 on this episode of Skeptico, the truth about what happens after we die. Now I could jump right into that truth with today's outstanding guest William Peters, but why go with the straight truth when we can mix in a little bit of Hollywood Stephen King fantasy crazy stuff, a clip. That's from the movie Doctor Sleeping and while that clip sure is scary and spooky, the movie does stumble onto some kind of real truth about the afterlife and in particular the transition to the afterlife that can be experienced by other people who are in the room. It's called a shared death experience and you're going to hear about it in this amazing interview I have coming up. But first another clip from the movie where Danny and yes this is Danny from The Shining all grown up. Anyway Danny is in hospice with this older gentleman who's dying and Danny is experiencing that crossing over. What a visit from Doctor Sleep really is. So what do you see Doc? I see your twin sons four years old. Can you see them? I do. Oh look at that. I could take a cart all out of order. I'm not scared of hell. I lived a decent life. Don't think there is such a place anyway. I guess I'm scared. There's nothing. We don't end Charlie. I know that for certain. I don't know much else but I know that we don't end. Not bad, but how about this? How about one of the world's leading authorities on shared death experience? A psychotherapist who studied it for over 30 years runs an organization with multiple PhDs including medical doctors who've looked at the phenomenon. So what does today's guest William Peters find? How about this story? Imagine this at this point this guy's already had a very traumatic near-death experience when he was just 17 years old nearly killed him very nearly paralyzed him. He recovers from that and he dedicates his life to kind of service winds up through a series of events working with homeless people people in need in San Francisco and as he's telling the story that he's about to tell circa 1980s this happens to be a lot of people who have contracted AIDS and are dying and are completely shunned and ostracized by society so they're living in these burned out buildings in the worst parts of downtown San Francisco. This is back in the day when there were worst parts of San Francisco. Now it's all million dollar condos. Nonetheless William has his first encounter with a story that is a shared death experience. It's unbelievably remarkable. This is among the most important research scientific medical research that's coming back to us right now because again when we say shared death experience these are a group of people living people who witnessed that transition that crossing over and when you study it scientifically like today's guest William Peters has done it lines up with so many other things we know about survival so here's one of the stories from the interview you're about to hear I said Brad would I be able to talk to your other brothers and you know he was like kind of okay but like really like he's a little bit hesitant you know I'm still a mental health worker you know and you know we have not treated this community well quite frankly but we had a good enough relationship so I remember going down there taking this long walk you know from you know from the tenderloin district of San Francisco across market street this was a abandoned many buildings burned out it was not safe drug deals prostitution and there we are we hiked up one set of stairs cement only concrete only and there is these tents and a fire pit and some of his brothers are there but this was midday and so there's just a few of them there but they had been there and so I remember talking to them and I asked them and they looked at Brad as if to say do you want us to share this and and they did but what they did was they they acknowledged an experience that was profound but what I and I knew in their eyes that it was profound and they talked about the light and they talked they also stumbled upon their words because as I learned later now with you know hundreds of interviews the ineffability of this experience but they gave me enough to know like okay we are talking about a shared experience one of the things I think is so incredible about that again putting these pieces together so you've had a near-death experience so you're open but when we step back this is so paradigm-shattering that I just don't think many people would be put in that position where they could absorb any of that I'm going to add another piece of information that was also central in this I was living and working in Central and South America and most of the people I was working with were indigenous people these were shamanistic cultures and I was listening and I remember hearing these expressions of journeys this is the language that these Aymada people were sharing with me as I would spend a good deal of time with them and and it fit because my near-death experience as you've so keenly identified as a you know transformational experience of my consciousness if you will and my understanding of how this world is put together their experiences fit with that so that's great and it's really an amazing interview and I could just leave it at that but I can't help poking in there with a little bit of skeptical stuff because as somebody like this ups the game in terms of bringing such important important science to the table I think we have to equally up our game in terms of bringing the inquiry to perpetuate doubt that's excellent and I'm sure that you are going to be effective and make a difference just like you've made a difference already I have a slightly different spin on it my take is number one we are all leading rich spiritual lives and as plain and ordinary as that might seem to you and I we have to look at the fact that completely contradicts the paradigm that we're all in second point for me is that we all have the ability to choose the light at any time and every time and along with that for some reasons that we don't totally understand some people don't choose the light and people choose the darkness consistently sometimes and unfortunately what we've witnessed and we have to come to grips with is some of those people have reached very very powerful and influential positions add to that the fact that their motives and who they are is often hidden and deceptive so with that it this is the working hypothesis this is the other part going a little bit further that I'm not asking you to agree with but I just want to throw on the table and that is as it relates to medicine and religion there's obviously many many many the majority of people in medicine are working in a heartfelt light warrior kind of way but the unspoken directive of western medicine is to disconnect you from your spirituality to disconnect you from your divinity because you can have it both ways they could jump over tomorrow to your understanding of this broader view of consciousness this more accepting view of divinity and nothing would have to change in medicine so the fact that they hold on to it I think is important and it can't be overlooked and then I think when we look at religion I think there's the same thing going on in a lot of ways and that is wonderful people amazing experiences that people are having with the spiritual but fundamentally an unspoken directive to become the soul or at least primary intermediary between you and divinity between you and the light between you and spirituality that's what religion wants to do let's dig around my interview with William Peters is coming up next welcome to skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers thinkers and their critics I'm your host Alex Keras and today we welcome William Peters to skeptico William is the founder and director of the shared crossing project an author of the newly published at heaven's door what shared journeys to the afterlife teaches about dying well and living better he's very smart guy undergraduate degree Berkeley masters harvard longtime psychotherapist lots of advanced training which we might even talk about very interesting stuff there and you know beyond all that William is one of these people who just has an amazing life of service to others and that's going to come out as we talk about his story we're going to talk about this shared death experience science and the very researchy stuff that he does and that's great but what I hope we get to is the spiritual stuff that is really I think at the core of what this guy's work is all about so William congrats on the book and thanks so much for joining me on skeptico Alex thanks so much for having me it's a real honor to be here very nice of you to say so you know I guess the natural place to start because a lot of people have heard of shared death experience but plenty people haven't give us a quick definition and then we'll talk a little bit about your background yeah so the shared death experience happens when somebody dies and a caregiver loved one and sometimes a bystander will report that they feel like they shared in this journey from the human life into the afterlife and the afterlife is the term that our research participants use they say afterlife and they often say that it's a benevolent afterlife great and the backstory on this is amazing it can jump off in a million different ways but you came to this because you had a near-death experience when you were 17 years old which really pivoted your life in some I guess ultimately positive ways but also some challenging ways and it leads you to sitting in a seminar with Dr. Raymond Moody who a lot of people know and go oh yeah he's the guy who coined the term near-death experience which he did but he's also the first person to talk about the shared death experience and I love the way you talk about the circumstances that brought you there and then you weren't even aware of this but in a way that echoes at several points in your life it's like making sense for you of these experiences that you've had that didn't make sense before so maybe you want to walk us through your your story which is really quite remarkable thanks yeah I think you're right contextualize this a bit because you know I wasn't the type of guy who in high school could see myself studying death and dying and spiritual experiences around them but at 17 years old I had a really tragic near-death experience in a skiing accident high-speed skiing accident crushed my spine was catapulted out of my body I mean for your audience it's a classic near-death experience moving away from my body on the ski slope very much at peace completely sublime feelings watching my life be reviewed for me seeing the teachings of karma right there like the intricate detail of this movie on my life was just stunning everything mattered and then I'm in this beautiful galaxy moving through the rib tunnel I see the light and when I see the light I had a response very unlike most indie years and that is I I knew I was dying and I knew I'd been there hundreds and thousands of times before but I also did not want to die as pleasant as this place was that I was in I was not ready to die and I pled with you know I grew up Catholic so I pled with God and said don't let me die don't let me die and I was essentially in that light for a long period of time it felt like very comfortable very much at peace but then at one point you know after my pleading I felt this pushback energetically on my being and in that moment I heard make something of your life and that was it and that was ominous statement to me I don't know what that meant but I think unconsciously I've been working out that command for quite some time because I'm very much aware that I was given a second shot at life here and you know the severity of that skiing accident was that you know an orthopedic told me I was 130 seconds of an inch away from being a paraplegic and so I've lived with chronic pain and difficulty walking at times and what have you but so that experience got into me but I I did not think of that experience for another decade as far as I can remember but it did change me and I appreciate you bringing up that this kind of service mission that I seem to have gravitated towards in my life because after college I went straight to Central and South America and found myself in the midst of two civil wars each in Guatemalan and the other in Peru and was working with a great deal of death and destruction and poverty and famine and hunger and what have you and I was there ostensibly I thought to help but the truth of the matter is these people were teaching me how to deal with my own sense of pain and loss that I was feeling because I was in really severe pain in my back and body so the other thing that happened is I came back worked in the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco I was a social worker I was hired because I spoke Spanish but the AIDS epidemic broke out and ended up working with this community of mostly gay men who were dying in Skid Row in San Francisco and at that time we didn't know much about the HIV virus we didn't know if it was contagious how was you know we didn't know the extent of the transmissibility of it so for me working with this community was considered high risk but I just felt comfortable and called but the reason I'm bringing this up primarily is I was starting to hear these profound end of life stories I just want to tee up a couple of things because I really want to hear that story I want to tell people that in the book you will find so many of these incredible and I'm reluctant to even call them stories because William is a professional psychotherapist on his team he has very top-notch medical doctor an anthropologist these are case studies that they've done interviews so he's going to tell these stories which are incredibly dramatic and the book is just a treasure trove of these case studies that are very well presented but they really weave together into this whole narrative of your life so I just want to add one other thing you know when you have your near-death experience at 17 you have nowhere to hang that off of in terms of near-death experience there is no near-death experience Raymond Moody unbeknownst to you has just coined the term a couple years ago and then this the amazing thing about this story you're about to tell is you're about now to experience a shared-death experience which absolutely no one is talking about but again in this way that we don't understand your life is being given these events that you were then asked to kind of weave together so please tell us tell us this first kind of amazing story yes so I'm you know a social worker in San Francisco and I'm working with this population and this is a population that is experiencing incredible devastation death it's like a plague so their willingness to come to me for not just emotional spiritual support if you will but also I was providing food for them and you know all sorts of supplies because this individual who I mentioned in the book who was such a wonderful man Brad was coming to me you know almost on a weekly basis he lived in a community of homeless just possessed as he called them brothers all all contracted aids and in a just a temporary community if you will to burned out building in San Francisco so he's coming regularly and one morning he comes into me early first one through the door and he looks absolutely exhausted but I was so relieved and I say to him I go oh my gosh Brad what's up and he says to me you know Randy died I said I'm so sorry and he responds yeah so am I but it was such a beautiful death and then I'm taking back and I respond beautiful death please tell me and as I'm in our food pantry filling up his bags of food for his community he is recounting this story and it goes like this he says we were circled around Randy we knew he was you know at death's door and at the moment of death he rises out of his body through a cylinder light and we watch him rise up this light and he stops just above us looks around at us and he thanks each of us for caring for him and what we notice about uh Randy is that he is now healed he is body that was covered with lesions and you know those deaths in those days with carposis sarcoma is just ugly death that he has none of that and he's telling us he's free of his body and he's happy and then he travels further up that cylinder of light and is gone and all these these brothers this community are rejoicing and hugging and feeling this beautiful goodbye of their beloved friend Randy and so you know I think Brad when he was sharing this story as well as others he would share with me because as I learned in my relationship with Brad even previous to this he was what we would call a psychopath he was somebody who maybe a death duel or a midwife in modern parlance he knew how to help people leave this human life and go on to the next so he was that leader almost a shaman in this community but very informal you know these are all you know ad hoc communities if you will and so but but he was as he was sharing this with me almost matter of fact almost checking me out but I always believed uh Brad and others who shared these stories with me and I think unconsciously I believed it because I'd had that first near death experience and they you know Raymond Moody and now I've had subsequent conversations about this is we believe these are the same experience in terms of capacity of phenomena why because they're taking place in that same terrain that same geography that lives between human life human death and what comes after this I just wanted to interject one thing William because the scientist in you even at the time yeah you believe it because you had a near-death experience but if I remember correctly you go there right you go there and you ask the right not everyone would do that so thank you yeah thank you so I was so fascinated by this um you know and I said Brad would I be able to talk to your other um brothers and you know he was like kind of okay but like really like he's a little bit hesitant you know I'm still a mental health worker you know and you know we have not treated this community well quite frankly um but we had a good enough relationship so I remember going down there taking this long walk and you know from you know from the tenderloin district of Santa of San Francisco across market street down into the old area which is now south of market now in that late 80s early 90s south of market is not what it is today this was a abandoned many buildings burned out it was not safe drug deals prostitution and there we are we hiked up one set of stairs cement only concrete only and there is these tents and a fire pit and some of his brothers are there but this was midday most of the because I went during my lunch hour most of them were out doing what people who are are without a home do during the day they go and get services they forage for food and so there's just a few of them there but they had been there and so I remember talking to them and I asked them and they looked at Brad as if to say do you want us to share this and and they did but what they did was they they acknowledged an experience that was profound but what I and I knew in their eyes that it was profound and they talked about the light and they talked but they also did something really interesting they also stumbled upon their words because as I learned later now with you know hundreds of interviews the ineffability of this experience when you're talking to someone who's well dressed as they were not a mental health worker they're a little tentative and scared you know and and they're living in a in a building that is not theirs so um so I could feel that in them this is the this is the psychotherapist in me at that time I wasn't licensed at that point but that's the the person who's sensing in saying oh this is really hard for them to talk about but they gave me enough to know like okay we are talking about a shared experience and it was I mean just to look at their eyes and they're looking at Brad as if to say do you want us to share this with him and Brad knowledge yeah you can trust him. One of the things I think is so incredible about that again putting these pieces together so you've had a near-death experience so you're open and then you're open enough in all these other pretty terrific ways to connect with these people and hear this story but when we step back this is so paradigm shattering that I just don't think many people would be put in that position where they could absorb any of that because again this is way way outside of anything we consider within this consensus reality thing that we talk about here and we're going to talk about that some more but I don't want to lose the fact that this is paradigm shattering we're talking about a group of people who collectively experienced this connection with the afterlife through this person who is making that transition I mean I just I could say it over and over again that's so remarkable it's so remarkable it's so remarkable that you were the person who was there because you were uniquely able to take that experience and run with it the way that you have with this book and with this project and with this whole thing yeah well thank you for saying that you know I'm going to add another piece of information that was also central in this and that is you know I was living and working in central and south america and working with refugees of of these civil wars there and most of the people I was working with were indigenous people the imata indians in southern peru and and also of course in bolivia these were shamanistic cultures and I was listening and as I was you know learning my spanish I mean we're both speaking second languages to each other so when you have that appreciation you talk slower you clarify things and I remember hearing these expressions of journeys this is the language that these imata people were sharing with me as I would spend a good deal of time with them and and it fit because my near-death experience as you've so keenly identified as a you know transformational experience in my consciousness if you will and my understanding of how this world is put together their experiences fit with that because they talked about dream travel and going to other realms it was a part of their reality so having just spent three years in these in this environment coming back and getting my first job and then hearing brad and others talk about this was like oh okay you know this makes sense to me it all kind of fits together and I will say I'm a pretty good synthesizer of things and that with my receptivity and openness I will say that's one of the things I think I do well I struggle with a lot of other things but that's something I can do okay so near the end of the book again the book is at heaven's door you really want to check it out I think you really enjoy it it is somewhat of a page turner with all these stories it's not weighted down but it's also a personal book near the end you talk about the passing of your dad you talk about it in a very complicated way with the family relationship which I appreciate all family relationships are complicated but it's also a really important story it's like a book end to this to this book you know and it wraps up a lot of things and brings them all together in a way could you would you mind telling about that story sure so um yeah here I am with my family my father has been in a memory care facility for a number of years and we are in covid and so no one has seen my father so this is just again this is present day now you've gone on 20 years of working with in in grief therapy being completely immersing yourself in all this near death and after death hospice stuff you're like an expert in a million of these different fields but you are like one of the foremost experts on this shared death experience when your dad is approaching his crossing so now you're like from one end with brad where you're kind of this what is this thing now you're like one of the leading experts in the world at this what you're at your dad's crossing would you say that's fair to say I'd say that's true yeah I mean and to be really clear there are not very there's only a handful of people are even looking at the shared death experience and I should that's not your problem that's not your problem that I mean there should be thousands so you know that's like yeah that's not like a mark against you no I'm yeah absolutely and you know and I I should say you know the research I as a researcher I you know we have a great team here I mean I have Dr. Michael Cancella who's our chief of research and comes at this from uh you know uh religious studies and cognitive sciences and you know Dr. Monica Williams an emergency room physician these we're really tackling this multi-disciplinary Lee in a way so that we can really look at what these experiences are but in the moment that I'm with my father all that doesn't matter here I am with my father we have been granted access just as there's been an opening in COVID we're still dressed in PPE and we're doing sitting vigil now with with him my my brother and sister my mother all taking kind of shifts if you will but I had the opportunity to be with him most of the day you know four days and as at the moment of death um a couple things happened that I'll share one is I'm all of a sudden I'm pulled into a different space and this is a common experience so here's the thing that is really important as an experienced I've had probably a couple dozen shared death experiences and the thing that is the kind of the gateway experience to it is there's usually a shift in energy a frequency shift that I noticed in my body there's a focused attention in other words my the aperture for my life gets narrow I hear a high pitch in my ears and this is all energetic stuff happening and then the light changes and this is all happening and then all of a sudden boom I'm in another dimension and I am seeing my grandmother and my aunt who had both died a couple decades earlier and they're there and they are looking it looks like they're at the foot of the bed elevated dark background it looks like they're looking down on my father that's the angle I'm getting and then I see this man come across who wishes to to actually talk to my mother I never seen him before but I recognized him energetically as my grandfather because he died when I was two years old and he has a beautiful exchange with my mother and I'll say that's more you can see that in the book because there's something really important that happens there but I'm now wondering why are we not taking my father he is laboring he has he's ready to go and I'm wondering why why are we not taking him why are you I'm actually talking to my grandmother and aunt why aren't you taking him and I can see this cylinder of light coming down from where they are about a quarter of the way almost to my father's body and I get this sense I've seen these before and we see it in the research this light is often a bridge for the dying to travel up as they leave oh we saw that I just talked about that with brad and randy what he saw so this amazing experience happens and that is that they they both my aunt and my grandmother avert their gaze and they move out up up above my father's body basically and they basically telepathically tell me this this force is in charge he's in charge what I really say is he's in charge like he as I move my attention over to that presence if you will and I lock my energy field into it and I don't know how that happens other than I just move my attention there and I feel this pull on my heart and bam I go oh my gosh this is that force that I have identified in the research as the conductor and what I have seen is this conductor manages the transition of a human spirit soul call it what you want consciousness from a human body into the afterlife and when I lock on that I feel the awesome power and force of this being and it is just the energies coursing through my body I start weeping right there I go oh my god I mean I can weep right now I mean that's the conductor that's this force that is going to take my father from this human life into an afterlife and just in that moment I don't have words for it's like it's the majesty of the universe it's like it's this great mystery and it is so awe-inspiring and you know heartwarming I don't have words for it and and so at that moment right as I'm feeling this my brother walks into the room and that moment is lost as I'm pulled back into the material human dimension and unfortunately I was never able to get it back because then my brother's there conversation goes on even though I should say my my mother and sister were there with me when I was having that experience they were they were we were very much kind of in silence or just like there was a there was a vigilness going on there so my father dies peacefully beautifully and then afterwards I stayed with the body the rest of my family members left you know gradually and just said you know we're leaving and I want to stay with my father until the morgue came and to the excuse me to the funeral you know authorities came to take his body the mortuary I should say and so during this time another beautiful experience happens his caregivers who'd been taking care of him during COVID because there's no family members they are knock on the door and ask if they can come in to pay their last respects and I was like well thank you yes so six of these beautiful caregivers from all over the world Alex these were these were people that you know were speaking English as their second language most of them I mean they were fluent but it was like oh my gosh do these beautiful people and that are here to take care to say goodbye to my father and they said the most beautiful things about my father and and now you alluded to this and I do go into more detail in the book I had a challenging relationship with my father he was a business person and an adventure capitalist and he'd done well in Silicon Valley he could not understand his spiritual son he just couldn't and he couldn't understand even the psychotherapist he just didn't just jive with him so we had a relationship that had some tension in it certainly distance and more than anything else a lot of disappointment about not being able to see each other and connect and I expressed that to my father to his courts saying ah you have such a wonderful loving relationship with these caregivers but we didn't have that and I'm sad about that and in that moment I'm in another visionary state and I'm watching the movie a movie that has scenes that some I know that I can kind of remember but most of them I could not in other words oh my gosh where are you getting this footage from because that was not anything I remembered I would remember the the place maybe or that that chapter of our lives together but the but the actual scene and the feelings and the the expressions no and so for me this is you know this is that what we call that shared life review and I was watching a review of our life together and in the you know in our research we've identified three different types of life reviews this is one of them where you're reviewing your life with the departing love one together and it was healing for me to see that there were times when I knew that he loved me as best he could and there was also the delivery of a very important message and that is that my father was not just my father he was a human being as well who had his own challenges traumas tribulations you know his father died young and he lived a life with that grief and not having the tools to work with it the way I was given tools to work with it my own grief so these are very very healing experiences this life review and and so you know it's really important for us when we look at the shared death experience that you said quite well it challenges our scientific medical perspective on things absolutely you know here we are I'm in a relationship with having these experiences you know with a consciousness seemingly that by fiscalism cannot exist anymore and here I am having this experience with what I'm experiencing interpreting as his consciousness in some way there's some way we are still in relationship even though he is you know this is now an hour or two after his physical uh human death medical death I should say so but the transformation that I experienced in my relationship to my father because of the shared death experience was so healing and this is you know I'm a psychotherapist I work an end of life and I want these experiences to be known because they're healing they're fascinating but but they're more than anything else they offer a different wholly more meaningful and healthy way to look at not just death itself but what is the purpose and meaning and context for our human life the sense that we survive human death and go on and it's that going on piece that the shared death experience seems to lay a pretty solid foundation for especially when you pair it with the near death experience because it is the same terrain we are in the same space and we have done the research to verify that yeah that's that's quite extraordinary and I want to pick up on that and kind of jump back and forth between those two aspects of the scientific and our consensus reality and where all the stuff seems to be really happening in this extended consciousness reality that we don't really have a handle on and you're trying to help us get a handle on it so the best way I know how to do that is kind of do it skeptical style a little bit which you led me right into because near the end of the book man you take the gloves off William I mean you take the gloves off regarding the medical community you really call them out in their lack of wisdom about the dying process about the end of life process you rip into the religious and faith communities in a very appropriate way about their handling of it and you even take aim at your own people there in in hospice and particularly people who are focused in the end of life and again I think you do it in a very honest way a terrific way my only complaint would be that you don't even go far enough and I want you to talk about I want you to talk about that a little bit and then I want to kind of throw out my working hypothesis on that so tell me tell me where you're at on that I thought it was very brave of you to do because you're a professional and this is your community and you're willing to kind of call them to task great yes so you're correct I was very much walking a line here I work with you know healthcare providers mental health providers specifically hospice workers of all kind end-of-life practitioners across the board and I know the constraints that these dedicated workers are under right now during the COVID let's face it I mean the every system that provides any kind of healthcare is just going far and beyond what would be expected of a normal human being and the amount of care and attention and care you know and compassion and love that they're providing for us so and I work with these people and I love them but the point being here is that this is a top-down system and the top of this food chain is medical sciences and that is locked in a paradigm that cannot explain near-death experiences share-death experiences and for that matter most end-of-life phenomena whether it's post-death dreams and visions or pre-death end-of-life dreams and visions all of that is utterly unexplainable by our current scientific materialist model there are so many good people within that system that know about the experiences I'm talking about and yet my and yet they can't talk about it my fundamental goal was to give those people a resource research-based that they could go to their supervisors their higher-ups and say look at the data is here now now Alex the share-crossing research initiative which I've already said but it's comprised of you know Dr. Michael Kinsella our chief of research and then Dr. Monica Williams an ER physician we have published in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine that is a leading journal this is a foundational piece that basically validates the shared-death experience with a robust research qualitative of course but it's robust and it's significant and it's getting attention we're also just published in Omega Journal of Death and Dying and so we have now put our stakes in the ground in both the academic and medical communities and this book now connects the not just the public the public interest books a general audience book for sure but the leading you know the people that are really buying this up now in droves from what I've been told all sorts of hospice workers and end of life workers and and mental health people because they know that these experiences happen but they want to know how they can talk about them and have a literature scholarly literature that can back them up because you can't talk about these experiences in a lot of medical settings without being essentially reprimanded like don't talk about those hallucinations those are delusions don't don't affirm a something that's not real and so now my as I to answer your questions directly my goal is for this book and our research to put a wedge right in there just to get space so that good people working every day with death and dying have the support and affirmation to say hey I can talk about this here's the data yeah that's that's excellent much needed and I'm sure sure sure that you're gonna be effective and make a difference just like you've made a difference already I have a slightly different spin on it my take is number one we are all leading rich spiritual lives and as plain and ordinary as that might seem to you and I we have to look at the fact that that completely contradicts the paradigm that we're all in second point for me is that we all have the ability to choose the light at any time and every time and along with that for some reasons that we don't totally understand some people don't choose the light and people choose the darkness consistently sometimes and unfortunately what we have witnessed and we have to come to grips with is some of those people have reached very very powerful and influential positions and add to that the fact that their motives and who they are is often hidden and deceptive so with that this is the working hypothesis this is the other part going a little bit further that I'm not asking you to agree with but I just want to throw on the table and that is as it relates to medicine and religion there's obviously many many many the majority of people in medicine are working in a heartfelt light warrior kind of way but the the unspoken directive of western medicine is to disconnect you from your spirituality to disconnect you from your divinity that is a directive that is in there this is my hypothesis not yours it's not like oh because you can have it both ways you don't have to you could they could jump over tomorrow to your understanding of this more broader view of consciousness this more accepting view of divinity and nothing could change nothing would have to change in medicine so the fact that they hold on to it I think is important and it can't be overlooked and then I think when we look at religion I think there's the same thing going on in a lot of ways and that is wonderful people amazing experiences that people are having with the spiritual but fundamentally an unspoken directive to become the soul or at least primary intermediary between you and divinity between you and the light between you and spirituality that's what religion wants to do you know so it's a little bit darker than where you're at I understand with the wedge and the line that you have to take I just want to let you know that that's what's on the table for me even if I'm not going to be there all the time and hey you know I again I appreciate the book because you're willing to at least go part of the way there and as one of your colleagues Dr. Monaco Williams in the book we're talking about at heaven's door puts it you know doctors are trained this is her quote to be body engineers working inside a disease based system and I don't know that's kind of kind of scary in a way you bring up to extraordinarily relevant points about the role of modern medicine in terms of its relationship to humanity to the subjects if you will that they're charged with caring for I I know the perspective you're talking about I see it more often than I wish I had to admit and acknowledge there is absolutely and Dr. Monaco Williams was very clear in stating this that the training for doctors it's changing but historically body engineers is what they are and to look at spirituality and the notion that that the being they're working on actually is more than just a physical body our medical system is getting there and there's certainly people within the system I assure you I work with these good people every day that hold that and they're and they're trying to transform the system but I would be not true to myself and my experience to deny what you're saying does not that perspective is operative and it takes place in our medical system far too much every day and I want to be an agent of change in that sensitive to the training they had offering the entire system a more holistic a more science based true science let's look at this phenomenon let's listen to these good people who have these experiences who knew nothing about them I have identified a pattern that is so difficult to deny let's look at this as scientists not as people who are devoted to a paradigm that doesn't hold up but they need to hold on to it because that's how you maintain your membership in the medical club I believe me I have some fierceness in me about that because I don't want to tell you how many times I have been with you know my clients patients and they're receiving medical care for a body but the soul and spirit is telling everyone in the room I want to go home and the medical community is committed to prolongation of human life at all costs so that human spirit with emotions and feelings is being hijacked by the medical model and this is all not ideal let alone it's not ideal it's not healthy for everyone in the room dying and caregivers so Alex I'm with you I just want to also say that it's the model is what it is but there are so many good people in it trying to change it and I I put my support and connection and community with those because they reach out to me all the time saying William can you talk here can you speak at Grand Rounds can you do this I want you to meet this person we've got an opening here you know and there are a lot of I want to I'll say it there are a lot of white-haired old men who are in this patriarchal system because that goes with this too and they are sun setting and good people are coming in with a much broader perspective that are true scientists that were willing to listen to the research I've done and others there are others doing similar research and I'm hopeful that we're going to get changes it'll be pockets first like anything else that will happen in some areas and and the rest of the country medical system will follow for the religious piece I also will concur with you I have a great deal of disappointment that spiritual care and chaplaincy is reticent to take up the shared death experience and other end-of-life phenomena in any rigorous systemic way another way in other words to really pursue the education and the research that would demand that they change their end-of-life spiritual care protocols and methods I think there's there's kind of a a comfortableness and all all spiritual care and I when I say spiritual care that includes chaplaincy and all the type of care you get for spiritual life in and end-of-life settings because they go by different terms depending on where you are in the country and world for that matter and there's an openness amongst a lot of spiritual care providers for sure but there's not the willingness that I've seen yet to really explore what these phenomena are and to bring it into the canon of understanding of end-of-life and what is being experienced by the dying in their caregivers and if we know that shared death experiences are happening what does that mean for our care like how first of all should we have education for anybody who comes into hospice and says hey just so you know these experiences happen and here's a series of end-of-life phenomena you may see we call all them shared crossings so here's end-of-life visions and visitations here's terminal lucidity here's the shared death experience here's various forms of after-death communication that when you're done with the dying you may be visited by him or her and welcome it because everything we know suggests that these are missions missions from the other side to tell you that they're alive and well and thank you for having you know shared in their life just ended with them you know so all of this in my in my you know estimation humbly although not stating it that humbly should be like end-of-life human preparation 101 for death dying and end-of-life it should just be standard and yet the the two institutions responsible for that act of death and dying and end-of-life medical sciences and spiritual care or religious care are both at this point institutionally hesitant to embrace this full continuum of spiritual experiences we call them shared crossings they go by end-of-life phenomena whatever they're they're not being fully embraced and brought into the canon of understanding and care at the end of life and this is what I would call a gap in care a huge gap in care that harms not just the dying but also the caregivers and loved ones who feel like when they have these experiences they doubt themselves they wonder if they're having some sort of psychotic moment when in fact they're getting a tremendous spiritual gift that can transform their relationship not just to the dying or to the deceased but to themselves into their very understanding of who they are as a human being and what their essence is as a dare say immortal human being immortal being so I've said a lot there but you get the point I do and you said it quite well so I want to pick up and thread back into a couple of things that you said in particular I want to talk about consciousness and what I sometimes call extended consciousness because you're not only an expert in this shared death experience but as you talked about you're an expert in a bunch of this other stuff that's in this realm so near-death experience you've not only had two near-death experiences but you've studied the literature extensively you've interviewed people like Evan Alexander and your colleagues with him and Raymond Moody and all these people you're in that community you're well versed and professionally trained in past life regressions and past life regression to hypnotherapy all that's a fascinating whole other aspect of that but you're there you understand that out-of-body experiences again is different you are an experiencer as well as being well versed in that literature so I could go on and on yet you mentioned some other ones but my starting point on this is always to kind of step back really and again we've pounded on this a couple times we're going to pound it on it one more time all these different bodies of evidence and the science that goes with them completely contradict this you are an epiphenomen of the brain of the brain consciousness and delusion and this is just completely insane from a historical and cross-cultural perspective it's just it's just so silly so if we can just kind of put a bow on that say okay that's done we're not even gonna worry about wrangling that which is just a distraction and kind of gets this thing what you have done and what you offer us the opportunity to do with this book at heaven's door and with this amazing body of case studies that you've put together on shared death experiences you give us the opportunity to kind of catapult past a lot of that stuff and start asking some really interesting and very challenging questions about extended consciousness questions that you know as wonderful as your summation is and your call of hope to people in your very positive message not taking a darn thing away from that but there's some challenging aspects of this as well that I just have to throw on the tables so tell us the story about Ron because this is a different kind of extended consciousness realm that he winds up in and you wind up in and again it's like you can't help but feel like the great conductor has set all this stuff up for you because the experience with Ron relates to your second near-death experience in a very very interesting way so can you fill people in on that whole thing? Yeah I think probably better here Alex is to start with my second near-death experience because it lays the contextual understanding for the my one of my early and quite formative shared-death experiences so I think I'm 30 years old and I contract a rare blood disease, idiopathic thrombocytopenia just means essentially that I have a very low platelet count I'm at risk for drowning in my blood so I go into the ER the emergency room in Kaiser Oakland and next thing I realize I am above I'm going to ceiling in a room that I realize is the ICU it's really important the way I'm saying this because I have no idea who I am anymore all I am is listening to some nurses talk about the various four patients in this ICU and then they talk about this patient who's this young 30-year-old man who's got no history of illness or any of anything really they can't understand why he's here what's happened why he has idiopathic thrombocytopenia and I go that's kind of interesting I'm looking at the other people in the beds going to move my consciousness around there and I am saying I am a consciousness viewing this world without any sense of identity there's no William here but then I go over and see this who's in this bed that they're talking about this 30-year-old guy because I'm curious and as I look at the guy in the bed I realize oh my god that's me that's that's me what a wow and I have this kind of like my my consciousness is trying to process this you know but but I'm really all of a sudden I'm doing something else like I see that I don't go back into my body I move back down the hall I'm watching the janitors do their midnight work because this is like two or four in the morning and and and then the doctor comes in sometimes later and taps on my hand and says mr. Peters mr. Peters and I have this question well what if I answer him what will that mean I debate about this for a little bit and I eventually do answer him and as I answer him I kind of fill in my body as if like you know energetically it's like shower when you're in a warm shower you feel the warm energy kind of spread out across your your physical being sensorily but what I really noticed is as I started talking and I opened my eyes I was now looking at him through my body when previously I was looking at the top of his head so very profound experience from that it was very clear to me that I was not at that point I realized whatever I identify as myself was not the physical body period right so just let me just add a couple tiny points here because I want you to get to the next story which is a profound in a deeper way and in a spiritual way but this is also kind of separate from spirituality as if anything can be separate from spirituality it can't but you know now you're talking in terms that someone who is an out-of-body experiencer would relate to very well you know all the things that you're talking about and maybe less so from a near-death experience and you could fit it in that peg over there but then again you know maybe not and that's what's interesting right because it raises this question why do you lack an identity in this one and not in this one why do you have this ability to kind of bounce around and hear stuff but one you know how could that even be how does that even make any sense but then number two how does that relate to the fact that you're not connected in a really profound way spiritually to all the other stuff we hear about so and then as you'll tee up in the story with Ron is what does this say about space what does this say about time and then the part that you added that I thought was really quite brilliant I never thought about before what does this say about this idea that we commonly refer to as a parallel universe because you're kind of in two places at the same time more so in this second story in this first but I think it's the seeds are there so do you want to tell the story about round yeah so you know this experience with Ron took place at the zen hospice project where I was a volunteer hospice worker for a number of years and I had been visiting with Ron on a regular basis and he had been in a we call um unresponsive state for I think a few weeks so but I was reading to him and we know as hospice workers that the last sense to go before you die is hearing so we often read to or talk to lovingly to our patients in this case I had been reading Ron's what was kind of he loved adventure stories he'd been a merchant marine and so I'm reading to him the call Jack London's call the wild and as I'm reading it to him I suddenly realized that I'm looking down at my body reading I'm seeing the top of my head I'm seeing the words on the page I'm watching my voice speak and there's Ron still in his bed you know unresponsive prone but to my right side is Ron Ron is there with a big smiling face eyes his white eyes was looking and glaring at me he is so happy he's smiling his teeth is right he's a radiant being and he's looking at me as if to say check this out so to say look where I have been and and he's I get the sense that he's invited me here and and I'm just with him I'm a little stunned but appreciative and sharing this moment with him I can't tell you how long I was there I don't think it was that long because we didn't really have any more significant you know communication if you will but sometime later I'm back in my body reading and and I think I just kept reading and then a few moments later I stopped and I said I got I got to talk to my supervisor about this because I love my supervisor you know his name was Eric Pochet he was a veteran of the AIDS epidemic previously so I've been doing hospice work for you know two or three decades uh two decades I think it'd be appropriate um and I shared it with uh Eric and he said to me oh William you know this is the 24 bed open hospice I should say so old hospital you know indigent indigent people of San Francisco and so a lot of death happening and as it's a long hallway and as I'm walking with him I I share this experience and he doesn't even stop walking he goes William um phenomenal rolling by just let it go you know Mary needs you in bed four and I'm like oh okay well this is indicative of a lot of things here Alex one is here's a here's a wonderful man everybody loves Eric super knowledgeable wise Buddhist been through it all and he kind of dismisses my experience so I would have a lot more of these experiences you know different types of shared death experiences while at hospice there I never mentioned boo about any of this to anybody I got loud and clear this is not something you talk about it's whatever but here I am secretly fascinated by these experiences you know and I mean I I would they were to be clear I would have a lot of experiences that were more about what we call changing the geometry of the room changing the time space continuum so there's something about that death vortex opening up and you know feeling the buzz in my in my ears and the light changing and the hard angles of the room the right angles getting softer and then the feeling the pressure on my chest the rising up and then all of a sudden I'm in a different space that's you know but would you call that an out of body experience we'd have to I'd have to go through a variety of them to go into but I do not go into them in the book because they're too detailed but the point being here is there's many points here one is that experience I had with Ron which happened about 10 years after my second near death experience in the ICU that space I was in in the at zen hospice project was very similar it was the same location just up high just below the ceiling so you know as a researcher and experiencer I know the different dimensions I'm still in this human realm in a certain way just at the kind of outer edges of it because I know if I go a little further well everything changes we're no longer in a physical dimension and I can look down and see it but where I am is not in it so that's a conversation for another day but but this really affirmed once again wait a minute I have an existence as an as a self of some type which I'll just call consciousness that survives a human body that is not dependent upon a human body and certainly not a brain and the other piece about this is in this situation with Ron I did maintain a sense of connection to you know William reading that book down there but I think that's because there wasn't any trauma involved I mean I was just popped out I don't know that happens but with the with the blood imbalance I was unconscious for I was in a darker space I do remember just nothingness for a while before I came to in the ceiling of my bed and I don't know why that excuse me in the ceiling of the ICU I can't explain all that I mean I probably could if you were to ask me deep questions but they're they're both the same in the out of body feature and a separate consciousness from the physical body brain but they're a bit different in my sense of identity with William the human being said I think that's super interesting and I think we need to kind of try and parse it out a little bit if I can ask you to do that because we do have this connection to like you mentioned shamanic traditions and other wisdom traditions and then we have all sorts of other stuff that we don't even have to get into here but are talking about these other extended consciousness realms and they talk about them in the way that you just did of oh this one's close this one's far away this one's above this one's below and then that's kind of from a non-spiritual perspective and then when we get into the spiritual perspective things shift a little bit and we're confronted with the really really big questions which the biggest to me always is the hierarchy of consciousness you know you're already referring to it in a way even though you don't use that exact language but the conductor is at a higher if you will level than some of these other folks and what does that say it implies god for lack of a better term but we're kind of uncomfortable with that but even I want to pull that back and saying we're uncomfortable with that forget being uncomfortable or comfortable with it just from a phenomenological kind of perspective we have this one experience that doesn't seem to have any of that but completely defies time space and sequence you know this parallelism and then we have this other experience that seems to be all about this big vertical leap that you're going to make in terms of spirituality you know this is terrain we do have to it does it do we have to dig it dig into this does this because you face such an enormous challenge that you've laid out which is just you know you gotta only got your plate just with hospice you know what I mean that's on your plate right now help people but the the the big meal is still out there as well as what does all this stuff mean well you're you just touched on the challenge that I face pretty much every day and that is you know what is the significance of the shared death experience in terms of you know the the research and the meaning around it what what is the sequentially in my mind who are the people we're asking to look at this and transform or incorporate this wisdom and knowledge in some ways like you you've identified alex the various if you will constituencies that that need to be they need to take this up and we need to have a conversation they need to address the reality of these experiences or they need to steer everyone away from addressing this as much as they possibly can because it doesn't really fit in with the way things are either where they want to take things or even on a simpler term just upsetting the way things are right now so I mean that's just I want to throw my two cents yeah I mean and in a certain way I feel myself wanting to be well I can tell you where I go organizationally because I run you know this organization where are we gonna allocate our resources and attention the truth the matter is when people who have levers of change and are willing to get the word out in a way that I think like you can do it in a way that is um efficacious wise thoughtful uh and can influence people that's where we go do I know where the where this is this change is going to happen I don't know where that hundredth monkey is it could be in medicine hey it could be that you know the you know the surgeon general stands up tomorrow and says you know I want to say something my you know my granddaughter gave me this ad heavens door for my birthday and I got to tell you I had one of these things okay well now we've got a game changer and I'm willing to respond to that or or a big influencer you know um you know you're you're certainly huge in your particular field of you know what I would say consciously oriented spiritual people who are looking at new models that are actually more reflective of the way things are say okay kind of simply um but you know it would be great if um you know Oprah Winfrey you know said hey by the way I heard about these and I had this with my aunt whatever you know so what I'm saying to you is I don't know where the transformation is going to take place I don't know what that lever is going to be I do feel very strongly Alex that it's going to happen because you can't deny this I mean the letters I have received emails from just the last month of having this book out has been absolutely spectacular people from all walks of life saying I had this thank you I've never shared it and you know and so and and even medical doctors saying I had this with my mother I've never been able to talk about it and I see patients all the day that talk that share these experiences every you know all the time but every now and then I hear these in my medical practice and I don't know what to say even though I've had it so I don't know where it's going to happen but I I do feel it will and maybe I'm just an optimist but well no you're you're that's awesome I mean you are you are a people helper you are in service you know and that's just such a beautiful beautiful thing to see and to experience someone who's doing that and has done that for so long so I got it you got to do that totally get that I'm going to hit you with one other one though that adds a little bit of color and complexity to this which I really appreciate that you don't shy away from that in any way I mean you deal with it head on you just have a heart that says let me help the people who I can help right now uh let me help comfort them let me help because grief I like that we haven't talked about grief because grief is complicated and there's another show can talk about all that but you work with people who are really really crippled by grief and you're trying to help and all that so let's do this as we kind of head towards wrapping this up back to the strangeness can you tell us the story about gale and the clink of the china because this is another one that you know again I just got to pull back a little bit because you get into the shared death experience like oh wow this is great this is great and then you but you got to check yourself go what clink of the china what the hell yes so gale she's you know gale is the first story we you know sharing the book it's the first one that I really uh want to want the audience to hear and grapple with right away so gale is in the hospital with her father and her father you know she doesn't know where he is on the map of life doesn't know if he's going to get out of the hospital doesn't know if you know this is his moment so she's in the hospital bedroom with him and he starts coding so the medical staff ushers her down to the waiting room and she's alone in the waiting room and what she describes is she finds herself in a visionary realm walking down a beautiful path and she feels the presence of her father with her she doesn't say that she actually sees him but she knows that he she is with him and they're walking down this beautiful country road and then all of a sudden she sees this little path go out to this kind of other estate if you will a state's probably too too much grandeur but there's a gate and there's people behind that she hears talking and she hears voices of people either that she remembers from her childhood who have predeceased her and of course her father and what she hears is that these people referring to Walter by his childhood name by his younger name that name that was only used in the family when he was you know in his 20s or something in childhood in 20s I think it's like Walter or something because now as he grew up they call him Walt but she recognizes these voices and she recognizes the names being exchanged and she's thinking oh my god there's my aunt who died and there's my grandmother who died she's putting this together and then she hears the clinking of the china and that and she realizes she at that moment she hears Walter's coming Walter's coming he's coming and now we are getting this sense of what you know I have defined is it was known before Raymond talked about this too Raymond Moody this welcoming party well known in the in the near-death experience and here we have it again in the shared-death experience they're preparing a party a gathering to welcome Gale's father home and as she approaches the gate she realizes this is a boundary upon which she cannot pass this is the boundary in the spiritual realm we know this well both in the NDE and the SDE and then it ends and she's back in the waiting room and the doctor comes down the hall and says to her I'm I'm sorry to tell you and she interrupts him I believe and says I know I was just with him I know he's died and the doctor steps back and rolls his eyes and walks out without saying anything like like you know anyway I can go off on that one but I'm like clinically so there's two things here so you've got Gale with this spectacular welcoming party experience with her father into the next dimension you know into the afterlife it's been elevated so for Gale what's so profound about this and what we see for all of our I say almost all of our experiences is this sense that her beloved father is now alive and well in a beautiful afterlife being greeted by known family and relatives welcomed home and so for Gale and many other SDE experiences she knows that her departed loved one is in a great place and this radically transforms her grief like she's not wondering where her father is she knows he's alive and well she knows that she'll see him again she even says that and and her fear of death is completely alleviated this is one of the great hallmarks of these near-death and shared experiences is that our relationship to death and dying is wholly transformed from one of fear and anxiety to one of wonder and awe and receptivity to this great event this great adventure that awaits us all so and then the last piece I'll say about this but I don't want to end here because it's not a positive piece but my my yearning my longing for Gale and anybody who has any of these experiences in a hospital is that when a medical professional and usually it's a doctor who comes to the surviving loved ones and announces a death says hey I have some news for you I'm really sorry to say to you and and then you know at some point Gale has the confidence now Gale is a very confident person so she told the doctor right there boom this is what happened but my hope is that that medical professional will say oh Gale that's wonderful you had a shared death experience tell me more I want to know more about this that is such a gift this is known in the research you are so blessed to have this and if you I would love to hear more right now if you feel comfortable I also have someone on staff who knows all about this we want to help you make sense of this and we want to affirm that what you had is a known experience that is a gift that you can continue to be with and it will are the research suggests that this is really beneficial for you and your loved ones that's what I hope for yeah that's awesome it's a great story and again you know William tells a great story he also writes a great story this book like I say it's kind of a page turner you're going to want to hear story after story and I guess that we should add you know and talk about the shared crossing project in sharedcrossing.com because the other thing that Gale can do in this situation is you're kind of filling the gap right so she could go to sharedcrossing.com and she could find someone where she could feel I'm sure she'd feel a real welcoming about that experience and that's an unbelievable gift that this book brings haven't said that because we said that over and over again I do want to take this story in a slightly different direction as well because again I think this is to me this is one of the barriers to really the acceptance of this whole stuff all this stuff and people like you and I in our community we can have a tendency to not fully appreciate what that paradigm change is like you know what because we forget our own paradigm change you are different you had it at 17 through a near-death experience but for the rest of us who don't have those experiences it's a lot of grinding on it grinding on it I'm a smart person how could I not know about this the world works the way it works and I'm comfortable with it how could everything be upside down because that's what you're really kind of demanding here Gale's story does not make any sense from a consensus reality perspective it just it doesn't and we can't pretend like it does or shoehorn it back in or no it just doesn't make any sense and what it points to I think the really challenging part is that maybe our barrier to understanding Gale's story is understanding just how clouded our consensus reality perspective is because everybody you're talking to William is coming back and going no you don't get it that's real you're not real you're not experiencing reality when I was there that was reality is it reality that's a lot for us to kind of wrap our head around and I'm sure you struggle with that I'm sure you probably struggled or have struggled with it yourself but I'm sure you also struggle with it with the people you tried serve yeah you've said that very well Alex at one of the frequent comments we hear during our interviews and of course you know I feel the same way being an experiencer is that that dimension that that we go to during these experiences is more real than real this that is the ultimate reality and that this human experience is the dream it's the delusion it's it's a temporary experience a realm that we go to to learn and to have experiences and hopefully evolve our souls I mean there's a whole paradigm around this what you can agree with or not and not all our experiencers will say what I said but they will when when they've had a particular experience assert that the human experience is not the ultimate reality where they went during that often short period of time is the ultimate reality and often we hear the term that's our true home that's where we truly reside great a couple other things let's just throw on the table if we can you've also you know really understand the work of Gregory Shushan and you've studied it and have you collaborated with him at all or talked to him at all I have not yeah but I do see us will be speaking at some conferences coming up I do hope to to to meet him I have a just a tremendous amount of respect for his work it is so I mean so challenging such a good way really stretches us not just spiritually but multi-culturally and I think that is what we we need that in spades so I just yeah I'm a huge fan and admirer of of his work great and so am I for all the reasons that you said because if we were going to pull back a little bit and say let's try and get a handle on this from this reality then we'd immediately want to go cross culture and cross time to kind of wipe out flush out any of those factors that are playing in and that's exactly what Shushan has done right he said from kind of an anthropological standpoint let's look at near-death experiences across all these cultures and let's go back in time as far as we can with these accounts and it's amazing what he finds he's kind of reticent to go too far because he's really even more locked into a system that doesn't allow any other stuff but it also kind of throws a monkey wrench into some of this stuff that we're talking about because it all doesn't break as cleanly as we'd want it to in terms of a nice neat story of all goodness and wonderful and all this I mean you got shamans journeying to some dark places as well you know and if we look at the near-death experience literature we have the traumatic and the distressing what we call near-death experiences we know they're under reported by researchers and because they're under reported by experiencers you don't want to come out and say I went to hell the first question is what did you do what did you do before that you know kind of thing but there's all sorts of aspects to this that we're not really sure we even want to explore what are some of your thoughts about that because I've heard you say you didn't directly come across that in your work but you got to know that it's out there in some way that we don't totally understand well the the not totally understand I can say that for sure the whole thing I mean I may sound like I'm you know knowledgeable and and sure about the shared-death experience in these phenomenons and I am you know qualitatively this I can say this is what we've seen there's a great pattern here and I can see it replicated over and over again in not just my clinical work but also in the research so but you're talking about these distressing realms that are reported by Nancy Bush for one in the NDE community I mean Evan Alexander starts out with this earthworm eye view it was just kind of a dark dense realm in his early stage of his near-death experience I would just interject that then if we go cross culturally from a shamanistic standpoint all over the place right so it's kind of confirming of those other realms whatever we are to make of them yeah yeah and so yeah if you want to take the you know the more pre-modern cultures if we use it shamanistic and indigenous and what have you they all have different realms some of which we would call distressing or you know non-desirable I don't know if I call them hell realms but they're they're certainly there is this is known in shamanism that there are a variety of realms to be visited that you can go to and a lot of it is I don't know if I'd say merit based because that's very kind of Judeo-Christian if you will I do think I do think there are ways in which you can cultivate your consciousness and do practices of which the these you know indigenous shamanic communities are our cultures are you know they're replete with they they they have a series of practices that prepare the soul and spirit for these journeys and to and to really go to certain places based on what they've learned in their tradition about how you access different realms again if I can just interject because it and I'm sure you will agree it just is complicated and the further you get into it it's complicated I interviewed a guy who was a a Buddhist dream yoga practitioner worked with a very accomplished teacher and his teacher at some point said gee kid you're doing great now what you're going to do is you're going to visit the hell realm and that's what he was supposed to do in his dream yoga and he did and so he was he was a visitor what does that mean do other people choose to visit those realms we have this whole magic tradition and other traditions that tell us oh you can gain things from that from those realms and those are a whole other conversation for a whole other time but I just think if we pull back the lens and we broaden this the possibilities and start stringing them together in a meaningful way and that's again when I say you know you have to do the work that you're doing it's it's you just have to and we have to change in the way that we're changing but it opens up all these other vistas that we we got to be ready for because that's the next step in all this too you know yeah well and I think this cross cultural piece is really important because when the western paradigm that you've referred to this kind of scientific materialism when it if it truly comes into relationship with pre-modern paradigms this is where quite frankly these pre-modern paradigms are far more sustainable and believable and reality-based than the narrow confines of scientific materialism it just ours works maybe in a test tube but it certainly doesn't work when you test run it in the real world and I think that and that's something that I learned early in my life for my time in central and south america working with indigenous cultures it's just like well this makes sense you don't have to leave anything out you know so you know what I mean you don't have to leave out these experiences so but let me share an experience with you here Alex that's really important to note and it really gets at what you're talking about and that is we have an experience that we call the sympathetic shared death experience so if you remember in my book I referred to Sarah Sarah wakes up one morning in Santa Barbara and she's got a fever and she's you know very sick she throws up she doesn't know what's going on her family says we're taking you to the ER she happens to be a paramedic she goes absolutely I got to go she gets ready to go and then oh she starts feeling a little better she goes well hold on maybe passing and she gets a little better but she's still not feeling well and then she gets a call from her sister who she's very close with and she says Sarah I have some very sad news for you you know your niece died of a drug overdose accidental drug overdose about an hour ago and Sarah goes wow you know just broken with grief and then as Sarah defines so well in the ensuing days she starts thinking wait a minute she's a paramedic she knows what a drug overdose looks like she's pitching it all together and then she also realizes something else I thought I actually in my experience I was feeling my niece in some way I can't explain it but I was connected to I feel like I was connected to her and let's boil it down to low gravy Sarah comes to the conclusion I was experiencing my beloved niece's last moments of her human existence and I was probably going into this experience of death with her I was sharing her death in in whatever way that you know that makes sense so we have I we have you know I want to say certainly a half dozen maybe up to a dozen of these experiences they come with drug overdoses unfortunately also with cardiac arrest you know people having their people thinking they're having a heart attack and then find out that a loved one of theirs died of a heart attack the same time so these talk about stretching the scientific materialist model that being that the brain responds to phenomena in the immediate environment only there is no extended consciousness there is no the brain is the mediator through the sixth sense doors all within the immediate environment the sympathetic shared death experience blows out right out of the water now of course most scientists scientific materialists and maybe reasonable scientists would say ah you know you only have a dozen cases could be conjecture people get sick you know whatever but I don't know I use the reasonable human kind of assessment and say there's too much going on here now of course I've had these experiences and I've studied them so I they fit in my paradigm but there's one you know there so that's a distressing SDE that you know doesn't get at some of the larger multicultural questions that you're bringing up but it does get at this distressing part and and there are a lot of people that I found that come into my clinical practice who have reported these and were concerned about just their the fact that they could have an experience like this doesn't mean they're vulnerable doesn't mean there's something to matter with them are they too porous are they still connected are they going to die from this so all of this information I want to get out as a mental health provider say hey this is a sympathetic shared death experience it happened to you because your loved one was dying you had a conscious you have a conscious connection with this person but you're not in danger of dying your your health is fine you this is a sign of a really lovely bond that you had and if I push on this I think that maybe your loved one was reaching out to you in some way either asking for help or just trying to say goodbye you're a nice guy and a good therapist I don't know I don't know I definitely can't fill that role hey one other question and then I want to hit some of the high points of the research some of the stats that I think people can take away do a phenomenal job again you know peer-reviewed publish you're playing the game the way it should be played in terms of using the scientific method and you know we can't totally bash science and that's I guess my last question too you know is the technology angle on this is extremely interesting challenging all those kind of things so when we look at near-death experience science you immediately go to resuscitation we don't know what to make of it but people are being brought back to life after they die in ways that wasn't possible you know kind of a few years ago and then if you go one step further and I interviewed these guys and I don't know quite what to make of them but I'm definitely not a ludite so you know push the technology forward but you look at Gary Schwartz the University of Arizona they're working on a soul phone they're saying hey guys forget after-death communication but let's take that after-death communication one step further and you can type out some messages to the deceased what do you think that is a that is you know we're talking about the cross-cultural and all the things we can learn from the other wisdom traditions the flip side of that is we might from a western perspective stumble across some things that are going to add some you know seasoning to the stew as well what do you think about the role of technology in this both now and moving forward I have a good deal respect for Gary Schwartz's work and the soul phone as you mentioned and Mark Pitzik who's been his you know was involved with I think he still is these these are these are smart people using the technological means available and definitely pushing us in this world I haven't seen a way that technology could help with the SDE other than this notion of being more formalized in making what has historically been called death compacts you know a death agreement you do report you know kind of the electromagnetic interference part of it that is part of your thing and yeah I agree that yeah absolutely we definitely see you know all sorts of which is kind of historically referred to as synchronicities around end of life it's a type of phenomena what Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth in from the UK call as deathbed coincidences as such that means you know electronic devices in particular like lights flashing digital clocks stopping at the time of death or even later significant dates like anniversaries or birth dates and things like that I mean I like to say we study these you know I want to tell your viewers if you have any of these phenomena we are they're related to end of life death and dying you know we are into them and we study them and we're building a database for this and my next book is going to be about the series we call it the spectrum of end of life experience I actually crafted this spectrum to capture this full continuum of experiences that begin with pre-death premonitions go right through end of life visions of visitations terminal city share death experience all the ADC you know the post-death visions of visitations and synchronicities throughout the technological piece I'm I don't haven't seen that really play out other than the way that I've I've seen you you know it's the examples you you bring up it's absolutely clear and I think you saw that in the case and and and at heaven's door Amelia B who loses her 13 year old son to cancer they talk about lights flashing when you know when he when they talk about him and movements of furniture and knocking and all this stuff that we see but I'm going to tell you something I think we can do better than that I think that what the data that we are gathering is we don't need to go too far field from really hitting on the the shared death experiences that are reporting this connection and amazing phenomena that can't be known any other way you know and I just think eventually as it's really this it's the credibility we're looking for Alex we just need an ebb and Alexander to have an sd e and I mean that because ebb and is just a wonderful person he had a you know a neurosurgeon associate professor at Harvard well respected wonderful man thoughtful we need some more you know people of that stature to speak of I look at I am very well received I am grateful that when people hear me talk and my colleagues at the medical community are very receptive but we need a major influencer to come out and help us I think that's going to do more than anything in these and I don't know if I'm answering your question specifically about the technology I just don't I what I'm talking when I think technology I'm thinking the electrical stimulation that happens around a death and dying of which is well noted in the literature so as we wrap things up here let's talk about some of the numbers some of the stats because they are helpful and they come through in your in your research and again folks this is real peer-reviewed research as William said published in you know really the top journal in his field which is all you can ever go through just because you've never heard of that journal doesn't mean anything you're not in his field so hit hit on some of these they're they're from the shared crossing dot com website under research and for there you can also find all the other things we talk about you can look at events media you can connect with these folks in a meaningful way but which one of these stats do you think we might want to touch on I think they're all spectacular I think the one that you know 64 percent of shared death experiences happen remotely that means they're not at bedside and when Raymond you know was Raymond Moody was doing his initial research on this he was dealing only with bedside accounts but then when I did a lit review I started you know basically seeing the research done by Peter and Elizabeth Fennick in Great Britain and they were having these deathbed coincidences well these were essentially shared death experiences but they were remote they were not at bedside and so and then when I put out you know when I started giving talks around this and reaching out to my colleagues and creating a larger net of interest if you will then we we found out that with our you know many hundreds of cases now that 64 percent of these seem two-thirds roughly are remote so that's interesting to people here's another piece that is that I find probably of all the phenomena here this is probably the most interesting to me is because I'm one of these 41 percent of people report having more than one SDE so that means there's something happening for these people and I'm going to suggest it some sort of energetic constitutional change at the dome at the level of psychic spiritual structure whatever that means that's probably a lot of mumbo but but you get the point because you know I'm an adept in the sense that if I once I had my near death experience you know I started out I had another near death experience and I had shared death experiences and you know and now when you get me around death and dying I'm just easy to have them so and we and most people many people are that way it's like once you have one it gets more and so the other thing is these meditation practices are you know we know that mindfulness practices really seem to be helpful and and having people have these experiences so that's 64 percent of our research respondents express that they have a mindfulness practice and that can be meditation that can be prayer that can be yoga and then the last thing that I love is that you know almost 80% 79% of our people who have an SDE are likely to have another experience we call them shared crossings another type of spiritual experience related to death and dying and that's really amazing because that means that once you have an SDE you're now kind of more open or available to have other communications with the deceased and kind of have what we call a continuing bond an ongoing relationship with your departed loved one or loved ones awesome now the other stat that jumped out at me is 87% of those interviewed reported that their experience had left them absolutely convinced that there's a benevolent afterlife yeah wow that's game changer yeah game changing but also matches the NDE literature as well correct correct good point so folks again our guest has been William Peters the new book I hope you check out I think you've really really enjoy it I think you're gonna want to share it with other people in your life because so many people you know once you start once you start talking about this you'll open up people in a way but it's at heaven's door what shared journeys to the afterlife teaches about dying well and living better William awesome work my man you are so to be congratulated I'm so so happy you joined me here yeah thank you Alex and if I can't I just want to remind your viewers that there's a lot of resources on our website sharedcrossing.com there's a video library for people to see firsthand experience first hand accounts from experiencers and then if I may I have a great event with it's a free event with Dr. Raymond Moody we're going to be talking about how the shared death experience changes everything and you know Raymond is you know he is the one who popularized the term shared death experience and I came in with him you know afterwards to really have done the deeper research and my team you know should be I should you know I want to let everyone know that I have a research team of Dr. Michael Kinsella and Dr. Monica Williams and others here that really have forwarded this but that's a great event with Dr. Raymond Moody and myself on March 12th you can find on our website. Awesome I hope people check that out I'm not sure this will be up in time but okay oh yeah sorry I can send out I can send out a note or something if you if you see the link yeah okay because it's a free event I mean it's a great event which is trying to get the word out and yeah so great well again terrific having you on I really appreciate it fantastic thank you you know it's funny my publicist said that you were gonna be kind of hard on me and I didn't I thought you were just you're you're not hard at all you're just a great engaged interviewer really the best one I've done and I've done a fair amount of them but the other one who did a really good one I think is a call I listened to your interview with Rick art Rick Archer I thought you know Rick's my buddy yeah he did a good job yeah well you guys both give long interviews this is almost two hours so I just didn't want I just wanted to get through it and I didn't want to come I never go this long but I just wanted to cover what we had to cover because this is so you know this is your life but I mean this is so so important and all these different levels so I appreciate you spending the extra time well thank you so much Alex thanks again to William Peters for joining me today on skeptico one question it up from this interview the obvious one what do you make of the shared death experience I think it's incredibly important scientifically what do you think let me know love to hear from you love to hear from folks who are listening anyways there's some more great episodes coming up I promise you that next one oh my gosh this is I don't know I'm still I'm still rocked by the next one anyways stick around for all of that until next time take care bye for now