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May 11, 2016 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:04:36
Edition 252 - Dr Penny Sartori

Dr Penny Sartori worked in hospitals for two decades - and has done unique research on NearDeath Experiences...

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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 indeed for following the show and also joining the growing number of people who are listening to the radio show.
10pm Talk Radio Sunday night from the United Kingdom, done from a central London studio, on DAB Digital Radio in the UK and online at talkradio.co.uk.
Thank you very much if you're listening to this online show.
Maybe you've been with me for years on this show.
If you can join me on the radio show, very important that you do, if you can.
And thank you very much if you have.
The radio show, a little different from the online show, and deliberately so too.
I want to see where that goes and then we'll review everything, I think, in a little while.
We'll see how the podcast is going and we'll see how the radio show is going and we'll see what synergies there might be between the two.
But thank you very much if you are listening to both.
10 p.m.
United Kingdom Talk Radio, the radio station.
Now, some of you, I think, are of the opinion that because I'm now doing a once-a-week radio show from London based on this podcast that's been running for 10 years, that I don't need donations now.
I absolutely do, because I think as I've said before on here, nothing that you do in radio pays very much.
And most of us who do radio exist very much at the margins.
One or two people are lucky they made themselves millionaires out of it, and most of us absolutely not.
So please, if you can make a donation to this online show, which we'll be developing here, separately from the radio show, but allied to it, please do.
Go to the website theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv, and there you can follow the PayPal link and leave a donation for the show if you can.
If you'd like to send me a message, maybe you want to send me an email about what you think the show is achieving, what you think the show might achieve, who you'd like to hear on it, love to hear from you.
You can send me an email by, again, going to the website, theunexplained.tv, devised, created and maintained by Adam at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
Follow the link for the website and there you can send me an email.
Thank you for your having.
You know that I work through your guest suggestions.
And if I can't reply to you in person or do a shout out, please know that I do see each and every email that comes in.
The guest on this edition, we've talked about near-death experiences both on the radio show and, of course, a number of times here online over the last 10 years.
But there is a new book out by somebody who has a refreshing, I think, take on all of this.
Her name is Dr. Penny Sartori.
She has a background in health provision.
She's a health professional.
And has written a book called What is a Near-Death Experience?
Questions answered, apparently, like, what are the characteristics of one?
And how do they differ among different cultures around the world?
And many other questions, like, if near-death experiences exist, do they mean that we don't need to fear death anymore?
Should they be making us change our outlook on life and death?
So Dr. Penny Sartori in the UK coming very soon on this edition of The Unexplained.
Shout outs first.
Thank you very much.
If you have been in touch, like I say, please do get in touch through the website theunexplained.tv.
Send me an email.
And if you do get in touch, tell me your full name.
Tell me where you are, and tell me how you use the show.
Okay.
Hi, Howard.
Enjoyed your episode on free energy with Dr. Patrick Kelly.
Believe in it 100%.
I was disappointed, though, you thought the New World Order is controversial.
When there is so much evidence out there to prove it exists, you sounded like a BBC reporter.
But I love the show.
Thank you very much, Matthew, at Flint in North Wales, and I believe you work at a place I know very well, Airbus in Broughton near Chester.
Now, New World Order, I think we do have to take a balanced view of it all.
I am inclined to believe that it probably does exist, but I haven't had definitive proof of that.
And that's why when people mention it in interviews, I've got to try and balance the interview and get more out of them.
So it's not that I don't believe in it.
It's just that I'm not 100% convinced and that's my job not to be convinced.
It's my job to ask questions.
So I hope you understand.
Hello, Howard.
Have you ever looked into doing an episode about transhumanism?
Not something that I've researched, but I can.
Please keep doing what you're doing, the way that you're doing it.
Don't let the complainers and the whiners get to you.
Thank you, Paul in Wisconsin.
That's very kind.
Lindell in Scotland says there have been repeated criticisms of your show from people who ask you to stop or limit interviewing the person and dive straight into the subject matter.
Lindell in Scotland says to follow their suggestions would limit our access to all important contextual material.
Well, I agree.
And, you know, I'm going to keep doing it this way because I think it's important to get a handle on the person that you're talking to.
Lindell says, you're doing well.
Have confidence in that.
Thank you.
Kurt in the USA couldn't disagree with Lindell more.
Kurt is going to stop listening, he says, because he says, Howard, you talk too much.
Well, Kurt, maybe I do talk too much, but I think you're going to have a problem finding a podcast where the host doesn't talk much at all, really.
You know, I think it's not much of a podcast where you don't get a sense of a human being presenting it.
You may not like that person, but at least that person is giving you themselves.
And that's all we can do, all of us.
But I wish you well, Kurt.
Josh Luka in Alaska.
I believe I'm your first contributor from Alaska.
I think you might be.
Love the show.
Thank you for your time.
It suggests James Dellingpole on the climate.
Okay.
British man.
I'll try and get hold of James Dellingpole.
Thank you for that.
Dave Calloway in Southampton says, I wanted to say what a great show.
Such a varied selection of guests.
Keep up the good work.
You have a passionate group of listeners.
I do.
And I don't know what I'd do without them.
And thank you, Dave.
David Calloway in Southampton.
Bob in Boston, not a big fan of Dr. Patrick Kelly on free energy.
He says, I used to work at the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Georgia that built the big American transport planes.
I was on the assembly floor as well as in the testing labs on the floors below.
I can assure you there were no electro-gravimetric drives used, nor were they needed.
Let's explore things like free Energy, but let's not go off into fairy tale land.
Bob in Boston, who says he loves the show.
Thank you.
Lorentino in Portugal.
Nice to hear from you, Lorentino.
Again, here's food for thought.
He says, Do you know that the voice of Dr. Patrick Kelly on episode 251 sounds like the voice synthesis of Mac OS X?
I didn't realize that.
He said, take a listen and you'll hear the similarities.
Okay.
Tom in Huddersfield says, good evening, Howard.
Just a quick message to say I've been listening to your podcast for the last eight years and thoroughly enjoy the work that you're doing.
I listen to the podcast in the car as I travel around doing my job and I've also started listening to the radio show as well.
Tom, thank you for that.
You tell me a story that I'm going to try and tell on the radio show.
Thank you very much for that.
And if you would like to come on and tell it yourself, I know you're not keen on doing that, but I promise I'll be kind, and it won't be a bad experience.
It'll only be a good one.
So have a think about telling it on the radio.
And if you don't, I will.
And thank you for getting in touch.
If you want to get in touch with me, send me an email through the website theunexplained.tv.
Near-death experiences now.
Dr. Penny Sartori, we get to in the United Kingdom, and she has a new book and has done a lot of research about this.
Dr. Sartori, thank you very much for coming on the show.
Oh, you're welcome.
Very nice to be here.
Now, I know you're based in Swansea, Southwest Wales, West Wales, a beautiful area.
Springtime's been pretty kind to us here in London.
We've had a bit of a heat wave.
Have you had the same?
It was lovely on the weekend.
It was really hot and sunny, but it's got a bit cloudy, but it's still very warm now.
So it's quite nice weather.
Not too.
I love Wales, though.
It's the land of my father's.
Now, I want to know a little bit about you, because your biography says that for a long period you were a health professional.
And of course, you're Dr. Penny Saratori.
So describe to me your background.
Well, I started off my career as a nurse.
I started my nurse training in 1989 and I worked.
Then when I qualified, I worked in various different departments and I settled in the intensive care unit and I loved it.
You know, it was really exciting work and it was something that I really enjoyed.
And it was fairly on in my nursing career when I was looking after a man who was clearly dying.
And I had an experience where it was almost as if I'd swapped places with this man.
I'd only adjusted his bed to do some routine nursing care and he was in so much pain that he almost jumped out of bed in agony.
And our eyes connected and it's almost as if I could feel what he was going through and I understood everything he was feeling.
And he mouthed to me because he couldn't talk because he was ventilated via a tracheostomy.
He mouthed the words to me, leave me alone, let me die, let me die in peace.
And that experience had a profound effect on me.
It really shocked me.
And the only thing I could do was call the doctor who increased his painkilling infusion.
And the most effective thing I did that night looking after that man was just to hold his hand and to reassure him and comfort him.
I think people don't really understand, do they, the connection that a lot of medical staff have with patients.
In the last 10 years, I've lost both of my parents, my dad and my mum, both in the same hospital.
And he was tended by a variety of medical staff, some of them really not very good and not very interested at all, unfortunately, especially at weekends, but some of them incredibly connected with him in a way that I couldn't understand.
I couldn't explain when I saw it, but there was a bond between them because in a way you're going through the same experience.
Yes, that's right.
And it can be quite difficult to bond with some patients, but with some, like with that case, it was something that was instantaneous with me and it gave me a totally different perspective on everything.
And after that, that really guided my future nursing care as well.
So I was far more mindful of patients as well.
And just before we close out on that very profound experience, Penny, just encapsulate for me, you say it made a difference to you.
It changed your life.
Tell me how.
Well, it made me think about death.
And, you know, I'd never really thought about it, although I'd encountered it throughout my nursing career up to that point.
In intensive care, I was kind of faced with it, like sometimes you could see four deaths on one shift.
But it was that particular experience with that man that it made me think, what is death about?
What was I doing with that patient?
He was at the end of his life and we were doing everything that we could to keep him alive.
And consequently, he had a very prolonged and suffering death.
And it's not something that I would want for myself or for any of my loved ones.
And it made me ask the questions, what is death about?
What happens when we die?
And so I started reading about death.
I tried to find some nursing courses that would help me to care for patients who die in a critical care area, but there was nothing that was appropriate because it was all geared towards palliative care, which is a very different approach to critical care.
So when I started reading about death, I came across near-death experiences and I thought, wow, these near-death experiences sound fascinating.
And, you know, my nurse training was very scientific.
And I kind of just thought to myself, this has got to be some sort of hallucination.
It's the way that the brain is shutting down.
And I didn't really think too much about it.
But then the more I read about them, the more curious I became.
And I thought, well, I'm working in the ideal place.
I could do my own research project.
And that's what I did.
I did a research project which took five years for the data collection.
And it took another three years for me to write it up and to analyse the results.
And at the end of it, then I was awarded my PhD.
And so that one night shift looking after that dying patient had a huge bearing on my life, really.
I mean, death is something that we prefer not to talk about.
Most people, we're afraid of it.
We fear death.
It's not something we want to explore.
And the only time that we encounter it is when somebody close to us dies.
And mostly we're never prepared for it.
And, you know, we try and forget about it as best you can once you've been through the traumatic experience.
But as you say, and as you imply, Penny, death is a Part of life.
And the more we understand it, the better we're going to get through the time that we have here.
Yes, I totally agree.
And, you know, doing my research has really helped me when members of my own family have been dying as well.
I can remember before I actually did my research, my paternal grandfather, he was dying of a brain tumour and it was something that, you know, I couldn't accept.
You know, I wanted him to have all the surgery possible to save his life.
But then on reflection, years later, when my other grandfather was dying, I had a very different attitude.
And it wasn't, I didn't want all the life-saving measures done then.
I just wanted him to have the comfortable death that, you know, he deserved.
And so it's helped me very, it's helped me a great deal in accepting the death of my own family members.
And do you believe this is a different question?
I want to get into the near-death experiences proper very soon.
But do you believe that we're handling death in the wrong way in the way that, for example, our health service does it?
My dad was on the Liverpool Care Pathway.
Very controversial.
They've stopped doing it now.
But that was all about depriving people of nutrition and water at the end to allow them supposedly to die with dignity and naturally.
I didn't understand what he was going through.
Nobody really explained it at the hospital to me, what he'd been put on.
It was only later that I realised, and I'm a journalist, what this was all about.
But it's something that we've wrestled with, isn't it?
The way to handle people and assist them at the very end.
Yes, it is.
And death is a process and it's individual to every single one of us.
And it's important that, you know, each patient's death is different.
So we have to tailor our care according to that individual person as well.
And I think, yes, it's a very difficult thing to address in a hospital situation now.
And of course, most people do die in a hospital situation.
Sometimes the care is excellent and you can't fault it, but sometimes it is lacking.
And there are things that we need to do to develop it and ensure that everyone has a comfortable and dignified death.
And something that we should be conscious of and mindful of and not try and sweep under the carpet, which I think, you know, even hospitals, they tend to want to put people away in side rooms and they don't want even the families to be that much a part of it.
That's right.
And that is a total contrast to many years ago when the deathbed scene was a social event and patients used to die at home.
Members of the community and friends and neighbours and even small children were present at the deathbed.
And so people were aware of these things.
But of course, it's been taken to the hospital now and often people die behind curtains in the ward or in a side room.
So it's a very different situation now as well.
It is, Penny.
And you know, I go back far enough to remember the last of the old way of doing things.
My dad and his family were Liverpool Welsh, Hugheses, and they lived in Monfer Road in Bootle, near Liverpool.
And my grandfather, who had the same name as my dad, Walter, had stomach cancer.
And I was very young.
I didn't understand what was going on.
But he was at home for the end.
And his bed was brought down to the living room, which was a very common thing to do in those days.
And at the very end, he was having what I could only describe now.
Of course, I didn't know it then as near-death experiences.
He was talking to people who had passed before him.
And they were, in a way, from the conversations he was having with people we couldn't see, they were preparing him.
Yes, that is right.
And that is so common.
And, you know, I first encountered that on the first day on the ward as a student nurse.
And I was sitting in the office and the night nurse had just casually said once you can see next or by the end of the morning.
Penny, we've lost the connection.
We're losing the Skype connection, Penny.
So what I'm going to do is we're going to continue this conversation by phone, if that's okay.
So I was talking about my grandfather's experience.
He died at home and had what appeared to me to be some kind of near-death experience.
And you said it was quite common.
It is very common.
These are called deathbed visions.
And I can remember my very first day on the ward as a student nurse.
And I was sitting down, and the night nurse was handing over and just casually mentioned that the man in Section C, bed six, would be dead by the end of the morning because he'd been talking to his dead mother since about three o'clock in the morning.
So I was quite shocked at this and I looked around and I just thought, are they trying to wind me up because it's my first day on the ward?
But everyone carried on as if it was the most normal thing to say.
So at the end of the report, I went out to this man's bedside and throughout the course of the morning, I observed him clearly communicating and gesturing to someone who I couldn't see.
There was someone there around his bedside, but obviously I couldn't see that person.
And then it was about 11.30 and this man kind of got some energy from somewhere and he sat up and he had his arms outstretched and he had a big smile on his face and it's as if he was going to hug someone.
And then he just put his arms down by his side, lay back down as if he was going to sleep, but he'd actually died at that point.
So that was my first ever time that I witnessed anything like this.
But then I also witnessed it in my grandfather's.
He was dying as well.
He used to point at the doorway and used to say, look who's there, look who's there.
But at the time I hadn't been doing my research and so I didn't really take any notice of it.
But these are very common and they're very often witnessed by family members who are at the bedside or by nurses as well.
It's the kind of thing that in the days when people did die at home, you know, the district nurse who saw people into this world and saw people out of this world would have been well aware of those things.
Yes, absolutely.
They certainly would have been.
And of course, you know, family members would have been as well.
But we've lost all those things because the death occurs in the lonely place at the hospital.
Now, we're not exposed to these things anymore because death is no longer taking place in the home.
At least in some cases, but not very often.
So the question is, isn't it, that, you know, those experiences, that gentleman who reached out to something and then he died, and those things are so common.
It's happened in my own family and you Know of cases yourself.
Is it some kind of hallucination that the brain is generating, or is it some kind of connection with something way beyond us here on this plane?
Well, that's interesting, really, because that was my initial thought: is it some sort of hallucination?
It's just the brain shutting down.
But, you know, sometimes as these patients are dying, certainly one of the patients in my hospital research during the night shift when he was expected to die, he recovered from that short period of where he deteriorated.
And then he started to communicate with someone who we couldn't see.
And he was clearly gesturing again.
And in the morning, when his family returned to his bedside, he said that during the night he'd been visited by his mother and his grandmother, who were both dead.
But also, he said, My sister was with them.
Now, what was she doing?
Why was she with them?
Now, unbeknown to him, his sister had actually died the week before, but the family hadn't told him because they didn't want to upset his recovery.
So, you know, sometimes these patients, and that's commonly reported as well, patients can communicate with people who they didn't know to be dead at the time of their experience.
So that puts an added spin on it as well.
So I think these are important experiences, and I think we really need to be aware of them because it's important to validate it for the patient as well, rather than just dismiss it and say, no, it's the drugs that you're on or you're hallucinating.
It's very important to give that validation to the patients.
And what it could mean, perhaps, and you know, you've worked in health yourself, so you know better, much better than I would ever know.
This could also maybe, if people take it seriously, I mean the people running health services take it seriously, could result in a major change in the way that we care for people at the end of life.
Yes, absolutely.
And I think that is really crucial.
And, you know, we need to kind of embrace these experiences.
These part of the dying process and we need to take notice of them.
And I think if we continue to ignore these experiences, that is detrimental to future patient care.
Your research, from the book anyway, looks very comprehensive.
Tell me about how you went about it.
Well, what I did with my hospital research, for the first year, I interviewed everyone who survived their admission to the intensive care unit.
And this is regardless of whether they came close to death or not.
I wanted to see how common the experience was.
I wanted to see if it was related to any particular illness itself or if it only occurred in the case of cardiac arrest.
And I also wanted to make sure that I didn't miss any patients as well.
So after the first year, what I found is that I was spending longer in the hospital than I was at home because I had to do my research in my spare time.
And so at the end of that first year, very few patients did report an experience because not all of them had come close to death.
So I thought, right, I'm going to modify the research for the next four years because I couldn't sustain it at that intensity.
So for the following four years, I limited my research just to the survivors of patients who'd had a cardiac arrest.
And the sample was much smaller, but there was a much greater frequency of near-death experiences reported.
And that seemed to show that the closer you come to death, the more likely you are to have this near-death experience.
And also during the whole of the five years, if any of the patients just spontaneously reported a near-death experience to me, I included those in my research as well.
Okay, when you deal with so many cases and so many people over such a long period, it must quite soon start to become clear to you where the commonalities, the similarities are between cases.
Yes, well, the near-death experience did tend to follow a pattern.
So Dr. Raymond Modi established this in 1975 when he published his book, Life After Life.
And he described that patients had an out-of-body experience where they looked down on the emergency situation from above.
Some people went through a dark tunnel towards a bright light, and that bright light, although it was so bright, it didn't hurt their eyes.
Sometimes they had a life review where they could see the whole of their life literally flash before their eyes in a matter of seconds.
But it was almost as if they were reliving it in great detail as well.
And the life review has a very profound effect on most people as well because they can see how their actions with other people affect other people as well.
So if people have been violent towards other people, it's almost like they swap places with them and they feel like what it's like to receive the violence.
And also if they've been nice to people, they can also see it can have a ripple effect down the line that they never knew was possible.
So the life review aspect is fascinating.
Sometimes they then find themselves in beautiful gardens with lush green grass and vividly coloured flowers.
They may meet deceased relatives or friends.
Sometimes they meet what they call a being of light, or sometimes it could be a religious figure.
And any communication between this religious figure or family members is all done by telepathy.
So it's all instant thought transference.
And very often then they'll come to a barrier or a border or a point of no return and they know that if they cross that point, they will not come back to life.
And after the experience, the person is usually profoundly transformed in many, many ways.
And in fact, it can take someone many years to fully understand and integrate that experience into their life as well.
And the stories that are, to me, the most interesting ones that I've heard over the years, and I wonder how many of these you came across, the people who've come very close to death.
My own mother did when she was a child.
She had pneumonia.
And in those days, small children died of pneumonia very regularly.
But she was able to fight through it.
She went through a crisis.
She went to a place that was full of sunshine, beautiful greenery, happy, smiling people, constant sunshine.
And she had the option of coming back.
You know, she was given the choice of, you know, do you want to go on or do you want to come back?
A lot of people report, don't they, that they're given that choice, the choice to take whether they want to go or stay.
And sometimes they're told, this is not your time, you have to go back.
Yes, absolutely.
Some people just have that conscious choice given to them.
But sometimes they're sent back to life.
They say, it's not your time.
You have to go back.
You've got work to do.
And sometimes they don't know what that work is that they've got to do.
So some people come back to life and know that they have some sort of mission to do, and they're forever searching for that mission as well.
So, you know, it does have huge impact on the person who has the experience.
And again, this is something that is beyond any human experience that they've ever had.
And, you know, words are not adequate to describe what they've encountered either.
So a lot of people get they're at a loss when they try to explain what has happened to them.
And of course, it can evoke a great deal of emotion.
You know, I've spoken to grown men who have started to tell me about their experience, but they can't because it's so emotional and they start crying.
And it's not because they're sad, they're just overcome and overwhelmed with this great deep emotion that they're feeling.
And so this is this astounding experience, really, and it remains very vividly etched into the mind of the person for years and years and years for the rest of their lives.
And presumably there were protocols that you had to sign up to when you were doing the academic research, Penny.
So were you allowed, if you came across somebody who almost died, came as close as it is possible to come to dying and then returned and told you a story of something that you'd heard before, because of the protocols of your research, were you allowed to tell them that what they'd experienced was pretty common?
Yes, after I'd taken their testimony, I then was able to explain that they'd had something which is recognized as a near-death experience and I could explain about what the phenomenon is.
And in fact, that helped a great deal of people as well.
You know, the patients who had the experience and were able then to open up about it and discuss it with me, it helped them a great deal.
And I think it's something that we need to be aware of as healthcare workers.
You know, I receive thousands of emails through my website every well, I've got a backlog of about 14,000 emails that I haven't had a chance to respond to.
And these are people asking me questions about their experience.
They've had this experience, they don't know how to understand it.
So it's so important that healthcare workers have this in their education so that they can recognize when it's happened and they can provide guidance for these patients as well.
Because it's such an overwhelming thing that they really struggle to come to terms with as well.
The people who have these experiences and the ones who come back talk about something that may well be transitional.
It may well be some kind of state that you go through before you go to another state, the sunlit uplands and all the rest of it in our culture, whatever that might be.
Do any of those people have a sense of what happens beyond that?
Do they get shown what happens when they finally pass and move on to whatever might be beyond that stage?
Not usually.
Some people kind of get exposed to knowledge at that point when they're in the near-death experience, but when they come back to life, they've forgotten what it is.
There are some cases like that, but no one has come back and said exactly kind of what is beyond.
So I think it's something that we can't fully understand until we experience it for ourselves at our own death, you know.
And when you're working in the National Health Service here, it's very much a question of you're admitted to hospital, they're going to get you back on your feet and get you out of hospital or you're going to die there and that's the end of the story.
It's black and white.
It's binary.
It's off.
It's on.
How did the people you were working with in the health profession regard the research that you were doing?
Well, it was funny really because there was a very big contrast from when I first started the experience, the research.
People kind of found it a bit funny, you know, they just sort of said, oh yeah, that's all ex-file stuff, you know.
And they didn't really pay much attention at first.
But certainly as it progressed, they really did take it on board.
And I was lucky I worked with a fantastic team.
And the doctors, especially at the end of my research, they wanted to know more.
And I can remember one of the doctors, there was a ward round going on, and there were some junior doctors on the ward round.
And the doctor said about my research and said, you know, you should really talk to Penny and find out more about what her research has entailed.
And at the end of it as well, they asked me to present a paper at one of their conferences.
So, you know, I saw it was really well accepted at the end because they knew that it was going to benefit patient care.
So I think it is something that initially might kind of be a little bit sceptical about, but when they understand what it's about exactly, I think a lot more people are open to it.
In your book, you say there is a significant misconception, even among the medical profession, that a person has to be clinically dead to experience an NDE.
This is not the case.
NDEs, you say, can also occur during life-threatening circumstances.
The person's heart does not necessarily have to be stopped, doesn't have to stop beating.
However, my hospital research shows me that NDEs are more likely to occur in people who have, in fact, been clinically dead, like people who've undergone a cardiac arrest or been successfully resuscitated.
Yes.
Yes, that's right.
So, you know, a lot of people just feel that your heart has to stop beating to have the experience, but it can happen in other circumstances.
So it could happen in a road traffic accident where the person is unconscious, but their heart hasn't stopped beating.
It can happen during a medical emergency where someone could come close to death but doesn't actually have a cardiac arrest.
What about the actual point of death, Penny?
You must have been at that point so many times in your work and during the period that you were doing your research.
A lot of people report changes in atmosphere.
There are reports that even the weight of the body changes at the point of death.
What do you detect?
What have you detected about the actual moment of dying itself?
Well, it is, you know, it's a process again, and depending on the circumstances of the death, whether or not it is just an expected death on you just sitting with the patient as they're dying, or it could be a sudden cardiac arrest.
Some people, some nurses I've worked with are particularly sensitive and almost as if they can intuit if someone is going to die, even if clinically they look quite stable.
And there was one nurse I used to work with who used to sense a drop in temperature at the bedside of the patient.
Now, I could never sense that drop, but my colleague could, and she was very accurate.
And she almost could predict when a patient was going to die according to the dropping of temperature around the bedside.
So some people have that ability, but I've not had it myself.
The book contains a few case studies that you've looked into.
There was two that have particularly grabbed me, but you might be able to talk about others as well.
There was a woman in childbirth, if you could recount that story.
It is very common, actually, in childbirth and complications of childbirth, where people can kind of have, suddenly have this out-of-body experience, look down on the situation.
And another thing as well is that some of the cases can be quite distressing, which I should also mention as well, because some people have the distressing kind of experiences, and when people only talk about the pleasant ones, it kind of puts them off as well.
So some people feel like they can have the usual type of near-death experience, but it can be interpreted in a very distressing way.
And there was one lady in my research, and she said that she had left her body and she could see her body sitting in a chair.
But then she said she felt herself drifting and she drifted towards a large expanse of water, which was a big river, and there was a bridge going over this river.
And she said, as she was getting closer to this bridge, she was getting more and more panicked and more fearful.
And she could hear voices in the distance.
It was like children laughing at her.
And she said, It was a horrible experience.
She said, I was convinced that I was dead.
And then suddenly, as she got to the point of reaching the bridge, she just kind of woke up and she was back in her body.
But you know, she was convinced that she was dead.
There's another kind of experience as well, which is of a distressing kind, where the person feels like they're in this dark, black, meaningless, eternal void.
And sometimes they can hear voices saying that their life is just a joke.
And one lady described this to me as being like eternal boredom, where she just everything replaying over and over and over.
And she said it was just boring, boring, boring.
And then you get the third type of experience where people believe that they're in hell or looking into hell and there are demons trying to drag them into hell.
And this can be particularly unpleasant, and it can take many years to come to terms with this because there's a form of post-traumatic stress with this.
Now, that's interesting, isn't it?
Because, you know, there is the concept of heaven and the concept of hell.
And we all like to think that we're going to go to a very nice place of calmness, tranquility, and maybe reward for our lives after we pass.
But there is also the, you know, religions talk about it, the idea that people who've done bad things will go to hell.
Were there any suggestion that any of the people that you talked to who talked about this hell experience had any reason to be heading in that direction?
That's right.
There's no suggestion of this at all, really, because, you know, some of the nicest people pop around, you know, they have these hellish experiences.
And then, you know, people who perhaps are not of such good moral character, who you would expect to have an unpleasant experience, actually had a very pleasant experience.
So it doesn't seem to have any bearing on the person's moral character.
We're not sure why so many people have these experiences that are distressing, but it has been suggested that it's people who are used to being in control of their life and that they're clinging on to life and they're fighting the experience and that when they relax into the experience, it can then turn into a very pleasant experience.
So that's another reason, isn't it, why your research could help.
If we assume that this really does happen and it does exist and the process of dying involves these stages, if you've been briefed about it beforehand, then you're going to let go.
Yes, that is something certainly, you know, if people were more aware of their own mortality and thought about these things and then were aware of, yes, perhaps I might have this frightening encounter if I try and relax into it as much as possible, and then that perhaps would make these experiences more pleasant for them.
What scientists always look for, Penny, isn't it, is proof.
Definite, copper-bottomed, repeatable proof.
And that's in these fields, it's very hard to get.
But I suppose something that would be proof would be some piece of information that a person got during a near-death experience and brought back that turned out to be correct, something that they couldn't have known.
Have you ever come across any cases of anything like that?
There was one man in my research who had a near-death experience.
And during this experience, he met up with a deceased family member and they had conversations.
And in the conversation, she said to him, when you go back, give this message to my mother.
And she said, tell her, so when he did revive, he gave the message to her mother.
And she was absolutely astounded that he should know this information because it is something that she had gone to great lengths to hide from him.
And so there's no way that this man could have known that information, but he got that information during his near-death experiences.
So that's something that we can't explain scientifically, because information was gained in ways other than Through the senses, while this man was deeply unconscious, we just can't explain it.
So, I think we need to look at different understanding of consciousness, and perhaps that's where that's why we can't explain near-death experiences because we're trying to explain them from the perspective that consciousness is produced by the brain and maybe it's not.
Maybe the brain just mediates the consciousness and doesn't produce it.
There was some news, I think it was about a week or 10 days ago, about a company, I think, in America who are working, I don't know if you've seen this, on the first stages of being able to regenerate people, being able to bring them back to life.
Of course, if that becomes possible, then we may experience a whole new grade of near-death experience, a real death experience.
Yes, now that is quite interesting, but gosh, it's really kind of baffling, really, to think about it because what is happening to the consciousness of that person as well, you know.
So it's a very difficult one, that is.
And, you know, I've noticed, you know, as you were mentioning earlier on with patients as they're dying, you know, sometimes when a patient, just before they die, the body is animated in some way.
You can see that there is something there.
But shortly after the person has died, there's a total contrast in what that person looks like.
And it literally looks like an empty shell after that.
But in just seconds before the person has actually died, there is some animation there.
And I don't know.
I don't know what it is, but there is a difference there.
So if someone is dead and that animation has gone, can you get it back?
I don't know.
Well, I agree with you.
And it seems to be much more than just the releasing of muscles and that sort of thing.
There does seem to be something beyond that.
Well, maybe it's just something that we as human beings read into it.
But, you know, when I saw my mother after she died, something was very, very different.
Yes, yes, that's right.
You talk in the book about the different, one of the books, about the difference in various cultures and how they regard near-death experiences.
You talk about the Aborigines and the Maoris and other cultures, don't you?
Yes, that's right, yes.
And so, you know, these near-death experiences are actually influenced by the person's culture.
And so, whereas in the West, people are more likely to see images of perhaps Jesus or Mary.
In India, for example, they'd be more likely to see Yama, the God of Death, or Yamduts, which are the messengers of the God of the Dead.
And sometimes, you know, it's slight cultural differences.
Whereas we have the life review in the West, in India, that seems to be replaced by the man called Chitragupta, the man with a book.
And this book is the book of deeds.
So all of the deeds of the person are documented in this book.
And then, depending on their deeds, that decides their fate from that point onwards.
Right, so it's a little bit like the life review, but you're, you know, we had a TV program here, I think they have in America, called This Is Your Life.
It's almost like encountering the person presenting This Is Your Life, because he's holding the red book, and in that book is your life story.
That's right, yes, exactly.
And I think the worrying thing for a lot of people, because look, whether you've tried to lead a blameless life or not, all of us have done things that we could have done better.
The thing that worries, I think, a lot of people is that when we go through this experience, if we do, then we're going to have to experience what we've experienced the things that we've visited upon other people.
And we have to experience what they experienced.
In other words, if we've left somebody from a relationship and we haven't left them well, we have to go through the feelings that they had at that point.
Yes, that's right.
And it does give people that deeper insight into their actions.
And the interesting thing about this is that during the life review, many people have reported watching the life review in the presence of the being of light.
And that being of light actually acted as a source of comfort for them.
And they themselves were judging them.
They weren't being judged by anyone else.
It was just that person themselves.
They were judging themselves.
And so that is another interesting thing.
You know, if death is the end, what would be the point in reflecting on your life and learning these lessons?
Why would you want to kind of learn from this if your consciousness was just annihilated at the point of death?
And that brings us back to the topic of reincarnation and coming around again.
I presume your research, five years of it, couldn't take that into account or could it?
I didn't really get a chance to look at, well, not much into reincarnation cases.
But, you know, it's an interesting phenomenon as well.
And there are arguments for and against that as well.
You know, that's a very complex area as well.
How would you summarise the conclusions you came to then?
What difference have they made?
Well, definitely near-death experiences happen.
You can't take that away.
It's a real phenomenon.
Thousands of people have had these experiences and we really need to take notice of them.
But just because we can't explain them, it doesn't mean we should explain them away.
And I think it's really important that this point is picked up on.
We really need to address this.
It needs to be in the education of all healthcare workers.
And I think rather, you know, sometimes it gets likened to sensationalized as being evidence of life after death.
But that was never what my research was about.
It was to find out more about the dying process.
And I think what it's taught me is a lot about consciousness.
And we don't understand what consciousness is.
We don't know when it begins and we don't know when it ends.
And in light of the near-death experience research that's been done, it would make sense to explore consciousness from a different perspective.
And what makes most sense to me is to consider consciousness as being primary and it's around us all the time, but we're not aware of it.
And our brain, rather than creating the consciousness, what it's doing, it's mediating it.
And there are times in a person's life where that brain acts like a filter, if you like, and it screens out this consciousness, which is a heightened state of awareness.
And there are times in the person's life where that filter action of the brain relaxes.
And rather than the brain creating an experience, all it's doing, it's allowing this heightened state of awareness into the everyday reality of that person.
I think that makes a far far better sense when trying to explain the near-death experience.
So I think it's time that we really revised our understanding of consciousness and updated it as well.
And it might also help to explain things like telepathy and also experiences like some of your healthcare professionals who were able to almost detect what was happening to the dying person.
They knew they could sense it.
That's right.
So this theory of it's called non-local consciousness.
I think that gives a better understanding of a whole range of phenomena that kind of just get dismissed.
And I think this, you know, it's given us a different understanding of consciousness and the mind.
Do you have any truck with people who use mediums and psychics and people like that to peer beyond this life?
Is it something that's interested you?
It's an interesting thing.
And I've witnessed people who've had messages from mediums and it's often comforted them in a very great way as well.
So it provides a service to people.
But obviously as well, there are people who perhaps are not as picking up on people's things as well.
I'm sure there are people out there who are kind of preying on people's bad luck as well.
So you have to be sort of careful as well.
It's a massive grey area.
You did this work.
It sounds to me as if it's changed your life.
What are you going to do with it now?
Well, I'm continuing to work with it constantly.
You know, it's something that I just can't leave behind.
You know, it's changed my life, but it's become a big part of my life as well.
So I continue to do talks about these experiences.
I'm trying my best to get it into the education of nurses and doctors.
But at the moment, it's not being accepted that much.
So, you know, I'm still kind of hammering away at it.
But I do a lot of public speaking events, and there's a lot of nurses who actually attend.
So, you know, people are definitely interested in the experience.
So, and hopefully, you know, I'll be writing more, continuing to write, and I'm working on some articles as well for nursing journals.
Because, in a way, you're talking about something that was unspoken for years.
Professionals understood this.
My dad was a policeman.
He came across these things all the time.
Anybody who's got a relative who's a nurse would have heard these stories, but it was never really accepted, never really scientifically documented.
But it was something that was almost folklore, wasn't it?
What you're doing is you're trying to turn to hard science something that in the past has been just folklore and stories.
Yes, yes, that's right.
And I think if we can study this in a prospective hospital study, there's many things that we can look at as well.
You know, when you study it in the hospital, you can look at the medical notes, you can see how close that patient came to death, you can see what drugs they were given at the time of the experience, you can look at the blood results if they're relevant, and you can interview the nursing staff and the medical staff who were present at the time.
So, if someone describes having an out-of-body experience, is that verified by the people who were present at the time?
And you know, that happened in my research.
There was one man I was looking after, he was deeply unconscious.
And after he regained consciousness afterwards, he described having this out-of-body experience, and he very accurately described the actions of the nurse, the physiotherapist, and the doctor.
And everything he said was very accurate, and I know it was accurate because I was the nurse, I was there while it was happening.
So, you know, this man at that particular point, he was deeply unconscious, he wasn't responding to deep painful stimuli, and his eyes were closed.
Yet he was reporting this heightened state of awareness where he correctly said everything that was done at that time.
So, that's something, you know, it's not easy to just dismiss something like that.
And further, as well, with this case, this man also went into what he described as a pink room, and he met a Jesus-like figure, and he also met his dead father, and another lady who was his dead mother-in-law.
He'd never met her but recognized her from photos.
And he was so comfortable there, and he wanted to stay.
But the Jesus figure said, No, it's not your time, you have to go back.
And the fascinating aspect of this case is that this man has cerebral palsy.
So, he was 60 years of age at the time of his experience, and his right hand had always been in a contracted position, he'd never been able to open it out.
Now, when I was interviewing him, he misinterpreted one of my questions, and he said, Oh, yes, he said, Look, I can open out my hand, I've never been able to do that before.
And at first, I didn't understand the significance of this.
But when I asked the doctors and the physios about this, they said that physically that should not be possible because the tendons would have been in a permanently contracted position.
So, to fully open out your hand, he'd have to have surgery to release the tendons.
Well, no such surgery was performed, he didn't have extensive hand physio or anything like that.
So, that is another aspect that we can't understand.
But I think if we took the time to investigate this and found the mechanism as to how that happened, this could benefit thousands of patients in the future as well.
So, I think, you know, we really need to start taking these experiences seriously.
So, there was a man who came back from the experience, in one way, repaired.
Do you think that the individual patient, Penny, has any say, any determination as to what happens to them through this experience?
In other words, the way that you've talked about these cases, it sounds like we passively float along in all of this and maybe we'll get offered a choice.
Do you want to go back?
And most of the time you have to be sent back or die as the case may be.
Do you think that the willpower, the determination and the mindset of the person has anything to do with what they experience?
Yes, it can do because again, the distressing kind of experiences, you know, if that person is in the mindset where they're used to resisting things because they want to be in control, maybe that is what influences the experience to be kind of distressing.
And it's then when they kind of become passive that that experience turns into a pleasant experience.
So, you know, we really don't know.
But yes, it would seem to be that perhaps mindset could influence the experience.
Sometimes I think people do make a decision.
I had a next door neighbor in the apartment next to mine called Peter.
And Peter was very wiry, very thin, very spry and sprightly.
He played tennis.
And he was absolutely fine.
He was very, very healthy.
But then he was run over.
He was cycling and a truck knocked him off his bike.
And his health deteriorated from that point and he became a virtual prisoner in his flat.
He had all sorts of circulation problems and things.
One day I came home from work and I knew that there was something wrong.
He was lying behind his bedroom door and had clearly had a stroke.
And the medics came, they made sure that his signs were okay.
They put him in a chair.
They carried him down the stairs.
And, you know, I said, I'll be seeing you back here later.
The next day, I got a phone call from the hospital because I was the only person they could contact.
And the hospital said, you're the only contact we've got.
We can't find his relatives.
They later appeared, but not at that point.
We have to tell you some very bad news.
And I said, I wish you wouldn't tell me this, but I know what you're going to say.
And they said, he died.
And the words they used, and this seems to be so common, were, he just gave up.
He made a decision.
Yes.
You know, that is quite common.
And, you know, with patients that I've witnessed that have, you know, looked after in intensive care, it's almost as if patients do have control over the time of when they die and in a very unconscious way.
So even when patients are unconscious, they may wait for, say, family members to arrive from abroad.
I can remember one man we looked after, and he was really, really sick.
And we expected him to die within hours of his admission.
But he hung on for about two days.
And then as soon as his son had arrived from Australia, within about half an hour after his son had sat at the bedside, although the man was unconscious, he then died shortly after his son's arrival.
And again, you know, patients would hang on for special family events.
One man hung on for his daughter's wedding, and shortly after she got married, he died as well.
And so I've witnessed that many times.
And another thing I commonly witnessed were patients' relatives would be at the bedside almost constantly.
And I can remember a few times asking patients if they would relatives go and have a break because I needed to do some nursing care.
They were looking tired, so I encouraged them to have a quick coffee break.
And shortly after the patient's relatives left the bed area, the patient's condition rapidly deteriorated.
And within minutes, the patient had died.
And I can remember many times running down to the canteen to get relatives back, by which time their loved one had died and they were really upset that they hadn't been there for them.
But I think what they were doing is actually they provided their loved one with that opportunity to leave.
And I think sometimes it's the love of the family that keeps them grounded in this life.
And when the family aren't there, I think it just makes it easier for the person to make that transition.
And so many stories.
You know, my own mother, I'll never forget seeing her for the last, I didn't know it was the last time, in the hospital.
And I had to drive back to London.
She'd had a leg amputated and we thought that she was going to recover.
And we had a conversation where we talked about things that we hadn't talked about since I was a little boy.
And our last words together were, I love you.
My last experience of my mother was her shouting down the ward, I love you.
Now, that was a perfect conclusion, although I didn't know it at the time.
We had our final conversation.
It went all the way back to my boyhood.
And I told her, no need for you to worry about me anymore.
The future is all about you.
And on some level, you know, and I'm sure this happens a lot.
I've heard other stories like it.
On some level, I think she almost wanted permission for whatever was to come next.
She didn't have to worry about me anymore.
Yes, yes, that's right.
Yes, and many people do need that permission.
And when that permission is given by the family, it does make their transition much easier for them.
Yes, I've witnessed that so many times, even with my grandfather.
So, yes, I totally agree with that.
I don't know how old you are, Penny.
I don't expect you to tell me you never ask a lady her age, but how has this affected your view of your own mortality?
It's made me more mindful of the way I live my life.
And certainly my values have changed drastically.
You know, before my experience, I was living in a very unconscious way.
And I used to just kind of busy myself with going out, shopping, spending money on things that I didn't really need.
But now, you know, it's much more, I don't know, it's more meaningful.
And I kind of appreciate everything that I have.
And I don't worry about things that other people have.
And I'm not as competitive as I used to be.
And, you know, it's affected me in a whole load of ways.
So it's had a very positive effect on my life, but it's certainly made me appreciative of all that I do have.
And I don't worry about silly little things that I used to worry about before.
There are so few people doing the kind of research that you've done.
Some of those people like Dr. Sam Parnia in the US and in the UK, you know, from a medical background.
It must frustrate you that there isn't more research of this kind being done because it is so fundamental to all of us.
I know, it does.
It's very frustrating.
And if you look at all of the hospital studies that have been done, they've really been done by people who are dedicated to understanding these experiences.
And, you know, there's no funding for this sort of research, so it's often been done in the researchers' own time and at their own expense in some cases as well.
So, you know, we really do need funding in this area.
And I think we need to open up as a society and start thinking about death.
You know, it's a very important thing, and it's something that's going to happen to every one of us.
And as you say, in many ways, we understood the process, perhaps arguably, better 40-odd years ago when my poor grandfather was in that bed in the living room of their tiny home in Bootle with the family around him.
Maybe we were doing things better than we later came to do them when older people were automatically taken to hospital and are expected to spend their final days there.
Yes, that's right.
I think we did have, you know, the rituals around death years ago were perhaps something that we've lost now, and I think we need to kind of embrace them and go back to them as well.
What are you going to be involved in next?
I know you said that this research is ongoing, but have you made any connections with any other institutions, people like that who might help you?
Where are you going with this?
Well, I'm kind of looking for other institutions who will take it on and take it on board because I would love to develop some techniques, for example, with patients who've had the distressing kind of experiences, try to develop therapeutic techniques that will help them to come to terms with the experience, and also look at how we can incorporate what we learn from people who've had a near-death experience, how we can incorporate that into healthcare as well, and for care of the dying.
So there's so many things that I want to do, but it's kind of like knocking your head against a brick wall at the moment.
And if now you come across either the family of or maybe somebody directly who is in the process of end stage of life, are you able to with confidence say to them, please don't worry as much because this is not the end?
Yes, and I kind of try to, where it's appropriate, I try to mention about my research.
Some people are not open to hearing about it, but there are some people who really do want to hear a lot.
So, you know, I kind of, if people are struggling with coming to terms with the death of a loved one, I will start to say, you know, I've done research where I've spoken to people who've died temporarily and come back.
If you'd like me to explain more, I can.
And that has been a source of great comfort to people to hear about what other people have been through.
And it's very effective as well in grief therapy.
Many grief counselors actually give their people accounts of near-death experiences, and that helps greatly with the grieving process.
Right.
This is a strange question, which you don't have to answer.
But in your professional experience, you did get quite a close bond, like the first story you told me about the old gentleman who wanted to be left in peace to die, and you felt a connection with him.
Any of the people you ever felt that kind of connection with, did you ever feel their presence after they had died?
I didn't know, but I did feel something when my grandfather died.
And I moved into my grandparents' house to look after him because he died at home.
And it was about a week after he died.
And I was in bed, and I'd put the lights out, but all of a sudden, I had an overwhelming sense of a presence.
And I really, I felt he was there in the room with me.
It was like no other experience I've had before, and it was really intense.
And in fact, it spooked me a little bit because I climbed under the duvet and pulled it over my head.
And I stayed in a seat-off position for about half an hour.
And then that kind of the intensity of the experience diminished, and then it just went.
But that was something that really did kind of, oof, it made me really take notice of it.
And before you started the research, and maybe even before you started working in the medical field, did you ever think about any of these things?
No, never, never thought about them at all.
No.
You're certainly thinking about them now.
Penny, if people want to know about your work, the way we do it these days, of course, always to go online somewhere.
Where would they go?
Yes, I've got a website.
It's www.drpennysartori.com.
And or if you Google me, my website will come up.
And you can get my books on Amazon or any other bookshop.
Penny, thank you very much indeed.
And I hope that when this interview is heard around the world, which it is, you know, maybe people will make contact with you and that might help your research too.
I don't know if you're open to that, but if you are, they will.
Right.
Yes, definitely.
Bear with me on my email replies because I'm a bit...
14,000.
14,000.
Yeah.
That's unbelievable.
So people are well aware of you and your work, but they need to be even more aware of you and your work, I think.
Yes.
Let me give my love to Swansea and West Wales, and I'm sure we'll talk again.
Thank you so much.
Great.
Thank you, Howard.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Okay, bye then.
Dr. Penny Sartori, some thought-provoking stuff about near-death experiences.
If you have any thoughts about this show, or any show that you've heard, or you want to make a guest suggestion, tell me anything, go to the website theunexplained.tv, triple w dot theunexplained.tv and you can send me a message through the link there.
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And if you have recently, thank you very much.
More great guests in the pipeline for The Unexplained until next we meet here.
I'm Howard Hughes.
I am in London and please stay safe.
Please stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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