1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:28,560 It's such a blessing to have a place like this to sit and just smell the air and hear the creek. 2 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:40,600 I know that I'll fade into it at some point in my life. 3 00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:49,560 I'm 53 years old and was told about five weeks ago that I'm dying. 4 00:00:49,560 --> 00:00:54,800 I've been given about six to eight months left to live and that's really what's happening 5 00:00:54,800 --> 00:00:57,280 in my life at the moment. 6 00:00:57,280 --> 00:01:00,660 Being okay with dying is a weird place to be. 7 00:01:00,660 --> 00:01:03,120 It's very disconnected from most of the people I know. 8 00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:04,440 They don't get it. 9 00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:06,280 They think that I've given in. 10 00:01:06,280 --> 00:01:11,560 It's still really hard for me to talk about it. 11 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:23,280 I know that he's upset about dying and leaving his loved ones, but what's amazing is that 12 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:29,940 he's so at peace with this journey that he's going through and where it's going to take 13 00:01:29,940 --> 00:01:31,780 him afterwards. 14 00:01:31,780 --> 00:01:38,320 What keeps me non-agitated about that is appreciation for the life I've already had. 15 00:01:38,320 --> 00:01:46,580 I've had a beautiful marriage and my kids are fabulous people and they hold fortunately some 16 00:01:46,580 --> 00:02:04,960 of the best parts of me. 17 00:02:04,960 --> 00:02:13,860 Have you had any experiences yourself that give you an insight into what happens when 18 00:02:13,860 --> 00:02:14,220 we die? 19 00:02:14,220 --> 00:02:22,260 I have thought about death since the age of six years when my grandfather passed away suddenly. 20 00:02:22,260 --> 00:02:33,740 You know, it's taken me almost a lifetime to fully comprehend that death is an ongoing process 21 00:02:33,740 --> 00:02:35,640 that makes life possible. 22 00:02:35,640 --> 00:02:42,520 What makes the universe fresh is that it's dying and it's being reborn and it's dying being 23 00:02:42,520 --> 00:02:49,520 reborn and every time it's reborn, it actually creates a better version of itself and we call 24 00:02:49,520 --> 00:02:50,520 it evolution. 25 00:02:50,520 --> 00:02:59,260 In the United States of America, I would say most people pretend that death doesn't exist. 26 00:02:59,260 --> 00:03:04,980 They call it a crime, they call it a mistake, they don't want to deal with it at all. 27 00:03:04,980 --> 00:03:08,500 And actually death is our birthright. 28 00:03:08,500 --> 00:03:16,140 So to think of it in any other way is really just asking for misery and pain in your life 29 00:03:16,140 --> 00:03:24,600 because everybody dies, every form of life dies, what we call dies. 30 00:03:24,600 --> 00:03:33,480 We came today because one of the Gibbons died recently and Nico, the partner, is here and apparently 31 00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:35,600 he's been in a kind of state of grief. 32 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:42,000 Nico had a mate that he lived with named Onyx and they've been together since 1986 which 33 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:44,420 is a very long time, 26 years. 34 00:03:44,420 --> 00:03:50,000 Gibbons in the wild are monogamous so it's pretty common for them to have that pair bond. 35 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:52,120 They tend to stick together. 36 00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:56,440 They're one of the very few primates that is monogamous, most are not. 37 00:03:56,440 --> 00:03:59,120 Definitely that was hard for him. 38 00:03:59,120 --> 00:04:02,060 His activity level decreased pretty significantly. 39 00:04:02,060 --> 00:04:08,220 Gibbons in the wild will do this beautiful song every morning and it's a duet between the 40 00:04:08,220 --> 00:04:09,980 bonded pair. 41 00:04:09,980 --> 00:04:12,520 And he stopped singing for several weeks. 42 00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:17,200 We're at about eight or nine weeks out now and he's really starting to get back to normal 43 00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:18,200 which is great. 44 00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:20,520 We're really happy to see that. 45 00:04:20,520 --> 00:04:25,520 You know, we're sad when animals die but birth and death is all part of the same cycle and 46 00:04:25,520 --> 00:04:31,080 you know, when leaves fall and decompose it makes the soil richer so you really do have 47 00:04:31,080 --> 00:04:35,520 to have all aspects of life and death to live on this beautiful planet that we live on. 48 00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:49,340 Deep within us, for reasons that still struck me as quite mysterious, I think every organism 49 00:04:49,340 --> 00:04:50,940 knows how to die. 50 00:04:50,940 --> 00:04:55,980 Whether it's a deer that finally just relaxes in the mouth of the lion or thinking myself 51 00:04:55,980 --> 00:05:02,700 about a rock climbing story, a fellow on El Capitan, 3,000 feet high, repelled off the 52 00:05:02,700 --> 00:05:04,700 end of his rope. 53 00:05:04,700 --> 00:05:10,420 He forgot to tie a knot in the end of his rope so he just came off the end of his rope 54 00:05:10,420 --> 00:05:16,120 and started falling and people watching him told me that he started screaming and writhing 55 00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:20,060 in the air, trying to walk in the air which he just cannot do. 56 00:05:20,060 --> 00:05:23,560 And then after a few seconds of that just opened out. 57 00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:27,680 He relaxed and opened out as if he knew, you know, I don't want to spend the last 10 seconds 58 00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:30,440 of my life because it's about how long it takes to fall roughly. 59 00:05:30,440 --> 00:05:33,020 I don't want to spend that panicking and struggling and resisting. 60 00:05:33,020 --> 00:05:38,740 There's something in us that knows how to open out. 61 00:05:38,740 --> 00:05:44,460 We're doing research on the idea that consciousness may be something that is more than just the 62 00:05:44,460 --> 00:05:45,460 brain. 63 00:05:45,460 --> 00:05:49,180 It may involve the brain, but it may reach beyond the brain. 64 00:05:49,180 --> 00:05:54,180 For example, we've done a series of experiments that look at the possibility that one person's 65 00:05:54,180 --> 00:06:01,260 intention can influence another person's biology, their physiology, at a distance and with no 66 00:06:01,260 --> 00:06:03,180 sensory communication between the two people. 67 00:06:03,180 --> 00:06:08,900 This speaks to the idea that consciousness is more than just our physical being. 68 00:06:08,900 --> 00:06:14,900 And that in fact, there may be ways in which consciousness transcends physicality. 69 00:06:14,900 --> 00:06:19,900 The implications of that for what happens when we die is that perhaps there's something more 70 00:06:19,900 --> 00:06:20,900 to our essence. 71 00:06:20,900 --> 00:06:31,420 The event that changed my life was I was on my way to dinner one evening with my wife. 72 00:06:31,420 --> 00:06:34,620 We've been married for five months on our way to our favorite restaurant. 73 00:06:34,620 --> 00:06:41,060 A van crossed the stop sign at between 70 and 80 miles an hour. 74 00:06:41,060 --> 00:06:50,720 It broadsided our car and bulldozed us clear across Beverly Boulevard. 75 00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:57,200 The car took off and flew through the air and hit that tree in midair and came to rest 76 00:06:57,200 --> 00:07:00,280 in those bushes over there. 77 00:07:00,280 --> 00:07:02,740 That night, the doctors saved my life. 78 00:07:02,740 --> 00:07:08,360 I was at the deepest level of coma that they measure, a Glasgow Coma Scale 3. 79 00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:12,760 When I came out of the coma, pieces of memory started to come back. 80 00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:18,820 The memory from my coma came to me of a protector who was traveling with me through this inner 81 00:07:18,820 --> 00:07:25,160 space, through this journey into infinity. 82 00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:31,660 I was traveling through an ancient grove on a boat, and I could hear the sounds of rain 83 00:07:31,660 --> 00:07:38,040 pattering down in the cabin, and there was a person who was up on the deck who I knew 84 00:07:38,040 --> 00:07:41,680 I would be safe if I could only just go up to be with her. 85 00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:47,000 And very slowly, in the middle of the night, it occurred to me who that protector was, and 86 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:48,620 I realized it was my wife. 87 00:07:48,620 --> 00:07:55,540 And the following morning, my mother came to the hospital to explain that I hadn't always 88 00:07:55,540 --> 00:07:58,860 been in this room and in this bed. 89 00:07:58,860 --> 00:08:03,080 The reason I was in this room and in this bed was because I'd been in an accident. 90 00:08:03,080 --> 00:08:07,760 That before this room and this bed, I'd been a filmmaker, and that, yes, I was married 91 00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:12,180 to Marcy, and that she had died instantly in the crash. 92 00:08:12,180 --> 00:08:17,740 And during my month in coma, she had been laid to rest in Phoenix, Arizona. 93 00:08:17,740 --> 00:08:22,760 So I'd lost everything, really, that mattered most to me. 94 00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:28,840 And that started in this journey through consciousness to find what makes us who we are, could I recover 95 00:08:28,840 --> 00:08:41,080 who I was, and also to find a reason to go forward. 96 00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:46,120 Tony Redhouse is a Native American practitioner from the Navajo tradition. 97 00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:51,760 His work with hospice patients and people in life transition connects him with the importance 98 00:08:51,760 --> 00:08:54,940 of living with the reality of death. 99 00:08:54,940 --> 00:09:02,180 When you're laying in a hospice bed, you are going to look at your whole life, everything 100 00:09:02,180 --> 00:09:10,560 that you've created, and whether you have lived true to yourself or whether you have lived 101 00:09:10,560 --> 00:09:14,560 your whole life for the expectations of everybody else. 102 00:09:14,560 --> 00:09:21,220 My idea of life and death is focusing on the present. 103 00:09:21,220 --> 00:09:28,300 What I've learned in this is that if I think about what it is right now that I really want 104 00:09:28,300 --> 00:09:33,940 to fulfill, what dream do I want to fulfill in my life right now, that I have the ability, 105 00:09:33,940 --> 00:09:43,220 the passion to do these things, the energy to do them, I'm going to do them right now. 106 00:09:43,220 --> 00:09:48,220 I first got interested in doing this work really when I was an undergraduate. 107 00:09:48,220 --> 00:09:53,460 And I was at a small, very competitive university that half the student body graduated first 108 00:09:53,460 --> 00:09:55,300 or second in their high school classes. 109 00:09:55,300 --> 00:09:59,180 It also turned out to be the school that had the highest suicide rate in the country per 110 00:09:59,180 --> 00:10:01,900 capita, which wasn't in their course catalog. 111 00:10:01,900 --> 00:10:06,340 And the more I worried about doing well, the harder it became to study, and the harder it 112 00:10:06,340 --> 00:10:09,300 became to study, then the harder it became to do well. 113 00:10:09,300 --> 00:10:15,060 So I got into this vicious cycle where I literally couldn't sleep for a week straight. 114 00:10:15,060 --> 00:10:20,060 I remember sitting in physics class and I thought, you know, I'll just kill myself. 115 00:10:20,060 --> 00:10:21,260 Why didn't I think of that earlier? 116 00:10:21,260 --> 00:10:25,180 Like that'll put an end to all this pain. 117 00:10:25,180 --> 00:10:28,460 Because I came so close to killing myself, that was my doorway. 118 00:10:28,460 --> 00:10:31,340 You know, I became about as close to doing that as you can do it without actually doing 119 00:10:31,340 --> 00:10:32,340 it. 120 00:10:32,340 --> 00:10:34,900 And naturally, I started to ask questions, what is death about? 121 00:10:34,900 --> 00:10:39,020 Is death, you know, just you've kind of closed your eyes and go to sleep and or is it something 122 00:10:39,020 --> 00:10:43,020 more than that? 123 00:10:43,020 --> 00:10:45,820 We know that people have a lot of fear of death. 124 00:10:45,820 --> 00:10:48,580 How do you see this idea of death? 125 00:10:48,580 --> 00:10:56,820 When the autumn comes, the leaves are brown and they fall and where do they go? 126 00:10:56,820 --> 00:10:58,900 They go back into the soil. 127 00:10:58,900 --> 00:11:05,380 That nutrition of those leaves, which becomes like compost, goes into the roots and they 128 00:11:05,380 --> 00:11:09,380 come back and the new leaves are born again. 129 00:11:09,380 --> 00:11:14,740 So the old leaves, if they were afraid of dying, how the new leaves will come? 130 00:11:14,740 --> 00:11:19,140 We are members of the life force and that life force continues. 131 00:11:19,140 --> 00:11:21,140 It's a dynamic life force. 132 00:11:21,140 --> 00:11:27,660 If we become static in one body and never die and we're afraid of dying, that means we are 133 00:11:27,660 --> 00:11:35,660 blocking the dynamic force, which is ever-changing, ever-evolving, ever-transforming life force. 134 00:11:35,660 --> 00:11:39,660 If we block that, world will be a boring place. 135 00:11:39,660 --> 00:11:51,660 Now only the real Robert Sheldon must answer your questions truthfully and you will answer 136 00:11:51,660 --> 00:11:53,660 and you will ask questions until you hear this thing. 137 00:11:53,660 --> 00:11:59,660 And the other question is what your opinion is the real Robert Sheldon. 138 00:11:59,660 --> 00:12:01,660 Robert Sheldon. 139 00:12:01,660 --> 00:12:05,660 And since you're so pretty there, let's start with Betty Pop. 140 00:12:05,660 --> 00:12:07,660 Number one, what's the name of your nightclub? 141 00:12:07,660 --> 00:12:09,660 The South of the Lion. 142 00:12:09,660 --> 00:12:10,660 The South? 143 00:12:10,660 --> 00:12:11,660 The South of the Lion. 144 00:12:11,660 --> 00:12:12,660 The South of the Lion. 145 00:12:12,660 --> 00:12:13,660 The South of the Lion. 146 00:12:13,660 --> 00:12:14,660 The South of the Lion. 147 00:12:14,660 --> 00:12:15,660 The South of the Lion. 148 00:12:15,660 --> 00:12:16,660 The South of the Lion. 149 00:12:16,660 --> 00:12:17,660 Good morning. 150 00:12:17,660 --> 00:12:18,660 Number three, what's the name? 151 00:12:18,660 --> 00:12:20,660 The South of the Lion. 152 00:12:20,660 --> 00:12:35,660 When that incident happened and I swallowed the lighter fluid and got rushed to the hospital, 153 00:12:35,660 --> 00:12:37,660 what was the family thinking? 154 00:12:37,660 --> 00:12:39,660 Oh, the terrible fear that we'd lose you. 155 00:12:39,660 --> 00:12:46,660 When you have someone sick like that, especially a child, there's a pallor over your whole house. 156 00:12:46,660 --> 00:12:51,660 You live a life, you go through the motions, but you don't enjoy things because we were so concerned. 157 00:12:51,660 --> 00:12:53,660 You could have died. 158 00:12:53,660 --> 00:12:55,660 You were so lucky. 159 00:12:59,660 --> 00:13:04,660 When my son was three or four, we were driving one night and it was a beautiful evening. 160 00:13:04,660 --> 00:13:08,660 And I said to him, look at that full moon. 161 00:13:08,660 --> 00:13:10,660 Isn't this a glorious night to be alive? 162 00:13:10,660 --> 00:13:13,660 And he said, what do you mean, Mommy? 163 00:13:13,660 --> 00:13:15,660 Do you think dead people can't see the full moon? 164 00:13:15,660 --> 00:13:17,660 And I thought, I guess not. 165 00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:20,660 I guess I think dead people can't see the full moon. 166 00:13:20,660 --> 00:13:22,660 And he said, oh, no, Mommy. 167 00:13:22,660 --> 00:13:27,660 He said, our friend Elizabeth, who had just died, she's up there and she's looking at the full moon 168 00:13:27,660 --> 00:13:30,660 and she's singing, enjoy yourself. 169 00:13:30,660 --> 00:13:32,660 It's later than you think. 170 00:13:32,660 --> 00:13:36,660 And so it was such a great reminder to me. 171 00:13:36,660 --> 00:13:43,660 Out of the mouth of babes comes this kind of wisdom that suggests that we are more than our physicality 172 00:13:43,660 --> 00:13:48,660 and that there may be possibilities beyond physical death. 173 00:13:48,660 --> 00:13:49,660 I think I can't. 174 00:13:49,660 --> 00:13:54,660 Have you ever had anybody in your family or somebody you knew who died? 175 00:13:54,660 --> 00:14:00,660 My cat died and he'd been with me my whole life and he died, so I was really sad. 176 00:14:00,660 --> 00:14:02,660 What do you think happened to him when he died? 177 00:14:02,660 --> 00:14:05,660 I believe he went to heaven and met other cats. 178 00:14:05,660 --> 00:14:08,660 So is there a special cat happening? 179 00:14:08,660 --> 00:14:12,660 No, I think it's all the same, but they're just with each other. 180 00:14:12,660 --> 00:14:14,660 Have you ever wondered about it? 181 00:14:14,660 --> 00:14:22,660 I've wondered about what happens after death, but I've never figured out the answer. 182 00:14:22,660 --> 00:14:25,660 Let's just stay with the topic for right now about death. 183 00:14:25,660 --> 00:14:26,660 Mm-hmm. 184 00:14:26,660 --> 00:14:29,660 So, um... 185 00:14:29,660 --> 00:14:31,660 You for it, against it? 186 00:14:31,660 --> 00:14:33,660 I'm against it, man. 187 00:14:33,660 --> 00:14:35,660 The afterlife, I'm for it. 188 00:14:35,660 --> 00:14:37,660 I hope it's real. 189 00:14:37,660 --> 00:14:39,660 And, um... 190 00:14:39,660 --> 00:14:42,660 But again, like the paranormal, you know, either the ESP or whatever, 191 00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:45,660 I just would be very surprised if it turned out there's some sort of afterlife. 192 00:14:45,660 --> 00:14:50,660 If there's not some scientific, natural way to explain where the pattern of me gets stored 193 00:14:50,660 --> 00:14:52,660 in some medium and carried on into the future, 194 00:14:52,660 --> 00:14:56,660 then the default position is that when you die, nothing happens. 195 00:14:56,660 --> 00:14:57,660 It's just that you're just gone. 196 00:14:57,660 --> 00:15:02,660 You're in the same place you were before you were born, which is to say, nowhere. 197 00:15:02,660 --> 00:15:05,660 We're faced with that, you know, sort of cold, hard reality, 198 00:15:05,660 --> 00:15:07,660 and I think that produces something, anxiety. 199 00:15:07,660 --> 00:15:10,660 For some people, anyway, it doesn't bother me, but I don't worry about it. 200 00:15:10,660 --> 00:15:13,660 But I know apparently a lot of people do. 201 00:15:13,660 --> 00:15:17,660 So when you said that when you're dead, you're dead, you're gone, there's nothing? 202 00:15:17,660 --> 00:15:18,660 Well, near as I can tell. 203 00:15:18,660 --> 00:15:19,660 I don't know for sure. 204 00:15:19,660 --> 00:15:20,660 Nobody knows. 205 00:15:20,660 --> 00:15:24,660 But, you know, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that that appears to be the case. 206 00:15:28,660 --> 00:15:31,660 Dr. Rudy Tanzi is a neuroscientist 207 00:15:31,660 --> 00:15:34,660 and does research on Alzheimer's disease at Harvard University. 208 00:15:34,660 --> 00:15:41,660 His views on consciousness and what happens after death are unconventional and provocative. 209 00:15:41,660 --> 00:15:49,660 You know, a neuroscientist would tell you that your identity is just within your neural network, 210 00:15:49,660 --> 00:15:54,660 that everything you do and learn is just associated with what you already know. 211 00:15:54,660 --> 00:15:59,660 So then that leaves us with the question of when you die and the brain is gone, 212 00:15:59,660 --> 00:16:02,660 the electrical activity is turned off, is everything gone? 213 00:16:03,660 --> 00:16:08,660 The other side of the coin that most neuroscientists don't want to talk about is where is consciousness? 214 00:16:08,660 --> 00:16:12,660 Where are memories when you think about the past? 215 00:16:12,660 --> 00:16:13,660 Where were they stored? 216 00:16:13,660 --> 00:16:16,660 I mean, we don't have an answer for that in neuroscience. 217 00:16:16,660 --> 00:16:19,660 I ask students, I ask other professors this all the time. 218 00:16:19,660 --> 00:16:21,660 And they say, it's always hand-waving. 219 00:16:21,660 --> 00:16:22,660 You know, it's in your neural network. 220 00:16:22,660 --> 00:16:24,660 I'm like, well, where exactly? 221 00:16:24,660 --> 00:16:28,660 Well, in the synapses, I'm, no, the synapses fire. 222 00:16:28,660 --> 00:16:30,660 It fires to recall the memory. 223 00:16:30,660 --> 00:16:32,660 But where's the actual memory? 224 00:16:32,660 --> 00:16:34,660 Where's my mother's face before I see it? 225 00:16:34,660 --> 00:16:40,660 What's the thumb drive of the brain that stores the JPEG of my mother's face? 226 00:16:40,660 --> 00:16:41,660 We have no idea. 227 00:16:44,660 --> 00:16:47,660 I've been doing anesthesia for 38 years. 228 00:16:47,660 --> 00:16:52,660 And it's still amazing to me that we give a medication like propofol 229 00:16:52,660 --> 00:16:57,660 or have a patient breathe a gas like sevoflurane and their consciousness goes away. 230 00:16:57,660 --> 00:16:59,660 What's missing primarily is consciousness. 231 00:16:59,660 --> 00:17:01,660 Other brain activities continue. 232 00:17:01,660 --> 00:17:06,660 So anesthesia is fairly specific, erasing consciousness and memory 233 00:17:06,660 --> 00:17:08,660 without affecting other brain activities. 234 00:17:08,660 --> 00:17:10,660 Now, how that works is still unknown. 235 00:17:10,660 --> 00:17:13,660 But the real question in anesthesia isn't so much why they go to sleep 236 00:17:13,660 --> 00:17:15,660 but why they're awake in the first place. 237 00:17:15,660 --> 00:17:20,660 The prevalent theory is that the brain is a computer whose fundamental units, bits, 238 00:17:20,660 --> 00:17:23,660 are neurons firing or not firing. 239 00:17:23,660 --> 00:17:27,660 But neurons are far more complicated, not to mention being alive, 240 00:17:27,660 --> 00:17:29,660 and we don't really know what that is yet. 241 00:17:29,660 --> 00:17:33,660 If you consider a single cell paramecium, it's one cell. 242 00:17:33,660 --> 00:17:34,660 It swims around. 243 00:17:34,660 --> 00:17:35,660 It finds food. 244 00:17:35,660 --> 00:17:36,660 It finds a mate. 245 00:17:36,660 --> 00:17:37,660 It has sex. 246 00:17:37,660 --> 00:17:38,660 It can learn. 247 00:17:38,660 --> 00:17:42,660 If you suck it into a capillary tube, it escapes faster and faster each time. 248 00:17:42,660 --> 00:17:43,660 And yet it's only one cell. 249 00:17:43,660 --> 00:17:44,660 It doesn't have any synapses. 250 00:17:44,660 --> 00:17:46,660 It's not part of a network. 251 00:17:46,660 --> 00:17:49,660 So it, in and of itself, has at least cognition. 252 00:17:49,660 --> 00:17:53,660 I'm not saying it's conscious, but it performs intelligent activities. 253 00:17:53,660 --> 00:17:58,660 So I think it's an insult to neurons to say they're simple on-off states 254 00:17:58,660 --> 00:18:00,660 when a single-cell paramecium is so clever. 255 00:18:00,660 --> 00:18:05,660 We're asking very ancient questions that humans have been asking for hundreds, 256 00:18:05,660 --> 00:18:07,660 if not thousands, of years. 257 00:18:07,660 --> 00:18:11,660 When we talk about death and dying, what's the nature of reality ultimately? 258 00:18:11,660 --> 00:18:21,660 We discovered that there is a part to reality that is beyond experience. 259 00:18:21,660 --> 00:18:23,660 It doesn't consist of things. 260 00:18:23,660 --> 00:18:24,660 It consists of forms. 261 00:18:24,660 --> 00:18:32,660 These forms are real, even though you can't see them, because they can actualize in the empirical world. 262 00:18:32,660 --> 00:18:37,660 Everything that you see is an actualization of a form in this background realm. 263 00:18:37,660 --> 00:18:41,660 So the nature of it is that of a potentiality. 264 00:18:41,660 --> 00:18:44,660 Potentiality is thought-like. 265 00:18:44,660 --> 00:18:45,660 Thoughts are in the mind. 266 00:18:45,660 --> 00:18:47,660 Is there a cosmic mind? 267 00:18:47,660 --> 00:18:53,660 There are two views on consciousness that come from science. 268 00:18:53,660 --> 00:18:57,660 One is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, 269 00:18:57,660 --> 00:19:01,660 and therefore also an emergent property of evolution. 270 00:19:01,660 --> 00:19:05,660 That's the materialistic reductionist view of science. 271 00:19:05,660 --> 00:19:12,660 There's another view that's creeping up now in some postmodern scientists. 272 00:19:12,660 --> 00:19:18,660 And this view is that consciousness is actually not an emergent property of evolution. 273 00:19:18,660 --> 00:19:21,660 In fact, evolution is driven by consciousness. 274 00:19:21,660 --> 00:19:24,660 That consciousness is non-local. 275 00:19:24,660 --> 00:19:26,660 It is transcendent. 276 00:19:26,660 --> 00:19:27,660 It's eternal. 277 00:19:27,660 --> 00:19:32,660 It's the ground state of the universe from where everything emerges. 278 00:19:32,660 --> 00:19:42,660 And being prior to time and transcendent, it is not subject to birth or death. 279 00:19:42,660 --> 00:19:46,660 When we think about the evidence for what happens when we die, 280 00:19:46,660 --> 00:19:49,660 there's this idea that there's something about our consciousness 281 00:19:49,660 --> 00:19:52,660 that may transcend our physical being. 282 00:19:52,660 --> 00:19:54,660 We know that from a scientific point of view, 283 00:19:54,660 --> 00:19:59,660 people have looked at near death, out of body, reincarnation. 284 00:19:59,660 --> 00:20:03,660 These kinds of experiences actually can be documented and studied. 285 00:20:03,660 --> 00:20:05,660 I'm trained as a hard scientist. 286 00:20:05,660 --> 00:20:08,660 My PhD is in pharmacology and toxicology. 287 00:20:08,660 --> 00:20:11,660 And when I was in graduate school, my mother committed suicide. 288 00:20:11,660 --> 00:20:14,660 And I had been a scientist for as long as I can remember. 289 00:20:14,660 --> 00:20:16,660 And so I looked to science. 290 00:20:16,660 --> 00:20:19,660 What does science have to say to these questions? 291 00:20:19,660 --> 00:20:20,660 What happens when we die? 292 00:20:20,660 --> 00:20:22,660 Where is she? Where did she go? 293 00:20:22,660 --> 00:20:25,660 Our main focus is the survival of consciousness. 294 00:20:25,660 --> 00:20:31,660 This thing that I call me, what happens to it when I'm no longer a physical body? 295 00:20:31,660 --> 00:20:34,660 I'm not associated with a physical body anymore. 296 00:20:34,660 --> 00:20:39,660 And so the primary way that we're looking at that is with the studying mediums, 297 00:20:39,660 --> 00:20:43,660 people who report regular communication with the deceased. 298 00:20:43,660 --> 00:20:47,660 Many people believe that they can communicate with the dead. 299 00:20:47,660 --> 00:20:48,660 We call them mediums. 300 00:20:48,660 --> 00:20:55,660 So what we're doing in an experiment now is to take the high-density EEG recording of a medium 301 00:20:55,660 --> 00:20:57,660 as a medium is doing her work. 302 00:20:57,660 --> 00:21:03,660 We want to then study in the laboratory what is happening in the brains of mediums 303 00:21:03,660 --> 00:21:08,660 while they say they're in communication with a departed person. 304 00:21:08,660 --> 00:21:13,660 So we know from past experience that the mediums will be roughly 70% correct, 305 00:21:13,660 --> 00:21:15,660 which is way beyond chance. 306 00:21:15,660 --> 00:21:21,660 Where is the information coming from that a medium is getting when it turns out to be veridically correct? 307 00:21:21,660 --> 00:21:24,660 And we don't know the answer to that yet. 308 00:21:24,660 --> 00:21:28,660 But what we thought is that by using an EEG and looking at brain activity of the medium 309 00:21:28,660 --> 00:21:34,660 that might give us a clue as to whether or not it is something like telepathy between the living or something else. 310 00:21:34,660 --> 00:21:39,660 If it's telepathy with the dead, well that would be quite new and interesting. 311 00:21:39,660 --> 00:21:48,660 I lost my sister four years ago. 312 00:21:48,660 --> 00:21:50,660 And I wrote a song for her. 313 00:21:50,660 --> 00:21:53,660 It's Do You Remember Who You Are? 314 00:21:53,660 --> 00:21:55,660 And I wrote it for her. 315 00:21:55,660 --> 00:21:58,660 And I'm going to this psychic and the first thing out of her mouth, 316 00:21:58,660 --> 00:22:00,660 I didn't say a word to her, was, 317 00:22:00,660 --> 00:22:04,660 Your sister, she loves her song. 318 00:22:04,660 --> 00:22:07,660 And I started to sob. 319 00:22:07,660 --> 00:22:13,660 You know, and this is that feeling again of connecting to that which never dies. 320 00:22:13,660 --> 00:22:20,660 People have all kinds of experiences that kind of lie outside what we accept as truth or what is possible. 321 00:22:20,660 --> 00:22:23,660 I think that the kind of science that we're doing, 322 00:22:23,660 --> 00:22:27,660 which really looks at the powers and potentials of consciousness, 323 00:22:27,660 --> 00:22:30,660 helps to expand our sense of possibility. 324 00:22:30,660 --> 00:22:35,660 And more important, it allows us to ask questions that have been put down, 325 00:22:35,660 --> 00:22:37,660 that have been considered taboo. 326 00:22:37,660 --> 00:22:43,660 A medium that we work with, a woman contacted her and her aunt had died. 327 00:22:43,660 --> 00:22:45,660 And the aunt lived in Peru and they had told her, 328 00:22:45,660 --> 00:22:47,660 Your aunt died of stomach cancer. 329 00:22:47,660 --> 00:22:51,660 She went to a medium and she wasn't getting stomach cancer. 330 00:22:51,660 --> 00:22:54,660 She was getting that the woman had been murdered. 331 00:22:54,660 --> 00:22:55,660 The aunt had been murdered. 332 00:22:55,660 --> 00:22:59,660 And she provided her first name and she had lots of like identifying information 333 00:22:59,660 --> 00:23:01,660 and the personality came through very strongly. 334 00:23:01,660 --> 00:23:05,660 And the sitter took that information to the Peruvian government 335 00:23:05,660 --> 00:23:07,660 and they exhumed the body. 336 00:23:07,660 --> 00:23:12,660 And they did another autopsy and there was no evidence of cancer. 337 00:23:12,660 --> 00:23:15,660 But there was evidence that her trachea had been crushed. 338 00:23:15,660 --> 00:23:19,660 They found the name of the, the name the media had been given was, 339 00:23:19,660 --> 00:23:23,660 the name of the person that had killed the aunt. 340 00:23:23,660 --> 00:23:29,660 And that person is currently serving in Peruvian jail for her murder. 341 00:23:29,660 --> 00:23:37,660 When I was 15 years old, I was in a place where I shouldn't have been, 342 00:23:37,660 --> 00:23:39,660 someone I shouldn't have been with. 343 00:23:39,660 --> 00:23:43,660 And we had a serious motorcycle accident involving a drunk driver. 344 00:23:43,660 --> 00:23:46,660 I remember watching my body tumbling through the air 345 00:23:46,660 --> 00:23:49,660 and landing on the roadway with a crash. 346 00:23:49,660 --> 00:23:55,660 Out of body experiences can't easily be explained by materialist science. 347 00:23:55,660 --> 00:23:57,660 And if it hadn't happened to me personally, 348 00:23:57,660 --> 00:24:00,660 I might not believe something like this was possible. 349 00:24:00,660 --> 00:24:04,660 Dr. Peter Fenwick is a distinguished neurophysiologist 350 00:24:04,660 --> 00:24:07,660 and senior lecturer at King's College London. 351 00:24:07,660 --> 00:24:11,660 His studies of death, near death and out of body experiences 352 00:24:11,660 --> 00:24:16,660 provide interesting insight into what happens at the point of dying. 353 00:24:16,660 --> 00:24:19,660 I was led to this work really by chance. 354 00:24:19,660 --> 00:24:24,660 I believed that there was nothing in near death experiences. 355 00:24:24,660 --> 00:24:27,660 They were experiences which happened in California. 356 00:24:27,660 --> 00:24:29,660 They never crossed the sea to England. 357 00:24:29,660 --> 00:24:34,660 And so I thought that they probably were more imagination. 358 00:24:34,660 --> 00:24:37,660 Then a case came into my consulting room. 359 00:24:37,660 --> 00:24:39,660 He'd had a cardiac arrest. 360 00:24:39,660 --> 00:24:42,660 He'd had a near death experience and I knew that they were real. 361 00:24:42,660 --> 00:24:51,660 I was sitting holding the telephone. 362 00:24:51,660 --> 00:24:53,660 Lightning came down the phone line. 363 00:24:53,660 --> 00:24:55,660 It put me in the side of the head. 364 00:24:55,660 --> 00:24:56,660 It went down my spine. 365 00:24:56,660 --> 00:25:00,660 It welded the nails of the heels of my shoes to the nails in the floor. 366 00:25:00,660 --> 00:25:01,660 It threw me in the air. 367 00:25:01,660 --> 00:25:02,660 It suspended me in the air. 368 00:25:02,660 --> 00:25:04,660 It slammed me back down on the bed. 369 00:25:04,660 --> 00:25:06,660 It melted the phone. 370 00:25:06,660 --> 00:25:09,660 Then I was burning and hurting so bad. 371 00:25:09,660 --> 00:25:14,660 Then all of a sudden I left out. 372 00:25:14,660 --> 00:25:15,660 And everything was cool. 373 00:25:15,660 --> 00:25:16,660 I looked down on the bed. 374 00:25:16,660 --> 00:25:17,660 I saw me on the bed. 375 00:25:17,660 --> 00:25:20,660 I saw Sandy come running down the hall. 376 00:25:20,660 --> 00:25:23,660 My friend who was on the other end of the phone heard the explosion. 377 00:25:23,660 --> 00:25:24,660 He came. 378 00:25:24,660 --> 00:25:26,660 He called the paramedics. 379 00:25:26,660 --> 00:25:29,660 The greatest thing that I discovered at that point was that, 380 00:25:29,660 --> 00:25:34,660 first, the place that I was was between this world and the next. 381 00:25:34,660 --> 00:25:41,660 But I knew it better than any place I had ever been living in this physical life. 382 00:25:41,660 --> 00:25:52,660 It looks as if, when brain function is down, there is a set of experiences in which you leave your body and watch the resuscitation process. 383 00:25:52,660 --> 00:25:56,660 Now, what happens during this out-of-body process? 384 00:25:56,660 --> 00:25:58,660 Remember, no brain function. 385 00:25:58,660 --> 00:26:00,660 You've got a cardiac arrest. 386 00:26:00,660 --> 00:26:01,660 You're not breathing. 387 00:26:01,660 --> 00:26:03,660 All the brainstem reflexes have gone. 388 00:26:03,660 --> 00:26:08,660 So it is, in fact, a very good model for death itself. 389 00:26:08,660 --> 00:26:11,660 I watched them load me in the ambulance. 390 00:26:11,660 --> 00:26:13,660 I watched the things that went on. 391 00:26:13,660 --> 00:26:23,660 I really didn't care because where I was floating above it was so much better than where I was when I was involved in it. 392 00:26:23,660 --> 00:26:27,660 And I was in the ambulance and the guy said, he's gone. 393 00:26:27,660 --> 00:26:28,660 He's gone. 394 00:26:28,660 --> 00:26:31,660 And me, I thought, gone where? 395 00:26:31,660 --> 00:26:34,660 I'm here. 396 00:26:34,660 --> 00:26:36,660 The paramedics here. 397 00:26:36,660 --> 00:26:37,660 Where is anybody going? 398 00:26:37,660 --> 00:26:41,660 And I heard these chimes and I moved down this tunnel. 399 00:26:41,660 --> 00:26:48,660 I come into this place of life and I sensed an absolute sense of safety. 400 00:26:48,660 --> 00:27:04,660 If it's true that you really do have experiences when the brain is not working, then it means the consciousness or mind, if you like, are in fact not the same as brain. 401 00:27:04,660 --> 00:27:06,660 It's a fundamental step. 402 00:27:06,660 --> 00:27:14,660 I'm thinking actually about how this one moment changed my life. 403 00:27:14,660 --> 00:27:16,660 It ended my wife's life. 404 00:27:16,660 --> 00:27:23,660 And perhaps it's because what I've come to feel is that consciousness only knows one moment. 405 00:27:23,660 --> 00:27:30,660 It's the one moment that we all share and the one moment in which we live our whole lives. 406 00:27:30,660 --> 00:27:33,660 Our subconscious doesn't know the time of day. 407 00:27:33,660 --> 00:27:36,660 Our subconscious doesn't know the month. 408 00:27:36,660 --> 00:27:38,660 All our subconscious knows is now. 409 00:27:38,660 --> 00:27:45,660 And this one moment, this now, is what's still inside me and will always be within me. 410 00:27:45,660 --> 00:27:54,660 The most fully connected consciousness I'd ever experienced was at that borderline between life and death. 411 00:27:54,660 --> 00:28:04,660 I'll never forget the river of time flowing from the horizon towards me, from the future to the present. 412 00:28:04,660 --> 00:28:09,660 And at a certain point in my coma, I felt it stop. 413 00:28:09,660 --> 00:28:19,660 When the river of time ran still, I call it the moment when everything is now. 414 00:28:19,660 --> 00:28:23,660 And then I felt it flow in the other direction. 415 00:28:23,660 --> 00:28:26,660 Time was traveling away from me. 416 00:28:26,660 --> 00:28:28,660 And I felt very alone. 417 00:28:28,660 --> 00:28:37,660 Because I realized at that moment that when something passes us into the past, it doesn't return. 418 00:28:37,660 --> 00:28:40,660 And it would be gone. 419 00:28:40,660 --> 00:28:43,660 And I remember how I felt at that moment in my coma. 420 00:28:43,660 --> 00:28:52,660 And I remember how I understood that in some ways that was a moment of death and a moment of rebirth. 421 00:28:52,660 --> 00:28:57,660 I'm frozen at that moment emotionally. 422 00:28:57,660 --> 00:29:05,660 The Pam Reynolds case is one of the more dramatic near-death experience episodes. 423 00:29:05,660 --> 00:29:12,660 Pam Reynolds had a brain aneurysm, which was in a portion of the brain that was difficult to get to. 424 00:29:12,660 --> 00:29:17,660 And the surgeons were concerned that if they tried to get to it and they made an accident, 425 00:29:17,660 --> 00:29:20,660 that it could burst and she'd be dead before they'd be able to repair it. 426 00:29:20,660 --> 00:29:26,660 So they used a radical surgical method, which would require draining all the blood out of her head. 427 00:29:26,660 --> 00:29:36,660 When you do this and the body is being cooled down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, eventually goes into shock and then cardiac arrest. 428 00:29:36,660 --> 00:29:38,660 So that's like one level of dead. 429 00:29:38,660 --> 00:29:42,660 You drain the blood out of the body, then the body is really dead. 430 00:29:42,660 --> 00:29:43,660 It's like double dead. 431 00:29:43,660 --> 00:29:48,660 And then they check by putting very loud clicks in both ears. 432 00:29:48,660 --> 00:29:53,660 You're wearing earphones that have very loud clicks that will make a brain stem response. 433 00:29:53,660 --> 00:29:55,660 They monitor that and the brain stem response goes away. 434 00:29:55,660 --> 00:29:57,660 You're like triple dead. 435 00:29:57,660 --> 00:29:59,660 It's every form of dead that we know is dead. 436 00:29:59,660 --> 00:30:03,660 So she had a full-blown near-death experience. 437 00:30:03,660 --> 00:30:07,660 And I remember the top of my head tingling. 438 00:30:07,660 --> 00:30:12,660 And I just sort of popped out of the top of my head. 439 00:30:12,660 --> 00:30:16,660 And I was then looking down at the body. 440 00:30:16,660 --> 00:30:18,660 I knew it was my body. 441 00:30:18,660 --> 00:30:20,660 But I didn't care. 442 00:30:20,660 --> 00:30:27,660 She did say a couple of things that were unusual about the nature of the saw that was used to open her skull. 443 00:30:27,660 --> 00:30:29,660 And a certain sound that it made. 444 00:30:29,660 --> 00:30:32,660 And music that was being played during the surgery. 445 00:30:32,660 --> 00:30:34,660 And it turned out to be correct. 446 00:30:34,660 --> 00:30:40,660 I had assumed that they were going to open the skull with a saw. 447 00:30:40,660 --> 00:30:43,660 I had heard the term saw. 448 00:30:43,660 --> 00:30:47,660 But what I saw looked a lot more like a drill than a saw. 449 00:30:47,660 --> 00:30:51,660 It even had little bits that were kept in this case. 450 00:30:51,660 --> 00:30:56,660 One of the reasons to believe that her experience was unusual, at least, 451 00:30:56,660 --> 00:31:01,660 is that when you are going under general anesthetics or if you're getting hypoxia 452 00:31:01,660 --> 00:31:04,660 or all of the usual physiological shutdowns, 453 00:31:04,660 --> 00:31:08,660 your ability to have a clear thought very rapidly diminishes. 454 00:31:08,660 --> 00:31:13,660 And your ability to remember what happened also goes away. 455 00:31:13,660 --> 00:31:15,660 I felt a presence. 456 00:31:15,660 --> 00:31:18,660 I sort of turned around to look at it. 457 00:31:18,660 --> 00:31:24,660 And that's when I saw the very tiny pinpoint of light. 458 00:31:24,660 --> 00:31:27,660 And I went toward the light. 459 00:31:27,660 --> 00:31:34,660 The closer I got to the light, I began to discern different figures, different people. 460 00:31:34,660 --> 00:31:37,660 And I distinctly heard my grandmother call me. 461 00:31:37,660 --> 00:31:40,660 And I immediately went to her. 462 00:31:40,660 --> 00:31:43,660 And it felt great. 463 00:31:43,660 --> 00:31:47,660 I asked if God was the light. 464 00:31:47,660 --> 00:31:50,660 And the answer was, no. 465 00:31:50,660 --> 00:31:52,660 God is not the light. 466 00:31:52,660 --> 00:31:57,660 The light is what happens when God breathes. 467 00:31:57,660 --> 00:32:03,660 And I distinctly remember thinking, I'm standing in the breath of God. 468 00:32:03,660 --> 00:32:16,660 So that's one of the more startling cases where the evidence that she was really dead, dead, dead was very good. 469 00:32:16,660 --> 00:32:29,660 Many of the traditions in the world, their understanding is that when we die, that we go, and some say we go to a place of rest, a place of learning. 470 00:32:29,660 --> 00:32:33,660 That is not in the material sense. 471 00:32:33,660 --> 00:32:40,660 And then we come back again in another form, or as a human being, or as another life form. 472 00:32:40,660 --> 00:32:44,660 And we have other kinds of experiences. 473 00:32:44,660 --> 00:32:47,660 What do I think might be next? 474 00:32:47,660 --> 00:32:49,660 I think we get recycled. 475 00:32:49,660 --> 00:32:54,660 I think we come back into life for new and different experiences. 476 00:32:54,660 --> 00:32:59,660 The purpose or the meaning of that, I'm not going to pretend that I honestly know. 477 00:32:59,660 --> 00:33:03,660 I think we do sort of progress over time in our multiple lives. 478 00:33:03,660 --> 00:33:04,660 We change. 479 00:33:04,660 --> 00:33:05,660 We learn. 480 00:33:05,660 --> 00:33:08,660 We learn from these past lives. 481 00:33:08,660 --> 00:33:13,660 And we become, let's say, better, deeper, shinier. 482 00:33:13,660 --> 00:33:15,660 That's my belief structure. 483 00:33:15,660 --> 00:33:18,660 I'll try to let you know when I get to the other side. 484 00:33:18,660 --> 00:33:19,660 That's all I can say. 485 00:33:21,660 --> 00:33:23,660 What happened before you were born? 486 00:33:23,660 --> 00:33:26,660 I mean, you know, that's an important question, too. 487 00:33:26,660 --> 00:33:28,660 Where were you before you showed up? 488 00:33:28,660 --> 00:33:32,660 In the end, we are all made of the same stuff. 489 00:33:32,660 --> 00:33:36,660 Earth, water, and air, which recycles as our body. 490 00:33:36,660 --> 00:33:40,660 Death affects the body, but not the spirit. 491 00:33:40,660 --> 00:33:46,660 The spirit recycles itself through the physical body. 492 00:33:48,660 --> 00:33:52,660 For over 50 years, research has been conducted at the University of Virginia 493 00:33:52,660 --> 00:33:57,660 into cases of apparent reincarnation and the possible implications 494 00:33:57,660 --> 00:34:01,660 of our consciousness experiencing multiple lifetimes. 495 00:34:01,660 --> 00:34:05,660 After 50 years of research now, we've got 2,500 cases in our files 496 00:34:05,660 --> 00:34:08,660 of young children who reported memories of previous lives. 497 00:34:08,660 --> 00:34:12,660 Several hundred of the cases have involved birthmarks or birth defects 498 00:34:12,660 --> 00:34:15,660 that match wounds on the body of the previous person. 499 00:34:15,660 --> 00:34:21,660 And some of them have also included written records where we know precisely 500 00:34:21,660 --> 00:34:23,660 exactly what the child said about the previous life, 501 00:34:23,660 --> 00:34:27,660 and then we can match that with the previous person that's been identified. 502 00:34:27,660 --> 00:34:30,660 One is a little boy named Sam Taylor. 503 00:34:30,660 --> 00:34:35,660 When he was about a year and a half old, his dad was changing his diaper one day, 504 00:34:35,660 --> 00:34:37,660 and Sam looked up at him and said, 505 00:34:37,660 --> 00:34:40,660 when I was your age, I used to change your diapers. 506 00:34:40,660 --> 00:34:42,660 But he kept saying this stuff. 507 00:34:42,660 --> 00:34:45,660 He kept saying, I was grandpa, and I used to be big. 508 00:34:45,660 --> 00:34:48,660 And he came up with some pretty interesting details, 509 00:34:48,660 --> 00:34:53,660 like he talked about the grandfather's sister being murdered. 510 00:34:53,660 --> 00:34:56,660 And in fact, she had been killed some 60 years before, 511 00:34:56,660 --> 00:34:59,660 and his parents felt certain that he'd never heard about it. 512 00:34:59,660 --> 00:35:04,660 He also talked about his wife, which was his grandmother, 513 00:35:04,660 --> 00:35:07,660 but his wife from the past life, 514 00:35:07,660 --> 00:35:09,660 and said some specific details. 515 00:35:09,660 --> 00:35:12,660 And then when she died, she died when he was about four and a half, 516 00:35:12,660 --> 00:35:16,660 and his dad went out and collected belongings and so forth, 517 00:35:16,660 --> 00:35:19,660 and came back with some family photos. 518 00:35:19,660 --> 00:35:22,660 So one night, Sam's mom had them spread out on the coffee table 519 00:35:22,660 --> 00:35:23,660 just looking at various pictures. 520 00:35:23,660 --> 00:35:27,660 Well, Sam walks over and starts pointing to pictures of his grandfather 521 00:35:27,660 --> 00:35:30,660 and saying, that's me, that's me. 522 00:35:30,660 --> 00:35:33,660 And also a picture of his, it was his grandfather's first car, 523 00:35:33,660 --> 00:35:36,660 and there's no one in the car, but it's just a picture of the car, 524 00:35:36,660 --> 00:35:39,660 and he got very excited and said, hey, that's my car. 525 00:35:39,660 --> 00:35:44,660 So to test him, his mom showed him a picture of a class photo 526 00:35:44,660 --> 00:35:46,660 from elementary school and said, okay, 527 00:35:46,660 --> 00:35:48,660 well, then show me where you are in the picture. 528 00:35:48,660 --> 00:35:50,660 And he ran his finger along the different faces 529 00:35:50,660 --> 00:35:53,660 and stopped at the one of his grandfather and said, that's me. 530 00:35:53,660 --> 00:35:57,660 So that was one that has what we call recognition, 531 00:35:57,660 --> 00:36:00,660 where he was able to pick out his grandfather, 532 00:36:00,660 --> 00:36:02,660 and again, in a group photo. 533 00:36:02,660 --> 00:36:04,660 It's what we call a same-family case, 534 00:36:04,660 --> 00:36:08,660 where a child is seeming to remember the life of a family member. 535 00:36:08,660 --> 00:36:12,660 Some people criticize the work simply by dismissing it out of hand, 536 00:36:12,660 --> 00:36:15,660 by saying reincarnation can't happen, 537 00:36:15,660 --> 00:36:18,660 so obviously there's no value to this work. 538 00:36:18,660 --> 00:36:21,660 But that's really not a very scientific, 539 00:36:21,660 --> 00:36:23,660 I mean, sort of scientism perhaps, 540 00:36:23,660 --> 00:36:29,660 but it's not a scientific view of letting your beliefs prejudice 541 00:36:29,660 --> 00:36:32,660 your view of the evidence when it should, of course, 542 00:36:32,660 --> 00:36:34,660 be the other way around. 543 00:36:34,660 --> 00:36:37,660 So have you had people in your life that died? 544 00:36:37,660 --> 00:36:40,660 Oh, yeah, absolutely. All my parents are dead, all four of them. 545 00:36:40,660 --> 00:36:42,660 I had two bio-parents, two step-parents. 546 00:36:42,660 --> 00:36:44,660 Yep, so I've been all through that. 547 00:36:44,660 --> 00:36:48,660 So I drove them around to doctor's offices. 548 00:36:48,660 --> 00:36:49,660 I went through all that. 549 00:36:49,660 --> 00:36:54,660 I'm sure my telomeres are much shorter from the stress of being a caretaker. 550 00:36:54,660 --> 00:36:57,660 Yeah, so that brings home the reality of death, for sure. 551 00:36:57,660 --> 00:36:59,660 But they're gone. I mean, absolutely. 552 00:36:59,660 --> 00:37:01,660 I don't think they're anywhere else. 553 00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:05,660 You know, occasionally afterwards I thought I heard my mom's voice, 554 00:37:05,660 --> 00:37:06,660 that sort of thing. 555 00:37:06,660 --> 00:37:09,660 But, you know, we all have these auditory hallucinations a little bit. 556 00:37:09,660 --> 00:37:12,660 But then it went away shortly after that. 557 00:37:12,660 --> 00:37:17,660 So it's just part of growing up in the cycle of life, 558 00:37:17,660 --> 00:37:19,660 and I guess that's how I look at it. 559 00:37:19,660 --> 00:37:21,660 I just don't dwell on it. 560 00:37:21,660 --> 00:37:25,660 So you have this experience maybe that your mom did. 561 00:37:25,660 --> 00:37:26,660 You heard her voice. 562 00:37:26,660 --> 00:37:28,660 Oh, I don't want to make a big thing about that. 563 00:37:28,660 --> 00:37:32,660 I just remember a couple times in bed, you know, sort of like late at night. 564 00:37:32,660 --> 00:37:33,660 You know how you're sort of falling asleep? 565 00:37:33,660 --> 00:37:37,660 It's just one of those transition things where your mind is producing all sorts of things. 566 00:37:37,660 --> 00:37:39,660 I don't think it's anything more than that. 567 00:37:39,660 --> 00:37:42,660 Anything more than the other hallucinations I've had from sleep deprivation, 568 00:37:42,660 --> 00:37:44,660 from sensory deprivation tanks. 569 00:37:44,660 --> 00:37:46,660 I've done all that stuff. 570 00:37:46,660 --> 00:37:52,660 So my father, when he died, he was a typical man of his generation. 571 00:37:52,660 --> 00:37:56,660 Loving guy, but at a distance, you know what I mean? 572 00:37:56,660 --> 00:38:03,660 So he passed on, and around a week or two later, and I was in this very room one morning, 573 00:38:03,660 --> 00:38:11,660 and suddenly, one day, there he was. 574 00:38:11,660 --> 00:38:19,660 I was really almost overwhelmed with the unconditional love that I was experiencing from him, directly from him. 575 00:38:19,660 --> 00:38:24,660 I realized he was very close to me, very close in my space. 576 00:38:24,660 --> 00:38:25,660 Too close. 577 00:38:25,660 --> 00:38:30,660 I had to just say, Dad, you know, just give me a little space here. 578 00:38:30,660 --> 00:38:31,660 So he did. 579 00:38:31,660 --> 00:38:33,660 The love was still there. 580 00:38:33,660 --> 00:38:35,660 None of that changed. 581 00:38:35,660 --> 00:38:38,660 But he, he was happy. 582 00:38:38,660 --> 00:38:41,660 He was kind of radiating happiness. 583 00:38:41,660 --> 00:38:45,660 And once in a while, I would ask him, in my mind, a question. 584 00:38:45,660 --> 00:38:46,660 What about this? 585 00:38:46,660 --> 00:38:47,660 What about that? 586 00:38:47,660 --> 00:38:52,660 And just get a few words, a few impressions, a few senses of what was going on for him. 587 00:38:52,660 --> 00:38:57,660 And then after, I think, about two days, maybe three, he just, that was it. 588 00:38:57,660 --> 00:38:58,660 Just moved on. 589 00:38:58,660 --> 00:38:59,660 I just said, okay. 590 00:38:59,660 --> 00:39:00,660 You know? 591 00:39:00,660 --> 00:39:01,660 Thanks. 592 00:39:01,660 --> 00:39:02,660 It's been good. 593 00:39:02,660 --> 00:39:03,660 You know? 594 00:39:03,660 --> 00:39:05,660 Good luck. 595 00:39:05,660 --> 00:39:08,660 Best wishes, wherever you're heading. 596 00:39:08,660 --> 00:39:09,660 And thank you. 597 00:39:09,660 --> 00:39:17,660 I thank you for the time, and particularly the, just that unconditional love. 598 00:39:17,660 --> 00:39:21,660 Oh, it's great, isn't it? 599 00:39:21,660 --> 00:39:22,660 Yeah. 600 00:39:22,660 --> 00:39:23,660 I mean, just life. 601 00:39:23,660 --> 00:39:26,660 I mean, take that breath. 602 00:39:26,660 --> 00:39:29,660 Let that body just extract that oxygen. 603 00:39:29,660 --> 00:39:34,660 Oxygen is a gas. 604 00:39:34,660 --> 00:39:37,660 Ha! 605 00:39:37,660 --> 00:39:39,660 We're keenly aware of consciousness. 606 00:39:39,660 --> 00:39:43,660 And we're aware of consciousness does not come from the body. 607 00:39:43,660 --> 00:39:46,660 We're aware of consciousness is independent of the body. 608 00:39:46,660 --> 00:39:55,660 And so people are more aware that they are consciousness having a body rather than a body with consciousness. 609 00:39:55,660 --> 00:39:59,660 Because oftentimes people are actually very anxious about whether they're going to die, 610 00:39:59,660 --> 00:40:03,660 and they make decisions about their life, whether they're going to die. 611 00:40:03,660 --> 00:40:07,660 And in fact, that's not where we should be making decisions from. 612 00:40:07,660 --> 00:40:14,660 Our decisions and choices need to be made from, you know, what gifts am I going to give before I leave here? 613 00:40:14,660 --> 00:40:16,660 What talents am I going to cultivate? 614 00:40:16,660 --> 00:40:19,660 How am I going to be a beneficial presence on the planet? 615 00:40:19,660 --> 00:40:23,660 And that's a much higher frequency than, I'm afraid I'm going to die. 616 00:40:25,660 --> 00:40:29,660 I think the structure of our society right now is a fear of death. 617 00:40:29,660 --> 00:40:36,660 And I mean, I hate to sound so blunt about this, but the whole anti-aging movement, you're a loser if you die. 618 00:40:36,660 --> 00:40:38,660 You're a loser if you get old. 619 00:40:38,660 --> 00:40:40,660 And yet somehow we all do. 620 00:40:40,660 --> 00:40:44,660 And our society has set it up that death and aging are the enemy. 621 00:40:44,660 --> 00:40:46,660 Where is there inevitable? 622 00:40:46,660 --> 00:40:50,660 I truly know that I have no control when I live or die. 623 00:40:50,660 --> 00:41:03,660 So the combination of accepting a lack of control over my own death and a very deep gratitude for the life I've already had is my real reason for being at peace. 624 00:41:03,660 --> 00:41:08,660 A lot of people have fear around death. 625 00:41:08,660 --> 00:41:20,660 And yet here you were fighting in Korea and, you know, piloting crafts that took off from aircraft carriers and then having to land again in the middle of the ocean. 626 00:41:20,660 --> 00:41:23,660 You know, you've just described it like a needle in a haystack. 627 00:41:23,660 --> 00:41:30,660 And then getting on the Apollo 14 capsule after Apollo 13 almost was disastrous. 628 00:41:30,660 --> 00:41:37,660 Those actions imply a kind of fearlessness about death. 629 00:41:37,660 --> 00:41:42,660 I've pondered my own immortality or mortality. 630 00:41:42,660 --> 00:41:55,660 But I think the more important thing for we humans is learn to feel pleasurable, happy, successful in what we do in this life. 631 00:41:55,660 --> 00:42:01,660 And feel that we're being productive, caring and helpful to each other and to our families. 632 00:42:01,660 --> 00:42:08,660 That that's really more important than whether we really have all the answers to what happens after this life. 633 00:42:08,660 --> 00:42:14,660 Living this life to its fullest and properly and happily to me is far more fundamental. 634 00:42:14,660 --> 00:42:22,660 I got a call from my brother. I was living in Phoenix. My dad was in Tucson. 635 00:42:22,660 --> 00:42:28,660 He had taken a fall and he was in ICU and he was in a coma. 636 00:42:28,660 --> 00:42:32,660 And so when I left the house in Phoenix, I took two things with me. 637 00:42:32,660 --> 00:42:37,660 I took my drum and I took two eagle feathers. 638 00:42:37,660 --> 00:42:42,660 And I went upstairs to the ICU room where my dad was at. 639 00:42:42,660 --> 00:42:44,660 And here I am, took my drum, two eagle feathers. 640 00:42:44,660 --> 00:42:45,660 My dad was like this. 641 00:42:45,660 --> 00:42:46,660 My dad was like this. 642 00:42:46,660 --> 00:43:00,660 He was laying there with his eyes open and his hands like this. 643 00:43:00,660 --> 00:43:13,660 And I took an eagle feather and I put one in each hand, I placed one in each hand. 644 00:43:13,660 --> 00:43:19,660 And I took my drum and I wanted my dad to wake up. 645 00:43:19,660 --> 00:43:25,660 I wanted him to live because my mom and dad had been together 56 years. 646 00:43:25,660 --> 00:43:26,660 That was my intention when I came down. 647 00:43:26,660 --> 00:43:28,660 I want to see him wake up. 648 00:43:28,660 --> 00:43:31,660 I want him back with my mom. 649 00:43:31,660 --> 00:43:39,660 And so I put the eagle feathers in his hands and I took the drum and I simply... 650 00:43:39,660 --> 00:43:45,660 I created a heartbeat and I went from head to toe over his life. 651 00:43:45,660 --> 00:43:50,660 And I prayed over him. 652 00:43:50,660 --> 00:43:55,660 And I wanted him to be healed. 653 00:43:55,660 --> 00:44:00,660 And on the last beat... 654 00:44:00,660 --> 00:44:06,660 My dad went into a convulsion. 655 00:44:06,660 --> 00:44:16,660 And he closed his eyes and he released. 656 00:44:16,660 --> 00:44:25,660 When he did, he grabbed that eagle feather in his right hand and he closed his hand. 657 00:44:25,660 --> 00:44:30,660 And I knew that what I had done was what he wanted to have done. 658 00:44:30,660 --> 00:44:36,660 And when he grabbed that eagle feather, I knew that I had been sent to do what I was supposed to do. 659 00:44:36,660 --> 00:44:50,660 We need to talk about death and the fear of death. 660 00:44:50,660 --> 00:44:55,660 I personally have more fear of an unfulfilled life than of death itself. 661 00:44:55,660 --> 00:45:01,660 I know I'm afraid of death because I don't want to think a different way. 662 00:45:01,660 --> 00:45:03,660 I don't want to become a different person. 663 00:45:03,660 --> 00:45:05,660 I just want to stay who I am. 664 00:45:05,660 --> 00:45:13,660 If I change, I want to remember this form or this person. 665 00:45:13,660 --> 00:45:22,660 Contemporating death can really bring us peace without impermanency. 666 00:45:22,660 --> 00:45:24,660 There's no change. 667 00:45:24,660 --> 00:45:25,660 There's no change. 668 00:45:25,660 --> 00:45:27,660 There's no life. 669 00:45:27,660 --> 00:45:31,660 Can you imagine a life without any change? 670 00:45:31,660 --> 00:45:34,660 It doesn't exist. 671 00:45:34,660 --> 00:45:38,660 Death is a taboo to talk about. 672 00:45:38,660 --> 00:45:47,660 People don't want to talk about death because it's something that happens to somebody else. 673 00:45:47,660 --> 00:45:50,660 But death doesn't know a culture. 674 00:45:50,660 --> 00:45:53,660 Death doesn't know religion. 675 00:45:53,660 --> 00:45:55,660 Death doesn't discriminate. 676 00:45:55,660 --> 00:45:56,660 That's the thing. 677 00:45:56,660 --> 00:45:58,660 It's going to happen to all of us. 678 00:45:58,660 --> 00:46:01,660 And we have to be prepared for it at any time, at any moment. 679 00:46:01,660 --> 00:46:06,660 It's hard to watch the people I love suffer. 680 00:46:06,660 --> 00:46:12,660 And I have to say it's harder for them than it is for me because I'm not suffering with this. 681 00:46:12,660 --> 00:46:14,660 I suffer with physical discomfort. 682 00:46:14,660 --> 00:46:16,660 The pain is not fun. 683 00:46:16,660 --> 00:46:18,660 The pain sucks. 684 00:46:18,660 --> 00:46:20,660 But dying doesn't. 685 00:46:20,660 --> 00:46:23,660 Dying is just what we do. 686 00:46:23,660 --> 00:46:37,660 I want to thank everyone for coming, for bringing your unique and special love for Lee here today. 687 00:46:37,660 --> 00:46:44,660 Lee was absolutely adamant that this was supposed to be a celebration of life, his and everyone else's year. 688 00:46:44,660 --> 00:46:48,660 And so with that in mind, we figured we'd turn the beginning over to Lee. 689 00:46:48,660 --> 00:46:59,660 I want you gently to close your eyes and begin taking deep breaths in and out. 690 00:46:59,660 --> 00:47:09,660 Now start thinking of people you love, those that bring meaning to your life. 691 00:47:09,660 --> 00:47:14,660 Begin to feel the sense of appreciation in your body. 692 00:47:14,660 --> 00:47:21,660 Do you feel it in your chest, your stomach, your back? 693 00:47:21,660 --> 00:47:28,660 Continue to breathe deeply in and out. 694 00:47:28,660 --> 00:47:32,660 Now think of a place that you love to be. 695 00:47:32,660 --> 00:47:35,660 A place that brings you peace. 696 00:47:35,660 --> 00:47:38,660 And image yourself in that place. 697 00:47:38,660 --> 00:47:44,660 And now you're joined in that place by someone you really love. 698 00:47:44,660 --> 00:47:49,660 Allow them to sit with you. 699 00:47:49,660 --> 00:47:58,660 Look at their face. 700 00:47:58,660 --> 00:48:04,660 And in your mind, tell them how you feel about them. 701 00:48:08,660 --> 00:48:12,660 Returning to the place we're born and raised can be an emotional experience. 702 00:48:12,660 --> 00:48:18,660 It is for me because of family members who are now passed on. 703 00:48:18,660 --> 00:48:27,660 I took my son Schuyler on pilgrimage to pay final respects to my mom and stepdad, who died two years earlier. 704 00:48:27,660 --> 00:48:32,660 My sisters arranged a memorial service and burial of their ashes in the family plot, 705 00:48:32,660 --> 00:48:39,660 a sweet goodbye for these two beautiful people who played such an important role in our lives. 706 00:48:39,660 --> 00:48:50,660 And I'm watching the people that I love leave and I am being left behind by the people that I love. 707 00:48:50,660 --> 00:48:55,660 And then I have to say the hardest sentence there is to say. 708 00:48:55,660 --> 00:48:58,660 I have to say, goodbye, I love you. 709 00:48:58,660 --> 00:49:04,660 How can it possibly be, goodbye, I love you, in one sentence together? 710 00:49:09,660 --> 00:49:19,660 They're not worried that you're not— 711 00:49:27,660 --> 00:49:31,660 This is my mother. I lost her in 2004. 712 00:49:31,660 --> 00:49:41,660 It's comforting to me that I can come and talk to her, be with her, bring her flowers, 713 00:49:41,660 --> 00:49:50,660 and just practice the way culturally we do in Mexico. 714 00:49:50,660 --> 00:49:55,660 Clearly the cross-cultural evidence suggests that people all over the world and throughout history 715 00:49:55,660 --> 00:49:59,660 have thought that consciousness is more than just our physical being. 716 00:49:59,660 --> 00:50:05,660 Different religions, different cultural groups have created practices to honor that transition. 717 00:50:16,660 --> 00:50:21,660 Many times when you see your friends that do get hit that are sitting beside you, 718 00:50:21,660 --> 00:50:25,660 I've had several pilots come out from underneath. 719 00:50:25,660 --> 00:50:31,660 And the fear hits afterward. That's when you feel it. 720 00:50:31,660 --> 00:50:37,660 I was down twice and you wonder why you make it and maybe the pilot didn't. 721 00:50:37,660 --> 00:50:43,660 I joined the service in 1966 and I trained as a medic. 722 00:50:43,660 --> 00:50:49,660 And part of your training, they teach you not to care about your patients. 723 00:50:49,660 --> 00:50:53,660 It's a job and that's all they want you to do is to do your job. 724 00:50:53,660 --> 00:50:59,660 But what happens is that when you have people, especially the men who are coming in off the field 725 00:50:59,660 --> 00:51:03,660 and have been mortally wounded and not expected to live, 726 00:51:03,660 --> 00:51:09,660 your own personal feelings start coming in and you start caring. 727 00:51:09,660 --> 00:51:11,660 And there isn't any other way. 728 00:51:11,660 --> 00:51:19,660 For me it was just really, I just had to stop and just, right now I'm having to do this. 729 00:51:19,660 --> 00:51:23,660 It just really brings a tear to your eyes. 730 00:51:23,660 --> 00:51:27,660 We honor the memory of those who have gave their lives in the service of our country 731 00:51:27,660 --> 00:51:33,660 and of those others who have dropped their burdens by the wayside of life. 732 00:51:33,660 --> 00:51:51,660 Can people use art at the end of life or people in grief as a way of processing their emotions? 733 00:51:51,660 --> 00:51:57,660 People have used art as a mode of expressing emotions, grief. 734 00:51:57,660 --> 00:52:01,660 Art is a mode of inquiry into consciousness. 735 00:52:01,660 --> 00:52:11,660 Now, the moment of death, it's known to have this experience of life review. 736 00:52:11,660 --> 00:52:17,660 But when you are going through this little passage in here, 737 00:52:17,660 --> 00:52:25,660 it's as if you're passing through all your experiences before you totally release. 738 00:52:27,660 --> 00:52:31,660 When I first saw footage of elephants encountering the remains of another elephant, 739 00:52:31,660 --> 00:52:33,660 I was deeply moved. 740 00:52:33,660 --> 00:52:37,660 You could see that they were very interested, certainly curious. 741 00:52:37,660 --> 00:52:39,660 Were they grieving? 742 00:52:39,660 --> 00:52:43,660 Each member of the herd explored the remains using their sense of smell and touch, 743 00:52:43,660 --> 00:52:51,660 as if looking for clues about what happened or in remembrance of events in the life of their departed companion. 744 00:52:51,660 --> 00:52:57,660 You know, grieving is an important part of the process, and it's necessary. 745 00:52:57,660 --> 00:52:59,660 That's how we look at it with the zoo. 746 00:52:59,660 --> 00:53:03,660 An animal dies, but there are still other animals that are counting on us, 747 00:53:03,660 --> 00:53:07,660 and we need to continue to do our best to take care of those animals. 748 00:53:07,660 --> 00:53:13,660 So if you have members of your congregation that are in grief, what do you do? 749 00:53:13,660 --> 00:53:21,660 If I really want to quiet and be present with my heart and the grief in it, I walk the labyrinth. 750 00:53:21,660 --> 00:53:25,660 The labyrinth is a pattern, actually. 751 00:53:25,660 --> 00:53:31,660 It's usually about a 40-foot circle, and it has one path that starts at the outer edge 752 00:53:31,660 --> 00:53:36,660 and weaves in a very circuitous way, eventually into center. 753 00:53:36,660 --> 00:53:41,660 And what it is, is a walking meditation, where you find your natural pace. 754 00:53:41,660 --> 00:53:44,660 And that's pretty rare. 755 00:53:44,660 --> 00:53:47,660 By walking, the mind quiet is much easier. 756 00:53:51,660 --> 00:54:03,660 I know we are here to celebrate David's life, but I would not be honest if I didn't say that I'm grieving right now. 757 00:54:03,660 --> 00:54:09,660 And my heart is broken. 758 00:54:11,660 --> 00:54:15,660 I grieved over David as a brother would. 759 00:54:15,660 --> 00:54:19,660 Grief is something that you must go through. 760 00:54:19,660 --> 00:54:27,660 You must feel it, embody it, experience it, and it has a life cycle. 761 00:54:27,660 --> 00:54:34,660 You know, it reaches a peak and then it wanes and then slowly dissipates as an energy. 762 00:54:34,660 --> 00:54:43,660 And when it dissipates, then you revive the bond, the love that was always there. 763 00:54:43,660 --> 00:54:44,660 Okay? 764 00:54:44,660 --> 00:54:47,660 And then you have a relationship with that person. 765 00:54:47,660 --> 00:54:51,660 And that person doesn't have to be perceptually right in front of you. 766 00:54:51,660 --> 00:54:53,660 They're in your consciousness. 767 00:54:53,660 --> 00:54:55,660 And you have access to them anytime you want. 768 00:54:59,660 --> 00:55:02,660 I think that everyone has their own way of getting through it. 769 00:55:02,660 --> 00:55:08,660 But once you have an awareness that life is eternal, you miss the person. 770 00:55:08,660 --> 00:55:10,660 I miss my mom. 771 00:55:10,660 --> 00:55:11,660 You miss them. 772 00:55:11,660 --> 00:55:12,660 You miss them. 773 00:55:12,660 --> 00:55:15,660 But you have a different relationship because they're here. 774 00:55:15,660 --> 00:55:16,660 You know? 775 00:55:16,660 --> 00:55:17,660 They're around. 776 00:55:17,660 --> 00:55:20,660 And it just becomes a different relationship. 777 00:55:20,660 --> 00:55:33,660 In the Christian tradition, you know, we've had many versions over the century of death and dying. 778 00:55:33,660 --> 00:55:39,660 But I think certainly the major tenant is that there is a life beyond after the body or after death. 779 00:55:39,660 --> 00:55:44,660 I do really, truly understand that there's consciousness beyond death. 780 00:55:44,660 --> 00:55:46,660 There's consciousness beyond the body. 781 00:55:46,660 --> 00:55:49,660 And I think that's what we mean by soul. 782 00:55:49,660 --> 00:55:52,660 The soul really can awaken. 783 00:55:52,660 --> 00:55:53,660 We know that. 784 00:55:53,660 --> 00:55:55,660 It's often asleep for many people. 785 00:55:55,660 --> 00:56:07,660 And as we become more conscious of this part of ourselves, we really, I think, want to guard that, protect that, grow that, be in love with it. 786 00:56:07,660 --> 00:56:14,660 This is a good subject because it's universal. 787 00:56:14,660 --> 00:56:20,660 Whether you're Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or atheist, everybody meets in that point. 788 00:56:20,660 --> 00:56:22,660 We call it death. 789 00:56:22,660 --> 00:56:23,660 Death. 790 00:56:23,660 --> 00:56:28,660 It says in that Sura that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was teaching. 791 00:56:28,660 --> 00:56:35,660 He said, blessed the one who created death and life. 792 00:56:35,660 --> 00:56:37,660 Usually you think life and death. 793 00:56:37,660 --> 00:56:41,660 We call this life and we call death the ending of this. 794 00:56:41,660 --> 00:56:45,660 But in that teaching he calls this whole life death. 795 00:56:45,660 --> 00:56:48,660 And he calls the after death life. 796 00:56:48,660 --> 00:56:50,660 Because this one has a limit. 797 00:56:50,660 --> 00:56:53,660 You're born and you have an ending. 798 00:56:53,660 --> 00:56:55,660 The other one doesn't have an ending. 799 00:56:55,660 --> 00:57:07,660 I think one of the great advantages of most traditional religions is that they make people less afraid of death. 800 00:57:07,660 --> 00:57:10,660 I mean, death's scary, especially if it's painful. 801 00:57:10,660 --> 00:57:15,660 But they make people less afraid of death because there's the feeling that death is a transition. 802 00:57:15,660 --> 00:57:21,660 If you're a materialist or an atheist and you believe that death is the end and the mind just goes blank, 803 00:57:21,660 --> 00:57:25,660 you may be scared of that or scared of growing old. 804 00:57:25,660 --> 00:57:32,660 I think that the main purpose of religion is to make people feel that their lives are part of something bigger than themselves, 805 00:57:32,660 --> 00:57:36,660 that they're connected to something much larger than themselves. 806 00:57:36,660 --> 00:57:40,660 And that includes something larger than themselves in relation to death. 807 00:57:41,660 --> 00:57:46,660 If people choose a spiritual path, you know, whatever path that is for them, 808 00:57:46,660 --> 00:57:49,660 and only they know what's right for them, and stick with it, 809 00:57:49,660 --> 00:57:53,660 you get these direct experiences of, on one level, I'm separate. 810 00:57:53,660 --> 00:57:55,660 You know, you're you and I'm me. 811 00:57:55,660 --> 00:57:58,660 And another, I'm part of something larger that connects us all. 812 00:58:01,660 --> 00:58:06,660 I think that the universe is becoming self-conscious through the human nervous system. 813 00:58:06,660 --> 00:58:15,660 The we that knows is an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent being, the cosmic mind. 814 00:58:15,660 --> 00:58:18,660 And our mind is an aspect of that mind. 815 00:58:18,660 --> 00:58:24,660 As the great poet Rumi says, you're not just a drop in the ocean, you're the mighty ocean in the drop. 816 00:58:24,660 --> 00:58:33,660 The Indian sages had this allegory of pots of water put in sunlight. 817 00:58:33,660 --> 00:58:37,660 You take a million pots and fill them with water, and the sun is shining. 818 00:58:37,660 --> 00:58:39,660 The sun is in each one of them. 819 00:58:39,660 --> 00:58:41,660 But there's only one sun. 820 00:58:41,660 --> 00:58:44,660 So, you know, it takes a million people. 821 00:58:44,660 --> 00:58:45,660 They all are conscious. 822 00:58:45,660 --> 00:58:47,660 There's only one consciousness. 823 00:58:50,660 --> 00:59:00,660 What I know for sure about death is just a passageway, a doorway into ever unfolding of who and what we really are. 824 00:59:00,660 --> 00:59:04,660 And it's nothing to be afraid of when the time comes. 825 00:59:04,660 --> 00:59:07,660 It's a common denominator that we all pass through. 826 00:59:07,660 --> 00:59:10,660 Know that one day we're not going to have this body. 827 00:59:10,660 --> 00:59:15,660 So while we're here in a human incarnation, we can ask, how can I serve? 828 00:59:15,660 --> 00:59:17,660 How can I love? 829 00:59:17,660 --> 00:59:21,660 How can I cultivate the gifts that are within me and express them? 830 00:59:21,660 --> 00:59:29,660 Let me not leave without saying and being and giving all that I can say and be and give while I'm here. 831 00:59:29,660 --> 00:59:35,660 I know unequivocally, without any question, there is no such thing as death. 832 00:59:35,660 --> 00:59:38,660 No one ever dies. 833 00:59:38,660 --> 00:59:42,660 You just shift from one frequency into another frequency. 834 00:59:42,660 --> 00:59:46,660 And more importantly, you go back to where you originally came from. 835 00:59:48,660 --> 00:59:53,660 So scientifically, we don't know if identity, self-awareness can survive death. 836 00:59:53,660 --> 00:59:58,660 That's more of a spiritual belief right now than a scientific belief. 837 00:59:58,660 --> 01:00:01,660 But I trust my intuition more than anything. 838 01:00:01,660 --> 01:00:06,660 And my intuition says, yes, this is probably the case. 839 01:00:06,660 --> 01:00:11,660 Being aware that we are part of a continuum. 840 01:00:11,660 --> 01:00:14,660 We were here at the time of the Big Bang. 841 01:00:14,660 --> 01:00:16,660 I never died. 842 01:00:16,660 --> 01:00:19,660 From the time of Big Bang, I was here. 843 01:00:19,660 --> 01:00:21,660 And I will never die. 844 01:00:21,660 --> 01:00:23,660 I'll be here for the eternity. 845 01:00:23,660 --> 01:00:26,660 I only change form. 846 01:00:26,660 --> 01:00:30,660 The moment you realize that, then you are not afraid. 847 01:00:30,660 --> 01:00:35,660 The dead are not under the earth, you know. 848 01:00:35,660 --> 01:00:36,660 They are in the water. 849 01:00:36,660 --> 01:00:38,660 They are in the woods. 850 01:00:38,660 --> 01:00:39,660 They are in the fire. 851 01:00:39,660 --> 01:00:40,660 They are in the air. 852 01:00:40,660 --> 01:00:43,660 They are in the breast of the woman. 853 01:00:43,660 --> 01:00:47,660 They are in the child that is crying, the dead are not dead. 854 01:00:47,660 --> 01:00:53,660 The key to the conquest of death is to find out who you are. 855 01:00:53,660 --> 01:00:59,660 As long as you're confused with your body and your mind, you're bamboozled by a superstition. 856 01:00:59,660 --> 01:01:00,660 Okay? 857 01:01:00,660 --> 01:01:03,660 Because the body and the mind are dying anyway all the time. 858 01:01:03,660 --> 01:01:04,660 Okay? 859 01:01:04,660 --> 01:01:07,660 I don't have the same thoughts I had when I was a teenager. 860 01:01:07,660 --> 01:01:09,660 I don't have the same personality. 861 01:01:09,660 --> 01:01:12,660 I don't have the same emotions. 862 01:01:12,660 --> 01:01:17,660 If you have a string of beads, there's a thread that strings together the string of beads. 863 01:01:17,660 --> 01:01:24,660 So think of the beads as the memories and the string as what the memories are strung on. 864 01:01:24,660 --> 01:01:30,660 That's you, the string on which the memories are strung on. 865 01:01:30,660 --> 01:01:36,660 And if you can go to that deeper level and be grounded there now, you have conquered death. 866 01:01:36,660 --> 01:01:40,660 Because you realize that death is an illusion. 867 01:01:40,660 --> 01:01:47,660 It's actually the movement of space-time events. 868 01:01:49,660 --> 01:01:53,660 In coma, it's a different universe. 869 01:01:53,660 --> 01:01:57,660 I had no sense of concern, no anxiety. 870 01:01:57,660 --> 01:02:01,660 I just found myself exploring. 871 01:02:01,660 --> 01:02:04,660 It was an area of complete curiosity. 872 01:02:04,660 --> 01:02:06,660 It was boundless. 873 01:02:06,660 --> 01:02:09,660 Vista after vista after vista. 874 01:02:09,660 --> 01:02:12,660 Every environment was beautiful. 875 01:02:12,660 --> 01:02:16,660 One environment leading seamlessly to the next. 876 01:02:16,660 --> 01:02:25,660 The landscapes and places I visited, I knew them well, though I had never been to them before. 877 01:02:25,660 --> 01:02:30,660 The people I met, I felt I'd known them for as long as I could remember. 878 01:02:30,660 --> 01:02:32,660 Although I'd not met them before. 879 01:02:32,660 --> 01:02:37,660 Which is why I feel that we have one consciousness that we all share. 880 01:02:37,660 --> 01:02:40,660 And complete connection with everything and everyone. 881 01:02:40,660 --> 01:02:42,660 Very beautiful. 882 01:02:42,660 --> 01:02:56,660 And whether we recover, whether we wake up or not, there's no cause for fear when we change, when we move into some other existence. 883 01:02:56,660 --> 01:03:06,660 On the day when death will knock at your door, what will you give to him? 884 01:03:06,660 --> 01:03:11,660 Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life. 885 01:03:11,660 --> 01:03:14,660 I will never let him go with empty hands. 886 01:03:14,660 --> 01:03:20,660 All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights. 887 01:03:20,660 --> 01:03:28,660 All the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days. 888 01:03:28,660 --> 01:03:34,660 Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. 889 01:03:34,660 --> 01:03:41,660 A summons has come and I'm ready for my journey. 890 01:04:04,660 --> 01:04:13,660 The sun comes up, I hear a cry. 891 01:04:13,660 --> 01:04:22,660 A baby's born, I see her rise. 892 01:04:22,660 --> 01:04:29,660 We're made of grace and a wisp of stars. 893 01:04:29,660 --> 01:04:41,660 Do you remember who you are? 894 01:04:41,660 --> 01:04:51,660 Who we are? 895 01:04:51,660 --> 01:05:01,660 You are alive, I see her fly. 896 01:05:02,660 --> 01:05:03,660 So you're terrified. 897 01:05:03,660 --> 01:05:07,660 Here you are. 898 01:05:07,660 --> 01:05:10,660 You may be afraid to help me with my life. 899 01:05:10,660 --> 01:05:14,660 What do we know next time is expect a moment. 900 01:05:14,660 --> 01:05:16,700 You may leave with my eye. 901 01:05:16,700 --> 01:05:18,660 We don't know.