 That, of course, is Kenny from South Park on his trip through hell. Feel the delightful pain. Did you hear the news? A war just broke out up on Earth. Meet Saddam Hussein, my new partner in evil. Move over, Saddam. You're hogging all the bags. The playfulness that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone show in dealing with hell is truly masterful. And it has a direct link to today's show. Because, as you know, beyond the love and light aspect of the near-death experience, which is overwhelmingly the most significantly reported experience, I mean, like 80, 90% of people report that there are reports of hellish NDE experiences. And they are significantly under-reported. They're under-reported by experiences who are undoubtedly afraid of facing the ridicule in judgment that comes with saying, yeah, I was in hell. And people are thinking, yeah, why were you in hell? What have you done wrong that I don't know about? But they're also under-reported by NDE researchers. And this has an interesting twist to it. Because it says that the data that we're getting back, that we're trying to rely on, we're trying to make all these interesting assumptions about extended realms, that that is subject to the same kind of personal human factors that we see in every other branch of science. So if you're an NDE researcher, do you really want to report the hell thing? What do you do with that? What do you do with the often very Christian biblical baggage that comes along with that? Do you, as some do, kind of immediately distance yourself from that? Oh, that can't be real in the way that you're thinking about it. It has this cultural overlay to it. I mean, do we really know that? Can we really make those kind of assumptions? And what is the end game for making those kind of assumptions about a consciousness that extends into and interferes and corrupts with the data in the extended consciousness realm if you know what I mean? Well, these are some of the issues that we get into on today's show with the very excellent David Sunfellow. In this game of trying to figure out, again, from the wrong end of the telescope, what's really going on in this extended consciousness realm? If we're going to play the game, if we're going to follow the data, this isn't the data. Jeffrey Long, his research very much supports the idea that there are these hellish realms. In fact, here's a quote from him that says, quote, the most frightening things that I've encountered in my life are not from fictional books or scary movies, but from near-death experiences with hellish content. So he's not saying there's no hell. He's just saying that, you know, God is not sending people to hell, which is a common theme among near-death experiences as a whole. I think they're saying something else. The way I read this data is there are a lot of scary movies out there, and you may have to watch a scary movie that may be on your path to help your overall learning and guiding of your soul to where it needs to be. But don't take the fucking scary movie too seriously. That's what the data comes through over and over again and says. And that's why I guess what I'm saying about Jeff Long is, yeah, what you said is technically true, but his overall conclusion is that it's not anything to be feared. It's part of your soul's experience. It's a small movie that you will walk into and walk out of. This is a deep dive into NDE research and how we might use it to better understand who are we, why are we here, and how we should make decisions around those questions. David is a terrific guest whose decades of work in this field gives him a unique vantage point to reveal the big picture takeaways from these experiences. My niece one time asked me, what is it about near-death experiences that you've learned something new? I mean, didn't you already know this stuff? And my answer was I learned two things from near-death experiences that I didn't learn from the other things. The first thing was a full picture of how all the pieces fit together. And the second thing was the emphasis that near-death experiences give to certain aspects of our life. And the main thing that leaps to mind is the idea that the little things in life are the big things. Stick around, my conversation with David Sunfellow is coming up next on Skeptico. Today we welcome David Sunfellow to Skeptico. He's here to talk about his new book, The Purpose of Life as revealed by near-death experiences from around the world. And really to talk about a lot more. I've had a great email exchange with David and I was just chatting one second ago when I first got him on the Zencaster here and we had a chance to talk to each other for the first time. And I feel like a certain connection with someone who's really devoted themselves to trying to understand more broadly these big picture questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we headed? And David has done that in just amazing ways. He's compiled thousands of near-death experience accounts, both written and video. He's put together a very popular website that is a real go-to for a lot of people within the near-death experience community. Near-death experience researchers know him well and he really tackles things that are sometimes outside of where a lot of people want to go in terms of the natural controversies that arise when you look at these extended consciousness things. So with all that, David, it's certainly great, great, great to have you on Skeptico. Thanks for being here. Hey, it's great to be here too. Alex, thanks for inviting me. So let's see, you know, as much as I sketched out a very brief bio of you, it is very brief. So who is David's son-fellow? Yeah, that's a big question. I guess I would boil it down by saying that I'm just someone who has spent my life trying to understand the big questions. You know, why are we here? What's life all about? Where's it going? And that's been my main focus, you know, along with raising four children and doing a bunch of other things. But the main thrust of my life has been to try to answer these big fundamental questions. Why do you suppose that is? I mean, I'll frame it up a little bit because I've told this story on the show. You know, I grew up and I was pretty success-oriented and that's how my family kind of raised me. And I think there was a good thing about that. So I was after the normal things that our society says. But I always had in the back of my mind that I needed to get past that so I could get to these bigger picture questions. So that's what I did. And I expected to find a lot of other travelers on that road. People who had said, okay, I'm going to tackle life, but I'm also going to tackle what are obviously these fundamental questions in life. And I found that, you know, a lot of people just aren't interested. Yeah, right. Or they're interested in a very narrowly defined way that, you know, is like, okay, church tells me that's how it is. So I just accept that, which to me is, again, not, I mean, even people who are religious and you're religious, we're going to talk about that for a minute. We'll talk about what that means for you. But for a lot of us, there's a deeper drive like, hey, is that really all the answers? And I think you have that drive too. What do you think that's about? Well, for me, the way to frame it would be, I went through a brutal childhood. And I basically crawled out of that wondering, you know, what happened? Why did it happen? How can I put Humpty Dumpty back together again? And so that really was the foundation that started everything. I didn't enter the world with any resources or wealth or anything like that. From my family's perspective, it was all bottom line, you know, just struggling to survive. So I crawled out of my childhood with a lot of wounds and a desire to understand what this is all about. And that eventually led me to Virginia Beach, Virginia, in the work of Edgar Cayce. And then I went through a period of about five and a half years of dark night of the soul type of experience that took me down the rabbit's hole to all these other deeper places. And that officially launched me into getting really, really serious for my own personal reasons of needing to understand what is this all about? And how can we learn to live healthy, happy, productive lives in this world? So that's a little bit more about my background. Interesting. What do you think about the Edgar Cayce material? It always has intrigued me. What was it that drew you to that? And what did you feel like you came out of it at the end? Yeah. Well, when I first encountered the case material, I was looking for answers. And why don't we tell folks really briefly, just in case they don't know, because it's a little bit dated. Now no one talks about it, although it's still an amazing body of work. What's that all about? Well, Edgar Cayce was a man who, through a series of events, he actually had a health crisis. He was hypnotized during the hypnosis. He couldn't speak at the time, but he was hypnotized. And then when he was hypnotized, he got his voice back. He was able to tell the hypnotist exactly what was wrong with his body and what needed to be done to correct it. That started the process with Cayce. And he eventually became what's called a trans psychic. He would go into these trans states. And then over the course of his lifetime, gave what is called readings, 14,000 of these readings that dealt with all kinds of topics, including big picture topics about purpose of life. But what he became famous for were his health readings. And he had the ability to basically, when he was in trans, to go into a person's body and diagnose everything that was wrong and what needed to be done to correct the problems. And he had a lot of miraculous healings result from the diagnoses that were given from the readings. And then he himself would not remember anything when he woke up about what was said during the trans time. So I came across his work and began studying the readings and eventually ended up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, which is where his work is located and was there for 16 years. So in Virginia Beach, and I've never been there and been to the... Association for Research and Enlightenment. Yeah, that's the name of the organization. Okay, awesome. So I want you to tell us a little bit about what that was like and what it was like to stay there and study. And I know many people have had amazing experiences just being there. But I also want to just fill in a couple of the details that I know and you can elaborate on. These are correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the amazing things is, when you say he's doing these readings, these are a lot of times are letters. I mean, this is kind of back of a day, you know, and people would just write in these letters and he would go into trance and the kind of medical readings that he would give, give people an example, David, but he would do really, really specific things, not like kind of general things. He'd say, you know, take this particular root that you'll find in your back. Exactly. Exactly. And then you healed over seven days. You know, it's like you can't really make that stuff up. Right, right. And the ARE, the Association for Research and Enlightenment, which is the organization that archives his work and has a library and they do regular conferences, they have all these readings on file where anybody can go in and study them, including case histories that tell exactly the kind of stories you just mentioned. And some of these are off the top, you know, wild stories. For example, there's one where he did a reading about, I can't remember what the particular problem was, but part of the diagnosis was finding this obscure herbal remedy in this drugstore in some distant city and this was a person that had written into him. And so he told him where to go find it. The pharmacist couldn't find it, so they did another reading and then he said, okay, go back in this room. It's on the third shelf in the back. And that was the kind of stuff that he did. It was, you know, just story after story after story. You know, and I want to put a pin in this because I don't want to pull it into the interview right now, but one of the things that I really appreciated about the email dialogue we've had is that, like, take this Edgar Cayce story right there. It already starts to introduce some of the complexity, the contradictions, the impossible to resolve, you know, how does this extended consciousness thing work and what does it mean to transcend space and time and is destiny really destiny and all these complicated questions. So like I said, I want to just kind of set those up in the background, but maybe in your story, tell us how that rolls into the near-death experience science stuff, why you were drawn to it and what that evolved into for you. Right. Okay. Well, there are two tracks happening here. The first one is just Cayce providing the basic overview of life. There's a lot more going on to life and we realize there are spiritual forces at work. There are specific things we can do in our lives to improve them, improve them. For example, Cayce recommended prayer, meditation, and dreams. That's the three main tools to use in your life. So Cayce was providing a big framework about how to view life in general and how to begin to move through life. So that's the general picture. More specifically how near-death experiences came to the picture for me is while I was at Virginia Beach, Virginia, studying Cayce's work, participating in a work study program, one of the speakers they had was a guy by the name of Dr. George Ritchie and he came and told his experiences near-death experience and at the time it wasn't even called a near-death experience. This was like about 1974, 75, about the time Raymond Moody was coming out with his book and I didn't know what to make of this. This was a professional medical doctor, very well known and respected in his particular area that was telling about humbly, I might add, humbly telling about this life-changing experience that he had. He had actually died and had an encounter with Jesus and told this fabulous story. So that was the first encounter I had with near-death, hearing a near-death experience. Turns out that this particular fellow, George Ritchie, was a mentor to Raymond Moody and Raymond Moody spoke life after life, which of course started the near-death experience movement. The modern near-death experience movement was dedicated to Dr. George Ritchie who introduced him to near-death experiences. So that's my first connection. Fantastic. So why did it kind of grab you the way that it did? Well, I had never heard anyone have an experience like his. By that time I'd become familiar with a lot of mystical experiences with classic descriptions of cosmic consciousness, universal consciousness, consciousness, satori, samadhi, things like that. And I was more of the mindset of the purpose of life really is to basically figure out how to get out of this world. And so here was, and Casey didn't have that perspective, but George Ritchie talking about this personal experience encounter he had with Jesus and then describing all the different realms that he visited and what he was shown in these different places help begin to give me a sense of what life was really about. So that basically helped begin to change my perspective on why we were here and what was important. So I just want to let folks know you've brought up Jesus a couple of times. And that's going to be a very interesting topic for us to talk about. And I want to get there. And I have a couple of clips queued up that you've already heard that I think we're going to have an interesting conversation about. So I want people to hold on and listen to that. But I don't want people to be thrown either way by the Jesus thing because I think you recognize it as a potential contradiction, a stumbling block, but also opportunity in figuring this out. And I want to let people know that you're not married to any one interpretation. And we're going to have to figure that out as we go. But I guess what I wanted to do is return to the near death experience thing because I'm going to suggest to you, David, that one of the reasons that you were drawn to the near death experience is the same reason I was drawn to it. Because I've never had a near death experience. I don't know anyone who's had a near death experience. And it sounds like that's similar to your situation. I mean, you heard George Ritchie. You hadn't had or did you have any family members who had told you a story like this? No, I had no direct contact with anyone at that time who had had a near death experience. And I hadn't had one myself either. I went through the spiritually transformative experience, but not the classic near death experience. And by the way, this is an important clarification. In my time with the case of material, I became in contact with a lot of other psychic, metaphysical type things. And so I recognized in near death experiences, there was something different happening with those experiences versus your typical medium trans psychic. There's something different. The quality of the experiences were different. And so that's another reason that it got my attention. Because I already spent, I spent, like I said, decades in the metaphysical world and that eventually led me to the near death experience world, which is what has become in the last, you know, actually the last several decades, a major focus of my life. So that is interesting right there. And I think you put your finger on it. I don't know if that's true for me. I'm not totally certain about the difference between near death experiences and other spiritually transformative experiences, but I have to admit, acknowledge what you're saying. They do seem to touch us more directly, touch our heart more directly. They do me and they do so many people that I've encountered. And I think that's kind of interesting. But I think the other thing that either consciously or subconsciously near death experience taps into for us is because we are enmeshed in this materialistic science as we know it, driven culture, it gives us a certain confidence to kind of leave that aside and say, no, wait a minute, you can't get past this. This person was dead. Their brain was not functioning in the way that you said brains are supposed to function and they had it. I think for me, there's a certain science-y kind of confidence in the near death experience science that is satisfying. Do you feel any of that? I don't want to put words on your mouth at all. Absolutely. I mean, what I would add to that is that for me, the idea of follow the data, the data when it comes to near death experiences is more clear in my view. If you gather all the data in the room like from trance psychics or from mystical experiences or from other kinds of experiences in the same room and gather those together with near death experiences, as a whole, I think the clarity that comes, shines through near death experiences is much more dramatic. And not just for the fact that we're talking about people who have died and left their bodies for the most part in a near death experience, you're classically talking about someone has died and left their body, which is different than a psychic who is still in their body directly connected to their physical body, their egoic structures, personality and so forth. But in addition to that, you have remarkable testimonies of healings, verifiable healings have taken place in a much greater degree in near death experiences than these other types of experiences that people report. And I'm not saying there's no value in all the other experiences. I think they're fantastic personal transformative value in the other kinds of experiences that human beings have. But as a body of work as a whole, I think near death experiences give us a clearer insight into the forces that work in life and we can learn more from them. Okay, so David, you sent me this book, The Purpose of Life as Revealed by Near Death Experiences from around the world. And you recommended to me and to any reader to, you know, sip and savor it bit by bit. That's kind of what I've done. I kind of read until I cry, which winds up being about three or four pages because I'm not a super crying kind of person, but these accounts, as anyone knows, who has dipped into them, they just touch us in a way. But you've done more than that with the book as well. You've kind of touched on some other areas and topics within this near death experience thing that need to be talked about. Well, tell us what you were trying to do with the book and what people are going to find when they pick it up. Yeah, yeah, good. Okay, what I was, what I'm trying to do with the book is I've spent the past 45 years looking at all kinds of experiences and then focusing specifically on near death experiences for the reasons I just mentioned. So what I've tried to do with the book is collect together the best of the best stories and quotes I've come across in this, you know, search that I've been on and put them together in one place where if a person wants to, okay, look, if a person asks what are near death experiences about, what are the main things that they have to teach us? And then with me, the main focus beyond that is practical application. What can we learn from these experiences that we can practically apply to our everyday lives? Well, here's a book that will help you understand the power, the instructive, clear power that these stories offer us. And not just that, that's the big picture. Okay, so what are those, David? What are those? What would you say are two or three of the big takeaways that you can say in terms of, hey, this is how you should live your life based on this information? Right. Well, of course, the biggest takeaway is love is really what it's all about. We're here to become more loving and present with... Well, I guess the main thing I would say that I've learned from near death experiences and the main thing I'm trying to communicate with the book is it's not just about love generally. It's about love in very specific forms, meaning learning how to love every single person and thing we encounter in our life. And that includes the people we encounter on a day-to-day basis, the cashier at the store. It includes the plants and animals that we are in relationship with. It includes the environment. It includes our bodies, ourselves, our minds, our emotions. It includes everything. That is the main thrust of what near death experiences are, I believe, trying to teach us that life is about love and we're here to learn how to express love to everyone and everything, including ourselves, that we come in contact with in this experience. But whenever somebody says something like that, it almost sounds trite, you know? So compared to what, David? Compared to what? Okay, love everybody, love everything, love everyone and tell the truth in curly baba. I mean, compared to what? Who isn't trying to do that? Well, I think probably there's a lot of people that are not focused on loving others or loving their environment or whatever, but what the book does is give you tangible examples of what does that mean in a practical application. And the book is full of stories where people are encountering, for example, unloving actions. What does an unloving action look like? One of the great stories has to do with Kenneth Ring in the book is talking about a near death experiencer that he knew where he was living his life review and what had happened in his particular case is he was driving down the road in the pickup. Somebody was walking across a crosswalk who got in his way, interrupted his day, so he stopped his pickup, got out and beat the guy up. And then during his life review, he was able to experience that situation from the perspective of the other person, but not just from their perspective, actually in their body experiencing everything that happened, how many times he was hit, how he felt about this interaction. And so the book is full of stories like this illustrating what love looks like in practical application. Does that answer your question? It does, but we're meandering into the contradictions, right? So I love that story, by the way. And I think it's gut-wrenching. Even as you tell it again, it's gut-wrenching to think that I might have to experience everything that I've done, both positive and negative, from another perspective, and that I always thought this was the key thing about the near-death experience. Science, if you will, the compilation of that data, it's telling me that I will be the one who will judge that. The me that I experience on a 24-7 voice inside my head I'm not going to get away from that. That's going to be the voice. That's going to be the me that is now standing in judgment. God isn't going to stand in judgment. Jesus isn't going to stand in judgment. Allah, Buddha, fill in the blank. They're not going to stand in judgment. That voice that's right now inside my head is going to stand, not even in judgment, just going to stand there and observe what that means and what that could mean in the same way that I could go learn something now and understand what it means in my life. Do you understand kind of where I'm going with that? Yeah, I would say it a little differently. The way that near-death experiences classically tackle this is it's not so much an intellectual observation exercise. It's actually you're literally, you are the other person. You are the other creatures you've interacted with and you're experiencing how you're treating them from their perspective as them. So it's a visceral in the body of the other person experience and that of course is much more educational than just observing whatever may be happening. So the lesson from that is number one that we're all connected in life together and we are responsible for the ways that we're interacting with each other so much so that we actually will have the experience of being the other people and beings we're in relationship with. And that kind of segues into another thing on the broader topic of what does love look like in practical application. And one of the main things that is very illuminating and surprising from near-death experiences is that they focus on the little things, the little interactions, the little words we say, the little things we forget and overlook having profoundly significant impact on the life that we're interacting with. So that's a calling for us not just to be sloppy with okay I'll just be a loving person generally but that we actually have to up the ante where we're becoming more conscious of every interaction we're having is having an effect upon the rest of the universe and often it's the smallest things that we do in the course of a conversation just saying some kind or mean remark that ends up turning out to be this hugely impactful thing. So that kind of throws the whole loving others into like a whole new perspective at least for me is like wow I didn't realize that my thoughts and actions were that significant especially the seemingly small and insignificant ones. You know I'm gonna put a pin in this as well because whenever someone starts going down the path of up the ante in terms of what I have to do that seems to stand completely at odds with what I'm the overall message that I'm taking away from all this which we can have a good discussion about and a healthy discussion about. I don't have to do anything. I don't think God is standing in judgment of me and is demanding that I do anything and I think that's a huge shift that I would avoid making because I think it leads us down some paths that we can look at and at least say that doesn't collectively feel right to the overall mission. And so as we talk about purpose as we talk about meaning as we talk about takeaway lessons one of the things that I think is a good way to start is to say what are some ideas that we can maybe dispel or say you know from the little shreds of information we're getting back from collecting about this this was what doesn't seem to be well supported in the data. So I'm going to stick a pin in the you know here's what you should do up the ante and switch over to the other side with that and maybe touch on some points that are beautifully covered in your excellent website where you tackle these issues and you have great titles to them and I'd start with this one shifting gears a little bit how to deal with skeptics and atheists because I think this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about where the data is our friend here the data is so stacked on one side that it really can help us in terms of how we deal with those folks who just are completely in denial about this or are firmly attached to the idea that it couldn't be true because hey they understand that there couldn't possibly be a God so tell us about how to deal with skeptics and atheists well that's another big topic I mean I would start with that I don't see it as my job or the job of anyone else to necessarily convert skeptics or atheists I think that everyone is on their own journey through life and you know it's important to be respectful and just respectful of that Yeah I believe that you're right on articles on this and you are very, they're well written because they're hard hitting and they get right to the point of saying here's the data the only way you can hold your position is to step past all this data Well what I'm saying is that I think our general posture towards everyone should be one you know of loving and trying to be understanding of where another person is coming from and not being the bull in the china shop it's like look I'm going to convert you and tell you this is what you need to know that said if you have people that are receptive to wanting to find out what the data says the data as you said is overwhelming I mean there's just no there's no question anymore about is there life after death or does consciousness continue after death is there more to life than what we encounter in this material world and there's a section I have on NH and these formula website that is full of all these different resources that tackle that issue from multiple perspectives so I would encourage anyone who wants to know more about the data and the proof that exists in support of consciousness continuing to visit that page and maybe a link can be included in this video that folks can go to and take a look at there's just remarkable overwhelming evidence I don't even talk about that anymore because it's a mute point in my mind what's the evidence for life after death it's a mute point like here's the data it's overwhelming you can take a look at I got to persist on this a little bit further because one of the things we talked about before this was Michael Shermer and I was telling you hey here's a link to the interview I just did brother recently with Shermer and it's one of I think I've done three with him and I said he's one of my favorite frenemies because he does have a certain style about him that makes these kind of dialogues entertaining and you shot back and said you know I can't stomach seeing the guy or listening to the guy and I get that I totally get that too I just think we need to be kind of more kind of real about it in terms of why it pisses us off so much and I can just start with myself and that's just to say you know I feel for people who have been socially engineered mind controlled into this biological robot meaningless universe shit and it gets drummed in from the time they go to school and it's drummed in every time they turn on the mainstream news and you can trace the history of near-death experience and you can see every time a significant study comes out there's this just barrage of quote-unquote skeptical but it's not skeptical it's coming from a different place it's coming from don't go there don't explore what you might really be kind of thing and Michael Shermer is either a useful idiot in that process or is a player in that process so I think we do need to kind of understand that and provide somewhat of a counter to that that goes beyond just of course we should love everyone and the way I also look at it is we should be entertained by everyone Michael Shermer is entertaining what role he's supposed to play in this but he's supposed to play some role in it sure I agree with that I guess what I would say about that Alex is what's upsetting about the Michael Shermer skeptic person is their refusal to look at the data I mean I just think that that's in my view if you're going to be a true skeptic that means you really look at the data you're looking at the data where's the evidence to support this or that you actually have to look at the data to make that decision you can't just say this data is not in my particular world view therefore you can't come in the room and we're not going to consider that or this doesn't make sense and I really don't want to talk about that you actually have to bring it in the room and you have to have if you're again being a true skeptic you have to have answers for why you have shared death experiences for example why blind people can see in your death experiences why you have these miraculous healings what is terminal lucidity about you have to have explanations and you have to know about the data and bring it into the room and be able to discuss it so my issue with a lot of the skeptics out there today is they don't they don't know about the data and they don't bring in the data and discuss it full on why do you think that is why does that exist why is it so prevalent among a certain group of people and why do people fall for it too easily my view is that it's like it's basically people have their own mindsets and worldviews set in and they have a comfortable life or a more or less comfortable life built around that and to bring in some of the the data that I'm talking about would completely challenge the materialistic humanistic worldviews and you know like that's just something most of us are designed not to do after you spend a lifetime building a worldview that allows you to operate in the world the last thing you want to do is let things in the room that's going to tear that apart so I understand why people are defended about things like that I can see reflections in my own life of having done the same thing where I you know built certain patterns had certain ideas in my life that I thought were true I built my life around those and I was defended against data that suggested I was wrong about that and in the end when I did open the door for that new data to come into the room it did dismantle a lot of the things that I thought and I did have to rebuild my life in a new way so I think that it's partially that and I think it's also partly developmental that it takes a certain kind of flexibility and maturity to be able to you know enter into the wild west of near death experiences and you know spirituality there it is like not a it's not a world like this material world is it's like there are so many strange and quantum physics like issues that operate in this world that it's much easier to stay somewhere else where everything is so cut and dry to make sense. Let's hone in on that for a minute David specifically what do you think are some of the challenges to that paradigm shift because I think what you described and you described it really well is something that a lot of folks go through and I certainly have gone through it but in talking to people that have listened to the show so so many people have gone through it what do you think we're holding on to with this belief system that most of us have ingrained and why are we holding on to it so firmly because at another level you know when you look at what the message is that you're saying is coming through from the near-death experience science it seemed like a very attractive alternative what is it that makes it not seem as attractive to us at that time why is it such a huge shift for so many of us well again I think it boils down to that we've created a world that we're comfortable in that our egos are comfortable in where we can be the gods of our own worlds the master of our own worlds and the things that we learn from near-death experiences challenge that whole system it's not just about us there actually are other forces and life that are bigger that we have to contend with and I'm wondering what you think after all the interviews you've done why do you think people are so stuck or attached to materialistic world use what's your opinion on that you deal a lot more with the scientific-minded folks than I do and I'm wondering what your answer is to that question fear you know I think it is exactly what you said I spin it slightly differently I've constructed a reality that allows me to avoid the things that I'm afraid of and allows me to hold on to the things that make me feel less afraid and I'm so built around those two not getting what I don't want and trying to get what I want that I just live in constant fear and any thought of just jumping outside of that is just really hard, hard to get in that space. Yeah and maybe there's a component there too if you have a mindset that's built on the material universe and you're the mini god that's in charge of it there's a lot of focus on you're the one that has to maintain control of this whole thing there are no external forces spiritual forces, angels God, Jesus, whatever that can help you deal with this you are alone in your universe so it puts a lot of pressure on us too I think that we have to maintain this or it's all going down the drain you know we can't kind of avoid some of the religious overtones popping up in a way that is just challenging, interesting let's talk about God it's something you talk about in a number of different ways we should start with what we think we mean by God but no let's start with a different point let's start with Dr. Jeff Along who's been on the show several times and who you do a beautiful job of representing his work understanding his work and the one data point we can kind of throw in people's face there is that Jeff Long of course is this radiation oncologist in Louisiana who I always love you know the synopsis of his story he's becoming a physician you know and he's going through all his coursework and he's studying and he comes across his cases and he goes wow you know this person came back from the dead from clinical death and he goes to his colleagues and he says what about this you know and they're like hey man just I'm studying for the test I want to you know don't worry about that kind of thing he's like what do you mean don't worry about it it's kind of fundamental but he kind of plows through and he becomes a very successful doctor but he has in his mind that this is important and I love because I think it relates to people like you and I who just won't let go of stuff and say no wait a minute I'm pretty sure the ignoring of this is not a good idea so Jeff Long does that and he writes the New York Times bestselling book compiles the largest database of scientifically controlled survey of near-death experiencers but then he writes the second book and in the second book he goes right to the God thing and he doesn't do it for himself he does it with these people who've had near-death experiences and he says is there God is there a moral imperative to this is there a hierarchy to this extended consciousness that your seem to be placed into after having these near-death experience and they say absolutely all over the place they say it and as a matter of fact he says it's severely under-reported by near-death experience researchers and that God is actually more highly reported than the whole tunnel thing right so our whole association with near-death experiences you go through this light of tunnel he says hey I'm sorry look at the data the data that's there the tunnel is no doubt there in a large number of cases but God is there even more so I don't know what that means and I'm not a religious person I'm not Christian but I do think like you said following the data with regard to near-death experience does bring us to God moral imperative hierarchy of consciousness however you want to say it so let that be a launching point for any thoughts you have about the God issue well the first huge thought for me is how is it that we're like 40 plus years into modern near-death experience research how is it that it's taken all this time for a researcher like Jeff Long to come out and actually acknowledge the central role that God plays in these experiences why has it been ignored or overlooked by researchers all these years and I think it has to do with the materialistic culture that we're in the materialistic way that science is kind of forced to look at everything that it was just too hot of a topic for a credible mainstream scientist to take up because there's such a scientific bias against God and other spiritual things that are just too hot of a topic to engage until just the last couple of years so and I think there are other topics like that as well that really have been ignored grievously with serious consequences and we're just beginning to come around and try to pick up in other words the stories themselves have been here for us all these years they've been being being analyzed and data based and archived and studied but we're just now at the point where we're beginning to drill into some of the bigger points like Jeff did on this particular topic hey guys just to make a note of this there's this God presence that's really dominant in these experiences we need to acknowledge that and do something with it right and let's drill into that a little bit more because as you say it is under reported and under analyzed if you will so what these people are consistently saying in a number of different ways from a wide variety of different religious or non-religious backgrounds they're saying in the term I always slip into to avoid some of the baggage that goes along with God is a hierarchy of consciousness so they're there and they say hey there was definitely this power this spiritual force and it was way beyond whatever I've experienced as my ego myself I am however you want to put that in any kind of non-dual or religious thing they go no no no no no it was separate from that and it was higher than that and let me ask you is there anything as a starter that we need to add to that because let's also acknowledge that is a lot for people to swallow it is going to really that statement along is going to piss people off and really send them rocking because we've kind of constructed all these different spiritual realities that says no it's just kind of this amorphous kind of consciousness and we're all floating in drops of ocean and drops of water in the ocean maybe true on some level too but I'm just saying this data comes through and clearly says something different that I think we have to deal with what are your thoughts on that or additions that you'd have to that yeah well what I would add to that is that first of all not everyone has an encounter with a personal God on the other side I mean the majority of people report that but many people do not many people have more of a very loving more along the lines of some of the eastern traditions of cosmic consciousness being one with the universe filling ourselves to be one or God and so on but a significant portion of these experiences report a supreme being in some form form of a light usually is the way that most people experience this but it's definitely a distinct being different from oneself yet connected to oneself that is identified as our creator but then they go a step further like it's not just there doing nothing just emoting love like the sun it's actually actively engaged in our lives and that traces back if you look at you know again Jesus comes up in that context where you have the way he described his relationship or talked about it is ava you know papa relationship with this supreme being that is active in our world and in our lives so near-death experiences honor the whole gamut they honor the personal God thing that many many people report they also honor people not having an encounter with the supreme being like that it's more of just encountering the universe as everything's alive and it's full of love and so there's just all kinds of different elements involved with this particular topic and one of the elements that you just talked about and let's rest here for a second is this idea of agency being able to affect this world if you will and this kind of ties back to what we're talking about with Edgar Cayce stuff right because you can come at this agency thing from a number of different paranormal extended consciousness angles so let me make sure I'm not just doing word salad here that no one can follow Edgar Cayce is transcending our space-time reality in every way that that's just kind of indisputable we have no way no other way of explaining what he's doing how he's getting a letter from Omaha and saying go down to the drugstore that's seven miles away and on this third shelf in the back that transcends our understanding of space-time it's completely outside of our reality so he's there and he's then this is the important part he is affecting this reality and that we can't even understand that we can get into kind of a sci-fi kind of you know back to the future if you change the timeline how to there's a whole bunch of questions about that you know can only good affect that or can bad affect that too or can you curse someone so we open up that whole thing but now we switch back over here to what you're talking about and we say now we have what is being presented as some kind of if there is this hierarchy it's known to us through this experience to be way up there and it's saying oh yeah and by the way I have agency I have ability to affect your life and we if you will accept the evidence we have some evidence of that right because they come back and they do things they heal people they say you will be healed after this they say oh unfortunately you will be healed after this but unfortunately your son will die you know as a as a teenager and all these things become true or you know all these things so I'm just trying to frame up what we're talking about in some of the problems and challenges of where we go with this information because if we are stuck in this time space reality that is a small portion of consciousness then let's circle back and ask the question of what are we supposed to do with this information that is outside of that can we really use it in the way that we want to back to the whole purpose of your look can we really say that these things are so just because we're down here and the bigger thing is out there just now if I lost the thread do you know what I mean yeah well let me I'll comment on it David Spangler gave a great analogy for this idea of the invisible worlds constantly influencing and being a part of our normal world our material world that we're unaware of them in the example that he gave the analogy that he gave was the microscope you know we for a long time we had no concept of what the cells on our body looked like until the microscope was developed and then all of a sudden you can drill down and say oh my gosh there's cells and bacteria and viruses and there's all these invisible beings that are operating in our physical universe that we were completely unaware of until the microscope was developed so that you could actually see what these things existed and they were actually affecting our physical world the point being that in the same way that a microscope allows us to see these hidden forces in the material world there's a spiritual world that also is constantly interacting with us which we are unaware of all we but we can see the impact of their presence and of course if you follow the data again the stories are legion about the encounters that people have with angels of other kind of spiritual forces that you know heal them or give them answers or a dream or whatever it might be so the point being that the data the stories are legion they're everywhere all around us even though from a scientific point of view we haven't been able yet to develop something that allows us to tangibly see these forces in work at work in this world right but even if we were able to see those forces at work we still have just an endless number of questions about what kind of conclusions we could draw on that it's back to the shut up and calculate stuff we're talking now through all this technology that relies on these very fixed laws being in place and operating reliably and they fricking do and we can't get past that so it's hard for us I would say impossible for us to imagine from the data what that interaction is because it doesn't seem to make any sense and then I would also say that I would jump over to our friends who are on the left hand path which is kind of misunderstood and I'm not a left hand path person but I appreciate many of the aspects about it and they say so wait a minute why are we limited then to only looking at the forces that manifest in a certain way and I guess what I'm saying is what you're going to call this kind of churchy good stuff why don't we look at the full spectrum of forces that are impacting our world and let's take a step back from the highly judgmental you know this is good or bad because we're living in a world of contradictions we're living in this manifest destiny united states kick ass take names conquer everybody and then you know enslave everybody but then be higher and better than it there's contradictions everywhere we look so let's unpack that and chat about that for a minute well I think the main thing near at least the main thing that comes up to me when you're saying that is that yes in the same way that we have spiritual forces that are unseen we have demonic forces evil forces dark forces that work in our world and those also need to be factored in and we need we need to step into that whole arena and that's another arena that the near death experience movement as a whole has not really come to terms with in the same way that this personal god thing is just emerging on the scene as a books are being written about it finally we haven't really dealt with the reality of hell and hellish experience and demonic spirits and what's that all about and how do they influence us and how can we how does this fit within the grand scheme of things and the purpose of life what's all that about and that's that's an area that I think we really need to know more about and it has very very tangible practical application in our everyday life okay you've kind of walked right into one there in terms of the hell thing let's talk about that you have an article on your website that has probably the most comprehensive collection I've seen of these hellish near death experiences and they really grab people they really grab a lot of people are very interested in this topic some of the highlights that you point out from your data is that they are significantly underreported again by researchers as much as we like to praise this research they seem to kind of want to dance around this issue and just underreport it they say it's not just it's not just a researcher's problem it's also a problem with the way our cultures design that people are stigmatized if they have this experience and they don't want to talk about it okay fair enough but man it's just where people go with this I think is really challenging as well and challenging that's such a soft word it's really difficult to because it brushes right up against some other shit that I know is fake and false from I don't know it's fake and false but in the same way in the same way that we can say you know what the atheistic you are a biological robot in a meaningless universe that data hasn't just been falsified it's been purposely and systematically fed into the system for a particular reason there's really no other way for me to interpret that data because it's such a stupid idea it just is your consciousness is an illusion we can break that down and it's a silly idea but in the same way some of the Christian and other religious dogma let's focus on the Christian dogma is completely corrupt and is falsifiable in a number of ways and has been deeply destructive to a lot of groups and a lot of people and I'm not telling you anything that we haven't had an email exchange about already but you know if you want to go way back go back to Constantine the father what a corrupt individual what a corrupt system that he put in place called the Catholic Church in 300 whatever it was in slaves all these people takes away all their power and really just substitute it with this church that is a perfect reflection of the Roman church but then fast forward with everything all the evils we've seen with Christianity right up to the current pedal, pope and the sex scandal and yet you're asking us to read the Bible and use the Bible as this fundamentally uncorrupted source of truth there seems to be a real real mismatch there and it is going to rile a lot of people when they hear you talk about the way you do about hell and that we should literally understand these hellish experiences to be as they're described in the Bible and all the rest of that. Well hold on let me clarify it let me clarify what you're talking about there Alex first of all where I'm coming from is data and in this case big data so I'm not talking about only Christian experiences and Christian reports of the hellish realms I'm talking about that you're atheist on the corner who ends up in a hellish realm or let's go back to Plato and talk about what you know there was a guy then there was called Ur who was a soldier who had a near-death experience that Plato talked about and recorded in the Republic he had part of his near-death experience was a vision of the hellish realm so hell and hellish domains and realms are not owned by Christians and in fact one of the there's a fantastic book that's been published recently by a Tibetan Buddhist American Tibetan Buddhist that talked about his experience as a Buddhist his encounters and tours he was taken on a tour of the hellish realms by the Buddha of hell so this is not just a Christian phenomena that's the first thing it's important to separate hell from Christianity this is a collective human experience that's happened throughout the ages and the second thing would be to begin to take a look at hell from through the window of the big data you know let's get all these stories together let's put them on the table let's do what we can to strip out the inappropriate destructive and culture rations of the various people that are coming to the table with these stories and let's see if we can identify the core truths that run throughout them that we need to learn from and apply to whatever to our particular life and to our particular culture that's what I'm talking about and that's by the way that's what the resource page on the formula website that deals with hell gives a broad perspective of these experiences from all over the place not just Christians. Okay with you to a certain extent but I think we've got to do a little reality check I wanted to play a couple of these clips that I got from Sid Roth an interesting televangelist converted a Jewish guy not that that makes any difference but it does make a difference that he came to Christianity not from his cultural background but you know he was brought up in the Jewish tradition and some Christian guy comes along he's got to be Jesus and he goes he has his personal experience with Jesus and then as Jesus leads him to Christianity and here he is leading a bunch of other people onto what hell is real ale about now you are about to know what hell has purposely kept hidden from you it's hell's best kept secret and I'm going to blast it now here he goes but near 2000 you were at rock bottom how bad was it? I was so depressed I had planned my suicide different times and my life just didn't feel I had hurt and pain rejection inside of me and I didn't know what to do with it now that person there who we're going to hear more from in a minute is her name is Laura Dottie and she's written this about her hellish experience and there's some really important things that I think we can add to our conversation in a super interesting level 3 kind of skeptical way one is the experience that she's about to describe and it is terrifying and I just have a small clip from it the overall thing is just more terrifying than the worst horror movie you've ever seen but this was an experience that was not through a near death experience but was through what we would normally call a paranormal experience she had again this space time shift interesting that she was at an evangelical retreat I mean the one thing I get from this story is this sounds like a woman a virtuous woman who's living a good life and doing all the right things and yet she visits hell and she has this experience and it's a whole experience that only lasts a few seconds she wakes up kind of where she's in the retreat but let's get onto her experience let me play that for you to always be in pain and to know that it was it kept ramping up and it was going to keep getting worse and worse and worse it was never going to end that was the thing it wasn't like you could reach a pinnacle in hell it worked the same as in heaven my full brain operated and I knew I knew all of Matthew 18 I knew every scripture that I'd ever read and I've read the whole Bible I knew every scripture that I've ever read and it made complete sense and it was completely righteous that I was in hell and there were people there they would just like me they believed Jesus is the Lord God but they refused to obey him they'd say we love you we love you but the scriptures teach if you love me then obey me and I think that's why so many people are a little bit taken aback by these hellish accounts that come through from fundamentalist Christians Alex what can we say about I was going to ask you can you elaborate on what you mean by that are you talking about the Jesus part or are you talking about her experience in hell her conclusion from it it's incredibly powerful testimony but her conclusion about to me from my interpretation of the near-death experience data it's starkly in contrast of what near-death experience researchers tell us go listen to my interview with Jeff Long he said exactly the opposite he says I've compiled all this data I've looked at all of it there is an infinitely loving God not there to punish us not there to demand that we follow his creed he says all that does not come through in the data as a matter of fact he says that the data contradicts that conclusion and yet she is entitled to her experience I'm not taking that away but I'm just saying in this game of trying to figure out again from the wrong end of the telescope what's really going on in this extended consciousness realm if we're going to play the game if we're going to follow the data this isn't the data well I would suggest first of all just to be clear so your readers understand Jeffrey Long his research very much supports the idea that there are these hellish realms in fact here's a quote from him that says quote the most frightening things that I've encountered in my life are not from fictional books or scary movies but from near-death experiences with hellish content so he's not saying there's no hell he's just saying that you know God is not sending people to hell which is a common theme among near-death experiences as a whole I think they're saying something different I think they're saying something else and this is where it's hard because people are going to have to make their own opinion on this but the way I read this data is there are a lot of scary movies out there and you may have to watch a scary movie that may be on your path to help your overall learning and guiding of your soul to where it needs to be but don't take the fucking scary movie too seriously because if it is a lesson and I don't like that word but if that's the meaning of it don't go off and interpret it as some kind of reality or you've lost the path again because you do have to pick up and you do have to tomorrow comes and you have to do the best you can and you have to encounter other people who even though they seem evil or satanic or whatever the hell you think they're doing the best they can and they're trying to figure things out and they're making horrible mistakes and horrible decisions but God doesn't love them any less than he loves you and he isn't waiting to fucking punish them as soon as he gets their hands on them and all that I think I not only believe that I believe that because that's what the data comes through over and over again and says and that's why I guess what I'm saying about Jeff Long is yeah what you said is technically true but his overall conclusion is that is not a judgmental place it's not anything to be feared it's part of your soul's experience it's a small thing that you will walk into and walk out of well Alex I agree with your your main point I think what's happening here is that we're confronted using the Christian typical Christian experiences of hell what we're confronted with is are these experiences like the one you just shared and the way that I've come to understand it is you have to separate the big picture everything is wonderful in the universe these experiences hellish experiences exist but they come and go don't get too excited about them you know and there's a bunch of things I could say about that but drilling down into it you have these what would you say about that what would you say about that David I'm very interested what would you say about that what would I say about what exactly that yes they're there but they come and go the universe is perfect it's all love so don't get too hung up on it what would you say about that well I would say that I mean on my understanding of hell and hellish experiences I would use a big word here I would say that they're fundamentally a part of the overall experience you take hell and what hell and hellish experiences represent out of the equation and you basically the system collapses it's the whole system this whole creative creation experience at least as we experience it in this world is built in part on challenging conflict hellish type experiences and of course we have them all over the world in this world we have many versions of hell many you know in North Korea wherever all around the world find themselves out right now in this world so this whole idea of hell is a fundamental part of what the whole systems about that said I think taking a step further back people universally report when they have these near death experiences and they get into a place where they become one with God or feel themselves to be God and know all things understand all things they look upon the whole picture they universally describe it as like wonderful spectacular astonishing everything is in its perfect place everything is beautiful everything serves the whole so I think hell needs to be looked at from that perspective yes hell exists it exists just as real as this world does because this world also is a dream world it's created by mental constructs of various kinds but that said it plays a part in the overall scheme of things it needs to be honored to recognize we need to understand it so we can know how to live our lives in a once more healthy fashion that's how I would say that's totally cool you've done a ton of awesome research and anyone who goes to your website reads your book will see how you break this down and approach it from an incredibly open-minded inclusive way so you are not a dogmatic guy and I really respect that you are doing truth seeking of the highest order where we can slightly disagree on things that no one ever gets to because they get totally caught up in the stupid does it exist Sid Roth you're going to burn in hell kind of stuff and you're not saying that you're saying understand it and acknowledge it and I'm saying we're never going to understand it so that's off the table and I'm saying any lessons we take from it we should be incredibly humble about holding on to those lessons too much you know the analogy I would make you said you have four kids I have four kids wonderful you know we all love our kids we all learn from our kids we all are incredibly challenged by our kids if you're a parent you know what I'm talking about every one of my kids needs different kind of love and different kind of discipline and some of them need a hellish experience in order to learn a lesson another one doesn't need any of that ever to learn the lesson just either because of their soul or their makeup or whatever I got to believe for me that's closer to what this is about so I don't understand it as a quote unquote reality more as something that I may need as part of my I hate the term I need to more broadly understanding all that I can be what do you think about that well Alex I think that's exactly true and that's the way I think that these experiences especially the dramatic Jesus saved me Jesus is the Lord of the world you can't get out of hell without his help stories that's the way to understand them the correct way to understand them is those things and people that are there are actually near death experiences I mean these are really rare that don't have love mentioned in them at all it's more an Old Testament type experience like there's one Jewish guy in particular that has this fantastic near death experience that is just steep with Jewish classic Jewish Old Testament imagery and experiences and I think that part of near death experiences are also developmental it's not just that you go to these realms that exist independent of yourself but it's actually that you're helping create them and you go to the realms hell or otherwise that are reflective of your particular state of consciousness your particular needs at the time in the same way you just described how our children all have different needs I think that's exactly what's happening with these Christian experiences and hell that they this is what they need to help wake them up and if you go back to the story you played and actually listen to it all the way through Lori's encounter of hell you see that she's got a lot of the basic elements right like for example she concludes at the end what was the term that they were using about the secret of hell and the secret basically was once saved always saved you know the Christian mentality is if you're saved by Jesus once you're always saved by Jesus that's the conspiracy of hell part of it is that that's not true you actually have to be responsible for all your actions and your thoughts and you can't just be a baby Christian or a Sunday Christian you have to be a Christian all the time so I think the messages from these experiences including all the drama and terror that come with some of them are meticulously designed for the particular person in question and that includes the particular group of people that that particular person belongs to so when Lori comes back with her experience her experience is not only given to her personally but then she's given a mandate go back and tell the people what you experience and in her case it's her Christian mainstream Christian people so these are the lessons they need to learn and the way that they need to learn it in a dramatic judgmental believe in Jesus where you're going to hell kind of way that's what they need and I know on the interview you did with Gregory Shushan did I say his name correctly at one point you asked him about do you find love is love the main message that you find throughout history and all these various experiences that have come down through the ages and his answer was well not exactly I mean it's not so much love but it's more the idea of these cultures are being led step by step to improve themselves to become better to become more loving but they're not specifically at least at that time given the love mandate and so I see the same thing happening with these kinds of experiences that classic Christian folks report they're given what they need to make the steps that they need to make and once they've made those steps which includes having a God's going to rain terror down on me if I don't learn my lessons once you master whatever is associated with that particular Old Testament mentality then you move on to the next one where that fear God begins to dissolve and more overtly loving God begins to shine it's like you are developing aspects of yourself and you're also letting things go that you know animal sacrifices whatever you're letting things go that you no longer need to do because you've thrown in ways that you weren't when this experience first took place that's awesome and I love this discussion and we've had a number of discussions on this show about the nature of evil and I think it's kind of a really really important fundamental issue that I think is at the heart of this question that we're kicking around in a way and because we do see horrors in the world that we can't process in the normal way I always go to the you know either the satanic ritual abuse ritualistic satanic abuse particularly the abuse of children you know and sex trafficking and you know five year old kids being molested and as a parent you know that person is then destroyed for life and their families destroyed and then they're killed and put in a snuff film and you know all this horrible stuff that we know goes on and if you don't think it goes on be brave enough to take a big swallow and do the research and it's just there and it's much more prevalent on a worldwide basis any of us want to acknowledge but it's there it's there it's there so the reason I always bring that up is because it really gets to the core of it for most of us we go okay that's evil you know I don't know if drone striking Yemen Yemeni's wedding is evil it sounds like fricking evil but I'm not sure there's political complexity to it but you know what abducting that little kid from a playground torturing him and killing him that's evil what's the nature of that evil and one of the best answers I ever got I think was from a guy friend of mine Conor Abib who's been on the show and that's kind of an interesting background that we won't get into but one of the things he is big Rudolph Steiner fan and he says you know how Rudolph Steiner approaches that he says look there's evil and we all know it's there and we're all tap into that at different times we make poor decisions we have a moment of weakness or a moment of greed or whatever it is we tap into that you can do that and you can do that over and over again in your life and you will have an evil life and then you will die and you will come back and you may choose to do that again and you may choose to do that again and again and again and it may be a process where your choice leads you to do a lot of this stuff but if we get past the idea that you have to pay for it that you're somehow piling up these incredible karmic debts I think there's another way to look at it and that is that we all learn in different ways at different speeds and that light is always shining that we can always look to it's just a choice that we make so I see it as an addition by subtraction kind of thing not that we're constantly compelled to try with all our might to do the right thing all we have to do is look up because the sun is always shining and now this is sounding a little preachy but I don't mean it to be I think we're talking about a philosophical difference in terms of the lessons we can take away from this and the lesson I take away from it is in addition by subtraction God the light the hierarchy of consciousness is always there if you choose to ignore it that's just your choice and there's a lot easier way and that's just to go towards it and that to me seems what comes through as the lesson for me and all this do you have any thoughts on the nature of evil and how to get out of it and whether we have some karmic debt to pay in order to get out of it well the way that I would frame what you've just said Alex is I understand how I understand near-death experiences is that there are two massive life changing life changing forces that we see represented in the body as a whole and the first one is encounters with the light and that's you know everyone describes as completely life changing and that represents the aspect of near-death experiences that deal with God loves us unconditionally everything is fine in the universe everything is unfolding beautifully everything is perfect and that is an attitude like the one you're talking about now that we need to embody and understand at some deep fundamental level the other huge pillar of near-death experiences is championed by the life review and that is that we need to be responsible we are responsible like it or not for every thought every action we engage in there are consequences we experience those consequences it's not God doing it it's not God bringing down judgment on us it's we standing in judgment of ourselves how loving have we been in our life and we are measured by that in a life review so you have these two forces standing side by side the one loving us unconditionally everything is perfect you don't need to do anything God loves us the rain falls in the just and the unjust equally and then the other force that's holding us accountable for every single thought and feeling we have and we experience the consequences of those thoughts and feelings as they reverberate throughout the universe so as I've come to understand it what we're after is a marriage of those two perspectives the middle path in a very balanced healthy way and that's that is the magic formula you know to bring those two into proper balance so we can actually be engaged in this world doing things making positive changes but at the same time not being overly crazy judgmental condemning of ourselves or others so I think it's a perfect marriage of those two forces is what we're aspiring to learn how to do in peace well if you needed anything more of a recommendation for this book the purpose of life as revealed by near-death experiences from around the world by our guest David Sunfellow well if you need more than that you're not going to find it that was quite beautifully succinct and well said David tell folks about more about your mission your journey your website your videos you've put up there all that stuff well it basically is this book is the culmination of everything I've been trying to do and by the way one of the significant things about the book is the book is only half of the story it's a collection of stories but at the end of every chapter there are links 30 of which take you to the video that the particular chapter is based on so you can watch the experiencer tell their story or the literature say whatever they had to say in the chapter so the companion website to the book is at least half of what you have in the book and then in addition to that there are various other websites that support all the things that the book is talking about including some of the subjects we've covered today like hell and hellish realms what's that all about so my main thing has been trying to understand what life's about and and I ended up focusing on you know when I put all the pieces together near-death experiences for me has given me the clearest picture so I've tried to gather the best the best information it's available from these experiences and put it out in a way that other people can sink their teeth into so they can apply it to their lives in very very practical ways that's what I've been trying to do an awesome job of it and I totally agree with you that there is something truly unique about what's going on with this near-death experience I don't want to exclude other ways of understanding the full spectrum of this consciousness that we're a part of but there's if we are going to take that bold step and say we can learn lessons we can draw conclusions from stuff man I agree with you ending ease are kind of a special place to do that and Alex and I would agree with you too that everything else all the other information also plays a significant role so that's one of the main themes that I see in there that the experience is that everything and everyone has a place in the choir you know they all have an honored place in the choir a necessary place we're not complete without all the pieces and that includes all the other mystical experiences and psychic experiences and archeology and science and anything else a person can think of they all belong at the table they all bring let me let me just say one thing that clarifies the near-death experience a little bit more my niece one time asked me two years ago she said Uncle David with all the research you've done on all these different spiritual paths what is it about near-death experiences that you've learned something new I mean didn't you already know this stuff and my answer was I learned two things from near-death experiences that I didn't learn from the other things the first thing was how to put and not that everything's complete but I basically got a full picture how all the pieces fit together for the first time things didn't really make sense I couldn't see how all these discordant pieces fit together until I started sinking my teeth into near-death experiences and then they help provide me a blueprint with how the different parts fit together as like a plane gathering all the parts of the plane sticking them all together so the plane actually flies not just pretends to fly or says it can fly but in this case it flies and we have miraculous healings and a whole bunch of things to prove that this plane actually flies and the second thing was the emphasis that near-death experiences give to certain aspects of our life and how to frame those and think about those and the main thing that leaps to mind is the idea that the little things in life are the big things that's something that you find in other traditions but near-death experiences makes it crystal clear what that actually means in practical applications so near-death experiences have done those two things for me help me put all the pieces together into a unified role that makes sense to me. Awesome, absolutely awesome well it's been great David and I'm sure we'll stay in touch best of luck with all this terrific work and thanks again for joining me on Skeptico Thanks again to David's unfellow for joining me today on Skeptico the one question I guessed a T up from this interview because we spent so much time on it what do you make of hellish near-death experiences how do those fit into your overall world view and do you feel like you've been open to exploring that data head on because it does seem to me that a lot of times people want to deflect and dismiss it and oh it can't be this it can't possibly be that we know all the Christians are full of crap so it can't be this so it's just some cultural overlay I'm worried about some of the assumptions that are being made I'm worried about the layer of interpretation that's being applied to this data and at the same time I think it's really exciting stuff to talk about let me know your thoughts you can definitely find me on the Skeptico forum but you can also find me other places email me if you have a really good answer that question I'd love to hear it I have a bunch of interesting shows coming up on Skeptico please stick around for all of that until next time take care and bye for now so thanks for watching this video and if it wasn't really a video but just an audio stored as a video I apologize but there's more videos out there as well but please check out the Skeptico website you can see it here we cover a lot of different stuff you might be interested in relating to controversial science and spirituality a lot of shows up there over 350 of them are so all free all available for download so do check it out