Season 2, Episode 1: Near Death Experiences and the Continuum of Consciousness

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Non-speakers, Telepathy, Telepathy Tapes, Amelia
2. 5:00 – 10:00: John Hanks Alexander, Melanesia, Micronesia, Native Americans
3. 10:00 – 15:00: John Hanks Alexander, life review, Materialism, soul group
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Dr. Jan Holden, Dr. Jeffrey Long, heavenly realm, life review
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Dr. Jeffrey Long, general anesthesia, John Hanks Alexander, Near-Death Experience Research Foundation
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Kimberly Clark Sharp, Koma Science Group, life review, psychedelic experience
7. 30:00 – 35:00: Dr. Jan Holden, University of North Texas
8. 35:00 – 40:00: emperor of heaven, ancient China, Office of Special Investigations, Randy Schaefer
9. 40:00 – 45:00: John Hanks Alexander
10. 45:00 – 50:00: Diane Madison
11. 50:00 – 55:00: Diane Madison, American Legion
12. 55:00 – 59:15: Diane Madison, Telepathy, Ben Kandura Design, Jill Pachznik

Notable quotes from "Season 2, Episode 1: Near Death Experiences and the Continuum of Consciousness"

• Hi everyone, this is Kai Dickens and you're listening to the Telepathy Tapes podcast.

  about Telepathy · at 0:00

• That they connected in a shared mental space called the hill. And at times with those who had passed on. And over the past few months, rigorous scientific testing has begun to confirm what many families have long asserted. In tightly.

  about The Hill · at 0:57

• I'm Evan Alexander, MD. I taught neurosurgery as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School for more than 15 years. I had a pretty good idea of brain, mind, consciousness, and how all.

  about John Hanks Alexander · at 5:55

• Ones who have left the physical plane already. That's where we plan next incarnations and go through life review that's the most important part because the life review which…

  about life review · at 12:08

• That's Dr. Jeffrey Long. He's a radiation oncologist who became fascinated with near-death experiences.

  about Dr. Jeffrey Long · at 15:39

• That's Dr. Jan Holden. She's a professor ammeritus at the University of North Texas and has been studying near-death experiences for decades. And that's probably why we started to see so many.

  about Dr. Jan Holden · at 19:04

• There's a man named Keni who lying there on his deathbed he goes to the other world and he meets the emperor of heaven and he says once he comes back to life he says that he…

  about emperor of heaven · at 35:48

• Just for the quickest second. And he tells me telepathically, Tell Madison at the salon her grandfather is okay.

  about Diane Madison · at 46:06

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• John Hanks Alexander — Person · 10 mentions · first at 5:55
• Diane Madison — Person · 10 mentions · first at 46:11
• Kai Dickens — Person · 2 mentions · first at 0:00
  Hi everyone, this is Kai Dickens and you're listening to the Telepathy Tapes podcast.
• Dr. Jeffrey Long — Person · 2 mentions · first at 15:39
• Dr. Jan Holden — Person · 2 mentions · first at 19:04
• Amelia — Person · 1 mention · first at 2:28
  Earth, but without a body. And so it made me realize that before we return to stories like Amelia's who in our next episode is overwhelmed by a flood of messages from the…
• Dr. Gregory Shushan — Person · 1 mention · first at 3:28
  Dr. Gregory Shushan is one of the world's leading authorities in near-death experiences and how they shaped ancient civilizations. Dr.
• Kimberly Clark Sharp — Person · 1 mention · first at 29:41
  Hospital. After she was revived, she told the hospital social worker, Kimberly Clark Sharp, exactly what she saw.
• Randy Schaefer — Person · 1 mention · first at 38:38
  Concerned about others, and more interested in expressing love to people, which is what happened to Randy Schaefer. He's a dad, a husband, a veteran, and had a near-death…
• Rachel Kantu — Person · 1 mention · first at 58:54
  Or tap the Supercast link in the show notes. Thank you to my amazing collaborators. Original music by Rachel Kantu, logo and cover art by Ben Kandura Design, audio mix and…
• Lori Rubin — Person · 1 mention · first at 59:03
  Design, audio mix and finishing by Michael Robino. Contributing producer Lori Rubin, and our incredible, hardworking podcast staff, Jill Pachznik, Katherine Ellis, and Selena Kennedy. And I'm Kai Dickens, creator and host.
• Jill Pachznik — Person · 1 mention · first at 59:05
  Michael Robino. Contributing producer Lori Rubin, and our incredible, hardworking podcast staff, Jill Pachznik, Katherine Ellis, and Selena Kennedy. And I'm Kai Dickens, creator and host.
• Katherine Ellis — Person · 1 mention · first at 59:07
  Lori Rubin, and our incredible, hardworking podcast staff, Jill Pachznik, Katherine Ellis, and Selena Kennedy. And I'm Kai Dickens, creator and host.
• Selena Kennedy — Person · 1 mention · first at 59:07
  Lori Rubin, and our incredible, hardworking podcast staff, Jill Pachznik, Katherine Ellis, and Selena Kennedy. And I'm Kai Dickens, creator and host.
• De Groot — Person · 1 mention
• Dr. Charlotte Martial — Person · 1 mention
• Eric and Vicki — Person · 1 mention
• Kathy — Person · 1 mention
• Keni — Person · 1 mention
• Lisa Di Maria — Person · 1 mention
• Michael Roino — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• Religious System of China — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Telepathy Tapes — Company · 3 mentions · first at 0:02
  Hi everyone, this is Kai Dickens and you're listening to the Telepathy Tapes podcast.
• Near-Death Experience Research Foundation — Company · 2 mentions · first at 15:45
  He started the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation and has collected thousands of firsthand accounts.
• University of North Texas — Company · 2 mentions · first at 19:06
  That's Dr. Jan Holden. She's a professor ammeritus at the University of North Texas and has been studying near-death experiences for decades. And that's probably why we started to see so many cases and started to see all the.
• Koma Science Group — Company · 1 mention · first at 26:03
  Happening. I'll let one of the study's co-authors take it from here. She's a researcher at the Koma Science Group in Belgium.
• Office of Special Investigations — Company · 1 mention · first at 38:49
  That rocked his world. I spent 20 years in the military as a special agent in the office of special investigations. I specialized in forensic science. That's what my master's…
• American Legion — Company · 1 mention · first at 50:54
  And she said through tears, He belonged to the American Legion.
• Supercast — Company · 1 mention · first at 58:51
  Anything or get adfree episodes, subscribe at the telepathy.supcast.com or tap the Supercast link in the show notes. Thank you to my amazing collaborators. Original music by…
• Ben Kandura Design — Company · 1 mention · first at 58:57
  Notes. Thank you to my amazing collaborators. Original music by Rachel Kantu, logo and cover art by Ben Kandura Design, audio mix and finishing by Michael Robino. Contributing…
• Harborview Medical Center — Company · 1 mention
• Modern Woodmen — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Telepathy — Concept · 7 mentions · first at 0:02
• Non-speakers — Concept · 4 mentions · first at 0:10
  In season 1, non-speakers showed us that telepathy is possible, shattering our assumptions about the world itself. This season, we're turning to others who've also been dismissed, doubted, or mocked.
• life review — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 12:12
• emperor of heaven — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 35:53
• veridical perception — Concept · 2 mentions
• The Hill — Concept · 1 mention · first at 0:58
• double blind telepathy experiments — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:09
  Testing has begun to confirm what many families have long asserted. In tightly controlled double blind telepathy experiments conducted across rooms and even zip codes…
• anformational field — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:53
  Connecting with? Is it like recalling a memory? Or could someone be accessing anformational field, a shared consciousness, the echoes of someone who actually lived on Earth?…
• shared consciousness — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:53
  Connecting with? Is it like recalling a memory? Or could someone be accessing anformational field, a shared consciousness, the echoes of someone who actually lived on Earth?…
• Black hole — Concept · 1 mention · first at 2:00
  Consciousness, the echoes of someone who actually lived on Earth? Physicists now believe that the edge of a black hole may store every bit of information that's ever entered…
• sun god — Concept · 1 mention · first at 2:55
  Soul leaves his body and he goes to the other world and he meets a being of light in the form of the sun god.
• Hindu religions — Concept · 1 mention · first at 3:49
  The Vadic period of India, which is the foundational era for all of the later Hindu religions as well as Buddhism, and then in some African, subsaharan African societies, and then the Mesoamerican religions in Aztec and Mayan civilizations.
• Mesoamerican religions — Concept · 1 mention · first at 3:54
  Hindu religions as well as Buddhism, and then in some African, subsaharan African societies, and then the Mesoamerican religions in Aztec and Mayan civilizations.
• Plato's world of ideals — Concept · 1 mention · first at 9:36
  Ultra reality, it was shocking, but had many earthlike features, but it was much more like Plato's world of ideals. There was no sign of any death or decay. I just remember the…
• soul group — Concept · 1 mention · first at 12:06
  I would say that's the realm where we reunite with higher souls, with our higher soul, with our soul group, loved ones who have left the physical plane already. That's where we…
• Materialism — Concept · 1 mention · first at 14:43
  Like so many others, I made the mistake of thinking that science was materialism, and it's not.
• heavenly realm — Concept · 1 mention · first at 16:46
  Anything they knew on earth. When they pass through that, they may be in an unearly often called a heavenly realm.
• general anesthesia — Concept · 1 mention · first at 20:32
  We have over 60 near-death experiences that occurred under general anesthesia.
• psychedelic experience — Concept · 1 mention · first at 26:46
  Mechanism underlying both experience. So the researchers wanted to compare a near-death experience to a psychedelic experience. And so first we wanted to just like interview…
• ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs — Concept · 1 mention
• soul — Concept · 1 mention
• Sumerian afterlife beliefs — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

• ancient Sumer — Place · 1 mention · first at 3:24
  This is about 1800 BC from ancient Sumer.
• Melanesia — Place · 1 mention · first at 5:13
  Did a second study comparing actual near-death experience accounts from Polynesia Micronesia Melanesia and Australia, Native Americans, subsaharan Africa. And they found dozens…
• Micronesia — Place · 1 mention · first at 5:13
  Did a second study comparing actual near-death experience accounts from Polynesia Micronesia Melanesia and Australia, Native Americans, subsaharan Africa. And they found dozens…
• Native Americans — Place · 1 mention · first at 5:15
  Near-death experience accounts from Polynesia Micronesia Melanesia and Australia, Native Americans, subsaharan Africa. And they found dozens of accounts of people within these…
• ancient China — Place · 1 mention · first at 35:45
  There's a really interesting account from ancient China from around 750 B.CE.
• Aztec civilization — Place · 1 mention
• Mayan civilization — Place · 1 mention
• sub-Saharan African societies — Place · 1 mention
• Vedic period of India — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

• Telepathy Tapes Supercast — Sponsor · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Hi everyone, this is Kai Dickens and you're listening to the Telepathy Tapes podcast. In season 1, non-speakers showed us that telepathy is possible, shattering our assumptions about the world itself. This season, we're turning to others who've also been dismissed, doubted, or mocked for the ways they claim to know, see, heal, or create. What if only by listening to those who've been ignored, we could unlock the deepest mysteries of who we are, where we come from, and where we're going. This is the Telepathy Tapes, and we're opening up the next channel.

0:44 Last season, we met non-speakers who revealed rich inner lives despite years of being dismissed as incapable. Some shared what few thought possible. That telepathy wasn't fantasy but survival. That they connected in a shared mental space called the hill. And at times with those who had passed on. And over the past few months, rigorous scientific testing has begun to confirm what many families have long asserted. In tightly controlled double blind telepathy experiments conducted across rooms and even zip codes, independent researchers are now witnessing what families and teachers have. clear, repeatable, mind-to- mind communication that defies chance. That should make everyone out there sit up because validating telepathy makes it harder to dismiss other things non-speakers have shared, especially their claims of talking to people who've passed.

1:37 Those claims are just as consequential as telepathy, maybe even more so. And that's the question that's been tugging at me for months. When someone says they're receiving messages from beyond the grave, what or who exactly are they connecting with? Is it like recalling a memory? Or could someone be accessing anformational field, a shared consciousness, the echoes of someone who actually lived on Earth? Physicists now believe that the edge of a black hole may store every bit of information that's ever entered it. What if the boundary between life and death works the same way and consciousness doesn't vanish, but is encoded in some invisible field at the edge of what we can know?

2:15 Not lost, just transformed. Or what if the non-speakers were actually talking to a soul? Real individuals who lived on Earth, but without a body. And so it made me realize that before we return to stories like Amelia's who in our next episode is overwhelmed by a flood of messages from the beyond, we need to lay a foundation. We need to ask the deeper question. Does consciousness survive death? And perhaps the best place to begin is with those who've been there and returned. He was lying on his deathbed and his soul leaves his body and he goes to the other world and he meets a being of light in the form of the sun god.

2:57 What you're hearing is a near-death experience or NDE for short. And then he meets another panel of deities who are also radiating light and they perform a sort of evaluation of his earthly life.

3:09 You've probably heard one of these before, but this near-death experience is nearly 4,000 years old. And then he meets his deceased relatives. There's a banquet thrown in his honor and then he's sent back to his body.

3:22 It's one of the earliest accounts in writing. This is about 1800 BC from ancient Sumer.

3:28 Dr. Gregory Shushan is one of the world's leading authorities in near-death experiences and how they shaped ancient civilizations. Dr. Shushon has multiple degrees. He's written seven books and he left no stone unturned in his research. He compared everything from

3:42 ancient Egyptian afters with Sumerian, the Vadic period of India, which is the foundational era for all of the later Hindu religions as well as Buddhism, and then in some African, subsaharan African societies, and then the Mesoamerican religions in Aztec and Mayan civilizations.

3:59 At first, near-death experiences weren't on his radar. He was just looking at afterlife beliefs across multiple ancient cultures.

4:06 Specifically at their afterlife beliefs as expressed in their ancient texts that describe journeys to the other world. And they did find the same consistent nine thematic elements that seem to be imported onto each of these civilizations as a whole almost leaving the body traveling through darkness coming into a realm of light meeting a being of light meeting the deceased ancestors a review of the life. But what I didn't expect on top of that was to find actual accounts of near-death experiences in all of these ancient civilizations. These narrative accounts of historical people who died, came back to life, and talked about the experiences of their consciousness during that period. That was really surprising to me because again, I just thought I was going to be comparing afterlife beliefs, which raises an intriguing question. What if our beliefs about the afterlife aren't just symbolic stories handed down through generations,

4:57 but records of real human experiences? What if thousands of years ago, people weren't simply imagining what happens after death, they were reporting it? I did a second study comparing actual near-death experience accounts from Polynesia Micronesia Melanesia and Australia, Native Americans, subsaharan Africa. And they found dozens of accounts of people within these societies actually saying this specific person died, went to the other world and came back on this particular date. And the reason we know about the afterlife, the reason we have these beliefs about the afterlife that we have is because of what that person told us. So this whole idea that people's afterlife beliefs, religious beliefs in the afterlife are originating with near-death experience was basically validated by a lot of these cases. So, I wanted to talk with someone who had their own near-death experience that changed the way they

5:51 thought about the world. And who better than a neurosurgeon. I'm Evan Alexander, MD. I taught neurosurgery as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School for more than 15 years. I had a pretty good idea of brain, mind, consciousness, and how all that works.

6:07 Throughout his career, Dr. Alexander had patients who would describe having their own near-death experience. He would listen politely but quietly dismiss them as hallucinations or the byproduct of a brain under extreme stress. He did not see them as evidence of anything beyond this life until he was 55 years old and contracted menitis.

6:27 My brain was inflamed. It was infected over all lobes of my brain. Even my brain stem was badly damaged.

6:34 He was put into a medically induced coma. And while he was there, while doctors were trying to dampen his brain swelling and minimize the damage that had already been done, Dr. Alexander had nothing short of a life-changing experience when he traveled to another realm.

6:50 So, it was a horrific case, but in many ways, that was a gift because if it hadn't been such a severe case of destruction to my near cortex, I wouldn't have had the kind of grounds to make the claims I made about the spiritual journey.

7:05 Dr. Alexander's experience stands apart from most and is quite consequential because while many near-death experiences happen after cardiac arrest where some brain activity still lingers, his cortex was completely shut down. And that's important because by conventional science, his brain shouldn't have been capable of any experience at all.

7:23 When I started reviewing my own medical records in the weeks and months after coma, talking over with my doctors, looking at my CT and MRI scans, I was thinking, "This doesn't match up. This amount of damage doesn't allow for a dream or hallucination, much less this extraordinary experience I had. And that's when I really had to start looking seriously at models of non-local consciousness.

7:46 Dr. Alexander was a materialist through and through. He's a neurosurgeon, a man of science, so he was surprised by how radically his experience changed his views on consciousness and the afterlife. And one of the things that impacted him most wasn't just what he saw, it's what he didn't know. I had no memory for Eban Alexander's life had no knowledge of Earth as universe. It really was an empty slate.

8:10 And for a neurosurgeon who once dismissed NDEs as brainbased hallucinations, that blank slate made all the difference. He had his near-death experience without filters, no expectations, no preconceived narrative.

8:22 I had no assumptions or preconceptions for my lifetime and for my work as a scientist. None of my religious beliefs. Every bit of it was deleted. which makes his visit to a seemingly afterlife, something he didn't believe in, all that more fascinating.

8:36 I went through basically three different phases of kind of the afterlife experience. The first was in a very primitive realm. I called it the earthworm's eye view.

8:46 I read Dr. Alexander's book and this earthworm's eye view is terrifying. He describes it as this dark and murky realm of primitive awareness. He said it's like being underground and trapped in this muddy jello- like darkness with strange mechanical sounds that were echoing around him. It felt kind of like the most basic level of consciousness. And I don't know why that hit me so hard, but maybe it's just because that's what our consciousness is like when it's trapped in a brain that's slowly shutting down. But then he describes being rescued by this melodic light,

9:18 this slowly spinning white light that came towards me. And it had a perfect musical melody associated with it. I remember that light portal opening up into a higher level. And as I ascended up into that, up into this brilliant ultra reality, it was shocking, but had many earthlike features, but it was much more like Plato's world of ideals. There was no sign of any death or decay. I just remember the colors beyond the rainbow. Down below us was a meadow. It was the world of perfection. What I was witnessing there was all this joy and merrynt playing, dogs jumping, and festivities. I didn't have any body awareness. And that's because our modes of knowing in that realm are so much grander. You know, here our physical body, our eyes, our ears, our brains, every bit of it conspires to limit our sensory flow to this tiny little trickle that's involved in our survival in the here and now as physical beings. And

10:13 yet, we have far greater wisdom and access to information about the universe beyond that.

10:18 And then there was this third almost higher realm he'd talk about. Angelic choirs provided yet another portal, a light portal up into this brilliant core realm. I witnessed as I ascended to these levels all of four-dimensional spaceime collapsing down. Time flow in that realm is not identically matched to time flow in this realm. But bottom line is in the core realm all paradoxes, all of the dualities of this world, male, female good bad dark light etc. Everything's resolved into pure oneness in that level. And that's where I acknowledge the oneness of my very conscious awareness with that infinitely powerful and loving God force. And coming to see as many near-death experiences describe that we're never separate from that. But I was always told going into the core, you're not here to stay. You'll be going back.

11:09 We'll teach you many things. Not in words because nothing in that realm was words. It was pure conceptual flow. In other words, telepathy is the main mode of communication in this realm.

11:20 I would tumble between these various levels over time. Go back down to that earth or my view. And it was by remembering the music. These are notes that go far beyond any notes that could ever be put together in music in this world.

11:34 And by remembering the notes and thinking of them, he could propel himself back to this realm of ultra beauty and ultra awareness. So during Dr. Alexander's coma, he would experience three different realms. The first being the earthworm's point of view, this dark jelloy underworld. And the highest of these felt like the core of everything, the unification of all that is. But that middle realm, the one described as paradise, is reflective of the place most often described in the near-death experiences I've encountered.

12:02 I would say that's the realm where we reunite with higher souls, with our higher soul, with our soul group, loved ones who have left the physical plane already. That's where we plan next incarnations and go through life review that's the most important part because the life review which has been talked about going back thousands of years. We relive events in a very detailed fashion but we're experiencing it from the emotional perspective of those around us who are influenced by our very thoughts and actions. The life review shows us very clearly that if we hurt others we're hurting ourselves.

12:35 And what Dr. Alexander experienced there tracks with so many different NDEs. And what I love about Dr. Alexander, he wrote everything down about his experience before reading any other accounts of near-death experiences because he didn't want to be swayed or influenced by what other people had said.

12:51 And the best part about it was I wasn't alone. My primary spirit guide was really that guardian angel. There was a beautiful young woman beside me and she looked at me with a look of pure love and she never uttered a word, but she didn't have to. And of course, I wanted to know if he had any idea who this young woman was because in doing my research, most people see someone they love or knew in their NDE. But he didn't recognize this woman

13:15 was actually identifying her 4 months after awakening from coma that it was the oh my god moment about the reality of the whole journey.

13:24 This requires a tiny detour into Evan's backstory. Was put up for adoption. My birth mother was 16 years old and unwed 1953. So social services took me away from her at age 11 days for failure to thrive. Now I'm not looking for sympathy because I was adopted into a wonderful loving family. But there was this big smoking crater in my life that had to do with my ability to trust others. I had finally met my birth family one year before my coma. I knew by that time that I'd had another sister and that she had passed and my family was still kind of grieving her loss. But there was always that kind of dark left out piece that there was a sister who I would never meet. But it turns out I would never meet her in this world because 4 months after my coma I received a picture in the mail from my birth sister Kathy and that was the picture of the lost sister. And when I saw that everything came together and I

14:23 went, "Oh my god." The beautiful spirit guide who was by his side during his near-death experience, who he didn't recognize was his late sister.

14:39 Like so many others, I made the mistake of thinking that science was materialism, and it's not.

14:44 Dr. Alexander studied his own case closely, both as a neurosurgeon and as an experiencer who simply did not believe in this type of thing. and he found no medical explanation. For him, the only answer is that his consciousness truly left his body and what he experienced was undeniably real.

15:03 That ultra reality, everything is so detailed and sharp. It's more real than lived events. And that was absolutely the case for me.

15:11 More real than lived events. This is something I've heard over and over from people who have a near-death experience that their time there, wherever it was, felt more real than their time here. The majority of people having a near-death experience will say that it is more real. They're more conscious than they were during their earthly everyday life.

15:39 That's Dr. Jeffrey Long. He's a radiation oncologist who became fascinated with near-death experiences. He started the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation and has collected thousands of firsthand accounts.

15:51 I've asked hundreds and hundreds of near-death experiencers in a survey question about their degree of consciousness and alertness. About three4 say that it's greater than their earthly everyday consciousness.

16:02 There are several other commonalities researchers have found regardless of the culture or country where the experience occurs. While no two near-death experiences are the same, a typical detailed near-death experience would be like this. Boom, there's that life-threatening event. They're unconscious or clinically dead. Element number one, first thing that happens about 45% of the time, consciousness separates from the body and goes above the body. And from that vantage point, they can see ongoing earthly events, including possibly people struggling to bring them back to life. They then may pass into or through a tunnel, variably described. At the end of the tunnel, there may be a beautiful mystical uh typically called an unearly light beyond anything they knew on earth. When they pass through that, they may be in an unearly often called a heavenly realm.

16:49 And a heavenly realm is a very reasonable description for this because in that realm there may be buildings, there may be landscapes, there may be plants, flowers. For example, people have described the flowers in the afterlife realm of the near-death experiences as having colors that are so beautiful there's no earthly coral. They're nothing like they could have even conceived of on earth. There may be music in that realm beyond anything they've ever heard possible, overwhelmingly beautiful. In this afterlife, if you will, they may encounter deceased loved ones. These are joyous reunions. In fact, they've encountered deceased pets. I mean, you name it. Cats, dogs, bird, horses, we've heard it all. Again, just like deceased human loved ones, joyous reunions and the beings, the humans or the pets are always in picture perfect health, even if they died of advanced illness or very up in age. So, it is around that time,

17:43 too, they may have that life review. That's common place for that to occur. And that's a fairly detailed near-death experience right there.

17:52 Here's Dr. Gregory Shushon again. Within dees there is a base experience that everyone's having but they kind of overlay their symbols onto it in order to understand it. It's a difficult thing to try to put into words but I see it almost as like that experience is only experiencable by our capacity to project our cultural forms and symbols onto it. So just to give one example like the being of light which lots and lots of people talk about in near-death experience. Some people will come back and say I saw Jesus. Some people will say, "I saw the Buddha." Some people say, "I saw Muhammad or Krishna." Some people will just say, "I saw a being of light." And they won't ascribe any kind of personality to it. So whether that is like the same being of light for everybody and everyone's just projecting their symbol onto it or whether everyone is seeing their favored entity, I think is unresolved. But to

18:43 me, it makes a lot more sense that it's the same type of manifestation or illusion or however you want to look at it that we're ascribing our cultural identities onto

18:53 because of advances in resuscitative medicine during the 20th century. People were being brought back from the brink of death in unprecedented numbers.

19:04 That's Dr. Jan Holden. She's a professor ammeritus at the University of North Texas and has been studying near-death experiences for decades. And that's probably why we started to see so many cases and started to see all the the similarities between these different cases. Um, but we also know that these experiences have been reported throughout history and across cultures. As you've already heard, another commonality in NDEs is that they're so profoundly beautiful that they are impossible to describe. It almost makes you wonder if it's a hallucination or even a dream. And that's the obvious thing a skeptic would point to.

19:43 Are they different from dreams? The very first version of the survey I put up on the website asking near-death experiencers about what happened. I asked them directly, "Was your experience dreamlike in any way?" And boy, did I get a lesson right off the bat. Over and over, I heard, "No, no way. Absolutely not." And they were so adamant and so clear that their experience had nothing to do with dreams. I was literally embarrassed by overwhelming consistency and how adamant they were.

20:11 That's Dr. Jeffrey Long again, the radiation oncologist and founder of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.

20:17 I learned quickly there are nothing like dreams, and that's continued in my research today.

20:21 So, these experiences might be more vivid or real than dreams, but some scientists think that near-death experiences can be chocked up to a chemical reaction in the brain.

20:30 We have over 60 near-death experiences that occurred under general anesthesia. Under general anesthesia, you should have no consciousness at all. Should be impossible. That's what general anesthesia is all about. And amazingly, their level of consciousness and alertness is typically even greater than earthly everyday consciousness. Those lines of evidence single-handedly refute any skeptical argument that near-death experiences are due to physical brain function. And there, believe me, there's a lot more counterarguments than just those.

21:00 I wanted to find someone else beyond Dr. Alexander, who had a powerful experience under anesthesia and who better than Martha Beck. She's a best-selling author with three degrees from Harvard and what happened to her while under anesthesia completely changed the course of her life. I left academia because I had an experience during a surgery where I became very sharply aware and cognizant and could visually see everything that was happening in the operating room. I watched the surgeons operating on me and then realized I was watching my body from a distance. I actually sat up out of it and it was still lying on its back with its eyes closed. So then I was very perplexed and I lay back down into my body and thought, "What is happening?"

21:45 And I was looking straight up at these surgical lamps which are extremely bright and right in the center of them another light appeared. It was like the size of a golf ball, but the most brilliantly radiant thing I had ever seen in my life. It's like trying to draw the galaxy with a box of crayons to use words to describe this light. And then it started to expand in all directions. And eventually it touched me, my body, and this sensation of absolute love and warmth and home flooded through me and the light was conscious and it was laughing and I started to laugh out of pure joy. You know when you see little kids who just they can't contain their joy and they're just laughing. It was just like being held by something that knew me intimately. It kept saying, "You said you wouldn't forget this, but you did."

22:44 And I was like, "I know. How could I have forgotten?" And then it just said, "Life is not always going to be easy for you, but I want you to remember that you don't wait until you die to feel this way. Your task in life is to feel the way you feel right now without being able to see it." And then I was awake sobbing, sobbing with joy and all the nurses trying to comfort me. So I asked to see the anesthesiologist because drug effects. I mean, I hadn't lost my mind just because I saw this light. And they brought him in and he sat down on me and he was just chalk quiet with fear and I couldn't figure it out. I was like just asking him, "What did you give me? What happened?" And finally he said, 'Look, please please please just tell me what happened in there because when the light touched me, I started to cry and I I was face up. So the tears were running down the sides of my face and the surgeons

23:42 who were operating thought I could feel what they were doing. So they said to the anesthesiologist, "You've got to there's something wrong. She can feel this." So he went to increase the anesthesia and then he told me he said a voice inside his head that was very clear, something he'd never heard before said, "Don't. She's crying because she's happy. She's happy." And he looked at me and said with these pleading eyes and said, "Did I do the wrong thing? Did I?" And I said, "No, you did the right thing." And I told him a little bit about what had happened.

24:15 and he said, ' Do you know how many times this has happened to me in 30 years of practicing medicine? I said, "No." He said, "Once." And then he kissed me on the head and walked away. And that reassured me because he'd given a lot of people anesthesia. And that only happened once. From my perspective, from what I can tell, the materialist argument for NDEs has not really advanced very much since the 70s or 80s.

24:51 Here's Dr. Shushan again. And it's essentially that it's kind of special effects of a dying brain that it's the brain shutting down. Each element of the experience might have a particular explanation associated with it. So lack of oxygen might cause the tunnel experience. That burst of brain activity might cause the panoramic life review. But once you start taking apart each one of them, you find that they just don't really hold up. Partly because if you don't have two people who are both having a life review or two people who are both going through a dark tunnel, then how can you say it's the brain shutting down creating the phenomenon?

25:26 Like for Martha Beck, there was no tunnel or life review. She seemingly went out of body. But what really makes her case stand apart is that the tears of joy she was experiencing under anesthesia were verified by the anesthesiologist himself. A man visibly shaken who understood through no rational explanation that her tears should not be misinterpreted as pain. That kind of validation makes the hallucination theory much harder to stand behind. And it's not just anecdotal. Scientists have been studying just this, comparing hallucinations to near-death experiences to see if the brain alone can really explain what's happening. I'll let one of the study's co-authors take it from here. She's a researcher at the Koma Science Group in Belgium.

26:06 I'm a researcher there and I lead all study on near experiment there. That's Dr. Charlotte Marciel and 10 years ago we started to conduct rigorous research on the topic. Of course, as a researcher, I am not there when people do experience nearless experience. So I have to find a way to understand it to study it and so one of the method that we can use is to use psychedelic to compare the phenomenology the impact and potentially the neurohysiological mechanism underlying both experience. So the researchers wanted to compare a near-death experience to a psychedelic experience. And so first we wanted to just like interview people who did experience both type of experience and then they are able to compare it directly since they they did experience both. We found significant overlap in terms of mystical like effects in both experience. But when we study specifically the sensory effect we found

27:14 a difference. Dr. Dr. Marciel and her colleagues actually found a lot of overlap between psychedelic experiences and near-death experiences. But they also found one big difference.

27:25 Near-death experience were most often associated with disembodiment where people can also be fully dissociated from the physical body.

27:36 Dr. Marciel explains that the biggest difference reported between psychedelic experiences and near-death experiences was the outof body experience. Many near-death experiencers have them and in some cases can accurately describe events or people or objects that they saw while outside of their body, while under anesthesia, in a coma, or even flatlined. This is a hallmark of many NDEs, and it even has a formal name, veritical perception. They see ongoing earthly events, but it's veritical. That means it's verifiable. That means what they see, what they hear during their near-death experience at that time is real. And if they go back and check it out, absolutely real. And in fact, we have a whole series of near-death experiences that when they have that veritical perception, it doesn't necessarily have to be geographically close to their physical body. We have probably hundreds of experiences where

28:30 what they're seeing, what they're hearing is far, maybe even over a mile away from their physical body, far outside of any possible physical sensory awareness. And yet, what they see, what they hear when they check it out later, accurate down to the most minute details. There's several ways they could check it out. They can either go ask people who are there, ask the people who are doing CPR, applying the defibrillator or in the operating room and try to validate their experience. And indeed, like I said, essentially always what they saw, what they heard when they talked to another person is real. Others, when they have that vertical perception, they're simply seeing other objects. They may see a building. They may see the top of a roof. They may see a shoe out on the hospital ledge. And that shoe reference he's talking about is one of the first near-death experience encounters that actually made me pay attention. It's the

29:21 story of a woman named Maria, a patient at the Harbor View Medical Center in Seattle who went into cardiac arrest while she was being resuscitated. She described floating out of her body and seeing a single worn blue tennis shoe, sitting on a ledge outside of the hospital. After she was revived, she told the hospital social worker, Kimberly Clark Sharp, exactly what she saw.

29:44 My name is Kimberly Clark Sharp. The initials after my name or LCSW for licensed clinical social worker, but at the time I found a shoe on a ledge. I was a young social worker, uh, fresh out of graduate school, and I was on the floor when someone was flatlining. It turned out to be Maria. The next day, I was paged by one of the nurses on the coronary care unit to say that Maria was awake and really agitated. English was not her first language. It was Spanish. So, first I had to find a translator. That worked fine. First, she said that she was up in the corner of her hospital room looking down and she pointed to where it was and I was skeptical. Then she said without any idea how she got there, she found herself above the emergency room exit. And then Maria said that she eyeballed a large tennis shoe, dark blue, on a ledge of the hospital.

30:45 She was sure, didn't know where. She had no orientation. She thinks she was three or four stories above the ground. And that's why she was agitated. She wasn't unhappy. She was excited. She knew the shoe was there. So, I started to look and it didn't go well. I went outside looking up at all the stories and that was nine floors. But I couldn't see anything. So, I thought I'll just go inside and I started out on the third floor. I worked my way from the east side where I had found nothing to the west side and about midway west side, not in the same part of the hospital where Maria was, by the way. whole different wing. In fact, I looked down and the shoe was there. It was large. It was dark blue. I mean, it was as she described. It's just that it was such a shock. The room spun in a way. I thought it was going to fade. And I found out what it's like to not be able to support my own body weight. I

31:47 remember the fog of my breath momentarily on the glass. And it was like, and now everything I've ever clung to as a belief is going away with the moisture from my breath because I reached down and picked up the shoe. Kimberly went looking and found the shoe exactly as Maria described it, perched outside, out of sight, on a ledge on a different side of the hospital from where Maria was located. And for me, this really caused me to pause and wonder how on earth could she have known about this unless she truly did leave her body. Here's Dr. Jan Holden again, professor ammeritus at the University of North Texas. The person may or may not perceive their consciousness to be leaving their body. Sometimes people actually feel it. Sometimes they're just suddenly aware that they're outside of their body. They can also move to other locations at what we call the speed of thought. They think of something and

32:49 then boom, they're there. And they can both see and see through things that we normally can't see through. Of the thousands of near-death experiences that Dr. Long has documented, there's one woman's experience with vertitical perception that truly blew his mind. It's the story of a woman who was blind, and she described seeing for the first time during her near-death experience. Her name was Vicki and she was legally blind and she was involved in a severe auto accident in her early 20s. The first time Vicky saw herself, her consciousness was over her body and she was in the emergency room. She was initially horrified because vision was so unknown to her completely. There she was over her body, horrified. When she calmed down, she finally recognized herself by her long hair that she previously only knew by the sense of touch. And interestingly, her father had given her a ring. She only knew it by

33:43 the sense of touch. But boom, she now correlated what she saw in vision with what she'd known by a sense of feel. Vicki went on to have a stunningly detailed visual near-death experience. And Vicki described what many other near-death experiencers describe, and that's 360° vision. For Vicki, her vision was simultaneously aware and processing visual awareness in front of her, back of her, right, left, up, down. Technically, that's spherical 360° vision. I told Vicki that those of us in our earthly life with normal vision, we have like pies-shaped visual fields because of the where our eyes are located in the sockets. And Vicki literally laughed at me. She said, "Well, no, that that can't be." She says,"Wh would you have your vision so constrained?" Because her entire life experience of vision during her near-death experience was that spherical vision that she had. So, yet another nail in the coffin of any skeptical

34:42 concern that near-death experiences are due to brain function. I dug into Vickiy's story and learned that she was blind from birth, which makes her account even more compelling. But as remarkable as her out-of- body perception was, there seems to be a myriad of ways to validate a near-death experience. For instance, when Dr. Shushon looked at historical accounts, he found a fascinating way that most ancient cultures seem to validate these experiences. Throughout history and around the world, they found cross-culturally these narrative accounts of meeting people not known to have died in the other world. It's essentially when the near-death experiencer travels to the other world, they meet somebody who they didn't know had died. And when they come back to life, they that that person's death is is verified.

35:26 These ancient accounts studied by Dr. Shushan are from eras long before there were telegrams or phones or even mail service. So news of a death might take weeks or even months to reach someone. So for our ancestors around the world, you can see why this would be an extremely compelling way to validate a near-death experience.

35:43 There's a really interesting account from ancient China from around 750 B.CE. Um there's a man named Keni who lying there on his deathbed he goes to the other world and he meets the emperor of heaven and he says once he comes back to life he says that he spent this joyous time with this emperor of heaven having just a wonderful time with music and dancing and deceased relatives and all the rest of it. While he's there he sees that standing next to this emperor is a little boy. So then at a certain point the emperor of heaven sends him back to his body. Fast forward a number of years and Kinsey is walking down a street in a totally different province than his own home and blocking his path on the street there's a man who he kind of vaguely recognizes and the man's like making eye contact with him but he won't move out of his way. He's kind of forcing this encounter and Kinsey's looking at him

36:37 and he says do I know you from somewhere? You look really familiar. This is why are you being so so strange? And the man says, "On this particular date a number of years ago, you died. You went to the other world and you met the emperor of heaven." And he describes all these things that happened in the NDE. And Kenzie says, "That's amazing. How did you know that?" And he says, "I was the little boy who was standing next to that emperor of heaven. He had had an NDE, came back to life, and then Kenzie met him all those years later." So this is an example of he didn't even know this person, and then it's later verified in his life years later.

37:12 Can that be verified just beyond this man's incredible story? It was recorded as like an official government document. They they sent people to interview people who were involved in it. Recorded the date and the time and the village and all that sort of stuff. There are quite a lot from China. In fact, there there's a 19th century book by a Dutch scholar named Degrroot who called the religious systems of China and he referenced entire books of collections of near-death experiences that just have not been translated into English. I don't know if they ever ever will be unfortunately, but yeah, they were very much focused on on near-death experiences. So, there are some pretty convincing ways to validate a near-death experience. But perhaps the most compelling evidence lies in the transformation itself. We know from psychology how difficult it is to truly change our behaviors and beliefs. But

38:05 after a near-death experience, people often come back transformed, more compassionate, less afraid of death. And that kind of evidence is just hard to dismiss.

38:15 Usually, they change their behavior, their beliefs. uh and this really changed the the meaning they have about life, about humans. They become more compassionate, less competitive, more concerned about others, and more interested in expressing love to people, which is what happened to Randy Schaefer. He's a dad, a husband, a veteran, and had a near-death experience that rocked his world. I spent 20 years in the military as a special agent in the office of special investigations. I specialized in forensic science. That's what my master's degree is in. And I was in charge of uh crime scene investigation, specializing in death investigation. Now, religiously, I was a bit of a skeptic my whole life because my whole world when I dealt with death involved physical evidence, physical proof of things. My world was intangible physical evidence. Randy got CO in March of 2020, back when the entire world

39:27 stood still and we were all terrified as hospitals were being overrun and doctors didn't have the tools to understand or treat CO.

39:33 I was pretty sick. They put me into a coma, medically induced coma, intubated me. So I was basically living by machine cuz my heart had enlarged. Of course, I was in respiratory failure. I got a collapsed lung, kidney failure. I went on dialysis. I was losing blood internally and they gave me about a 3% chance of living and really started to prepare my family for my demise. I spent 6 weeks in a bed.

40:04 And during those 6 weeks, Randy had a series of near-death experiences. But before those, somehow his consciousness also traveled kind of nearby, watching his family from their homes and intimately witnessing them being worried and accounting for him. I traveled to my house and I was up in the corner of our living room looking down and my middle daughter was sitting on the couch, computer on her lap and she was typing away and my wife was standing at our French doors looking out onto the patio. I remember thinking of how peaceful they were.

40:42 After he came out of his coma, I told him where they were, what they were doing, where they were standing. Randy verified what he saw when he was watching them and even things like this very special little co detail.

40:53 Everybody was isolated. But as Randy slipped to the edge of death, he traveled much further than his family's living room. I remember my consciousness awakening. I was in this long slender tube of some sort. And I remember passing through it very slowly. I remember consciously saying to myself, "Okay, you died, you're dead, but where are we going?" And I remember the tunnel being surrounded by light and I could feel it. It felt warm. I traveled through this tube and I came to the end of it and my consciousness was standing inside a beautiful room. Absolutely gorgeous structure with this light that I felt penetrating through the stained glass windows. I was standing there like on a mezzelene looking down on this gorgeous room of gold and opaque colors so vivid and so real. I just felt peace and very calm. This human form came up to me and you don't talk. It's telepathic. you just know what either each one is thinking and and

42:07 are saying. I communicating with him how beautiful this room was. And he goes, "Yes, it's one of our most loved rooms. The people love coming into this room." He said, "But you don't belong here." He said, "You have to leave." And he pointed to these giant oak doors. And I remember pushing open these doors and I was standing in the middle of a beautiful city. Now, there wasn't any cars, buses, or anything, but I call it a city. The roadways were an opaque color. And I remember traveling down through the city, and off to my both of my sides, I encountered these beautiful parks, beautiful green grass. There is nothing to compare with the beauty that I saw.

42:59 But suddenly I got scared. I was lost and I started to panic and I sat down and I could feel others around me. I was aware of other beings around me and I was yelling out for help but nobody would talk to me. Nobody would encounter me. So I looked off behind me, look over my left shoulder, and here behind me was this beautiful staircase going up as far as I could see. And I said, "If I can get to that staircase, maybe someone will recognize and find me and help me get back." I knew I was dead. I just didn't know how I was going to get back or what I was going to experience uh next. But I remember going up the staircase and suddenly somebody yelled out, "There's Randy. Get him."

43:56 And it was like somebody grabbed me by the scuff of the collar and whisked me right off of that steps. And I was back in my little dark sedated world. Everything went black. But just like Dr. Alexander's experience that we heard about in the beginning of the episode. Randy would go from what seemed to be the dark consciousness of his still body back into this other place more than once.

44:21 I experienced that city for a second time. And each time the same elements were familiar, the staircase, the beautiful city, and sometimes new discoveries were made like a dirt pathway lined with these beautiful flowers and beautiful trees, colors that I've never even experienced before. And again, I felt so safe and so calm and so peaceful.

44:43 And usually, there was someone who would find him and tell him it wasn't his time that he had to go back home. And just like most near-death experiences, that is not welcome news. Most people don't want to go back to their earthly life.

44:57 And I said, I don't want to leave. I said, I love it here and I am home. But every time he was sent back,

45:05 I was back into my little dark, sedated world. until my consciousness awoke another time right at the end of that tunnel that I was talking about earlier. I was right at the end of it and I came out into like a void. It was very late dusk. It was dark but you could still see things. And these orbs of light were coming past me, zooming past me. And this spirit guide came up next to me and again indicated that I needed to follow him. So I started to follow him deeper into this void when suddenly way off in the distance behind me this orb of light catches my attention and came up very fast and he stopped. It almost felt like inches in front of me.

46:02 He was very close. His face materialized just for the quickest second. And he tells me telepathically, "Tell Madison at the salon her grandfather is okay." And the word veteran perpetrated me. I tasted the word. I felt the word veteran, veteran, veteran over and over and over again. And he moved onto a white porch. And he started making red, white, and blue ribbons and American flags. And then suddenly my spirit guide said, "You have to leave and go." and I was gone into my dark sedated world. And that was the last time my consciousness came alive like that. When I came out of my coma, I started to tell my daughter these stories.

47:07 And I told her Madison's story and she says, "Who's Madison?" I said, "I don't know. I'm Madison." You know, and she goes, "You don't use the word salon. You've always said I'm going to get my haircut and going to the barber shop." So then none of that made sense. And she goes, "Who's the man that you saw?" And I said, "No clue. I don't know who it was." I came home from the hospital and I had to learn to walk again. I was so weak and things that I was in a wheelchair and for some reason something pulled me over to a junk drawer in a bedroom and I started rummaging through this junk drawer and I found a business card to a local barber shop here in town and I took it out and I said, "Hey," I said, "Could you call them and see what they're doing for haircuts?" COVID was very ongoing. So, my daughter starts to interrogate me about this card.

48:09 Where did I get the card? Where did I find the card? How long have I had the card? And I kept telling her, I said, "I don't know. I just found it in my drawer." She goes, "Dad, have you looked at this card?" And she handed me the back of the card. And on the back of the card was written Madison. and I said,

48:31 "At this point in our conversation, Randy starts to get emotional, remembering this part of his experience."

48:37 Um, so I told my daughter, I said, "Call, call and make me an appointment with Madison." So we go down and there was maybe four ladies cutting hair and my daughter said, "Dad, do you recognize any of them?" A few minutes later, this girl walks up and she said, "Hi." She goes, "I'm Madison." She goes, "I think you're my I think you're my next client." So, she takes me back and she's cutting my hair and I said, "Madison," I said, "Would you mind if I ask you some personal questions?" And she says, "No, no, go ahead." And I said, "Are both of your grandfathers still living?" And she said, "No." She said, "Um, the one greatgrandfather that I was closest with passed away less than a year ago." I said, "Um, was he a veteran?" And she goes, "Oh, yeah." She said, "He was a veteran." She goes, "I think he was in the army. He talked about Vietnam and things like that." And I said, "Oh." So, I felt that I had the right girl. And I

49:40 said, "Well, Madison," I said, "Um, I think your grandfather came to me." And she kind of looks at me and I said, "I was very sick." And I said, "I was very near death." And I said, 'I believe your grandfather came to me and he has a message for you. And I told her exactly what he said. Tell Madison at the salon her grandfather is okay. And I said, "So he wants you to know he is okay, that he is safe, that he is he's well." So she's crying, I'm crying. You know, people in the barber shop are looking at us like, "What's going on over there?"

50:16 So I said, "Madison?" I said, "He moved onto a white porch. Is that somehow significant to you?" And she says, "Well, that would have been his porch in Iowa. Love sitting on his porch and talking to people as they went by." And I said, "Oh." I said, "Well, he was making red, white, and blue ribbons in American flags. Is that connected somehow?" Kai, she took a step back and she looked at me like I came from a third world. And she said through tears, "He belonged to the American Legion." And every Veterans Day, her whole family would go down and make red, white, and blue ribbons, American flags for their veterans graves.

51:08 So, not only did he give me a message, he told me how I could find Madison, and he gave me information that only her family would know to validate that it came from him.

51:25 I wanted to hop on the phone with Madison's grandmother, the woman who loved John the longest and the most, to see how on earth this story resonated with her.

51:33 He was the love of my life. You know, we grew up together. Our lives inter intertwined since seventh grade until we actually did become partners.

51:44 So Kathy, tell me what happened when Madison called you. I mean, what on earth did she say to you after that encounter the first time?

51:51 She just said, "Grandma, I have something to tell you." And she just started out telling me about Randy. She said it was really sentimental. She said he got to some point, she goes, where I I had to believe him. So then I had asked her if there was any way of getting in touch with him. So um the first phone call that I got was Randy telling me his stories. And when he got to the part about John, I was just kind of flabbergasted and I believed him. But you know how you're skeptical about certain things, you know.

52:35 And she said, "Did you see his face?" And I said, "Yes, just oh so briefly." And I described it. I said, "It was kind of a long face, olive skin, dark hair, uh maybe in his early 20s, mid20s, somewhere in that area." And I said, "I think he had a mustache."

52:56 And then I had sent him a picture of John in the military. young, you know, hair everything.

53:04 She sent me this picture and I looked at it and I called her back and I said, "Kathy, that's who I saw. That's who I saw. That's the face and that's the original that I saw."

53:16 So, it became very believable and Randy and I have talked several times from then till now.

53:22 What makes this account so astounding is John himself. He was so persistent, so devoted to letting his family know that he was okay and out there somewhere that he actually reached out to Kathy before through another person during their near-death experience. A few days after John passed, I was still dealing with the paperwork and I was calling Modern Woodsman, which is like an insurance company here, and I dialed the wrong number, I guess. And this man answered the phone. And I said, "Is this Modern Woodsmen?" And he goes, "No." He says, "Where are you?" And I said, "I'm in Iowa." And he goes, "Well, I'm in California." I said, "Oh, I'm sorry." Sorry. I I was trying to get a hold of him to talk to him about insurance and he goes, "Are you married?

54:12 Has someone passed in your in your household?" You know, he started asking me these questions. So, I said, "Yes, my significant other just passed." And he said, you know, he says, "I just got out of the hospital." He said, "I had a near-death experience." He said, "And and the only thing I can remember is I met a gentleman from Iowa. He had been in the military and he says, "I just want you to know that if if this is your loved one," he said, "He's fine. He's he's okay." So, we ended the conversation and I hung up and to this day, I cannot find that phone number.

54:54 It's like it vanished from my phone. So, I had had this man from California. He told me he was okay. And then and then Randy through Madison that he was okay. So it makes you feel good, you know, to know that he reached out to all these people just to let us all know that he was fine.

55:28 What was your emotional state when he passed? I mean, cuz it really seems like he was trying to reach you.

55:33 When he got sick, he would always say, "Don't leave me." He He didn't want to be alone. You know, that was his big thing. Just don't leave me.

55:42 And he died when he was alone. And that bothered me for a long time, that I had left him. I truly believe now that you can come down and see your loved ones here on earth. How else would John know where Madison worked? He knew that I was in heaven and that we had a remote connection simply through location. And he selected me because of that to get the message to Madison and then on to Madison's family. When you come on an experience like this, you know that there is life after death and that you will see your loved ones.

56:27 It's just another remarkable story about a near-death experience creating connections and lasting impact for people and scientists who want to understand consciousness are taking note. I have even more question than 10 years ago on death, on life. Personally, I think this also influenced the way I see consciousness. I the way I reflect on mind and death. Of course,

56:53 I will say for me personally, that which I took on faith for most of my life, now I have a mountain of evidence knowing that there's an afterlife. And I know something about it. I know that it's infused with love. I know that it's non-physical in every sense of the way. I know time is either radically different or doesn't exist. I know that there's a god there. I know that it's a part of a realm of me, you, and every single person. It's literally the heritage of where we came from and the destiny of where we go.

57:22 And in the end, it's the experiencers, not the experts, who can interpret meaning the best.

57:27 There's been so many times afterwards that I will see somebody and quickly learn that they are struggling because of someone's demise or a close friend passed away and I tell them my story and it always brings them some sort of peace. There is an afterlife and we should look forward to going there. And that's my message. And I believe that I was selected to pass on this message.

57:52 Near-death experiencers describe reunions, lessons, life reviews, a place that feels more vivid and real than here, and a love and peace and acceptance so big that it defies words. If their stories are even partly true, it suggests our minds aren't just biological machines, but they're part of something vast. And if consciousness can survive the body, could it also communicate across that divide? Next time on the telepathy tapes, we'll explore one of the most controversial frontiers of all, mediumship. Almost no group in history has faced more accusations of fraud and deception. But what if there truly are gifted mediums among us? And what if they have to say doesn't just validate near-death experiences, but informs them and us about what it really means to be alive and to die.

58:44 If you want to go deeper, ask me anything or get adfree episodes, subscribe at the telepathy.supcast.com or tap the Supercast link in the show notes. Thank you to my amazing collaborators. Original music by Rachel Kantu, logo and cover art by Ben Kandura Design, audio mix and finishing by Michael Robino. Contributing producer Lori Rubin, and our incredible, hardworking podcast staff, Jill Pachznik, Katherine Ellis, and Selena Kennedy. And I'm Kai Dickens, creator and host.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Season 2, Episode 1: Near Death Experiences and the Continuum of Consciousness"?

In order: 0:00 Non-speakers, Telepathy, Telepathy Tapes, Amelia; 5:00 John Hanks Alexander, Melanesia, Micronesia, Native Americans; 10:00 John Hanks Alexander, life review, Materialism, soul group; 15:00 Dr. Jan Holden, Dr. Jeffrey Long, heavenly realm, life review; 20:00 Dr. Jeffrey Long, general anesthesia, John Hanks Alexander, Near-Death Experience Research Foundation; 25:00 Kimberly Clark Sharp, Koma Science Group, life review, psychedelic experience; 30:00 Dr. Jan Holden, University of North Texas; 35:00 emperor of heaven, ancient China, Office of Special Investigations, Randy Schaefer; 40:00 John Hanks Alexander; 45:00 Diane Madison; 50:00 Diane Madison, American Legion; 55:00 Diane Madison, Telepathy, Ben Kandura Design, Jill Pachznik.

What is mentioned in this The Telepathy Tapes episode?

64 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including John Hanks Alexander, Diane Madison, Telepathy, Non-speakers, Telepathy Tapes, life review. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Season 2, Episode 1: Near Death Experiences and the Continuum of Consciousness"?

The episode runs 59 min; the transcript is about 9,858 words in 119 timestamped sections.

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