← Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH W/ Dr. Jeffrey Long
01:18:58
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- [00:02]
A
What if the greatest mystery in human history has already been solved? Well, today we're tackling the ultimate question. Is there life after death? My guest is Dr. Jeffrey Long. He's a medical doctor, an oncologist and the world's foremost researcher on near death experiences. So he hasn't just listened to a few wild stories. He's compiled the largest scientifically documented database of NDEs on the planet. And what he's found is absolutely mind blowing. Dr. Long has discovered an undeniable connective tissue between thousands of people who've crossed over and come back.
- [00:38]
B
To my astonishment, I found that the content, what they described, the characteristics of the near death experience strikingly similar everywhere around the world, regardless of where they were in their non western countries, regardless of what their prior belief system was.
- [00:54]
A
So today Dr. Long is sharing his documented evidence of the afterlife, the universal encounters with a higher power, and what many are calling the ultimate scientific proof of God. So get ready to have your entire reality shifted. Let's dive in. Keep it real. Keeping it Real with Jillian Michaels. Dr. Long, how are you? Welcome to the show.
- [01:19]
B
I'm doing fantastic. I'm glad to be here.
- [01:22]
A
I gotta tell you that I have, I've read your book, I've watched your interviews. I've been waiting to talk to you for such a long time to establish for the audience. You are the foremost researcher on near death experiences in the world, are you not?
- [01:37]
B
I think that's a little bit of an overstatement. I'm very prominent. My research website has collected and we've investigated over 4,000 near death experiences. So if you will, I'm right up there on the chain of people that do research in this.
- [01:52]
A
And you got into this because you work in your radiation oncology. Doctor, can you, can you give the audience a little bit of an idea about who you are, what you do and what prompted you into this transition?
- [02:06]
B
Oh that, you know, that's great, Julian. Of course as a radiation oncology physician, I'm still working part time, but it was decades ago. I was in my residency training. That was pre Internet, that's how long ago that was. But I was at the medical library flipping through a journal looking for a cancer related article. And completely by accident I came across an article that had in the title near death experience and I'm like, what's this? Everything I knew in my medical training was you're either dead or you're not dead. So what's this near death experience? So intrigued I went ahead and read the article and was Fascinated. Here was a study from a physician who had investigated some patients with near death experiences. They had what often happens early in the experience, call it out of body experience. Consciousness rises above the body. And in his study, what the patient saw, what they heard in the near death experience while they were clinically, actually clinically dead. This is a cardiologist and these are patients that had no heartbeat, they were being resuscitated. But what they saw at that critical juncture was real when they came, asked about the patient and verified it later. So again, I was absolutely fascinated. I mean, how can you not be fascinated about what happens after we die? And here was an intriguing line of evidence suggesting an answer. So that got me going. And then several later, I set up my research Near Death experience Website and boom, 25 years later, here we are talking a lot of water under the bridge.
- [03:35]
A
Since then, I think a lot of people are afraid to die. Do you think that's a safe assumption, Dr. Long?
- [03:42]
B
There's no question about that. Fear of death is sort of that background cloud that we have, like all of us hanging over our head, I think at some time or another, or even a good portion of our life. And Jillian, it's not just fear of our personal death, but what about our friends, family, loved ones or someone who's actually passed on? I mean, it's a fairly common concern and I think appropriately so to worry what happens after the dead. Are they all right? Are they going to go on having a conscious existence? And that is where I share your delight about near death experiences there by the thousands. Not only my research, but literally scores and scores of other researchers finding consistent descriptions that we really do have a survival of who we are, what we are, everything we are goes on as a conscious existence after our permanent bodily death. And I share your thoughts on that too, Gillian. That to me, even after all these decades of studying it is just incredibly inspiring. And it brings me back to that basic principle of science. What's real is consistently observed. And that's the fascination of near death experiences. Because these overwhelmingly consistent observations, description of what lies beyond death's veil is absolutely astonishing. And we keep getting new experiences every week, obviously.
- [05:00]
A
Okay, I want, I want to attack this, I want to be skeptic. I'm watching this and I'm going, well, you know, when the body is dying, the brain is starved of oxygen. It releases all of these chemicals that are akin to different psychedelics. You know, there's one famously, I think it's dme, I can't remember. Dmt, dmt That's. Thank you doc. The brain releases these psychedelics and that's what's happening. It's all a hallucination. What does one say to that?
- [05:31]
B
That's absolutely been an interest of mine. You know, literally for the 25 years I've been into this research, doing the science properly. I've investigated very careful possible brain produced explanations of near death experiences. So you mentioned DMT which is a known psychotropic or brain acting drug that causes hallucinatory experiences. We've actually had a number of people that had near death experiences that also described taking DMT or other types of hallucinogenic psychotropic drugs. And over and over people that actually have had near death experiences and taken those drugs repeatedly. Say the near death experience was nothing like that. The psychotropic drugs were as the cause of action would be expected. Hallucinatory, unreal experiences, events skip around like dreams. Not so with near death experiences they often had diminished consciousness. It was frightening and you just don't see that kind of. And of course very inconsistent pattern. And a lot of what you see in a near death experience all but never described in these hallucinogenic brain acting drugs. And let's not forget too Gillian, classic near death experiences have been recorded by the score when people are under general anesthesia and of course at that time heart is very well monitored. So boom, when you have that cardiac arrest, when heart stops, you know it, the medical team knows it. And yet at that time, again by the scores, classic near death experiences. Now under that blanket of anesthesia, general anesthesia, it should be doubly impossible to have a lucid organized experience when you're under anesthesia and your heart stops. And yet the near death experiences at that time are identical to near death experiences occurring at all other times from all other causes. So absolutely in those circumstances impossible to have anything due to physical brain function, you name it, electrical activity, chemical cascade, low oxygen levels, high carbon dioxide. I mean nothing can possibly explain these types of near death experiences.
- [07:35]
A
I want to start with the out of body experiences and you, you talk about something called blind sight. Can you explain what that is?
- [07:45]
B
Sure. That is, I guess to answer blindsight I have to explain one of the most fascinating interviews I' done with someone who had a near death experience a while back. Her name was Vicki. Vicki was born totally blind. To Vicki, vision was unknown and unknowable. I tried to explain vision in terms of the remaining four bodily senses and it was like whoosh. I mean you just can't do it. It's completely different. And so Vicki was a talented singer and was being driven by for sang at a bar, being driven home by an unfortunately inebriated patron and boom, they had a bad car accident. And so the first Vicki saw had vision was when she had that out of body experience consciousness above her body and there was her body down on the gurney in the emergency room. She was initially frightened because vision was so unknown and different. And it really took her a while to correlate the feel of her long hair and interestingly, a ring that her father had given her that she knew her entire life only through feel. Now she could see. Vicki went on to have a very classic near death experience through a tunnel, reviewing the portions of her prior life and these unearthly beautiful realms. And when she came back, she described vision the way so many people that have a near death experience do. Vision to Vicki and actually many other near death experiencers is what we call 360 degrees. She's simultaneously aware of vision in front of her, behind her, right, left, up, down. The correct geometric term would actually be spherical vision. But when I told Vicki that everybody else that has normal vision on earth has a so called pie shaped visual field because of where our eyes are located in our head, when I told Vicki our vision was limited like that, she laughed at me. She said, no, no, how can that be? Vision is you see all around. How can you be so limited? So that led to my interest. We actually ask survey questions now about vision during near death experience. And we now have a small series of people that were either legally blind and or severely impaired vision. Every one of them that had a near death experience, normal or often as Vicki described, supernormal vision.
- [10:00]
A
That's absolutely incredible. When she came back, was she angry that she would not see that again as in her human existence or like, oh, I was just so grateful to have had this moment because I would imagine that would feel so difficult to have this door opened up and then have it ripped away.
- [10:21]
B
You know, that's a good question. Actually. She didn't seem to have any resentments or concerns about having vision and then not having vision. I mean, don't forget she was in her early 20s when she had her near death experience. So she was very well adapted to blindness. She had extremely good hearing, extremely good remaining four bodily physical senses. And so she was reasonably certainly adapted and comfortable with living her existence in that way. So I didn't really hear any resent or concern from her about not having. But that's a good question. I, you know, I Think you and I, gosh, if we lost our vision, I dang sure would be resentful. But I guess if you're born totally blind like Vicki, it's a different situation.
- [11:02]
A
You know I asked that Doc, is because it seems like one of the through lines is that people come back changed, changed for the better. Can you talk about the ways in which people are changed after coming back?
- [11:13]
B
Virtually everyone who has a near death experience is going to be changed and often profoundly. Actually, I published the largest study of what we call after effects or the typical changes of a near death experience last year with 984 people that had a near death experience. Now Julian, interestingly we had a comparison group of 42 people that had a life threatening event but did not have a near death experience. So we were able to compare apples with apples. And the group that had the near death experience, that group of 984 were off the chart in terms of how their lives changed compared to those with just a life threatening event. They were overwhelmingly, and I mean like orders of magnitude more compassionate. Increased belief in an afterlife, increased lack of fear of death, increased value of life and the meaning of life. But over and over through all those critical survey questions directed towards changes after near death experience. I mean just profoundly changing. And interestingly, the changes that you have after a near death experience, these after effects actually become more pronounced in the years to decades after they have their experience. Now you don't change your life, almost nobody does in response to a single life event unless you are absolutely convinced that what happened was real, meaningful, significant and with that foundation of understanding like near death experiencers virtually always do, Boom. Then in response to that you have these huge life changes.
- [12:45]
A
You know, I asked that Doc, because I think in this climate right now, we're so accustomed to othering people and I think of all the ancient texts that I've ever taken the time to look at, there's this similar theme of all of us coming from the same source, right? And people who have the death of ego on these monster psychedelic trips. Same sort of takeaway, we're all the same, we all come from the same source, we're all connected. And I wonder if when they die, are they seeing that? Is that a theme of like we are all part of this interconnected web, we're all one, so they come back with more empathy? Or is it possibly the life review which I want to get to, where maybe they see, hey, I wasn't such a nice person here and I felt what that other person felt. And it didn't feel good. So I should come back and be better. What's making them a better person?
- [13:43]
B
Okay, that's great. It's almost like you were aware of my research. Folks. We didn't talk ahead of time. Gillian just came right up with this and it's amazing. So you get into that. Let's go right after those ancient texts, the wisdoms of people literally for thousands of years, that we all come from the source, that there seems to be that unity or oneness. Well, Julian, we asked that directly in our survey of those 984 people that had a near death experience. During your experience, did you have any awareness of a unity or oneness? And Amazingly, well over 50% of the respondents answered yes. Yes, they did have that awareness during their near death experience. And gosh, you know, in a world of separation, in a world where it's so much more obvious how different we are, how apart we are from other people and from things in the world, to have that very consistently observed sense that we are unified, in fact, when they. In the narrative answers to that question, the people having near death experiences are far more likely to describe it. Not with the weaker term a connection, but with the much stronger term a unity, a oneness. Exactly what you were just saying there. So, yeah, there does seem to be strong corroboration, amazingly from near death experiencers, actually the majority that have had them. That corroborates very nicely those ancient spiritual and wisdom teachings. Maybe those folks from centuries and millennia ago had a near death experience or learn from others that do. But it's interesting how that, that very important, very true wisdom can certainly be seen in near death experiences.
- [15:21]
A
Why do you think? I'm just, I'm just curious. Why do you think God. It sounds like there's a God, right? That sounds like there's something here pretty significant. And I want to get to a lot of the proof that, that you have, you know, documented over the course of this interview. But if there is a God, if we're saying there is and there's more, why are like a handful of people given a glimpse behind this curtain? Are they meant to come back here and tell us all to stop acting like assholes? I'm sorry, just. Are they meant to say stop acting like an asshole? We're all connected, we're all one. Because otherwise we all have the scales on our eyes and it creates misery. And then you've got these few, you know, 4,000 cases, there's billions of people on the planet, they all report the same thing. You've got all of this incredible connective tissue with these people. Why do you think if I know there's no quantifiable answer, but this is where I would look to God and say, why don't you just let us all know that? Why do a few people get to know that? And what are they supposed to do with that knowledge?
- [16:22]
B
Okay.
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A
Wow. I've had these questions for you for such a long time. I struggle with these things at night. It's crazy.
- [16:30]
B
But, but, but hey, Julian, it's not just you. It's been me. It's been. I'll bet just about everybody watching this video is thinking to themselves, wow, that, that's speaking to me. That's what I've wondered about. And I'll tell you that what near death experiencers say, I think sort of the Rosetta stone of understanding the answer to that came from a near death experience for themselves. They were having a very profoundly positive near death experience, as they typically describe. Just overwhelming, off the chart, literally unearthly, nothing they could have known on Earth, feeling of pe. Unity. And they were in that beautiful, unearthly, often called heavenly realm. But while they were there, they actually did meet God. And this person having the near death experience was so enmeshed with this beautiful experience, she asked God directly, why me? Why was I so special? And I think God's answer, I think directly addresses what. What you're asking there. God said, love falls on everyone equally. Everyone is special. This is what you needed to live your earthly life. Wow. And I think that's the answer so corroborated with some other notes from other near death experiencers. I think it's literally a gift. I think there's some people that need that gift more than other people. I kind of wish everybody on Earth could have a gift like that. Wow. Wouldn't that change? Yeah, I know, but that seems to be, as best I can tell, it seems to be something from a vastly higher wisdom, a decision, a experience that people have that are especially in need of that to live their earthly life.
- [18:04]
A
It's interesting you say that. I had one experience and I'm very. I'm terrible at math and chemistry and all that, but I'm a very scientific person in that. I'm like, give me proof. I'm not buying into this until I have proof. So you know God. I'm like, I hope so. I think so. Maybe I don't know all of that. My grandmother and I were exceptionally close and she died when I was 10 years old. And I Was tormented. I'm not exaggerating, actually tormented over it most of my life. I still think about her all the time. And we had a deal. And the deal was, if you can come back and visit me, come back and tell me you're okay. So, 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old, nothing, zero, nothing. Parents get divorced when I'm 13. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I'm 27 years old. It's been 17 years since she passed away. And I'm going through a really hard time. And I have this little studio apartment. I'm dead broke. I fall asleep on my couch. And I'm dreaming. And in this dream, I'm in my mom's condo. And I'm following my mom down this hallway. And my mom's kind of sad about something. And my grandmother and my mom had unresolved stuff. And my mom kind of peels off into her office down this hallway, which is off to the right. And at the end of the hallway is my mom's room. In that room is somebody putting stuff away in drawers. And I keep walking down the hallway, and the woman turns around and it's my grandmother, and it is her. I never dreamt about her. Not once. And I used to say. I don't even dream about her. I used to say it constantly. Like, I can't even. I can't even get peace. Having a dream where she's in. It turns around, it's her. And I mean, it's her. The eyebrows are penciled on.
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She would kill me.
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But, like, it is her. Not like she turned into a deer and then walked, you know, and then I was in at a parkway or. No, it's her. We're in the room. I immediately break into tears. In the dream, she had an escort. Somebody or something was with her. And they gave me a bunch of information. All I know is I woke up sobbing hysterically. But one of the things that she left me with, this was it. This was going to be the last time while I was alive that I get this one. It was like we made an exception in a weird way. I bring it up because it was like, you need this to be able to have peace. This is the peace for you. And she said to me, we see each other every day. And she did not mean. And I couldn't process what exactly she meant at the time, But I knew it wasn't like, I'm always with you. I'm in your heart. I'm in your head. I knew it wasn't that. As I got a little bit older. And I began to learn about the fact that time is relative. The fact that like 1974 is happening in the same now as 2026, that we're just experiencing it in a linear fashion. I was like, oh my God, like we, we are existing on the fabric of space time right now, together, all the time, forever in eternity, simultaneously. I then come to learn about the potential for infinite parallel universes. And I'm like, we're having all of these lives together that are going on right now. So just in this piece of my journey, she's not with me, but we are with each other all the time, every day. And I, in that moment, as I began to sort of glean this greater knowledge, understanding of the universe and space and time, I knew that's what she had meant. And I knew I was meant to learn what she had meant in order for it to validate that sort of bigger message. And I know now. You know now I'm 52. It's been, it's been quite some time, obviously since then, 24 or 5 years. I have not seen her since. I knew I wouldn't. But what was crazy is that it changed the way that I looked at the world. And then I started reading stuff about NDEs and how's this possible? And you know, people who would see loved ones and would see them in a dream, but it wasn't like a drug trip. It was very concrete. And. And so this brings me to ask you about the loved one part of the NDEs. I know people in hospice report seeing loved ones, but it's like, well, they're on drugs, you know, they're, they're on pain medication, they're totally out of it. But in these NDEs, some people see family members.
- [22:37]
B
No, absolutely. First of all, thanks for sharing that profound dream that you have. That's what we call an after death communication. Dreams are the most common thing, if you look into reading about that. Actually about 30 to 40% of people in the United States have had what they believed to be an after death communication. So again, it's not rare. And what you describe is a classic pattern of that very important, very powerful, very meaningful. So we're back to that old scientific adage, what's real is consistently observed. And Julian, you're not alone. I'll bet there's a huge number of people watching this video that will take that in and say, wow, I also had an after death communication. So yes, they can be very real and they can be very significant, just exactly as you experienced. But getting back to your loved ones and near death experiences. About 20% of people that have a near death experience will encounter a deceased loved one. These are people they knew on earth that had died and they can meet them most commonly in that beautiful unearthly realm. And there they are. Boom. Even if they died of very advanced age or a disfiguring illness or accident, they're essentially always in the near death experience. Picture perfect health and these are joyous reunions as you can imagine. A lot of sharing, a lot of dialogue goes on. Very beautiful experience experience. I mean, even after 25 years of research, I love reading about this. Interestingly, if the deceased loved one was an infant that died early in childhood, the child often appears many, many years older as in a young child. Another interesting thing, if they died in extreme advanced age, we're talking 90sish. They may appear even decades younger. So a beautiful kind of reunion they seem to be. Again, picture perfect health and beautiful reunions and certainly one of my favorites is
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- [26:01]
B
It's not just people, Julian. Deceased pets are also encountered in near death experiences. I know we'll have to.
- [26:08]
A
I have a 19 year old dog that I think we're getting to the end and I'm a little bit out of it today because we're like, we're there. And I was like, how am I going to interview this doctor and talk about this? I'm going to start. And I just keep.
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Oh, that's, I know.
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And I just, I'm like, you know what, that's tough.
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I mean, as an animal lover, pet dogs, I'll, I'll take this. I know. How dang heartbreaking. Oh my God.
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A
I would give you.
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B
I've walked miles in those shoes. But it's on our website. You can literally find scores of these joyous reunions again with that beloved pet. If they died in advanced age, they may appear many, many years. It's, it's a continuation, but at a much higher level of that loving relationship there was on Earth, Julian, you name it. Dogs, cats, birds, horses. I mean the beloved pets, I've heard it all in near death experience accounts. Just absolutely dramatic, beautiful. Again, highly reassuring to those of us like you and me that are pet lovers, that even for our beloved pets, love does not end, even if it's a pet at the end of their physical existence, that it goes on and it really is eternal and we will all be together again.
- [27:21]
A
That's absolutely incredible because part of me has always thought, well, listen, you know, if Jillian is a stained glass window and Dr. Long is a stained glass window, the light that shines through that window, we share, right? We're all part of source or God or whatever label you want to give it or, you know. But when the window breaks, the window breaks, the individual is gone. Maybe again, you exist in, in other universes and what have you, but the fact that like the individual continues on is absolutely wild to me because you might think to yourself, well, you would just go back to source. You'd be absorbed back into this pool of energy to be kind of recycled into something else or someone else. Do you think maybe that's God showing the person something that, that makes them feel safe and since those loved ones are a part of God, like it's almost a, I don't know, like a hologram of something that you trust that comforts you? Or are they saying, that was my father, that was my dog?
- [28:28]
B
Oh, absolutely. When you encounter the deceased loved ones. There's interestingly, there's an immediate knowing, even if they appeared, you know, older than when they died or younger than when they died. So there seems to be, and there's that dialogue, there's that, that awareness, wow, the deceased loved one knows that person, knows them completely. They know how they live their earthly life. I mean there's, there's so much sharing, there's so much beauty in these kind of interactions. I don't think this is, is any kind of an illusory thing. I mean, I believe this is absolutely a part of a glimpse of our eternal destiny as souls. So to me, I find that reassuring. And I would emphasize while we did talk, that unity, that oneness, seemingly paradoxically, there's also that powerful sense of individuality we never lose in the afterlife from near death experiences. Who we are, what we are, our memories, those loved ones that we knew and that we lost in our earthly life. I mean, we all seem to be who we are, but in the afterlife described in near death experiences, vastly more intelligent, completely free of, of pain, you know, no pain, anxieties, miseries, seems to be literally, you know, in a classic, overwhelmingly beautiful, far better than our earthly life existence. And so I find that incredibly positive and, and hugely reassuring. I geez, Julian, I've lost some loved ones too, and you know, it. It's, to me, it is a never ending source of inspiration and joy to know that we really all are going to be together and be together as ourselves and especially as a cancer doctor that helps patients battle that life threatening illness, cancer. I find that not only personally extremely reassuring, but also highly professionally reassuring. Every step of my path as a
- [30:16]
A
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- [31:52]
B
Yeah, that's good. Life review is a fascinating part of near death experiences. You can life reviews are varia described. You can see either a part or even see all of your prior life, which I know, as amazing as that sounds, because here you are unconscious or clinically dead with an absent heartbeat and yet, boom. You can review literally decades of your life in its totality. By the way, that's a really good example of how rapid acceleration of consciousness often is described in near death experiences. But in the life review, they may see there's several different ways they can see it. A common scenario is like multiple screens and portions of their life flashing and they could focus in on their life and see parts of it and revisit things they can come up with, understand what they did that was really good and they're happy about or things that they did that weren't so good and they could be less than happy about. But as you mentioned, there are certainly a significant number of these near death experiences where remarkably, they're not only aware of, very vividly, their life through their own eyes, as broadly defined during the near death experience, but they also become aware of their interaction with other people through the perspective of the person they interacted with. And as amazing as that sounds, we see that over and over in a large number of near death experiences. So they're not only aware of what they said, what they were feeling when they said that, what they intended, but boom. They can see simultaneously how the other person they interacted with, felt with, processed it. And sometimes that can be a huge surprise they find, I mean you can just imagine, you know, how geez, just, you know. But over and over they become aware, Julian, amazingly, that that smallest act of love and compassion that they thought was just, you know, literally nothing or just an afterthought turned out to be very significant and important and sometimes even life changing to that person they interacted with. So it's an incredibly valuable way for near death experiencers to learn how they live their life, what they can learn from it, and certainly vary foundational to help them bring back, if you will, that little piece of heaven to go forward with the rest of their life, to be better people and know how profoundly significant and meaningful it is with their interactions with other people every day of their life.
- [34:15]
A
I can't imagine how helpful that must be because, you know, at the end of the day, you, you know how you feel and how you see a situation. You know, I'm having a disagreement with a friend right now, and of course I think I'm all right. Like, well, I'm right, I'm right about that and I'm right about that, and this isn't right. I, I'm right about that. And as I was kind of preparing to talk to you today, and of course sitting with my little dog, telling her, you know, was gonna talk to you and everything, I was thinking about this life review and wondering, I wonder what my friend sees about me. I can't even perceive it. The things that, you know, oh, you did this and you did that and you did this, and you're just thinking, no, I didn't. Maybe because I didn't have those intentions. Maybe because I'm, you know, I don't have the ego strength to hear it, but I, I often try, you know, or put yourself in the other person's shoes. You know, you're told to do that, but it's not easy. It is not at all. First of all, you, you don't have the ability to know what's in their head unless they tell you. And when they do, they're often so angry that we just reject it, we don't hear it. And it's such a shame because it destroys relationships, the inability to hear one another, not become defensive, not launch a counter attack. And I just wonder, like, how would I handle that? What kind of person would I be in that life review? And like, look what a piece of you were here. You know, like, oh, you know, are you humbled? You're, you know, you're, you're in this holy place. And I wonder if I would come back thinking I would, I would hope that I would handle it like a champ in a class act. But I also, there's a part of me that wishes I could do that here on earth, that I could be a better mom to my kids, that I could be a better wife, that I could be a better friend without having die and come back. Is there anything that we could sort of take Away from that, any sort of message of how to do it, how to be humbled, how your life improves. I'm fascinated by that, that.
- [36:15]
B
Yeah, you know, I think there are some messages from Life Review that can inform that. You know, certainly as you mentioned, you think about putting yourself in the position of the other person. I mean, that's very powerful. You know, why do they feel that way? You know, is there anything that I can do or do, should do, shouldn't have, do to help with that interpersonal reaction, with that conflict? So I think, I think that's really powerful. A really powerful thing you could do at the end of the day is just review what happened that day. You know, are you, you satisfied with what you did or some things you could do better. But if you do that over and over, it's going to ultimately help one to basically do like a life review. It's described in Near Death Experience and can be powerfully positive, informative. I think another fascinating insight from the Life Review as, I mean, gosh, I mean, think about that. Here you are seeing your entire prior life, you know, things you did, good things you did, not so good. And we've all, we've all fallen short. Believe me, I know that. Me too. But the good news is when people have that Life review essentially 100% of the time, there's no external judgment. If there's any judgment about how you lived your prior life and your actions and what you did, that's going to come from the person having the near death experience, not externally. So I think the take home message from that is don't be too hard on yourself. You, me, every single person watching this video, we're all human, we're going to make mistakes. And you know, what we can do is always strive to do better. And I think that's the important thing. Not that we never make a mistake, but that we learn from our mistakes, that we have that just like you said, that humility to understand that we're going to make mistakes, we can learn about it, tomorrow's the next day, we can continue to spread love and compassion to our fellow human beings the next day and the day after that. And that's what's really important. Always focusing on being the best person that you can be. And you know, I think that that's really some of the strongest thing and certainly take home the message also from near death experiences both in the Life Review and other aspects, that no matter how difficult life is, I mean, gosh, here's a friend and you're having A conflict and there's some anger, you know, welcome to the human race. I like to say when I hear that, you know, how many miles of all of us walked in that shoe? And yet again, you know, as difficult as life gets and frustrating, you always remember a profound message from near death experiences, that our life, all of our lives, is far more meaningful and significant than we could possibly imagine in this life. Near death experiencers very consistently come back with that awareness. The littlest things that we do, the biggest things, how we bring forward love into the earth really does matter. Even if it's not really obvious to us, living our earthly life day to
- [39:07]
A
day, that means so much, I think, because you feel like this is not a drop in a bucket, you know, this is a drop in every ocean on every planet in the entire universe. Like it's just pointless, it's insignificant. There are billions of us and bad things happen and good things happen and we have no control and it doesn't matter. And I think this is where people become nihilistic and they, they give up, they don't work on it anymore and life seems unfair. And another thing that I think is so important that you mentioned is that when they're in this life review, there's no judgment. Whereas I think we're so afraid of being ashamed by a behavior that we refuse to own it. But if it was like, okay, let me not be ashamed of this mistake that I made and you could step away from that and just look at things. Honestly, it would be such a big deal. And I wonder if we could internalize the fact that maybe in the, in the eyes of a loving God, there is no shame for this behavior, just a desire to remedy it and evolve. Maybe we would be less inclined to reject it. Oh, sorry, doc, go ahead.
- [40:16]
B
That is an awesome spiritual wisdom and I really want to just echo that because I think it's so significant and important. I mean, here we are, we're all going to make mistakes. You, me, everybody. And yet we don't have to let that impede the rest of our life. We don't have to hang on to that. You know, that mistake we made doesn't have to be that baggage we carry tomorrow and the next day. You just need to let that go and just move forward to be the best that we can all be day by day. Again, the number one thing that near death experiencers say, probably the first or second most common word they use is love. So again, taking that wisdom from near death experiences, that's really how our focus should be. Not only to ourselves, but to everybody in our life. Try to be as loving as we can, as compassionate as we can. And you're carrying forth that little beat. I've used that phrase before, but I'll say it again. That little piece of heaven that near death experiencers bring back to their earthly life and share it with other people in the world.
- [41:15]
A
Doc, can you explain accelerated consciousness? Is this when you have an understanding of the space time continuum and you know the, the greater mechanics of the universe? What does this mean?
- [41:28]
B
Sure. Over and over near death experiencers come back, you know, especially when they have deeper, longer lasting near death experiences will come back and say wow, I was a part of, not aware of, but much more likely to say a part of, enveloped in, deeply aware, you know, in the human word sense of what we call universal knowledge. I mean it's amazing these near death experience, what they describe as I knew everything I, I had knowledge, awareness, art, sciences, literature, how the universe works, how it all fits together in a way that was absolutely profound. Interestingly, they fairly commonly say it's like aha. It's almost like I knew this before and it still kind of bothers me when they say oh, it was so simple. I mean you're the RG. Universal knowledge. When I started my research over 25 years ago, I kept thinking, wow, you, you encountered universal knowledge? Well that's super. Share it with me, come on. And I kept waiting for someone to say, come on, tell me how to cure cancer. I'm a cancer doctor, you know, tell me some things that we can do scientifically to, to help bring these advances on Earth. And I realized very quickly that they, they couldn't bring back that knowledge. And I still was frustrated by that until once again, near death experiencer, literally my greatest teachers in my life put it to me very succinctly and said in that universal knowledge we had, indeed it was like all of the knowledge in the universe, but when you come back to that confined earthly body, it's like trying to put an ocean of knowledge into that teacup of our human brain. It doesn't fit. And so thereby I understood that that's why they can't bring back the kind of part of that universal knowledge that they can manifest as non ordinary knowledge in their earthly lives.
- [43:19]
A
You know what's interesting? In that dream that I had, I was given a bunch of information by not just my grandmother, but the Sha. I honestly it was like a chaperone. But then now I can tell you, all I can remember is what she looked like when she smiled on me, at me when I fell, you know, to my knees, crying in the dream, woke up sobbing. And what she left me with, which is like, this is the last time in this life, you know, and we see each other every day, be at peace and. But all the other stuff gone. And I did, it was like, oh, but I'm here and we're doing. And I, I remember having some sense of greater understanding. But it's like, what did she say? What did you do? I'm like, did she always with me? And it went on for hours. And that's, that's all I can actually recall. The. Okay, okay, now this is the, the one that's really. I want to get to the levels of absolutely insane, undeniable. The other one outside of blindsight is these stories of people that like lift up outside of their body and become aware of everything going on in the room. But then you have stories of people that are aware of stuff going on elsewhere that actually did happen. I remember seeing a woman talk about how like I guess there was a doctor in another room at the hospital and he had spilled spaghetti on his tie and he was having to change his tie or something, but he wasn't even in the operating room. But that actually did happen. Or like remembered where her dentures were in a cart or something. I can't like people that remember these things that are happening not in the operating room, that are happening in other rooms, but they're up out of their body and they can see all of this. This. What is this? Is it astral travel? What is this? This?
- [45:04]
B
Okay, that's great, Julian. That's. That's called the so called out of body experience. That's typically a first thing that happens during a near death experience. So boom, they're unconscious from that life threatening event or clinical death, even with no heartbeat. So they have often as an initial step, consciousness rising typically up above their body. And from that vantage point as you describe, they can see and hear ongoing earthly events. Events. They can see the crew coming in from the ambulance to try to resuscitate them, their friends, family or loved ones, you know, running around in a panic even in the operating room as you described. So that's fairly common. But what is impressive to me is and as a researcher is how accurate these observations are. Now don't forget they're unconscious, right? Look up unconscious and dictionary no conscious remembrance. So they're not perceiving from their physical body, often laying on the floor unconscious. Their point of conscious reference, seeing and Hearing is up, often way above their body. And as a researcher, I was interested in, well, how accurate are those observations? Is there any reason to believe it's hallucinatory, that it didn't happen? So I studied 280 of these out of body experiences and to my astonishment, just under 98% of the time when they described those observations, it was accurate down to the finest detail, and I mean often very detailed description of ongoing earthly events they absolutely could not have known about unless they were their consciousness, soul, if you will, many people call it that, was up above their body. And you make a very good point there, Jillian, about the fact that literally by the scores, probably, well, hundreds that have been reported so far, they actually, when they have that out of body experience, they can see and hear ongoing earthly events geographically far from their physical body. Exactly like you said, outside the room, outside the operating room. We've had people bring back to descriptions that were a mile, miles away. And yet every single time in my series of investigating these and I look at it formally, what they see, what they hear, when they go and check it out later, again, accurate down to the finest details, there's absolutely no way that the physical brain can cause that. That's been described literally by hundreds and hundreds of people that shared near death experiences with me on our research website. And there's literally hundreds of such experiences described in scholarly peer review literature. So is indeed a reality of what happens in a near death experience. And that is absolutely medically inexplicable and among the, if not the strongest line of evidence that near death experiences must be real.
- [47:48]
A
Oh my goodness. Okay, so Doc, you said that's one of the first thing that one of the first things that happen. There's a chronology to this because that I was not aware of. So what is that chronology for an nde, you come out of your body and you're in the light, I'm guessing.
- [48:09]
B
Sure. Well, I want to emphasize no two near death experiences are the same. But if you study, well, thousands like I have, you see what other researchers see also. And that is a very consistent pattern of characteristics. What happens during the near death experience, that's often described in a very, very typical chronological order. So boom, we talked about that. Out of body experience, consciousness over the body. Often the next thing that happens is they go into or through a tunnel, variably described. Often at the end of that tunnel they encounter a beautiful. They describe it as an unearthly, mystical light unlike anything they knew on earth. And then boom, when they pass through that, they're into that unearthly beautiful, often called heavenly realm. That's a time they may have that life review see part of all their prior life. That's a common realm. Or their encounter their deceased loved ones. That's a common realm where they see beauty beyond anything they could describe on Earth. Over and over, people having a near death experience will say this unearthly realm has beauty beyond anything they could have even imagined on Earth. They may describe music that is so beautiful it couldn't possibly be created on Earth. They may describe plants, flowers that have colors that they describe as so brilliant, so beautiful that there's no correlate on Earth. They literally don't have the words to describe the beauty or the wondrous color that they have there. There can be landscapes, there can be buildings. Again, beautiful in their splendor. And so it's a very. And of course at this point in time, very commonly, typically, in fact they're having overwhelming sense of peace, of love, of that unity we talked about earlier. And sometimes, geez, even after all these years, I have to kind of pinch myself and remind me these people, physically, their body is dead or unconscious and yet here they are having often supernormal consciousness, supernormal sensory awareness, wonderful emotions beyond anything they knew on Earth. Seeing beauty, loved ones. So really that's sort of the chronology of it, I might add also that near death experiences, when they have them, even very detailed ones with characteristics like that, it's not like dreams where the events skip around or hallucinogenic substances. We talked about DMT where events will often skip around. These are, these flow very logically and chronologically. They go very in a logical order direction from here to here to here. Very classic of near death experiences. What I just described would be a typical but very detailed near death experience with all those bells and whistles.
- [50:55]
A
How does this impact religion? You know, right now we're contending with maybe there's alien life on Earth, maybe they're interdimensional beings. Looks like there's some math to suggest there's infinite parallel universes. Time is relative. You know, we're, we're having to, to, to reckon with all of this. That to a certain extent I think has an impact on, on people's religious beliefs when they die. I know some people do see Jesus, right? And some people, people to see like the Prophet Muhammad. This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma. When it comes to your money, Credit Karma keeps you ahead of the game. You can count on Credit Karma to keep up with your Financial needs as they evolve, helping you monitor your progress and giving you personalized recommendations so you can make strides towards your goals. Make sure you're on the right track no matter where you are on your financial journey. Intuit, credit, Karma. Karma you can count on. Download today. Hey, this is Mike Slater. I have a podcast called Politics by Faith. I would love for you to listen. We take the news of the day and we run it through the Bible. What does the Bible have to say about this? Because there's nothing new under the sun. Read the headlines. Everything's all crazy. World's coming to an end.
- [52:24]
B
It's all in the Bible.
- [52:25]
A
And after every episode, hopefully you leave with a pretty proper perspective and a biblical piece. Please join us wherever you listen to podcasts and we also have a YouTube page as well. YouTube.com politics by faith how do they come back? If they're a very religious person, does it reinforce their belief in their religion or are they like, yeah, religion is like this little funnel that we're kind of processing this, this monster size God. I, I don't know, does that make any sense? That question? I feel like religion is like this and God is like that.
- [52:59]
B
Yeah, it's like, it's like we share a brain here. Again, I follow your word. I've been very fast fascinated by that too. So many, many years ago, as part of our survey that we do for near death experiencers, we asked them a very detailed question about what their religious beliefs and affiliation was prior to their near death experience right at that time and then when they shared their near death experience, which happens to be a median and average of about, about 15 years later. So interestingly, the majority of people retain the same religious belief that they had prior to their near death experience. Whether it's Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, they will go on being that way. A minority will change religions, but certainly the majority seem to be able to process their near death experience and go on being very comfortable in their religious beliefs. Now they'll often say that they look at it a different way. I mean, they may be taught to have faith that there's life after death and they say no, I know from personal experience, the most real experience of my life, that there's life after death. So there's a little bit of that integration, sort of a shift from a faith to a knowing. But you know, they don't seem to have any trouble with that. You know, they may, I mean what has been taught in the, in the great religions for thousands of years is what they experience. I mean, the reality of an afterlife, the critical importance and of meaning and purpose of our life, the critical nature of love, importance of being compassionate. And we've talked about God interestingly over and over. Near death experiencers will come back and we ask a direct survey question about that and say God is a human word that is limiting. There is no earthly word that could possibly describe that overwhelming being of compassion, love, light that knew me, loved me for everything that I was, all that I was, beyond anything that would be possible on earth. And they say, you know, we often hear, well, God is the most common work. There's really not a lot of better word in the English language. Over and over they say this is something far beyond earthly words or descriptions and sometimes they'll even fall all over themselves. But what we hear that incredibly positive message from near death experiencers is yes, indeed there does seem to be that, that God, that one, that all that everything and that seems overwhelmingly compassionate, concerned about each and every one of us. And certainly that helps near death experiencers, whatever the religious path, to really know just how profoundly loved they are and everybody is. And certainly that can just help them to mesh with their religious beliefs.
- [55:37]
A
There are some cases and so the question's like, well, proof, proof, proof, proof. And you've made a tremendous case, you know, especially like being able to describe stuff in miles away, so on and so forth, blind side. All of these things are, are pretty amazing. And the connective tissue between these different experiences. I'm also under the impression that children under the age of five have similar experiences to adults. So there's no kind of imprinting of hearing about this stuff previously that they, they could have come up with. You know, a three year old says they saw a light, a 52 year old says they saw a light. The three year old has not heard that before, but I've heard a story about a young boy that was in the hospital and he had this one nurse and he ends up dying and coming back and he saw the nurse in his NDE and she had died in a car accident and she said, I guess her parents gave her a car and she crashed the car and she saw him and she said, tell my parents I love them, I'm sorry about the car. And there's no way he could have known that she died because it happened over the weekend when she was off not working.
- [56:56]
C
One of the questions that people often ask about near death experience is whether they provide proof that we survived death. They don't provide proof for other people. They certainly provide proof for the experiencer. But not for the rest of us. But there are some experiences that do provide something that's at least evidence, if not proof. And those are cases in which the experiencer encounters a deceased individual who was not known at the time to have died. One person that I know, Jack, was hospitalized in his mid-20s and he had one nurse who worked with him every day. And one day she told him that she was going to be taking the long weekend off and there'd be other nurses substituting for her. And while she was gone, he had another respiratory arrest where he had to be resuscitated. And during that arrest he had a near death experience in which he found himself in a beautiful pastoral scene. And there to his surprise, was this nurse, Anita, walking towards him and she said, jack, you can't stay here with me. You need to go back into your body and I want you to find my parents and tell them that I love them and I'm sorry I wrecked the red mgb. He then woke up back in his body in his hospital bed. Tried to tell this to the first nurse who walked into his room. She got very upset and left the room in a hurry. It turned out that this nurse of his, Anita, had taken the weekend off to celebrate her birthday and her parents had surprised her with the gift of a red MGB for her 21st birthday. She got very excited, jumped in the car, took off for a drive, lost control, crashed into a telephone pole and died. Just a few hours before Jack's near death experience. Now there's no way he could have known or expected that she was going to be dead. And certainly no way he could have known how she died. And yet he did. And, and that seems to be evidence that something about this nurse, Anita still persisted after her death and was able to communicate accurate information to Jack.
- [58:56]
A
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- [60:28]
B
Oh, there's, yeah, I have, you know, again, as you, I'm very fascinated by those accounts. We have a small series of these types of experiences where people come back knowing information that they could not possibly have known. One of the more powerful examples of that is my series. I think we're up to about 17 that we call shared near death experiences. By the way, in that story you just shared about the nurse, I would wonder if that child who had the near death experience was aware of that nurse right about the time she had her car accident. If so, that would be the 17 or so that we call shared near death experiences. That's where two or more people have a simultaneous life threatening event and boom, there they are both having a near death experience and they're aware of each other, they can communicate with each other, they can describe their surrounding scenery. And then most typically one person is going to irreversibly, permanently die and the other person returns to their earthly life and talks all about that near death experience. So again, powerful evidence that what people typically describe in a near death experience may well be, you know, for most, maybe all that initial pathway after permanent physical, bodily death. But getting back directly to that child and that nurse, that's just a fascinating account. I've seen a few other accounts just like that where they come and it's often maybe a nurse. More commonly in my series, these are deceased loved ones. They have a near death experience and they encounter the grandfather, the grandmother and they may interact and they kind of have a sense that they're when they're having a near death experience, that this is, that they're physically, bodily dead. And so they're kind of surprised to see a person that they believe to be alive. So there's often a dialogue and a sharing and then ultimately when they recover from what nearly killed them, boom, they found out that that person had died often shortly before their near death experience. There's no way they could have known about that. And that is again yet another significant line of evidence for the reality of near death experiences. And may I add, if they, in all, all the experiences like that I've reviewed, if they encounter someone in a near death experience and they have that sense or we're communicating that that other person had died, I've never seen that to be false. When they have that information, when they bring that back into the earthly life and check it out later, yeah, that was indeed a person who died before, often shortly before they had the near death experience. And that's exactly what they found. Just like this story you shared.
- [63:03]
A
Are there any lessons they bring back that we should know? Like, why are we here, Doc? And I, I say this simply because if there's this tremendous place where we're not at war with each other and, and things are lovely and we have the perfect loving parent, what are we doing here? Why are we going through this? Is there any sort of guidance on like, listen, I love life, it's wonderful. But like, if I could love life and heaven. Heaven, I'll take that. I mean, I just. What?
- [63:34]
B
Okay, that's. I'd be glad to answer that. That's tough. I, I don't know that I know completely know the answer. I don't know that anybody completely does. But you know, of course I do have some insights that, that may be going down a path to understanding that. So first of all, shoot, here we are. You, me, everybody. You know, life is difficult. So we all have those rough moments in our life and we all wonder, gosh, you know, I. Why can't, you know, you hear this beautiful stories from experiencers. Why can't we go there and be, you know, anxiety free, pain free and live in perfect.
- [64:08]
A
No more horror stories. I can't, Doc. The horror stories like Iran, they did this to this person and that to that person. And then they. Unfortunately, I came across a podcast about the dark web and I thought this would be interesting. And then you find out what's on there and it's some of the most horrible, disgusting stuff you ever heard in your life. I'm like, why, God? Why? Why is this hap. Why, why is this part of your creation? Okay, sorry.
- [64:36]
B
I tell you what, you me, I think everybody has wrestled with those issues. That's very common and I think it's, it's very important. Here we are talking about, geez, Jillian, you know, the overwhelming peace, love, compassion and, and literally a paradise beyond earthly description, you know, in the afterlife. So and here we are and gosh, Earth is not, not heaven. We all notice that. So as best I can tell, just to help to get a little bit of nuggets of a little bit of understanding on this, I think that's an important question for everybody to answer. You know, one line of thinking about that is don't forget near death experiences bespeak a beautiful but eternal existence. In other words, that seems to be our heritage is to have an afterlife where we're going to be in an overwhelmingly amazing, beautiful, off the chart beyond earth in every way, wonderful conscious existence. So that seems to be eternal. So as difficult as life is, maybe there's some reassurance here that our earthly life, however long it seems, that's just literally the tiniest slice of who we are as eternal beings. So that's number one. Number two, I think an important point that we hear from near death experiencers is that when you're here in your earthly life, you're literally having lessons, having experiences that would be, as best I can tell, impossible. When you're in the afterlife where you're fully conscious, you have universal knowledge, you're imbued with love and that oneness. And as beauty be off the chart, I think you really have to go through an earthly life to experience non heaven because I don't think you can in the afterlife really have that. So I think as one near death experiencer said, it's kind of like a boot camp camp of our eternal spiritual existence. So you know, while that sounds a little bit brutal, there are still lessons that we have loves that we can do, things that we can do as physical incarnated beings that we simply could not do as non physical eternal beings in the afterlife. So I think even, you know, the little lessons in life are going to turn out to be radically important as part of our overall eternal existence. So I think that's good. And you brought up all the horror that you see on the dark web and some of those really ugly things that go on in life. Tragically, that just shows the severe limitation that some humans are evil is indeed a reality. In our earthly life there are those very dark evil beings. And that's just simply part of the lessons we have to learn in life to Deal with it, to do our best to try to mitigate the evil, both that dark side of our own soul and certainly the dark side of the soul of other people that can be at times so profoundly harmful. So I think that is in some important way the calling of what we're doing here on Earth. It's literally to do the best we can with what we got.
- [67:26]
A
Another thing that I hear a lot, and by the way, my mom knew somebody who had an NDE and she reported this and it's the choice. So she was actually giving birth to her son, very complicated, had an NDE and it was, you can come with us or you can go, go back to Earth. And she went back. Are, is everybody given a choice or just some people given a choice? Why choose to come? I mean, I would come back for my, my kids, you know, my wife, obviously. But I find that fascinating. The option.
- [68:01]
B
That's a good question. I. I've actually investigated that in a large number of near death experiences, this is often occurs in that beautiful unearthly, heavenly realm. Often there's other beings around the near death experiencer at that point in time. And, and it's actually a distinct minority of near death experiences where they're given a choice. So the other beings around them will basically give them the choice to stay in that beautiful unearthly realm or return to Earth. The majority, actually somewhat significant majority of near death experiences, there isn't really a choice or a discussion about that. It's just when the near death experience ends, boom, back to the physical body trying to recover from a nearby nearly what nearly killed them. But what's fascinating, Julian, is when they have a choice in the fairly large number of near death experiences that I've read that describe that in the. The significant majority of time a choice is given again at the end of the near death experience. The great majority of people having the near death experience do not want to leave that beautiful unearthly realm. Isn't that amazing? Their whole life, their friends, family, loved ones, years, typically decades of everything they knew in their earthly life, they have chosen to leave because that unearthly realm with that beauty, love. And they often describe the near death experience realm at that point in time as not feeling like the real home, but actually being their real home, they have a strong sense, this is where I belong, this is the real home. So it's a significant majority of people having a near death experience that are given a choice, at least initially, initially don't want to come back. And so at that point in Time. There's often a dialogue, there may be, you know, discussion, there may be, you know, a lot of interaction with spiritual beings around them. When they do ultimately decide, after initially deciding that they want to stay in the heavenly realm, they want to return. There's really the top two things in the study I did on that. Number one is for family, especially children. They don't want to leave behind those loved ones on earth. They feel it's important. They need to, you know, especially geese like what you just described that had a baby.
- [70:12]
A
Yeah.
- [70:13]
B
So that is very compelling when they, they realize the profound sense of loss and grief that they're going to cause their loved ones if they leave. And then sort of a somewhat distant second choice is they come back. Because this mainly for younger near death experiencers, it's. They want earthly life to experience, they want to live life, they want to, you know, get married, have children. You know, often younger near death experiencers, it's, it's life experiences or lessons in the broadest sense that ultimately will convince them that they need to come back to their earthly life.
- [70:44]
A
That is the one thing I think about all the time. Because the more I follow work like yours, or read about these things, and I have less fear. I've had a wonder, I've been very lucky. I've had a great life. But I do feel an overwhelming obligation to get my kids past a certain point point. And it's beyond like, okay, I have life insurance and, you know, I've set up my will. It's like I want to get them, you know, like into adulthood to a certain degree, at least through college before something like that happens. And it is wild how often I think about it and I feel like that would be the. My wife even is like, what about me? I'm like, man, you'll find someone better looking, smarter, younger. I have a great insurance policy for you. You're gonna be solid. But, you know, and of course I would never want to leave her. But there is something with the kids where you're like, I have this job and it is a sacred job and I have to get them through this vulnerable period. And I can only imagine what that must feel like where you're like, I have to actually go do this. I agreed to do this and I'm gonna do this. And it's like the, the number one thing with death that I'm like, I just gotta make sure they're, you know, at a certain point in life. So I can appreciate that. Doc, is there something I should have asked you about this that I didn't. Anything that I'm missing.
- [72:04]
B
Oh, wow, Julian. I mean, you're just awesome. So, you know, I'd have to really reach down into the memory banks to pull something out here that we haven't talked about because it's been such a great interview. One thing that's interesting, you did talk about very young children and I'll expand on that a little bit. Yeah, I did a study of over several dozen children that have near death experiences. Age five and younger, median and average age was three and a half years old. And shoot at that young an age, you're practically culturally a blank slate. You almost certainly don't have well formed religious beliefs, you don't think about death, you've never heard of near death experience or wouldn't understand that you're practically at that tender young age, culturally a blank slate. And yet in my study I found that what occurred during the near death experience, and that was like 33 of those characteristics based on responses to survey question, were absolutely identical to older children and adults that had near death experiences. So again, another significant line of evidence that near death experiences are not culturally determined. They're not based on what you thought would happen or not happen when you die. The children make that very clear when they have their near death experiences at very, very young ages. Another interesting thing, in just last year I put together the largest cross cultural study of near death experience in the world. This had over 60 near death experiences from non western countries, about half shared in English and about half shared and translated with human volunteers. And once again they all completed the same survey. And to my astonishment, I found that the content, what they described, the characteristics of the near death experience strikingly similar everywhere around the world, regardless of where they were in their non western countries, regardless of what their prior belief system was. So even today with the findings of that study, and actually it's corroborated with a number of other studies, smaller number of people studied by other investigators. But shoot, Jillian, it's absolutely amazing to me that it doesn't seem to make any difference where on earth you have a near term death experience. The content is going to be identical, doesn't make any difference whether you're say a Muslim in Egypt or a Hindu in India, a Christian in the United States, or somebody that doesn't even really have a well formed religious belief. From my very large study of that, wherever on earth you are, whatever your belief system, if you have a near death experience, it's going to be the content. What occurs is going to be strikingly similar.
- [74:39]
A
Doc, you're fantastic. I can't thank you enough for all the work you do and for giving me so much of your time. Where can people find the website, read the book, watch these series that you're talking about. Where do they get more of this?
- [74:52]
B
Oh, I appreciate that. The website you can find well over 4,000. Dang. I think we're right about 5,000 posted. Near Death Experiences is nd erf.org standing for the Near Death Experience Research Foundation.org you go there, you'll see we don't solicit donations, have nothing for sale. What the near death experiencers by the thousand have shared with us over the years, we feel morally obligated to share back freely with the world. By the way, if you go there, you'll see portions of the website and near death experiences in over 30 different languages. We're truly the largest global outreach for near death experience in the world. There's a lot of other resources there. We have some fact sheets. So I'd encourage that it also. Oh, a book. Yes. Well, some years ago I wrote a New York Times bestselling book called Evidence of the Afterlife. The Science of Near Death Experiences. So that's another really good detailed discussion. It'll, it'll go into a lot more depth.
- [75:52]
A
Incredible book. I highly, highly recommend it for anyone who likes this podcast that is like exponentially more fascinating and touching and spiritual. Special Duck, thank you so much and I will link to all of this in the show description for everybody and please get, just stay safe. Even though, you know, even though there could be more. We, we, I, I, I personally need your work. It, it helps me feel much calmer and much more peaceful. Last question. I'm sorry, last question, Last question. What do you hope that people take away from your work?
- [76:32]
B
Right. I think people, I hope they, the most powerful thing they could do is actually read near death experience accounts or ideally talk to someone or someones that have had a near death experience. There's really no substitute for the actual sharing with someone else. If you can, or at least reading the accounts. I think if people read those, especially any significant number of accounts, become aware of, you know, 10, 20, 20, you know, perhaps as many as 30. I will bet that's my challenge to everyone. If you read 30 near death experience accounts, I will bet that you're going to see over and over that very consistent patterns that we've been talking about today that multiple lines of evidence all converging on the understanding that near death experiences are in a word real. And I would bet that people that want to go down that path of becoming more familiar with near death experiences will take that little piece of heaven, that little piece of peace loving, compassion, understanding into their own life. And that's going to help empower them for the rest of their life to share that forward with the world.
- [77:37]
A
Dr. Long, thank you. Thank you for all you do and I. I hope we can speak again in the not too distant future.
- [77:44]
B
I'd love it.
- [77:46]
A
Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please like like, comment, subscribe and share and make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.