. 22 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:24,560 1974. 23 00:01:24,560 --> 00:01:30,920 So nearly 50 years ago, authored many books, many studies on the subject and thank you 24 00:01:30,920 --> 00:01:33,000 for being with us, Dr. Moody. 25 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:35,000 Well, thank you, Eric. 26 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:38,760 And thanks again to the folks listening in. 27 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:39,760 This is so fascinating. 28 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:46,760 It's you and I have already mentioned and it's just, I'm delighted with people who listen 29 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:47,760 to me. 30 00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:49,040 Well, thank you. 31 00:01:49,040 --> 00:01:54,600 And Paul, what I have here about you is you are a co-author of five New York Times best 32 00:01:54,600 --> 00:01:55,600 sellers. 33 00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:56,600 Right. 34 00:01:56,600 --> 00:02:02,200 You've co-written dozens of books on near-death experiences, four of them was Dr. Moody and 35 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:06,040 directed two popular documentary films on the subject. 36 00:02:06,040 --> 00:02:07,040 Right. 37 00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:08,040 Oh, come on. 38 00:02:08,040 --> 00:02:09,840 You can say more than just write. 39 00:02:09,840 --> 00:02:10,840 That's amazing. 40 00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:16,320 You know, I've really written over a dozen books on near-death experiences. 41 00:02:16,320 --> 00:02:19,760 It's only that five were New York Times best sellers. 42 00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:25,920 And well, since you've given us the right to have bragging rights, I've also written 43 00:02:25,920 --> 00:02:28,000 a number of other books as well. 44 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,200 I wrote a biography of under S. Thompson. 45 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:35,360 I went to Egypt and followed the trail of Jesus through Egypt. 46 00:02:35,360 --> 00:02:37,080 The hits just keep coming. 47 00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:38,080 That's great. 48 00:02:38,080 --> 00:02:42,960 And we could talk to each of you for hours and hours and hours, but we're going to get 49 00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:48,720 right into the topic that this podcast is all about, which is near-death experiences. 50 00:02:48,720 --> 00:02:56,080 And I know that a lot of what's in your most recent studies is also shared death experiences. 51 00:02:56,080 --> 00:03:01,040 Let's start off with talking about the difference between the two, maybe a definition of the 52 00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:03,240 two so people understand. 53 00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:04,240 Okay. 54 00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:09,280 Well, the interesting thing about near-death experiences, which occurred to someone who 55 00:03:09,280 --> 00:03:17,440 almost dies and it's revived and shared death experiences, which occurred to people who are 56 00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:23,520 not ill or injured, but who are present at the death of someone else, that those two 57 00:03:23,520 --> 00:03:28,200 kinds of experiences are actually identical. 58 00:03:28,200 --> 00:03:31,160 And they consist of the same phenomenon. 59 00:03:31,160 --> 00:03:36,800 We've known for years about the near-death experiences where people there in cardiac 60 00:03:36,800 --> 00:03:43,120 arrest will say they live their bodies, they watch the scene of the resuscitation from 61 00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:44,720 above. 62 00:03:44,720 --> 00:03:47,840 They eventually realized that nobody could see them. 63 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:52,280 Nobody could hear them, although they can see perfectly what's going on. 64 00:03:52,280 --> 00:03:56,140 They realized, oh, this has something to do with death. 65 00:03:56,140 --> 00:04:01,040 And they talk about from this point on, no matter how articulate, no matter how many 66 00:04:01,040 --> 00:04:06,760 degrees, no matter how brilliant, how brilliant they are, people say, I just keep 67 00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:07,880 this car for you. 68 00:04:07,880 --> 00:04:09,880 There are no words. 69 00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:14,480 But the best they can do is they say they proceed through this passageway. 70 00:04:14,480 --> 00:04:21,040 They come out on the other side into an incredibly bright and warm and loving light. 71 00:04:21,040 --> 00:04:27,520 And in that light, say that relatives or friends of theirs have already done, seem to be there 72 00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:30,480 as a greeting, committing almost. 73 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:35,320 Then at some point in this, everything else kind of disappears. 74 00:04:35,320 --> 00:04:41,560 Time stands still and they see everything they've ever done in a sort of panorama all 75 00:04:41,560 --> 00:04:49,040 around instantly, often in the presence of a being of complete compassion and love, who 76 00:04:49,040 --> 00:04:51,320 helps them review this. 77 00:04:51,320 --> 00:04:56,520 And in this review, they say, you see everything you've ever done, but you see it also not 78 00:04:56,520 --> 00:05:02,120 just from your perspective, but from the perspective of those with whom you've interacted. 79 00:05:02,120 --> 00:05:07,600 So if you see yourself doing something mean to somebody, then you feel the hurt. 80 00:05:07,600 --> 00:05:13,000 And if you feel, see yourself doing a kinder action, you feel the good feelings. 81 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:18,320 And when people come back from these, whatever they have been chasing for, knowledge, as 82 00:05:18,320 --> 00:05:24,080 in my case, or power or fame or money or any of these other things, people say, what, this 83 00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:26,000 is all about his love. 84 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:28,160 It's learning to love. 85 00:05:28,160 --> 00:05:35,320 Now shared death experiences are the same phenomenon, except they occur not to somebody 86 00:05:35,320 --> 00:05:40,640 who almost dies in return, but who somebody happens to be there at the death of someone 87 00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:41,720 else. 88 00:05:41,720 --> 00:05:48,160 These occur to doctors as well as to the friends and relatives of the dying person. 89 00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:53,120 One of the things that people say is that as grandma or whoever died, that they see 90 00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:59,680 something leave the body, it's hard to describe, they try to say it's like a cloud or what, 91 00:05:59,680 --> 00:06:02,520 but it is very difficult for them to describe it. 92 00:06:02,520 --> 00:06:06,000 They say it lifts, leaves from the body. 93 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:12,560 And other people say that, yeah, as grandma died, I myself left my body and went up partway 94 00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:15,160 toward this light with her. 95 00:06:15,160 --> 00:06:17,920 Then I came back to my body. 96 00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:24,840 Or people say that as their loved one is dying, that apparitions of the dying person's deceased 97 00:06:24,840 --> 00:06:28,720 relatives come into the room, people can see them. 98 00:06:28,720 --> 00:06:35,920 And that people say the room fills with white and most troubling to me in a way, this is 99 00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:41,640 the most thought-provoking thing I know from my studies. 100 00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:49,640 It is common enough that it can be studied cases of where the bystander empathically 101 00:06:49,640 --> 00:06:53,480 co-lives the dying wife or you. 102 00:06:53,480 --> 00:06:59,120 The first two of these that I really studied happened to be from women, middle-aged women 103 00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:01,880 who had lost their adolescent son. 104 00:07:01,880 --> 00:07:06,480 And then I began to hear from other groups as well, including and Carleton Georgia, this 105 00:07:06,480 --> 00:07:11,360 woman who had been literally the childhood friend of her husband. 106 00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:13,760 They had been together all of the life then. 107 00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:19,560 But as she was telling me that as he was dying in the hospital, he was very old at that time. 108 00:07:19,560 --> 00:07:26,120 But she said she was watching this life review all with and they were communicating with. 109 00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:31,960 Now you see, that's so troubling to me because I'm hoping to recuse myself from my own life 110 00:07:31,960 --> 00:07:32,960 review. 111 00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:38,000 Much of the idea of a spectator there is all they're troubling to me. 112 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:41,520 However, people say that it's not like that. 113 00:07:41,520 --> 00:07:48,680 What I learned as a psychiatrist is we all have pretty much the same secrets. 114 00:07:48,680 --> 00:07:54,320 And so it makes sense that to the person who's having this, it will be natural. 115 00:07:54,320 --> 00:08:00,800 I always assumed it had to be somebody intimate, but some years ago, Cheryl and my wife and 116 00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:06,720 I got a communication from a doctor who was called to the ER to resuscitate a patient who 117 00:08:06,720 --> 00:08:08,840 never laid an eye on us. 118 00:08:08,840 --> 00:08:14,920 And he said, as this guy was dying, his whole wife reviewed, sprang up a link. 119 00:08:14,920 --> 00:08:17,480 Those are the phenomena we're talking about. 120 00:08:17,480 --> 00:08:19,680 I have a dozen comments and questions already. 121 00:08:19,680 --> 00:08:21,600 I'm not quite sure where to start. 122 00:08:21,600 --> 00:08:28,960 I guess my first one is, as you were describing, NDE's and really the same goes for these 123 00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:33,000 shared death experiences, SDE's. 124 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:35,280 Not everybody has the same experience. 125 00:08:35,280 --> 00:08:36,680 Why do you think that is? 126 00:08:36,680 --> 00:08:38,880 Paul, do you have an idea? 127 00:08:38,880 --> 00:08:41,320 That's the million-dollar question. 128 00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:43,520 That is a million-dollar question. 129 00:08:43,520 --> 00:08:50,760 Another million-dollar question is why everybody doesn't have a near-death experience and why 130 00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:54,000 everybody doesn't have a shared-death experience. 131 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:55,440 Why aren't they all the same? 132 00:08:55,440 --> 00:09:02,800 I think, as far as near-death experiences go, about 20% of people, maybe more, who have 133 00:09:02,800 --> 00:09:08,320 a cardiac arrest because that's the gold standard of studying because you can't argue 134 00:09:08,320 --> 00:09:11,800 that a person is actually bearing near-death at that point. 135 00:09:11,800 --> 00:09:18,880 People have a cardiac arrest, only about 15% to 30%, depending on which study you want 136 00:09:18,880 --> 00:09:24,000 to take a look at or believe, have a near-death experience. 137 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:28,640 It's not possible yet to tell how many might have a shared-death experience because it hasn't 138 00:09:28,640 --> 00:09:31,960 been really studied yet in that way. 139 00:09:31,960 --> 00:09:36,240 Is it possible that it's a lot higher than 20%? 140 00:09:36,240 --> 00:09:40,560 But the 20% is how many people remember it. 141 00:09:40,560 --> 00:09:41,560 That's correct. 142 00:09:41,560 --> 00:09:46,560 I wonder if nearly everybody has one, but most people just can't remember it. 143 00:09:46,560 --> 00:09:51,960 Many people who have a cardiac arrest are given drugs that are a side effect to them 144 00:09:51,960 --> 00:09:54,920 is that they make you forget. 145 00:09:54,920 --> 00:09:58,640 So you end up with a lot of people who come out of the operating room and there's several 146 00:09:58,640 --> 00:10:02,600 people, so we've run into this several times, people come out of the operating room, they're 147 00:10:02,600 --> 00:10:07,960 in the waiting room, they're trying to talk to their nurse or doctor about a near-death 148 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:13,200 experience, and then later when they get an opportunity to actually speak to someone at 149 00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:17,240 length, they forget most of it or they forget what they were talking about when they come 150 00:10:17,240 --> 00:10:22,000 into the waiting room, into the recovery room. 151 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:26,720 So yeah, I think it's much higher than 15% to 20%. 152 00:10:26,720 --> 00:10:31,520 Another factor, Eric, is how you collect information. 153 00:10:31,520 --> 00:10:37,440 Some of these studies where it's 20% have been like a questionnaire. 154 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:38,440 Right. 155 00:10:38,440 --> 00:10:42,480 Well, how would you feel if you suddenly given a questionnaire? 156 00:10:42,480 --> 00:10:50,880 Well, I think, and yet, Dr. Fred Schoonmaker was chief of cardiovascular medicine at St. 157 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:59,800 Luke's in Denver, this is the late 70s, early 80s, and concurrently Dr. Bender was chief 158 00:10:59,800 --> 00:11:06,640 of cardiovascular medicine at St. Vincent's Hospital in Hamburg, Germany. 159 00:11:06,640 --> 00:11:14,760 And both of them had found this out from just their patients, you know, and Fred had interviewed, 160 00:11:14,760 --> 00:11:22,120 I talked to him in the early 80s, about 1600 patients that he had resuscitated. 161 00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:27,240 And he said that it's about 60% of the people. 162 00:11:27,240 --> 00:11:33,000 And similarly, Dr. Bender, who had the same method, said it was about 80%. 163 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:39,760 Now, these two guys are both what you call oral personalities, and they tend to be sort 164 00:11:39,760 --> 00:11:51,080 of roundish and orally oriented, and they tend to be humorous and also tend to be oriented 165 00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:52,640 to service others. 166 00:11:52,640 --> 00:11:56,000 They often own restaurants, for example. 167 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:02,480 And both of these guys, Dr. Schoonmaker and Dr. Bender were oral personalities. 168 00:12:02,480 --> 00:12:06,840 And you see, it seems to me that, you know, the way they did it, they just come in after 169 00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:11,640 the resuscitation, and you got very close to what you remember about that. 170 00:12:11,640 --> 00:12:17,640 Now my guess is that that would be a much more productive way to get some information 171 00:12:17,640 --> 00:12:20,840 from people that handing them a questionnaire. 172 00:12:20,840 --> 00:12:21,840 But I don't know. 173 00:12:21,840 --> 00:12:25,040 And I think that's one factor that's taken. 174 00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:27,560 You find that numbers to be different with children? 175 00:12:27,560 --> 00:12:32,320 Well, I want to say one thing about the type of doctors. 176 00:12:32,320 --> 00:12:38,040 Years ago, we were writing our first book, The Light Beyond, and I was also working on 177 00:12:38,040 --> 00:12:40,520 a book on reversing heart disease. 178 00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:44,120 And I was working on it with a doctor in Cleveland. 179 00:12:44,120 --> 00:12:48,920 And so I went to see this doctor and working on our book, and he said, what else are you 180 00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:49,920 working on? 181 00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:53,160 And I said, well, I'm working on a book on near-death experiences. 182 00:12:53,160 --> 00:12:57,840 And he said, you know, I've resuscitated hundreds of people, and I have to tell you 183 00:12:57,840 --> 00:13:02,720 that I have never, ever heard a near-death experience in hundreds of people that I've 184 00:13:02,720 --> 00:13:04,200 talked to. 185 00:13:04,200 --> 00:13:08,640 And he was called away from the nurses station where we were talking. 186 00:13:08,640 --> 00:13:15,320 And the nurses came up to the counter, and they said to me, he's never heard a near-death 187 00:13:15,320 --> 00:13:20,320 experience because he's never asked his patients what happened when they were under. 188 00:13:20,320 --> 00:13:27,040 And that's, as Raymond points out, it's how you get the information that is in many ways 189 00:13:27,040 --> 00:13:28,640 very important. 190 00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:30,440 And then I had a question about children. 191 00:13:30,440 --> 00:13:32,880 Have there been different studies done on children? 192 00:13:32,880 --> 00:13:34,640 Are the numbers the same? 193 00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:36,840 Well, I don't know. 194 00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:41,480 Now, Raymond's got something to say there, but I don't know that they are because I don't 195 00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:44,320 think there's any studies on that with children. 196 00:13:44,320 --> 00:13:47,760 There's studies dealing with children and near-death experiences. 197 00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:54,880 I've written several books with Melvin Morris who did most of the work on this type of work. 198 00:13:54,880 --> 00:14:01,040 But I don't really, I've never heard a study on children and how many have you? 199 00:14:01,040 --> 00:14:03,640 I've never heard it. 200 00:14:03,640 --> 00:14:08,040 By the way, Paul, Eric interviewed Mel Morris recently. 201 00:14:08,040 --> 00:14:09,040 Yeah. 202 00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:13,520 My memory of that interview was he made it sound like the numbers are a lot higher with 203 00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:15,040 children. 204 00:14:15,040 --> 00:14:20,920 Like the majority of people that, of kids that he interviewed with the parents permission 205 00:14:20,920 --> 00:14:25,360 were able to color things that they had seen while they were gone. 206 00:14:25,360 --> 00:14:26,360 Yeah. 207 00:14:26,360 --> 00:14:30,800 We have beautiful drawings that children have done of near-death experiences. 208 00:14:30,800 --> 00:14:35,560 They have tunnel experiences and bright lights and people of bright light and themselves 209 00:14:35,560 --> 00:14:36,560 looking at them. 210 00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:40,160 No, they're really beautiful drawings. 211 00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:45,360 But I think I'm going to make a guess here is that he ran into a lot of parents who didn't 212 00:14:45,360 --> 00:14:51,280 want their children interviewed about this because parents can be so touchy about, gee, 213 00:14:51,280 --> 00:14:56,000 this might damage my child or they might start believing things I don't want them to believe 214 00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:57,000 in. 215 00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:01,560 And I just don't think anyone's really been able to crack through that wall, which is 216 00:15:01,560 --> 00:15:06,000 definitely, there definitely is a wall in many hospitals against interviewing people 217 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:07,000 about this. 218 00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:08,000 Okay. 219 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:12,160 Let me go back to another statement, Raymond, that you made earlier, which was about the 220 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:19,480 life reviews and I find it so fascinating that people tell me about their life review 221 00:15:19,480 --> 00:15:25,960 that even when they saw things that had hurt others and they realized and felt that hurt, 222 00:15:25,960 --> 00:15:30,440 they didn't feel guilt and shame. 223 00:15:30,440 --> 00:15:35,120 So maybe it's not that bad to have somebody there with you watching this. 224 00:15:35,120 --> 00:15:36,720 And I'm not sure why it is that way. 225 00:15:36,720 --> 00:15:37,720 What do you think? 226 00:15:37,720 --> 00:15:38,720 Well, yeah. 227 00:15:38,720 --> 00:15:48,560 I mean, this existence appears very differently once you cross over that line and things that 228 00:15:48,560 --> 00:15:54,440 seem so important and troubling here are just fate and insignificance. 229 00:15:54,440 --> 00:16:04,920 I think that the life review is to me a particularly fascinating part of these near death experiences 230 00:16:04,920 --> 00:16:12,240 because as you know, I was a professor of logic and in reality, in the real world, it's 231 00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:17,760 very difficult to draw entrances about this kind of thing. 232 00:16:17,760 --> 00:16:28,880 But one in the case of these life reviews, if we set aside the notion of an afterlife, 233 00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:34,960 it is very can be very plain to us right at this moment that you can make an absolutely 234 00:16:34,960 --> 00:16:43,160 startling and a mind bending inference from life reviews. 235 00:16:43,160 --> 00:16:49,400 It is obviously now and I mean, you can't get out of this and that is for at least some 236 00:16:49,400 --> 00:16:54,960 of us life is a two phase process. 237 00:16:54,960 --> 00:17:01,160 I think we live it forward as the protagonist or the actor. 238 00:17:01,160 --> 00:17:09,920 Then time stands still, there's a 180 degree turnaround and you've witnessed all of that 239 00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:13,720 things you've gone from the point of view of other people. 240 00:17:13,720 --> 00:17:18,280 And to me, I mean, that's a that is a very plain inference. 241 00:17:18,280 --> 00:17:19,960 You can't get around that. 242 00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:27,680 When you think for the mom for a moment about that significance, holy mackerel that we have 243 00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:29,920 a two phase life. 244 00:17:29,920 --> 00:17:35,920 We lead it forward as the protagonist and then we watch it from the point of view of 245 00:17:35,920 --> 00:17:37,880 the other people and fall. 246 00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:41,360 I mean, I think that's just absolutely phenomenal. 247 00:17:41,360 --> 00:17:46,880 And I assume the purpose of looking back is just to learn and to be forgiven and to get 248 00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:48,520 a clean slate. 249 00:17:48,520 --> 00:17:50,840 You know, that's it. 250 00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:51,840 That's how I look at it. 251 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:55,400 I think people really clean slate from their life review. 252 00:17:55,400 --> 00:17:56,400 Yeah. 253 00:17:56,400 --> 00:17:57,400 Yeah. 254 00:17:57,400 --> 00:17:58,400 That's right. 255 00:17:58,400 --> 00:18:04,440 It's like this man, a wonderful guy and architect and Zurich who had a profound your 256 00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:12,040 death experience in 1964 in the Alps when he had a car crash. 257 00:18:12,040 --> 00:18:13,040 And that's what he said. 258 00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:16,720 He said, at that phase in his life, he'd done all these things when he said, there 259 00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:21,160 was this life review and he said it was just solved on. 260 00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:29,520 And that's presents to some extent a problem at times because once you get a clean slate, 261 00:18:29,520 --> 00:18:32,040 you're not the same person you were. 262 00:18:32,040 --> 00:18:38,640 And so you run into a significant number of divorce cases with near death experiences 263 00:18:38,640 --> 00:18:42,600 because the person they married is no longer the same. 264 00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:44,280 I've noticed that too. 265 00:18:44,280 --> 00:18:46,800 The divorce numbers seem to be really high. 266 00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:48,720 Are there any percentages on that? 267 00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:50,240 Has that ever been studied? 268 00:18:50,240 --> 00:18:55,680 Oh, there used to be percentages batted around, but I never believed them. 269 00:18:55,680 --> 00:18:57,080 I thought they were way too high. 270 00:18:57,080 --> 00:19:00,760 I don't feel like they were medical journal stuff. 271 00:19:00,760 --> 00:19:02,280 What do you think, Raven? 272 00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:03,280 Yeah. 273 00:19:03,280 --> 00:19:10,880 I mean, I just don't want, you know, I don't have a basis for making that assessment. 274 00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:13,280 And I just don't know. 275 00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:20,480 But I do know the phenomenon yet it does occur, but I don't know in terms of how likely it 276 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:21,480 is. 277 00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:24,280 But it's really kind of, we call it the Scrooge effect. 278 00:19:24,280 --> 00:19:26,160 Oh, I like that. 279 00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:27,160 Okay. 280 00:19:27,160 --> 00:19:28,160 Explain that more. 281 00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:35,080 Well, Ebenezer Scrooge from the book Charles Dickens wrote Christmas Carol saw his business 282 00:19:35,080 --> 00:19:38,000 partner Marley at late at night. 283 00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:39,440 He didn't believe in Christmas. 284 00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:45,440 He ran people away from his door who were asking for money for charity and on and off. 285 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:48,080 But Marley came back and he had had it. 286 00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:51,960 He died and he had clearly had a near death experience because that's really what this 287 00:19:51,960 --> 00:19:59,000 whole book and TV show is about is Scrooge's near death experience. 288 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:05,200 But because he followed the advice of Marley after that, which was to, he had a life review 289 00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:11,160 and then as a result of his life review, he was also guided through his own life review. 290 00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:16,960 Scrooge was by an angelic being who of course happened to have chains all over him. 291 00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:20,520 When he came back, he was a totally different person. 292 00:20:20,520 --> 00:20:22,800 He opened the door. 293 00:20:22,800 --> 00:20:24,320 He bought people turkeys. 294 00:20:24,320 --> 00:20:29,640 He went to a Christmas dinner and started to help Tiny Tim. 295 00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:35,080 And that's the effect you run into with people who've had near death experiences. 296 00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:42,440 One of the other things that I hear quite a bit actually, and by the way, for you too, 297 00:20:42,440 --> 00:20:46,160 this podcast is completely non-denominational. 298 00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:50,600 We're not pushing any one religion over another, anything like that. 299 00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:54,360 Nor are we judging or putting down any religions. 300 00:20:54,360 --> 00:21:01,880 But I've had quite a few people tell me, hey, I thought I should go talk to my clergy about 301 00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:05,320 this and that ended up being a bad experience. 302 00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:07,320 Yes, it does. 303 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:08,320 Yes. 304 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:10,480 Explain why you think that is. 305 00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:17,440 When I started out with this, it was back in the late 60s, early 70s. 306 00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:20,000 That was a very common thing I heard from people. 307 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:25,120 They said, well, when this happened, I tried to tell my doctor about it. 308 00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:31,840 But he would either say, oh, it's just hallucination or a dream, or else would say, well, you 309 00:21:31,840 --> 00:21:35,600 know, you better talk to your minister about that. 310 00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:40,040 So then they would go to their minister and tell the same story. 311 00:21:40,040 --> 00:21:44,080 And their minister would say, well, that's out of my... you better go talk to your doctor 312 00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:45,560 about that. 313 00:21:45,560 --> 00:21:49,480 So there was this kind of run around that people experienced. 314 00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:54,440 But I hear many that are even more negative than that, more like, hey, hey, that's not 315 00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:55,440 in the Bible. 316 00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:56,940 That's not of God. 317 00:21:56,940 --> 00:22:02,480 That's what it is, and I went to the wake of my brother-in-law about a year and a half 318 00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:03,760 ago. 319 00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:09,360 Half of my family is Seventh Day Adventist, and the other half is Baptist or other. 320 00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:14,680 I was with the Seventh Day Adventist half that were at the wake. 321 00:22:14,680 --> 00:22:16,560 And they asked me what I was doing. 322 00:22:16,560 --> 00:22:19,560 Am I still writing those books? 323 00:22:19,560 --> 00:22:21,280 And I told them, yes, I am. 324 00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:25,800 And I told them about the book I'm working on right now, the book we finished, Proof 325 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:27,680 of Life After Life. 326 00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:31,240 One of my cousins are... well, I don't know what the relation is, but I guess he's a cousin 327 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:38,760 in law came over and he said, you have to be careful because Satan takes many forms. 328 00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:41,320 And that was it. 329 00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:46,160 But there's a lot of inference there that what happened to you was not of God, it was 330 00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:47,960 of Satan, right? 331 00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:48,960 Right. 332 00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:55,320 On the other hand, I have found that Mormons are very accepting of your death experiences. 333 00:22:55,320 --> 00:23:00,080 They have an old book from, I don't know, it must be the 19th century called The Book 334 00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:05,920 of Mormon Discourses, and it's full of near-death experiences. 335 00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:11,200 And then recently, I was talking to a Mormon friend, this is last week, two weeks ago, 336 00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:13,200 maybe, whose father had died. 337 00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:16,640 She's Mormon and he died up in Utah. 338 00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:22,200 And she said that she went up there for her father's funeral, and all of her aunts were 339 00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:29,960 sitting around talking about experiences like shared-death experiences that they had had. 340 00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:36,360 I think as a culture, they tend to take care of their people who are passing much closer 341 00:23:36,360 --> 00:23:40,840 than other cultures do, other religious cultures do. 342 00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:45,960 So they're there at that time when these people are starting to pass over. 343 00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:52,160 As soon as Life After Life was published in 1975, I started getting scared. 344 00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:59,880 I was scared of letters from Utah saying, yeah, we know about this, this is part of it. 345 00:23:59,880 --> 00:24:08,040 And then when I went to, I lectured at BYU in, I think it was 1977 at the Marriott, so 346 00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:14,920 they later gave me a, sent a thing that over 10,000 people I think had attended. 347 00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:22,120 And after the lecture, these kids just swarmed up with their family records, show us their 348 00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:26,720 own, their great-grandfather, and had such an experience or whatever. 349 00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:28,240 Oh, that's awesome. 350 00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,040 There are cultures that are very open to it. 351 00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:39,400 For example, the Salto Indians of Canada had a full tradition of carrying these stories 352 00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:44,560 of near-death encounters along, and their oral culture for ages. 353 00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:51,560 And it's interesting when you read them, they're just like, one, when a guy was saying he got 354 00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:55,000 out of his body, and he said, I came into this place. 355 00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:59,880 He said it's hard to describe, and it was like, teat-piece of light. 356 00:24:59,880 --> 00:25:05,520 And you know, that's what people say is, I see cities of light, but he was saying teat-piece. 357 00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:11,160 From his perspective, and speaking of perspective, getting back just a little bit to the question 358 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:17,440 about everybody's experience being different, have you found that their culture has something 359 00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:24,520 to do with it, if, for example, if they're Christian, maybe they see Jesus, or if there's 360 00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:31,440 something else they see Buddha or Muhammad, or is that something that's common? 361 00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:34,280 To a degree, but to a degree not. 362 00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:38,040 You know, I've had lots and lots of people over the years who say before this thing, 363 00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:44,480 add just no contact with religion at all, and then all kinds of religions. 364 00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:50,920 And one thing also, Eric, that people say is that, I hear this often, is that, well, 365 00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:58,960 I tell you about this experience, I have to draw images or words from my own tradition, 366 00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:05,880 but that's because the only ones I have, but that it's not like that, that it's far beyond 367 00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:09,400 the terminology of my religion. 368 00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:14,440 I think Jeff Long, who has studied this a lot, he founded the near-death community. 369 00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:19,360 He's a near-death experience research foundation, and he's an oncologist in Louisiana. 370 00:26:19,360 --> 00:26:23,600 So he's looked at thousands of near-death experiences from all over the world. 371 00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:26,200 He has an amazing organization. 372 00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:32,960 And his result on that question is that people, they see the same thing, but they interpret 373 00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:34,600 it differently. 374 00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:40,000 So if someone says, well, I saw it being of light, and it was counseling me, and it was 375 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:43,560 Jesus, and they'll say, okay, what does Jesus look like? 376 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,480 Well, in this case, I couldn't see him. 377 00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:48,640 He was just a being of light. 378 00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:53,200 So there's that cultural interpretation is like that. 379 00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:57,920 And as Raymond says, they have to use something from their culture to describe what they're 380 00:26:57,920 --> 00:26:58,920 experiencing. 381 00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:04,280 How has, as you've been studying this for many years, both of you, Raymond, 50-plus 382 00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,480 years, has it changed over the years? 383 00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:12,160 Have you learned a lot of things recently that you didn't know before, for example? 384 00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:16,720 Well, I can say one way that it's changed a lot, and that is that, as you'll see in 385 00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:23,400 this book, we have a lot more doctors talking about experiences, their own experiences and 386 00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:26,160 the experiences of their patients. 387 00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:34,080 And then we have more doctors talking about some of the, what really edgy experiences, 388 00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:39,680 like seeing a mist come out of somebody who was dying back in 10 years ago or so. 389 00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:41,280 You wouldn't have had that at all. 390 00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:45,160 There's been definitely a cultural change with doctors, that's for sure. 391 00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:54,240 Dr. Hagen, who was the editor of Missouri Medicine, which is one of the best state medical 392 00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:56,280 journals. 393 00:27:56,280 --> 00:28:04,880 Some years ago, did a series and the Missouri Medical Journal of doctors who had had near-death 394 00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:07,520 experiences or had studied them. 395 00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:11,600 And the series went on for about 18 months. 396 00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:16,320 And Dr. Hagen's a good authority on this, too. 397 00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:21,000 It's just became fascinated by it as a physician. 398 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,880 So Paul, you mentioned the book just a minute ago. 399 00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:27,120 It's called Proof of Life After Life. 400 00:28:27,120 --> 00:28:32,520 Has anyone mentioned to you yet, that is a very bold statement. 401 00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:34,040 It is very bold. 402 00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,320 I'm sure you knew that when you made it. 403 00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:42,480 But from my point of view, what you have here is, to me, the primary difference between 404 00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:48,840 a shared-death experience and a near-death experience is that other people experience, 405 00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:52,920 someone's near-death experience, are other events as well. 406 00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:59,000 And that makes it objective as opposed to a shared-death experience, which is subjective 407 00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,520 because only one person has it. 408 00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:06,720 And therefore, only one person can really describe what happened to them. 409 00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:10,960 But with this shared-death experience, there's someone else who comes in and says, yeah, 410 00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:14,440 I went up the title, I saw the same people he did. 411 00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:16,920 Are there other examples? 412 00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:21,080 And that's the real difference between what we're doing here and what we've done in the 413 00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:22,080 past. 414 00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:28,880 And what we're doing here is that shared-death experiences have a way of proving that consciousness 415 00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:30,880 can leave the body. 416 00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:34,640 And it's evidentiary that they can based on shared-death experiences. 417 00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:39,840 Yeah, you couldn't have a murder trial with just subjective evidence. 418 00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,920 But what we have here is objective evidence. 419 00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:50,480 I have a little bit of a different take on that, Eric, as a logician because I'm fascinated 420 00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,200 by the concept of proof. 421 00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:56,760 And there's all kinds of different meanings of that term, of proof. 422 00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:03,040 What's in my mind, Mosul, is like Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead in the Principia, 423 00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:08,400 Mathematica, and the notion of a mathematical proof is very fascinating to me. 424 00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:13,760 But there are other kinds of proofs, too, which have come through the years. 425 00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:21,320 And the reason I'm OK with this word now is that over the years, or 50 years, people 426 00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:29,480 have been coming to me and saying, often in the context of a loss of a loved one or a 427 00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:31,280 terminal illness. 428 00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:35,760 And they say, Raymond, is there any proof of this in England? 429 00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:38,840 And they want that word proof, is something. 430 00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,600 So I had to sort of study, what do they want? 431 00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:45,880 I mean, I know it wasn't what Bertrand Russell articulated. 432 00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:48,600 What are they asking people? 433 00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:53,800 And when I would try to put it in terms of logic, people's eyes would just roll up. 434 00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:56,560 So I realized that's not what they want. 435 00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:02,720 What do people, most people want when they say they want proof of an afterlife? 436 00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:12,400 Well, what I finally figured out is, and what I am willing to say is, the question is, is 437 00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:20,840 it rational to confidently expect and anticipate that there's an afterlife? 438 00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:28,280 And I say resoundingly, yes, because I can't think my way out of this era. 439 00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,480 You know, I am a skeptic in the general sense. 440 00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,560 These people falsely use that term skeptic. 441 00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,040 They don't know what they're talking about. 442 00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:44,240 And they make me so mad, not because anything to do with near death experiences, but because 443 00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:47,800 I love to teach Greek philosophy. 444 00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:54,720 And when I get to the skeptics, which is a Hellenistic philosophy formed by Pyrrho, 445 00:31:54,720 --> 00:32:03,200 yeah, I have to undo the damage that these morons have done to my students' minds by 446 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:08,400 their completely false and incoherent use of this term. 447 00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:10,520 They don't know what they're talking about. 448 00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,040 Let me explain what a skeptic is. 449 00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:19,160 The skeptical movement was launched by Pyrrho about 30 years after the Aristotle roughly. 450 00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:27,400 But Aristotle is the person who codified logic and Pyrrho knew logic very well. 451 00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:33,520 But now he asks, well, if you think about logic as a machine for generating conclusions 452 00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:35,840 from premises, right? 453 00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:40,160 So Pyrrho's saying, well, what if we don't follow the conclusion? 454 00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,160 That is, we really press down and ask every question. 455 00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:44,560 We're very rigorous. 456 00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:47,800 But in the end, we don't draw a conclusion. 457 00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:49,440 But why? 458 00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:55,400 Because, number one, they found, as anybody who does this for any preciful time, realized, 459 00:32:55,400 --> 00:33:01,320 if you constantly do that, it has this amazing mind-expanding experience. 460 00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:07,160 You get David Hume that mentioned that, too, the great skeptic of the 18th century. 461 00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:12,120 And also, if you think about it, and everybody else is heading in this way to get to the 462 00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:19,040 conclusion, but your technique is to avoid a conclusion, then you see things along the 463 00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:22,480 side that everybody else admits. 464 00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:24,520 You see side effects. 465 00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:30,040 So now, run that knowledge back through these claims of these morons. 466 00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:33,760 You say, oh, I'm a skeptic about these near-death experiences. 467 00:33:33,760 --> 00:33:37,120 I think it's just the chemistry of the brain. 468 00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:43,560 What that ignoramus has just said is, I'm a person who doesn't draw conclusions, and 469 00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:46,280 my conclusion is such and such. 470 00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:52,560 And that is a very annoying thing for somebody who's interested in the foundations of this 471 00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,760 whole rational system, the great philosophers. 472 00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:57,400 So that's why I get agitated. 473 00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:01,600 I don't have anything to do with near-death experiences. 474 00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:09,520 But in my skeptical process, Eric, trying to, every way I could, to think of what are 475 00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:10,840 the objections? 476 00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:18,000 What do you think of the things that it, the reasons why it is not, is the way you proceed 477 00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,800 to get confident. 478 00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:26,200 And in that process, I just reached what were I given up. 479 00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:28,960 And I mean, I can't think my way out of it. 480 00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:37,920 I never felt with that big, oxygen deprivation to the brain because, number one, that depends 481 00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:43,680 on an incoherent theory of the mind called epiphenomenalism. 482 00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:47,120 So there's a philosophical strike against it. 483 00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:54,160 But also in terms of the more practical side of it, one of my own medical skill professors, 484 00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:59,400 my first year of medical skill, told me about having this experience when she was trying 485 00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:02,080 to resuscitate her own mother. 486 00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:03,880 He was dying. 487 00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:10,160 And obviously my physician friend, I have oxygen deprivation to the brain, but she had 488 00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:12,440 this same experience. 489 00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,680 And so that's never been an issue for me. 490 00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:23,680 But the fact that it is not oxygen deprivation to the brain simply does not imply that it 491 00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:24,680 is life after death. 492 00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:25,680 See what I mean? 493 00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:28,760 And so this is my process. 494 00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:32,480 I just finally got to the point where I give up. 495 00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:39,760 And some of the events, I have a friend named Anthony Chakoria, who is a PhD in physiology 496 00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:48,680 and an MD, an orthopedic surgeon and a professor of orthopedic surgery, who in 1994 was struck 497 00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:55,160 in the neck by a bolt of lightning and had a cardiac arrest and got out of his body and 498 00:35:55,160 --> 00:36:01,360 went all through this resort center where his family was having a family reunion and 499 00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:02,800 saw what they were doing. 500 00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:06,960 And he told me, he said, this is more real than real. 501 00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:08,560 This is not life to train. 502 00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:11,400 This is hypo reality. 503 00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:17,440 And so when Anthony got back from this, unaccountably, he started to think, well, I'm 504 00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:23,040 unaccountably, he started getting interested in the pianos, never in interest. 505 00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:29,440 And he started having a recurrent dream, which he was playing a piece on a piano on a concert 506 00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:30,440 stage. 507 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:35,880 And so he learned how to transcribe music to transcribe the piece. 508 00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:37,600 And he learned how to play the piano. 509 00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:43,880 And now, in addition to being a renowned orthopedic surgeon, he's a concert pianist. 510 00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:50,560 Now that series of events does not fit into consensual reality. 511 00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:53,040 By the way, he's been on this podcast too. 512 00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:54,040 Oh, really? 513 00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:58,480 And so if anybody wants to hear his whole story in it, it's awesome. 514 00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:03,600 And some of his music we put in the podcast, we'll get that one in the show notes. 515 00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:06,520 I forget the number off the top of my head. 516 00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:10,960 And now here, another one, right out where you live. 517 00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:19,640 An advert graphic artist, Jeff Olson, some years ago, had a car crash in which his legs 518 00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:21,160 smashed off. 519 00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:23,720 His wife was killed instantly. 520 00:37:23,720 --> 00:37:26,960 One of his kids, I think, and then the other one, Leah. 521 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:29,600 So he was taken to the hospital. 522 00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:37,520 And Jeff O'Driscoll, who's an ER doctor, was there in the hospital when Jeff came in. 523 00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:46,160 And as Jeff was having his near death experience surrounded by tubes and wires, Jeff O'Driscoll 524 00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:52,640 was talking to Jeff Olson's dead wife and the hospital. 525 00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:59,080 And you say, I can tell you, and does another physician, friends of mine, Eben Alexander, 526 00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:01,480 for example, the neurosurgeon. 527 00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:06,320 And all of these people, I trust their medical judgment completely. 528 00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:10,080 If something happens to me, I go to anyone else. 529 00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:16,920 Unanimously, their judgment of their own experience was that not only was it real, it was more 530 00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:20,880 real, in order to awaken reality. 531 00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:28,560 So I am in a situation, see, I can't think my way out of how can I trust their medical 532 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:33,240 judgment to the point that I would put my life in their hands. 533 00:38:33,240 --> 00:38:39,400 But on the other view, what does that do about their unanimous opinions that this was real? 534 00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:40,600 So I give up. 535 00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:42,760 I just can't think my way out of it. 536 00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:47,880 I love that term, and I've heard it so many times, that their experience was more real 537 00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,080 than real. 538 00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:54,680 And those of us that have not been through it will probably never understand that, but 539 00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:56,760 more real than real. 540 00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:02,560 But for the antagonists, they're still going to say, Paul, your book says proof. 541 00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:07,640 What other proof do you have? 542 00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:11,800 Today's interview was quite a bit longer than most, so we've broken it up into two 543 00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:13,160 episodes. 544 00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:19,440 We just ended part one with the question, what other proof is there of life after life? 545 00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:23,920 In part two, which will be released later this week, we'll find out the answers to that 546 00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:26,280 question from the experts. 547 00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:28,600 I hope you'll come back for the conclusion. 548 00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,800 By the way, if you want an email reminder when new episodes are released, click over 549 00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:36,480 to roundtripdeath.com and get on our email list. 550 00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:55,240 Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.