Let me begin this talk as I always do by just talking personally for a few minutes. I always put this at the very beginning of my talk since this is such an important point to me. I come into this from a certain perspective and certain interests and the kind of Interest I have in this is not to try to convince anybody that there's life after death and I don't I'm not at all interested in proselyting that kind of activity is always bored me. Really I don't have any conclusions for you. All I can really do is talk about what people have told me that I have been very interested in. I realize entirely that what I did and am doing is not a systematic or scientific investigation and I get kind of perturbed when I see headlights.Lines and tabloids about things, you know scientific evidence or proof of life after death. I just don't think of it that way my own kind of interest is something different and it has to do with dealing with people who have had close encounters with death and the course of their contact with medical therapy, but I will talk a little bit more about that aspect of it later. I'm saying that I don't draw any conclusions from this and that I'm fully aware that this does not even count as evidence of life after death and my sort of purest conception you say one of my specialties in philosophy was logic and I still think and kind of purest terms from that point of view. I realized that this doesn't even count as anything I would call evidence but at the same time that doesn't mean that I haven't had my own emotional response to it. I will freely admit that I have to the point where I don't doubt anymore that there is survival of bodily death, but that is a purely subjective response it something that's worn off on me from having talked with hundreds of people who are so convinced on the basis of something that happened to them. But if you say I'm not when I say that I'm just reporting on my subjectivity that is not trying to argue that other people should or would have that same response. My own feeling is that there may be a pretty good operatory reason why proof or evidence of life after death in the scientific sense and I would underline that is actually impossible and I'm not talking about forever. I just mean from the perspective of current methodology, but you know methodologies are things that change and develop over time certainly scientific method is not the same today as it was in the time of Galileo and I don't believe that it's going to stop in July of 1977 think it will keep developing. Another thing is that since a lot of you are interested in the field of parapsychology here. I will have to tell you first of all just to be honest. I really know very little about this field I've read maybe about one or two books and when I say that my interest is not in it, I don't mean try to put it down. You see what I mean? Is that for people who? Want to look at these experiences from this point of view. That's fine. I mean is the way it's moved me an account of different direction that I will talk about. I suppose that clinical and philosophical kinds of implications of this are more important to me. Another thing about all this is that obviously in looking into these things. I have had my own perspective and subjectivity in my own professional background and please bear in mind my favorite saying about professions, which was what George Bernard Shaw said all professions are conspiracies against the laity and just loving it and what he meant was, you know, a very real point to me that a group of people got together and they said well, we're going to lay down The rules for this area of reality and unless people have been through our training and so on they can't say anything intelligible about this area of human concern and so I Came from a certain kind of professional round of that has no doubt shaped my perspectives one limitation. I feel is that I know so little about other areas whose perspective needs to be added cultural anthropology for instance would be a really interesting thing. I've I've received articles of accounts of near-death experiences and other cultures under different situations and so on and they're very interesting and I think someone who knew about cultural anthropology could offer some genuine Insight in terms of the way cultural coloring shapes these experiences another background. I don't have much obvious that of theology. I have my own kind of religious background, obviously as everyone else does but I'm talking in terms of systematic theology. I read content Calvin and Augustine and st. Thomas and philosophy now, Really because those people are regarded as great philosophers as well. But I think there are a lot of theological issues. Obviously that are raised by such experiences. I just can't address myself to those and there's always the unconscious side of me that is somehow showing and through in this perhaps very early on in Psychiatry training when I would talk with patients. And then after you talk with patients, you can see just people in everyday life and you become aware that there is an unconscious part of the mind and it occurred to me at some point in my training. Holy cow of all these people I've talked to I can see their unconscious presuppositions. So clearly, isn't it totally striking that I'm the only person who has absolutely no unconscious presuppositions. And intellectually, of course, it occurs to me that I just may have them but I'm just not aware of them by definition. And so what I'm trying to say and that is that I'm hoping that the time will come very soon when Raymond Moody's unconscious presuppositions can kind of be filtered out of this by other people looking into it, which is one of the reasons why I plan to retire at least from the public part of this as of about January 1st, so I can get back to my residency and do some other things and I am pleased to say that other Physicians now are looking into this there is a dr. Becker in Germany German internist and I read in Der Spiegel. Not that I can read German anymore. I saw this article and it was kind of translated to me to say that there is a German physician by the name of dr. Becker who is now interviewed many people who have had these experiences. There is a cardiologist at the University of Florida Medical School who is done now extensive work in this field and others. And so I feel that now other people can look at this and kind of sift out some of my own subjectivity. As I guess most of you know, what I have done essentially is that I've interviewed people who can't fail roughly into two categories those who came very close to death and the course of a very bad accident or injury or illness secondly a group who were believed or a judge declared pronounced clinically dead and then resuscitated and who had experiences several things to say about this. First of all, not everybody who comes near death even among those who are for one reason or another declared dead have any sort of experience some people come back from this saying I just don't remember anything about it. This raises several questions. Number one what percentage do I don't know the study of the kind that I have done could not provide an answer to that sense. It wasn't prospective. But as I didn't say in advance, we're going to look at the next 50 cases of successful resuscitation and the given Hospital under given circumstances and see whether they recall anything. I would think that even in the course of a prospective investigation. The question about percentages would be kind of hard to answer for several reasons number one try to empathize with people who've had fantastic experiences and are lying in a hospital bed recovering and Along Comes. Someone who looks like a psychiatrist and says, what do you remember when this time when you're nearly died It might run through your mind. Well, no, if I tell him what happened, he's not likely to let me out of here as fast. So I think you know, it might be hard to get figures even in this kind of case interestingly enough. I would have guessed that the percentage of would have been almost in a kind of small in terms of the total number of resuscitation. But the the guess the study I know that says most of this is that of the the Cardiology professor at the University of Florida. They looked into 50 cases of documented near death and counters and out of that group found 11 persons reporting experiences, which is about a 20% kind of ratio. I have no idea if that will hold up and later studies are not Another kind of question that's raised by the fact that not everybody has an experience is the question what difference is there between the two groups in terms of character or emotional pattern personality? And so again, I don't know. I don't have much of a way of estimating. Obviously my group of cases is weighted toward people who do have experiences because people are inclined to come up to me and say I had an experience rather than just saying when I died nothing happened, Another thing is that there are some interesting intermediate cases people who tell me that they don't remember anything during this period consciously, but that they have the very strong feeling that something profound happened to them and that time perhaps because of subsequent changes in their lifestyle and interests in life and so on and the kind of nagging feeling that there was something going on in that period that they just did not remember and when I first heard many years ago of cases like this guess what pumped into my mind, you know hypnosis the possibility of taking people back to near death and counters who don't remember anything and seeing if this could be recovered or just hypnotizing people who have had near-death encounters that they could remember and being able to relive the experience and perhaps to give more details of it and so on. And then it occurred to me just a minute, you know, you can cause all sorts of physiological changes by hypnotizing people in two states and you've heard this thing about hypnotizing people and making them believe that they've touched a hot object and you can raise a blister on the finger. So this one and then it occurred to me if what if we were to precipitate a cardiac arrest and this attempt and so I dropped that project and then only about a year and a half ago. I was talking with a physician friend of mine who had had such an experience and I mentioned this to him about why I would never use hypnosis in this and he kind of smiled and he said that's he said several years ago when I was a resident. He said that I got some friends of mine to hypnotize me some other Physicians and took him back to this point where he just before he was declared dead. It and he said when they got to this point, he did not have a cardiac arrest but he did go into failure his pulse rate shot up. They noticed neck vein distention. He was having having labored respirations. So I'm so naturally to say I don't recommend hypnosis as a method of studying this now Let me talk just a little bit about the kinds of things that people say when they come near death the things that they remember and I will say that what struck me really from the very beginning that I began to look into this quite by coincidence. It was not something I was seeking out was that these experiences seemed very very similar by that? I don't mean that they had a strict identity like the everyone was identical with every other one. Although a few will come very close to it or almost word for word the same but rather if you look at this whole scope of the reports, point you have is if I can use my own kind of borrowed and inappropriate probably terminology. I would say they have a family resemblance and what I mean by that is that if I look at all the reports that have come to me I have found about 19 common things in them that is elements that crop up not just in one report but in a you know, an appreciable number of reports, they crop up again and again now an individual reporter and experience May consist of two or three of these things only two or three of them or the person may report five or six. He may report 10 or 12. He may report up to 18 or so. And so there's a spectrum and gradation effect. And the ones that I have looked into there is a definite tendency for the people who were in this extreme State whatever you want to call it of where they were believed dead. And there's a tendency for the people who were in this state for more extended periods of time to report and their experience a greater percentage of these and the ones in which I have that where the people have reported 17 or 18 of these things have invariably and my experience spend the ones where the patient was declared dead for periods of time that just don't seem physiologically possible sometimes more about that part of it later. So what I will do I will just talk about some of the things that people say some of these common elements rather than all of them and I don't know why / chosen this particular list except that I'm just more comfortable somehow with talking about these the others are all very interesting but I kind of in my oh my look at these has ones that somehow more frequent than the others and the ones that I've looked into I think the most universal element in these reports perhaps something that is far as I can. Remember every single person has said and one form or another is that what they went through was something that was ultimately ineffable Indescribable and that try as they may to put it into English words. They are just not able to they say things like I cannot describe it to you. There are no English word. I don't have the semantics to express it Etc. Naturally this kind of thing governs everything that's to follow because people are say that this experience they go through is so ultimately Indescribable. There are no words. Then the words they do use they say are kind of like metaphors or attempts to describe something now. I'm going to go through these and an order in which they very typically occur. A very early event is what I'll call a noise that's kind of nondescript and people say that it's not really annoys anyway, but that that's just the closest they can come to it. It doesn't have a sensor equality like a sound but that if you have to put a label on it you come up with something on the auditory language people have said buzzing clicking ringing roaring sound of trap drums beating the sound of a swarm of bees roaring a vibration together with the feeling of in many cases of being drawn through a dark tunnel as the most frequent word used tunnel. There are others funnel cave Well Valley Pipe dark cylinder, they feel drawn rapidly through this then seem to find themselves looking upon their own physical bodies from a point of view outside. Of themselves and at this point there is a kind of when I shall call the one-way mirror effect. That's a term drawn for my own psychiatric training and when you're learning Psychiatry with the patience for knowledge, you take your patient into a little room and interview them and there's a mirror on the wall in which you can see yourself as it were and you can't see through that mirror, but on the other side there are you're attending physicians and your fellow residents and so on they're watching your interview and then later you talk about it. Well, people say that it's something like this when they find themselves out of their body that they can understand what's going on in the room. A lot of people say that they didn't hear voices in the physical sense, but they were immediately aware of what people there were saying and it was as though they say is like they could see the mouths of the person's open after they had already picked up what the person was going to say. They can understand others, but they cannot be understood when they try to tell someone in the room or ask someone something no one seems to respond. They can see other people. Although they say, you know, this is not exactly a regular kind of scene but that others cannot see them when they try to touch other people to get their attention. They find their go right through but there is no contact. They feel that they are still in a body if you want to put it that way, but that it does not have physical Mass. They say it has an effect of form a shape. But no Mass people find this part of the experience very hard to describe. I used to think just because it was so inherently the Indescribable in its nature what they then found themselves in and that is perhaps true to a degree but also I finally realized when I was talking with someone about a year or so ago that she couldn't describe it simply because she wasn't paying any attention to it. She said I was a lot more taken up with what was going on down there and watching people resuscitate me and so on and I didn't really pay any attention to what I was then in any intense intention anyway, A lot of people have described meeting deceased friends or relatives people that they feel that are there to meet them as they're passing through this transition. They say that they don't seem to appear in the physical form. It's not like seeing Uncle Bill's body as he was there and a sensory way, but just knowing that he is there by direct kind of communication with him and that there is a kind of an appearance but it's like the body that they are then in a kind of wispy Gauzy thing. They may report panoramic reviews of the events of their lives. And the ones that I have looked into involved people actually declared dead for extended periods of time. This is described in a very spectacular way people say that this is in full color three dimensions in a third person point of view. I should interject here that I have never had a near-death experience and I'm not given to Mystical Consciousness. I really wish I could empathize more directly with what a mystical experience is by kind of knowing directly, but I just-i can't-- uncanny things don't seem to happen to me. No less I'm going to put myself into perspective that people described word to be able to explain this it gets very complicated semantically. Otherwise when I say that these reviews are in the third person point of view from that point of view what I mean is if I were having one of these experiences, I would not be reliving this event through these eyes. I would be out there watching me among all of you. And I would know that was me because I remember doing this. If you think about it, that's an excellent point of view from which to judge what you've done or think about it because you really do become as it were another person in this kind of description. It is not portrayed it all is something linear. It's not like an instant replay with everything in temporal sequence speed it up very rapidly. They say everything is somehow there at one time in this representation, three three-dimensional full-color Panorama all around them and it takes place simultaneously the sense I get from talking with these people. They have to use the word simultaneous, but really it's not a matter of time at all. A lot of people have told me that in addition to all of their actions portrayed their there was also all of their thoughts and a couple of people have even mentioned how than in the presence of this being that I will be talking about next who had kind of omniscient grasp of the situation that all of the consequences in terms of the feelings of other people where they're portrayed for them as well. It is not only did they see their actions and their thoughts but also all the consequences on other people of these actions and thoughts for that reason alone. I'm not looking forward to dying anytime soon. Another thing that about this actually people have said that that when they saw the unpleasant things that they had done their lives, they felt regret it too along with this. So there was an emotional response and and accordingly they were pleased as it were when they witnessed things in which they had felt satisfied with themselves. Very often this review is described as taking place in the presence of a light and intense light again, they say light is not exactly the word but comes as close as you can put it one man said it was like looking into about a million arc welders light all at once that's the kind of intensity it has and yet as quite apparently a personal being because they feel it communicates with them. The description is invariably loving warm accepting being Christians will say Christ. I've talked with a few Jews who have had this experience to and they say God or the Supreme Being I have not talked with people from without the judeo Christian tradition a personal being that speaks to them not through voice, but they are immediately aware of what is being directed to them. I feel as though they are put to the test at this point by being asked a question. What have you done with your life to show me I use that formulation of it because that is what six people independently of one another none of whom thought that anybody else would have ever had such an experience. Even or at least they would never met such a person they came up with this one and exactly the same sequence of words to characterize what they felt they were asked but even then so that those words were not enough really to portray it many other translations have been offered for this question. Are you satisfied with your life? Are you ready to join me different terms like this. Now it's interesting that during this transcendental part of the experience. There's a profound alteration of the sense of time. This is I think most strikingly Illustrated instead of trying to give you a picture of it by explaining it. I will just give you a particularly striking example of it one man told me how he was injured horribly in this accident in which there was an explosion and fire then found himself immediately up above the scene watching his own body and from this height into perspective could see the people who were running toward him and he said at this point all of this physical part just went away and there in his place was everything. He said he had ever done in this Panorama full-color 3D and this being of light and be identified as cry. Just asking him in effect what he had done that he wanted to talk about in this. He said he went through every single thing he had ever done. Well at the end of this interview I went back and I always just let people talk as much as they will and then I first go back and ask very general questions. For instance. If they have felt that they were out of their body I say so you felt you were out of your body. How could you tell me more about that? And then finally at the very end I get to specific questions and I remember asking him a specific question. Well, how long did this review of Your Life seemed to take and then he kind of got impatient and he said well, you can't even put it in those terms. It was not a temporal thing. They said if if you just made me come up with some figure. He said I would have to say the very least it took an hour. He said but you know When this was over and when it I was told that I had to go back, you know that I was not to die. Yeah, and I'd seen all the things I had done. He then he said this review went away and I was back up over the building and looking at my body again, and he said and the people who had been running to get me were frozen and stop motion and exactly the same positions as when I had when the that part of disappeared and I had seen this review and he said then as I came back into this they speed it up again, like somebody has slowed down the projector and then when I came back into this situation, he said it was like speed it up again. So that I think is as dramatic an illustration of the kind of time changes that I could really give you. If I had just been hearing this I suppose I would be very interested in the question of what this light was interested in and this review. I will say that I have yet to find anyone who said that in the course of this review. He he met up money changer who said at current rates of exchange for Fortune comes to or generally the things that the culture tends to instill in people very prominently Canton weren't there that question that they were asked they felt really was best translated as something like here you are and you're witnessing all the things that you have done and you are loved totally and they felt the point of the challenge was and what you see there. Do you feel that that you have given the same sort of love? And that was the primary thing that they felt that they were asked of him some have reported that when the focus was on scenes and which they had been learning things whether in the formal sense of an education or not or just something they were doing on their own. It was imparted to them that learning or knowledge was not something that just pertain to this place, but that even after they Him over there, they felt on a permanent basis. This would go on. Now obviously all the people with whom I have talked have had to come back and an interesting kind of thing has happened here when people first find themselves out of their body a very typical responses, they felt that the almost a panic-stricken feeling of I've got to get back into that body. But that feeling doesn't matter very much because they couldn't figure out how to get back in any more than they could figure out how they got out in the first place. So this initial feeling of panic and confusion and so on by the time the people of reached transcendental stages of this that the attitude has shifted and a lot of people have told me they did not want to come back from this day that they would rather have stayed there on a parent exception is in the case of mothers who have children who would say well for Point of view I would rather have stayed over there, but I wanted to get back to finish raising my children and so on. Another thing I should add though. That's just as important. I'm talking now about the perspective they had when they were in this experience and maybe for a Time afterward from the perspective of days or weeks or months that the thing is changed in people of said, well, I'm very glad that I was given an opportunity to come back if you see what I mean, like looking back on the experience. They say gee I'm really glad I made it back because I see that there are things for me to do here. I would say this kind of experience of has the effect of focusing people's attention on living rather than on dying people have said I've seen what a positive and valuable thing that life is I've seen that I have a purpose here. There's something that I want to get done now it has in so many of the cases Don't know how many times I've heard people. So after this happened to me, I have not been afraid of death anymore. I'm not afraid of death. This doesn't mean that they are seeking death actively. It's a matter of fact, a lot of them have said precisely this thing that now they see that life is valuable that they are here they feel on assignment or to get something done what they mean. I think is that they don't regard death as an obliteration of Consciousness anymore, so that it is not a fear for them. And that sense. Obviously, these people are not greatly anxious to die in a slow or agonizing or painful way either see all I mean by saying that they're not afraid of death according to them. It's just that they don't regard it as a total blackout or obliteration of consciousness. Let me go back just a little bit into historical times and talk about something that interested me. I used to wonder when I first started looking into this as I said just by coincidence. Really. I heard the first cases of this used to occur to me now. Why is it that I'm hearing these things and they seem so common to me and yet there's nothing written about them. Well that was just entirely ignorance on my part and I found that there are many cases of this recorded in history techniques of resuscitation are very ancient as a matter of fact and they go back to the Phoenicians who had a kind of mouth-to-mouth respiration paracelsus the European physician developed the method of bellows resuscitation by using the Bellows people used to the Fireside as early as about 1530 and there was a horse trotting method Used in Europe for a long time where the person to be resuscitated was thrown over the back of the horse abdomen downward and he was trotted along and you could see how this would have the same effect as the procedure. She had see on emergency and the method of injecting adrenaline into the heart to to resuscitate was developed as early as about 1905. So this would suggest that there may be a lot of cases they are in history. If you just clever enough to find them I certainly wasn't clever enough to find them by the time I wrote the first book on this but now many people have written in and said didn't you know that the same thing was recorded them not the venerable. The classic of literature and book 5 chapter 12 has a near-death experience of the time that I've talked with you about a man who was believed dead and put on a bed for the wake and at some point many hours later. He sat up he told about this experience of going through what he calls a valley into a realm of light that he's guided there by someone who's there to help him through this transition. He relates his feelings of reluctance to return and he talks about how he was he didn't talk about this with other people unless he felt that they were would receive it very sympathetically now, This is as a slightly different cultural coloring than the one she here today, but I think it's to me. It's recognizably the same kind of thing Edward Tylor the English Anthropologist recorded cases a whole chapter of his book primitive culture of the second volume of that. The first chapter has to do with what he called. Rick calls returned from the dead stories and other cultures and since I have zero, aesthetic sensibility and terms of pictures and everything. I just I really do like the pictures and my Donald Duck comic books and but I still have my collection on what I'm saying is that I really don't have any sensitivity much to paintings. And so it's been very interesting to me that people who do know about paintings have been sending me copies of paintings and some very old and which the same theme is portrayed and the most striking went to me. Was done by a painter named Hieronymus Bosch. Who was I think from the 15th century and someone sent me this painting and or copy of it and they didn't trust me with the original and in the foreground what you see is some people who are apparently dying and they are surrounded by what are portrayed as Spiritual Beings. And these Spiritual Beings are trying to direct the Gaze of VIXX dying person's upward and right above them. There is a kind of gray Misty Zone and above that is on a Blackness and through that Blackness a dark tunnel and at the other end of the tunnel and intense white light and people are going through this tunnel and kneeling reverently into the light. So there's the same thing. I've that's exactly A very typical case of what people describe to me when they are believed dead and are being resuscitated. That's the very typical thing. They say they say well all of a sudden there was this Blackness and then I looked down and I saw my own body and I looked up above me and I began to rise upward and there was a zone of gray mist and then I went into a tunnel toward an intense light. I've got to get up get a book on Hieronymus Bosch to see if you know I can figure out where he might have come up with such a thing. Why then if these things are so old why do they seem kind of new to us? I think there are several reasons for this one is that people have just been afraid to talk about this because they felt that they would be laughed at most of the letters. I get from people who have experiences begin. I've never told anybody about this or I only told just a few people and they laughed at me and so I've shut up about it. I've just not talked about it. Any more interesting kind of thing has happened to some people and this illustrates again, the kind of dilemmas of professions that I was talking about. Some people have said that when they they came back from this experience and they would try to tell their And he would listen intently to a few words and then he would say well that's very interesting. But you know, that's something that belongs to your religious life. You better talk to your minister about that and so they would usually go to their Minister and he would say listen to a few words and he'd say now that is really interesting. But you know that happened to you when you were under the Doctors Care you better talk with him about that. This kind of thing is in the Borderland. I suppose between two professions and I guess from the point of view if you were a problem or intellectual dilemma of some kind it might be regarded as the worst fate you could have to be caught in the Borderland between two professions. Another thing I suppose it's just that techniques of resuscitation are now being widely taught and employed and so more people are in positions where they could have these experiences. And so I guess there had to be a critical point. When as many as people in this society as there are who have had this experience. They had to be a critical point, you know, where more and more people having there had to be some kind of event that called, you know was a nucleus for everybody else to say. Yeah that happened to me. I'm glad I'm not the only one this brings me to the kind of clinicals concern that I mentioned earlier that I have about this. Ontology aside to me speaking personally. It's just important for me as a person who is sometimes involved in resuscitation attempts to know that patients have these experiences because so many people have told me, you know, I wanted so much to talk with someone about this, but when I tried to raise it with a nurse or my daughter or someone they just patted me on the hand and said I want it's all over now. Don't talk about it. Have you been to the bathroom this morning honey? And this is a genuine concern of people and something that they have desperately wanted to talk about and we're not received. I don't I don't to me it would just be pointless to get into an ontological debate with people who have had very transcendental near-death experiences and say oh that was Hallucination most people that I've talked with were told that if they raised it at all with someone in a professional capacity and it was brushed off in that one, but they weren't asking for a diagnostic label at all, you know the ones I've talked to as I've tried to assess what they were trying to ask when they tried to tell their physician or their nurse or their friends about this all they were interested in was that they just wanted to know if they were the only person that had ever had this experience or whether there might be someone else in the world that they could share this with who would you no understand? And that I think is the ultimate, you know, most the ultimate clinical relevance on top of it to get into an ontological debate with someone by saying this was a Hallucination is beside the point for them and only alienates them. Let me talk. about Two more things briefly the question that will come most frequently up in people's mind is usually phrase like this were any of these people really did and I will have to say quite blankly or openly at the first that the classical definition is the state from which one does not return and so by that definition, obviously, none of these people were really dead just as obviously a complication has been introduced when it was written down in the patient's record that he was declared dead. And when his death certificate was filled out and this introduces something that we're going to have to think about and react sensitively to also I like to think of it like this. First of all the criteria of what counts as death as we all know are up in the air and a topic of intense debate and is not to be settled anytime soon apparently because of technological difficulties advances and so on that are just complicating the issue. What are the criteria for death? We don't you know, we can't say with the degree that would satisfy the obsessive-compulsive mentality at present and that's a very regrettable thing and something that causes worry to us all because it ends up in kind of tricky questions like about transplants and organ donations and so on. The criteria you problem is one then another thing people will always ask about ECGs and whether EEG is were available to go along with any of these experiences and the ones that I have looked into no, but let me imagine for a moment the the hypothetically ideal case there, you know from the purely theoretical point of view if someone is interested in theoretically trying to prove that there's life after death someone comes back from an apparent very well-documented clinical encounter with a close call with death, which is heart was not beating for an extended period of time and so and we do have a flat EEG tracing to go along with it. What would we make of this? Is this proof or evidence of life after death? No, number one EEG machines, like all other machines are fallible and you know all kinds of problems arise with them. One thing in clinical emergencies. I should say this. The first thing you call for is not when a patient arrest is not an EEG machine you call for other equipment first. And so that I think counts very well for why there are no tracings in the ones that I personally have looked into so usually these machines are very cumbersome to set up and is any of you who might have put you know, put them on people know that paste tends to come loose and you're trying to get things set up and something funny is happening you look over and the person that you're trying to test is the adhesive it slipped off is complicated, too. Me not real complicated, but you've got to know where to put into leads and so on it takes time. And and another thing about the machines is that they can give false indications of brain death. So come in cases of hypothermia where the body temperature is down very low in cases of barbiturate intoxication. There can be apparently flat EEG tracings for period of time and yet the person can still be resuscitated and I'm sure a lot of you've heard of the case when I think it was in Canada and McGill if I'm not mistaken of the physician who in talking about this brain death issue put some leads into a blob of lime Jell-O and got tracings and concluded from this not the jello lives. But but rather that those machines sure can get set off by Walking by or just the local see beers down on the highway giving squiggles of electrical things darting through the room. And another thing suppose we did have a flat tracing to go along with someone's story of, you know his account of his experience that I think the first thing I would want to know is number one was the tracing the flat tracing concurrent with the experience and number two. How would you know a very real dilemma None of this top means by the way that I don't believe that like that. There's life after death. And that that this phenomenon is a manifestation of it, which is has been my subjective response. All I'm talking about is in trying to say that it is not scientific at least in the way that it's been done so far. I'm not trying to put these experiences down by talking like this. I hope you realize that I mean, I think they are just almost too important to be pushed into a mold of a certain preconceived kind of methodology. Now continuing on just a little bit about this this issue of whether this was really death. Let me just say with all that kind of difficulty know that the theoretical difficulty. I think there's a he's just got to stop at some point and say well we don't have the facts yet and there's all kinds of theoretical disputes about this. How do you deal with people and how do you respond to them? We've been through this state where they have nearly died and where it is sometimes written down on their record that they were dead. You've got to give some sort of accounting of that and I can only say then how I would do it and how I do it suppose I were to witness a cardiac arrest. At a distance of say 50 feet away from me. I see someone collapse. I run over to him listen to his heart trying to detect any respiration or pulse and I can't he stopped breathing and his heart's not beating and so I start resuscitation measures and pretty soon the emergency squad or Rescue Squad comes along and they bring proper equipment and so on and this person is resuscitated and recovers in the hospital in it and I go in to see him. What do I say? You see, I mean this thing kind of thing happens every day. It's not a matter of the criteria you say, I mean that's in the back of your mind. But but you've got a problem relating to someone who's been very Dire Straits. What do I say? So I go up and say mr. Jones you died and I brought you back. No. Absolutely not why number one that preempts the function of the Divinity, which I certainly don't believe in doing. You know, I don't I have never been comfortable with the me God you patient kind of relationship. secondly I don't do it because that the proper thing there is to explain the patient's physiological State your heart stopped beating and so on and tell what happened to say something like you died is to give the person quite a load to carry. Just I died. Oh my goodness. Can I collect on my insurance policy? Okay. Now that's one situation. That is not what I love what you do you don't say you died you explain the physiological state of the person but there is another kind of difficulty you see. Sometimes it's written down in the patient's chart that he died. Patient expired his death certificate has been filled out in one case. I know of an obituary was printed in the newspaper. Here is a different dilemma. The person comes to you with a thick medical fold of Records. And he says, you know doctor I died and they brought me back. What do I then son? And I read there it says patient believed dead pronounced and I'm here talking about an actual case for illustration there others like this. I'm only thinking of a specific one. It's written down on the on the record that the patient was pronounced dead at a certain time. Nine minutes later. Another other Physicians came back and pronounced the patient dead again, and the body was being prepared for the morgue and someone noticed a slight movement. They thought that they weren't sure and they taught the the attending physician into injecting adrenaline into the heart and the patient revived. What do you say to someone who has a case like this and say says I died and they brought me back. I don't say well now mr. Jones you were not really dead. Sure, your heart had stopped beating for 10 minutes and there was no respiration and you look very pale and Ashen, but you were not really good. What what what I'm trying to get at is what better word to I have to use you were in a state of suspended animation. What does that mean? I don't know. If this is the label the person wants to use I just say gosh something very unusual happened to you and I don't understand it based on what I think I know about physiology, but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen because it could be too that maybe our knowledge of physiology is incomplete or that this was a special case with very unusual circumstances of some kind and so another thing about all this that often arises people asked about whether isn't five minutes the limit that beyond that doesn't the brain deteriorate. So that resuscitation is impossible that is a very good clinical rough-and-ready rule of thumb but they're all kinds of complicating situations. The body temperature has a lot to do with it and cases where the body has been frozen or something. Then resuscitation attempts can go on much longer than five minutes and I read in the newspaper. Last January about the case and I think Massachusetts where the resuscitation attempt went on for four and a half hours before the end. The person was brought in apparently dead and they knew that since they've been frozen they should go on and keep trying and they they worked on this for four and a half hours. Now I will close by saying that as I said, I intend very soon to as of January 1st to retire from the public on this for many reasons one. I just want other people who have looked into this to be able to add their own perspectives. Another thing is that although I certainly will go on talking with people who have had near-death experiences and dealing with people who are terminally ill which is another very important thing to me. I think that this experience I've had of talking with all these people who are so convinced that there are survival of death and this attitude having rubbed off on me the funny effect. It has on me is to focus my attention on living and I am not interested in pursuing the exact details of what happens after you die. I'm very looking forward to opening ultimately a clinic and dealing with patients who have certain kinds of disorders that are not very widely treated. I'm very interested in gambling neuroses for instance and sleep disorders and people with chronic pain syndromes and people with and psychological problems related to them and patients with deformities for instance and who have a lot of Anguish and grief about this and generally kinds of psychiatric and also people who are facing terminal illness and impending death and having either in themselves or in people that they love and are having trouble dealing with this kind of issues emotionally. And that is what my attention has turned to. I am really looking forward to seeing results of studies of near-death experiences that are being done and will be done. I think now that it has come to our attention that this is not just something that happens to one or two people but to a lot of people. Thank you.