169. Near Death Experiences 2

0:36 And welcome back to the Infinite Rabbit Hole. I'm your host Jeremy. And today we're going to go ahead and wrap up our coverage on near death experiences. We're going to start off with Doctor Grayson's last point and then we're going to go ahead and jump into some of other people's research and then we're going to jump into some of the science and maybe a topic here and there as well before we get started. And then I don't want to take too long. Go ahead and rate US five stars if you would, please. Without further ado, travelers, let's go ahead and jump right into this. No waiting here today. We'll see you on the other side. And DES are life changing.

1:19 The last piece of evidence for the belief that there is an afterlife comes from not something that happens during the experience, but rather what happens afterwards. Many people who experience an NDE no longer fear death, have a greater appreciation for life, and often times begin to seek out ways that they can help others who fear this transition or are suffering from something that has them knocking on death's door. Many even claim to have been either permanently or temporarily given gifts of supernatural psychic type that puts them more balance with those that are around them. Although there are many who come out of an NDE with a new positive look on life, there are plenty that come out and have a very negative outcome from the experience. Typically, this does not come from the experience itself, rather it comes from the time after the experience. Many people will mention their experience to their healthcare professional who was active in their events or to their general health practitioner.

2:15 This is usually the point in which the experience becomes negative as they are made to believe that the visions were induced by drugs or lack of oxygen. Sometimes the negative events don't happen with a doctor, but rather happen when they discuss their experience with a family member or friend. Many have reported being ridiculed over the admittance of an NDE, with the other person claiming that they are looking for attention, were on drugs, or were just generally lying. This of course would present a negative experience to anyone and would push someone into the shadows of life more than they ever were. Now the experience not only makes them ashamed of being accused of lying, but they also now don't feel safe enough to actually discuss this experience with anyone, even in a productive manner. While doing my research and reading book after after book after book about Ndes, one topic kept coming up and that was the fact that many people who come forward once about their experience will never come forward again if the first time is a negative reaction.

3:13 I have found statistics that claim 15 to 20% of those that suffer an event that nearly or actually does kill them report having an NDE. But there are many who believe that this number could be much higher. But those who have had the experience will not come forward due to fear of a negative experience from those that they trust with their information. But those that do come forward with their story do end up having a new positive look on aspects of their lives and their attitudes. There also seems to be a phenomenon with those that do nearly die but don't report an NDE or even claim that there was no way that they experienced an NDE in which the person who nearly died or was pronounced dead at some point changes their life habits, attitude and their personality in some way.

3:58 Could this mean that they did have an experience and will mention it at some point? Or maybe that they had an experience, they do not remember it. Or maybe there is something more to the aspect of death and effects that it has on a human's life. One day we may find out, but we'll cover that in another episode. According to a study by PMH Atwater in Jeffrey Long's book Evidence of the Afterlife, Atwater claims to have found that it takes the average Nder about seven years to fully understand, mentally recover and integrate back into their normal lives after an NDE. But no matter the study, it seems that a common conclusion is that the experiencer tends to come out with a new look on life, which most typically comes out positive.

4:41 With such changes as quote more self-confidence, stronger sense of spirituality, they reduce interest in material gainer status and a greater appreciation of life, says Long. Other studies have also found that these positive outcomes also come with such changes as a belief in the sacredness in life, a sense of a godly presence and understanding of meaning and life's purpose and awareness of the needs of others, increased value of love and peace, a decreased fear of death, an increased belief in the afterlife and a goal to live a more fulfilling life. The other detailed One of the most commonly reported descriptions from a near death experience come from the process of death itself, that being the famous white light that appears to you, and just prior to that is the third person view or out of body experience that you have of your dying body. Numerous reports claim to have one or the other experience, and in most cases in which the white light is discussed, the third person view is also present.

5:43 Among some of the other common details that are described are that the experiencers still sees themselves as a physical being, with a few others reporting that they were more of a light or essence. Experiencers often come across a guide of some sorts, which is commonly described as a loved one who has previously passed on or someone who gives off the feeling of being the one who can best be described as God. But no matter who this guide ends up being, there seems to regularly be a period of re establishment into the afterlife that this guide helps you through as you remember who you really are. This brings to attention one of the most famous cases of Ndes ever, that being the case of neurosurgeon Even Alexander in 2000, 1008, when he was medically induced into a coma while fighting a bacterial infection in his brain known as meningitis.

6:30 While in the coma, his situation grew worse as pus began surrounding his brain and was given a very slim chance of survival. But on day 6 the coma, he surprised everyone and opened his eyes. At first he had symptoms of confusion and amnesia as well as having difficulty controlling various parts of his body, but a few days later everything began to return to normal. It was then that he began talking about his out of body experience he had while comatose. He described an incredible peaceful feeling, a light that brought him out of his body, watching people pray over his body in the most shocking detail of a young female that acted as a guide for him while away from his body. He was completely unaware of who she was and did his best to explain her features, but nobody knew who he could possibly be talking about. Well, a few months after the coma, Dr. Alexander, who was adopted at birth, found his biological parent and that is where he found out that he had a biological sister who passed away 10 years prior.

7:28 One looked at a picture of her and he knew exactly who his mystery guide in the afterlife was. More on this case in a future episode of The Infinite Rabbit Hole. In Doctor Grayson's book after, Grayson points out a detail that he saw fluently in his research subjects and to ease the workings of the mind while experiencing one of these events seem to work at a much higher and perfect efficiency while thinking, speaking not verbally and the processing of information quote. What I found is that many of them did report that their thoughts become much faster, clearer, and more logical than usual. This not only affects the mind, but seems to also affect the senses of hearing and vision in many cases as well. Many experiencers detail incredible colors or lights that they cannot explain with human words, ones that they have never seen or could even conceptualize from their earthly perspective. The same goes for the sense of hearing, as many specifically detail the ability to hear every single detail of the area in which their near death experience took place. In Grayson's book titled After, he quotes a man by the name of Greg Gnome who drowned after going over a waterfall. Suddenly I could hear and see as never before. The sound of the waterfall was just so crisp and clear that it really is indescribable.

8:44 Another important detail that was outlined by Grayson is a seemingly different perception of time. He highlights in many different accounts which describe a lack of time or time that was moving much slower in the physical world. Experiencers have regularly described how their events it felt like hours, days, months or even years, but in reality only a few seconds or minutes had passed in the physical world. And the last commonly described detail is the environment of the afterlife. To be clear, there are typically two different categories of environments commonly described, one of which is in the setting of the cosmos where you are surrounded by infinite black. In some cases this is amongst stars, planets, black holes, quasars and nebulas, and in other cases this is simply just a void lacking any color whatsoever.

9:31 The second category of environment is more earthbound or human experience, which comes in the shape of a building with a long hallway with many rooms attached for processing, or a beautiful garden with many experiencers reporting both. A modern look at an ancient mystery In Jason Hewlett and Peter Wren's book Dying Light, an investigation into near death experiences, Hewlett discusses a more modern technique to the research going on into the phenomenon of near death experiences. Through this chapter of the book, he dives into conversations with Andrea Soto of Western University's Brain and Mind Institute in which they discuss the usage of test mining and AI technologies to help extract information from 158 different written accounts of near death experiencers. This process began by asking experiencers to write down whatever they remember from their experience in an essay format without any limitations.

10:27 The purpose of this was to remove the limitations of multiple choice answers and attempt to rid the possibility of creating a false memory in the person who is being surveyed. The very first thing they did with the information compiled by 158 different accounts was to look for repeated words and what their frequency was. While using AI technologies, they found that there were some 30 different descriptive words that were used on regularity like light, tunnel, body and death. The word light was discovered to appear in 106 accounts of the 158 or 67% tunnel showed up 55 times. So Do then goes on to describe what exactly they did, with the information paraphrased by Hewlett as quote.

11:09 If words like light and tunnel are present in all the documented cases, there is substantially no distance between them. Says so Do. If words like light and tunnel are present in all the documented cases, there is substantially no distance between them. If a word is present in one account but not in any other, there is a great distance between them. By taking this step they were then able to discover that positive toned words show up much more frequently like sea and light, and when compared to negative tone words like death and fear. After this step they looked at the specific position of these terms and whether or not they were used to describe the general experience or just a small portion of it, or possibly even the time before or after the experience took place.

11:57 This then showed that the vast majority of the actual near death with experiences that were recorded were viewed as a positive experience by the person who experienced them. They were also able to discover that most accounts describe certain details, such as a light or tunnel, and some even described a tunnel of light science. In the 1950s, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield of the McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute became the most well known name in the studies involving the mapping of the brain and what areas are responsible for what action. His studies were based around patients who suffered from seizures that were not made better with medication.

12:40 According to the website clevelandclinic.org, a seizure is a medical condition where you have a temporary unstable surge of electrical activity in your brain. When that happens, the affected brain cells uncontrollably fire signals to others around them, which overload the areas of the brain. In the 1950s, the answer to this was to find the area of the brain that was causing the seizures and remove it. Penfield's process for finding the culprit section of the brain was to apply small shocks of electricity to various parts of the patient's brain in order to force the condition causing the patient to seize was to apply small shocks of electricity to various parts of the patient's brain in order to force the conditions causing the patient to cease. Side note, this does not hurt by the way, because the brain does not have any pain receptors.

13:25 So through these trials he found that by applying a small dose of electricity to different areas of the brain, he could make people smell things, swallow as if they were eating food, say random phrases, claim that they felt like they were spinning or standing up even when they were laying on their backs. He went to run tests on various areas of the brain on 1132 different patients, with only two claiming to experience anything resembling a symptom of an out of body experience. One of which, according to Doctor Grayson, occurred when Penfield removed the electrical current from the patient's brain, which caused the patient to then claim that it felt like he was leaving his body, and another patient claimed to feel as if they were halfway there and halfway somewhere else.

14:09 But other than these two cases, there is nothing in Penfield's reports that point to anything resembling an out of body experience. A popular skeptical argument against Ndes, or more specifically the out of body experience and the life review, come from the idea that the brain may be firing off one last finale of electrical pulses in the areas of the brain that stimulate memories and other feelings or actions. This is easily put to test due to the fact that the EE GS show that brain activity reduces after about 6 seconds after the heart stops and all signs of brain activity are completely gone after another 10 to 20 seconds without ever having a spike from the input of electrical data. Therefore, there is no increase of electrical activity that is responsible for this phenomena.

14:54 One last thing I would like to touch on one last thing before I end this presentation. In Doctor Bruce Grayson's book after he touches on a concept that was considered for apparently many centuries that he loosely refers to as the filter model. The filter model hypothesizes that the brain is a filter and without it our consciousness or mind is unfiltered. The filter exists to reduce the amount of input data that our senses can perceive so that we do not become overstimulated. Rather, it controls the contents and the amount of said contents in order to allow for only the information and knowledge that is necessary for survival.

15:34 Grayson quotes the Greek philosopher Hippocrates from over 2000 years ago stating the brain is the most powerful organ of the human body, for when it is healthy it is an interpreter to US of the phenomenon that gives U.S. intelligence to conscious. The brain is the messenger. Wherefore I assert that the brain is the interpreter of consciousness. He uses this quote as a way to prove that the belief that the brain and the mind have been considered to be two different entities for a very long time, although there was a time between then and now that this was not the case. This way of thinking seems to be making AU turn, though, with many neurologists and other doctors or scientists referenced in Grayson's book being of the belief that the mind and the brain are independent of each other. Almost immediately after his quote from Hippocrates, he quotes an English philosopher from the early 1900s name Aldous Huxley as saying quote.

16:26 The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by his mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically used. As far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, many at large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system which comes out. On the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. Yet again, this quote highlights the belief that the brain acts as a filter for our survival.

17:10 And when you think of the many things that can go medically wrong with the brain, all of which will alter our ability to perceive or use the information that is given to us, this filter model that Grayson refers to starts to make sense. Now, this part is only my own theories based on how I interpret the information outlined by Grayson and the others that I researched after learning of this hypothesis. I am not a neurologist, nor do I claim to have any specialty in any critical field that qualifies me to make these assumptions, so please do not take it as fact or as if it were coming from anyone else's mind other than my own. But in order to make this whole thing make sense and to show why I brought this up in the first place in order to make it all connect for me, I see it as possibly a flow of stages of existence. First, we are born.

17:55 Our physical bodies enter this world with a brain that is completely blocking out all knowledge and experiences that we will slowly get later as our lives go on. Our minds are a blank slate and our brain is a tool that we use to filter specific information to gradually give us everything we need to survive and only that information. This, as Grayson points out, is our brain's way of ensuring our overall safety by controlling the inputs of information to our minds. This will make more sense soon. As we grow, our brain learns that there is more and more information that is required for survival and slowly filters less and less until we get to our peak knowledge and experience near death and old age. Those that experience an NDE have their minds separated from their physical bodies which removes the filter that is the brain.

18:41 This would explain the reports of new colors, sounds, feelings, the flow of infinite knowledge, the peacefulness, the ability to move around without the constraints of a physical body, and the feeling that this experience is the true reality as compared to the one where the brain filters everything. Then as those come back from their NDE, they find it hard to be able to explain in words what it was that they experienced since their brain is once again acting as a filter of our knowledge and we no longer have the tools to express what we experienced. The very loose comparison I can make to what I am trying to say is to think of our lives as humans on earth as the necessary process of the birth of a mind. Sort of like that of a Caterpillar and a cocoon.

19:22 To become a butterfly, our minds do need this physical form. Why that is, I don't know yet, and it seems important due to our overall obsession of survival in the brain acting as a filter against extra voices or bombardment of information entering our minds that would undoubtedly distract us to the point of possible insanity, ultimately removing us from the goal of survival. Those that experience Ndes commonly claim that they are told to return to their physical body to finish something or to gather information about something unknown. This would make sense that the process of going through a physical state is important. Finally, as our bodies begin to decay and the filter of our brain begins to close up, we enter the waning hours of our physical lives, and as we die, our minds are released into the afterlife, fulfilled in the goals of our physical selves.

20:10 The cocoon breaks open. And we spread our wings for the first time, ready for all the information and experiences that are waiting for us in our next reality. Well, that's it travellers. That is my coverage of the Near Death experience. Again, like I said in the introduction, if you have had an experience with an NDE, please let us know. We'd love to have you on the show. I I would love to talk about your experience. I, I find this stuff absolutely incredible and mind blowing. Like I said, this has changed my life, or at least the view on my life.

20:58 And I'm, I'm really excited to, to dive into it even more. I would be pretty surprised if you guys didn't get another episode of Ndes somewhere down the line. I just feel like there's more to this topic. I do have a couple more books I would like to order and read. So yeah, of course. You know, I think it's natural to say that there may be a third episode coming at some point. But until then, travelers, let us know how you think of the podcast. Hit us up with a 5 star rating or review. Anything you can possibly do to help us out would be phenomenal. Until next time travellers, I'll see you in the next fork, the path of the infinite Rabbit Hole. Goodbye.

21:42 I would like to thank you once again for tuning into the Infinite Rabbit Hole Podcast. Please make sure to give us a follow in one of those beautiful five star ratings on your podcast player of choice. If you would like to join the conversation and stay up to date on all things Infinite Rabbit Hole, head on over to Facebook and search for the Infinite Rabbit Hole Facebook group. You'll know it's us when you see the logo. If you would like to help contribute to the 'cause, there are a few ways to do so. First, head on over to anchor dot FM forward slash infant Rabbit Hole and click on the subscribe button where for $5.00 a month you'll get access to all our old episodes that will never see the free spotlight ever again.

22:25 It's horrible stuff, but if you're into that kind of thing then go check that. Second, head on over to infiniterabbithole.com and click on the IRH Merch shop tab and grab yourself a sweet T-shirt sticker or whatever else you see that you wouldn't mind on. Until next time travellers, I'm Jeremy, and I'll see you at the next fork in the path of the infinite rabbit hole. This line represents the time as of 19. 85 Future Past Prior to this point in time, somewhere in the past, the timeline viewed into this candle, creating an alternate 1985 alternate tune near Einstein.