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April 8, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
53:10
Edition 533 - Dr Jeffrey Long

Leading NDE researcher Dr Jeffrey Long - founder of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation - has done decades of diligent and detailed research and thousands of case studies of near death experiencers (NDE'ers) and their accounts - hear his conclusions on this edition...

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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 being part of my life and my show, and you really are a part of my life after all of the years that we've been doing this together, 15 years now on the podcast, and five years.
We're into the sixth year now of The Unexplained on the radio.
You know, the people who were starting Talk Radio Radio Station said to me, will you bring a version of your show, the podcast, to our radio station?
And I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do that because I felt the podcast had to lead everything, which it still does.
But we've been there every Sunday night.
I haven't, well, yes, I did miss one when I had what I thought was COVID in February 2020.
But apart from that, I've been there every Sunday night for five years, which is a bit of an achievement.
And I've tried to keep the flow of podcasts going and do more of them during this COVID lockdown period.
Thank you for the nice things you said about the difference that you say the podcast has made to your life in lockdown.
The fact that it's kind of helped you through, that's great.
And as I've said before, it's sort of therapy for me too.
You know, I think there's a lot of anger and frustration around.
And sometimes I think it manifests itself in people who get in touch with me to tell me quite angrily what they think of particular guests.
And I have to say, even though I've said this before, I used to listen to Art Bell and Coast to Coast AM a lot.
And very occasionally I'd hear a guest I loathed and hated.
And sometimes I would turn those people off if it was too much.
But mostly I would stay listening in the hope that I might learn something, maybe have my opinions changed, or even be reinforced in the opinions that I had.
So what I'm saying basically is instead of getting angry about something that you don't like, it's much better just to turn it off and then come back to something else later, I think is much better.
I'd hate to think that people were getting angry, but I think there's a tremendous amount of anger around at the moment.
And I was talking to a man who is a mind coach a few days ago on the radio, a man called Don McPherson, who's written a book about your monkey mind.
Your monkey mind is the one that sits on your shoulder and says, you can't do this.
You're no good.
You'll never be able to get that done.
I don't like that.
And he's all about turning the volume down on that so that you can live a better and more fulfilled life.
He said he's been very busy lately during this COVID period helping people out.
I found him interesting.
I see what you think.
Don McPherson is his name, but that's by the by.
So if you hear a podcast that you don't like, whether it's one of mine or somebody else's, don't get angry.
Turn it off.
If the guest is making you that upset, then turn it off.
You know, I tend to take an easy-going approach myself to these things.
And if I'm, you know, sometimes I'm doing shows with people and they are saying things that I really don't think are true.
But I think it's important to let people express themselves, otherwise we never get anywhere.
We never learn anything, I think.
But that's only my personal view.
And thank you very much for all of your emails, all of the points that you make, gratefully received.
And thank you for the support that you're giving me through this terrible year that we've all had.
Now, the guest on this edition, this is a replay of my radio show Conversation with a man called Dr. Jeffrey Long, who is the man behind the Near Death Experience Research Foundation.
I found what he had to say, this man is a medical doctor, enormously interesting, and I think you will too.
Have a conversation slightly shorter than one of the usual podcasts here.
I'll read from his biography.
He's a medical doctor specializing in the practice of radiation oncology, that's using radiation to treat cancer, in Louisiana.
He founded the Near Death Experience Research Foundation in 1998.
He wanted to know if NDEs were real by directly asking the NDEers, the people who'd experienced them themselves.
That, I think, is what makes his research so compelling and so different.
So, Dr. Jeffrey Long, great guest, I think, on this edition of The Unexplained.
Please remember, if you want to get in touch with me, if you want to make a point about the show, guest suggestions are always gratefully received.
And if you can tell me how to contact the guest, that's all the better.
Please go to my website, theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam.
And you can send me an email and, you know, make your comment or suggestion there.
And when you get in touch, please tell me who you are.
Give me a name.
Don't be afraid to use your real name.
Tell me where you are and tell me how you use this show.
And I'm always grateful to hear from you.
I don't think I've got anything else to say now.
So let's get to the guest.
This is from my radio show a couple of nights ago, Dr. Jeffrey Long from the Near Death Experience Research Foundation.
Dr. Jeffrey Long, thank you very much for coming on.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I guess the first thing I would want to ask a medical man who is involved in this, and I know that doctors see life in the raw.
You see people enter this world and you see the departure of people from this world.
So maybe I've just answered the question, but I'll ask it anyway.
What makes a medical doctor involved in the field that you're in interested in these things?
Well, certainly with regard to near-death experiences, I mean, gosh, how can one not be curious what happens after we pass through death's door?
So I've always been fascinated with that, and I think a lot of other people have too.
And medically, I see that more day-to-day, of course, than most people do.
I deal with people with cancer.
They are facing a life-threatening illness.
Not everybody makes it.
So I think, especially in my medical practice, I have to think over and over day by day, what happens to these patients?
What would happen to me?
What happens to our loved ones when we finally pass?
And is there an answer as to, is there an afterlife?
So that led directly to my research.
And in your work, obviously dealing with people at such a tender time of life where they're either going to make it, or as you say, they're not going to make it.
Have you found common threads in the stories of people who are at the end of their lives?
Oh, absolutely.
There's a basic tenet in science that what Is real is consistently observed.
And that's what's really got my attention with near-death experiences.
There's overwhelming consistency in near-death experiences in terms of what happens, the deeper messages they get, lines of evidence that make them absolutely medically inexplicable.
So I see that over and over in the over 3,500 near-death experiences I studied.
That's a lot.
I would like to believe, in fact, I'm hoping at my time of life where one has to contemplate it is finite.
I'm kind of hoping that my path will be smoothed at the end and that it won't be as horrendous as I might imagine in my darkest moments.
Would I be right in consoling myself that way?
Oh, I think you absolutely would, and so would everybody else.
Certainly, dying is difficult, but I can assure you with our modern medicine miracles, we have the dying process vastly easier than it was when I started my medical career over 30 years ago.
We've got hospice.
We have a lot of understanding about how to ease that transition, even when the cause of death is cancer.
As far as what lies beyond death door, that's where the evidence of near-death experience comes in, and it's powerful, and it's certainly positive.
So do you believe with certainty that the so-called NDEV and near-death experience is in fact a glimpse, in some cases a fleeting one, of what comes next.
But in some cases, those people, of course, return and they're able to tell the story.
You believe that that is a glimpse of what is there for those who die?
Yes, I absolutely do.
Again, based on evidence, and evidence that is stronger than a lot of the evidence I use to make my daily medical decisions about how to treat cancer, I think it's almost certainly a very beginning pathway to those that permanently, irreversibly die.
And in fact, some strong evidence comes from what's called shared near-death experience.
Two or more people have a simultaneous life-threatening event.
They have a near-death experience.
They're in an unearthly realm.
They can communicate.
They share with each other.
And as happens in my series of 15 of these types of events, one person goes on to permanently, irreversibly die.
One person returns to share their near-death experience.
So shared near-death experience, strong evidence that indeed what people are describing in near-death experience is really that first step towards permanent, irreversible death.
And it's certainly a powerful positive message.
Well, Jeffrey, I would imagine that what you've just described is the gold standard of research, isn't it?
Because if you have two people who have similar life-threatening events and they both meet up somewhere else and one of them doesn't make it and one of them does, that's pretty evidential, it sounds.
That's one of, and I think that certainly would be convincing to a lot of people.
I think that's strong evidence from my point of view, but there's so many other lines of evidence analogous to that for the reality of near-death experiences.
At some point, you just see a mountain of evidence and say, this has got to be for real.
And those who experience that, that experience of meeting up with somebody who was in a similar situation, in another dimension, in another place, whatever it is, what do they talk of?
If they do meet another person that they knew in their earthly life, interestingly, well, first of all, when they meet other people, they're generally in an unearthly, it is apt to call it heavenly realm.
We can get into that later, but it's a beautiful, non-earthly realm.
The people that they encounter that they knew during their earthly life are virtually always deceased at the time of the near-death experience.
And even if the person is deceased as a result of an earthly, chronic, debilitating, disfiguring illness or accident, when they meet in a near-death experience, they're essentially always picture-perfect health.
And even if the relationship in earth was strained, when they have that reunion, if you will, in a near-death experience, it's essentially always a joyous reunion.
And it's not just people.
Deceased pets are also regularly described in near-death experiences, same observations.
Even if the pet died of a disfiguring accident or illness, they're pictured perfect health, and it's every bit the joyous interaction they had in the near-death experience that existed in the pet's real life.
This is exciting stuff, obviously, and it's moving stuff, too.
Are you sure that what is being experienced by such people, though, is not just some kind of artifact of the mind?
We know that there are some people who claim to be able to mind read.
There are some people who claim acts of psychokinesis and all sorts of things.
You're quite convinced that those who say that they've gone to another realm and they've been able to function in that other realm and communicate in that other realm are not just having some kind of psychic experience.
They're actually having a transitional experience.
Okay, sure.
Let's, in directly responding to that question, we'll talk about another significant line of evidence for the reality of near-death experience.
I have a series of people that had their near-death experience while under adequate general anesthesia.
Now, of course, under general anesthesia, they very carefully monitor heart rate.
Often they're ventilating them, respiration.
That's the job of the anesthesiologist.
They do their job and they do it well to keep a close eye on the vital signs.
However, sometimes during general anesthesia due to the pre-existing illness or accident that led to the surgery or sometimes just due an unexpected complication, allergy, for example, the heart may stop while they're under general anesthesia.
Now, I would submit to you that if your heart stops and you're under general anesthesia, it should literally be doubly impossible to have any lucid organized remembrance at that time.
And yet by the scores, near-death experiences describe that occurring right then and there.
They have that out-of-body experience.
They may, their consciousness may go above their body and from that vantage point, see the often fratic going-ons in the operating room as they try to bring them back to life.
They then have, in my comparison of near-death experiences under general anesthesia to near-death experiences under all other circumstances, absolutely consistent elements are what occurs during a near-death experience.
And what do you think, what do you believe from all of that research that you've done differentiates those experiences from dreams?
I can tell you, and I'm sure many people are telling you, that during lockdown, I have had astonishing and frightening in many cases.
Last night, the most recent, three-dimensional, multicolored nightmares in many cases.
Last night, it was definitely nightmares, encountering and communicating with people who I've never seen before.
You're convinced that these experiences are very different and very separate from dreams.
Yeah, wow.
Sorry to hear about your nightmares, but in terms of a significant message of reassurance about near-death experiences, at the very dawn of my research and near-death experience, the very first survey I put up had the key question, was your experience, that being the near-death experience, dreamlike in any way?
I asked that very deliberately, open-ended, so that if any part of a dream would reproduce any part of their near-death experience, I expected a yes and a narrative textbook allowed them to share what that was.
I can tell you, as a researcher, I was embarrassed at that question, by the scores.
Ultimately, over 100 finally, near-death experiencers were sharing absolutely it was not dreamlike.
No way, not in any way, no how.
I was so impressed at how emphatic and consistent the near-death experiencers were that their experience was not dreamlike in any way.
I embarrassed, removed that question from future surveys.
Well, I can concur with that.
I've told the story on the show before, so I will keep this short, but my mother, aged 10, had pneumonia, nearly died in an era when they didn't have all the drugs they have today.
And the doctor said she was going through a crisis.
She would either make it through the night or she wouldn't.
Of course, this is years before I was on the scene.
She described to her dying day and told my sister Beryl and I this story over and over again.
It never changed.
Of going to a place of sunshine and beauty and greenery that was indescribable here.
You know, it was just beyond what we have here.
Experiences, a very visceral thing that she went through.
She came back and they thought, well, you know, she was obviously delirious and that was part of that.
But she stuck to her story all the way through her life.
And she said that she was told that she had to come back.
And of course, if she hadn't come back, I wouldn't be here talking to you now.
So, you know, in my family, there is a story of a near-death experience.
And my mother's story, I mean, I lost my mother in 2006, but her story remained consistent throughout her life.
And she was always adamant that that was no dream and it wasn't delirium.
Yeah, wow.
Thanks for sharing that.
That's absolutely a near-death experience with many of the overwhelmingly consistent elements.
Notice that she described her realm she was in as seemingly unearthly beyond easy description in words.
We see that routinely when they're in that unearthly, heavenly realm.
It doesn't really lend itself to simply earthly words.
It's such a radically unearthly experience.
She talked about how she was sent back.
Very typical.
Again, if I had a nickel for every near-death experience account that said they were sent back for various reasons, usually not specified, your time's not up, you need to go back, your work's not done, I would be very wealthy because that's a very common ending element.
And then the final thing that your mother shared that's very typical is that absolute, complete memory of it, even for decades after its occurrence.
We see that in both prospective and retrospective studies, the remembrance of the near-death experience seems vastly better than any other memory of anything that occurred around that time in their life.
And even over a decade later, we have good both prospective and retrospective data.
Near-death experience accounts, when they're shared with others, tend not to be either embellished, that means enhanced, or forgotten.
So exactly like your mother experienced classic near-death experience with a lot of what's commonly observed.
The folklore of it, and folklore is probably an unkind term to use.
So it's just in the absence of any other word that I can think of.
But the general story of what happens when you die, if you believe that something else happens when you die, and I want to believe that something else does happen when you die, is that you transition, you go through a kind of waiting room, maybe you go towards the light or whatever you do.
Maybe sometimes there's something congruent with whatever religious beliefs that you have, but not necessarily so.
And you have a life review.
You go back over your life.
Do any near-death experiences get as far along the process to be able to do the life review and review all of the things and feel the experiences that they went through in their lives?
Because the accounts of the life review are sometimes, well, very happy, but also harrowing at times because you're reliving everything that happened to you.
Well, now that is a great question.
I was just today reviewing my prior research on life reviews.
In my study of a huge number of near-death experiences, a life review occurred about 14% of the time.
A life review is a review of part or even all of your prior life.
At times during life reviews, there's what's called a panoramic life review, where you're aware not only of the events in your prior life, but when you're interacting with other people, you absolutely feel down to the core what the other person was felt like when you were interacting with them, for good or for ill.
You have a sense of what they were thinking, which is absolutely astounding when these are described in near-death experiences, but they're common enough that they seem to be a part of what is consistently observed in near-deaf experiences.
So a couple of things about all that.
First of all, That shows the incredible acceleration of consciousness that's typically described during near-death experiences.
I mean, don't forget, these folks are unconscious or clinically dead, and yet here they are potentially reviewing every event of their life in literally the minutes that they're unconscious.
And that's a life review for you, a real strong indicator that this is an unearthly functioning of consciousness during a near-death experience.
And then, secondly, for my research, I wanted to see if anything they encountered in their life review was wrong, was inaccurate in any way.
And in the over 80 life reviews that I looked at, people found, what they found in their life review, what they saw absolutely really happened previously, even if they'd forgotten about it.
And a common scenario is they would see something that happened when they were toddlers, too young to remember.
And then if they went to check out what they saw in their life review with their parents, they would confirm, yes, that event really happened that they saw in their life review, even if they'd long forgotten it.
It's a little daunting as a prospect, though, Jeffrey.
You know, the Duyen of this genre of broadcasting, the inspiration to me, Art Bell, who I'm sure you encountered a number of times, did a show like this one in the United States.
He was the master of this.
And he would always talk about the life review and say with great honesty what I'm going to say now, you know, that in my life, and I'm sure everybody's life, there are things that brought you great joy and you can relive those, but there are also not your finest hours, you know, and Art used to say, and I can echo this, that, you know, in my life, I have hurt people.
I've, you know, I've been unthinking about career moves and leaving people behind and leaving people behind in my life.
And, you know, I'm not proud of any of that.
It's part of the process of life.
And I find the thought, just as Art Bell did in those old radio shows that I used to listen to, that the thought that I'm going to have to encounter that and feel what those people felt is scary on this side of life to contemplate.
Okay.
I can address that very directly.
The very first talk I gave to the public after publishing my New York Times best-selling book many years ago about evidence of the afterlife, the science of near-death experiences, I'm in a small town here in southern Louisiana, and it's a fairly religious community.
So the very first talk I gave as I talked about life review, I was looking at the audience.
I was like, what's going on?
There's something fun going on here.
And that was addressed when I was done talking.
There was the usual flood of questions, and then a few people came up and basically they said, Dr. Long, I've done some things I'm not proud of.
And I went, uh-oh, you don't have to worry about that.
In my now, at the current time, hundreds of life reviews that I've reviewed and near-death experiences, almost always there's no external judgment.
And that's an extremely important point.
They may, of course, we've all done things we're not proud of.
And here are people reviewing portions or even all of their prior life.
And of course, they're going to see the good, the bad, and well, the ugly.
And yet it's very important for everybody to know that they're not judged.
There's often beings around, and yet they won't judge them.
There's no commentary on it.
If there's any judgment to be made, it's by the person having the near-death experience and nobody else and nothing else.
The life review actually turns out to be one of the most positive, transformative parts of a near-death experience.
I mean, think about that.
For the first time, you can see dramatically, vividly, and in a way you could not possibly have otherwise known how your actions affected other people.
And I think it's really helped people that have those types, especially panoramic life reviews, to live the rest of their earthly life more loving, more compassionate, more understanding how even the slightest word can make a big difference in another person's life for good or for ill.
And of course, they're going to focus more on that loving outreach, those few words, those actions that really make a positive difference in the life of people around them.
Well, if we think of life, Jeffrey, as a continuum of learning and loving, and the process of being here is to learn things, and then going on and learning things and taking those lessons and refining them for the future, it all makes sense.
Jeffrey, you have in both of the books the nine lines of evidence, the nine almost preconditions of these experiences.
I think it would be useful, if you're in agreement, to work our way through the nine lines of evidence.
What do you think?
Oh, absolutely.
They're nine lines of evidence for the reality of near-death experience and their consistent message of an afterlife.
So let's go at it.
Okay, number one then, crystal clear consciousness.
Well, you know, that's one of the amazing things.
I keep saying at the time of a near-death experience, you're unconscious or clinically dead with absent heartbeat.
A common precipitating event in a near-death experience is a cardiac arrest.
Your heart stops beating.
Immediately when the heart stops beating, blood stops flowing to the brain.
Now, 10 to 20 seconds after that event, the EEG or electroencephalogram, which is a measure of brain electrical activity, goes absolutely flat.
It's impossible to have any lucid organized memory when your measure of brain cortical electrical activity is zero.
And yet, by the scores, people report near-death experiences after cardiac arrest, seeing people approach them, trying to resuscitate them.
And that should be absolutely impossible.
So the very fact that people have normal, and actually about three-fourths of people in my survey say the level of consciousness and alertness is greater during a near-death experience than during earthly everyday life, that's absolutely medically inexplicable.
Number two is to do with the realism of these experiences.
Well, we could talk about the realism.
People that have, we could jump ahead a little bit to a line of evidence.
I survey a lot of people.
When I closed my last version of the survey, there were 1,122 near-death experiencers that answered a key survey question, which was, how do you currently view the reality of your experience, the near-death experience?
And a little over 95% answered that they believed Their experience was definitely real.
About another 4% said probably real, and less than 1% said their experience was probably not real or definitely not real.
So, having a near-death experience cures any near-death experience disbelief.
To those that have had it almost uniformly by their personal experience, they know it was real.
Number three is a thing that my mother described, a sharpening or heightening of the senses.
Yeah, absolutely.
We talked briefly about the life review and the amazing acceleration of consciousness that occurs.
But above and beyond that, we see often supernormal senses.
Communication in a near-death experience is essentially always telepathic.
And I mean, good gosh, you wouldn't expect that from anything living in your earthly life.
And yet, that's almost a defining characteristic of near-death experience.
And it's not just telepathic in the sense of communicating, say, a conversation.
Communication in near-death experience is described as transmitting completely, fully all of the information, the context, the emotions, and sort of supernormal information in a crystal clear way, often described as absolutely no room for uncertainty or doubt.
And believe me, even with fine communication, such as your fine radio show, you know, that's pretty awesome is what they're describing in near-death experiences.
Above and beyond that, for example, they may have supernormal vision.
The one person I interviewed who was totally blind from birth described what many other near-death experiencers described when she described vision, and that is 360-degree vision during the near-death experience.
They're simultaneously aware of and processing visual information in front of them, back, right, left, up, and down.
It's technically spherical information.
So that is absolutely medically inexplicable and certainly not anything that you would create from prior life memories.
And yes, 60 degrees is called very common.
You most definitely left behind any semblance, any vestige of physicality.
Number four.
Oh, yeah.
We touched on this a little while ago.
Consciousness during anesthesia.
Yeah, we went over that earlier.
You know, in my series of looking at people that had near-death experiences while under general anesthesia compared to near-death experiences under all other circumstances, absolutely it happens.
I've got scores of such experiences now.
They're typical experiences.
And the critical survey question, I asked, what was your level of consciousness and alertness?
Remarkably, no statistical difference between the near-death experience under general anesthesia and the near-death experience under all other circumstances groups.
So even under general anesthesia and having your heart stop, remarkably, they still have that typically supernormal lucidity during their near-death experience, which is under general anesthesia, if you will, we said earlier, really doubly impossible, doubly medically inexplicable.
Number five is about life reviews that we've kind of done.
So let's skip to number six.
My great hope, you know, like a lot of people, I've lost both of my parents and they leave a huge void in my life.
You know, I'm kind of hoping that what comes next allows me access to them again.
So family reunions.
Oh, absolutely.
This is a joyous reunion with deceased loved ones that we've had.
Gosh, my heart goes out to you.
I've lost both of my parents too, and it hurts.
Everybody that's lost parents knows.
But the great news from near-death experience is that it's common.
Well, it's about maybe around 20% of the time.
They may encounter deceased loved ones in these unearthly, heavenly realms.
And as I mentioned, it's essentially always joyous reunions.
They're in picture-perfect health.
There's a lot of interaction that goes on.
I mean, they're not just standing there looking at each other.
There's a lot of joyous sharing.
And certainly, deceased pets are also appearing in near-death experiences.
And in every other experience of altered human consciousness, dreams, hallucinations, you name it, the great majority of people encountered are going to be people that are alive at the time of that dream hallucination.
And yet a near-death experience is only 4% of the beings encountered when they're in that unearthly heavenly realm are alive at the time of the near-death experience.
And that also distinguishes near-death experiences from other altered forms of consciousness.
And that's why I'm, you know, yet another line of evidence why I'm saying, hey, this really all converges on the conclusion they really are in an unearthly heavenly realm.
And that's why they're encountering only deceased people.
In fact, even we have a small series, I was reviewing that even today, of people that encountered deceased siblings.
These are often children that had near-death experiences, and they may encounter a brother or sister that they never knew that they had.
And when they bring that up after they recovered from their near-death experience to their shocked parents, in every single account that's been shared with me, their parents admitted, yes, that you had a brother, you had a sister.
Typically, they died early in childhood, and parents will typically wait until the child is older, say age 12 or older, and have a better understanding of death before they were willing to share with them that they had a deceased sibling.
And may I add, every single account of this that we have, when they encounter in their near-death experience, either a brother or sister, the gender is identified as correct when they share it with their shocked parents later.
Isn't that interesting?
And talking of children, number seven, I think, speaks to some extent, you tell me, of reincarnation.
Because children's experiences, you say, sometimes include concepts, ideas, and knowledge that the child would be too young to know.
Oh, absolutely.
When I studied young children in my research, I studied kids age five and younger.
Their actual average age of this study group was three and a half years old.
And, you know, I did that because culturally they're practically a blank slate when they're that young.
They wouldn't have strong or certainly any significant preconceived notions at all of religion.
They almost certainly wouldn't understand death and obviously have never heard of near-death experience, or if they have, they wouldn't have any idea what it means.
And yet, here in these very young children, they have strikingly consistent near-death experiences with older children and adults.
Really, no statistical difference when I compared my research on that with, I think you'll recall it was like 23 very young children.
So, you know, once again, yet another line of evidence that near-death experiences don't seem to be culturally determined, religious determination.
They seem to be occurring independently of prior life existence, exactly as described by very young children.
Now, they do have age-specific content.
I mean, there may be sort of like another sort of mother figure, another one with them.
But yes, absolutely, there.
Even these young children will often come back and say, I was thinking processing information at a vastly higher age level than I was when I had the near-death experience.
So we see that quite commonly, too.
All of this even more enigmatic.
Number eight, worldwide consistency.
In other words, no matter what country you're in, the sorts of things that are experienced have similar threads.
Oh, absolutely.
The NDERF.org website, that's our research website, Due to the Heroics of My Wife, has been translated into over 30 different languages, including the survey, an amazingly huge process.
So as a result of that, we can get near-death experiences in the native language all around the world.
We use human volunteer translators to translate it and post both the original non-English language version as well as the English translated version.
And since we have over 50,000 unique visitors to our website every month, we're pretty sure that if we have an inaccurate translation, we're going to hear about it.
The conclusion about this largest cross-cultural study of near-death experience that's ever been possible before is that once again, near-death experiences are strikingly similar in terms of their content anywhere on the planet that they occur.
And of course, as a researcher, I wanted the sternest test of cross-cultural near-death experiences.
So I have scores of non-Western near-death experiences, countries that are not predominantly Judeo-Christian, typically very different culturally, very different religious background.
And again, what I've observed, near-death experiences, even in non-Western countries, strikingly similar to typical Western countries, I've actually been collaborating with an Iranian near-death experience researcher, and we've got our second scholarly paper on that coming out due for publication.
Conclusion from that research, from Iranian near-death experiences, in the content remarkably similar to typical Western near-death experiences.
You know, it's amazing.
It doesn't seem to make any difference whether you're, say, a Muslim in Egypt or a Hindu in India or a Christian in the United States, anywhere on the planet you are and have a near-death experience, the content, what happens, is going to be strikingly similar.
Are these experiences more common in countries that we would consider to be more devout?
No, and that's a good question.
The implication in that question is that religious belief or lack of religious belief has an influence either on the occurrence of a near-death experience or what its content might be.
I co-authored a scholarly chapter where that was one of the issues we looked at, among many other issues.
And the bottom line, after reviewing several decades of research, is that there's no predictor of your pre-existing belief, lack of belief.
Atheists have near-death experiences.
We've heard near-death experiences from an unbelievable number of religions from all around the world.
And once again, I feel like a broken record here.
The content is strikingly similar.
Not surprising.
So it's, you know, there seems to be some, again, all of this converges on the presumption that all of us, wherever on the planet we are, end up in an afterlife that seems to be the same, the afterlife, if you will.
Whatever our beliefs are, however young, old we are.
Even atheists have had near-death experiences, and often, well, typically they stop being atheists after their near-death experience, but literally anyone can have a near-death experience regardless of their belief system.
Well, that leads us nicely into number nine, then, and the last of these preconditions or factors.
After effects.
I've spoken with many people who've had near-death experiences.
I've come incredibly close to death of being horribly injured in one case in a train accident where a guy was left in conditions that would have killed a lot of people, but he got through it.
He was changed after that experience.
But so many people claim that after the experience, they are different.
Yes.
As you can imagine from the discussion so far, personally having a near-death experience is a big, big deal.
It's an enormous life event.
When people come back from a near-death experience, the changes that are typically observed in both prospective and retrospective studies are called after effects.
After effects are very common, and interestingly, the after effects become stronger, more pronounced, even years to decades after the near-death experience.
And it may take years to fully integrate this remarkable, life-changing, unearthly experience that they have.
So not surprising it takes a while.
But the after effects typically observed is, well, of course, they have an increased belief in an afterlife.
Well, that's obvious.
Why?
Because from a person who had a near-death experience, they know that there's an afterlife.
They experienced it.
They saw it, heard it, felt it, know its reality to the very core of their being.
So obviously, they have a greatly increased belief in an afterlife, a greatly decreased fear of death.
I mean, certainly we all have some concerns about the dying process, but beyond death's door, near-death experiencers almost uniformly know that there's nothing to fear, that what lies ahead, our destiny for all of us, is an afterlife, a wonderful afterlife, and that's for all of us.
One of the more common things that people encounter in the near-death experience are Overwhelming senses, awareness of love, and they come back, if you will, bringing a bit of that piece of heaven back into their lives, and they become more loving, compassionate people.
They may leave unloving relationships or jobs where they can't manifest love and seek out relationships, jobs where they can express that.
Certainly, they become less materialistic and certainly have an increased belief in God, an increased belief in spiritual matters.
Again, not at all surprised from everything you've heard tonight about a near-death experience.
And just we have to take some commercials just before we do.
Are there people who have returned from this with abilities or maybe heightened abilities?
Yeah, there's been a lot of interest in studying that.
As best I can tell from my research, there's not a lot of good evidence that major telekinesis or things like that occur.
But I think people that have a near-death experience may describe they're almost intuitive, like they can read people.
They know what people are thinking.
And I believe that that has more to do with them being increasingly compassionate, loving, aware of other people, more interested in being attentive to nonverbal clues.
And so that can look like a psychic ability to other people around them.
So that's, as best I can tell, the most common sort of inexplicable type of, if you will, paranormal after effect like that.
There's people that talk about electrical sensitivity.
That was one where there was actually a good study that came out, and it wasn't entirely conclusive.
It said suggestive need more studies.
So again, it's kind of difficult to review, to study these types of phenomenon, but certainly people that come back with a near-death experience has certainly substantially changed in many ways.
What a conversation.
Dr. Jeffrey Long, founder of the Near Death Experience Foundation, is here.
We've got him for another quarter of an hour or so.
Perhaps the biggest questions of any of our lives.
You know, we spend our lives trying to get on in this world, many of us, trying to get qualifications and get on.
But at the end of the day, what happens?
Where do we go?
And what does it all mean?
Jeffrey, this topic is not an easy one to discuss at all.
And we know that suicide, the ending of one's life, is no answer to anything.
Never is.
And any counselor will tell you that more eloquently than I'm able to say.
So I'm asking this carefully, and we have to frame the discussion equally carefully.
Those who have attempted to take their own lives and they come back, what do they describe?
Is it all explained to them that they must come back and the state that they're in, if you see what I'm saying?
Okay, you know, Howard, that's a good question.
Certainly, suicide has led to a huge number of near-death experiences, and that's actually been studied very well and published in scholarly literature, some very good research and investigation of that.
So when people have a near-death experience as a consequent of attempting suicide, interestingly, they're not really judged.
They have typical near-death experiences.
Generally, they don't have, again, external judgment during their near-death experience.
However, when they recover from their suicide attempt, something very interesting happens, been noted, very well documented in scholarly literature, and that is they come back understanding that their earthly life is important and significant.
They come back understanding that that was a huge mistake for them to attempt suicide.
Now, suicide attempters that do not have a near-death experience are very predisposed to attempt suicide again and again and again, unfortunately, tragically.
However, those that attempt suicide and have a near-death experience and have that insight about the significance and importance of earthly life as a consequence of what they experienced rarely, some would even say, never attempt suicide again.
Again, they've understood the value of life.
They've understand the extreme mistake they made in attempting suicide.
And they will almost never attempt suicide again.
So again, a positive message of hope for those that.
So if you want to hear it from the people that have attempted suicide and had a near-death experience, one word, don't.
Earthly life is that important, that significant.
There's a lot of resources for people who are in dire straits and suicide prevention lines can be found.
So again, a message straight from the near-death experiencers that attempted suicide, biggest mistake of their life, and they know it.
And, you know, we must say this on these occasions, and I think it adds to what we're talking about.
You know, that if you're ever in need of guidance, somebody to listen, a friendly ear.
Don't forget the Samaritans in the United Kingdom, a wonderful organization, 116123.
That number is 116123.
And we've talked about the near-death experience as being a positive thing, as being a thing where you have this life review and you're not judged and you go to a place where the experiences are sharper and better.
And, you know, sometimes you're sent back here to continue your journey here, but perhaps improved with a different take on life.
Are there occasions when people report a kind of hell experience?
Or does that not happen?
Yeah, that's an interesting question, Howard.
The significant majority of purported frightening and especially hellish near-death experiences that I've encountered from other researchers are not really near-death experiences.
There's an intensive care unit delirium, which is commonly confused.
There's other sort of problem issues that they have around the time of nearly dying.
Nearly dying is an inherently frightening event.
And so a lot of these so-called hellish near-death experiences, if you read them carefully, they didn't really happen when they were, that wasn't really a near-death experience.
There was some other cause of it.
However, now that I have so many near-death experiences, I was Able to find about two dozen that were very solidly, in my opinion, hellish near-death experiences.
And by hellish, I mean they encountered some kind of objectively frightening content.
They could be frightening realms, frightening noises, frightening demonic characters are often described, often a sense of feeling abject terror.
Again, these are very rare experiences, but they do seem to occur rarely.
Now, there's a silver lining to that dark cloud of a hellish near-death experience, and that is it is fairly common, essentially typical, when people come back from a hellish near-death experience and process what happened, that they'll typically say, you know what?
I had issues in my life, anger, guilt, resentments, and there was simply no other way that I could face those issues in my life other than to have that type of horrific experience.
People that have hellish near-death experiences go on to have the positive life transformations, the after effects so vividly described.
And I might add, both me and all other near-death experience researchers that I know of, none of us believe in a permanent involuntary hell in the afterlife.
So this is a kind of short, sharp shock to get them back on the right path.
It can in some significant way be the most loving thing that they could experience they could have if the end point is for them to live the rest of their earthly life more loving, compassionate, facing up to, understanding, dealing with, and moving on from their significant life issues.
Isn't that interesting?
We've only got minutes left, sadly, Jeffrey.
So let me ask this.
I'm sure you've been asked this before.
Has any research been done on people guilty of the most heinous crimes, the murders, the serial killers, all of these sorts of people, you know, some of them in America, perhaps on death row for long periods before finally being dispatched?
Has any research on those sorts of people been done and the kinds of experiences that they may have, if any of them come back, you know, from something like that?
Obviously, those who are dispatched are dispatched permanently.
But, you know, I'm trying to see if there's any documentation on people who've done bad things.
I guess that's the way of putting it.
Yeah, we would refer to them, you know, pro-social and anti-social people in the scholarly literature.
But yeah, we've had the murderers, the severely anti-social people are such a small group, thank goodness, that we don't really have enough near-death experiences from them to be conclusive.
What evidence I've observed is somewhat mixed.
I'm not sure if they have either the typical near-death experiences in general or if they're a little more predisposed to have frightening near-death experiences just because obviously they have those unresolved issues of anger, guilt, resentment, far more so than other non-violent offenders might have.
So the literature is really, and the evidence is really not out there to the point that I can definitively state that.
I think if anything, it is possible that they may be a little bit more predisposed to frightening or hellish near-death experiences, but that's getting into the realm of speculation.
In our last two minutes together, I guess the ultimate question of all of this is we've skirted around the issue of religion and the experiences that people who have in more devout countries and the commonalities and similarities around the world.
We come to the topic of God, and it's unfortunate that I'm only giving two minutes to this part of it, but that's all we got.
Do many of these people meet a supreme being?
Let's put it that way.
Sure.
I reviewed 277 near-death experiences that encountered or aware of God.
So I've done some very careful research on this.
First of all, when God is encountered in a near-death experience, it's very common for people to say that the being they met was so overwhelmingly loving, so overwhelmingly concerned about them.
English words in general don't describe this.
God is a word.
This was far beyond words, far beyond anything that can possibly be described in language.
They may use things like the one, the all.
They often use descriptors other than the word God, and yet God is used more often just because that's a word that people recognize as some kind of ultimate being.
The great news is that God is overwhelmingly loving, invariably described as powerfully loving, accepting people for who they are, all that they are, everything that they are, thank goodness.
And that's literally a defining characteristic of God in near-death experiences.
And you essentially never see God going in the opposite direction from those descriptors I described.
There may be interactions, discussions with God, and they may learn a great deal.
They may have some insights that help them to live the rest of their earthly life.
But God, as very broadly understood, literally transcending all religions, is fairly common in near-death experiences.
Giving you 30 seconds to answer this is not really fair.
Sure.
Do you have a religious faith?
Has that influenced your research?
Or has it made you religious?
Right.
When I do near-death experience research, I put any preconceived religious beliefs on the side, and I'm totally guided by evidence.
That evidence has radically transformed my religious as broadly defined beliefs.
I now absolutely believe based on evidence in an afterlife God, the importance of love in the universe, a unity of all of us.
It has radically affected my understanding, again, based on overwhelming and remarkably consistently observed evidence.
Yeah, it doesn't really fit neatly into any specific religious classification.
I was just going to say I've thoroughly enjoyed and been stimulated by this conversation.
Jeffrey, just quickly, what is the website of the NDERF?
Yes, the Near Death Experience Research Foundation.
You just said it, nderf.org.
And details of your books will be there, I guess.
Jeffrey, thank you so much.
I hope we get the chance to talk again.
You've made me think tonight.
One of those conversations that I had to sit down, have a cup of coffee, take a deep breath, and have a big, long think after that.
And I did have a night of thought.
After what I heard from Dr. Jeffrey Long, I would like to believe, as maybe you would like to believe, that this life that we live, with all of its trials and its tribulations, you know, I've had my share of joy as you will have had, and certainly my share of heartbreak over the years.
Some terrible periods that I thought I would never get through.
But they say it's all part of life's rich and varied tapestry.
The fact that the process of its end is an enlightening one and a continuum, if that's the word, I found fascinating.
I found it quite moving too.
Your thoughts, welcome.
I'm Dr. Jeffrey Long from the NDERF, the NEADEF Experience Research Foundation.
Always welcome.
Please go to the website theunexplained.tv.
You can send me an email from there.
More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained, so until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online, and please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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