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Sept. 7, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:02:27
Edition 220 - Near Death Experiences

Featuring psychologist Roy Hill and his latest research...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you very much for all of your recent communications and your support for this show, whether you've made a donation to it or whether you sent me a message or whether you've done both.
Gratefully received and I love to hear from you when you tell me about your life, where you are, what you do and how you use this show.
So many people use this show when they're going to and from work.
They listen to it.
You know, I think if I was running a mainstream radio station now, I'd be getting very, very worried about the number of people who are just not listening to the radio anymore apart from catching the news.
Because it seems that more and more people, as I predicted a long time ago, many of us did, are turning to digital sources to get their information.
You do not need the big media corporations.
And the great thing about working in a small outfit like this, which is basically me, Adam, my webmaster at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool who does great work, and you.
There are only three of us involved in this show.
If you think about a big media organization, then you've got departments and people.
No matter how much cost-cutting they've done, there's still a lot of people to go through.
And quite often, if you get in touch with them and you make a suggestion, they'll probably ignore your email.
But if they don't, they'll talk about it endlessly.
And at the end of that, they might do something about it if they feel like they might not.
That's the difference between us and them.
The fact of the matter is that we, I think, in this new digital sector treat you as a person.
They treat you as a statistic and something to be measured when it comes to audience rating time.
And I'm afraid that is just the truth of all of this.
A lot of it is a business now.
And, you know, we understand that money has to be made.
But it's a people business.
And it's a business in which the people should be put first.
And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, I can promise you they are not.
Very sad news in the last couple of weeks that I'm catching up with here.
The medium who came on my show, psychic medium, Colin Fry, died of cancer recently.
I believe he was 53, which is no age at all to go.
I'm told that he had no fear of death.
Very unexpected news.
A man who used to come in live on the radio version of The Unexplained, always had a smile, always made us laugh, and was never afraid.
This was the great thing about him.
When the show was on radio, it was on an AM station that by night would reach all the way down to Spain from the UK, all the way up into Scandinavia, Germany, and places like that.
Colin was not afraid of any of the questions that you asked.
However detailed they were, whether they were from total sceptics who wanted to rubbish him, Colin would take it all in good part.
And the greatest thing about him is he would travel up from Sussex to do the show and would enjoy it.
A very good person to have around when you're doing a radio show.
And I'm very sad to hear that he's no longer with us.
Colin Fry, who's died at the age of 53.
Interested to see this recently in the papers.
Apparently, according to official police guidelines from the College of Policing, police officers searching for missing people in future, and you know that on the last show we talked about missing people with ex-Detective Dave Borlaidis.
In this country, police are being told they shouldn't rule out getting the help of psychics, which is interesting.
The person's methods should be asked for and whether they have accredited successes.
That's according to a consultation document from that Royal College of Policing, which is the official source of professional practice on police work.
I think I've just promoted it.
I don't think it's a Royal College of Policing.
It's the College of Policing, but it's important.
That is where police take their lead.
So that's interesting.
Thank you very much.
If you have been in touch recently, keep your guest suggestions coming.
And if you can make a donation, like I say, that would be great too.
Go to theunexplained.tv.
That's my website.
And that's where you can do that.
On this edition of the show, we're going to talk to somebody we haven't spoken with before and somebody who may well be new to you.
You know, I like to mix it up here, a mixture of guests who are returning, well-known, and a mixture of people that you haven't heard before.
Well, Roy Hill is one of those people.
Now, Roy has a distinguished career.
He's a clinical psychologist for more than 20 years.
He supervised prison departments in the U.S., managed mental health programs, provided general clinical services, and participated in crisis management.
But according to his biography, despite a rewarding career, Roy believes his most important work lies ahead, lending voice to our ambassadors from heaven.
We're going to talk on this edition about Roy's researches into near-death experiences and something that you have wanted me to get into again.
So we're about to do that here on The Unexplained.
Thank you very much indeed for everything that you've done for me.
Let's cross to the U.S. now and get Roy Hill on and we're going to talk about NDE's near-death experiences.
Roy, thank you very much for coming on.
Thank you, Howard.
I'm very glad to be here.
Now, Roy, we're doing this interview because I got a news release about you, and it piqued my interest and my imagination.
Partly, I have to say, because of your background.
You come from a background that is not, I don't think, the norm for investigating this sort of semi-paranormal stuff.
It is a very straight psychological background, and you've held some very, very responsible positions, including, I believe, in the U.S. prison system.
Yes, I have worked in the prison system as a clinical psychologist for almost 20 years.
I have supervised various programs.
I am the chief psychologist.
I have been for about 12 years at two institutions.
And that's all in the present tense.
So you're doing this work about neodeath experiences while also continuing that work?
For the time being, that is correct.
Okay.
And just out of interest, how do the people that you work for view this other research that you do?
Well, I think they're just finally realizing what I'm doing.
My book was published only a few weeks ago, so I'm brand new in terms of media.
There's a few people work who have known what I've been doing for maybe a year or two, but probably most people didn't know.
But as people are finding out, I think most people appear pretty receptive.
At the worst, people seem kind of indifferent To it, but more people than not say, wow, that's very interesting.
I heard about that, or I want to know more about that.
Because as I said on the intro to this show that you won't have heard, but I said that the truth of the matter is that most of us, and that includes me, are fascinated by the subject of death and dying.
We want to know what happens, and those people who come near to death, close to it, are the ones who may be best placed to give us some kind of indication of what is to come, aren't they?
Yes.
Right.
I agree.
You know, this is the ultimate question that relates to who we are, what our future is, where we've been.
What are we supposed to do while living on Earth?
The biggest question throughout existence is, what is the meaning of life?
And I think this type of study answers these questions to some degree.
And for you, a man working in professional clinical psychology at the level that you've been working, is this a question that's bugged you for many years, or is it something that's come to you recently?
Well, I have always wondered the question, but really the answers have only come in recent years, I do believe.
I was raised in an evangelical Christian background, and so the answers had always been sort of provided to me.
So this is different now because I've been on my own journey, my own quest, looking for new answers and studying many thousands of, well, several thousand NDEs I've read.
What I've discovered is that they're like pieces to a jigsaw puzzle.
They're very consistent.
And as I read more and more, all these pieces start fitting together.
And I go, wow, okay, now I'm starting to expand my understanding of the spiritual realm and the purpose of my existence here on earth.
Okay, so these are fundamental questions and they're questions that people have been asking for many a long year.
Perhaps in the past, it wasn't seen to be fitting or right to ask these questions in our modern civilization because they were seen as kind of out there.
But more and more people think it is legitimate as an area of research.
When you decided you wanted to research this, how did you go about it?
Well, I had a personal experience that made me question my own faith and my own spiritual journey.
That led me to read NDE counts, particularly from the NDERF website, which is Near Death Experience Research Foundation, where they have about 4,000 anonymous NDE entries.
And the more I read, the more I became interested.
And so I began to have a voracious appetite in learning these things.
There's a question that I was going to ask you a little later in this conversation, but I think it might be an idea to ask it now, simply because it's burning within me.
You've worked in the prison system.
I don't know whether you've worked with people who've been on death row, if there is a death row where you work, because I guess they are the people who would confront such things.
Right.
I have met some inmates who have had near-death experiences, maybe two or three during my career.
I do not work with those type of folks.
I've typically worked with low and medium security inmates.
But kind of how this started did start with an interesting experience in the prison system.
If you have a few minutes, I would describe that if you're interested.
Absolutely.
Okay, so basically how this all started is I had an inmate on Suicide Watch.
His sister had recently passed away in an auto accident.
And so this inmate I put on Suicide Watch because he was extremely depressed.
So after a couple days, he said he was better and ready to come off Suicide Watch.
I asked him, why now?
Why the sudden improvement?
And he said that his sister was talking to him and said that he was going to be all right and she was fine where she was at, that he really shouldn't be on suicide watch.
That's not what God's purpose for him was and for him to live better and more productively.
So he was eating better and his mental status looked better.
So I took him off watch and talked to him the next day.
I asked him, are you still talking to your deceased sister?
Wondering if this was some sort of psychotic process.
I was thinking it was not, simply because auditory hallucinations from schizophrenics and other people with psychotic disorders, these types of voices typically are very cryptic and negative and not helpful.
This was the opposite.
These were kind of rather lengthy discussions and very positive and helpful to him.
So it didn't seem like a regular psychotic process.
So I kind of entertained the possibility that he was indeed talking to his sister, but I wasn't sure.
So I asked him again, if his sister was still talking to him, and he said, yes.
I says, well, what is she saying?
And he said, well, she's saying that you don't believe me.
So that you shall believe me.
She has a message for you.
And of course, my skin started getting goosebumps and so forth.
So I said, well, what is her message?
He says, quarter.
Quarter.
I says, what does that mean?
Like quarter of a substance or quarter of the American coin?
He says, let me ask.
So he comes back and after communing with the deceased for a few seconds, he says, he says, quarter the coin.
I says, well, what does that mean?
I don't know.
So the next guy I saw, who was actually a white Muslim and didn't Run in the same circles as this other guy by any means.
He was ranting about the hypocrisy of the United States government.
And he asked me, Do you know what's written on a quarter?
And I said, In God we trust.
He goes, That's right.
And nobody had asked me that prior or since.
And so the timing of it, I thought, well, this is a declaration that I needed to have faith in God.
So I talked to the guy the next day, that same inmate, that sister had passed, asked, and did she say anything else to you?
And he said, yes, your son, your wife is pregnant.
You're going to have a son, and he will be born on Christmas Day.
Well, the first two were right, but it's possible that he could have received that information elsewhere.
So the real crux of the truth of what he was saying kind of rested on whether my son would be born on Christmas Day.
Well, my son was born on January 7th.
So for 11 years, that really bothered me.
And the more I thought about it, I said, well, you know, this was all really a test of faith.
First, there was a declaration I didn't have faith.
Then there was a statement that I needed to trust in God.
And thirdly, there was a test of faith.
So on a leap of faith, I looked, Googled Christmas Day and January 7th.
And lo and behold, a lot came up.
My son was born on January 7th by the Gregorian Christian calendar.
That's on Christmas Day.
And still the Orthodox Christians, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox celebrate Christmas on January 7th.
And Christendom used to pretty much widely celebrate in January 7th.
So that was what kind of led me to start really looking at these things.
So that was a prison experience that sort of led me into this direction.
Wow.
That's the kind of thing that changes you.
And most of us, it would inspire us to maybe do some reading.
I'm not sure whether it would inspire us to do intensive research.
Right.
So there was something about me that was inspired, perhaps, by the divine.
I guess it was I'm the right person at the right time with the right circumstances to move forward with it.
I'm just guessing with that.
And had you ever thought about near-death experiences, experiences with things which are without us before that?
Had it been something that had been on your mind before?
Well, I did read Raymond Moody's book and had some passing interest in near-death experiences as a curiosity and a possibility.
But bear in mind that I come from a very scientific background.
My father's a physicist.
My mother's a geologist.
My brother's a physicist and I was a psychologist.
So it was kind of difficult for me to accept it to the degree maybe I should have or later did.
Okay, so you had to wrestle with yourself to an extent to get started?
Perhaps, perhaps.
I mean, once I got started, I just naturally went to it.
And how did you do that?
By just reading and reading and reading.
And then after some time, I started to receive some spiritual messages on the other side.
I welcomed it.
I asked for it.
And I do believe that I received some information that only verified my journey in that direction.
Now, this is the bit that people will have difficulty with, some who are listening to this, those who are more skeptically minded, that you were guided to do this by something.
That is the thing that people will have trouble with, I think.
I think you're right.
What would you have to say to them?
Well, most of my life I was there too, and these are personal decisions.
And really, I think you have to look at the nature of science.
Science asks the how questions and answers the how questions, but it really doesn't answer the why questions and really not too much even the what questions.
And mathematics by its own nature, according to Rolo May, who's a famous existential psychologist, noted that math is the ultimate abstraction.
And from there, we're drawing conclusions based on that.
If you look, you know, maybe 80 years ago or maybe a little longer, maybe a little more 100 years ago prior to Albert Einstein, physics, people just assumed that physics followed a Newtonian type organization.
And with Einstein came relativity and quantum physics.
And quantum physics is a type of physics that says that the way particles are expressed, subatomic particles are expressed, is based on thought.
And Einstein called it spooky science.
Now, the scientific community accepts that now, but doesn't understand it because it's measured.
But it still throws people into loops mentally because it has spiritual ramifications.
So here is something that we can show and demonstrate through experiments to be true, but there is no real good explanation.
So really, I think the nature of science needs to be broadened.
Unfortunately, especially in the United States, there's a big gulf between fundamentalist Christians and the scientific community.
There's almost like a war against each other.
In reality, both lines of thinking are very important, the inward and the outward, the empirical and the spiritual.
I think more and more people are coming to accept that, where you see these experiments where people are influencing water, for example, by the power of their minds.
So I think more and more people will accept that.
I don't want the point to slip away from us that you felt that you were guided by messages, almost voices telling you to do this.
Can you talk to me more about that and the sorts of things that were being said to you?
Well, thank you, Howard.
It's really not in my book because I didn't want people to be distracted by that.
But I have received images, usually in terms of flashes of light and imagery.
Usually the imagery is symbolic, so I do have to figure out what those images mean.
So a lot of it relates to developing my own spiritual journey.
Some of it related to the book and some of it related to what I would say maybe some spiritual revelation.
So I think that that has been a very powerful influence in my life.
I have learned to accept it and take it seriously and be guided by it.
It is a very personal experience, and maybe at some point I may share it more publicly.
But if people choose not to believe it or think it's a hallucination or what have you, I'm fine with that.
Well, you're a psychologist.
If anybody is qualified to know the basis of what you were going through, I guess you would be.
So if you were going through something that was some kind of mental trauma, I guess you would be equipped to know that.
I do believe so.
I've worked with many psychotic individuals and know what psychosis looks like.
There are various different types of mental illness, including psychotic disorders, but none of them really resonate with what I'm experiencing.
And, you know, maybe others will disagree, but the type of brief imagery and light, usually what psychologists call in the hypnagognic state, it's that meditative state between wakefulness and dream.
Some people may say, well, you're just dreaming.
Well, I've never dreamed before in bright things of light.
And these types of images are not dreamlike.
They're very different.
So I would say that these type of experiences for me are not part of a normal psychotic process.
Okay, so there you are.
You're somebody who's guided to do some research.
But you must have gone through that process of thinking, well, you know, okay, I had this experience with the guy in prison.
I've been getting these messages and this guidance that I need to be doing some more about this.
But you must have asked yourself, because I presume nothing in your previous experience prepared you for this, how do I do this?
Right.
So the way it started is as I was getting a lot of great ideas, I was communicating quite a bit with Jodi Long, who is a co-owner with Jeffrey Long with the Enderf website.
And I was throwing ideas back and forth with her and asked her if we thought we should write a book.
And she said yes.
And it ended up that I was the only author, but she was very supportive and instrumental in the production of my book.
And just ideas started flowing.
And a lot of it had to do with stuff I have read from all these different NDE experiences being recorded anonymously on the NDERF website, who I consider to be ambassadors from heaven now.
Ambassadors from heaven.
Yes.
Yes, because I believe that God is trying to communicate new information to a new age.
And there's no accident that we are having a lot more near-death experiences during the last 50, 50 years.
Yes, a lot of it has to do with improved resuscitation technologies.
But I also believe that there are some new messages that God wants to impart to us, given that I believe this earth is on the razor's edge, and that even though our technology is growing leaps and bounds, our spiritual maturity has not.
And we need as a species to get to the next level.
Otherwise, what we're doing is not sustainable.
I am presuming from what you've been saying that you're a religious man and that's guided you a little in your life.
Are you not just putting a religious interpretation on these experiences that you had?
No, I'm basing it pretty much on what I believe people are saying with near-death experiences.
And this is only one aspect.
So I think there's a spiritual revolution going on earth, and many people who have near-death experiences report that.
And they come back to Earth with a sense of you have more work to do.
And many of them are told to share their experiences with other people.
In fact, people who do come back usually have great insights or they have more paranormal ability.
Well, now this is really interesting because I always used to assume, and I'm sorry for talking over you for just half a second.
I don't want to lose this point, but I always used to assume from what I've read and from the people that I've interviewed that the near-death experience is a very personal thing where you may encounter relatives, perhaps loved ones who've died, gone before you.
You're given a personal bit of guidance, a personal steer.
You see perhaps a vision if you believe in these things of the other side.
Then you're sent on your way and told your time has not come.
But you're saying there's much more to it.
Oh, absolutely.
Everything you said is correct.
No doubt about it.
And there's different level of near-death experiences, Howard.
There are very simple experiences where people have an out-of-body experience and feel peace, watch themselves on the operating table and come back.
Then there are people who meet family members and are told maybe have a quick life review.
They're kind of redirected in their life for transformation, and they're sent back.
They say, well, you have more work to do, or you need to do this or that.
So all that you said is very true.
But there are other people who have maybe longer or perhaps deeper near-death experiences receive other messages as well.
And really, here's the important part.
Everything is possible with God, and God tailors, as you say, the near-death experience for the individual.
It is very individualized.
However, there are repeated themes.
And in fact, the lungs did some research to show that there are maybe a dozen elements that are common among all near-death experiences.
Now, not everybody who has near-death experiences experiences all 12 elements.
However, people who have near-death experiences experience some of those elements, and they repeat.
And then there are some very individual special messages that only a few people receive.
Even Eben Alexander is a great example of that.
Or Howard Storm, if people want to look for such things.
If you want to go back into history, to English history, the first woman who wrote a book in the English language was a woman named Julian of Norwich, who lived in the late 1300s.
And nobody knows her name, but she was from the Abbey of Julian of Norwich.
And she had a remarkable near-death experience.
And she had much to say.
A whole book to say.
So there have been people throughout history, and especially more recently, have had very profound things to say for the people of this new generation coming into this very challenging age.
Doesn't that assume, though, that you can only have these things if you are of a religious bent and you believe in God?
An awful lot of the population of this planet aren't religious and don't believe in God.
No, Howard, actually that's not true.
People have near-death experiences from all walks of life.
of life so an agnostic person can have a near-death experience a Christian Hindu a Buddhist a housewife Dr. Eben Alexander was a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon to everybody not everybody has a near-death experience but I don't believe religion or walks of life or culture or anything like that has much to
do with whether somebody is going to have a religious, I'm sorry, near-death experience.
Now, I will say that people who do have near-death experiences experience them in the cultural context from which they come, but those are only the superficial elements of the near-death experience.
The true messages are the same or similar regardless of the culture or the person.
My own mother had, when she was a child in near-death experience, she was a child in an era when a lot of kids got pneumonia and a lot of things that we can deal with easily these days with drugs that get better every year.
Those weren't available to my mother in her Liverpool childhood, and she came very close to death.
She reached a crisis in her home, and she was hallucinating and in and out of consciousness, but she always told the story of how she went to a beautiful, sunny place that was very green, and it was very light, and it was beautiful, and she didn't want to come back here.
But they told her that it wasn't her time, and she was sent back here.
And she told that story consistently and in the same way right through my life, and until she died, she talked of this near-death experience.
And I don't doubt that something happened, but I just don't know what it was.
And I think experiences like she had are fairly common, aren't they?
Very common, Howard.
In fact, many people report when they go over several key elements.
One, they're in a different realm.
Usually it's very beautiful.
Now, realize this kind of Earth-like realm is manifest.
If you go back to quantum physics, where thought generates reality, in that realm, it's a realm of energy.
And so, really thought is creating this reality, it appears.
And so, things are manifest for our benefit.
When we cross over, we experience heaven, if you will, as individually a transitional place where we can relate to and feel comfortable, especially during this early transition of one realm to another.
So, people experience often a garden-type setting, but that can vary depending on the person and what they need to see.
They feel a profound sense of bliss and peace, and they feel an interconnection.
Now, my mother at this time would have been nine or ten years of age, so she was a child.
Her experience of life and expectations of something like this, I guess, would have been fairly limited.
But there she was in a beautiful garden setting, a summery place where it was full of greenery and jolly people.
You know, you're saying that that was appropriate to her cultural background.
Indeed.
Exactly.
And the people or beings that she met are people who she probably knew from before.
remember eternity goes in both directions and so what i consider this earth is to be a school if you think about what heaven is like where we're all interconnected with each other with god there is No pain.
There is no death.
There's no sickness.
There is no conflict between people.
A very wonderful place to feel bliss, but not a great place to learn from our own free will.
And that's what God wants us to do.
We're all journeying towards the source, God, through eternity.
Well, I mean, that again sounds like your interpretation.
You know, has anything said to you that this is the work of God?
I mean, it may just be some cosmic artifact, not necessarily a supreme being, but you're assuming that it is a supreme being.
I'm just interested to get to that point.
Yes.
A lot of people who have near-death experiences do experience God.
Jesus is often viewed and seen as well as other spiritual beings, and even God is seen sometimes.
But God is not an old man sitting on a throne, as Renaissance art may depict.
Rather, people of near-death experiences, everything is of God.
And God is experienced as a light of some sort, sometimes as a gold light, as a white light.
And in a sense, the really fascinating thing that people of near-death experiences are reporting that our own soul, which we can tap into through our own awareness, is actually a part of God.
Now, obviously, you and I are not God.
However, our soul is a part of God, and God is experiencing reality through himself, through us.
I know that sounds like a bit of a paradox, but that's what it is.
People are reporting.
So it's not really necessarily a traditional Christian view of God, but this is what people are reporting.
So the really paradoxical thing about this is that God seems to be both an individual and a collective.
And we're all interconnected in unity.
I am you and you and me.
I know that has sort of Eastern flavor to it, but that seems to be what people are reporting.
Well, no, I remember an Indian scholar a long time ago now, when I was very young, and I don't think I entirely understood it.
I was interviewing this guy in Bath.
His name's Swami Avyaktananda.
He was 100 years of age then.
And he was trying to explain and wouldn't let me go from this place and this interview until I understood the meaning of the phrase that everything is one.
All things are one.
Absolutely.
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make.
And this is what people are reporting after near-death experiences.
We are gifted with individuality and free will, and especially down here on earth.
And these are learning experiences so that we may all, in a spiral of lessons over time, choose to go back to the source.
Some people choose not to.
But over time, they say that everybody may choose to go back to the source or will choose to go back to the source.
And you say that within the last 50 years or so, God has been sending people back here from their near-death experiences with important information for our salvation to save this place that we live on because we're wrecking it.
What sorts of messages are people bringing back?
Well, you know, unlike, you know, maybe some people who are giving precise information, what I sense with near-death experiences is that a lot of people are not getting super precise information.
They're getting general information that we're not loving each other, that war is never something that we should be doing to fellow spiritual beings.
Because what we do to others, we do to ourselves in this unity.
And that we're all extremely valuable and important.
We're all magnificent souls, a part of God.
And to be killing each other is just abhorrent to God.
And so we're doing that.
And this environment that was created to sustain us here on earth, that if we're wrecking it, that that can only go to our detriment.
So there are sort of general environmental issues, messages of peace.
If you want to ask me the purpose and meaning of life, it is to learn to love.
And that is what needs to happen on this earth as collectively is we need to learn how to love.
And love, I don't mean as a feeling.
We talk about falling into love.
That's really not accurate.
We fall into infatuation.
Rather, as a psychologist, I would say love is a series of skill sets, such as how to have unconditional regard and respect, how to sacrifice, how to forgive.
So you're talking about, your definition of love is compassion and sympatico, things which we in our society now, and certainly in the field that I work, those things are sadly lacking these days.
Roy, listen, in the time remaining to us, I'm very keen to talk to you about your own primary research, about the people that you've spoken to who've had these experiences.
I don't expect you to name names.
It's quite fine if you want to preserve their anonymity.
And if they're people within the prison system, I guess you have to by statute, by law.
But tell me some of the stories that you've heard then, that you've been told.
Well, Howard, a lot of my information does come from the Endurf website.
But it's kind of interesting.
I was writing this book that I had four people with profound near-death experiences that came forward or I was introduced to in a sort of a synchronous manner that I included in the book, and three of which were written into chapters.
Two of them really weren't truly near-death experiences.
Well, they were in a sense.
At least one was not, but most of them had a near-death experience attribute.
But really, there are stories more of transformation.
So we had this one lady I'll share with you.
And she was run over by a boat in San Diego Bay.
She had lived a very wealthy lifestyle.
And she went up to the other side.
She had a meeting with God, and she saw a couple deceased relatives.
And they told her that it was not her time, that the first half of her book had been written, but she needed to write the second half of her book of life.
So she was sent down.
Now, this boat had taken out a number of organs.
She was paralyzed.
So it was just a remarkable story of transformation and healing.
Currently, she is now partially walking, and doctors have no explanation for that.
And that is something that's, as your show would suggest, is one of the unexplained things.
And was she given, when she was on the other side, whatever that may be, was she given an indication of the fact that she would be healed and how she would be healed?
Not at that time, but during surgeries, a couple, she had over 40 surgeries in the next year.
She was in the hospital for over a year.
During a couple surgeries, she saw one time a very powerful spiritual being work with her and say that you still need to, you have many, much more work to do and you need to survive.
And then another incident, she saw Jesus and many spiritual beings or angels, if you will, pray for her and work with the doctors so that the surgery may succeed, that she could live.
If I'd had an accident, and I had an accident a few years ago where I broke my shoulder, that caused me a lot of pain, but it's in no way analogous to what happened to that woman who thankfully recovered.
I know that if I got the chance to talk to somebody beyond me about the accident, I would say, why has this had to happen to me?
Did she ask that question?
Well, that's the amazing thing.
As I write in my book, she frequently told me she does not have a woe-be-me attitude.
In fact, she works, she takes care of a couple of children and all partially paralyzed, though, like I said, she was completely paralyzed.
Her spine was severed, but now she can partially walk and maneuver and has bladder control.
What a wonderful thing for her to have got that degree of function back.
So many people are not that lucky and they really, really suffer.
But when she was going through the process of meeting Jesus or whatever, even then did she not ask, why did this have to happen?
She says not.
She knew that she had a purpose.
When she was told that her second part of her life was about and needed to be completed, at some level, she knew that she had important things to do, that her life was not just her own, that she had a special mission, a contract, if you will, to do some certain things in this life.
And even though it involved pain, that was okay.
Because what a lot of people who have near-death experiences tell us is that pain is one of the best learning experiences.
Adversity is one of the best learning experiences.
Dr. Kubla Ross, who's the famous Swiss psychiatrist who wrote a lot about death and dying, she did the five stages of grief, which developed the five stages of grief that we read so much about and even introductory psychology.
She later in life, working with dying patients, she became very interested in near-death experiences.
And one thing that she learned is that we are here to experience both positive and negative things in life.
We learn from both, but we learned best the lessons we need to learn here in life through adversity.
And that's why we're here on the tough schoolyard of Earth.
Well, I think a lot of us, certainly me included, hope that, you know, I've learned my lessons here and I never stop learning those lessons and some of those are real hard.
I think that the great hope with all of us is that what comes next is better.
It is better, but it's not just what comes next.
It was what was before.
So this brief time on Earth seems long to us, but it's really not.
It's just a blip in our existence.
And when people have near-death experiences, they report that they are going home.
They know they're going home.
Imagine going to such an alien environment.
Now, if you were to go overseas, let's say live in India, that might feel unusual to you because of the different culture.
But imagine dying and going to a different realm.
Shouldn't that feel really strange?
But people don't report that.
They report like they belong there, that they know it's home, and that their brief time on here on earth was for their own development, not only for their own development, but to help each other because we are one.
And we're all tunneling through this existence, helping each other and helping ourselves grow towards the source based on our own free will.
And free will, again, is extremely important.
God doesn't want robots.
He wants us to experience creation and choose the life and our own individuality from our own free will.
There will be people who will email.
And forgive me if you're listening to this and you're saying, oh, Howard's now falling back on this thing of saying people will email Me, but believe me, they will email me and say, this man is clearly trying to preach to us.
He's trying to preach religion to us.
Just to head this off at the pass, I will get those emails.
What would you say to those people by way of explanation?
Well, like I said, people who have near-death experiences have usually have very positive experiences, and religion doesn't seem to be a factor.
So if somebody's agnostic or even atheist, it doesn't mean that they're going to have a negative experience.
So what I'm saying is not necessary for one's salvation.
That's one difference that what I'm saying from typical religion is that, you know, I'm just only reporting what people are saying who are coming back.
I'm not making any of this up.
It's based on, again, the thousands of near-death experiences, ambassadors, if you will, coming back.
And those who do come back, do they have the sense that they have been through phase one of what they will eventually go through when they do die?
In other words, is the near-death experience actually part of the process but incompleted of dying?
In other words, is that what happens to us, but we go a little further when we do die?
Well, that's a good question, Howard.
Many people who have near-death experiences sense a barrier that they can't continue.
So even though you're in the spiritual realm in that dimension, and I would say heaven's not really a place, it's more of a state of existence, a vibration, if you will.
And so, or dimension, if you will.
So when they go up there, they can't go further.
So there is only so far that they can go into the spiritual realm if they're coming back.
Often that's manifested as a bridge crossing a stream.
Once they cross the bridge or a wall or a door, they know that once they cross that, they can't come back.
So the answer really is it is part of the process, but it is you're going along, it's like you're going along a highway and you go as far as a motel and then you turn back.
Exactly, exactly.
We can only go much further.
And if I can go back to your original question, though, there is some significant differences between near-death experiences and religion.
In near-death experiences, there are no certain rituals.
There is no certain one singular path.
If you can imagine a mountain, and I'm using a near-death experience report to say this, if you can imagine a mountain and God is at the top, there are different paths up the mountain.
One may be a Buddhist path, one may be a Christian path or a Native American path, one may be an agnostic path.
But there's many paths that we go to learn to God, and each path is very valuable.
So there really isn't any doctrine necessarily associated with near-death experiences.
There's no rituals.
I think there's reports of hopefully what I believe is to be a truth.
And how we interpret those truths, I think, is individualistic.
And certainly there's all the room to debate and disagree.
And somebody asked me, do you think near-death experience is your book or some other book or whatever, there should be like a Bible coded?
And I say, absolutely not.
We have enough Bibles or religious books like this in the world that tell us how to think and what to believe.
The near-death experience is not like that at all.
And I think that's an important distinction for your readers to realize that this is not a new religion.
There are religious aspects.
There is faith involved.
But faith is not even necessary.
And certainly rituals and really what we should be doing is fighting for love on this earth.
And everything else is secondary.
Okay, well, you get no disagreement from me about that.
The standout case, then, in your book is this woman who had the accident and was terribly hurt in this, but managed to regain function.
The doctors don't quite understand it and now has a more meaningful life, arguably.
Does she have a different view of death now?
Has it changed her view of dying?
Absolutely.
And there's some research on this.
Over 90% of people who have near-death experiences report that they no longer fear death.
There's a difference, Howard, between believing in faith and knowing.
And I understand that from my own experiences, having experienced spiritual guides work in my life and image and light, I know they're there.
And so I kind of feel like many people who have near-death experiences, that that knowing reduces a lot of fear and garbage in my life.
So when I had a friend recently pass away from brain cancer and everybody was wailing during the funeral and crying and so forth, but I felt this profound peace knowing that he was there and home.
And people say they believe that, but if they really believe that, then death should not have such the sting it does.
And that's one thing I learned that through the near-death experience can help people, or even communicating with the divine and having these experiences, that death is just one thing to another.
People make far too much of death.
So she learned that.
And she looks forward to dying.
Now, she doesn't want to die.
She loves her life here despite the adversity.
But she looks forward to dying and going to the other side as I do.
I think a lot of us feel that way, you know, Roy.
From my point of view, I don't fear particularly dying.
I'm keen to know what comes next.
Of course I am.
You know, I have a feeling there might well be something.
I think what I worry about is the process.
And of course we all do, you know, about possibly getting sick or, you know, having an accident or something like that.
Do any of these stories of near-death experiences help us with that?
Because there are Claims, aren't there?
You can read it everywhere, where people say, Well, you know, you feel a certain amount of pain, but then it stops.
You know, you're taken out of the worst of it.
At the point where you're going to go, you don't experience the ultimate of it.
It isn't, you know, as painful a thing as you might assume.
Do any of the researchers that you've done help with that conundrum?
Well, I know a lot of hospice work that people who are ready to die within about 24 hours or so before they die, or it could be longer, start communicating with deceased loved ones.
And unfortunately, the scientific medical community, the response is, well, they're hallucinating, so give them antipsychotic medications, which I think is the wrong approach.
I really do believe that many people are communicating, getting ready to die, and loved ones, deceased loved ones, who often, by the way, are our spiritual guides or deceased loved ones, and they are truly with us every moment of our lives and nudging us here and there, often imperceptibly.
But they become more real when we're closing the dye and people have more vivid, I shouldn't say visions, but they see them more vividly and hear them.
Well, I can tell you in my own life, in my own experience, and forgive me for interjecting with a personal account, but it might help, it might not.
My grandfather, my father's father, in Bootle, part of Liverpool, was, I mean, in those days, people lived in very small houses, and he was basically lying in a bed in the living room of that house so that he could be part of daily life.
And as he got closer to the end, he was communicating with people who'd passed on.
And, you know, that can be dismissed as hallucination, but for the fact that there was one person that he communicated with who was, I think, a sister or a brother.
I think a sister of my father, who my father didn't know about.
There'd been a child who died not very long after birth.
And he was communicating with that person who my father hadn't known about.
So I think maybe that is a sign of something.
Maybe we've, in the family, we always thought that.
Yes, absolutely.
There are many, many other reports like that.
And so in regard to the pain, of course, nobody wants to have a painful wasting disease, cancer, what have you.
But unfortunately, that is part of the learning experience.
It's part of the learning experience for the caregiver.
And they're learning how to love by sacrificing in this terrible moment.
And for the person who is going through the dying process, they're learning another aspect of love we haven't discussed, and that's being humble or knowing that we don't have any power apart from God.
And so there are lots of lessons to be learned through pain and dying.
But in truth, there really is no death.
And certainly faith can help us through that process.
And then near the end, they do comfort us.
And there are reports of healing, as I say, but they're rare.
And why some people get it, some people don't, I don't think has to do with the value of the person, but rather the mission.
Boy, that's a lot to think about, Roy.
As a professional trained psychologist with this string of qualifications that you have and still working in a very responsible position as your day job, this research that you're doing on near-death experiences is the very antithesis, isn't it, of rationality?
It is by definition beyond the rational.
How do you square that conflict with your psychological background?
You know, Howard, I think areas in physics and other areas, and there are empirical support for near-death experiences, and it's growing, and it's being done by medical doctors and other psychologists and other types of research physicists too, that are looking at these things.
So I really don't see the conflict.
Yes, I see that near-death experiences will never be a hard science, but I talk about various lines of evidence in my book that's akin to the soft sciences, such as psychology, to be inferred.
For instance, people who are blind at birth are able to report seeing things up there and report what they've seen.
Typically, well, I would say in all instances, blind people cannot explain or report visual experiences because they have no common, they have no frame or reference of having that.
But once they have a near-death experience, they can describe colors and visual things and spatial things that they wouldn't ordinarily not be able to describe.
There's other experiences or experiments where people are able to describe resuscitation efforts that medical staff use.
And the control group and the other group are people who do not have near-death experiences.
And they report resuscitation efforts based on their knowledge of TV.
And so people who have not had near-death experiences cannot describe it accurately for the most part, where almost everybody who has had a near-death experience who reports seeing the resuscitation efforts are able to describe it accurately.
And also, Howard, one of the main, probably the biggest reasons why, scientific reasons for a near-death experience is that a hallucination doesn't accurately describe a very long, complex experience.
When the brain dies, the neuroelectrical activity becomes very erratic very quickly, almost immediately.
And then not long after that, it ceases altogether.
So if there was an hallucination that people remember from dying, you would expect it to be extremely chaotic and short-lived.
But that's not what report near-death experience reports are saying.
And there are many other lines of evidence that people are exploring that I think give some scientific credibility to near-death experiences.
When Eben Alexander went up to the other realm, he said that everything he saw up there was related to science.
That all the things up there were working on very complex physical properties.
So what we're saying is that all of this actually brings this neatly round and completes this circle, that what you might think is irrational and unscientific actually in its own way is, which is a very, very interesting thought.
And all of this for you, Roy, as we conclude this conversation now, all started with a conversation that you had with a prison inmate who told you some information that you believe to have been correct.
Yes, it's true.
I didn't ask you, when was that?
I was about 14, 15 years ago, 15 years ago.
And that prison inmate, like I say, you don't have to give names or details, but what happened to that person subsequently?
You know, Howard, I don't know.
I've been moving around the country a bit with different jobs, and so unfortunately, I've lost track of that particular inmate.
But prisons are, I've only ever, I mean, my father was a policeman, so I did get to see prisons, but I've only ever had an in-depth visit to a prison once, which was a sobering experience for me and changed my thoughts about jails and the people in them for the rest of my life.
But prisons are a place where people confront themselves, aren't they?
They can be for those able and willing to do so.
But not everybody does that.
Well, I wish you well with your research.
Are you going to be doing more of this, or do you consider this piece of research and this book to be it as far as you're concerned?
What's your status?
I plan on doing more things, Howard.
So keep in touch, and hopefully we'll have more books coming out.
And I wish you well.
I know you haven't done many interviews, and I wish you well with all of those.
Doing the media round for these things is something that people either love or they don't, but it's something that you have to do.
And I wish you well with it.
I love doing it.
Yes, I got that impression.
And I've really enjoyed talking with you in Denver, the mile-high city.
You have a website connected with all of this.
It's only fair that I give you a chance to mention the website.
Yes, Howard.
Very good.
It's neardeathexpsy.com.
Again, that's neardeathexpsy.com.
And I have a lot of cool quotes from the website, things that are coming up, and a contact page so people can ask me questions, and I love answering them.
I looked at, I think it was Amazon before we did this, and you've had a couple of very nice reviews about the book.
So I wish you well with it.
Roy, thank you very much indeed for coming on.
Well, thank you very much.
Roy Hill and a man talking about a subject that I think has an enduring fascination for many of us, NDEs, near-death experiences.
And you can be sure that as time goes by on this show, we'll come back to that subject again.
Thank you very much for all of your reactions to what we're doing here at The Unexplained.
If you want to get in touch with me, you know how to do it now.
Go to the website, theunexplained.tv, the website designed by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
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More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained as we get into autumn and cruise through the winter here.
I don't even want to think about it.
So until next we meet here on The Unexplained, my name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
Please stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you.
Take care.
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