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March 4, 2006 - Art Bell

02:29:48

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Dr. Sam Parnia - Near Death Experiences

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01:01:43

dr sam parnia

01:02:38

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right now the lead story this hour is a real shocker in my opinion.
		A lead story on the Associated Press basically is Army to launch probe into Tillman death.
		What's up with this?
		The Army said Saturday it's going to launch a criminal investigation into the April 2004 death of Pat Tillman, the former professional football player who was shot to death by fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in what previous Army reviews had concluded was an accidental shooting.
		Colonel Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesperson, said the Defense Department Office of Inspector General at this, had reviewed the matter at the Army's request and concluded that a criminal probe was warranted.
		Wow.
		That one, in my opinion, is definitely in the shocker category.
		And then this gliders tracking whale calls and ocean waves.
		Now listen carefully.
		Ocean scientists can now plunge into the middle of the sea without ever leaving their offices.
		Six-foot, 100-pound underwater gliders, underwater gliders, and they show one of these things, are swimming the oceans of the world and dutifully sending data home on everything from whale calls to the massive waves produced by hurricanes.
		Several ocean scientists reported on the use of underwater gliders at the biannual ocean sciences meeting this week, sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.
		How interesting is that?
		Now, if they've got, it looks like an airplane.
		All right, they've got a little photograph of it.
		Looks like an airplane.
		Can you imagine this thing is gliding underwater and reporting back on everything that it sees?
		Now, most of our planet is water, right?
		The only time we get UFO reports are pretty much when they show up over land.
		But it seems to me, particularly if they don't want to be seen, that UFOs, and we've certainly had reports from ocean-going vessels and captains and people like that, that they have seen unidentified objects entering and leaving our oceans.
		So this thing, you know, if they gave us the information, would pick that up, right?
		So if there's something going on in the biggest part of our world, the oceans, now we've got something down there to tell us about it.
		I mean, you know darn well the nuclear subs we've got down there and others have down there are not going to report on anything like that.
		They'd never report one of those to steal a line, right?
		But these are civilian scientists.
		They might report on one of those things.
unidentified		Huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely fascinating.
		I think absolutely fascinating.
		I'd sure like to see the data that comes back from those underwater gliders.
		Did you have any idea that was going on?
		We're going to have open lines for the balance of this hour shortly.
		But right now, before I forget it, which I have a tendency to do, let's break.
		Last night, I gave you a number of headlines.
		I'd like to fill you in on a few of the details right now.
		Again, repeating what James Hansen said from this Boston article.
		And he, remember now, he is the number one man at NASA on climate.
		So take his words seriously.
		He said those models, rather, the models he's using, reveal a miserable situation at present, but a dire one in the years ahead.
		In his December speech to the Geophysical Union, he noted that carbon dioxide emissions are now, quote, surging well above the point where damage to the planet might be limited.
		Speaking to a reporter from the Washington Post, he put it bluntly, having raised the Earth's temperature one degree Fahrenheit in the last three decades, we're facing another increase of four degrees over the next century.
		That would imply changes that constitute practically a different planet.
		The technical terms for those changes include drought, famine, pestilence, and flood.
		Well, hey, that almost sounds biblical.
		It's not something we can adapt to, he said.
		We can't let it go on another 10 years like this.
		And that's what makes him so dangerous now.
		He's not just saying the world is warming.
		He's not just saying that we're the cause.
		He's saying we have to stop it.
		Now, not wait yet a few decades more while Exxon and mobile keep making record profits.
		Not wait a few decades more until there's painless new technology, something like hydrogen cars that let us drive happily into the future, not even wait a few years until the current admin can cut and run from Washington.
		The President indeed recently said, we've become addicted to oil, which according to the Boston Globe is a little as though Abe Lincoln suddenly noticed the South had slaves.
		So, you know, that's a man I think you all, all of us, should be listening to.
		Now, this article, remember last night, if you were listening, last night there was some discussion of feedback.
		So listen to the following Carefully, this is not from a minor source.
		This comes from ABC News, Point Barrow, Alaska.
		Recently, it was another beautiful sunny day out on the Arctic tundra.
		It may sound nicer that way, but it's a big problem for Earth.
		You know, that place we live, folks.
		Scientists say the warm weather adds to global warming because of, here it comes, feedback loops.
		In a feedback loop, the rising temperature on the Earth changes the environment in ways that can create even more heat.
		Scientists consider feedback loops the single biggest threat to civilization from global warming past a certain point.
		The tipping point, they say.
		There may be no stopping the changes.
		No matter what you do, in other words, no matter what you do, no matter what you stop driving or stop emitting, it's going to keep going.
		Scientists working on the Arctic report that feedback loops are underway right now.
		As the frozen sea surface of the Arctic Ocean melts black, essentially back and to black, there is less white to reflect the sun's heat back into space and more open dark water to absorb the heat, which then melts the floating sea ice even faster.
		That's what they mean by a feedback loop.
		The hotter it gets, the hotter it gets.
		The more it melts, the more it melts.
		Faster and faster and faster.
		More than a third of summer sea ice disappeared in the last 30 years.
		That's more than a third of the ice up north.
		In the ground, next to the ocean, scientists say, warming has also awakened another enormous danger.
		Billions of tons of carbon locked up for eons by what once was frozen ground.
		Said Walter Ochell, I feel very uncomfortable about it.
		He's a scientist studying all this.
		He said, quote, I mean it's not the way the Arctic ought to be, end quote.
		He discovered that as global warming thaws and dries out the vast tundra, old, decayed vegetation begins releasing carbon dioxide.
		That's the same greenhouse gas that comes from cars and plane exhausts and power plant chimneys and so forth.
		And the tundra releasing the carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere even more.
		A feedback loop, folks.
		This is something that feeds on itself and gets bigger and faster and worse every minute.
		It's a slow-motion time bomb that's speeding up and could become self-generating.
		Humans are putting about six or seven billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, the scientist adds, and we're standing on 200 billion tons here.
		If any significant portion came out that dwarfs the current human injection into the atmosphere, and once that runaway release occurred, there would simply be no way to stop it.
		They report there are an additional 200 billion metric tons of carbon now beginning to leak from the northern boreal forests that encircle the Arctic tundra, apparently for the same reason.
		The rising temperatures are drying out the forests, which means that more decayed vegetation is getting released, yet more carbon dioxide.
		Hochell says the new carbon-free energy technology, like injecting greenhouse gas from power plants back into the ground or ground zero emission cars, will be vital for maintaining a livable planet eventually, that is, once they're developed, if they are, but he says the longer we wait, the worse the situation gets, the harder it's going to be to crack.
		He says by his calculations, the only possibility for preventing a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is to begin reducing the use of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal immediately.
	So he obviously agrees with Dr. Hansen.
	It just goes, it goes on and on.
	Antarctic ice sheet losing mass.
	This is from Science Daily.
	University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have used data from a pair of NASA orbiting satellites, there you go, in tandem to determine that the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90% of Earth's ice, has lost significant mass in recent years.
	Now, again, that ice sheet, that ice is 90%, 90% of all the ice on Earth, and it's melting.
	Now, doesn't this seem to you, ladies and gentlemen, like something is drastically, horribly wrong?
	I said last night, I can feel it in my bones, something absolutely awful is coming.
	I could be, and I hope I am, totally wrong.
	But as you read these stories and you listen to these experts, how can you not imagine we're in deep doo-doo.
	The World Meteorological Organization, WMO, said it saw unprecedented signs, get this, pointing to a new looming La Nina, a phenomena that originates off the western coast of South America and can disrupt weather patterns in many parts of the globe.
	Now, I'm telling you, this is connected.
	It is, they say, unprecedented in the historical record of the world, short as it may be, for a La Nina of substantial intensity or duration to develop so early in the year.
	It has not happened before.
	Under La Niña, the sea surface temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific falls way below normal.
	This typically will bring much drier weather to the southwestern U.S., we're already pretty dry, Florida, and western Latin America, and above average rainfall to Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
	Scientific American.
	Here's another one.
	Scientific American, magma on the move beneath Yellowstone.
	Guess what, folks?
	It's moving down there.
	Much of Yellowstone National Park is, in fact, a giant collapsed volcano, or caldera, if you will, in an enormous eruption about 640,000 years ago.
	The Discovery Channel did some on this, and it was incredible.
	The volcano spit out around 240 cubic miles of rock, dirt, magma, and other material.
	Around 70,000 years ago, its last eruption filled in that gaping hole with flows of lava.
	The area has enjoyed a very uneasy peace ever since.
	The land alternately rising and falling with the passing decades.
	New satellite data now indicates that this uplift and subsidence is caused by the movement of magma beneath the surface and might explain why the northern edge of the park continues to rise while the southern part of the caldera is falling.
	So in other words, put another way, a portion of it is bulging.
	Now, if all of this is not enough to give you the heebee Geebies, I don't know what is, let us proceed with open lines to the top of the hour.
	And at the top of the hour, we're going to be joined by a physician who wrote a book called What Happens When We Die.
	NDEs, usually not a subject researched by physicians.
	First time caller line, you are on the air.
	Good morning.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, this is Mike in Grass Valley, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Mike.
unidentified		I have two quick things to say.
		The first one's quicker than the second.
		That feeling that you have, Art, about in your bones about the bad thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		I have the same feeling, but I think it has more to do with people like Al-Qaeda than it does the environment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hope you're right, because trust me when I tell you, anything Al-Qaeda could do would pale in comparison to what Mother Nature could visit on us.
unidentified		You're absolutely right about that.
unidentified		The second thing is I watched the Discovery Channel the other night, and they had a documentary on that incident in, I believe it was Illinois, about the four or five police departments that saw the triangular-shaped object with the lights on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my friend, I interviewed those police officers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know all about it, yes.
unidentified		Now, I came up with this theory.
		It occurred to me that I wonder if it's possible that the United States government actually has a stealth blimp, and they fly it around at low altitude with the lights on as a means of disinformation.
		In other words...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course it's possible.
unidentified		You think?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course it's possible.
		Now, I saw one, as you know, not more than 150 feet above my head.
		Now, could it have been a stealth balloon?
		Sure it could have been.
		Sure it could have been.
		But what would the motivation of the Armed Services or whoever it is be for doing that?
unidentified		Well, you see, the more of those things you see flying around, then the less likely you are to be, what's the word, surprised by an actual accidental sighting of a genuine top-secret aircraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess, you know, it's as good a theory as any I've heard.
unidentified		You know, my brother saw, I'm guessing 30 years ago, he told me about three triangular-shaped objects going through the sky silently.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it's my brother's son.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long ago?
unidentified		Oh, God.
unidentified		I mean, it had to be 30 years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		30 years ago.
unidentified		25, 30 years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
		I don't think that 30 years ago he saw any U.S. government stealth a triangular object, my friend.
		No way.
unidentified		No way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		Well, I think I do.
		If we have such a craft, it's only in very recent years.
		Now, there's no, absolutely no way that I can deny the possibility that it is a secret U.S. aircraft of some sort.
		Of course it could be.
		But it silently flew above my head.
		It certainly didn't look like any lighter-than-aircraft to me.
		Not at all.
		And when I say silent, and I've repeated this several times, my wife and I could hear the crickets, you know, a quarter of a mile away.
		We're out here in the middle of the desert, not all that far from Area 51.
		And this thing just silently traversed directly above us.
		And then we stood and watched it disappear toward a west, northwesterly direction, which would be indeed Area 51.
		Wildcart line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Good evening, Art.
unidentified		Good evening from LV.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		So on subject with tonight's guest, the way I see it, there's four ways that the NDE has been documented, a few of which are self-induced, which would be like the meditative state, the drug-induced state.
		Yes.
		Then you get down to the Mayo Clinic where they've drained the blood out of everybody to do the brain surgery and whatnot.
		The people that get the blood drained out of them, they're not having any NDEs.
		The people that have the cardiac arrest, that do the DMT, that do the deep meditation, they report the experience.
		So that leads me to believe that perhaps there's some proof or some tooth to the fact that the brain acts as a computer.
		And if you shut the computer down through this draining of the blood and freezing the body to something, your computer doesn't work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, wait a Minute.
		I don't know that I agree.
		I mean, where is your research showing?
		I'm certainly familiar with the people you're talking about, but how do you back up what you're saying with regard to they have not had NDEs?
		NDEs Once again, top of the hour, a physician on NDEs.
		And let me go back now to my caller.
		And again, sir, what I was asking was, how can you really be sure?
		I haven't read the reports one way or the other.
		Have you, on people who have undergone the kind of operation you were talking about?
unidentified		Just one.
		You know, it was the woman, I believe she was a guest on Coast to Coast.
		I don't know if you interviewed her or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I did.
		And she was also a subject of a 60-minute story.
		But yes, you're right.
		Just one.
		So, you know, that's far from a reasonable sample, in my opinion, to come to any conclusion in that category.
unidentified		Well, actually, the correlation I'm trying to make, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I see what you're trying to do.
		That's clear.
		I can see where you're going.
		I'm just saying.
unidentified		Here's the deal.
		Actually, you know, if the brain or the mind-brain-soul, whatever it is connection is physically involved with the body, then perhaps there's some software, whether it's through meditation, dimethyltryptamine, or clinical death, that actually allows you to transfer yourself to the other dimension or wherever you go when you die.
		And perhaps whenever they drain your blood and everything, you're not allowing the computer to function like it should.
		You're pulling some software out of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, again, I clearly could see where you were going with this.
		I'm just saying, thank you very much, that a sample of one means nothing.
		So there are some rare instances in which, for one reason or another, a person does have their blood literally drained, and then a procedure follows.
		But we don't have...
		So there can't be any corollary to reciting one story.
		I think you'd have maybe once this operation is more mainstream and we have a lot of them, we can make some kind of statement about that.
		And I certainly agree that's worth researching, but at this point tells us nothing.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		It's a real pleasure to talk to you.
		I want to express my sympathies to you, too.
		I know I've gone through a similar experience.
		As about the near-death experience, I had a heart attack in 1999, and when they took me to the hospital, they brought a woman in who was having a heart attack, and they had her on the other side of the curtain from me.
		And we were both seizing up at the same time, and they hit me with paddles, and then they hit her with paddles.
		Wow.
		And I could see lights flashing as I was going through this from her side of the curtain.
		And it seemed to me like, you know, like there was auras coming off of both of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Were they working on you simultaneously?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		We were both having cardiac arrest at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They don't put on those paddles unless your heart has stopped or gone into a rhythm that is so deadly that you're going to be dead anyway.
unidentified		Well, mine had stopped for, they said like 14 seconds, and I heard them talking later about her when they met of both of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		May I ask a couple of questions?
unidentified		Of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		During those 14 seconds, do you have memory of what was going on?
		Did you hear things?
		Did you perceive anything?
		What happened?
unidentified		I could hear voices, and I could hear him saying, he's flattened.
unidentified		He's flat-lined.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		You've got to hit him again.
		Really?
		Say that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
		That's really something.
		I mean, so, in other words, you know, I have no, I guess nobody has a way of really understanding how long it takes the brain to put it in quotes, die.
		But the fact that you were hearing that, were you still in your body?
		Did you have any physical sensation that felt like you were out of your body at all?
unidentified		I felt a little separation.
		It felt like I kept bouncing.
		But I don't know if that was from electrical shock or but I wasn't like bouncing.
		It wasn't like a pogo stick bounce.
		It was more like a little float up, float down, float up, float down.
		And then I settled into it again.
		And then they got me stabilized.
		And they said, okay, we're going to put you on a helicopter.
		And, you know, like, I thought the woman next to me was having a rougher time.
		So I said, you take her first.
		They said, well, if you take her, you're going to die.
		So I said, well, put me on a helicopter.
		It's okay by me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This experience, has it changed your view at all of whether there is life after death?
unidentified		I've never really had a view on that.
		I've been kind of accepting my day-to-day life as something that I'm just experiencing it.
		I have no idea what's going to happen next.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		None of us do.
unidentified		And I've been happy to be around.
unidentified		It makes you appreciate the little things more.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Every day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Take a deep breath and get up in the morning and your eyes pop open.
unidentified		You say, wow, I made it through another one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
		It's interesting.
		When I get up in the morning, I'm just slow to enter the world.
		I can't say that my eyes pop open and I say, What a beautiful day.
unidentified		My God, look at the sun streaming through.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
		The way it works for me is I wake up, stumble out, grab a cup of coffee, and sit there and try and inject life into my veins.
		And then sometime later, an hour or two later, I'm able to observe the world in approximately that fashion and say, whoa, beautiful.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Mark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		This is Jeff from Cebola, Arizona.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Jeff.
unidentified		And I have been a longtime avid listener of your program, and I do a little newsletter from your program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Promoting the program.
unidentified		It's called The Chronicles of the Ambassador.
		I'm sci-fi, but I've been an avid watcher of the weather.
		And I have a feeling that before all this really super bizarre stuff, which is already gets a little thicker, we'll probably see a little heavier UFO activity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You think that the climate change, the environment, is connected to the presence of others?
unidentified		Yes, I do.
		It's a big scope.
		I think, and we're at an evolutionary peak in our souls out here, too, on this planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		An evolutionary peak?
unidentified		Yep.
unidentified		I think we're evolving spiritually outside of Christianity, outside of the Muslim thinking, more on a grander scale than what those two can even come up with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I would like to think you're right that we're evolving, but I'm not sure, frankly.
		I mean, we're evolving technologically.
		There's no question about that.
		Nobody would argue that.
		We're evolving very quickly technologically.
		But are we evolving spiritually?
		Are we evolving?
		Not really.
		I mean, taking a look as an alien would at our planet, are we at war any less frequently?
		Are we killing each other any less frequently?
		I'm not so sure that an alien could make any sort of positive judgment from looking down.
		International line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Mr. Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		You are truly a national treasure.
unidentified		I am an alien, or E.T., as my fellow human brothers and sisters refer to those of us who are not members of the race of human beings who live on the surface of the planet today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not a human being.
unidentified		I am a human being.
		I'll rephrase that.
		I am an extraterrestrial who is living as a member of the human race.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, this is exactly what I've been looking for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where, out of curiosity, if you can tell me, are you calling from?
unidentified		Toronto, Canada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Toronto, Canada.
unidentified		Yes, multicultural city.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		Well, hmm.
		You're a human being and you're an extraterrestrial living among us.
		Now, you have a pronounced Canadian accent?
unidentified		Actually, most people say that I'm English.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, a little bit English in there, perhaps.
unidentified		But I've been living as a member of the human race for a number of decades now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would account for it.
		Yes.
		Well, so, you know, having you is indeed a valuable thing as well.
		So having you here is very valuable.
		Tell us then.
unidentified		My pleasure and honor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then tell me what it is you're doing here.
		What is your mission?
		Why are you here?
		And how are we doing?
unidentified		Thank you for asking.
		My name is actually Commander Ashtar, A-S-H-T-A-R.
		I am the commander of the civilization that has been misidentified as the Nephilines for the past 6.4 million years by the members of the human race.
		My civilization is actually called the Neverenes.
		We are the Neverenes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Huh.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		We're the oldest civilization in this physical universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, now wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you extraterrestrial or are you more like, well, I don't know, an angel?
unidentified		Actually, all beings, correction, all beings, no matter where they live in the universe, they're actually ETs because they go from one part of the universe to another to live mortal lives.
		Who am I?
		It's not really important.
		However, the reason calling is important in response to your question about what exactly is going on, why do you feel it so much inside your bones that something awful is about to take place on the surface of this planet?
		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the answer is?
unidentified		Well, the answer is, first I must point out that over 97% of the true history of the human race, races who have lived on the surface of this planet for the past 663.6 billion years,
unidentified		and also the true history of the identity of each of the immortals who now live as members of the human race, over 97% of that truth has been completely lost to the human race for over 6.4 million years now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're immortal.
unidentified		I'm sorry?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're immortal?
unidentified		All beings are immortals.
		When they live in mortal bodies, they are considered immortals, just as I am today and you are now.
		And all those who are listening to the show who are members of the human race, we're immortals who live mortal lives.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I can accept that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, again, you were going to get to why I...
unidentified		The reason what is taking place is this.
		Planet Earth is in the process of undergoing the end of this age.
		But this is not the first age of the Earth that is about to be completely reconstructed.
		This is actually ratio near the end of the 23rd age of planet Earth.
		The Mayan calendar, by the way, it's not a 5 million year old calendar.
		It's not a 5,000-year-old calendar.
		It's a 5.3 million-year-old calendar.
		Now, the reason why 97% of every member of the human race today is feeling inside their bones that something is about to take place for the past 65 months, approximately, is that the end of the 23rd age on this planet is about to take place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		and it will begin at the start of the end of the Mayan calendar so the Mayan didn't just I'm sorry to interrupt, but I would like to know how it's going to manifest itself when this begins at the end of the Mayan calendar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What should we expect?
unidentified		Okay, good question.
		It's a process.
		Each of the 23 ages that have come and gone from this planet, there's a reconstruction process that planet Earth goes through during a 44 period.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Reconstructing from what?
unidentified		The planet itself is completely reformed and reconstructed through, you would call it a cataclysmic process, where the continents are pulled under and new ones are brought to the surface.
		The end of the last age, by the way, was the end of the days of Noah and company.
		That was 23.6 million years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so it's kind of like a reset.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, start from zero.
unidentified		No.
		Mother Earth is a living being, and she has to rebuild and reconstruct and transform her body, just as we all do.
		We cleanse ourselves when we become ill and toxic for different reasons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Arnie, well, we're drifting here.
		I appreciate your call, and I appreciate the insights.
		And certainly what he said could occur.
		I mean, there's ample evidence that there are many who believe that the Earth has been populated, then depopulated right down to the size of bacteria or smaller, and then life again appearing.
		And it may well have come and gone many times.
		So that reset that he talked about, you never know.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, Art.
		My name's Eric.
		I'm in East Missoula, Montana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Eric.
unidentified		Back about 12 years ago, me and my dad and a close family friend of ours were traveling back to my hometown of Troy, and we saw something that maybe you could shed some light on, because I know that you got a lot of UFO experience there, would you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not really.
		I mean, I've talked about the subject a great deal and seen a couple.
		That's about it.
unidentified		Well, maybe you can shed a little light on this.
		We was traveling up the Bull River Valley, up Highway 56, heading back up to Troy.
		And now you've got to understand there weren't nobody on this highway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There weren't nobody.
unidentified		Yeah.
		It was probably about 10, 11 o'clock at night, and it was starting to snow a little bit.
		It was nice and still, and all of a sudden we had this blinking light up above our truck.
		We stopped right in the middle of the highway there and got out of the truck, and it was just pure quiet.
		But this light was up above us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far?
unidentified		I'd say what it appeared to be was maybe about 200 to 300 feet above us, and it was really bright.
unidentified		And it was just like hovering there, and we couldn't really see what it was coming from or anything, and then it just was gone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that was it like that.
unidentified		And this is a really tight valley going up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You had no experience like missing time or anything of that sort, right?
unidentified		No, but we couldn't explain what this was.
		It was completely quiet.
		We thought maybe it was a helicopter, but there was no sound whatsoever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Helicopters are inherently noisy.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even the quiet versions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I doubt it was a helicopter.
unidentified		And so that's why I was wondering if you could shed some light on what this possibly was.
		This has bothered me for going on 12 years as to what this was.
		Like I said, we stopped and we shut off the truck and we was standing out there looking trying to figure out what this was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, fine.
		It was a class 3 saucer from Zeta Reticuli.
		Does that help?
unidentified		All right, Art.
unidentified		Thanks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, obviously, I'm not going to be able to nail down what it is.
		It was a light above your vehicle.
		I have no idea, sir, what it really was.
unidentified		You haven't heard anything like that from anybody else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, I've heard a million stories of lights that suddenly disappear, lights that are UFOs, unidentified flying or floating objects or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've heard a million of those stories, but to call me and ask me what is it?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can I, any more than the next guy, identify what it is.
unidentified		Pretty much it might have been governmental or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Cornell University in New York, where he is a fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine.
		So he's in exactly, exactly the right field to be commenting on this phenomenon.
		He founded the Consciousness Research Group and is chairman of the Horizon Research Foundation.
		Dr. Parnillia is constantly in demand as a speaker, and he's made numerous media appearances.
		His groundbreaking research was recently featured in the BBC2 and Discovery documentary, The Day I Died.
		Now, the book he has, this is Dr. Parnillia's first book.
		I've got it right here, simply called, Indeed, I'm Going to Read It, What Happens When We Die.
		I've perused it Already, but I guarantee you, this is one I will read, and I hope you will too.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This clearly in life is the largest question any of us will ever face, ever consider, ever ultimately come to understand.
		It is the biggest question, and it is simply what we can all attest to our current presence on planet Earth, right?
		We have consciousness.
		We understand where we are.
		We understand the desk or whatever it is in front of us.
		It's material.
		We can touch it, understand it, feel it.
		We are alive.
		But once we die, once we physically die, is there anything else?
		If that is not the biggest question on the planet, it ought to be.
		Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Sam Parnillia, welcome to the program, Doctor.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's wonderful to be on the program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Great to have you.
		I've been really looking forward to this for a very long time.
		Certainly you're in the right field of medicine to be asking the kind of questions you're asking.
		I'm curious, Doctor, actually how you came to begin studying all of this.
unidentified		What drove you to study this in the first place?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, there were a number of things really that came together in my life.
		The first thing was that while I was training as a medical student, I started dealing with patients who were obviously dying.
		This was towards the end of my clinical years.
		And it touched me very much.
		And in particular, there was one patient that I was looking after one day who I got to know very well.
		And in fact, I had been on an elective in New York.
		This is almost 11 years ago now.
		And this is a gentleman who was admitted to the emergency room, I should say.
		And I met him.
		I spoke with him, his family.
		I got to know him very well.
		I left him, and then about half an hour later, there was a cardiac arrest alert.
		And I ran to the emergency room, and I noticed that the whole team of doctors were there.
		They were trying to resuscitate this man.
		And I stood there and I watched, and I suddenly realized that this is the same man that I had been speaking to half an hour earlier and that his heart had now stopped and that people were trying to get him back to life.
		And unfortunately, he didn't make it despite all the efforts that the team made on that day.
		And I remember at one point just watching him as he slowly progressed and he died.
		And thinking to myself, I wonder what's happening to this conscious thinking being that was here with us half an hour ago, whose company I enjoyed so much.
		I wonder what's left of him.
		Is he able to watch us?
		Is he able to hear us?
		And I'd heard of people who claimed to have near-death experiences, who claimed to be able to watch doctors and nurses working on their bodies from a point above.
		And I wondered whether he could have been conscious of what we were doing or had he been completely annihilated.
		And of course I didn't know.
		And I then turned to science.
		I turned to medicine to see what answers we had found.
		And I realized that actually very little work had been carried out in this field.
		And that really was what started my biggest interest in this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You did mention the paddles.
		And I'm, you know, very curious.
		When these paddles are used on patients, doctor, is there any way to attach a percentage of the time that you're actually able to restart a heart?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Do you mean how often we can get a heart?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, how often you're able, you know, if you have somebody right there, how often you're able to restart a heart versus how often you call the time of death?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends on a number of different circumstances.
		For example, you know, how long someone's heart had stopped in the first place.
		The longer that period becomes, the less likely we are to be able to restart it.
		In general, if we can have a patient, if we can have people resuscitated back to life and discharged from hospital, say, within seven days, we'd be expecting about sort of a 20% success rate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		About 20%.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, absolutely.
		Obviously, you have to appreciate when people have a cardiac arrest, by definition they reach the point of death.
		And most of them, you know, if we don't interfere, all of them would probably die.
		And therefore, we're just trying to do what we can to restart the heart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's remarkable.
		I had no idea what the percentage was, but about 20%, folks.
		So that's, what, about a one in five chance if your heart stops, I guess.
		I'm assuming that many, if not most times, there's an underlying condition that won't allow, excuse the word, a restart.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		There obviously could be numerous causes that can lead the heart to stop in the first place.
		And some of them are associated with a better prognosis.
		You know, we have a better chance of restarting the heart.
		For example, if somebody's heart has just a very abnormal electrical activity where it starts to beat very abnormally and then stops because of that, usually if we shock it by applying a bit of electricity, as you've probably seen with the paddles, then that has a very good success rate.
		Whereas, for example, if somebody has heart has stopped and they've gone into a flat line for various other medical conditions, and sometimes it's much harder and they have maybe only a 2 or 5% success rate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In your research, is there any way, doctor, to understand how long basic functions continue?
		Let's say the heart stops right now.
		Is that person on the table still able to hear anything?
		Are they able to perceive anything?
		Do we know anything at all about the process and the length of time involved in the process once the heart stops beating?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we do.
		We have quite a lot of information about that.
		There has been a lot of research carried out in studying the whole process of what happens during a cardiac arrest, which is essentially the same as what happens when we're dying.
		So, in other words, the heart stops beating, the patient stops breathing, and then very quickly after that, because there's a lack of blood flow to the brain, of course, the brain then shuts down and it stops functioning as well.
		Now, there have been lots of studies carried out both in humans and animals, and what they have indicated is that the brain shuts down, in terms of its function, in a range of time that varies between about two seconds up to about 20 seconds.
		And the average length of time is about 10 seconds.
		So, in that sort of range of time, the brain then ceases functioning for various obvious reasons.
		And that's measured by using various apparatus, which measures the electricity going across the brain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, that once the electrical activity in the brain ceases, that person is dead.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That person has started the process.
		Yes, the process of dying, although I have to point out that, of course, death itself is a process.
		It's not an instant.
		It is a process that starts at the moment the heart stops and then continues.
		Now, in the early stages, it's potentially reversible, which is why we try to resuscitate patients.
		The longer that process goes on, the less likely we are to get somebody back to life.
		And this is really why we study people at that time.
		I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's all right.
		What I was going to ask is, what is the longest period of time that you're aware of that a person's heart has been restarted and they have been brought back to life?
		What is the longest period?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't tell you exactly how long, but I know certainly over an hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		An hour, an hour, and 20, that sort of time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my gosh.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Although that's very, you know, as I said, the longer it goes, the less likely.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But there are cases on case reports of people who have been resuscitated, certainly over an hour, approaching over an hour and a half, that sort of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God.
		That just doesn't seem possible.
		I was aware of some cases, for example, where children had fallen into the water and ostensibly drowned, and their body temperature was lowered as a result of that.
		Would that be the kind of case you're talking about?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Those cases are much more likely, exactly, to be rescued because of the fact that the temperature had dropped, and therefore their metabolism in the body had slowed down, and therefore there's less damage.
		Because the thing that causes the most harm is when the blood flow to the brain ceases, then the brain cells start to become damaged through their own chemical activities.
		They start to, in a sense, poison themselves.
		And therefore, if you're cold, then all those chemical reactions become slowed down, and therefore the time can become prolonged.
unidentified		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That still seems absolutely outrageous, an hour.
		All right, so you began your investigation of people who have had these experiences and have come back.
		Another question for you.
		Can you make any judgment about the percentage of those who have actually clinically died, doctor, and have had NDEs versus those who do not report NDEs?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, there have been reports of people who describe near-death experiences.
		And the first time that these became sort of prevalent were in the 1970s, after Raymond Moody's book, Life After Life.
		In 1982, there was a Gallup survey carried out here in the United States.
		And this suggested that about 4 or 5% of the population have had a near-death experience at some point in their lives.
		But the problem with this definition or this discussion about near-death experiences had always been that it is very difficult from a scientific point of view to define the concept of being near-death.
		It's a very broad term.
		What do you mean by near-death?
		And so what we have done, and that's certainly been the case since in the last few years, and other people have also carried studies in the same way, is to define this at a time when people really are clinically dead.
		In other words, a cardiac arrest.
		So if you look at cardiac arrest scenarios, which is essentially the same as clinical death, then we have about 10 to 20% of people who have been shown to have essentially well-structured, lucid thought processes with reasoning and memory formation.
		And they describe typical features of a near-death experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		10 or 20%.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		10 to 20.
		It depends on the studies that have been carried out.
		There have been four studies carried out now, all published in the last few years in scientific and medical journals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that still certainly represents a large number of people who have had this experience.
		Now, I have seen various stories on O60 Minutes and other programs where, you know, to get the negative side of the NDE, they usually will have a physician who basically says, nonsense, you know, just absolute nonsense.
		The brain begins dying from the outside in, and so these people who report the white light are simply reporting what they perceived as their brain began dying from the outside moving inward.
		You know, I've heard statements like that.
		How would you respond to that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		Well, that's a very good point.
		And it really goes back historically to how near-death experiences had been received by the medical and scientific community.
		After they were described in 1975 by Raymond Moody, obviously the people who had the experience really claimed to have had, or at least the majority of them, claimed to have had, a glimpse of the afterlife.
		They really believed that they had seen something of the other world.
		And the scientific reaction to that was that these are probably at best some sort of hallucination due to the fact the brain is shutting down, it's dying.
		And maybe even at worst, people are fabricating these cases.
		Perhaps people are just making it up For attention.
		Now, what's been shown is that actually there have been cases that go back historically many, many years.
		In fact, the first reference to a near-death experience is said to come from Plato's Republic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, which goes back obviously thousands of years.
		There's a very interesting painting by Hieronymus Bosch, the famous Dutch painter from the 14th, 15th century.
		And he's essentially drawn a typical near-death experience with a tunnel with a very bright light at the end of it, and people being accompanied by angels going towards that.
		And that's very interesting, because if you think about it, this idea of having a, that when we die, we see a tunnel with a bright light, isn't a prevalent Christian or really any other religious view of how we should die.
		So certainly these go back.
		Now, in terms of your original question, that's really where that has come from.
		There have been a number of theories put forward by a number of scientists, psychologists, to try and account for why people have near-death experiences.
		And the most common theory is that this may be due to some sort of lack of oxygen to the brain.
		And what that's doing is causing people to have an illusion of seeing a tunnel with a bright light.
		The problem with this is that although we know that, of course, every experience that we have, including near-death experiences, are mediated by the brain, if we were to simply identify which parts of the brain, for example, which cells become active that lead to an experience, this doesn't tell us anything about whether an experience is real or not.
		By that, I mean, if you think about a simple example, if you take a mother who sees their child and they feel love for their child, well, that love is being mediated by certain parts of the brain that become active.
		So that if we put them into a scanning device, we can see which parts of the brain become active.
		But just by identifying areas of the brain that mediate any experience that we have, and this takes place for every experience that we have, it doesn't tell us anything about whether that love was real or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's certainly a good point.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't mean that love, for example, is a hallucination.
		And therefore, although we know that certainly when people are dying, certain parts of their brain become active, and that leads to a near-death experience, that doesn't mean that the experience was either an illusion or a hallucination.
		We simply cannot comment on whether that is real.
		It's certainly real for the person who's experienced it, and as any other experience, it's unique for the individual.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, can you tell me anything about that part of the brain?
		You said a specific part of the brain in the dying process becomes active.
		Now, what part of the brain is that, and what is its normal function?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, at this point, nobody yet knows which part of the brain mediates near-death experiences.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That's what we'd all like to know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But what I was referring to is that in principle, of course, we know that a part of the brain which we haven't yet discovered would have become active.
		And the reason we know that is because certainly if you think about the dying process, what happens is an individual's blood pressure starts to drop.
		And that causes the body to release certain chemicals and signals, which will then start acting on the brain and on the rest of the body.
		And we start to release very high levels of hormones to keep us alive, such as epinephrine and various steroid hormones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All natural.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		All natural, of course.
		It's our body's way of trying to keep us alive.
		It's really a last-ditch effort to try and maintain a blood pressure and to maintain blood getting to the brain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know the body had that capability.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		At that time, we released the highest levels ever recorded, over a thousand times normal levels of these hormones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that something?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A thousand times normal.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, yes.
unidentified		Yes, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we know that, which is fascinating.
		Are there ethical reasons why we have not been able to have somebody in the right machine or even multiple somebodies who are in the process of dying to determine what does occur in the brain, what part of the brain becomes active during that process?
		Are there ethical reasons why we don't know?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's actually, there are two separate questions.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Obviously, different parts of the brain would become activated.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, I'm sorry, hold this for the break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're at a break point.
unidentified		We're at a break point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I truly appreciate the way Dr. Parnilla is answering questions.
		I'm just learning a lot.
		Doctor, welcome back to the program.
		So we were talking a little bit about what we don't know, meaning the part of the brain, for example, that is extremely active during the process of death itself.
		Now, I had asked, are there ethical reasons?
		I know we can look at the brain with various machines, right?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, yes, we can do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So are there ethical reasons that we don't?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're limited in terms of how much we can look at the brain during that time.
		Because if you imagine a cardiac arrest, it's first of all an event that happens very suddenly.
		It's usually not predicted.
		And then the main priority, of course, of all the teams are to try and resuscitate the person back to life.
		And so it is very difficult to sort of start to do very invasive tests on people at that time.
		The best that we can do is to study this process in people who happen to have had a brain monitor attached to themselves, what we call an EEG device, and then who happen to have a cardiac rest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very rare, but I'm sure it happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have we learned anything from that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		What that has demonstrated is that essentially by about 10 seconds, first of all, as soon as the heart stops, the electrical waves in the brain slow down, and by about 10 seconds, we get a flat line on the brain during that time.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But beyond that, in terms of identifying specific points in the brain or areas in the brain, in humans it's very difficult to do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But a flat line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That means everything stopped.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That means exactly.
		That the function of the brain has stopped at that time.
		Which makes sense because there's no blood flowing to the brain, so of course we wouldn't expect the brain to be able to function just as every other organ stops functioning as well at that time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it possible, doctor, that what we are calling a flat line is only up to the limit of what we can measure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, I guess I'm asking: could there be electrical impulses that the equipment we have is unable to measure still going on?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's certainly possible with obviously with every apparatus, with every device that we design, they have a certain limit of detection.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		And the same thing is obviously true with measuring brain electrical activity.
		So certainly we couldn't comment on whether there is maybe some activity within brain cells at a very, so we say, more minute level that we cannot measure.
		What we do know, though, however, is that when there is an insult to the brain, and by that I mean any kind of derangement in the normal function of the brain.
		So for example, if there's a lack of oxygen, if there is a reduction in, say, the blood sugar levels that get to the brain, if there's any kind of head injury or trauma, anything like that, this can be measured through a change in the electricity that the cells generate.
		And we can certainly measure that with the apparatus that we have currently.
		What we know, though, is that a cardiac arrest is the biggest insult to the brain, such that actually it causes such a heavy insult that the electrical waves actually go completely flat.
		In other conditions, they don't go flat.
		They may change to some degree, but they don't normally go flat.
		This happens in a cardiac arrest, or if, for example, artificially somebody has had something dance the brain to try and shut it down for any other reason.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You've been so good answering questions that I'm going to jump out and left field for a second and ask you one that I haven't been able to get an answer from others with.
		And it is this.
		Remember the movie Flatliners?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		My question is, if you took a perfectly normal, healthy person and you induced, electrically induced the heart to stop you gave me a figure of 10 to 20% revival rate in general, somewhere in there.
		But if you took a perfectly healthy person and stopped their heart and induced an NDE, how much higher would the percentage of success be in restarting their heart?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, you probably mean to induce a cardiac arrest in a death experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is actually something that takes place very commonly in medical practice.
		You know, there are a lot of people who have problems with the electricity in the heart, and they have to have certain devices attached to them.
		They're called an AI-CD device.
		It's like a specialized pacemaker.
		And what it does is when the heart has a near-fatal rhythm or an abnormal beat, what it does is it detects that, and then it discharges a small amount of electricity and essentially shocks the heart back to a normal rhythm.
		So what people, what doctors do, what cardiologists do when they're inserting these is they will often, in order to test it, they have to actually artificially stop the heart themselves with electricity and then wait to see if this device kicks in and restarts the heart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One hell of a test.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		So then you're telling me that the percentage must be very, very high for a healthy person.
		If you induce it to stop, then the possibility of restarting it is 70%, 80%.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		No, in those people, obviously it's 100%.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		In those people, nobody would want to go for a test to have a device instead of if they thought they had a 20% risk of dying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a good point.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But you have to also bear in mind that that's done in a very controlled setting so that the heart is stopped transiently, only for a few seconds, and then that device restarts the heart again.
		That's not what happens really in a sort of a normal, shall we say, a cardiac arrest.
		When somebody is ill and due to an illness, their heart stops.
		But when those AI CD devices are being inserted, of course, the heart is stopped transiently.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Again, that's incredible.
		That's amazing.
		So the whole premise then of that Flatliners movie, even though fiction really can be supported.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think the content of the movie was certainly fascinating, and certainly what they were trying to do was, you know, the idea was support, exactly was supported, because if you stop somebody's heart and then you're looking to see what they're experiencing, and it gives you an idea of what we're all going to experience at the end of our lives when our hearts do stop.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Okay.
		Now, you mentioned that there was a history.
		Of course, Dr. Raymond Moody, I've interviewed many times, and you mentioned that kind of like Roswell was the beginning of flying saucer reporting, that the beginning of real reporting on this subject was Dr. Moody's book.
		But clearly, this would have had to have been going on for all of mankind's existence, right?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there's a lot of evidence of that.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, there is, yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I mean, as I was touching on earlier, one of the criticisms that was put forward after Dr. Moody described these near-death experiences was that, well, why is this only something that's been described since the 1970s?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Of course, if it's really an indication of what happens when people are dying, then it should have been around, as you pointed out, for as long as mankind has been around.
		And certainly there are many references.
		If we look in the historical literature, there are many references to near-death experiences.
		I mentioned that there's a reference in Plato's Republic.
		There's a very interesting painting which shows one.
		There's a very interesting article from a British admiral who almost drowned around 1795 off the British coast.
		And he describes his experience, which is very similar to what we now call a near-death experience.
		And in fact, the first study really of near-death experiences actually took place in 1892.
		And Albert Heim, A Swiss mountaineer and geologist who himself had a near-fatal mountaineering accident and had a very interesting experience, then collected the cases of 30 other people and found that they had also had very similar experiences to his own, which we would now call a near-death experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So, to be clear, Dr. Moody wrote about the whole thing, the tunnel, people greeting you, all the rest of it.
		But you're saying in these old documented collected cases, the same rough experience was reported.
		Is that correct?
		Prior to Dr. Moody's book?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, exactly.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The tunnel, the light, the whole thing?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Some of them.
		There's a point.
		I have to just mention something here, which is that even you can see this in Dr. Moody's book.
		Nobody necessarily has to have all of those features.
		So somebody won't necessarily see a tunnel, a light, you know, say deceased relatives, and then go into a very beautiful, heavenly kind of place, all in that same order.
		They may see two or three of those features.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But there was enough in the old studies to identify that, aha, it's the same thing.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, absolutely.
		For example, the painting by Bosch that I mentioned earlier is fascinating because he's clearly shown a tunnel with a very bright light at the end of it and various people going towards that light.
		So that's really a classical description of a near-death experience that we now talk about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there any NDEs that have gone...
		I would assume that people go to various stages.
		In other words, ultimately reaching...
		Do we use the word heaven?
		I guess what I'm asking is how much of an NDE have we ever had described?
		How far?
		Have they actually gone all the way, Doctor, to the other side and then come back?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a very difficult question for me to answer because it depends on what we mean by the other side.
		That's true.
		If you talk to those who have had the experience, the vast majority of them certainly would tell you that they have seen something of the other side.
		I have, for example, interviewed others who didn't believe in that.
		For example, I had a lady who I interviewed who was an atheist, and she did not believe that there is any afterlife.
		And she said to me that she had had an experience where she was critically ill, her blood pressure had dropped, and that she had at that point separated from her body, and she was watching everything below, and she'd seen a tunnel and a light.
		But when she came back, she was almost bemused by the whole thing because she said, well, I didn't believe in anything, so I don't know why I had an experience.
		Almost said, well, it shouldn't be happening to me.
		She still had an experience, but her interpretation of it was that it can't be real because she didn't believe in anything.
		The majority of people who have the experience, however, come back and they really believe that they had had a glimpse of the afterlife.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To what degree is this determined by a person's religious or spiritual faith?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		People of all backgrounds can have near-death and do have near-death experiences.
		That isn't related to their personal cultural or religious beliefs.
		What effect religion or culture does have on the experience is in the interpretation of the experience.
		So for example, if you look, near-death experiences have been described from all over the world, but say if a Hindu and a Christian have a near-death experience and they both see a being of light, the Hindu may come back and describe having met one of the Hindu gods, say for example Krishna, whereas the Christian would come back and describe it in Christian terminology and say, well, I met Jesus.
		And that's really the difference.
		And that's also very interesting when you look at children's near-death experiences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		They have very similar features to adults, but their description is often limited by their own understanding and their own vocabulary and terminology that they can use.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of the world, yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		The interpretation of the experience depends on the individual's background.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But the features, by and large, are the same.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the important part.
		The features are the same.
		The interpretation may be different, but the features are the same.
		That is what's so fascinating about this.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I think it's really fascinating, especially when you look at children, because many of them are too young to have any concept of death or an afterlife.
		You know, I've interviewed children who've had near-death experiences when they weren't even three years old yet.
		And so it's very difficult to argue that they had seen what they, for example, believed they were going to see.
		Well, they don't really know what death is, let alone what they should experience if they were to have an afterlife.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, what are the chances that the human brain does have a very specific way that it dies?
		As that doctor, you know, who stood up and said, look, it dies from the outside, moving inward.
		And so this light that we're seeing is the very center of the brain and all that's left.
		And so that's all we're seeing, and it doesn't go any further than that.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is actually something I wanted to come back to, and this is a good chance for me to explain this a little bit further.
		You see, the theories that have been put forward only can account, they could only account for certain aspects of a near-death experience.
		For example, it's been proposed that when people feel very peaceful, it's due to a fact that there's a sudden release of endorphins into the bloodstream when the brain is shutting down, or the fact that they see a light with a tunnel may be due to activity of brain cells in the back of the brain where vision is usually mediated.
		Now, I think it's definitely true that when we die, there are certain changes within the brain that take place.
		But I have to just point out again that identifying those changes, although we don't yet know exactly where they are, undoubtedly there are centers in the brain that become activated, won't ever tell us whether an experience is real or not.
		Because the majority of the features are personal.
		For example, Somebody says they felt peaceful, they saw a tunnel, they saw a light, they saw maybe their deceased father or their deceased mother.
		Those are personal to the individual.
		We could never say it happened or it didn't happen.
		However, the most interesting aspect are those people who come back and describe separating from the body and watching events from a point above at the ceiling.
		And that's interesting because they actually come back and tell us very specific things that we did.
		And I've had a number of medical doctors, very senior medical doctors, who've had patients come back and describe in specific details what they had done during a cardiac arrest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How does a doctor react when a patient tells them?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Completely bemused.
		Completely bemused.
		I had one of my colleagues who actually said to me, pulled me aside one day, said, look, I haven't told anybody this because it's just completely shaken me and I cannot explain it.
		And I've just decided not to think about it anymore.
		And he described this whole scenario of how he had been involved in the resuscitation of a 30-year-old man who had had a flat line on his heart monitor and who they had thought had died and they had stopped resuscitation and essentially eventually managed to get him back and it was a very long story.
		But this gentleman came back a week later from the intensive care unit, met this colleague of mine and told him in exact detail what he had done, what he had said during this event.
		And I just want to sort of point this fact out that these are very interesting because we can't simply write these off as being hallucinations or illusions because these people are coming back and describing very specific details of what was being verified.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Is there any medical explanation for a person's being able to do that?
		Is there any medical explanation?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what we're trying to understand right now, and it's very difficult to explain because our current views, and these are only views I must point out, about the relationship between our mind or consciousness.
		And by that I mean everything that makes us unique as individuals, our sense of self-awareness, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions.
		We currently, our neurobiological views are that these are generated by the brain.
		Although I have to point out that nobody has yet been able to put forward a mechanism by which brain cells could generate thoughts.
		Nobody knows how that comes to be.
		And what the occurrence of these experiences, these near-death experiences during cardiac arrest does is it somewhat challenges that view because we have a group of people who have essentially no brain activity, no electrical activity of the brain, yet nevertheless they're able to come back and have very lucid consciousness and thought processes and describe what happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there really is no medical explanation for how they're able to do this, and I can understand that a physician probably would say, you know what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not going to think about this anymore because the implications are simply too great.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It challenges everything I believe and therefore I'm going to put it up on the shelf and not think about it.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That's the easy way out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I guess it is the easy way out.
		I remember, again, going back to 60 minutes, they did have an operating room in which they put a number up on some high point in the operating room for exactly the reason you're talking about, because so many people have been coming back and explaining what had been happening to them.
		So when we get back from this break...
unidentified		...and we're going to have to go back to this break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, if you would like to grace me with an email, I certainly have the time to read them all, and I am indeed doing so.
		So there's two ways to get hold of me.
		Artbell, that's A-R-T-B-E-L-L at mindspring.com or artbell at aol.com.
		The MindSpring address is probably the prime one.
		Artbell at mindspring.com.
		Now, the good doctor has raised several times this rising above the place where you're being worked on and actually being able to observe and then later describe with actual brain death what was going on.
		Now, there's really no way to medically explain that.
		There's simply no way.
		Again, on the 60-minute show, Doctor, they interviewed a doctor in an operating room, and they had lost many patients on the table.
		And so they actually went to the trouble of putting a large sign up on top of some piece of medical equipment so that if somebody did rise up in the room to the ceiling, they would be able to note the number and then later report it.
		And they used as negative evidence that it really wasn't happening the fact that nobody had yet come back and reported that number.
		Had you heard about that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, in fact, we actually did a study ourselves in cardiac arrest patients where we used various targets that were essentially had images that were only visible from the ceiling down and not from any other area to try and test the claims of people who say that they're out of body.
		And the problem is that I don't know about the case that you're referring to, but certainly from my own experience of having done this, one of the big difficulties is that near-death experiences happen in only about 10 to 20% of people who are resuscitated back to life.
		So if you imagine you start out with, say, 1,000 people who have a cardiac arrest, you're left with 100 to 200 who may have a near-death experience.
		Now only a quarter of those, so maybe 25 to 50, would have an out-of-body experience.
		So in all the studies that this has been attempted, and certainly I know that people have perhaps tried it here in the U.S. as well, they've only looked in operating rooms where Patients don't necessarily have a cardiac arrest, and it's very rare for it to happen there.
		When we looked in our study, we had 10% of people who had a near-death experience, but nobody claimed to have had an out-of-body experience.
		And the reason was that we followed everybody over a one-year period in our hospital who had a cardiac arrest.
		But 65 people in that one-year survived.
		And so statistically, perhaps we should have had one person who would have claimed to have had an out-of-body experience.
		And that's why the only way to really test this phenomenon is to do a large-scale multi-center trial where the study has the appropriate scientific power to detect whether this phenomenon really is taking place or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then there's one other thing that I would have brought up in protest to that example that they gave.
		And that is that if you are on a table and you're dying, or excuse me, you're dead, and you float up above the ceiling, probably the very last thing you'd be interested in would be some number or some design or anything of the sort.
		You're going to be probably riveted on the fact that, hey, that's me down there dying.
		That's where your attention is going to be.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That's a very valid point.
		I mean, certainly I have studied hundreds of cases of people who have had out-of-body and near-death experiences.
		And it's very variable.
		I mean, some of them will tell you that they were watching themselves, but also they were watching things around the room, and they were just really intrigued as to what was happening.
		That was such an unusual phenomenon for them to be up there at the ceiling looking down that they were looking around, and some of them were only looking at themselves.
		And some of them will tell you that, actually, I just went straight through the ceiling.
		I didn't even add a glance, and then I went.
		So that's why, really, in order for this to work, we would have to look at over 1,000, maybe 1,500 cardiac arrest survivors, and then to try and see, really, what people describe and see if they can identify these hidden images and targets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, doctor, with the importance of this question, I mean, I started out the program saying I think it's got to be the biggest question of all for mankind.
		There is no bigger question than this.
		Is it all over when it's over, or is there something else?
		So why has there not been more study?
		Why does it take somebody like Dr. Moody or yourself or a very few others?
		In other words, there's so little study of the death process itself and NDEs.
		Why?
		Why, why?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think there are lots of reasons for this, but really it comes down to a few basic issues.
		One simple reason is that it's actually very difficult to study people at the end of life, because if you imagine, if you take the cardiac arrest scenario, well, most of those people don't survive.
		And even if they do, the whole priority is really geared towards getting that person back to life.
		And it's very difficult to do a controlled study to find out what was happening.
		Other issues that now come up are, for example, getting a patient's consent.
		Somebody who wasn't aware of anything being wrong, suddenly they have a cardiac arrest, their heart stops.
		It's very difficult to get them to agree to participate.
		Another problem, I think, is that traditionally and historically, people have perceived the idea of studying or the whole concept of death and dying to be related more to philosophy or perhaps theology rather than science.
		And I think that has probably hindered us to some extent because we've just assumed that it shouldn't be something that we should be dealing with.
		We should leave it to others to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, do you think that it's a worldwide phenomenon, this understudy of death?
		Is it a worldwide phenomenon?
		Or are there some countries where it's perfectly legit and they research this kind of thing?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		No, it's definitely a very, very acute problem really all over the world.
		I mean, people, there are very few people, scientific papers published on this area.
		And that is a problem.
		And unfortunately, whether we like it or not, the fact is that we're all going to reach that point in our lives.
		Certainly from a medical point of view, we deal with this on a daily basis.
		We have patients that we have to make decisions about their life and death, and we have to be able to repair them.
		And also, we have to know what they're going to experience.
		And that helps us and guides us to some extent as to how to treat them.
		So this will have huge implications.
		It will have implications for any discussion on euthanasia in the future.
		And it's really one of the issues that, you know, by improving our science, we have had to take on issues that we have considered more philosophical.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here's one for you.
		We have only so far talked about the brain tonight.
		But there are several cases out there, doctor, of organ transplants, sometimes multiple heart and lungs altogether.
		I've interviewed some of these people, doctor, and it's really bizarre.
		These people who are the recipient of the organs begin to get the longings for the exact same thing that the donor loved, whether it was peanut butter sandwiches, all of a sudden they would develop this bizarre longing for peanut butter sandwiches, and it went way beyond that.
		And so there's some hint or some suggestion that there might be some kind of cellular memory that we don't fully understand that is not totally connected to only the brain.
		Have you considered that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I've certainly heard of these descriptions as well.
		I don't know how to account for them, and they are very interesting.
		I don't really know.
		I don't have an answer to that.
		I think it really touches onto the wider issue of trying to understand where our thoughts and consciousness and everything that makes us unique as individuals comes from.
		And unfortunately, in science, we currently don't know, we don't have an answer for that.
		And it's the biggest mystery that we currently face in science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it sure is.
		And In life.
		So, where is NDE research going?
		I mean, Dr. Moody had his book.
		Now, you have written this: What happens when we die?
		Where is the research going?
		Is there all of a sudden going to be a lot of money available, or are we stuck in the same old place of very little research?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Unfortunately, I have to say that currently we are stuck with very little research, and that is due to the fact that there is very little funding.
		There are no organizations really in the world that fund research into near-death experiences.
		Very few charities fund research into death and dying.
		And so it's very difficult to get funding to do these studies.
		And unfortunately, as I described, the only way to get the answers is to do large-scale studies, which do cost money because we have to employ staff.
		What we are currently doing is trying to set up a multi-center study in the United Kingdom.
		We had a small grant from the UK Resuscitation Council to study this in more detail in cardiac arrest setting.
		But again, it's only really a start-up grant.
		We would have to get more funding to be able to expand out into the numbers that we're looking at, which is about 30 hospitals and 1,500 cardiac arrest survivors.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here's a very, very interesting question, Doctor, and I guess it'll require a guess from you.
		But, you know, I talk about all kinds of fringe topics, including UFOs.
		UFOs is a very good example of things we talk about in this program.
		And I can tell you from experience, doctor, that a very large number of people see UFOs, and a very small number of people actually report one of those things.
		So my question to you is, with regard to NDEs, how many do you think, because the person is probably afraid of being called a nutcase or laughed at or they're embarrassed about it or whatever the reason, what percentage do you think are not reported?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think a lot of people's experiences are not reported.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Certainly the people that I have interviewed, a lot of them had told me that this was the first time they were actually talking about their experiences, but they may have had it 30, 40 years before that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Same here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I get calls all the time.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, if you think about that, I'm sure right now there are lots of people who are listening who have had an experience and they've not really been able to discuss it in detail because they're afraid of being labeled in a negative manner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But as I said, a Gallup survey has suggested that maybe 4 to 5% of the population have had one at some point in their life.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		So you can imagine that's a lot of people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, and I don't know how many told Gallup no when it was really yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So even there, I'm not.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That's also a good point.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it could be a higher percentage, and I would bet that it's a higher percentage than we think.
		Just give us the very brief rundown of what one can expect with an NDE.
		What are the most widely reported observations of those having an NDE?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		So yes, people who come close to death for whatever reason will typically then describe feeling very peaceful, feeling joyous, seeing a bright light, sometimes seeing a tunnel and going through a tunnel towards the light.
		They may also describe seeing deceased relatives, perhaps a mother or a father, and may also describe seeing a being of light, a being that they describe as being full of compassion, full of love that sometimes accompanies this person.
		Sometimes they may describe having a period where they have a flashback, a review of their entire life in a moment, where they sometimes judge their own actions.
		They see what they have done.
		They may feel any pain they may have caused other people, and they may experience that at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That one scares me.
unidentified		Yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Those who've had it say that there was one lady in particular who told me that because of that experience, she's now very aware and very careful because she knows that when she dies, that's what she will experience.
		If she causes pain into others, she will experience it herself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure a lot of other people listening right now are cringing.
		I mean, how many of us, how many of us, really, honestly, folks, could face two things.
		One, experiencing the pain that you may have given to others in your life and then being required to judge yourself.
		That's really brutal.
		That's really brutal.
		And because I know I'm no different than anybody else, I have sinned.
		I have treated people poorly.
		And so I'm not so sure that I would judge myself well, Doctor.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's very interesting.
		What this lady told me is that she was accompanied by this being, and she saw everything that she had done, and she could feel things that she had done to others.
		And it wasn't that that being of light was judging her.
		She was then judging herself.
		And she was learning through it.
		It was really an educational process for this person.
		So although it was uncomfortable, but it was an educational process, and she certainly has been very much transformed positively by her experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can imagine that.
		It seems somewhat unfair, in a way, that some people have the opportunity to know that that's coming and correct their life.
		And most of us, on the other hand, certainly do not, except for whatever natural feelings might arise.
		I have interviewed over the years, Doctor, a few people who have said that they went to hell.
		In other words, perhaps they had judged themselves not worthy of the good side, and they actually went to hell in an ND.
		It's a very sensitive, very controversial topic.
		How many have you talked to who have said that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I've spoken to a few people who said that, but I have to point something out to you about that.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		The majority of people who have near-death experiences have very pleasant experiences, or at least I can say that the dying process seems to be pleasant for the majority of people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I can't say for everybody, obviously.
		we've had accounts given by people who suggest that they've had negative near-death experiences.
		So they've described, for example, maybe coming across demon-like figures, maybe coming across rats, snakes, things like that.
unidentified		The difficulty with that is, first of all, they're very rare.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Secondly, we know that certainly when people are critically ill, for example, let's say when carbon dioxide levels in the blood go up, people can start to have visions or paranoid type of visions where they start to see things that are coming to get them.
		So it's very difficult to know whether that really was what we would call a true near-death experience or whether it's simply that the person was very ill.
		And it goes back to the definition that I gave earlier that we need to be able to define clearly what we mean by near-death.
		It has to be people who are at the point of death.
unidentified		Got it.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Not a very vague sort of terminology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but doctor, if you think the normal, pleasant NDE is under-reported, and we both agree on that, trust me when I tell you that the, hey, mom, I had a near-death experience and I saw the devil and I saw people screaming and I saw the most hellish vision in my whole life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, now you're talking about an under-reported thing, doctor.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, the difficulty I have, I have to just point this out again, is there have been four studies carried out in cardiac arrest patients.
		So in other words, when people have reached the point of death.
		And although obviously these are relatively small studies, nobody has come back in those groups and described these negative type of experiences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's not to say that it doesn't happen.
		Again, I think the problem is that we need to do large-scale studies.
		But simply having somebody call me and say that, you know, I had this hellish experience, it doesn't mean that it was a near-death experience.
		It could simply have been that they were given various drugs or that they had been critically ill and had developed paranoid thought processes.
		It's very difficult from a scientific point of view to say.
		So I think what we need is a large-scale study of people during cardiac arrest and see what percentage have such negative experiences and what their features are like.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How can you imagine you might get funding or anybody might get funding for a study exactly like that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, one is obviously if there is somebody who is interested in this, who is interested in funding scientific research and who may want to assist in this or to support this kind of work.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		The second way is obviously if scientific funding bodies see some benefit in this and start to divert funds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That seems very, very unlikely.
		Dr. Holder, we're at the bottom of the hour.
		Jonathan in London, England says, hey, Art, it just can't be.
		The whole thing doesn't make sense.
		Judging yourself will only adversely affect the good people.
		The really bad, horrible, psycho-bastards who don't care and never did, never going to judge themselves guilty.
		They'll just have a good laugh.
		Then what?
		Into heaven?
		That's an interesting point.
		I don't know.
		I guess it depends upon how much of your consciousness you carry with you into this process.
		And one would have to imagine that you would carry your consciousness into it, or we're not talking about anything.
		Words are hard, aren't they?
		I was going to say anything real, but it could still be real.
		It's an interesting question he poses, don't you think, Doctor?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think it is obviously interesting.
		We simply don't know enough about this.
		And, you know, I've just described an anecdote or an individual person's experience.
		So I think we simply need more research into the dying process to see what we experience and what happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me run this one by you.
		I've interviewed many over the years who have had NDE's doctor.
		And I once interviewed a young lady named Sarah.
		And I have never had a story stop me in my tracks the way this one did.
		She was hit by a car.
		She was definitely clinically dead.
		And she was thrown way into the air.
		I mean, it was a terrible accident.
		And she described, her NDE was so specific, doctor, that she talked about actually moving to the other side down long halls full of different rooms.
		And she got to look into these rooms.
		And in some she saw people apparently suffering.
		In others, she saw great visions.
		It was just so incredibly detailed and told with such conviction that you knew it was true.
		How many NDEs do you get of that caliber?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I have to admit, I haven't ever seen or spoken to anybody who's told me that they've seen, for example, different rooms.
		It's difficult for me to comment on that, but certainly the vast majority of people that I have interviewed have had very specific details of what they've seen, what they've experienced.
		And it's been very touching for me, very moving, really.
		It's really added an insight into my personal life, but also for my professional life talking to these people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you still practicing?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, of course, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are.
		Do you ever get into conversations with any of your patients on this topic?
		Or is it something you stay away from in your personal practice?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I would certainly talk to patients if they bring it up with me.
		But I have to say that usually in the acute hospital setting, patients who've had near-death experiences won't bring it up unless they're specifically asked and if they trust the person who's asking them because they're usually afraid of being labeled In a negative manner.
		And also, sometimes it's a little bit in the initial stages, it can be a little bit traumatic for them because it gives them a realization that they really had been close to dying and that maybe they wouldn't be here today or at that time to talk about it.
		Sure.
		They usually sometimes they feel that they need a bit of time to really, it's not so much the experience, it's the knowledge that really maybe today I wouldn't be here.
		I almost died.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To process the information, that alone would be hard.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I absolutely agree with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if since Dr. Moody's book, when patients or the relatives of patients hear that, you know, their relative or whatever did indeed clinically die for a period of time, we probably live in a day and age where that question would much more likely be asked, right, since the book?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think, generally speaking, in the last 25, 30 years, there has been a trend towards more acceptance of this.
		And I think certainly, yes, there have been changes.
		When they were first described, people were much more negative about them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So relatives are more likely.
		Are relatives...
		Are you bound, doctor, to tell the relatives or friends of a person who has clinically died, or even that person themselves, that they did clinically die?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, we tell patients, it very much depends on the particular circumstances.
		We would normally tell their relatives that they had had a cardiac arrest and that they've been very critically ill.
		Obviously, say for example, if I'm involved in a cardiac arrest resuscitation and an immediate family member arrives and they're very concerned, then we would communicate with them quite often during the whole process.
		We would tell them that what's happened to their loved one, that they have essentially had a cardiac arrest and that we're trying to restart their heart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		And then we will go back and tell them whether we've been successful, whether we're still trying, and unfortunately, whether we hadn't been successful.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That must be very difficult, very difficult to tell.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Very difficult.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Usually the relatives are more in a state of shock, I have to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But it is very difficult.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Obviously, it's not good news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know about shock.
		Okay.
		Have you personally concluded, Doctor, that NDEs are real?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think that near-death experiences certainly take place and certainly give us an indication of what we're likely to experience at the end of our lives.
		And for the majority of people, they are pleasant.
		What I can't tell is whether they indicate something of an external reality, whether there is an afterlife or not.
		But certainly if you look at the anecdotal cases, as I said, the area that we can test and we can try and validate are people who claim to have had out-of-body experiences because they come back and tell us in specific detail what we had done and what was happening, and those can be verified.
		And certainly we now have the scientific means and the technology to be able to test these theories and to find out what happens to the human mind and consciousness at the end of life and how it relates to the brain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I want to talk about consciousness.
		Doctor, there have been, I think, claims that some scientists or doctors have made that they were able to electrically stimulate some part of the brain and cause an MDE.
		Is there anything to that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		There is some element of accuracy with this.
		There was a paper published in 2002, a scientific paper published, by a group of Swiss doctors.
		And what they were doing is they had a patient who had been suffering with intractable epilepsy.
		And as part of this treatment, they tried to identify, this is not all of the world, but this happened to this group of doctors in Switzerland, where doctors will try to stimulate different parts of the brain electrically to try to identify the area of the brain that has an abnormal electrical rhythm that's causing the epilepsy and the seizures.
		And what they found as part of their routine workup for a particular patient is that by stimulating a specific area of the brain, the patient started to describe what sounded very much like an out-of-body experience.
		It wasn't a complete one, but she felt that she was able to see at least half of her body.
		It's very difficult to comment beyond that because this is a single case report.
		And there have been other cases like this before where doctors had stimulated similar experiences.
		What this tells us is that certainly there are areas of the brain that mediate the experiences.
		So for example, if you imagine if I were to go out into the street and, for example, a car hits me or I have a heart attack or I have very severe meningitis, something that then causes me to come close to death and then eventually die, the changes, the physiological or biological changes that take place in my body will stimulate certain parts of the brain and they will lead to an experience.
		However, what that doesn't tell us is whether the experience is real or not.
		It just simply tells us that specific parts of the brain are involved with it.
		Now, if we then go back and artificially stimulate those same parts of the brain, we could induce the same experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So then if we're looking for proof about whether an experience is real or not, the people who rise to the top of the room and are able to see everything going on when they have absolutely nothing going on in their brain at all, when they're flatlined, those people might be the best evidence that this is a real experience.
		Would you agree?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Those are the only people that can be studied objectively through scientific means currently, absolutely.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I just want to just, if I may, just finish off my last point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of course.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Because this is important, because a lot of people think that, oh, simply because we identify or we can stimulate parts of the brain And cause an experience, that means that it must be a hallucination, or it must be unreal.
		And that's absolutely incorrect.
		The reason for that is because, if you think about it, if we take again a mother, when a mother sees, let's say, a two-year-old or a three-year-old child, that seeing of the child will induce feelings of love and compassion and all maternal feelings towards.
		And we can study the brain accurately and find out which parts of the brain mediate that love.
		What we can then do is artificially stimulate the same parts of the brain and lead to the same sensation of love.
		Okay?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Aha.
		Isn't that something?
		The love part of the brain.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Any part, any sensation that we have, any experience that we have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We can identify where it is, stimulate it, and sort of reproduce it artificially.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Reproduce it artificially.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		So in the same way that you wouldn't say maternal love is a hallucination, in exactly the same way we cannot say simply because we know which parts of the brain may be involved that this experience is unreal.
		The way I also think about it for myself is if you think about when the body is going through the dying process, it's a bit like a jet pilot, a fighter jet pilot who has had a malfunction with his plane and it's about to crash.
		And he or she will try the best that they can to try to keep the plane in the air.
		But eventually they get to a point where they realize actually no matter what they do, the plane is going to crash and all they can do is bail themselves out.
		They'll press a little button and then they'll eject out of the plane.
		And it may be that when we're dying, that there are various keys that are being pressed in the brain to try and keep it alive.
		And eventually the brain says, well, it's not going to work.
		We're going to die.
		Then the person has this experience and they may then have this separation of their consciousness or their mind from the brain at that time, which is what we then see as an out-of-body experience.
unidentified		Okay, but it has to be real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it has to be real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If somebody can come back and describe what went on and what was said when they were dead, then it has to be real.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, what that would mean, and by real I'll just define that, what that would mean is that, and this is very difficult for us to understand and explain scientifically, but we'd have to accept it and we'd have to try to understand it better, is that actually there can be a separation of mind and consciousness from the brain at the end of life or at any other time.
		That actually mind and consciousness may not only be simply be a product of brain activity.
		It may be a separate scientific entity that we haven't yet discovered.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got a fast blast here.
		That's a little computer.
		People can talk to me by computer while the show is going on, and they're reminding me that there was a very old study that I'd love to have you comment on.
		I wish I had the, I think it was, might have been Reuters News or AP Now, one of the big wire services reported on this doctor who in the 1800s, Dr. Parnia, actually measured people's weight at the moment of death.
		Yes.
		Are you familiar with the study?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I've heard of it, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the study, people lost varying but significant amounts of weight at the instant of death, and people have said all kinds of things about it, but this was done back in the days when such a study, ethically, I guess, could be done.
		And for all the research I could do, it seemed absolutely legitimate.
		And I doubt in the modern day that we've done such a thing.
		But, you know, the contention was that this was the soul, that the soul had some physical, some physical weight or something, and was continually measured as, you know, an ounce or two or three or whatever at the instant of death.
		Any comments on that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've been told about this as well.
		I think my reaction to it is that it's very difficult to draw such a conclusion.
		I mean, if you think about it, there are so many limitations with this kind of work or concept.
		Because the first limitation is, is the apparatus that's being used accurate enough to measure that sort of change?
		The second problem is, obviously, when someone is dying, there will be shifts in their bodily fluid amounts.
		And if we're only talking a few grams, then it's very difficult to say that this wasn't due to a simple shift in some sort of bodily fluid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, the studies showed ounces.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Or ounces.
		What I'm saying is it's very difficult to comment that this is not something physical that's happening in the body.
		And then to be able to attribute it to something else.
		So I simply don't know.
		I mean, I've heard about it, but that's all I can really say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then there's one other thing.
		I have interviewed many people over the years doing a program like this who have been with a dying person at the actual instant of death.
		And many times, you know, relatives will, of course, put their arms around the person or lean over them in some way.
		And I've had these accounts, Doctor, of people who said they actually felt something move through them at the instant of that person's death.
		In other words, they were above them and they actually felt something move through them.
		Have you heard any of those accounts?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I've heard of some people say things like that when they've been with their relatives.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I really can't comment beyond the fact of just saying that I've heard about it.
		I don't know if they're true or not.
		I mean, obviously they're true to the person, but I don't know what they signify.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Money for the kind of work that you're doing.
		Money for research.
		It doesn't seem very likely to me it's going to come from our government.
		Although you never know.
		I just wonder if you were to try to make the case, Doctor, for getting a research grant for this, and you had to come up with some medical benefit, some benefit to the medical community in order to justify the study, could you do it?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		This area is very new.
		It's novel.
		And it has huge implications for us all.
		It has both medical implications and social implications.
		The benefits from a medical point of view is that one, we need to understand what our patients go through at the end of life, and particularly during cardiac arrest.
		We've now had four scientific studies that have suggested that our mind or consciousness of our patients during cardiac arrest, at least in 10 to 20%, may continue to function, even though there is a lack of brain activity, as far as we can see, and as far as studies have indicated.
		And this needs to be verified.
		It needs to be done in a larger scale.
		And if it's true, it would probably help us in trying to understand the biggest mystery in science, which is actually what is the nature of human consciousness thought and how it relates to the brain.
		Another very interesting area where this would benefit society and medical practice in particular is that, and we haven't touched on this very much tonight, is that people who have near-death experiences, particularly those who see a being of light, when they come back, they're positively transformed by this experience.
		They become more altruistic, they become less materialistic, they become much more engaged with their family, society in general, they become much more empathetic.
		And this has also been demonstrated in a study carried out in Holland that was published a few years ago in cardiac arrest patients.
		And it's essentially a very positive experience for the people, and it stays with them for many years, perhaps decades, until they die.
		And again, as I pointed out earlier, everything that we experience, we know is mediated through certain changes within the body or the brain.
		What we'd like to do ultimately is to identify what are the molecular changes.
unidentified		What we'd like to do is to identify what are the molecular changes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, the fascinating Dr. Sam Parnilla.
		Doctor, welcome back.
		Just before we get to phones, we are going to go to the phones.
		I want to let people ask questions, but this one came in by email.
		I'm actually monitoring my emails as we go along.
		Is there any actual scientific evidence that consciousness is contained inside the brain in the same sense that, say, a liquid or gas can be contained inside of a physical container?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		There isn't, no.
		I mean, the biggest mystery we currently face in science is actually understanding how our thoughts, our consciousness comes to arise from the brain, if at all from the brain.
		In simple terms, if you think about it, if you were to look at a brain cell, a neuron down a microscope, and I were to say to you, well, this cell is now thinking, you know, I'm hungry, or gosh, this guy talks so much, then you'd say, well, it's impossible because it's just a cell, and these cells can't think.
		And so the problem we currently face in science is, well, how is it that if we were to connect two of these cells together, or hundreds or thousands or millions of them, essentially by electricity, where do thoughts come from?
		How is it that if I were to throw a brick at my neighbor's window, why should my brain cells start to feel guilty about what I have done?
		Why should they have thoughts they shouldn't do?
		So this is called the hard problem of consciousness because we simply don't know how these things arise.
		We know they interact with the brain.
		We can demonstrate which areas of the brain become active when we have certain thoughts.
		That can be done very easily.
		But the big step of jumping from electrical activity in the brain to thoughts, which really, to some extent, almost feel like something completely different, we don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, in the computer field, they're getting closer and I guess closer to someday being able to emulate the brain in storage, in speed, in all these different categories.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I wonder if it would be fair to say if someday they create consciousness in a machine that they have created life.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think we have to just touch on a point here, which is that when we talk about consciousness, we're not talking simply about calculations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		We're not talking, yes, we know that the brain, you can think of it as a very complex computer that can carry out thousands and millions of calculations at every moment in our lives, based upon information that it receives from all over our body, inside and outside the body.
		But we're not talking about that.
		We're talking about having thought processes.
		In other words, what we experience is our conscious self and how that comes to be.
		And that's really different to a complex machine that may do very complex calculations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it necessarily different, really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, once you get to enough speed and enough storage, storage being memory, speed being, I guess, the way neurons communicate with chemical messengers to each other, if you get to that point with a machine, one has to wonder if they will, in fact, discover consciousness, or if it is completely unique, then the case that you're making is quite good.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, of course.
		If brain cells can generate thoughts, and if it's simply a matter of fact that we haven't been able to discover them, then in theory, if at some point in the future, whether it's now, 100 years or 500 years in the future, we can discover machinery that mimics the brain in some way through its complexity, then in theory we might be able to discover or generate some form of consciousness as well.
		If, however, consciousness is a separate scientific entity that hasn't yet been discovered and that isn't generated by those neurons, those brain cells, then of course we will simply manufacture a very complex computer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Exactly.
		And that would, I guess, prove your point.
		So science someday, science someday, may be able to actually establish that what we call consciousness, and by the way, do you define consciousness as More than awareness of self?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I describe it really as everything that we experience, the whole subjective world that we experience within ourselves.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		So our thoughts, feelings, emotions, everything that we have that makes us unique as individuals and gives us life and personality.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And these are probably the things that compel you to believe that these NDEs are real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The mystery of this.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It depends what you mean by real.
		I think that, like I explained earlier, we're at a very interesting point in science where we can actually test the validity of these claims.
		And these may indicate to us that actually, indirectly, they may indicate that mind or consciousness is a separate scientific entity that hasn't yet been discovered.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Yes.
		Is there any work going on?
		I mean, anything with electrical activity going on, it seems to me, if there is a consciousness, that it's operating at some level with some God, what I use, something that we're ultimately going to be able to measure with an instrument.
		In other words, are you familiar, for example, with the experiments going on at Princeton University in consciousness?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Are you talking about the global consciousness?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I certainly am, yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I've heard about them.
		I don't know enough in detail to be able to comment in any informed way.
		Yes, absolutely.
		But I'm aware of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
		Well, you're going to absolutely love it.
		And, you know, in view of what you've done, I would think that you should jump right into that because it sort of parallels what you just said about it being separate, but yet still perhaps measurable.
		They've done good scientific work at Princeton, and they may be measuring collective consciousness.
		It's really fascinating.
		Let's go to the phones.
		First-time caller line.
		Good morning.
		You're on the air with Dr. Parnia.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		I didn't know if that was me or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's you.
unidentified		All right.
		I've sure had a hard time trying to get to talk to you, but I have a lot of answers.
		I just don't know if it's the time to release them.
		And if there's some way I can't get online, I'm going to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, do you have a question for my guest?
unidentified		Well, yes.
		Are you familiar with the fact that there's been some scientific writings from the early 1700s that speak of spiritual body, a natural body, and that the spiritual body is what goes on.
		The natural body, of course, stays here.
		And there's the spiritual mind, the natural mind, and it's rather...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that your belief?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, historically, there has been the concept that there is a soul.
		And if you look back to, you know, whether philosophical literature or religious literature, essentially it's a concept that it's something that gives us life and that remains after we die.
		No one could probably describe in detail exactly what the nature of this is, but it's a concept that we have that goes back generations and many, many years.
		And in science today, what we're trying to understand is what is consciousness.
		Again, what is it that gives us life, that gives us our thoughts and our personality and who we are.
		And it may be that we're all describing the same concept.
		It's just that we're calling it different things.
		But what is interesting is that science now for the first time, and this has only been happening in the last 20 or so years, has become interested in trying to understand this, which had been previously considered purely a subject of debate for philosophy or theology.
		And obviously, everything that exists exists within the objective or the testable domain.
		And it's simply really our limitation, our scientific limitations, that sometimes don't allow us to discover what those concepts are.
		And I'm sure one day we'll be able to find out what consciousness is and how our thoughts are and what happens when we die.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, if science were to ever prove not that NDEs are real, not that there is any life after death at all, but if science were to ever conclude conclusively that in fact there is nothing after death, this is probably a question you don't get very often.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you imagine the incredible impact it would have on the world?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think it would have a huge impact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		But obviously we'd have to, the big if is obviously it has to have been tests that have been done appropriately to be able to answer the question.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		And it shouldn't be the fact that we are limited in not having appropriate apparatus or instruments to measure what happens at that time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I sure wouldn't want to be the guy who had to walk out and announce that to the world as a conclusive piece of evidence.
		Holy mackerel.
		I once interviewed a fellow named, actually several times, Matthew Alper, and he has written a book.
		He's not a believer in any higher power at all.
		He's written a book called The God Part of the Brain.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you're familiar with that?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I'm familiar with the concept, but sure, go ahead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's just that if you go to the deepest part of the jungles and, you know, the most out-of-the-way places and you come in contact with people who have never come in contact with the modern world, they inevitably, absolutely, worship something.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so that alone is worth study.
		It means Something that the human being, no matter where and under whatever circumstances, grows to worship something.
		Be it the sun, the moon, God, Buddha, whatever, he worships something.
		And so there's got to be some part of our brain that almost demands we do that.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure you're also familiar with other research that's been carried out by Dr. Andrew Newberg.
		And he studied areas of the brain that are involved in spiritual or religious experiences.
		So he's been studying people who meditate and studying which parts of the brain become active during that time.
		And certainly we've been able to identify through this type of work that there are specific areas of the brain that are involved with religious experiences.
		That, you know, it's not that people have religious experiences and it's separate from the brain.
		It takes place, again, through the brain.
		And so it may well be that there are areas of the brain that are geared towards our, should we say, spiritual life.
		But again, like any other thing, if we identify those areas of the brain, it doesn't tell us whether an experience is real or not.
		It's simply a chemical that goes across the brain.
		It's a bit like if you were to imagine you had a satellite and you were able to watch, I don't know if you've seen, but you know, in Egypt in the olden days, because the river Nile is such an important source of water for that country, in the olden days, what they used to do was to just develop little waterways that would come out and branch out of the river.
		And what we now do is we study brain activity and we can study where blood flow goes and how it changes.
		And so if you imagine if you had a satellite and you were looking down at the Nile and you could see little tributaries coming out of the Nile, you could conclude from that that there is activity going on down there, but you couldn't conclude anything beyond that.
		And that's what we're doing with the brain.
		What we see is we see activity within the brain cells, but it doesn't tell us if an experience is real or not.
		It just tells us that there is blood flow going on to the particular area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Pernilla.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		This is Vicki from Denver.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Vicki.
unidentified		And thank you so much for taking my call.
		I have two really quick questions.
		One, I've always read about energy.
		I've always thought of consciousness as energy.
		We have emotional, kinetic energy.
		And there's a theory that energy does not die nor is created but is merely transformed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that's more than a theory.
unidentified		Yeah, exactly.
		So I wondered what the doctor had to say about that.
		And my second note is that I had an NDE back in 1979.
		And just a question about that.
		My experience was I was pulled through a tunnel to the light and Given the option of whether to go back, and I hesitated.
		I mean, I didn't hesitate.
		I said, I have to go back.
		I have to go back.
		In all the readings I've done, I've never heard of anybody that did not hesitate, like I did not hesitate.
		And I wondered if he had come across anyone like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I bet we never hear from the people who say, I don't want to go back.
		Listen, thank you very much for the call.
		Both very good questions.
		The first question, Doctor, about energy.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, as you pointed out, that is something that is well accepted, that energy just changes, but it doesn't die out.
		The problem we have, though, in relation to consciousness is that we simply don't know what the nature of consciousness is yet.
		And we're limited by our scientific tools.
		We don't have the right apparatus.
		In the same way that 50 years ago, if you said to somebody we can have a scanner that can look inside the brain up to one or two millimeters accuracy, in other words, an MRI scanner, they would have laughed at us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		We simply don't have a tool or a machine that can show us thoughts and consciousness yet.
		It doesn't mean that we won't have it, but we don't have it yet.
		So how that relates to consciousness in terms of energy, of course, we simply don't know because we don't know what consciousness is yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, but it makes the Fact that energy does not die, I guess, you know, gives people hope.
		And it's true, energy does not die.
		I suppose the most you could say is, well, it might disperse randomly and just sort of become something else, but it doesn't die.
		So, I don't know.
		This is all really something to even contemplate, even to think about, and certainly very difficult to get funding for.
		Where would you first think you would look for funding?
		Not to the government, I presume, but to some wealthy individual who wants answers?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think either a philanthropist who is interested in supporting scientific research or ultimately medical charities that deal with understanding what happens during cardiac arrest, because essentially we are studying the human mind and consciousness during that time.
		And as I pointed out, there are reports that consciousness may continue during that time.
		Another way of obviously getting funding may be potentially to try to, as I said, devise new therapies for people who have depressive illnesses based upon identifying which areas of the brain become active after a near-death experience?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That one seems very likely from a clinical point of view.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, depression is a monstrous problem all around the world.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, if this and you feel this really might give some answers about how better to deal with depression to perhaps stimulate very specific parts of the brain, is that the idea?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, because this was actually an idea that was given to me by a doctor at Baylor Medical Center in Houston, Dr. Lily Fong.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		And she told me, and it's made so much sense, is that obviously if we can identify the changes that happened in the genes of people after they've had a near-death experience, in other words, the areas that mediate the good, the positive effects of a near-death experience on the individual, then we could try to artificially stimulate those areas and hence bring about the same good feelings or positive feelings that those individuals have had, but without having to go through a critical illness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you could actually do that, I guess it would lead people perhaps even away from the idea that NDEs are real in an external sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It might be a good thing to do for medicine, certainly, but the very fact that it could be done would probably weigh down on the other side of the argument, right?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		What it shouldn't do, what it would probably do, which I think is a good thing, is make it very clear to people that simply by identifying areas of the brain that mediate any experience, that does not validate in any way the experience itself.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		In the same way that we could theoretically devise treatments that could stimulate feelings of love in people, it doesn't mean that love itself is a hallucination.
unidentified		Music.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it seems to me that people can describe what's going on while they're dead, that is proof of NDEs.
		Now, what it may not be proof of is an afterlife.
		Is that correct, Doctor?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would certainly demonstrate to us that consciousness can separate from the brain and continue to function when we reach the end of life.
		It won't tell us what happens hours later.
		Obviously, we don't have the means, but certainly it would give us an indication of what happens in the first few seconds, maybe up to an hour of the dying process.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So are you personally convinced, you know, this is a personal question you don't have to answer, doctor, but are you personally convinced that A, that NDEs are real?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think that NDEs are real in the sense that they take place, absolutely.
		If you mean, do they mean an afterlife?
		I don't yet know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have hope that in your lifetime you will know?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I certainly hope that we'll be able to do the right test, yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		That we'll be able to find out what happens when people die through scientific means and to answer this age-old philosophical and religious question through the objectivity of science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, how's your book doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's just out, isn't it?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's only just come out in the U.S. in the last, I think it's only been out for about two weeks now.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		So I don't yet know myself, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's going to do real well.
		I mean, based on the way you've answered questions this morning, if your book is like that, it's going to do very well.
		So there's a question for you.
		Does your book deal with mainly what we've been talking about this morning?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it does.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's really both a story of how I got involved in this research, and it also summarizes really what's been happening in near-death experience research and the work that has been carried out since by ourselves and others, and where the future lies in this kind of research.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we have Dr. Moody, and now we have you, Doctor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you see other people of science entering this arena?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I think there are a number of other people who have done very good work.
		Probably the person who I have the most respect for is Professor Bruce Grayson, who works here in the United States.
		And he's published a number of studies on near-death experiences.
		But relatively, unfortunately, there are very few people out there who are doing this kind of work.
		I think there are only two groups currently working.
		One is Professor Bruce Grayson's group here, and one is our group where the research has been carried out in the United Kingdom.
		And there's nobody else who's doing any work right now in the world on this, as far as I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely pathetic.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's very disappointing, I have to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pathetic.
		To be the biggest question for man and to have only that going on is just pathetic.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Parnillia.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, hello, Art and Dr. Parnia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		I'd like to submit something that may answer both of those questions.
		Survival of consciousness and also an afterlife.
		Not the kind of consciousness like we're just abstractly floating in an auric egg in space, where you know that I am I and I am me.
		I'll praise that way down ten years ago.
		My sister passed on.
		She was very ill.
		Seven and a half weeks after that, I was wide awake, so I decided to read.
		You know, you can't just stare at walls.
		I was reading nothing more strange than one of Emerson's essays, Wide Awake.
		Almost as though some doctor had just injected me with sodium pentathol or whatever, I couldn't keep my eyes open.
		A sudden swish, like someone turned a switch.
		Two seconds later, I was floating above my body.
		And the next thing I knew, someone was, I'm getting chilled in remembering it, holding my hand.
		And it was tangible, which means whatever body we were manifesting, it was my sister.
		And I said, Jerry, it's you.
		She said, well, of course it is, real matter-of-factly.
		I was, and the first thing, this shows I had consciousness.
		I said, am I dead?
		After all, if Jerry is dead and I'm there with her, I'm, she said, oh, you know, come on, like, like you, how foolish.
		No one is dead.
		No one dies.
		And we were actually flying to a place, don't ask me where.
		It was like an alabaster illuminated gazebo.
		And she said, please tell everyone in the family.
		She said, I knew you wouldn't be afraid, which she's correct.
		Tell them everything is hunky dory.
		That was her favorite expression.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hunky Dory.
unidentified		After we talked for a bit, we went back.
		And then I felt her hand slip away.
		And the next thing I knew, my body jerked.
		I mean, so suddenly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Back into your body.
		Okay.
		Doctor, this is actually a very, very, very good question.
		All the reports, like you just heard from that lady, and of ghosts, and of spirits, and of EVPs, and of all of these, you know, fringy kind of things, in a way, they potentially could sort of wind into your research, couldn't they?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes and no.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I'm very much researching specifically what happens to people at the point of death.
unidentified		Yes.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		So it's a very specific clinical scenario.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Although once you expand out into the implications this would have for understanding the nature of human consciousness, then of course, you know, all experiences would fit into it because we simply don't know how they arise and how they relate to the brain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, we sure don't.
		And if the answer ultimately to the question is that consciousness does survive, then the kind of thing that that lady just described, it could happen.
		It could be part of the yes answer.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Pernilla.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, my name is Peter from Herrero, Louisiana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I have two questions.
		I guess I'll ask the first one first.
		How do I get involved or maybe volunteer for any kind of study towards what you do?
		And secondly, actually, the most important one, in anything that you've seen, any of your NDEs, have they seen or spoken to any of their dead family or friends?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, here, you're volunteering to be flatlined.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that correct?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		No, I think you don't bring that either.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm kidding with them.
		All right.
		Well, I don't know if there's any way you can become involved.
		Doctor, is there?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It probably is very difficult.
		It depends on what the gentleman can do.
		We're obviously looking at people in hospital settings whose heart stops for whatever different reasons.
		So at this point, that's really we would look for collaboration with people who are working in hospitals.
		But I think to answer your second question, that's a very interesting question.
		You're asking a lot of people describe seeing deceased relatives.
		It's almost as if when they're going through a dying process, as if those relatives are there to comfort them through that experience, almost to welcome them there.
		And they will often see perhaps, say, a mother or a father that they were very close to.
		They may have a conversation with that person.
		Usually if they have a discussion or a conversation, it's carried out in almost like a telepathic manner.
		So it's all through a conversation with thoughts.
		People don't actually verbalize.
		It's a bit like when we have dreams, we may have a conversation.
		But actually, if you think about it, you don't normally see your lips moving.
		It's just through your thoughts that you converse.
		And it's carried out in a similar manner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How frequently are these unexpected relatives, I guess that's a way to put it, to meet people that you would not necessarily have the expectation of meeting or be surprised to be meeting?
unidentified		Does that question make sense?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think, well, I couldn't give you an actual percentage, but the majority of times it's usually people who are closer, although I have had people who have told me that they saw, say, a deceased aunt or maybe a friend or somebody who isn't necessarily as close as we would expect, say a mother or father or a brother or a sister.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you get up there and say, my God, it's Aunt Doris.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the people say that.
		Oh, I saw my aunt who died 30 years ago and she was there.
		They've described that, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That also is very interesting because it would mean you were having an experience that there was no immediate frame of reference for.
		You might expect to meet mom or dad, but not sort of a further away relative.
		So that's fascinating.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Parnia.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
unidentified		And Dr. Parnia?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		A quick comment and one good question, please.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		Art, I had a t-shirt made up for the Starwood Festival that says, is our memory an experience?
		Question mark.
		Are our thoughts an experience?
		Question mark.
		And is experience an experience?
		Question mark.
		Dr. Parnia, since we interpret our sensations through the electrical chemical processes in our brain, what makes the car going by any more real than, say, our dreams or doing DMT, for example?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a very good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Because as you know, I'm sure, you know, when we see something and we experience it as being real, it's essentially that we have certain activity within the back of the brain, and that will give us, we interpret that as meaning something to us, say, for example, a car going along.
		But if we think about a car going along, and we close our eyes and we think about it, the same areas of the brain become active.
		And this really touches on the point that I made earlier that just because a part of the brain becomes active doesn't tell us about the reality of the event.
		And in fact, it's probably difficult to go through it on the program tonight, but reality is really socially determined.
		So a group of people will decide on what meaning they can give to an observation.
		And that is really dictated by our society that we live in and the time that we live in.
		So that with time you see that certain things that we take for granted as being real are then changed.
		And it very much depends on the people in society who are dictating it or who are if they're perceived as being more, shall we say, important or significant members of society, that they will tell us what meaning to give to what we see.
unidentified		So if two people see a UFO, it's real?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		It's real for them.
		That's all we can say.
		That's the point.
		If, for example, I say that I saw my mother even, that's real for me.
		It's difficult for anybody else to say whether it was really real or not.
		I just want to also point out that we're also limited in terms of understanding the reality of the world around us.
		We're very much limited by the apparatus that we have.
		In other words, the brain.
		Our brain is tuned to being able to take data and information in a 3D way.
		We know that there are more than three dimensions out in the universe.
		Science has shown that.
		But our brain, our computer, however you want to think of it, is limited in the way that it can take information, and so are all our senses.
		Our eyes can only see within a certain limited amount.
		Our ears are the same limited.
		So what we do to compensate for that is we devise instruments.
		We build microscopes.
		We build telescopes to be able to see beyond what we can normally see with the naked eye.
		And so what we have to understand is that as human beings, we're very limited in understanding what is real out there.
		And if we confine everything that is real to what we can understand within our three-dimensional brain, we're very likely to have missed out on a big chunk of reality simply because we don't have an apparatus or a machine to be able to pick it up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Parnell.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Ert and Dr. Parnillia.
		In response to the initial fast blast that indicated some questions about where consciousness is coming from, I wanted to cite the work of John Lorber from Sheffield University that did research on hydrocephalics and found that certain had very high IQs but virtually no brain, just about a millimeter or so of neural tissue lining the inside of the skull.
		So this flies in the face of the late, great Walter Penfield and his center in cephalic coordination of consciousness or John C. Eccles and the varietal lobe and etc.
		And it really disturbs a number out there that research brain activity when you find that there's virtually no gray matter or lobes or fissures to speak of and you're talking about people having higher than normal IQs.
		And lastly, I wanted to respond to the diagnostic procedures for measuring this kind of very delicate activity.
		Well, far beyond MRIs and nuclear magnetic resonance is superconducting quantum interference technology, or SWIDS.
		These measure bioelectromagnetic phenomena down to the ionic structure and coupled with the work of people like William A. Tiller, one of my favorite guests on your show, Art, his work on the power within the vacuum of an atom and the redundancy built throughout the universe makes superluminal communication possible, action at a distance.
		And it ties in well with the work of Jack Sir Fatty and Henry Stepp and Carl Pribram that's looked at the holographic universe.
		So I thought these might be some interesting directions to pursue.
		Carl Pribram, Jack Sir Fatty, Jamaic Tiller would be a good person to have on at some point to discuss the non-locality of the universe and how things can in fact be transmitted in a very physical way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All excellent suggestions.
		And obviously, Doctor, your work could take many, many different directions.
		But with so few people doing the research.
		I just, you know, I can see how you've got to stay right on course for now, anyway.
		Someday, maybe the world will wake up.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Parnell.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, this is Susan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Susan, you're going to have to yell at us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not too loud.
unidentified		Hi.
		This is Susan.
		I'm from Los Angeles.
		In 2000, I had two NDEs, one from open heart surgery and one from cardiac arrest five months later.
		I've also been a person who's studied consciousness most of my life.
		And I would like to ask the doctor the question between measuring consciousness through activity in the brain and perhaps measuring consciousness through the seat of the soul electromagnetically, like Dr. Moss measured with Kirlian photography.
		And if perhaps he could comment on whether the possibility exists that the brain is nothing more than a gathering place of information that definitely experiences or...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's stick with Curilian photography for a moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it possible, Doctor, that some other method of measurement may find activity and energy that conventional methods so far have been unable to detect, as in Curilian photography?
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure that in theory, of course, yes, the answer to that question is yes, that there will be methods that can be devised that perhaps we don't know yet or that are not conventional at this point that can measure activity.
		I don't know enough about curlion photography to be able to make a judgment about the accuracy of the work.
		I know that it's been done, but I don't really know if it's reproducible from a scientific point of view.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that it may be, and it's probably worth investigation.
		But again, I understand your narrow field.
		Caller, I'm sorry, anything else?
unidentified		Yeah, I would just sort of like to comment on my own experience, and that's that I do believe that consciousness exists in a place other, in addition to existing in the mind and being measurable in the mind, that it's also felt in the seat of the soul.
		And that that's The part that we talk about that continues on.
		My own personal experience is that I saw lots of things that family members that I knew were related to me but had no idea who they were in tunnels saw and had communication with my grandmother and something much greater than me behind her at the same time that forever changed my life.
		And when I listen to trying to approach it from a scientific point of view, and while I understand your guest is a clinician, what I'd like to tell you from my own personal experience is that I don't know that I could ever have understood it with my mind, but I certainly understand it with my soul.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got you.
		I've got you.
		And on that note, Doctor, we're out of time, but boy, what a guest you have been.
		What Happens When We Die is the name of the book.
		You should go find it on Amazon or wherever you can find it.
		What Happens When We Die by Dr. Sam Parnilla.
		Doctor, I want to thank you for being here.
		Just a terrific guest.
dr sam parnia ▲ ● ▼		Thank you so much.
		It's been my pleasure, Art.
		It's been wonderful to be on the program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I would like to do it again sometime, all right?

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