September 22, 2025 • 67 mins
On this episode of Revelizations we are joined by Bob Coppes. Bob is a scientist and former banker. He's spent decades exploring near-death experiences while sharing his insights through lectures across the US and Europe. His latest book, Impressions of Near-Death Experiences, presents a rich tapestry of quotes from hundreds of people who have balanced on the thin thread of life and death, who have come back to share their experience with the rest of us. Bob currently serves on the board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS). Today we discuss:
- Bob Coppes' journey from banking to spirituality
- What is a near-death experience
- Are the secretions from a dying brain the reason for a near-death experience
- Different cultural perspectives on near-death experiences
- Different types of near-death experiences
- What is the reoccurring message people come back with after experiencing a near-death experience
- The impact on the life of someone who lives through a near-death experience
- Religious parallels to near-death experiences and more
Grab your favorite snack, grab a seat, and enjoy today's episode of Revelizations with Bob Coppes. Thanks for listening everyone.
Learn more about Bob Coppes https://www.bobcoppes.com/
Got a question for Bob Coppes? https://www.bobcoppes.com/contact
Purchase Impressions of Near-Death Experiences https://www.amazon.com/Impressions-Near-Death-Experiences-Quotations-Experiencers/dp/0997560894
Learn more about near death experiences from the International Association for Near-Death Studies https://iands.org/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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(02:04):
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Revelizations.
I'm your host, Brian James.
Brace yourself.
Today's episode is a bit of a departure for my normal topics.
But I guess every topic I've covered is because it's something that I think is interesting
and want to learn more about it.
So I suppose brace yourself for another topic in the broad range of subjects that capture
(02:25):
my interest while I have the privilege of sharing them with you.
What's the purpose of life?
Why are we here?
Is there anything after this life?
These questions have been coexisting with humans for as long as we've had the ability
to think.
I think we get hints, but we'll never truly know for sure what's on the other side of
(02:45):
this life until we travel there ourselves.
Today's guest, Bob Coppes, is here to illuminate what could be waiting for us.
He's curated a collection of direct quotes and experiences from those who claim to have
seen a glimpse of what's next.
In today's podcast, Bob Coppes shines that light at the end of the tunnel on these questions
(03:08):
without us having to travel down that tunnel ourselves.
Bob is a scientist and former banker.
He spent decades exploring near-death experiences while sharing his insights through lectures
across the United States and Europe.
His latest book, Impressions of Near-Death Experiences, presents a rich tapestry of quotes
from hundreds of people who have balanced on the thin thread of life and death who have
(03:31):
come back to share their experience with the rest of us.
Bob currently serves on the board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
Today's episode was a lot of fun to record, and I hope you enjoy it.
So please join me today as I sit down with Bob Coppes and we discuss what almost dying
(03:52):
can teach us about living.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Hi Bob, it's nice to meet you.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'm ready to have a really fun conversation with you.
I'm looking forward to it.
So go ahead.
Thank you for having me on your show, yes.
Of course, it's my pleasure.
So if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll see where that takes
(04:17):
us.
Well, I've studied economics at the university, so I'm an economist.
But I was always interested in spiritual things.
So it shows you that even though you are an economist, you can still be spiritually oriented.
During my study, I read the book by Raymond Moody, Life After Life, a book that is published
(04:40):
50 years ago.
So at the Ions conference this year in August, we had the anniversary, the golden anniversary
of the book that coined the term near-death experiences.
And that really made my interest grow in this subject, especially when I read passage in
the book about a woman who had her life review during her near-death experience and saw her
(05:05):
whole life.
And she was not really very enthusiastic about every little detail.
But she noticed there was no judgment and that the no judgment part, that is something
that really struck me because I was brought up Roman Catholic with Helen Purgatory.
And I laugh about it because, well, people still believe that.
(05:31):
Looking at near-death experiences for such a long time, every time again you hear there's
no judgment.
We all are welcome there.
There's unconditional love for everyone, so no exceptions there.
And I think that's more correct than the notion of hell and purgatory.
(05:52):
And I did my study and I went into banking, something very financial.
And I went into central bank, I did my PhD at university, and then later I thought, well,
what's happened with near-death experiences, the study of that, the research?
And I found there was so much done there.
It made me write about that and I produced a few books about near-death experiences.
(06:18):
The latest book, Impressions of Near-Death Experiences, I like so much because it has
so many quotes from NDEers that give you a really very good idea of what an NDE is, a
near-death experience.
And it gives such a positive view on life and on how everything works.
(06:39):
Even though we don't really know how it really works, but it gives you still a positive notion
of life and that we are all very important, no exceptions there either.
I want to backtrack a little bit into your career as a banker.
So once you read that book, Life After Life, did it just interest you and like just start
(07:01):
you thinking or like, were you a banker at that time?
And then you started investigating near-death experiences and life after death, or what
did that look like?
What was your journey from you being a student, you being a banker, and then learning about
near-death experiences?
Good question.
The thing is that I was always spiritually interested, but I couldn't find where to
(07:27):
look at.
So you read books, some Boo-Woo books, and then during my study of economics at the university,
I read this particular book and that was really based on experiences that many people had.
Though it was the start of the journey for people looking into near-death experiences.
(07:50):
So I did my study, I had to find a job because you have to pay the bills and it's very down
to earth.
And then later, only after like 25 years that I really looked back again on what was happening
there.
And then I found that in the United States there was this organization, the International
(08:14):
Association for Near-Death Studies, of which I am board member now since two years.
And they do a lot of work.
The funny thing was I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and I was looking in the United
States and found something there.
But nearby there was also a big organization, the Dutch Organization for Near-Death Studies,
(08:41):
and they had done such an important study there.
There was a group of people who did a prospective study.
It's a very complicated word to indicate that you can repeat this study.
And that was very important.
It was also published in The Lancet.
(09:01):
The Lancet is a medical journal that is really of high quality.
The study was that during a time span of like 13 years, they looked at all people that were
brought into 10 hospitals in the Netherlands with a cardiac arrest.
And after they were resuscitated, they would ask just one question.
(09:24):
And the question would be, do you have a recollection of the time you were out?
And astonishingly, like 18% of the people, I think that was like 64 people out of 344,
they had a recollection of, well, time being out.
And those were the near-death experiences where you experience a tunnel, you see the
(09:46):
light, you see deceased relatives, you even have a life review, you have conversations.
Some people say they have conversations with God even.
But the interesting thing is that you have then two groups.
One group with an NDE and one group without an NDE.
And then you can study what are the differences between the group, these two groups.
(10:10):
Because if you find a difference, then that might cause the NDE.
Now, the thing is, and that has been established also in the United States in similar kind
of studies, and then the UK, there were no differences between these two groups, indicating
that we still don't know what causes the NDE.
(10:31):
But it's ruled out that it's because of a lack of oxygen or because of substances that
are created in a dying brain or something like that.
Those are the things that are oftentimes mentioned as causing a near-death experience.
So those were ruled out.
And that's interesting.
(10:51):
We still don't know what triggers an NDE, but there's other research going on there.
Yeah, that's really interesting because there is, are you familiar with, I only know it
as DMT.
I don't know what the actual chemical name of it is.
It's also in ayahuasca, I think it's the same kind of substance.
(11:12):
Yeah, it's the psychoactive ingredient ayahuasca.
So ayahuasca DMT, it's a psychoactive drug, and it produces very intense hallucinations.
And depending on the source, if you go down to South America and you go to a shaman and
have ayahuasca experience, it's going to last a few hours, but can also get DMT intravenously.
(11:38):
And that will be a very intense 15 to 30 minutes.
So bringing this up, it's interesting that they could rule out it's not some sort of
side effect of hypoxia, but more specifically that DMT, because DMT mirrors very closely
everything you're kind of saying, at least some of the experiences that people are having,
(12:02):
like talking to God, having a non-judgmental experience, feeling connected with everyone.
And so how did they come to that conclusion?
How did they rule out that it's because DMT is produced in the brain, DMT is produced
in the lungs, we produce DMT when we're sleeping, or I know at least when we're sleeping.
(12:25):
And so I think, I thought that it was also found to be produced when people are dying as well.
Well, I don't know if that's the case, but if it is a substance that's created in a dying brain,
then according to the studies that have been performed in the Netherlands, but also in the UK and the US,
(12:46):
that should be ruled out as a reason why an NDE is created.
Because both groups, as I said, the one that didn't have recollection and the other one that did,
both had a dying brain and both would have probably the same kind of substances created there,
or a lack of oxygen or things like that.
(13:07):
But DMT is really an interesting thing.
And some people also say LSD and other substances might trigger something like that.
But DMT is really interesting in that respect.
I don't really know too much about it, but the things that I understood is that it is still not sure
if DMT creates or gives a person a NDE-like experience.
(13:35):
Maybe it is partial the case, like they might feel that they are outside their body,
or they have light flashes or they have a God-feeling or things like that.
But the whole experience that some near-death experiences have, which is a complete and a full NDE,
(13:57):
where they have all these experiences and on top of that also a live review
and meaningful conversations on the other side, I'm not sure that that can be brought by DMT.
And maybe it's also important to discuss perhaps vertical observations
that are made sometimes during near-death experiences,
(14:21):
because these observations give circumstantial evidence that NDE's are real
and that something real is happening there.
And vertical observations is another maybe complicated term,
just to say that these are verifiable out-of-body experiences.
So you have to imagine someone has an NDE, not always in the case of a medical critical situation,
(14:47):
but suppose there is one and they leave their body,
the first phase that they can look around where they are,
either in the operating dome or at the crash site of where the accident happened or something,
and they can see things that are happening there,
like there are many stories of doctors performing certain procedures on the patient
(15:12):
and that the patient can see what they are doing and then later,
and that is important, and later after the patient comes back again into the body,
after having had the NDE, they tell what they have seen
and what they have seen has been then confirmed independently by others.
(15:35):
This shows you that people can be outside their body,
or the consciousness, I should say, can be separated from the body.
So your body doesn't, or your consciousness doesn't need your body.
That's the important thing, the conclusion there.
And there are hundreds of these kind of stories that have been confirmed.
(15:57):
And I'm not sure whether with DMT these kind of cases are reported,
but I leave it open.
I think there should be some more research done into DMT
because maybe it triggers a partial out-of-body experience
or it makes your body die maybe a little bit
(16:20):
and that's why there might be some of these experiences.
But I'm not sure whether a complete near-death experience can be reached with DMT.
Yeah, I've never heard of a DMT experience and having a life review.
I've heard of DMT and then what I was mentioning earlier
of just like having a conversation with God,
(16:41):
feeling overwhelming love, like no judgment.
People who have trauma or people who are addicted to substances
just get a very introspective reason of why they're doing it
and they kind of come out of the experience no longer needing those things
because they've worked it out.
(17:03):
But I know one of the mechanisms of DMT is that it kind of shuts down
a part in the front of your brain, your prefrontal cortex
that's associated with the self, like the ego, that like, oh, I am.
That's how a lot of people get the interconnect.
You're like, oh, of course we're all connected
(17:24):
and that's something that elicits that.
So yeah, I was very curious.
Just hearing that they've ruled out that it's not a chemical reaction in the brain
so I was very fascinated to hear that
because it just seems like almost that would be it.
But again, the two substances don't mimic each other.
(17:45):
The one experience of a near-death experience and DMT aren't parallel.
There's some similarities there.
So yeah, it'd be very interesting to,
hopefully science can figure out what actually is causing that.
When we were first talking, you said that,
because to me, I kind of thought near-death experience is kind of just established.
(18:08):
So in every, not every culture, because I don't know every culture,
it just seems very pervasive in cultures that you die,
like, no, don't go into the light, you know,
like very dramatized for movies or something like that.
But then like, oh, I see Uncle Ted.
And so is it, are near-death experiences disputed?
(18:30):
Disputed in which way?
Amongst cultures.
Not amongst cultures, but people don't even believe that near-death experiences happen.
Oh, yeah, well, people that, well, people that have a near-death experience
are really convinced that they have been somewhere else.
It's almost 100% hit.
(18:53):
Of course, when they talk to their relatives and friends
about what they have experienced, there is a lot of unbelief.
Because these stories, let's be real,
these stories are really fairy tale-like.
It's amazing what they go through.
And it's so not from this world.
It's not from our earthly environment.
(19:14):
There are stories that people say,
well, this other environment is much more real than this one.
And I could see 360 degrees around.
I could be in more places at the same time.
Time doesn't exist there.
I can look through time a thousand years in the future,
a thousand years backwards, anything.
Like these kind of things.
(19:36):
If you talk to someone like that, you'd think,
hmm, he's a strange guy, maybe he's on drugs or so.
But there are more of these kind of stories.
And the interesting thing is, again,
that there are veridical observations that give you circumstantial evidence
that these experiences have really happened
and that there is meaningful conversation also on the other side
(19:59):
with the light or light beings or so.
And as you mentioned, cultures, you know,
NDEs happen everywhere on the world.
I heard stories from as far away as New Zealand and China,
Africa, South America, United States, Europe, you name it.
There are stories of NDEs.
So it is something that is particular for humans.
(20:24):
Yeah, that's the case.
Yeah, that's what it seems like.
I just didn't want to say like, you know, just outright,
oh, every culture, because I just don't know every culture.
No, of course not.
So yeah, it does seem very human experience.
And it happens to men and women, to rich and poor,
to any race that I know of.
(20:48):
I've seen so many stories
and I know that it happens to people of all walks of life.
And I have heard many stories that I can,
that's why I think I can say that.
That's it.
So it happens everywhere.
There are maybe cultural differences somewhere.
Like, for instance, in Western societies,
(21:09):
some people talk about having seen Jesus,
but in Hindu kind of countries, they would see Krishna.
There are stories that they see Krishna
or one of the other many gods that they have there.
Or in Islam, they would see Muhammad
or one of the other prophets that are important.
The thing is that near-death experiences
(21:32):
are so difficult to explain by the people that have them.
They say it's ineffable.
It's very difficult to put words on what they have experienced.
So you use words and concepts that you have.
If you're from a Hindu background,
you would use perhaps words that are known to that culture.
(21:57):
If you're a Westerner, you would use other kinds of words.
But the central theme is still,
there are a few things that really stick out for me.
One is that there is unconditional love.
It's reported all over the place and very consistent.
And it seems that this unconditional love is there for everyone
(22:18):
and no exception, even for the people you despise.
Another thing is that there is a feeling
of very close interconnection with others and with nature.
To the point where people even say we are one.
There's this oneness that we are all part of.
That gives you very interesting ideas
(22:40):
if you really think about that into extremes.
You said you had the Roman Catholic background
and with that there are certain beliefs there.
I am a Christian so I still maintain those beliefs
that you were raised in.
And so that's why these conversations are really fun
because I like to hear what other people believe
and really test actually what you believe.
(23:04):
But the point of me bringing that up is
you're saying people have these near-death experiences.
And so they see basically the religion that they have.
They see the deity associated with that religion.
They see Jesus, Muslims are seeing Mohammed,
and then Krishna for the Hindus.
(23:26):
Yeah, thank you.
And it seems like it would be kind of,
because all those religions kind of talk about a judgment
and there is a correct way you're supposed to live your life
to find the afterlife, to find heaven, essentially.
(23:47):
It seems like difficult to reconcile
that these people are seeing these things.
And like you said, maybe it's just a concept for them
of like, okay, I know this God, I know Jesus,
so I'm going to manifest Jesus when I'm experiencing this.
Well, maybe. I don't say that that's the case.
Maybe Jesus really appears. I don't know.
(24:08):
I don't know.
But the point is that people have difficulty
explaining what they have gone through.
So they will use the words that they know.
One person, one end of the year, and she's also in my book,
she said it's as if you have to explain something
that is so far away that you can't really have the words for it.
(24:31):
And she said, she likened it to playing a piece of Beethoven,
the composer, but you only have a bucket to do it on.
Or you have to try to redraw a painting that Rembrandt made,
like the Night Watch or so,
and you have only paving stones to do it on
and two colors of chalk. That's impossible.
(24:54):
That's what they say.
What I went through, I cannot explain.
And I use the words that are inadequate.
That's in brief what most of them would say.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
The point I was trying to make is like the judgment,
the disconnection between, because all those religions
essentially have judgment as a core component of when you die.
(25:17):
And so that's interesting that a near-death experience,
what they're saying is that there is no judgment,
but then they still see a deity that is associated
and talks about judgment as well.
Well, the thing is, that's interesting,
there's an important topic.
NDEers sort of consistently say there is no judgment.
(25:40):
They see their life review, and not everyone.
I mean, an NDE is not something, it's not a tick box exercise
where you have to tick all the things that are possible in an NDE.
So some people don't have a life review,
some people don't see a tunnel that they fly through,
or they don't see the light, very rarely.
So not everything, every detail is in every near-death experience.
(26:05):
But a life review is very interesting,
because a life review is what the word says.
You get to see your life, and it comes in different ways.
Some people see it in pictures, some see it in a film,
some see it in emotions, or in another way.
There was one person even saying, I saw my life review
(26:27):
as if I was in the center of a football stadium,
and each of the seats was a television screen,
and if I would focus on one screen,
I would get the detail of that part of my life.
If I would turn around and go to look at another screen,
I would see something else, and I could see my whole life.
Now, the interesting thing about life reviews
(26:50):
is that you get to see your life not only from your point of view,
but also from the other point of view,
from the people that you interacted with.
And it goes even further, you see it from their point of view.
So you become them.
You see what you did to them, and you feel it as if you are them.
(27:12):
So that's very direct.
And that has been said very consistently
throughout all the life reviews that I came across.
So that means that there is something strange going on,
because how can I feel what you feel as if I'm you,
because I'm not you at this moment.
But there is, once we are on the other side,
(27:35):
there is no boundaries anymore.
That's strange, but that's what has been said.
You feel what the receiver felt,
because you become the receiver.
And if you do something nice, you will feel the joy.
If you do something less nice, then you will feel the pain as well.
And that's very hurtful for people that went through a life review.
(28:00):
There are so many stories of people that have...
Of course, we all have done nasty things to others.
These people go through this, and they feel it from the other side,
and they see that's a very, very painful exercise to go through.
It's very painful.
Yeah, this is just really interesting.
(28:21):
My mind's going in a few different directions.
One is, I just think it's so fascinating
of what would a near-death experience look like,
because those near-death experiences are coloured
through experiences that we have, as far as seeing it in cinema,
seeing it on a TV, or seeing it in pictures.
So it makes me wonder, how did people experience a life review
(28:45):
before these technologies were invented?
They did say, one, they feel it through emotions,
and so that would obviously span humans
for as long as they've been able to understand emotions.
And that makes me wonder, is there one other thing,
is what you're saying about this,
this empathy that people are feeling,
(29:08):
and really diving into that person, it makes me think of A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol is going to predate the book that you read
in university, Life Before Life.
And so it seems like there's a near-death parallel there,
because in the ghost of Christmas future,
he sees what he's done, or no, ghost of Christmas past,
(29:30):
he sees how he treated people,
and the harm that he treated.
And so there's a parallel to a near-death experience there.
So it makes me wonder, is there other literature?
Obviously, the religions are going to cover death and life,
but is there other literature that points to near-death experiences
that isn't so closely intertwined with religion?
(29:52):
I don't know.
If you talk about near-death experiences in history,
in literature, in what is being written down,
the most famous one is mentioned, the story by Plato,
you know, the old Greek.
He spoke about a soldier who was thought to be dead,
and he was put on a...
(30:14):
Is it a pyre?
Pyre, yes. That's the word.
I'm struggling sometimes with words.
I can only speak one language.
You can speak a lot more, so you're doing really good.
And then before they set it on fire,
the guy gets up again and talks about what he had experienced.
And that is how a life review would be.
(30:37):
The interesting thing, what you mentioned just before
with the Christmas Carol, that is really...
That touches upon life reviews,
and you asked me if there is something more...
I don't know all the literature, of course,
but maybe somewhere that will be mentioned.
I don't know.
But it's an interesting theme that you become so empathetic
(31:02):
that you understand what you do to others,
and that would change you.
And that is what near-death experiencers say.
The life review is really a life changer.
The whole thing is a life changer because it's so far out.
And you've... Well, most people really feel
that this unconditional love is so imminent
(31:25):
and so big that they cannot neglect it anymore
or just refute it or whatever.
It's engraved in their head.
But the life review is... And it changes their lives.
But a life review changes the life in a way
because you know that whatever you do to others,
you will feel it from the other's point of view.
(31:48):
So it is something that will make you think twice
before you do something very, very nasty to someone else.
And having said that, I would really wish
that so many people nowadays out there in the world
would really understand that near-death experiences are real.
You can get that from vertical observations.
(32:11):
And that if you know that love or unconditional love
is the most important thing and that we are in it together,
that if I do something to you, I actually do it to myself,
that people will change their way of living.
And it's very necessary.
If I look at the news in the United States,
there is so much animosity there.
If you look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict,
(32:35):
there is so much animosity.
All sides, also Russia, Ukraine, you name it, conflict.
Every single person that harms someone else,
shoots someone else, bombs someone else,
will feel the consequences, not only from one person,
but from... Let me give you an example.
(32:57):
This is an example by Daniel Brinkley.
It is in my book, and I just want to flesh it out.
There are some impressions of near-death experiences.
There are also chapters on a vertical observation.
So those are the circumstantial evidence kind of things.
But this case of Daniel Brinkley,
he is a guy who was in countless fights in school.
(33:20):
He stole people's bikes. He was nasty in school.
Later on, he was in fights still,
and he joined an organization in the US,
where people were sent out to other countries
to kill off adversaries of the US.
I just tell you what is in the book.
I don't have an opinion there.
And he said, then he has later on in his life,
(33:43):
he has his life review.
He sees what he did in his life,
and he sees him making all these kills.
There's one kill where he bombs,
or he has a bomb that explodes in a hotel,
killing off like 50 people,
whereas he just had to take out one.
So there were 49, how do you say that,
(34:04):
collateral damage kind of cases.
Then he has his life review.
He sees what he did to others.
He sees it from the point of view of the victims.
So he relives all his kills from his point of view,
but also from the other point of view.
But on top of that, he also sees what he did,
(34:24):
what were the consequences for the children,
because he will become the children of these victims
and the wives of these victims,
and he feels it from their point of view.
This is really mind-boggling for him.
But this is said by so many people.
You get to see every detail from the other point of view.
There is not a little inch that you cannot cover in that feeling.
(34:50):
I wish that people really understand that.
So they would think twice in doing something very harmful to others.
Yeah, that makes you think,
are there short-term side effects of experiencing
a near-death experience and long-term?
Very short-term is euphoria,
but that lasts sometimes very short.
(35:13):
Because they realize that if they talk about it to their relatives
or to the doctors,
they sometimes are met with unbelief or even hostility.
Some people continue the euphoria and they go out.
There is this wonderful story about a guy who went into the street
(35:35):
and said, well, God really lives and we all go to this place.
You don't have to be afraid.
He goes to shopping malls,
but also to drug bins where they trade and stuff like that.
He notices that it has no use.
So then the next thing is that not everyone does that,
(35:56):
what I just explained.
But the phase that he comes into is something that many other people do get into.
It's like a kind of depression because you want to go back.
You feel the discrepancy between what we have here on Earth
where there is not this unconditional love.
(36:18):
There is hatred, there is animosity.
You know that it can be different because you have seen it
and you want to go back there.
There will always be a kind of homesickness on the part of the end ear.
It never wears off.
But then they need to learn to cope with it.
(36:39):
So this is the depression they sometimes get into,
the longing back to this place.
Although people know they shouldn't commit suicide in order to get back again.
That's interesting.
They know that their life is important.
They have something to do like we all have something to do.
(37:00):
Not one of us is unimportant here.
That's what they say.
So they know they have to do something but they feel sick
because they long for this unconditional love.
And then later on they learn to cope with it.
Now on average there are some ideas that it would take seven years
(37:22):
before people can cope again with living a sort of normal life.
Some people do it in a few days.
I've spoken to people who took 35 years and more
to be able to adjust to this experience.
It's really a life changer.
It's difficult.
They say it's the best present they have had in their life.
(37:47):
But it's also very, very difficult to cope with it.
That seems like a pretty big downside of it.
I was thinking because I had a friend who was dating someone,
that person, they broke up,
(38:08):
and then the person she was dating took a workout supplement,
not drugs or anything, and it gave him a heart attack.
He just about died.
I don't know if he had a near-death experience or anything like that,
but he just came back with a clarity of,
oh, I want to marry you.
And so the person, they got married and had kids,
(38:32):
and it's wild because it's just such a profound experience.
It seems like on the outside,
it seems like it would make you really understand
what is important in life and kind of what's a distraction in life.
Well, that's true.
NDE gives you really the idea of what is important and what is not.
(38:54):
And what is important is connections with others, nature.
Money is not important anymore.
Power is not important anymore.
It's the being together with others,
having a nice time, helping others, things like that.
So it's more like serving others.
That's what NDEers tend to do more.
(39:18):
That's really a significant change in people's lives,
and that has been proven statistically also.
So it's like power and money is not important anymore.
Big watches or cars or a big boat is not something they would go after.
Big jobs, a lot of money, not important anymore.
(39:42):
It's something that we might not understand.
But on the other side, what makes you happy?
I think most of the time it will be being with others,
sharing things with others, doing something nice for others.
I think that is if you really look into yourself,
those would be the things that will really make you happy
(40:05):
more than being on a boat that is yours or a big car.
Yeah, there's so many interesting parallels
because I really do want to look into Hinduism
and the religion of Islam and kind of understand
because so much of what you're saying,
there's a lot of examples in the Bible exactly what you're saying,
(40:26):
that euphoria feeling, that guy who went out after and was saying,
hey, this divine love is real.
Guys, it's here.
And there's a parable about a person who goes to hell,
and this is in the Christian Bible, who goes to hell,
and he says, he's in agony, and he's saying,
(40:49):
please, go back and let me tell my brothers that this is real.
And he said, even if you go back, they still will not believe.
And so there's a parallel there and what you're talking about,
how the Bible talks about that not money is evil,
but the love of money is evil.
And so there's another person, a very rich person.
He says, what do I need to do to go to heaven?
(41:12):
And he says, give up all your possessions to the poor and follow me,
and he can't do it.
And so there's that parallel too.
So I'm very interested, and this might be a little bit out of your purview,
but is there any sort of similarity there with Islam or Hinduism
that has those themes?
Because what you're saying is very prominent with what Jesus teaches.
(41:37):
Yes, I've studied also the comparison between NDEs and religions,
and that became a separate book, and that's really interesting.
In every religion, there are things that you can find in near-death experiences,
like in Islam, for instance, there's somewhere it's mentioned
(41:58):
that God is closer by to you than your, I don't know how to pronounce that,
this artery here.
You're carotid?
That's one, I can't pronounce that.
Yeah, it's a tricky one.
Carotid artery, yes.
Nailed it.
That's said in Islam, it's in the Koran.
(42:19):
And the thing is that if you listen to NDEs,
they talk about that God or the light is in everyone.
We have divinity, everyone has divinity within itself.
The core part of us is unconditional love, is divine.
It comes from the source.
(42:41):
I just quote a number of people in my book.
That's what they say, that we come from this oneness that we are part of.
And that resembles or that coincides with what is written in Islam in this case.
So there are many more parallels in Islam.
The nicest thing of Christianity, I think, is what Jesus once said.
(43:07):
Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, what is the most important command?
And they hoped to trick him.
And then Jesus said, well, the most important command is to love your God
with whole your heart and whole your mind.
And the second command, which is equal to this,
(43:29):
so he puts them both on the same footing,
is love your neighbor like you love yourself.
Now, that's interesting because if you really study NDEs,
you know that we are all part of the divine.
So there's divinity within you, within our neighbors, and within, of course, God.
So we are all made of the same substance.
(43:52):
And there it is, Jesus just says it.
And that's the most important command.
I really love that because that's the core thing of what he teaches us.
And that's the core thing that is in near-death experiences,
if you really look through everything.
(44:13):
That's kind of like the truth of why I'm really attracted to Christianity
and why it resonates as truth.
For me, it's like what you're saying.
It's kind of you're lowering yourself, you're putting others up high.
You're saying just love people.
And then, obviously, Christianity gets really disgusting
with the people who practice it or the people who espouse
(44:35):
that they practice Christianity and they treat people very poorly.
So I could understand how the world has a very bad opinion of them.
You know, it's a sidetrack, but it boggles my mind
how people in the U.S. talk about Christianity
and do things that harm others and still say they are Christian.
But that's just a side remark.
Yeah, I just think that human nature and yeah, it's pretty yucky, but I agree.
(45:02):
But we've talked about your book so much,
and I really want to dive in as we are approaching the end of this conversation.
I want to dive into your book because I want to know the structure of it more.
Is it a book that you've compromised of quotes from near-death experiences
or are you going and talking about and teaching people what near-death experiences are?
(45:24):
Here are the categories and here is what some of the research
and some of the experiential evidence that we have that leads us to believe certain things.
So how did you set up the book?
You know, I was thinking back of the first start that I was interested in NDEs
and I would have loved to read a book like this
(45:46):
because I'm not really interested in how people die or how people go into their accident.
I was interested in what the messages are.
I wanted to see what the messages are because those I find interesting.
So what I did is after so many years of looking at NDEs,
I thought there are a number of categories that are important
(46:09):
and I tried to find a lot of quotes, and it was easy,
that goes with one of these categories.
And I'll just mention a few.
Of course, how do you get out of your body?
Sometimes it's very interesting.
People say it's very easy.
It's just like another quote that's in my book.
It's like a toast popping out of a toaster.
(46:31):
It goes like that.
Before you know it, you're out of your body and something else opens up.
How do you get back into your body?
Very interesting stories there too.
But the thing is that this otherworldly environment is so strange.
That's another chapter where I found a lot of interesting quotes there.
The unconditional love, that's important.
(46:54):
The life review, there's so many stories there
that give you a good impression of what a life review is.
We are all important.
So many people say that.
But how do they say it?
What is the purpose for our life?
Well, that's another chapter.
There's people that hear that as a bonus.
(47:15):
They didn't ask about it, but they hear this is what is important.
Some people do ask about it.
One of those guys was like,
well, before you sent me back to Earth, I want to ask this question.
Why are we on Earth?
And there are a lot of answers.
It mainly comes down to practice love.
Just enjoy life.
(47:37):
There's a wonderful phrase by a little girl, Christina,
who was having her life review.
Her NDE.
And she said she heard from God.
There's four ingredients.
It's love, be loved, just be, and experience life.
I love that quote.
And I always mention it because I find it so easy.
(47:58):
It's loving and be loved and just enjoy life.
Well, experience life.
It can be hard.
Everyone has hard times.
But those are times that if you look back on it from the other side,
once you die, it's like it's not important
because the other side is much more real.
(48:20):
What we do here is like a shadow of the reality.
Now, having said that, there is also a very important chapter
on vertical observations because I find it important as a researcher
to show that there is circumstantial evidence
to show that these experiences are not just fairy tales.
(48:42):
And there is a chapter on oneness, a very important chapter.
Did I mention that?
That's the I find very important and very interesting.
And there's also because that's also the case.
There are people that have experienced distressing NDEs.
I go into that detail as well.
And maybe just to also say something more about the vertical observations.
(49:05):
There's I mentioned that there are sometimes observations made
what the doctors do or the nurses do.
But that's here on Earth.
There are also observations made in the other worldly environment,
like in one case where someone hears that is presented with a boy,
a small boy, and this boy says to the end ear, I'm your brother.
(49:32):
And she says, I don't have a brother.
And he said, well, you have to ask your father
because you have to go back again and ask him if I am your brother
and remember how I'm clothed and how I look like.
And then she has to go back to her body and then she asked her father
and the father finally acknowledges that she had a baby brother before she was born.
(49:57):
But it died very soon after it was born and never really grew up.
But it matched with the with the description of the clothes and so
so that that shows you that there is meaningful conversation also on the other side.
Yeah, that's interesting to think about why that would happen.
(50:18):
And like the the thing that came to my mind the quickest would be that child
helping the father release the like the trauma and the sadness
and like just the grief of death and just saying, hey, I come on the other side.
I'm OK. Yeah. Yeah.
That's that's also very important that people see disease relatives
and they they are so happy that they they are OK.
(50:42):
We all go there. That's the idea.
You mentioned distressing and is that like your your life review
and then your you know, you haven't been the kindest person.
So you're getting a lot of back to back empathy exercises that are very painful
to live out on the other side of your cruelty.
Is that what would be a distressing and or is there are there different examples of that?
(51:08):
It's a separate category.
Before I go into that, I have to say that the words good and bad
or that we use very easily here are not the words on the other side.
They they don't have a meaning there.
That's how I understand it from the years now.
Distressing and ease is a very small subset of all the NDS that we know,
(51:30):
although we don't really know because people who have had a distressing NDE
with sometimes hellish situations, don't brag about that.
I mean, if you had an awful NDE, you're not going to say,
wow, I had a distressing NDE with hellish things and so
because you're afraid that you will be judged by it.
(51:52):
So we have a subset of NDS that are distressing.
But within that subset, there is only a very small part
that is really distressing with hellish environments.
The others are maybe more like parts of an NDE that people find frightening,
like the life review, as you said, one of them.
(52:13):
Some people find flying through the tunnel with the speed of light is is awful.
Like, I don't like to go into a fair with all those machines
that shake you and turn you around.
I don't. I dislike that very much.
So flying with the speed of light through a tunnel,
(52:34):
I don't think that I would like that very much.
Let's concentrate on the subset of the subset.
And that's the really distressing ones.
What we do know from this and that's established in research is that
you cannot say that people who have been, quote unquote, bad
will always have a distressing NDE.
(52:56):
And similarly, you cannot say that people have been good
will always have blissful NDE.
An example being Daniel Brinkley.
I talked about him before, the guy that went around shooting others,
killing a lot of people, taking out 49 collateral damage kind of people
in this bombing.
(53:17):
He met with wonderful love and he really enjoyed his life with you.
Apart from the he had a wonderful near death experience,
but not his life review.
His life review was awful, as he says it.
And he noticed that he was really an awful person and he changed.
(53:38):
Now, there are also cases of people who have had who have lived a life
as dull as many lives, not to say that lives are dull,
but just to say there's nothing going on there.
They didn't kill people or so.
And they have had distressing NDE's.
(53:59):
I've come across a number of these people and they don't they sincerely
don't know why they had such an experience.
The idea is that things can in your first part of your NDE,
things might pop up from the collective conscious,
which is a term from Carl Gustav Jung, this psychiatrist in Switzerland,
(54:25):
or that they might pop up from your own experience.
Like sometimes people have well, we talked about religion.
Some people that I spoke to have had such a fear of going to hell
because that's taught to them in their religion.
If you do this and this, you will go to hell.
(54:47):
And it's being brainwashed.
And they are so afraid that they meet this.
They go to this hellish environment that they actually create themselves.
Most people get out of that kind of situation by asking for love
or turning their eyes to the principal component of their religion,
(55:11):
like Jesus or someone else from another religion.
And I have to say also that there are a lot of a number of NDEers
that explicitly hear during their NDE that there is no hell and no purgatory.
And I tend to believe that because I don't understand why there would be a hell
(55:35):
if we are all part of one or we are part of a oneness that is out there.
Why would part of the oneness be left out in disarray in a hellish environment?
It doesn't make sense.
And it's being told to people explicitly that you don't have to be afraid.
We all go home. That's another quote.
All to be found in my book.
(55:57):
Yeah, there's just so many different philosophical tangents that you could really dive into.
I'm curious because the Bible talks about the elect,
depending on how you interpret the Christian Bible.
There are certain people that are destined for heaven and destined for hell.
And so again, this is just all through my perspective of like how I'm understanding.
(56:19):
I understand that you're saying like NDE's are bigger than the language that we have to explain them.
But I'm just I'm wondering with that concept of the elect and the ones that aren't chosen,
is there a parallel to other religions?
Like does Hindu have that or Islam have that?
To where they talk about there's like a chosen people?
(56:43):
You know, the interesting thing of near-death experiencers is that when they come back again,
they move away from their own religion and they become more spiritual.
So they don't like the religion. They don't like the dogma.
They feel that a lot of things are wrong.
One of them, the elect, because NDE say we all go there.
(57:08):
It's for us, for everyone.
And the notion of elect is that's not what Jesus said.
There is nothing in the Gospels.
And I'm talking about the real, the Gospels, Matthew, Luke and the two others.
Jesus never said that there's only a few there.
That is a notion that is being brought in there by some of the,
(57:31):
I try to remember who this is.
Paul.
No, no, yeah, Paul also.
But Paul never knew Jesus.
He had a very interesting episode when he went to Damascus.
He was probably struck by lightning and had maybe a near-death experience.
If you read through the Bible, you think that's interesting, this episode.
(57:55):
But the term was not there yet.
But there is someone like Thomas of Aquino.
That's one of them.
And the other is this church father in 325 after Christ.
They brought into this, into the religion that there is original sin.
(58:17):
You go through the Gospels and tell me where Jesus talks about original sin.
It's not there.
If it were so important, he would have mentioned it.
But that was something that is thought of later.
I think it was brought into religion to access power over others.
That's my idea.
(58:39):
But you can have a different view, but it's not in the Gospels.
There's nothing on original sin.
Yeah, that's very interesting.
And then obviously, yes, religion is used a ton to just control people.
So I was thinking more so...
Not only in Christianity, also in the other religions.
(59:00):
Well, men, especially men, are very good at that.
They make part of the religion.
Maybe the core is right, and there are good...
That's what I also tried to explain in my other book on religions.
If you look at the core of each religion, there is real truth in them.
And you can find parallels with NDEs.
(59:24):
But the moment you go further and you go into the dogmas,
you think, wow, how did they come up with that?
And this one that I mentioned, like original sin, is one of those.
Yeah, because I was wondering...
Because you said people who...
Not everyone who has a near-death experience will have...
(59:46):
Or who are close to death will have a near-death experience.
And so I was wondering...
Because Christianity talks like it does mention the elect
if you read it with a certain perspective.
And so I was wondering if Hindu and Islam have the same sort of...
There's the chosen people and not the chosen people.
Because if you look at it in that lens,
(01:00:07):
that there are people who are destined for eternal love
and certain people who aren't destined for eternal love,
that the people who are destined would have the same experience.
They would have the same love experience
because they're destined for that experience.
And on the other side, the people who aren't destined for it
don't have the near-death experience.
(01:00:28):
And so that could explain, again, through my lens,
the phenomenon of certain people who...
One person has a heart attack, has a near-death experience.
The other person has a heart attack
and doesn't have a near-death experience.
So I don't know, I like thinking about these things and it's fun.
So I was just wondering if other religions mirror that perspective.
(01:00:49):
Well, all other religions have, to a certain extent,
also the excluding of others.
So you need to be in their religion
and then you have the possibility of going to heaven.
I think that some of the Christian strands can be very, very tough.
Like you have to be baptized in Christ.
(01:01:13):
If not, then you cannot go to heaven,
which brought very interesting questions.
One of which, perhaps Moses and Abraham,
they are very important in Christianity,
yet they were not baptized in Christ.
So where are they?
They cannot go to heaven.
(01:01:35):
This is really what has been discussed about.
The Roman Catholic Church, long ago,
thought of some, well, not so hellish places
where these people could go to.
They couldn't go to heaven, they couldn't go to hell.
So there's some kind of intermediate place there.
Same with children that were not baptized and died
(01:01:58):
before they could be baptized.
How can you put children into hell?
So they don't go to hell, but they can't go to heaven
because they haven't been baptized.
They go to this specific place.
So there are really strange things going on in our religion
because I still call it also mine.
In other religions, they have something similar,
(01:02:19):
although maybe not as harsh as that I just mentioned
with Christianity and being baptized in Christ.
How did you find these people to interview them for your book?
I came across first, I came across them through books
or first books, and then later I went to visit
(01:02:42):
the Ions conferences.
I met a lot of people.
In the Netherlands, we have conferences,
so you can meet a lot of people.
And if you really search and you get into contact with,
it's easy, you can get into contact with people
that are out there, that are vocalizing
what they have gone through.
Maybe for people who are really interested,
(01:03:03):
they should visit the IANDS website.
It's the International Association for Near-Death Studies.org,
so abbreviation IANDS.
There's a lot of information there.
It's very interesting.
There's an archive with all kinds of examples,
hundreds of near-death experiences,
(01:03:27):
some more interesting than others,
but each NDE is interesting in itself.
That's the way I would look at it.
And there are very nice podcasts specifically aimed
at discussing this with NDEers,
so they have only NDEers on.
That's fascinating.
It really is.
And Bob, I just appreciate this conversation so much.
(01:03:50):
It was a lot of fun and your insight
and just being so free and sharing
and just sharing a positive message.
So if people want to learn more about you,
get your book, how can they get in contact with you?
Where can they find your book?
Well, they can go to my website.
It's bobcoppes.com, and Coppes is C-O-P-P-E-S.
(01:04:12):
You will find my books there.
You will find directions to other websites
where you can find information.
And there's also a forum.
If people want to ask me questions,
they can always do that on my website
and I'll always answer.
Yeah, that's it.
And my book is available on Amazon.
But if you go on my website, you can find the link
(01:04:35):
or you can go to Amazon and then find it there.
Do you have any other books
that are coming down the pipeline?
No, not really.
I'm trying to get more new quotes into my book.
And on vertical observations,
I just want to separate all the vertical observations
into two categories.
(01:04:56):
One, where people make observations here
in the operating dome in the hospital
or at the crash site of their car.
And the other one being the meaningful conversations
in heaven, if you want to call it like that,
or the otherworldly environment
that is proven later on independently
(01:05:17):
that this was correct.
Like the example that I gave with the baby brother.
Bob, this was so much fun. I really appreciate it.
I liked it too. It was very nice.
Thank you for all your questions.
And they were very insightful and very to the point.
Thank you very much. Interesting conversation.
I agree. Thank you so much.
(01:05:54):
I'm not proud of what I did,
but I was desperate for a date to the spring fling dance.
I've always heard when it comes to dating,
it's a numbers game.
You just keep on asking till someone finally says yes.
The thought of getting rejected face to face
one person at a time was paralyzing.
So instead, I came up with a better idea.
(01:06:17):
I would send out a mass text
to all the girls in my community
and a mass text to all the girls in my class.
I crafted the perfect text
that would even put Shakespeare to shame.
Hey, girl, your eyes are bluer than the sky.
Your smile is always in style.
I think it's fate. Won't you be my date?
(01:06:38):
Then I pressed send.
It didn't take long.
The next thing I know,
my phone was flooded with rejections.
Like everyone.
I begged my parents to transfer me to a different school.
They refused.
All that was left was for me to be embarrassed
for the rest of my scholastic career.
(01:07:01):
That's what it would have looked like
if I didn't use Sibling Scapegoat.
With the help of their services,
I was able to save faith by responding to everyone that,
oh, I'm so sorry.
My little brother got a hold of my phone
and sent that text to you.
You know I don't think of you that way.
Best friends forever.
But also, if you need a date to the spring fling,
(01:07:24):
I'm available.
Whoops, sorry.
My little brother sent that last text.
Unless...
Thanks, Sibling Scapegoat.
Sibling Scapegoat,
when accountability comes knocking,
don't answer.
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(02:04):
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Revelizations.
I'm your host, Brian James.
Brace yourself.
Today's episode is a bit of a departure for my normal topics.
But I guess every topic I've covered is because it's something that I think is interesting
and want to learn more about it.
So I suppose brace yourself for another topic in the broad range of subjects that capture
(02:25):
my interest while I have the privilege of sharing them with you.
What's the purpose of life?
Why are we here?
Is there anything after this life?
These questions have been coexisting with humans for as long as we've had the ability
to think.
I think we get hints, but we'll never truly know for sure what's on the other side of
(02:45):
this life until we travel there ourselves.
Today's guest, Bob Coppes, is here to illuminate what could be waiting for us.
He's curated a collection of direct quotes and experiences from those who claim to have
seen a glimpse of what's next.
In today's podcast, Bob Coppes shines that light at the end of the tunnel on these questions
(03:08):
without us having to travel down that tunnel ourselves.
Bob is a scientist and former banker.
He spent decades exploring near-death experiences while sharing his insights through lectures
across the United States and Europe.
His latest book, Impressions of Near-Death Experiences, presents a rich tapestry of quotes
from hundreds of people who have balanced on the thin thread of life and death who have
(03:31):
come back to share their experience with the rest of us.
Bob currently serves on the board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
Today's episode was a lot of fun to record, and I hope you enjoy it.
So please join me today as I sit down with Bob Coppes and we discuss what almost dying
(03:52):
can teach us about living.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Hi Bob, it's nice to meet you.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'm ready to have a really fun conversation with you.
I'm looking forward to it.
So go ahead.
Thank you for having me on your show, yes.
Of course, it's my pleasure.
So if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll see where that takes
(04:17):
us.
Well, I've studied economics at the university, so I'm an economist.
But I was always interested in spiritual things.
So it shows you that even though you are an economist, you can still be spiritually oriented.
During my study, I read the book by Raymond Moody, Life After Life, a book that is published
(04:40):
50 years ago.
So at the Ions conference this year in August, we had the anniversary, the golden anniversary
of the book that coined the term near-death experiences.
And that really made my interest grow in this subject, especially when I read passage in
the book about a woman who had her life review during her near-death experience and saw her
(05:05):
whole life.
And she was not really very enthusiastic about every little detail.
But she noticed there was no judgment and that the no judgment part, that is something
that really struck me because I was brought up Roman Catholic with Helen Purgatory.
And I laugh about it because, well, people still believe that.
(05:31):
Looking at near-death experiences for such a long time, every time again you hear there's
no judgment.
We all are welcome there.
There's unconditional love for everyone, so no exceptions there.
And I think that's more correct than the notion of hell and purgatory.
(05:52):
And I did my study and I went into banking, something very financial.
And I went into central bank, I did my PhD at university, and then later I thought, well,
what's happened with near-death experiences, the study of that, the research?
And I found there was so much done there.
It made me write about that and I produced a few books about near-death experiences.
(06:18):
The latest book, Impressions of Near-Death Experiences, I like so much because it has
so many quotes from NDEers that give you a really very good idea of what an NDE is, a
near-death experience.
And it gives such a positive view on life and on how everything works.
(06:39):
Even though we don't really know how it really works, but it gives you still a positive notion
of life and that we are all very important, no exceptions there either.
I want to backtrack a little bit into your career as a banker.
So once you read that book, Life After Life, did it just interest you and like just start
(07:01):
you thinking or like, were you a banker at that time?
And then you started investigating near-death experiences and life after death, or what
did that look like?
What was your journey from you being a student, you being a banker, and then learning about
near-death experiences?
Good question.
The thing is that I was always spiritually interested, but I couldn't find where to
(07:27):
look at.
So you read books, some Boo-Woo books, and then during my study of economics at the university,
I read this particular book and that was really based on experiences that many people had.
Though it was the start of the journey for people looking into near-death experiences.
(07:50):
So I did my study, I had to find a job because you have to pay the bills and it's very down
to earth.
And then later, only after like 25 years that I really looked back again on what was happening
there.
And then I found that in the United States there was this organization, the International
(08:14):
Association for Near-Death Studies, of which I am board member now since two years.
And they do a lot of work.
The funny thing was I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and I was looking in the United
States and found something there.
But nearby there was also a big organization, the Dutch Organization for Near-Death Studies,
(08:41):
and they had done such an important study there.
There was a group of people who did a prospective study.
It's a very complicated word to indicate that you can repeat this study.
And that was very important.
It was also published in The Lancet.
(09:01):
The Lancet is a medical journal that is really of high quality.
The study was that during a time span of like 13 years, they looked at all people that were
brought into 10 hospitals in the Netherlands with a cardiac arrest.
And after they were resuscitated, they would ask just one question.
(09:24):
And the question would be, do you have a recollection of the time you were out?
And astonishingly, like 18% of the people, I think that was like 64 people out of 344,
they had a recollection of, well, time being out.
And those were the near-death experiences where you experience a tunnel, you see the
(09:46):
light, you see deceased relatives, you even have a life review, you have conversations.
Some people say they have conversations with God even.
But the interesting thing is that you have then two groups.
One group with an NDE and one group without an NDE.
And then you can study what are the differences between the group, these two groups.
(10:10):
Because if you find a difference, then that might cause the NDE.
Now, the thing is, and that has been established also in the United States in similar kind
of studies, and then the UK, there were no differences between these two groups, indicating
that we still don't know what causes the NDE.
(10:31):
But it's ruled out that it's because of a lack of oxygen or because of substances that
are created in a dying brain or something like that.
Those are the things that are oftentimes mentioned as causing a near-death experience.
So those were ruled out.
And that's interesting.
(10:51):
We still don't know what triggers an NDE, but there's other research going on there.
Yeah, that's really interesting because there is, are you familiar with, I only know it
as DMT.
I don't know what the actual chemical name of it is.
It's also in ayahuasca, I think it's the same kind of substance.
(11:12):
Yeah, it's the psychoactive ingredient ayahuasca.
So ayahuasca DMT, it's a psychoactive drug, and it produces very intense hallucinations.
And depending on the source, if you go down to South America and you go to a shaman and
have ayahuasca experience, it's going to last a few hours, but can also get DMT intravenously.
(11:38):
And that will be a very intense 15 to 30 minutes.
So bringing this up, it's interesting that they could rule out it's not some sort of
side effect of hypoxia, but more specifically that DMT, because DMT mirrors very closely
everything you're kind of saying, at least some of the experiences that people are having,
(12:02):
like talking to God, having a non-judgmental experience, feeling connected with everyone.
And so how did they come to that conclusion?
How did they rule out that it's because DMT is produced in the brain, DMT is produced
in the lungs, we produce DMT when we're sleeping, or I know at least when we're sleeping.
(12:25):
And so I think, I thought that it was also found to be produced when people are dying as well.
Well, I don't know if that's the case, but if it is a substance that's created in a dying brain,
then according to the studies that have been performed in the Netherlands, but also in the UK and the US,
(12:46):
that should be ruled out as a reason why an NDE is created.
Because both groups, as I said, the one that didn't have recollection and the other one that did,
both had a dying brain and both would have probably the same kind of substances created there,
or a lack of oxygen or things like that.
(13:07):
But DMT is really an interesting thing.
And some people also say LSD and other substances might trigger something like that.
But DMT is really interesting in that respect.
I don't really know too much about it, but the things that I understood is that it is still not sure
if DMT creates or gives a person a NDE-like experience.
(13:35):
Maybe it is partial the case, like they might feel that they are outside their body,
or they have light flashes or they have a God-feeling or things like that.
But the whole experience that some near-death experiences have, which is a complete and a full NDE,
(13:57):
where they have all these experiences and on top of that also a live review
and meaningful conversations on the other side, I'm not sure that that can be brought by DMT.
And maybe it's also important to discuss perhaps vertical observations
that are made sometimes during near-death experiences,
(14:21):
because these observations give circumstantial evidence that NDE's are real
and that something real is happening there.
And vertical observations is another maybe complicated term,
just to say that these are verifiable out-of-body experiences.
So you have to imagine someone has an NDE, not always in the case of a medical critical situation,
(14:47):
but suppose there is one and they leave their body,
the first phase that they can look around where they are,
either in the operating dome or at the crash site of where the accident happened or something,
and they can see things that are happening there,
like there are many stories of doctors performing certain procedures on the patient
(15:12):
and that the patient can see what they are doing and then later,
and that is important, and later after the patient comes back again into the body,
after having had the NDE, they tell what they have seen
and what they have seen has been then confirmed independently by others.
(15:35):
This shows you that people can be outside their body,
or the consciousness, I should say, can be separated from the body.
So your body doesn't, or your consciousness doesn't need your body.
That's the important thing, the conclusion there.
And there are hundreds of these kind of stories that have been confirmed.
(15:57):
And I'm not sure whether with DMT these kind of cases are reported,
but I leave it open.
I think there should be some more research done into DMT
because maybe it triggers a partial out-of-body experience
or it makes your body die maybe a little bit
(16:20):
and that's why there might be some of these experiences.
But I'm not sure whether a complete near-death experience can be reached with DMT.
Yeah, I've never heard of a DMT experience and having a life review.
I've heard of DMT and then what I was mentioning earlier
of just like having a conversation with God,
(16:41):
feeling overwhelming love, like no judgment.
People who have trauma or people who are addicted to substances
just get a very introspective reason of why they're doing it
and they kind of come out of the experience no longer needing those things
because they've worked it out.
(17:03):
But I know one of the mechanisms of DMT is that it kind of shuts down
a part in the front of your brain, your prefrontal cortex
that's associated with the self, like the ego, that like, oh, I am.
That's how a lot of people get the interconnect.
You're like, oh, of course we're all connected
(17:24):
and that's something that elicits that.
So yeah, I was very curious.
Just hearing that they've ruled out that it's not a chemical reaction in the brain
so I was very fascinated to hear that
because it just seems like almost that would be it.
But again, the two substances don't mimic each other.
(17:45):
The one experience of a near-death experience and DMT aren't parallel.
There's some similarities there.
So yeah, it'd be very interesting to,
hopefully science can figure out what actually is causing that.
When we were first talking, you said that,
because to me, I kind of thought near-death experience is kind of just established.
(18:08):
So in every, not every culture, because I don't know every culture,
it just seems very pervasive in cultures that you die,
like, no, don't go into the light, you know,
like very dramatized for movies or something like that.
But then like, oh, I see Uncle Ted.
And so is it, are near-death experiences disputed?
(18:30):
Disputed in which way?
Amongst cultures.
Not amongst cultures, but people don't even believe that near-death experiences happen.
Oh, yeah, well, people that, well, people that have a near-death experience
are really convinced that they have been somewhere else.
It's almost 100% hit.
(18:53):
Of course, when they talk to their relatives and friends
about what they have experienced, there is a lot of unbelief.
Because these stories, let's be real,
these stories are really fairy tale-like.
It's amazing what they go through.
And it's so not from this world.
It's not from our earthly environment.
(19:14):
There are stories that people say,
well, this other environment is much more real than this one.
And I could see 360 degrees around.
I could be in more places at the same time.
Time doesn't exist there.
I can look through time a thousand years in the future,
a thousand years backwards, anything.
Like these kind of things.
(19:36):
If you talk to someone like that, you'd think,
hmm, he's a strange guy, maybe he's on drugs or so.
But there are more of these kind of stories.
And the interesting thing is, again,
that there are veridical observations that give you circumstantial evidence
that these experiences have really happened
and that there is meaningful conversation also on the other side
(19:59):
with the light or light beings or so.
And as you mentioned, cultures, you know,
NDEs happen everywhere on the world.
I heard stories from as far away as New Zealand and China,
Africa, South America, United States, Europe, you name it.
There are stories of NDEs.
So it is something that is particular for humans.
(20:24):
Yeah, that's the case.
Yeah, that's what it seems like.
I just didn't want to say like, you know, just outright,
oh, every culture, because I just don't know every culture.
No, of course not.
So yeah, it does seem very human experience.
And it happens to men and women, to rich and poor,
to any race that I know of.
(20:48):
I've seen so many stories
and I know that it happens to people of all walks of life.
And I have heard many stories that I can,
that's why I think I can say that.
That's it.
So it happens everywhere.
There are maybe cultural differences somewhere.
Like, for instance, in Western societies,
(21:09):
some people talk about having seen Jesus,
but in Hindu kind of countries, they would see Krishna.
There are stories that they see Krishna
or one of the other many gods that they have there.
Or in Islam, they would see Muhammad
or one of the other prophets that are important.
The thing is that near-death experiences
(21:32):
are so difficult to explain by the people that have them.
They say it's ineffable.
It's very difficult to put words on what they have experienced.
So you use words and concepts that you have.
If you're from a Hindu background,
you would use perhaps words that are known to that culture.
(21:57):
If you're a Westerner, you would use other kinds of words.
But the central theme is still,
there are a few things that really stick out for me.
One is that there is unconditional love.
It's reported all over the place and very consistent.
And it seems that this unconditional love is there for everyone
(22:18):
and no exception, even for the people you despise.
Another thing is that there is a feeling
of very close interconnection with others and with nature.
To the point where people even say we are one.
There's this oneness that we are all part of.
That gives you very interesting ideas
(22:40):
if you really think about that into extremes.
You said you had the Roman Catholic background
and with that there are certain beliefs there.
I am a Christian so I still maintain those beliefs
that you were raised in.
And so that's why these conversations are really fun
because I like to hear what other people believe
and really test actually what you believe.
(23:04):
But the point of me bringing that up is
you're saying people have these near-death experiences.
And so they see basically the religion that they have.
They see the deity associated with that religion.
They see Jesus, Muslims are seeing Mohammed,
and then Krishna for the Hindus.
(23:26):
Yeah, thank you.
And it seems like it would be kind of,
because all those religions kind of talk about a judgment
and there is a correct way you're supposed to live your life
to find the afterlife, to find heaven, essentially.
(23:47):
It seems like difficult to reconcile
that these people are seeing these things.
And like you said, maybe it's just a concept for them
of like, okay, I know this God, I know Jesus,
so I'm going to manifest Jesus when I'm experiencing this.
Well, maybe. I don't say that that's the case.
Maybe Jesus really appears. I don't know.
(24:08):
I don't know.
But the point is that people have difficulty
explaining what they have gone through.
So they will use the words that they know.
One person, one end of the year, and she's also in my book,
she said it's as if you have to explain something
that is so far away that you can't really have the words for it.
(24:31):
And she said, she likened it to playing a piece of Beethoven,
the composer, but you only have a bucket to do it on.
Or you have to try to redraw a painting that Rembrandt made,
like the Night Watch or so,
and you have only paving stones to do it on
and two colors of chalk. That's impossible.
(24:54):
That's what they say.
What I went through, I cannot explain.
And I use the words that are inadequate.
That's in brief what most of them would say.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
The point I was trying to make is like the judgment,
the disconnection between, because all those religions
essentially have judgment as a core component of when you die.
(25:17):
And so that's interesting that a near-death experience,
what they're saying is that there is no judgment,
but then they still see a deity that is associated
and talks about judgment as well.
Well, the thing is, that's interesting,
there's an important topic.
NDEers sort of consistently say there is no judgment.
(25:40):
They see their life review, and not everyone.
I mean, an NDE is not something, it's not a tick box exercise
where you have to tick all the things that are possible in an NDE.
So some people don't have a life review,
some people don't see a tunnel that they fly through,
or they don't see the light, very rarely.
So not everything, every detail is in every near-death experience.
(26:05):
But a life review is very interesting,
because a life review is what the word says.
You get to see your life, and it comes in different ways.
Some people see it in pictures, some see it in a film,
some see it in emotions, or in another way.
There was one person even saying, I saw my life review
(26:27):
as if I was in the center of a football stadium,
and each of the seats was a television screen,
and if I would focus on one screen,
I would get the detail of that part of my life.
If I would turn around and go to look at another screen,
I would see something else, and I could see my whole life.
Now, the interesting thing about life reviews
(26:50):
is that you get to see your life not only from your point of view,
but also from the other point of view,
from the people that you interacted with.
And it goes even further, you see it from their point of view.
So you become them.
You see what you did to them, and you feel it as if you are them.
(27:12):
So that's very direct.
And that has been said very consistently
throughout all the life reviews that I came across.
So that means that there is something strange going on,
because how can I feel what you feel as if I'm you,
because I'm not you at this moment.
But there is, once we are on the other side,
(27:35):
there is no boundaries anymore.
That's strange, but that's what has been said.
You feel what the receiver felt,
because you become the receiver.
And if you do something nice, you will feel the joy.
If you do something less nice, then you will feel the pain as well.
And that's very hurtful for people that went through a life review.
(28:00):
There are so many stories of people that have...
Of course, we all have done nasty things to others.
These people go through this, and they feel it from the other side,
and they see that's a very, very painful exercise to go through.
It's very painful.
Yeah, this is just really interesting.
(28:21):
My mind's going in a few different directions.
One is, I just think it's so fascinating
of what would a near-death experience look like,
because those near-death experiences are coloured
through experiences that we have, as far as seeing it in cinema,
seeing it on a TV, or seeing it in pictures.
So it makes me wonder, how did people experience a life review
(28:45):
before these technologies were invented?
They did say, one, they feel it through emotions,
and so that would obviously span humans
for as long as they've been able to understand emotions.
And that makes me wonder, is there one other thing,
is what you're saying about this,
this empathy that people are feeling,
(29:08):
and really diving into that person, it makes me think of A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol is going to predate the book that you read
in university, Life Before Life.
And so it seems like there's a near-death parallel there,
because in the ghost of Christmas future,
he sees what he's done, or no, ghost of Christmas past,
(29:30):
he sees how he treated people,
and the harm that he treated.
And so there's a parallel to a near-death experience there.
So it makes me wonder, is there other literature?
Obviously, the religions are going to cover death and life,
but is there other literature that points to near-death experiences
that isn't so closely intertwined with religion?
(29:52):
I don't know.
If you talk about near-death experiences in history,
in literature, in what is being written down,
the most famous one is mentioned, the story by Plato,
you know, the old Greek.
He spoke about a soldier who was thought to be dead,
and he was put on a...
(30:14):
Is it a pyre?
Pyre, yes. That's the word.
I'm struggling sometimes with words.
I can only speak one language.
You can speak a lot more, so you're doing really good.
And then before they set it on fire,
the guy gets up again and talks about what he had experienced.
And that is how a life review would be.
(30:37):
The interesting thing, what you mentioned just before
with the Christmas Carol, that is really...
That touches upon life reviews,
and you asked me if there is something more...
I don't know all the literature, of course,
but maybe somewhere that will be mentioned.
I don't know.
But it's an interesting theme that you become so empathetic
(31:02):
that you understand what you do to others,
and that would change you.
And that is what near-death experiencers say.
The life review is really a life changer.
The whole thing is a life changer because it's so far out.
And you've... Well, most people really feel
that this unconditional love is so imminent
(31:25):
and so big that they cannot neglect it anymore
or just refute it or whatever.
It's engraved in their head.
But the life review is... And it changes their lives.
But a life review changes the life in a way
because you know that whatever you do to others,
you will feel it from the other's point of view.
(31:48):
So it is something that will make you think twice
before you do something very, very nasty to someone else.
And having said that, I would really wish
that so many people nowadays out there in the world
would really understand that near-death experiences are real.
You can get that from vertical observations.
(32:11):
And that if you know that love or unconditional love
is the most important thing and that we are in it together,
that if I do something to you, I actually do it to myself,
that people will change their way of living.
And it's very necessary.
If I look at the news in the United States,
there is so much animosity there.
If you look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict,
(32:35):
there is so much animosity.
All sides, also Russia, Ukraine, you name it, conflict.
Every single person that harms someone else,
shoots someone else, bombs someone else,
will feel the consequences, not only from one person,
but from... Let me give you an example.
(32:57):
This is an example by Daniel Brinkley.
It is in my book, and I just want to flesh it out.
There are some impressions of near-death experiences.
There are also chapters on a vertical observation.
So those are the circumstantial evidence kind of things.
But this case of Daniel Brinkley,
he is a guy who was in countless fights in school.
(33:20):
He stole people's bikes. He was nasty in school.
Later on, he was in fights still,
and he joined an organization in the US,
where people were sent out to other countries
to kill off adversaries of the US.
I just tell you what is in the book.
I don't have an opinion there.
And he said, then he has later on in his life,
(33:43):
he has his life review.
He sees what he did in his life,
and he sees him making all these kills.
There's one kill where he bombs,
or he has a bomb that explodes in a hotel,
killing off like 50 people,
whereas he just had to take out one.
So there were 49, how do you say that,
(34:04):
collateral damage kind of cases.
Then he has his life review.
He sees what he did to others.
He sees it from the point of view of the victims.
So he relives all his kills from his point of view,
but also from the other point of view.
But on top of that, he also sees what he did,
(34:24):
what were the consequences for the children,
because he will become the children of these victims
and the wives of these victims,
and he feels it from their point of view.
This is really mind-boggling for him.
But this is said by so many people.
You get to see every detail from the other point of view.
There is not a little inch that you cannot cover in that feeling.
(34:50):
I wish that people really understand that.
So they would think twice in doing something very harmful to others.
Yeah, that makes you think,
are there short-term side effects of experiencing
a near-death experience and long-term?
Very short-term is euphoria,
but that lasts sometimes very short.
(35:13):
Because they realize that if they talk about it to their relatives
or to the doctors,
they sometimes are met with unbelief or even hostility.
Some people continue the euphoria and they go out.
There is this wonderful story about a guy who went into the street
(35:35):
and said, well, God really lives and we all go to this place.
You don't have to be afraid.
He goes to shopping malls,
but also to drug bins where they trade and stuff like that.
He notices that it has no use.
So then the next thing is that not everyone does that,
(35:56):
what I just explained.
But the phase that he comes into is something that many other people do get into.
It's like a kind of depression because you want to go back.
You feel the discrepancy between what we have here on Earth
where there is not this unconditional love.
(36:18):
There is hatred, there is animosity.
You know that it can be different because you have seen it
and you want to go back there.
There will always be a kind of homesickness on the part of the end ear.
It never wears off.
But then they need to learn to cope with it.
(36:39):
So this is the depression they sometimes get into,
the longing back to this place.
Although people know they shouldn't commit suicide in order to get back again.
That's interesting.
They know that their life is important.
They have something to do like we all have something to do.
(37:00):
Not one of us is unimportant here.
That's what they say.
So they know they have to do something but they feel sick
because they long for this unconditional love.
And then later on they learn to cope with it.
Now on average there are some ideas that it would take seven years
(37:22):
before people can cope again with living a sort of normal life.
Some people do it in a few days.
I've spoken to people who took 35 years and more
to be able to adjust to this experience.
It's really a life changer.
It's difficult.
They say it's the best present they have had in their life.
(37:47):
But it's also very, very difficult to cope with it.
That seems like a pretty big downside of it.
I was thinking because I had a friend who was dating someone,
that person, they broke up,
(38:08):
and then the person she was dating took a workout supplement,
not drugs or anything, and it gave him a heart attack.
He just about died.
I don't know if he had a near-death experience or anything like that,
but he just came back with a clarity of,
oh, I want to marry you.
And so the person, they got married and had kids,
(38:32):
and it's wild because it's just such a profound experience.
It seems like on the outside,
it seems like it would make you really understand
what is important in life and kind of what's a distraction in life.
Well, that's true.
NDE gives you really the idea of what is important and what is not.
(38:54):
And what is important is connections with others, nature.
Money is not important anymore.
Power is not important anymore.
It's the being together with others,
having a nice time, helping others, things like that.
So it's more like serving others.
That's what NDEers tend to do more.
(39:18):
That's really a significant change in people's lives,
and that has been proven statistically also.
So it's like power and money is not important anymore.
Big watches or cars or a big boat is not something they would go after.
Big jobs, a lot of money, not important anymore.
(39:42):
It's something that we might not understand.
But on the other side, what makes you happy?
I think most of the time it will be being with others,
sharing things with others, doing something nice for others.
I think that is if you really look into yourself,
those would be the things that will really make you happy
(40:05):
more than being on a boat that is yours or a big car.
Yeah, there's so many interesting parallels
because I really do want to look into Hinduism
and the religion of Islam and kind of understand
because so much of what you're saying,
there's a lot of examples in the Bible exactly what you're saying,
(40:26):
that euphoria feeling, that guy who went out after and was saying,
hey, this divine love is real.
Guys, it's here.
And there's a parable about a person who goes to hell,
and this is in the Christian Bible, who goes to hell,
and he says, he's in agony, and he's saying,
(40:49):
please, go back and let me tell my brothers that this is real.
And he said, even if you go back, they still will not believe.
And so there's a parallel there and what you're talking about,
how the Bible talks about that not money is evil,
but the love of money is evil.
And so there's another person, a very rich person.
He says, what do I need to do to go to heaven?
(41:12):
And he says, give up all your possessions to the poor and follow me,
and he can't do it.
And so there's that parallel too.
So I'm very interested, and this might be a little bit out of your purview,
but is there any sort of similarity there with Islam or Hinduism
that has those themes?
Because what you're saying is very prominent with what Jesus teaches.
(41:37):
Yes, I've studied also the comparison between NDEs and religions,
and that became a separate book, and that's really interesting.
In every religion, there are things that you can find in near-death experiences,
like in Islam, for instance, there's somewhere it's mentioned
(41:58):
that God is closer by to you than your, I don't know how to pronounce that,
this artery here.
You're carotid?
That's one, I can't pronounce that.
Yeah, it's a tricky one.
Carotid artery, yes.
Nailed it.
That's said in Islam, it's in the Koran.
(42:19):
And the thing is that if you listen to NDEs,
they talk about that God or the light is in everyone.
We have divinity, everyone has divinity within itself.
The core part of us is unconditional love, is divine.
It comes from the source.
(42:41):
I just quote a number of people in my book.
That's what they say, that we come from this oneness that we are part of.
And that resembles or that coincides with what is written in Islam in this case.
So there are many more parallels in Islam.
The nicest thing of Christianity, I think, is what Jesus once said.
(43:07):
Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, what is the most important command?
And they hoped to trick him.
And then Jesus said, well, the most important command is to love your God
with whole your heart and whole your mind.
And the second command, which is equal to this,
(43:29):
so he puts them both on the same footing,
is love your neighbor like you love yourself.
Now, that's interesting because if you really study NDEs,
you know that we are all part of the divine.
So there's divinity within you, within our neighbors, and within, of course, God.
So we are all made of the same substance.
(43:52):
And there it is, Jesus just says it.
And that's the most important command.
I really love that because that's the core thing of what he teaches us.
And that's the core thing that is in near-death experiences,
if you really look through everything.
(44:13):
That's kind of like the truth of why I'm really attracted to Christianity
and why it resonates as truth.
For me, it's like what you're saying.
It's kind of you're lowering yourself, you're putting others up high.
You're saying just love people.
And then, obviously, Christianity gets really disgusting
with the people who practice it or the people who espouse
(44:35):
that they practice Christianity and they treat people very poorly.
So I could understand how the world has a very bad opinion of them.
You know, it's a sidetrack, but it boggles my mind
how people in the U.S. talk about Christianity
and do things that harm others and still say they are Christian.
But that's just a side remark.
Yeah, I just think that human nature and yeah, it's pretty yucky, but I agree.
(45:02):
But we've talked about your book so much,
and I really want to dive in as we are approaching the end of this conversation.
I want to dive into your book because I want to know the structure of it more.
Is it a book that you've compromised of quotes from near-death experiences
or are you going and talking about and teaching people what near-death experiences are?
(45:24):
Here are the categories and here is what some of the research
and some of the experiential evidence that we have that leads us to believe certain things.
So how did you set up the book?
You know, I was thinking back of the first start that I was interested in NDEs
and I would have loved to read a book like this
(45:46):
because I'm not really interested in how people die or how people go into their accident.
I was interested in what the messages are.
I wanted to see what the messages are because those I find interesting.
So what I did is after so many years of looking at NDEs,
I thought there are a number of categories that are important
(46:09):
and I tried to find a lot of quotes, and it was easy,
that goes with one of these categories.
And I'll just mention a few.
Of course, how do you get out of your body?
Sometimes it's very interesting.
People say it's very easy.
It's just like another quote that's in my book.
It's like a toast popping out of a toaster.
(46:31):
It goes like that.
Before you know it, you're out of your body and something else opens up.
How do you get back into your body?
Very interesting stories there too.
But the thing is that this otherworldly environment is so strange.
That's another chapter where I found a lot of interesting quotes there.
The unconditional love, that's important.
(46:54):
The life review, there's so many stories there
that give you a good impression of what a life review is.
We are all important.
So many people say that.
But how do they say it?
What is the purpose for our life?
Well, that's another chapter.
There's people that hear that as a bonus.
(47:15):
They didn't ask about it, but they hear this is what is important.
Some people do ask about it.
One of those guys was like,
well, before you sent me back to Earth, I want to ask this question.
Why are we on Earth?
And there are a lot of answers.
It mainly comes down to practice love.
Just enjoy life.
(47:37):
There's a wonderful phrase by a little girl, Christina,
who was having her life review.
Her NDE.
And she said she heard from God.
There's four ingredients.
It's love, be loved, just be, and experience life.
I love that quote.
And I always mention it because I find it so easy.
(47:58):
It's loving and be loved and just enjoy life.
Well, experience life.
It can be hard.
Everyone has hard times.
But those are times that if you look back on it from the other side,
once you die, it's like it's not important
because the other side is much more real.
(48:20):
What we do here is like a shadow of the reality.
Now, having said that, there is also a very important chapter
on vertical observations because I find it important as a researcher
to show that there is circumstantial evidence
to show that these experiences are not just fairy tales.
(48:42):
And there is a chapter on oneness, a very important chapter.
Did I mention that?
That's the I find very important and very interesting.
And there's also because that's also the case.
There are people that have experienced distressing NDEs.
I go into that detail as well.
And maybe just to also say something more about the vertical observations.
(49:05):
There's I mentioned that there are sometimes observations made
what the doctors do or the nurses do.
But that's here on Earth.
There are also observations made in the other worldly environment,
like in one case where someone hears that is presented with a boy,
a small boy, and this boy says to the end ear, I'm your brother.
(49:32):
And she says, I don't have a brother.
And he said, well, you have to ask your father
because you have to go back again and ask him if I am your brother
and remember how I'm clothed and how I look like.
And then she has to go back to her body and then she asked her father
and the father finally acknowledges that she had a baby brother before she was born.
(49:57):
But it died very soon after it was born and never really grew up.
But it matched with the with the description of the clothes and so
so that that shows you that there is meaningful conversation also on the other side.
Yeah, that's interesting to think about why that would happen.
(50:18):
And like the the thing that came to my mind the quickest would be that child
helping the father release the like the trauma and the sadness
and like just the grief of death and just saying, hey, I come on the other side.
I'm OK. Yeah. Yeah.
That's that's also very important that people see disease relatives
and they they are so happy that they they are OK.
(50:42):
We all go there. That's the idea.
You mentioned distressing and is that like your your life review
and then your you know, you haven't been the kindest person.
So you're getting a lot of back to back empathy exercises that are very painful
to live out on the other side of your cruelty.
Is that what would be a distressing and or is there are there different examples of that?
(51:08):
It's a separate category.
Before I go into that, I have to say that the words good and bad
or that we use very easily here are not the words on the other side.
They they don't have a meaning there.
That's how I understand it from the years now.
Distressing and ease is a very small subset of all the NDS that we know,
(51:30):
although we don't really know because people who have had a distressing NDE
with sometimes hellish situations, don't brag about that.
I mean, if you had an awful NDE, you're not going to say,
wow, I had a distressing NDE with hellish things and so
because you're afraid that you will be judged by it.
(51:52):
So we have a subset of NDS that are distressing.
But within that subset, there is only a very small part
that is really distressing with hellish environments.
The others are maybe more like parts of an NDE that people find frightening,
like the life review, as you said, one of them.
(52:13):
Some people find flying through the tunnel with the speed of light is is awful.
Like, I don't like to go into a fair with all those machines
that shake you and turn you around.
I don't. I dislike that very much.
So flying with the speed of light through a tunnel,
(52:34):
I don't think that I would like that very much.
Let's concentrate on the subset of the subset.
And that's the really distressing ones.
What we do know from this and that's established in research is that
you cannot say that people who have been, quote unquote, bad
will always have a distressing NDE.
(52:56):
And similarly, you cannot say that people have been good
will always have blissful NDE.
An example being Daniel Brinkley.
I talked about him before, the guy that went around shooting others,
killing a lot of people, taking out 49 collateral damage kind of people
in this bombing.
(53:17):
He met with wonderful love and he really enjoyed his life with you.
Apart from the he had a wonderful near death experience,
but not his life review.
His life review was awful, as he says it.
And he noticed that he was really an awful person and he changed.
(53:38):
Now, there are also cases of people who have had who have lived a life
as dull as many lives, not to say that lives are dull,
but just to say there's nothing going on there.
They didn't kill people or so.
And they have had distressing NDE's.
(53:59):
I've come across a number of these people and they don't they sincerely
don't know why they had such an experience.
The idea is that things can in your first part of your NDE,
things might pop up from the collective conscious,
which is a term from Carl Gustav Jung, this psychiatrist in Switzerland,
(54:25):
or that they might pop up from your own experience.
Like sometimes people have well, we talked about religion.
Some people that I spoke to have had such a fear of going to hell
because that's taught to them in their religion.
If you do this and this, you will go to hell.
(54:47):
And it's being brainwashed.
And they are so afraid that they meet this.
They go to this hellish environment that they actually create themselves.
Most people get out of that kind of situation by asking for love
or turning their eyes to the principal component of their religion,
(55:11):
like Jesus or someone else from another religion.
And I have to say also that there are a lot of a number of NDEers
that explicitly hear during their NDE that there is no hell and no purgatory.
And I tend to believe that because I don't understand why there would be a hell
(55:35):
if we are all part of one or we are part of a oneness that is out there.
Why would part of the oneness be left out in disarray in a hellish environment?
It doesn't make sense.
And it's being told to people explicitly that you don't have to be afraid.
We all go home. That's another quote.
All to be found in my book.
(55:57):
Yeah, there's just so many different philosophical tangents that you could really dive into.
I'm curious because the Bible talks about the elect,
depending on how you interpret the Christian Bible.
There are certain people that are destined for heaven and destined for hell.
And so again, this is just all through my perspective of like how I'm understanding.
(56:19):
I understand that you're saying like NDE's are bigger than the language that we have to explain them.
But I'm just I'm wondering with that concept of the elect and the ones that aren't chosen,
is there a parallel to other religions?
Like does Hindu have that or Islam have that?
To where they talk about there's like a chosen people?
(56:43):
You know, the interesting thing of near-death experiencers is that when they come back again,
they move away from their own religion and they become more spiritual.
So they don't like the religion. They don't like the dogma.
They feel that a lot of things are wrong.
One of them, the elect, because NDE say we all go there.
(57:08):
It's for us, for everyone.
And the notion of elect is that's not what Jesus said.
There is nothing in the Gospels.
And I'm talking about the real, the Gospels, Matthew, Luke and the two others.
Jesus never said that there's only a few there.
That is a notion that is being brought in there by some of the,
(57:31):
I try to remember who this is.
Paul.
No, no, yeah, Paul also.
But Paul never knew Jesus.
He had a very interesting episode when he went to Damascus.
He was probably struck by lightning and had maybe a near-death experience.
If you read through the Bible, you think that's interesting, this episode.
(57:55):
But the term was not there yet.
But there is someone like Thomas of Aquino.
That's one of them.
And the other is this church father in 325 after Christ.
They brought into this, into the religion that there is original sin.
(58:17):
You go through the Gospels and tell me where Jesus talks about original sin.
It's not there.
If it were so important, he would have mentioned it.
But that was something that is thought of later.
I think it was brought into religion to access power over others.
That's my idea.
(58:39):
But you can have a different view, but it's not in the Gospels.
There's nothing on original sin.
Yeah, that's very interesting.
And then obviously, yes, religion is used a ton to just control people.
So I was thinking more so...
Not only in Christianity, also in the other religions.
(59:00):
Well, men, especially men, are very good at that.
They make part of the religion.
Maybe the core is right, and there are good...
That's what I also tried to explain in my other book on religions.
If you look at the core of each religion, there is real truth in them.
And you can find parallels with NDEs.
(59:24):
But the moment you go further and you go into the dogmas,
you think, wow, how did they come up with that?
And this one that I mentioned, like original sin, is one of those.
Yeah, because I was wondering...
Because you said people who...
Not everyone who has a near-death experience will have...
(59:46):
Or who are close to death will have a near-death experience.
And so I was wondering...
Because Christianity talks like it does mention the elect
if you read it with a certain perspective.
And so I was wondering if Hindu and Islam have the same sort of...
There's the chosen people and not the chosen people.
Because if you look at it in that lens,
(01:00:07):
that there are people who are destined for eternal love
and certain people who aren't destined for eternal love,
that the people who are destined would have the same experience.
They would have the same love experience
because they're destined for that experience.
And on the other side, the people who aren't destined for it
don't have the near-death experience.
(01:00:28):
And so that could explain, again, through my lens,
the phenomenon of certain people who...
One person has a heart attack, has a near-death experience.
The other person has a heart attack
and doesn't have a near-death experience.
So I don't know, I like thinking about these things and it's fun.
So I was just wondering if other religions mirror that perspective.
(01:00:49):
Well, all other religions have, to a certain extent,
also the excluding of others.
So you need to be in their religion
and then you have the possibility of going to heaven.
I think that some of the Christian strands can be very, very tough.
Like you have to be baptized in Christ.
(01:01:13):
If not, then you cannot go to heaven,
which brought very interesting questions.
One of which, perhaps Moses and Abraham,
they are very important in Christianity,
yet they were not baptized in Christ.
So where are they?
They cannot go to heaven.
(01:01:35):
This is really what has been discussed about.
The Roman Catholic Church, long ago,
thought of some, well, not so hellish places
where these people could go to.
They couldn't go to heaven, they couldn't go to hell.
So there's some kind of intermediate place there.
Same with children that were not baptized and died
(01:01:58):
before they could be baptized.
How can you put children into hell?
So they don't go to hell, but they can't go to heaven
because they haven't been baptized.
They go to this specific place.
So there are really strange things going on in our religion
because I still call it also mine.
In other religions, they have something similar,
(01:02:19):
although maybe not as harsh as that I just mentioned
with Christianity and being baptized in Christ.
How did you find these people to interview them for your book?
I came across first, I came across them through books
or first books, and then later I went to visit
(01:02:42):
the Ions conferences.
I met a lot of people.
In the Netherlands, we have conferences,
so you can meet a lot of people.
And if you really search and you get into contact with,
it's easy, you can get into contact with people
that are out there, that are vocalizing
what they have gone through.
Maybe for people who are really interested,
(01:03:03):
they should visit the IANDS website.
It's the International Association for Near-Death Studies.org,
so abbreviation IANDS.
There's a lot of information there.
It's very interesting.
There's an archive with all kinds of examples,
hundreds of near-death experiences,
(01:03:27):
some more interesting than others,
but each NDE is interesting in itself.
That's the way I would look at it.
And there are very nice podcasts specifically aimed
at discussing this with NDEers,
so they have only NDEers on.
That's fascinating.
It really is.
And Bob, I just appreciate this conversation so much.
(01:03:50):
It was a lot of fun and your insight
and just being so free and sharing
and just sharing a positive message.
So if people want to learn more about you,
get your book, how can they get in contact with you?
Where can they find your book?
Well, they can go to my website.
It's bobcoppes.com, and Coppes is C-O-P-P-E-S.
(01:04:12):
You will find my books there.
You will find directions to other websites
where you can find information.
And there's also a forum.
If people want to ask me questions,
they can always do that on my website
and I'll always answer.
Yeah, that's it.
And my book is available on Amazon.
But if you go on my website, you can find the link
(01:04:35):
or you can go to Amazon and then find it there.
Do you have any other books
that are coming down the pipeline?
No, not really.
I'm trying to get more new quotes into my book.
And on vertical observations,
I just want to separate all the vertical observations
into two categories.
(01:04:56):
One, where people make observations here
in the operating dome in the hospital
or at the crash site of their car.
And the other one being the meaningful conversations
in heaven, if you want to call it like that,
or the otherworldly environment
that is proven later on independently
(01:05:17):
that this was correct.
Like the example that I gave with the baby brother.
Bob, this was so much fun. I really appreciate it.
I liked it too. It was very nice.
Thank you for all your questions.
And they were very insightful and very to the point.
Thank you very much. Interesting conversation.
I agree. Thank you so much.
(01:05:54):
I'm not proud of what I did,
but I was desperate for a date to the spring fling dance.
I've always heard when it comes to dating,
it's a numbers game.
You just keep on asking till someone finally says yes.
The thought of getting rejected face to face
one person at a time was paralyzing.
So instead, I came up with a better idea.
(01:06:17):
I would send out a mass text
to all the girls in my community
and a mass text to all the girls in my class.
I crafted the perfect text
that would even put Shakespeare to shame.
Hey, girl, your eyes are bluer than the sky.
Your smile is always in style.
I think it's fate. Won't you be my date?
(01:06:38):
Then I pressed send.
It didn't take long.
The next thing I know,
my phone was flooded with rejections.
Like everyone.
I begged my parents to transfer me to a different school.
They refused.
All that was left was for me to be embarrassed
for the rest of my scholastic career.
(01:07:01):
That's what it would have looked like
if I didn't use Sibling Scapegoat.
With the help of their services,
I was able to save faith by responding to everyone that,
oh, I'm so sorry.
My little brother got a hold of my phone
and sent that text to you.
You know I don't think of you that way.
Best friends forever.
But also, if you need a date to the spring fling,
(01:07:24):
I'm available.
Whoops, sorry.
My little brother sent that last text.
Unless...
Thanks, Sibling Scapegoat.
Sibling Scapegoat,
when accountability comes knocking,
don't answer.
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