He Was Declared Dead, Left His Body, Traveled Across States, and Later Described a Town He’d Never Visited—One of the Most Astonishing Near-Death Experiences Recorded | Doctor Raymond Moody

Summary

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Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown

Episode: He Was Declared Dead, Left His Body, Traveled Across States, and Later Described a Town He’d Never Visited—One of the Most Astonishing Near-Death Experiences Recorded

Guest: Dr. Raymond Moody

Release Date: December 23, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode explores the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDEs) and their implications for our understanding of consciousness, the afterlife, and the intersection of science and spirituality. Mayim Bialik and co-host Jonathan Cohen engage Dr. Raymond Moody—the physician, philosopher, and originator of the term “near-death experience”—in a wide-ranging, deeply inquisitive discussion about what NDEs reveal about the nature of existence and human perception. The episode also features memorable case studies, an exploration of ancient Greek practices regarding death and the soul, and Dr. Moody’s own groundbreaking “psychomantium” research.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Ubiquity of NDEs and Contact with the Afterlife

• Dr. Moody recounts family experiences during his mother’s passing where multiple relatives felt a presence or communication with deceased loved ones, illustrating how common near-death and shared death experiences are in contemporary society.

  • Quote: "Practically everybody knows somebody who is in touch with the afterlife." – Dr. Moody [00:22]

• Mayim highlights that the once-fringe topic of NDEs is now widely discussed, with high percentages of bereaved individuals reporting contact with the deceased.

Origins of the NDE Concept

• Dr. Moody explains his philosophical and historical roots in approaching NDEs, referencing Plato and the idea that ancient Greeks were familiar with death-related visions and soul journeys.
  • Quote: "All the ancient Greek philosophers knew about oracles of the dead. People would go through there and they would have experiences and converse with their dead relatives." – Dr. Moody [00:33]
• The progression from philosophical anecdote to clinical research is traced, emphasizing that heart-revivals via CPR have prompted an explosion in reported NDEs in recent decades.

Core Aspects of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

• Jonathan and Mayim enumerate hallmark features shared among NDEs:
  • Life review (seeing one's life "flash before their eyes")
  • Timelessness; sense of being outside of normal time
  • Ineffability (“words can't encapsulate it”)
  • Overwhelming colors and heightened senses
  • Instant, telepathic knowledge (“a download”)
  • No fear of dying, deep focus on love and connection, appreciation for small moments, changes in destiny/sense of control, and sometimes, acquisition of psychic abilities
  • Quote: "People who have an NDE come out with a very similar set of changes. The fear of dying is gone." – Mayim [07:54]

Dr. George Ritchie's NDE: Traveling Out of State While Dead

• Mayim recounts Dr. George Ritchie’s famous case (from December 1943), considered the “best out-of-body experience” by Dr. Moody:
  • Dr. Ritchie, declared dead in Texas, describes leaving his body, instantaneously traveling to Virginia, and later physically recognizing a town he’d “visited” only while clinically dead.
  • He detailed the town’s geography accurately, shocking acquaintances and suggesting perceptual abilities beyond ordinary consciousness.
  • Notable for physical documentation: Dr. Ritchie was declared dead twice and later revived by hospital staff.
  • Quote: "He remembered the geography of an entire town that he had never been to with his body." – Mayim [14:07]

Conceptual Barriers and the Limits of Science

• Dr. Moody critiques the Western reliance on the scientific method for existential questions, calling for “conceptual thinking”—a return to philosophical rigor and logic to approach the mystery of the afterlife.

  • "The solution to the afterlife problem is not science. In 2025, the question of life after death is the most important question of existence. And it is also not yet a scientific question." – Dr. Moody [70:12]

• He challenges self-identified “skeptics” and the “afterlife establishment,” arguing that both parapsychologists and skeptics often misunderstand or ignore the philosophical complexities involved.

  • Quote: "The folks who say, ‘Oh, I'm a skeptic about these near death experiences, I think it's just the chemistry of the brain.’ Their kind of statement is a self-contradiction." [33:23]

Shared Death and Parallel Dreams

• Dr. Moody describes his own family’s shared death experience, emphasizing that bystanders often witness aspects of the dying process (apparitions, presence of deceased relatives, unexplained senses or communications).

  • Quote: "Bystanders say: As grandma died, I myself got out of my body and rose up with her partway toward this light. Or…I saw the apparitions of my grandmother's deceased relatives coming in the room to take her away." [41:22]

• Discussion extends into "parallel dreams" and "precognitive dreams," where multiple people share vivid, overlapping dream experiences sometimes tied to real future events.

The Psychomantium Experiment: Modern Oracles of the Dead

• Dr. Moody outlines his recreation of the ancient Greek "oracle of the dead" (psychomantium): a dark room with a mirror where participants, prepared to reflect deeply on a departed loved one, often have vivid encounters, sometimes seeing the deceased step out of the mirror into the room.
  • "Not only did he appear in the mirror, he stepped out of the mirror into the room." – Dr. Moody [66:28]
  • In his trials, about 50% “saw” the person they were seeking, even though participants were highly trained professionals unlikely to be easily influenced or suggestible (e.g., counselors, psychiatrists).
  • Sometimes, unexpected deceased individuals appeared, not the ones participants had focused on.
  • Quote: "If we're opening some portal, it doesn't mean that the person that you want to come through is going to come through." – Mayim [88:17]

Rational Inquiry vs. Storytelling

• Dr. Moody distinguishes between the emotional impact of narrative stories and the challenging philosophical logic needed to advance true understanding of consciousness after death.
  • He claims to have devised a new logical framework (“nonsense logic”) for this inquiry, outlined in his manuscript “Swan Song,” seeking feedback from analytic thinkers.
  • Quote: "Raymond Moody will be the person who figured out nonsense logic." – Dr. Moody [78:28]

The Intersection of Family, Ancestral Support & Healing

• Mayim and Jonathan discuss how ancestral presence is felt in therapy practices (e.g., Family Constellation work), dreams, and end-of-life experiences—pointing to possible continuities between psychological well-being, familial lineage, and post-mortem consciousness.
  • Quote: "If physiologically I don't believe I can heal, I don't believe I should be able to heal…Then the healing practices aren't going to hold." – Jonathan [102:18]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• "Practically everybody knows somebody who is in touch with the afterlife." – Dr. Moody [00:22]
• "All the ancient Greek philosophers knew about oracles of the dead. People would go through there and they would have experiences and converse with their dead relatives." – Dr. Moody [00:33]
• "People who have an NDE come out with a very similar set of changes. The fear of dying is gone." – Mayim [07:54]
• Dr. George Ritchie's vision:
  "He remembered the geography of an entire town that he had never been to with his body." – Mayim [14:07]
• "The folks who say, ‘Oh, I'm a skeptic about these near death experiences, I think it's just the chemistry of the brain.’ Their kind of statement is a self-contradiction." – Dr. Moody [33:23]
• Moody’s own family’s shared death:
  "My perception was that the space I was in bent and it, it widened out at the top and at the bottom, and there was a very narrow intermediate space which was tending to rotate… I heard my mother say twice, I love you, although she wasn't moving her mouth." – Dr. Moody [42:52]
• On the psychomantium:
  "Not only did he appear in the mirror, he stepped out of the mirror into the room." – Dr. Moody [66:28]
• "If we're opening some portal, it doesn't mean that the person that you want to come through is going to come through." – Mayim [88:17]
• "The solution to the afterlife problem is not science. In 2025, the question of life after death is the most important question of existence. And it is also not yet a scientific question." – Dr. Moody [70:12]
• "Raymond Moody will be the person who figured out nonsense logic." – Dr. Moody [78:28]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Family shared death experiences & societal prevalence [00:00–00:24]
• Definition and origin of NDEs / Ancient Greek perspective [00:32–00:59]
• Core NDE characteristics (by Mayim & Jonathan) [06:14–09:11]
• Dr. George Ritchie's story—case details [11:13–14:43]
• Discussion of skepticism, philosophy versus science [27:27–36:20]
• Dr. Moody’s own shared death experience [41:22–42:52]
• Psychomantium experiment details & findings [57:19–69:49] & [88:17–90:01]
• Shared death, dreams, and family experiences [91:10–103:42]
• Legacy and the future of afterlife inquiry [78:28–78:50]

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Flow & Tone

• The conversation is open, curious, occasionally playful, and deeply philosophical.
• Mayim and Jonathan approach the subject with both earnest fascination and healthy skepticism.
• Dr. Moody is humble, witty, and critical of superficial approaches—urging analytical rigor but also humility in the face of the great mysteries.

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Summary Takeaways

• NDEs and related phenomena are reported much more commonly than most realize; advances in medical resuscitation have enabled a cultural reckoning with these experiences.
• Dr. Moody argues that both scientific materialism and naive credulity are insufficient: the next breakthrough in understanding the afterlife requires conceptual, even paradoxical, philosophical rigor—not just stories or clinical anecdotes.
• Experiments like the psychomantium reflect an ongoing attempt to bridge ancient wisdom and modern research, yielding eye-opening results on the permeability of consciousness.
• The soul, consciousness, and the afterlife are, as of now, not scientifically provable—but philosophical exploration offers a compelling way forward.
• Shared death experiences, parallel dreams, and phenomena described by both ancient and modern witnesses continue to challenge simplistic, materialist views of reality.

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For listeners and skeptics alike, this episode powerfully spotlights the need to approach life’s greatest mystery—what happens after death—with deep humility, creativity, and a willingness to “think about unintelligible things.”

Transcript

[Maya Bialik]

You had an experience when your mother passed the space.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

I was in bent. I heard my mother say twice, I love you, although she wasn't moving her mouth. My wife who was there had some experience. My sister felt the presence of my father who had died 18 months before. Practically everybody knows somebody who is in touch with the afterlife.

[Maya Bialik]

Dr. Raymond Moody is the actual physician who coined the term near death experience.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

I have put us in a situation where we can now prove the afterlife. All the ancient Greek philosophers knew about oracles of the dead. People would go through there and they would have experiences and converse with their dead relatives. I started this with my graduate students and the very first person, imagine my surprise when she got out of there and she said, it wasn't my husband who showed up, it was my father.

[Maya Bialik]

If we're opening some portal, it doesn't mean that the person that you want to come through is going to come through.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

I've heard dozens of cases like that.

[Maya Bialik]

What are we on the cusp of in terms of understanding about a larger consciousness?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

The first and necessary step is conceptual thinking. We are on the verge of a breakthrough.

[Maya Bialik]

Time.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

It's always vanishing.

[Maya Bialik]

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[Dr. Raymond Moody]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Dr. Raymond Moody]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Dr. Raymond Moody]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[Maya Bialik]

And welcome to our breakdown. Today we have a real treat. We speak to so many people who have had near death experiences. We speak to so many people who are helping us understand what it means to have the veil between this reality and another reality thinned. Today we are going to speak to the actual physician who coined the term near death experience. And we're gonna be learning a little bit from him about what his perspectives are from 1975, when this term was coined, to the way that we think about it now. We're also gonna be focusing a bit on what are we actually talking about, practically speaking and clinically speaking, from the perspective of a near death experience, what can we prove, what can't we prove? And where is there wiggle room? Dr. Raymond Moody Jr. MD, PhD. He is the leading authority on near death experiences. Something that I hadn't realized. He actually holds a PhD in Philosophy. He was originally a philosophy professor who studied Plato. And you're thinking, what does that have to do with any of this? The early Greeks were some of the first to go into depth in thinking about what it means to die before you die. There was a very specific practice which we talked about with Brian Murarescu, where people would go into these underground dark chambers, sometimes for a month at a time, to commune with the dead. And if you're thinking like, well that's crazy, that's just like ancient stuff, turns out that is really indistinguishable from the descriptions that people have of what happens when they encounter people from the other side. And it's not just in near death experiences, it's in shared death experiences. It's in things like parallel dreams. It comes up in precognitive dreams. There's an amazing, amazingly high percentage of people who in particular in grief experience not dreams, not even visions. An actual like personification of someone that they've lost. What's going on? Is it just wishful thinking? Turns out it has a long history. That's originally what Raymond Moody was studying. He then went to medical school to become a psychiatrist. He had a very strong interest in kind of the, the, the policing right of murder and how psychiatry and how medical school can help us understand better these kind of elaborate aspects of society. However, he ended up working in, in a psychiatric facility and has dedicated his life to understanding these phenomenon. He's written so many books. He's the founder of the Life After Life Institute. Every single person we've had show who's had an NDE has referenced Dr. Moody at one point or another. They. It's kind of like they all know each other. I recently read Proof of Life After Life, 7 Reasons to Believe there Is an Afterlife. I actually want to touch on a couple of these points before we welcome Dr. Moody.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We only had Raymond Moody for a short period of time. So this episode we are going to describe some of the phenomenal and unbelievable experiences that appear in his book and through his writing just before we get our moments with him.

[Maya Bialik]

Jonathan, what, what do you know of, of the world of NDEs? When we talk about what are the things that actually kind of qualify that experience what kind of things have we heard people talk about?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, there's a lot of similarities between many of the experiences people have when they cross over or when they're. They explain their consciousness leaves their body. So one of those similarities is that they have a life review where they see each part of their life flash before their eyes. I actually think about the early Apple itunes shuffle feature where they showed you the album art and you could skip through the album art and it was like, on this display case. I kind of see it like that. It could also be a montage, so I'm not saying how it should appear.

[Maya Bialik]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

They also have a sense of, like, timelessness where they lose track of time. They describe often feeling like they've gone somewhere for a very long period of time. But in actual physical time, it can be very short. Some people have described 360 vision. Some people have also described the fact that words can't actually do justice.

[Maya Bialik]

It's ineffable.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Ineffable what they've experienced where the sensation is so great and yet their ability to describe it. Words can't encapsulate it. There's also colors that feel overwhelming.

[Maya Bialik]

Also, what has heightened senses.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Heightened senses. The ability to travel, move through space. Not bound by the physical.

[Maya Bialik]

You're doing great. You've been paying attention.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I have been paying attention also, which I am fascinated by is the notion of asking a question, even in your mind, and having that information there instantaneous.

[Maya Bialik]

A download. There's some notion of a download. So there. There are actually. There are kind of seven main categories of things that emerge from the experiences that Jonathan's talking about. People who have an NDE most commonly come out of it with a very similar set of changes. The fear of dying is gone. When's the other time we hear about that? Psilocybin assisted therapy for terminal patients. Right. It is specifically to remove fear of dying. Just drawing that kind of parallel before we even get too deep. So no fear of dying. They come out with no fear of dying and understanding of the importance of love. There's this notion people often see a bright light, right? They're overwhelmed by some, like, light being something like that. It almost always is associated with love, understanding. And so they come out of this experience like love. Love's the answer, Right. The third thing, a universal sense of connection. And this can come from that 360 vision. It can come from the. This kind of heightened experience. But there's this notion that we are.

[Jonathan Cohen]

All connected also in that universal connection there.

[Maya Bialik]

You can't Enter my list. I have my list. You don't know my list.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I don't know your list. Need some additional information.

[Maya Bialik]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

The universal connection. They're often reconnected with people that they've been connected with. True story in their lives, whether that be parents, grandparents, siblings who may have passed. You actually have a sort of a question about this because you brought up that in all of these scenarios there's never a complicated relationship in the afterlife.

[Maya Bialik]

So even this is like a topic I want an entire episode on. People rarely really talk about this, so we have no fear of dying. Understanding the importance of love. Universal sense of connection, Appreciation of learning. I thought this one was really, really interesting. There's this notion that you're getting downloads, there's information for you to learn. Like I thought that was a really interesting thing. Also a new feeling of control, meaning having control over your destiny, your decisions. Number six, focusing on the little things. Elizabeth Cron has talked about this. How small things become sources of gr. And a notion of whatever I experienced, there's a re entry that is necessary. Meaning you could say, oh, you had this experience and blah, blah, blah, blue. But almost everyone who has a near death experience has this. This experience of needing some sort of transition of getting back to whatever normal is. Also something we've spoken about. People often come back with special abilities. How can I explain this? And as when we welcome Dr. Moody, he'll talk a little bit about really how much we have to resist trying to have an explanation for everything. But I want to know what is happening. That people are coming back with psychic abilities, with extrasensory abilities. There's a story in. It's in proof of life after life. But it's what. What Dr. Moody describes as the best NDE he's ever heard. Would you like to hear it?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I would like to hear it.

[Maya Bialik]

This is the story of a doctor, Dr. George Richie. This happened in December 1943. And Dr. Moody describes this as the best, the best out of body experience in an NDE that he's ever heard.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And we've heard a bunch.

[Maya Bialik]

We've heard about. He's heard more than we have. So Dr. Richie was very sick. He had pneumonia. He had a fever of 105 degrees. He was sent to Camp Barkley in Texas. Okay, so we're in Texas, 1943. He remembers he was very sick, high fever. And he got out of bed, but when he looked back at the bed, he was still in the bed.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Happens to me all the time.

[Maya Bialik]

Right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Just kidding.

[Maya Bialik]

So he. He said he knew that something was. Was odd. And he tried touching people, and his hand went right through it. Like, think of Casper the Friendly Ghost. Like, that's the first thing I thought of. And he said, okay, something's going on. He then thought, where are we? Barkley, Texas. He literally thought, I wanna go see my mother in Virginia. And he said, within that thought, he was in Virginia. Okay, this is the first case I've ever heard of someone not only leaving their body, but leaving the state where their body was. So you might think this is all just like, it's his recount. Like, what do. We don't have to know.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's his imagination.

[Maya Bialik]

It's his imagination. We don't know. Long story short, he went to. Not Richmond, Virginia, where his mother was. For whatever reason, he stopped at a new town near Richmond, Virginia.

[Jonathan Cohen]

He forgot the directions.

[Maya Bialik]

He walked all around the town. He familiarized himself. And then he thought, I should go back. I'm gonna go back to Texas. All right. So he's having all these things. He comes back to Camp Barkley, Texas, and he's then in the hospital ward, and he ends up seeing lots of things. He sees what they're doing to his body and trying to bring him back.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Being back in Texas.

[Maya Bialik]

In Texas, yeah. They covered his body with a sheet and said that he was dead. And he watched it all. And one of the texts was like, doctor, I think this guy's alive. He just moved. He's under a sheet. He is watching himself declared dead. A tech is like, doctor, I think he just twitched. The doctor comes over. He's like, nope, he's dead. Cover him back up. Doctor goes away. Tech again is like, nope, this dude just twitched. What is happening? He ends up eventually waking up. He. There is records declaring him dead not once, but twice. So you might be thinking, why'd you tell me this whole story about Virginia? Because one day he was on a bus going back to Richmond to visit his mother. For real. He's alive now. And he stops in a town called Vicksburg, Mississippi. And he says to the person traveling with him, there's a diner down on the next street. And the guy's like, how do you know that? And he said, because I've been here before. He remembered the geography of an entire town that he had never been to with his body. It is the town that he traveled to when he left his body when he was dead. It's a very, very bizarre, bizarre story.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'm going to play you for a second and say, in a town, there's probably a diner. So why how is this so amazing that he that he described the fact that there was a diner and is it possible that the person recounting this.

[Maya Bialik]

Story 100% had a couple?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Oh, there's a clothing store on this. How do we know we made a.

[Maya Bialik]

Non believer out of you. It took 300 some episodes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

Thank you Remy for sponsoring this episode.

[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

Questions and I can't rule out this possibility of like everybody's remembering something wrong. Like we're gonna, we're gonna set that aside. But what his acquaintance who he was on the bus with decided to do was test him. So acquaintance says to so he's like, what's around that corner? And this guy was like telling him what was around every single corner of this town that he had Never been to. He had a visual map of the ent town. Also, he became psychic when he came back. What?

[Jonathan Cohen]

You know what's more unbelievable?

[Maya Bialik]

He became psychic. What.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What's more unbelievable is that he could have a map from just having gone there once. I would go somewhere many times, not even just with my consciousness, with my physical body, and I wouldn't remember.

[Maya Bialik]

Can we also talk about what was happening? That they covered him with a sheet because they thought he was like. Do they not know when people die Twice? He was declared dead.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

That freaked me out.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That's a little bit of malpractice at that hospital, clearly.

[Maya Bialik]

The other thing I wanted to talk about before we get. Get Dr. Moody on here, there's something that he has experienced, which is called a shared death experience, and he's gonna talk a little bit about it. But one of the things that I think is fascinating is what happens when you get a group of people who are experiencing something. And one of the things that honestly didn't realize this until I read this book. I'm going to just take a poll of the two people in this room. Has anyone heard that when someone dies, there's like a mist that. That hovers over their body? Have you ever heard this? No. Valerie?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

No.

[Maya Bialik]

So it's in. It is in movies, apparently. This is like a thing that a lot of people report. And I'm thinking, is it like collective. You know, a collective thing we have when we do a live on substack? This is what I want to ask. I want to ask about the mist. And I've been in the room when people die. No mist. But maybe I didn't know how to look. Maybe I wasn't looking right. Many people see a mist that rises off of someone when they pass. I literally wrote wtf in my notes. What colors? Is it white or pink? Of course, white or pink. Why would it be any other color? And some people hear music. A choir of young girls singing is what some people report. I've never heard of this in my life. You know, when I look back into what we have tackled and what we have chosen to sort of, you know, post our flag in this year, it's been a huge year for us, not just in terms of conversations about consciousness. And we've spoken to philosophers and we've spoken to quantum mechanics, physics professors about this, but it's been a huge year in trying to also give people the ability to step into their experience without fear. And also the purpose of talking about the intersection between science and spirituality is to say if you're having spiritual experiences, if you're having experiences that feel out of this world or out of your consciousness, there actually is a science to it. And if you're a person who's coming from more of a scientific perspective, guess what? There's a spiritual component of that as well. It feels like this conversation is so timely as we kind of take a bit of a reckoning of like, what has this year meant for our podcast and for this community?

[Jonathan Cohen]

We think about death, we think about near death. A lot of these episodes talking about what happens after we die are really about how are we living, how do we expand our notion of what's possible so that the lives we're living now can be filled with more joy and peace and calm and we don't have to compartmentalize. It's very difficult to prove the science of the afterlife and what happens when we leave these physical bodies. But we know that there is often more going on and more available to us than has been described in the past. And these conversations for me have been such an amazing reminder to allow our creative imagination to exist, to expand our view of what's possible, and to accept some of the experiences that many of us are having and trying to better understand them through this framework.

[Maya Bialik]

I mean, these kind of conversations get me very, very excited. So I took a couple left turns in even just reading Dr. Moody's bio. But I do want to mention he got his medical degree from the College of Georgia, his PhD from the University of Virginia. Everyone in the NDE world knows of Dr. Moody. We have regards from every NDE guest that we've had on. I've told we are having Dr. Moody on. So without further ado, here are some excerpts of our conversation with Dr. Moody and then we'll be back after to do some more breaking down of of different aspects that we didn't get to cover in our conversation with him. So welcome Dr. Raymond Moody to the Breakdown. Break it down. We're very excited to speak to you. We bring regards from everyone that we've had the pleasure of having come on this podcast to talk about their near death experience. And everyone speaks in such loving terms about you. Elizabeth Crone and Anita Moorjani and Betty Guidano. Like everybody, everybody refers to you whenever we talk about NDEs. So it's an honor to welcome you to the Breakdown.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Thank you both so much. And I tell you my life strategy is to keep my self esteem as low as possible. But I just nonetheless, I appreciate those nice thoughts from so many people and at the same time, I'm kind of overwhelmed by them. I am kind of finished with ego. And let me explain. If I said that I've passed my ego, I climbed the mountain and I laid on the bed of nails and I burned the incense, that would be egomania, right? But the reason I'm finished with ego is that I almost killed myself with it. And my particular was, was jealousy. But, you know, when I finally got over that one, I. In the Bahamas a few years ago, I was at an ashram and I was talking and I said, one ego trip is enough. And I saw the swami God. When you're a kid, you hear that phrase, the happiest life is a life of service to others. When you're a kid, you hear it as an ideal, right? Then you get into middle age and you begin to think of it as an aspiration. But by the time you're my age, it's just a fact of experience because you realize whenever you're in it for yourself, you're always miserable. And it's just life takes ego out of you, I think, in a very wonderful way.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, we're going to ask you to sort of lean into your expertise for the time that we get to speak with you, because, you know, you coined a term that, you know, at the time was this very kind of fringe concept to even think about. And all these years later, you know, more and more people are reporting interactions with people who have crossed over. People are less scared to talk about. You know, I think the percentages of widows having contact with deceased husbands in some cases is as high as 90%. Parents who have lost a child, you know, having an encounter with the child, you know, within a year of the child's death, so many more people are tuning into different frequencies. They're having psychedelic experiences or transcendental experiences where the veil between this world and the next is becoming thinner and thinner and more and more accessible. I wonder if you can kind of give us a little bit of a framework. How did you first get interested in this? And what have you seen that has changed over the 50 years that, that you've been in this field?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Well, thank you for that first comment. You were saying that back in the 70s, this was a fringe phenomenon, and that is. That shows how ignorant we are in the west about our origins. Because in the. In reality, the way I found out about this was by reading Plato. Who's still my favorite author. I was. My dad was a military veteran, a professional military officer, a surgeon. You can imagine that personality. He apparently Had a horrific experience in World War II, which I gather because he never talked about it. Right. And so the way I experienced as a kid was that my dad was hostile to religion. I went to Uva at the age of 18, intent on becoming an astronomer, took a philosophy course and I was hooked. And the. The Republic of Plato, which was the first philosophy book I read. It starts with this guy who was kind of elderly and he's been successful all his life and like so many I know just focused on their work, you know. And then he got to a certain age and he said, and now I, my, my mind goes back to those stories about the afterlife I heard was when I was a kid. That night I developed this sense of urgency. Okay, and then the Republic culminates in this. It just saw it. If you ever read Herodotus with the story of the, the Persians marching down it Thermopylae pass, right? The whole book kind of ends up like in that focus right on that pass and, and the, the Republic is similar. And the whole thing goes right down to the story of a guy who was believed dead on the battlefield. But he, he sat up at the, at his funeral and told his, his friends about getting out of his body and going through a passageway into this other world, seeing his life reviewed and so on. And I was really intrigued by that. So I asked Dr. Hammond, our professor, what's this all about? And he said, yeah, these early Greek philosophers knew of cases of people who had apparently died and yet revived and had these experiences to tell. And Professor Hammond said that Plato wrote as he did about them, but meanwhile, or a little earlier, Democritus the atomist knew, knew about these experiences. And he wrote that, yeah, what this is, it's the, the, the biological activity that's still going on in the body on the atomic level, even though it's not visible. Right. And so, so that was my take on it as of September of 1962. Well, three years later I met Dr. George Ritchie who had actually had such an experience. And I mean, it was. George, to this day is the finest human being I ever knew. And so then I start, started gathering cases of this. I finished my PhD in Philosophy in 1969 and I started teaching philosophy immediately. Began to hear these stories from my students and from. As I started talking about it, faculty members told me about the, the experiences the. They had. So and so very quickly I became aware that this was a very common phenomenon. I would be invited to these civic clubs which at that time were an all male prop province. And, and it was like the movers and shakers town. Every one of these places I went to, they come up after somebody would come up. Dr. Moody, I've never told anybody this, but. So that's how I got interested in this and began to pursue my research. Well, to go back to a very brilliant comment you made earlier, and the way I would put it is this. The afterlife is infusing into this life because with the advent of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the 60s, something that had always been a phenomenon and yet was extraordinarily rare because it was extremely rare for somebody who almost died to live through it. But with cpr, that changed the situation. And so suddenly what happened is it was something in, that was in, in 1925, unheard of. It's just very rarely in 2025 is every, you know, everybody knows somebody who's been such, through such an experience. So what that means is that practically everybody knows somebody who is in their heart in touch with the afterlife life. Right? So it's what we call the afterlife is infusing itself into this life. I think you said, like the veil is breaking down. That's a way of putting it too.

[Maya Bialik]

I think the general, you know, kind of understanding that many of us have is that we are alive for a very short period of time and after a certain amount of time we die. And that's it. That is what a lot of people, you know, kind of walk about, you know, experiencing. What can you tell us about how that's wrong and why it's wrong?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

I was a professor of philosophy before I went to medical school. And the way I really got interested in the afterlife question was through Plato. And so I, I, this is not a religious thing to me. This is something that I encountered in the, in my work as a philosophy student and then later as a philosophy professor. And even now, even after I subsequently, I went to medical school and became a psychiatrist. So that's added a different dimension to my work. I am a skeptic in the sense, that is the real sense. The folks who say, oh, I'm a skeptic about these near death experiences, I think it's just the chemistry of the brain. Their kind of statement is a self contradiction. And it shows that people who use that kind of statement are ignorant and, and I mean, because they ignore the definition of the word skeptic. Skep Skepticism was a philosophical school founded by Pyro, who was one of the philosophers who went to India with Alexander the Great. And so what the skeptical movement, which was as much a spiritual process as a intellectual process was. And it came in the wake of Aristotle having codified logic. So Pyrrho knew logic very well. And what he said was if you think about logic, you can think of it as a machine for generating conclusions from premises, right? And so what he said was, let's suppose that we use that, that system vigorously. We ask every question, we really bear down and think of it logically. But then in the end we refrain from drawing a conclusion. And that shows why the so called skeptics are ignorant. They don't even look up the word. Because when you say I'm a skeptic and I think the near death experience is just the chemistry of the brain, that's a self contradiction, right? What you're saying is I'm a person who doesn't draw conclusions and my conclusion is such and such. Those folks are just ignorant and they're not worth thinking about. Okay? What I say is the reality is that the logic we have in 2025 is not, is not adequate for proving life after death. Where I am as a skeptic in the Pyrrhonian sense is I understand all the difficulties in making an inference about life after death. And I talked about them all the time when I thought logic, mind.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

That's code m a y I [e-mail] mime my imbalance breakdown is supported by Incogni.

[Maya Bialik]

Guess what? Your personal data is everywhere online. And that makes you an easy target for identity theft scammers.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Oh yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Websites legally publish and profit from your info. It's not paranoia, it's true. Your name, your home address, even court records. Once it's out there, it's fair game for stalkers, identity thieves, or anyone with bad intentions. Last year alone, data breaches skyrocketed by over 200%. That means your private details could already be floating around. Shady directories, AI summaries. People search sites waiting to be exploited. That's where Incogni comes in. They hunt down your exposed personal data. Not just from data brokers, but from across the entire web. Directories, search results, company databases. Gone. Their custom removals feature takes it even further. Send them a link and your dedicated privacy expert will handle the takedown. Whether it's a random court record or a sketchy people search profile, they will make it disappear. Reduce your risk of scams and identity theft. Protect your privacy, reclaim your online solitude. All in just three steps. Create your account, give one time authorization, and let Incogni do the rest. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you. Add up to three emails, addresses and phone numbers to uncover even more hidden profiles. With the unlimited plan, you can send in any link and watch it vanish. Plus, it's risk free. Cancel anytime. Get your money back within 30 days if you're not satisfied. Scammers are getting smarter. But with Incogni, you're one step ahead. They're the only data removal service independently verified by Deloitte. Because your privacy deserves proof, take your personal data back with incogni. Head to incogni.com mayim Use the code mayim M A Y I M to get 60 off an annual plan.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That's code [e-mail] mime My mbialix breakdown is supported by Incogni.

[Maya Bialik]

Your personal data is everywhere online, and that makes you an easy target for scammers. Websites legally publish and profit from your info. Your name, home address, even court records. Once it's out there, it is fair game for stalkers, identity thieves, or anyone with bad intentions. Last year alone, data breaches skyrocketed by over 200%. That means your private details could already be floating around. Shady directories, AI summaries, and people search sites just waiting to be exploited. That's where Incogni comes in. They hunt down your exposed personal data, not just from data brokers, across the entire web. Directories, search results, company databases. Gone. Their custom removals feature takes it even further. Send them a link and your dedicated privacy expert will handle the takedown. Whether it's a random court record or a sketchy people search profile, they will make it disappear. Reduce your risk of scams and identity theft, protect your privacy and reclaim your online solitude in just three steps. Create your account, give one time authorization, let Incogni do the rest. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you. Add up to three emails, addresses and phone numbers to uncover even more hidden profiles. With the unlimited plan, you can send in any link and watch it vanish. Plus, it is risk free. Cancel anytime or get your money back within 30 days if you're not satisfied. Scammers are getting smarter, but with Incogni, you're one step ahead. They're the only data removal service independently verified by Deloitte. Because your privacy deserves proof, take your personal data back with incogni. Head to incogni.com mayim use the code mayim m a y I m to get 60 off an annual plan.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That's code mimecogni.com mayim where I am.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Now is I give up. I've always, throughout my life, been able to think myself out of anything. Because if you. If you're very critical and you question everything, then what stands up most rigorously when you question everything, you can have some sort of confidence on it. So where I am now is this that I give up. I can't think my way out of it. And so apparently there's an afterlife. Okay, I can't draw that as a conclusion, but I'm just forced into that. I give up. The pseudo skeptics tell us, oh, this is the chemistry of the brain. And they utterly fail to take into account that it is very common for bystanders at the death of someone else who are not themselves ill or injured. Have all of these experiences that we think of as near death experiences. The bystanders say as grandma died, I myself got out of my body and I rose up with her partway toward this light. Or they say that I saw the apparitions of my grandmother's deceased relatives coming in the room to take her away. And they say the room fills with light. Have quite a number of cases where the bystanders empathically co. Lived the dying life. Review of the person who passed away.

[Maya Bialik]

You had an experience when your mother passed?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

As my mother was dying, my perception was that the space I was in bent and it, it widened out at the top and at the bottom, and there was a very narrow intermediate space which was tending to rotate. None of this makes sense. I know because the words don't fit in it, that But. And I, I heard my mother say twice, I love you. Although she wasn't moving her mouth. My, my. My wife who was there had experience. My sister, who, who was there, felt the presence of my, my father who had died 18 months before. And. But to me it's immaterial that it's happened to me. You know what I mean? And this, yes, happened to me, but the impressive fact to me is that it happens to so many people now in 2025. The reality is that the sheer. The soul blockade in 2025 for. To a progress toward a rational proof of an afterlife is no longer logical. It's now entirely psychological, which, by which I mean that the reason why in 2025 people have made no progress toward a rational understanding of an afterlife is that they are intellectually lazy. And I can prove it, but I can't prove it to people who are intellectually lazy right now. Now, what I have developed over a long, long period of time is a. Is a, what I call a logico, spiritual exercise where I take people through the facts of ancient Greek philosophy and facts about the, the language that we use. And it culminates in the closest we have ever gotten to a rational proof of an afterlife. And I. There's no way I can explain this in a brief period of time, but I will explain to you guys how you can get access to the work. Okay, but, but the classical criticism about life after death is that the very notion is unknowable. That's the reality now. But I say, as a philosophy professor, so have all kinds of things been regarded as unknowable. For example, clouds until the early 19th century were regarded as the epitome of the unknowable and the unintelligible and the ephemeral. But a single man, Luke Howard in the early 1800s, who just happened to observe this over a period of time, wrote a paper saying, well, there's four types of them which he learned in, in grammar school, right? The cumulus, the stratus, the nimbus and so on. Well, when Luke Howard published that paper, anybody who was, was energetic enough to waddle outside and look up at the sky could prove it. We could see it for themselves, right? So it was a transformation. If you go up before about, before about the mid-1880s, everybody knew, quote, that the distance to the fixed stars is unknowable, right? Then by 1838 the measurements got close enough where they realized that knowing that it's 186 million miles across the orbit of the Earth around the sun, that if you took the measurement here and then waited exactly six months, you could take it again, there'd be a difference. And that's called paralyze. I have used those two kinds of moves to put us in a situation where we can now prove the afterlife. However, this is the difficulty which Plato pointed out very well and I'm sure you guys have observed too, what draws people to this is stories. The magnetic feature of near death experiences is that it's a narrative that grips people and as Plato knew about these experiences too, and about other kinds of experiences which create narratives. But what he pointed out was even if you had a billion experiential narratives wouldn't add up to a proof of an afterlife. What do you think the reaction will be to the people whose, whose sole focus on this is hearing charming stories? What will their reaction be when you say, well, to really get a handle on this, you've got to go through a, a like a rational process of following a long and remote train argument. They're turned off. But for that reason there's a blockade. And the, the sole reason now while we can't make real advance in rational inquiry into the afterlife is this narrative concept problem. As I say, people just don't. They're too lazy in American anymore, in America anymore to think. That's the reality. People just don't like to think. However, for those who still do, there's a way out and we can actually reformat our mind in such a way that when we subsequently have a near death experience, we will be able to put it in an entirely new way. We already have thousands and thousands of reports of near death experiences that are, are verbalized through the form of a travel narrative. And we have thousands and thousands of those. I got out of my body, I went through a tunnel, and so on. In the not too distant future we will have other a new set of verbalizations of it where people realize that the travel narrative format of it is unintelligible. And this is why, because what people say with the near death experiences, they say there are no words, right? And it did not take place in time and it did not take place in space. But the only way I have to say it is I got out of my body, I went through a tunnel into the light, I met my deceased relatives, I saw my life pass in review, I returned to my body and I came back to life. That is a travel mirror narrative, isn't it? Well now, just a minute here. What is the meaning of travel narrative? Is there no time and space and no words? Now I have intervened in that situation so that. And at least once to my knowledge I had a man years ago who took my course on how to think about unintelligible things, subsequently had a near death experience and has reported to me. He said, Ray, while I was over there, my mind went back to your seminar and I realized you can't comprehend how that world is connected to this world unless you take the unintelligibility access into account. I am happy to say that we are on the verge of a breakthrough in the rational investigation of an afterlife. But it's not going to be accepted acceptable to the folks who are now in what I call the afterlife establishment. Parapsychology is full of wonderful, sweet, kind hearted people whom I love dear and who are just not good analytical thinkers, you know, And I mean, I know a lot of people who are not good analytical thinkers and I love them anyway. Okay, but parapsychology and its alter ego, the so called skeptical movement, which is actually a movement of the humanist society, what the people who call themselves skeptics are actually humanists is their religion. Humanism is a religion for people who are not religious. Basically we're on the verge here of a breakthrough, folks, but it's going to leave a lot of the folks who are in the afterlife movement now behind because what they want to do is just listen to wonderful stories. I've heard thousands of these stories and I can't wait to hear the next. But you listening to stories is not going to hack it. If your genuine object is to get rational enlightenment on the afterlife, you can easily do it, but it's just going to have to. What it requires is people having to think through some things that are normally Boring to them, and they just won't want to listen to it. And the United States now is in, totally grist and engrossed in wish fulfillment or instant gratification. Right. It's. If you subscribe to the instant gratification model of life, you're never going to get a rational insight into the afterlife. However, if you're really, if you are willing to really sit down and, and think through this, you can get to a place which. Aha. There is a whole new way of looking at this.

[Maya Bialik]

What is this breakthrough? What, what could it look like for us to have access to a totally different way of understanding what happens when we die?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Well, as I said here, this is. It takes time. But, but just today, actually, as it happened, I, my son Sam, who's a PhD in Spanish linguistics, finished typing the manuscript. So I have a manuscript called Swan Song and it's out. And for those who want to donate a little. So I can, I can send you a manuscript, then you can read it for yourself. And I'm looking for refutation. See, it's like I'm not trying to start a new religion or a new ideology. The funniest experience that's happened to me in my entire career is that the intelligence folks heard about this through a friend of mine who worked with them, who was Roy Scruggs was the guy who designed the Saturn V release mechanism. And, and they had me back three times. I don't think they would make the same mistake again and again. So what I'm saying is this is real.

[Maya Bialik]

So many of us are willing to entertain the possibility that the soul is not contained in the physical body. Right. The soul has the ability to travel. I mean, many people are reporting these things in the NDEs that, that we've learned about. And we spoke to Jeffrey Long and you know, so we kind of, we know those stories, but I think what we're curious about is what are we on the cusp of in terms of our understanding about a larger consciousness?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Yeah, well, to put it clearly, David Hume, the great skeptic, said, by the mere light of reason, it seems difficult to prove the immortality of the soul. And that was an ironic understatement. Right? And Hume went on to say, some new species of logic is requisite for that purpose and some new faculties of the mind that they may enable us to comprehend that logic. And he implied that that was an impossibility. Now, flash forward couple hundred years, around the first of the 20th century, you guys probably have heard of the logical positivist movement and AJ Ayer and such, and AJ Eyre pointed out in his brilliant book on, on this, that he said, you know, it makes sense in our language to say that a man survived a total change of personality or survived a whole, a whole, like a total loss of memory. But he said it makes no sense to say that a man survived the annihilation of his body. And so, you know, the classical difficulty, when people start thinking about it, they realize that there are conceptual difficulties here. What I say is that I have worked out a logic which you can go through yourself and you can see at the end of it that in fact, that Hume was correct, but in his statement that the mind as we have it doesn't work for it, but he was, he was incorrect in the implication that that is, it's therefore impossible. So what I would say is I've solved Hume's problem and I've worked out a new logic. And, and by the way, it's not predicated on the afterlife. It's, it's. This new logic has been received very powerfully by people who are number one in the advertising business, people who are in the literary studies division, people who are in business and, and people in intelligence work. But those, the, the work I have presented has caught on in that world, but in a world where the object is to hear more wonderful, inspiring stories, that's not going to catch on. But for those who do, it will work.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, here's something I wonder if you can talk to us about. Am I pronouncing it right? The psychomantium.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the design of this experiment which really sought to kind of echo what we've actually, you know, spoken to Brian Murarescu, who did a lot of study into the classics and the relationship with the afterlife. You know, if you die before you die, then you'll live forever. Right. Which, you know, was fascinating for many reasons, but I wonder if you can talk to us a little bit about the design of that experiment and what it means to try and put people into a state where they're more susceptible. Right. To being able to break through that veil.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Yes, yes. And again, the only way I can get at this is by prefacing it by saying that the only way you can understand this is by looking at Greek philosophy. Because, look, the reality is that the, the system of reasoning that we're using right now as we're conversing came to us from the Greek philosophers. That is reality. It's something that, you know, Americans of the 21st century are not interested in. And because of that fact, they've totally excluded themselves from comprehending the afterlife. Let me explain. The Greek philosophers developed in an environment where a common institution of ancient Greece, which all the ancient Greeks philosophers knew about, were called oracles of the dead. Okay? And in fact, the man who you can think of as the founder of deductive logic, Parmenides, was the person who came up with the notion of truth, right? That sounds very counterintuitive. But what truth means is truth is that which is the case independently of what anybody thinks about it or perceives or believes. And that notion cannot be comprehended by people in a pre literate society. And the reason is that the first inkling that people will have that there's some things that are the case independent of what anybody perceives is in connection with what we think of as deduction. Okay? And deduction is the first premise, Andy is taller than Bill. Second premise, Bill is taller than Charlie. Conclusion, Andy is taller than Charlie. And it doesn't make any difference what anybody thinks, perceives or believes. If 1 and 2 are true, then 3 is necessarily true. How, where did that come from? It came from the other side through an oracle of the dead. And it's so counterintuitive, but anybody who wants to look into ancient Greek philosophy will see it. Okay, now what these oracles of the dead were places. They were subterranean institutions. And there were five main, main ones. The most famous one was on the Acheron river in the northwest corner of Greece, sort of below modern day Albania. And the another one was the famous one was on the, the end of the Peloponnese there on Cape Mataplan. Others were on Sicily on the slopes of Mount Etna. But these places were places where you can read this ancient stuff. And it says people would go through there and they would have experiences during which they seem to see and converse with their dead relatives. And so that's why we have logic now. And I had been fascinated by these oracles of the dead since I was my first year in college. And then in 1985 I think it was, I read in a classical journal a report of the most famous of these places had been excavated. And what they found there in the subterranean chamber was an enormous bronze cauldron surrounded by a balustrade. When people would go down there, they would be down there 29 days. And then they would be escorted into this apparition chamber about maybe 50ft long, 15ft wide. And at the end of it was this big cauldron. You could see torch Marks on the wall, which is. This was illuminated in antiquity by torchlight. And so Professor Thackerus, who dug this up was. He thought that this was fraud. He said, well, they had these folks down there long enough that what they did was that they hid in the cauldron and act out the roles of the spirit. But I knew, you know, that's. That's irrational. By the way, I'm not contradicting Dr. Thakuras. After I did my work, I went to him and I explained my result, and he had. I saw the aha. And he realized that I was right. Then he gave me some other pictures which indicated that. And I want to emphasize, in connection with helping me understand Greek philosophy better, I set this up. I. There's a dark room with a mirror in it. And it's a comfort room. Close, comfortable enough that people don't get claustrophobia. It's a darkened room with a mirror on the wall placed such that the person sitting in a comfortable, easy chair in front of it does not hear his or was not see his or her own reflection. It's just like you're looking out into infinity and a small light source behind the chair so that it brings the light in the room and it diffusely. Diffusely fills the room. Okay. Person sitting in that situation, to them, it looks like they're gazing into infinite space. Ed Mitchell, who was the lunar landing module pilot on Apollo 14, came to my place and he said. He said, ray, it's like people think when they think about space, they think of it as, like, flat black. And he said, but it's not that way. He said, when you look out at it, it's like it has a sheen over it, over it. Like you're looking at a tabletop covered with glass or something. And so that's the effect that you want. Now, the. The preparation involves really thinking about the deceased loved one and bringing up all your pleasant memories and addressing the. The difficulties in the relationship. What was the unfinished business? And so. So I started this with my graduate students of psychology. And as word spread about it, by the way, these were graduate students, and a number of them were already counselors. And as word spread about it, a sociology professor, an anesthesiologist, psychiatrist, other professional colleagues joined in. And what we wanted to know was just what happens, right?

[Maya Bialik]

And you didn't make people go for 29 days, correct?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

No, we, We. We boiled it down to a day. Right. But it was one by one. It was. The students would come out to my place and would spend the Whole day with them, right? And it was like, tell me about this person who died. And what were they like? All. What are you. All your good memories. What are the. The things that, you know, the unfinished business and so on. So you go through this process, and people reach a. Any point where he ages, you can kind of sense they're ready. So I put them in this room and just say, relax, gaze into the mirror, and just. I'm gonna be back in about an hour, hour and a half. And so I was expecting that if I did 50 of these, I'd probably get five, right? Because I was thinking probably about one out of 10 and. And certainly I thought since these people were sophisticated about the human mind, if they did see something I was anticipating, they'd say, yeah, I saw an image in the mirror. It looked like my grandma, but was it real or was it a figment? I don't know. Instead, it was the very first person who. Who was in. There was a very seasoned drug and alcohol recap counselor. If you know about that subculture. Those are very grounded people. And she came to see her husband who had died 18 months before. Imagine when she. My surprise when she got out of there. And she said, yeah, but it wasn't my husband who showed up. It was my father. And not only did he appear in the mirror, he stepped out of the mirror into the room. I've heard dozens of cases like that.

[Maya Bialik]

What are you creating that allows that it to happen?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

I don't know. I was just going by what the. What the. You know, what the Greek setup was. I mean, there's a lot of stuff about this I don't understand. And the most astonishing part to me was that my very sophisticated students took it to be a real event, not as a dreamlike or. And. And so this is borne out very well. Lots of people have Reclamation replicated my psychomantion study, and they get the same results. And so. So what I'm saying is that for somebody to rush into this to have some kind of wacky sensation that's not going to work. You've got to think of this reflectively and realize that this procedure has a lot to do with the way you think. And that these Greek philosophers are. They founded the whole Western way of thought this works. But to really bring it alive in yourself, you've got to read about some stuff that most people are just bored by. And, you know, as you guys know, I am not a parapsychologist. As sweet and kind, as wonderful and blissful as these wonderful people are, what they do is they make these assumptions and they can't absorb anything that challenges these basic assumptions. The most troublesome to the most troublesome is number one, the, what I call the afterlife establishment. Psychical research and parapsychology, those are ahistorical, right? In reality, the rational inquiry into the afterlife begins with the Greek philosophers. That is undeniable. But in the parapsychology and psychical research do not begin with the Greeks. They begin in 1848 with two little girls cracking their toes. That's the real, that's the reality. And you can look up for yourself. It was the parapsychology and psychical research came from a religious craze of the 19th century. And they know nothing about the theta and the foundations of western thought about the afterlife. And then the second most troublesome assumption they make as scientists, by the time that mediums came into vogue and these people began to think, well, we want to investigate it, they had to put the word scientific into it. Because by that time the people had gotten say, oh, scientism is the. Science is the ideal of knowledge and so on. So they had to use that word scientific. So what we have in parapsychology and psychical research is just pseudoscience science. And it's in. I've proved that definitively in my new book.

[Maya Bialik]

So what is the way that we should be approaching these things? Because you can't blame people, right? Everyone is fascinated. I mean, the story, you know, of Dr. Richie and Viola Horton, like, that's an amazing story. And for many people, we need the stories and those details.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

And I'm not, not questioning that. I'm saying, yes, the narratives are fascinating. They've changed my life. They've just changed my whole entire world. And you can't gain any insight into them. And trying to provide into trying to impose the scientific method on this, the first and necessary step is conceptual thinking. And scientism is the doctrine that science is the only rational means of securing knowledge. Right. That is so ingrained in western as you don't even think it's. People just assume it without thinking. When I taught philosophy and I taught epistemology and so I would say first couple of classes, I say, what do you guys think knowledge is? Right? Couple of, you know, take a couple of classes and what they come up with is science is knowledge. And any pat, unpack this is scientific method is the only rational means of securing knowledge. All right? So I would say, I would write that up on the board. Scientific method is the only rational means of securing Knowledge. And I say, is that what you guys think? Yeah. Yeah. So then I draw a rectangle around that statement and I say, well, how do you know that if you say scientific method is the only rational means of securing knowledge? And I know that by the scientific method, that's called reasoning in a circle. Patissio principa. It's assuming what you set out to bullet to prove. Okay? The other option is to say scientific method is the only rational means of securing knowledge. And I know that by philosophy or literary theory or history or the law, that is a self contradiction. Scientism is a social movement. It has nothing to do with rational thought. It's just a way of. It's touting science as the savior of society. The way to solve the afterlife problem is not science. In 2025, question of life after death is the most important question of existence. And it is also not yet a scientific question. That is the reality. But do you think that parapsychologists and psychical researchers are going to move out of that position? No, but I have moved out of that position and I'm going to challenge you guys. All right, so I say I've made a major breakthrough in the afterlife question and I want you guys to test it. And I don't mean to agree with me. I'm saying read through this and please, if you find any error, please report it to me. Because if I put this out and my colleagues find an error in it, then I am moved closer to the truth by seeing my mistakes. On the other hand, if I put it out to my colleagues and they cannot find an error with it, it gives me some encouragement that I'm on the right track. Plus, this opens entirely new ways to investigate the afterlife question.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'd like to go back in your life a little bit. You were a professor of philosophy. You got your PhD. What drove you to pursue medicine?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Well, it's very interesting. I am from a law enforcement family. My uncle Fairly was the chief of police in this little town in Georgia. And he. When Fairly retired after 30 years, a local judge told us that they had to hire three officers to take Fairly's place again. And so when I was a kid, I drove around like my uncle ferried me around in the cop car. And I knew a lot of cops. My brother was a cop for 20 years, a sheriff. And so I just. That's. My son is a. Is a medical doctor and a. He's a correctional medicine doctor in a prison. And so it's. And my dad worked for what's now the FDA and their sting operations. He was a surgeon and he help them in the stinging of the people in drugstores who were giving things to folks and all. So you know, law enforcement is in my blood and I've always been fascinated by homicide and so when I had been in, in teaching philosophy I really loved it and still do. But I was 23 years old I think when I got my PhD in philosophy. And what's driven me my whole life is trying to get knowledge. So I just, I wanted to, to go that route and so I went to, to medical college and I from the one of the, my first days I went down to the sub basement and and asked Dr. Chandler who was the forensic pathologist down there like. And so I would go to murder scenes and such. So I mean I just really am fascinated by homicide. And so that was the reason for the change into plus also it gives you a more in depth range of thought about the mind than just philosophy. But I still love philosophy. It wasn't any kind of discouragement. And subsequently I've taught philosophy again. I mean it's just. And I still, you know, I just, I love teaching philosophy and I heard.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You mention that you were focused on psychiatry.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Psychiatry, right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Do you believe in the biochemical approach to psychiatry or do you believe in a spiritual.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

The two ways of investigating near death experiences these days which they've come up with are the. Some are trying to find sections in the brain which they say generate these near death experiences. Right. And that the other method is the method of putting something on the ledge above where people are being resuscitated. Right. And these two are the allegedly scientific methods. Now the idea is, yeah, if they said yeah, the people who get out of the body during the resuscitation, they see the little object on the shelf or something, does that prove there's an afterlife? Absolutely not. It doesn't get us one bit closer because it's just like it's perfectly conceivable that, that you know, when the, that's long, that's before the body is annihilated, it doesn't give us any insight as to what might happen after the body. So what I'm saying is the, the ignorance that permeates the afterlife establishment it show they have no idea about all of these, these objections that were posed in antiquity. They don't think like that. And so I'm just saying there's a new way to do it and it's not going to be, be pleasant to the folks who are focused on these methods, like parapsychologists, what they are interested in is their method. They're not. You know, when you and the folks in parapsychology and psychology research, their notion of the afterlife is internally generated. Their notion of the afterlife is a projection of their own methods. And I wouldn't say methods, but rather methodological presuppositions. But. But there's a way out of this, and. And we're on the verge of it, but it won't go down well with the parapsychologist and the psychological researchers.

[Maya Bialik]

Before we let you go, I wonder if you could just tell us what you kind of see as your legacy. You've already made such an incredible impact on the world. Not just of near death experiences, but really a conversation about consciousness in general and the soul. What do you think your legacy is?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

If I projected ahead, I think that my legacy will be that Raymond Moody. Well, as the person who discovered that unintelligibility is an intelligible phenomenon. In other words, that Raymond Moody will be the person who figured out nonsense logic.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, we're really so, so grateful we got to speak with you. And we can't wait to tell all of our NDE friends about it. In the time that we had with Dr. Moody, I didn't get to ask him about something called a parallel dream. Do you know what a parallel dream is?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I mean, I can imagine.

[Maya Bialik]

Have you and I ever had the same dream and both woken up and been like, hey, we just dreamed the same thing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That's what's happening right now.

[Maya Bialik]

Stop it. But I'm gonna ask. Have you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Pinch yourself. Pinch yourself right now. Wait. Wake up.

[Maya Bialik]

I've heard of people having simultaneous bad dreams. I've heard of people having simultaneously good dreams. He talks about in this book. He was married previously and his ex wife, now they're divorced. His wife at the time was, I believe, seven months pregnant. And he had a horrible, horrible nightmare. A very graphic nightmare. And he saw their baby being born and it was stillborn as a horrible, horrible dream to have. She was very pregnant. He remembered seeing the doctor and like seeing everything happen. You know, like terrible. He wakes up from his report. His then wife woke up. She had just had it at the same time. People parallel dream. She had had a dream and wait for it. Not only did she describe the exact same thing, she described it from her proscenium. Meaning it was as if there was a moment in time that existed which each of them had access to from their particular perspective. Right? I mean, like I have chills. And in her dream, she was giving birth, right? So he was watching her giving birth in his dream. She was giving birth in her dream. And they ended up. They did lose the baby. Now, it's a very tragic story, but what. What's interesting and what he kind of talks about and what I think we would think about, right? What's real? What's reality? Were they going to lose the baby? Was that already decided? And then they each dreamed it? Was that not going to happen until they dreamed it? Like, talk about dreams creating reality. He also talks a lot about precognitive dreams. And I thought about your dream where you dreamed the place in Ashland. There are qualities that he says are necessary to determine if something is a precognitive dream. Right. So I was thinking, was this parallel dream they had, precognitive has to be real or hyperreal. Like, it's not like, oh, I dreamt this. It's like I experienced. I lived it. I was in it. So it's not so much like a memory. It's like a re. Membering. Right. Often sights and sounds are superimposed over ordinary reality. So there's often, like, other sensory stuff that's going on. There has to be a unique feeling to the dream. Where usually you would say, I've never experienced anything like this before. I've never felt anything like this before. Right. It's. It's special and spooky. Often a mystical white light or a spiritual being made of light. These are the things. So this parallel dream thing, though, freaked me out. Freaked me out.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Almost all of the characteristics you describe were in my Ashlyn dream.

[Maya Bialik]

That's what I was thinking. That's what I was thinking. So I'm also curious. Another thing that we talk about and also curious from, you know, our.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Our.

[Maya Bialik]

Our audience, right? Are there people who are more open, susceptible to receiving information that is not of this plane? I think that's really part of the larger question, right? And you could say, oh, well, this person, you know, they're a hippie. They're always meditating. But that shouldn't be a condemnation. The notion is if you continuously place yourself in a place space, right. In a theta state, in that space, yeah. You're gonna be, in theory, more open to it. I also love these stories of people who are just, like, walking down the street, and then all of a sudden, they're channeling, right? What is that? How does that work different, you know, fascinating thing. But this notion that he. He himself, like, is it from the studying of it? Is it from his deeper understanding, is it because he studied Plato and he understands what this actual structure is of trying to. To thin this veil, to pierce this veil?

[Jonathan Cohen]

You know, what comes to mind is the conversations we hear about spiritual awakening, and they've changed for a long time. He goes back and talks about Plato and how we change our thinking. But a lot of the spiritual teachers, for as long as there's been written text, talk about this evolution of knowledge where people are waking up to their higher selves or their true nature, and the fact that, you know, we're caught in illusion, or we're caught in ego, as Jung described it, or we are caught in a distraction that can be in modern day society with the trappings of commercialism, or it can be the distraction of social media. But there is some essence that we are here to discover as human beings that is core to our existence. And how do we access that? How do we feel something on this earth that is more than the pursuit of consumption? And so much of the NDEs come back and talk about love, talk about connection, talk about feeling a larger sense of oneness. And so how do we start to experience the veil thinning? It is starting for some by having the notion that it's possible where others are just shot through the veil, and then they come back as the guides to say, wait a second, there is something here. The nature of reality from the materialist perspective is quite limited. And you're missing this whole internal world that you could be experiencing.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, I think one of the things that's so interesting about Dr. Moody's path was that it began from a philosophical perspective, which normally you would think, like, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. It actually has everything to do with what we're talking about. Because in ancient times, intellectually, that's where conversations about spirituality lived. They lived in these realms. It's what led me to ask Dr. Moody about his psychomantium experiment that he devised. He started doing it with graduate students and, you know, the Greeks knew that there was life after death, right? Or that there was a way to contact ancestors, right, which plenty of healers and energy workers, right, will do past life regressions and get you in touch with ancestors, right? But he thought, what's a modern way to create this in an experimental format? So what he did is he devised not an underground chamber, which is what the Greeks used to do, but he tried to create a dark, very simple space where people would sit. And he basically was creating a forced gaze into nothingness. For him, that was Done in a dark room. He would place a mirror so that you couldn't see yourself, but you could see basically, the mirror reflecting just blackness. And you would gaze into the mirror. And I think Joan Rivers went in there. There was, like, celebrities that were attracted to this experiment that he was doing. And his hope, you know, was that maybe he'd get something. He got a lot of people to have very profound experiences. And what's interesting is he set them up with kind of a miniature review of their relationship with this person. So if you think about these stats that we were talking about, widows reporting that they're interacting with husbands at like, 90% in certain surveys and things, what does it mean to have a deep. A deep emotional connection with someone and then to lose them? Right. You're losing them from this physical space. How are you connected to them? We've talked about this in terms of a plane of consciousness, in terms of even, like your microbiome is mixing with that of the person that you spend the most time with. You are kind of part of the same organism. If we pull way back, of course, you might be more susceptible to receiving information or as some might say, imagining it. So the actual statistics from the first study, I wanted to touch on 8 out of 16 people. So 50% saw the dead person that they wanted to see.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Wow.

[Maya Bialik]

And that's big. He thought he'd see maybe like, not even 1 out of 16.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What I'm wondering is, do you see a dead person that you didn't expect to see?

[Maya Bialik]

I'll give you that stat, too. Also, people might be saying, like, well, maybe these are crazy people. No, these were mentally stable people who were seekers, interested. Interested in consciousness. He was using graduate students, right? Some people didn't see that person that they thought they would see. But think of all the associations your brain can make. They saw other people who had passed. So let's just keep this in mind. If we're opening some portal, right? It doesn't mean that the person that you want to come through is going to come through. You may be thinking about that, but this one woman that he talked about, she wanted to see her husband instead. Her father came through. Right?

[Jonathan Cohen]

That might be the most profound sentence you've ever said on this podcast. When you open a portal, you don't know who's going to come through. You have to be aware of the portal you're opening.

[Maya Bialik]

Be careful, take caution. The portal you open, but you like a plan. So I do like a plan.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Can imagine you wait for it. Sitting, opening a portal Being like, no, excuse me, you are not who I invited.

[Maya Bialik]

Some people in this study, I can't remember if it was like, 10%, saw no one in that moment. Imagine you go, you spend the day, like the protocol for this experiment. You sit with him, you drink tea, you have a little breakdown.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Hallucinogenic tea.

[Maya Bialik]

Not hallucinogenic tea. You're talking about this person. You know, there's a whole protocol. He's a psychology professor. He does all these things, right? So you're sitting with him, you're having, like, you have a light breakfast, and then you talk. And there's a whole protocol, like, according to sort of the psychology department, right. Of, like, how this study is being designed. Imagine you go in there after a whole day talking about your dead person that you want to see and the issues and this. That. Imagine not seeing anything. I would be majorly bummed out. However, a certain proportion of people, I think it was 10%, saw that person later in the day at their home, just hanging out. Well, people had not dreams, not visions, but, like, they had an experience. And it could be like, what if you're not comfortable in that weird little room?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Dr. Tara Swart talked about her husband right there appearing clear as day bedside.

[Maya Bialik]

Correct? That's actually in the shared death experience that he talked about with his sister when they were seeing their mother die. He said it wasn't like, oh, we're seeing a vision. He said it was as if his father came down from heaven and they were looking at him in the room, and his father was like, come on.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Honey, tell us a little bit about shared death vision for if we haven't heard about it before.

[Maya Bialik]

So shared death experience is something that actually Martha Jo Atkins talked about, because when you witness transitions, right? This is something that apparently happens. And I love this notion. You know, Dr. Moody has talked about this stuff happens a lot. People don't know where to put it. They don't know what to say. They don't know how to articulate it. They're worried they'll be called crazy. Right? This stuff is happening, and since the invention of cpr, to think that's why we're seeing it so much more, because we're having this new data set of people who literally died and are brought to back.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We never used to be able to bring them back.

[Maya Bialik]

Correct.

[Jonathan Cohen]

They were going off, having their visions, and then off they went.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

That's right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And we're like, no, don't go.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, okay, so if I'm gonna, like, if I'm gonna do this thought experiment, if this is happening, right, our shared death experiences, things that we all have access to. You're all around someone's bed who's passing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And so the portal is opening. Cuz they're opening the portal.

[Maya Bialik]

Who opens the portal to the next life? That's the question.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I asked this to Martha Jo Atkins in our episode with her, just as a reminder. Martha Jo is a death doula. She's been with more than a thousand people as they've transitioned.

[Maya Bialik]

It's a weird flex, but yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And she's described many of the patterns that happen while people are transitioning. And I equate those patterns to the fact that there may be an underlying code that we can identify to understand. There are systems at play in life that we are mostly a part of. And so we can see those patterns as indicators. Okay, so people are passing and people see visions. Sometimes they see a loved one coming. And she talked about this too, that there are shared visions where someone in the room, a child, an adult child, of the person who's dying. So imagine a parent is passing and their adult children are there, and they see the deceased partner, another parent who has also passed, who has passed previously, coming to help guide the person on their deathbed across. And I asked her, yes, if a portal is opening. It's like a buses, you know, like a spiritual bus. Okay, guys, we're picking this one up. We have to stop at this hospital or this transition home. And I say, if the portal is opening, do you ever have to be careful what else might come? Because if there are all these entities on the other side of the veil, and the veil is so thin, and this moment of someone in physical form is the point at which they're crossing over. And you can think about the Marvel movie when the thing opens. Every time that circle opens, someone comes through that you're not expecting. It's. It opens for one person and then like the bad guy comes through.

[Maya Bialik]

Any other sci fi fans out there? First of all, this happens in Ragnarok. I'm pretty sure this happens in several. There's a few Avengers movies where like something like this totally happening. Also like Anomaly, like it's a. Right. That was a British sci fi show. Sorry, I'm just thinking like the thing opens and who knows, it's also Land of the Lost. There's a really old school reference to what we're talking about. The question that I originally framed to you though was, is the portal opening? Don't laugh. Is the portal opening of its own accord? Meaning is oh, let me finish the question.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I have an answer.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Okay.

[Maya Bialik]

So the notion is not so much to me that let's say the person is passing, that they're like, I'm opening the portal. No, they're having an excuse experience. And it's not other people opening the portal unless there are people on the other side being like, come to me. It's like a moment. It's an energetic moment in time where this person's time in their meat suit is ending. And that is the opening that then is allowing other things to come through.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So you get there, right?

[Maya Bialik]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You start the analogy of, is this person opening it? No, they are part of a dance that is this interconnected relationship between the meat suit, the field of consciousness, the other side of the veil, whereby it is known that the meat suit transition is ending. And therefore their soul needs to go on the school bus. The school bus knows where the stops are. It has its schedule. There's someone on the other side programming the route that the school bus is asked to take.

[Maya Bialik]

The simulation version of life. But yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, it could be. What are the angels doing if they're not programming the school bus?

[Maya Bialik]

Here's the challenge that I often have. Everything's so hunky dory. What about families where people are fighting? The couple didn't like each other. Nobody's happy to be there. Do those families like, is that this.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Is the great moment. Right. The mom is transitioning and the dad shows up to help her across. You're like, I don't want to see you. I'll go with anyone else. Where. Where's your cousin Jerry?

[Maya Bialik]

That's my Czechoslovakia joke. That's the punchline.

[Jonathan Cohen]

The one thing that Martha Jo said when I asked her about, does anything else come through? She said one time in the birth center, something happened. The lights were flickering, the doors blew open, and, like, some weird energy, and everyone in the center felt it. And they had to go and smudge.

[Maya Bialik]

And, you know, of course, gotta go smudge.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, something came through that wasn't supposed to.

[Maya Bialik]

You know, we're speaking very freely about all of this. And I want to drill down for a second. Can we drill down for a second?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yes. And we're speaking so freely because I do believe there's a change, not only in our community who is interested in this, in these conversations, not only in. And you and I ourselves, who have been able to speak to so many people, who have gathered these stories and normalized it, but what we're finding is that so many, almost most people have some kind of story like this somewhere in their family where maybe it's not them, but it's someone else. And there's just these extra otherworldly experiences that people are having and aren't afraid anymore to bring up and talk about. I'm not saying that we have figured out the mechanism.

[Maya Bialik]

I feel left out. I feel like everybody's doing it but me.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Sometimes you do have these things, and.

[Maya Bialik]

Then you're like, I'm not talking about, like, a shared death. I mean, I've been in the room when people die. Bupkis. Just crying, just weirdness, just sadness. I mean, my dad. My dad did talk about. At one point, he did talk about.

[Jonathan Cohen]

His.

[Maya Bialik]

I think, his parents. And he also talked about seeing my mother, the age when he first met her. And I thought, well, that's interesting, but no mist, no music, nothing like that. Like, when you hear Dr. Moody talk about it, it's like, well, it's happening to everybody. Has it happened in your family?

[Jonathan Cohen]

You're. Well, hold on one second. Your mom.

[Maya Bialik]

Spooky. They're spooky stuff.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Believes that she interacts with your. Your dad all the time, routinely.

[Maya Bialik]

You may as well just be here.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Through hummingbirds, through butterflies, all the things. Because I'm a catalog of all the episodes that we have. I think about Teresa Caputo, and I think about the story of after my brother's accident that she taps into, where she talks about how my dad's father helped.

[Maya Bialik]

Shepherd was amazing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

My brother back from the brink of death because my dad wouldn't have been able to handle it. And in that moment, that was intense. I had thought about that dynamic for decades from every different angle, and I never occurred to me what could have been happening, the support that could have been available for my father so he could get through that scenario.

[Maya Bialik]

I have no idea.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And just recently, a couple of weeks ago, my sister said to me, I just had a dream last night about Zadie. He came to me in a dream and was like, this pillar of support. And I had just had someone revisit that episode with Teresa Caputo, and they had just told me about. You know, we call him Zadie. Yeah, my dad's dad. And my sister was like, has he ever come to you in a dream? And I told her about that episode, and she's like, that was the first time he has come to me in a dream like that.

[Maya Bialik]

Wow.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So, I mean, this. So let me. Yeah, one more thing. I first started experiencing the notion of ancestral support through family constellation work, which is an extension of the Bert Hellinger methodology? I don't know. It was founded by Bert Hellinger and it's been expanded. But the notion is that type of therapy, which is a group non talk based therapy, makes the veil seem so, so thin. So what does that mean in everyday life if the veil is so thin?

[Maya Bialik]

Right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Like we can ask for that type of support. Whether or not we can receive it and interpret it is another thing.

[Maya Bialik]

It would be a total revolution in the way we interact if we can actually drill down into what this actually is. Yeah, it would be a revolution in how we interact, in how we hope for things, in what we seek. I mean, I guess this is for people who feel that they're in touch with these entities all the time. That's what they're guided by. Think about Lee Harris. He's in touch with this set of entities that he feels is kind of guiding things. Like, what is it like? And is there a place? And I think this is sort of the strength of what Dr. Moody has brought to this field. Is there a place where these things can coexist or do we have to be siloed and say, oh, there's the people who believe and then there's the rationalists? Right. No, there's actually a place where all of this can, you know, mix.

[Jonathan Cohen]

How I got introduced to Family Constellation Therapy was actually through a body worker chiropractor who believed that you needed a certain type of spiritual healing or reattunement in order for the body to keep its physical structure so you could adjust and adjust and adjust. But if you didn't deal with it at a soul level, then the body would never actually hold an adjustment. So she was like. She incorporated that into her practice.

[Maya Bialik]

Wow.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And you and I did this exercise once where we looked in a mirror and we did a muscle testing exercise. I don't know if you. You. You'll remember it when I tell you and I did a muscle testing exercise with you where I asked you say in the mirror that I have the right. I believe I have the right to heal.

[Maya Bialik]

Can we not.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Do you remember this?

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Sure.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Why are you so.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Go ahead.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Because. Because it's a little out there, right. And you're a little bit of afraid to let your out there side fly. But in 2026, as we approach this new year, as we're in the new year, we're coming out of the spiritual closet, you and I. You know, we talk about it with Bruce Lipton, we talk about it in many other episodes. If you have a subconscious belief or even a conscious belief that you don't deserve to heal.

[Dr. Raymond Moody]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Then the healing practices aren't going to hold. Tell us a little bit about that as. As a. An understanding, because it connects to this idea of the support outside of the veil. So I'm going to tell you how it connects and then you can sort of support that idea. If physiologically I don't believe I can heal, I don't believe I should be able to heal. I have the right to heal from shame or guilt or baggage or whatever I'm holding.

[Maya Bialik]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Then it can prevent the physical change. And in family constellation, what you're doing is drawing on the support of ancestors of people.

[Maya Bialik]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Who know you outside of this limited framework to help you push forward and say whatever you're holding is likely actually not yours, that you've. You're a part of a larger family system and you've inherited these belief patterns as a coping mechanism and you can give them back and that you can honor your family by living better. You don't have to martyr yourself by being in a state of stress, anxiousness, or other afflictions.

[Maya Bialik]

I think you did a great job describing that. I think it's important to be clear that, like, we actually don't know. We don't know a lot about what we're articulating here. We really don't.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You are very cautious, and I believe it's important to be cautious about what we know and what we don't. The last thing I'll add, though, is that I have seen for myself and in others that there is a physiological change in muscle strength when people adjust that core belief or feel more supportive.

[Maya Bialik]

I appreciate that. I think it's beyond the scope of what I can sort of understand for the purposes of this episode. I do think that this does tie into this notion of. I mean, Ellen Langer talks about this, you know, this notion of sort of what do we believe? What are we anchoring towards? You know, I do. I fall a little bit on the rationalist side, or whatever you want to call it, of a lot of this, you know, whatever story people want to construct. Also, it doesn't mean that it's not true. It can just be their own kind of story and framework. But, yeah, I think that there's. I think that there is space for us to allow this kind of framework. I don't know if it's mine. I just don't. So I think we should probably leave that there for now. I think we're probably pretty good. I feel like we've talked A lot. And it's almost time to go.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You believe that the unconscious can hold beliefs and systems that affect us psychologically?

[Maya Bialik]

Of course.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It can affect our decision making. It could affect how we analyze a situation. It colors our perceptions.

[Maya Bialik]

Sure.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I'll take it one step further, that these unconscious beliefs, feelings, thoughts about ourselves can have a physical influence.

[Maya Bialik]

Yes, that is true.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We're bridging here. We're not so divided.

[Maya Bialik]

We can start our own religion right now with those things as the basis. It was such a thrill to get to spend some time with Dr. Moody and. And, you know, as we spoke to him, I kept thinking of all the lives that he has touched, all the people who have been able to use him as a cornerstone of their experience to say, I'm not crazy. This is happening. There are people who have studied it. There are people who continue to study it. And especially in the framework of what we spoke about with Dr. Moody, there's a framework for this that spans back thousands of years. The conversation about what can we access? Where does our intention get placed so that we can access other things. It's just. It's tremendous to get to speak to him about this.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I totally agree.

[Maya Bialik]

You know, Jonathan, as we round out 2025, I'm reflecting back thoughtfully on all of the NDE episodes we've done, all of the episodes we've done about consciousness, about collective consciousness, all the physicists we've spoken to, all of the, you know, individual stories we've heard. This feels like such a beautiful way to. To get to round out the year by talking to literally the person who put so much of this on the map in so many different fields. It's almost Christmas Eve. I think we. We also want to wish everyone a happy holiday, a happy holiday season, a safe new year. We'll be back in 2026 with so much more.

[Jonathan Cohen]

There's so many more topics that we have. Like, I have lists and lists of topics that we didn't even get to this year. We're going to dive deeper in. Until then, come join us on substack. Mayimbialix Breakdown on substack Growing Breaker community with content we release nowhere else but there.

[Maya Bialik]

Happy new Year, everyone. Happy holidays. And we will. Yeah. From our. From our 2025 breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you in 2026.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Next time, it's Maya Bialix breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two fiction, and now she's going to break down to break down. She's going to break it down.