Can Science PROVE the Afterlife? | Dr. Jeffrey Long

The great majority of people having a near-death experience don't make a choice about whether to stay in that beautiful une Earthly realm or or not they're sent back basically involuntarily to their physical body but there is a small percentage that have a fascinating discussion typically with other beings around them about a choice they have a choice to stay in that beautiful and Earthly realm or return to The Earthly body I mean just imagine here they've know Earthly life is all they've known for T typically years decades for most people friends family loved ones everyone is

down in that Earthly life and yet among those who have a choice the great majority do not want to leave that unearthly Heavenly [Music] real Dr Jeff Long the I you you are described as um basically one of the most well-known or the most well-known Near-death experience researcher and I want to get um and and the winner of the Bigalow Institute for Consciousness studies for your essay on the scientific evidence for near-death experiences which is a New York Times bestseller um and what I wanted to talk to you about more importantly is that you are

you live in a world of science you know you're not like some some guy who you know wears beads and has had this experience you you're an oncologist Right right yeah radiation oncology use of radiation to treat cancer I'm a full-time practicing physician wow so you deal with you you you know it's a heavy job you deal with you know you see it work you see it not work you've got to tell people that uh they have probably not as much time as they thought they did it's got to be a tough one and so

your your experience with life and death is very different than most of ours oh you're absolutely right U i mean that's a part of my practice you know unfortunately we have to give bad news regularly and you know these are people that have friends family loved ones and if their cancer can't be cured I mean that you imagine what shocking news that is so that's a part of my everyday practice on the other hand you know often we bring very good news your cancer is cured that's great you know we expect great things but it

is yeah it's a little bit of a roller Coaster professional practice in terms of the news that sometimes very good sometimes very devastating news I share with my patients what does it do to you as a physician do you find yourself sometimes kind of um you know that like I love this I think Socrates said a philosopher should have a quiet contempt for their body the idea that this is just Machinery it's just I I live within this kind of rusty kind of awkward uh puppet Meats suit and it's going to go Anyway do you

find yourself being more cautious healthwise or are you less cautious I'm probably a little more cautious healthwise I you know as a radiation Colley physician obviously I don't smoke take good care of myself get regular medical care so you know pay attention to any of the symptoms now I've been practicing for 38 years years so that's long enough that you kind of get into a routine of you know not being overly concerned and yet being Appropriately concerned and cautious and getting those screening medical studies that everybody should that's age specific do you do you subscribe

to any particular diet or do you believe that this is genetic it's environmental It's a combination of all of them obviously if you smoke it's probably not a great idea there are a lot of reasons to not do certain things right so oh absolutely yeah it's it's there's cancer is a multifactorial process it can be related To the environment uh smoking is certainly the number one cancer cause and cancer killer as a result uh you know certainly the number one risk factor is being up in years the older you are the more likely you are

to get cancer so there's a there's a genetic factors certainly have a lot to play in terms of an individual's risk and interestingly with new treatments that are designed to Target genetic abnormalities cancer we're now uh Targeting that with what we call immunotherapy we're actually curing more people now than we ever could before with cancer I love it so let's get into this let's get into near-death experience you know you hear that and all of a sudden we're like oh boy here we go with the woo woo stuff right but I before we get into

near-death experience I I what I'm interested in is when when does someone actually die you know there's this moment right there's a Moment moment there's got to be a moment which is you know your heart can stop you can have brain death but your body's still going right there is a moment moment where you take your last breath and and in fact my my father-in-law uh my um um was he died not I'm sorry not my father-in-law my my my brother-in-law's father passed and it was very when he took his last breath there was a

change uh you knew that he was no longer with us you could See it physically I I wasn't there but I it was how and I've heard other people describe this where even the coloring of the body changes and everything changes right so it's like it's like something leaves your body right oh absolutely many people have that sense you have that last breath you you lose Consciousness and you're physiologically progressing to that irreversible permanent death uh many people seem to have that sense that It's different there's you know it's almost like you there was some

life however on the edge and then all of a sudden there's no life and so you I've kind of wondered if that isn't an awareness at least at some level some sensory level of the people around them that their if you will soul that part of the immaterial part of the body has left right at that moment of physical death yeah you know if you look at uh Buddhists and these Himalayan sages that You know they'll talk a lot of times about you know know how you can kind of be a witness to not only

your mind and your emotions but also your own body they call it sha sakti I think they call it cultivating the witness so you know when you watch this Buddhist monk in 1963 when he was protesting the the South Vietnam's government the South Vietnamese government's treatment of Buddhists he lit himself on fire and David halan of the New York Times and His colleague said he didn't move I mean he he just burned and then keeled over and they heard the air leave his lungs but whatever was going on with that that highlevel Buddhist monk he

he was dealing on a plane that most of us don't and he was it seems probably either watching that happen or he had already detached from his body right and so that that's that's a near death that feels like what what you kind of describe a lot of times is is is is that the Area yeah absolutely in fact there was a a big PE big organization that does surveys of people called Pew forum and a 20 2021 survey found that 72% of Americans believed that near-death experience was an observation of the essence leaving the

physical body at the time of death you know you can interpret that Essence as Soul so not only it it does do I believe that happens but so does the majority of people in the United States that there really is that Immaterial part of each and every one of us the soul and it really does leave and go on existing after see the apparent physical permanent death so so why why did you come to that conclusion you know there's there's there's the near-death experience um uh what the what is nf.org can you tell tell us

about that because because you know you've got this the New York Times bestseller evidence of the afterlife and then God in the afterlife the groundbreaking new Evidence of for God and near-death experience I mean you wrote these things you know this is something you're really really interested in but as an oncologist what was the what happened like where where did you what caused you to kind of even go down this this thing I mean this is all anecdotal but there's got to be through lines right oh absolutely yeah i' I've studied well over 4,000 near-death

experiences so it's it's no longer anecdotal this is a Mammoth series but I actually got interested in that decades ago when I was in my residency training via physician radiation oncology physician this was so long ago was before the internet so to read about cancer we'd go down to the medical library and go through these huge bound medical journals that were in paper form and so I was going through the Journal of the American Medical Association flipping through looking for a cancer related Article and completely by accident there was a title of the article that

had the phrase near-death experience in it so I paused I'd never heard about that I mean everything I learned medically was you're either alive or you're dead and what's this near-death experience thing so puzzled I read the entire article and was immediately fascinated I mean how can you not be fascinated by the concept of what happens after we die and yet here was a cardiologist who' had several Dozen patients that had near-death experiences that had that Consciousness separate from the body when their heart stopped beating bringing back observations very accurate observations of what was going

on while they were being resuscitated while they were literally in a coma so immediately I was fascinated I remember somewhat prophetically thinking why aren't more people researching this incredible phenomena and so that led to my thinking About doing this and then several years later when I heard my first person share a near-death experience in person I immediately said if this is true if this is real this changes my view of the universe so so over 25 years ago I started the website nf.org the near-death experience Research Foundation but I started that because I was curious

or if you will I was appropriately a skeptic at that time I'm a man of science I'm a man of evidence And so I knew I wanted to go to the best source of evidence that being people who had these experiences tell me about them in the form I had on the website and the multiple survey questions and once I started that process over 25 5 years ago very quickly I realized near-death experiences are in a word real what do you mean I so so typically what I would do I guess in that situation is

try to see if there was a through line are there similarities in how people Describe it oh absolutely both for me and for the many other people studying near-death experiences we see a very consistent pattern of elements or what occurs during a near-death experience now while no two near-death experiences are the same if you study a large number you will see this very common pattern there's that life-threatening event boom they're unconscious are clinically Dead with no heartbeat so at that time they shouldn't Have any conscious experience at all they do that's the experience part of

a near-death experience what's often described is so when when when when their everything stops they they seem to still know and be able to see what's going on oh absolutely in fact that's a very common initial thing that happens during a near-death experiences is that so-called out of- Body Experience Consciousness separates from the physical body while their physical body Is unconscious or clinically dead they shouldn't have any ability to bring back any memory any conscious sorum awareness at all and yet they do by the thousands they've shared with me what they can see with their

Consciousness as it rises typically above that body their physical body down below what they see and hear when they check it out later with people that were on the scene or what they saw and heard in the environment almost invariably 100% accurate down to the Finest details wow so they so the heart stops the brain's still working but the heart stops they can still ostensibly see and hear I would imagine but well but the brain isn't working that's the whole point of the brain's not working the when they okay look at it this way a

very common precipitating event of a near-death experience is a heart attack Cardiac Arrest that means your heart stops beating well immediately when your heart Stops beating blood stops flowing from the heart to the brain 10 to 20 seconds after your heart stops beating the EEG or electroencephalogram measuring brain electrical activity goes absolutely flat there's no measurable brain electrical cortical activity DN and yet that is a Time by The Hundreds people have shared having these near-death experiences Consciousness apart from the body very clear often uh most often super normal Awareness and alertness of ongoing Earthly events

at a time their body is is beyond unconscious in a coma so they can see their body even though their eyes are closed and there's no brain activity they're looking down and they can recall what happened as everybody's like get we're freaking out and trying to get them back to to life it absolutely it's very common for them to report the Frantic efforts of other people uh the emergency medical Team coming in trying to resuscitate them I they can see and describe vividly efforts at their own resuscitation they describe those defibrillators being placed on their

body because they don't have a measurable heartbeat Boom the chest moves up uh with the electrical defibrillator causes muscle contraction they describe that exactly boom boom they may need to be defibrillated multiple times they've been bagged by that time often intubated uh someone Squeezing a bag trying to get some oxygen oh these are these are people absolutely on the the threshold of life and death that have that heart stoppage and have that resuscitation and yet here's their Consciousness over their body during a near-death experience vividly aware down to the finest detail of what's going on

to their body down below can you give me some examples of of things that people saw and heard that they should not have seen and heard Where you know they they come back I mean do we that's the thing so sometimes maybe when you're coming to you're seeing all this stuff right but yeah how long are people out for typically in these situations right well your unconscious are clinically dead typically in the order of magnitude of minutes and if you start to get much longer than that other than exceptional situations like cold water grounding you're

not going to come back you're not Going to be able to be resuscitated so that's the amazing thing about near-death experiences is that even though their unconscious are clinically dead minutes they could have a very detailed amount of information of experience during their indes that will would have translated into far more than just a few minutes even over an hour in terms of relative Earthly time damn it's so wild so I didn't know that the electricity in the body had stopped That's significant you know no brain activity no heart activity and and meanwhile they pull

up they're they're able to see everything it makes sense though you you have examples of this with the with the Buddhists that practice this stuff they can go through you know the the in the Himalayas in India you'll find the Indian army will come across these yogis who will be in 50 below or 30 below in just a robe and they're covered in snow and they're just And they're literally meditating and not moving and practicing this Detachment you know and then of course I'm sure they get warmed up and all that but they can be

out there for way longer than a human being should be so yeah I mean yeah that's awesome I mean what the the power of the human mind and the brain and the ab is is it's far more than or not just the human brain and mind maybe it's something beyond the human brain and mind maybe It's the ability to watch the we know that you can watch the mind right like you can you can actually you can actually observe your thoughts you can see the thoughts come in to to your brain like an empty room

I mean that that would be the idea of kind of like with with meditation from what I understand it's like trying to have no thoughts but be pure awareness whatever that means I'm not you know but I I am fascinated with that and maybe that's Maybe that's the area that we're talking about I don't know but it does seem that Christianity talks about a soul the Buddhists talk about a soul of some kind I mean it even the Greeks even even the philosophers like Aristotle and certainly PL Plato and talked about it right yeah it's

really that's what's so exciting about studying near-death experience I me we're literally even after it's been known for decades I it's still I feel like we're at the frontier Still there's so much new and exciting things to be learned in fact I would say even after I've studied it for 25 years that what we don't know about near-death experiences exceeds what we do know and so it's a wide openen area it's exciting U there a lot of fascinating things going on and you know over and over to have all these people from every Walk of

Life from all around the world young old regardless of their prior belief system all describing near-death experiences That are remarkably similar have remarkably consistently observed not only content as to what occurs but also typically occurring in a consistent order so it's U remains fascinating to me even after all these years what is that order explain that sure well again while while no two near-death experiences are the same or have even you know all the characteristics a common thing that occurs during a near-death experience is boom that Physical accident or injury their physical body is down

their unconscious we clinically Dead with no heartbeat then at that time as we talked about a common initial event is that so-called out-of- Body Experience Consciousness Rising above their body where they can see and hear ongoing Earthly events vividly accurate following that they Men Travel into or through a tunnel variably described but really never claustrophobic often at the end of that Tunnel there's a beautiful they call it a mystical unearthly light some people have said well it's like a thousand times a thousand times intense as a sun but it doesn't hurt their eyes remember they

don't have eyes at this time they are a non-physical conscious entity they may then pass into an unworldly realm often called a Heavenly realm and that's probably an app description in that realm there can be things analogous to Earth and tend in terms of like Landscapes buildings that's where they may encounter deceased loved ones uh these are joyous reunion you'll see you'll see people actually meet loved ones they'll they'll see yeah about about 15% of near-death experiences have that these are people that they knew and loved in their Earthly life and uh even if this

person died of advanced age or a disfiguring accident or illness they're essentially always picture perfect health these are joyous reunions and Also deceased beloved pets are encountered too again same story picture perfect health so really a very dramatic part of near-death experiences is they have that interaction uh in this beautiful realm the communication is essentially always non-physical or telepathic I like to think of it as telepathic on steroids you're communicating immediately all thought context around the thought emotions uh in such a Clarity that there's no room At all for any confusion or misunderstanding they me

describe colors in the Landscapes flowers that is colors that is beautiful beyond anything on Earth literally colors that they've not known on the Earthly life that are beautiful beyond anything Earthly possible uh in this realm they may also have a Life review and they may become aware of part or even all of their prior life events which is just again sometimes I have to almost pinch myself Because here they are unconscious or dead for minutes and here they are reviewing for what many people report their entire prior life even if they've lived for decades uh

around this time also don't forget they had that horrifying accident or injury that that rendered them physically unconscious and yet here in the in this unearthly afterlife realm they're feeling overwhelming intense love overwhelming intense peace uh the fact the two most Common words used to describe near death experiences are light and love and so they feel this intensely uh and and interestingly many near-death experiencers say while this unearthly heavenly like Realm may sound very alien or unfamiliar to us when they're there they feel a strong sense of familiarity like they've been there before God that's

wild man that's you know I had a um I went to a my my f friend of the family's funeral and the Priest said you know this this transition to something else is always painful and he likened it to when a baby's born the baby's been in this beautiful warm womb you know all safe and warm and being fed and it's quiet and it's you can hear the mom's heartbeat and then it's shot into the world held upside down slapped on the ass or whatever happens you know and it's awful it's cold it's bright it's

just this you know And slowly the child wakes up into this reality that we end up becoming attached to because there's obviously suffering in life but also a lot of joy and then of course that ends and you know he was kind of saying and you're being born into something else probably better right kind of a beautiful way to look at it you know yeah you know I have great news for people that have worried about what happens immediately after their physical bodily death and it's nothing Like being born into the physical world in fact

I mean these people shoot may be in agony with that disease or accident that is ultimately going to lead them unconsciousness I mean they're often described horrible pain immediately prior to their near-death experience but Boom the moment that Consciousness goes apart from the body they have essentially never described any pain whatsoever boom uh they're painfree and and very aware of that because that's a Very sudden and very dramatic transition from them uh leaving their physical body's accident or illness and throughout all the near experience uh virtually never is there any description of unpleasant painful Sensations

I mean it's essentially always that that overwhelming unearthly even and level of intensity feeling of peace love joy Harmony connection with that around there I mean it's just a very dramatic thing unfortunately at the end of the Near-death experience boom right back into the physical body and then as I've so often heard hundreds and hundreds of times boom all of a sudden that pain that misery immediately returns as they uh resume Consciousness in their physical body do you have you done follow-ups on on what it does to people in terms of their relationship to death

to are they less fearful typically because I know somebody um uh I think it's God I can't he's gonna kill me uh Deelder uh is it Rob deelder he he was his leg and hand were bitten off by a shark and he basically died you know he died right in the boat when they got him up on the boat and uh and I said and he said dude it was it was I there I am getting my leg bit off and my hand bit off by I look down and I see this giant black eye

it's my nightmare right and he was like you know it's not that bad it's not as bad as I thought it would be and then he started to try to swim the boat He he he dies basically loses all his Consciousness in the boat I said are you afraid of death and he's like not even a little bit anymore like he just I suffered the worst thing that Mo you know most people's Nightmare and wasn't that bad actually it could be worse I mean obviously there hell exists on Earth but you know Paul deelder Paul

deelder um sorry Paul uh but uh you know he was also an Australian Navy SEAL he's a badass but still it's kind of cool to Hear now now let me ask you this yeah yeah go ahead sorry yeah you you asked a great question there does having a near-death experience change people answer generally profoundly I actually just have an article published in the peer General explore it's actually archived by the National Library of Medicine and boom there's my name on the article which is the largest study of what we call near-death experience After Effects which

is the typical changes Observed in people that have near-death experiences so in this study which was the largest study ever published about near-death experience After Effects uh me and my co-author we were able to come some very definite conclusions we found that people that had near-death experiences were as your friend dramatically reduced fear of death uh the great great majority of people have literally have no fear of death and I mean think about that here's people that That suffered something that most of us can only imagine you know the horror of coming that close to

with a close brush with death and yet here they are not fearing death after their near-death experience but in addition to that obviously they have an increased belief in an afterlife why well from their perspective they know what lies Beyond death's door because they personally experienced it but in addition to that they find that they have much much Increased level of compassion again don't forget that very common word they encounter in near-death experiences love it's almost like they bring back that little piece of heaven and radiate it through the rest of their Earthly life increasing

compassionate caring for their fellow human beings uh decreased materialism uh sometimes they'll change jobs if their job can't really allow them to manifest their Newfound values of Love comp passion and concern for Other people so yeah near-death experiences change people dramatically and that changes lifelong you know unlike other singles for like flash in the pan events that can occur during life these after effects or changes actually become more pronounced years to decades after the near-death experience really and I will oh absolutely and you don't change your life that dramatically unless you are convinced that what

you experienced deep down and you've had Years to Decades of Life later you know it's real or you don't change your life in response to that event that's for sure um do you know you could you could be speaking about psychedelics I've heard people describe psychedelics certain trips almost the same way um have you done any studies on on psychedelics and and and how they relate to near-death experience yeah that's a really controversial topic there's some real mixed literature on that uh so I as I I co-authored a several years ago with another researcher where

we did a review of many many near-death experiences and identified what occurs during them and we compared that to reviewing the published literature about what occurs during psychedelic experiences and it was our conclusion of that article there's really not a lot of similarity between the two I mean there could be some overlap a little bit with some experiences some netive experiences but As a whole they seem to be two separate groups another perspective on this is to go to study firstperson descriptions of their psychedelic experience and you can find literally thousands of those on a

website called arrow. org e r o wi you pick any psychotropic or brain acting drug that you want and you can read hundreds and hundreds of people describing the what they experienced in their own words and I can tell you if you could do what I did and compare What's written about psychotropic drugs and the experience of they have real world real first person and compare that to real world first person near-death experiences you don't have to read too many experiences in both categories to realize they're way different psychedelics oh they are different they're very

different okay oh yeah they're more like psychedelics are more likely to be uh frightening they're more likely to be well obviously Hallucinatory unreal as opposed to near-death experiences that are grippingly real and psychedelics experiences can skip around like dreams and you almost never see that with near-death experiences so yes a few psychedelic experiences can uh reproduce some significant parts or even substantial parts of a near-death experience but that's that's pretty uncommon that's interesting that's an interesting distinction it's an Important one too what about dreams what about dreams I mean what what's your theory on that

I'm glad to answer that and I'm true confession time okay yeah don't tell anyone but this is true um so at the very first time I started that research website .org right off the bat I was curious about that too I mean you know dreams seem to be very unearthly experiences so the very first survey had a question was your experience dreamlike In any way and we had you know dozens of near-death experiencers respond to that in a narrative form and I was embarrassed over and over I kept hearing no way are you kidding not

a chance what there's nothing like that and then they were so emphatic and I felt so embarrassed because of how obvious it was to some PE people had dreams obviously and they have near-death experiences uh as a researcher uh that's the most embarrassing question I ever Answered so it's not only just no it's hell no they're nothing like they're nothing alike dreams and near-death experiences and so that was drilled into me so quickly in that survey that was one of the major reasons I very quickly developed another version of the survey because I was tired

of being embarrassed and frankly offend ing near-death experiences when it was so obvious that near-death experiences are nothing like dreams well it sounds like the lynchman There is that near-death experiences you're totally Lucid you're totally aware of what's going on you're not you're not dreaming you're you're you're aware you're not dreaming you're aware you're not having a hallucinatory experience or a psychotic break you're aware that this is something beautiful and from what I've read a lot of people don't want to leave they kind of want to stay there you know once they get through That

tunnel which is so crazy it it really is that's you just raised a hugely important point I mean especially when people are in having a fairly deep near-death experience they're in that unearthly or Heavenly realm and you said earlier sometimes that strong sense of familiarity I've been here I belong here you know here's deceased loved ones that pain and misery they knew in their Earthly life gone It's they often uh would they are the great majority of people having a near-death experience don't make a choice about whether to stay in that beautiful une Earthly realm

or or not they're sent back basically involuntarily to their physical body but there is a small percentage that have a fascinating discussion typically with other beings around them about a choice they have a choice to stay in that beautiful an Earthly realm or return to The Earthly body I mean just imagine here they've know Earthly life is all they've known for T typically years decades for most people friends family loved ones everyone is down in that Earthly life and yet among those who have a choice the great majority do not want to leave that unearthly

Heavenly realm it's so beautiful really the sense absolutely significant majority what brings them back is it a conscious Choice you're right there's often uh Well 100% of those people did ultimately come back and tell their story so it's fascinating to find out what happened the other beings around them will often dialogue with them and this is a really awesome interaction they have with these other sort of Spiritual Beings um they may be shown we have a small Series where they're shown what happens if they decide to stay in that unearthly realm they're shown a vision

of their own funeral to happen a few days later and That is just grippingly Eerie I recall one for example where there was young children involved and here were two or three year old children in the front row the funeral basically giggling at the Future Vision of his own funeral because they didn't know what a funeral was and I would that's that's that's what would happen and that's certainly very convincing but when people do make that decision to come back and I've actually investigated that most commonly it's for Children if they have children uh and

it's you know an important connection and they become aware that it would be a severe impact to their children or other loved ones in their life spouses uh and and that's really one of the major reasons they come back are for those very important critical family relationships I'll tell you one reason they don't come back and that's to you know make more money to get more material possessions to to basically Manifest the values that that that most people have on Earth it's really different than that it's to manifest love manifest compassion be there for their

family uh help others in their family friends family loved ones you know navigate the difficulties of life so they make that literally heroic Choice uh off so often when they have a choice some else for love right immediately yeah boom once they make that decision almost verely boom they're Right back down in their physical body and they sometimes regret that decision that's not at all unusual they return to that miserable even the horror of that accident or injury that nearly killed them damn and they they yeah they resent it I mean they they they regret

they regret it you know yeah yeah yeah yeah that that's that's fascinating that's fascinating but it makes sense there was a there was a pastor who said i' I've been at the bedside of thousands of People have taken their last breath not one of them has to see their trophies or to see what their bank accounts said or to hear about their accomplishments they just wanted to be around the ones they love you know that that which makes a lot of sense great great words of wisdom right there yeah and but we forget it we

always forget it because we have alimony and we have rent and we have mortgage and have all these things right and that that's part of being alive that's part Of part of being alive is being thrust into the Practical dayto day reality you know yeah and and that's really true I mean here in our Earthly life I mean what do you think about all day long I me here I'm a doctor I've got patients I've got deadlines I've got this dang paperwork to do I've got you know stuff you know see like coming out my

ear sometime and yet you know certainly you know we've got the other things other life commitments other things we need to Do friends family loved ones and yet you know sometimes you you take that moment of silence you think about that what's really important in life and I think just about everyone if they really think about what they really want to do what they really want to accomplish in their life it's just boom exactly what you heard from that minister with all the people dying and that is it it's those those positive moments when you

when you laughed when you loved when you shared When you were compassionate when you were loving uh you know it seems like we have multiple lines of sort of uh from of lines of of experience and evidence from Earthly lives all converging on how important those values are intimacy intimacy and Adventure those are the two things I think we stay alive for and you know when you go through something terrible but somebody's by your side you build a real Bond you can see that with soldiers Who've gone through combat together you can see that with

people who've gone through the same illness injuries it's pretty wild and the the whole point is it tends to build a bond it it creates real love you know um yeah yeah absolutely yeah that's a that's a really good point and uh so you know there's a lot of our or you know you don't have to have a near-death experience yeah uh you there's a lot you can learn from your own Earthly lives that can really inform The rest of your life in a very positive way how's it changed you oh enormously I mean here

I was over 25 years ago you know starting out as basically a skeptic because I'm a show it to me kind of person I make decisions as a physician treating cancer based on evidence based on reasoning people's lives depend on it measurable evidence youve got to measure so when I start this out I was basic I mean and it seem so fantastic I mean there's nothing I I I knew nothing Medically could explain Consciousness apart from the body consistently observed experiences in all age groups all prior belief systems and throughout the world I that that

was just a big bite for me to take so but I was intrigued I mean I'd read articles on it i' i' talked to a person live so once I started realizing as people shared their near-death experiences and and the research data set that I had mounted and mounted uh I became aware relatively Quickly no doubt about it based on the strongest evidence that I mean the evidence for the reality of near-death experience finally surpassed the level of evidence that we use to treat most types of cancer I mean this is huge numbers of people

not only from my research but from others so after a while you really accept the fact that based on evidence near-death experiences are real and then even then it still took me literally years to finally have That sink in and change me it changed me personally as a physician I'm much more open courageous with my patients I help them battle that life-threatening illness cancer with more courage and more uh than ever aware that even if we don't get that cancer cured even if they're going to to come that's not the end of their overall existence

that they have an afterlife and a wonderful afterlife just like all of us so that's helped me very very unscientific of you Very unscientific of You by the way very yeah learn that in medical school in residency training that's true and that's again you're back to that you know life experiences can be the greatest teacher but it's helped me to be far more compassionate far more aware patients I think I work harder than ever uh I mean it can be exhausting sometime but now more than ever my patients get the best and we give them

the best chance of getting their cancer cured What does research mean in this field sure uh there's retrospective studies that's what I do in other words We Gather stories from people that have had near-death experiences you know often many years ago they fill out a survey and then we we study that and then we go ahead and uh uh uh then we uh oh we go ahead and study that and uh uh let me back up so what research to me means exactly in in the neth experience Arena that it would be as fi was

uh in In doing medical research you you get the evidence you get the best evidence you can uh retrospective studies you look at people that have either been treated medically and how they did and what worked your death experience the same way you look at these narratives you look at all the survey questions you ask and and you put it all together so that's research uh that's retrospective there are a few like only about six prospective studies of near-death Experience where they studied people that were coding that say for example at the time they had

C heart stopped uh emergency room so there been in very very few prospective studies typically with very few patients we we're in desperate need to do more prospective near-death experience studies I think we could learn so much have you done a cross-section though of like are these people that are coming back and describing this tunnel and this light And their loved ones are they primarily Christians are they Americans are they white what are you know have we done any studies on on what happens to say a Korean Buddhist when they have a near-death experience or

a Shinto Japanese you know or an atheist have we had have you done any of that research because I always wonder if they religious and faith that based up bringing is actually what's playing a factor Here that's a great question and the answer is an emphatic yes here's the details uh due to the heroics of my wife who's an attorney but is also the Web Master of our nf.org website portions of the website including the survey has been translated into over 30 different languages we get accounts from people all over the world including non-western countries

so as a result of that we're able to do by far the largest cross-cultural study of Near-death experience that's ever been done and I've even done co-authored several papers with an Iranian near-death experience researcher uh who studies Muslim near-death experiences there um in our current survey we study we ask directly about religious affiliation at the time of their experience and we have a pretty large population of people that self-describe themselves as atheists as agnostics so what is amazing to me and other Near-death experience researchers it doesn't make any difference whether you're say a Christian in

the United States or a Muslim in Egypt or a Hindu in India anywhere in the world that you have your near-death experience and whatever your prior religious or cultural beliefs when you have that near-death experience it's going to be strikingly similar amazing that's a big deal that's interesting yeah you really don't see the prior religious beliefs Having a huge effect on the experience that they have in other words they're still going to have that Consciousness apart from the body go through the tunnel be in that beautiful unearthly landscape uh you know they may encounter deceased

relatives have a Life review feel those same emotions so everywhere on the planet that you are near the experience I guess you could say is the ultimate equal opportunity experience if you want to look at it that way because It it seems to affect people in so what experi how they experience it is is so similar and how they change their life after to it that can be significantly influenced by their prior beliefs in other words if they have prior particular religious beliefs yeah they they may put a spin on it based on their prior

beliefs and that's understandable yeah but what how often do they describe this tunnel with the light and is this cross-cultural this is this is something You hear from Buddhists Hindus Muslims atheist absolutely really yeah wow about about 15 20 years ago there was a controversy about whether people in non-western countries had tunnel experiences the answer I'm here to tell you I have um probably up to about 80 or 100 nonwestern near-death experiences so yes they do have tunnels and it's tunnels just like you know other people and don't forget language can get in the way

of describing a near-death Experience I mean here's something that people often have difficulty expressing in language because it's so unearthly it's so unlike any of their other experiences uh is fairly common for near-death experiences to be called ineffable which means difficult to describe in words so especially when you're trying to translate something in non-english into English that's where you get into a little bit of trouble but what shines through all those different Translations and different languages uh what people are experiencing it's uh it seems to be remarkably similar and that was what we established too

in my several authors I several Publications I co-authored with my Iranian Muslim near-death experience researcher how far back do near-death experiences go have you looked at the historical record sure the very first near-death experience that was as best we can tell described was back in the era of Plato Back then there was a soldier named ER erer and he died they thought died in battle and as was the custom at that time they put them on top of a big wood pile and they light it on fire and that was their custom back in the

Plato's era so er er was up on the funeral p and they were getting about ready to light it when he suddenly recovered from what they thought was fatal injuries and er went on to describe a very remarkable unearthly experience that seems Analogous to the near-death experiences we have today so subsequent to that time there's been near-death experiences recorded in medieval times uh from even centuries ago and including some very well documented ones from some centuries ago where people kept detailed records so near-death experiences uh you know when they first became widely popular with Dr

Raymond Moody's popular book Life After Life in 1975 near-death experience has been Around for centuries for Millennia we just didn't recognize them or know what they were there there are though like so so when you get rushed with endorphins I mean an overwhelming amount of endorphins pain goes away and you the people are being attacked by animals for example um they just go into this thing where they wow this is happening to me right now and they feel no pain um could it be that this is just an a a release of all the endorphins

in your Body sure now i' I've studied carefully the possible alternative explanations of near-death experiences and you raise a really intriguing possibility endorphins are if you will the brain's natural painkiller they're narcotic like uh substances that are naturally occurred in the brain and they specifically can reduce pain I mean it's probably a survival Advantage for people that we have endorphins in the brain the ability to produce that to just exactly like you Said there reduce pain when we're faced with a lifethreatening event however when people have that endorphin release in their brain in response to

some severe stress like narcotics like other types of related chemicals to orphans once you finish that life-threatening event you still have that pain relief that can go on literally for an hour or more that's not true with near-death experiences at all at the end of The Experience well first of all as we said During the experience during their nde they don't feel any pain they're they're incredibly painfree but Boom the moment they go back into their physical body the moment they come into Consciousness they are fully in pain and and generally profoundly so so there's

no sense that yeah no hint of that longlasting endorphin effect in near-death experiences whatsoever there are people that go through Terrible Things um I know of a father who came into the room After his son committed suicide terrible terrible I thought and he was watching himself he pulled up from his body and he could see himself responding in this situation um so there are there are people who go through terrible things and suddenly they can they pull P back from their body and even though they're not dead they're watching themselves so have you have you

looked at that um yes by the many many hundreds I love how you have an answer for all I'm Steal I'm trying to steal man this it's great man I tell you what yeah I I mean I've been so fascinated with this I set up an entire another website uh ob.org stands for the out-of- body experience Research Foundation so we've received several thousand other types of experiences I mean exactly like when described there if Consciousness goes apart from the body at a time when they're not physically compromised or having a close brush with death then

That's you know a spontaneous out of- body experience and these are fascinating experiences you know once again you have Consciousness apart from the body they can see and hear ongoing Earthly events that just about all the time they validate down to the finest details when they return to their physical body and check it out and yes out-of- body experiences can be induced by severe psychological stress they can occur spontaneously with Seeming no precipitating event at all and these they're fascinating experiences because again what occurs during them uh while there's as a group they're generally different

from near-death experiences there can be that overlap and that very remarkable occasional out of- body experience which is a very deep and profound spiritually transformative experience so we see lots and lots of that God it's amazing yeah it just it does sound like near- depth Experiences are a thing of their own they seem to stand apart from from all the explanations that go on with people when they're living in this realm I mean is that a fair statement oh absolutely true I mean think about the evidence for near-death experience Consciousness apart from the body and

what they see and hear is accurate even if what they're seeing and hearing is geographically far from their physical body and I mean like city blocks away Wait a minute we've had people blind yeah you've probably heard hold on go so so let's back up this is important so say that again say that again they've had they've so they've been dead they pull back from their body and they have experiences what like they they can they know what's going on blocks away oh yeah um that's unusual but we have scores of people that have that

out-of- body experience it's not just over their physical body occasionally Their Consciousness leaves the geographic area of their physical body and they can observe things uh blocks even over a mile away for example we had a non-western near-death experience where the guy had it went into cardiac arrest his heart stopped right out on a city street Consciousness over his body he saw people trying to bring him back to life but then his Consciousness drifted blocks away and saw his he was looking through a window and saw his Wife looking at housing in a different city

and that didn't make any sense to on on the internet it didn't make any sense they said what's this we've never talked about that we live here I mean what's going on it's only after he got over that close brush with death and talked with his wife yes exactly at that time he was physically down on the street dying uh she was looking over some housing in a different city because that day she'd had a job offer in that City and she was just curious what the housing would be like husband who had no idea

about that it was only after he observed that Consciousness apart from the body during his near-death experience he became aware once again validated that that physical or that that awareness that visual awareness far beyond any possible physical sensory awareness of his body details checked out to the finest detail you know William blatty I think wrote The Exorcist he was a journalist and he he I I don't know if this you know you have to be careful all these anecdotes stories but what what kind of fascinated him was that this kid in Egypt who was possessed

or you know had this psychotic break um ended up speaking I think Aramaic or something you know and and and was speaking languages that he had not been exposed to and that kind of sent him and you know Jung when he Studied psychotic breaks found that the the breaks were very similar cross-culturally they saw things they hallucinate ated they they had Revelations that were very very similar regardless of whether they had so the Yano Mamo in Brazil were very similar to someone in Sweden and this was in the 1800s when they had obviously no connection

so studying these sort of psychic structures that seem to cross over there is there is this human Connection that there are these broad similarities especially when we do break from what we would consider everyday reality uh that that's kind of fascinating too I don't know if you've looked into any of that oh I well you know as a doctor I you know I studied psychiatric illnesses was a long time ago in medical school but yeah I mean you're absolutely right you know it's absolutely fascinating when you know people have that that Other sort of direction

of brain function that being psychosis that being entering observations uh auditory hearing things that are unreal um how similar that can all be you know that all points to a similar area the brain that's having a dysfunction at the time of a psychotic break how have you been received by the scientific Community I'm sure you you suffer no shortage of Skeptics or are they are they are they sort of Bemusedly tolerant of the idea that there probably is something out there yeah there's a there there yeah that's a great question you know I've actually I've

never lost a debate with Skeptics by the way I mean you can tell already from what we've shared so far the evidence for the reality of near-death experience is so strong and there's ABS in fact when you start being a skeptic and saying well there must be something the physical brain that explains this I'm here to tell you there's been over 30 different skeptical explanations in near-death experience because reason there is so many is that no one or several of these skeptical explanations make any sense at all even to the Skeptics as a group so

they keep coming up with more and more explanations none of the skeptical expl ation explain anything that we're talking about here today but getting back to how I've been received you know once I I published Some very important peerreview literature I co-authored scholarly book chapters so as a result of that I've been quite respected in the academic Community that's interested in near-death experience um you know and certainly writing a New York Times best-selling book helps too so I've been very impressed overall my colleagues including those in medicine are are fascinated with this I've talked at

medic Grand rounds I've talked to groups Of doctors and as part of getting getting continued medical education credits they have to fill out a survey so I've actually seen some very objective assessment by by my peers by other doctors and I am amazed at how open they are how interested they are I think doctors especially when they hear about near-death experiences uh it's vividly obvious to them those doctors that have attended people that that coded whose heart stops where they had To do CPR where they had had to try to bring them back to life

and they all didn't make it they know darn good and well that the evidence from near-death experience absolutely is not explainable by physical brain function because that's a part of their Professional Knowledge and experience yeah they're they're they're in the trenches and they've seen it what's the name of your New York Times bestseller again yeah evidence of the afterlife the science of Near-death experiences and you you cover all this stuff you you look at all the data you you talk about crosscultural comparisons and all these things do you get into Consciousness what's your what's your

take on Consciousness this is a debated subject even among physicists you know the collapsing cat you know it how do you measure Consciousness well you can't you can measure everything else but the when when something is experienced something Happens to the electrons something happens and something doesn't happens sometimes that's sort of the collapsing cat theory Sure yeah in conscious you know certainly I've thought a lot about that and I've given a lot of talks about Consciousness related to near-death experience to me it is very obvious that you can put Consciousness into two groups there's a

physical consciousness of brain you know you have strokes you have focal brain dysfunction it creates Very specific neurologic deficits we know that because that's how the physical brain works and yet in the other side of the equation is the consciousness of near-death experiences the non-physical Consciousness the consciousness that clearly with a mountain of evidence and multiple lines of evidence is not due to physical brain function it's absolutely medically inexplicable so I think you literally have those two sort Of camps of Consciousness you know I encourage all Consciousness research or however you want to come at

that but certainly the physical consciousness of the brain doesn't explain the non-physical consciousness of near-death experience and vice versa yeah I mean maybe currently science can't explain it but you're in the process of trying to figure out a way to scientific explain it someday right I mean that's kind of the idea I I would I would be I it's Really interesting in my near-death experience work and the the obvious amazing descriptions of Consciousness during near-death experiences heck I'm easy I'm first and formost a scientist a researcher I go down the path of Truth wherever that

path leads if someone finds some physical brain function that explains all of near-death experience well first of all I would be astounded astonished be the most astonishing thing in my life because of the all the Evidence it's contrary but I'd be the first to embrace that I would say okay let's go share that with the world because I'm not here to Advocate a particular agenda or belief system I'm here to bring the best evidence about Consciousness particularly Consciousness during near-death experiences to the world that's really what I want to do my buddy Amir who's a

religious guy said something really cool he said you know we have six senses and earthworm has two They can they can sense touch and heat or whatever to them that's the reality to us being able to see and hear and taste and feel and touch or whatever and all our senses we're five senses I'm sorry um for that we know that I mean we had that bats have sonar but we maybe there's another sense maybe there are a number of Senses maybe this is just a parallel universe maybe we're maybe we're living who knows who

knows but uh I am I am for sure a believer that there Are things that are that exists that you can't measure and not at least with our instrumentation not with our visual apparatus not with our auditory apparatus um so you know it's kind of one of the reasons I stay alive I love it yeah I couldn't agree more I mean what we don't know about this bigger picture of the universe is just waiting for there to be discovered I mean wouldn't that be fascinating to you know at least get these tantalizing hints That lines

of evidence about that greater picture the Multiverse uh you know that additional senses that lay Laten you know for all of us in our human brains I mean it's it's just how could one not be fascinated by by Consciousness and and all the possibilities and all the things that we have yet to discover that that could profoundly impact Humanity if we were to learn more about them I'm going to send this uh podcast to a number of people Who are fascinated with this um here in Hollywood so I appreciate you stay safe on that Highway

Dr Jeff long and oh I will I hope they catch that I hope they catch that bastard um oh jeez he's probably crazy or who knows you know doesn't matter uh he's crazy yep so so nf.org is the website um the near-death uh um what is that near-death experience yeah the near-death experience Research Foundation go yeah you got it and then and then that's org and then New York Times bestseller evidence of the afterlife God and the afterlife the groundbreaking new evidence for God and near-death experience um that's awesome man well thanks for thanks for

coming on man we really appreciate it okay this was an awesome discussion so I want to thank you for this very insightful and revealing discussion we had this this was fantastic I appreciate you well you made it easy so uh you you are as you develop more stuff and as you get closer To God you come on you come on here anytime I love talking about this stuff oh I appreciate that this was this I just love doing this I mean you could I could I could literally talk your ears off for hours but that

would be good I would I let's let's shoot for being back here because I think it's not only you know it's above and beyond just you and I are both fascinated and had an incredibly good discussion but this is going to be extremely informative and Inspirational to a vast number of your viewers so I think that's you know you're back to that sort of charge from near-death experience is reaching out to the world with compassion with truth that's exactly what we just did here today I think so and you're and you're you're saying there's more

to discuss so we can have really yeah oh yeah tease me with what's what's for the next podcast tease me yeah still doing My research and still finding some amazing things so well you know it will be you certainly what we don't know about nde exceeds what we do know but by goly I'm going to spend the rest of my life narrowing that gap down so that we get the more and more we learn the more and more amazing it gets even after all these years I've been studying thank you I'm excited uh Dr Jeff

Jeffrey long uh we'll talk to you soon appreciate you look forward to thanks again you got it Buddy see you later consider [Music]