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Sept. 21, 2015 - Art Bell

02:16:06

Art Bell MITD - Dr Jeffrey Long NDEs

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	From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you good evening, good morning,
	good afternoon, whatever the time of day may be in your time zone, every single one of
	them covered by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
	I'm Art Bell.
	All right, so the rules of the show are really simple, no bad language, and only one call per show.
	And that's all the rules we have.
	A big thank you, as always, to Telos, Joe Talbot, thank you for the great sound, Keith Rowland, my webmaster, Heather Wade, my producer, she's been working really hard, Streamguys, LV.net, Sales with Pete Everhart, TuneIn Radio, Leo Ashcraft, and Down Under, Jazz Monda.
	Alright, so, um, it's a pretty big deal, and, uh, let me tell you what's going on.
	Let me explain.
	Best I can.
	Um, we are, uh, we have had, now, for the last two months, an outstandingly excellent internet radio program.
	Um, yes, we're on about twenty affiliates, or twenty-two or three, I don't know how many now.
	But, um, we are ready to Go kaboom!
	Now, we're about to engage XDS on October 1st.
	This is a big deal, and you say, well, what's XDS?
	XDS is the satellite receiver that about 4,000 radio stations, or just about, have sitting already in their radio stations, satellite downlink receiver.
	And what we're going to do is we're going to feed XDS our internet stereo signal, our excellent stereo signal, I might add, and they will then send it up to satellite and down to radio stations.
	So, up until this point, We have been just an excellent internet show with some very progressive stations already taking the show, as you know.
	Well, this will exponentially increase the possibility of broadcast stations taking the program.
	And therefore, I would ask all of you, go get a pencil and paper and jot this down so you don't forget it.
	Tomorrow, the next day or the next week, but tomorrow would be good because you'll forget it otherwise.
	Call your local radio station and tell them, they'll know what XDS is.
	That's X-Ray Delta Sugar.
	They'll know what XDS is, so call up the local manager and tell them, guess what?
	Art Bell is back and you can have him at the flip of a switch beginning October 1st.
	So if you would do that, it would be really, really wonderful, and we're about to sort of, well, go to the next level, frankly.
	All right, let's look at a little bit of news, because that's all there is, a little.
	Warning that the Republican presidential race has become too nasty.
	Ha, ha, ha, no kidding.
	Scott Walker exited the 26th campaign on Monday and urged others to quit, too.
	Clear the field so somebody can emerge to take down Donald.
	The Donald.
	Getting too nasty?
	Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who said the Eleventh Commandment would be never to speak ill of another Republican?
	What a bunch of sinners!
	Right?
	Volkswagen, speaking of sin, Became the world's top-selling car maker, trumpeting the environmental friendliness, fuel efficiency, high performance of diesel-powered vehicles that met our clean air laws here in America.
	It was so good that pollution control advocates did their own tests, hoping to persuade other countries to enforce the same strict standards, and now they're in trouble.
	There's some saying they may have fudged on some of the strict standards.
	This is, I thought, interesting.
	It's from anomalous.com, and actually it's what you might expect Snowden to say.
	Edward Snowden, yes, that one.
	When asked by an astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who we've got scheduled to come on the show, by the way, on the StarTalk podcast, whether a highly intelligent alien civilization might be communicating with encrypted messages, Snowden agreed.
	He said that an advanced civilization would realize the need to encrypt their communication in order to protect it from us humans, I guess.
	And this could also be the reason that we've never heard from other Civilizations, because what we just, you know, we hear it as noise, right?
	Lots and lots of noise.
	So, uh, I don't know.
	That could be the reason, or it could be nobody's out there.
	Speaking of out there, I'm really looking forward to tonight's topic.
	NDEs may be my favorite topic of all time.
	And that's what we've got tonight.
	Jeffrey Long, MD, is a leading near-death experience researcher.
	Dr. Long is a physician and radiation oncologist.
	So I guess he would have met with any number who have had MDEs, right?
	Oncology.
	Oncology is the medical use of radiation to treat cancer.
	He is practicing in I believe it's Homa, Louisiana.
	Dr. Long founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.
	Over 10 years of research went into Dr. Long's study of over 1,300 NDEs presented in his book, Evidence of the Afterlife.
	The science of NDE experiences, this is by far The largest scientific study of near-death experiences ever presented anywhere.
	Over 4,000, actually, NDEs are currently posted on www.nderf.org.
	That's www.nderf.org, making it by far the largest number of NDEs ever studied,
	and by far the largest number of NDEs publicly accessible in the world.
	Portions of the site have been posted in over 20 different foreign languages.
	This is leading to increased awareness that worldwide and across cultural boundaries we all share these types of experiences and they are similar to a degree that is medically inexplicable.
	I have done some serious thought about why all of this is so important to me, why I'm doing this, why I'm doing a program like this and you know the answer is Probably, that I'm something of a heretic, I suppose.
	I mean, I look at virtually everything.
	I look at what is up above, that would be our Creator, I guess, I hope, and what is down below.
	Because it is said, if you have one, you have the other, right?
	And so I look at everything.
	I talk to priests, I talk to witches, I talk to people like The doctor we're going to have on tonight.
	I talk to anybody who can possibly help answer the question, which is the most important.
	Whether it's ghosts, it doesn't matter.
	It's weird creatures, proof of the paranormal, anything that proves that we are more than our physical, material presence.
	I gave this a lot of thought last night.
	I thought, well, to some I'm certainly going to appear Heretic, right?
	Heretic.
	And at times, I suppose, somewhat godly.
	But all over the place.
	That's what this program does.
	It doesn't limit examination of anything.
	And so be it.
	Coming up in just a moment, Dr. Long, Jeffrey Long, with behind him 4,000 log NDEs.
	I'm looking forward to this one.
	I hope you are too.
	The evidence has got to be out there.
	It's just a matter of getting to it.
	from the high desert this is midnight
	the the
	the From the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
	Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
	That's 1-952.
	Call Art.
	952-225-5278. That's 1952. Call Art. It is. Dr. Jeffrey Long, welcome to Midnight in the Desert.
	It is an honor to have you on the program.
	Well, it's an honor and a privilege to be here, Art.
	It's been a long time.
	We talked a long time ago.
	We first talked, I was thinking about that just today, about 17 years ago.
	That's right.
	And here we are again, so certainly a great deal of very memorable Discussions from all those years ago.
	A real honor and privilege and exciting, actually, to get back on the phone again.
	Well, look out for tonight.
	I've got some serious questions.
	And I'm going to start with defining death.
	Can we do that?
	Because I know NDE.
	I know what an NDE is.
	And it can be under various circumstances of physical distress.
	There are some people, Doctor, who have really been, as far as I can tell, dead-dead.
	And when I say dead-dead, I mean absolutely no heartbeat, no brainwaves, the blood has been drained from their body, and their body has been cooled, I guess, to preserve the meat, as it were, but they've been brought back to life.
	And if that's not dead-dead, Then, what is the definition of really dead?
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	And you're right, there's a spectrum as to how dead people are.
	For the research I do, I have what among NDE researchers is a fairly stringent criteria.
	In other words, they have to be so physically compromised that if they didn't get better, they'd suffer a permanent irreversible death.
	Many of them, of course, are having cardiac arrest or very, very severe episodes of physical compromise like that.
	But if someone is so severely compromised from illness or injury that they're unconscious, by definition, if that doesn't get better, then they're going to suffer permanent irreversible death.
	And, of course, if they're physically unconscious, as the very dictionary definition of unconscious means no conscious experience, If they're having a lucid, organized experience at that time, a near-death experience, then I think that qualifies what most people would consider to be a near-death experience.
	I think it does, but what I'm asking is, if somebody is really dead, the way I think her name was Pam?
	I can't imagine anybody being more dead than that, can you?
	Actually, I can.
	Yes, that's right.
	I interviewed her and it was an amazing interview, by the way.
	One of the best NDE's I've ever heard.
	Amazing.
	Anyway, I can't imagine anybody being more dead than that, can you?
	Actually I can.
	Art, I hope you're sitting down when you hear this, but we actually have a small series
	of people that have shared their near-death experience that were actually on their way
	or actually in a morgue.
	These are people that were not only declared dead but had the toe tag and were, you know, literally getting prepared for the final burial process.
	So that's about as dead as dead gets.
	Wow.
	And yet remarkably, even when these folks are in very dramatic experiences, you can imagine how frightening it is to people that By all intents and purposes and by physician determination that they were dead, all of a sudden they start stirring, make some sounds, and it scares the heck out of people that are in the morgue or attending to them at that time.
	There's no question.
	Yeah, I can imagine, Doctor.
	That's correct.
	It would scare the hell out of them.
	However, still, brain waves at that point are not being measured.
	Heartbeat is not... Well, presumably it was measured before the toe tag went on and they went into the cooler.
	But brainwaves perhaps not being measured in that case, or maybe they were, I don't know.
	But when you have zero brainwaves, I mean, that's really dead dead, it seems like to me.
	Oh, and that's certainly the modern definition of death.
	You're absolutely right, Art, is absence of brain function.
	And that's why I'm especially interested in near-death experiences that occur under Apparent adequate general anesthesia now under that blanket of sleep There's been some careful EEG if you will electroencephalogram measurements of people that are under general anesthesia And there's a dissociation of brain electrical activity.
	I mean it's a mishmash of Residual electrical activity, and there's just no chance that you could have medically explicable conscious experiences at that time and yet as part of my research we now have scores of people that had a All right.
	I know that you've seen the movie Flatline.
	You could not have not seen it.
	Sure have.
	And there was recently a TV series called Proof.
	I don't know if you watched that or not, but they did an NDE experiment in that show as well.
	And I must say, I've said this on the air recently and I've given it more and more thought.
	If I had, especially at my age, if I had a medical team doctor and all the right stuff on hand, I think I would be willing to do a flatline experiment just to see.
	That's how much I want to know.
	Wow, I mean, your curiosity is enormous there.
	I mean, to the point you'd be willing to get yourself into a life-threatening event.
	Yes.
	I mean, that speaks volumes.
	That speaks both of your interest and the interest of so many other people.
	Of course, speaking from it medically as a physician, it would be, of course, unethical to do that.
	Of course.
	It would be difficult and probably impossible to find any physicians that would be willing to do that.
	I mean, heck, you'd lose your license if you did that.
	Well, if it didn't work out and it was found out, yes.
	But if there's any such a doctor listening out there willing to do it, you know how to get a hold of me.
	If that comes about, Art, I'd be delighted to hear about it.
	I'm sure you would.
	That would be fascinating.
	But still would encourage, you know, if there's anybody out there that considers personally flatlining themselves, you know, i.e.
	is in a suicide attempt, No, no.
	I strongly encourage everybody to do something completely different, just pure science there.
	Right.
	So let me ask you before we proceed, are you aware, on the down low, without giving me names or places or anything else, of anybody else who has flatlined intentionally?
	And had it studied?
	That's a great question because I hear from people all over the world.
	To the best of my knowledge, that's not been reported.
	I didn't say reported.
	I asked if you had sort of heard of anything on the down low.
	On the down low?
	Yes.
	I have not.
	I'm searching my memory banks here.
	I've never had anybody contact me, even on the FYI or on the secret, about doing such an experiment.
	Well, I cannot think of any question bigger in life than the one we're about to talk about.
	I simply can't.
	It is the biggest question and I'd actually be willing to to do that.
	Alright, so fine, let's start out with what is an NDE?
	Sure.
	A near-death experience is It experiences lucid and organized that occurs during a time of physical compromise so severe that physically the person is unconscious.
	Very often that's associated with cardiac or respiratory arrest.
	In other words, a heart or breathing stops around that time.
	But at an absolute minimum, for my research anyway, they need to be unconscious.
	They need to be unarousable, unresponsive, and at a time when there should be no conscious experience
	possible when the brain is that far shut down here for a certain percentage around nine to eighteen
	percent of people that are that physically compromised they have that very lucid organized and detailed and
	consistently observed experience the near-death experience
	okay uh...
	i guess if i were a colleague of yours or a doctor myself i might say something like
	oh come on doctor long uh... i think you and i both know that
	the brain uh... begins to do all kinds of things during the process
	of death and that uh... these things that are seen even though they're
	similar inexplicably similar
	uh... among almost all people uh... are explainable by
	The brain doing what it does as it begins to die.
	It protects you, it gives you nice thoughts, it whatever.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And that's something that I've also considered for hours and hours.
	When we, and both me and other near-death experience researchers, really have all come to the conclusion that when you study the brain that approaches unconsciousness, the closer and closer you get to unconsciousness, the more Absent, diminished, hallucinatory, unreal thoughts become, and as you just reach that threshold of unconsciousness, you've really got no organized, stable thinking.
	I mean, certainly, many or most of the listeners have run into this, too, sometime in their life, sort of like falling asleep.
	And the closer you get to sleep, the less and less your thinking and the less organized your memories or ability to reason are.
	As you progress all the way fully to unconsciousness at this time that your brain, by all medical measurements or measurements of anybody else, seems to be not functioning at all.
	You're not processing information, not hearing, seeing, not aware, not feeling.
	Right at that moment, here are people that is having not only a conscious experience, but in my survey, 75% of the people have more consciousness and alertness than their normal, earthly, everyday life.
	And that art's medically inexplicable.
	That shouldn't be happening when, by all medical appearances, the person's unconscious.
	Okay.
	Doctor, I have noticed, you know, in later years, that as I'm falling asleep, in the process of falling asleep, I begin to have these disorganized, interesting thoughts.
	In other words, no matter what I was thinking about as I was trying to fall asleep, when it actually began, I did begin having a series of And a couple times I've awakened at that point, and I said, wow, that's interesting.
	Why was I thinking about that?
	Yeah, and that's a good point.
	That's certainly an experience we've all shared, but by the time you enter a full dream, dreams are, as is generally known by people that dream, in general, they jump around.
	Experiences aren't in continuity like they are in near-death experiences.
	They're often hallucinatory, blatantly unreal.
	content to these dreams or when you are approaching the dream state.
	We just don't observe that in near-death experiences.
	In fact, all those years ago when we were talking on the radio and at the very early
	survey I did of near-death experiencers, I asked the key question, was your experience
	dreamlike in any way?
	That was a question deliberately worded for people to answer in the affirmative.
	Yes, if they had any aspect of their near-death experience that was related in any way to
	dreams that they were so familiar with.
	Right.
	And I got such a resounding no response to that.
	I mean, people not only were basically telling me no, it wasn't dreamlike, but Dr. Long, hell no, I mean, not even close, no way.
	And in fact, the response was so emphatically no to that question, I dropped it in later surveys.
	It almost seemed to be like near-death experiencers were almost insulted to think that this highly
	lucid organized near-death experience was related in any way to dreams, to UI.
	Your listeners and everybody else that Scott generally has a lot of familiarity with, but
	near-death experiences are very, very different types of conscious experiences than dreams
	or approaching dreams or waking up from dreams are.
	Yes, sir.
	All right, I've got to ask this, as an oncologist, you would deal with a number of people in
	very dire medical circumstances, obviously with cancer, and a certain number of those
	would pass away, and so it's an obvious question to ask you.
	If you began all of this...
	from some experience you had in your personal practice?
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	You know, my interest in near-death experiences actually began about a quarter, oh gosh, about over 20 years ago when I was in my residency training in radiation oncology and I was going through one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, the Journal of the American Medical Association looking for a cancer-related article and completely by accident I came across an article that had the term near-death experience in it.
	Now, I was very studious and didn't listen to the radio as much as I should have, or watch television, so I'd never heard the term before.
	So, mystified, I stopped and read the article and was immediately fascinated.
	Here was this description of scores of these types of experience all around the world, remarkably similar, and clearly Even with my very first reading about this, I knew everything that I had learned as a doctor up until that time.
	My entire life absolutely could not explain these experiences and that was certainly consistent with the author of this article's writing.
	I was so fascinated, I resolved right at that time that I wanted to learn more about near-death experiences.
	Not necessarily from reading other books or other research, but from getting the original source of the information.
	That being People that have actually had these near-death experiences, to me the most reliable source of information.
	And see for myself, I guess for several years after that, I had a burning question in my heart, near-death experiences, are they real?
	Knowing that if I found through evidence that they were real, that would change my entire view of the universe.
	Art, that was about 17 years ago that I went through that, and even after I got my first batch of near-death experiences from my website and started my study, Almost immediately I realized that near-death experiences are, in a word, real.
	Yes, sir.
	All right.
	Stay right there.
	Dr. Jeffrey Long is my guest.
	He is a very, very serious NDE researcher.
	4,000 of them collected thus far.
	It's going to be a heck of a show.
	Midnight in the desert.
	Stay right where you are.
	The heart of the city's been beating.
	And when the neon's turned to darkening.
	Take my thoughts on the floor.
	Another night, another day goes by.
	In that darkest time between dusk and dawn.
	From the high desert, it's Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert.
	Now, here's Art.
	It's always somewhere midnight.
	When we're on the air, it's midnight somewhere across the nation.
	It is literally sweeping across the country.
	Kind of cool, actually.
	Dr. Jeffrey Long is my guest.
	He is an NDE researcher, probably the premier NDE researcher.
	With this many 4,000 cases logged, I would say the premier researcher.
	And so, lots of very important questions for him.
	And one of them is, people seem to report virtually the same thing.
	Well, you're going to be able to tell me that, but I mean, they see relatives, they certainly see a white light.
	But the big question, really a big one, is when people nearly die and have some sort of experience or no experience, the question is how many do have it?
	How many have an NDE?
	It's actually a relatively, I think, small number, isn't it?
	Yeah, you're right, Art.
	At the time of a life-threatening event, including a cardiac arrest, only about 9-18% of people will have a near-death experience.
	It's like all or nothing.
	You either have a full-blown near-death experience, often with all the great detail and imagery that can occur, or you have absolutely nothing.
	You're literally a blank slate until consciousness returns.
	I've got this long story from an atheist, and the bottom line to it, without reading it to you, is he experienced absolutely nothing.
	And he was quite pleased about that, actually.
	And I wonder if that indicates to you that he's just a victim of statistics, or he got what he believed he would get.
	Well, actually, having no conscious memory at the time of a life-threatening event is what happens to between, as we said, 91 to 82 percent of people that nearly die that have that close brush with death.
	So, that's not at all unusual to me.
	We don't absolutely know why some people have a near-death experience and why some don't.
	Religious belief, or even lack of religious belief, doesn't seem to affect the probability of whether an NDE will occur or not.
	What the content of a near-death experience will be if it does.
	We have a series of near-death experiences from atheists.
	People that, unlike the gentleman you quoted, actually was an atheist, had a life-threatening event, and had a full-blown near-death experience.
	Almost none of them remained atheists after their near-death experience, of course.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	Is there any sense to be made As you look across the country and look across the world of demographics, in other words, age, where people are located, the culture they're in, their religious background, time in history, anything like that.
	Yeah, and that's a great question.
	I reviewed 30 years of scholarly research in a book chapter fairly recently, and part of that was to discover if there was anything that would predict What group of people, what demographic group would have a near-death experience at that time of a close brush with death?
	And absolutely nothing kicked out.
	Of all the studies that have been reported, including mine too, we just can't seem to predict from anything gender, age, NDEs occur in the young, children, the old, the elderly, people of all religious beliefs or no religious belief, atheists, and in fact A remarkable part of my research is it doesn't seem to make any difference where in the world you are at the time you have a near-death experience.
	It doesn't make any difference whether you're a Muslim in Egypt or a Hindu in India or a Christian in the United States.
	All around the globe, near-death experiences are strikingly similar.
	Alright, then let us get down to describing What most commonly occurs during an NDE?
	They are pretty common.
	This is one area where you run into a lot of common stories, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Now, the interesting thing is, now that I've studied over 4,000 near-death experiences, I've seen what other researchers have found, and that is, while no two near-death experiences are the same, If you study a group of them, you see very similar elements, or if you will, characteristics of the near-death experience that occur typically in the same order.
	For example, there's that life-threatening event, an episode of unconsciousness, or even the heart stops.
	First element is typically what's called out-of-body experience.
	Consciousness rises typically above the body, and from that vantage point they can see ongoing earthly events, and often described vividly the frantic efforts of others to resuscitate them and bring them back to life.
	Following that they may go into or through a tunnel and that's variably described but interestingly essentially never claustrophobic.
	It's no matter how large or small the tunnel is.
	Now often at the end of the tunnel there's a mystical unearthly light.
	It's nothing like the light we're familiar with in our earthly everyday lives.
	In fact, one near-death experiencer vividly pointed out that it was like a million times a million suns in its intensity, and yet it's never uncomfortable.
	It never hurts whatever visual apparatus they have during the experience.
	Now, at the end of the tunnel, there may be deceased loved ones, people that they knew in their earthly life that died.
	And even if the relationship was strained, these are joyous reunions.
	And yes, Art, They encounter deceased beloved pets as well.
	We have scores of beautiful dramatic stories of that.
	They may describe unearthly beautiful landscapes, building landscapes, often colors, in these landscapes that are so beautiful that they have no earthly correlate.
	They literally don't have the language from their whole life prior experience to describe the beauty of the colors and what they're seeing.
	Very often they have what's called a life review.
	They may see a part or even all of their prior life.
	And very often, near the end of the experience, there may be what's called a boundary, a creek across the path they're on, a fence, a chasm, often are some of the more common ones.
	And at that moment in the near-death experience, they often have to decide, are they going to stay there in that unearthly, beautiful realm, or return to that earthly life and that body which is fighting to stay alive?
	And that's the brief, more common elements we see in near-death experiences.
	Jay, I'm going to ask you hard questions, because that's what makes a good interview.
	You mentioned that they frequently see those that are working on them, doing their work, trying to get them back, and the frantic efforts to try and get them back, right?
	Yeah, frantic resuscitation efforts, especially for those that coded and his heart stopped You know, if true, for me, even that's enough.
	without a body experience, they're over their body and often vividly and very accurately
	on that they had described their own resuscitation.
	You know, if true, for me, even that's enough.
	I mean, if people can come back and actually describe what was done or the order in which
	it was done or what was said while they were gone, you know, that's proof.
	However, I seem to remember, it may have been a 60-minute segment, something like that, where at one emergency room somewhere, they put a clock up.
	They actually put a clock up on top of equipment so that if somebody were to float to the top of the room and look down and see the clock, they would be able to say, A, they saw the clock, and B, I guess what time it was, or whatever.
	And nobody ever came back and described that clock, and yet people are able to describe these resuscitation efforts, even things that are being said.
	So, you knew about that?
	Yeah, there's been about, we're up to six now, prospective near-death experiences are called, where they put, and they call them targets, and they can be clocks.
	One of the more sophisticated methodologies was actually A laptop computer that played different colors, pictures, and words, and they would be placed in an area where they thought there would be people that would have, like cardiac arrests, operating, well usually not so much operating rooms, they need to keep those sterile, but emergency rooms, I guess occasionally operating rooms, but just places where people were, emergency rooms, places where people were critically ill.
	Of those six prospective studies, there have been As of, I think, the most recent data, 13 that had a near-death experience and had an out-of-body experience, none of them described a target.
	But, if you read these articles, none of them had their consciousness directed toward the target.
	You see, when you're putting a target in the emergency room, in something like a critical care unit, you really have to put that way up on the side, out of the shelf.
	People need to have access to the patient.
	You can't put it directly above them because that's a patient care area.
	So it's not surprising to me that people, if they haven't had their consciousness directed toward that target and they don't see it, you can't really say it wasn't there.
	Of course when they have a cardiac arrest and your consciousness goes above the body, What are you going to look for?
	Are you going to go look for a target placed in the room?
	Or are you going to look down at that action, your own body, and the resuscitation going on?
	Absolutely.
	I was going to add that.
	I mean, come on, if I'm out of my body and I'm looking down at myself, possibly dead, I've got a lot more on my mind than what's on a clock or a laptop somewhere.
	Yeah, and certainly if anybody during any of those studies had had their consciousness Our vision, if you will, directed toward the target and didn't see it.
	I would accept that as a significant negative finding, but absolutely none of them had their vision or consciousness directed toward the target, so we really don't know.
	However, Art, exactly like you were just saying there, it is amazing the detail that people bring back.
	The resuscitation efforts, we've had people even describe details down to the number on the We have hundreds and hundreds of these types of experiences and part of my research is to go through all these experiences and see, were they wrong?
	How often were they wrong?
	Did they miss?
	Was they describing something that was hallucinatory that didn't happen?
	And that's only a few percent.
	A very, very small percentage that describes something that did not actually seem to really happen.
	So, for virtually everybody that has a near-death experience, what they're seeing and what they're hearing in the out-of-body state, when they come back and describe it, and often go back and verify it later, it's accurate down to the finest details.
	And I might add, not only is it observations over their physical body, but we have dozens and dozens of near-death experiences where they're describing events Geographically far from the earthly body.
	For example, they code in the operating room.
	Yeah, their heart stops in the operating room and their consciousness may drift outside of the operating room and actually go.
	We've had people describe what's being said and done in the nursing station at that very moment in the hospital cafeteria where their friends and family are anxiously awaiting results of the surgery and yet Every single time, or virtually every time, when the near-death experiencers investigate that later after they recover from what nearly killed them, it is stunningly accurate what they described.
	Information they absolutely could not have known by any other mechanism unless their consciousness was actually there observing it.
	Well, let me ask this, Doctor.
	You have a lot of colleagues, obviously, probably many of them, you know, in emergency rooms, surgeons, that kind of thing, people who have had people in this kind of circumstance.
	I'm sure many times, either to them or to the nurses attending them, these people come back and they're very talkative about what they experienced.
	Now, is it medical training that causes them to somehow dismiss what they're hearing or are you aware that some of your colleagues have slowly become very interested in what they're hearing?
	That's a great question.
	You know, when I started my research 17 years ago, it was typical that if the person who had a near-death experience returned to consciousness, returned to life, And started sharing it with the medical staff.
	Most of the time they would seem to be rejected, ignored, belittled even.
	And it was just frightening.
	Now the good news Art is that this is a whole different era.
	In the modern era today where near-death experience is so widely known, the health care team now generally has one or usually more people that are aware of near-death experiences that know these happen and it can embrace them for what they really are.
	And that was Very real, lucid, organized experiences.
	So, as a result of that, now more than ever, when people are sharing with their health care team, they're open, they're receptive, they're interested, they often have other people.
	And in fact, now more than ever, people that have nearly died will be asked very directly by their health team members, well, did you have an experience?
	Did anything happen?
	Really, really.
	You were gone from us.
	And so, yeah, actually seeking it out and that's exciting because that was simply, I How a generation changes things in terms of health care attitude toward near-death experiences, and it takes a lot of courage to share a near-death experience.
	I mean, think about it from their perspective.
	They nearly died.
	Can you imagine what's on their mind as they slowly come to recovery from nearly death?
	And yet to have the courage at that point in time, you know, where they may be suffering, miserable, hurting, and in pain, and yet to be so convinced that their experience was significant and important in spite of all that on their mind and all they may be suffering to go out of their way to share that with the health care team is absolutely amazing and courageous and now more than ever we're getting more and more accounts like that and that's really I think probably nothing changes the health care team's attitude more than actually hearing these accounts from the people that had them.
	They know darn good and well that they were unconscious or clinically dead And yet, here are these people describing what the health care team was doing, saying, thinking, even if they were down the hall and far out of their room.
	And it doesn't take too much of that to make believers out of an unbelieving health care team.
	Okay.
	Let me try this question.
	It seems to me that physicians, in their very, very long school and training, and on-the-job training, are almost I have to be careful here, I guess.
	Almost trained away from God.
	Is that a fair or unfair crack?
	You know, I think that medicine is a very powerful medical training, but it's not an education.
	You don't really have that breadth of understanding.
	You don't learn in medical school or in your training about very important, very real issues like God.
	You sort of come away thinking That all that we are, all that we think, all that we could ever be is defined by biological functions, physiological processes, chemical synapses in neurons of the brain, and so much of your training leaves me, and certainly I think virtually every other physician, sort of with that wow feeling.
	All we are is an amazing biological being, and yet You don't really understand that you don't have that depth of training, you don't have that depth of openness in medical school training, that there is so much more to our life, so much more that we are than physical bodies.
	I mean, you're sitting here, all your training is focused on us being the physical, and yet my near-death experience suggests with powerful evidence that we are far, far more than our physical beings, than our physical presence.
	Well, that's kind of an answer from you.
	But I'm not sure it's an overall answer.
	In other words, physicians are trained in hard science.
	Biology, everything about the human body, and most scientists, and I've interviewed many, many scientists, Doctor, I would say are not believers in God, to be frank.
	Yeah, and I think surveys have shown that, too.
	And that's interesting, but you are correct.
	I can imagine how many enormous number of scientists you've interviewed.
	Yes.
	And certainly other surveys are consistent with that.
	I think maybe people just sort of get so focused on the body and the physical self and how things can go wrong with the body and how they need to fix it, that in some real way, in my opinion, they're overlooking the very big picture.
	And that is, there is more.
	There's a bigger picture.
	There's that vast afterlife and there is an organization in order to that afterlife and I firmly believe as part of that afterlife there is God.
	Well, a lot of surgeons come out of the operating room just having done something quite miraculous.
	I'm sure with the feeling that God didn't do that, I did.
	Yeah, we do have some physicians with a God complex.
	I've run across that more than a few times in my life.
	Oh, good grief.
	And I think there's a lot of truth to that.
	My path has been very different.
	In doing radiation oncology, I believe God is the great healer on the side of physicians who will let God be their presence.
	I appreciate that.
	Hold on, Doctor.
	We'll be right back.
	This is Midnight in the Desert, Dr. Jeffrey Long.
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	Can any of you out there think of anything more important in terms of the question the award's discussing tonight?
	I certainly cannot.
	Dr. Long, you quote nine lines of evidence from the book of evidence of the afterlife.
	Nine lines of evidence?
	That's correct, so far, and research continuing to show even more.
	So these are all, and you're right, these are lines of evidence from my research that all converge on showing the reality of near-death experiences and its consistent message of an afterlife.
	Do you want to rattle them off, or just discuss some of them?
	I mean, can you sort of... Anything that claims to be evidence, you'll go right ahead.
	Yeah, okay, sure.
	Yeah, we'll rattle them off here.
	If it's taking too long, jump right in.
	No, no.
	This is a long-form radio.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, certainly crystal-clear consciousness occurs during near-death experiences.
	Art, if you consider what happens during a cardiac arrest when the heart stops, of course immediately when the heart stops beating, blood stops flowing to the brain.
	10 to 20 seconds after the blood stops flowing to the brain, the electroencephalogram or EEG, which is a measure of brain electrical activity, goes absolutely flat.
	It should be absolutely impossible to have a conscious experience and yet, this is a time that people very often report out-of-body experiences observing their own resuscitation
	at a time when we know during cardiac arrest measure and lack of blood flow to the brain consciousness
	should be measurably impossible to happen and we've talked a little
	bit about these out-of-body experiences where people observe their ongoing
	earthly events and almost invariably
	97-98 percent of the time what they observe is incredibly accurate down to
	fine details even if what they're observing is vastly far from their
	physical body and way beyond any possible physical sensory awareness and that's
	That's absolutely beyond any possible medical explanation.
	All right, let me only stop you there long enough to ask you if, I deal a lot, do a lot of shows about OBEs, you know, and I wonder if OBEs are pretty much the same when you have them in good health as when you have them near the end?
	You know, I think they are, and I think that what makes them Overlaps, what makes them similar is they're describing realistic observations that are medically inexplicable.
	I think that's the critical overlap and that's why they're so important to consider both of them together.
	Okay.
	No question about that.
	I think there's a lot of similarity there and that's what makes actually the study of both near-death experiences and OBEs not associated with NDEs so exciting.
	They are.
	I'm sure we'll have more on that in future shows.
	That'll be exciting.
	Certainly, we haven't gotten into this, but people, the blind, including those born totally blind have described highly visual near-death experiences.
	We have some case reports of those.
	For someone born totally blind, our vision is unknown and unknowable and cannot be described in terms of the remaining four senses.
	I've tried that with someone born totally blind that had a visual NDE.
	And it's amazing, so that is certainly there.
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to keep stopping you, but I'm curious.
	If somebody born blind has an NDE, in what way do they describe their experience that differs from those who have sight, if at all?
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	Those born totally blind don't know vision, so the one I'm thinking about that I interviewed is Vicky is her name.
	In her age 22, she had a severe auto accident.
	She was being driven home from a singing engagement.
	She was a professional singer and had a bad auto accident by an intoxicated driver.
	But for the first time in her life that she saw herself, her consciousness was above her body in the emergency room.
	She saw a body on the gurney down below.
	It literally didn't register.
	She didn't understand who it was.
	And here's where it gets interesting.
	She didn't even know what she was seeing.
	Vision was so new to her until she correlated her sense of touch of her long hair and, interestingly, the pattern on a ring that her father had given her.
	Only when she correlated what she was seeing with Vision for the first time in her life with those prior sensory awarenesses, then she realized that was her.
	What's also interesting is that Vision was so unfamiliar to Vicki That she was terrified.
	This was outside of anything that she thought could ever happen to her, and it was very frightening.
	With Vicki, this is interesting, many near-death experiencers describe vision that's 360 degree, and that's technically a two-dimensional term.
	It's actually spherical.
	They simultaneously see, register, interpret, and understand visual things above them, below them, right, left, forward, and backward, all simultaneously.
	No, that was Vicki, the Rock Blind from Birth lady's experience, and in fact, even talking with her at length, she simply cannot understand why all the rest of us living our earthly life have, if you will, pie-shaped visions, why we don't see spherically.
	Because from her life experience, that's all there is.
	I think she literally thought I was kidding when I told her we had a narrow That is absolutely astounding!
	Do other NDE experiencers with sight report the same 360-degree vista?
	Oh, that's uncommon, but I have dozens and dozens of them all together.
	That's not at all rare art.
	And again, it's that same kind of 360-degree vision.
	I mean, it's literally You have to put yourself in their shoes.
	It's like our regular pie-shaped field.
	You can sort of assimilate everything going on in front of you because you can see it.
	But imagine these people with spherical vision.
	Just as you're understanding and aware of what's in front of you, they're understanding and aware of what's behind them.
	Left, right, up, down.
	All crystal clear, perfect vision, and all understanding it just as we would vision that lies in front of us.
	And that's, of course, typically not during the out-of-body experience.
	This is much more commonly, in fact, almost uniformly observed when they're in these unearthly realms.
	But this is just one of the myriad of examples from near-death experiences.
	Sensory awareness is typically vastly different from what we know during our earthly life.
	And you can imagine, I mean, how often have you had a dream where you had spherical vision?
	Well, if you're like me, never.
	So this is just one more example of how people are having Content during their near-death experiences that is absolutely, literally unimaginable to the near-death experiencer until they absolutely had the experience and experienced it firsthand.
	The story of Vicky, Vicky's story is absolutely astounding and I wonder how you felt as you listened to that.
	I was just blown away.
	I mean even after listening to enormous number of near-death experiences, each new near-death experience I hear is You know, always fascinating to me, interesting, and you know, sort of like, you know, one more gemstone out of a collection of gemstones that we have in my research database.
	And so, but especially with Vicki, I mean, just literally with her glasses on, and you could just tell, I mean, she had no vision.
	I mean, I'm a doctor, and I know blind, and she's, of course, totally blind.
	And here she is describing things like so many other near-death experiencers, seeing deceased beings, light, things that were outside of her experience.
	It's always fascinating to talk to people in person, especially Vicki, and just hear that ongoing sense of awe and fascination and wonder in their voices as they recount their experience again.
	You know, every instinct I have as a researcher is, wow, that's real off-the-scale when people share like that.
	I agree with you, off-the-scale.
	Please continue.
	Anyway, there are nine of them, I guess.
	Sure.
	Yep.
	We've got another one.
	We talked about this briefly before, is near-death experiences under general anesthesia.
	During general anesthesia, you're not just unconscious, you're comatose.
	I mean, you can literally perform huge bodily surgery without you feeling it and never having any sensory awareness at all and yet due to either complications of the surgery or the anesthesia or the pre-existing illness or injury that led to the surgery I've got I'll bet I have probably around a hundred near-death experiences at this point that occurred under general anesthesia and remarkably they have the same elements the same type of experience in a key survey question that I ask in my survey
	is about their level of consciousness and alertness during the experience.
	Now surely, Art, if that anesthesia modified their consciousness at all, you would expect them to have less consciousness and alertness than people that had near-death experiences caused by other things.
	Right.
	And remarkably, in response to that survey question, the people that had near-death experiences under general anesthesia had exactly the same amount of consciousness and alertness during their experience As all other near-death experiencers.
	Even those powerful, powerful medications that do the safe and effective modern-day general anesthesia cannot modify that alertness, typically higher level of consciousness and alertness that near-death experiencers have.
	I mean, you could just stop right there and say, hey skeptics, that pretty much eliminates any possibility that near-death experiences are due to brain function right there.
	All right, let me again stop you.
	I'm so sorry about this, but I can't help myself.
	There are scientists who claim that with electrical stimulation of the right part of the brain, they can reproduce an NDE.
	You're aware of that claim, right?
	Yeah, the researcher, the main one that's known for that is a guy named Blanqui from Europe.
	I might address that.
	Frankly, Art, that's a little bit of an urban myth.
	These experiments were started with Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon of some decades ago.
	One thing that amazingly was reported relatively recently in a prominent journal was that you actually stimulate the part of the brain while the people are awake.
	Now, that sounds like it would hurt.
	It doesn't, because the brain has no pain senses.
	Because the brain has no sensory pain fibers, you can do these types of things and they actually can map the source in the brain where they're having seizures.
	So they can try to treat seizures in certain patients.
	So that's why they ate common medical indication for stimulating the brain electrically.
	But this isn't that rare of a procedure and out of the vast number of people that have had this procedure, there was only one relatively recent case report where the person sort of had a sense that one of their legs rose up. I mean it wasn't an out-of-body
	experience, their consciousness didn't separate from the body.
	But, Geez Art, you've talked to so many people that have had near-death
	experiences.
	How many people describe, yep, my torso and arms stayed in place, my head, but by
	golly my leg raised up. Nobody.
	I mean, yeah, no, me neither. I don't mean to be coming...
	I don't mean to be coming at you as a skeptic, Doctor.
	I'm just trying to challenge you, because I'm on your side all the way, but I'm trying to throw you all the meat I can in terms of challenge.
	And actually, I greatly appreciate that, because lots of your listeners are going to be asking the same questions, because these studies have been widely, and I probably should have brought that up on my own, because it's such a common concern that people have but this is nothing. I mean like a
	legs raising up I mean even an out-of-body experience as you know that's
	extraordinarily rare to non-existent so
	what they were observing was undoubtedly some type of illusory thing
	it wasn't even a real out-of-body experience and even Wilder Pinfield with his extensive research who did
	much more electrical stimulation of the brain decades ago and I've looked over this and other researchers have really
	never reproduced
	any element of a near-death experience.
	So, you know, an electrical stimulation of the brain reproducing an Indies and urban myth, hands down, not even close.
	All right.
	But here's another one.
	We also talked briefly in passing about a life review.
	This is one of the more fascinating things to me during a near-death experience.
	In a life review they may see a part or even all of their prior life.
	I mean, can you imagine?
	They're unconscious for minutes, maybe even tops an hour or two, and yet here they are reviewing years and typically decades of all of the events of their prior life.
	And in fact, Some of these life reviews are so detailed that they're not only seeing how they interacted with prior people throughout all their prior life, they actually literally become aware of, understand, and feel what the person that they interacted with felt like at the time they were interacting with them, for good or for ill, whether this was making them feel uncomfortable or angry or joyous.
	All that they ever did when they interacted with everybody they can become aware of during these life reviews.
	Absolutely astounding and an excellent example of the enormously accelerated consciousness that occurs during near-death experiences.
	I think that a life review doctor is absolutely terrifying.
	I've got some great news for you and you know lots of other people feel that way.
	Here's the great news.
	I sort of felt that way too.
	I remember Years and years ago I started reading about these, and I'm sure I'm not alone in saying, uh-oh, I've done some things I'm not proud of in my life.
	But that's true for all of us, Art.
	The good news is that even though you're seeing all of your prior life, and often there's another being present in this unearthly realm where this is going on, the great news is there's essentially never a sense of judgment.
	In other words, you're seeing your life, your prior life, as if to learn.
	Understand and maybe live the rest of your life better when you return to your earthly life.
	But there's essentially never any external sense of judgment by other people around you.
	I cannot even recall a single near-death experience where they felt damned or condemned or felt that they were in big trouble for the rest of eternity because of what they saw in their life review.
	And in fact, on the positive side, the life review can be among the most powerfully positive transformative aspects of the near-death experience.
	I mean, people that have a life review come back often as changed people.
	They're aware, in a way that none of the rest of us could be, how their actions affect other people, for good or for ill.
	And you can imagine, if you've seen that, they're going to go out of their way, more than ever for the rest of their life, to treat other people lovingly, compassionately, because they've seen what their actions mean to others.
	Right.
	Well, in some ways, that seems unfair, Dr. Holtight.
	In other words, they've got a chance to see what they did.
	And by the way, judgment of oneself is probably more terrifying than... Well, maybe not.
	Anyway, we'll be back.
	Exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network, Midnight in the Desert, with Art Bell.
	Now, here's Art.
	I played that to remind myself to ask about reincarnation, which I will.
	Not that I expect it's anything revealed by MDEs.
	It seems to me, Dr. Long, that judgment of one's self probably is going to be harsher than, I don't know, you'd expect from a fair and compassionate God.
	Judging yourself would be rough.
	Oh yeah, it is.
	Very often people are mortified by what they see during their life review.
	I think so many of us, myself included, you live life and you don't even really stop to think about what you're doing or how you're interacting, how it affects other people.
	And when you see that vividly, no escaping it, all of it in its entirety, comprehensively throughout your prior life, You know, it's certainly, and especially when you're in this unearthly realm or this overwhelming sense of peace and love, it's horrifying to see how your life so vividly deviated from that love and that peace and that serenity that's so typical in the afterlife, and it makes up perhaps all the more
	It's difficult to confront what you've done all the years of your prior life.
	A lot of people believe in reincarnation.
	Is there probably nothing in NDEs to suggest either way with respect to reincarnation because
	it seems like it would be later in the full experience, so to speak?
	But I'll ask anyway.
	You know what?
	That's a real good question.
	In my most recent survey, we start to delve into questions like that.
	Gosh, great minds think alike, if I might flatter myself, Art, but I actually ask directly.
	The survey question I ask of near-death experiencers is, during your experience, did you encounter any specific information or awareness that you did or did not exist prior to this lifetime?
	Yes.
	Reincarnation, in other words, an existence.
	This allows narrative responses.
	So, all responses basically are in the answering affirmative.
	Yes, they did encounter, during their NDE, awareness that existed prior to this lifetime in ARDOR.
	A very surprising 27% answered yes.
	So, only 7% uncertain.
	So, there seems to be a fairly significant percentage of people that have near-death experiences that part of what they go through includes that awareness that we did exist.
	This lifetime is not the sole totality of our existence, that we had that past and apparently would likely have a future experience.
	This is certainly nothing I expected when I set up the survey question, and the narrative responses corroborate this too.
	Certainly many people describe some remarkable past lives, remembrances, so interesting near-death experience evidence now Starting to point to some evidence that the reincarnation may be a reality.
	Remarkable.
	Alright, I get messages as I do the program.
	Radar Man has sent me one and says, please ask the doctor the following.
	During NDEs, in which the subject meets loved ones or people that they know, there are cases in which the people they met are Wow, great question, Radar Man.
	I actually studied that formally as part of my research.
	The interesting thing is that any dream, hallucination, or any outside of near-death experiences, any altered consciousness involves encountering people that are alive at the time.
	I mean, if you have a dream or hallucination, you may recall, for example, Bank teller you did business that day with, a family member you said hi to before you headed to your bed and had your dream.
	But in near-death experiences I've looked specifically in another major research project looked at the same and both of us found an identical conclusion and that is only four percent of people in near-death experiences are alive at the time of the experience.
	Ninety-six percent of the people are deceased and that's just simply not Something you'll find in any other altered human consciousness experience.
	Alright.
	And what's even more interesting is we have a number of these near-death experiences that have been reported where they may encounter people during their near-death experience they thought that they were alive and they only after they recover from their close brush with death they realize that that person had died shortly before they had their near-death experience and they didn't know it until they had their near-death experience and encountered the deceased.
	Okay, again through what we call the wormhole, Joe says, does he believe that one day we might develop the technology to travel at will in and out of the NDE realm?
	Wow, that's a great question, Joe.
	Certainly what they describe in the afterlife realm is so technologically overwhelmingly advanced compared to what we have on earth that it almost seems unimaginable.
	And yet I'm a great believer in the human spirit.
	I'm a great believer in all of us, you know, slowly humanity moving toward that technological increased awareness.
	And I think it's distinctly possible that we may someday converge through technology or through
	human understanding or growth in a variety of ways globally that we may end up potentially
	being aware of and potentially even interacting in a way we cannot even
	conceive of now with this overwhelming blissful loving peaceful
	what we call afterlife which is perhaps another perspective as simply a part of the greater reality that we're just not
	often aware of.
	Do you ever feel, Doctor, that this is an area that we ought not be tampering in.
	In other words, this is an area reserved for, well, that great question of what comes next, and we have no business inquiring into or tampering in this area.
	That is an awesome question.
	I've spent a large amount of time considering my research and wondering if we are learning about something, becoming aware of something that we're not supposed to know about.
	Clearly on earth, as you go through your earthly life like me, you don't become aware of an afterlife, of all that's there in the afterlife, your deceased loved ones, the beauty, the wonder, the peace, the love that seems to rule there.
	And I've reflected on that.
	Is this really the right thing for me to be doing, to try to bridge that gap, to help people to understand that that's a reality and understand a little bit about the afterlife?
	After a great deal of wrestling with that question, I've decided, yes, I think that really is the right thing.
	I think the afterlife is revealing itself in bits and pieces to us more dramatically in near-death experiences, I think more subtly during the life experiences that probably each and every one of us has, and I think that's just part of Uh, the way things are in our earthly life.
	I mean, it seems to be, if you will, a part of humankind's meaning and purpose is to continue to grow closer to that source.
	So, you're not worried, doctor, that when you get to the pearly gates, they're going to say, ah-ha, Dr. Long, wrong floor.
	You want to punch sub-level 94.
	No, I think the universe is ruled by love.
	We're okay.
	Stay right there.
	This is Midnight in the Desert.
	I'm Mark Bell.
	I'm a singer.
	I'm a singer.
	I can't exist.
	I'll surely miss your tender kiss.
	Don't leave me this way.
	Baby!
	From the Kingdom of Nye in the High Desert, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
	Please ring Arts Bell at 1-952-225-5278.
	That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
	Alright, let's rock and roll.
	I'm going to begin to open the lines, everybody.
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	In addition, we have the ability for you to come on with Skype.
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	Once again, Dr. Long, welcome back.
	And yet another question from Mark through the wormhole to settle a debate.
	Can the chemical DMT account for an NDE and what is DMT?
	Yeah, DMT is a psychoactive drug, dimethyl, and then it gets into polysyllabic wording after that, but DMT has been studied as a hallucinogen.
	Some researchers are thinking that If use under controlled clinical circumstances may reproduce some elements of near-death experiences.
	I've actually been in communication with some researchers that have used that formally in investigation studies.
	Certainly it can induce a sense of great peaceful feeling.
	It can sort of create a sense of a mystical feeling.
	But does DMT reproduce near-death experiences?
	Absolutely not.
	I have yet to encounter a DMT experience that significantly reproduced any typical near-death experience.
	While I think it's intriguing, there doesn't seem to be much overlap.
	That's actually true of other psychoactive or, if you will, brain-acting chemicals.
	They can certainly create some superficialities that somewhat resemble a near-death experience.
	No chemical can reproducibly cause anything like a near-death experience.
	Unless it causes clinical death.
	Do you have any reports, and this is the big one, of negative NDEs?
	Oh, we sure do.
	In the scholarly literature, they're referred to as frightening because certainly that's the dominant emotion, obviously, in these types of experiences.
	And I've actually investigated that myself.
	Out of the 4,000 near-death experiences I have, certainly there's a small percentage where there's a portion, usually not all of the near-death experience, but a portion of it where the dominant emotion was frightened.
	That can be due to a wide variety of things, the unfamiliarity of the experience, etc.
	I think what most people are thinking about when they think about a negative or frightening experiences are experiences that are objectively frightening.
	In other words, They are literally in a hellish realm.
	Hellish experiences are, of course, objectively frightening.
	I only have about, of all the 4,000 near-death experiences I have, we only have about 1%
	that were truly hellish in part or in all of the experience.
	In looking in that group of experiences, it's very interesting.
	Certainly some of the most frightening stuff that I've ever read in my life.
	I mean, you can read fictional frightening things, go to frightening movies, but some of what is described in these hellish Indies is literally off the scale in terms of being spooky.
	Now, the important thing, I think, to take home with this is that even if people have such a horrific experience, that doesn't necessarily lead to them coming back believing they're condemned or they've been especially bad people.
	Very often people that have these types of experiences come back and say, ultimately
	often months to years later after they've had a chance to learn from it, but many of
	these people, if not most, come back and say, you know, I needed an experience like that
	to learn some things, to let go of that anger, guilt, resentment, and really live the rest
	of my life with that much less of an issue than it was before the experience.
	I know.
	It doesn't seem fair, Doctor.
	It doesn't seem fair.
	In other words, some small portion of people get this experience and get to reshape their life and then presumably get a better outcome next time they exit.
	Well, you know, don't forget these types of dramatic life changes, and that's a good point, but these kind of dramatic life changes and sort of a renewed Desire to continue living your life in love and compassion and peacefully is very commonly observed in people that have the typical pleasant blissful experiences.
	So there's a real overlap in what we call the after effects of near-death experience for those that have had the frightening hellish experiences and those that have had the blissful experiences.
	It's like all roads lead to Rome.
	All of these paths for the unique individuals that they are.
	seem to be important to them for that point in time in their life to help point them the proper way, the proper path.
	Alright, I have more questions, but I have hugged you and a lot of people want to talk to you, so if you wouldn't mind, we're going to take some calls.
	And here we go.
	Let's dive right in, Art.
	Alright, here we go.
	The water in Toronto, Canada.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Yes.
	Bernard here.
	Hi Dr. Long.
	I have a very unusual story that took place about 12 years ago.
	I was extremely sick.
	I had mononucleosis, flu, pneumonia.
	This was during the SARS crisis in the hospital.
	My family doctor was afraid to have me admitted lest I get SARS and die.
	She gave me medication and told me to get plenty of bed rest.
	I had never felt sicker in my life.
	It was February, it was a darkened room and I thought I was going to die.
	I thought where would I want to be right now?
	So I visualized a place I know very, very well, my aunt's living room in Hawaii, just
	on the big island by the sea.
	I just let myself start to go towards that image of myself lying on her living room floor
	beside a lanai where I did many times before.
	At one point I could start smelling the ocean.
	I could hear birds.
	I could hear waves.
	I could feel the ocean breeze, the place faces due west.
	I could feel the breeze.
	I felt myself.
	I can't put it into words but I felt myself kind of sliding over there and it became more real and where I was in bed sick was less real.
	At one point I thought, well this must be what it's like to die.
	I heard different stories.
	Renditions of it and I thought well maybe for me this is what happens.
	The angel of death or the angel of mercy gives you one last nice thing you can do and lets you have a little fantasy and then you slip off.
	I was pretty convinced that if I let go completely I would have gone somewhere.
	It wasn't awful.
	It was really pleasant.
	I love Hawaii.
	It's my favorite place in the world.
	I got scared.
	And I think I let go pretty much until maybe 10-15% of me was still hanging on.
	I thought, okay, maybe this is a trick of the devil.
	Maybe something is going on here.
	I'm going to die.
	My wife is going to be upset.
	And I started to move around and wake up.
	Opened my eyes and looked around.
	Took some breaths.
	Flipped the light on in the room and I just lay there.
	I don't know.
	I thought about the experience.
	Ten minutes later my aunt, who by the way Art introduced me to your show in the mid
	90's, she's a very open minded person, she called ten minutes later.
	My wife came running up the stairs, you could see your aunt Janet, Bernard did you just
	try to materialize yourself on my living room floor?
	Wow.
	And I said I wasn't trying to, I was just thinking that's where I really wanted to be
	right at that moment.
	And she said well I was washing the dishes.
	It's an open concept room, and she was on the other side of the house, and she could see lights twinkling on the floor, right where I imagined myself being.
	And she said it looked something like the twinkly little lights you'd see in a Star Trek transporter, along with little blue flashing lights.
	And she said, I saw you materializing.
	And my mouth was open, I thought.
	What's going to happen?
	I thought you were really going to do it, and then all of a sudden, boom, you faded out.
	And I waited for another five or six, ten minutes, and I decided to call you and see if I was hallucinating, or if you really did it yourself.
	That's some story, caller.
	Yeah, that's some experience, Art, and it's kind of been haunting me, so I don't know what that was.
	Was that a near-death experience?
	Was it translocation?
	was an out-of-body experience.
	I've asked a few people and I haven't told many people the story.
	I don't know if it's really easy to put a name to it, but Doctor, what do you think?
	Yeah, that's probably in the realm of, it doesn't sound like an imminent loss of consciousness
	or something like that, so I put that more into an out-of-body experience, but that's
	an extremely rare and extremely important experience you're describing there.
	I mean, that was verifiable both in terms of the time it occurred and the location.
	I'll say.
	And that's an extremely important experience.
	I mean, good gosh, how evidential could you get for the reality of it?
	Extraordinary.
	Absolutely extraordinary.
	Really, you know, it just shows how, you know, wow.
	Thanks for sharing that, Bernard.
	That's something that I hope you share widely because I think more people need to hear about that.
	One of the more... I've studied literally thousands of out-of-body experiences over the years, and that's one of the more remarkable I've heard.
	It is.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Katerina, hello.
	You're on the air with Dr. Long.
	Hi, Art.
	Can you hear me very well?
	I hear you get good and close to the microphone on your computer.
	All right.
	Let me turn the volume up as well.
	Can you hear me better?
	Yeah.
	Go ahead.
	Okay, I moved to Pahrump several years ago from Kentucky where I had a near death experience at age 21 from taking birth control pills.
	I was adopted and I didn't know that the family had a history of brain aneurysms that they died from.
	Well, when I was taking these birth control pills, I developed severe headaches.
	And to make a long story short, I died and was dead for about ten minutes.
	And while I was dead, I saw several things and asked to see several things in that state of being.
	One thing that I experienced, and I asked to understand this was when the pin dot of light that came
	down for me that was calling me to go towards it, I noticed that there was shadows being
	cast upon what I can only describe as pods or holding units for many screaming, moaning
	entities that were, I guess, it wasn't hell but as I've talked to many ministers and rabbis and
	priests, they more or less confirmed that it would be what would be called purgatory.
	Yeah, I was going to say it didn't sound like heaven.
	Yeah, and I asked to experience why are they screaming?
	So I was taken to one of these little pods, as I called it, and placed inside of it.
	And as soon as I was placed inside, there was no sound, there was no voices, there was
	nothing.
	It was, everything was black, everything was silent.
	And after a few seconds, I could understand why they were screaming.
	So I asked, I said, Dear Father, if it's meant for me to stay here, you know, there's not anything I can do about it, but I would much rather be out in, you know, in Heaven.
	So the pod at that time was opened up.
	And I saw the pin dot of light while I could clearly hear the people that were in the other, or their spirits that was in the other pods, screaming and crying for help.
	And so I was then heading towards the light.
	And I saw many things while I was on my way.
	I reached a golden double gate that had these beings.
	I can only describe as it had the head of a lion, the torso of a man, and the lower
	part looked more like a lion because it had kind of a lion's tail or a bull's tail.
	It had the tip of it was fur or whatever.
	And they went to the center of the double doors and opened them.
	And I remember that the being that was with me, my husband, was sitting there and he was
	sitting there and he was looking at me and he was looking at me and he was looking at
	Um, Spirit Guide, whatever you want to call him, and I walked through this gate, and I remember we were so small.
	We were about the size of an ant.
	But as soon as we walked through the gates, I remember seeing this beautiful garden and this city on a hill, and I know that sounds like former President Reagan, but there really was a city on the hill.
	Where all this light was coming from, and I told my guide, I want to go there.
	So, we crossed over this crystal lake, and as we were crossing over, I looked down, and I noticed that I didn't have a body, and I distinctly remember laughing and saying, Oh, I must be dead, I don't have a body!
	Ed, we continued on up to the hill and went through another gate and I remember the angels singing and hearing people talking and I still wanted to go to the source of the light.
	To me, that was God.
	I was always raised in the church and that was my reference for who the light was.
	Sure.
	And something pulled you back?
	No, no.
	I went all the way to where the light came from behind this curtain that was gently blowing.
	And I said, I don't want to stay here.
	And I was told it was not my time, that I had a purpose here on Earth.
	The next thing I remember is I was taken to a library facility where there was a projector showing me
	these slides or videos of things to happen in my future.
	I never had a past life review.
	I was only shown my future.
	And everything I was shown, which started out very slowly and increased to a blur, everything
	they showed me came to pass.
	I have no explanation except what a wonderful blessing it has been to my life since I've
	I understand completely and I really thank you for that story.
	Oh, you're welcome.
	I have my book on Amazon.
	It's Yes, Virginia, There is a Heaven.
	Oh, you wrote a book, okay.
	Excellent.
	Thank you very much.
	It's my very big anniversary.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Take care.
	Another really, really remarkable story, Doctor.
	Yeah, it really is.
	Very typical that they're told it's not your time, often by a spiritual being there, and that there is purpose on earth.
	I hear that over and over in near-death experience accounts and I think that's a hugely important message to all of us.
	By the way, the descriptions there were scenes from the future.
	I just pulled up our most recent survey data.
	It's unusual but not rare.
	In my most recent survey, I asked directly, did scenes from the future come to you?
	And 5.7% of people that had a near-death experience said they saw scenes from the world's future, and another 9% said scenes from my personal future.
	So, again, unusual but not rare, and remarkable to think that they may have evidential observations of that which may come to pass on this earth.
	Wow.
	That's just a wow.
	I don't know what else to say.
	Both those stories that we got, just amazing.
	Incredible stuff.
	I'm Mark Bell, and this, of course, is Midnight in the Desert.
	This is a video of me playing the game.
	I'm not a pro at this game, but I'm trying to get the most out of it.
	Yeah, welcome back to this fascinating show, Art.
	It really is a fascinating show.
	Okay, so here's a question with a little humor, maybe, or maybe it's not humor at all, from Tracy through the wormhole.
	Hi, Art.
	I've always wondered, if people die drunk or high, do they stay that way in the hereafter?
	I've always had a fear of dying drunk.
	Oh, that's a good one.
	Well, Tracy, that's interesting.
	We have a fairly large number of near-death experiences where the life-threatening event was alcohol overdose, intoxication, if you will, or illicit drug overdose or intoxication.
	Especially the most lethal ones are the narcotic-type drugs where an overdose can suppress and even stop respiration, or your breathing, if you will, and cause a life-threatening event, a near-death experience.
	In essentially every near-death experience that I can call that occurred as a result of such circumstances, the person describing what happened in the NDE makes a note that they were no longer drunk, they were no longer impaired, they could think crystal clearly, even more clearly than they could typically in their earthly everyday life.
	So it seems that the consciousness that survives bodily death, again, isn't modified by The anesthesias that you might be on, the drugs that you've taken, even illicitly, the consciousness seems to be crystal clear, lucid, and unmodified by all those other things that we normally think would affect brain function.
	All right.
	Good news.
	Let's go outside the country somewhere.
	Carl, I believe it is.
	Carl?
	Yes, this is Carl from South Africa.
	Hello there.
	I have a question for Dr. Long.
	Yeah.
	Doctor, in your studies, have you ever come across the concept of soul recycling?
	Reincarnation?
	Yeah, I think that... Is that like reincarnation?
	In other words, someone dies, the soul leaves their physical body and then that same personality, that same soul, if you will, that represents or that was that person, enters another physical body Um, that's what I'm asking, but it's with a little twist at the end, where there's a third party that's in control of the whole process, where they are in control of the recycling, where they actually wipe the memory off the soul, and then, after wiping the memory, put them back into whichever body they choose to.
	You know, that's interesting because we do have some near-death experiencers that share their existence in an afterlife prior to being born, prior to living in our earthly life.
	And all of these descriptions describe that it's a voluntary process.
	In other words, if you will, premortal existence before birth.
	Very often they'll describe a description of being born to particular parents in particular circumstances.
	Often with the goal that this seems to be the life in which they can best learn their lessons or lessons that they need to learn through their earthly life.
	So I see no evidence whatsoever that there's a third party who's sort of controlling this or affecting people's soul going into that.
	If there's one thing that seems to be an overwhelmingly common theme in my near-death experience research, it's a sense in the afterlife that we have free choice, free will.
	In other words, we seem to be incredibly free to choose to be What we will be, what we do, and that includes what, if you will, the earthly life we incarnate into.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	And take care.
	To the phone.
	Hello there.
	Hey, Art.
	It's Tom from Florida.
	Yes, hello.
	Dr. Long.
	Hey, how you doing, Dr. Long?
	Yeah.
	Actually, my question was kind of...
	Answered maybe a little bit earlier with the gentleman who started to appear to his aunt.
	I was going to ask how often is it counted that living people actually during the time of the NDE, living people encounter that relative appearing to them as a spirit.
	But the other question I have is, I'm sorry go ahead.
	Yeah, that's an interesting thing.
	One thing that makes me think about this are what's called shared near-death experiences.
	That's analogous to this and I think it's an important point to make here.
	I have a series, I'm up to 14 now, where there were two or more people that had simultaneous
	life-threatening events.
	Remarkably, these two individuals are aware of each other, interact with each other, and
	both of them seem to be having a near-death experience.
	For example, one of the very first experiences that are shared near-death experiences I ever
	got was a guy and his fiancé involved in a very bad car wreck and they went up in an
	out-of-body experience hand-in-hand.
	They went up and met some spiritual beings who felt great love and compassion, but they told the two of them that the gentleman was going to return to earthly life.
	He wasn't really fully dead, but his fiancée had died and would not be able to return to earthly life.
	These spiritual beings reached out and separated the handhold that they had.
	and led his fiancé down toward the light.
	The guy vividly describes waking up in the car, returning to consciousness, and even with his eyes closed, even with not being aware of anything else going on, he knew immediately that his fiancé right beside him was dead because he had experienced that.
	It's a shared near-death experience.
	We've got a series of 14 of them, astounding things like that.
	Yeah, shared near-death experiences with people that they didn't even know were having a life-threatening event at the time they did, and so this is certainly a part of the evidence of the reality of near-death experience, and I think that's analogous to some of the other things we've been talking about tonight.
	All right.
	Winnipeg, Manitoba, I believe.
	Yes, sir.
	This is Greg.
	How are you guys tonight?
	Fine.
	Excellent.
	Super.
	Okay.
	I had an experience.
	A long time ago after a relationship I had with a female that I was with for a long time and I was kind of in a depressed state and this isn't an NDE out of body experience that I had but it ties into what that other caller from Hawaii said about what his aunt had said about seeing him and it was very similar to what I had seen.
	So I'm just going to collaborate that and then the other thing was collaborating with the blind patient that you had had said I had exactly the same experience.
	So anyways, I felt I was I was laying in bed and I was upset and all of a sudden I felt the voice of God speak to me and it was odd and I don't know like exactly how to explain it but I remember the voice and it said wait get up from your bed move to the door And you're going to see an angel.
	And I seen like what the guy was describing.
	And I fell backwards, like just completely fell backwards.
	But it felt like I fell into like pillows, or like air clouds or something.
	But I didn't get knocked out.
	It just it just put me into like a shock state.
	Okay, so that was that was the first thing that had had happened.
	That's similar to what that guy said.
	It was kind of odd.
	But anyways, The second time was later on in a different part of life for me.
	I was in a stage where I was DJing in the rave scene culture and me and a friend had experimented at a time with nitrous oxide and ketamine at the same time and I was on more than Like I've had many NDEs in my life and I'm not going to go into any of them because there's so many it's overwhelming but this one was like the one that was like that I had to call in because of that blind caller that you said or that blind patient that you called in.
	The experience was I took more than probably about 150 milligrams of ketamine and a whole lot of nitrous.
	I'm not even sure how much.
	And me and my friend, we both did that.
	And while I did that, I did it to the drop of the bass line on some headphones that I
	had on.
	I skyrocketed out of like, like totally out of like existence in a sense, like well conscious
	existence like we experience every day on earth.
	And then basically what happened is I seen the valley and the shadow of death.
	And it was a totally tranquil place.
	And then all of a sudden, that was a split second.
	There was no white light.
	I entered this realm like exactly like the experience that the woman had that wasn't
	like a pie shape, you know, tunnel vision that we all go through every day in our normal
	everyday life.
	And it was like you had a million eyes all around your head and you could see like in every single direction.
	And I was trying to turn and look around and I could see it was like a screensaver.
	Well, if you have 360 degree vision, you shouldn't have to turn to see anything.
	No, but then at the very moment where I realized where I was, I heard the same voice of what I choose to believe now that is the voice of God say to me that, he said, because you've mixed this music with these molecules in exactly the same sequence, You are a professional DJ.
	What you should have said is, don't do drugs.
	Oh my goodness.
	Let's go to Skype.
	Celestial, you're on the air.
	Hi Art Roswell, this is Celestial from Montana.
	So I was a little chokin' for a second about the Indie Shared and I'll get to it regarding my brother in a moment.
	I'll talk about mine in a second.
	So when I was 14, I'm 41 now, I had a tumor in the palm of my left hand.
	They didn't know if it was cancerous or not, and they had let it go on for a couple years, but it started to attach itself to the nerve endings in my hand, so they wanted to do surgery on it to remove it because it was giving me pain.
	So I went under surgery.
	And I remember going to the doctors, going under surgery, everything else.
	The last thing I remember before I went under anesthesia was they told me to count backwards from 100 and I hit 99.
	And the next thing I remember was I was in white.
	Everything was white.
	It was bright.
	And I saw my grandfather, which was completely bizarre to me because he had died two years before that.
	And I was freaked out because I didn't know.
	I actually was sitting there thinking, am I alive?
	Am I dead?
	What is going on?
	Why am I seeing my grandpa?
	And he looked very concerned.
	Like he came running up to me in this bright white light.
	And the next thing is right behind him, what looked like Jesus in the typical form of Jesus came running up and they both grabbed me around my shoulders and they looked freaked out.
	And I'm like, Oh my gosh, Grandpa, I'm so happy to see you.
	And they're like, you're not supposed to be here.
	You're not supposed to be here.
	You need to go.
	And I was like, no, no, no, don't go.
	I miss you.
	I miss our adventures.
	And they grabbed me and they smiled and they turned me around and they spun me and they shoved me really hard into even a brighter light.
	And I'm like, why are you making me go?
	And they shoved me so hard and I stumbled forward.
	And what the light, the brighter white light turned into the clock on the wall across from my bed in my recovery room.
	Wow.
	And I was like, what?
	And I and I still like what came into focus is the clock and what I could see out of the peripheral vision on my right side was a nurse But I couldn't turn my head.
	I couldn't get my whole body to respond.
	And I could see her looking really concerned next to my head.
	And I'm like, why is this chick talking?
	I don't know what she's talking about.
	And I sort of drifted in and out.
	And next thing I know, she's on the other side of me.
	And then she came around the other side.
	And I'm like, why can I see her mouth moving, but I don't know what she's saying.
	And finally I could hear what she's talking about and apparently I had flatlined on the table and my surgery was supposed to be 45 minutes and I was out for two and a half hours and I flatlined and they brought me back and when they brought me back I was conscious but I was staring but not responding to the clock on the wall for 45 minutes.
	Well, we're gonna have to hold it there because we've got a break.
	Doctor, just amazing, amazing, amazing stories one after another after another.
	And with your collection, I guess you're used to that.
	This is Midnight in the Desert.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Rocking on through the night.
	It goes...
	...into the room.
	There was voodoo in the back.
	I was captured by a star.
	But I could not...
	No call screening.
	No waiting on hold.
	No requirement to kiss Art's ring.
	Just good talk.
	Join Art by calling 1952-225-5278.
	That's 1952.
	Call Art.
	Okay, here's Rhonda in Arizona.
	Even though we've covered this, it's worth asking.
	Art, I've been an ER nurse for 15 years, and I want to say that I feel that times have changed.
	Oh, no question about it.
	people in the medical field now do talk about NDEs. Doctor, do you find this to be the case
	in your research? Oh, no question about it. I agree with Rhonda.
	17 years ago when I started my NDE website, I literally did not include my name on it.
	I didn't want any of my medical colleagues to find me by an internet search.
	I mean, it was that secret.
	I literally operated in secret for years because of my concern about people having negative judgments about what I was doing.
	Oh, that was long ago and far away.
	Now, I talk openly with my colleagues.
	They're fascinated.
	Most doctors I talk to and share the evidence that I've shared on this show get it.
	They understand, especially physicians, I think, grasp that there's no way medicine can explain these remarkable lines of evidence we've discussed on the show.
	There's nothing medically that can explain a near-death experience.
	Understood.
	With NDEs, people often have a choice to stay Or come back to Earth, I guess.
	And if it is as good a feeling as they say, then why is it people choose to return?
	That's a great question.
	The significant majority of people, and it's often near the end of their near-death experience, often in these unearthly, beautiful, what's often called heavenly realms, People don't want to go back to their earthly life.
	Think about that.
	This is their earthly life that is so familiar to them that they've lived years, typically decades, and yet here they are in this unearthly realm of beauty, love.
	They literally feel that the afterlife realm is their real home, that that's where they belong and they want to stay there.
	So no matter what family they have, their familial connections, loving connections with people on earth, The great majority of people that have that choice, that are given that choice, at least initially, don't want to go back to their earthly life.
	They want to stay there in that unearthly, beautiful realm.
	Ultimately, they do generally choose to return to their earthly life, but there's often some discussion.
	It may take some persuasion.
	In fact, sometimes we have a small series of near-death experiences where these spiritual beings that are typically with them at this time We'll show them, basically, as if to say, OK, suppose you do stay here.
	Suppose you do not return to your earthly life.
	Here's what happens next.
	And they'll be shown their own funeral.
	And it is gripping the reality that we see when they're shown.
	And we talked about how they can sometimes be aware of future events.
	That's right.
	Well, this is what they would see if they choose not to return to their earthly life.
	And it just gives me chills, Art, to read some of these accounts.
	For example, One person vividly described their own funeral, their friends, family, loved ones, enormously grieving and in tears, and yet here were a couple of the two-year-old relatives that he had, a couple of them laughing and kind of giggling because they didn't understand it was a funeral.
	They didn't understand that somebody died.
	How's that for a gripping reality?
	And that's what people describe over and over, and typically when people see their own funeral and its impact on the people they love, They'll grudgingly choose to return to life and fight to recover from what nearly killed them.
	Okay.
	Simon, again on the computer through the wormhole, asks, Art, please ask the doctor about the guy you know.
	He means Dr. Lear, John Lear, who has haunted me for years and years and years.
	John Lear came on the program and said, Art, I've got an insight, and that is If you die, if you have an NDE, don't go to the light.
	It's a trick.
	Go to the darkness.
	The talk show curse goes on, John, for saying that to me because I've never been able to get it out of my head.
	Okay.
	Well, I'll be glad to address that, Art.
	After studying over 4,000 near-death experiences, I find absolutely nothing This suggests that that's a reality.
	If you're having a near-death experience when that light's encountered, it's typically not just an ordinary earthly light.
	You feel drawn to it, attracted.
	You have a sense of that overwhelming love, peace, and compassion.
	I mean, it literally seems a part of you.
	It seems like where you came from before you're earthly-like, and life and where you're delighted to return to when your earthly life ends.
	But there is not a shred of evidence that says you should go to the darkness.
	I don't think people need to live in fear about making a wrong decision.
	The universe is overwhelmingly ruled by love and peace.
	I think we all, in the afterlife, will have a choice.
	We can make amends.
	We can choose to make a right decision.
	I have to disagree with John Lear.
	There's nothing in my research, nor in any research with any other near-death experience researcher I'm aware of, That suggests we need to have that concern about not going to the light and going to the dark.
	Well, see if it doesn't haunt you.
	It does me.
	Laneyville, Texas, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi Art and Dr. Long.
	You have posted on one of our, well actually in the beginning when you were first posting stories up on your website.
	I believe you posted my son's story way back in the very beginning and it was listed as, I believe, Emily's son.
	He had gotten run over when he was six years old and you ran it on the website and it was really a nice thing.
	Did he have an NDE?
	Yes, he did.
	He was out for quite a long time and I gave him up as dead.
	I screamed and I laid him down on the ground and just screamed with every bit of my soul.
	He jolted and came back to life.
	Six weeks later, he was only six years old, he told me the whole story when he was out and how I was giving him mouth to mouth.
	The tractor that came by and the guy that stopped and the whole story.
	He was just six years old.
	He said, Mama, I was up above you looking down at you giving me mouth to mouth.
	And so it changed our life because I realized and he realized too that there is something
	going on.
	Yeah, thanks for sharing that.
	It sounds like he was observing some other vehicles around there and you doing mouth
	to mouth things.
	He wouldn't have known unless he was actually above you seeing that and seeing accurately.
	So all the hallmarks of a near-death experience and certainly changing your life is very common.
	Once you know that consciousness can be apart from your body, you know that we're much, much more than just our physical earthly manifestations.
	It really causes one to think and to learn and to grow.
	And I'm not surprised it changed both of your lives.
	Thanks for sharing that.
	Okay, I don't have a lot of time, but Denver, Colorado.
	Hi.
	Hey, Art.
	It's Matt, your undefeated atheist.
	I'm actually enjoying the show.
	I like that you've been bringing on new people I actually haven't heard, so it's refreshing.
	Even if they have a view I don't necessarily have, I still find it kind of interesting to hear something else.
	That would be most of them, Matt.
	Oh, yeah, probably.
	But, you know, hey, I'm a reasonable guy.
	I might jump over, you know, to a couple of their theories, if they believe in it enough.
	What I wanted to call the doctor about was, well, he had spoken a little bit about DMT, and, you know, I had done my personal research in that field with some friends over the years, but that's another story for another day, Art.
	But, no, I think Dr. Rick Strassman had done Quite a large study.
	They even did that DMT movie, The Spiritual Molecule, I think it was called?
	Yes.
	And they talked about the high and large quantities of DMT released from the pineal gland right before a very traumatic experience.
	And they believe that, you know, maybe death might be that.
	And so maybe it might be your brain actually trying to calm you down.
	And what wouldn't be more calm than seeing, like, you know, memories of loved ones, things like that.
	Going through the pain of, you know, drowning or bleeding to death.
	And I also found it interesting that the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center had talked about how the brain actually goes into survival mode.
	Right.
	And they talk about how the pons and the medulla actually are the only ones that are running and the rest of the higher parts of the brain actually shut down.
	And then they say if the vision center of your brain, the optical cortex, suddenly is activated, that might actually explain the bright light effect.
	Matt, I'm very short on time, but I do want to ask you this.
	If you had an NDE, Matt, and all you heard was a big, deep voice saying, don't do drugs, and then you came back, what would you conclude from that?
	I would say one of my friends must have been standing over me and talking into my ear when I was passed out, probably from doing drugs.
	Everybody hold on.
	We're going to break point.
	This is Midnight in the Desert.
	I stopped to know that along the way, hoping to find some way to get home.
	Midnight in the Desert.
	I stopped to know that along the way, hoping to find some way to get home.
	Stop to know that along the way, hoping to find some Now, here's Art.
	Here I am.
	Coming to you at the speed of light in the darkness, this is Midnight in the Desert with
	Art Bell.
	Now, here's Art.
	Here I am.
	Dr. Long, if NDEs are proof of an afterlife, which I guess you believe they are, correct?
	Well, I say the evidence is certainly proof to me.
	I would represent other people that, you know, don't have the personal experience reviewing 4,000 near-death experiences.
	I'd say, at a minimum, it's very powerful evidence of life after death.
	Then what are the majority of the lack of NDEs under similar circumstances proof of?
	Well, that's a real interesting question, and here's a direct answer for that.
	There's exactly, out of 4,000 near-death experiences, one near-death experience where they were in an unearthly, beautiful, overwhelmingly peaceful, loving environment, typically called heavenly realms, and there was a near-death experiencer in this overwhelmingly joyous environment, and they were interacting with God.
	And asked God very directly, why me?
	Why was I allowed to have this?
	Right.
	And the answer was, I'm feeling overwhelming sense of love and peace in this unearthly realm.
	And the answer she got was, love falls on everyone equally.
	This is what you needed to live your life.
	And so that's, in talking with other near-death experiencers recently, it was at our annual, yeah, and that's Unearthly Wisdom Hour.
	I couldn't have thought of that.
	And neither could any of the NDE researchers that I talk with.
	I brought that to the attention of others and they went, well yeah, that kind of resonates.
	And it seems at this point that that's our best model for why some near-death experiences happen to some and not others.
	It seems to be something that is an experience that is created for those that particularly need that experience at that time in their life to go on living.
	And apparently the majority of people for Reasons we can't fathom wouldn't benefit or from that experience at least at that time in their life during an NDE.
	So I'm not the only NDE researcher that feels that the most likely hypothesis at this point that we have going for why some people have NDEs and some don't when they nearly die.
	Good answer.
	All right.
	Joe on Skype.
	You're on the air with Dr. Long.
	Hi.
	Yes.
	Hey, Art.
	Good to have you back.
	Thank you.
	I just want to share an experience I had when I was five years old.
	I was having a tonsillectomy, and during the operation, I had the experience of looking up from my throat like I was inside my throat, looking up, and I thought it was a pair of spectacles, a pair of glasses, right at my throat.
	And at age five, Flash forward to age 18, I'm in medical assistant school, and the first time I was handed a pair of forceps, needle forceps, I was like, bingo, snap, that's what I saw.
	And it's, I don't know that anything happened during the surgery, but it was such a strange experience, I really felt like I was inside looking out.
	Yeah, let me make really sure that I get this, because it's pretty incredible.
	You're telling me That you were looking from inside your throat out of your own mouth and saw a doctor at five years of age wearing spectacles.
	No, no.
	I just saw what in my mind was spectacles, but later when I saw a pair of forceps, it was the handles.
	Gotcha.
	The round handles on the forceps.
	That's so incredible.
	And I thought that was pretty bloody amazing, and it stuck with me, and I'm 58 now.
	And I'm so happy to speak with you, and you have made my nights complete.
	I don't sleep on weekends.
	You don't sleep on weekends?
	Yes, because, you know, your voice is just so calming.
	And you are so, what I am so impressed, always I must say this, you are so wonderful with the callers.
	Such a variety of people that call you, you allow people to speak.
	And you don't cut them off, you don't, you know, you don't just, you know, disparage them or make disparaging comments or bully them, you know.
	I'm very impressed.
	I'm an Army veteran.
	I was a WAC from 76 to 80, and I just, you, you're, I thank you for your service.
	Thank you.
	I'm just saying you were Air Force, correct?
	That's correct.
	And, well, I just wanted to share that, and thank you so much for letting me share.
	You're very welcome.
	That's pretty cool.
	That's quite a cool story, actually.
	Doctor?
	Yeah, that's very impressive.
	And sometimes, you know, you can imagine a five-year-old, they've never seen the curved handles on forceps.
	How would you know about that?
	They don't show you that before they start the surgery.
	When people have out-of-body experiences, as we've said, generally their consciousness is above their body.
	Rarely it's beside their body or even below their body.
	This may be one rare example of an out-of-body experience with the point of conscious perception actually within the body.
	Yeah, that was almost inside the body.
	Under anesthesia, amazing.
	Yes, amazing.
	El Paso, Texas, I think?
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Hello, Doctor.
	I know you don't have a lot of time, so I'll be quick.
	I wanted to get the doctor's opinion on whether my experience was a genuine near-death experience.
	I was feeling very, very sick at the time.
	I felt like I was dying.
	It turns out all I had was bronchitis.
	Anyway, in the hospital, as I lay there, I felt like I was dying, and I called out to a friend of mine who had recently passed away, and I saw him, and he told me basically, it's not your time yet.
	If you do want to come with me, let's go.
	If you don't, I'll stay with you and be your guardian angel throughout your life.
	I wanted the doctor's opinion to see if that was a genuine experience or not.
	That's good.
	The very classic thing that occurs in a near-death experience statement is not your time, in other words, not time to leave your earthly life.
	and having a choice.
	Again, a common and near-death experience is a choice to leave your earthly life and
	go to that blissful unearthly life.
	So that is so typical that it is somewhat irrelevant if you had a life-threatening,
	a serious life-threatening event at that time.
	That is a good example of an experience.
	Even if it's not a near-death experience, it's still obviously profoundly meaningful and significant.
	So that would be what we call an NDE-like experience and it's certainly in the same spectrum of near-death experiences and certainly has the same degree of reality, significance and meaning.
	certainly would would mark that up as is for real byron i'm still stuck on a lady who was looking for a month
	man-to-man uh... you have a profile that's
	uh... anthony hello you're on the air with dr long hi good evening art and doctor long i think for taking my
	call i'll make this quick because we don't have a lot of time
	I'm curious, out of all of the NDE cases that you've experienced, have you ever had any that have reported contact with any kind of interdimensional or alien beings?
	And like I said, I'll take my answer off the air.
	Okay, should be a good one, too.
	Really good question.
	Yeah.
	Interdimensional, I mean, these seem to be spiritual beings.
	They're very common.
	These are unearthly.
	Not physical, often seem to be made of energy, and often in a realm where time doesn't exist.
	So, interdimensional beings are very common in near-death experiences.
	Now, Anthony's great question is about alien beings.
	In other words, beings that seem to be more of a physical type beings that are not of this earth.
	Sure.
	And interestingly, we have a few near-death experiences, and I find this fascinating.
	I'm sure your listeners will, too.
	A few near-death experiences describe going into space and sometimes they'll see other, it's not at all uncommon for them to describe other suns seemingly viewing other galaxies and on relatively uncommon occasions, but we do have reports of this, they actually go and visit other worlds and there can be other life forms and other beings.
	In fact, I'm recalling one near-death experience Where they specifically asked the beings with them if they could see another planet that had life and beings that were less well-developed, less advanced than they have on Earth.
	And they were shown sort of humanoid-type beings that were less culturally developed than here on Earth.
	Sort of like caveman-ish, sort of, but not quite.
	That's analogous.
	And then he wanted to see an alien existence that was more advanced.
	And boom!
	There he was seeing Something that was technologically far more advanced than we have on Earth.
	So, very interesting observations from these occasional near-death experiences that seem to strongly suggest that we're not alone in the universe and that there are indeed other planets throughout the universe that have life either more or less developed than what we know on Earth.
	All right.
	Allentown, Pennsylvania, I think.
	Hi, Dr. Long.
	I just want to say thank you very much for all your research and your website.
	And thank Jody, too.
	Yeah, you're welcome.
	It's our second full-time job.
	My question is, if there's no judgment, why isn't Kevorkian seen as sort of a hero and why not our quietus take with a bare botkin?
	Yeah, and again, that's what led me to think a lot too.
	You know, if there's no judgment, that seems contrary to my personal sense of justice and what I think a lot of other people do.
	Why can't there be that cosmic justice for, you know, people that are evil, that live on this earth?
	I mean, what's that all about?
	And yet, my job is not to put a spin on near-death experiences, but to report them rigorously and accurately as I observe them.
	And there's absolutely no question about that, that there's a striking lack of judgment.
	Now, there are other spiritual beings.
	Even God may be displeased with what they see during the afterlife, but in terms of a global judgment, in terms of judging the near-death experiencer globally in totality, of the totality of their being, that is vanishingly rare to close to non-existence.
	So, there seems to be that part of the... And of course, let's not forget also that everybody that has these near-death experience where they encounter no judgment, 100% of them return to their earthly life to tell their tale.
	So, I'm not totally sure that we can extrapolate that to people that permanently, irreversibly die.
	Is that going to be the time they face that final, true end of their life of judgment?
	I don't know.
	On the other hand, I do know that the universe seems to have this overwhelming, beyond-earthly understanding, sense of love and compassion and connection, and I kind of get the sense that we're forgiven far more than we could possibly forgive others.
	And I guess the other way to look at this is our earthly life seems to be the tiniest slice of our true, total, infinite existence that we are as beings.
	And so for us to suffer some permanent, involuntary ill fate because of that tiniest slice of our errors that we've made in our earthly life, of that tiniest slice of our eternal being, Maybe that's something that an overwhelmingly and compassionate loving God isn't having happen.
	But again, that's speculation.
	Yes, the way I look at it too, it's such a small piece of existence, why not see it through?
	It's just the other side, it kind of comes down to what you believe.
	Like whether you believe that the NDEs are everything or there's maybe that slice of what happens after permanent death.
	Well, there sure is a lot of evidence.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Well, appreciate it, Doctor.
	We are short on time.
	Very quickly, Jeff, Skype, you're on the air.
	Yeah, hey, it's a codename Jeff Scepter out of Dallas.
	And just a real quick one, pretty weird.
	A close family member of ours, When he was on the table, operating table, he started saying that he was in flames and it was hot and whatnot.
	He survived.
	Okay, you're kind of breaking up on us, but a hellish NDE is what you're describing, right?
	Right.
	And he survived.
	And then later, It happened again, and he didn't survive, but the same kind of ordeal on the deathbed.
	Well, I wonder if he went to the destination he first saw, or somehow managed to turn his life around in time.
	It's hard to say, but it was pretty scary.
	I actually heard the second time myself.
	Yeah, that's scary, all right.
	I'm with you.
	Yeah, that is.
	Yeah, deathbed visions.
	It's hard to sort that out during deathbed visions because they can have hallucinatory experiences.
	They often are on high doses of pain medication and so it's hard to really know if those are true spiritual experiences or if those are what you would expect to see with a dying brain.
	Near-death experiences and their relationship to the brain.
	That's more often what you'd expect in a dying brain.
	Hallucinatory, unreal, frightening experiences.
	And yet those are very rare in true near-death experiences.
	Monterey, California.
	Not much time.
	Hi.
	Hi, it's Bob.
	I had a near-death experience in that I fell down a mountain and I was picking up momentum as I was sliding.
	And I had prayed heavily before I started down the mountain, because I really didn't think I was going to make it.
	And all of a sudden, everything stopped.
	It was stop motion.
	I've got to ask a question.
	Were you skiing, or what do you mean, starting down a mountain?
	This was in your neighborhood, so it was at Big Sur.
	And I was in the gorge area, and I had climbed up I think so, yes.
	by mistake, instability, and got caught in a slide and I got to the point where I wasn't gonna be able
	to stop without going over the edge.
	Gotcha.
	But basically time stopped in that I was in stop motion and a voice said, Bob, what are you doing here?
	It's not your time.
	But that's not what he said, he said, we weren't expecting you.
	And from that point, there was a brief conversation.
	A brief conversation.
	I was told that I could view my life, I could have the life experience.
	I was only 16.
	They said not much had happened in my life.
	I say they, but it was one voice that I recall.
	I didn't see anybody, but just this conversation that took place.
	Well, motion basically and time had stopped.
	And out of it, I said, well, they said, you can stay or you can come with us.
	And I said, what must I do to stay?
	And they said, you must have a leap of faith.
	And that's what they said to a guy falling off the mountain.
	But there was one opportunity to save my life and I saw a tree limb sticking out of a rubble just before I'd go over the cliff and I had to leap.
	And then grab the true limb.
	So that's your leap of faith and leap of being saved, I guess, too.
	I'm sorry we're going to have to cut it off there because we've got to go.
	The show is ending.
	Doctor, it has been a real pleasure and honor to have you on the program, and we'll have to do it again, obviously.
	Yeah, this is a fantastic show.
	I mean, this has been an epic discussion of near-death experiences.
	Art, you're the master interviewer.
	Enormously, enormously fascinating show here.
	So, gosh, yeah, I would be delighted to do this at any future time.
	Thank you, my friend.
	And your website again?
	Yeah, nderf.org.
	All right.
	Be safe, and thank you for the wonderful interview, Doctor.
	Good night.
	Yeah, good night, Art.
	A magical journey is right.
	Absolutely right.
	Everybody have a good night.
	We'll see you tomorrow evening, about the same time, same channel and all that.

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