All language subtitles for Thaier

It was July 18th, 1969

It was early in the
morning, about 5:30 am

It was a beautiful
day to fly

No wind to speak of

So how could it be better?

We start up the engines

We were full of fuel

Everything was fine

And we started taxiing

And then sure enough,

the aircraft started to climb

Chuck brought the landing
gear up

We were accelerating
and climbing

above the runway,

and I think we were about

100 feet above the ground
when I started noticing

that something was wrong

You have one engine
at higher rpm

another low rpm

Now that can happen
with an engine failure

And I mean,
I grabbed the chairs

and held on and looked out

and I saw a bunch
of green grass

and it looked
like a city park

And I thought, well,
worst case scenario,

we've always been trained
to just land in a park

But the next thing
I noticed was

towering trees
were filling our windshield

Chuck grabbed
the flight controls

and he yanks them all
the way left

As far as they'll go

And then he pulls them
all the way back

against his chest

I suddenly found myself

above the crash site,

but unaware

of what I was
looking at or why

I was not in any pain

I was not in any fear
or discomfort

I was just above this
crash site

I could see an airplane
and I could see a pilot

First of all, my eyes
went right to one pilot

This was Gene

And then I went over
and I saw another pilot

right next to him
five feet away

And I recognized this
as Chuck

And while I'm processing
what I'm looking at

I see a third pilot also
about five feet away

And this is me

Imagine if what
we're living here on this

earth is really being
lived on a flat, black

and white
painting on a wall,

and death is separation

So when we die, our

spirit separates
from our physical body

You die and
you're ripped off

that flat,
black and white

two-dimensional painting

your brought out into a
three-dimensional room

of color all around you

You're experiencing things

you've never
experienced before,

even though you can
see your world

is contained
within this world,

then imagine
you're put back into

that flat,
black and white painting,

and you have to describe

three dimensions of color

in two-dimensional
black and white terms

How would you do it?

Medically,

Scientifically,

the point of death

cannot be defined

What we do know is there
is a process of dying

during which I feel the

near-death
experience occurs

75% of the people in that
first study

have had a documented
cardiac arrest

Part of the
experience is they

said they floated up
out of their body

and they can see
what was going on

during the resuscitation

I felt that myself,
as a cardiologist

could pick that apart

This is clinical
death as we know it,

sometimes
for a few minutes,

sometimes 30 minutes,
sometimes hours

And yet modern medicine
or the miraculous,

I don't know,

resuscitated them

and they were able
to come back

and talk about it

You may think
you've died

All definitions,
medically,

scientifically,
and legally

state that once you go
across that red line,

ie you die,

you don't come back

And I like to say doctors
resuscitate,

not resurrect
their patients

I was actually
an agnostic

I didn't know if I
believed there was a God

I thought, I don't
know if I believe

there's a heaven or not,

but my dad was
dying of cancer

and someone gave him
the very first research

on what's now called
near-death experiences

And I saw it
on his nightstand,

picked it up
and read it in one night

And that just
got me curious

So I kind of opened my
my eyes, my mind,

and I started
to explore from there

I found it fascinating,

kind of, the train
of how this

whole near-death
experience phenomenon

started to get
traction in America

Dr George Ritchie
was the first one

to really talk
publicly about this

He was actually
at Camp Barkeley

getting ready to go
fight in World War II

What happened
during those 9 minutes?

What did you see?
What happened?

I met
the Christ

because I was told
to stand up, you are

in the presence
of the Son of God

He came into my room

and he conducted me
through four different

realms of life
after death

Life really is
forever We don't die

Death is nothing
more than just a gateway

through which we go

Dr Moody
actually heard him lecture

at the University
of Virginia,

where he was
a visiting professor

and heard him talk about

this near-death
experience

In 1969,

I became a professor
of philosophy

at East
Carolina University

and in teaching
courses on Plato

I began to hear these

experiences
from my students

and also from other
faculty members

I was
brought into this

field kicking
and screaming

I was at the University
of Florida in Gainesville

with Sarah Kreissinger

who was a psychiatric,
social worker

at the hospital
I was working at

And she had picked up

Raymond Moody's book
Life After Life,

about two months

after it was
initially published

She read it
She gave it to me

She asked me
what I thought

This is Dr Raymond
Moody,

noted psychiatrist,
lecturer, and researcher

He is perhaps best
known as the author

of the groundbreaking
examination

of the near-death
experience

The bestselling book,
Life After Life

It has sold upwards
of 15 million copies,

and has been printed in
14 different languages

They tell us,
first of all,

that they seem,
from their point of view,

to leave
their physical bodies

to float up above the
scene of the resuscitation

and to watch the events
going on down below

They tell us that they go

through a narrow
passageway or a tunnel

into an
incredibly brilliant

and warm and loving light

Hogwash

I never heard
these experiences before

I went into the hospital

asking some of the
older physicians,

"Hey, you ever heard
a patient say this?"

"No"

So I was very skeptical

that these things
were even occurring

And if they were
occurring,

they were either
hallucinations

or delusions or whatever

In cardiology, we're about
scientific studies

So I asked a few people

who had been resuscitated,

and the third patient

I talked to had
an experience

similar to what
Moody talked

about in his book,
Life After Life

So, Sarah and I said,

Well, maybe we ought
to look into this further

We devised a
scientific protocol

to interview
these people

We tape recorded
the interviews

We took down
their background data,

the demographics,
etc And

this went
on for five years

First of all,
I'd get permission

to tape record it
and then say,

okay, go

These
people say,

"I've never told anybody
about this, doc

And by the way, I'm
the only one

that's ever had this"

So the near-death
experience at that time,

and that's about 45 years
ago was not well known

And so these people
were sort of

coming up
with it on their own,

and they were suspicious
of me asking the questions,

which to me

lent credibility to what
they were telling me

Many of them
said, for example,

that they had tried to tell
their doctor about it

or a minister about it and
that they were dismissed

And in those initial years,

the people that I talked
with were just very happy

that at last somebody
would listen to them

I started at
Northern Kentucky University

in 1972

I was hired as an assistant
professor and I was

offered a promotion
to full professor

at the age of 25, and
I was also given tenure

my third year

Seven students, myself

and my wife

toured Amsterdam

and then went up
to Denmark

Spent a few days there,
went to Sweden for a day

And last week, it was
a three week trip,

and our last week,
was a week in Paris

It was an art tour, it was,
pretty much all museums

On that Saturday morning,

June 1, 1985,

and I had the most acute

pain I'd ever
experienced in my life

in the center of
my abdomen Right there

It was terrifying
because it

it just came from
nowhere

And I never experienced
such acute pain

I mean, this was like

the kind of pain
that blows

the top of your head off

A doctor
came very quickly,

got me up
off the floor,

with a great deal of
difficulty because

I couldn't move

He knew exactly
what was wrong

and told me that I
had a perforation

of the duodenum

Which means I had a hole

go through my
small stomach

What was happening
was the hydrochloric acid

and the enzymes

and the bacteria
in everything

are now migrating, leaking

into my abdominal cavity

To put it in crude terms

I was digesting myself,
on the inside

Without exaggeration,

what it felt like
was fire

my wife riding alongside me

in the back of
the ambulance

as we traveled
70, 80 miles an hour

through the streets
of Paris to the big

city hospital

they confirmed basically,

if I didn't have the
surgery in an hour,

I would die

So they sent me
to the surgical hospital

And because it was
the weekend,

there was no doctor
available

No surgeon
available at the hospital

they sent me to
So I was put in a room

I begged, I screamed,

I yelled,

and my wife begged

and yelled and screamed,

Nurse, can someone
please come in here?

Sorry

We need a doctor
to prescribe something

Can you please talk
to someone who can help us?

There has to be somebody,

how can there not be
someone here?

There I
was for 10 hours

About once an hour,
the nurse would come in

and ask how I was doing,
and I would tell her in

French and English
that I was dying and

shrug their shoulders
and walk away

I wasn't in fear

I was in terror

Because I was 38 years old,
very successful

in my career
at the university,

you know, wife and two
kids, nice house, two cars

The thing
that kept going through

my mind is this
can't be happening

This can't be happening
This can't be happening

People ask me,

How do you know
you were dying?

It's like the stupidest
question in the world

when you're dying,
you know it

with every breath

I felt like I had one more
breath to go

Nurse came into the room
at 8:30 that night

and said they were sorry,

but they were

unable to locate a doctor
and they would try

to find one the next day,
which was Sunday

Well, when she said that,
I was like,

okay, it's over Done

You know,
I can't do this anymore

You know, I'm exhausted

and it was horrible to
see her crying like that

And I closed my eyes and
stopped trying to breathe

And I went unconscious

I was an atheist,
and I knew that

when you die,
it's just over

It's like the big nothing,
you know, void the end

The official

impact speed recorded
by the National

Transportation Safety Board
was 135 miles an hour

We impacted
right below the cockpit

with that impact speed

It just exploded
the cockpit into

We just,
everything was opened up

We hit that dome and fell,

boom,
right down to the ground

I'm told by the curator

of the mausoleum,
that the mausoleum

was six stories,
seven stories tall

And we slammed

right into the top of it

I can remember today

as well as I could five
years ago, ten years ago

You realize
that you are not

a body

I believe it's

what happens to everyone
when they die

I awoke
from unconsciousness

standing there

next to the bed,

feeling better than I ever
felt before in my life

My vision
was greatly increased

Instead of seeing 106

degrees, I could see
almost 360 degrees

My depth of field
was total

When I looked at something
close, I, everything

far was in focus

Being an artist and being
a visual person, not much

The first thing I was like,
Wow, I've never been able

to see like this

Then I realized I
could hear,

smell, taste, touch,
everything

I could feel

all the little nuances
in the cold linoleum floor

I could hear the buzzing
of the fluorescent lights

in the ceiling
really loudly

All of my senses were
greatly, greatly enhanced

I'm looking
down and I'm realizing

there's my body,
but I'm up here

I can't be dead because
I've never felt more alive

I was not only alive,
I was free

And I didn't understand
this

But I realized then, okay,

I am a spirit

I have a soul

And I used to live

in that body

I was pressed up against
the instrument panel

and was motionless

It was 16 minutes
before the fire department

got there

The paramedics
got there right after

they put me and Chuck
in the same ambulance

And I have tremendous
strong memories

that I'm watching my body
and Chuck and I'm chasing

that ambulance as it goes
through the streets

I have no idea
how to explain

a lot of the things
we're talking about

But chasing that ambulance
without really any effort

How did I do that?

I don't know

I wasn't worried

I wasn't in pain

I wasn't concerned really

I was questioning,
what is this all about

Now, while no two
near-death experiences

are the same,

they have a very consistent

pattern of elements
or what occurs

during the near-death
experience

That typically occur in
a very consistent process

The very first thing that

happens is that close
brush with death

They're unconscious

They may be clinically dead
with absent heartbeat,

absent breathing

At that time when
they shouldn't

have any experience at
all, they do

Often the first thing
that happens is

what's called
an out-of-body experience

People leave
their bodies

They're, they're watching

the resuscitation
many times, but they say

they still have
a spiritual body

From that
vantage point,

they can see ongoing
earthly events

and often later describe

frantic efforts
at their own resuscitation

They move out
of that place

of their resuscitation,

and they come to a place
of exquisite beauty

They very commonly
see a light at times

They interpret
that as a religious figure

And this light was
light that is love and life

It was palpable

and not hard to look at,

but it came out
of everything,

and yet it made everything
vibrant

The colors,
they say, are far

beyond our color spectrum

Music has been

described so beautiful

that they say they've never
heard anything like it

Nothing like that
is possible on earth

Deceased
relatives or friends often

come to meet them there

You know, they say
we still have all our memories

our humor,
we're the same people

But we meet again
on the other side

And some of them say,
well, I reached a place where

I felt like

if I went any further,
I wouldn't come back

At that time,

they may then have
a life review

They may see part
or all of their prior life

The whole
experience is

very calm,
it's very peaceful

Some people don't
want to come back

And then many talk

about a God of light
and love

that they experience
in this presence

This light is brighter
than the sun,

but again, not just light
like we would see

here on earth

And they feel an
unconditional love

and peace and acceptance

from this God like they've
never experienced before

Ultimately, they either
make the choice to return

to the earthly body or
sent back involuntarily

This God almost
always says to them,

Your time is not up yet

You still have a purpose
on Earth

Sometimes he asks them,

Do you want to stay
or do you want to go?

Many times he says,
You got to go back

None of them want to go
back

Not every
single one of

them experiences
all the commonalities

Some do, some experience
three, four or five,

some ten, 20,
some, all of them

But those
commonalities overlap

But there are uniqueness
to each experience

Like when they encounter
this god of light and love,

each one of them feels like

they are the only
one God loves

And yet,

they all feel that way

You know actually,
these near-death

experiences are not new

Plato wrote in the Republic
about

a soldier who comes to
on his funeral pyre

and had an experience
like this

Paul in the New Testament,
who wrote much of

the New Testament,

I believe in
Acts chapter 14,

He's stoned to
death in Lystra

and left for dead

And then he gets back up
and he talks about

how he had an experience
of going to heaven

In the ancient world

Presumably these
experiences were very rare

By the time
I started investigating it

in the 60s
and 70s,

the advent
of cardiopulmonary

resuscitation
had greatly increased

the number of people
who had been to the brink

of death and recovered

So there were
a lot of cases

Some of them say,
well, I reached a place where

I felt like

if I went any further,
I wouldn't come back

And I get questioned
about this a lot

And the question

is, well, is that really
a barrier or not?

And my answer is,

well, I've not been able
to interview

any of them
that didn't come back

So I assume

that if they do go over
that, it very well may be

a point of no return

I have no evidence
to suggest that,

except I have no evidence
to refute it either

Raymond Moody heard
about our work,

so he called us up
to his house,

along with two
other researchers

And that's when I met
all of these wonderful people

Bruce Grayson and Mike
Sabom and Kenneth Ring

We got together,
we compared notes

and we said, you know,
we ought to form

a group and share with one
another what we're doing

And it eventually
turned out to be

what's now known as IANDS

International Association
and Near-Death Studies

After five years of
doing research, Dr Sabom

ends up writing
a book convinced that

this really does show that
there is life after death

But then even more
fascinating, he publishes

in the Journal of the

American Medical
Association

his findings and what
changed his mind

I was in my
residency training

and I was going through
a bound journal

looking for a cancer
related article

And completely by accident,
I found in the title

of an article the
term Near-Death experience

Everything I knew as
a doctor said,

This is medically
inexplicable

In this article

all around
the world, were people

having these experiences
while they were unconscious

or even clinically dead

who can't be mystified
by that question

of what happens
after you die?

As I've traveled
around the world to China

and Japan and India

and North and South America
and all over Europe,

people all over the world
use the word light,

but they say that it's not

the light that comes

from a light bulb
or from the sun

But universally
the description is that the

light of complete
compassion and love

And people also say
that they learned

from their experience
that what we call

death is a transition
into some other reality

So they
lose their fear of death

The day was
January 18th, 1989

very chilly by
South Texas standards

I almost stopped
in a little town

before you cross
all the bridges to get some

some coffee I didn't

The people who were
on the highway ahead of me,

she wanted some coffee
They pulled over

I drove past them
and they came in behind me,

Dick and Anita, Onarecker

It was foggy and a slight rain

It was wet

and I knew I would have to
cross some bridges

It was an old bridge

and it is very narrow

I'm just really focused
on getting back

to Alvin, Texas
where I lived

I was headed back that way

and looking forward
to seeing my family,

which I missed for three
days, especially my wife

What I didn't know

was that steep
embankment was there

It's like going on a tunnel

because you had this
big metal superstructure

above you,
on both sides of you

You can see only really

to the end of the bridge
and then

the highway goes up

So I couldn't see beyond
the end of the bridge

Out of nowhere, a tractor

trailer truck
hit the car in his lane,

then came over to my lane
and hit me head on

When we approached
the bridge,

the first thing on
the right

was this large 18 wheeler,
and then the next

thing on the left,
I believe, was a gray car

It had a single older
man in it

Then the next thing
was Don's red car

that was all crushed
and smashed

So we were only
four vehicles on the bridge

at that point

I was stationed

in Walker
County at the time

I said,
How does it look for him?

And they said,
"not good at all"

That was, you know, just
something I never forgot

I mean, was seeing that

it was a miserable
miserable day

Traffic is backed
up from miles

in both directions
because at that time

there was the only bridge
across that lake,

in fact, Dick Onarecker

And Anita

had to leave their car
and walk up on the bridge

to get to where
the accident was

Police approached
Dick first and said,

Don't even bother
with that man

I've already checked him
and he has no pulse

And then Dick did check,

and he could not
identify any pulse

You could see from this
wrecking yard picture that

the trajectory of the truck
as it went over

When the truck hit me,
it literally took

this arm over my shoulder
into the back seat

The steering wheel

actually went horizontal
and into my chest

My head had banged up
against the metal side

of the interior of the car

My right leg
was broken at the knee,

but I must have slid on
the seat a little sideways

because it hit
from that angle

And when it did, it
literally severed my left

leg just above the knee,

and four and a half
inches of the femur

was ejected from the car
and actually never found

I had been
killed instantly

My heart was not beating,

so it was not
pumping blood

I died on the bridge

I'm a board certified
orthopedic spine surgeon

and physicians
spend their entire career

evading death

We believe that
if we are smart enough,

if we are
well-trained enough,

and if we do a good enough
job that we can control

the outcomes, that we can
control the variables

and we can cheat death

My husband and I
were avid kayakers

Kayaking is

both challenging
and exhilarating

We began to go down
the river

We went over
the first couple of drops

It was very high flow,
very high

current, strong current

There is another client
that sort of bobbled

her way past me and

ended up sideways at the
entrance to the chute

So my only option
was to veer over

and go over the
main part of the waterfall

and the
front end of my boat

became pinned

and the boat and I
were then

completely submerged under
8 to 10 feet of water

I recognized that I was
probably going to drown

I would think about
the fact that

I must be dead,
but I didn't feel dead

I felt more alive
than I've ever felt

I felt this
incredible experience

like I was just
part of the water

I felt magnificent,
actually

I knew that
I was being held by Christ

as purely as I know,

anything

I know it sounds crazy,

but it's just
something that

is outside of our language

We went up a
world famous climb,

maybe 500 feet,
three pitches up

As the train
started pulling out,

I just thought, This is it
I'm going to die

I took a corner
to a 90 miles

an hour, flipped over,
and it landed on the top

All I remember seeing was a
big white, white light

The knife had gone all
the way through my liver

I had a punctured lung and
I started feeling myself

leave my body

You were in the hospital
bed, right?

But you had left your body
and you

My body was on
the bed and my spirit

and I could see
in every direction

Up on the ceiling
looking down

There was this feeling of a
presence It felt like God

Not like this guy
up in the sky

And that was God

I just know it was God

The meaning of life,
of everything,

It was unlike anything
I've ever experienced

I have no fear of death

it's with total knowledge
and unconditional love

It was all the love that
is in the universe

Death is not the end
It's probably the beginning

I looked into his eyes,
It was like

I was looking
at forever inside of him,

and I could see the love
he had for me

You know,
people don't believe you

when you say the story,
but it's just so real

Almost 30 minutes
had gone by

Enough time had passed
that they had shifted from

a rescue mode to purely
a body recovery mode

I could see this
bloated purple body

and I never felt alive
and then dead

I never felt conscious
and unconscious

I felt conscious
and then more conscious

I felt alive
and then more alive

I came into this
thing skeptical, mean

I could have very easily
blown this whole thing off

If you go
to the resuscitation

for 20 minutes

and you've been

without oxygen
for 20 minutes or whatever,

you're going to lose
some neurons,

You're going to
have brain damage

You may not
live either

You'll die a
neurologic death

general rule is, the longer
without the oxygen

Normally, the more brain
damage you're going to have,

and it's progressive
until it's restored

A new study may
provide answers

to the age old question

What happens to our brains
when we die?

The brain has always
been the most fascinating

and the most interesting

organ to me
because to the world

it is completely
unexplored

I was working in Vancouver
at the Vancouver

General Hospital

This was the 87 year
old gentleman

He came during
the emergency shift

with a bleed between
the brain and the skull

We call it
a subdural hematoma

And we decided to operate

We removed the skull

We removed the bleeding

He did fairly well
after the surgery

for about three days

And then he started
having seizures

So we went and applied
an EEG to see

where the seizures
are coming from

and how to treat them

Once we had this applied,

he had a heart
attack and died

So that left us with

the rare recording
of the human brain

that went from a life
to death

It's the first ever
recording of a dying human

brain, one that happened
entirely by chance

We've heard about people

before who have faced
near death experiences

Describe this moment

where they were
the important moments

in their life
flashed before their head

Is that
what we're talking about?

Is that what this is?

From what
this case of

One tells us

all the things
they are consistently

being described
by people who undergo

near-death experience

These guys have exhibited
these brain waves

that exactly the same ones
we're measuring

when we record the activity
of this patient

30 seconds

before the heart stops
beating

and 30 seconds after
the heart stops beating,

that we found
was quite astonishing

After searching
and searching,

we had not found anybody
at the time when we wrote

the manuscript
and submitted it

that had full brain
recordings

from the dying human brain

Under acute
clinical environments

brain waves
are always present

in our brain

They differ in frequency,

meaning how many times
per second they oscillate

The high frequency waves
are called gamma waves

Then the lower ones
we call them

beta, theta,
alpha and delta waves

Those are slower
frequent oscillations

We found
an increased interplay

of these oscillatory bands
with each other

We looked at how this,
for example,

theta waves that are
known for memory recall,

how do they couple
with gamma waves?

And we found an increased
coupling of the

two after a heart
stopped beating

The brain is a prediction
machine that is designed

for survival

So we see something,

we interpret the signal,

we generate a response

in all kinds of responses
that the brain generates

The only one we can measure
right now is movement

We can't measure
what we call thinking

Can you measure emotions?

Feelings?

I don't know what
to answer you

We can't measure
all these things

We know that the brain
somehow does these things

We may never understand

what exactly happens

And maybe that's not the most

important thing either

If the science

can contribute even
a minute percentage

and can shed light

on the nature
of the human brain dying

If I could go to
my patients

and I could tell them,

it may be that your loved
one is replaying

some of the memories
of their life

It somehow
makes things easier

It tells them
they're not suffering

That, I think, would help
patients in that

tremendously
difficult time

Growing up in South Korea

I grew up in a
Buddhist home

Ever since the age
of six, seven,

I was asking questions
like, Why are humans made?

Why are we born?

What is the purpose
of mankind?

Why am I here?

The Buddhist
monks at the temple

would say things like,
Oh yeah, Steve,

you can go to heaven,
you can go to hell,

come back,

you can get reincarnated

into an animal
or a different species

They taught you how to do
right and do wrong,

and try to earn
your salvation

My mother, who was trained
as a registered nurse,

she got recruited

by a VA veterans
hospital in Boston

You know, she prepared
the way for us to come

So I came with my younger
brother in elementary school

The older I got,

middle school and
even up to freshman year,

and I remember
feeling a lot of confusion

I remember looking
in the mirror and saying,

How come I'm the only one?

How come I have
to be Korean?

And it was a big struggle
and led me to become

a little rebellious

Like I joined the garage
band I tried to

I think I tried
a little harder

than others
to try to fit in

And I just remember,
you know, always feeling

a little empty, feeling
confusion and emptiness

You know, from high school

I remember
in the summer of 1998,

we will get high
in the morning,

in the afternoon, in the
evening, the whole summer

I don't remember
being sober for an hour

And my mom and brother
were getting super worried

I called the Buddhist
temple for help

They didn't help either

So I realized, like,

this is something that is
beyond my power ability to

to to save myself from

You know, people
say when they see demons

or evil spirits,
they might think

somebody comes
with a pitchfork and horns

But I had an open eye

vision of all Asian
grandpa coming

He's talking to me
like I'm talking to you

He said, Hey, Steve,
I know you're

having a hard time

If you commit suicide
and take your own life,

then I can give you 50,000
less years of hell

And I'm like,
That's a great deal

I went to the kitchen

I grabbed the biggest
knife I could find

Got on my knees

So I grabbed a knife

and I cut my
neck open here,

which, you know,
was very painful

My mom sees the
event happening,

so she calls 911

The cops came,
and then there's

the Grandpa spirit is
still there speaking to me,

says, Steve,
you got to hurry up

You're going
to miss your chance

Go for the stomach

So I cut my stomach open,
which actually is,

you know, the scars
go down all the way here

I lost a big part
of my blood

The cops came
and whacked me with a bat

I dropped the knife

I remember
losing consciousness

The whole living was
bloody red

My mom was crying
I remember hearing her

They put me
in the stretcher

because already I'm
very damaged

I'm losing blood,
like at a very fast rate

and I'm going in of conscious

The grandpa spirits gone

and then it was just into
the unknown after that

I remember coming out,

seeing my body and then
seeing the ER room

I remember going through
just darkness, like even

seeing rocks and stones
around me just falling

It just felt like I was
falling in an elevator

And I don't know how to
put it into words exactly,

but I knew I was going
to a different place

There was still real,

more real than anything
here on Earth

I was still fully
conscious

Everything's happening,

but now it's like

there's different
set of rules,

there's a different set
of awarenesses

And you're saying
goodbye to Earth

I knew I was saying
goodbye to Earth

And going to
another place of eternity

And then God came to me
and like a ball of light,

that became
like a triangle

Behind it I saw the city,

I looked up and it was
glittering like gold

The walls were gold

I don't know how it works,

but it's definitely
a place we go

I heard a voice
before I woke up

I love you

And I open my eyes and I'm
in the emergency room

I was like,
Oh my God, I'm alive

So first of all, I was
so thankful I was alive

I look around,
my mom's there,

she's crying, grabbing
my hand, son, you know,

you, you regained
consciousness

And I was still trying
to process what happened,

but I just knew
I was back on Earth

They said it took two
surgeries to cover

the blood vessels
that were cut

A specialist had to fly in
at the last minute,

and if he was late,
they told me I would

have been bye, bye forever

My heart and blood wouldn't
go back up

We just kept
sinking, sinking, sinking,

during the whole surgery

And they said
it was a miracle

Good timing

I know one thing, we all
live once and die once

And there is
judgment after

I think
that there are

a lot of people that do
take advantage of this

The novelty
and the fascination

of this experience

We're all to die
and we all want to know

what's going to happen
once that happens

So, I mean,

this is speaking to us all
And of great importance

That can be abused

Some of these these cases

are transmitted through

several different people
before they get in print

And they get
a lot of attention

because they're fantastic

But what I've tried to

do is remove
some of the subjectivity

to these experiences

And put data out there

that's been scientifically,
rigorously collected

There's no way
you can verify

the transcendental part
of the experience

The person feels like they go

to an otherworldly
environment

as opposed
to their environment

right there in the room
with them

What really convinced
me and what convinced

many skeptical doctors,
oncologist, cardiologist,

is that when people
initially leave their body,

they say that many times

they were in the room

still where they were being
resuscitated or worked on

many times up

near the ceiling,
looking down, watching

They felt incredible peace,
even though

it was chaotic

oftentimes in the room

where they were
working on their body,

When they would come back,

they were able to give
corroborative evidence

that they actually saw

what was going on
in the room,

even though
they were unconscious

at the time they
were worked on

They shouldn't have
been able to see this

Autoscopic means
self-visualization

They were visualizing
themself from the ceiling,

lying in bed, lifeless,
or being resuscitated

That is the verifiable part

of a near-death experience,
where you can go back

and either verify what
they said they saw

or what
actually occurred

And that's what I wanted

That was the main thing

that got me hooked
on this thing

And I paid
very little attention

to the tunnel, the light,
the deceased relatives

and friends,
the religious figures

For me as a
cardiologist, scientist,

and a physician,

I wanted some verification,

I wanted
some medical records

I wanted to talk to people
who had been there

and seen what had
happened in the room

Back in
the early 1990s,

when I was a resident
training and neurosurgery

at Phoenix and at the Barrow
Neurological Institute,

one of the best places
to go in the world

It was a destination center
for neurosurgery

I was on the Chairman
Service,

Dr Robert Spetzler

and Dr Spetzler is
world renowned

There was a patient
who came to him

named Pamela Reynolds,

What we're looking
at is the aneurysm that she had

Which is at the very
base of the brain

This is the balloon
that can burst

and cause this
incredible catastrophe

It's all the way at the
very base of the brain

And that is why it's so

incredibly difficult
to get there

The anatomical
location of the basal

artery is a neurosurgeons
no man's land

She underwent an operation

Again,

pretty unusual operation
called cardiac standstill

I came in several times
into the operating room

because it's a cardiac

standstill case
and they're fascinating

If you were going to
do a laboratory experiment,

this is the perfect
experiment

She was put on the
operating room table

and immediately put under
general anesthesia

The cardiac
standstill operation requires

teams of medical providers,
surgical providers,

all of which is designed to:

1 drop the temperature of
a person's body

2 Drain out all the blood
out of their body

3 Keep them in a state
of suspended animation,

shut down brain function

And you've actually
stopped the heart

They had these things
in her ears

that emitted 95 to 100
decibel clicks

If the click went off

and you saw spike
on the EEG

that was measuring
the brain stem,

then you knew
the brainstem was active

No heart
that's beating,

a brain that's no
longer functioning

And what they had to
do is get it

so that those clicks
were eliciting no

brainstem reactivity, ie

it was flatlined

So was pretty
much totally isolated

from the environment
physically

And medically,
she was in a --

that's why they call
procedure standstill

Everything
was at a standstill

She would be
clinically dead

for a whole hour
of the operation

She had a three part
near-death experience

The first part
was out-of-body,

autoscopic part,

When Spetzler first started
up the brain saw

she heard the conversation
between Spetzler and

the surgeon

about the artery
being too small

in her right
femoral artery,

and they had to switch
over to the left

The visual part

She saw the bone saw,
which I didn't even know

what it looked like myself
as a cardiologist

And I was then
looking down at the body

I knew it was my body,
but I didn't care

My vantage
point was sort of

sitting on the doctor's
shoulder

I remember the instrument
in his hand

It looked like the handle
of my electric toothbrush

And then she said
that there was this tray

of instruments
to the right of Spetzler,

that it looked like
the socket wrench set that

her father used to have

And then the other stuff
was the same autoscopic

And in between
those two experiences,

which she relates

the experience
as a continuous experience,

she had the transcendental
experience

I felt a presence

I sort of turned around

to look at a
pin-point of light

Well, how do you know
the transcendental

experience happened

when the blood was drained
out of her head?

Well, you don't

All you can do is infer it

You can't prove it

The other two are
time anchored

The middle is not

Pam came back,

I believe,
the following day

As with every patient,
I'm rounding on her

in the intensive care unit
before the chairman rounds

and she's awake
talking with me

You know, usually ask the

typical questions
How are you feeling?

after that tube was removed
from her by extubation

and she was able
to control her airway

and she was becoming
more lucid?

Well, she
had a lot to talk about

She began to

describe some details
about her operation

And as she spoke,

I became spooked

She talked about her
blood vessels and her

groin, being canulated
and being too small

She talked about her
heart being shocked twice

Giving me details that
she just shouldn't know

I sort of put the kibosh
on the conversation

"Pam, you need
to get some rest

I'll come back later"

I went to my chairman

and told Dr Spetzler,

"You need to talk
with Pam Reynolds

She's describing stuff that
she just shouldn't know

This ain't right"

Functionally speaking,

Pam, was dead

Typically, when
people are coming out of a dream

in the morning,

they feel like they're
coming back to reality

But people who have
a near-death experience

say that is they
go into that experience,

it's this life
that becomes dreamlike

People feel that
when they, from the world's

point of view, are dying,
they actually are waking up

to a reality that
this state of existence

that we're in now
seemed like a dream or

as though you're asleep

I think
the near-death

experience is where
science meets religion

There is a big difference
between proof and evidence

This is all evidence,

but enough evidence
at some point

makes it so close to proof
that most people would say

it's right,

it's real

I got to watch what I say
because I don't want to

unnecessarily
alienate people

I think skepticism is good

skepticism, true
skepticism

But rigidity is not

In other words,
if you have an

ideological opposition
to something

and you fight tooth
and nail to support it,

or at least advocate it

and refuse
to look at the other side,

that's not being objective

There's a lot
about the afterlife

that we don't know
for sure

We'll all know for real
only after we die

And not completely
before then

There have been lots
of alternate theories

fighter pilots syndrome

You're pulling G's,

It feels like you're
going through a tunnel

Some say

psychedelic drugs like
DMT or LSD or mescaline,

vibrant colors and, and,

maybe going to
another place,

You name it, DMT,
Ketamine, LSD,

those are

generally illicit
substances that produce

hallucinatory effects

And in fact, many people

that take these
illicit substances

and the difference between
the experience they have

and the typical near-death
experience

is very striking

The problem is that

all of those might describe
one aspect

You have people
and we're talking thousands

and thousands of people
all around the globe, old,

young, sighted
people, blind people

And they're saying
the same thing,

though on the other side,
blind people can see

they have to adjust to it,
to describing things

that they see, but
they see the same things

And there was one study
done with 23 blind people,

14 of them
blind from birth,

two of them that I report

about describe the light
coming out of everything

There's the near-death
experience of Marta

She was a five-year-old
girl and totally blind

Marta went into a lake
and drowned,

and her consciousness rose
above her body

She described vividly
details of birds' feathers,

birds' eyes,
details on telephone poles

It's remarkable to me
how someone totally blind

can be fascinated

by mundane
things that you and I

would not consider
to be so exciting

Seeing this
for the first time

while she's unconscious

and below the
surface of the water

and yet having a
near-death experience

So how do you get
a lucid experience

that happens both
for people who have had

hallucinogenic

drugs potentially
in the hospital or,

you know, anesthesia,

But they're saying

the same things as those
who have had no anesthesia

and the same things
that little kids say,

the same things that people
from different

religious
backgrounds and cultures

say you don't have mass
hallucinations

The moment
the truck struck me,

I was standing
at the gates of Heaven

And it was magnificent

It was like the
inside of an oyster

It was pearl and dazzling,

almost like it was living

It just looked that way
because of the light

reflecting off the gate

Heaven is light

God is light

It's it's astounding

One of the most
difficult things

about talking about heaven

is that you have to do it
with earthly words,

and there are no earthly
words that do it justice

I did think
for a moment, okay, I died

Okay, I'm gone

And was I sad?

No, not at all

I wasn't worried

about my mom or dad

or what they would think
or my--, nothing

I was only looking forward
to where I was going

and it was nothing but joy
and peace, love and unity

I was surrounded by people
I knew and loved in life

The first person
I saw was my grandfather

I was very close
to my grandfather

The last time I saw him,
he was in a casket

At his funeral, he did
not look good

Now I'm standing
at the gates of Heaven,

and there he is
to greet me

And he looked really good

He extended his hands to me

and spoke a language
I've never heard before,

but fully understood and
said, Welcome home, Donnie

I recognized this
group of people

These people are looking
at me with such love

They're all seemingly
at the prime of their life

And these people

were greeting me
and they were so delighted

that I was there,

And I knew that they
were there for me,

to welcome me,
to greet me, to to love me

to make me feel known

And I knew that
they had known loved me

as long as I've existed

The music was phenomenal

Thousands of songs at the
same time without chaos

all manner of music

instrumental

choruses,

Astoundingly,
they just invade you

I mean, you're permeated
by the music

My senses were
incredibly vivid,

you know, touch and taste
and feel and hearing

It was just all

It's just the most
real thing

that's ever happened to me

After I greeted
the people, they parted

and I could see
through the gate

There was a long boulevard that

really bisects the city

and it appears
to be constructed of gold

So many of the things
that we experience here

are there,
but much infinitely

more glorious and perfect

I wanted to climb that hill

and fall at the
feet of the great

God of all
creation and say,

"Thank you for
letting me come"

That was my objective

Not every near-death
experience is a good one

23% of those who come
forward talking about them

talk about how they had
hellish experiences

At that time,

I, I felt really empty

It just seemed like
the best thing to do

was just to die
at that point

If I die,
then it's game over

And if I die, then the pain
and the suffering,

the depression,

the darkness,
all this is going to stop

Well,
if I do enough cocaine,

then maybe my heart
will stop beating

because it feels like it's
racing out of my chest

And I didn't see
a bright light

I saw a black tunnel

It felt like somebody
grabbed me and dropped me

in this outer darkness

As I started racing down
this tunnel,

it seemed like infinity

It was like
a bottomless pit

I don't know how,
but I was no longer high

All my senses
were at 1,000

I knew that I had died,

and it was one of
the scariest moments

in my entire life

And I'm racing
down this tunnel

that seems like forever

like a thousand miles an hour

as I'm just freefalling

If I'm going to hell,
there's got to be a mistake

because I never
killed anybody

I didn't rob a bank

I mean, I'm a good person

I'm not a bad guy

The only person I hurt
was myself

When I began to justify
how good I was

it went faster

like 2,000 miles an hour

It speeded up the process

Like, now you're
really going to Hell

I remember at that point
I cried out

with all desperation

I said, "God, you need to
come help me right now

because I need you

If you really exist
I need your help

So you got to come help me

Please, God,
I need your help"

In the bed

that I had been in
was this big slab of meat

And when I looked
at the face,

it bore an amazing
resemblance to me

And I could not understand

how that could resemble me

But I was perfectly
well standing there,

perfectly alive,
looking at this,

hunk of meat

The other thing
that bothered me was that

my wife would not
respond to me

Well, at first I started
talking in a nice voice,

and then I started yelling
at her, like, you know,

what the
hell is going on here?

Look at me Talk to me

You know, I'm all better

You know, what's that
thing in the bed?

How did it get there?

I was very upset,
very distressed

And then I heard people out
in the hallway

outside the well-lit room

in the darkish-gray,
hazy hallway

And there was
a group of people standing

outside the light
of the room in the hallway

I said, "I'm sick

I need a doctor"

And they said, "We know

We know all about you

It's time for you to
come with us"

So I thought that they were

hospital personnel
to take me to a doctor

When I left the room

and went into the hall,

I can't explain how I knew,

I couldn't go back
into the room

The door didn't close,

but I knew that
it was impossible

for me to go back
into the light of the room

So I hesitated and
the people became very

Hurry up,
Let's go Let's go

We can't wait anymore
You know

We've been here a long time
waiting for you

Hurry up

So I gave in
and went with them

and they immediately
surrounded me

and moved me forward
into that greyness

As we moved along,
I could not perceive walls,

ceiling, any
feature at all

And we walked
and walked and walked

And after a while
I was like, okay,

this hospital's
not that big, you know?

I mean, we walked miles
now, and it's like,

where's the stairs?

You know,
where's the up and down?

Where's the walls?
And there was nothing

We just walked and walked

So I was asking the people

around me like,
this isn't the hospital,

This isn't right, you know,
where are we?

Stuff like that, and

their response
was, "Shut up, be quiet

Keep moving

Move, move, move"

They'd say,
"You're going to find out

You'll find out

You're going to get there"

There was a lot of
people around us,

possibly hundreds,

I don't know
They were

being very vulgar, very
threatening, very scary

I'm in abject darkness

I have absolutely no
idea which way

is forward, backward
I mean,

all I knew was I wanted to
get away from them

They said, "No,
you've got further to go"

And they started to push
and shove me

And I fought back

They began by punching,
shoving, kicking

And then they started
biting, scratching

and tearing me apart,
literally

disemboweling me,
gouging my eyes

And it was all accompanied

with a great deal
of laughter and joy

I thought about

my whole life
and everything seemed like

what was the point

And I realized
that my relationships

with my mother
and father were a disaster

My relationship with
my sisters wasn't good

My relationship with
my wife was very troubled

I was not proud or pleased

with my relationship
with my two children

I sank into

a pit of despair
and hopelessness

that I can't begin
to describe

My mind offered up a memory
of myself as a little boy

going to a Sunday school
singing "Jesus Loves Me"

When I was a little boy

and I was afraid,
like having nightmares

at night or whatever,
I would pray to Him and

He would chase the
lions and tigers

and bears away

And as a child,
it was, like, mostly

in the image
of like a superhero

Jesus was like a superhero

And so

that's it

That was all I knew

So I called out to him
in complete desperation,

A tiny little star
appeared in the sky,

and very rapidly
it got brighter

and brighter and brighter

I started moving

helplessly
without direction

I had nothing to do
with this

I started moving
out of the room

I next realized that

I have left the hospital
and now I'm traveling

almost like a rocket ship,
just moving

out of this atmosphere

As if in deep space

I realized we were
not on the ground anymore

We were moving upward,
straight upwards

So I've got my face
buried in His chest

hanging on to Him

I'm like, I don't want to
let me go because I,

I'm afraid if I let go,

or if he lets go, I'm
going to fall back

into that horrible
place again

And there was a beam
of light that was lighting

the pathway
of where I was going

My whole life
flashed in front of me

as big as the sky,

Tiny spheres
of light

They weren't planets,
they weren't stars

These were beings
going to Earth

Where we were going
is what I first thought

was a galaxy
A huge world of light

The light that
I'm looking at,

is coming from none
other than God Himself

Inside the light was life,

And inside
that light was love

And my body is
still on Earth

My brain and eyeballs
are back there

But, I'm sensing
and discerning

all of these things

When you leave this earth

and you step into
the eternity,

everything is
crystal clear

I knew I was coming
to this holy area

and obviously

it took another second
to connect the dots

This is Heaven

And he spoke to me

for the first time
in his voice,

but it was telepathic
but it wasn't

a thought of mine

It was his voice
in my head

And then he said,
I've got some people

that I want you to meet

They've recorded your life

and they want
show you your life

So they proceeded to

show me my life
in chronological order

What I saw, to
summarize it, was

happy youth

pretty much

going to adolescence,
everything going sour,

particularly
with my relationship

with my father

Because of my father's
cruelty to me,

I was cruel back

My father was physically
and emotionally abusive

every day to my mother,
my sisters and to me

I mean, it never stopped

The only way
that I could deal with it

was to try
and not feel anything

And all he wanted for me

was to be
a little duplicate of him,

you know,
just be subservient to him

You know,
being being disobedient

had immediate
physical consequences

of being kicked
or punched or hit

And I saw myself striving

to become emotionless
and feeling-less,

which was a way for
me to protect myself

from being hurt

As I became
more manipulative

and successful,

the more the angels
and Jesus expressed

their disappointment

and sadness
with me and my life

And it really hurt
to disappoint them

because I here

I have these newfound
friends, my big rescuer,

you know, best friend
I ever had

And I'm-- and I'm
looking at my life

and I'm a big, huge
disappointment

and you should put me back

I don't belong here

You know,
you've made a mistake

I don't belong here

And he said,
"We don't make mistakes

You do belong here"

At this point

I had had

a number of operations and

I was finally able
to be upright instead of

wheelchair bound

But I,

wasn't
able to walk very well

When I was
sent back to my body,

I knew that
sharing my experiences

with other people
was part of the deal

I knew that part of that
was writing about them

And so I woke up

and I spent the
next week or so

getting up at three
or four in the morning and

writing for a few hours
before the morning routine

And so I, you know,
made my final revisions

And when I hit
the save button,

I took my youngest son, who
was still living at home

into town to get ice cream
so we could celebrate

And so as we were
driving into town

to celebrate,
I called my older boys

because my oldest son
and his brother

were at the time
living in Maine

They were ski training

And I called them

to share this great news

And the coach
answered the phone

and told me that Willie
had just been hit

by a car and killed

and um,

I mean,

I reacted

like any mother would

The depth of my spiritual
knowledge,

does not protect me
from grief

It doesn't protect me from

sorrow or any of
those things

The depth of pain,

of losing a child is,

I don't think, a

pain that can be
replicated by

any other human
experience

I mean, I was devastated

And it all stopped

just as quickly I arrived

That accident happened
at 11:45 in the morning

I arrived at Hermann
Memorial Hospital

at like 6:15 that night

So they went and got my
wife out of her classroom,

brought it down
to the office

and told her the news

And I walked down the
hall and into the office,

and our assistant principal

came out
from around her desk

and just wrapped me
in this hug

And she says, "Don's
been in an accident"

And that's all that
we knew

I was taken into surgery
that evening

and was in surgery
for 12 hours

The next day

was when I realized
I was in the recovery room

The emergency room
had called

and the nurse said,
he can't hold the phone,

but I'm going to put it
next to his ear

so he can hear you

And I started with
the questions,

"Are you okay?
What happened?

Do I need to
come out there?"

just, you know, rambling
sort of things

And all I could hear
him say was,

"I just want to go home

I just want to go home"

Later, I understood

that he meant his
Heavenly home

Had I had a choice,

I would not have
come back here

I mean, I've had 30
wonderful years here,

but I would still rather
be there

I know what happens next,

and it's it's always
better there

than it will ever be here

So I didn't really want to
come back, but

I didn't get a choice

He went into a deep
depression

And I would go in, and
he would just lay there

He wouldn't talk to me
He wouldn't acknowledge me

I would bring papers
to grade

I would sit over in the
corner and grade

and stay there
till about 11:00

almost every night

And then I'd tell him
goodnight,

and I'd leave

And it was hurtful, because
I thought, you're alive

You know, you're alive
You're back with us

Don't you love us enough to

be glad to be back with us?

And to me, that
was harder to deal with

The depression was harder
to deal with

than the physical injuries,
which were massive

And I remember one night,

I thought, you know what?

I'm going to go home
early tonight,

and I'm going to take
a warm shower,

and I'm going to
crawl in the bed,

and get a good
night's sleep

So I gathered up
all my stuff,

and I just said,

well, I guess I'll
see you tomorrow

No response

That night, something

clicked inside of me,
and I had had it

And I dropped
that book bag,

and I stomped my way over
to the side of the bed,

and I let him have it

What is wrong with you?

Why aren't
you glad to see us?

Why aren't you glad
that you're back with us?

It was just--
it just tumbled out

And so I grabbed
my stuff up,

and I'm walking
out the door

And there was a big mirror
next to his bed

And I looked over there,
and he was crying

Just tears

So I walked myself back
over, and I kind of had to-

he had so many metal
things that we had kind of

got my way in and I just
wrapped him in my arms

And I said, It's
going to be okay

And I realized then that

I had to accept that
sometimes

he was going through things
I didn't understand

Finally,

I got through it

Jesus said,
"Do you have any questions?"

I said, "I've got a million
questions"

He said,
"What do you want to know?"

So I asked him
everything that

I could think of to know,

And if we went
through that,

it would
take us several years

And He gave me a whole

new understanding
of everything

I said, "Great,

Now that I understand,
I want to go to heaven"

He said, "um um,

You're not ready
for Heaven yet"

Finally, I said, "What do
you want me to do?"

"I want you to love
the person

that you're with"

I said, "Okay, yeah,
but then what

do you want me to do
after I do that?"

And He said, "No, that's
what I want you to do"

I said, you know, "What
good is that going to do?"

He said, "It's going to
change the world"

And I said, "That's
going to change the world?

I don't think so, no"

I said,
"You don't understand

The world is like
a terrible, cruel place

Even if I love someone,
they're just going to go

get beat up somewhere else
and not going to--"

He said, "No, if you
love someone,

they'll take that love
out into the world

and maybe they'll love
somebody and it'll

grow and grow and grow"

I said, "It's not going to
work"

And He said,
"It's God's plan

It's going to work"

Well, when he pulls out
the God's plan work,

you know,

I mean, like,
what can you say?

And so finally I conceded

and I said, "Okay,
I'll go back"

And with that, bang,

I'm in the body,
I'm in the bed

The nurse who'd
been in the room

comes in and says,

a doctor has arrived
at the hospital and

we're going to prepare you
for surgery

When I awoke,

I knew that
what had happened to me

was the most
important thing in my life

Because now my life had
real meaning and purpose

I was very, very weak

I had been in
surgery for hours

I'd spent
most of the morning

trying to think of how
I was going

to tell my wife
what had happened

I said to her,
"It's all love"

She said, "I love you"

And I said, "I know you
love me, but it's all love"

She said, "What are you
talking about?"

And I said, "It's
an ocean of love

And you have to just go in

into that ocean of love
and be a part of it"

And she said, "Okay, honey,

Try to get some rest"

Here I am I'm I' giv--

I'm giving her
the abbreviated

wisdom of God

And she's basically
telling me,

you know,
you're making no sense

It's crazy talk

From that day forward,

I tried to tell people
about God, Heaven, Hell,

what I'd experienced,
and nobody,

nobody took me
seriously at all

I was a zealot

I was a complete zealot

And it was

not good
for my relationship

with my kids
because the more that they

did not respect what
I was trying to tell them

and the more they told me
I was nuts and crazy

and stuff like that,
the more

it totally alienated them

from the Bible,
from God, from me

I mean, it was completely
counterproductive

It was a disaster

My wife left me

She poisoned the
kids against me

They've rejected me

They don't want anything
to do with me

They think I'm a crazy man

It's all going to work out

I know that God works
stuff out

It just doesn't happen
on our time frame

I mean, I'd like it now

It's not happening
right now,

but it could happen
tomorrow

It might take a long time

I don't know,

A couple of years
down the road

when I found out

about the Heaven
experience,

people have asked me,

"Aren't you mad that
he didn't tell you?"

Not really

I was relieved
because now I understand

You know,
if you've been to Heaven,

why would you want to be
back in the pain

that he was in?

I found myself
on a daily basis

with all these devices
attached to me

and unable to move at all

I couldn't do a
single solitary thing

for myself at all

38 and then 39 year old man

who was completely
helpless

Why?

You let me see that,

And you brought
me back to this

What is going on here?

What was the purpose
of this?

In my studies
of psychiatry,

I quickly realized
that practically

everybody
is chasing something

Some chase fame
or money or power

But what I quickly realized
in talking with people

who had near-death
experiences

is that whatever
they were chasing

before this experience,
convinced them that

what life is all
about is learning to love

And they all come
back all around the globe

with the same "aha"
That God is love

And that how we treat and
love one another

is what matters
most to God

You have people

who have these experiences
and come back

and their life
is radically changed

When I came back

one of the things I knew
I wanted

to make friends
with my dad

Not only was
I able to forgive my father

because I understood
that he was just messed up

because of his messed up
childhood

All my father
really wanted to do

was to be loved but he

didn't know how to do that
in an appropriate way

So he tried to be loved
in inappropriate ways

He thought obedience
and discipline

And my mother
and my sisters

were really angry with me

because they all told me
several times

"You and Dad
hated each other

and now you're
his best friend Why?"

And I'd say, "Because
he's my dad"

Grace is passed along
and passed along

and passed along
And it's powerful

It's powerful because
people change lives

for the good

They find hope, peace,
love, joy, contentment

You know

And they also find

God and eternal life

When I was being shown

the ripple effect
of my own actions

and my own words,
I was able to see this

20, 25, 35 times
removed from me

That's

a big distance

I understood all the hurts
and sorrows and dreams

Everything that had brought
me to that point in time

when I may have hurt
someone else

I also had this complete
understanding

of the back story

or the, you know,
the life story

of the other
people involved

and everything
that had brought them

to that moment in time
where they hurt me

or they
hurt someone I loved

What we
each say and what we

each do and the choices
we make matter

They really do

When I talk
about my son's death,

I know that he went home,

and I'm sure that he didn't
want to come back either

I'm sure he was reassured
that we would be fine

When my time
on earth is done,

my oldest son
will be there to greet me,

my father, my stepfather

I now know

other people who have died,
people who I love, people

who are important
in my life

I don't see

us here on Earth, and God's
world is over here

I think we exist
in the midst of it

I had the most

overwhelming sense
of being home,

of being where
I really belong,

where we
really belong, all of us

It took about a few
months to recover fully

I was still feeling
the pain,

feeling a little down,
depressed Seeing Hell

and Heaven, changed me to
kind of prioritize others

So at the age of 35,
I joined the Army Reserves

I became a chaplain

People just
came back from war

and you could tell
that they had

a very heartbroken
experience

or a psychological damage,
or the atrocities of war

So we did a lot
of counseling

We would pick up
phone calls at two,

three in the morning,

go with them to training,
hang out with them

I would tell them that
there's hope

I would tell them that
depression is not forever

I believe
all over the world,

there are so many unique

NDEs, near-death
experiences,

and so many cultures

and backgrounds, American
or not,

all types of religions,
because

death is as real as life

And I believe God
in his mercy,

no matter what
religious background

you are, allows you
to go through that

so that you can seek Him
in the process

I don't know why
some people survive

and some people don't

I wish

I wouldn't have survived

I've had some
very real things

happen to me on Earth

The birth
of five grandchildren,

seeing my children
all graduate

I mean, it's
been glorious in many ways,

but nothing compares
to Heaven

It's just, that's
the most real thing

That is my reality

This is not

What do we have

more in common
as humanity than death?

And to know that there is
hope beyond this life,

that there truly is beauty,

and relationship and love

and adventure ahead

You know, that

all of our our history
and our memories,

they don't end and we don't
become something else

It goes on

People ought to
keep an open mind

to what's going on,

not accept everything
they hear

from people, from me,
from anybody

Be skeptical,
ask questions,

think about it

There are things that we
can't explain, and I think

it needs to be documented
as much as we can

Documentation's important
Without that,

it's an interesting story,
and that's it

We can only do so much

You know,
we're human beings

and we do the best we can

I think
most people really do

We don't have
all the answers,

and I don't think we ever
will have all the answers

In the scientific realm

What is a human
soul? Is a human soul?

does it live after death?

I don't think science is going

to answer those questions

I think all of these
near-death experiences

suggest that that's possible