 If we went back to 1970 the day after your out-of-body experience nice time machine You're gonna give me that's right And and we tried and we approached you and said and tried to convince you that this out-of-body experience was Could be explained using natural means What would it have taken to convince you would it Would it could it have happened? Would you have changed your mind very easily? How interesting? I think you should work on this time machine and we'll find out um That that's really interesting I'm trying 44 years. It's you know I Think there would have been two things going on in my mind at once And I think that even were do you're in the experience those things going on on the one hand would have been but I know I You don't understand. You don't understand how real it was. I you know, how can you possibly? You know, this is so important to me And and and you know it means so much to me and simultaneously would have been going on But there has to be an explanation. What's going on? I've always been a Scientist in the broadest sense since I was a kid. How does that work? What's this doing? You know, how's this fire? How could I you know and that would have been going on as well? I think if you'd approached me as Some of the worst members of the skeptical community would be like, oh, that's rubbish You know, then I would have been absolutely against it But if you'd come along and said well, you know, could it be there's something in the brain? Could it be I'd have been thinking could be I might have been frightened because The day after I was so confused I mean, I think you'd have to come a little bit later when I sort of calm down a bit But in a way when people have these very dramatic experiences and I've met lots of lots of people who have You feel threatened if somebody tells you it's not what you thought and if you are a sort of rigid Closed-minded kind of thinker and you when you've had this extraordinary experience you step onto your own explanation Then it's very very hard You feel frightened when people say, ah, yes, but it's happening in the middler or the prefrontal court or whatever You know, but if you're more open-minded if you're good at thinking if you're good at asking questions if you're good at Exploring possibilities Then I think it's much easier and if the person confronting you is also like that Let's explore this together. What how did it really feel and then what happened and take an interest? Then I think I would have responded quite well to you and been hey, you might be my savior Let's go and find out right, but I didn't have a savior I had to go and find out myself in it in an age where the science was with the wasn't any neuroscience We hadn't very little idea what was happening in the brain The paranormal stuff out there in the new age and the you know the age of Aquarius and all that stuff the end of the 60s Was like a world apart and that's why it's taken me a lifetime I would say to bring together extraordinary experiences and So a lot of people who are going to be watching These videos and taking this course would have had something similar some vivid experience That they can't really explain we've done these sort of questionnaires in this course and in others where Students have heard a story from parents about ghosts or They've experienced something themselves how would you given what you know now about opinion change and and Changing your own opinion. What would be the best way to approach somebody and Change their mind or at least get them to consider the alternatives that it might not be What they think I'm glad you made that switch. I don't go at anyone who's had an extraordinary experience I want to change their mind unless they are just so rigid. I despair and I think I don't want to have anything to do with it You know, but for most of the people I've met So many have had an experience they can't understand and they don't know what to do with it The first thing to do is to listen and and probe Some people will be very rigid particularly I think of near-death experiences where it has so much of religious connotations and in our culture This tends most often not always but to be Christians who are convinced that they have seen Jesus or pearly gates The the judgment day they've been to heaven or they've seen heaven or they've seen hell. They've got all this baggage But what I first do is okay, then what happened then what happened? Could you see could you see anything else and get them to loosen up? Because if what they've done is had this extraordinary experience. I mean typically in a near-death experience If they if it's a long one, they will typically start with a tunnel like I did and go into the light They'll have an out-of-the-body experience and they'll watch what's physically happening or seem to Then they'll go on to other worlds after that it becomes dependent on your culture and your upbringing So if they are a religious person Muslim or Hindu whatever it might be Or a Christian they kind of know where they are they've set their own experience in that box So part of my job is to actually get them to remember other things Well, what did these pearly gates like where they really gates or you know, what else could you see around? And very often then they'll come up with all sorts of other stuff which they haven't really thought about which will help them to The point is I'm grounding it in what really happened because I want to know because I'm always thinking what's going on in their brain Where is this relating to you know, what's happening in the temporal lobe? What's happening in the visual cortex where we know they the tunnels are generated? What kind of tunnel was it what emotional state where they are when they started because very often these experiences have a most Wonderful profound sense of it's all right Which is probably endorphin based but it's that saying that doesn't put it down That you know, it's got to have a physical basis somehow But that can be quite an important thing also for people to know it is possible as a human being on this earth without God's spirits and everything else To know that it's all right and you're all right. It's okay So I sort of like to help people just to talk about the experiences Um Sometimes that will lead them to their own interest and their own inquiry and they'll go off and read stuff and they'll talk stuff And I you know, let them do that other times. They'll just reject it and go. Yeah, well, I know I saw Jesus I might want to But you know, that's not going to work. There's no point I'd rather people use their experiences the basis to go and try and understand themselves and the world Then I would try to change their mind of the truth. We don't know the truth We know little bits. We know a lot We know as much as we can know that nothing leaves the body and these experiences that there is no spirit No soul and so on but so much more to find out So like I'll do it myself So these people who've had these experiences actually they're in they're important And they're the ones who can can explore more and find out more Yeah, one of the real sort of knee-jerk responses with opinion change is just to remain passive and unconvinced Right. Yes. I know what you're telling me, but that's fine. I'm gonna continue my merry way and not do much about it and Yeah, we're trying to provide students with the tools specifically to Look at the data, right and and to try not to remain passive and unconvinced figure out what it would would have looked like You know in other sorts of scenarios where it didn't happen just the way that it didn't I think it's absolutely foundational to being to being a good thinker Oh that reminds me of two things one one's a bit depressing It's when I used to do interviewing for admissions to the university and psychology degree and I would set some kind of Challenging scenario as purely hypothetical. What if it turned out that? You know black people can't do this or so, you know some challenging thing I'm not saying it's true. There's no I'm just saying suppose it did what are the possible explanations? Now the good student the one I'm going to admit says Well, I don't think it's true, but if it were it could be because of their upbringing It could be because of whatever it could be it could be it could be it could be What how would I find out blah blah blah blah and the student? I'm going to I'm going to say no it's gonna go But that's not true, but that's wrong. How could you say that? You know and that's that's sort of the rigidity. Yeah, but it also makes me think more about the kind of Paranormal things that we're thinking about and the strange experiences that people have the the The student I would want the student. I would enjoy would go well. I think that this happened, you know, but hang on a minute, okay? It's emotionally difficult. It's challenging to me. I don't like it, but let me imagine a purely mechanistic explanation Let me imagine an explanation in terms of a religion that I don't know much about or isn't mine Let me imagine and they would actually be willing despite the it hurts. I don't like this to do that Now I've had a lot of experience in my life of that anguish. I mean The world's a simple place if you know how it works and you know I'm in here I'm me. This is who I am. This is what I do. That's how they were, you know, it's a simple place It's horrible. It doesn't work as a life strategy, but you feel you feel you're gonna be safe that way Now you can imagine me having started out with all these beliefs I mean, I honestly believe that out there is this great psychic field and that I was going to be the great hero Heroine of science who was going to change the world forever because I prove once and for all that are paranormal phenomena The there are any This was not a comfortable time for was horrible. I'm wrong Now also imagine me. I mean not only with my crystal ball and my tarot cards, but I suppose I've got colored But you know the the late 60s early 70s wafty clothes and headbands and wow peaceman and you know all that and You know, I looked everything about my life was was like that. Yeah, I had to give up. Well, let go off Let go of all of that in order to move forward to ask questions to learn Oh, and I look back now good because you know, I found out so much Also all that led me Exploring a whole lot of different things and the only one that stuck was meditation And I've been training in Zen for 30 years and that is also training in Flexibility letting go Openness to experience openness to different explanations and that training Goes along very very well with the scientific mind that asks questions and doesn't take the first Theory I come up with is the truth and that's it So the goal of the course is To improve people's everyday thinking. Do you have any recommendations for how people in the course might improve their everyday thinking? Yes Start with your intuitions watch yourself Feel those intuitions coming up and question them because some of your intuitions will be fine Yeah, I think if I lean on here it'll be fine, but some of your other intuitions I'm in here looking out through my eyes. I know what that is That person's nice that but a lot of your intuitions won't be so question your intuitions and be willing to give them up If there's a good reason to do so and that's hard, but yes Some of those intuitions. My name is Sue. I think about consciousness