This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E479 Near-Death Experience Expert Dr. Jeffrey Long

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00:00:56.320 for plan features and network management details today's guest is a practicing physician he's an

00:01:03.920 author and he's a researcher into the phenomenon of near-death experiences he has done the largest

00:01:11.600 case study over 5 000 cases of near-death experiences and he wrote the book evidence of the afterlife

00:01:19.840 the science of near-death experiences which is a new york times best seller um i'm just i'm grateful to

00:01:26.800 be able to spend time with him today and uh and get to learn about what's right on the cusp of the

00:01:33.280 afterlife today's guest is dr jeffrey law

00:01:40.880 i'll sit and tell you

00:01:44.240 i'm sitting here with uh yeah with dr jeffrey long and uh you had the new york times bestseller

00:02:09.760 like you were just saying the evidence of the afterlife the science of near-death experiences

00:02:15.600 and that term is fascinating to people you know you hear near-death it's like because that's what

00:02:19.680 we're everybody's so afraid of that line that you know it's in the finality of it um i want to start

00:02:25.680 just by asking what is what quantifies near-death experience sure now different researchers have

00:02:32.560 different concepts but the research definition that i've always used is exactly what the name implies

00:02:39.120 you're near-death in other words you're so physically compromised you're unconscious or

00:02:44.000 you may be clinically dead with absent heartbeat okay now at that time it should be impossible to

00:02:49.280 have any lucid conscious remembrance and yet people do have that remembrance at that time

00:02:54.800 and that's the experience part of a near-death experience okay and why is it at that time that you

00:03:00.320 shouldn't be able to have any lucid like brain activity why is that sure let's talk about what

00:03:06.400 happens to the brain after a cardiac arrest which means the heart stops beating okay the moment the

00:03:11.840 heart stops beating theo obviously blood immediately stops flowing to the brain 10 to 20 seconds after

00:03:19.120 that event the eeg which is electroencephalogram a measure of brain electrical activity okay goes

00:03:25.760 absolutely flat there's no measurable cortical brain activity 20 seconds after the heart stop after the

00:03:31.680 heart stop and after blood stops going to the brain it should be impossible to have any remembrance at

00:03:37.360 that time let alone the highly lucid and organized near-death experience so you started to kind of

00:03:43.200 quantify or collect the experiences people were having at that point absolutely okay i've been researching

00:03:51.440 and gathering near-death experiences for over 25 years okay i was so fascinated when i first heard about

00:03:58.640 near-death experiences and i really wanted to study them but with the best methodology possible okay and

00:04:04.720 that being people that actually had near-death experiences sharing their first person experience

00:04:09.920 right so over 25 years ago i established the near-death experience research foundation a research website

00:04:17.680 which encouraged people to share a narrative of their experience but also had a scientifically designed huge

00:04:24.560 number of questions actually as a survey so that not only were we getting large numbers of near-death

00:04:29.760 experiences but we were learning about them from all those survey questions at a depth that heretofore

00:04:35.200 had been impossible okay so you create a website where people would go that had had near-death experiences

00:04:41.440 and they would start to just list out the information right like what were kind of some of the questions that

00:04:46.640 would be that you would ask to somebody sure well first of course we have them give the narrative of their experience we

00:04:52.480 don't want any leading questions prior to that time but then once we start and currently the website

00:04:59.200 survey has over 80 different questions some of the questions include the leading research tool called

00:05:05.440 the nde scale which is a series of 16 questions that are sort of different in degrees of expressing

00:05:12.800 that particular element or or not expressing it at all but in addition to that we have dozens of other

00:05:18.960 questions that help establish basically demographic questions male female where do you live when did

00:05:25.120 the experience occur also content questions which is a very strong focus of the survey and then finally

00:05:31.920 importantly after effects how did their life change after that how did their life change in response to

00:05:38.720 that amazing near-death experience wow so 25 years ago you start the website people start reporting

00:05:45.120 what's happening they start you start collecting this data were you surprised at the number of people

00:05:49.840 were you like yeah what are some things that kind of shocked you out of the gate right off the bat i

00:05:55.120 realized there was overwhelming consistency even in the first few dozen near-death experiences i saw

00:06:00.880 everything i knew as a physician told me this is not possible you can't have highly lucid conscious

00:06:07.120 experiences when you're unconscious or clinically dead and yet here the very first few dozens of people

00:06:13.840 sharing with me very clearly and what was very impressive is the remarkable consistency of the

00:06:20.000 elements they were describing what happened during the experience the elements or if you will

00:06:24.720 characteristics okay not only were they very consistently seen across many many near-death experiences

00:06:30.640 but they typically occurred in a very consistent and logical order this is nothing like dreams or

00:06:35.840 hallucinations or any other type of pathologically altered consciousness i realized very very quickly

00:06:41.840 and as i was to learn uh even more and more with i got more and more experiences shared with me

00:06:46.640 near-death experiences are in a word real yeah what were some of the things that made you that led

00:06:51.520 you to believe that they were real oh absolutely the overwhelming consistency now while no two near-death

00:06:56.640 experiences are the same if you study a lot of them and theo i've studied over 4 000 oh so with that huge

00:07:03.920 data set really loitering around there yeah it's kept me busy it's my second full-time job

00:07:08.720 wow saint peter over here well milling around it yeah it's tough to be a full-time doctor which i'm

00:07:15.680 trying to do while while doing that as my other full-time job but what i have observed and and

00:07:21.040 other near-death experience researchers see is that very consistent pattern of what happens when you have

00:07:26.640 a near-death experience well of course there's that life-threatening event they're unconscious or

00:07:31.040 clinically dead no heartbeat but at that time a very common first element it's what's called an out-of-body

00:07:37.520 experience okay consciousness separates from the physical body and goes above the body now from

00:07:42.320 that vantage point they can see ongoing earthly events often including people frantically trying

00:07:48.240 to bring them back to life they may then go into or through a tunnel variably described often at the

00:07:54.160 end of the tunnel there's a beautiful unearthly they emphasize a light in that after passing through

00:08:01.200 the tunnel then at that time they may be in an unearthly what some call a heavenly realm aptly

00:08:07.040 described it's very different from what we've known everywhere on our earthly life it's literally a

00:08:12.880 non-physical realm movement is non-physical communication is essentially always telepathic

00:08:19.360 time is almost invariably described as either radically different from earthly time

00:08:24.800 or not existing at all in this realm this unearthly beautiful heavenly realm there can be encounters with

00:08:31.280 deceased loved ones there can be a review of a part or all of their prior life called a life review

00:08:37.200 at this point they can be colors like in plants and landscape that are so beautiful that there are no

00:08:44.480 earthly words that they have to describe them there can be buildings around this time there's often a

00:08:50.160 decision that they make as they interact with other beings about whether to stay in this beautiful

00:08:54.880 unearthly realm or return to the earthly life and that body struggling to survive okay so those are the

00:09:01.120 most common characteristics of of the near-death experiences and what's what what would be like

00:09:05.920 the your strongest evidence that this actually happens because anybody can kind of go on a website

00:09:10.960 you know any naysayer like anybody can go on a website and fill it out right sure there's been a ton

00:09:14.800 of people that have done it but like what's the most common evidence that that you believe that this

00:09:19.200 has happened that you believe oh absolutely you know theo we talked earlier about that out of

00:09:23.680 body experience where consciousness goes above the body above the unconscious or comatose physical body

00:09:29.440 below what i and other researchers have investigated is how accurate are those observations in that out of

00:09:36.080 body state and amazingly in my study over 98 of what people are seeing and hearing with their physical

00:09:43.040 body unconscious down below is accurate down to the finest detail and in fact they can

00:09:49.120 make these observations in that out of body state geographically far from their physical body

00:09:54.560 far outside of any possible physical sensory awareness for example what do you mean when you

00:09:59.840 say that just before you get to the example like geographically what do you i'm a little sorry i got

00:10:04.800 confused there yeah let me give you an example of what i'm talking about we had one relatively recent

00:10:10.160 near-death experience lady was riding a horse and was out you know basically breaking in the horse and the 0.92

00:10:15.760 horse threw her off and she hit her head very severe head injury immediately unconscious she had that 0.77

00:10:22.480 out of body experience consciousness above her body saw her body lying on the ground saw the horse heading

00:10:28.480 back to home but then her consciousness went to where she had started prior her journey the barn and she was

00:10:35.760 able to hear other people talking aware of what they were saying doing they didn't know that she was fighting for

00:10:42.000 her life over a mile away because they weren't aware of that they only were aware of that when the horse 0.59

00:10:47.200 arrived without her and again she was able to see and bring back all that information verified down to

00:10:53.760 the finest details of what she was seeing and a mile away obviously there's no way you're going to see here

00:10:59.120 or perceive in any way with your normal sensory function and so that's a common thing people like so hovering

00:11:07.120 kind of outside of themselves so people leaving their physical realm right you leave you ask and

00:11:12.640 i guess do they feel okay being away from themselves do they feel like jeepers i got to get back into

00:11:19.760 myself like when you lost your phone or something you know or does it feel like that's what i would be

00:11:24.880 like gosh because if i'm just milling around it's almost like you're just naked like you're as naked as

00:11:29.840 you could be you're naked down to your soul you know that's a good assumption and i kind of wondered

00:11:35.040 about that too early in my research but amazingly even though these people are unconscious or

00:11:41.200 clinically dead and may have had you know severe trauma or illness problems that led to that episode

00:11:47.200 of unconsciousness when that consciousness separates from their physical body they essentially never

00:11:52.720 describe any pain it's unusual for them to feel fear about consciousness apart from their body

00:11:59.040 far more commonly described is a sense of calm a sense of peace a sense amazingly that this is

00:12:05.600 actually their real conscious self that being non-physical and apart from their body down below

00:12:12.480 ah so that's a common thing that people say oh this felt all that felt a lot more real

00:12:18.080 than the existence i've been having in my body oh absolutely in fact we have a survey question

00:12:24.560 and we asked people you know about what they said but what they ultimately decided about the reality

00:12:30.480 of their experience and in our survey of 834 people that had a near-death experience where we asked that

00:12:36.640 question 93.8 said their experience was definitely real and over and over as part of that they were

00:12:43.520 saying it was more real than anything they'd known in their earthly life they typically have acceleration

00:12:49.920 of consciousness amazingly the substantial majority even though they're physically unconscious or

00:12:55.440 clinically dead are actually thinking processing at a speed they simply couldn't have done in their 0.98

00:13:01.600 earthly life wow a good example of that is we talked briefly about the life review i mean just imagine

00:13:08.320 that here you are unconscious or clinically dead and yet about a fifth of people have a life review or

00:13:14.400 they may see part or even all of their prior life here they are unconscious just for often minutes

00:13:21.280 certainly you know less than 30 minutes almost always and yet at that time they're reliving viewing

00:13:28.800 all that went on in their prior life an amazing demonstration of just how rapid consciousness can

00:13:34.160 be during a near-death experience so that's one you said one out of five people had that yeah life review

00:13:39.360 okay in a life review yeah i mean i think that makes sense because the brain is like the the ultimate

00:13:43.840 function of the brain is to organize and um and i feel like a lot of times i guess it would make

00:13:51.840 sense if you if your brain is worried that it's going to shut down it's still trying to like it

00:13:57.440 would almost show it almost seems like say if it's trying to prove at the last second hey what but what

00:14:04.240 i've been doing makes sense here's my work it's almost like you're trying to show your professor like

00:14:07.520 look i have the beginning i have the next i have this i have this doesn't this check out because

00:14:12.320 does that make any sense thinking like that absolutely that's how i thought for a long

00:14:15.920 time going into my near-death experience research absolutely i assumed as i think most people would

00:14:21.680 rationally assume that near-death experiences had to be due to physical brain function because theo

00:14:26.960 that's how we think that's how we live our life i mean that's what we're used to we haven't really

00:14:31.440 in general had any particular experience of consciousness or awareness that wasn't part of our

00:14:37.040 physical brain but that is the amazing thing about near-death experiences during the life review

00:14:43.440 it's not a matter of them using their physical brain it's like that consciousness apart from the

00:14:47.840 body where they're seeing and hearing things theo you can't possibly do that with normal physical

00:14:52.560 sensory awareness and in fact we have scores and scores of near-death experiences that had their

00:14:58.640 life-threatening event typically typically their heart stopping while they were under general

00:15:03.280 anesthesia now under that blanket of sleep it should be and as many of you know that have

00:15:08.080 been under general anesthesia i mean the brain just shuts off there's no possible remembrance at all

00:15:14.160 and at that time they're carefully monitoring vital signs i know i've been there i'm a doctor i've

00:15:19.840 theo it should be doubly impossible for the physical brain to produce any kind of awareness or experience

00:15:25.280 and yet from from being under anesthesia it should be completely impossible scientifically for the brain

00:15:31.760 to recall anything absolutely okay and yet at that time by the scores me and other

00:15:37.920 near-death experience researchers are finding that they do have near-death experiences typical

00:15:42.880 near-death experiences like all others okay so that is if you will doubly impossible that that could be

00:15:48.880 due to the physical brain function so okay so but what's how do you know something is not just a

00:15:54.880 dream how do you or uh i'm trying to think of another word for a dream but i don't know another

00:15:58.240 word for it yeah well that's a good one i mean in all of our lives we typically have dreams that's very

00:16:04.880 common near-death experiences are nothing like dreams theo at the risk of embarrassment i'm going to

00:16:10.240 share you how with you how i found out about that at the very dawn of putting a survey up on the

00:16:15.200 website i asked the question was your experience dreamlike in any way and oh i was embarrassed at

00:16:21.600 the responses no way no chance absolutely not uh emphatic over and over again for people having

00:16:28.640 near-death experiences emphasizing this had nothing to do with dreams so i i quickly let go of that line

00:16:34.560 of questioning so again you know when you hear about a near-death experience it seems so unearthly

00:16:40.160 people normally would think gosh isn't that like a dream that i'm familiar with yeah nothing

00:16:46.000 absolutely nothing like a dream it's far more lucid and conscious the a dream theo typically events may

00:16:53.520 skip around in a illogical order yeah it's almost like that movie gummo kind of you ever seen that

00:16:58.800 i've heard of it yeah i haven't seen it yeah it's like yeah it's i mean it's it is what it is but

00:17:03.760 yeah it's like somebody it's it's like it's like somebody made a collage dreams are sometimes

00:17:08.000 for like a collage i love that that's a great way to look at it uh it you're typically less lucid

00:17:13.920 less conscious than earthly everyday life uh events in the dreams skip around because well they're like

00:17:20.320 dreams while it's a different type of altered consciousness it's actually a hyper lucid

00:17:26.160 consciousness which is interesting when you say that because like whenever i so and i don't want to

00:17:30.560 like just equate this to ayahuasca right but i've done drugs in my life you know and you know

00:17:36.800 have you ever done any uh no i actually say anything no i i actually haven't you haven't

00:17:41.520 yeah no oh um yeah and that's okay right and some people do them some people don't and but when i went

00:17:48.240 and did ayahuasca it was not like doing a drug people were like do you get messed up you know it's like

00:17:54.000 no dude it is a intense emotional boot camp where like you're like you almost

00:18:07.600 your thoughts suddenly have

00:18:11.360 of a response to them in a way like suddenly you're right like the world thinks back at you

00:18:17.440 that's what it feels like kind of i never really was able to think about it but the world you can feel

00:18:22.160 the world literally thinking back at you and reflecting so you get so much there's a lot of um

00:18:30.960 like solving of problems because you're not just wondering and putting things out in there and

00:18:35.840 waiting for you to solve them it feels like nature or the world or god or a higher entity or a collective

00:18:43.760 entity or energy meets you halfway and helps you work like in real time and it's a very loving

00:18:50.240 helpful um entity or energy even though it can take you through some moments that feel challenging

00:18:58.960 it feels like extremely uh cathartic and helpful um so that's one of the things that made me

00:19:06.720 fascinating when i started hearing about uh some of your work i was like oh this is so i wonder how

00:19:12.080 much of this is similar to some of the experience that i had on ayahuasca and i wonder what just what

00:19:16.720 people's experiences are like you know well i can address that okay um i co-authored a paper that was

00:19:23.520 published in the annals of the new york academy of sciences and the lead researcher investigated the

00:19:29.760 published medical literature about a wide variety of what we call psychotropic or brain acting drugs

00:19:36.320 and looked at the descriptions of these experiences and compared it to near-death experiences and the

00:19:42.640 conclusion of this study really radically different experiences between psychotropic drugs and near-death

00:19:50.480 experiences but above and beyond that theo for anybody listening or viewing this you can find out

00:19:56.880 for yourself there's a website called arrowid e-r-o-w-i-d.org there arrowid arrowid.org has thousands of

00:20:05.360 first-person shared experiences with psychotropic drugs it is amazing how many they have you can

00:20:12.560 look up any type of psychotropic drug you can look up ayahuasca experiences arrowid e-r-o-w-i-d

00:20:19.760 documenting the complex relationship between humans and psychoactives wow they have thousands of

00:20:24.720 experience it is by far the best resource for anybody that would like to compare near-death

00:20:30.640 experiences and what happens in near-death experiences with psychotropic drugs go there you

00:20:36.480 can look up ayahuasca you can look up dmt you can look up lsd there are literally hundreds of

00:20:43.360 examples of virtually all of these psychotropic drugs i've done that and very quickly you'll realize

00:20:50.000 as i have and others do that go through that exercise that the psychotropic drug experiences

00:20:56.400 from shared by people that actually had them are in general radically different for what happens

00:21:01.760 in a near-death experience they're more hallucinatory they're more often frightening

00:21:06.160 they're more often in dreamlike in a sense that events can skip around all you have to do is read

00:21:12.320 10 ayahuasca especially 20 ayahuasca experiences from that source and read 10 or 20 near-death

00:21:19.280 experiences and it jumps out at you immediately the contrast and then finally wow when we have our

00:21:24.480 survey people will often share when they have a near-death experience that they've also tried

00:21:30.240 psychotropic drugs and in general they will state from the source people that had both near-death

00:21:36.320 experiences and psychotropic drug experiences that the two experiences are radically different

00:21:42.320 the near-death experience is grippingly real the psychotropic drugs are tending to be not real

00:21:49.680 that's what you'd expect with a hallucinatory experience 0.96

00:21:52.640 dude you make me want to i want to have a damn near-death experience oh well i tell you what it's 0.84

00:21:56.960 and i want to emphasize that i mean a lot of people hear about the near-death experiences and 0.97

00:22:00.560 go wow i gotta go get me some of that and we have to give it well i i'm going to give a cautionary

00:22:05.920 note to you and i think this is important uh some people hear about near-death experiences and and

00:22:10.880 tragically a few people will actually do something risky with their lives you know up to even considering

00:22:16.400 suicide i think as i want to emphasize that people that have had near-death experiences as a result of

00:22:22.160 suicide attempts learn almost uniformly during their near-death experience that that suicide attempt

00:22:28.320 was a huge mistake virtually everyone that has a near-death experience as a result of an effort at

00:22:34.480 suicide and then recovers will almost never attempt suicide again and why because they understand life

00:22:41.520 is meaningful life is important they're here for a reason even if their life is extraordinarily difficult

00:22:48.880 and by the way if you if you commit suicide and don't have a near-death experience you're much more

00:22:53.440 likely unfortunately to attempt suicide again at some future time wow really yeah yeah well also if

00:23:00.000 you're listening you didn't commit suicide that's a good point you know like not no judgment to anybody

00:23:05.600 that gave it a run or whatever you know we're glad you're no good at it okay that's good but yeah you

00:23:10.000 didn't do it did people that tried suicide did a lot of them have near-death experiences well i guess they

00:23:15.680 they did because they tried suicide but that's a physical act of yeah well i and that's a good

00:23:19.920 question theo first of all i want to point out that of people that have a life-threatening event

00:23:26.240 only about 10 to 20 of them will actually have a near-death experience 80 or 90 don't so you're

00:23:32.560 saying if somebody falls off a cliff somebody you know falls into like a um butter churn or something

00:23:38.240 or somebody gets hacked by somebody somebody gets beaten hit by train whatever domestic dispute

00:23:42.960 heavy domestic dispute yeah and something happens to them you're saying only a small percentage of

00:23:48.960 those will have then within their unconsciousness then have a near-death experience right does it

00:23:53.920 matter how you get into unconsciousness on whether or not you have a near-death experience no it doesn't

00:23:58.640 make any difference what that life-threatening event was as to whether you have a near-death experience

00:24:04.080 in fact the only good research study found the closer to death you are the more likely you are to

00:24:09.760 have a near-death experience wow so you got to walk over there huh yeah it's kind of interesting

00:24:14.240 i i actually uh theo actually co-authored a scholarly book chapter where we looked at

00:24:21.040 all the demographics i mean you name it you know gender location what led to the near-death experience

00:24:27.760 and we could find no correlation with what the life-threatening event was what your demographic

00:24:34.480 background was didn't really seem to predict the probability of having a near-death experience

00:24:39.840 when you nearly die nor what the content would be so you're saying yeah because i would think some

00:24:44.800 ethnicities and i you know and probably like i'm not going to you know but people in like memphis or

00:24:50.480 something might be more likely to have near-death experiences because there's more near-death going on

00:24:55.040 you know what i'm saying like but you you didn't find that any ethnicities or genders or anything

00:25:01.120 or ages had it none were more likely to have near-death experiences than others yeah absolutely

00:25:08.080 not there was some earlier research the thought maybe children were more likely to have a near-death

00:25:12.960 experience when they nearly died but i'm not seeing that so it seems to be you know interestingly theo

00:25:18.960 i mean children just came from life they just came from life so you think like oh they might have

00:25:23.760 maybe just they got a shorter tether well yeah and i think so you know they'd be less likely to but

00:25:29.760 on the other hand theo i studied very young children age five and and below average age of

00:25:36.160 this study group was three and a half years old now at that very young age when they had their near

00:25:41.120 death experience they're practically a cultural blank slate they almost certainly have no formed

00:25:47.520 ideas about religion the afterlife they almost certainly have never heard of what near-death

00:25:52.080 experience is or wouldn't understand it if they had and yet these people statistically had basically

00:25:58.000 exactly the same content the elements of near-death experience as older children and adult which is a

00:26:04.000 very strong line of evidence that pre-existing beliefs don't really lead to people you know having

00:26:10.880 a near-death experience or what the content of the near-death experience is wow that's fascinating so

00:26:15.760 whether it was a 90 year old or a seven year old that seemed to articulate well you found that the

00:26:21.280 experience that what they shared was had a lot of similarities yeah absolutely really that's that's really

00:26:26.400 and that's exciting because you know it gives you some proof that you're on to something that you

00:26:31.280 know it just furthers your your belief well it really uh eliminates the skeptic concern that the

00:26:36.800 near-death experiences are pre-existing beliefs it's what they thought would happen and there's there's

00:26:42.400 absolutely right because a child doesn't really have enough time to have too much of a pre-existing

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00:28:41.760 user earns 145 dollars per year that's right and right now ibotta i-b-o-t-t-a is offering our listeners

00:28:52.400 five dollars just for trying ibotta by using code theo when you register just go to the app store or google

00:29:00.720 play store and download the free ibotta app to start earning cash back and use code theo that's

00:29:08.720 ibotta in the google play or app store and use code theo one thing that i found that was really

00:29:15.440 interesting that really made me lock in and want to learn more was when you said that people of

00:29:19.440 different religious beliefs and things like that and they all none of them though they all had the 1.00

00:29:25.040 same uh there was they had the same characteristics of their experience if they had a near-death

00:29:30.880 experience that you're exactly right theo i really shot i was like wow so there's that anyway yeah

00:29:36.400 that's one of the things that really hooked me in yeah and and that's exactly right in my research

00:29:41.040 we've had well the website our research website has been translated into over 30 different languages

00:29:47.440 so as a result we can do by far the largest you have to do that because otherwise if you get like

00:29:53.040 yeah you get some dude yeah you get some guy fresh out the barrio or something and he's like

00:29:57.200 you know we was dreaming you know yeah and and that's that's what's exciting when you have pull

00:30:04.000 in near-death experiences literally from all around the world in their native language so we have about

00:30:09.120 60 what we call non-western near-death experiences these are in countries where they're not predominantly

00:30:15.120 judeo-christian and they're from just you name the religious background i've run into it and

00:30:20.320 remarkably these non-western near-death experiences the content what occurs the the elements are

00:30:27.360 strikingly similar to typical western near-death experiences and in fact i've co-authored a scholarly

00:30:33.280 paper with an iranian near-death experience researcher looked at a couple dozen people that had

00:30:38.320 near-death experiences in iran exactly what i'm seeing in my series no matter where on earth you have

00:30:44.800 your near-death experience amazingly it doesn't make any difference theo whether you're say

00:30:49.600 a muslim in egypt or a hindu in india or a christian in the united states or no religious

00:30:54.800 belief at all wherever on the planet you have your near-death experience whatever age the content

00:31:00.240 what occurs is going to be strikingly similar did you feel like over time though that you became uh

00:31:07.040 what am i the term look for like you became that's what you started looking for you know

00:31:10.400 i'm talking about oh um i i what's the term i'm looking for you don't talk about yeah um uh

00:31:15.680 confirmation biases yeah yeah did you believe did you did you worry about that did you take that

00:31:20.000 into account at all oh absolutely as as a researcher i have to carefully minimize anything

00:31:26.400 that would affect wrongly my interpretation and confirmation bias is one thing but that's the glory

00:31:33.520 of having the survey and then archiving the results and then posting them all theo we have over

00:31:39.600 4 000 near-death experiences posted we have scores of non-western near-death experiences give me one of

00:31:46.720 those that was interesting that kind of really surprised you was there is there one that stands

00:31:50.080 out like a non-western yeah we have uh there was a a lady who was literally dying of hodgkin lymphoma 1.00

00:31:56.800 oh gosh and you know it tragically uh was given basically no chance of survival and right at death's

00:32:05.040 door she had a near-death experience a profoundly detailed near-death experience and as part of that

00:32:11.120 she became aware that if she was to choose to return to earthly life that the lab results that were

00:32:17.760 just drawn would come back showing she was recovering she was starting to respond and if she chose

00:32:23.600 not to return to her earthly life that the lab results would indicate she was on her path to

00:32:28.960 irreversible permanent death amazingly she recovered and when she recovered she had an amazing highly

00:32:35.440 detailed near-death experience with with most of the characteristics we've talked about now well see

00:32:40.960 that's interesting because that makes me think that some of the information that you get are in a

00:32:46.240 near-death experience right and i hate that we keep having to say the term over and over again

00:32:50.400 but we have to say yeah we do yeah we really do um what some of the information that you get

00:32:55.200 during an experience like that i wonder if some of it then because at first i'm thinking it comes

00:33:00.160 from the other side it comes from the great beyond you know that but then now i'm thinking that if

00:33:06.640 you're getting information where you see that you may be getting lab results coming that would be

00:33:11.120 different if you return that makes you wonder if some of that information is somehow coming out of your

00:33:16.480 body like on this side and service and you know well does that make any sense well normally you

00:33:22.960 make sense or not yeah it does because you would have to say maybe you have a personal deep down

00:33:27.520 sense right that this is going to happen however that's the case then i would be thinking that some

00:33:31.680 of that near-death experience is in is influenced on this side of right life as opposed to what part

00:33:36.960 of me is was leaning towards it being influenced on the other side of life absolutely so you know it's

00:33:42.480 very reasonable to hypothesize that maybe something that occurs or is described in near-death experiences is

00:33:49.200 just because they had that sense that that inner awareness in their physical body but theo their

00:33:55.120 unconscious are clinically dead when they have their near-death experiences so they really can't

00:34:00.240 gather from that sense that memory that subconscious part of themselves because everything is shut down

00:34:06.800 when they have a near-death experience are there other choices i know you mentioned early on that

00:34:12.720 people were there were choices that people had to make so that one is a lady saying lab results could 1.00

00:34:16.800 make her or upcoming lab results could be different were there other choices that came up yeah i'll tell

00:34:23.920 you the most poignant choice that we encountered near-death experiences and that is a choice to stay

00:34:30.320 in that unearthly beautiful realm in the environment they're in or the choice to return to their earthly

00:34:37.440 life and struggle to overcome that life-threatening event that they caused the near-death experience

00:34:43.840 what what is it and this is where it gets really interesting theo at that moment of decision even

00:34:50.880 though people having the near-death experience everything that they knew up to that time friends

00:34:56.960 family loved ones decades of their life often is their earthly life and yet what they're experiencing in

00:35:05.200 this unearthly realm overwhelming sense of peace and love those are about the two most common words used

00:35:11.920 and they often describe that they feel this unearthly beautiful realm is their real home their true home

00:35:18.960 but the great majority of people that are in that unearthly heavenly realm that make a decision or asked

00:35:24.960 to make a decision want to stay there they want to leave their earthly life and not come back and believe

00:35:31.840 me they uh that is a difficult decision they will often argue with the beings there oh yeah that can be

00:35:37.280 you go to destine for the first time you've been in destine oh yeah so that's that's really interesting

00:35:42.320 that's just how compelling and beautiful and what the sense is like in this unearthly beautiful realm

00:35:48.880 that they're in of near-death experience wow see and so that makes me believe that it's not like ayahuasca

00:35:53.920 because in ayahuasca and i only compare to that because like i've done you know some of the other

00:36:00.240 psychotropics lsd and uh and uh mushrooms right and those are the only ones i've done i know there's a lot

00:36:05.600 of new ones and people are you know sucking on animals or whatever and you know licking frogs 0.88

00:36:10.560 or whatever there's some stuff i hope not a lot theo i mean i don't look i mean i don't look

00:36:15.840 i know a dude who's done a thing or two down there you know a couple of okay well i'll leave a taste in

00:36:20.320 my mouth but moving on look i know a guy north of panama city i don't know if he's ever gotten high

00:36:26.640 but he's definitely done some things okay goodness great um but on ayahuasca i never felt a sense of

00:36:33.200 peace it's always a sense of um learning and constant like uh not negotiating but uh revealing

00:36:42.000 and um catharsis but not a big some relief but never it feels very much like you're in a long

00:36:49.120 period of uh therapy which sometimes can be extremely intense so it doesn't feel like you're in this um

00:36:56.800 um you know a million thread count exit you know space yeah which that sounds like what you're

00:37:02.240 talking about wow yeah now now is there a and if so people if they some people might have near-death 0.91

00:37:11.040 experience but they just die and you're like oh shit we didn't get the information 0.54

00:37:15.280 oh absolutely i mean you know at a life-threatening event you know certainly unfortunately a lot of people 0.97

00:37:21.440 will ultimately permanently and irreversibly die so that's uh you know that that's it however uh

00:37:28.080 that brings up an interesting point we do have a small series of what we call shared near-death

00:37:33.840 experience these are two or more people that simultaneously had a life-threatening event

00:37:39.120 no and true story there we've got uh we're up to about 20 posted on the website so it's not not a

00:37:44.880 real like death twins kind of so what happens i mean you name it auto accidents uh collapsing

00:37:50.080 building you know some kind of accident out in nature these are all common precipitating events

00:37:56.240 so two or more people boom they're in that life-threatening event in a shared near-death experience

00:38:02.320 they can interact with each other they can be aware of their physical body down below

00:38:07.760 in these shared near-death experiences at least in the series i have one goes on to permanently

00:38:13.280 irreversibly die the other returns back to their body and then when they recover they can talk about

00:38:19.280 a shared near-death experience now theo that is some of the strongest evidence i can conceive of

00:38:24.960 that for those permanently irreversibly dying what you observe in a near-death experience is that

00:38:29.680 initial pathway but you're saying one of them died and one of them didn't but if one if one of them

00:38:34.640 died then how do you know that that person had the experience too because the other person shared

00:38:39.280 an experience with them they talked they interacted um they communicated the one that lived said that

00:38:44.640 they both both of them were together body experience for example we had from canada we had a

00:38:52.480 caught bad car accident and a gentleman was driving with his fiancee boom car he fell asleep and hit a

00:38:59.360 tree both him and his fiancee had that out-of-body experience holding hands i mean they were fiancees

00:39:05.280 rose up and then uh they were able to see this unearthly beautiful realm in the distance there

00:39:11.760 were four beings that came up to them two of them went to her two of them went to him and they

00:39:18.240 separated their holding hands they felt so much peace and love they described he wanted to say

00:39:24.560 no but but felt so compelling compellingly that's why it was remarkable that he felt so much peace and

00:39:30.560 love that he didn't want to resist it and so wow he watched the two beings carry his fiancee toward

00:39:36.160 this beautiful unearthly realm in the distance the other two beings gently lowered him back down to

00:39:41.600 the car from way above the car he saw the front end on fire and then he went back into his body and he

00:39:48.720 felt that when he returned to consciousness his fiancee leaning on his shoulder as she was when he had

00:39:56.160 the accident and he knew immediately fiancee was dead she was an empty shell and that he had left her

00:40:02.800 with those beings above that's a shared near-death experience and very dramatic shared near-death

00:40:08.960 experiences are that's unbelievable i mean out of 4 000 you know to have maybe about 20 that's how rare

00:40:14.560 they are and yet they're so dramatic in terms of providing evidence that for those that permanently

00:40:20.400 irreversibly die their consciousness continues to live and will eventually be reunited see

00:40:27.280 that's so why the fact that two people had it now was there ever two people that had it and both of

00:40:32.640 them lived uh there have been not in my series we have uh there has been a report of firefighters

00:40:40.880 they were called the hot shots in arizona and they were battling a fire and the fire they

00:40:46.240 performed change direction yeah and then they wind changed direction and trapped them and so

00:40:51.920 there were many of the firefighters that died and certainly all of them had a life-threatening event

00:40:57.520 and they were aware of each other and then ultimately came back to report that remarkable

00:41:02.400 shared near-death experiences where several lived and several died wow

00:41:08.960 oh man that's how's that for food for thought that those just blow me away i mean i tell you

00:41:14.960 even after 4 000 near-death experiences when i read these shared near-death experiences

00:41:20.400 i'm still in awe even after 25 years can you tell when somebody some are fake we are very careful to

00:41:27.840 investigate whether they're fake theo we ask many of our survey questions in a similar concept we're

00:41:34.240 asking but worded differently in different sections of the survey so as a result we use that tried and

00:41:40.160 intrude method to make sure that the near-death experience responses are valid above and beyond

00:41:46.080 that as a doctor i can certainly spot things that don't add up medically but finally if the overwhelming

00:41:53.040 majority of people share true and honest near-death experiences even those people that share falsified

00:41:58.960 near-death experiences if they're that rare it isn't really going to change our overall understanding

00:42:04.800 of what happens during a near-death experience and what their meaning is what are some things that

00:42:09.760 people do where that if they're telling a fake near-death experience where you can kind of spot

00:42:13.520 those right because there's got to be commonalities there too i'm sure the main well first of all when

00:42:18.320 we do our survey we always post it anonymously they don't get paid anything they literally have no

00:42:24.320 public recognition because there's no real uh no incentive no incentive at all right for them no cloud at

00:42:31.680 all no direction for them to share a falsified yeah no coughing cloud or whatever it would take

00:42:36.880 probably most people especially with a detailed account over an hour to fill that out and so people

00:42:43.120 generally aren't going to do that just for laughs um so i think in general and and certainly what we're

00:42:49.280 observing in our near-death experience accounts are strikingly similar to what all other researchers

00:42:55.680 are finding in their research series so i'm reasonably confident that these great great

00:43:01.440 majority if not virtually all are legitimate are legitimate yeah what is what is it mostly when is

00:43:07.040 it more women that fill them out than than men because women i think low-key want to die all the time i 1.00

00:43:11.760 feel like well because they love dateline you know i'm saying they're always like oh you know they're

00:43:17.040 always leaving a window open it's that's a great question it's probably pretty close to 50 50 but i'll tell you

00:43:22.880 why i think theo guys like us are just a little more inclined than women to drive the car fast to

00:43:30.640 go do risky things you know swim in places we shouldn't swim we've all been i mean it's a guy

00:43:36.000 thing so we may be a little more predisposed to have fun in some risky way women i think are a little 1.00

00:43:42.480 less inclined to do that so i think that may help explain why it's about 50 50 right because you have

00:43:47.520 more men that are actually getting doing getting close with death and accidents right but you have

00:43:52.880 more women who may um share stories like that yeah they're more inclined to share women childbirth and 0.91

00:43:59.200 you know severe complications and clinical death during childbirth we have a huge number of those

00:44:04.720 type of near-death experiences have you ever had a woman that had a child and then the child 0.65

00:44:08.960 i guess the child would wouldn't be able to recollect something like that yeah no we don't have any uh if a

00:44:14.800 if a lady had a near-death experience there's no you know obviously they're they are very good at

00:44:21.200 delivering the baby even if she has a life-threatening event but there's no real discussion

00:44:26.560 later from that child of oh i had a shared near-death experience right yeah like years later that yeah

00:44:32.960 that'd be too hard to remember what motivates you to care about this i am fascinated by near-death

00:44:40.240 experiences even after 25 years and 4 000 near-death experiences you ever been to bush gardens

00:44:45.760 yeah i have oh yeah that's awesome too that's that's true but i love all that kind of stuff

00:44:50.240 it's fun well near-death experiences to me it continues to remind me that there's an afterlife

00:44:56.800 a wonderful afterlife and that's for all of us i'm a physician that treats patients with cancer

00:45:02.800 these are my patients that have life-threatening events and i'm involved with them every day

00:45:07.920 what i know about near-death experience has helped me to help them in their journey with

00:45:13.040 their battle with cancer in a way with more courage more confidence that even if we ultimately don't

00:45:19.760 cure them that in the end they're going to have a wonderful afterlife and as i've told them you're

00:45:25.840 going to be in a much better place than those left on our earthly life so i think that's really uh

00:45:32.080 you know certainly something to look forward to i hope and i believe that too because even just

00:45:37.600 living is so like that's what i always say when people are like i don't believe in an after life

00:45:44.000 um i'm like all right you know like first of all what like okay you know because here's why my biggest

00:45:55.600 proof is that we lived at all yeah that's my like at least believe in reincarnation because we already

00:46:01.840 lived yeah how you you didn't why you didn't don't even believe you're here then if you're not even 0.68

00:46:06.320 going to believe it's possible that's that's ridiculous like i'm doing this right now you're

00:46:10.400 going to tell me and i came out of nothing i don't know where i was yeah you know i got some vague ideas

00:46:16.480 and you know i'll sketch some stuff every now and then but i don't have any real information

00:46:20.640 but to think this couldn't happen again to me seems asinine it's because you you have proof like

00:46:27.120 you're living in proof like it'd be different if you weren't but you're living in proof that you that 0.55

00:46:33.680 existence from nothing is possible now i know you came from people when you came from sex but

00:46:39.200 they eventually we don't know where they came from you know yeah we don't know where life came

00:46:44.320 from that's the thing sure no i and absolutely that's already yell at you or anything no this is

00:46:49.040 great hey theo this is what i find among other things very inspiring about near-death experiences i

00:46:55.280 mean here over and over is very powerful evidence that we do have a life after death our consciousness

00:47:02.320 goes on we're not really going both for us our friends our family our loved ones when we have

00:47:09.200 that final end of our earthly physical life there's a much bigger picture a much weak continuation of

00:47:15.280 consciousness uh eternal and infinite as best i can tell from near-death experiences and that's exciting

00:47:21.520 yeah i mean whenever earthly life gets miserable difficult we've all been there all of us and you always

00:47:29.360 have that that thought in the back of your mind from near-death experiences wow here is the evidence

00:47:34.880 powerful evidence that we go on well and it it makes me think like you know we used to bring it back

00:47:42.720 up that arrowid site was that arrowid yeah e-r-o-w-i-d dot org e-r-o-w-i-d so yeah if you'll zoom in on

00:47:49.440 here the the vaults of arrowid and this was the site you were talking about where people share their

00:47:53.920 experiences from different psychedelic techniques and methods yeah psychotropic drugs uh-huh psychotropic

00:48:00.880 drugs and it also says on here there's breathing um dreaming drumming fasting so it seems like there's

00:48:07.840 a lot of different like modalities people used to get to different now maybe all these are on while

00:48:14.080 they're under the influence of psychedelic drugs no i you know these are are obviously different ways

00:48:19.280 in which an altered consciousness can be achieved right okay and that's what's so cool about this

00:48:23.360 site i mean here are the original first person accounts yes a lot like my own nd erf.org website

00:48:30.880 where there's really no they're they're posted typically anonymously there's no real incentive for them

00:48:36.080 to make any of this up these are people that just want to share with the world what happened

00:48:41.120 during their experiences often they're going to select out their most dramatic interesting experiences

00:48:46.240 but it is a treasure trove of altered states of consciousness yeah i love this and so some of

00:48:52.400 these on here are somewhere it seems like it's not just uh drug induced not just so psychotropic

00:48:59.360 that means drugs right right yeah okay so some of these that has breathing dancing um dreaming

00:49:05.440 drumming uh fasting uh meditation prayer martial arts yoga um just has different modalities some

00:49:15.360 i've used half of those breathing i worked with a comedian this girl blair sochi and she does breath work 1.00

00:49:21.840 and i had an experience there that was um very uh it wasn't like a near-death experience but it was

00:49:31.280 beyond something i'd ever had before where my it locked up all of my muscles and i was just with my um

00:49:39.840 um some like way my conscience was you know and that and it took a i remember just ball just

00:49:47.520 tears coming out of me like it was like uh a cleansing of some sort um martial arts i've done

00:49:54.160 mma where at the end of the class you just sat there and just like start crying because you've

00:49:59.600 done so much like just different ways your muscles and releasing things and stuff and it um

00:50:05.840 uh and i think a long time ago they used to do a lot of sweating uh a lot of meditation you know

00:50:11.600 um historically that's kind of what i was getting at was like i wonder if there was more connection

00:50:17.360 with the afterlife in previous centuries and ages of time because they used uh less technological

00:50:27.760 modalities and more like uh actual physical practicing of things you know even if you go look

00:50:34.560 at like the egyptians they would draw and bury their dead sometimes with tombs sometimes with 0.50

00:50:41.040 tunnels that they said would lead to another little tomb that just had gifts of the afterlife and like

00:50:46.720 they had just it feels like they had a much more spiritual connection maybe with with here and

00:50:53.280 something beyond because they i mean to build a you know to build a tomb and bury somebody with all

00:51:00.400 your worldly goods that you have to take all your money and bury it with a friend so that they can

00:51:05.920 use it in the next realm it's you know it's just a lot of that's really fascinating because we don't

00:51:10.640 practice a lot of that anymore now somebody will slip you a perk or slip you a thing of cigarettes or

00:51:14.960 something on the way you know okay you know i'm so glad you brought that up theo does it make any

00:51:19.040 sense what i'm saying oh absolutely and in fact i'll take that and run with it near-death experiences

00:51:24.400 as dramatic as they are and as much as they point to that afterlife they're really a subset

00:51:29.440 of that bigger picture just like what you were talking about the umbrella is

00:51:33.520 spiritual experiences in general you know absolutely you can have that type of spiritual

00:51:38.800 experience with martial arts i was a brown belt in karate i get that i've walked a mile in those

00:51:44.320 i can't say shoes because we're barefoot yeah so uh but on top of that you can have certainly

00:51:49.440 meditation experiences can produce some dramatic experiences the scholarly literature describes these

00:51:56.080 as mystical experiences okay and there's a whole wealth of literature out there about people that

00:52:01.600 can have very dramatic experiences sometimes they even reproduce many of the characteristics of

00:52:08.160 near-death experiences and yet they're all part of that if you will the umbrella that bigger picture

00:52:13.920 all converging with evidence on the fact that there's consciousness uh far beyond what we're aware

00:52:19.920 of in our earthly life that there's an afterlife there our consciousness is much more than just

00:52:26.000 what we think with how we interact with other people uh our conscious earthly everyday experience

00:52:32.000 that's just a subset of a much bigger picture of consciousness just like what you were saying

00:52:37.440 yeah all of those things seem to touch yeah they seem to find ways um i don't know i just feel

00:52:44.240 like historically we probably even though now we're able to catalog things better i mean back then

00:52:48.320 you had to draw it on a cave wall or you had to whisper to your buddy you know and if he gets damned

00:52:53.120 you know yeah you know he comes across a rare std on a mountaintop and it's you know nobody knows what

00:52:58.400 what happened and it's so it's like you know just different times or you know it just now we can

00:53:03.920 catalog more i feel like but the connect the experience we have uh is kind of we have less experiences

00:53:12.960 maybe i don't know i just it seems like our forefathers they this was like a saturday night they

00:53:20.560 get together in a sweat lodge and they wanted to see something you know but it was you had to

00:53:25.120 you know make your own uh netflix in your in your brain yeah you know i think you're right i think

00:53:30.080 you're really on to something there here's my take on it i think years ago centuries ago i think there was

00:53:37.280 probably more openness to these types of experiences i think there was more um you know when we didn't

00:53:42.800 have that sort of scientific rigidity about what the brain can do and what it can't do i think people

00:53:48.640 collectively were more inclined to share these stories to have people believe them to value them

00:53:54.720 and as a result of that allow them to be shared you know verbal tradition probably much more so than

00:54:00.480 we have today because people were probably less afraid to share that um these were more tight-knit

00:54:06.480 communities i mean they knew each other they interacted with each other and so i think there

00:54:10.800 was more trust that we have today today we're sort of apart from each other more i think it's harder

00:54:16.480 to develop that interpersonal trust perhaps as much as existed centuries ago that's a shame among many

00:54:22.560 other reasons um people today may be less inclined to share with others their spiritual experiences

00:54:29.200 because they're afraid they'll be judged yeah i want to let you know that the best way

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00:54:42.880 it every day mm-hmm but if that's not in the cards this year you can still learn a language the second

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00:55:42.480 luck in and learning your new language and that's really really exciting yeah or there's not as there's

00:55:48.240 certain well it's interesting because there's it used to be i mean sometimes you would be the chief

00:55:52.640 of a village if you had had like a if you had gotten to you know connect with the third eye you

00:55:58.400 know it like there was a lot of enhancement and and um yeah there seemed to be a lot more of social value

00:56:07.360 to it and i think we're still going through this metamorphosis maybe where you know we tried a lot of

00:56:13.760 uh medicines to cure people like a lot of western medicine that is proven to be or slowly more and

00:56:20.240 more proving to be very much um not as helpful as we thought more causing more addiction than it is

00:56:27.520 like probably benefits overall maybe um and maybe i'm saying that to a doctor maybe i shouldn't be but

00:56:34.800 but that we're getting more to where people are i feel like we're trying to get back to nature and to

00:56:41.440 finding ways to a take care of ourselves better um and then b uh use other modalities to solve

00:56:51.680 particularly things that we struggle with thinking and feeling wise than medicine does that make any

00:56:57.840 sense or not oh i i think i see where you're going with that theo now more than ever we're focused on

00:57:03.920 we start with a focus on the patient what's best for the patient well prevention you know certainly

00:57:09.200 um treatments that have less toxicity very strong focus in my specialty radiation oncology where we

00:57:16.400 treat cancer we're more interested in the totality of the patient how are these treatments affecting

00:57:22.400 them how can we mitigate these adverse effects how can we sort of consider the patient totally mentally

00:57:28.720 physically spiritually and help be everything that we can as health care providers in a way that we

00:57:35.440 perhaps hadn't even thought about before so there's a real it's kind of interesting we're really kind of

00:57:40.400 at a threshold now where there's with a focus like that i think we're i know we're we're curing more

00:57:46.800 people especially with cancer my specialty than we ever did before but i think importantly we're helping

00:57:52.240 people to live better than ever before because we're so focused on the total patient have there been

00:57:58.640 experiences where you've been able to discuss with cancer patients who uh weren't fortunate enough to

00:58:04.880 to to get into remission that you felt like talking about the afterlife and possibilities and people's

00:58:11.680 experiences have been helpful to them oh absolutely uh of course i'm a well-known near-death experience

00:58:18.880 researcher so over and over we have patients or their family members google who is this dr long guy and oh my

00:58:25.840 gosh you know here's my hundreds of times i've talked to the media and been around and for people

00:58:31.360 that are aware of that they will generally come talk with me about that next time they see me

00:58:36.080 that can be profoundly inspirational to somebody who's got a life-threatening illness they're in

00:58:41.600 fear about that their family their loved ones they know they might not make it and yet here's the

00:58:47.920 research the information i have powerful evidence that there is life after death that there's a

00:58:54.400 bigger picture for who we are what we are that we're not just physical brain function that we

00:59:00.160 are a consciousness that's going to survive our earthly death it is incredibly important to patients

00:59:06.320 that come to that understanding i've spent huge amounts of time talking about that with patients and

00:59:11.920 i love that i consider that to be a very special and important part of how i practice medicine

00:59:18.160 going in that extra dimension like yeah well it's it was it's just it's it's you know for one it's a

00:59:24.080 blessing that you care about this because you're also in it in a in a field where people are

00:59:32.640 are walking or are having to deal with that you know sooner maybe than they expected um do you ever

00:59:41.200 have you ever been there when somebody was passing away and just kind of like

00:59:44.080 like been like hey come on back you know well yeah i mean i've done cpr for real a few times and

00:59:51.680 you know that yeah i'll tell you what that is like look around while you're down there

00:59:56.640 the first thing they say in the books is when you have it someone codes their heart stops and you have

01:00:00.800 to try to bring them back from the brink check your own pulse first too because you're ah that's pretty

01:00:06.560 pretty eerie but because you can freak out oh it's spooky i mean your your heart rate i mean it's

01:00:12.400 frantic when you have to do cpr well when i do it for real yeah oh yeah when we brought people

01:00:16.960 i mean this is literally unexpected typically it's life and death um you know it's there we're

01:00:23.520 we're frantically trying to do the best we can i'd be worried like if say there's house music playing

01:00:28.080 in the place i would be worried i would just uh what if you just tap into it you're like what is

01:00:32.160 going on oh come on you know no you theo i just don't want to be laying a james blake track on

01:00:38.000 somebody you know like at least i mean i can't speak for others but i'll tell you when i've done

01:00:42.080 you know what you're doing yeah you stay focused and you want to make sure you're doing just the

01:00:46.560 right number of chest compressions i'm just saying you get some guy like me in there and it's just

01:00:51.520 you know get out the way for cotton eye joe and just playing that you know what i'm saying

01:00:56.400 you'd make an awesome doctor i love that theo we need to get because that would be i haven't heard

01:01:00.640 a doctor ever share that but hey you know that's i think i would be disbarred immediately i'm just saying

01:01:05.440 that like if you're not really locked in on what you're doing if you're doing cpr on somebody you

01:01:09.760 know yeah and somebody just you know lays it lays some kind of a track in the distance anything

01:01:14.400 can happen you know yeah um have you ever had a near-death experience no i haven't thank goodness so

01:01:18.960 now have you is there a part of you that because at some point you gotta you know put your muffins

01:01:26.400 where the oven is you know what i'm saying bro like that and like you know what i'm saying at some

01:01:31.280 point okay there people were gonna you know what i'm saying if you want to write the third book you

01:01:36.480 gotta have to go over there but let me tell you how it works in the real world here theo people 1.00

01:01:40.800 that have had a near-death experience in general typically are not near-death experience researchers

01:01:47.120 and i think the reason for that is they know about near-death experience it is grippingly real they

01:01:52.240 understand it they understand its implications in their life and so as a result of that they're not

01:01:57.600 asking questions like me and so many other people that do research in this area that want to know

01:02:03.440 is it real what happens so again but a near-death experience cures any near-death experience disbelief

01:02:10.240 that's for sure does part of you ever wish like you know and it's not nobody wants to because near-death

01:02:16.880 experience you gotta death is in the middle of it that's the tricky part of the rest of it you can

01:02:21.360 handle but death is the part you gotta risk you know but is any part of you ever like you know

01:02:26.160 where like oh where if you say you ever been skiing and then you fall like oh this could be

01:02:31.840 it let's see what happens here yeah i'll tell you i have so many irons in the fire in my life i've got

01:02:37.120 a full-time medical practice uh i love doing research and sharing about near-death experience i've got so

01:02:43.600 much going on i'm very careful not to get into a life-threatening event yeah you know i mean i get

01:02:49.280 what you're coming from sure at one level it'd be i think an adjunct to my research to say this is what i

01:02:55.520 experience and here's what happened but don't you think that might seem fake now you get a little

01:03:00.400 confirmation bias i agree and i'd start to see other near-death experiences through the filter

01:03:05.840 of my own yeah dude i can't believe earlier i was like we have a don't you think there's a lot

01:03:09.760 of confirmation bias and then i just try to talk you into confirmation oh well yeah again when i start my

01:03:16.480 near-death experience research my scientist's coat goes on i have to be very careful to use the best

01:03:22.480 scientific methods and avoid those kind of pitfalls yeah that are common in science yeah you know

01:03:28.160 that it's still science so you're still applying science right absolutely and i think that's one 0.95

01:03:32.320 thing that makes it more valid you know um we had a guy dr max moron do you know who this guy is

01:03:39.440 i i've heard the name i just can't can't place it he is a he does the um he runs the uh

01:03:46.960 what's it called where they froze walt disney oh the cryogenics oh yeah he's a he's like a um

01:03:54.160 he's like a philosopher he's like a futurist uh he's a director of uh he's the he was a ceo

01:04:01.760 and a president of alcor life extension and that's where they do like cryonics and cryogenics where they

01:04:07.440 freeze people right so i i we talked with him one time and i some people were like oh this whole thing's

01:04:14.720 a scam right and and i looked at the financials of it it it wouldn't really be worth it i don't

01:04:20.480 think if it were a scam it's just not that much money it doesn't seem like in it but it does seem

01:04:25.760 like it's just kind of there's there's just sort of this blind hope that one day they will be able

01:04:31.840 to like reincarnate or no to rehabilitate the like the physical us that's here right what are your

01:04:40.480 thoughts on that like because it's not really the same world that you're in but there's there's

01:04:44.800 this the afterlife is part of you don't hear much about the afterlife right well you know theo i'm

01:04:50.320 as a researcher and a scientist and as a physician i'm interested in pretty much any aspects of

01:04:56.000 possible survival of consciousness and here we have groups that are freezing bodies cryogenics hoping

01:05:02.800 that people will be able to be resuscitated decades centuries from now and literally be brought back

01:05:09.600 to life well a couple thoughts on that first of all i i can't get over scientifically the fact that

01:05:14.480 when you freeze cells human cells below 32 degrees the water in the cells expands boom it busts the cell

01:05:23.120 membranes and the cells are literally dead how you can bring back completely busted trashed if you will

01:05:30.880 cells in an entire living organism back to life is is absolutely outside i know they're using in liquid

01:05:36.640 nitrogen to do it right yeah oh yeah that no that's cold so that would be and i think they do it at a

01:05:41.840 quick enough level where they're saying that that doesn't happen that decomposition doesn't happen

01:05:45.840 that's what their claimant is i the ability to suddenly freeze an entire physical organism i mean

01:05:51.600 i i'm not flash freezing or whatever that would be and again i'm not an authority right of course

01:05:56.480 yeah we're just kind of doesn't pass my sniff test but i think moreover the bigger picture here is

01:06:01.920 people so afraid of leaving their earthly life so believing that earthly life is is all that they

01:06:09.200 are and and all that they can be i think if they knew what the overwhelming consistent messages and

01:06:14.640 near-death experiences that our physical life isn't who we really are it isn't the end that what we are

01:06:21.360 who we are is that eternal infinite consciousness that goes on living after our physical death here on

01:06:28.080 earth yeah so tell me about some of that because so so yeah that's an area we haven't really gotten

01:06:31.920 into what are people saying because these are people that they came back right so they didn't go

01:06:37.040 you know they either didn't get accepted or whatever right now we're not judging them you

01:06:41.120 know there's tons of applications right all right you know the afterlife gets countless applications

01:06:45.920 every day these are interviewees who it feels like god over there okay and that's funny i mean

01:06:51.520 there's actually been a study we uh that was uh someone went through literally over a

01:06:56.240 thousand of our near-death experiences and when right over you guys did you mean yeah are we are

01:07:01.440 the ones we have posted right when i say we've studied over four thousand near-death experiences

01:07:06.400 those are posted on our nd are all the ones you get posted or not all of them every single one

01:07:12.000 that gives us permission which is way over 95 is posted but man you don't have any there's no like

01:07:19.200 let's make sure that let's have there's no protocol for you guys to like be like come on this one

01:07:24.720 you know this one has joaquin phoenix in it you know like this one i have i the integrity of the

01:07:30.720 research i do requires that no matter what the content of the near-death experience if it appears

01:07:36.640 to have occurred during a life-threatening event you know sometimes i'll you know unless it's blatantly

01:07:42.720 falsified i mean hey theo we got two near-death experiences in a row where they encountered pamela

01:07:50.160 anderson and there's obviously some teenage probably boys they were having a good old time

01:07:55.520 and boom boom okay i get that that's fake and that's rare thank goodness because again it just

01:08:00.720 takes too long to do that but we have i have a whole write-up on how we very carefully validate

01:08:06.720 these near-death experiences as real i understand we have a responsibility to the world to make sure

01:08:13.600 that we have posted valid experiences because other researchers are using this interestingly

01:08:19.520 artificial intelligence has gone through the internet and that's one of the major drivers of

01:08:24.160 artificial intelligence understanding of near-death experience is the over 4 000 we have posted right

01:08:30.160 so you guys have so many of them that obviously people are using it but yeah i was just trying

01:08:33.520 to get if there's any barrier to entry between your site oh so there is some if there's some if

01:08:38.080 people are saying pam landerson or samuel jackson or whatever yeah you're like i don't know but yeah

01:08:43.920 so the the integrity that of the research we do is such that there's some if there's well there's a

01:08:49.840 lot of integrity but there's some barrier to entry well not really if they if i mean this is less than

01:08:54.800 one percent of people that have shared what we consider to be obviously falsified experiences okay so

01:09:00.320 it's it's i mean it's rare with that order but you take some down that are obviously falsified well it's

01:09:04.960 not we will and sometimes we learn we will post it and then subsequently as they and again these are

01:09:12.720 usually people that have a commercial interest in their account and as time goes on we may come

01:09:17.920 to understand that they falsified embellish their account using you guys absolutely they're out of

01:09:23.920 there if that happens so that again that's rare yeah and that says a lot about the integrity the

01:09:30.320 of humans in general i mean people that have a near-death experience that is in general the most

01:09:36.560 amazing influential experience of their life so let's talk about that sacred to them yeah okay so

01:09:42.560 so that's interesting so people say it's sacred to them you know um what are some yeah what are some

01:09:49.360 of the things if people go there they're on death's doorstep and they get to come back you know nobody was

01:09:53.840 home they knocked they got some information maybe you know uh but what is some of the things that they

01:10:01.520 what do we have you learned anything about the afterlife i guess or that that next step have

01:10:05.760 you learned anything about that or do you feel like you've learned anything absolutely i am extremely

01:10:11.120 interested in that after years of doing research and being aware that they were remarkably consistently

01:10:17.760 describing unearthly you know heavenly realms obviously as a researcher i'm dang interested in

01:10:24.240 that so in our most recent version of the survey we've got a lot of questions where i try to drill

01:10:29.680 down on that try to understand more about that remarkably consistent perspective on what lies

01:10:36.000 beyond death's door and that's where theo it gets dang interesting one thing we're okay talk interesting

01:10:42.000 here so like what's it what's it like okay you know here it first of all you have to understand

01:10:47.760 it's radically different from that physical earthly like that we know it's nothing like a separate

01:10:54.000 geographically independent five senses dude yeah oh yeah you know how many senses you get probably

01:10:58.400 when you're done here well more you know there's yeah 12 senses i bet okay think about all the other

01:11:03.280 senses you could have yet the more the merrier i know but uh regarding what i'm consistently seeing

01:11:09.360 based on survey questions and spontaneous comments that they have the afterlife again completely

01:11:16.160 non-physical emotions non-physical communication they typically have a greatly accelerated consciousness

01:11:23.200 they often have amazingly what they call universal knowledge it's a sense of knowing everything it's a

01:11:29.840 bigger picture of knowledge far more than they could have known in their earthly life now see some of that

01:11:34.880 that really makes me sound a little bit like um you know i did a little bit of dmt with this guy from

01:11:40.880 a smoothie shop right okay you know and that's uh it was in who i was in uh i think it was maui basically

01:11:47.920 yeah and i mean hell it might have been their damn um you know i think the guys on their pamphlet or

01:11:52.800 whatever you look at the maui the you know he's yeah anyway so uh but i remember thinking that all of my 0.89

01:12:02.080 feelings were so limited the or the the the the yes my concept my concept of existence that i'd had

01:12:12.240 here on earth was kindergarten compared to what else there was anyway when you said that that's

01:12:19.920 that's just all i i you know i remember that go on and that's fascinating i'm glad you shared that

01:12:25.440 i think there's sort of different ways you can come to understand that what we know all the knowledge we

01:12:31.120 have here on earth is incredibly small compared to that bigger picture that if you call universal

01:12:37.360 knowledge in fact near-death experiencers become aware of basically they'll describe as understanding

01:12:45.120 the universe how it all fits together how it's connected that drove me nuts when my early years

01:12:50.880 of research i kept saying we'll share something bring back something we can use in our earthly life

01:12:56.160 i'll check you right here because this reminded me it's not that you get the knowledge that the

01:13:00.480 knowledge is like read to you as if you read it on a page and then you know the facts it's that the

01:13:04.720 knowledge is suddenly in you yeah that's what it feels like you've got it bingo i just realized that

01:13:10.240 i'm all yeah it's like it's not like you can you don't just you're like it's not like everything's

01:13:15.040 revealed to you really it's just revealed in the sense that suddenly you know it or that the the

01:13:21.120 revelation of it didn't even matter and then i can't even explain it again but but exactly you're

01:13:26.320 going right down the path that i've heard from so many near-death experiencers i love it

01:13:30.480 what they will become aware of is it it's funny they often say it's so simple it's so easy

01:13:36.080 well gosh not to those of us on earth but you know what's interesting after years of studying

01:13:41.600 these accounts and wondering why they didn't bring back something that we can use one near-death

01:13:46.560 experiencer taught me and said hey it's like an ocean of knowledge he was aware of and that can't fit

01:13:53.360 into the teacup of our human brain and then i went oh i get it that's how limited we are in

01:13:58.560 our earthly physical life right i've thought about that before too that i wonder if we just

01:14:04.480 don't have the means as limited as we are yes to under even to eat just and there's nothing wrong

01:14:13.760 with that it's just we're doing a great job we do a ton of you know seeking and wondering but even

01:14:19.920 our ability to wonder is in not infantile because we're here we are discussing it but it's uh it's

01:14:28.240 not able to know exactly to be known yeah and it's probably good that it isn't because we would

01:14:35.200 really wilt i think if we almost knew yeah and i think that's true i'll tell you the awareness of

01:14:41.120 this universal knowledge that's out there that we don't know one thing that that has led me to

01:14:47.120 consider in my research is theo that's just dang humbling i'm a doctor i'm a smart guy i blew

01:14:53.600 through pre-med my work in three years so i thought i was pretty good aware of this incredible knowledge

01:15:00.720 that is far beyond anything i or anybody on earth could understand is really really humbling about

01:15:07.360 how little we really know in the big in the big picture of things and it's kind of nice if you can

01:15:12.080 embrace that yeah oh it takes the edge off well it tells there's a lot that we all need to learn

01:15:17.840 and uh that's that kind of continues the scientist in me saying okay we're still uh we haven't got

01:15:24.480 all of knowledge figured out there's just a vast universe out there just waiting to be understood

01:15:29.120 and discovered and that's exciting but will we ever get it but and maybe we will and maybe you know

01:15:35.280 and some of it is even us thinking about this together and having conversations like this you know

01:15:39.840 and comparing somebody who's done a lot of research with people who weren't under the influence of

01:15:44.480 drugs unless you consider like somebody being you know falling off a cliff a drug or whatever being

01:15:48.400 in a car accident but um and then somebody who's only had kind of unique experiences through drugs

01:15:55.120 you know um and realizing that there's some similarities and and some like that are totally different

01:16:00.880 what are some things that people talked about the afterlife the one thing you said that was

01:16:04.160 interesting was being able to make a decision maybe to come or to go so there's some like

01:16:09.600 it's almost like do you want to stay do you want to try this new thing you know uh that's interesting

01:16:15.040 well you know it's interesting what's interesting theo is that when they're in that realm when they're in

01:16:19.680 that beautiful unearthly realm feeling love and peace beyond anything the new on the earthly life

01:16:25.360 that's not unfamiliar they often say this is a strong sense of their real home and and not

01:16:32.480 their earthly life and that's one reason they want to stay there they know their friends family

01:16:37.440 and loved ones that they leave behind are going to be okay that they too will be in that realm when

01:16:42.480 their time comes it's that feeling you get to when you hug somebody that you love i think like that

01:16:46.800 i like that a lot and that exactly feeling it's almost it's not even about the it you're happy that it's

01:16:52.000 them you know yeah but it's really not even for there's a little bit of sometimes in a moment in

01:16:56.320 a hug where it's not even about them it's just about this like other little space that gets created

01:17:02.800 kind of that just feels uh absolutely welcoming oh you know i'm talking about kind of yeah i love

01:17:11.280 talking about love so we'll focus on that but yeah when you've got a hug and you've got that intense

01:17:16.000 sense of love you can understand in personal experience the words in the dictionary that it's like

01:17:21.520 a connection like a unity and you often can feel that and because the love described in near-death

01:17:27.360 experience is one of the most common words you see that the in the afterlife described in near-death

01:17:33.920 experiences one of the most consistent themes amazingly is they do feel that and they use a

01:17:40.240 stronger word the connection much more commonly saying it's a unity it's a oneness of of us and of

01:17:46.240 everyone it's sort of like the super if you will ultra love is what our destiny is going to be in

01:17:52.560 the afterlife oh yeah that 70s love baby you know because the 2020s loves a little you know it's

01:18:00.000 definitely it's got uh it's been i think it's been cut with something you know probably baby powder

01:18:06.640 i you know i think it's definitely different but that 70s stuff that's it that was some pure love it

01:18:11.200 seemed like back then um oh one thing that stood out in your book i remember reading that um

01:18:19.120 that there was a that there that blind people had similar near-death experiences absolutely people of

01:18:26.160 sight that is a very good point theo uh i interviewed vicki vicki was born totally blind oh wow to her

01:18:34.160 really all in oh to vicki vision was unknown and unknowable i interviewed her and you know you simply

01:18:40.880 cannot explain vision how how we see in terms of the remaining other four senses impossible and

01:18:47.760 so i learned a great uh game show though like a japanese game show you know that would be interesting

01:18:52.400 we had a beautiful young blind lady will you bring bring her up we had a blind woman that came on 1.00

01:18:56.480 here and we learned about being blind oh fascinating it was really really interesting that's great i

01:19:00.800 interviewed vicki vicki she was uh very good at singing she was a professional singer so she was singing in 0.73

01:19:08.880 a bar one evening which is what she did and was involved in a terrible auto accident and i'm going

01:19:14.640 to jump in on what you and many others are thinking wait a minute she's blind no she wasn't driving okay

01:19:20.560 she had an inebriated patron driving which was not a good idea so bad crash if you're drunk and you

01:19:26.800 the last person you need to help you get home is a blind person yeah that she was probably not real 1.00

01:19:32.240 helpful with navigating down well yeah it's just like and let them be dude they're doing their own

01:19:36.880 thing you're drunk driver yeah very sad you know take somebody so they can see yeah well sorry

01:19:42.960 whatever no well you know that's that just shows you know exactly the problem of drunk driving because

01:19:49.280 he nearly killed her yeah well of course yeah it's like yeah and you're like and you're like oh i'm so

01:19:54.400 drunk at least if we get an accident this person won't even see what happened you know so they can't 0.99

01:19:58.240 lie to the cops yeah there you go well you know that's just the shit that guy was probably thinking 0.99

01:20:03.120 probably well anyway so vicki was taken to the emergency room and the first time in her life 0.98

01:20:10.960 that she had vision she was in what we've talked about that out of body experience consciousness over

01:20:16.320 her body and it's interesting to understand her first emotional reaction of suddenly having vision

01:20:23.760 which was unknown and unknown to her she was actually frightened because the sense of vision was so

01:20:30.240 unfamiliar she was initially horrified what is this new sensation and she had to actually calm down

01:20:37.440 and then finally correlated she didn't even know who that was down on the gurney below but it was only

01:20:43.600 after vicki correlated the feel of her long hair man i can't do that well because i don't have long

01:20:50.160 hair but vicki did so she had it so many if you need it she correlated a feel of her long hair 0.97

01:20:55.360 an interesting ring that her father had given her she only knew by the sense of feel and now she was

01:21:02.000 seeing it from up above in an out-of-body experience so when she calmed down she then

01:21:07.440 had a tunnel experience had a review of her life that life review and went on into those unearthly

01:21:13.280 heavenly realms beautiful highly detailed and highly visual near-death experience but with a twist

01:21:20.000 theo her vision as she was explaining it to me was what we hear from many people that have near-death

01:21:26.480 experiences it's so-called 360 degree vision amazingly she's simultaneously understanding

01:21:33.360 vision in front of her behind her right left up down the proper term would actually be like spherical

01:21:38.960 and that was the vision she knew so when i told vicki that those of us in our earthly life have these

01:21:44.640 pie-shaped visual fields because where our eyes are in the skull vicki laughed at me she said that

01:21:52.160 just can't be she didn't get it couldn't grasp it because her whole life experience with vision was

01:21:57.680 that spherical vision wow wow that's so fascinating and then she came back here and didn't have any more

01:22:03.120 vision she yeah so when she returned to her earthly body vicki was back to being totally blind and i mean

01:22:10.160 this is pure blindness no sense of light no partial vision at all i mean this is like to her vision

01:22:17.280 unknown and unknowable interestingly and i asked her did you see colors well how could she answer that

01:22:23.440 she had no life experience of knowing what color is she said she knew she'd seen which is she knew

01:22:28.240 she so it almost makes you believe that there's just a one sense then it's a holistic sense so then

01:22:34.240 what why i wonder why we get stuck here in these the that these entities that only have five senses

01:22:40.960 then we we almost feel like a split end of you ever seen like a split end of hair like you know like

01:22:46.320 when we get they split ends hairs or something and their hair it looks like it's been doing drugs

01:22:50.880 it's rattled you know it's not that it's not been doing that well there yeah and uh and so um that's how i

01:22:59.280 feel something like a human we're this erratic or if you see a live wire on the ground and it's just it's not

01:23:04.080 connected but it's like you know just that's how i feel like humanity is where this split end of

01:23:09.840 existence that's that's frayed kind of from what it seems like even nature is supposed to be like

01:23:14.880 nature even though it's violent and it's beautiful it's everything at the same time it's decaying

01:23:19.200 it's birthing it's like this um it's um it's constantly occurring right it's and we sometimes

01:23:27.120 feel like this weird thing that's able to stick our head out of nature and just look around at it

01:23:32.320 right we don't know what we're really grasping we're trying our best some of us are you know 0.98

01:23:37.840 wearing driving gloves and think we're neat but most of us it's like fucking dude we don't know 0.93

01:23:42.880 what's going on here anyway i don't know if that makes any sense but yeah i think it does i think it 0.94

01:23:47.840 shows like you know here we're so used to our five earthly senses and yet so many ways they're

01:23:52.800 limited i mean you hear these accounts like vicky and you go wow our senses uh in the afterlife are

01:24:00.720 going to be much much more than we possibly knew here i mean it's it's just really breathtaking to

01:24:06.000 think about how consciousness functions we're not limited by who we are what we are in our earthly life

01:24:11.920 i mean we're stuck with our vision our hearing sensation you know we got five senses and that's

01:24:18.080 it you know at least for most of us those yeah and there's some pretty door-to-door senses they're

01:24:21.840 nothing real you know they seem like kind of over-the-counter senses under the counter which

01:24:26.800 one's the which one you got to get a prescription for yeah i like they're kind of uh kind of they

01:24:31.680 can be marginal i mean medically you know we see people that have impairment in their senses and

01:24:36.160 that's that's very very sad so but which one you have to get drugs for which one you have to get

01:24:39.520 a prescription for over the counter or under the counter oh over the counter oh yeah so these are

01:24:42.880 just under the counter senses these are just like basic you know like your regular shelved senses you

01:24:47.520 know on the shelf senses yeah nothing special it doesn't feel like anything special yet and and yet you

01:24:52.480 know it's all we got to live on it's good well shoot i guess one way of looking at the oh it's

01:24:56.800 kept us alive for all of our lives i'm not i'm grateful for them but i think when we start to look

01:25:01.920 at vicky's sense even a blind person coming back and saying look dude you guys can have your vision

01:25:06.400 or whatever bs you do whatever two-dimensional bs you guys are looking around and stuff that's fine

01:25:11.920 just knowing on that next level that you get all the uh you know you get like uh all the all the

01:25:18.160 you get everything that they have exactly i mean we're not limited you know what i think too

01:25:23.760 sometimes dr long is like i used to have this theory that like um four-legged animals right

01:25:29.520 they complete a circuit right because when they're on the earth right there's four legs they complete

01:25:34.480 a circuit and then us somehow we ended up two we're two-legged so we're kind of have these loose

01:25:41.600 sins all the time and i feel like we're we're we're just this uncompleted circuit sometimes and

01:25:49.200 that's sometimes how i think why we that's something that happened to us we're we're maybe

01:25:57.920 supposed to be more four-legged because you look at some two-legged animals kangaroos i think are

01:26:01.520 two-legged and they are yeah they're obtuse brother they're they're bouncing yeah they're fighting they

01:26:07.840 have children on them they're just like us really they're like us at disney world you know and it's

01:26:12.320 like so that's i that was a theory i had like a year ago or something that popped into my head i was

01:26:17.920 like why do we not fit sometimes with nature at ease you know you know that's an interesting point

01:26:24.320 because you know we're we're so much of nature is that four-legged and and you know it's fairly

01:26:29.360 consistent in terms of how animals go around here we're the anomaly right that's the thing we're the

01:26:34.720 anomaly we're not the norm we're the why did we end up the anomaly and i and but then you start

01:26:39.280 thinking well is there a higher power that wants us to be the anomaly that's taken us from this

01:26:43.440 four-legged and stood us up to have some enlightenment which i also think is very to me feels very uh warm

01:26:51.680 and wanting you know so um and it could be a mix of the two i don't know i'm just thinking out loud

01:26:57.120 what have you garnered from uh speaking with people who have been close to the afterlife

01:27:03.040 and um what have you garnered from that oh that's that's where my research gets amazingly interesting

01:27:09.520 what i'm seeing is well theo it's a basic scientific principle that what's real is consistently observed

01:27:15.920 and that's where it's exciting when you look at the afterlife in near-death experiences because what's

01:27:21.360 described now times thousands is so amazingly consistent i mean it's a beautiful unearthly realm that

01:27:28.320 strong sense of peace and love but off the scale beyond anything they knew in their earthly life

01:27:35.040 the encounters with deceased loved ones interactions by the way deceased pets are often described in

01:27:40.640 near-death experiences and these are again joyous you know for animal lovers out there tremendously good

01:27:47.120 news from near-death experience oh i mean hey theo you name it dogs cats birds horses i've seen

01:27:53.840 not rats well i mean i haven't heard that but you know certainly pets are are not it's not at all

01:28:01.120 unusual and like other deceased humans that they knew these are joyous reunions and you know sort of

01:28:06.960 back to that sharing like they did on earth only here they are in the afterlife so so do they see that

01:28:12.720 they see these people in the afterlife what do people say they physically see they see their father

01:28:17.600 cousin or grandparent or something yeah they see them in the way that they saw them on earth

01:28:23.040 um not is there any information about that yo lots like how do people see people when they when

01:28:28.080 they have a near-death experience how do former humans that they knew or humans that they knew on

01:28:33.200 earth that are now gone how do they see them in uh in the ndes right they're essentially always picture

01:28:40.480 perfect health even if they died of an advanced age or a disfiguring debilitating accident or injury

01:28:47.040 when they're encountered in the afterlife they're essentially always absolutely picture perfect

01:28:52.320 health interestingly if someone died in an extremely advanced age they may appear even decades younger

01:28:59.440 and if they died in a very early childhood amazingly they may appear in older childhood oh really and so

01:29:06.560 it seems to be that kind of interplay usually yeah usually they look pretty much you know and they can

01:29:12.080 tell another interesting thing you almost never have people say mary is that you it's it's an

01:29:20.160 immediate and intense deep understanding that this is their beloved they can share from issue you know

01:29:27.440 what they had and experienced in their past life um there's a predisposition for genetic relatives but

01:29:33.040 you can be anything obviously spouses or uh you know pretty much it friends loved people so it again a

01:29:40.800 beautiful beautiful beautiful part of near-death experiences where you have that joyous reunion

01:29:45.120 and in fact even if the earthly life was strained in the afterlife it's that's not an issue anymore

01:29:52.960 there's joyous sharing there can be sort of like the analogous of interaction touch you can't really

01:29:58.480 touch right on physical but there's certainly a lot of that kind of very close sharing and interaction

01:30:04.480 a very beautiful very touching part of near-death experience so there's no like needing to get over

01:30:10.160 past things everything's just equal there yeah that i i i that makes so much sense man i think even

01:30:17.440 i think whenever i did some dmt or something my feeling was just that these intricacies the are these 0.99

01:30:23.280 idiots these idiot ways that we interact with each other and how we treat each other it's all 0.99

01:30:29.760 so pointless to the act to what it all whatever that value was at we're like yeah it's like there's a 1.00

01:30:38.960 whole like equation going on and we're over here like on a um one of those nimbus counters whatever

01:30:44.400 is it or no that's a cloud but like one of those like little you know that i don't know i'm talking

01:30:48.800 about dude jesus christ but um but i do understand that i mean it's it's like we're infantile in

01:30:55.840 understanding understanding that the value of each other right and here we have our earthly things that

01:31:01.200 separate us those anger resentments and yet none of that absolutely i wish everybody on earth could

01:31:08.080 hear you say that to you none of it matters when you're on the afterlife because you're you're letting

01:31:12.480 go of all those things that that kept us apart that separated on earth and here we are in the afterlife

01:31:18.960 intensely feeling unified connected one with everyone and everything um literally you know a concept of

01:31:27.200 super love if you will yeah so then why does this happen why are we on this leg of life do you think

01:31:34.800 do you able to grasp does anybody get that sort of information or it doesn't really go there it's

01:31:39.600 just more of this okay now i'm this there's the opportunity when you die to get in be embraced into

01:31:46.640 this ever laugh this everlasting warm love all-knowing place but do they get any intel on why we're

01:31:54.560 in this realm now yes i asked a specific survey question if during their near-death experience they

01:32:01.600 got any specific information about the meaning and purpose of life so theo i've had hundreds and

01:32:07.520 hundreds of people give that narrative response in direct answer to that question and what is fascinating

01:32:13.760 is that our earthly life first of all very important what we learn here lessons about love

01:32:19.360 relationships what we experience is important but way more important than we could have possibly

01:32:25.920 known it seems to ripple through an eternity and through the live souls of many many other people so

01:32:32.320 that was fascinating for me to understand that as i kept getting these narrative responses so there is

01:32:37.120 value to what we learn here that's what you're saying yeah oh absolutely there is value and it's it seems to

01:32:41.440 be extremely important and here's another concept which a lot of people wouldn't think of and that is

01:32:46.560 is you know all we know here is our earthly life i mean this just seems to sometimes drag on forever

01:32:52.640 yeah but our real uh consciousness our real beings is that which is eternal and infinite this physical

01:33:00.720 earthly life that we're living seems to be the tiniest slice of our eternal existence this is literally

01:33:07.280 the one time during our eternal existence when we can know non-eternity non-infinity limitations

01:33:14.560 what an interesting way to think so that is that is literally as opposed to trying to be told or

01:33:22.000 learn from other people's experience there is no other way for us to learn all that we do in the

01:33:27.840 physical earthly realm of life other than to experience it right as a tiniest slice of our

01:33:34.240 infinite existence wow because yeah you you think like man i want to get back there where everything's

01:33:39.520 interesting but maybe when you're there you're like dude we got to go back to earth where everything's

01:33:43.760 all kind of piecemeal and weird and you got to figure it out and you hit puberty or whatever

01:33:48.160 and it's strange you know absolutely i mean it's only during a physical earthly life i mean

01:33:53.120 with the afterlife yeah you're not going to have that anger you're not going to have that want you're

01:33:58.080 not going to have even remember any of that oh yeah absolutely it doesn't matter if you saw somebody

01:34:02.800 that you hated there's not even the all of that friction or whatever doesn't exist i don't think in

01:34:07.840 the afterlife well you've got that yeah but feel you've got that overwhelming sense of love and

01:34:12.560 compassion and connection i mean you're really think you would forgive somebody or you don't

01:34:16.800 even have to forgive them it's just known it's i think it's a you there's one thing that's overriding

01:34:22.880 in the afterlife is free will you have the free will choice to forgive someone or not to forgive but

01:34:28.960 shoot that's what they say in the afterlife well that's what we see for many near-death experiencers

01:34:33.280 describing is you have free over there you you would have i think if out of free will you would

01:34:39.040 have the ability to hold a grudge and yet i don't even know that i've seen any near-death experiencers

01:34:46.000 describe that in other words this is completely off the scale in terms of love peace that sense of

01:34:52.800 connection uh that sense that on our earthly life even if we made mistakes and geez we all did oh yeah i

01:34:58.800 know i know i did oh i know that those referees who called didn't call that pass interference about

01:35:03.440 six years ago when drew breeze was in the playoffs well i know that they did there you go talk about

01:35:08.640 mistakes i'm going to take that one of the afterlife honestly you might have a different perspective when

01:35:14.160 you're in the afterlife you know what i thought about that i can let a lot of stuff go man but those

01:35:18.560 guys they just they should not have done they should have figured that out well anyway maybe i will you're

01:35:23.520 right i'm sorry but you have the choice you'll probably have the choice to do that and yet you'll

01:35:27.120 understand that in a realm where literally the guiding force is love that that might not be

01:35:32.400 loving and so that might not be who you are at that point in time and i think it's i know right

01:35:37.760 it's it's it's tough to it's tough to put yourself in the mindset of that infinite eternal beyond earthly

01:35:45.280 love and unity that you have there but that's yeah that's what i hear times thousands no i look i i think

01:35:51.120 uh i think that part relates to feelings that i've had under some psychedelics or under ayahuasca is

01:35:58.880 just this all no this this i can't remember if it's ayahuasca or dmt whichever it was something i

01:36:04.880 haven't done them in a long time but um where it felt like yes all this silly stuff of the the world

01:36:12.080 this earthly world didn't matter it's but there but then there must be some long-term thing to it but but

01:36:17.760 but like you're saying it does it does matter to be here and exist and go through this my friend

01:36:22.480 megan she he she's like a therapist in uh oregon and she's really a really neat thinker and a deep

01:36:28.160 thinker and she um she would say sometimes that some of our soul some souls that you come across

01:36:35.200 and some of our souls and maybe me and and maybe you and are like baby souls it's like their first time

01:36:41.760 doing uh the earth show you know yeah and so some some souls you meet and they're just like oh

01:36:48.080 some of them been here a long time maybe and they're you know they're smoking or whatever and

01:36:52.080 they're you know they're complaining outside of the library but some of them it's their first time and

01:36:56.720 they're like you know having a blast or just i don't know i thought that was kind of a interesting

01:37:01.440 school of thought that she shared with me one time yeah it's a concept of old souls you know i've

01:37:06.640 heard of that before right you've heard of that before i just never heard of young so i'd never really

01:37:10.160 thought of the the other side of it that that's that it's some soul it's just like they're fresh

01:37:14.160 out of the back you know the the bassinet and they're just you know well if you have old souls

01:37:18.720 you have young souls yeah i didn't put it together binary but again i think it's all you know in the

01:37:24.160 afterlife i don't you know i don't know there's really a judgment or that it's so critical i think

01:37:28.960 we're all here to learn um they're you know we're all here to share and interact with each other

01:37:34.320 and learn from those relationships and grow from those relationships i mean that's going to be a

01:37:38.560 part of the consciousness of who we are what we are and and literally what we can share with

01:37:44.160 eternal consciousness uh you know on an ongoing basis so it's really that important it's not just

01:37:49.040 our consciousness it's what we can do as a group it's what we can yeah it's literally there's a

01:37:53.360 shared consciousness i love there's a shared knowing and so that's we talked about briefly

01:37:58.000 earlier about like a ripple effect of consciousness so what we do in earthly life the choices we make the

01:38:03.680 love that we express is actually literally rippling through eternity far more important than we realize

01:38:10.000 we could possibly know here man i love that that's such a great thought man it's such a great theory

01:38:14.960 too and it's one that we need to put out there more and i i feel like um we're getting more i feel

01:38:22.160 like that is gonna become i think we're starting to realize that these these ways of like immense greed and

01:38:29.920 like putting each other for at like massive amounts of people that pain for profit and just

01:38:36.560 yeah and it just there's no what is the long-term value of it well i don't see anybody that think what

01:38:43.200 is the long-term value of oppressing a people or of you know it's like we have to be evolving out of

01:38:50.000 that and it's like i i i think a lot of us are starting to see that like it does because the only way

01:38:58.000 we all have to be here and it's like we have you have to find a way where it all works out you know

01:39:04.320 and some of these um archaic ideas of greed and of uh just um i don't know well i think about that

01:39:16.080 stuff a lot i like that because after all you know the old adage you can't take it with you i mean if

01:39:21.600 you spend your life being greedy and hoarding and and you know material possessions none of

01:39:28.160 that is going to exist in a physical afterlife but what is going to be a part of you your soul

01:39:33.120 is going to be those loving outreaches you had it's going to be those times that you really showed

01:39:39.520 compassion and that is going to be what helps define us our eternal soul and will ripple out and be a part

01:39:46.160 of us forever i agree with you and but we can do that as a bet i think our leadership and how we

01:39:51.760 choose to can do that like i like i don't know i i'm not like a socialist really i don't think but i i

01:39:59.840 guess i i am a person that like that i believe people should be capped on kind of the amount of

01:40:05.520 money that they can make i don't believe that corporate like we should i don't think we should

01:40:10.320 sacrifice the good of people the betterment overall betterment of people and of your experience

01:40:16.640 on earth uh for technological advancement for profit i don't like i don't know i haven't fully

01:40:25.760 conceptualized some of my ideas and i don't know what they are but i just see how it just makes it

01:40:31.600 sick it's like we could just we could have better lives overall it feels like but then maybe part of

01:40:36.880 the reason that we're here is to have this struggle and to see these things and to know what um

01:40:42.400 what the ups and downs feel like and to know what it feels like not to care about each other as much

01:40:47.520 as we should you know so that when you do go to that other place it's like oh this makes so much

01:40:52.000 sense you nailed it it's the struggle we're having struggles here all of us you know the needs the wants

01:40:58.800 the the you know the the thinking that we should be agreed you know the the desires we have to

01:41:05.280 you know struggle with just being human i wonder if we do better do we evolve like wonder if we if at

01:41:10.240 a certain point we do like decent good enough then god gives us another sense like now you got this

01:41:15.280 sense boys and you're like whoa bro so i wonder if we can evolve if we all got to a level of

01:41:23.520 of caring about each other or of doing something you know and i know that 0.59

01:41:26.960 shit sounds kind of hoity-toity and we are the world and magic johnson or whatever or michael johnson 0.96

01:41:32.240 molested those kids or whatever i'm not saying all of that but i'm just saying like if we all got 0.99

01:41:36.960 to a level where we could like could we like do we get to go to another level if we can beat this level

01:41:44.880 on earth absolutely i think that's a a beautiful statement of a hope of a vision for humanity if we

01:41:51.520 can all learn about the importance of love compassion sharing um let go of those all too human

01:41:57.920 greed once uh you know the incredible disparities in material goods around the world which is just

01:42:06.320 incredible if we could let go of that if we could all know that we are one we are one world one people

01:42:12.720 if we could just visualize that work towards making it happen absolutely yeah we as a humanity could

01:42:19.760 evolve and evolve in a very positive direction we unlock a new sense and we would yes and i think that

01:42:24.400 that is a great expression of hope so good i like your attitude too dr long and look obviously i'm

01:42:30.480 sitting here in a warm room and you know clothes and food and everything i'm not like trying to uh

01:42:38.160 but at the same time i'm not gonna burn down every moment of my own life or like achievement or

01:42:44.720 something just to try and say that that idea isn't possible you know it's like obviously we're privileged

01:42:50.800 enough to be able to say that you know or whatever you know we have microphones we have whatever you

01:42:55.040 know we have electricity and everything um and yet here we are you know talking about you know being

01:43:00.800 able to talk about this and and yet we're we're learning about the importance of these values from

01:43:06.480 near-death experiences from our own lives i mean it's that seed of compassion that i think every

01:43:11.280 human being has it's just a matter of bringing that out helping people to manifest that and how it would

01:43:18.080 change the world right if we all understood that and different ethnicities different places different

01:43:23.440 people they have less of it than others i think different people because we all have different

01:43:27.520 pieces of each other's lock you know like we're all the keys to each other's locks that's my friend

01:43:31.920 james basher always says and it's like we're all like different you know we do need each other anyway

01:43:37.680 this is getting a little bit like preachy almost but no it's it's positive and it's good and it's a good

01:43:42.880 message and i don't mean that but i don't want to get to the point where we sound like we're just

01:43:46.560 like we know like we're trying to save the world the hope this hope i'm a stat of our well yeah and

01:43:53.840 yet the hope for humanity that we are expressing very directly here is directly part of the near

01:43:59.120 death experience wisdom over and over we're understanding those concepts and that's directly

01:44:04.480 relevant to the the greater truth the greater understanding and literally the hope for world

01:44:10.000 that people that have near-death experience experiences bring out yeah now what about this dude they say

01:44:16.880 what's if somebody's gonna die and they're not gonna do near-death experience they're just gonna die

01:44:21.200 right what's what should you wear you think if you're gonna die yeah because like so you get so

01:44:28.880 because some people say okay you know sometimes sometimes i think that if you whatever you wear you

01:44:32.880 die and you could get that job in the afterlife like they say dress for the job you want you know

01:44:37.680 i'm talking about um theo yeah in 25 years of having interviews like this that's the first time i've heard this

01:44:43.360 question so i'll address that i don't think it makes beans worth a difference what you're wearing

01:44:49.040 or what you're not wearing or nothing at all i mean it it's in the afterlife it's going to be your

01:44:54.320 consciousness not your clothes it's not going to be any aspect of who we are physically uh clothes

01:45:00.160 hair uh you know jewelry we're wearing you know we are much more than that we are consciousness and

01:45:06.320 that's that's what near-death experiencers are consistently describing as going on to the

01:45:10.640 afterlife yeah i think i'm gonna wear a chef's hat probably because i uh i would want to be in

01:45:16.400 a bakery i think if i'm in heaven and you're in a bakery imagine how good it smells you know

01:45:21.200 and you're just making scones or whatever because the british i guess get to go to

01:45:24.400 oh you're making me hungry yeah heavenly scones i don't believe you know okay i don't believe

01:45:28.640 everybody should be there but i'm you know all right but the british they're good folks but

01:45:32.560 you know some people don't think that they are yeah but um have you have you this is one last

01:45:37.600 question i have for you dr long and thank you so much for your time today man pleasure i'm glad

01:45:41.440 this evolved i think we stayed patient with each other and this evolved into a cool conversation

01:45:44.880 this is an awesome conversation so carry on what you got there yeah and i'm grateful this book man

01:45:50.400 i'm grateful just like you know that there's somebody who wants to care enough to think about

01:45:56.080 this and collect this information because it's it's kind of tedious i'm sure it is my literally

01:46:02.240 my second full-time job and a big shout out to my wife jody she is a licensed attorney and yet she 1.00

01:46:08.480 stepped down from doing that so she could devote full time to running the website and working to

01:46:13.680 gather this information and share it back with the world the experiences the near-death experiences

01:46:18.320 shared with us freely it's wonderful that we have the opportunity to share them back freely

01:46:23.840 literally in over 30 different languages so people all over the world can read these if you go to

01:46:28.720 the website nd erf.org go to the home page you'll quickly realize yeah we don't have anything for

01:46:34.640 sale and we don't solicit donations why but that doesn't seem like the typical materialistic viewpoint

01:46:40.720 it's because we know that the information we have the experiences we're sharing are so important

01:46:46.160 we don't want to compromise the integrity of that by having any commercial interest right on the home

01:46:50.640 page okay got it that's fair i respect that man i think there's certainly ways to do that sort

01:46:55.120 of thing and and there's ways also not to feel embarrassed about it you know like i think from

01:46:59.600 listening to you i don't i think i can people's instincts usually are what they are and everybody

01:47:05.200 will make their own decision as to if somebody thinks you're some sort of a snake oil salesman or

01:47:08.640 something but that's not what i gathered um and they and we do that for everyone you know we do that on

01:47:13.440 all types of things i'll tell you this i accidentally bought four copies of the book and one audio copy of

01:47:18.960 oh evidence of the afterlife oh because uh yeah i had i didn't know where i was going to be and so

01:47:25.520 i um if i was going to be here or la so i bought one and then uh my friend got me one and then i

01:47:30.480 bought an audio uh copy as well but i don't have god in the afterlife this is a different book yeah that

01:47:35.920 came out later and that's where we went into the deeper if you will spiritual content of near-death

01:47:41.360 experiences concepts of god which i want to hasten to add many near-death experiences say

01:47:47.520 god is a human word and what they encountered in god is far beyond human language far more

01:47:54.320 you know they would are concerned about being limited in what they encountered by using typical

01:48:00.960 english verbal expressions of that which is beyond the verbal beyond language and god but also great

01:48:07.920 deal of writing in this book about love and the concepts of that that seems to be if you will the

01:48:13.120 glue that holds the universe together and what we've alluded to earlier uh the overwhelming consistent

01:48:18.800 comments from people that have been in that unearthly heavenly realm that amazing concept that

01:48:24.160 we're all one we're all unified we're all together uh and forever which is again completely different

01:48:30.560 from conventional western religious thinking and yet by the literally at this point thousands we have

01:48:36.000 people that have near-death experiences sharing that yeah yeah no i think uh that that's interesting

01:48:42.000 to go so people so that one's a little bit more of a religious aspect this has nothing to do with

01:48:46.800 religion this is purely evidence-based this is purely what people having okay their experience of what of

01:48:52.560 any interactions with what they perceive to be god and you're saying that overall that experience was

01:48:57.360 that the god that they perceived or the energy of a higher power or of a more all-knowing power was

01:49:04.400 greater than something we could actually conceptualize and the best we can do with that here on earth is

01:49:09.040 by saying god absolutely god is just the most common word i mean you know there's really no other

01:49:13.840 right well it goes to the senses it goes to the senses of this is the best we can do

01:49:18.960 with the five senses we have exactly is create this um this this uh lower level according now if we

01:49:29.280 if we believe in this higher level that of uh of communication and of sharing and an idea of

01:49:35.600 something yeah absolutely yeah that's you got it you nailed it there theo thanks dude it only you know

01:49:41.360 it only took us two hours to do it oh so what about have you have you had anyone who had a near-death

01:49:47.600 experience from like a um a uh like a mass like a 9-11 or a school shooting or a mass

01:49:58.240 death type of scenario was there anything like that ever i know you said there was

01:50:01.200 one where there was two people yeah have you had anybody report from something greater like that

01:50:06.400 wow you know that's a good question you know fortunately mass sudden deaths mass shootings mass

01:50:12.320 things like that are very very rare you know virtually all people that die it's going to be

01:50:17.920 you know their individual death that accident illness advanced age that kills them i can't

01:50:23.120 right off the top of my head think of any near-death experiences that occurred at a time of a very mass

01:50:29.840 death that have been shared with but i'll sure keep my eyes out for one yeah yeah i'm just wondering

01:50:33.760 if there's too much death in one moment at that place for the other side to like really you know

01:50:39.120 maybe they have to just um you know maybe they don't have as much of a uh intake you know person

01:50:46.080 working that day or whatever where you have enough time with them you know i'm saying you don't i don't

01:50:49.840 know where you know because i imagine that some things would be a little bit similar maybe it's like

01:50:54.720 all right everybody get in here and you know you can't loiter you know yeah uh i don't think we have

01:50:58.640 to worry about that the every hint of information about the afterlife is is overwhelmingly more

01:51:04.000 intelligent loving and i think there's uh an immediate sort of aware entry into the afterlife

01:51:12.960 for anybody who's permanently deceased on this world any celebrities have reached out to you

01:51:17.760 or any interesting folks like that or like people you know that are any like interesting folks that

01:51:23.680 have reached out to you to be more curious about your work yeah we we do periodically here for some

01:51:29.200 i mean you name it doctors executives uh some people that don't want their name mentioned but

01:51:34.720 yeah we've had some people very interested in this that have contacted me you know like are you sure

01:51:39.840 dr long are you do you really be how what is the evidence behind it can you share it with me so we've

01:51:44.960 i've banded with some people uh way up the food chain if you will in this society that are are

01:51:50.960 fascinated with this research and want sort of a one-on-one perspective so yeah i've done that there's

01:51:56.160 plenty of i mean how can you not be fascinated about what happens after you die and so you know

01:52:02.240 people that are you know well-to-do that are famous literally have those same interests that i think

01:52:08.480 everybody does certainly at least some point in their life yeah well it's a big conversation that we

01:52:13.120 have about death and it's a lot of times it's a conversation i think that we have with ourselves but

01:52:17.440 that we're really afraid to have absolutely you know i don't know how much i have a conversation with

01:52:22.000 myself about death and if i do what even is it really yeah like what do you know anything about

01:52:27.040 that it's such an unknown is such a mystery oh i i think just about every person that's ever walked

01:52:31.840 this planet you know like you have thought about this and and it's unknown or unknowable the good

01:52:37.280 news is interestingly when people have a near-death experience as you might guess their fear of death

01:52:43.520 drops dramatically from a person who's had a near-death experience these are called

01:52:47.920 after effects the typically observed changes after a near-death experience and one of the most common

01:52:53.680 is a dramatic reduction in their personal fear of death and that's no surprise now is it they know

01:52:59.600 what lies beyond death's door because they personally experienced it they know it's wonderful

01:53:04.560 and not to be feared yeah man that reminds me whenever i did that dmt man i remember i called my

01:53:09.920 mother after i sent her a text and i said hey ma don't worry about getting older or dying it's not

01:53:14.880 that big of a deal what we're doing here isn't as super important as we think it is and that

01:53:19.040 everything's gonna be way awesomer than you think it is um which is just interesting because that's

01:53:25.200 the only time i think maybe that dmt experience was a little bit more like some of the near-death

01:53:30.720 experience but i'm gonna go and read i'm gonna go check out that website and and see what more

01:53:34.880 information i can garner because this is really just it's neat to think about but man yeah to get close

01:53:41.200 now are there people who want to sign up and say hey put me under some type of

01:53:47.920 a coma or something so i can try to have a near-death experience are there kind of like

01:53:51.600 astronauts of death where they want to go into that darkness and see what they can

01:53:57.520 get and come back are there people like that yeah fortunately people that have raised that possibility

01:54:03.440 for having themselves have an induced death is first of all it's vanishingly rare thank goodness

01:54:09.200 second of all nobody's ever going to do that that would be illegal unethical and that's not how you

01:54:15.280 study near-death experiences i mean shoot look at this we've had thousands of people share their

01:54:20.080 near-death experiences why should we put someone's life in jeopardy to just study what we can ask

01:54:26.560 literally thousands tens of thousands probably around the world millions of people that have had

01:54:31.200 near-death experience so there's absolutely nobody's going to do that right i see it from your

01:54:35.680 side especially as a medical professional right but are there i'm sure dude i bet we could damn do

01:54:40.240 a sign up online you know i bet you get six people off twitter by midnight today who would do it you

01:54:45.360 know who would let you put them under some sort of a thing and they would sign that you know the

01:54:50.480 you know the red rover agreement or whatever if they don't come back or whatever i don't know what

01:54:54.160 it would be called but i bet we could i bet there's a lot of people who would be like near-death

01:54:58.880 uh experienced or not or whatever who would want to just you know every other day maybe they maybe

01:55:05.280 it's an every other day job you put them in a coma or something and say see what happened they try to

01:55:08.880 come back around yeah sadly that's true i think there's a lot of people that so want to to incorporate

01:55:15.520 that that wonderful message of near-death experience into their own life that they would be willing to

01:55:20.080 risk it again illegal unethical and absolutely not a self-loving path which we see in near-death

01:55:26.640 experiences so commonly that overwhelming importance of love that's not loving either

01:55:31.200 themselves or to the individuals would put them in a dying state that's it's really it's sort of

01:55:36.640 like the lessons we learned from people that had near-death experiences as a result of suicide

01:55:41.840 attempts they learned vividly that that's not the right thing to do that was a huge mistake right

01:55:49.440 wow man this is pretty this is pretty heavy here theo this but you don't have a lot of talks where

01:55:54.400 things get this deep no and it's nice though i want to have more talks like this and i think you

01:55:58.480 know even us just talking about some of these things like i want to have more talks about like

01:56:01.760 greed and why do we live in this space because i think some of the sickness that we feel as humans

01:56:07.440 these days that we like you know there's a lot of emotional unwellness and mental unwellness and i

01:56:14.320 think a lot of it is just because of us we realize or we feel and we can't even maybe put words to

01:56:22.240 it sometimes that we're sick of something we've created a way of being a way of treating each

01:56:33.120 other and even some of us are at fault we're all part of it but we're sick of it i think we're it's

01:56:39.200 making us sick but we are all stuck in it kind of and we don't and we've never been able to see it

01:56:44.240 before but i think we're starting to be able to see it a little bit does that make any sense to you

01:56:47.440 or am i crazy no absolutely i like what you're saying i think there's you know there's sort of

01:56:51.840 that sickness innate in humanity i mean here we are you know self-focused uh focused away from other

01:56:58.800 people uh focused on our own interests and our own concerns our own wealth our own everything i mean

01:57:06.160 it's literally you're getting down to values there's a sickness in the expression of values all around

01:57:11.200 the world today and that's a sad thing it's you know globally you could call it unloving and yet

01:57:16.960 here in near-death experiences is that consistent message pointing to that's not the way that's not

01:57:23.360 how life is to be lived you need to think about your neighbor you need to think about other people

01:57:28.800 you need to reach out compassionately i mean it's literally a profound message of hope for all of

01:57:33.600 humanity and in fact these profound deep messages in the near-death experience are in my opinion

01:57:39.840 the most profoundly positive message even conceivable for all of humanity wow it's crazy

01:57:47.120 that we have to almost die to get a message of how to live you know that we have to go you know

01:57:52.160 we have all this life in front of us every moment in front of our eyes and you have to go that close

01:57:56.480 to the you know to that white vulture of the lord death and and you're over there and feed him bird

01:58:02.640 seed out of your dang hand is just you can get a little bit of information and yet i think we need

01:58:07.120 to if we do understand that that's the big picture that that's really a part of our real eternal and

01:58:13.920 infinite existence and that we're all here to learn lessons to move closer to that greater reality that

01:58:19.920 we have that unity that love that compassion i mean i think that sets you know really a pathway that we

01:58:26.960 can all think about each day of our daily lives and maybe move one step closer to being our true selves

01:58:33.760 which is what we're going to be in the afterlife right yeah man it's definitely uh

01:58:41.840 it's definitely super fascinating it's interesting to think about i'm grateful that god let me exist to

01:58:46.880 even kind of just get to think about stuff like this that's some sometimes the most fascinating

01:58:51.120 thing about life and especially of being able to stay alive and get older because you get to see

01:58:54.880 more concepts of yeah like that's one of the saddest things i think when people die young is they just

01:58:59.760 don't get to see like how things kind of a little bit more clarity you get and and a little bit more

01:59:05.680 light knowledge you get of what of of existing and stuff yeah absolutely is there anything else i was

01:59:12.080 going to ask you about man you really this has been a great interview has it been yeah you've really

01:59:17.440 i mean you've really covered a lot of material here very fascinating i love this different perspective

01:59:22.320 that you're bringing out in this discussion here uh i think you're coming at the concept of near

01:59:27.040 death experiences in a very special and i think very important very positive way it's sort of that

01:59:32.960 you need to think about near-death experiences are such a a all-encompassing we start talking about

01:59:38.880 infinite and eternal consciousness and our self or souls i mean literally just coming at the concept of

01:59:44.880 near-death experiences from so many different ways i have learned in this discussion here i've thought

01:59:49.840 about things i haven't really thought about before so this has been great this has been very helpful to

01:59:54.320 me personally and i'm sure to vast number of viewers as well oh thanks man yeah well i think it's

02:00:00.800 you know yeah i just feel grateful that we got to chat about it dude honestly um you know it's nice

02:00:06.800 to think about and it's nice to be just reminded about it you know it's interesting the things that we

02:00:11.040 focus on and listen to and stuff do have an effect on how we feel and think and stuff you know i think

02:00:17.360 sometimes yeah uh yeah i think it's important you know where we put our attention you know and the

02:00:24.400 dark arts have really masterminded ways to take our attention and use it for evil i don't think they

02:00:29.680 know they're doing it for evil they think there's other reason behind it but we just have to be

02:00:34.080 careful where we put our attention you know that's the most important thing it's hard and i'm not

02:00:38.080 preaching about it i suffer just like everybody else but to recognize that we suffer is kind of a or

02:00:44.320 that we're that where we're trapped a little bit is it's kind of interesting and good start that's

02:00:48.880 really cool man what a neat hobby that turns into something fascinating when you look back on that

02:00:54.960 part of it like your own attention to it and stuff what uh what gifts has it given you out of paying

02:01:02.880 attention to it absolutely i have been profoundly affected by my study of near-death experiences as a

02:01:09.280 physician and i'm practicing full-time this has helped me to be much more compassionate

02:01:14.000 focused on the patients loving to them literally going the extra mile really being the kind of a

02:01:19.760 doctor to my patients that i would want a doctor to be with me and in fact in the facility that i'm

02:01:25.680 working at now patient satisfaction is measured by a national survey called press gainy for the past

02:01:31.360 seven months the facility i'm working yeah i've heard of that before you've heard of press gainy well how

02:01:35.600 about i bet you probably haven't heard of this in the last seven months of the press gainy surveys

02:01:40.400 in the facility i'm working with every single patient that was surveyed on every single question

02:01:46.640 we were at the 99 percent level based against national standards but again it shows and i want to

02:01:52.000 emphasize i contributed to that by the compassion and love and attention and focus i give patients but

02:01:58.000 that's a whole dang team that shares that value of compassion doing their best of making patients

02:02:04.960 feel like you know it's their home away from home when they come in there that they're really being

02:02:09.360 cared for each person is an individual so between me and the whole team there we have some of the highest

02:02:15.840 patient satisfaction scores you're going to find anywhere theo well that's congratulations yeah

02:02:21.520 and i and no that's that's awesome that your own work has ended up uh that your own hobbies and

02:02:26.720 interests have ended up inspiring you to do your original job better it really is um with press gainy

02:02:34.720 we had a corner in and he was talking about once press gainy they started at calling people and

02:02:41.280 asking them to rate how their experience right right that it started to affect that somehow the opioid

02:02:49.840 those makers use the press gainy press gainy scores and the that the opioid makers were using the press

02:02:57.840 gainy to somehow you know i'm talking about it all yeah unfortunately uh i am suspicious that

02:03:03.360 you know patients that were seeking narcotics and then would get that would rank their health care

02:03:08.880 team higher than if their health care team did proper medicine and didn't give them inappropriate

02:03:13.920 opioids so i i hope that's not what this is but i i have a i just remembered literally when you said

02:03:20.960 that i this is the only second time i've ever heard it go back to the top please it says uh the u.s has

02:03:26.320 get to the writing the u.s has been in the middle of an opioid crisis the past decade deaths uh more

02:03:33.280 than 150 people a day die from opioid we know all that stuff and an interesting angle researchers have

02:03:37.760 been looking if there's a direct or indirect link between press gainy scores in the opioid crisis

02:03:41.520 press gainy is a company that has the healthcare industry's largest database of patient caregiver and

02:03:45.760 physician feedback which you're saying you guys have done a great job with and you think that a lot

02:03:50.400 of that is because of your also understanding of what people's potential life after their life on earth

02:03:55.920 it has certainly helped me to be a more compassionate uh courageous doctor i mean i i deal with patients

02:04:02.720 oh these are people that are facing a life-threatening illness cancer is a scary word oh but with what i've

02:04:09.200 learned about near-death experiences i can approach each patient with cancer in their journey of treatment

02:04:15.280 and hopefully recovery and cure with increased hope with increased compassion um yeah in a way that i i i

02:04:23.520 know uh is beyond what i could have done before i started studying near-death experience well yeah if

02:04:29.120 you're a concierge for this more comfortable

02:04:33.440 afterlife or existence even just a even if you just are collecting all the rumors of it that's very

02:04:38.560 fascinating i think that would definitely warm me if i'm a someone who's really in severe pain

02:04:42.240 i mean it warms me and i'm not in pain yeah um but yeah i just want to look at this but patients using

02:04:47.360 prescription opioids to manage their pain are 32 percent more likely to report high patient

02:04:51.360 satisfaction scores according to recent research out of dartmouth hitchcock medical center but here's

02:04:56.800 my question is why if if a if a medical place gets a higher press gaining score do they get a

02:05:02.480 is there a financial incentive to them i mean not directly i mean i'm not accusing you of anything

02:05:07.440 you just happen to be here when this is happening i don't want you to feel like oh no i'm not i'm not

02:05:11.120 okay i i haven't read that study so i can't really comment on the dartmouth study and and you'd really

02:05:17.360 have to read it to to understand the nuances to to really interpret it i think accurately but you know

02:05:23.600 as the study says that uh you know there's there's probably many different reasons that people could

02:05:29.920 could rate their i think i get it health care team higher if they get more you know more opioids oh

02:05:36.560 oh yeah if i'm on an opioid damn i'll rate you know i'll rate my you know i'll rate my neighbor's 0.83

02:05:40.400 violent son higher you know well or whatever you know what i'm saying i'll rate somebody parked in 0.97

02:05:44.480 my driveway higher and i don't even know him you know but it this says the surveys promote an

02:05:48.640 assumption that patient satisfaction is an index of physician competence but then what hospitals can

02:05:53.680 do is they can say we have the highest score medical places because yeah i was just curious because

02:05:58.160 i remember he said that and i was like because he said he thought some of the opioid crisis was

02:06:02.720 influenced more by some part of the press gaining but i could i couldn't understand what he was

02:06:07.440 talking about and so we didn't go down that road so when you said it it just made me think about it

02:06:11.760 and i'd have to look over the study because there's there's it's multifactorial i'm sure it is not a

02:06:16.960 simple opioid you know it's not it's correlated not causal it could be for any medicine really if we

02:06:22.640 give more medicine to our some of our clientele then there some places are hypothesizing well then

02:06:28.720 they'll give us higher scores and if we get higher scores and we can say we're the best ranked

02:06:33.200 hospital or whatever in the area yeah i mean i think i'd wonder about that i don't know if

02:06:37.600 the dartmouth study made that point but that's you know that's that's certainly a concern i can't

02:06:42.000 imagine that that who can i mean i guess if you make that much money by being a higher rank then

02:06:47.120 maybe it would be worth it to you to me it doesn't seem like there's enough juice for the squeeze

02:06:51.200 really in it um but anyway uh dr jeffrey long i appreciate it man it may be longer huh if there's an

02:06:58.160 afterlife oh yeah we we may that's a good point uh this may not be ado at the end of this discussion

02:07:04.640 there may be a continuity a sharing of experience in an afterlife infinitely and eternally so we may

02:07:11.120 uh be encounter each other again as souls well nice to get to know you here on uh here on the

02:07:16.960 starter block i like that but um thank you so much for just aiding people in their cancer journeys and

02:07:23.680 um and for being somebody that's curious about possibilities outside of just the form of uh of

02:07:30.000 modern medicine these days and um i think that's really interesting for people to hear and and uh

02:07:36.160 and thank your wife too for being a part of your life as you guys have that's brought y'all closer

02:07:41.120 together in some ways and and she's helped and it just seems interesting and and i'm glad that you did

02:07:46.400 all this work so that we could think about it yeah well thank you great interview we covered some

02:07:50.880 very fascinating and informative uh concepts here so been an honor and a privilege to hang out with

02:07:56.640 you and talk about all this this is great you bet man where can uh and people will put links to your

02:08:01.360 stuff online and you are a practicing physician yep full-time dear god yeah i know i tried to retire

02:08:08.080 and i failed went back to working full-time but heck you know it's a labor of love just like my

02:08:12.560 work and near-death experiences i i love doing both parts of both aspects of my life um thank you so

02:08:19.840 much dr long and i wish you the best of luck thank you appreciate it take care

02:08:26.640 i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be cornerstone

02:08:34.480 oh but when i reach that ground i'll share this peace of mind i found i can feel it in my bones

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - January 23, 2024

E479 Near-Death Experience Expert Dr. Jeffrey Long

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