Life after death? What about life before death?

Life after death.

We all have opinions about it.  "Do you believe in it?"  I always answer "I don't believe in anything."  Belief implies something unknowable, something hard to pin down.  I prefer "not to believe."  Belief implies a leap of faith, like "since you can't see it, or understand it, your brain has to go on hold and then you have to accept that you can't know it - so therefore, you just gotta believe."

Charles Grodin wrote the Foreword to Volume One of "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" Chuck believes I'm from another planet, so in fact, I may be right about everything else.

I do believe the sun will set and rise tomorrow.  That's generally the rule of things.  I can't rule out that it won't, as we know.  It's possible that the Earth could stop spinning, and we just stop spinning in space altogether.  Not likely.  But possible.

I feel the same way about death.  Based on the research I've been doing and have done, I think it's a joke that was foisted on people for a long time.  "Hey look, Larry's not moving. We'd better bury him because the animals are going to come and eat him, and if those vultures look at me for lunch, I'm outta here."

Pretending to be Picasso with a long sparkler

But hang on. Even Plato reported a near death experience. Talked about the time one of his pals died - was considered dead - for ten days, then came back and talked about it.  And he saw all kinds of battles he was involved in in previous lifetimes.  The first case of NDE.  Somehow it didn't take.

So now we have scientists studying NDE's - the Aware project just released its results and Dr. Sam Parnia says "Yes, when we have an NDE - without any blood to the brain, no oxygen to the brain - we still have consciousness."  Bruce Greyson at UVA has studied thousands of near death experiences.  And people generally say the same things about them.

I interviewed Bruce Greyson for my latest book. I interviewed neuroscientist Mario Beauregard about it - said the same thing. Interviewed Gary Schwartz PhD, and he says the same... damn... thing.  Science can prove evidence that consciousness exists beyond our lifetime.

But no one seems to be listening.

I've been filming people under deep hypnosis for the past five years - over 25 sessions in all, I chose the subjects, some friends, many skeptics - but all of them had the same damned experience.  They saw and experienced a previous lifetime and then saw themselves in the life between lives realm where they discovered other amazing - unbelievably amazing things - in these sessions.

What did they find?

Well, start with everyone has a guardian angel.  Everyone.  Call him or her a spirit guide - or "higher self" - but we all have one.  Some of us have more than one.

One of my guardian angels. No really. And I took the pic.

We all have a soul group, or classroom of souls that we incarnate with.  We were all formed at the same time (after or before the big bang, it doesn't matter, they claim this process is outside of time, and they haven't even seen "interstellar") - there's a gaggle of people we hang out with between lives, that we interact with during lives.  Look around the room, you're probably sitting with one of them right now.  Maybe you're avoiding them.  Maybe you're loving them or hating them.  But they've always been familiar to you.

We all have a council that guides us.  Bunch of older wiser souls who gives us a heads up between lives.  They don't judge us - that's for us to do during our past life review - but they help us look over what we learned from our previous lifetime.

A parking lot of bodies in Paris

And we've been doing that for time immemorial.  Or a long time.  Some are new - but most of us are old.

So what about population boom? Where'd the new souls come from?

I can only answer with what they claim; this ain't the only merry go round.  People can incarnate here or elsewhere, and it appears a lot of folks "want" to be here on earth at this particular time.  They say why, but it's not apocraphal.  Suffice to say, it's a good time to be here.  Like a good party.

I've seen people with severe illnesses lose their illness during these sessions.  One, an acclaimed writer, who teaches at a famous film school, who has severe parkinsons - lost it during her session.  I filmed it.  It was gone.  Her finger twitched for the full 6 hours - and that was about it. When she came back to consciousness, it came back with her.  I filmed a woman with agorophobia who examined the reasons for that, and then I filmed her swimming.  I filmed a guy with a life long kidney problem, and it virtually disappeared during his session (but has come back to a lesser degree now).  That fellow is in the film "Flipside."

I hear dead people.

I've been gathering these reports about the afterlife for a couple of reasons.

One is to wake people up.  If we're going to want to come back here - and we don't have to if we don't choose to, there's not power in the universe forcing us to do anything, including "karma" - we reportedly choose each lifetime for a reason - to understand the energies behind it.

We choose lifetimes with stones in our path so we can learn what it's like to step around over or through those stones.  This ain't me talking - this is the thousands of cases that Michael Newton has done, and the 25 I've filmed - they all say the same things.

Am I inside looking out? Or outside looking in?  Still can't decide.

Relatively.

They don't say the EXACT same things.  When they talk about going to a "library of souls" they describe a library they know - always different.  Sometimes with stacks, sometimes with screens, sometimes with scrolls - I've yet to hear two similar libraries.  So that either means there's a billion libraries up there - out there - or it means that our experience in the afterlife is somewhat similar to our experience here.  Our consciousness helps create what we experience in the afterlife - so think about that for a moment.  Live in fear, you're going to find some fear back there (that is, until your soul group shows up and says "Hey, dude, enough with the brimstone.")  I've actually seen that happen twice in a session.  Therapist asks "Do you want to stay here or go somewhere else?"  "Let me out of here" and it dissolves behind them.

So the good news is we don't die.

Me in a past life with Robert Towne and Caleb Deschanel on the set of "Personal Best." I told Robert I was born to play the track meet manager.  He said "with a goatee."  So I shaved my beard, which is what my hands are looking for.

The bad news is we don't die.  We get to come back here, or go somewhere else, or hang out with our loved ones - but to work hard on the next incarnation.. and we may have lots of them.  It's a lot of learning, a lot of study (a lot of classrooms as I've reported in all three books) where we learn about the transference of energy, or the energy of transference.

All I can say definitively is this:

If you can find a Michael Newton trained hypnotherapist that is highly recommended by others (they have a website at newtoninstitute.com) there is no other modality I'm aware of that can give you the same experience of a near death experience without the death part.

Would you take this guy seriously?  You're not alone. Most don't.

So if you want to know why you're on the planet, why you're going through what you're going through, or even to connect to loved ones who appear to no longer be here - it's the single most powerful thing you can do for your soul.

I don't do these sessions.  I'm not trained to do them.  (although I've dabbled with a few, but warn my friends they may no longer speak to me afterwards).

I can recommend a number of them and do so in my books "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" volumes one and two.  For a list, check out the end of the book, or look online for a book talk. Here's one:


I post this with love and light and praise for the courage of choosing the difficult path you've chosen in this lifetime.  And for the courage to figure out what the hell that's all about.

Did your kids choose you? Or did you choose them? Just ask.

Rich

Dr. Bruce Greyson on "Consciousness without brain activity."

Evidence that life goes on.

Dr. Greyson presents some of the scientific evidence for consciousness without a functioning brain.

I would call this "Proof that life exists after death from a scientific perspective" but of course that would be putting words into his mouth.

But listen carefully to what he's saying.

He also graciously allowed me to interview him for the book "IT'S A WONDERFUL AFTERLIFE" which is now available on kindle and in print.

It's only a few minutes, and will change the way you view consciousness.

Then there's this, from Mario Beauregard PhD - who is also in the same volume as Dr. Greyson.

Thank you both for granting me interviews!!!!

Analyzing John Brooks Dream about the winning goal in the US World Cup match

Analyzing John Brooks’ Dream About Scoring The Winning Goal

United States' John Brooks celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the group G World Cup soccer match between Ghana and the United States at the Arena das Dunas in Natal, Brazil on June 16, 2014.Ricardo Mazalan—AP

• Alice Park @aliceparkny
 

June 17, 2014

Two days ago, US soccer player John Brooks dreamed about the game-winning he goal he made. Here’s what science says about that

Wouldn’t it be nice if our dreams were like a crystal ball that foretold our future? That every night as we slumbered, we’d learn if we’re going to get a raise, or win the lottery, or, if you’re like soccer player John Brooks, find out you will use your head to score a last-minute goal in a World Cup game?

Last night, the soccer player scored a goal in the 86th minute, which was an unlikely turn of events because he was not a starting player—in fact, he’s a back-up defender, and defenders hardly ever get substituted. When asked about the goal, he said he dreamed it—even the part about it being after the 80-minute mark and using his head to get the ball in the goal.

Of course his dream was not literally “predictive” but it begs the question: Can dreams prime us for success in waking life?

THIS IS NOT ACCURATE. HIS DREAM WAS 'LITERALLY PREDICTIVE.' HE DREAMED HE WAS GOING TO BE SUBSTITUTED. (HE WAS) HE DREAMED HE WAS GOING TO WIN THE GAME WITH A HEADER. (HE DID) HE DREAMED HE WAS GOING TO DO IT IN THE 80TH MINUTE (IT WAS THE 86TH). HE TOLD HIS FRIENDS ABOUT IT (WITNESSES).  IF THIS ISN'T PREDICTIVE, THEN WHAT IS?

Dreams (are) a combination of what we have already experienced and the things that occupy our minds during the day, says Antonio Zadra, professor of psychology at University of Montreal who studies dreams. “People have dreams related to their current concerns and preoccupations,” says Zadra. “In all of these players’ cases, [playing in the World Cup] is an ongoing drive, so it’s not surprising that it impinges on their dreams.” 

MIGHT HAVE ASKED MARIO BEAUREGARD, NEUROSCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL, AUTHOR OF "BRAIN WARS" IF CONSCIOUSNESS IS RELEGATED TO THE BRAIN; HIS RESEARCH SHOWS THAT IT IS NOT. SAME AS DR. BRUCE GREYSON AT UVA. SCIENCE SHOWS THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT NECESSARILY CREATED IN THE BRAIN.

And Brooks, like any good player, would likely want to prove his prowess on the field, making it likely that would show up in his dreams. And it makes sense that he dreamed of making the goal in the 80th minute, late in the game, since he isn’t part of the starting lineup.

HE COULD HAVE CHOSEN ANY MINUTE UP TO THE 90TH TO WIN THE GAME. WHY CHOOSE THE 80TH? THE QUESTION SHOULD BE - WHY WAS HE SIX MINUTES OFF? NOT "WAS HIS DREAM PREDICTIVE?"  IT WAS. THIS SCIENTIST QUOTED IS INACCURATE. ARTICLE DIDN'T FACTOR IN THAT IT WAS RARE HE WAS SUBSTITUTED, AND NO SUB HAS EVER SCORED A GOAL IN THE HISTORY OF THE US TEAM.

Still, says Zadra, dreams can be self-fulfilling. Similar to the way that visualization works, Zadra says that having positive dreams can feed into real-life outcomes. “During REM sleep, all the areas of the brain responsible for controlling motor behavior are activated as if you were awake,” he says. “If you are dreaming of skiing or scoring a goal or playing the piano, your brain is actually commanding all the motor areas as if you were awake.” Part of the brain stem inhibits the actual movement so you don’t hurt yourself while you sleep, but as far as your brain is concerned, you “live” whatever you dream.

“If Brooks dreamed that he scored the goal, all of that feeds into his instinctive reactions, and it’s one more positive thing going into the instinctive and instantaneous decisions that he makes on the pitch.”

Of course, the flip side is that negative experiences in dreamland can have make you feel less confident and potentially less capable in waking life. So while it’s not exactly “scientific, “what your first coach and your parents always told you is probably good advice: think positive, and good things will happen. Maybe.

'HOW DID JOHN BROOKS KNOW HE WAS GOING TO WIN THE GAME?' IS THE QUESTION. I WISH IT HAD BEEN ASKED.

Okay, that's Time Magazine's version.

They didn't address the dream AT ALL.

This athlete, who was the least likely man to score a winning goal in this game - a team HE'D NEVER PLAYED WITH THE US TEAM IN A MATCH.  Let me repeat that. It was his first time playing with this team in a match.

He dreamed it was a HEADER. Not a kick with his foot. Not a bicycle kick, or something really spectacular like Pele's many winning kicks.  It was EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.
He dreamed it was in the 86th minute. He was 6 minutes off.

The point is - this is an one more FLIPSIDE example - ABSOLUTE PROOF - that consciousness isn't created by the brain.  This event happened two days prior in his head. He witnessed the future - or the future presented itself to him in some manner, like the slice of a hologram.

I myself have had the exact same thing happen to me.  When I was going to school in Rome in 1975 I dreamt I met Lina Wertmuller on an elevator and she was wearing white framed glasses. I told my friends. I had never met her, but knew of her films.  Two years later, I saw she was in San Francisco where I was working and asked a magazine if they wanted me to interview her. (I remembered the dream). They asked me to interview Giancarlo Giannini instead. So I did. But the day I went to meet him in the lobby of the hotel, I was in the elevator when it stopped on her floor and she got on wearing white framed glasses. EXACTLY AS I'D DREAMED IT TWO YEARS BEFORE.  Not kind of. It was not my desire to know her, to meet her, to have anything to do with her at that point in time. I had yet to be in film school.  But after the interview, I did pursue a career in film, which I've been doing for the past umpteen years.  So - the dream occurred, it eventually did have an effect on my life. BUT IT WAS NOT WISHFUL THINKING.

How could John Brooks have created this dream in advance and then it occurred? Modern materialist science has no answer for it.  And within this Time Magainze article, they don't offer one.

Well - there is an answer. It's in the research done by Bruce Greyson at UVA. It's in the research done by Gary E Schwartz at University of Arizona. It's in the research by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard. and it's in the research I've done for the book and film FLIPSIDE.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT NECESSARILY CREATED BY THE BRAIN.

Let me say it again. Consciousness isn't necessarily in our brains in the first place.  John Brooks dreamt he was going to score the winning goal, with a header, after being substituted into the game, in the 80th minute. He told his friends about the dream. They can corroborate what he said.  HE SAW THE EVENT IN ADVANCE.

It was not WISHFUL THINKING.  There's nothing wishful about it. Why not wish for a running kick? Why not for a "Bend it like Beckham" goal? Why the 80th minute? Why after a substitution? 

No sub in the history of the United States team has EVER SCORED A GOAL during match play.  So there's no reason for him to have dreamt it, because it had never, ever happened. And the likelihood of his being called upon to score the goal is extremely small.  The odds of this happening are not calculable.

So why not say so?  Why pretend that it's something in the realm of possiblity when it's not?

The answer is that if you examine the data, the research behind NDEs and LBLs, you'll find that consciousness may not be created by the brain.  If you want a scientist lecturing about it, WATCH THIS.  If you want to learn about it for yourself, then READ THIS.

Happy to say that I will examine this case and many many others in the next installment of FLIPSIDE

IT'S A WONDERFUL AFTERLIFE.

Thank you. (Oh, and nice goal John. Thanks for sharing your dream as well!!!!)

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.

MORE MARIO BEAUREGARD.

Flipside Redux

Flipside Redux: Received an amazingly generous donation from a Pulitzer prize winning author for the sequel to Flipside. How cool is that? I'm in the midst of transcribing interviews with neuroscientists (Mario Beuregard, Bruce Greyson) interviews with scientists (Gary Schwartz) with hypnotherapists (Pete Smith, Scott De Tamble) about the latest research and reports from the afterlife.

I made a documentary (FlipsideTheFilm.com) about what thousands say about the afterlife under deep hypnosis; the book became a best seller in its genre at Amazon (#1 twice - FlipsideTheBook.com) and I took to crowd funding to help finance the sequel. I've been filming between life sessions with a number of friends, strangers, also gathering sessions from therapists nationwide, and interviewing post materialist scientists about their findings that coincide with the research I've been doing.

The new book explores near death experiences and how they coincide with between life hypnosis and scientists weigh in on the evidence they've found that consciousness can exist outside the brain. There are some other surprises inside, interviews with folks I didn't know I'd be able to reach. Right now it's weighing in around 500 pages, and I'll pare that to something that won't hurt your hands or mangle your kindle.

The research is basic, the results less so. What they report is;We don't die. That's the good news. The bad news; we don't die. Meaning, we've got a mountain of new lifetimes, adventures, and lessons to learn about why we chose this particular lifetime, those we've affected or helped (or hurt) during it, and how in the future we can learn from those explorations.

The book is not based on belief, philosophy or a desire - just eyewitness accounts from people who've taken this trip, and the scientists who corroborate what they're saying. Shy of a near death experience, it's the closest I've found where people have a consensus about what happens in the afterlife. Stay tuned, and thanks for the support. http://www.gofundme.com/FlipsideTheSequel

Proof Consciousness exists outside the brain

Proof consciousness exists outside the brain. Given two years ago by Dr. Greyson of UVA, (interviewing him for the next edition of "Flipside") 90 mins of scientific (peer reviewed case studies) evidence the mind works just peachy when our noggin is switched off. In some cases better. Why does it matter? Think about it. And don't shoot the piano player.  http://youtu.be/sPGZSC8odIU

As long as materialist scientists rule the allocation of funds for studying this sort of thing, we'll see materialist results. However, scientists like Dr Greyson, Dr Kelly ("Irreducible Mind") or Dr Beauregard ("Brain Wars") neuroscientists, psychiatrists, physicists are allowing the data to lead them in a new direction. Looking for funding outside the box of traditional sources is the way of the future. As Dr Greyson says in his talk, it was xerox founder Chester Carlson who funded his program at UVA. Tons of money gives people access to new ideas, and there are folks who want to help science find the light at the end of the tunnel. If you can, watch the entire talk - it's pretty MIND BLOWING.  

Dr. Greyson is pretty much the foremost authority on near death experience, (NDE) and is the foremost scientist studying it. This talk is from his nearly 1000 cases. As he says in the talk:

"this evidence is not accepted or known by most American scientists – nevertheless it is there, and it is reliable and reproducible evidence – we have cases of people whose brains have been deteriorating for years suddenly think clearly on their deathbeds, people who function normally sometimes with high intelligence who have virtually no brain tissue, NDE experiencers who think more clearly than ever when their brains are not functioning, and we have very young children who can barely speak, who talk about their past lives with accurate details. These phenomena, all well investigated by modern scientific methodologies, and building upon decades or centuries of prior research, strongly suggest that under extreme circumstances, consciousness can be produced and can function without the intercession of the phsycial brain." 

If you'd like to invest in the next edition of "Flipside" please click on this link: http://www.gofundme.com/FlipsideTheSequel

Flipside Two Book news

Many thanks to NY Times, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Bill Vlasic for making a generous donation to the completion of this next edition of "Flipside." His "Once Upon A Car" is a must read to understand the history of Detroit, the bailout, and what's behind the politics of that arena. A generous fellow! Thank you!



Speaking of "Flipside" am nearing the end of my interview phase with scientists. I had an amazing chat with Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist in Montreal who explained what "post materialist" science is about, and his theory that the human body may function as a kind of television set for consciousness, complete with its own set of filters (V chip?) for accessing certain kinds of information.  His book "Brain Wars" talks about the research he's done using EEG and fMRI to understand more fully what's going on in the brain when someone is having a near death experience.  He cited 5 studies that have examined 100's of cases where are person has died during cardiac arrest, there's no blood to the brain, and yet they come back to life with accurate reports of what they saw in the operating room, conversations doctors had, even in adjoining rooms in the hospital.


Just got the great news that I'm going to be able to submit some questions to Dr. Bruce Greyson and Dr. Edward Kelly - authors of "Irreducible Mind" - Both at UVA, Dr. Greyson is considered "the father of near death studies," and Dr. Kelly is a cognitive neuroscientist who has written extensively on consciousness outside the body. (Their 800 page book on "Psychology for the 21st century" is required reading)  I'm hopeful to get their opinions on this research into the idea that consciousness exists outside our mental framework.

I had a lively discussion with an Oxford trained Neuroscientist who teaches at one of my alma maters, who telling him about "Flipside" repeatedly said "I don't believe a word you're saying." He also lumped me in a group of "Hollywood people trying to cash in on new age nonsense."  But he revealed that he once had a mystical experience where he was in a gymnasium and felt Jesus was jogging alongside him.  I pointed out that there's no rational logic for why he thought that to be the case (He agreed, and felt he'd imagined it) but when discussing the actual "feeling" of knowing that someone was running next to him, he said the same words people do under hypnosis, or during an NDE about things they witness; "I just knew it was him."

I pointed out that "knowing" implied that he'd met the fellow before, else how would he "know" someone unless he'd met them previously? And further, people claim to see Jesus often during NDE's - of course non Christians don't - but how do these people know that it's Jesus they're meeting? Is he wearing a name tag? Could it be someone else pretending to be Jesus?  Again - they have this feeling of "knowing" who is in front of them - I don't doubt that, but how can you know who someone is if you're meeting them the first time? (unless it's not)

Which is what I'm trying to explore. If we can experience things outside of our conscious minds that include "knowing" or "remembering" or "reliving again" or "between lives" - logic tells us either they're accurate or they are not. If they are not, then why have thousands had nearly the same experience when they've not met each other, read anything that related to their experience, or for other reasons could not be making it up? (I point to some of these cases in "Flipside").  If they are accurate - or are based on some universal objective truth - then they bear further scrutiny.  If only to understand what the heck we're doing on the planet.

Someone sent me this pic - oddly looks like me, but not me.

Oddly enough, is me.

Again, thanks for your contributions - I know this is an odd way to ask for support, but it came to me - if Lorenzo de Medici could pick artists out of an academy and tell him he'd like to support them (as in the case of an 11 year old Michelangelo) is it that much of a leap to imagine artists of any era should find create ways to help fund their work?  We're not talking "the David" here - but most folks don't know Michelangelo won that piece of marble in a competition, found a flaw in the marble, and built the statue around the flaw by following it to its end and beginning there (David's left knee, according to my professor sculptor Peter Rockwell when I took his class in Italy). And young Buonarotti was only 25.

I'm just looking for the flaw in the idea that consciousness exists only in the brain and beginning there.