May 8, 2026 • 18 mins
George Noory and author Michael Zigarelli explore scientific cases of near death experiences where people recount what happened to them after dying, whether chemicals in the brain could be creating the visions of near death experiences, and how people's lives have changed after returning from death.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Michael Zigarelli with US, professor at the Messiah University in Pennsylvania,
author of a dozen books on leadership and practical theology,
and his latest work is Evidence for Heaven, Near Death Experiences,
and the Morning Case for the Afterlife. Michael, welcome to
the show. Looking forward to this.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thank you, George, thanks so much for the invitation.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Is investigating near death experiences and evidence for Heaven? Was
that out of your norm?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well? It, like you said, professor of leadership, and this
is just kind of a natural extension. We're leading people
toward an understanding of God and of truth and of
potentially the afterlife. So it's pretty broad umbrella and it's
not totally outside my wheelhouse. I have a seminary degree
in addition to my social science background.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Oh good for you. That's variety. To be sure, what
got you to investigate life after death?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Well? I guess I want to know the answer. Who
among us doesn't? What's that? Sir?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We all do?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, who among us doesn't want to know? What happens
after we die, and the older I get, I think,
the more I want to know the answer, and the
more that people around me pass away, the more I
want to know the answer. So I guess as a
lifelong researcher, as a lifelong social scientist, I undertook this
research to see what we could possibly know about this question.
(01:32):
And the result after several years of investigation is this book,
Evidence for Heaven, just being released by by Baker Books.
And it's not a book of mere anecdotes, although there
are a lot of anecdotes in there and very good
books out there, inspirational books on I went to heaven,
this is what I saw, This is what I heard.
But it's not that kind of book. It's actually a
(01:53):
book that pulls together the best eyewitness evidence we have
for life after death and tries to share that in
a compact way so that people can understand the evidence
and really decide for themselves. It's a little like a
Greatest Hits album, if you will, right, here's the best
of what we've learned. Here's the case for the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Michael, did you ever have any doubts about the existence
of the afterlife?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Sure? I mean I've had ebbs and flows throughout my life.
I've known plenty of people like that, and it's I
think natural to wonder about these existential questions. And frankly,
I think until we doubt, until we really test our faith,
our worldview, whatever you might call it, it doesn't really
(02:40):
become our own. It just becomes the worldview of our
parents or our teachers, our pastors, our friends, whatever. But
I mean, we really have to stress test it, I think,
and that has that's happened for me quite a bit
over the years. Frankly, what we found in this investigation
(03:02):
gives me increasing confidence, and I'm eager to share some
of it with your audience.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Absolutely, I'd love to hear some of it. In your book,
you talk about seven lines of evidence, let's start.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Go ahead, Yeah, well that is the whole book. So
maybe I can give you a big picture and then
we can drill down into to whatever you want. And
the big picture is basically this, And there are thousands
of eyewitness accounts from all over the world of a
life beyond this one, typically people who are very near
(03:37):
death or maybe who are even clinically dead and then
later return to consciousness with this claim. That they've been
outside their physical body in some other realm, and the
stories are strikingly consistent. I mean, these people they come
back telling stories of seeing themselves from above and traveling
(03:58):
through a tunnel and this being of life, and your
audience is going to be familiar with a lot of
this phenomenology. You tell stories of meeting deceased friends and
relatives and sometimes even deceased pets, of being in a
place of indescribable beauty, and some report having a full
life review. Everything ever said, thought you did in my
(04:18):
life was reviewed by this supreme being and then being
sent back to their earthly bodies. So those are a
couple of lines of evidence here is that the prevalence
of these things as throughout history, as well as the
pattern the consistency of them. But beyond that, one line
of evidence might be how their lives are radically transformed
(04:39):
when they come back from this near death experience, or
how they report things that they saw around their body
that turned out to be accurate when they were unconscious,
when they were in surgery, they saw these things in
the operating room or outside. These so called corroborated cases
or cases with independent verification, very probative, very powerful evidence there.
(05:00):
There's a line of evidence on how children come back
with information about deceased relatives that they never knew. There's
more here than many people realize, and collectively, I think
it produces a surprisingly credible case for the afterlife, and
it's a case based on eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's the point, Michael, how do we know that under
NDEs near death experiences, the brain isn't doing something biological
creating these events in our head as we pass on
or get close to passing on.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, that's an excellent question and exactly the right question
to ask. I think we really need to be skeptical
about these extraordinary claims, and certainly some NDEs could be
the result of natural brain based phenomena. And actually they're
brilliant people working on this in the neuroscience community, suggesting
these hypothetical links to natural phenomena and even finding brain
(05:58):
signatures up to an hour after after death. So in
the book Evidence for Heaven, we do a bit of
a deep dive into their work and try to give
a fair hearing to their points, to their objections. Here,
when we look at superstars in the neurology field that
names that may not be household names, but you know
(06:19):
Daniel Conziela of Copenhagen University, or Gmo Borgigen of University
of Michigan, Kevin Nelson, University of Kentucky, Charlotte Marshall University
of Liege in Belgium. I mean, again, names that might
not mean much to our audience here, but these are
the best and brightest in the field, and they are confident, George,
that this afterlife is all in our heads, that all
(06:43):
human experience, including near death experience, arises from the brain.
But to your question, now, you know, having said that this,
they've not really found any linkages between the brain and
actual NDEs. We just have theories. We have lots of
theories here, and frankly, I think that implies that we
(07:04):
don't we don't know yet what's really going on physiologically.
I mean, if we knew, there wouldn't be so many
medical theories, right. But but but even beyond that, let
me kind of bring this to a point here that
there's also this broader problem of science having not linked
the brain to consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness. It's
(07:26):
called if if your listeners want to look it up,
the hard problem of consciousness. Still, you know, some of
these brilliant skeptics, they're they're insisting that, and I think
more ideologically than scientifically that Look, the brain did it.
You know, consciousness can't continue after physical death because it's
inextricably linked to the brain. And personally, as smart as
(07:49):
these folks are, I think that all of us researchers
need to be logical about this, not ideological, just to
follow the data wherever it leads. Let's not reject out
of hand and quite unscientifically, the possibility of a supernatural realm,
the possibility of continuity of consciousness after our physical body dies.
(08:12):
So bottom line point here, some good empirical work is
being done to understand what's really happening in an NDE,
what's happening with the brain, what's happening with the body,
But so far nobody's been able to link them to
the brain. So they just assume that nds come from
the brain because of their kind of physicalist presuppositions, because
(08:32):
of the reductionist worldview that we experience it. Well, then
the brain did it.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
What fascinates me about all this, Michael, is the fact
that ages and ages of ago they talked about near
death experiences as well. They've never stopped.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yes, that's true. Near death experiences didn't begin in the
modern day. They didn't begin in today's hospitals or hospice facilities.
We have ancient writings from many civilizations China, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome,
even the Americas that that report these these out of
body journeys and movement from darkness into light, and encounters
(09:11):
with spiritual beings returned to life. All they bear resemblance
to today's accounts. And these different cultures they you know,
of course, they interpreted through their own cultural lenses, but
their their narrative is strikingly consistent. And you know what's
fascinating is that these different people groups across these continents
(09:32):
had no communication with one another across those continents. I mean,
you think about that, and the reporting exactly the same things,
and these writings were very, very similar phenomena. It appears
that these phenomena must be pre cultural, as ethno historians
might say, rather than be in shape by cultural narratives
(09:53):
or religious traditions. So if you'd like, I could share
a quick example of how it transcends history in evidence
for Heaven. We show a painting in that book of
what looks like one of these NDEs. There's a classic
tunnel leading to a bright light, has spiritual beings in it.
They're helping people into the tunnel and through the tunnel.
(10:15):
These people have ecstatic expressions on their faces. They're just delighted,
mesmerized by the light. A lot of classic elements are
in this painting. And you might say, okay, well, so
what it's a painting, it's depiction of NDEs evidence for Heaven. No,
that's evidence of nothing, thank you very much, except that
this painting, George, is from five hundred years ago. It's
(10:38):
currently hanging in a gallery in Venice, Italy. Five centuries ago.
This artist, his name is Eronymous Bosh, a Dutch artist,
painted what essentially could have been my book cover in
Evidence for Heaven. And it's just extraordinary the consistency of
these stories over time. So things like this very weighty evidence.
(10:59):
I think in this case for the afterlife. If some
sort of out of body experience really does occurs as
we die, then you'd think that history would record that,
and in fact, history does.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I wanted just watch. I had a picture called the
Garden of earthly delights, A bizarre painting. Bizarre painting.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, a lot of this stuff does look otherworldly.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You have talked about in your book corroborated near death experiences.
What are they?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, corroborated meaning there's there's externally verifiable connections to what's
being said. I give you a couple quick examples. Maybe
that's the easiest way to do this. So one woman
said that she had floated near the ceiling during her surgery,
very common report here, and but while she was up there,
(11:56):
she said she memorized a long serial number that she
saw on top of a respirator. And another patient recalled
seeing I said it was a nineteen eighty five quarter
face up on some cardiac monitor in the operating room.
And another patient insisted that she saw a red shoe
on the hospital roof as she drifted toward the sky. Now,
(12:20):
the staff checked each of these very skeptical, but they
found the serial number exactly as the woman had recited it,
all twelve digits. They found the quarter, the date was accurate,
They found the red shoe on the roof. These people
were unconscious, George, but somehow they came back with this
this kind of information. Can I give you a few
more examples please, yeah, yeah, So in give you a
(12:43):
couple out of Europe here and in France there was
there was a woman who woke up after surgery, and
she not only accurately described her surgical procedure, which she
had no specialty knowledge about, but she also was able
to describe the simultaneous amputation in the adjacent room. This
guy had his leg amputated. They put it in a
yellow bag. She somehow knew that she was right about that.
(13:07):
And another French patient who had already been pronounced dead.
The doctor was off preparing the death certificate. Then this
patient eventually wakes up and can recount for the nursing
staff word for word both sides of a private phone
conversation that had happened down the hall after he had
been pronounced dead. And in another case, emergency room patient
(13:30):
reported that during surgery he floated up one floor. His
consciousness floated up on one floor and he saw looked
around so on an empty hospital wing, and he claimed that, well,
there's nobody here, but this is weird. There are people
in these rooms. He looks closer, they're not people. They're
actually mannequins in the hospital beds with with ivs attached
(13:52):
to them, and you know what wakes up from his coma? Uh, doctor,
what a weird dream? What do you make of this?
And the the staff is just exchanging these knowing glances
at one another. As it turns out, there was this
restricted access nurse training center one floor above, and there's
no way this guy should have had that kind of knowledge.
(14:13):
This is what we mean by corroborated. What they come
back and they report something and it gets independently verified
by the staff or by others. And they are the
classic cases that some of your audience may have heard about,
the Pam Reynolds case, the tennis shoe case, the Denture's case.
Think your audience can look those up judge for themselves.
And then on top of all of that, you have
(14:35):
these accounts from kids, from children awakening from a coma
talking about deceased relatives that they didn't know and they're
correct about it. So this is what mean by independent
confirmation by corroboration. And there are just dozens of these stories.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Do you find, Michael, that those who come back from
near death experiences are different? They've changed somewhat.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, most do come back different. And you might expect that, George,
because I mean, they just narrowly escape death, right. I mean,
it's an epiphany, it's it's a bit of a wake
up call. But we have some pretty rigorous research published
in one of the top medical journals in the world,
a journal called the Lancet over in the UK, that
shows that those close to death who had an ND
(15:23):
change a lot more than those close to death who
didn't have an ND I mean it's like test group,
control group, very very tightly controlled experiment here, and the
NDE group tends to return less concerned about prestige or
power accumulation or their reputation. You know what other people
(15:43):
think of them. They're less anxious, they're more altruistic. They
don't they don't fear death anymore, most of them because
they're they're confident that they know what's next. Plus, we
have stories of these radical transformations. I mean the atheists
becoming pastors. We have a mobster becoming a social worker.
We have people giving up careers as lawyers or executives
(16:05):
to enter the helping professions. And why is that Well,
I think it's because they essentially come back with this
new meta narrative in forming their life. They now firmly
believe that death is not the end, it's not termination,
but it's transformation, and that allows them to live differently
(16:27):
and to love differently, and it opens up all sorts
of other existential questions. If there's an afterlife, well, how
do I get to this afterlife? Is it one place
or is it two places? And does that mean that
how I live and what I believe actually matters? And
the last thing I'll say about this is, you know,
all these transform lives, all these stories, it's not necessarily
(16:49):
proof of an afterlife. It's just what's called circumstantial evidence.
But it is consistent with what we'd expect if they did,
in fact have some sort of the other worldly experience
that included a supreme being of light and of unconditional love. So, yeah,
the transformation one of most common things that we see
(17:09):
in the research.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Michael, do you find that the closer people get to
really close to death, the more profound their experiences when
they come out of it.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Can you just clarify, you mean the closer they come,
you mean like when they're they're near, really nearing that point,
really near death, really near death. Well, that's when these
that's when they start to have these visions or even
after they have been declared clinically dead, which means you know,
the heart stops, breathing stops, So that's when these these
(17:44):
things occur. Now, I mean there's no there's no standardized
definition of near death experience. I mean, it's it's one
of those things where you know, researchers sometimes they talk
about it is disembodied consciousness or non local consciousness, but
more simply stated, these are events that occur when a
person is clinically dead or very near death, and as
(18:06):
we were saying before, very prevalent, somewhere between four and
nine percent. Most of these surveys indicate say that, yes,
I've had that sort of experience, and that that would
be I mean, if you do the math, that's millions
in the United States and extrapolates to hundreds of millions
around the world. So yeah, that that is when these occur,
(18:29):
is when when people are right up on the brink
of eternity.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Michael Zigarelli with US, professor at the Messiah University in Pennsylvania,
author of a dozen books on leadership and practical theology,
and his latest work is Evidence for Heaven, Near Death Experiences,
and the Morning Case for the Afterlife. Michael, welcome to
the show. Looking forward to this.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thank you, George, thanks so much for the invitation.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Is investigating near death experiences and evidence for Heaven? Was
that out of your norm?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well? It, like you said, professor of leadership, and this
is just kind of a natural extension. We're leading people
toward an understanding of God and of truth and of
potentially the afterlife. So it's pretty broad umbrella and it's
not totally outside my wheelhouse. I have a seminary degree
in addition to my social science background.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Oh good for you. That's variety. To be sure, what
got you to investigate life after death?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Well? I guess I want to know the answer. Who
among us doesn't? What's that? Sir?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We all do?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, who among us doesn't want to know? What happens
after we die, and the older I get, I think,
the more I want to know the answer, and the
more that people around me pass away, the more I
want to know the answer. So I guess as a
lifelong researcher, as a lifelong social scientist, I undertook this
research to see what we could possibly know about this question.
(01:32):
And the result after several years of investigation is this book,
Evidence for Heaven, just being released by by Baker Books.
And it's not a book of mere anecdotes, although there
are a lot of anecdotes in there and very good
books out there, inspirational books on I went to heaven,
this is what I saw, This is what I heard.
But it's not that kind of book. It's actually a
(01:53):
book that pulls together the best eyewitness evidence we have
for life after death and tries to share that in
a compact way so that people can understand the evidence
and really decide for themselves. It's a little like a
Greatest Hits album, if you will, right, here's the best
of what we've learned. Here's the case for the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Michael, did you ever have any doubts about the existence
of the afterlife?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Sure? I mean I've had ebbs and flows throughout my life.
I've known plenty of people like that, and it's I
think natural to wonder about these existential questions. And frankly,
I think until we doubt, until we really test our faith,
our worldview, whatever you might call it, it doesn't really
(02:40):
become our own. It just becomes the worldview of our
parents or our teachers, our pastors, our friends, whatever. But
I mean, we really have to stress test it, I think,
and that has that's happened for me quite a bit
over the years. Frankly, what we found in this investigation
(03:02):
gives me increasing confidence, and I'm eager to share some
of it with your audience.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Absolutely, I'd love to hear some of it. In your book,
you talk about seven lines of evidence, let's start.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Go ahead, Yeah, well that is the whole book. So
maybe I can give you a big picture and then
we can drill down into to whatever you want. And
the big picture is basically this, And there are thousands
of eyewitness accounts from all over the world of a
life beyond this one, typically people who are very near
(03:37):
death or maybe who are even clinically dead and then
later return to consciousness with this claim. That they've been
outside their physical body in some other realm, and the
stories are strikingly consistent. I mean, these people they come
back telling stories of seeing themselves from above and traveling
(03:58):
through a tunnel and this being of life, and your
audience is going to be familiar with a lot of
this phenomenology. You tell stories of meeting deceased friends and
relatives and sometimes even deceased pets, of being in a
place of indescribable beauty, and some report having a full
life review. Everything ever said, thought you did in my
(04:18):
life was reviewed by this supreme being and then being
sent back to their earthly bodies. So those are a
couple of lines of evidence here is that the prevalence
of these things as throughout history, as well as the
pattern the consistency of them. But beyond that, one line
of evidence might be how their lives are radically transformed
(04:39):
when they come back from this near death experience, or
how they report things that they saw around their body
that turned out to be accurate when they were unconscious,
when they were in surgery, they saw these things in
the operating room or outside. These so called corroborated cases
or cases with independent verification, very probative, very powerful evidence there.
(05:00):
There's a line of evidence on how children come back
with information about deceased relatives that they never knew. There's
more here than many people realize, and collectively, I think
it produces a surprisingly credible case for the afterlife, and
it's a case based on eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's the point, Michael, how do we know that under
NDEs near death experiences, the brain isn't doing something biological
creating these events in our head as we pass on
or get close to passing on.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, that's an excellent question and exactly the right question
to ask. I think we really need to be skeptical
about these extraordinary claims, and certainly some NDEs could be
the result of natural brain based phenomena. And actually they're
brilliant people working on this in the neuroscience community, suggesting
these hypothetical links to natural phenomena and even finding brain
(05:58):
signatures up to an hour after after death. So in
the book Evidence for Heaven, we do a bit of
a deep dive into their work and try to give
a fair hearing to their points, to their objections. Here,
when we look at superstars in the neurology field that
names that may not be household names, but you know
(06:19):
Daniel Conziela of Copenhagen University, or Gmo Borgigen of University
of Michigan, Kevin Nelson, University of Kentucky, Charlotte Marshall University
of Liege in Belgium. I mean, again, names that might
not mean much to our audience here, but these are
the best and brightest in the field, and they are confident, George,
that this afterlife is all in our heads, that all
(06:43):
human experience, including near death experience, arises from the brain.
But to your question, now, you know, having said that this,
they've not really found any linkages between the brain and
actual NDEs. We just have theories. We have lots of
theories here, and frankly, I think that implies that we
(07:04):
don't we don't know yet what's really going on physiologically.
I mean, if we knew, there wouldn't be so many
medical theories, right. But but but even beyond that, let
me kind of bring this to a point here that
there's also this broader problem of science having not linked
the brain to consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness. It's
(07:26):
called if if your listeners want to look it up,
the hard problem of consciousness. Still, you know, some of
these brilliant skeptics, they're they're insisting that, and I think
more ideologically than scientifically that Look, the brain did it.
You know, consciousness can't continue after physical death because it's
inextricably linked to the brain. And personally, as smart as
(07:49):
these folks are, I think that all of us researchers
need to be logical about this, not ideological, just to
follow the data wherever it leads. Let's not reject out
of hand and quite unscientifically, the possibility of a supernatural realm,
the possibility of continuity of consciousness after our physical body dies.
(08:12):
So bottom line point here, some good empirical work is
being done to understand what's really happening in an NDE,
what's happening with the brain, what's happening with the body,
But so far nobody's been able to link them to
the brain. So they just assume that nds come from
the brain because of their kind of physicalist presuppositions, because
(08:32):
of the reductionist worldview that we experience it. Well, then
the brain did it.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
What fascinates me about all this, Michael, is the fact
that ages and ages of ago they talked about near
death experiences as well. They've never stopped.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yes, that's true. Near death experiences didn't begin in the
modern day. They didn't begin in today's hospitals or hospice facilities.
We have ancient writings from many civilizations China, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome,
even the Americas that that report these these out of
body journeys and movement from darkness into light, and encounters
(09:11):
with spiritual beings returned to life. All they bear resemblance
to today's accounts. And these different cultures they you know,
of course, they interpreted through their own cultural lenses, but
their their narrative is strikingly consistent. And you know what's
fascinating is that these different people groups across these continents
(09:32):
had no communication with one another across those continents. I mean,
you think about that, and the reporting exactly the same things,
and these writings were very, very similar phenomena. It appears
that these phenomena must be pre cultural, as ethno historians
might say, rather than be in shape by cultural narratives
(09:53):
or religious traditions. So if you'd like, I could share
a quick example of how it transcends history in evidence
for Heaven. We show a painting in that book of
what looks like one of these NDEs. There's a classic
tunnel leading to a bright light, has spiritual beings in it.
They're helping people into the tunnel and through the tunnel.
(10:15):
These people have ecstatic expressions on their faces. They're just delighted,
mesmerized by the light. A lot of classic elements are
in this painting. And you might say, okay, well, so
what it's a painting, it's depiction of NDEs evidence for Heaven. No,
that's evidence of nothing, thank you very much, except that
this painting, George, is from five hundred years ago. It's
(10:38):
currently hanging in a gallery in Venice, Italy. Five centuries ago.
This artist, his name is Eronymous Bosh, a Dutch artist,
painted what essentially could have been my book cover in
Evidence for Heaven. And it's just extraordinary the consistency of
these stories over time. So things like this very weighty evidence.
(10:59):
I think in this case for the afterlife. If some
sort of out of body experience really does occurs as
we die, then you'd think that history would record that,
and in fact, history does.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I wanted just watch. I had a picture called the
Garden of earthly delights, A bizarre painting. Bizarre painting.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, a lot of this stuff does look otherworldly.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You have talked about in your book corroborated near death experiences.
What are they?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, corroborated meaning there's there's externally verifiable connections to what's
being said. I give you a couple quick examples. Maybe
that's the easiest way to do this. So one woman
said that she had floated near the ceiling during her surgery,
very common report here, and but while she was up there,
(11:56):
she said she memorized a long serial number that she
saw on top of a respirator. And another patient recalled
seeing I said it was a nineteen eighty five quarter
face up on some cardiac monitor in the operating room.
And another patient insisted that she saw a red shoe
on the hospital roof as she drifted toward the sky. Now,
(12:20):
the staff checked each of these very skeptical, but they
found the serial number exactly as the woman had recited it,
all twelve digits. They found the quarter, the date was accurate,
They found the red shoe on the roof. These people
were unconscious, George, but somehow they came back with this
this kind of information. Can I give you a few
more examples please, yeah, yeah, So in give you a
(12:43):
couple out of Europe here and in France there was
there was a woman who woke up after surgery, and
she not only accurately described her surgical procedure, which she
had no specialty knowledge about, but she also was able
to describe the simultaneous amputation in the adjacent room. This
guy had his leg amputated. They put it in a
yellow bag. She somehow knew that she was right about that.
(13:07):
And another French patient who had already been pronounced dead.
The doctor was off preparing the death certificate. Then this
patient eventually wakes up and can recount for the nursing
staff word for word both sides of a private phone
conversation that had happened down the hall after he had
been pronounced dead. And in another case, emergency room patient
(13:30):
reported that during surgery he floated up one floor. His
consciousness floated up on one floor and he saw looked
around so on an empty hospital wing, and he claimed that, well,
there's nobody here, but this is weird. There are people
in these rooms. He looks closer, they're not people. They're
actually mannequins in the hospital beds with with ivs attached
(13:52):
to them, and you know what wakes up from his coma? Uh, doctor,
what a weird dream? What do you make of this?
And the the staff is just exchanging these knowing glances
at one another. As it turns out, there was this
restricted access nurse training center one floor above, and there's
no way this guy should have had that kind of knowledge.
(14:13):
This is what we mean by corroborated. What they come
back and they report something and it gets independently verified
by the staff or by others. And they are the
classic cases that some of your audience may have heard about,
the Pam Reynolds case, the tennis shoe case, the Denture's case.
Think your audience can look those up judge for themselves.
And then on top of all of that, you have
(14:35):
these accounts from kids, from children awakening from a coma
talking about deceased relatives that they didn't know and they're
correct about it. So this is what mean by independent
confirmation by corroboration. And there are just dozens of these stories.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Do you find, Michael, that those who come back from
near death experiences are different? They've changed somewhat.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, most do come back different. And you might expect that, George,
because I mean, they just narrowly escape death, right. I mean,
it's an epiphany, it's it's a bit of a wake
up call. But we have some pretty rigorous research published
in one of the top medical journals in the world,
a journal called the Lancet over in the UK, that
shows that those close to death who had an ND
(15:23):
change a lot more than those close to death who
didn't have an ND I mean it's like test group,
control group, very very tightly controlled experiment here, and the
NDE group tends to return less concerned about prestige or
power accumulation or their reputation. You know what other people
(15:43):
think of them. They're less anxious, they're more altruistic. They
don't they don't fear death anymore, most of them because
they're they're confident that they know what's next. Plus, we
have stories of these radical transformations. I mean the atheists
becoming pastors. We have a mobster becoming a social worker.
We have people giving up careers as lawyers or executives
(16:05):
to enter the helping professions. And why is that Well,
I think it's because they essentially come back with this
new meta narrative in forming their life. They now firmly
believe that death is not the end, it's not termination,
but it's transformation, and that allows them to live differently
(16:27):
and to love differently, and it opens up all sorts
of other existential questions. If there's an afterlife, well, how
do I get to this afterlife? Is it one place
or is it two places? And does that mean that
how I live and what I believe actually matters? And
the last thing I'll say about this is, you know,
all these transform lives, all these stories, it's not necessarily
(16:49):
proof of an afterlife. It's just what's called circumstantial evidence.
But it is consistent with what we'd expect if they did,
in fact have some sort of the other worldly experience
that included a supreme being of light and of unconditional love. So, yeah,
the transformation one of most common things that we see
(17:09):
in the research.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Michael, do you find that the closer people get to
really close to death, the more profound their experiences when
they come out of it.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Can you just clarify, you mean the closer they come,
you mean like when they're they're near, really nearing that point,
really near death, really near death. Well, that's when these
that's when they start to have these visions or even
after they have been declared clinically dead, which means you know,
the heart stops, breathing stops, So that's when these these
(17:44):
things occur. Now, I mean there's no there's no standardized
definition of near death experience. I mean, it's it's one
of those things where you know, researchers sometimes they talk
about it is disembodied consciousness or non local consciousness, but
more simply stated, these are events that occur when a
person is clinically dead or very near death, and as
(18:06):
we were saying before, very prevalent, somewhere between four and
nine percent. Most of these surveys indicate say that, yes,
I've had that sort of experience, and that that would
be I mean, if you do the math, that's millions
in the United States and extrapolates to hundreds of millions
around the world. So yeah, that that is when these occur,
(18:29):
is when when people are right up on the brink
of eternity.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The MeatEater Podcast
Building on the belief that a deeper understanding of the natural world enriches all of our lives, host Steven Rinella brings an in-depth and relevant look at all outdoor topics including hunting, fishing, nature, conservation, and wild foods. Filled with humor, irreverence, and things that will surprise the hell out of you, each episode welcomes a diverse group of guests who add their own expertise to the vast world of the outdoors. Part of The MeatEater Podcast Network.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.