Pam, thank you so much for joining me today.

Looking forward to this conversation very much.

You're welcome.

Pam, let's start off with your clinical work as a cardiologist.

You've described a moment during your clinical career that sparked what we could call your life's question, which is how can consciousness continue once the brain has stopped?

So when did that mystery first shift from curiosity to conviction for you it?

Took many years.

I like you.

I had learned in University Medical school that consciousness and product of brain function.

So that's what we know that's what I was convinced of.

So for me, my opinion was to death as the end of everything we are until I met a lot of patients who shared the ND with me.

So in 1986 I read a book by George Ritchie Returned from Tomorrow and where he described as a medical student he died in 1943 of a dib of pneumonia and it there were no antibiotics available.

So he died, declared death and his body was covered with a sheet.

And the nurse was so upset that this young medical student had died that she was able to persuade the medical doctor to give him an injection for other nerine right into his heart, what was quite uncommon.

And after 9 minutes of death he regained consciousness.

He had some problem to find his body back because it was covered with a sheep.

But then he she had a very, very deep near death experience with all the elements we know from Raymond Moody.

I had to read a book by Raymond Moody which was published in 1975.

But because I this book, I started to ask my patients who had survived A cardiac arrest if you could remember something from the period of unconsciousness.

And then to my big surprise, within two years after 50 patients, 12 patients share the NDA with me.

And this was the moment that for me was just a site of currosity.

Because it should impossible to have memories, let alone clear, clear consciousness, cognition, emotions, memories for early childhood, the possibility of perception out of above the life of the body and the brain doesn't function at all.

So that's why it started that we that we started the prospective study in 1988 in in from till 44 consecutive survivors of cardiac arrest that took four years and then another 7-8 years for the longitudinal study.

This study was published in The Lancet and during the period that I met so many patients were the only that I gave more and more convinced that there's a continuity of consciousness and death is just the end of our body, but not the end of our consciousness.

So it was.

It took many years, but now I'm quite sure.

I'm convinced that it was wrong as a young doctor.

It's, it's pretty fascinating work because I know as a medical doctor, when we, when we talk about things like this in a philosophical manner with medical doctors, it's something that's quite frowned upon or, or it's, it's almost like fringe science for, for, to discuss this within a clinical setting.

How was that for you?

How was it?

What was it like to to go beyond what we would call just generic medicine?

Well, it was not important what other doctors were thinking about me and about our study.

There were some specialists who were open for it, one or two cardiologists and one or two other specialists, but most of them were not interested at all.

And then they are silent.

Then you know enough.

And it was not important at all for me because I was just following what my heart was telling me.

I had to look and try to understand what was, could be the cause and content of an NDE.

So that was the only important thing for me.

It was not about the ideas of other people who are usually and still now are willful, ignorant and and have prejudice about this kind of subjects.

Yeah, In many ways, your research asks one of the oldest philosophical questions, which is what is this relationship between mind and matter?

How do you personally define consciousness after decades of studying what appears to survive beyond the brain?

Yeah, I have no definition of consciousness and there is no definition of conscious.

There's so many aspects of conscious.

I have written an old chapter in my book Consciousness Beyond Life, just what we could call consciousness.

So there's no definition at all.

But I never used the word the word mind or soul or spirit because so many people have different ideas about these words this or never use them.

I use consciousness and enhanced consciousness and different layers of enhanced consciousness.

That's what I'm using.

It the you just mentioned the study you did in 2001 and that that Lancet study still remains one of the benchmarks when it comes to NDE research.

What you mentioned, what convinced you to start that?

But what surprised you most about the data as it started to stream in?

Well, I was, I was just open for the, the results and what we found in the theaters.

44 consecutive survivors of card arrest that 18% had memories on the periods of unconsciousness.

So they they shared an Andy with us and 82% did not have any memories at all Now.

So now we compared to two groups with and without an NDE to see if we could find an explanation why only a small percentage of patients report a near death experience.

So where we compared to duration of cardiac arrest, 2 minutes or 8 minutes, it didn't matter at all.

Compared to duration of unconsciousness 5 minutes or three weeks ago, it didn't matter at all.

Where you have induced cardiac arrest in electrophysiological studies in the Cath lab, it usually it takes 20 to 30 seconds to resuscitate, didn't matter at all.

So one of the main conclusion was that until that time still mostly accepted idea that lack of oxygen in the brain should be an explanation for the cause of of the and the we could exclude.

And also other things like the given medications didn't matter at all.

Fear of death before the arrested psychological explanation did it better at all pre knowledge that you know that these experiences are possible Data better at all religion data better or if they're atheist or Christian or Muslim data better at all general or education data matter at all.

So the main conclusion of our syllabus that there was no scientific or medical explanation why only 80% of those people report in NDE.

And interesting there are three other prospects of studies on in survivors of chronic rest, one from Bruce Grayson, one from Sepanipedophenica, one from Penicillatoria with a total of 562 survives cardiac rest.

And the conclusion all those 4 prospective cities was there is no medical explanation why people report an NDE.

So we could exclude old until that time given explanations, hallucinations, dreams, side effects of drugs, neurotransmitters and oxy of the brain etcetera, you could exclude.

And and PEM when it comes to reportability, because I can imagine when, when you get bombarded by critics, what one of the questions might be, I mean, was the brain truly offline or so, So something could be someone could ask about the reportability of subjective experiences.

How much can we trust that?

So for anyone watching or listening, if you, how much of the conscious experiences, how confident can we be sorry that it occurs during the cardiac arrest rather than moments just before or moments right after?

There's always a good question, but first of all, there have not been too many critical comments.

There have been some skeptics or should say debunkers just after my book came out in 2007 in the Netherlands, but usually they don't contact me at all.

But it's this important question.

How do we know that the neo death experience happened during the period of our consciousness?

That that's because of the out of body experiences.

One of the elements there, there are many elements, 12 elements, which was reported by Raymond Moody as well.

And one of the elements is out of body experience.

That is that people have a perception out and above their lifeless body.

They have IDD, they have left their bodies as an old cult and they can perceive, not see, but perceive see the 60°.

If they see details and the and then overview at the same time, they can perceive through walls.

They can see what happens to the other side of the hospital.

They can see what happens at home.

If they're trying to, to, to, to focus on that so and then they can see what people are doing with the CPR or with during surgery.

They can perceive what is happening.

They can know what is being told.

They don't hear it, but you know what is being told because you have driver salt transfer and blind people blind from birth can ring us written about it.

They have never seen anything.

They've never had pictures during dreams that the first time in the world when they have an ND they can perceive their own body.

They can see if they get through the the hospital walls and go outside to see the first time they did trees and houses and sun and shadows etcetera.

So what is when you have the corroboration of the free radical perceptions so details of the CPR then you can prove that this and the auto body experience happened during cardiac arrest.

And I have been in study done by Jan Holden of about 80 patients and has recently booked the cells does not die and it has 128 cases of corroborated free radical perceptions.

And what they found is 95%.

What was told was totally correct was really correct.

What happened during CPR, during surgery, during general anesthesia or urine coma?

So this proves that it happens during cardiac arrest.

Let's let's go with this for now and, and, and take your blisters on the journey with us mapping consciousness beyond the brain, because you've described the brain not as a producer of consciousness, but rather as a transceiver or interface.

Can you unpack what that metaphor means in scientific terms and how it might fit or conflict other modern neuroscientific theories like global workspace or IIT, etcetera?

But first of all, let's discuss what happens to your cardiac arrest in brain function.

So what we know there have been studies on induced cardiac arrest also, let's say in the past where it was SASS hole testing of internal defibrillators, ICDS, but also induced cardiac arrest in animals.

And we can see that in a Jewish character crash the people lose consciousness within seconds.

The blood flow to the brain in the carotid artery is 0.

Within one second the body reflexes are gone, which is a function of the cortex of the brain.

The brain sample reflexes are gone.

With the Gacrefax you can put a finger in someone's throat.

The coriolor reflexes and white and pupils who don't react to light are clinical findings.

There's no breathing, but the breathing center is close to the brain stem, so they stop breathing as well.

So the clinical findings are what the brain doesn't focus at all.

And when you have the EEG registration, but they did studies like social testing the EEG flat lines within 10 to 20 seconds.

And we know that when you have ACPR, it never happens that a successful CPR is built in 20 seconds.

It usually in the best organized coronary care unit will take 344 minutes.

So all the 562 pages of the four prospectus prospectus must have had a flat line EEG must have no brain friction at all.

And in meters between 10 and 20% of those patients reported in the death experience.

So that's what we know from about and that's a bit, a bit about your question about how we see the function of your brain, because the other thing is the longitudinal study.

We can discuss it later as well about the transformation.

But what we know from the brain function that when there is no brain finger at all, people can have what I've told you before, cognition, emotions, possibility of perception.

They have a review of someone's life, they relive their whole life, are connected to everything, what happens in the past.

Also with people, the conscious of people in the past, they took something for your, for your small sister, you know how sad she was.

You can have future events as well.

So everything happens at the same old where you come back in your body.

You can talk for a week what happens in your life review while you're kind of aggressed for 3 or 4 minutes.

So there's no time and no space and everything is connected at the moment that the brain does not function at all.

That means that the brain, the conscious is not dependent on brain function.

The non local conscious enhanced consciousness.

Maybe you're sitting here now we have a waking consciousness and that's dependent of a functioning brain and the and the waking conscious is just a small part of the non local consciousness and it's just a small part of the memories we have.

But then the brain function stops.

We go in the other non local real where there is no past and future is is acceptable.

It's always there, everything is connected.

That means that this kind of consciousness is not dependent on brain function.

And to understand it, you can compare it with the, let's say the mobile telephone.

At this very moment in your room and in my room, there are 200 telephone calls go through you through the walls, electromagnetic informational fields.

There are hundreds of television programs and radio programs and 1 billion websites or YouTube films go through you in the form of electromagnetic informational fields.

But you need an instrument to receive it.

You need to mobile telephone to get the the the call they're meant for you.

You mean an ATV set to receive the program.

But where your TV set is off, the program is still there.

You need another TV set to receive it.

And also I compare now the non local consciousness with the cloud, the 1 billion websites and YouTube preps always there.

You need to function computer to receive it, just part of it because of the code you use.

But your computer does not produce, it's called the I cloud, but it receives part of the I cloud.

So our brain receives parts of this no longer consciousness and that's what we call a filter or but also an interface.

So you need to function brain to have your waking consciousness.

But let's say in, in during dream, during deep sleep, the, the brain is functioning, but you don't receive waking consciousness.

So where's your consciousness?

Where you have general anesthesia, your brain is active, but you don't receive consciousness.

So where's your it's because you, the receiving capacity of your brain is, is is out and where you back in your, then you receive again parts of it.

And the interesting thing is that when you had the near death experience, the the threshold of conscious, the receiving capacity of your brain and body, it's been permanently enhanced.

So you receive not just channel 1, your own conscious of the channel 2-3 or four or five of other people.

That means what we call the enhanced intuitive sensitivity.

They receive information not by his senses or not by the body.

And they know what people think.

They know what people feel.

They see that someone will die in three weeks and he dies in three weeks and he knows that he lost his mother last week, et cetera.

So they got information because the reception ability of the brain is permanently enhanced.

And it's also fits with the concept of the brain as a receiver of interface.

And I think it's fascinating because today when you when people talk about things like the brain gut axis and when you look at the enteric nervous system and how highly functional it is.

And it's interesting that we tend to still focus on the cortex in the brain as this main system for this transmission or receiving of events.

Because it could be then plausible that the enteric, the nervous system is just as vital to some of this information transmitting.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, we did also.

I've told you it induced cardiac arrest in animals and we saw those animals that the deeper friction of the brain, the brainstem didn't function at all between 10 and 20 seconds.

There was no reaction of the brain stem.

So also the deepest structures ever, you know, it's also let's say the the breathing centre stops is also close to the brain stem.

So we know also the deepest structure of the brain do not function at all.

And to have awakened conscious you need many neural centres working together to exchange in information.

The global neural network of of and that doesn't is not available.

May you have chronic arrest?

Well, you partially answered this question already, but I have to ask it anyway.

The the fact that consciousness isn't generated by the brain in this case, what role does the brain play in essence to you?

You sort of touched on it, but if you were to give a general outline of what you believe the brain actually is there for in terms of governing this localized conscious wakeful experience, well, how would you summarize that?

I told you a little bit before, I think we need to function brain to be alive in this world and to to have experiences in this physical world.

Because when you're out of this body in the other non local realm, you don't have the physical experiences as we have now.

So the waking consciousness and also the short term memories.

But it's sort of you can also say the brain is a transceiver.

It transcends information from body and senses towards your consciousness and has received information from your consciousness in into your brain and body.

So this young sorry, sorry PIM.

That's all right.

Yeah, continue.

No, no, it's all right.

I was.

Going to ask as a young materialist medical Doctor Who stumbles upon this and eventually realizes OK awareness may be non local, extending beyond time and space.

How did that impact you and change how you think of things like memory, identity, self?

How did you perceive it prior to this and then thereafter?

Well, it it was not from one moment to the other.

And I think the most important thing, when I started cardiology, I was always impressed by the techniques for the echocardiography, the Cath lab, the catheters, the, the, the rhythm disturbance, etcetera.

But at the end of my career, it was 10% of techniques and 90% was communicating with the patients.

And then you know what people think and you know what, what is behind the questions as well.

So it's about not about a heart, but it's about a patient who has fear or real problems with your heart as well.

So it's much more than just your organ.

And when you think of memory identity yourself, how should someone now perceive this knowing that this might be a non local experience?

Well, I, I think that's what what we know now from, from, from research, from the death experiences.

When we are awakened, awakened consciousness, then we have our ego and the ego is depending on our bodily functions.

That means you have jealousy and, and hate and aggression and, and, and greed, etcetera.

When you're out of your body, that's gone.

You're just the essence of who you are.

It's it's all about love, about acceptance, about compassion, about being interconnected with other people and being connected with animals, with plants, with planet earth.

So you're connected with everybody and everything because that's the non local aspect of conscious and you don't have this kind of feeling.

You're raking conscious.

Except we had a near death experience.

There's people with an ND talk about what I said and has intuitive sensitivity.

If you're connected with everybody and everything, they feel connected with animals and plants and with other people and they know that everything you do to others will come back to you.

If you give hatred and aggression towards us, it will come back to you.

Or you give love and acceptance and compression, it will come back to you.

And it is also for nature.

But you have problems with nature, how we treat planet Earth.

It will come back to us.

We know it already, but that's the lessons we can learn from it.

So and and so the essence of who we are is we always call it self with capital.

The self with capital is the highest aspect of who we are.

And and I think that we we are light being the self with capital is a light being and send sometimes aspects of of who we are in this higher self towards back to embody to learn other lessons as well.

In sticking with this theme of phenomenology and transformation, many Indies include similar events, light, unity, unconditional love as you mentioned.

Do you interpret these as neurophys, psychological archetypes, or are these glimpses into the deeper structure of consciousness itself?

I think you just said it already, because when the brain doesn't function, it cannot be neurophysiological.

Aspects of it must be aspects of consciousness.

And it is, it's these are universal elements.

The problem is that near death experience is an ineffable experience.

There are no words for it.

So a child will use different words and interpretation as an adult and and and Christian will use different words as a Muslim or atheist or, or for Buddhist.

But to try to, to, to put it to words, this inexpert, this ineffable experience as well.

And then there you have, as I said, you have being aware of being dead, dark space go through eternal come again and heavenly environment with with beautiful landscapes and colours and music.

And then meeting this his relatives with communication and and meeting being of light with feet of unconditional laugh and access to wisdom.

You understand that advance quantum physics.

When you're back in your body, you you don't understand anymore.

You can have some live review.

You can have a preview of someone's life.

You come, come to a border.

You know that when you pass across this border, you will never come back.

And there is usually a voice which tells you it's not your time yet.

You have a task to fulfill and then you're conscious.

Return it to the body with an awful experience because you again experience all the pain and limitation of your disease.

When you have a traffic accident, everything is broken.

It's awful to be back in your body.

It's the psychological after effects of Indies are quite profound.

I mean, you mentioned all of them.

Those less fear of death, greater compassion or some more sense of meaning from from your experience and from the data you've encountered, how often do you see these ever fully returning back to its previous state where where someone loses that sense of greater compassion?

Has that some?

Has that been something you've encountered, or has it been a pretty permanent state in most people's lives?

Yes, first of all, we did a longitudinal study.

We saved interview two years and and eight years after cardiac arrest with all survivors of cardiac arrest with an ND and a mesh control group of patients who survived cardiac arrest with no memories, pest control group with the same age, same gender and the same time interval.

And now what we found is that only patients with the ND had to classical transformation, No Fear of death.

A new insight was important of life so unconditional love and compassion towards yourself accept your own negative aspects we all have and then towards others and towards nature and they're more interested in spirituality and the third aspect is enhanced their truthful sensitivity.

That means that this is the objective proof of the subjective experience because only patients with an ND had this transformation.

But having had an ND you try to talk about it with with doctors.

They say total nonsense and hallucination here you get medication you get over it.

So usually they stop talking about for years.

I've met people who have been silent about it for 50 years after first attempt to talk, to share it with others.

And there's a period of depression, homesickness and loneliness.

So it's it's Andy is a spiritual trauma.

Despite the positive content, it's very hard to be back in this material world.

I always as a joke said, when you have Andy in India, you get congratulations.

When you have it in Western world, yes, yes, you're just crazy.

And they think they're crazy.

They didn't know.

They don't know there's a name for it.

They don't know that they're not the only one be referred to psychiatric institutions, but they start keep talking.

But once they're here and read a book or see it on television or read your podcast and so it has a name.

It's in their death as well.

And they start to accept it.

It takes years and then they can't integrate it in their in their life.

That means the materials world is not important anymore.

They don't give money is not important.

Society is working with them.

They become vegetarian, they love nature, they love silence.

So they changed a lot.

And this is a permanent change.

There's after characteristic, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, there's a permanent life change the rest of their lives.

But first they have to accept it and they have to integrate it, and it can take years and years.

Yeah, it's, it's almost like this blissful high that you enter and then thereafter have to come back to to reality.

It is.

It does sound pretty sad.

It is sad for a.

Little bit part of the goal with my channel was as a as a medical doctor myself when growing up fundamentally materialist and and then it's doing a philosophy degree thereafter.

When I did that, it sort of changed so many views of my own and, and big part of this podcast is to try and expose others to to more deeper philosophical thinking.

Do you think when you're engaging with skeptics, do you believe that they might be one day a shared scientific language you could use to explore these with people?

Or do you find it's very difficult still today, after all of this, to communicate these ideas?

Well, I've hardly met any skeptics who want to discuss it with me and whether you're whether you're Internet that that, that I'm talking about deniers and debunkers.

A sceptic is someone who wants to think about it, but the debunker and the denier doesn't accept.

And usually the problem is there have been discussions also Rupert Celtic has discussed and other people have discussions talking with a debunker or a denier.

They don't know the literature.

They they have just prejudice and willful Icorus.

They don't they haven't read my book.

They haven't read the Lanceter.

They haven't read anything else.

The I've published many articles, but also other people like Bruce Grayson, Ken Ring and other sepani, Peter Fennec have been so many books.

But they have an opinion without any basis of science as well.

So they have a problem.

I don't mind if they're don't accept my ideas, then they have a problem.

I that's not my problem anymore.

I've learned it.

Yeah, I think there's there's nothing worse than formulating it conclusion about something without actually sifting through the data and and actually reading the person's work before making.

I will never want to convince anybody.

It's up to them if they want to be open or not.

And, and and you know, there are a lot of also professors and neuroscientists, etcetera.

They tell personally to me, you could be right, but officially said it's total nonsense until they reach higher.

And then they said perhaps I was wrong my whole life because they lose their research money to lose their position in the university.

It says it's dangerous to tell other people in this kind of academic world that it could be different as we always thought.

But based on this prospective studies on the ethnic space, we have to reconsider the never proven hypothesis that conscious is a product of brain function and the death is just the end of our body, but not the end of our consciousness.

And they have.

I've been now studying it for 39 years.

It's so normal for me now, but it was, let's say, totally new for me when I started.

Yeah.

Look, do you believe then that one day we might be able to measure or detect this consciousness independent of the brain?

And if so, like what type of technologies do you think might make these paradigms possible?

It's impossible.

You cannot measure in the non local real.

It's beyond the physical world, so you cannot measure it.

Let's say where you measure activity in the way you can neural correlates and that that's so you see activities in the way you can measure it by EEG or Meg or fMRI of PET scan, but it doesn't say anything about the content of consciousness.

So the current material science or that is true, but you can objectify, but you can measure what you duplicate, what you can falsify.

Now what you think and feel your consciousness, you cannot measure, you cannot objectify, you cannot duplicate, you cannot falsify.

So consciousness does not exist at all in the material science and that's the problem.

So we have to to expand science to a post material science to include subjective experience.

But you cannot objectify consciousness in the non local realm.

It's always about subjective experiences.

So we have change.

We have to change science to include subjective experiences.

And what we did with the transformation, it's a kind of objective proof of the subjective experiences.

But you cannot prove subjective experience, never.

You have to accept it.

How when you look at your work and and your current view of the mind body problem, let's say, how does your work sit within this long tradition of philosophical theories?

Is it a monist theory?

Is a dual aspect theory?

What?

How would you describe this as a philosophical?

Yeah, I, I'm always relucted to give it a name.

Let's say it has been in all human history.

It has been said in Buddhism, it has been said in the Vedas and the Upanishads, in Hinduism.

It has been said that the Kabbalah has been agnostic Christianity.

It has been all the people who are living in this world.

The, the, the, the apostrophe.

Everybody has said that there is death is not the end for me.

Now most comes to is less but ontological idealism or pen psychism or protopen psychicism.

But I'm very reluctant because people are talking about a terminology and I want to talk about content.

So for me, consciousness is fundamental in the universe.

So everything comes from consciousness.

Matter is derivative from consciousness and not the other way around.

So consciousness is always everywhere together with energy and information.

It's fundamental in the universe.

So it starts with consciousness and your body also has started with consciousness and the world we see around this started with consciousness.

And also there's animals and plants and planet Earth have kind of subjective aspect, which you call not, it's not a human consciousness, but it's a kind of subcutivity because it everything comes from this fundamental consciousness, primary consciousness.

Do you think that, for example, William James suggested at some point that the brain transmits rather than creates consciousness?

Do you, a century later, do you think that neuroscience is finally catching up to that intuition?

At least?

Because I find today when I interview guests as well and speak to people, this this seems to be a growing theme that people are starting to question things more.

They are starting to ask questions about consciousness beyond the brain.

What have been your views throughout the years?

Yeah, I'm very positive.

Let's say if you have the Journal of Conscious Studies and 20 years ago it was 80% materials based studies on consciousness and now it's about 6070% post material based studies on consciousness.

So it's changing and especially younger generation, like you are much more open than my generation.

So when I give lectures to, to to medical students and also the, the, the emails are received from everywhere, the younger generation, younger doctors are aware of it, nurses are more aware of it.

So it's better for the page to want to share the ND with the medical profession as well.

So I'm positive it it it will change.

And and if consciousness truly continues after physical death as as doctors, how should how does that reshape our medical ethics, let's say around resuscitation, organ donation, end of life care?

How do you believe this would impact that?

Oh, a lot.

It makes a lot.

Let's say when when the the end of life care, it's about the moment of dying, the terminal faith.

They have several experiences which are based on non local conscious and of life experiences.

People who are in the turbo phase of of illness can have be in contact with the conscious of diseased relatives, let's say partners or parents of diseased child.

They see the light, they see brutal landscape.

They don't get the moment of transition is is near of.

Unfortunately, most doctors and nurses and other people think they are hallucinations of side effects of drugs.

But the research, research from Switzerland is about more than 80% of people in terminal phase of illness have this kind of end of life experience.

But it's just always good easy to express it to others, but they are in and out the body.

Then you have the terminal lucidity, people who have the end phase of Alzheimer's disease, who don't recognize the family members for years or even even are in coma or unconscious, suddenly set up in bed, recognize the family members, call them by name, thank them and die.

I mean, you know how the brain looks and say of, of, of of of Alzheimer's.

It's just a lot of mess in the, in the skull.

There's no brain function left.

They have to share that experience.

The people are healthy and are at the death bed of a very close loved one and the moment he dies, he can see the light or even are taken with them in the death experience.

They get out of the body to the turtle to the light see sometimes the life review of the disease and then at once they're back in the body at the at the bed rather just a different died shared that experience.

They're normal people who have this kind of experience.

They have to peer immortal experience that you that you

4:00 in the night you wake up.

I think of your father.

He said, oh, how sad or how is he?

And next more you got a phone call that at that very moment he died.

So you have communication.

Sometimes you see them as a light being saying goodbye to you and they have to post, post portal experiences after that communication.

About 125 million people in Europe have this kind of experiences.

It usually happened during the night because you call it a dream.

It's not a dream, but it's got a dream.

You will forget, but you'll never forget this kind of experiences.

About 80% of the people have experience of after death communication in the first days, weeks of months after the death of a closed family member.

They can see them, they can hear them, they can communicate with them, they can smell them, they can feel everything is possible.

And usually they'll they say I had a dream, but it is not a dream.

And when you have this after that communication to prove that consciousness of a disease rather rather is still there, consciousness is always there.

So when I give Lexus also 30 or 40% of the people in the audience when I asked for it said I had an after death colleague.

That's why they come because they they know now all the other way around, they'd have contact with this conscious of disease relatives.

It's all the conscious is means also it's not local.

It's always there and you have kind of access to it when you're alive as well.

So all these kind of experiences prove that consciousness is still there, but it's not not, let's say, scientific proof.

A real scientific proof is just being mathematics.

You can prove or or or, but you cannot prove in psychology or psychiatry or this kind of subject.

You cannot prove it.

It's beyond reasonable doubt.

Yeah, it reminds me when I spoke to Noam Chomsky about this, he he he spoke about how the the whole scientific revolution was completely abandoned after Newton because once once theories became so complex that he could not explain reality anymore, we started developing theories to just explain what we believe made the most sense.

So science of ultimately just dropped the ball and trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality.

And he said there is no mind body problem because technically there is no body because we just don't know.

What matter is you really know.

The matter doesn't exist.

Yeah, exactly.

It's just emptiness.

Exactly, and he was like, there is just no mind body problem.

There is no body.

We don't know what matter is, which is ultimately the something that you kind of fundamentally agree with.

How has this changed your life when you when it comes to personal implications?

How has your research actually shaped how you live, How you see death and and understand purpose?

That's a good question as well.

I think people ask me what what about my death?

I say I'm I'm curious.

I'm not afraid I'm curious what will happen but my life changes.

Well my wife is very open.

She post physiotherapist but she did Tai chi and chi ku and she up to traditional Chinese medicine, yoga etcetera.

So she's open for everything.

So our both our life change.

Our home is always silence but be garden.

We love gardening.

We will we we we live theater pizza from a National Park.

We each day we are out at least one hour biking or walking in nature.

We are both vegetarian, my wife more strict than I am, but you know, the rest of perhaps sometimes take fish, but the rest.

And we have a also in our home, we have a place where fifty families each Saturday come and take the biologic dynamic vegetables.

It's based of Anthroposophy.

So for, for 2530 years, we have a place where people come.

So there's a farmer who brings the, the vegetables with us and the family comes here.

So we, we have for more than 30 years biological dynamic vegetables as well.

So we, we changed our life as well.

My wife's also interested in Anthroposophy also a bit.

So we're we're discussing a lot.

It's it, it seems that well.

Also as a cardiologist, I'm assuming you know how healthy that is for you.

So after seeing years and years of block, you've made a good decision.

We, we, we, we walk a lot and bike a lot still each day and I'm now 82 but I'm still each day bike and walk.

You know, it's incredible when when you think about back when you were young medical student, perhaps as a materialist think I assume you were skeptical of things like parapsychology, any phenomenon that was outside of the scientific realm.

Have you explored that anymore since this journey?

Things like telepathy or or talking, the sort of accessing streams of consciousness beyond what we consider scientific.

First of all, I'm never used to work paranormal and I'm never used to work parapsychotic.

It's normal, it's a psychotic, but you need different theories about it.

As a young doctor, I was not interested.

My father was a neurologist and he couldn't, my father couldn't accept my research in the death experiences.

He had a problem with it.

But I'm I know.

But I'd say we read about study about the death experience and non local constant telepathy, which are called non local information exchange.

You can get information beyond time and beyond space.

You have perception, what we call remote view, because non local perception.

I know Stephen Schwarzer had written books about it.

So it's possible to know exactly what happens on a long distance or in a long time.

Stephen Schwarz did studies in Egypt and you could find a nonlocal perception palaces who were not known yet.

So it's real so, but I know never used the world telepathy.

I used no local perception, no local information exchange, etcetera.

I tried to because consciousness has no is always interconnected, no time, no places the information is possible.

That is much more normal than we know.

So many people have this kind of experiences, so also future events of prognostic dreams.

You dream about something and and then a year later you see marriage or whatever or Deja vu where you come somewhere on a place.

I must have been there, but not now.

So all this kind of experience is an aspect of non local consciousness, but.

This might be too personal, but have you ever had a near death experience?

I always say not as far as I know, but in my aura and in my is said perhaps when I was 2 years old but I don't know.

But I'm over.

I resonate with all the people who haven't and the ears shared with me and and they come to me.

They they feel that I'm open.

So people who don't know me come to me and start to share their experience with me.

So it could be.

Do you feel like maybe things like quantum mechanics or our lack of understanding of physical reality today and the fact that people are exploring this and so many different diverse theories is helping this field grow and and and sort of triggering people to think beyond the brain?

Yeah, well, I use scrotification also written a chapter about it because I'm used to the terminology non local consciousness.

Non local is beyond time, beyond space and interconnected.

But I use scrotifices as an analogy and not as an explanation for consciousness.

I I use neurophysiology neurophysiology and I use any research to understand the aspects of near death experiences, but quantum is just an analogy.

Yeah, it's it's, it's always tough because a lot of people try to use that as an explanation.

So you.

So I really like that.

Another thing is also for for quantum.

Not all quantum is believe it, but consciousness is essential because the the the observer doesn't exist, because the observer makes an an an an an experiment and the result of experiment is depending of the consciousness of the of the observer.

So there's no objectivity at all.

In at last in, in, in, in, in, in science you can prove that light behaves as particles and you can prove that light behaves as Braves both as true, but it is not possible to have it.

So consciousness is fundamental also for quantum physics and also we know down now that there is no objective science at all.

It's something you think about.

It is.

Is there any reason why you almost went down the Pennsyka's route versus the idealist route with your explanation of consciousness?

Any.

It's not for me, not just told you before.

It's not about the the terminology.

I, I will can't talk and discuss it.

I know Bernardo Castro very well and and and I can discuss with people also with with philosophers.

The terminology is not so important for me.

We can discuss the ideas and not a terminology.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it almost.

It almost encloses someone into a box that they didn't get stuck defending exactly.

And often too far.

It shouldn't.

It shouldn't become a dogma.

And that's the problem.

It should become a dogma.

When you look at looking forward, when you when you look at the next generation of scientists and philosophers, what do you see them doing differently in terms of studying the nature of consciousness?

What would you like to see actually?

Well, I think it should be important that a lot of neuroscientists, but also physicians and other philosophers know about results of near death experience research because they don't know and they don't want to know because they're frightened if it could be true that they have been wrong with their whole life.

It's an awful, there's a huge problem for them.

So, but the what I told you, the younger generation is much more open.

Also known.

There are scientists in the in the Netherlands who are more open for non local consciousness, but they're very reluctant to share it with others as well.

But it will change.

Let's say my book Conscious Beyond Life is now in most schools in the Netherlands for 6070 year old students get my book to read and to give something to write about.

And my my granddaughter studying psychology in the second year, she had my book and had to do an examine about it.

So it's it's changing.

The younger generation is more open and they've no more.

But it's, it's a small process.

It's a process.

It'll take some time, but again, I'm positive.

That's incredible.

I think that's that's great to see things come full circle like that.

When you were when you were exploring this and finally came out of your materialist view of the brain as the main function for consciousness.

What books did you read?

Who, Which authors were the people who took you out of this and took you even further into this?

For people who are curious and would like to.

I also say people who have Andy have been my greatest teachers.

That's it.

You have to listen to people with open mind.

And science is asked a question with an open mind.

So.

So you have to get rid of your dogmas because otherwise, yeah, you cannot listen anymore.

You cannot read anymore because you're still in eternal vision.

So, but I've read many books that I started to read.

I really started to read the Bible, for instance, and and and and Tibetan Buddhism and the banished shuts and and and whatever books with a lot of philosophy books, consciousness books, quantum physics books, a lot of books about their death experiences.

But the most important thing for me was the starting point was listen to people with an NDA.

They have been my really my teachers.

And if you had to summarize the ultimate message that comes from that, for anyone who still sceptical, still curious about Ndes, what about that topic do you love so much?

And, and if you had to summarize the major findings of what you think would fundamentally shift someone to explore this topic, what would those be?

I think that based on what we know now is that death is just the end of your body, but not the end of your consciousness.

There's no beginning, Norco will there ever be an end to conscious?

It's before birth and after death.

There's consciousness.

So when you die, you're involved in unconditional love.

You will be connected with other people you love.

So it's it's, it's not the end of who we are.

I think that's the main, main, the most important aspect of what we have learned.

And we always connected also when we have died.

So the lessons also we have to live now in love to others as well, where you help people to be nice or help people to help, like two different aspects.

Just helping to help is important, but helping to be nice is something else.

So this kind of lessons you have to learn it.

It's it's just about be open to others and helping others and giving love to others.

When it comes to the universe.

And to nature.

Exactly.

I was going to about to take this further as well.

When it comes to the universe itself, do you see the do you think there is a teleological purpose to all of us?

Do you believe that fundamentally consciousness might have a a purpose in this, or is there a purpose in the universe for you?

Yeah, that's a difficult question because there's no definition of consciousness as well.

I think we have a consciousness during our life to learn lessons, I think and, and, and the the essence of who we are, the higher self with with capital, it has always be there, always be there.

So, and this is just universal love, compassion and acceptance.

That's the essence of who we are and we have to learn during our life, have to learn this lesson.

I think that could be the purpose of of this non local or universal of divine conscious, whatever you would call it.

Yes, I think that's the the most intriguing part of exploring these theories of consciousness.

When Robert Lawrence Kuhn wrote the is now this 350 theories of consciousness.

It's just growing and growing.

But the The funny thing is, is that it's intriguing because every theory of consciousness must have some sort of philosophical outcome.

So the ethics change or the values change, the morals change.

And generally when it comes to these Pancycus theories or or I know you don't want to label them and put them into boxes, but they tend to have a slightly better overall philosophical picture and ethical framework that comes out of it then our generalized dead matter view.

So I think that's one of the most positive things that does come out of these experiences for people.

Is that it does come.

They're more interested spirituality.

Spirituality is to search for inner knowledge by experience, in a wisdom by just by experience.

I think that that's what people are starting to do, just more spiritual beings or the essence of who we are.

And as a Doctor Who's explored such profound topics, do you find things like psychedelics or meditation, other forms of consciousness experiences sorry as as almost a transcendence into that realm to almost tuning in, let's say to.

Sometimes, sometimes it can happen.

Let's say that where you're People who meditate sometimes get an experience of enhanced consciousness, but more often not, and it cannot be the purpose for meditation.

You get it enhanced consciousness, but it may happen may you do psychedelics.

Sometimes it may happen that you have enhanced consciousness, usually not the same elements as an ND, but mostly it are hallucinations, frightening experience, negative after effects etcetera.

So it's dangerous as well.

It can be dangerous, but there have been also examples of very positive after LSD or seriously bean or DMT or whatever.

But it is not easy and it could be dangerous as well.

Yes, yeah.

And what they interesting is they have done fMRI studies in people who using these psychedelics and then you see parts of the brain becoming less active, but they have enhanced consciousness experiences.

That's also interesting.

Yeah, that, yeah.

But when I spoke to Bernardo, he spoke about the exactly the same thing.

And he finds that to be one of the ultimate markers that show because there's so much activity occurring.

So if the the reverse is happening in the brain, it just makes sense that definitely not the source.

And then if you, when you look at your work, your it, it's a vast body of knowledge.

So much to explore.

I'll put links to your books down below as well.

Outside of ND ES, outside of out of body experiences, any other areas that you feel can help fine tune this work or bring us closer to understanding the conscious experience?

Yeah, but I think what I told you before, all the experiences around to death, but in the dying it happens so often that usually people outside at the bottom, they have to share it with others.

So the end of life experiences after that communication, the the terminal lucidity, they are all aspects of non local consciousness.

And, and so we have to discuss it.

Why can't it happen so often?

And, and, and it's because it's normal.

But interpretation of what's happened to us.

They, they don't understand because they just believe it's a dream.

But what I also told you before, you normally forget a dream with this you, you never forget.

So this kind of experience are important aspects of non local conscious beside the scientific research of the death experiences.

It's almost like we have to be retrained as medical doctors as well to approach that with patients when you explore that clinical counter because it's a paradigm shift in thinking.

It's just and it's to be open minded, but I said it's so you forget what you've learned and listen to the patients and you get more and more intuition as well.

When you're open for patients, you'll hear much more behind the words as well.

When you look back at your career and, and you reach closer to death, we're all getting there.

As you said, we need to normalize this, this topic.

What?

When you look back at your life, what what do you?

What would you look most likely most like to be remembered for?

I, I, I think, but I'm just grateful for the life I had.

I'm grateful for my wife and my children and my grandchildren.

I'm grateful the way I could live being a cardiologist and doing the ND research.

I'm grateful for it.

So I'm happy and that's my conclusion when I'm 82 years old.

Now I'm looking back and I'm happy and grateful.

You're 82 years young, PIM.

It's it's the when, when that heart stops beating.

Where do you think PIM goes afterwards?

Yeah, I'm curious.

I think I've only got with the other dimension.

So that's what I said.

I'm a little curious.

So I'm I have not fear, perhaps reluctant to think about the dying process of dying that could be very unpleasant.

But as soon as I leave my body, it will be wonderful.

Yeah, I guess it all comes down to the mechanism of death, eh?

Like do you want to get shot in the leg and bleed out for hours before it finally happens versus going quietly in the night?

I think it's hopefully, hopefully the best we go quietly in the night.

But thank you so much.

It's such a pleasure to chat to you and your work's incredible.

Your body of work's all amazing.

It's been such a pleasure to read it and reread it because I read your book quite some time ago.

And then to go back through it, it's been really great.

Any final words from you poem?

Anything you feel we haven't touched on that you'd like to explore before closing?

It was a pleasure to talk with you.

I think you're already a lot.

You've prepared well, so and I hope it also did kind of podcasts to help people to open their minds.

I think that's why I do these kind of, I've given board of 50s youth the last 2-3 years.

So and I think it's important because it's the and the research has been done, but a lot of people don't know anything about it.

So it's important and most people don't like to read books anymore.

So this kind of interviews is helpful perhaps to change the minds of a lot of people.

Yeah, and I think this that's exactly what this podcast is trying to do.

So hopefully people see this interact, engage.

But if there's any links to any specific articles or papers you want me to put in the description for people to click on, please do share.

Yeah, my, my, my website is country beyondlive.com and you can have all the scientific articles, you can have a lot of interviews, you can see everything that you want to see.

So my website is in.

Yeah, Alex, I'll put a link to all of that as well to the.

Link to my book as well perhaps?

Yeah, and.

Continuity of consciousness.

All your papers.

And I think the, the, the paper, the continuity of consciousness from the Big Law Institute is a very important paper.

I kind of regret it's 40, only 40 pages.

So it's it's just kind of updated summary for my book.

Yeah, yeah, it's nice and accessible.

Hopefully a quick read for some people, but we'll see how fast they can get through it.

But yeah, man, it's it's it's amazing.

It's incredible work.

And it's it's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

I I've still one point.

Did you read the last book by Dan Brown?

No, I have not yet.

The ultimate secret?

No, it's just about your death experience.

It's no longer consciousness, telepathy, non local perception, etcetera.

It's just what I told you is near in his book and have been studying for eight years now already have been.

I don't know if he read my book, but I think he must have read my book.

So that's very important that because millions of people will read this book and they will say they will read about non local consciousness, near death experiences, telepathy, non local perception, etcetera.

So it's very helpful to to to other people to be open.

Yes, it's almost like it it it bridges that popular culture with this, with this type, it makes it a lot.

More and and that's that's that's very positive.

Yeah, no, no, for sure.

And and I think that's exactly what needs to happen, is that the more pop culture starts to get into this and that's mainstream academia cannot do this alone.

You have to sort of bridge in some sort of a popular media and then that's when the message gets received.

The change will come from the population, not from science.

Thank you, it was nice to talk with you.