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

Starting point is 00:00:00 At Salesforce, we're all about asking more of AI. Questions like, where's the data going? Is it secure? Are you sure? Are you sure you're sure? Get answers you can trust from Salesforce at askmoreofai.com. Today's guest is a practicing physician.

Starting point is 00:00:16 He's an author and he's a researcher into the phenomenon of near-death experiences. He has done the largest case study, over 5,000 cases of near death experiences. And he wrote the book, Evidence of the Afterlife, The Science of Near Death Experiences, which is a New York Times bestseller. I'm just, I'm grateful to be able to spend time

Starting point is 00:00:41 with him today and get to learn about what's right on the cusp of the afterlife. Today's guest is Dr. Jeffrey Long and you had the New York Times bestseller like you were just saying, the evidence of the afterlife, the science of near-death experiences and that term is fascinating to people you know you hear near-death it's like because that's what everybody's so afraid of that line that you know it's in the finality of it. I want to start just by asking what quantifies near-death experience?

Starting point is 00:01:43 Sure now different researchers have different concepts, but the research definition that I've always used is exactly what the name implies. You're near-death. In other words, you're so physically compromised, you're unconscious, or you may be clinically dead with absent heartbeat. Now, at that time, it should be impossible to have any lucid conscious remembrance, and yet people do have that remembrance at that time it should be impossible to have any lucid conscious remembrance and yet people do have that Remembrance at that time and that's the experience part of a near-death experience Okay, and why is it at that time that you shouldn't be able to have any lucid like brain activity? Why is that sure?

Starting point is 00:02:18 Let's talk about what happens to the brain after a cardiac arrest which means the heart stops beating. The moment the heart stops beating, Theo, obviously blood immediately stops flowing to the brain. 10 to 20 seconds after that event, the EEG, which is electroencephalogram, a measure of brain electrical activity, goes absolutely flat. There's no measurable cortical brain activity. It's 20 seconds after the heart stops. After the heart stops and after blood stops going to the brain. It should be impossible to have any remembrance at that time, let alone the highly lucid and

Starting point is 00:02:53 organized near-death experience. So you started to kind of quantify or collect the experiences people were having at that point? Absolutely. I've been researching and gathering near-death experiences for over 25 years. I was so fascinated when I first heard about near-death experiences that I really wanted to study them, but with the best methodology possible. And that being people that actually had near-death experiences sharing their first-person experience. So over 25 years ago, I established the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation, a research website which encouraged people to share

Starting point is 00:03:32 a narrative of their experience, but also had a scientifically designed huge number of questions actually as a survey so that not only were we getting large numbers of near-death experiences, but we were learning about them from all those survey questions at a depth that here too forward been impossible. Okay, so you create a website where people would go that had near-death experiences and they would start to just list out the information, right? Like what were some of the questions that would be that you would ask to somebody? Sure. Well first, of course, we have them give the narrative of their experience. We don't want any leading questions prior to that time. But then once we start and currently the website survey has over 80 different questions. Some of the questions include the leading research tool called the NDE scale, which

Starting point is 00:04:20 is a series of 16 questions that are sort of different degrees of expressing that particular element or not expressing it at all. But in addition to that, we have dozens of other questions that help establish basically demographic questions, male, female, where do you live, when did the experience occur. Also content questions, which has a very strong focus to the survey. And then finally, importantly, after effects, how did their life change after that? How did their life change in response to that amazing near death experience? Wow.

Starting point is 00:04:54 So 25 years ago, you start the website, people start reporting what's happening. They start, you start collecting this data. Were you surprised at the number of people were you like, yeah, what are some things that kind of shocked you out of the gate? Right off the bat, I realized there was overwhelming consistency even in the first few dozen near-death experiences I saw. Everything I knew as a physician told me,

Starting point is 00:05:16 this is not possible, you can't have highly lucid conscious experiences when you're unconscious or clinically dead. And yet here, the very first few dozens of people sharing with me very clearly, and what was very impressive is the remarkable consistency of the elements they were describing. What happened during the experience, the elements or if you will, characteristics, not only were they very consistently seen across many, many near-death experiences, but they typically occurred in a very consistent and logical order. This is nothing like dreams or hallucinations

Starting point is 00:05:49 or any other type of pathologically altered consciousness. I realized very, very quickly, and as I was to learn, even more and more with it, I got more and more experiences shared with me, near-death experiences are, in a word, real. Yeah, what were some of the things that made you you that led you to believe that they were real? Oh absolutely. The overwhelming consistency now while no two near-death experiences are the same, if you study a lot of them and Theo I've studied over 4,000. So with that huge data set I, and other, it's kept me busy with my second full-time job. Wow, Saint Peter over here. I'm milling around. Yeah, it's tough to be a full-time doctor,

Starting point is 00:06:28 which I'm trying to do while doing that is my other full-time job. But what I have observed and other near-death experience researchers see is that very consistent pattern of what happens when you have a near-death experience. Well, of course, there's that life-threatening event. They're unconscious or clinically dead, no heartbeat. But at that time, a very common first element is what's

Starting point is 00:06:49 called an out-of-body experience. Consciousness separates from the physical body and goes above the body. Now from that vantage point, they can see ongoing earthly events, often including people frantically trying to bring them back to life. They may then go into or through a tunnel, variably described, often at the end of the tunnel, there's a beautiful unearthly, they emphasize light. In that, after passing through the tunnel, then at that time, they may be in an unearthly, what some call a heavenly realm, aptly described. It's very different from what we've known everywhere on our earthly life.

Starting point is 00:07:25 It's literally a non-physical realm, movement is non-physical, communication is essentially always telepathic, time is almost invariably described as either radically different from earthly time or not existing at all. In this realm, this unearthly, beautiful heavenly realm, there can be encounters with deceased loved ones, there can be a review of a part or all of their prior life called a life review. At this point, they can be colors like in plants and the landscape that are so beautiful that there are no earthly words that they have to describe them. There can be buildings around this time, there's often a decision that they make as they interact with other beings about whether

Starting point is 00:08:07 to stay in this beautiful and earthly realm or return to the earthly life and that body struggling to survive. Okay, so those are the most common characteristics of the near-death experiences. And what would be like your strongest evidence that this actually happens? Because anybody can kind of go on a website, you know, any any naysayers like anybody can go on a website and fill it out right sure there's been a ton of people that have done it but like what's the most common evidence that that you believe that this has happened that you believe oh absolutely you know Theo we talked earlier about that out-of-body

Starting point is 00:08:37 experience where consciousness goes above the body above the unconscious or comatose physical body below what What I and other researchers have investigated is how accurate are those observations in that out-of-body state? And amazingly in my study, over 98% of what people are seeing and hearing with their physical body unconscious down below is accurate down to the finest detail. And in fact, they can make these observations

Starting point is 00:09:03 in that out- body state, geographically far from their physical body, far outside of any possible physical sensory awareness. For example- What do you mean when you say that? Just before you get to the example, like, geographically, what do you, I'm sorry, I got confused there. Yeah. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. We had one relatively recent near-death experience. A lady was riding and was out you know basically breaking in the horse and the horse threw her off and she hit her head Very severe head injury immediately unconscious

Starting point is 00:09:34 She had that out-of-body experience consciousness above her body saw her body lying on the ground Saw the horse heading back to home But then her consciousness went to where she had started prior to her journey. And the barn and she was able to hear other people talking, aware of what they were saying, doing. They didn't know that she was fighting for her life over a mile away because they weren't aware of that. They only were aware of that when the horse arrived without her.

Starting point is 00:10:01 And again, she was able to see and bring back all that information verified down to the finest details of what she was seeing in a mile away. Obviously there's no way you're going to see here or perceive in any way with your normal sensory function. And so that's a common thing. People like, so hovering kind of outside of themselves. So people leaving their physical realm, right?

Starting point is 00:10:24 You leave you you escape. And I guess, do they feel okay being away from themselves? Do they feel like Jeepers, I gotta get back into myself like when you lost your phone or something, you know? Or does it feel like, that's what I would be like, gosh, because if I'm just milling around, it's almost like you're just naked, like you're as naked as you could be,

Starting point is 00:10:43 you're naked down to your soul. You know that's a good assumption and I kind of wondered about that too early in my research but amazingly even though these people are unconscious or clinically dead and may have had you know severe trauma or illness problems that led to that episode of unconsciousness. When that consciousness separates from their physical body, they essentially never describe any pain. It's unusual for them to feel fear about consciousness apart from their body. Far more commonly described is a sense of calm, a sense of peace, a sense amazingly that this is actually their real conscious self, that being non-physical and apart from their body down below.

Starting point is 00:11:25 Ah, so that's a common thing that people say, oh, this felt all that felt a lot more real than the existence I've been having in my body? Oh, absolutely. In fact, we have a survey question and we asked people about what they said, what they ultimately decided about the reality of their experience. And in our survey of 834 people that had a near-death experience where we asked that question, 93.8% said their experience was definitely real. And over and over as part of that, they were saying it was more real than anything they'd known in their earthly life. They typically have acceleration of consciousness. Amazingly, the substantial majority, even though they're physically unconscious or clinically dead,

Starting point is 00:12:09 are actually thinking, processing at a speed they simply couldn't have done in their earthly life. Wow. A good example of that is we talk briefly about the life review. I mean, just imagine that. Here you are unconscious or clinically dead, and yet about a fifth of people have a life review or they may see Part or even all of their prior life here They are unconscious just for often minutes certainly, you know less than 30 minutes almost always and yet at that time They're reliving Viewing all that went on in their prior life, an amazing demonstration of just how rapid consciousness can be during a near-death experience.

Starting point is 00:12:49 So that's one, you said one out of five people had that? Yeah, life review. Okay, and a life review, yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense because the brain is like, the ultimate function of the brain is to organize. And I feel like a lot of times, I guess it would make sense if your brain is worried that it's gonna shut down, it's still trying to, like it would almost show,

Starting point is 00:13:12 it almost seems like say if it's trying to prove at the last second, hey, what I've been doing makes sense. Here's my work, it's almost like you're trying to show your professor like, look, I have the beginning, I have the next, I have this, I have this. Doesn't this check out? Cause does that make any sense thinking like that? Absolutely, that's how I thought for a long time, So your professor like look I have the beginning I have the next I have this I have this doesn't this check out because

Starting point is 00:13:27 Does that make any sense thinking like that? Absolutely, that's how I thought for a long time going into my near-death experience research absolutely I assumed as I think most people would rationally assume that near-death experiences had to be due to physical brain function because Theo 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 in general had any particular experience of consciousness or awareness that wasn't part of our physical brain, but that is the amazing thing about near-death experiences. During the life review, it's not a matter of them using their physical brain. It's like that consciousness apart from the body where they're seeing and hearing things. Theo you can't possibly do that with normal physical sensory awareness And in fact we have scores and scores of near-death experiences that had their life-threatening event typically typically their heart stopping While they were under general anesthesia now under that blanket of sleep

Starting point is 00:14:18 It should be and as many of you know that have been under general anesthesia, I mean, the brain just shuts off. There's no possible remembrance at all. And at that time, they're carefully monitoring vital signs. I know I've been there. I'm a doctor, I've seen that. Do you wake up and say something racial sometimes? I've done that before. Is that crazy?

Starting point is 00:14:38 I've never, I can honestly say I haven't ever done, I've heard of people waking up and having, with altered brains and bizarre conversations with the anesthesia team and ask any anesthesiologist, they'll have all sorts of stories like that by the way is a bit of an aside. But getting back to that cardiac arrest, heart stopping while under general anesthesia, Theo, it should be doubly impossible for the physical brain to produce any kind of awareness or experience. And yet from being under anesthesia, it should be

Starting point is 00:15:08 completely impossible scientifically for the brain to recall anything. Absolutely. And yet at that time by the scores, me and other near-death experience researchers are finding that they do have near-death experiences, typical near-death experiences like all others. So that is, if you will, doubly impossible that that could be due to the physical brain function. Okay, so, but what's, how do you know something is not just a dream? How do you, or I'm trying to think of another word for a dream, but I don't know another word for it. Yeah, well that's a good one. I mean, in all of our lives, we typically have dreams. That's very common. Near-death experiences are nothing like dreams.

Starting point is 00:15:47 Theo, at the risk of embarrassment, I'm gonna share with you how I found out about that. At the very dawn of putting a survey up on the website, I asked the question, was your experience dream-like in any way? And oh, I was embarrassed at the responses. No way, no chance, absolutely not. Emphatic over and over again for people having near-death experiences

Starting point is 00:16:09 emphasizing this had nothing to do with dreams. So I quickly let go of that line of questioning. So again, you know, when you hear about a near-death experience that seems so unearthly, people normally would think, gosh, isn't that like a dream that I'm familiar with? Yeah. Nothing, absolutely nothing like a dream. It's far more lucid and conscious. A dream, Theo, typically events may skip around in a illogical order.

Starting point is 00:16:35 Yeah, it's almost like that movie Gummo, kind of. You ever seen that? 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 yeah, it's like somebody, it's like, it's like somebody made a collage, dreams are sometimes for like a collage. I love that. That's a great way to look at it. You're typically less lucid, less conscious than earthly everyday life. Events in the dreams skip around because, well, they're like dreams.

Starting point is 00:17:00 Yeah, you're hanging with your buddy, then you got a snake, and then you look inside of a window, and then everybody hates you, you know, and you have to go home because you did something. We've all been there Theo. So you're right. That's nothing like near death experiences. While it's a different type of altered consciousness, it's actually a hyper lucid consciousness. Which I'm just seeing when you say that because like whenever I so, and I don't want to look like just equate this to ayahuasca, right I'd done drugs in my life you know and you know have you ever done any uh no I'm not saying anything no I actually haven't yeah yeah oh um yeah and that's okay right and some

Starting point is 00:17:37 people do them and some people don't and but when I went and did ayahuasca, it was not like doing a drug. People were like, do you get messed up? You know, it's like, no, dude, it is a intense, emotional boot camp where like, you're like, you almost, your thoughts suddenly have a response to them in a way. Like suddenly you're like, the world thinks back at you. That's what it feels like kind of. I never really was able to think about it, but the world, you can feel the world literally thinking back at you and reflecting.

Starting point is 00:18:18 So you get so much, there's a lot of like solving a problem is because you're not just wondering and putting things out in there and waiting for you to solve them. It feels like nature or the world or God or a higher entity or a collective entity or energy meets you halfway and helps you work like in real time. And it's a very loving, helpful entity or energy, even though it can take you through some moments that feel challenging, it feels like extremely cathartic and helpful.

Starting point is 00:18:57 So that's one of the things that made me fascinating when I started hearing about some of your work. I was like, oh, this is, I wonder how much of this is similar to some of the experience that I had on ayahuasca. And I wonder what, just what people's experiences are like, you know. Well, I can address that. Okay. I co-authored a paper that was published in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. And the lead researcher investigated the published medical literature about a wide variety of what we call psychotropic or brain-acting drugs and looked at the descriptions of these experiences

Starting point is 00:19:31 and compared it to near-death experiences. And the conclusion of this study really radically different experiences between psychotropic drugs and near-death experiences. But above and beyond that, Theo, for anybody listening or viewing this, you can find out for yourself. There's a website called Aeroid, E-R-O-W-I-D dot org. Aeroid.org has thousands of first-person shared experiences with psychotropic drugs. It is amazing how many they have. you can look up any type of psychotropic drug You can look up ayahuasca experiences arrow at E or ERO

Starting point is 00:20:11 WID documenting the complex relationship between humans and psychoactives Wow, they have thousands of experience It is by far the best resource for anybody that would like to compare near-death experiences and what happens in near-death experiences with psychotropic drugs, go there. You can look up ayahuasca. You can look up DMT. You can look up LSD. There are literally hundreds of examples of virtually all of these psychotropic drugs. I've done that.

Starting point is 00:20:40 And very quickly, you'll realize, as I, and others do that go through that exercise, that the psychotropic drug experiences from shared by people that actually had them are in general radically different for what happens in a near-death experience. They're more hallucinatory, they're more often frightening, they're more often and dream-like in a sense that events can skip around. All you have to do is read 10 ayahuasca, especially 20 ayahuasca experiences from that source and read 10 or 20 near-death experiences and it jumps out at you immediately the contrast. And then finally, when we have our survey, people will often share when

Starting point is 00:21:20 they have a near-death experience that they've also tried psychotropic drugs. And in general, they will state from the source people that had both near-death experience that they've also tried psychotropic drugs. And in general, they will state from the source, people that had both near-death experiences and psychotropic drug experiences, that the two experiences are radically different. The near-death experience is grippingly real. The psychotropic drugs are tending to be not real. That's what you'd expect with a hallucinatory experience. You make me want to, I want to have a damn near-death experience. Oh well, I tell you what, and I want to emphasize that. I mean a lot of people hear about the near-death experiences and go, wow, I got to go get me some of that.

Starting point is 00:21:55 And we have to give a cautionary note to you, and I think this is important. Some people hear about near-death experiences and tragically a few people will actually do something risky with their lives, you know, up to even considering suicide. And I think it's a one to emphasize that people that have had near-death experiences as a result of suicide attempts learn almost uniformly during their near-death experience that that suicide attempt was a huge mistake. Virtually everyone that has a near-death experience as a result of an effort at suicide and then recovers will almost never attempt suicide again. And why? Because they understand life is meaningful. Life is important. They're here for a reason, even if their life is extraordinarily difficult. And by the way, if you commit suicide and don't have a near-death experience you're much more likely unfortunately to attempt suicide again

Starting point is 00:22:49 at some future time. Wow really? Yeah. Well also if you're listening you didn't commit suicide. That's a good point. You know like not to no judgment to anybody that gave it a run or whatever you know we're glad you're no good at. But yeah you didn't do it. Did people that tried suicide, did a lot of them have near-death experiences? Well, I guess they did because they tried suicide, but that's a physical act of it. Yeah. Well, that's a good question, Theo. First of all, I want to point out that of people that have a life-threatening event, only about 10 to 20% of them will actually

Starting point is 00:23:21 have a near-death experience. 80 or 90 percent don't. So you're saying if somebody falls off a cliff, somebody, you know, falls into like a, um, butter churn or something or somebody gets hacked by somebody, somebody gets beaten, hit by train, whatever domestic dispute, heavy domestic dispute. And something happens to them. You're saying only a small percentage of those will have then within their unconsciousness, then have a near-death experience Right does it matter how you get into unconsciousness on whether or not you have a near-death experience?

Starting point is 00:23:50 No, it doesn't make any difference what that life-threatening event was as to whether you have a near-death experience In fact, the only good research study found the closer to death you are the more likely you are to have a near-death experience Wow, so you got to walk over there, huh? Yeah, it's kinda interesting. I actually, Theo actually co-authored a scholarly book chapter where we looked at all the demographics. I mean, you name it, you know, gender, location, what led to the near-death experience,

Starting point is 00:24:20 and we could find no correlation with what the life-threatening event was, what your demographic background was, didn't really seem to predict the probability of having a near-death experience when you nearly die, nor what the content would be. So you're saying, yeah, because I would think some ethnicities, and probably like, I'm not going to, you know, but people in like Memphis or something, might be more likely to have near-death experiences because there's more near-death going on, you know what I'm not gonna, you know, but people in like Memphis or something might be more likely to have near death experiences because there's more near death going on. You know what I'm saying? Like, but you didn't find that any ethnicities

Starting point is 00:24:52 or genders or anything or ages had, none were more likely to have near death experiences than others. Yeah, absolutely not. There was some earlier research, the thought maybe children were more likely to have a near death experience when they nearly died. But I'm not seeing that. So it seems to be, you know, interestingly, Theo. I mean- Well, children just came from life. They just came from

Starting point is 00:25:14 life. So you'd think like, oh, they might have maybe just a, they got a shorter tether. Well, yeah. And I think so, you know, they'd be less likely to, but on the other hand, Theo, I studied very young children age five and below. Average age of the study group was three and a half years old. Now at that very young age when they had their near-death experience, they're practically a cultural blank slate. They almost certainly have no formed ideas about religion, the afterlife. They almost certainly have never heard of what near-death experience is or wouldn't understand it if they had and yet these people Statistically had basically exactly the same content the elements of near-death experience

Starting point is 00:25:53 Really as older children and adult which is a very strong line of evidence that pre-existing beliefs Don't really lead to people, you know having a near-death experience or what the content of the near-death experience is. Wow, that's fascinating. So whether it was a 90 year old or a seven year old that seemed to articulate well, you found that what they shared had a lot of similarities. Yeah, absolutely. Really? That's really, and that's exciting because it seems... It gives you some proof that you're on to something that, you know, it just furthers your belief. Well, it really eliminates the skeptic concern that the near-death experiences are pre-existing

Starting point is 00:26:32 beliefs. It's what they thought would happen. And there's absolutely... Right, because a child doesn't really have enough time to have too much of a pre-existing belief. Exactly. You wouldn't think. Exactly.

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Starting point is 00:29:16 they all had the same characteristics of their experience if they had a near-death experience. That you're exactly right Theo. I'm not really shocked. I was like, wow, so there's, that anyway, yeah, that's one of the things that really hooked me in. Yeah, and that's exactly right.

Starting point is 00:29:32 In my research, we've had, well, the website, our research website has been translated into over 30 different languages. So as a result, we can do by far the largest cross-cultural study in the world. Oh, that's, you have to do that. Cause all the ones, if you get like Because otherwise, if you get like, yeah, you get some guy fresh out the barrio or something, and he's like, you know, we was dreaming, you know. Hold on, bro. Yeah, and that's what's exciting when you have pull-in near-death experiences literally from

Starting point is 00:29:58 all around the world in their native language. So we have about 60, what we call non-Western near-death experiences. These are in countries where they're not predominantly Judeo-Christian and they're from just you name the religious background, I've run into it and remarkably these non-western near-death experiences, the content, what occurs, the elements are strikingly similar to typical western near-death experiences and in fact I've co-authored a scholarly paper with typical Western near-death experiences. And in fact, I've co-authored a scholarly paper with an Iranian near-death experience researcher. He looked at a couple dozen people that had near-death experiences in Iran. Exactly what I'm seeing in my series,

Starting point is 00:30:35 no matter where on earth you have your near-death experience, amazingly. It doesn't make any difference, Theo, whether you're, say, a Muslim Muslim in Egypt or Hindu in India or a Christian in the United States or no religious belief at all wherever on the planet you have your near-death experience whatever age the content what occurs is going to be strikingly similar. Do you feel like over time though that you became... what am I the term look for? Like you became that's what you started looking for you know I'm talking about? Oh I... what's the term I'm looking, like you became, that's what you started looking for, you know what I'm talking about? Oh, um, I, I, what's the term I'm looking for? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, um, uh, confirmation biases. Yeah. Did you believe, did you, did you, did you worry about that? Did you take that into account at all?

Starting point is 00:31:13 Oh, absolutely. As, as a researcher, I have to carefully minimize anything that would affect wrongly my interpretation and confirmation bias is one thing but that's the glory of having the survey and then archiving the results and then posting them all Theo we have over 4,000 near death experiences posted we have scores of non-western near death experience. Give me one of those that was interesting that kind of really surprised you was there is the one that stands out like a non-western? Yeah, we have, there was a lady who was literally dying of Hodgkin Lymphoma. Oh, gosh. And, you know, tragically was given basically no chance of survival.

Starting point is 00:31:56 And right at death's door, she had a near-death experience, a profoundly detailed near-death experience. And as part of that, she became aware that if she was to choose to return to earthly life, that the lab results that were just drawn would come back showing she was recovering. She was starting to respond. And if she chose not to return to her earthly life, that the lab results would indicate she was on her path

Starting point is 00:32:21 to irreversible permanent death. Amazingly, she recovered and when she recovered, she had an amazing, highly detailed near-death experience with most of the characteristics we've talked about now. Well, see, that's interesting because that makes me think that some of the information that you get are in a near-death experience, right? And I hate that we keep having to say the term over and over

Starting point is 00:32:42 again, but we have to say it. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we really do. Some of the information that you get during an experience like that, I wonder if some of it then, because at first I'm thinking it comes from the other side, it comes from the great beyond, you know, that, but then now I'm thinking that if you're getting information

Starting point is 00:33:00 where you see that you may be getting lab results coming that would be different if you return, that makes you wonder if some of that information is somehow coming out of your body, like on this side and service and you know, does that make any sense? Well normally you would make sense or not. Yeah it does because you would have to say maybe you have a personal deep down sense that this is going to happen. If that's the case then I would be thinking that some of that near-death experience is influenced on this side of life as opposed to what part of me was leaning towards it being influenced on the other side of life. Absolutely. So, you know, it's very reasonable to hypothesize that maybe something that occurs or is described in near-death experiences is just because

Starting point is 00:33:42 they had that sense, that inner awareness in their physical body But Theo they're unconscious or clinically dead when they have their near-death experiences So they really can't gather from that sense that memory That subconscious part of themselves because everything is shut down when they have a near-death experience Are there other Choices I know you mentioned early on that people were, there were choices that people had to make. So that one is a lady saying lab results could make her,

Starting point is 00:34:11 upcoming lab results could be different. Were there other choices that came up? Yeah, I'll tell you the most poignant choice that we encountered in near-death experiences. And that is a choice to stay in that unearthly, beautiful realm, in the environment therein, off of the spirits, or a choice to stay in that unearthly beautiful realm and the environment they're in, or the choice to return to their earthly life and struggle to overcome that life-threatening event that they caused the

Starting point is 00:34:35 near-death experience. And this is where it gets really interesting, Theo, at that moment of decision, even though people having the near-death experience, everything that they knew up to that time, friends, family, loved ones, decades of their life often is their earthly life. And yet what they're experiencing in this unearthly realm, overwhelming sense of peace and love, those are about the two most common words used. And they often describe that they feel this unearthly beautiful realm is their real home. They're a true home, but the great majority of people that are in that unearthly heavenly realm that make a decision or ask to make a decision want to stay there. They want to leave their

Starting point is 00:35:21 earthly life and not come back. And believe me they that is a difficult decision They will often argue with the beings there. Oh, yeah, that's really interesting I never want to live there. That's just how compelling and beautiful and What the sense is like in this unearthly beautiful realm that they're in of near-death experiences Wow, see and so that makes me believe that it's not like ayahuasca because in ayahuasca and I only compare to that because like I've done you know some of the other psychotropic lsd and uh and uh mushrooms right and those the only ones I've done I know there's a lot of new ones and people are you know sucking on animals or whatever and you know licking frogs or whatever. There's some stuff. I hope not a lot.

Starting point is 00:36:05 Theo, I mean, I don't know. Look, I know what dude has done a thing or two down there. You know, a couple of them. Okay. Well, I'll leave a taste in my mouth, but moving on. Look, I got north of Panama city. I don't know if he's ever gotten high, but he's definitely done some things. Okay. Goodness. But on Iowa's guy, never felt a sense of peace.

Starting point is 00:36:26 It's always a sense of learning and constant, like not negotiating, but revealing and catharsis, but not a big, some relief, but never, it feels very much like you're in a long period of therapy, which sometimes can be extremely intense. So it doesn't feel like you're in this, you know, a million thread count, you know, space. Which that sounds like what you're talking about.

Starting point is 00:36:55 Wow. Yeah. Now, is there a, and if, so people, if they, some people might have near death experience, but they just die you're like oh shit We didn't get the information. Oh Absolutely, I mean, you know at a life-threatening event, you know certainly unfortunately a lot of people will ultimately Permanently and irreversibly die. So that's you know, that that's it. However

Starting point is 00:37:20 That brings up an interesting point. We do have a small series of what we call shared near-death experience These are two or more people that simultaneously had a life-threatening event and true story there. We've got We're up to about 20 posted on the website. So it's not not a real So what happens? I mean you name it auto accidents collapsing building, you know some kind of accident-out-in in nature. These are all common precipitating events. So two or more people, boom, they're in that life threatening event in a shared near death experience.

Starting point is 00:37:54 They can interact with each other. They could be aware of their physical body down below in these shared near death experiences, at least in the series I have, one goes on to permanently, irreversibly die. The other returns back to their body, and then when they recover, they can talk about a shared near-death experience. Now Theo, that is some of the strongest evidence I can conceive of, that for those permanently, irreversibly dying, what you observe in a near-death experience is that initial pathway. But you're saying one of them died and one of them didn't? But if one of them died,

Starting point is 00:38:27 then how do you know that that person had the experience too? Because the other person shared an experience with them. They talked, they interacted, they communicated. So the one that lived said that they both had an out of body experience. For example, we had from Canada, we had a bad car accident and a gentleman was driving with his fiancee. Boom! Car fell asleep and hit a tree. Both

Starting point is 00:38:52 him and his fiancee had that out-of-body experience holding hands. I mean, their fiancees rose up and then they were able to see this unearthly beautiful realm in the distance. There were four beings that came up to them two of them went to her two of them went to him and they separated They're holding hands. They felt so much peace and love. They described he wanted to say no But but felt so compelling Compellingly that's why it was remarkable that he felt so much peace and love that he didn't want to resist it. And so he watched the two beings carry his fiancee toward this beautiful, unearthly realm in the distance.

Starting point is 00:39:31 And the other two beings gently lowered him back down to the car from way above the car. He saw the front end on fire. And then he went back into his body and he felt that when he returned to consciousness, his fiance leaning on his shoulder as she was when he had the accident and he knew immediately fiance was dead. She was an empty shell and that he had left her with those beings above. That's a shared near-death experience and very dramatic shared near-death experiences are unbelievable. I mean out of 4,000, you know, to it have maybe about 20 that's how rare they are and yet they're so dramatic in terms of providing evidence that for those that

Starting point is 00:40:12 permanently irreversibly die their consciousness continues to live and will eventually be reunited see that's so why the fact that two people had it now was there ever two people that had it and both of them lived There have been not in my series. We have there has been a report of Firefighters they were called the hot shots in Arizona and they were battling a fire and the fire Change direction. Yeah, and then they when changed direction and trapped them And so there were many of the firefighters that died and certainly all of them had a life threatening event.

Starting point is 00:40:50 And they were aware of each other. And then ultimately came back to report that remarkable shared near death experiences where several lived and several died. Wow. Oh man. That's how's that for food for thought. Those just blow me away. I mean, I tell you, even after 4,000 near-death experiences when I read these shared near-death

Starting point is 00:41:11 experiences, I'm still in awe even after 25 years. Can you tell when some of these, some are fake? We are very careful to investigate whether they're fake. Theo, we ask many of our survey questions in a similar concept we're asking, but worded differently in different sections of the survey. So as a result, we use that tried and true method to make sure that the near-death experience responses

Starting point is 00:41:37 are valid. Above and beyond that is a doctor. I can certainly spot things that don't add up medically. But finally, if the overwhelming majority of people share true and honest near-death experiences, even those people that share falsified near-death experiences, if they're that rare, it isn't really gonna change our overall understanding

Starting point is 00:41:57 of what happens during a near-death experience and what their meaning is. What are some things that people do where they're telling a fake near-death experience where you can kind of spot those? Because there's got to be commonalities there too. The main, well first of all when we do our survey we always post it anonymously. They don't get paid anything, they literally have no public recognition because there's no real no incentive. No incentive at all right for them, no cloud at all. No direction for them to share a falsified

Starting point is 00:42:26 Yeah, no coughing cloud or whatever they call it. It would take probably most people especially with a detailed account Over an hour to fill that out. And so people generally aren't going to do that just for laughs so I think in general and and certainly what we're observing in our near-death experience accounts are in general, and certainly what we're observing in our near-death experience accounts are strikingly similar to what all other researchers are finding in their research series. So I'm reasonably confident that these great, great majority of not virtually all are legitimate.

Starting point is 00:42:56 Our legitimate, yeah. What are, is it mostly, is it more women that fell in love than men? Cause women, I think low key wanna die all the time, I feel like. Well, I think they-key wanna die all the time, I feel like. Well, I think they love date, you know what I'm saying? They're always like, oh, you know, they're always leaving a window open.

Starting point is 00:43:11 That's a great question. It's probably pretty close to 50-50, but I'll tell you why. I think, Theo, guys like us are just a little more inclined than women to drive the car fast, to go do risky things, you know, swim in places we shouldn't swim. We've all been, I mean, it's a guy thing.

Starting point is 00:43:29 So we may be a little more predisposed to have fun in some risky way. Women I think are a little less inclined to do that. So I think that may help explain why it's about 50-50. Right, because you have more men that are actually getting close with death in accidents, but you have more women who may share stories like that. Yeah, they're more inclined to share women, childbirth, and severe complications and clinical death during childbirth. We have a huge number of those type of near-death experiences.

Starting point is 00:43:58 Have you ever had a woman that had a child and then the child, I guess the child wouldn't be able to recollect something like that? Yeah. No, we don't have any, if a lady had a near-death experience, there's no, you know, obviously they're, they are very good at delivering the baby even if she has a life-threatening event, but there's no real discussion later from that child of, oh, I had a shared near-death experience. Right, you'll recollect years later that it would have recollect. Yeah, because it would be, yeah that it would be too hard to remember. What motivates you to care about this?

Starting point is 00:44:30 I am fascinated by near death experiences. Even after 25 years and 4000 near death experiences. You're going to Bush Gardens. Yeah, I have. Oh, yeah. That's awesome to it. That's that's true. But I love all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 00:44:42 It's fun. Well, near-death experiences, to me, it continues to remind me that there's an afterlife, a wonderful afterlife, and that's for all of us. I'm a physician that treats patients with cancer. These are my patients that have life-threatening events, and I'm involved with them every day. What I know about near-death experiences help me to help them in their journey with their battle with cancer in a way with more courage, more confidence that even if we ultimately don't cure them, that in the end they're going to have a wonderful afterlife. And as I've told them, you're going to be in a much better place than those left on our earthly life. So I think that's really, you know, certainly something to look forward to.

Starting point is 00:45:26 I hope it is. I believe that too. Cause even just living is so like, that's what I always say when people are like, I don't believe in an afterlife. I'm like, all right, you know, like first of all, like, okay, you know, because here's why. My biggest proof is that we lived at all.

Starting point is 00:45:50 That's my, like at least believe in reincarnation because we already lived. Then don't even believe you're here then, if you're not even gonna believe it's possible. Like that's ridiculous. Like I'm doing this right now. You're gonna tell me, and I came out of nothing I don't know where I was. Yeah, you know, I got some vague ideas and you know, I'll sketch some stuff every now and then

Starting point is 00:46:10 But I don't have any real information But to think this couldn't happen again to me seems asinine It's because you you have proof like you're living in proof Like it'd be different if you weren't, but you're living in proof that existence from nothing is possible. Now I know you came from people when you came from sex, but they eventually, we don't know where they came from. We don't know where life came from. That's the thing. Sure. And absolutely.

Starting point is 00:46:39 It's already yell at you or anything. No, this is great. Hey, Theo, this is what I find, among other things, very inspiring about near death experiences. I mean, here over and over is very powerful evidence that we do have a life after death. Our consciousness goes on. We're not really going both for us, our friends, our family, our loved ones. When we have that final end of our earthly physical life, there's a much bigger picture, a much more continuation of consciousness, eternal and infinite as best I can tell from near-death experiences. And that's exciting. I mean, whenever earthly

Starting point is 00:47:15 life gets miserable, difficult, we've all been there, all of us. And you always have that thought in the back of your mind from near-death experiences. Wow, here is the evidence, powerful evidence that we go on. Well, it makes me think like, you know, we used to bring it back up that ArrowWid site. Was that at ArrowWid? Yeah, erowid.org. Erowid.

Starting point is 00:47:40 So if you'll zoom in on here, the vaults of ArrowWid, and this was the site you were talking about where people share their experiences from different psychedelic techniques and methods. Yeah, psychotropic drugs. Psychotropic drugs, and it also says on here, there's breathing, dreaming, drumming, fasting. So it seems like there's a lot of different modalities

Starting point is 00:48:02 people used to get to different. Now maybe all these are while they're under the influence of psychedelic drugs? No, these are obviously different ways in which an altered consciousness can be achieved. And that's what's so cool about this site. I mean, here are the original first person accounts. A lot like my own NDERF website where there's really no, they're posted typically anonymously. There's no real incentive for them to make any of this up. These are people that just want to share with the world what happened during their experiences. Often they're going to select out

Starting point is 00:48:36 their most dramatic, interesting experiences, but it is a treasure trove of altered states of consciousness. Yeah, I love this. And so some of these on here are somewhere it seems like it's not just drug induced, not just so psychotropic. That means drugs, right? Right. Yes. Okay. So some of these did has breathing, dancing, um, dreaming, drumming, uh, fasting,

Starting point is 00:49:00 uh, meditation, prayer, martial arts, yoga, just as different modalities. So I've used half of those breathing. I worked with a comedian, this girl Blair Sochi, and she does breath work. And I had an experience there that was very, it wasn't like a near-death experience, but it was beyond something I'd ever had before where my it locked up all of my

Starting point is 00:49:28 muscles and I was just with my Some Like way my conscience was you know and that and it took a I remember this ball just tears coming out of me like it was like a cleansing of some sort tears coming out of me like it was like a cleansing of some sort. Martial arts, I've done MMA where at the end of the class you just sat there and just like start crying because you've done so much like just different ways your muscles and releasing things and stuff and it and I think a long time ago they used to do a lot of sweating, a lot of meditation, you know, historically.

Starting point is 00:50:05 That's kind of what I was getting at was like, I wonder if there was more connection with the afterlife in previous centuries and ages of time because they used less technological modalities and more like actual physical practicing of things. You know, even if you go look at like the Egyptians, they would draw and bury their dead. Sometimes with tombs, sometimes with tunnels that they said would lead to another little tomb that just had gifts of the afterlife. And like they had just, it feels like they had a much more spiritual connection, maybe with here and something beyond because they I mean to build a tune you know to build a tomb and a Bury somebody with all your worldly goods that you have to take all your money and bury it with a friend So that they can use it in the next realm

Starting point is 00:50:59 It's you know, it's just a lot of that's really fascinating because we don't practice a lot of that anymore Now somebody will slip you a perk or slip you a thing of cigarettes or something on the way, you know. Okay. You know, I'm so glad you brought that up Theo. Does it make any sense what I'm saying? Oh, absolutely. And in fact, I'll take that and run with it. Near-death experiences as dramatic as they are

Starting point is 00:51:18 and as much as they point to that afterlife, they're really a subset of that bigger picture, just like what you were talking about. The umbrella is spiritual experiences in general. You know, absolutely you can have that type of spiritual experience with martial arts. I was a brown belt in karate. I get that. I've walked a mile in those. I can't say shoes because we're barefoot. Yeah. So, but on top of that, you can have certainly meditation experiences can produce some dramatic experiences.

Starting point is 00:51:46 The scholarly literature describes these as mystical experiences. And there's a whole wealth of literature out there about people that can have very dramatic experiences. Sometimes they even reproduce many of the characteristics of near-death experiences. And yet they're all part of that if you will the umbrella that bigger picture all Converging with evidence on the fact that there's consciousness Far beyond what we're aware of in our earthly life that there's an afterlife there our consciousness is much more than just What we think with how we interact with other people our conscious earthly everyday experience

Starting point is 00:52:24 That's just a subset of a much bigger picture of consciousness, just like what you were saying. Yeah. All of those things seem to touch. Yeah. They seem to find ways. Um, I don't know. I just feel like historically we probably, even though now we're able to catalog things better, I mean back then you had to draw it on a cave wall or you had to whisper to your buddy, you know, and if he gets damn, you know, you know, he comes across a rare STD on a mountain top and it's, you know, nobody knows what

Starting point is 00:52:51 would happen. And it's so it's like, you know, just different times are, you know, it just now we can catalog more. I feel like, but the connect, the experience we have is kind of, we have less experiences maybe. I don't know. I just, it seems like our forefathers, they, this was like a Saturday night, they get together in a sweat lodge and they wanted to see something, you know, but it was, you had to, you know,

Starting point is 00:53:18 make your own Netflix in your brain. Yeah, you know, I think you're right. I think you're really onto something there. Here's my take on that. I think years Yeah, you know, I think you're right. I think you're really onto something there. Here's my take on that. I think years ago, centuries ago, I think there was probably more openness to these types of experiences. I think there was more, you know,

Starting point is 00:53:34 when we didn't have that sort of scientific rigidity about what the brain can do and what it can't do, I think people collectively were more inclined to share these stories, to have people believe them, to value them. And as a result of that, allow them to be shared in a verbal tradition, probably much more so than we have today, because people were probably less afraid to share that. These were more tight-knit communities.

Starting point is 00:53:59 I mean, they knew each other, they interacted with each other. And so I think there was more trust that we have today. Today we're sort of apart from each other more. I think it's harder to develop that interpersonal trust, perhaps as much as existed centuries ago. That's a shame among many other reasons. People today may be less inclined to share with others their spiritual experiences because they're afraid they'll be judged. Yeah, I want to let you know that the best way

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Starting point is 00:55:39 Yeah, or there's not as, there's, well, it's interesting cause there's, it used to be, I mean, sometimes you would be the chief of a village if you had had like a, if you had gotten to, you know, connect with the third eye, you know, it like, there was a lot of enhancement in, yeah, there seemed to be a lot of more social value to it.

Starting point is 00:56:01 I think we're still going through this metamorphosis maybe where, you know, we tried a lot of medicines to cure people like a lot of Western medicine that is proven to be or slowly more and more proving to be very much, um, not as helpful as we thought more causing more addiction than it is, like probably benefits overall, maybe. Um. And I'm saying that to a doctor, maybe I shouldn't be. But that we're getting more to where people are, I feel like we're trying to get back to nature and to finding ways to, A, take care of ourselves better.

Starting point is 00:56:38 And then B, use other modalities to solve particularly things that we struggle with thinking and feeling wise than medicine. Does that make any sense or not? Oh, I think I see where you're going with that Theo. Now more than ever, we're focused on, we start with a focus on the patient. What's best for the patient? Well, prevention, you know, certainly. Treatments that have less toxicity, very strong focus

Starting point is 00:57:06 in my specialty, radiation oncology, where we treat cancer, we're more interested in the totality of the patient. How are these treatments affecting them? How can we mitigate these adverse effects? How can we sort of consider the patient totally, mentally, physically, spiritually, and help be everything that we can as healthcare providers in a way that we perhaps hadn't even thought about before. So there's a real, it's kind of interesting, we're really kind of at a threshold now where

Starting point is 00:57:35 there's, with a focus like that, I think we're, I know we're curing more people, especially with cancer, my specialty than we ever did before. But I think importantly, we're helping people to live better than ever before because we're so focused on the total patient. Have there been experiences where you've been able to discuss with cancer patients who weren't fortunate enough to get into remission, that you felt like talking about the afterlife and possibilities and people's experiences

Starting point is 00:58:04 have been helpful to them? Oh, absolutely. Of course, I'm a well-known near-death experience researcher. So over and over, we have patients or their family members, Google, who is this Dr. Long guy? And oh my gosh, you know, here's my hundreds of times I've talked to the media and been around.

Starting point is 00:58:22 And for people that are aware of that, they will generally come talk with me about that next time they see me. That can be profoundly inspirational to somebody who's got a life-threatening illness. They're in fear about that. They're family. They're loved ones. They know they might not make it. And yet here's the research, the information I have, powerful evidence that there is life after death, that there's a bigger picture for who we are, what we are, that we're not just physical brain function, that we are a consciousness that's going to survive our earthly death. It is incredibly important to patients that come to that understanding.

Starting point is 00:59:00 I've spent huge amounts of time talking about that with patients and I love that. I consider that to be a very special and important part of how I practice medicine, going in that extra dimension like that. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's, you know, for one, it's a blessing that you care about this because you're also in a field where people are having to deal with that, you know, sooner maybe than they expected. Do you ever, have you ever been there

Starting point is 00:59:34 when somebody was passing away and just kind of like, been like, hey, come on back, you know? Well, yeah, I mean, I've done CPR for real a few times. And you know that, I'll tell you what real a few times and you know that I tell you what that is like look around while you're down there. Yeah. Oh, the first thing they say in the books is when you have someone codes or heart stops and you have to try to bring them back from the brink, check your own pulse first too

Starting point is 00:59:57 because you're, ah, that's pretty, pretty eerie. But because you can freak out. Oh, it's spooky. I mean, your heart rate, I mean, it's frantic You see PR well when I do it for real. Yeah, when we brought people, I mean, this is literally unexpected typically it's life and death You know, it's there were frantically trying to do the best I'd be worried like if say if there's house music playing in the place I would be worried I would just what if you just tap into it you're like what is going on you know no you feel I just don't want

Starting point is 01:00:28 to be laying a James Blake track on somebody you know like at least I mean I can't speak for others but I'll tell you when I've done you know what you're doing yeah you stay focused and you want to make sure you're doing just the right number of chest compressions I'm just saying you get some guy like me in there and it's just you know get out the way for cotton eye Joe and just playing that, you know what I'm saying? I don't want to talk about it again. You'd make an awesome doctor.

Starting point is 01:00:50 I love that Theo. We need to get, cause that would be, I haven't heard a doctor ever share that, but hey, you know, that's a, I think I would be disbarred immediately. I'm just saying that like, if you're not really locked in on what you're doing, if you're doing CPR on somebody, you know, and somebody just, you know,

Starting point is 01:01:04 lays some kind of a track in the distance, anything can happen, you know. Have you ever had a near-death experience? No, I haven't, thank goodness. Now, have you, is there a part of you that, because at some point you gotta, you know, put your muffins where the oven is, you know what I'm saying, bro?

Starting point is 01:01:20 I'm like that. And like, you know what I'm saying? At some point, people were gonna, you know what I'm saying? bro? I like that. And like, you know what I'm saying? At some point, there are people who are going to, you know what I'm saying? If you want to write the third book, you got to have to go over there. But let me tell you how it works in the real world here, Theo. People that have had a near-death experience in general, typically, are not near-death experience researchers. And I think the reason for that is they know about near-death experience.

Starting point is 01:01:43 It is grippingly real. They understand it. They understand its implications in their life. And so as a result of that, they're not asking questions like me and so many other people that do research in this area that want to know is it real? What happens? So again, but near-death experience cures any near-death experience disbelief. That's for sure. Does part of you ever wish like like you know, and it's not Nobody wants to because near-death experience. You got a death is in the middle of it Mm-hmm. That's the tricky part of the rest of you can handle but death is the part you got a risk

Starting point is 01:02:16 You know, but is any part of you ever like, you know We're like oh, right if you say you ever been skiing and then you falling like oh, this could be 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 a full-time medical practice. I love doing research and sharing about near-death experience.

Starting point is 01:02:35 I've got so much going on. I'm very careful not to get into a life-threatening event. Yeah, you stay at home. You know, I mean, I get what you're coming from. Sure, at one level, it'd be, I I think an adjunct to my research to say, this is what I experienced and here's what happened. But don't you think that might leave now you get a little confirmation bias. And then I'd start to see others near death experiences through the filter of my own.

Starting point is 01:02:58 Yeah, dude, I can't believe earlier, I was like, we have a, don't you think there's a lot of confirmation bias? And then I just try to talk you into confirmation bias. Oh, well, again, when I start my near-death experience research, my scientist coat goes on. I have to be very careful to use the best scientific methods and avoid those kind of pitfalls that are common in science. Yeah. You're still science. So you're still applying science to this.

Starting point is 01:03:23 Right, absolutely. And I think that's one thing that makes it more Valid, you know, um, we had a guy dr. Max moron. Do you know this guy is I've heard the name? I just can't can't place it He is a he does the um He runs the uh What's it called where they froze Walt Disney? Oh, the cryogenics. Yeah, he's like a philosopher. He's like a futurist.

Starting point is 01:03:49 He's the director of, he was a CEO and a president of Alcor Life Extension. And that's where they do like cryonics and cryogenics where they freeze people, right? So we talked with him one time and some people were like, oh, this whole thing's a scam, right? So I, I, we talked with him one time and I, some people were like, Oh, this whole thing's a scam, right? And, and I looked at the financials of it, it, it wouldn't really be worth it. I don't think if it were a scam, it's just not that much money. It doesn't seem like in it, but it does seem like it's just kind of there's, there's just sort of

Starting point is 01:04:21 this blind hope that one day they will be able to like reincarnate or no to rehabilitate the like the physical us that's here right what are your thoughts on that like because it's not really the same world that you're in but there's there's this the afterlife is part of you don't hear much about the afterlife right well you know Theo I'm as a researcher and a scientist and as a researcher and a scientist and as a physician, I'm interested in pretty much any aspects of possible survival of consciousness. And here we have groups that are freezing bodies, cryogenics, hoping that people will be able to be resuscitated decades, centuries from now and literally be brought back to

Starting point is 01:05:02 life. Well, a couple thoughts on that. First of all, I can't get over scientifically the fact that when you freeze cells, human cells below 32 degrees, the water in the cells expands, boom, it busts the cell membranes and the cells are literally dead. How you can bring back completely busted, trashed, if you will, cells in an entire living organism back to life is absolutely outside of anything. I know they were using in liquid nitrogen to do it, right? Yeah, well, that's cold. So that would be...

Starting point is 01:05:33 And I think they do it at a quick enough level where they're saying that that doesn't happen, that decomposition doesn't happen. That's what their claimant is. The ability to suddenly freeze an entire physical organism. I mean, I'm not... A flash freezing or whatever, you know. That would be... And again, I'm not an authority physical organism. I mean I I'm not I'm not freeze in her way that would be and again I'm not an authority on right of course yeah We're just kind of doesn't pass my sniff test, but I think moreover the bigger picture here is people so afraid of leaving their earthly life so believing that

Starting point is 01:05:59 Earthly life is is all that they are and and all they can be. I think if they knew what the overwhelming consistent message is in near-death experiences that our physical life isn't who we really are. It isn't the end that what we are, who we are, is that eternal, infinite consciousness that goes on living after our physical death here on earth. Yes, tell me about some of that because so yeah, that's an area we haven't really gotten into. What are people saying? Because these are people that they came back, right?

Starting point is 01:06:28 Today they didn't go, you know, they either didn't get accepted or whatever right now, we're not judging them. You know, there's tons of applications, right? All right. You know, the afterlife gets countless applications every day. These are interviewees who it feels like got over there. And that's funny. I mean, there's actually been a study.

Starting point is 01:06:46 Someone went through literally over a thousand of our near-death experiences. And when people are sent back... Over you guys, as you mean? Yeah, the ones we have posted. When I say we've studied over 4,000 near-death experiences, those are posted on our NDERF.

Starting point is 01:07:02 Are all the ones you get posted or not all of them? Every single one that gives us permission, which is way over 95% is posted. But man, you don't have any, there's no like, let's make sure, let's have, there's no protocol for you guys to like, be like, come on, this one isn't, you know, this one has Joaquin Phoenix in it, you know,

Starting point is 01:07:20 like this one isn't it. I have, the integrity of the research I do requires that no matter what the content of the near death experience, if it appears to have occurred during a life threatening event, you know, sometimes I'll, you know, unless it's blatantly falsified, I mean, hey, Theo, we got two near death experiences in a row where they encountered Pamela Anderson and there's obviously some teenage probably boys that were having a good old time and boom, boom. Okay.

Starting point is 01:07:49 I get that. That's fake. And that's rare. Thank goodness. Cause again, it just takes too long to do that. But we have, I have a whole write up on how we very carefully validate these near death experiences as real. I understand we have a responsibility to the world to make

Starting point is 01:08:05 sure that we have posted valid experiences because other researchers are using this interestingly. Artificial intelligence has gone through the internet and that's one of the major drivers of artificial intelligence understanding of near-death experience is the over 4,000 we have posted. Right, so you guys have so many of them that obviously people are using it, but yeah, I was just trying to get if there's any barrier to entry between your site. So there is some, if people are saying Pam Land

Starting point is 01:08:31 or Senator Samuel Jackson or whatever, you're like, I don't know. But yeah, so the integrity of the research we do is such that, if there's, well, there's a lot of integrity, but there's some barrier to entry. Well, not really, if they, I I mean this is less than 1% of people that have shared what we consider to be obviously falsified experience so it's it's I mean it's rare with that order but you take some down

Starting point is 01:08:55 there obviously falsified well it's not we will and sometimes we learn we will post it and then subsequently as they, and again, these are usually people that have a commercial interest in their account. And as time goes on, we may come to understand that they falsified and bellished their account. Right, using you guys as absolutely right. Absolutely, and they're out of there if that happens. So that, and again, that's rare. And that says a lot about the integrity of humans in general. I mean, people that have a near-death experience,

Starting point is 01:09:27 that is in general the most amazing, influential experience of their life. So let's talk about that thing. So literally sacred to them, yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. So people say it's sacred to them, you know? What are some of the things, if people go there, they're on death's doorstep and they get to come back, you know, nobody was home,

Starting point is 01:09:46 they knocked, they got some information, maybe, you know? But what is some of the things that they, what do we, have you learned anything about the afterlife, I guess? Or that next step, have you learned anything about that? Or do you feel like you've learned anything? Absolutely, I am extremely interested in that. After years of doing research and being aware

Starting point is 01:10:08 that they were remarkably consistently describing unearthly, heavenly realms, obviously as a researcher, I'm dang interested in that. So in our most recent version of the survey, we've got a lot of questions where I try to drill down on that, try to understand more about that remarkably consistent perspective on what lies beyond death's door. And that's where Theo, it gets dang interesting. One thing we're okay, talk interesting here. So what's it, what's it like? Okay.

Starting point is 01:10:37 We, you know, it, first of all, you have to understand it's radically different from that physical earthly like that we know. It's nothing like a separate geographically Yeah, we only have five senses. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean since did you get probably when you're done here? Well, you know, there's yeah Okay, think about all the other senses you could have yet the more the merrier I know but Regarding what I'm consistently seeing based on survey questions and spontaneous Regarding what I'm consistently seeing based on survey questions and spontaneous comments that they have, the afterlife again, completely non-physical.

Starting point is 01:11:10 Motions non-physical, communication. They typically have a greatly accelerated consciousness. They often have, amazingly, what they call universal knowledge. It's a sense of knowing everything. It's a bigger picture of knowledge far more than they could have known in their earthly life. Now, see, some of that really makes me sound a little bit like, um, you know, I did a little bit of DMT with this guy from a smoothie shop, right? Okay.

Starting point is 01:11:35 You know, and that's, uh, it was in, I was in, uh, I think it was Maui. Basically like, yeah. And I, I mean, hell, it might've been their damn, um, you know, I think the guys on their fan flat or whatever, if you look at the Maui, the, you know, he's, yeah, and I'm a hell, it might've been their damn, you know, I think the guys on their fan flat or whatever, if you look at the Maui, the, you know, he's, yeah, anyway. So, but I remember thinking that all of my feelings were so limited, the, yes, my concept, my concept of existence that I had here on earth was kindergarten compared to what else there

Starting point is 01:12:10 was anyway when you say that that's that's just all I you know I remember that and that's fascinating I'm glad you shared that I think there's sort of different ways you can come to understand that what we know all the knowledge we have here on Earth, is incredibly small compared to that bigger picture that if you call universal knowledge. In fact, near-death experiencers become aware of basically they'll describe as understanding the universe, how it all fits together, how it's connected. That drove me nuts when my early years of research, I kept saying, we'll share something, bring back something we can use in our earthly life.

Starting point is 01:12:48 And I'll check you right here because this reminded me, it's not that you get the knowledge, that the knowledge is like read to you as if you read it on a page and then you know the facts. It's that the knowledge is suddenly in you. That's what it feels like. You've got it, bingo. I just realized that.

Starting point is 01:13:03 I'm all, yeah, it's not like you can, you don't just, you're like'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 revealed to you really it's just revealed in the sense that suddenly you know it or that the revelation of it didn't even matter and then I can't explain it again but but exactly you're going right down the path that I've heard from so many near-death experiences I love it What they will become aware of is it's funny. They often say it's so simple. It's so easy. Well, gosh, not to those of us on earth, but you know, it's interesting. After years of studying these accounts and wondering why they didn't bring back something that we can use, one near-death experiencer taught me and said,

Starting point is 01:13:40 hey, it's like an ocean of knowledge he was aware of, and that can't fit into the teacup of our human brain. And then I went, Oh, I get it. That's how limited we are in our earthly physical life. Right. I've thought about that before too, that I wonder if we just don't have the means as limited as we are. Yes. To. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just we're doing a great job. We do a ton of seeking and wondering, but even our ability to wonder is not infantile because we're here, we are discussing it,

Starting point is 01:14:18 but it's not able to know. Exactly. To be known. And it's probably good that it isn't because We would really wilt. I think if we almost knew it and I think that's true I will tell you the awareness of this universal knowledge that's out there that we don't know One thing that that has led me to consider in my research is Theo. That's just dang humbling. I'm a doctor, I'm a smart guy, I blew through pre-med my work in three years. So I thought I was pretty good,

Starting point is 01:14:50 but I'm aware of this incredible knowledge that is far beyond anything I or anybody on earth could understand is really, really humbling about how little we really know in the big picture of things. And it's kind of nice if you can embrace that. Oh, it ticks the edge off. Well, it tells us a lot that we all need to learn.

Starting point is 01:15:10 And that kind of continues the scientist in me saying, okay, we're still, we haven't got all of knowledge figured out, there's just a vast universe out there just waiting to be understood and discovered. And that's exciting. But will we ever get it? But maybe we will. And maybe, you know, and some of it is even us

Starting point is 01:15:29 thinking about this together and having conversations like this, you know, and comparing somebody who's done a lot of research with people who weren't under the influence of drugs, unless you consider like somebody being, you know, falling off a cliff, a drug or whatever, being in a car accident. But, and then somebody who's only had kind of unique

Starting point is 01:15:45 experiences through drugs, you know, and realizing that there's some similarities and some like that are totally different. What are some things that people talked about the afterlife that one thing you said that was interesting was being able to make a decision maybe to come or to go. So there's some like, it's almost like, do you want to stay? Do you want to try this new thing? You know?

Starting point is 01:16:06 That's interesting. What else you know? It's interesting What's interesting Theo is that when they're in that realm when they're in that beautiful Unearthly realm feeling love and peace beyond anything the new on their earthly life. That's not unfamiliar They often say this is a strong sense of their real home and not their earthly life and that's one reason they want to stay there. They know their friends, family, and loved ones that they leave behind are going to be okay, that they too will be in that realm when their time comes. Is that feeling you get to when you hug somebody that you love? I think like that. I like that a lot. Exactly. That feeling,

Starting point is 01:16:41 it's almost, it's not even about that. you're happy that it's them, you know? But it's really not even for, there's a little bit of sometimes in a moment in a hug where it's not even about them, it's just about this like other little space that gets created kind of that just feels absolutely welcoming, you know? Don't talk about kind of?

Starting point is 01:17:03 Yeah, I love talking about love. So we'll focus on that. But yeah, when you've got a hug and you've got that intense sense of love, you can understand in personal experience, the words in the dictionary, that it's like a connection, like a unity. And you often can feel that.

Starting point is 01:17:17 And because the love described in near-death experience is one of the most common words, you see that in the afterlife described in near-death experiences, one of the most consistent themes amazingly is they do feel that, and they use a stronger word, the connection, much more commonly saying it's a unity, it's a oneness of us and of everyone. It's sort of like the super, if you will, ultra love is what our destiny is going to be in the afterlife.

Starting point is 01:17:46 Oh yeah. That's 70s love, baby. You know? Because the 2020s love is a little, you know, it's definitely, it's got, it's been, I think it's been cut with something, you know, probably baby powder. But, you know, I think it's definitely different. But that 70s stuff, that's, that was some pure love it seemed like back then. Oh, one thing that stood out in your book, I remember reading that,

Starting point is 01:18:11 that there was a, that there, that blind people had similar near-death experiences. Absolutely. To people of sight. That is a very good point Theo. I interviewed Vicki. Vicki was born totally blind. Oh wow. To her. She's really all in. Oh, to Vicky, vision was unknown and unknowable. I interviewed her and you know, you simply cannot explain vision, how we see in terms of the remaining

Starting point is 01:18:37 other four senses. It's impossible. And so I learned. That'd be a great game show though, like a Japanese game show, you know, that would be interesting We had a beautiful young blind lady. Will you bring it bring her up? We had a blind woman that came one here and we learned about being blind. Oh Fascinating is really really interesting. I interviewed Vicki Vicki. She was very good at singing She was a professional singer So she was singing in a bar one evening, which is what she did, and was involved in a terrible auto accident.

Starting point is 01:19:06 And I'm going to jump in on what you and many others are thinking, wait a minute, she's blind. No, she wasn't driving. She had an inebriated patron driving, which was not a good idea. So bad crash. And also if you're drunk and the last person you need to help you get home is a blind person. Yeah, she's probably not real helpful with navigating down. Well, yeah, it's just like, and let them be, dude, they're doing their own thing.

Starting point is 01:19:29 You're drunk driver. Yeah, very, you know, take somebody's can see, yeah, well, sorry, whatever. No, well, you know, that's that just shows, you know, exactly the problem of drunk driving because he nearly killed her. Yeah, well, of course he is like, yeah, you're like, and you're like, oh, I'm so drunk. At least if we get an accident, this person won't even see what happened. You know, so they can't lie to the cops. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:19:52 There you go. Well, you know, that's just this shit that guy was probably thinking. Probably. Well, anyway, so Vicki was taken to the emergency room and the first time in her life that she had vision, she was in what we've talked about that out of body experience consciousness over her body. And it's interesting to understand her first emotional reaction of suddenly having vision, which was unknown and unknown to her.

Starting point is 01:20:18 She was actually frightened because the sense of vision was so unfamiliar. She was initially horrified. What is this new sensation? And she had to actually calm down and then finally correlated, she didn't even know who that was down on the gurney below, but it was only after Vicki correlated the feel of her long hair. Man, I can't do that well because I don't have long hair, but Vicki did. So she had it so many if you needed. She correlated a feel of her long hair. And interestingly, a ring that her father had given her,

Starting point is 01:20:51 she only knew by the sense of feel. And now she was seeing it from up above in an out of body experience. So when she calmed down, she then had a tunnel experience, had a review of her life, that life review, and went on into those unearthly heavenly realms, a beautiful, highly detailed, and highly visual near-death experience. But with a twist, Theo, her vision as she was explaining it to me was what we hear from many people that have near-death experiences, is so-called 360-degree vision. Amazingly, she's simultaneously understanding vision

Starting point is 01:21:26 in front of her, behind her, right, left, up, down. The proper term would actually be like spherical, and that was the vision she knew. So when I told Vicki that those of us in our earthly life have these pie-shaped visual fields, because where our eyes are in the skull, Vicki laughed at me. She said that just can't be. She didn't

Starting point is 01:21:45 get it, couldn't grasp it because her whole life experience with vision was that spherical vision. Wow. Wow. That's so fascinating. And then she came back here and didn't have any more vision. Yeah. So when she returned to her earthly body, Vicki was back to being totally blind. And I mean, this is pure blindness, no sense of light, no partial vision at all. I mean, this is like to her vision unknown and unknowable. Interestingly, and I asked her, did you see colors? Well, how could she answer that? She had no life experience of knowing what color is. She said she knew she'd seen, which is, she knew she makes you believe that there's just a one sense then it's a holistic sense

Starting point is 01:22:26 So then what why I wonder why we get stuck here in these The these entities that only have five senses then we almost feel like a split end of It was like a split end of hair like you know like when we get they split in his hairs or something and their hair It looks like it's been doing drugs or search rattled, you know, it's that doing drugs or it's rattled, you know? That's not been doing that well. We've all been there, yeah. And so that's how I feel. Some of the human were this erratic, or if you see a live wire on the ground

Starting point is 01:22:56 and it's just, it's not connected, but it's like, you know, just, that's how I feel like humanity is where this split end of existence that's frayed kind of from what it seems like even nature is. Like nature, even though it's violent and it's beautiful, it's everything at the same time, it's decaying, it's birthing, it's like this. It's constantly occurring, right? And we sometimes feel like this weird thing that's able to stick our head out of nature and just

Starting point is 01:23:23 look around at it, right? We don't know what we're really grasping. We're trying our best. Some of us are, you know, wearing driving gloves and thing. We're neat, but most of us are like, fucking dude, we don't know what's going on here. Anyway, I don't know if that makes any sense, but yeah, I think it does. I think it shows like, you know, here we're so used to our five earthly senses and yet so many ways are limited. I mean, you know, here we're so used to our five earthly senses and yet so many ways they're limited I mean you hear these accounts like Vicki and you go wow our senses

Starting point is 01:23:51 In the afterlife are going to be much much more than we possibly knew here I mean, it's it's just really breathtaking to think about how Consciousness functions were not limited by who we are what we are on our earthly life I mean, we're stuck with our vision our hearing Sensation, you know, we got five senses and that's it, you know, at least for most of us those. Yeah, and there's some pretty door-to-door Senses, they're nothing real, you know They seem like kind of over-the-counter senses. I under the counter. Which one's the which one you got to get a prescription for? Yeah, I like they're kind kind of, they can be marginal.

Starting point is 01:24:25 I mean, medically, you know, we see people that have impairment in their senses and that's very, very sad. So- But which one do you have to get drugs for? Which one do you have to get a prescription for? Over the counter or under the counter? Oh, over the counter is-

Starting point is 01:24:35 Oh yeah, so these are just under the counter senses. These are just like basic, you know, like your regular shelved senses, you know, on the shelf senses. Yeah, nothing special. It doesn't feel like anything special yet. And yet, you know, it's all we got to live on. Well, shoot, I guess one way of looking at it, Theo, it's kept us alive for all of our lives.

Starting point is 01:24:51 I'm not grateful for him. But I think when we start to look at Vicki sense, even a blind person coming back and saying, look, dude, you guys can have your vision or whatever BS you do, whatever two dimensional BS you guys are looking around and stuff, that's fine. Just knowing on that next level that you get all the, uh, you know, you get like, uh, all the, all the, you get everything that they have. Exactly. I mean, we're not limited to some times Dr.

Starting point is 01:25:16 Long is like, I used to have this theory that like, um, four legged animals, right? They complete a circuit, right? Because they're on the earth, right? There's four right? They complete a circuit, right? Because they're on the earth, right? There's four legs, they complete a circuit. And then us, somehow we ended up two, we're two-legged. So we're kind of had these loose ends all the time. And I feel like we're just this uncompleted circuit sometimes. And that's sometimes how I think why we,

Starting point is 01:25:47 that's something that happened to us. We're maybe supposed to be more for like, cause you look at some two-legged animals, kangaroos, I think are two-legged and they are, they're obtuse brother. They're bouncing. They're fighting, they have children on them. They're just like us really. They're like us at Disney World, you know?

Starting point is 01:26:04 And it's like, so that's, that was a theory I had like a year ago or something that popped into my head. I was like, why do we not fit sometimes with nature at ease, you know? You know, that's an interesting point. Cause you know, we're, we're so much of nature is that four legged and, and you know, it's fairly consistent in terms of how animals go around.

Starting point is 01:26:24 And we're the anomaly. We're not the anomaly. We're not the norm. Right, so why did we end up the anomaly? But then you start thinking, well, is there a higher power that wants us to be the anomaly that's taken us from this four-legged and stood us up to have some enlightenment, which I also think is very, to me, feels very warm and wanting. And it could be a mix of the two. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud. What have you garnered from speaking with people who have been close to the afterlife? And what have you garnered from that? Oh, that's, that's where my research gets amazingly interesting. What I'm seeing is, well,

Starting point is 01:27:03 Theo, it's a basic scientific principle that what's real is consistently observed. And that's where it's exciting. When you look at the afterlife in near-death experiences, because what's described now times thousands is so amazingly consistent. I mean, it's a beautiful unearthly realm, that strong sense of peace and love, but off the scale beyond anything they knew in their earthly life. The encounters with deceased loved ones, interactions, by the way, deceased pets are often described in near-death experiences.

Starting point is 01:27:34 And these are again, joyous for animal lovers out there, tremendously good news from near-death experiences. I mean, hey Theo, you name it, dogs, cats, birds, horses. I've seen, not rats, we'll have to repeat. Well, I mean, I haven't heard that, but you know, certainly pets are not, it's not at all unusual. And like other deceased humans that they knew, these are joyous reunions and you know, sort of back to that sharing like they did on earth, only here they are in the afterlife. So, so do they see that they see these people in the afterlife?

Starting point is 01:28:07 What do people say? They physically say they see their father, cousin or grandparent or something. They see them in the way that they saw them on earth. Not necessarily. Is there any information about that? Yo, lots. Like how do people see people when they,

Starting point is 01:28:20 when they have a near death experience, how do former humans that they knew or humans that they knew on earth that are now gone? How do they see them in in the NDE's? Right. They're essentially always picture perfect health, even if they died of an advanced stage or a disfiguring, debilitating accident or injury. When they're encountered in the afterlife, they're essentially always absolutely picture perfect health. Interestingly, if someone died in an extremely advanced age, they may appear even decades

Starting point is 01:28:50 younger. Yes. And if they died in very early childhood, amazingly, they may appear in older childhood. Oh, really? And so it seems to be that kind of interplay. That glow up. Yeah, usually they look pretty much, much you know and they can tell it and another interesting thing you almost never have people say Mary is that you it's an immediate and intense deep understanding that this is their beloved they can share from

Starting point is 01:29:19 issue you know what they had and experienced in their past life there's a predisposition for genetic relatives, but you can be anything, obviously spouses or pretty much friends, loved people. So again, a beautiful, beautiful part of near-death experiences where you have that joyous reunion. And in fact, even if the earthly life was strained,

Starting point is 01:29:41 in the afterlife, that's not an issue anymore. There's joyous sharing, there can be sort of like the analogous of interaction, you can't really touch on physical, but there's certainly a lot of that kind of very close sharing and interaction of very beautiful, very touching part of your death experience. So there's no like needing to get over past things, everything's just equal there. Yeah, that makes so much sense, man. I think even, I think whenever I did some DMT or something, my feeling was just that these intricacies, or these idiot ways that we interact with each other

Starting point is 01:30:20 and how we treat each other, it's all so pointless to the app, to whatever that value was at. We're like, it's like, there's a whole like, equation going on and we're over here, like on one of those Nimbus counters, whatever, no, that's a cloud, but like one of those like little, you know, I don't know, I'm talking about dude, Jesus Christ, but.

Starting point is 01:30:44 But I do understand that. I mean's it's you were infantile and understanding Understanding that the value of each other right and here we have our earthly things that separate us those anger Yes, and I'm a matter and yet none of that absolutely I wish everybody on earth could hear you say that to you none of it matters when you're on the afterlife because Earth could hear you say that to you. None of it matters when you're on the afterlife because you're letting go of all those things that kept us apart, that separated on Earth. And here we are in the afterlife, intensely feeling unified, connected, one with everyone and everything, literally, you know, a concept of super love, if you will. Yeah. So then why does this happen? Why are we on this leg of life? Do you think, do you, are you able to grasp? Does anybody get that sort of information or it doesn't really

Starting point is 01:31:31 go there? It's just more of this, okay, now I'm, this, there's the opportunity when you die to get and be embraced into this ever laugh, this everlasting, warm love-knowing place. But do they get any intel on why we're in this realm now? Yes, I asked a specific survey question if during their near-death experience they got any specific information about the meaning and purpose of life. So Theo, I've had hundreds and hundreds of people give that narrative response in direct answer to that question. And what is fascinating is that our earthly life, first of all, very important, what we learn here, lessons about love, relationships,

Starting point is 01:32:13 what we experience is important, but way more important than we could have possibly known. It seems to ripple through an eternity and through the lives, souls of many, many other people. So that was fascinating for me to understand that as they kept getting these narrative responses So there is value to what we learn here. That's yeah Yeah, yeah, oh absolutely There is value and it seems to be extremely important and here's another concept which a lot of people wouldn't think of and that is

Starting point is 01:32:39 You know all we know here is our earthly life. I mean, this just seems to sometimes drag on forever. Yeah. But our real consciousness, our real beings is eternal and infinite. This physical earthly life that we're living seems to be the tiniest slice of our eternal existence. This is literally the one time during our eternal existence when we can know non-eternity, non-infinity, limitations. What an interesting way to think about it. That is literally, as opposed to trying to be told or learn from other people's experience, there is no other way for us to learn all that we do in the physical, earthly realm of life other than to experience it as a tiniest slice of our infinite existence. Wow, because yeah, you think like, man,

Starting point is 01:33:30 I want to get back there where everything's interesting, but maybe when you're there you're like, dude, we got to go back to Earth where everything's all kind of piecemeal and weird and you got to figure it out and you hit puberty or whatever and shit's strange, you know? Absolutely. I mean, it's only during a physical earthly life. I mean, in's only during a physical earthly life. I mean, well, in the afterlife, you're not going to have that anger. You're not going to have that want. You're not going to have. You don't even remember any of that. Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:33:54 It doesn't matter if you saw somebody that you hated. There's not even the, all of that friction or whatever doesn't exist. I don't think in the afterlife. Well, you've got that. Yeah. But feel you've got that overwhelming sense of love and compassion and connection. I mean, you're really, you would forgive somebody or you don't even have to forgive them. It's just known. It's, I think it's a, you, there's one thing that's overriding in the afterlife is free will. You have the free will choice to forgive someone or not to forgive, but shoot, that's what they say in the afterlife. Well, that's what we see for many near-death experiences describing is

Starting point is 01:34:26 if you have free will. So you get the whole of a grudge over there? You would have, I think, out of free will, you would have the ability to hold a grudge, and yet I don't even know that I've seen any near-death experiences describe that. In other words, this is completely off the scale in terms of love, peace, that sense of connection, that sense that on our earthly life, even if we made mistakes, and jeez, we all did. I know I did.

Starting point is 01:34:52 Oh, I know that those referees who didn't call that past interference about six years ago when Drew Brees was in the playoffs, I know that they did. There you go. Talk about mistakes. I'm going to take that one for the afterlife, honestly. You might have a different perspective when you're in the afterlife. You know what I thought about that?

Starting point is 01:35:09 I can let a lot of stuff go, man. But those guys, they just, they should not have done, they should have figured that out. Well, anyway, maybe I will, you're right. I'm sorry. Yeah, but you have the choice. You'll probably have the choice to do that. And yet you'll understand that in a realm

Starting point is 01:35:21 where literally the guiding forces love that that might not be loving. And so that might not be who you are at that point in time And I think it's a no right It's it's it's tough to it's tough to put yourself in the mindset of that infinite eternal Beyond earthly love and unity that you have there, but that's yeah, that's what I hear times thousands. No, I look I think I Think that part relates to feelings that I've had under some psychedelics or Under ayahuasca is just this all know this This I can't remember. It's ayahuasca DMT, whichever it was something I haven't done them in a long time, but

Starting point is 01:36:00 Where it felt like yes all this silly stuff of the world, this earthly world didn't matter. But then there must be some long-term thing to it. But like you're saying, it does matter to be here and exist and go through this. My friend Megan Sheehy, she's like a therapist in Oregon and she's really a really neat thinker and a deep thinker. And she would say sometimes that some of our souls, some souls that you come across and some of our souls and maybe me and maybe you and or like baby souls, it's like their

Starting point is 01:36:33 first time doing the earth show, you know. And so some souls you meet and they're just like, oh, some of them been here a long time maybe maybe, and they're, you know, they're smoking or whatever. And they're, you know, they're complaining outside of the library, but some of them, they're, they're first time and they're like, you know, having a blast or just, I don't know. I thought that was kind of a interesting school of thought that she shared with me one time. Yeah. It's a concept of old souls.

Starting point is 01:36:58 You know, I've heard of that before. Right. You heard of that before. I just never heard of young. So I'd never really thought of the, the other side of it, that that's, that it's some soul. It's just like they're fresh out of the, you know, the bassinet and they're just, you know. Well, if you have old souls, you have young souls.

Starting point is 01:37:12 Yeah, I didn't put it together though. I think you would have a binary. But again, I think it's all, you know, in the afterlife, I don't know if it's really a judgment or that it's so critical. I think we're all here to learn. There, you know, we're all here to share, interact with each other, and learn from those relationships and grow from those relationships. I mean,

Starting point is 01:37:30 that's going to be a part of the consciousness of who we are, what we are, and literally what we can share with eternal consciousness on an ongoing basis. So it's really that important. It's not just our consciousness. It's what we can do as a group. It's what we can, yeah, it's literally there's a shared consciousness. I love that. There's a shared knowing. And so that's what we talked about briefly earlier about like a ripple effect of consciousness. So what we do in earthly life, the choices we make, the love that we express is actually literally rippling through eternity. Far more important than we realized that we could possibly know here. Man, I love that. That's such a great thought, man. It's such a great theory too. And it's one that we need to put out there more. And I feel like we're getting more,

Starting point is 01:38:14 I feel like that is going to become, I think we're starting to realize that these ways of like immense greed and like putting each other at like massive amounts of people that pain for profit and just, and it just, there's no, what is the long-term value of it? I don't see anybody that think, what is the long-term value of oppressing a people? Or, you know, it's like, we have to be evolving out of that. And it's like, I think a lot of us are starting to see that.

Starting point is 01:38:47 Like it doesn't, because the only way 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? And some of these archaic ideas of greed and of just, I don't know. I think about that stuff a lot. I like that because after all, you know the old adage, you can't take it with you. I mean, if you spend your life being greedy and hoarding

Starting point is 01:39:17 and, you know, material possessions, none of that is going to exist in a physical afterlife, but what is going to be a part of you, your soul is going to exist in a physical afterlife, but what is going to be a part of you Your soul is going to be those loving outreaches you had it's going to be those times that you really showed Compassion and that is going to be what helps define us our eternal soul and will ripple out and be a part of us forever I agree with you and but we can do that as a bet I think our leadership and how we choose to, can do that like, I don't know. I'm not like a socialist really, I don't think,

Starting point is 01:39:52 but I guess I am a person that like, that I believe people should be capped on kind of the amount of money that they can make. I don't believe that corporate, like we should, I don't think we should sacrifice the good of people, the betterment, overall betterment of people and of your experience on earth for technological advancement, for profit. I don't, I like, I don't know, I haven't fully conceptualized some of my ideas and I don't

Starting point is 01:40:20 know what they are, but I just see how it just makes it sick. It's like we could just, we could have better lives overall, it feels like. But then maybe part of the reason that we're here is to have this struggle and to see these things and to know what, um, what the ups and downs feel like and to know what it feels like not to care about each other as much as we should. You know, so that when you do go to that other place, it's like, oh, this makes so much sense. You nailed it. It's the struggle.

Starting point is 01:40:47 We're having struggles here, all of us, you know, the needs, the wants, the thinking that we should be agreed, you know, the desires we have to, you know, struggle with just being human. I mean, What if we do better? Do we evolve? Like, what if we, if at a certain point

Starting point is 01:41:03 we do like decent, good enough, then God gives us another sense. Like, now you got this sense, boys. And you're like, whoa, bro. So I wonder if we can evolve, if we all got to a level of caring about each other or of doing something, you know? And I know that shit sounds kind of hoity-toity and we are the world and Magic Johnson or whatever,

Starting point is 01:41:23 or Michael Johnson molested those kids or whatever. I'm not saying all that, but I'm just saying like if we all got to a level where we could like could we like do we get to go to another level if we can beat this level on earth? Absolutely. I think that's a beautiful statement of a hope of a vision for humanity. If we can all learn about the importance of love, compassion, sharing, let go of those all-too-human greed once, you know, the incredible disparities in material goods around the world, which is just incredible. If we could let go of that, if we could all know that we are one,

Starting point is 01:42:03 we are one world, one people. If we could just visualize that, work towards making it happen, absolutely. We as a humanity could evolve and evolve in a very positive direction. And we unlock a new sense. And we would, yes. And I think that that is a great expression of hope. So good. I like your attitude too, Dr. Long.

Starting point is 01:42:22 And look, obviously I'm sitting here in a warm room and clothes and food and everything. I'm not trying to, but at the same time, I'm not gonna burn down every moment of my own life or achievement or something just to try and say that that idea isn't possible. It's like, obviously we're privileged enough to be able to say that, you know, or whatever.

Starting point is 01:42:46 You know, we have microphones, we have electricity and everything. And yet here we are, you know, talking about, you know, being able to talk about this. And yet we're learning about the importance of these values from near-death experiences from our own lives. I mean, it's that seed of compassion that I think every human being has. It's just a matter of bringing that out, helping people to manifest that and how it would change the world

Starting point is 01:43:12 if we all understood that. And different ethnicity, different places, different people, they have less of it than others. I think different people, could we all have different pieces of each other's lock? You know, like we're all the keys to each other's locks. That's what my friend James Busher always says. and it's like, we're all like different, you know, we do need each other. Anyway, this is getting a little bit like preachy almost, but it's positive and it's

Starting point is 01:43:34 good. And it's a good message. And I don't mean that, but I don't want to get to the point where we sound like we're just like, we know, like we're trying to save the world the hope this whole come on stand about it Well, yeah, and yet the hope for humanity that we are expressing very directly here is directly part of the near-death experience wisdom over and over We're understanding those concepts and that's directly relevant to the greater truth The greater understanding and literally the hope for world that people that have near death experience experiences bring out. Yeah. Now what about this dude? They say what's if somebody's going to die and they're not going to do near

Starting point is 01:44:12 death experience, they're just going to die, right? What's, what should you wear? You think if you're going to die? Cause I like, so you get, so cause some people say, you know, sometimes, sometimes I think that if you, whatever you wear, you dying, you could get that job in the afterlife. Like they say dress for the job you want. You know what I'm talking about?

Starting point is 01:44:30 Um, Theo, yeah. In 25 years of having interviews like this, that's the first time I've heard this question. So I'll address that. I don't think it makes beans worth the difference what you're wearing or what you're not wearing or nothing at all. I mean, it's in the afterlife, it's going to be your consciousness, not your clothes. It's not going to be any aspect of who we are physically,

Starting point is 01:44:51 clothes, hair, you know, jewelry or wearing, you know, we are much more than that. We are consciousness. And that's, that's what near death experiences are consistently describing as going on to the afterlife. Yeah. I think I'm going to wear a chef's hat probably. Cause I would wanna be in a bakery. I think if I'm in heaven and you're in a bakery, imagine how good it smells, you know?

Starting point is 01:45:12 It would be good. And you're just making scones or whatever, cause the British I guess get to go to heaven as well. Oh, you're making me hungry. Yeah. Heavenly scones. I don't believe, you know, I don't believe everybody should be there, but I'm, you know, but the British, they're good folks, but you, but some people don't think that they are.

Starting point is 01:45:27 But have you, this is one last question I have for you, Dr. Long, and thank you so much for your time today, man. I'm glad this evolved. I think we stayed patient with each other and this evolved into a cool conversation. This is an awesome conversation, so carry on what you got there.

Starting point is 01:45:41 Yeah, and I'm grateful to this book, man. I'm grateful just like, that there's somebody who wants to care enough to think about this and collect this information because it's, it's kind of tedious, I'm sure. It is my literally my second full-time job and a big shout out to my wife, Jody. She is a licensed attorney and yet she stepped down from doing that so she could devote full time to running the website and working to gather this Information and share it back with the world the experiences and near-death experiences shared with us freely It's wonderful that we have the opportunity to share them back freely

Starting point is 01:46:16 Literally and over 30 different languages so people all over the world can read these if you go to the website Indie our f.org go to to the homepage, you'll quickly realize, yeah, we don't have anything for sale and we don't solicit donations. Why? That doesn't seem like the typical materialistic viewpoint. It's because we know that the information we have, the experiences we're sharing are so important. We don't want to compromise the integrity of that by having any commercial interest right on the homepage. Okay, got it. That's fair. I respect that man. I think there's certainly ways to do that sort of thing.

Starting point is 01:46:48 And, and there's ways also not to feel embarrassed about it, you know, like, I think from listening to you, I don't, I think I can, people's instincts usually are what they are and everybody will make their own decision as to if somebody thinks you're some sort of a snake oil salesman or something, but that's not what I gathered. And we do that for everyone. You know, we do that on all types of things. I'll tell you this, I accidentally bought four copies of the book and one audio copy of evidence of the afterlife.

Starting point is 01:47:13 Because, yeah, I didn't know where I was gonna be. And so, if I was gonna be here or LA, so I bought one and then my friend got me one and then I bought an audio copy as well. But I don't have God in the afterlife. This is a different book. Yeah, that came out later and that's where we went into the deeper, if you will, spiritual content of near-death experiences, concepts of God, which I want to hasten to add.

Starting point is 01:47:37 Many near-death experiences say God is a human word and what they encountered in God is far beyond human language, far more, you know, they would are concerned about being limited in what they encountered by using typical English verbal expressions of that which is beyond the verbal, beyond language in God, but also great deal of writing in this book about love and the concepts of that that seems to be, if you will, the glue that holds the universe together and what we've alluded to earlier the overwhelming consistent comments from people that have been in that unearthly heavenly realm that amazing concept that that we're all one we're all Unified we're all together and forever which is again completely different from conventional Western religious thinking.

Starting point is 01:48:25 And yet, by the literally at this point, thousands, we have people that have near-death experiences sharing that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that that's interesting to go to. So that one's a little bit more of a religious aspect. This has nothing to do with religion. This is purely evidence-based.

Starting point is 01:48:41 This is purely what people having their experience of what of any interactions with what they perceive to be God. And you're saying that overall that experience was that the God that they perceived or the energy of a higher power or of a more all-knowing power was greater than something we could actually conceptualize and the best we can do with that here on earth is by saying God. Absolutely. God is just the most common word. I mean, you know, there's really no other concept. It goes to the senses. It goes to the senses of this is the best we can do with the five senses we have is create this, um, this, this, uh, lower level

Starting point is 01:49:20 according now. If we, if we believe in this higher level that of, uh, of communication and of sharing an idea of something. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's, you got it. You nailed it there, Theo. Thanks, dude. It only took us two hours to do it. Oh, so what about, have you had anyone

Starting point is 01:49:39 who had a near-death experience from like a, a like a mass, like a 9 11 or a school shooting or a mass death type of scenario. Was there anything like that? Ever. I knew you said there was one where there was two people. Yeah. Have you had any buddy report for something greater like that?

Starting point is 01:49:58 Wow. You know, that's a good question. You know, fortunately mass sudden deaths, mass shootings, mass things like that are very, very rare. Virtually all people that die, it's going to be their individual death, that accident, illness, advanced age that kills them. I can't right off the top of my head think of any near-death experiences that occurred at a time of a very mass death that had been shared with them. But I'll sure keep my eyes out for one. Yeah, I'm just wondering if there's too much death

Starting point is 01:50:27 in one moment at that place for the other side to like really, you know, maybe they have to just, you know, maybe they don't have as much of a intake, you know, person working that day or whatever, where you have enough time with them. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. Where, you know, because I imagine

Starting point is 01:50:44 that some things would be a little bit similar. Maybe it's like, all right, everybody get in here and you can't loiter, you know? I don't think we have to worry about that. The every hint of information about the afterlife is overwhelmingly more intelligent, loving, and I think there's an immediate sort of

Starting point is 01:51:02 aware entry into the afterlife for anybody who's permanently deceased on this world. Any celebrities have reached out to you or any interesting folks like that or like people, you know, that are any like interesting folks that have reached out to you to be more curious about your work? Yeah, we do periodically here for some, I mean, you name it, doctors, executives, some people that don't want their name mentioned. But yeah, we've had some people very interested in this that have contacted me.

Starting point is 01:51:31 You know, like, are you sure, Dr. Long? Do you really be? What is the evidence behind it? Can you share it with me? So we've, I've banded with some people way up the food chain, if you will, in this society that are fascinated with this research and want sort of a one-on-one perspective. So yeah, I've done that. There's plenty of, I mean, how can you not be fascinated about what happens after you die? And so, you know, people that

Starting point is 01:51:55 are, you know, well-to-do, they're famous, literally, have those same interests that I think everybody does, certainly at least some point in their life. Yeah. Well, it's a big conversation that we have about death? And it's a lot of times it's a conversation I think that we have with ourselves, but that we're really afraid to have absolutely, you know I don't know how much I have a conversation with myself about death and if I do what even is it really? Yeah Like what do you know anything about such an unknown as such a mystery? Oh, I I think just about every person that's ever walked this planet, you know, like you

Starting point is 01:52:25 have thought about this and it's unknown or unknowable. The good news is, interestingly, when people have a near-death experience, as you might guess, their fear of death drops dramatically from a person who's had a near-death experience. These are called after effects that typically observe changes changes after a near death experience. And one of the most common is a dramatic reduction in their personal fear of death. And that's no surprise now, is that they know what lies beyond death's door because they personally experienced it.

Starting point is 01:52:56 They know it's wonderful and not to be feared. Yeah, man, that reminds me whenever I did that DMT, man, I remember I called my mother after I sent her a text and I said, hey, Ma, don't worry about getting older, dying. It's not that big of a deal. What we're doing here isn't as super important as we think it is and that everything's gonna be way awesomeer than you think it is.

Starting point is 01:53:16 Which is just interesting, because that's the only time. I think maybe that DMT experience was a little bit more like some of the near-death experience, but I'm gonna go and read, I'm to go check out that website and see what more information I can garner because this is really just, it's neat to think about. But man, yeah, to get close. Now, are there people who want to sign up and say, hey, put me under some type of a coma or something so I can try to have a near death experience? Are there kind of like astronauts of death where they

Starting point is 01:53:46 Want to go into that darkness and see what they can get and come back. Are there people like that? Yeah fortunately people that have raised that possibility for having themselves have an induced death is First of all, it's vanishingly rare. Thank goodness. Second of all, nobody's ever going to do that. That would be illegal unethical and That's not how you study near-death experiences. I mean shoot look at this We've had thousands of people share their near-death experiences Why should we put someone's life in jeopardy to just study what we can ask literally? Thousands tens of thousands probably around the world millions of people that have had near-death experience So there's absolutely nobody's going to do that.

Starting point is 01:54:27 Right. I see it from your side, especially as a medical professional, right? But are there, I'm sure, dude, I bet we could damn do a sign up online. You know, I bet you get six people off Twitter by midnight today who would do it, you know, who would let you put them under some sort of a thing and they would sign that, you know, the, you know, the Red Rover agreement or whatever, if they don't come back or whatever, I don't know what it would be called. But I bet we could, I bet there's a lot of people who'd be like near death, uh, experienced or not, or whatever, who would want to just, you know, every other day, maybe they, maybe it's an every other day job, you put them

Starting point is 01:54:59 in a coma or something and say, see what happened. They try to come back around. Yeah. Sadly, that's true. I think there's a lot of people that so want to, to incorporate that, that wonderful message of near death experience into their own life that they would be willing to risk it again, illegal, unethical, and absolutely not a self loving path, which we see in near death experiences so commonly that overwhelming importance of love. That's not loving either themselves or to the individuals who would put them in a dying state.

Starting point is 01:55:27 That's it's really, it's sort of like the lessons we learned from people that had near death experiences as a result of suicide attempts. They learned vividly that that's not the right thing to do. It was a huge mistake. Right. Wow, man. This is pretty heavy here Theo. But you don't have a lot of talks where things get this deep. No, and, this is pretty heavy here, Theo. But you don't have a lot of talks

Starting point is 01:55:46 where things get this deep. No, and it's nice though, I wanna have more talks like this. And I think, you know, even us just talking about some of these things, like I wanna have more talks about like greed and why do we live in this space? Cause I think some of the sickness

Starting point is 01:55:58 that we feel as humans these days, that we, like, you know, there's a lot of emotional unwellness and mental unwellness. And I think a lot of it is just because of us, we realize, or we feel, and we can't even maybe put words to it sometimes that we're sick of something we've created a way of being a way of treating each other. And even some of us are at fault, we're all part of it, but we're sick of it.

Starting point is 01:56:30 I think it's making us sick, but we are all stuck in it kind of, and we've never been able to see it before, but I think we're starting to be able to see it a little bit. Does that make any sense to you or am I crazy? No, absolutely, I like what you're saying. I think there's sort of that sickness in Nate and humanity. I mean, here we are self-focused, focused away from other people, focused on our own

Starting point is 01:56:53 interests and our own concerns, our own wealth, our own everything. I mean, it's literally you're getting down to values. There's a sickness in the expression of values all around the world today. And that's a sad thing. It's, you know, globally you could call it unloving. And yet here in near-death experiences is that consistent message pointing to that's not the way. That's not how life is to be lived. You need to think about your neighbor.

Starting point is 01:57:19 You need to think about other people. You need to reach out compassionately. I mean, it's literally a profound message of hope for all of humanity. And in fact, these profound deep messages in the near-death experience are, in my opinion, the most profoundly positive message, even conceivable for all of humanity.

Starting point is 01:57:38 Wow. It's crazy that we have to almost die to get a message of how to live, you know? That we have to go, you know, we have all this life in front of us, every moment in front of our eyes. And you have to go that close to the, you know, to that white vulture of the Lord death and over there and feed him birds, he'd out of your dang hand and just even get a little bit of information from it. And yet I think we need to, if we do understand that that's the big picture, that that's

Starting point is 01:58:02 really a part of our real eternal and infinite existence, and that we're all here to learn lessons to move closer to that greater reality that we have, that unity, that love, that compassion. I mean, I think that sets, you know, really a pathway that we can all think about each day of our daily lives and maybe move one step closer to being our true selves, which is what we're going to be in the afterlife. Right. Yeah, man, it's definitely, uh, it's definitely super fascinating. It's interesting to think about, I'm grateful that God let me be exist to even kind of just get to think about stuff like this. That's some of sometimes the most fascinating

Starting point is 01:58:43 thing about life and especially being able to stay alive and get older cause you get to see more concepts of, like that's one of the saddest things I think when people die young is they just don't get to see like how things kind of, a little bit more clarity you get and a little bit more light knowledge you get of what, of existing and stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 01:59:03 Was there anything else I was gonna ask you about? Man, this has been a great interview. Has it been? Yeah, you've really covered a lot of material here. Very fascinating. I love this different perspective that you're bringing out in this discussion here. I think you're coming at the concept

Starting point is 01:59:19 of near-death experiences in a very special and I think very important, very positive way. It's sort of that you need to think about. Near-death experiences are such a all-encompassing. We start talking about infinite and eternal consciousness in our self or souls. I mean, literally just coming at the concept of near-death experiences from so many different ways. I've learned in this discussion here, I've thought about things I haven't really thought

Starting point is 01:59:44 about before. So this has been great. This has been very helpful to me personally, and I'm sure a vast number of viewers as well. Oh, thanks man. Yeah, well, I think it's, you know, yeah, I just feel grateful that we got to chat about it, dude, honestly, you know, it's nice to think about it. And it's nice to be just reminded about it, you know?

Starting point is 02:00:02 It's interesting the things that we focus on and listen to and stuff do have an effect on how we feel and think and stuff. You know, I think sometimes, yeah, yeah, I think it's important, you know, where we put our attention, you know, and the dark arts have really masterminded ways to take our attention and use it for evil.

Starting point is 02:00:21 I don't think they know they're doing it for evil. They think there's other reason behind it, but we just have to be careful where we put our attention. You know, that's the most important thing. It's hard and I'm not preaching about it. I suffer just like everybody else. But to recognize that we suffer is kind of a, or that we're, that where we're trapped a little bit

Starting point is 02:00:38 is kind of interesting and good start. That's really cool, man. What a neat hobby that turns into something fascinating. When you look back on that part of it, like your own attention to it and stuff, what gifts has it given you out of paying attention to it? Absolutely. I have been profoundly affected by my study of near-death experiences. As a physician and I'm practicing full-time, this has helped me to be much more compassionate, focused on the patients, loving to them, literally, going the extra mile, really being the kind of a doctor to my patients that I would want

Starting point is 02:01:14 a doctor to be with me. And in fact, in the facility that I'm working at now, patient satisfaction is measured by a national survey called Press Ganey. For the past seven months, the facility I'm working in... Yeah, I've heard of that before. You've heard of Press Ganey. Well, how about... You probably haven't heard of this. In the last seven months of the Press Ganey surveys

Starting point is 02:01:33 and the facility I'm working with, every single patient that was surveyed on every single question, we were at the 99% level. Congratulations. Based against national standards. But again, it shows... And I want to emphasize, I contributed to that by the compassion and love

Starting point is 02:01:48 and attention and focus I give patients. But that's a whole dang team that shares that value of compassion, doing their best, of making patients feel like, you know, it's their home away from home when they come in there, that they're really being cared for. Each person is an individual. So between me and the whole team there,

Starting point is 02:02:06 we have some of the highest patient satisfaction scores you're gonna find anywhere, Theo. Well, that's congratulations. Yeah, thank you. And no, that's awesome that your own work has ended up, that your own hobbies and interests have ended up inspiring you to do your original job better. It really is.

Starting point is 02:02:26 With Press Ganey, we had a corner in, and he was talking about, once Press Ganey, they started calling people and asking them to rate how their experience, right? Yeah, right. somehow the opioid, those makers use the press gainie, press gainie scores and that the opioid makers were using the press gainie to somehow, do you know what I'm talking about at all? Yeah, unfortunately, I am suspicious that, you know, patients that were seeking narcotics and then would get that would rank their healthcare team

Starting point is 02:03:02 higher than if their healthcare team did proper medicine and didn't give them inappropriate opioids. So I hope that's not what this is, but I have a fear of what it is. I just remembered literally when you said that, this is the only second time I've ever heard it. Go back to the top, please. It says the US has, it gets to the writing.

Starting point is 02:03:21 The US has been in the middle of an opioid crisis for the past decade, death, more than 150 people a day die from opioid. We know all that stuff. And an interesting angle, researchers have been looking if there's a direct or indirect link between Pres Ganey's course and the opioid crisis.

Starting point is 02:03:34 Pres Ganey is a company that has the healthcare industry's largest database of patient caregiver and physician feedback, which you're saying you guys have done a great job with. And you think that a lot of that is because of your also understanding of what people's potential life after their life on earth is. It has certainly helped me to be a more compassionate,

Starting point is 02:03:52 courageous doctor. I mean, I deal with patients. Oh, these are people that are facing a life-threatening illness. Cancer is a scary word. But with what I've learned about near-death experiences, I can approach each patient with cancer in their journey of treatment and hopefully recovery and cure with increased hope, with

Starting point is 02:04:11 increased compassion in a way that I know is beyond what I could have done before I started studying near-death experience. Well, yeah, if you're a concierge for this more comfortable afterlife for existence, even if you just are collecting all the rumors of it, that's very fascinating. I think that would definitely warm me if I'm someone who's really in severe pain. I mean, it warms me and I'm not in pain.

Starting point is 02:04:38 But yeah, I just want to look at this, but patients using prescription opioids to manage their pain are 32% more likely to report high patient satisfaction scores according to recent research out of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. But here's my question is why if a medical place gets a higher-press Ganey score do they get a is there a financial incentive to them? I mean not directly I mean I'm not accusing you of anything. You just happen to be here when this is happening. I don't want you to feel like I'm attaching anything to you.

Starting point is 02:05:03 I haven't read that study so I can't really comment on the Dartmouth study. And you'd really have to read it to understand the nuances, to really interpret it, I think accurately. But as the study says, there's probably many different reasons that people could rate their healthcare team higher if they get you know more opioids oh yeah I'm on an opioid damn I'll rate you know I'll rate my you know I'll rate my neighbor's violent son higher you know well or whatever you know what I'm saying I'll rate somebody

Starting point is 02:05:36 parked in my driveway higher and I don't even know him you know but this says the surveys promote an assumption that patient satisfaction is an index of physician competence. But then what hospitals can do is they can say, we have the highest score medical places. Because I remember he said that and I was like, because he said he thought some of the opioid crisis was influenced more by some part of the Prescani,

Starting point is 02:05:58 but I couldn't understand what he was talking about. And so we didn't go down that road. So when you said it, it just made me think about it. And I'd have to look over the study because it's multifactorial. I'm sure it is. It's not a simple opioid. It's correlated, not causal.

Starting point is 02:06:13 It could be for any medicine, really. If we give more medicine to some of our clientele, then some places are hypothesizing, well, then they'll give us higher scores. And if we get higher scores, then we can say we're the best ranked Hospital or whatever in the area. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what I'd wonder about that I don't know if the Dartmouth study made that point, but that's you know, that's that's certainly a concern I can't imagine that that who can I mean, I guess if you make that much money by being a higher rank

Starting point is 02:06:39 Then maybe it would be worth it to you to me It doesn't seem like there's enough juice for the squeeze really in it But anyway, uh, Dr. Jeffrey Long, I appreciate it, man. It may be longer, huh? If there's an afterlife. Oh, yeah, we may. That's a good point. This may not be a due at the end of this discussion. There may be a continuity, a sharing of experience in an afterlife infinitely and eternally. So we may be encounter each other again as souls. Well, nice to get to know you here on the starter block. I like that phrase. Thank you so much for just aiding people

Starting point is 02:07:14 in their cancer journeys and for being somebody that's curious about possibilities outside of just the form of modern medicine these days. And I think that's really interesting for people to hear and thank your wife too for being a part of your life as you guys have, that's brought y'all closer together in some ways and she's helped. And it just seems interesting.

Starting point is 02:07:37 And I'm glad that you did all this work so that we could think about it. Yeah, well, thank you. Great interview. We covered some very fascinating and informative concepts here. So been in honor and a privilege to hang out with you and talk about all this.

Starting point is 02:07:50 This is great. You bet man. Where can, and people will put links to your stuff online and you are a practicing physician. Yep, full time. Dear God. Yeah, I tried to retire and I failed and went back to working full time.

Starting point is 02:08:02 But heck, you know, it's a labor of love. Just like my work in near death experiences, I love doing both parts of my, both aspects of my life. Um, thank you so much, Dr. Long, and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care. It's only like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind

Starting point is 02:08:32 I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little...

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

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