 Let's everybody think of one incident where Katniss Everdeen genuinely moved you. When she volunteered for her sister at the Reaping. Excellent example. Good. What else? Oh, when she sang that song for Little Rue. Oh, yeah, we didn't get choked up at that. You know, I like you better, Effie, without all that makeup. Oh, I like you better, Silver. That's of course Woody Harrelson from The Hunger Games. A clip that would seem to be because it is a long way around the barn from an interview with one of the world's leading near-death experience researchers, Dr. Jeff Long, who's compiled the largest searchable database of near-death experiences and who joined me primarily because I wanted to verify, because I reference it so many times, the quality of the data in the database. Here's a short clip. Are you in any way scrubbing the database? Are you in any way taking out any references that might be offensive to someone? You know, if it's if they're satanic, you know, or this and that. Or I don't think so because I even do NDERF aliens. I do NDERFET. There are a few entries that come up. It doesn't seem to me like you're in there scrubbing the database in this kind of cancel culture shadow banning. You know, we don't know what's really out there. Great question, Alex. The only change that we make to the entirety of what is shared with us is we remove references. I mean, they may dislike their doctor that they believe was involved in their life-threatening event. So we remove names just to preserve confidentiality. Our overriding concern is the confidentiality of who shares. We post everything that they share with us. It would be an abomination to us to pull out anything that we didn't like or we disagreed with. If they share it with us, it goes up. Now, I realize that this point, which seems so, so, so important to me is really not that important to most people who are interested in near-death experience. What they want to hear about is all the goodies that come from the experience as well they should because there's a lot of goodies to hear as Dr. Jeffrey Long will tell you from the data he's compiled like fear of death. Here's a clip on that. I pulled up the response to the question, fear of death. I asked them directly, what about your fear of death? Before the experience, before their NDE, 32.3% greatly feared death. At the current time, when they shared their near-death experience, typically years later, the percentage that said they greatly feared death down to 3.1%. Remarkably, you go right to that key question, the options to response for their level of fear of death is I greatly feared death. I moderately feared death. I slightly feared death. I did not fear death or unknown. So look right directly at that response to that question of, I did not fear death. At the time prior to their near-death experience, 13% did not fear death. After their near-death experience, 76.7% said they did not fear death. Alex, this is dramatic evidence of the power of near-death experiences to change lives. Yeah, it is. And I wonder, you know, I've had a couple of social scientists on the show who've done related work in terms of how people change from going through a six-week meditation course and something like that. And the only thing I'd just add is that if you ever looked into the social science part of this, a social scientist would just throw up their arms and go, that is crazy. I mean, fundamental belief systems like that, switching from 30% to 3%, there's no precedent for that in the social sciences of how that kind of change can happen. On the other hand, and the reason I keep coming back to the data is for certain kinds of people like me, like a lot of you, and apparently like Dr. Jeff Long, the data is important because the data can actually be part of the spiritual growth, if you will. Here's how he explains it. I think people that have done near-death experience like me have sort of had that time when they really get it. It sinks in. You go, wow, this is what some indie years, I think, very aptly say, the boot camp of our spiritual existence. That afterlife, you know, where you don't have that pain, misery, and the stuff that we have here in our earthly life is our real home, as they say, over and over by the hundreds. I think there comes a time in many near-death experience researchers where you just go, wow, I'm not you. You sought to learn about them, but look what you learned. We're not really home, that there's a vastly better existence around being than our everyday earthly life, where these miseries and stuff that we have to put up every day don't exist. Our life on Earth is not an accident. We're here to learn. We're here to live our life to the best way that we can. And there's meaning and purpose to it. Meaning and purpose more than I would have ever guessed before I started my near-death experience research. So I think all of that broad understanding of near-death experience, plus the motivation that the near-death experiencers state over and over, this is literally an act of love to go through your life and reach out to others as lovingly as possible. As I just said, number two word used in describing near-death experience is love. So it sort of gives you that motivation, that understanding that even though this is the boot camp of our spiritual existence, it's important and in some ways a gift. And we just do the best we can with it and reach out in love. Okay, but back to the clip. Back to Woody Harrelson. Back to the Hunger Games. What they're actually doing in that scene is they're devising a campaign to counter the social engineering that's going on inside of their society. And this is kind of a reoccurring theme that you've heard on Skeptico and you know I've brought this up over and over again with some of the top near-death experience researchers and they're very, very reluctant to go there. And I think as I keep repeating over and over again, it's a mistake to not go there. It's a mistake to not realize the extent to which culture is playing a game with that. So in this interview coming up with the very excellent Dr. Jeffrey Long, I make a passing reference to the deliberate misinformation campaign against near-death experience science. I know that sounds far-fetched, but I gave up the classic example and it's a wonderful example really because this guy is really pretty nice guy, I guess. He's reached out to me a couple times. He's been on the show, I think in some way, in some strange way, he kind of believes in what he's doing, but it's just kind of a great example of what I'm talking about. It's a University of California Riverside professor named Dr. John Martin Fisher and he's written about his new interpretation of near-death experiences. And the reason I always bring up John is because John got this relatively huge grant from the Templeton Foundation which is very, very sus in that it was a foundation that was started by this really, really rich investor guy Templeton who was super interested in spirituality and religion and was very religious himself and very spiritual and wanted to understand the interface between science and religion and then these guys somehow, like they always do, they managed to co-opt it and now you have somebody like John Fisher who's an atheist who somehow gains access to this foundation and is able to get funding to do research that does kind of the exact opposite which would kind of turn Templeton over in his grave. He's essentially out there trying to debunk near-death experience. And you can go listen to the interview that's been on the show. It's just almost embarrassing in how lame his arguments are, but especially when you compare it to somebody like Dr. Jeff Lung who can pull up so much data and report data. Again, John Fisher has never talked to a near-death experience researcher. It isn't part of his research to actually study the people who've had the experience. It's bizarre. But here's what I want to draw your attention to. You can go to YouTube right now and type in near-death experience, a new interpretation or near-death experience, John Fisher or skeptic. I don't know. You could probably get to it in a number of different ways because YouTube is unbelievably hyping this interview. This interview, this YouTube video, if you were to believe it, has 1.4 million views on YouTube. That's fake. It's just fake. Go there and scroll down and read the comments. The comments. I scrolled through. I'm not exaggerating. I flipped through 10 pages of comments. I could not find one positive comment. Just I'll read right from the top. I like how he mumbles as he reads what is outside his bias while raising his voice within his bias. Here's another one. He sounds like a barber pontificating about neurosurgery. He's a sincere flatlander. Next, he hasn't had an NDE. He's like a food critic who's read the menu without tasting any of the dishes. Can you imagine listening to this guy while striving? Finally, and then I'll let it go. It's like someone who's never visited Paris trying to convince us that he knows more about Paris than others who've been there. Folks, I'm not cherry picking. Go read the comments. There is no way on earth 1.4 million people listen to this or watch this video. Go compare it with all the interviews that have been done with Dr. Jeff Long. He's very successful. He gets a lot of place. He doesn't get anywhere near this. I don't know how it's faked. I don't know exactly why it's faked, but it's fake. It's just not real. And it's in some way, I don't totally understand part of the culture war, part of the mission to discredit and distract you from this science. But you know when I put all this to Dr. Long, he had what I think is a very wise response. And that is that, you know, the truth kind of wins out. In the end, people see through this. People figure it out. Let's hope that's the case. Here's my interview with Dr. Jeffrey Long. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Cares. And today, I am so excited to welcome back Jeff Long to Skeptico. You know, we're just chatting him in the go before I hit record. And I'm already fired up to talk to this guy. Jeff is one of the most respected, and I would say, and I'm going to tell you why in a minute, I think one of the most important near-death experience researchers we have. He's a medical doctor, as well as a medical scientist. And we're going to get into the difference there. But he is truly both. He's the author of the New York Times best-selling book, Evidence of the Afterlife from a few years ago, and author of another very popular book from a few years ago, God and the Afterlife, which no doubt would have been a New York Times best-seller, but the title always threw people, I think a little bit. You know, Jeff is not a preachy kind of sermon guy. He just kind of reports the data, but when you report the data and the data has the word God in it, sometimes that throws people. And here's what I already tip my hand to Jeff, what I really am hoping we can focus on, is that Jeff, along with his wife, Jody, who is, you know, an accomplished attorney, author, you know, very smart person, are the creators and maintainers of a fabulous website at NDERF.org. A website of near-death experiences. How many are there at this point, Jeff? Right. We have over 3,500 near-death experiences posted on the NDERF website. And literally, in our family of websites, thousands of more experiences. So this is by far the largest publicly accessible collection of near-death experiences in the world. And you know what I always tell people, because I mean, you are a medical physician and you have viewed, I mean you're, I want to right from the beginning, I want to kind of back up. And we're having this conversation you're not here to sell a book. Your books have been out for a couple years. Hope people go if they're at all interested in this and reacquaint themselves with those books. They're available on Amazon, heck for $7.50, so you can get God in the afterlife and evidence of the afterlife is up there too. But like I say, Jeff isn't here necessarily to promote books or to sell books. If you go to the NDERF website there's no big donate button staring you in the face if you want to donate, you can but that's not what this thing is about. This is a guy who is a scientist who is a serious researcher in addition to a medical doctor who has done some incredibly important work in compiling a database. Why is it that people can rely on this database of near death experiences? Good question, Alex. In recent years, many studies have been published in scholarly journals that compare the so-called traditional pencil and paper surveys in person with internet based surveys and they found to be equally reliable. So we have that confidence, but above and beyond that for our database and the experience was shared with it we asked like at this time over 80 different questions. It takes a huge amount of time for people to fill all that out and people just essentially never do that just on a whim or as a joke. Moreover, they're always essentially always posted anonymously unless we have very specific permission. So it's not like they're going to gain any recognition by having their experience posted on the NDERF website. And then finally we have over at this time over 50,000 unique visitors every month, Alex, to the website. And so if there's anything that's fraudulent copied from somewhere else, we pretty much expect to hear it. Medically, I can tell the plausibility about descriptions of medical life-threatening events led to the near-death experience. And then on top of that, the survey over 80 questions, there's a number of questions asked in a redundant fashion slightly worded differently in different parts of the survey. So we can compare that and see how serious people are doing it. And there's even more vetting steps, but at the end of the day, we're quite confident that it may not be 100%, but it's dang sure way over 99% are not fraudulent in any way. So we're very, very careful about that. And I think I read on the website that you have encountered that, right? That does come up. It's rare, but it does happen. If it never happened, I'd almost be suspicious of that. Right. Okay. Well, Arrant, you're asking. I'll tell you, we had two separate Indies in a row that were reportedly shared by Pamela Anderson. We quickly realized that there was a couple like the adolescents, boys, that decided that that was what they would do that evening. So that's memorable because it's so rare to have people sending fraudulent Indies. So Jeff, I know you are very media savvy for people who don't know. You've done Fox News, you can do all these things. And here I went to the website, N-D-E-R-F and you're part of a new documentary, Hidden Beyond the Veil. Looks like Jody got a little airtime too. I really liked the clip on there. And one of the things I thought was really cool about it is I heard this story, which I hadn't heard before, about one of the first times you encountered a near-death experience as a medical professional. Alex, I'd read very little about near-death experience and knew of the concept. I was actually in my residency training and radiation oncology. That's what I do all day professionally. But I had a college friend over and his wife and we were having a nice meal and we were all sitting there yacking and the wife of my friend mentioned that she had so many allergies that were so severe that at one time she was having an operation under general anesthesia and she coated. But every instinct I had in the way she said that, it didn't sound fearful. It sounded like there was an air of mystery. When you say she coated, she died? Is that her heart stop? Yes, clinically that's death. Obviously, as you know, Alex, under general anesthesia, they very carefully monitor vital signs, especially heart beat. So if you have a severe allergic reaction and your heart stops, you know it immediately. The EKG measure of electrical activity of the heart immediately goes into a huge racket. There's alarms everywhere. So you know immediately. So here, but getting back to my wife's friend, so she said that with kind of a mysterious tone in her voice and there was literally about a 20, 30 second pause for literally very possibly my whole future research and indeed hung in the balance because I considered it the stupidest question I could ask as a doctor, well did something happen while you're under general anesthesia and your heart stopped? And I had to sort of get up the courage, if you will, before I could ask what should have been the dumbest question in my life. And as soon as I said that, she popped up and went, why yes? And described a dramatic near-death experience, consciousness above the body, that EKG measurement rack at the panic in the operating room, I mean you can just imagine going through a tunnel life review very detailed near-death experience, but she didn't know what happened. She wasn't aware of a near-death experience. So I said, jeez I read about this a couple years ago briefly. I think you had one of those near-death experience things. And I mean it was so dramatic the concept of her heart stopping obviously and coding, literally, and being under general anesthesia that immediately got me to thinking if this happens and this is real then this changes my whole view of the universe. This is beyond anything medically possible. There's nothing I've ever had in my medical training possibly explain that. And that was the impetuous Alex that got me started several years later to go to the original source of data, that being those that had near-death experiences, share it on the INDIRF website so that I could make up my own mind with that burning question I had, are near-death experiences real? And wow, did I ever get an answer? That's such a great story Jeff. It made me wonder and I've never asked you this or heard you talk about it. So you have the experience in med school and you kind of play it close to the vest as you have to because like you just said it goes against, you know you're going off reservation even by asking the question and then you have the internal drive to pursue it. But what about earlier in life? Was there ever anything early in your life that kind of hinted for you or gave you some sense of direction that these kind of questions would be something you would pursue or not, maybe not? I, you know I would have to say no. I never had a near-death experience. I hadn't really personally had what I would call a significant mystical experience up until that time but I was curious. I'm one of those folks that says let the evidence do the talking. Show me. And that I guess I've always had that and certainly that guides my medical decisions and my radiation oncology decisions every day as I work with my patients to fight cancer. So I guess I've always had that mentality. I've always been interested in research and the best methodology. I mean shoot my father nearly won the Nobel Prize in his area of pharmacology many many years ago and he discovered a drug that characterized parasympathetic nervous system. So I guess I've always been focused on research and the questions and the search even from childhood from that source. So that was probably if anything the most informative thing I had just that burning curiosity, the desire to know the truth in the best way possible. You know in a lot of ways I think that is what really suited you for this in a way because I was video for this upcoming film which isn't out now hidden beyond the veil looks pretty interesting we might talk some more about that. But the other interesting thing that I heard you say is that your study of the near-death experience research and science that you've been a big part of has completely removed your fear of death and I think we have to kind of put that in the context of how significant that is. I mean for many many people this is like a major barrier in their life and it interferes with their life and then the grief of when someone they lose someone all these things around that. So when you combine that with the fact that you never had any huge significant spiritual never had a near-death experience but had this drive to know it's great to know that someone can just study this stuff like you have and through just study of it intellectually can come to such a life-changing kind of belief change like that don't you think? No question about that and Alex a major point here is that I've had some great teachers in my life from some of the outstanding physicians that taught me in medical school but at this point some of my life's greatest teachers are those that have near-death experiences and had the courage to share with me in the world. From them I've seen beyond any shadow of a doubt in my opinion evidence that we really don't have to fear death that we're all going to survive death if there's an afterlife, a wonderful afterlife and it's for all of us. Near-death experiences dramatically as a group reduce the fear of death after near-death experience. I've got data just several days old from crunching some numbers analyzing the responses to my most recent database in my Excel spreadsheet and there is once again dramatic association of reduction of fear of death from the belief the fear of death they had of time there in DE for the fear of death at the time they shared their near-death experience around 15 average years later so I can't think Alex of any other single event that you could encounter in life that would be so correlated with the reduction of fear of death as a near-death experience. Let's take a minute and pull up that stat because I think it'll kind of shoehorn us into this discussion that I want to have about the data because one of the questions I had is can we still rely on the data? Is the data being is the integrity of the database intact because I think it's very very important what we can do with that database in terms of the search ability of it in terms of the research potential of it which I think is largely untapped. Do you have that at your fingertips? What is the reduction in fear of death for people? Yeah, I should do an Alex I want to point out the transparency this kind of research I mean shoot anybody on the planet can pull up the experiences and go read for themselves what the responses to the questions are so this is a summary of what 800 and 834 people shared on the most recent version of the survey. I pulled up the response to the question fear of death I asked them directly what about your fear of death before the experience before their NDE 32.3 percent greatly feared death at the current time when they shared their near death experience typically years later the percentage that said they greatly feared death down to 3.1 percent remarkably you go right to that key question date the options to response for their level of fear of death as I greatly fear death and moderately fear death I slightly fear death I did not fear death or unknown so look right directly at that response to that question of I did not fear death at the time prior to their near death experience 13 percent did not fear death after their near death experience 76.7 percent said they did not fear death Alex this is dramatic evidence of the power of fear of death experiences to change lives these are called the after effects we have equally remarkable data about an increased belief in an afterlife increased belief in God increased belief in the importance of compassion and living their daily lives but once again you throw all those that remarkable shift in values and beliefs as I've said I can't think of anything else any other life event or combination of events that would give you that kind of data that I just presented with you it is amazing the power of how near death experiences can change lives. It is and I wonder you know I've had a couple of social scientists on the show who've done related work in terms of how people change from going through a six week meditation course and something like that and the only thing I just add is that if you ever looked into the social science part of this a social scientist would just throw up their arms and go that is crazy fundamental belief systems like that switching from 30% to 3% there's no precedent for that in the social sciences of how that kind of change can happen which is what you're saying I'm just putting it from a different perspective I like the way you said that Alex and I think that's absolutely true I mean we're not talking a slight change after near death experiences or even a moderate change that's radically different people and people know that that are with near death experiences they often feel that that person is a completely different person they're more loving and more compassionate they're more interested in spiritual matters obviously they have an increased belief in an afterlife because well shoot they know from personal experience what happens beyond death's door and it's wonderful so this is dramatic as this evidence is you know I think it speaks volumes in addition to all that it shows how grippingly they accept the reality of their near death experience personally for those that had it you just don't make huge life changes on dreams, hallucinations or maybe this is real you only make profound changes when you know something is absolutely important but real and you have time to change your life response to it so that's exactly what we see in mass in near death experiences you know one of the stats that always blew me away and then I want to get back to some of the more kind of edgy next level stuff is something like and tell me if this is still true something like 96% which again I don't know you can get 96% of people across the globe across languages how you could get them to agree on anything but something like 96% are certain of the reality of that experience is that still hold? Yeah that's interesting I was just reviewing my original evidence of the afterlife book and the percentage in the survey then was 96% I've just got the data from 834 near death experiences and let's see here it's still right about 95% I've got a huge amount of output of data we have over 80 questions but it's somewhere like and tell me the question again the question that you asked the question I asked very directly is what do you believe about the reality of your experience shortly today's or weeks after it happened and then we ask the question again well what do you believe about the reality of your experience at the current time that being when they shared their near death experience though it dropped about a percent at the current time and again this is several days old data the percentage saying experience was definitely real 93.8% and like you said what else what other experience can you conceive of the response significantly to the question the two other components of the question experience was probably not real or experience was definitely not real at the time they share their experience combining those two it's 1.3% so essentially everybody that has a near-death experience believes their experience was definitely real or at least probably real even the probably real is only 4.9% the real wow message from this data is the numbers picking at the time they've shared their experience and they've had often years to process experience 93.8% believe their experience was definitely real and I would submit Alex for skeptics who feel that near-death experience is not real out of people's general ability to understand reality from life experiences that they have if skeptics want to argue that near-death experiences are not real the burden of proof is on the skeptics to provide strong evidence proving their point that near-death experience is not real and they're not even close we've had over 20 different skeptical explanations come along over the years skeptics themselves can't agree on any one or several of those explanations that explains anything that we've observed in near-death experience let alone the totality we'll see if we have time to get into that a little bit it's kind of a forced equivalency I mean it's not even on the realm of scientific in terms of a lot of the objections and I think they're manufactured and engineered for a particular way to kind of target this research because I think it doesn't conform to certain messages but I don't want to get too far away from that before we leave this is because I bring this stuff up all the time Jeff with people who you wouldn't expect they're not necessarily looking for near-death experience data near-death experience research and I'm just saying if you're open-minded why wouldn't you consider doing the search that I always do N-D-E-R-F space Bible Baphomet whatever you can pick your choice and it actually searches through the database so one thing I want people to know are you in any way scrubbing the database are you in any way taking out any references that might be offensive to someone if they're satanic or this and that I don't think so because I even do N-D-E-R-F E-T there are a few entries that come up I don't know what to make of them any more than anyone else does but to answering this question it doesn't seem to me like you're in there scrubbing the database in this kind of cancel culture shadow banning you know we don't know what's really out there great question Alex the only change that we make to the entirety of what is shared with us is we remove references I mean they may dislike their doctor that they believe was involved in their life-threatening event so we remove names to specific individuals that would be identifiable sometimes they have the date, geographic location and time so fine that anybody could look up in paper archives so we'll take out the you know like May 22nd we'll take out May 22nd again just to preserve confidentiality what we're overwriting concerned is the confidentiality of who shares and then we do edit the accounts only for clarity sometimes they come in with punctuation wrong, misspellings are fairly common so we think we're adding to clarity to do that minor edit we archive in our database both what was shared with us originally and what was posted on the web that actually enhances your understanding or wouldn't be doing it it's a hell of a lot of work to go edit some of these just to be put up bluntly some near-death experiences are remarkably poorly shared are written and these are people sometimes that suffer brain injury from their life-threatening event and they just simply can't type well so we very cautiously actually Jody has that takes over that piece very carefully transcribes it's done exactly what they were saying but cleaned up punctuation wise for example we post everything that they share with us it would be an abomination to us to pull out anything that we didn't like or we disagreed with if they share it with us it goes up and so that's that's the integrity of what we have to do we have to do it that way we're not censorship and I don't even know how you would set up boundaries even if you want to do that so everything that we get goes back up on the website as basically exactly what they have to say and that is and one other thing that's important too just out of integrity sometimes there can be a little bit of subjectivity about was the life-threatening event severe enough or was the experience associated with the life-threatening event and period of unconsciousness if there's any ambiguity about that they're not NDE's but probable NDE's and we have a policy of posting every single probable NDE that gives us permission and interestingly that's about 99% allow us to post experience anonymously so again anybody on the planet can decide for themselves you know removing some of that subjectivity about you know what the exact classification of an NDE so we try to be very very careful to make sure that we are appropriately sharing the amazing message of near-death experience with the world as precisely and accurately as possible you know I can't stress enough from my perspective how important that one question is with that you are embracing on one hand the wonderful wonderful message that you keep talking about but you're also embracing the strangeness the non-reality reality of it that I think we have to come to grips with I think is what's the future of near-death experience research because as your data that you climb on top of is this social scientist hat that you put on and you start pulling together these statistics if someone goes past the statistics it does get messy some people are talking about Jesus other people are saying there's religion isn't important some people are talking about loved ones some people are not there are built-in contradictions in the fact that you are not scrubbing those out that you're letting those live and breathe and touch people in whatever way they're touching them and you're still saying but wait a minute we do have a survey that was scientifically developed and we can look at some of the patterns that emerge from that I think is super important underutilized as a research tool I wish more people were digging into your data and doing some real analysis from a social scientist perspective there's an unlimited number of PhD dissertations there waiting to happen if someone wanted to cross correlate your data with all sorts of other social science data we have there's that and then there's also the opportunity for this personal exploration to see how your beliefs conform to just a wide variety of beliefs so is there any part of that you want to pull apart in terms of the strangeness of these accounts yeah well I do want to address Alex I totally agree that there's a lot more work that either I could do or other people can do with the data that we have from our website interestingly enough just within the past week I got the most recent edition of the journal near death studies and in that was an article from a person I've worked with and was able to share him the data from this was something over 500 sequential near death experiences from the ender website and the article had an amazing sort of analysis of it most common words the word associations and so this was a major article to use the actual data posted on the website and shared with him I shared it with him in Excel database form spreadsheet form but interestingly one of the there was a lot of you know anybody that has a journal near death studies I encourage you to read that article but just for interest sakes the two most common words that kicked out as descriptors of near death experience were in order light and love and immediately you can see how that you know you're getting into a you know an unearthly realm in terms of when they describe light near death experiences much more likely to be an unearthly light than earthly light much more likely to be an unearthly love if they're describing that unearthly love so you can see how important these sort of deeper workings are to the near death experiences themselves when they use those words and their descriptors of their experience and I do want to bring it back because I maybe didn't phrase that question as well as I could these accounts taken from a rational perspective do not make sense in a lot of ways in the same way I always remember when I first interviewed Raymond moody the guy who is credited for coining the term near death experience doctor moody is really an interesting guy and he's his own kind of bird you know what I mean but he always said that we need a new system of logic before we can even begin to understand that and I think there's so much there in that little kernel that he gives us because if we're going to stand in this here now time space reality and suggest that we can understand this other realm and reality that's being revealed to us I think we've missed the point because one of the things that comes through clearly in this amazing database is that they feel like that's the greater reality and this is the lesser reality so I just think that we're doing the best we can but I just think sometimes don't you think we have to kind of pause and say how sure are we of this terra firma that we kind of stand on and do you know what I mean absolutely that's a great point Alex I mean for example when people describe God over and over I hear from them that's an earthly term what I've met was totally beyond earthly words God the moment you say that word is limiting it's a concise thing what they say was infinite and something beyond human conception so we're literally above and beyond logic we need a whole seeming of language to help describe some of these things I mean you can you have whole many many near death experiences describing things that are so unearthly that they're literally hard to describe in English language a very well over half of people that have a near death experience and that's a data from the most recent survey considered their experience to be ineffable that means difficult to describe in words so you know again it's one of those things where we either need a new language sort of a new logic a conceptual framework I think to really start to branch out and grasp these remarkably unearthly experiences that they so consistently describe it and they do a good job I might add I mean for you know fortunately folks have had an average of 15 years from their NDE until I share it so they certainly had a chance to express it in words as best as possible in fact we had a quality assurance survey question and the great great majority of people are comfortable that what they shared accurately and completely conveyed their experience which is pretty awesome given its common ineffability but we you know we need to we need to be aware that some of the concepts the experience they have is so and sometimes they just literally can't even express some of the deeper parts of their experience adequately in words and it's we just we just need a whole new language I guess to really grow to understand that and let me kind of take that a tiny step further I'm just wondering on a kind of personal philosophical level because you're a very deep thinking guy what about this idea of you know which reality does this ever kind of send you down that path of going you know I got to get up tomorrow and I love I'm sure you love your practice and you love your patients and you love helping people but you're also immersed in this other reality that's telling you Jeff this is really the greater reality what about that how do you process that that's a great question I think people that have done near enough experience like me have sort of had that time when they really get it it sinks in you go wow this is what some indie years I think very aptly say the boot camp of our spiritual existence that afterlife you know where you don't have that pain misery and the stuff that we have here in our earthly life is our real home as they say over and over by the hundreds and so there I think there comes a time in many near enough experience researchers who just go wow I'm not you you sought to learn about them but look what you learn we're not really home that there's vastly better existence realm of being than our everyday earthly life where these miseries and stuff that we have to put up every day don't exist so that takes some an adjustment I mean you have to really sort of say wow I mean the evidence is overwhelming that that's true but I think sort of what helps me to get adjust through that and move on is you understand that earthly life is finite and we're infinite beings this is literally Alex a tiny a slice of our eternal existence so I think with that understanding you just have to say it's important that we're here and that we hear over and over from near death experiences our life on earth is not an accident you know we're it we're here to to learn we're here to to live our life to the best way that we can and there's meaning and purpose to it meaning and purpose more than I started my near death experience research so I think all of that broad understanding of near death experience plus the motivation that the near death experiences state over and over this is literally an act of love to go through your life and reach out to others as lovingly as possible as I just said number two word used in describing near death experiences love so it sort of gives you that that motivation and understanding that even though this is the boot camp of our spiritual existence it's important and and in some ways a gift and we just do the best we can with that and reach out in love and so with with that to with that thought behind me that certainly guides pretty much everything I do now in my current life that's awesome I want to pick up on two words that you just use meaning and purpose and you said that that comes through again through the data folks not through a divine revelatory experience it's the data because one of my things has always been and this is just what I stumbled on to is there's some there's some misinformation about near death experience in my opinion I want about some of these off you and there's also some disinformation I mean where people are intentionally saying something different than what is true and I've encountered this over and over again and one of my frustrations in talking to Dr. Bruce Grayson who is fantastic by the way he is the man he's done so much in a lot of ways I think the database is kind of more important than any one person's research but that shouldn't even come into to play he's fantastic and what he's done but I kind of pushed him on the fact that you guys have had to push against criticism misinformation nonsense research that gets catapulted into the front of the line in terms of public perception in terms of cover of magazines in terms of YouTube views it's way out of proportion it doesn't make sense it's fake and I think one of the reasons behind that is we do have to step back and understand that science is telling us it is their dogma you are meaningless because there is no meaning in any of the universe you know if the universe is meaningless how can there be any meaning in your life because if there's any meaning in your life then the universe isn't meaningless and that's not just a philosophical mind game that is the truth in terms of their dogma in terms of scientific materialism and I always get kind of confused a little bit when people go oh yeah but scientists don't believe that it's like wait a minute if that's the official dogma if that's what neuroscience is saying that you are an epiphenomenon of your brain then that's the dogma and ultimately that is the song that everyone has to dance to so I don't know if you've encountered that I can give you examples I'm gonna do in this introduction an example that I sent to you with a guy who's really a pretty nice guy Dr. John Fisher at University of California Riverside you know and he got four million dollars from the Templeton Foundation which in and of itself is a total sham right Templeton the most spiritual guy you know sets up a foundation to study science and religion and they get in there and they give it to a guy who's good at quote unquote debunk near-death experience without ever having talked to anyone who's had a near-death experience but that's okay without getting into personalities but I did invite you and you were welcome to engage with him before the whole COVID happened but great great great let me wrap all that up into this question Jeff what do you think about the claim that you're kind of going against something here that isn't exactly made clear articulated that there is somewhat of a disinformation campaign against this kind of research sure Alex of course there's going to be you know with the extreme visibility and to some extent popularity near-death experiences you're going to have people try to ride that to get you know clicks on YouTube or you know sell books or some such thing to contain misinformation and that's out there the good news is I'm very confident the truth will prevail the reason for that is disinformation mistruth is random in science what's real is consistently observed you're going to have a variety of mistruth none of really being found by other researchers and that's the glory of the scientific method it's not just for one person can identify the findings should be corroborated by other researchers by other investigations over a period of time that's how you can hone in on the truth through science through misinformation should craft like that I mean they may have their 15 minutes of fame on a YouTube but their misinformation isn't corroborated by me or anybody else and as time goes on people are just going to let go of whatever it was that they showed people really Alex I firmly believe are interested in the truth what's the reality I mean it's not just you and I that are seekers about that are focused on that question there's a vast number of other people and I think people in general in that search are going to be focused on things that they are consistently observed from credible sources from scholarly sources and I think that's what's really going to inform people more than disinformation in the future thank goodness I think you're right and I think the other thing that's undeniable is the culture shift around near-death experience that you and Dr. Grace unfortunately and so many other researchers that we could name off and I've been fortunate to talk to so many of them and they're also inspirational you guys have turned the ship and it's undeniable from a public kind of person on the street you know absolutely the change is there so I guess one related question to that that I'd love to get your thought on is when I look I mean one of the ways I know that's true is I look how near-death experience is working its way into popular culture in terms of media but I also look at the way it's being kind of presented and distorted and it's one thing to say well they're just trying to entertain people and it's sci-fi I can't tell you how many emails I get from people who say oh check out OA on Netflix and it kind of it's his Netflix series super popular critically acclaimed and it had a near-death experience theme in it but Jeff if you ever go watch that show it doesn't conform at all to what near-death experience science that you report and again folks I can't just say I mean just all about the data man just ask him to pull up his Excel spreadsheet and he'll tell you he hasn't scrubbed the data he says these accounts come in from all over the world 95% say I'm definitely sure this thing is real when you go to another account when it's fictionalized and it's like all over the board the message is like suck you in with yeah I did I almost died and then I had this experience and then from there it's all different it just makes me wonder I watch undone on Amazon Prime a great kind of series it's but again it's this near-death experience person almost dies encounters their father in the but again then it goes into this twist of back to kind of what our media seems fascinated about murder death evil you know all this other stuff it just seems to me so orchestrated so scripted to try and take it and then well let's co-opt it and pull it back in this direction do you have any feelings about how near-death experience science is portrayed in media as you see it pop up you know that's a good question Alex I think it's a mixed bag interestingly a few months ago I had a it's a national television show that will remain anonymous that was going to have a near-death experience themed aspect to it in the next season and they actually had a whole group of people sit down and talk with me and talk about what they understood about a near-death experience sort of what they were trying to do and it was a very good discussion they asked very good questions and I sort of steered them right down the line of here's what really happens in near-death experiences and I I haven't followed up on that show it's not my type but I think they were sincerely interested in presenting it as in some significant truthful manner I mean the trouble is in the entertainment industry it is so fractured there are so vast many entertainment outlets that I think they're all at this point now more than ever scrambling over each other to get those clicks get those views and have a narrower and narrower audience so I think that may encourage lately more sensationalism than we had in the past with near-death experience having said that it's a mixed bag for Easter I was interviewed by Inside Edition as part of two near-death experiencers it's on YouTube if you want to look it up last time I looked they were way over 300,000 views and it was outstanding they had the near-death experiencers very vividly beautifully actually describing what happened to them during the near-death experience and they interviewed me without even knowing what they were going to say and the consistency of what I was saying when I talked about my research was what they actually described was amazing so I would like to think over time you know especially people can be entertained and you can be entertained in a lot of ways but I think those are really want to know the truth that are seekers that want to understand they'll find ways to get to the truth apart from the entertainment industry excellent really like the way you put that and I think you make a very convincing case especially when you tie it to your earlier point about the truth and how that truth has an ability to resonate with us at a deeper level so we kind of have a tuning fork that allows us to kind of maybe sort through a lot of that crap and say I get it that's that was really the truth similarly it very controversially I run into a lot of frustration sometimes when I talk to Christian people that to me seem to be co-opting maybe sometimes inadvertently and misinterpreting what I understand to be the data so I am all for anyone's spiritual experience and how they express it and I have the utmost respect for that because like you I follow the data and I say oh big news the big news flash there is this extended reality next news flash there does seem to be this wonderful moral imperative that is this light and love that's pulling me towards it and when I go search N-D-E-R-F Baphomet or do what thou wilt or occult magic I get zero results and when I go search for God, love, forgiveness, compassion I get pages and pages and pages I find that very very promising and compelling but I don't think the research suggests that the primacy of Christianity which is what Christianity is all about it's about this is the way is supported in the data I don't think any religiosity to me my read of the data is increased spirituality decreased religiosity with this kind of and I can pull it up I will pull it up right out of your book I think you can get my point by now that Jeff and Jody but Jeff in his book he just spits the truth as it comes through so he tells you what they say about God he tells you what they say about their religious beliefs before and after it's 50 50 50 percent of people say yeah I just stay with my religion it's fine and what I learned said that everything I'm experiencing here about love and compassion is good and I'm on the right track even a good number of those people say but I don't feel like it's this most important this is the most only way screw everybody else go protest in the street kind of thing and 50 percent of them are super important when you think about again the social cohesion and how hard it is to change these things 50 percent say I really felt like the religious experience I had doesn't really fit with this greater reality that I have so I might have added too much of my own opinion on that but tell us what you found about religious experience and spiritual experience and religiosity in this work yeah that's a good question Alex I've got some recent data but I haven't quite crunched it as much as I'd like to your had enough time but we can make a couple points from what we know so far first of all people can have essentially you name the religion they can pretty much be there after their near death experience so people that have near death experiences like the data is about half the time they'll stay in their religious affiliation about half not but we still have every possible denomination that you can conceive of have people that have near death experiences in it and so they do believe that that religion seems to be compatible I mentioned the recent issue of the Journal of Near Death Studies I co-authored an article of 17 Muslim near death experiences and they all remain Muslim after their near death experience and yet other people make radical changes and sort of leave a religion that they've been or a belief system they've had all their life and go somewhere else you see a predisposition for people after a near death experience to be spiritual but not religious the one religion that changes significant the most significantly by far after a near death experience or the group that are atheists at the time of the near death experience as you might imagine the great great majority put it mildly are no longer atheists after their near death experience so that group has by far the greatest shift in religious beliefs after an NDE you know related to that one of the ways I really appreciate how you slice this data and again it gets back to this point of the enormous potential that's there to ask these next level questions is you have data for people who experienced God for lack of a better term what they identified as God and those who didn't experience God and tell us what your findings are on that yeah I mean these are all typical near death experiences they have they can have all the elements out of body experience tunnel light landscapes you know beautiful life review I mean you name it all elements is just part of it they encounter God now the ones that God tend to be the more detailed near death experiences because awareness or encounter of God typically occurs in the unearthly if you will heavenly realms and so you have to a pretty much had a yet on average and a deeper near death experience before you go to encounter those types of things so but that's about it it just seems to be if you will a sort of a progressive a more detailed deeper near death experience starts to encounter God and sometimes some of the other deeper spiritual insights that near death experiences shared okay you know one other related point on this and this is always kind of a tricky one for me to parse out with people what I'll hear a lot of people say is hey if you're Christian you're going to see Jesus I'm like well I let's look at the data that seems to happen a lot but it doesn't happen all the time don't it doesn't mean that there's some mechanism in there that works that way you know some of the research that I think is fascinating and I know I'd love to hear your opinion is Dr. Gregory Shushan who looks at near death experiences across time and cross culture and what he found is that in a lot of shamanic cultures as soon as somebody came up with a verifiable really good near death experience well they said almost we have to change our beliefs about the afterlife because this guy has done it and what I hear a lot of times Christians doing is the opposite they're saying well let's see if we can take our beliefs and find cherry pick out some near death experiences that make it sound like we always we always had the answer it seems to me we should be doing the other way around we should be saying what is the near death experience data telling us what does that tell us about our beliefs about the afterlife couple good points you made there first of all regard to some people that say you'll see a religious figure based on your prior you know you interpret what you see during a near death experience based on your prior religion belief I think there's that that's a real important point about near death experiences I mean obviously during when you meet deceased relatives it's going to be deceased relatives you know when you encounter a religious being it's going to be a religious being you know and not one that you've never heard of in your life so the what occurs during the near death experience the elements are overwhelmingly consistently observed and yet there's that personal aspect of what your prior life is what you know that manifest during a near death experience with regard to people saying they see an amorphous like an amorphous being of life interpreters Jesus oh my gosh go to enderf.org go to that search box at the top right put in Jesus and see for yourself how people describe that you're not going to hear you hear talk about an individual height, hair, eye color beard, what they're wearing color, details this isn't any kind of amorphous being they're describing very vividly and extremely well very discrete specific individual that they're calling Jesus most of the time so I have a little concern about people that that say that that's totally subject to interpretation and that they're seeing a describing often very accurately and very physical very specific physical appearance not not just an amorphous being of life so where are you on that I don't match those two together it may be in the way that you do I understand that that is their experience and I'm totally down with that there is a I don't but I don't understand that realm I don't pretend to understand that realm I don't know how memories images are formed how they're maintained and that's why I pull back to the data level lens before I start doing that but when I look at the specific data points they're all over the map they're all over the map in so many different ways and then you at least still you know I'm because I've done a lot of research in that you want to tie that to the historical Jesus you want to tie that to what we understand about history I don't look for any I don't use near death experience accounts as some kind of insight into interpreting Josephus or the gospels or anything like that I don't think there's a I don't think there's a match there because I think we're in two completely different realms I mean maybe they are realm maybe they are different realms maybe they aren't but I don't think we have that understanding of what is the difference between our truth here and the truth there and which is superior and how we would even begin to understand that I kind of rambled on there do you get what I'm saying I do the you know there first of all I agree with you I don't think that you can really you look at Jesus and near death experiences Jesus actually rarely talks about events in the Bible or of historical things virtually every time he's there for the near death experience or they feel love overwhelming compassion I mean words just seem to fall all over the near death experience describing how amazing it is to encounter Jesus but Jesus essentially never that I can recall is an advocate for Christianity as opposed to other religions or certainly an opposition of religion so I think you've really got the Jesus pairs near death experiences and the Jesus in the Bible and I think there's there's a couple different flavors there's a couple different things that I never I mean in the Bible for example you'd say you know it's replete with words like Valard or a third of the Bible or third of the time Jesus talks in the Bible is parables and you essentially never hear that with near death experience accounts so that's the data that I've seen it's it's intriguing but there seems to be that's just not what Jesus in near death experience he's spent a lot of time addressing because there's a couple things I always hammer on there one is Christ consciousness and I don't say it to try and be tricky I just say clearly what the data is telling us is that there is this other realm of consciousness and again juxtaposed that with science that says there isn't even any consciousness consciousness is an illusion what an absurd idea so what the near death experience along with a lot of other good science says is hey there's not only a conscious experience here but there's these extended realms where consciousness seems to operate under different principles so I just when somebody says they encounter Jesus in their near death experience I go I'm totally down with Christ consciousness and sometimes people Christians you never what it's not Christ consciousness it's Jesus and it's like definitionally I don't know what you mean you're in this extended realm which we don't understand what that extended realm is but we're acknowledging that it seems to have this reality and you're encountering this spirit being which we don't understand if we could try and connect it historically but that has its problems why are you uncomfortable with the term Christ consciousness is one of my first questions but then my second question is how are you going to fit that with all these other kind of you know the Tulpa Gregoria kind of co-creators of reality kind of stuff that we see pop up in other traditions if you it does seem that other wisdom traditions are telling us that if we collectively think about you know Jesus then Jesus is real if we collectively think about Satan then even if you know I had Richard Smollion the other day you know Oxford theologian and researcher you know he'll tell you if you go looking for Satan in the pre Torah kind of Satan isn't there Satan pops up after Zoriaster you know so but Satan is very real now because our collective consciousness I mean one way to look at it is that we are collectively and I don't see I don't know if that's true I just say that would give me pause to start drawing the connections between this Christ consciousness which again I think is the data says is extremely profound and extremely important and what some would understand historically so that's one of the things that I struggle with trying to clear up and I don't know if you have anything else to add about that or not I do I think your concept of Christ consciousness as describing what is occurring in that experience is closer to truth than trying to connect that to what is the beliefs about historical Jesus so I would say that's going down the right way of thinking you've answered so many really I think important questions about this database and what I hope people pull out of it is the potential for kind of having their own experience their own knowing at this level in this realm of what this stuff is really all about because that's what you attest to and that's what I attest to this research has changed me and I am kind of spiritually dense I never had an NDE I don't know anyone had an NDE but you know this book is I particularly point people towards this book God in the afterlife the groundbreaking new evidence for God and near-death experience and if you can in a couple minutes that we have left just sum up what people are going to find there particularly about this God thing which can be kind of tricky for people right well as I said you know the we have way over 200 near-death experiences in which they were aware of or encountered God so this is a huge study unlike anything that's ever been published before and I think the message is extremely important and positive for all of humanity I mean here's God described overwhelmingly consistently as being a being of great love compassion accepting people for who they are all that they are everything that they are essentially never judgmental that I can see which interestingly is a surprise to a lot of people that encounter are aware of God and just that strong and often people say they feel that connection even unity with God which interesting it would be conceptually an overwhelming expression of God's love I think the deepest expression of love that you can find is a unity and here over and over people feel that with God which is remarkable so I think that's the message of God is I think dovetails very closely to an important point that I was thinking earlier in one of the first survey questions I ever asked is the message of near death experience or the experiencer only or for us all and the overwhelming response from the near death experiencers was that the messages are for all of us so in studying near death experiences it sounds like you're going down the same line of thinking Alex you really want to think about it not as somebody else's experience what happened to them is history and it's been a long time it was a long time ago near death experiencers speak to each one of us individually each one can read near death experiences being formed both informative and inspirational I think very powerful measures of each so it really can be life changing it really can serve as an understanding of ourselves individually and result in those tremendously perhaps the most profoundly positive message that is conceivably available to earth and people in it today. Awesome. I do wanna pick up on one point that you made because when we were talking earlier about things that resonate, I think the idea of compassion resonates, but what also resonates is judgment. People understand judgment. And I think the message from near death experience, research, when I share it with people that really kind of both frightens people but also kind of propels them forward in a way that says, hey, that sounds like truth. That doesn't sound like bullshit. Is about the judgment that does come with the near death experience because it really just is a subtle twist that kind of flips it on its head that makes us understand why we have felt judgment our whole life. Who's the judge? Who's the one judging? Yeah. Yeah, Alex, as I'm sure you know, judgment being judged externally in near death experiences by other spiritual beings nearby is really rare. And that's an over and over common extremely ingrained theme of near death experiences is that they don't feel judged. They're not judged. And that's often, again, very surprising to near death experiencers who, well, have done some things that they're not proud of in their life. And so they find that enormously reassuring in a life review where they're seeing their prior life, there's often other beings around there. Yet once again, they're not being judged by that other being. It's that individual seeing their life, understanding how they interacted with other people at times even feeling what the other person felt. It's the near death experiencer that forms the judgment and nobody else, not from any other external force. That can be quite significant. That feeling of now being in a position of judging your soul, of you being the one who weighs your soul. Cause my gut instinct is that we all have felt that throughout our life. You know, I always say, when I was a kid and I walked down to the corner store and was wondering whether or not I could sneak that piece of candy that I couldn't afford into my pocket. I felt like there was gonna be some judgment. And now when I hear from the near death experiences, you were right. There was judgment, but it's okay. It's just you doing the best you can. But then having to face and understand that all your thoughts, all your actions are important. They are meaningful and you will judge those but you'll be supported in doing so. That resonates is true. And it more than somebody saying, oh, it's just all perfect. Yeah, no, and you're absolutely right, Alex. This lack of external judgment, especially negative judgment is simply one of the very powerful manifestations of love and near death experience. Again, that's the over and over you hear about that. We've actually asked survey questions about their awareness of love and near death experience. And as I recall, it's well over half of near death experiencers did come away with some concept like that. And it's that, you know, that love, I think it's all that package of non-judgment, no judgment external. I think that probably helps near death experiencers let go of fear and living their earthly life. They're less concerned about that external negative judgment that we've all been had to put up with during times in our lives. So I think you made a good point there on that, Alex. Jeff, what's going on? We said a little bit, you sit there with a bunch of new data. How will that work its way out into the world? And what's going on at NDERF? Yeah, glad you brought that up. I'm just now sort of looking at some of the latest data that we have in terms of evidence for the reality of near death experience and its consistent message of an afterlife and some of the deeper spiritual messages in near death experience. And it is, I'm not ready to say a lot about it yet, but we are definitely, I think, moving forward in a very positive way. And this, again, just a hint of what lies ahead. Over and over I said to Jody here, this seems to be perhaps the most powerfully positive message that we could possibly share with the earth what we're seeing. So stay tuned on that. How's that for a teaser? But then above and beyond that, where Jody is working on consolidating the data so that it's more easily accessible and can be accessed by using key words better than ever before. We have the enderf.org website, but we also have two other websites devoted to one to after death communication and the other to out of body experience and other related spiritual types of things. So we're getting all that data together so that we can analyze it scientifically and to the greatest extent possible, hopefully get to the point, we're working with some volunteers to share it with the world. So people can do just like what you did, Alex, look up those key words on enderf, you know, at Jesus God and be able to more fine tune it. You can cross God with light, you can cross, you know, how often do you cross love with pick up, you know, with, you know, under it with life review. So you're going to be able to cross concepts in a near death experience and get right to the near death experiences describing that more accurately than ever possible before. And that's still a work in progress, but I think we're going to have some good. I think Google is definitely helping you out with that. And again, the thing, you know, I kind of maybe travel in different circles, but what I was, it's go, go, go with the outside stuff, go ET, go Baphomet, go N-D-E-R-F, N-D-E-R-F, Baphomet, you think Baphomet is a Braxis? Great, go for it. Search, is it there? I mean, again, he's not scrubbing the data, the data's coming in from all over the world, a lot of different things. What are people saying about Satan? What are people saying about the devil? What are they saying? Hey, man, it's just go take your own tour through it, walk through it in your own way. And it gives you the sense, that's what I like. It empowers the individual to feel like, wow, I'm really walking in the shoes of these people and the answers may be all over the board, but invariably you find a way through it that is the summation of what your work is. Absolutely, Alex. There's just such a wealth of different concepts in near-death experiences that people in one hour and one day are gonna say, wow, I'm especially interested in how colors look different in these heavenly realms as compared to Earth. What about this unearthly music that I've heard about? How can we find some accounts and go to the original source? I mean, we're basically exactly, as you said, empowering people to take the journey I did over two decades ago, where you go to that original source of data and start to learn from those concepts the questions that are important to each individual. And that's exciting. It is exciting, Jeff. You're exciting. You're an exciting guy. You and Jody are doing such amazing work. And I so appreciate you coming back on and talking to people. And hopefully we helped explore more of the science about this and where it might be headed. Thanks again so much for joining me. Always a pleasure. Thanks again to Dr. Jeff Long for joining me today on Skeptico. The one question I tee up from this interview is what do you find most meaningful about the database, about the data that Dr. Long has collected? I give you a couple of thoughts during this interview, but I'd love to hear what you think. Let me know. Reach out to me in any way you can. Skeptico Forum is my preferred way, but find me however you do. Lots of stuff coming up. Stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care and bye for now.