Ben Affleck and The Flipside

Rarely do we see how silly "modern science" can be.

"Ben Affleck Asked PBS Not To Reveal Ancestry"

 (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File

First off, let me say I've met Ben an a few occasions, in Cannes where I introduced him to Chantal Cerruti, who offered to outfit him in a suit. (I was wearing one, and was happy to make the introduction.) And then later in Santa Monica, where our kids shared a pre-school - his were stalked by paparazzi in trees hovering over the playground, mine were bouncing around the chicken coop - but he and his wife couldn't have been nicer people. 

Despite playing my way through Boston U via a piano-bar in Charlestown (The Warren Tavern) near his home - other than that proximity, I have no reason to comment on this story, other than... it's nonsense.

She agrees with me. Or at least I hope so.
Taken on the set of my film "My Bollywood Bride"

Forget for a moment, the illegal posting of private emails by Wikileaks (One thing to reveal criminal behavior on behalf of hidden agendas, and another to post emails of people who happen to work for or be affiliated with a company... mine included - as I worked on their film "Salt.")  That's beyond the pale, and for my two cents, its reputation just went into a pail.

But back to Mr. Affleck who is "accused" ("Je Accuse!") of asking a reality TV show to cut out the part where his ancestors owned slaves.

Here's the issue:  Harvard's Robert Gates, who hosts the show, claims Ben (or his reps) asked him to delete that part of the show that revealed Ben's relatives owned slaves:

"PBS and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, host of the show that traces the ancestry of well-known guests, said in separate statements that they didn't censor the slave-owner details. Instead, more interesting ancestors of the actor emerged and Gates chose to highlight them in October's segment featuring Affleck, they said in the statements posted on the PBS website..." 

(Professor Gates is the professor who was arrested on his porch in that tragic "arrested for being black" incident in Cambridge years ago.  Unfortunately, a victim of a centuries old amount of prejudice in the Boston area, where I went to school across the Charles River.)

And then this quote jumped out at me:

"In their email exchange, Gates asks (Sony's Michael) Lynton for advice on how to handle Affleck's request. "Here's my dilemma: confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors--the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?" Gates wrote on July 22, 2014."

Hello?

"The fact that HE OWNED SLAVES."  Now, I imagine he's not referring to Ben Affleck here, because Ben never owned slaves.

Includes an account of someone who did own slaves... in a previous life

But this sentence goes to the heart of why this research into consciousness, into the "Flipside" is so important.  For Ben, and for Gates, who is belaboring under the concept that somehow we are our ancestors (genetically or epigenetically.) 

There's no evidence that we are our ancestors.  We don't have memories of what our ancestors did.  Under hypnosis, during a near death experience, or any other event in human history.  None. (I'm sorry all those relatives of mine, Irish and Italian who celebrate that fact every year with pasta or beer. It's nice to believe we are them, but we ain't. And it shows)

However we have tons of evidence that people have memories of previous lifetimes that weren't, could not be, were in no relation to their ancestors.  Under hypnosis, during near death experiences, and sometimes during a coma, an out of body experience, during an LSD trip - even while being "cleared" during Scientology.  People have "memories" of their previous lifetimes. Memories that can be forensically looked up and proven.

How could that be?

I can tell you what scientists say.  That it's "cryptomnesia" - or somehow remembering something they saw, or heard on tv, or imagined.  Somehow they made up these details - emotions and everything else that goes along with a previous remembrance of a lifetime.

Hypnotherapists in Iowa watching "Flipside" on DVD. 
Available on Amazon, or Gaiam TV.  Nice screening room.

But where are these memories stored?  In our DNA?  Well, that doesn't make sense, because these memories are of different races - sometimes remembering a lifetime as a slave owner (as in "Flipside") or sometimes a lifetime remembered as an Asian monk (in "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife.")  

What people report under deep hypnosis is that these memories are not stored in our DNA, but travel with us in the form of energetic "hard drives" - they're described in various accounts as "fractals" or some other mode of transport that retain all of our memories from previous lifetimes.  And that when we need to access them - moments of clarity, apotheosis, or in moments of fear, or nearly dying - we access them.  

Could they be part of the Jungian "pool" of consciousness, as one scientist has suggested to me?  Well that doesn't make a lick of sense either, because people who remember these past lives, remember the death scene, remember leaving the body, and when asked where they'd like to "go" they inevitably say "HOME."  As all the 26 people I've filmed under deep hypnosis say.  And then, they go "home" - where they claim they meet their loved ones, hang out with spirit guides, and generally plot their next lifetime. 

(I began "Flipside" as a documentary about Michael Newton's work as a psychologist where over 7000 people said the same things under deep hypnosis about the afterlife over 30 years prior to his publishing in 1994.  I've discovered Dr. Helen Wambach, another psychologist got the same results in her studies in the 1960's. So there's plenty of research to back up these accounts.)

I'm not hypothesizing this detail - it's not a belief or a philosophy - it's what thousands have reported.  Consistently.  Which is what science requires.

So let's start there.  

Ben Affleck should know, should be aware that he is not his ancestors.  Any more than the actress who plays Desdemona coming off stage and berating the actor who played Othello for killing her.  "It's in the play!"

(This quote, courtesy of the actress Kathy Bates, who said it at the end of last year's "American Horror Story" - which sums up perfectly what these reports of why we choose difficult lives, but there's only forgiveness in the afterlife.)

Kathy Bates in her "Freak Show" costume

So if Ben had slave owners in his memories of previous lifetimes - which like I say, occurred in someone interviewed in "Flipside" who saw and felt and experienced what it was like to beat and whip people without any feeling for them - and seeing and feeling and experiencing the horror of that experience.  

And then being told by his spirit guides that he had "transferred that anger to himself" and was still working on beating himself up over his past life behaviors, but that he's "doing better now."  (The person is a hypnotherapist, who has healed countless people in his work; Paul Aurand, former President of the Newton Institute).

Gary Schwartz PhD, author of many books 
on consciousness, "Sacred Promise" included.

Harvard's Gary Schwartz PhD wrote the introduction to "Flipside."  (He also got a PhD from Yale and ran one of their medical schools).  He's been at the forefront of studying consciousness existing outside the body, so Professor Gates might want to check into his work. 

Harvard's own Dr. Alexander wrote about his consciousness existing beyond his body.

 Or perhaps Harvard's Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had a profound between life experience as recounted in "Proof of Heaven" (Proof also mean a scientific argument for, by the way) - who has personally experienced consciousness existing outside the brain.  Or perhaps look into the work of UVA's Dr. Bruce Greyson, whose epic work on near death experiences is distilled in the youtube video "Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain" where he demonstrates the many cases where people whose brains are not working, actually work in various cases.

The book by Dr. Greyson, Drs Kelly, interviewed in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife"

(80 mins that will convince you that consciousness is not confined to the brain. UVA's Dr. Bruce Greyson speaking in Dharamsala, reproduced in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife")




But no, you see, people focus on the idea that somehow Ben's stardom might have been affected by this revelation that someone in his genetic tree owned slaves.  And now, here we have the opportunity to prove that's nonsense - that he has no more responsibility for what his genetic forefathers did, than a fruit fly does for being angry that he lives for 24 hours. 

Just like people killing each other in Northern Ireland for the fact that their forefathers were of a particular religion.  There's no evidence they are their forefathers, but there is evidence that they've reincarnated on both sides of the fence.

Just like people killing each other in the Middle East. There's DNA evidence that shows Palestinians and Israelis are nearly identical in their DNA, much more so than those outside their group.  And there's no evidence that people had previously lifetimes in their genetic tree - unless they chose to do so.  And there's plenty of evidence of people reincarnating on "opposite sides of the fence."

Just like slaves and their slave owners.  There's no evidence that people remembered lifetimes as slaves (unless that was a choice they made in a previous lifetime) nor is there any evidence that people were slave owners.  However there is evidence that a boy in Ohio who is white, remembers a lifetime where he was a young girl who died in a fire in Chicago (who was black.)
Here's his story.




"It's in the data.  Data does not lie.  We only lie to ourselves about the data."  (said no one but me)


What the research in "Flipside" demonstrates, (and now in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife") over and over again is that we choose our parents each time out.  We choose our lifetime each time we decide to come here.  Yes, we can choose to be a slave owner, yes, we can choose to be a slave - and we have our own private, personal reasons for making that choice, and none of us can judge another for their choice - because we can't be in their shoes.  

And in this case, Ben chose to be here on the planet, and I applaud him for it.  But he should take this opportunity to look into the research - the real research about who he is, about why he chose to be on the planet.  He'll find it if he looks for it, if he's open to it.  To examine why he chose this particular life, this particular path.

Prior to some screening somewhere on the planet.

And that my friends, is my two cents for the day.

Flipside in the News... Ed Sheeran Et Al

Just wanted to weigh in on some recent news stories that point to the research in "Flipside" and "It's A Wonderful Afterlife."
(On SALE AT AMAZON)

Let's start with the Brit Awards.  While winning his award, the amazing singer and musician Ed Sheeran said:

"Since I was a little kid I dreamed of people all over the world singing my songs and although I've got a long way to go, this shows that I'm stepping in the right direction." Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran, photo: Daily Mail UK

I've asked a number of people "their first conscious thought they'd be doing what they're doing" and often hear of recurring dreams, visions, or "always knew" as if the future lies somewhere under the surface of our reality. 

Not that we're destined, as free will reportedly dictates our path (to accomplish or screw up), but the dreams or visions appear to have little or nothing to do with nature or nurture. Genetics or environment seem to only support the outcome, but its the consciousness of knowing your path that puts one in the "right" direction. (Sheeran quote is buried after Madge's tumble)

I've come across many accounts of people who had profound dreams, recurring dreams or visions of what or who they were to become.  It was also in their behavior in the school yard.  

I asked one FBI agent when she first became conscious of what she might want to do in her life.  She said in preschool, because "I started keeping lists on what people did in school every day. What they wore, what they ate."  (As quoted in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife")

Was she seeing into the future?  Or seeing the path that she'd already chosen for her to be on?  Does it matter?  It does if you're a parent or guardian, and your child says something silly like "When I grow up I'm going to sing music to millions of people."  The answer is, "Cool! Let me get a camera and I want you to say that on camera, because in 20 years, it will be very valuable."

Just like Dave Schultz (the Olympic wrestler, whose story is told in "Foxcatcher") told his father when he was 5 that he "wasn't going to be here very long," but that he had come here to "teach a lesson in love."  (A conversation the father didn't remember until he said it at the eulogy.)  That's a hard pill to swallow - but when you consider the growing mountain of evidence that shows that we don't die - that we are here on stage temporarily, and that those we love have not disappeared, or gone into oblivion, it can be a source of comfort to those who would like to know there is data that backs that up.

Dave Schultz told his dad he wouldn't be here long.

Then, I found this clip, on the anniversary of George Harrison choosing to be on the planet (his birthday), an old friend of mine posted this link to his speaking about death. George says in the clip:

"What happens when you die? That, to me, is the only thing that's of any importance. The rest is just secondary." "If you want to know anything in this life, you just need to knock on the door. Which I found through meditation. It's all within." (At the end a live version of "All Things Must Pass.")  

"What happens when we die, is the most important thing for us to know while we are on the planet."  

Why is that?

Because the answer will inform how you live your life, how you relate to people, how you relate to fear, to stress, to other people behaving badly.  

And finally, a "Near Death Story" with a different outcome:

In the Independent Newspaper in the UK, there's this story about a fellow who "died twice" and both times didn't see or experience anything (consciously) and they use it to report that "nothing happens after we die." No light, no tunnel. Nada. Zip.

Tunnel? Doorway? Different planes of existence? Pixels on a page?  All of the above.

Au contraire.

One person had that experience - an unconscious one - but thousands have had the opposite experience.

We all have different dreams, different experiences of being awake, widely divergent concepts of what being alive is. Or consciousness is. This fella experienced being dead and nothing came to mind. No tunnel of light. Just blankness. 

Never mind thousands have the opposite experience; scientists like Dr. Bruce Greyson at UVA studying cases for decades, Dr. Sam Parnia's published results of the extensive 7 year Aware Study showing consciousness existing outside of dead people, or the 100 cases Mario Beauregard PhD cites in his neuroscience research where people had no blood to the brain for minutes, and yet saw, heard new information from their "out of body" perspective. 

I got pals all over the planet.  These fellas are in Kashmir. Made me a rug.

Some people are actually convinced nothing happens after we die. Sorry to say, it's just not in the data.

Finally, if you want proof of the afterlife, I suggest you watch this clip.  In it, author David Bennett ("Voyage of Purpose") recounts his near death experience where he saw into the future and saw that he would be diagnosed with cancer that would only give him months to live, and then survive it (knowing he would survive it, because he'd already seen that he would). His case has been examined by science: Dr. Greyson at UVA.  I'll let him describe his experience in his own words:



My two cents.

"Flipside" and "It's A Wonderful Afterlife."
(On SALE AT AMAZON)

Deepak Chopra's Million Dollar Consciousness Challenge

Deepak Chopra's One Million Dollar Challenge to the Skeptics

“Please explain the so-called normal, how does electricity going to the brain become the experience of a 3D world of space and time. If you can explain that, then you get a million dollars from me."  

Deepak Chopra 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6GqgBK5Qo

So the world's foremost "gadfly of consciousness" has issued a challenge (ala the skeptics of the planet and "the amazing randi" and his "million dollar challenge" to prove ESP) to prove what "reality" is.  (for randi's challenge: http://www.skepdic.com/randi.html)

Let's start with the definition of skeptic.  

The definition of skeptic is: 

A person who doubts the truth or value of an idea or belief: (Cambridge Edition) or

noun

1.

a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something 
purporting to be factual.

2.

a person who maintains a doubting attitude, as toward values, 
plans,statements, or the character of others.

3.

a person who doubts the truth of a religion, especially Christianity, 
or of important elements of it.

4.

(initial capital letter) Philosophy.

1. a member of a philosophical school of ancient Greece, the earliest
2. group of which consisted of Pyrrho and his followers, who
3. maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible.
4. any later thinker who doubts or questions the possibility 
5. of real knowledge of any kind.

A skeptic is someone who doesn't believe in the prevailing school of thought.  

And the prevailing school of thought about consciousness is this: it all arises in the brain. 

Forget for a moment about the "paranormal."  Let's define "normal" for a moment. 

What's happening in the brain? Why is it self aware or thinking?  When a child remembers a past life are they delusional? When a person hears a voice and steps back from a speeding car racing by, and no one is around - who told them to step back?  Is everything we see and hear created by the brain?  

Or is it created somewhere else?

I would argue that Deepak's challenge to prove reality - or consciousness - is like those who want to disprove the paranormal.  First we have to agree on the definitions of what we're talking about - and in so doing we have to agree on each particular word, perhaps even agree on the particular letters. Skeptic or sceptic.  We can't even agree on the danged word to begin with.

But let's put this to rest, shall we?  Let's answer the million dollar challenge.  "Explain the so-called normal, how does electricity going to the brain become the experience of a 3D world of space and time?"  

The answer is pretty simple. 
(Profoundly simple, simply profound.)

Consciousness works just like an FM receiver works.  The brain is an instrument that has been honed and altered over millennia, but functions the same way that an FM receiver does.  

The consciousness receiver by Yamaha

There are filters to keep certain information out (below 20 Hz or above 20K hz aren't accessible) the amperage only goes so high, the output is onlyo so many watts per channel, otherwise we would blow the speakers.  The receiver is off when it is in the womb, until about the 4th month (according to the many reports I've gathered from NDEs or LBLs) and then the receiver is turned on (people claim we "merge" with the fetus around the 4th month). 

There's a lot more information that is available to the receiver then it initial receives while it boots up. 

It takes about 7 years for all the circuits to actually form and shape themselves until the back and forth ability to experience other wave lengths eventually becomes moot. (Just the way some kids can remember past lives but no longer do after the age of 7 or 8 - others can experience other dimensions or pick up signals from other realms (just the way bees can see other visible spectrums), and others have different frequencies accessible to them, as mediums do).  

But ultimately, the receiver is accessing information that is being broadcast to it - it translates that information into dreams, hopes, and consciousness.  

Each receiver is different, or at least different enough so that no two circuit boards are the same (even identical twins have different dreams and moments of consciousness - sometimes they can feel what the other twin is feeling, but that's because the receivers are so similar - but not exactly the same.)

However, there is a fundamental difference in this model that I'm describing, and this is why it's worth a million bucks.

Because it's not based on karma or previous editions of the same receiver - the conscious mind exists as a sub unit in this other realm, or the realm outside the receiver and CHOOSES which receiver its going to work with based on a number of factors that have mostly to do with compassion (or agreements, or helping others). 

Not all receivers have all their dials and switches intact however, and when a person chooses a faulty one things can go awry - it's a bit like cranking up the tunes, turning all the dials to 10 at once - you may think that's going to work in theory, but it can actually overheat the system, blow speakers, or cause damage to the system.  However, you wouldn't know that unless you tried it once or twice.  (or over a few lifetimes).

I've laid this all out in my work; "Flipside: ATourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife" (#1 in all its genres at amazon twice) and the two volumes of the new work that interviews scientists that prove my theory (called "It's A Wonderful Afterlife" - volume one is available now, and volume two soon to come.)  This theory is based on the past 6 years of filming people under deep hypnosis, and then expanding the research into near death experiences, out of body experiences, and the scientists who have been on the cutting edge of studying consciousness (Dr. Bruce Greyson at UVA - see his "Is Consciousness Created by the Brain?" on youtube) and Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist in Montreal (wrote "Brain Wars") RobertThurman and Gary Schwartz PhD ("Sacred Promise"). 

When you combine the research you can see pretty clearly that the brain functions as a receiver of information - but like an FM receiver in your home, it is limited by its construction but at the same time can play some pretty awesome tunes.  

The music isn't created by the machine itself, but it does an amazing job of translating waves and energy into sound.  The same happens with the brain, but in a much more multifaceted, multidimensional way - but the function is the same.  

Consciousness doesn't come straight from the source to our unit - then all the units would play the same song.  We exist as fully formed individuals between lives, and send about a third of our spirit energy to any particular incarnation. (This is based on the over 10K interviews done under hypnosis by Dr. Michael Newton and Dr. HelenWambach).  

According to one person we would "blow the circuits" if we brought too much energy to a lifetime.  Just the way we would "blow the circuits" if we had all of our consciousness downloaded into the FM receiver at once.

When we come here, we do so to learn and teach - and there are filters in place so we don't remember all of our previous lifetimes.  A bit like random access memory (RAM), so that not all the information is accessible at one time.  That function is two fold - we don't spend all day thinking about all of our different lifetimes, and we're able to focus on the obstacles and joy in the one we're currently in.  

We spend our lifetime (or life of the FM receiver) making people happy (happy tunes) or sad (catharsis is involved) as we affect and change and learn from every song we play, every function we perform. And at the end, our circuits eventually burn out.  However, just like the many studies of the brain, people do suddenly access their consciousness at death - in England, the reports are as high as 70% of nurses with alzheimers patients that claim in the last minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days prior to death, they suddenly are lucid and remember their lifetime with clarity. (For the cite for this see the above talk given by Dr. Greyson - it's statistical research, not hopeful speculation.) 

And after these folks have died, autopsies reveal that their brain was not capable of these "higher functions" - that there's no earthly or physical reason they should have been able to be fully conscious and speak with clarity about their lives. 

The reason is because as the brain and body have died, the filters that keep out consciousness have "died" as well - and are shut off.  Unfortunately it's only for a few minutes, or hours, or even days - but it allows loved ones to say goodbye. What I'm talking about her are scientific results that are consistent and are replicable.  And at the heart of science is the idea that if you can repeat an experiment under certain conditions, whatever the result is the answer, whether we like that answer, whether we believe that answer, whether it's worth a million dollars or not.  

And that, my dear Deepak (whom I met once many years ago in La Jolla) is the answer to your million dollar question.  The electricity that goes to the brain functions just like the electricity that goes to power up a receiver of music.  

It's not the receiver that is creating the 3D experience, the electricity is just powering up the unit that receives, processes and filters the information its receiving (which you could call radiating waves of consciousness (in a back and forth conversation with our higher selves) that allow us to experience reality.  

Once all the circuits of the receiver are up and running, it can process its own myriad of information, including bodily function - but the "mind" or "consciousness" that makes us aware of our world around us comes from elsewhere, works with the circuits in the particular unit and creates (or helps formulate) who we are in temporary, yet high fidelity form. Crank up the volume.

Hope this helps.  Rich Martini

For the book It's A Wonderful Afterlife:
https://www.createspace.com/4733624

Flipside Documentary Gaiam

In Kindle and book

Flipside in Kindle or Book

Near death, explained  Dr. Mario Beauregard, who I interview in the next edition of "Flipside" talks about the research that both he and Dr. Greyson at UVA have been doing into consciousness and the brain. Oh, and the KINDLE VERSION OF FLIPSIDE IS ON SALE FOR 99 CENTS:  

Near death, explained

New science is shedding light on what really happens during out-of-body experiences -- with shocking results.

MARIO BEAUREGARD

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TOPICS: NEUROSCIENCE, SCIENCE, EDITOR'S PICKS, LIFE NEWS, ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

Mopic via Shutterstock

This article was adapted from the new book "Brain Wars", from Harper One.

In 1991, Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Pam Reynolds felt extremely dizzy, lost her ability to speak, and had difficulty moving her body. A CAT scan showed that she had a giant artery aneurysm—a grossly swollen blood vessel in the wall of her basilar artery, close to the brain stem. If it burst, which could happen at any moment, it would kill her. But the standard surgery to drain and repair it might kill her too.

With no other options, Pam turned to a last, desperate measure offered by neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Spetzler was a specialist and pioneer in hypothermic cardiac arrest—a daring surgical procedure nicknamed “Operation Standstill.” Spetzler would bring Pam’s body down to a temperature so low that she was essentially dead. Her brain would not function, but it would be able to survive longer without oxygen at this temperature. The low temperature would also soften the swollen blood vessels, allowing them to be operated on with less risk of bursting. When the procedure was complete, the surgical team would bring her back to a normal temperature before irreversible damage set in.

Essentially, Pam agreed to die in order to save her life—and in the process had what is perhaps the most famous case of independent corroboration of out of body experience (OBE) perceptions on record. This case is especially important because cardiologist Michael Sabom was able to obtain verification from medical personnel regarding crucial details of the surgical intervention that Pam reported. Here’s what happened.

Pam was brought into the operating room at 7:15 a.m., she was given general anesthesia, and she quickly lost conscious awareness. At this point, Spetzler and his team of more than 20 physicians, nurses, and technicians went to work. They lubricated Pam’s eyes to prevent drying, and taped them shut. They attached EEG electrodes to monitor the electrical activity of her cerebral cortex. They inserted small, molded speakers into her ears and secured them with gauze and tape. The speakers would emit repeated 100-decibel clicks—approximately the noise produced by a speeding express train—eliminating outside sounds and measuring the activity of her brainstem.

At 8:40 a.m., the tray of surgical instruments was uncovered, and Robert Spetzler began cutting through Pam’s skull with a special surgical saw that produced a noise similar to a dental drill. At this moment, Pam later said, she felt herself “pop” out of her body and hover above it, watching as doctors worked on her body.

---

Although she no longer had use of her eyes and ears, she described her observations in terms of her senses and perceptions. “I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar,” she said. “I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not.” She also described the Midas Rex bone saw (“The saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it … ”) and the dental-drill sound it made with considerable accuracy.

Meanwhile, Spetzler was removing the outermost membrane of Pamela’s brain, cutting it open with scissors. At about the same time, a female cardiac surgeon was attempting to locate the femoral artery in Pam’s right groin. Remarkably, Pam later claimed to remember a female voice saying, “We have a problem. Her arteries are too small.” And then a male voice: “Try the other side.” Medical records confirm this conversation, yet Pam could not have heard them.

The cardiac surgeon was right—Pam’s blood vessels were indeed too small to accept the abundant blood flow requested by the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, so at 10:50 a.m., a tube was inserted into Pam’s left femoral artery and connected to the cardiopulmonary bypass machine. The warm blood circulated from the artery into the cylinders of the bypass machine, where it was cooled down before being returned to her body. Her body temperature began to fall, and at 11:05 a.m. Pam’s heart stopped. Her EEG brain waves flattened into total silence. A few minutes later, her brain stem became totally unresponsive, and her body temperature fell to a sepulchral 60 degrees Fahrenheit. At 11:25 a.m., the team tilted up the head of the operating table, turned off the bypass machine, and drained the blood from her body. Pamela Reynolds was clinically dead.

At this point, Pam’s out-of-body adventure transformed into a near-death experience (NDE): She recalls floating out of the operating room and traveling down a tunnel with a light. She saw deceased relatives and friends, including her long-dead grandmother, waiting at the end of this tunnel. She entered the presence of a brilliant, wonderfully warm and loving light, and sensed that her soul was part of God and that everything in existence was created from the light (the breathing of God). But this extraordinary experience ended abruptly, as Reynolds’s deceased uncle led her back to her body—a feeling she described as “plunging into a pool of ice.”

Meanwhile, in the operating room, the surgery had come to an end. When all the blood had drained from Pam’s brain, the aneurysm simply collapsed and Spetzler clipped it off. Soon, the bypass machine was turned on and warm blood was pumped back into her body. As her body temperature started to increase, her brainsteam began to respond to the clicking speakers in her ears and the EEG recorded electrical activity in the cortex. The bypass machine was turned off at 12:32 p.m. Pam’s life had been restored, and she was taken to the recovery room in stable condition at 2:10 p.m.

Tales of otherworldly experiences have been part of human cultures seemingly forever, but NDEs as such first came to broad public attention in 1975 by way of American psychiatrist and philosopher Raymond Moody’s popular book Life After Life. He presented more than 100 case studies of people who experienced vivid mental experiences close to death or during “clinical death” and were subsequently revived to tell the tale. Their experiences were remarkably similar, and Moody coined the term NDE to refer to this phenomenon. The book was popular and controversial, and scientific investigation of NDEs began soon after its publication with the founding, in 1978, of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS)—the first organization in the world devoted to the scientific study of NDEs and their relationship to mind and consciousness.

NDEs are the vivid, realistic, and often deeply life-changing experiences of men, women, and children who have been physiologically or psychologically close to death. They can be evoked by cardiac arrest and coma caused by brain damage, intoxication, or asphyxia. They can also happen following such events as electrocution, complications from surgery, or severe blood loss during or after a delivery. They can even occur as the result of accidents or illnesses in which individuals genuinely fear they might die. Surveys conducted in the United States and Germany suggest that approximately 4.2 percent of the population has reported an NDE. It has also been estimated that more than 25 million individuals worldwide have had an NDE in the past 50 years.

People from all walks of life and belief systems have this experience. Studies indicate that the experience of an NDE is not influenced by gender, race, socioeconomic status, or level of education. Although NDEs are sometimes presented as religious experiences, this seems to be a matter of individual perception. Furthermore, researchers have found no relationship between religion and the experience of an NDE. That is, it did not matter whether the people recruited in those studies were Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, or agnostic.

Although the details differ, NDEs are characterized by a number of core features. Perhaps the most vivid is the OBE: the sense of having left one’s body and of watching events going on around one’s body or, occasionally, at some distant physical location. During OBEs, near-death experiencers (NDErs) are often astonished to discover that they have retained consciousness, perception, lucid thinking, memory, emotions, and their sense of personal identity. If anything, these processes are heightened: Thinking is vivid; hearing is sharp; and vision can extend to 360 degrees. NDErs claim that without physical bodies, they are able to penetrate through walls and doors and project themselves wherever they want. They frequently report the ability to read people’s thoughts.

The effects of NDEs on the experience are intense, overwhelming, and real. A number of studies conducted in United States, Western European countries, and Australia have shown that most NDErs are profoundly and positively transformed by the experience. One woman says, “I was completely altered after the accident. I was another person, according to those who lived near me. I was happy, laughing, appreciated little things, joked, smiled a lot, became friends with everyone … so completely different than I was before!”

However different their personalities before the NDE, experiencers tend to share a similar psychological profile after the NDE. Indeed, their beliefs, values, behaviors, and worldviews seem quite comparable afterward. Importantly, these psychological and behavioral changes are not the kind of changes one would expect if this experience were a hallucination. And, as noted NDE researcher Pim van Lommel and his colleagues have demonstrated, these changes become more apparent with the passage of time.

Some skeptics legitimately argue that the main problem with reports of OBE perceptions is that they often rest uniquely on the NDEr’s testimony—there is no independent corroboration. From a scientific perspective, such self-reports remain inconclusive. But during the last few decades, some self-reports of NDErs have been independently corroborated by witnesses, such as that of Pam Reynolds. One of the best known of these corroborated veridical NDE perceptions—perceptions that can be proven to coincide with reality—is the experience of a woman named Maria, whose case was first documented by her critical care social worker, Kimberly Clark.

Maria was a migrant worker who had a severe heart attack while visiting friends in Seattle. She was rushed to Harborview Hospital and placed in the coronary care unit. A few days later, she had a cardiac arrest but was rapidly resuscitated. The following day, Clark visited her. Maria told Clark that during her cardiac arrest she was able to look down from the ceiling and watch the medical team at work on her body. At one point in this experience, said Maria, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. She was able to provide several details regarding its appearance, including the observations that one of its laces was stuck underneath the heel and that the little toe area was worn. Maria wanted to know for sure whether she had “really” seen that shoe, and she begged Clark to try to locate it.

Quite skeptical, Clark went to the location described by Maria—and found the tennis shoe. From the window of her hospital room, the details that Maria had recounted could not be discerned. But upon retrieval of the shoe, Clark confirmed Maria’s observations. “The only way she could have had such a perspective,” said Clark, “was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”

This case is particularly impressive given that during cardiac arrest, the flow of blood to the brain is interrupted. When this happens, the brain’s electrical activity (as measured with EEG) disappears after 10 to 20 seconds. In this state, a patient is deeply comatose. Because the brain structures mediating higher mental functions are severely impaired, such patients are expected to have no clear and lucid mental experiences that will be remembered. Nonetheless, studies conducted in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States have revealed that approximately 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors do report some recollection from the time when they were clinically dead. These studies indicate that consciousness, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings can be experienced during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity.

NDEs experienced by people who do not have sight in everyday life are quite intriguing. In 1994, researchers Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper decided to undertake a search for cases of NDE-based perception in the blind. They reasoned that such cases would represent the ultimate demonstration of veridical perceptions during NDEs. If a blind person was able to report on verifiable events that took place when they were clinically dead, that would mean something real was occurring. They interviewed 31 individuals, of whom 14 were blind from birth. Twenty-one of the participants had had an NDE; the others had had OBEs only. Strikingly, the experiences they reported conform to the classic NDE pattern, whether they were born blind or had lost their sight in later life. The results of the study were published in 1997. Based on all the cases they investigated, Ring and Cooper concluded that what happens during an NDE affords another perspective to perceive reality that does not depend on the senses of the physical body. They proposed to call this other mode of perception mindsight. 

Despite corroborated reports, many materialist scientists cling to the notion that OBEs and NDEs are located in the brain. In 2002, neurologist Olaf Blanke and colleagues at the University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland described in the prestigious scientific journalNature the strange occurrence that happened to a 43-year-old female patient with epilepsy. Because her seizures could not be controlled by medication alone, neurosurgery was being considered as the next step. The researchers implanted electrodes in her right temporal lobe to provide information about the localization and extent of the epileptogenic zone—the area of the brain that was causing the seizures—which had to be surgically removed. Other electrodes were implanted to identify and localize, by means of electrical stimulation, the areas of the brain that—if removed—would result in loss of sensory capacities, linguistic ability, or even paralysis. Such a procedure is particularly critical to spare important brain areas that are adjacent to the epileptogenic zone.

When they stimulated the angular gyrus—a region of the brain in the parietal lobe that is thought to integrate sensory information related to vision, touch, and balance to give us a perception of our own bodies—the patient reported seeing herself “lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” She described herself as “floating” near the ceiling. She also reported seeing her legs “becoming shorter.”

The article received global press coverage and created quite a commotion. The editors ofNature went so far as to declare triumphantly that as a result of this one study—which involved only one patient—the part of the brain that can induce OBEs had been located.

“It’s another blow against those who believe that the mind and spirit are somehow separate from the brain,” said psychologist Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, which seeks to debunk all kinds of paranormal claims. “In reality, all experience is derived from the brain.”

In another article published in 2004, Blanke and co-workers described six patients, of whom three had experienced an atypical and incomplete OBE. Four patients reported an autoscopy—that is, they saw their own double from the vantage point of their own body. In this paper, the researchers describe an OBE as a temporary dysfunction of the junction of the temporal and parietal cortex. But, as Pim van Lommel noted, the abnormal bodily experiences described by Blanke and colleagues entail a false sense of reality. Typical OBEs, in contrast, implicate a verifiable perception (from a position above or outside of the body) of events, such as their own resuscitation or a traffic accident, and the surroundings in which the events took place. Along the same lines, psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia commented that “We cannot assume from the fact that electrical stimulation of the brain can induce OBE-like illusions that all OBEs are therefore illusions.”

Materialistic scientists have proposed a number of physiological explanations to account for the various features of NDEs. British psychologist Susan Blackmore has propounded the “dying brain” hypothesis: that a lack of oxygen (or anoxia) during the dying process might induce abnormal firing of neurons in brain areas responsible for vision, and that such an abnormal firing would lead to the illusion of seeing a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Would it? Van Lommel and colleagues objected that if anoxia plays a central role in the production of NDEs, most cardiac arrest patients would report an NDE. Studies show that this is clearly not the case. Another problem with this view is that reports of a tunnel are absent from several accounts of NDErs. As pointed out by renowned NDE researcher Sam Parnia, some individuals have reported an NDE when they had not been terminally ill and so would have had normal levels of oxygen in their brains.

Parnia raises another problem: When oxygen levels decrease markedly, patients whose lungs or hearts do not work properly experience an “acute confusional state,” during which they are highly confused and agitated and have little or no memory recall. In stark contrast, during NDEs people experience lucid consciousness, well-structured thought processes, and clear reasoning. They also have an excellent memory of the NDE, which usually stays with them for several decades. In other respects, Parnia argues that if this hypothesis is correct, then the illusion of seeing a light and tunnel would progressively develop as the patient’s blood oxygen level drops. Medical observations, however, indicate that patients with low oxygen levels do not report seeing a light, a tunnel, or any of the common features of an NDE we discussed earlier.

During the 1990s, more research indicated that the anoxia theory of NDEs was on the wrong track. James Whinnery, a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M, was involved with studies simulating the extreme conditions that can occur during aerial combat maneuvers. In these studies, fighter pilots were subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. Such rapid acceleration decreases blood flow and, consequently, delivery of oxygen to the brain. In so doing, it induces brief periods of unconsciousness that Whinnery calls “dreamlets.” Whinnery hypothesized that although some of the core features of NDEs are found during dreamlets, the main characteristics of dreamlets are impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, confusion, and disorientation upon awakening. These symptoms are not typically associated with NDEs. In addition, life transformations are never reported following dreamlets.

So, if the “dying brain” is not responsible for NDEs, could they simply be hallucinations? In my opinion, the answer is no. Let’s look at the example of hallucinations that can result from ingesting ketamine, a veterinary drug that is sometimes used recreationally, and often at great cost to the user.

At small doses, the anesthetic agent ketamine can induce hallucinations and feelings of being out of the body. Ketamine is thought to act primarily by inhibiting N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, which normally open in response to binding of glutamate, the most abundant excitatory chemical messenger in the human brain. Psychiatrist Karl Jensen has speculated that the blockade of NMDA receptors may induce an NDE. But ketamine experiences are often frightening, producing weird images; and most ketamine users realize that the experiences produced by this drug are illusory. In contrast, NDErs are strongly convinced of the reality of what they experienced. Furthermore, many of the central features of NDEs are not reported with ketamine. That being said, we cannot rule out that the blockade of NMDA receptors may be involved in some NDEs.

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger has claimed that he and his colleagues have produced all the major features of the NDE by using weak transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the temporal lobes. Persinger’s work is based on the premise that abnormal activity in the temporal lobe may trigger an NDE. A review of the literature on epilepsy, however, indicates that the classical features of NDEs are not associated with epileptic seizures located in the temporal lobes. Moreover, as Bruce Greyson and his collaborators have correctly emphasized, the experiences reported by participants in Persinger’s TMS studies bear little resemblance with the typical features of NDEs.

The scientific NDE studies performed over the past decades indicate that heightened mental functions can be experienced independently of the body at a time when brain activity is greatly impaired or seemingly absent (such as during cardiac arrest). Some of these studies demonstrate that blind people can have veridical perceptions during OBEs associated with an NDE. Other investigations show that NDEs often result in deep psychological and spiritual changes.

These findings strongly challenge the mainstream neuroscientific view that mind and consciousness result solely from brain activity. As we have seen, such a view fails to account for how NDErs can experience—while their hearts are stopped—vivid and complex thoughts and acquire veridical information about objects or events remote from their bodies.

NDE studies also suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness. Needless to say, this view is utterly incompatible with the belief of many materialists that the material world is the only reality.

Excerpted with permission from “The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives.” Courtesy of HarperOne.

Mario Beauregard is associate research professor at the Departments of Psychology and Radiology and the Neuroscience Research Center at the University of Montreal. He is the coauthor of "The Spiritual Brain" and more than one hundred publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry.

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