3: The Nearing Death Experience

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Speaker 1: I'm just a fool. We fear and strange. Welcome to death, grief and other ship we don't discuss. I'm Kyle McMahon. In November, my beloved mo Mom had passed. That was really where Mom went downhill. Up until then, Mom was fighting through thick and thin, determined to beat this horrible disease. There were so many ups and downs. It was a roller coaster of emotion. We'd get great news and I'd hold on to that and that would get me through, at least for a while. When doubt or anxiety would start creeping in, I'd remind myself of the good news the doctor had shared during her last appointment. No matter how small that good news was, I was holding onto it with a death grip. It was those small bits of hope that got me through each day. As it got closer to the next appointment, those good feelings would slowly turn to doubt as each hour brought us closer to her updated status. Doubt would turn to despair, and despair would turn into anxiety and depression. When the next appointment came around, I'd anxiously wait with my phone in hand, counting down the minutes until I expected a phone call from Mom or Dad with the update. Sometimes those updates were positive and other times they weren't. As we had been going through these ups and downs of Mom's cancer journey over the last two years, it was really really taking a toll on me. I had splotches of gray hair that just appeared overnight, as if I had seen a ghost. I was losing weight because I would go through periods of not wanting to eat anything at all, because I just didn't feel like eating. There were days when I had to block it all out just to survive the day. I'd become fearful of going too far from home in case I got a call that I'd have to run over to my parents house for some unspecified reason I had created in my mind. And now that I knew Mom's time was limited, all of that was happening more and more frequently. I could see what it was doing to her. She had lost so much weight in just a couple of months. She was nearly skin and bones. She was holding on for me and for Dad, but I could see that her grip was loosening, and it was through no fault of her own. She'd still have some good days, but they were becoming further and farther between. I'd see she posted some inspiring saying or photo on Facebook, and I'd get so excited because I knew that meant she was feeling well, at least well enough to be on her phone for that moment. Her text to me became less frequent too. That's when it really started hitting home for me. I was her baby boy, her entire world. If I didn't see her or didn't talk to her on the phone, we would have definitely texted back and forth. I continued to text her each morning with hearts and a good morning to let her know I was thinking of her and I love her. As the days went on, I was at my parents nearly every day just to sit with her, to talk with her, to tell her how much I love her, even if it was only for a few minutes. I began to remember what she had begun asking me just a few months before her diagnosis took a turn for the worst, and it made so much more sense now. Just out of the blue, one day, she said to me, straight up, Kyle, I need to know you're gonna be okay. And I was angry for her asking such a thing. Mom, What are you talking about You're not going anywhere, so of course I'm gonna be okay. I was legitimately mad at her for asking me such an insane question. I thought to myself, are you giving up hope? Is that why you're asking me this? She'd dropped it, and then a few days later bring it up again, and she would get the same response from me. Finally, after we got the news that her options had become very limited, she asked me once again, Kyle, please for me, I need to know that you're gonna be okay. I started crying and I gave her a big hug. I don't know how, Mom, but of course I'll be okay. She told me to promise her. I promise you. I'm not sure how I'm gonna do it, but I will find a way to be okay. I promise you. Mom passed that night. Of course, we all have different definitions of what okay means. I knew in many ways I would not be okay when she goes. How could I possibly be okay with my rock being torn from me? What she was really asking me, though, it was for me to promise her that I will make it through this, that I'll make it through this life without her. If you think about it, this was really a brilliant move by my mom. How could you look someone in the eyes on their deathbed and lie to them? I certainly couldn't, And she knew that getting me to promise her that I would make it through was her way of being assured that I wouldn't sink so low into a cycle of despair and depression and sadness that I do something irrational and irreversible. I know that by promising her that I would make it through, that gave her the peace and ultimately the permission to let go. When I think about those final days, I instantly fill up. By that point, Mom couldn't get out of bed on her own. She needed help just to eat. This is not the woman who just a few months prior to that was driving herself around and filming instructional dance videos with my dad in their living room. Cancer was stealing my mom right in front of me, and I was powerless to stop it. I held out for a last minute miracle, but I was even starting to doubt that. You know, it was getting really bad for me, because I started binging unsolved mysteries for hours every single day. I was retreating into my bubble more and more often, and to be honest, it was safe there. I'd go and visit Mom, and although I'd sit with her and talk about all kinds of stories about her life growing up or my life growing up, and that made me and her happy, the second I got out the door, I'd barely make it to my car before I just start sobbing. I knew that she was nearing death, and no amount of praying, no amount of anger, no amount of sadness, no amount of action was going to change that. I cherished every moment that I could spend with her. But at the same time, I couldn't spend too much time with her because she'd start getting in serious pain, and I couldn't just stand by and watch my mom crying and wailing in pain. I just couldn't do it, no matter how hard I wanted to be by her side every single second until the end. Thankfully, Dad did do it, and I knew that she couldn't be in better hands than those of the love of her life. She trusted him with her care and her life, and so did I. I knew that there was not another person on this earth as perfectly equipped as Dad to help Mom. Dad's military experience had given him the gifts of being able to take care of Mom, from helping her to eat, to giving her the right meds at the right time, to helping her sleep. Dad did it all. As I had mentioned before, Mom had always been the caretaker for me and Dad throughout both of our lives. Bills, Mom had taken care of him, dinner, Mom's already got it planned out. Clothes. Mom knew exactly how to dress Dad to make him look his best, so she'd update his wardrobe often. Mom has everything taken care of here, so Dad can go and just worry about work. It wasn't always easy, but Mom had literally taken care of Dad and I from day one where we never even had to think about it, through deployments and homecomings and promotions. Mom stood by him and me through it all. And now here was Mom unable to do any of it, unable some nights to even muster the strength of bringing the water bottle to her lips. But there was Dad right by her side as Mom had been by his. On a larger scale, it was truly a beautiful switch, but at ground level, it was a devastating one. You have to watch your wife, who has been so strong throughout her life mentally and physically, to be in the state to have to watch your mom or anyone you love go through this. It's painful, it's traumatic, it's horrible, it's not fair, and it's something that truly never ever leaves you. I can never thank Dad enough for the strength he displayed for me and for Mom. He got her through like she was there every step of the way throughout his life personally and professionally. Here was Dad helping Mom along every step of the way out of hers I wouldn't have had it any other way, and more importantly, Mom wouldn't have had it any other way either. They aren't just a husband and wife, their friends and how many people can honestly say that in their marriage they enjoyed doing things together. They enjoy just being together. They always have each other's backs, even until the very end of Mom's life. I was binging unsolved mysteries when I got a text from Dad, I'm outside. It was strange to have Dad stopped by unannounced. I mean, of course I didn't care. My parents were free to come over whenever they wanted, just as I did at their house my entire life. But it was an odd thing for Dad to do without letting me know he was coming ahead of time, so I knew that something was going on. I came outside to meet him, and I could see he had been crying. He said, immediately, they're running out of options, Kyle. We both just broke down and hugged, and he said to me, I don't know how we're gonna do it, but we'll get through this together. I couldn't believe the words that I had just heard. I had sensed that it was coming, but when it actually comes, there's nothing you can do to prepare yourself for it. Dad had been so optimistic and so war ready throughout Mom's cancer journey. To hear him say those words, I knew that he meant it. Just a few weeks after that, Dad called me to say that Mom's time was getting very very short. You would have to call a priest to give her her final rights. I was a half hour away working on a project with fright Land Haunted Attractions. I couldn't believe the words that I was hearing. It wasn't real to me. None of it felt real at all. It was like a movie that I was watching, not something that was actually happening to me. I immediately left and drove the half hour back to my parents house. My mind was racing. I'm sobbing my heart breaking. Dad had said that the doctors think the TPN bag, the bag that was essentially feeding her, was also feeding the cancer. It was growing quickly, so much so that some of her organs were starting to show signs of failure. This was all happening so very fast, way too fast. I drove right to my parents house and ran in and just sat with Mom and hugged her and kissed her and cried. What can I do? What can I say? There was nothing that someone can do to change the situation, and that hurts even more. At this point, that probably hurts the most. I stayed and hung out with Mom for a while, and once she started feeling the pains, I mentally had to go. Before I had left, Mom and I just sat together and cried and hugged and talked. She said to me, whenever you're having a bad day, talked to me. I'm there. Whenever you need me, Just talk to me, even if you don't see me, I'm there with you. Always, and if there's anyone on this earth that would move heaven in hell to find a way to still be with me, it's Mom. I believe her when she tells me that she'll be with me forever. And with that converse station, I realized that we're getting really close to the end. This woman, the most influential and consequential person in my world, in my entire life, she was preparing to soon leave it, and none of it felt real. The next few days, like so much of this journey, we're just a blur. Until that day the priest came to my parents house and gave Mom her last rites. I was in the room physically, but for some reason, it was like I was watching it as an outsider. How is this even happening. This has to be some sort of nightmare that I'll wake up from and Mom will be okay. It just has to be. If you're unfamiliar, the last Rites are one of the catholics seven sacraments Baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, confession, anointing of the sick, Holy Orders, and matrimony. The last Rites are an incorporation of the sacraments of confession, the anointing of the sick and the Eucharist combined with the Our Father and Apostles creed prayers. It's performed when someone is very close to their death. And now here I am in my parents room, surrounded by my aunts and uncles and cousin, watching the last rites being performed on my mom. We had just gone through this a few months before with my incredible mo Mom Joan, who I was so very close with, and almost a year to the day before that, we had gone through it with my loving grandmother Audrey. And while of course the loss of my grandmother's was hard, they were a bit more expected, as both were well into their eighties golden years and had lived long, happy lives. But my mom is nowhere near her eighties. I just helped her film a dance video a few months ago. This is not the way it was supposed to work. This is not how this is supposed to go. And with father here, this is all but an assurance that Mom will go. It's like this is seiling her fate. There will be no fourth quarter miracle. And no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't stop this freight train coming straight for us. Lord Jesus Christ, you chose to share our human nature, to redeem all people and to heal the sick. Look with compassion upon your servant joe Anne, whom we have anointed in your name with this holy oil for the healing of her body and spirit. Support her with your power, Comfort her with your protection, and give her the strength to fight against evil. Since you have given her a share in your own passion, Help her to find hope and suffering for you, our Lord, forever and ever. Amen. And with that it was done. My beautiful mom had just been given her last rights. A priest had come into the home that my mom and dad built together over decades, and surrounded by our family, gave Mom her last rights in just minutes. The United States Catechism for Adults states that quote, when the sacrament of anointing of the sick is given, the hoped for effect is that, if it be God's will, the person be physically healed of illness. But even if there is no physical healing, the primary effect of the sacrament is a spiritual healing, by which the sick person receives the Holy Spirit's gift of peace and courage to deal with the difficulties that accompany serious illness or the frailty of old age end quote. That's so absolutely crazy to me. I guess it wasn't in God's will for Mom to not die a horrible death from fucking can't sir. I guess it was God's will to make his best, most selfless servants suffer unnecessarily my feelings aside. I know Mom was happy that she received her last rights, just as my mom had done just a few months prior. So in the end, I was happy that she was happy. We all talked and hugged and cried, and then Mom spent time one on one with everyone individually. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to be at my parents house for Mom and for Dad, but I also felt like I was breaking apart, like I was just physically breaking apart. I'd go into my old room, quietly, closed the door and just cry. I put my face into the pillow to muffle the sounds because I didn't want to upset Mom. Jason texted me and said that he'd be over in a few minutes, so I was counting down the seconds. When he arrived, we hugged and I warned him. Mom didn't look the same as she did when he last saw her. Eventually, he did go into my parents bedroom and he talked to Mom alone one on one. I went back into my old bedroom and just cried, and at one point I could hear Mom crying through my door and through her door, and I could hear Jason two. I didn't want to know what was being said. That was their final time together. She loves Jason, and she always told everyone he's the son of my heart. Dad always jokes that Mom got stuck with me, but she handpicked Jason, and now here was his final moments here on earth with the woman who was like a second mom to him since we were kids. Eventually, he knocked on my bedroom door to let me know who was done, and so we went outside and talked. His eyes were bloodshot, red, tears streaming down his face, and we hugged as he told me, I wasn't ready for that. She just doesn't look like her, and Jason was spot on. Mom didn't look like she normally looked. Cancer was ravaging her body. By the second, her pure snow white skin had turned yellowish, her beautiful face had become skeletal, her body frail, her mind and her heart were there though, as big as they ever were. Jason told me that he had promised her he'd watch over me, and that made me cry even more. Here was my mom, literally on her deathbed, still more concerned about how I will be than being concerned over what she's going through. But that's Mom, always thinking of others. As Jason and the rest of my family said there goodbyes to each other and to me, and friends were popping over to say they're goodbyes to Mom, I couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't really happy in ing. It really was a feeling that started when she was diagnosed, and a feeling that continues to this very day. I can't believe any of it is real. I intellectually know that it's happening, but it doesn't feel real. I would also fantasize that maybe once she passes, she'll come back. I had read during one of my Google fons of googling everything related to the latest and pancreatic cancer treatments, that there was this woman who had cancer. She was then pronounced clinically dead, and then she came back. Her name is Anita more Johnny, and she wrote a book about her experience called Dying to be Me my journey from cancer to near death to true healing and Anita and her story just suddenly popped in my mind as I was standing outside of my parents house. Maybe that would be mom. Maybe God will pull through with that last minute miracle. I believe that it can happen. Now will it happen? That is the question. Near death experiences, referred to as n d s are much more common than we think. While once thought to be pseudo science, more and more research has been done on the phenomena and the data is showing that something is happening with these people that cannot be explained. In a group of doctors in China inadvertently captured some interesting data when a patient when under cardiac arrest while undergoing a brain scan. What they found was that the brain scan showed the same exact type of brain activity before and after the heart stop that someone does when they're recalling memories in their life. This is super interesting because this tracks with so many nd ears experiences of their life flashing before their eyes right before they passed. But how much science is behind near death experiences? Surprisingly, there's a lot, and the science is growing every day, I sat down with Dr Janice Holden, the president of International Association for Near Death Studies, to discuss near death experiences. Dr Holden was the perfect person to discuss this with as she served as a professor at the University of North Texas and the Counseling Program, retiring as Professor Emirata. Her research career over thirty one years at u n T focused on near death experiences and after death communication. I wanted to know if there was some kind of typical experience that people had before they pass Dr Holden explains near death experiences occur during any close brush with death, and so if a person is very ill or has a very serious injury, and they might have a near death experience. And what we know now from researches that of all the people who survive a close brush with death from whatever, you know, a car accident, surgery, you know, any any illness, anything you can think of about don't remember anything unusual. But about ten to twenty percent remember their consciousness functioning very lucidly. And the two main aspects of the experience, well, there's the experience that some people have of their consciousness actually leaving their body and at the end of the experience returning to their body. But in between, they are perceiving the material world from a position outside their body, and or they're perceiving and interacting with beings and environments that are not of the material world. And so those those two, those are the two main aspects of the experience. My it's interesting that you say that because my mom who passed just about three months before. My mom, I was lucky enough to be able to sit with her in her final hours and hold her hand, and and she began talking to her mom who you know, she was talking to her as if she was standing at her bedside, and it got me to thinking it was plain at day to her. I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I didn't certainly want to ruin that, you know, so as as she was talking to me, I was going with it. Yeah. Is that something that's common that that people report seeing their loved ones to kind of bring them to the other side or Well, what you're describing is there there are a group of different phenomena surrounding death, and what you're describing is what's called nearing death awareness, where someone who's terminally ill and they're about to die, often sees deceased loved ones, so they have actually after death communication with deceased loved ones, and the purpose of the communication it's virtually always very comforting to the dying person, and the purpose seems to be to reassure them that, uh, they're not going to be alone in their transition process, that that there will be people there who love and care for them. Is that unknown? Why? I read somewhere that some doctors somewhere was like, oh, well, that's just lack of oxygen to the brain or something. But to me, from what I've read and seen, there's got to be more to it than that that people are specifically seeing that specific thing over and over and over again people, no matter what the culture and that sort of thing. Is there a science behind that? Is it as of yet unexplainable? Well, you know, most of these experiences are just personal, subjective experiences that can't be verified objectively. But there is a phenomenon and that's really been the primary focus of my research. Uh for the reason that we're we're getting at um called vertical perception, and that's where during the experience, you know, whether it's a an experience like your grandmother had, or a near death experience, or some other death related experience like after death communication. That can happen to people under any circumstances where they'll have perceived the presence of their deceased loved one. There's this phenomenon where um they get information from the experience that based on the condition position, everything they know, they couldn't possibly know this, and yet it's later verified to be accurate. So, for example, in after death communication, there's a man whom his name is John Wigglesworth. His father died and a few days after he was at his parents house helping his mom clean out his father's stuff, and he remembered that his father had told him a few years before that he the father had bought a gun and just wanted it in the house for protection. He hadn't told anybody about it, even his wife. He didn't want her to be worried about it, and he kept it in the closet in his bedroom, up on a shelf. And so he said to his son, you know, John, whenever the time comes, I hope you'll go and retrieve it from the house, because your mom wouldn't know what to do with it. So here he is in the perfect opportunity and he searches all around belongs to re short. He didn't find it there, he didn't find it anywhere, safe deposit box car. He just looked everywhere, could not find the gun. Thought well, maybe his father had gotten rid of it and hadn't mentioned it. He he just didn't know. So a few days later, he's asleep and he has this experience while he's asleep, which I'm not going to call a dream, because when people have these experiences, they usually report that they're qualitatively different than a dream. You know, dreams are irrational and and emotional, and these just seem like very genuine encounters with the discarnate, which is, you know, a word for the deceased. And in this experience, he's in his parents home and he's walking down the stairs into the basement and his father's calling to him from above, and he's saying, you know, go down the stairs, down the hall, into my dark room. Keep going into the dark room. Across the room to this cabinet. Pulled the cabinet away from the wall, and you'll find the gun lodged between the cabinet and the wall. And so the next morning, John wakes up. He remembers his experience. He wrestles with himself. He thinks, you know, that can't possibly be dreams, are you know, fantasy? But it gets the better of him. He goes to his parents house, Mom, you minded fell look around now whatever. He goes downstairs into the dark room to the cabinet, pulls it away from the wall. There's the gun. And if he's like, I don't know why my father moved it. I don't know why you put it there. He never told me. I never knew, except I learned from him after he passed. So there are accounts of people who found like missing wills and things that like the discarnate had taped an insurance document in the nightstand, pull out the drawer and had taped it up above like this. So it's something you would never find unless you knew to look there, and he had hidden it there, and they found it and got his insurance benefit. And there are cases like this of near death experiences where like a woman is in surgery and um, she unexpectedly flatlines, and so important to know that in the surgery, um, they were doing some kind of abdominal surgery, and so her face and head were completely covered, her eyes were taped shut. After a few minutes they're able to resuscitate her. Of course, the whole time she remains completely anesthetized. They finished the surgery, take her to recovery, and they're The surgeon comes to see her once she's you know, awakened kind of back, to find out how she's doing, and she says to him, I know that I died during the surgery. And he's like, how do you know that? And she said, well, because I saw, from says up above looking through the ceiling, and I could see, you know, you did this, and this person did that, and then somebody came in and did this and then left. So they were only there during the cardiac resuscitation part. When she was complete, she was dead actually, And he's astounded because all that is accurate. But then which in my thinking, it's like if he knew anything, which a lot of doctors don't. But there's extensive research and there are hundreds of accounts like this, But she said, um, like I said, I was up above the ceiling looking through and I could see into the adjacent operating room and there they were amputating a man's leg, and when they finished, they put the leg into a yellow plastic bag to dispose of it. And he's like, what, because he says, I don't even know it. Else is being scheduled in the hospital. You know, I don't pay attention. But now, of course it's a couple hours after the surgery, and he goes to the hospital records and finds out that, in fact, while he was doing the surgery on her, they were amputating a man's leg in the next Star operating room, And because it was specialized for amputation, he'd never been in it before, but at this particular moment it was empty, so he went and peeked in, and there he saw the yellow plastic bags they used to dispose of amputated body parts, and so it's kind of like, how could she know this? Well? As I said, there are hundreds of accounts like this, and just recently they've been collected into a book called The Self Does Not Die. So you can read one account after another, most of them submitted by physicians who were the witnesses to verify that what the person reported was accurate, and they're from all over the world, and it's just very very indicative that Even though most of these types of experiences, near death experiences, nearing death awareness after death communication are subjective and don't include vertical information, those that do are almost always completely accurate. And when they happen to people who are during the perception, their heart was stopped, so they were essentially dead for you know, temporarily, and the information they received was very idiosyncratic and nothing that they could have possibly known. Like one man um during his surgical crisis, left his body and he floated up through the hospital floors and when he of course, they resuscitated and finish the surgery. When he came to, he was talking to an ears and he's and he told her what happened, and he said it was really weird though, because the floor right above the operating room there were like people who were frozen in place, and these computer modules and and he just described various things. Well unbeknownst to him, how why would he know right above the operating room was their training room where they had mannequins and you know, where they practiced CPR and all these different things with the computers and the and all the kind of stuff that he saw. But he saw it while he was rising up through the hospital room levels. So you know, how could somebody know that unless their consciousness really was out of their body. So these these vertical experience indicate that the experiences that don't involve vertical information maybe just as objectively real even though they don't have the evidence for them. That's incredible and for me it makes sense. But you know, as as a as also a science type person, it's also undeniable, you know what I mean. I mean, when you have all of these accounts of like you said, there's no way that you could know these things, that is something that there's something to do that you know right right. Well, you know, interestingly, people who are I don't call them skeptics, I call them cynics because they're they're not just skeptic really means open mindedly, you know, just staying neutral and trying to get all the information. But there are people who just believe that this is not possible, and so they try to put forth explanations for how these things can happen, like, um, oh, the person must have overheard nurses talking about this and don't remember overhearing it. Well, that might happen in one situation, but when you've got you know, more than a hundred accounts, and nobody is saying I actually heard people talking about this, and just then, you know, kindued up the image. They're not saying that, they're saying I experienced this. It just doesn't it doesn't hold water. What is some of the other phenomenon you know, you talked about in regards to my my mom with the visiting of loved ones? What are some of the other phenomenon that is either you know, common or has happened or well. Um, The two things that I'm most knowledgeable about, though I do have knowledge of some of the other kinds of phenomena that happened around death are near death experiences where the person does have a close brush with death that then they survive and go on to you know, live the rest of their life. And after death communication where a living person and perceives the presence of a deceased loved one, and that presence can take any of a number of forms. Um and so so both of those things happen, So they're um in terms of the experience that experiences themselves. Of course, they're different because in the near death experience, the person's uh for the almost all near death experiences or experiencers will say that their consciousness was outside their body and either observing the material world or observing and interacting with beings and environments not of the material world. And after death communication, the living person continues to just live, you know, and they don't have the sense of their consciousness leaving their body. They had the sense of the deceased coming to be with them, as in the case of your your grandmother's experience. So so phenomenologically they're different, but um. But what they have in common is that in the Western world, um, at least many cultures of the Western world, not all. UM, these phenomena, because they involve interaction with with non material beings and environments, they're just looked on negatively. Um as uh. You know, the prevailing view in sciences and materialism, the idea that everything arises from a physical source. And so if you have an experience like this, it's just your mind playing tricks on you. You know, like you said, lack of oxygen to the brain, blah blah blah, and um. The problem is that, like with things like um after death communication, people have those experiences when they're perfectly healthy, so there's no of oxygen to the brain or um any other explanation that can consistently explain all cases. And the same is true with near death experiences. We know from research that in cases where people who survived cardiac arrest were monitored for their blood oxygen level, there was no relationship between how much oxygen was in their brain and whether or not they reported a near death experience. So that explanation just doesn't hold water and um, and the same can be said of every theory that's developed. Like one physician thought that more people who have had near death experiences also report sleep sleep paralysis. So so this one doctor hypothesized that there might be a relationship with sleep paralysis, and he found higher reports of sleep paralysis among near death experiencers, but not everybody. You know, there are a lot of your death experiencers who have never experienced sleep paralysis. So it just doesn't it just doesn't hold water. And so you can just go through the list and and essentially shoot down the validity of anything that's been explained, except and then when you take political perception on the other hand, and say, you know, there are all these cases where people have gotten information that there's just no way to explain how they could have gotten except that they were actually like out of their body or communicating with a deceased loved one. Then you know, it's it just points to the that there's a reality to the experiences. And what I find interesting about this is that there are so many commonalities. And again it's it's irregardless of religion or spirituality or you know, where they live or whatever. What are some of those Yeah, well, first of all, you're absolutely right that we know from research that near death experiences are equal opportunity experiences. They happen to every demographic, anything, any characteristic you can think of it differentiates people. Has not shown a differentiation for near death experiences, so they just happened to everybody, anybody. Um So, some people actually report the experience of leaving their body, their consciousness leaving their body, not everybody does. And then some near death experiencers report perceiving the material world from above, and usually it's above their body, outside their body, usually above, and in that process, the material world appears just the same as it does to us, you know, when we're in our bodies, and their additional factors like our features, like the person can both see and see through a wall. The person their location changes based they move at the speed of thought, like if the person thinks, oh my gosh, you know, um, I must be dead. They're looking down, they see this body and it's like, oh, oh wait a minute, that's that's me. Well, I must be dead. Oh my gosh, I wonder where mom and dad are and then boom, there in the waiting room of the hospital where mom and dad are sitting. Mom is praying, Dad is reading magazine. And you know, of course, later the person can report what they were doing at the time of the of the medical crisis. So there's that perception of the physical world, um, and these special features of being in that in that state. And then some people have an experience of uh moving rapidly through some structure or through space and like really fast, like hum you know, Star Wars kind of speed. And sometimes they perceive that they're moving through something that looks like a tunnel. But the tunnel is different to different people, Like some say it's dark with the light at the end. Some say that the tunnel itself is light and that sort of thing. So, and it doesn't have to be a tunnel, it could be a space or something like that. But typically there's movement towards a light, and once the person I'm calling their consciousness, the person you know, reaches the light, they discovered that the light is a being and this being exudes absolute complete knowledge of the person and absolute complete love, and so the person feels absolutely known, absolutely loved, and a lot their death experiencers who never met each other say that the experience of being in the light is coming home with capital H O M E. This is this is like where they essentially feel the safest, feel like they're from. They know it's familiar and that sort of thing. Well, while in the presence of the being of light, some people have a life review and they both review and re experience typically every moment of their life, but also simultaneously, while they're re experiencing it personally, they're also at the same time observing it as a third person and and they're also experiencing being every person with whom they interacted, so that if they said something nice to the person, they experience being the person and receiving that positive message and how that felt. If they mistreated the person, they experience the mistreatment and um not uncommonly when people you know, inevitably encounter situations where they mistreated somebody else they feel like shame or regret or that sort of thing, and the Being of Light is not judgmental. They tends to be kind of philosophical and most often inviting the person to reflect on what they learned from that experience. And so when you know, to fast forward a little bit after the person is you know, survives and returns to physical life. This is one of the aspects of the near death experience that's most impactful because then now people know everything I do to you, say to you, even think about you, I'm gonna experience being on the receiving end of that. And so it informs people's decisions moment to moment, and um not in a burden some way, because there's also the knowledge that you know, if I screw up, I'm not going to be like damned or anything like that, but just the they're not wanting to engender in other people the suffering that they know that they would be engendering if they do something you know, harmful. So then often people sometimes following the encounter with the Being of Light, they moved to other trans material you know, not of the material world environments and encounter deceased loved ones like you know, you would see your grandmother again or um, your mom or that sort of thing, and also interact with other spiritual beings um some of whom may seem to maybe have lived as humans and some not necessarily and usually for there's like wisdom, guidance and things like that that is engendered for the person, and there maybe other aspects, you know. Sometimes people encounter these beautiful environments. Sometimes they're preternatural. With grass, every blade of grass has its own consciousness and the beautiful music that is nothing like people see on earth. People say in these environments they see colors that they never saw on earth. And sometimes people see like cities of light and knowledge where entities are doing work. You know, I don't know exactly what. So people see things like that as well. And then there's the return to the body against Some people experience actually returning re entering their physical body, and others don't. If they do perceive themselves leaving their body and are returning to their body, it's not necessarily the same between two people. One person might you know, the tap of their head, another through their chest, another just have a sense of a full body exit. It just it varies from person to person. So yeah, that's that's the the experience itself. As I struggled with my own spiritual beliefs, I had to wonder if people that had near death experiences had any kind of similarities in their spiritual beliefs. Do Christians have nd ease less than Jewish people? Do atheists see a light and experience what a Christian person may call heaven? Coming up next, Dr Holden explains it all through mom's cancer journey, I had been going back and forth in a struggle with my faith. While I would definitely consider myself spiritual more than religious, I had fallen back on my Catholic upbringing and mom's time of need. After all, what better way to get through something than to rely on a higher power to do it for you. So that made me wonder do people who have strong religious faith experience nd ease more or less than somebody who doesn't believe in a higher power? Does one religion experience NDEs more than another? Dr Holden dives in, Sometimes it explicitly represents itself as Jesus. Let's say, sometimes the person themselves interprets they and they'll say, he didn't say he was Jesus, but I'm sure it was. And then sometimes the person will say, you know, I met this wise beyond anything being and they don't try to put a label on it at all. So it really just depends culture, including our cultural beliefs, including our religious beliefs, may influence what we see are how we see it. It certainly influences how we interpret it and so. But people are not in any way limited to perceiving things that their religious or cultural background prepared them for. Um. There are often surprising things that happened that contradict what the person would have thought. And one example is that sometimes in n d s people see previous lives and future lives, and this happens to people of all belief systems, even agnostics who don't believe that the consciousness even survives physical death more or less reincarnation or something like that. So after these experiences, people are much more likely to believe in reincarnation based on the their experience of what they knew, you know, um happened to them. And by the way, near death experiences people almost always report that the experience was as real or more real than this reality. And I remember when I was doing my dissertation, I read one of the participants responses to my question about the extent to which they believed the experience was real, and he wrote, the experience was more real than sitting here writing this response to you. I still get chills when I when I recount that, it just really struck me. Uh So, subjectively, people usually are not at all doubting of what they experience. Now, sometimes people are, um, they because the experience can be so different from what our culture prepares us for that it just like isn't making sense and can the person kind of tends to pooh pooh it. But then usually the experience continues to press itself on them, you know, and and they start to really consider the possibility that that there's a lot more than what our culture ever prepared us for. That's incredible. And they ramifications of that um challenge a lot of what we can explain in black and white, you know, And that's that's a powerful thing. It is what is something that you've seen? You know? When they come back, do they want to go back to that place again once their consciousness has come back to our place? Or are they content with I'm going to get there again, but now I have a different meaning with my life going forward, or or speak a little bit about that. Yeah, actually both of what you said and and actually those things can coexist. I've heard a lot of near death experiencers talk about this deep longing to return to you know, this wonderful experience, um. And at the same time, in the experience, people tend to learn that our lives have meaning, our lives are important. We're here for a reason. The reason, according to near death experiencers in general, is to advance in our capacity to love and to acquire knowledge and so so at the same time that they really want that they're satisfied with I won't say satisfied, but they're willing to stay and and play out what they were intended to get from this lifetime. Mm hmm wow. What is if any um? Is there a trend in how people, you know, once they have come back and how they go forward from then, like for in other words, like do you see they start to volunteer more so you know anything like right, yeah, well yeah, And this is the other aspect that's been very well researched is the after effects of near death experiences, and generally speaking, you know, near death experiences themselves can range in depth, like somebody might just like pop out of their body, see the scene of the car accident and then pop back in and that's it. And other people have these extensive experiences with all these trans material entities and all this kind of stuff. And generally speaking, the deeper than near death experience, the more intense the after effect. But even that isn't always the case. I've seen some people who had very quick end ease who had pretty powerful after effects, and the after effects we know from research now tend to fall into what I like to categorize in four categories, so their psychological after effects. The biggest one is that almost everybody who's had a near death experience completely loses their fear of death. They know from experience that their consciousness is going to continue, so they don't have anything to fear. And like one near death experiencers said, dying is like walking from this room into the next. It's just like that. So there's no fear now. They may still fear the dying process nobody wants to suffer, but death itself they don't fear. And at the same time, they value life more and really appreciate that there are things that we can waste, that we can develop at this level of reality that aren't available at any other level of reality. So they appreciate the unique opportunity that life on earth brings. They tend to become much less materialistic concerned about material things. They still enjoy material things, but they just don't have the attachment to them that some people have, and and they become less concerned about things like fame and um, you know, other kind of fleeting fleeting things in physical existence. So those are some of the psychological aspects. UM. Then there are spiritual aspects, and many people after ends become very interested in spirituality and will read and like try out different churches and things like that. Interestingly, most end years, UH, if they were affiliated with religion prior to their n D, they disaffiliate after not because of like rejection, but just because no religion is big enough to explain everything they experienced. But some become even more involved in their in their religion. So there's no like one um pattern. But I will say, like I have a friend who's Catholic and he became a deacon after his near death experience, but in his first homily he talked about near death experiences. So you know, it's kind of like you just can't escape it. And uh, people develop what in some religious systems are called spiritual gifts. There's psychic abilities, people foresee the future, they know what other people are experiencing, telepathy, and even developed psychokinesis um so, which is the ability to move things without the use of physical force. So so there's the kind of spiritual thing. So we've talked about psychological and spiritual. Then there are physical changes. A lot of near death experiencers change their diet. Many stop eating meat. But I have an end to ear friend, Linda Jackman, who has to have meat every day. So again there's no one thing. But there are these tendencies, and they tend to need less sleep. Uh. And then there's this phenomenon related to psychokinesis where electronic things in their vicinity tend to malfunction and so cell phones drop, computers crash. But that that happens to all of us, but we know from research that it happens significantly more to people who have near death experiences. And we know that from that research that it happens more when they're emotionally aroused, and it could be anger or elation. It doesn't matter what the emotion and is. It's like emotionality generates some kind of energy that makes things go koflui around them. So the one thing that they usually have to learn to do if if that happens, is calm themselves. You know, if your computer crashes right in the middle of something, you tend to want to get more angry. What they know they have to do is um, you know, and and kind of and then the computer comes back and things work okay. So it's a kind of an interesting process. So we've talked about psychological, spiritual, physical, and then social, so all these other changes reverberate in people's social worlds. A lot of times people will say after their near death experience that when they regain consciousness following the experience or as soon as the experience was over, because you don't have to lose consciousness actually to have in your death experience, as soon as it was over, they felt transformed. They just felt different and their values were different, you know, the things that we've talked about, And so imagine if you're married, and again we know from research when people marry, they tend to have in Western, in you know, US culture, they tend to have similar values. And then if one of the people has a near death experience and their values veer off towards you know, non violence and you know, concern for others and no concern about going shopping again and can't watch TV anymore because of the violence on it and all that, those people tend to divorce. If their values diverge, they tend to divorce, and the divorce rate is higher than uh than the national average for if a person is married when they have their n D. But there are a few cases where the living person who never had a near death experience started out having somewhat more n D like values. And so then when this and has their n D E, their values converge and they report they stay together and they're happier than ever. So if values diverge, they divorce. If they converge, they continue. So those are that's just one of the ways that the social world reverberates. A lot of people change jobs. A mafia hitman who has had a near death experience just can't do it anymore and becomes a high school teacher. So I always laughed because I was a high school teacher once and I often thought that being able to hit people would be valuable. I'm just kidding. Um, Yeah, And people change their affiliations, they change the way their own priorities in life. So you know, the pastimes that they did, the organizations they affiliated themselves with, those all can change, and usually in the direction of you know, charity, caring, benefiting humanity and the planet and things like that. So there is, in fact, plenty of science behind near death experiences, and the science is growing every single day. In my opinion, there has to be something to this where so many people from all different walks of life have all experienced similar things, and for so many of them to be able to explain things that there's no way they would know what was happening on the floor above them, for instance, and what the people were wearing on that floor. How else would you know that there's definitely something to this, whether science can explain the specifics yet or not. So if Mom did go, could she come back? I prayed to God and every other deity known demand for that to happen, and ultimately only time would tell. It's quite clear that there's a growing mountain of science behind near death experiences. But it seems that, for whatever reason, NDEs have been much more often with people who had sudden deaths and ultimately rebirths. And while those last few days on Mom's cancer journey were so inconceivably hard, I did take comfort in Mom's words, I'll always be there. Just talk to me. I'm there and Mom had never broken a promise to me, and I believe with all of my heart that she won't start now. On the next episode of Death, Grief and Other Ship, we don't discuss I discuss the day I lost my mom and the ramifications of those moments in that final day. Then you've heard of midwives, but have you heard of death dulas. I speak with death dula Karen Karnats all about what death dulas do. Then I speak with Dr John Goodu, chief of Christiana Cares Hospice and Palliative Care, will explore the differences of hospice and palliative care, how to handle it, and more. For more information and resources, please visit our website at Death and Grief dot Show and joined the conversation on our Facebook and Twitter. Come mother, she said, she me me, I'm just school avertorny, I'm just school. Were over.