Verified Near-Death Experiences: Proof of an Afterlife with Simon Bown | EP 479

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hi there, I'm Brian D Smith, and welcome to Grief 2 Growth. So whether you're a first-time listener, or someone's been on this journey with me for a while, I'm truly glad you're here. This is a podcast where we explore the big questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Where do we come from? And where do we go when this life ends? And I want to say this to you, if you're a skeptic, this episode is especially for you. Today, we're taking a close look at one of the most fascinating and controversial topics in the study of consciousness, and that is near-death experiences. But we're not talking about just any NDEs. We're talking about verified near-death experiences, cases where people gained information during clinical death that they couldn't have possibly known through ordinary means. My guest is Simon Brown. He's the author of Verified Near-Death Experiences: Proof of an Afterlife. Simon is a clinical hypnotherapist who's guided hundreds of past life regressions. And he's also the host of a podcast with over 900 episodes Exploring NDEs, Reincarnation, and Consciousness. His new book brings together some of the most rigorously documented NDE cases that challenge the materialist idea that the mind ends when the brain stops. We'll explore what it means for an NDE to be verified. We'll hear some of the most compelling cases that Simon has uncovered, and we'll tackle the hard questions that skeptics often raise. Can these experiences really offer proof of life after death? Or is it all just brain chemistry and wishful thinking? We'll also look at how these experiences often lead to deep personal transformation, the common themes that show up again and again, and even the more— and even the more troubling NDEs that don't follow the usual script. So whether you're deeply spiritual, whether you're cautiously curious, or you're firmly skeptical, this is a conversation that will challenge you to look deeper. And when you're done listening, please head over to my Substack at grieftogrowth.substack.com, where you can read an article I'm going to post about this, leave a comment, and join the conversation. So now let's dive in with Simon Brown.

Hi, how you doing? It's good to be here.

It's great to have you here, Simon. I, uh, I've studied a lot of different afterlife areas, uh, mediumship, uh, after-death communications, etc. NDEs, I think, provide some of the most compelling— I'm going to say proof that an afterlife exists. So before we get started, we talked— I mentioned in the introduction verified NDE. What is a verified NDE?

Well, the word that we use is veridical, which comes from a Latin word veridicus, meaning truth or to be truthful. And I didn't want to use verif— veridical near-death experiences as my book title because people probably don't know that word so much. But what I've got is about 30 cases in the book where people basically, they died and then they saw something while out of body. They come back and talk to people about it, and they say to them, yeah, but that happened when you were dead. There's no way you could have seen it. So it's a kind of verification that something spiritual happened, that their consciousness was out of their body and able to see what was going on. So that's basically what it is.

Yeah, and I, I know the word vertical myself, but it is a word I've only ever heard used associated with NDEs. So I think verified is, is a good word to use for, for your book title. Um, so you said you've got 30 cases, uh, in your book. So explain to people like how you found these cases, how you verified them.

Well, there's— I'd say 5 of them are quite famous cases, which I think are really good, so I've put them in the book. But the rest of them, every single one of those people has been a guest on my podcast, so I was able to talk to them myself. Myself about their whole experience. And I was writing the book and I did further Zoom calls with everybody. And then when I'd finish the chapter that they're featured in, I'd send it to them so they could read it and confirm that I got everything accurate. So this, this book has been read by the experiencers and confirmed that what I've put is, is accurate of their experience.

Yeah.

And also, um, I, I write about their whole experience, everything spiritual that happens when they go on, say, to the afterlife. They have the life review, they meet deceased loved ones or spirit guides, the, the areas they might go to. So it's not just about the veridical side of it, there's lots more to the book as well.

Yeah, exactly. Um, I've, I've interviewed probably 100 or so people who have had near-death experiences and The vertical part of it is really interesting, but there's so much more to it. But so we'll start with the vertical today, because I do want to address this episode to the skeptics, the people who say, well, this is all just a dying brain. This is, this is a dump of DMT. This is oxygen deprivation. So this is one thing that easily refutes those, those theories. So can you give me like one example? Maybe we'll start with the famous one, and then we'll go to one that's not so famous.

Well, uh, there's a— the famous— one of the famous ones is the Pamela Reynolds case that I've got in my book, where she had, um, an embolism in the back of her brain at the base, and it was large and it was likely to kill her, and it was in a really difficult place to operate. So the doctor, Mr. uh, Dr. Spetzler he had this new technique back in the '90s, which I think is more common today, which he calls standstill. And what they do is they purposefully stop the heart, and so the brain function ceases, and so there's no flow of blood. And then they can operate on this thing in the back of her head, take it out without risk of her bleeding out or other complications. And so she's hooked up to all these devices So they can be absolutely sure that there was no brain function, no heartbeat, and yet she was able to describe what happened in the room. And there are criticisms of this. One is that, uh, she might have seen something, or that she might have heard something and hallucinated that there was some form of consciousness in the brain, even though it's been inactive for 10 minutes. It's not just a few seconds. But for her, they built these special earbuds. This was the '90s, before the earbuds we have now. Right. And they were put in her ears and they were shaped to her ears, so they completely blocked exterior sound. And they played repeating clicks at about 96 decibels, which is really loud. It's like being at a rock concert. And they were going really fast, almost machine gun fast. The reason they did that is because if the brain was functioning at all, it would show up on the, the devices, the screens they had, that there was some kind of auditory processes going on. So this argument she might have heard something and hallucinated is impossible with her ears just completely plugged up. Also, our eyes were taped shut throughout this, um, through this thing. And, and it's almost If you wanted to do an experiment with a near-death experience, you'd want somebody hooked up to all this stuff to check on it all. But she was able to talk about the music they were playing while the operation was going and the conversation that happened, and she was very accurate. Like, there was— they had to feed a line in through her, her groin that went right up through her heart And it was some kind of tube for something. I, I'm not a surgeon, but there was a doctor down her leg, and she said, 'I can't find a vein big enough.' And Dr. Spetzl said, 'Try the other leg.' And they know that that occurred when her brain function was zero, and yet she was able to recount that conversation back to them. And the fact they were listening to Hotel California and she was a little annoyed with them because there was the line in that you can check out but you can never leave, and she felt a little offended by that. So Dr. Spetzler says he, he just can't explain it. And she was accurately described this, uh, bone saw that they used on her skull, which actually looks like an electric toothbrush, and it has a little blade at the top that spins. And she would never have seen that before. And when she was taken into the operating theater, all the surgical stuff was covered with cloths keep it sterile. So that, that's a great one. That's, that's quite famous, that one. And then another one in my book was Barbara Bartolome. I don't know if you've talked to her.

I have not.

She, um, she's, she's great. She talks so much. And she had, uh, a problem with her spine, and they were going to operate on her spine. And the day before they did a test where they'd inject ink into the spine, and she was on a table with her head here, and then they'd move the table like this slowly, and the ink would go down her spine, and they could see through the X-ray where the leak was in the spinal fluid. So they knew where to operate, and they could see if there's other stuff they hadn't spotted before that needed dealing with. So there were two radiographers, one controlling the bed and looking at the screen, and another one controlling the equipment. The neurosurgeon was there and the orthopedic surgeon was there, and there was a nurse, and it was a pretty standard procedure. And the thing was, the, um, surgery was supposed to be 7 AM the next morning, so the doctors, the surgeons, wouldn't have time to check out the results before it started. So they wanted to be there and watch it. So, uh, the guy had his finger on the button on the table, he's checking the equipment, he presses the button, and the table goes the wrong direction. Injection, and the ink goes into her brain, basically kills her. So she's above the table and she's looking down on it, and it's that kind of classic NDE thing, how she watched all they did with the resuscitation and the very specific stuff of it, about the nurse getting on the phone and calling for a crash cart, and about how they hooked up these things to her chest and it was the heart monitor and it was flatlined. So they knew her heart was flatlined. The two radiologists were doing CPR, taking it in turns to change between doing the chest compressions and the help with the breathing. And she said what happened was, uh, the author— the neurosurgeon came over and pushed them out the way, and he hit her on the chest with his fist and She said the fist came from back here. He really smacked her with it. And the second time he hit her, she got a heartbeat, and she said that's when she went back into her body. Hmm. So she was resuscitated, and they put an oxygen mask on, and eventually after 20 minutes they took it off, and she was like, what just happened? And they're like, what just happened? She says, I saw you do this, and you did that, and you said this, and she recounted all of it. And they knew she was dead when it happened.

Yeah.

And the neurosurgeon stood next to the table, and she said he had his teeth clenched and his fists clenched, and he said, 'I'm not going to stand here and listen to this,' and he stormed out the room. But then the orthopedic surgeon sat down with her and said, 'Tell us again what happened.' And, um, you know, she couldn't get anybody to talk about it from the hospital. And the reason is that they'd made the mistake. It was her fault she was dead, so they were liable. She could sue them, right? No one was going to confirm anything to her. So, you know, I did try and see if we could talk to the orthopedic surgeon because she's still in touch with him, but he declined being interviewed. So that's a great case. There is that skepticism that might say, again, there was some consciousness, she hallucinated it, or she heard it. But her heart had stopped beating. And I interviewed Dr. Eben Alexander. He told me that within, say, 20 seconds of your heart stopping beating, you have no brain activity, right? So you can be pretty sure there was nothing there.

You know, it's, it's really interesting, Simon, how the materialists will keep chasing different theories to, to hold on to that materialism, right? Because they tell us the consciousness is in the brain, and that's, that's all. The, the brain generates the mind that's it. Once your brain stops, you're, you know, you're— it's lights out. But then on the— I know, and neurosurgeons, you know, people like Dr. Evan Alexander, neurologist, tell us once the blood flow stops to the brain, you've got a few seconds and then there's no— there's no brain activity. So we know there's no brain activity, there's no heart activity. And it said, but yeah, maybe, but there's some element of consciousness. But Pam Reynolds' case proves that her ears and her eyes were not functioning. So even if there is some element of consciousness that way— and I don't, uh, I haven't, I haven't read your book unfortunately, but are there any cases of like remote things where people could not possibly know because they weren't even in the room?

Oh yeah, yeah, there's, there's a few of those. There's my favorite is this guy called Tibor Putnocki, a Hungarian man. Have you ever heard of him? This is, um, it's a great case. Dr. Penny Sartori talked to him. I, I didn't get to talk to him, but I, I saw interviews with him and all sorts of things. And this was the early '90s. He was in Hungary, just after Hungary left the Soviet Union. He was in hospital for very high blood pressure. Doctors told him they were really worried about him, but being this post-Soviet hospital, it wasn't great. And There were 3 beds in his ward and there was a big window that was a two-way mirror, so people in the room could see in the ward, but you couldn't see in that room from the ward. So he's lying in bed feeling awful, and then the next moment he's standing up in the ward and he feels great. And he's like, ah, this is great, they've cured me, I feel fine. And I was like, why are those nurses rushing past me? And they were rushing over to his body to give him CPR and try and resuscitate him. He didn't realize he was dead. And he, he looked at this two-way mirror and he just said, I just thought to myself, what's happening in there? And then instantly he's in there and there's a nurse with a trolley at a cupboard and she's pulling all these things out and putting them on the trolley fast as she can. And she dropped something and it rolled underneath the cupboard and then she ignored that and rushed out. I think she was going to help with the resuscitation. So Tyball went, what is that thing under the cupboard? And he said it was like his sight was suddenly 4 inches away from this item. And I've heard this before with other near-death experiencers. And he read the label on it, and there was a nurse in that room having a phone call with her husband, and their children were ill, and she was trying to tell him where the doctor's phone number was in the phone book. Because, you know, we We didn't have cell phones in those days. You wrote down your own phone book, and he couldn't find it. And Tyball could hear both ends of the conversation, and then he wondered about that man. And he said suddenly he was in the apartment with that guy, and it's 7 kilometers from the hospital, and instantly he's there. And he looked around the room and saw the books and the furniture, the carpet. He looked over the guy's shoulder and he saw the doctor's number and The guy kept flipping the pages and Tyball said he was shouting, there's the number, there's the number. But he also saw this man's socks and they had lots of little pictures of animals on them. And Tyball says he thought to himself, what kind of a man wears socks like this? So anyway, he was— he went on to have all sorts of stuff with the life review, and it was really such an impact on him, that, that side of it. And I describe all that in the book. But afterwards he was resuscitated and the doctor sat next to him and said, okay, you were dead for 9 minutes, did anything happen? So he talked about the nurse's room. The doctor went in, found this item under the cupboard just as Tybur had described it, and then he found the nurse that was on the phone. She confirmed that the content of the phone call was exactly as Tybur described it. So he got in the car with her and went to the apartment. And again, he saw this is exactly as described. And when he returned to the hospital, he was holding those socks with the little animals on them. So I think that's, that's a great one, that, you know, something happened 7 kilometers from the hospital and he accurately described all of it.

Yes.

And they know that at the time the phone call happened, they were trying to resuscitate him, that he was going through CPR. So how could he possibly have known about that apartment, that phone call, that item under the cupboard.

Yeah, and I love, I love that case because it proves that not only does consciousness survive death, but it's also that it's not, it's not just local. Because there you could say, well, you know, if someone knows something is going on in the room, um, that maybe somehow they're, they heard it, or they're, you know, something like that. But this is, this is like consciousness describing something that's going on remotely, which as far as we know, our eyes and ears, you know, aren't equipped to do. So, you know, I, I— the, the word proof is, is, uh, I know in, in science, I work with Dr. Gary Schwartz, and, you know, they always— they don't like the word proof, right? But it's, it's— to me, there's a, there's a proof beyond a reasonable doubt because there's no theory of consciousness that's materialist that can account for the things that we're talking about.

Yeah. And it's— I've seen my, my book's called Verified Near-Death Experiences: Proof of an Afterlife. And I said proof because for me it's proof. I'm not waiting for a scientist or somebody to allow me to believe it's true.

Yeah.

I've convinced myself enough as it is. So that, that word proof can be a bit, um, I don't know, contentious. Is that proof for who? Who decides what's real?

Yeah, I love the way that you use the word proof because the other thing scientists will tell you is we don't prove anything. They'll say that philosophers prove things and mathematicians prove things, but science, they don't use the word proof because it's, it's just, it's a philosophical thing in the scientific community. But for us normal people, you know, everybody looks at the sky and we all say the sky is blue. I don't, I don't need proof that the sky is blue. We, we all perceive believe it. And I've spoken to enough NDE experiencers, and you have as well, that we know it's proof for us. I have a really good friend who was a total atheistic materialist. And she came to me and said, I don't believe mediumship is real, give me the best medium that you have. And I will go to her, I will give her a fake name, I will use my friend's credit card, and I want to see what she gets. And this person came back to me and said, I'm convinced, because her personal experience was, you know, able to, quote, prove it to her. So proof is, you're right, it's something that it's, it is still subjective. How much does it take for us to prove it to ourselves? But I love the fact that you've gathered these things. And it's, to me, it's like a challenge. Okay, explain this to me. How does this happen in your model of consciousness? Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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Yeah, for me, I tend to think that the brain is a receiver of consciousness. Yes, you know, it's like a radio picking up a radio station. And so somebody might say, yeah, but when somebody has brain damage, they might lose their memories, or they, they might lose this or that. And it's like, yeah, but with a radio, if something goes wrong with it, it might be you can't tune to another station, or the sound is awful, or you can't change the volume. Different things happen, but doesn't mean that this radio station stops transmitting. And just because your brain's dead, it doesn't stop I mean, consciousness is no longer there because your brain's just dumbing down your consciousness so it can survive in a 3D world. Because, you know, we know our eyes can't see the whole spectrum, our ears can't hear everything.

And exactly, this—

it's, uh, it's a thing. I think consciousness is somewhere else and it's somehow we're receiving it.

That's a model to me. And my background is engineering, so, you know, I look at it like, you know, that's a model to me that makes sense. That, that the brain is more like a receiver, and it's a filtering receiver. And as you said, we know that our eyes filter. We don't see above a certain light spectrum. We don't see below a certain light spectrum. Our ears filter. We don't hear things above a certain spectrum or below a certain spectrum. Our brains, our bodies receive so much input that our brains only prevent— present a very small bit of it to us consciously. So we know all these things are being filtered. And the materialist says, well, the mind is generated by the brain. Well, then you've got to— if you're going to use that model, you've got to account for things like we're talking about. And beyond NDEs, things like remote viewing, you know, we know the government knows 100% that remote viewing is real, because they've used it. And so we know those things exist.

Yeah, I talked to Russell Targ.

Oh, they have you? Okay. Yeah.

And Russell Targ was telling me about this guy called Pat Price, who, back when they were doing this for the Army, he was exceptional. And there was one time they sent two people out and they got to a location, and, and they called in to Russell and said, right, we're at the location. So he just went to Pat and said, the location. And he drew out all this, these things. And they'd gone to a swimming pool where there's outdoor swimming pools, and he had drawn these rectangles and he'd said the, the sizes of them and the, the amount of feet he describes is exactly what the, the swimming pools were. And he had drawn out the whole plan of this swimming pool location, but he also drew two water towers there which are not there. And they did some research and they found out decades ago there were water towers there.

Oh wow.

So he was seeing back in time as well as what's currently there, which is pretty strange. But he was given a target as a test, and it was a small cabin in the woods next to a military base. And he was able to go into a real high-ranking officer's room and look through the filing cabinet and see the names on the files.

Oh wow.

And when he reported that to them, they just freaked out. They said, this, this is too much. You'd think this, this would be great if you had a spy who could do this, right? Russell Targ said he died soon after in mysterious circumstances, and he thinks the Army couldn't risk him learning all their secrets. Yeah, but it shows remote viewing works over and over. And they also remote view places that are far away, don't they, like Mars or the moon? And they say they see stuff there. So if the stuff they see on Earth can be confirmed, what does that say for the things they're seeing on Mars? Does that lend to it being real? We're getting off the subject a bit here.

And then, well, we are and we aren't, because to me it's a whole body of evidence. So the near-death experience, and particularly the veridical near-death experiences, are something that I think we can take to a skeptic and say This is very concrete, but it also fits the model that you and I have, that the brain is a receiver of consciousness and consciousness exists outside of the body, which remote viewing also, uh, let's say, verifies or, um, emphasizes that model, right? Because if you— if, if our model is true, that consciousness is outside of the brain, then things like remote viewing would be possible. And that is very, very well documented that, you know, remote viewing happens. So that, that again, I think that that kind of backs up the NDE as well. So I want to encourage people to get your book and to read the verified near-death experiences. But beyond the, that physical verification, there's the, the, the abilities that people come back with, the personality changes that people have after they've had an NDE.

Yeah, I know. I heard 70% of NDEers divorce when they come back. It may be such a change. If you're quite materialistic, you want your big house, your nice car, your great holidays, you've got a great job and lots of money, and you come back from the near-death experience and all that is gone. You're spiritual, you don't want to chase that anymore. And then your partner's saying, well, hang on a second, Yeah, I like the money, I like the house.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's a thing also, there's, there's aftereffects, aren't there? Like that they become more psychic and they're almost like weird things happen in the house and you can't wear watches because they won't work, or lights flicker when they're around. And those aftereffects come back with near-death experiences. And I think the life review is maybe the most powerful part of the near-death experience. That can change people so much if you really think about what that is and what it would mean for you, you know, to go through every second of your life and to feel the hurt that you might have caused other people. And it shows you what you're doing, what sort of person you are. And I think it's such a shock that people come back, they're much more compassionate and much more empathy. And, uh, they're much more of like less materialistic. I talked to somebody the other day who, who had a great job and they just sold everything and moved into a small apartment. And that's all they want to do now is talk about their near-death experience and show people that spiritual stuff is the path to go down. And that it's all about, um, love and looking after the people around you. Because I've heard people say in the in the life review that they may see stuff where they were kind to people, and it could be the smallest little thing that they just forget about just like that. But they say it's like the spirit guides that are with them are so proud of them just for that one little thing that they do. And it's like they're saying, yeah, this is the stuff, this is important, this is how you should behave.

Yeah, yeah. I think, um, again, that to me The, the vertical part of it is really cool because it's, it's really— we can get people's attention with that. But, um, the, the people that you said, the changes they've had— and, and people don't change based upon hallucinations or dreams. We've all had dreams. None of us has ever had it— well, I shouldn't say none of us, but very few of us ever had a dream and woke up and said, I'm going to sell everything and, you know, move to the desert because I— because of a dream I had. Or people that have had, had experiences where they've died in the hospital and been resuscitated. Not all of them report near-death experiences, and not all of them change their lives, but some of the ones that do— and I interviewed a guy just yesterday, and it'll be out in a few weeks— he's a really extreme example. This guy was a C-level executive, CEO of a company, total materialist, totally chasing, uh, motorcycles and boats and cars and experiences and going out to eat and, you know, just, just living a hedonistic lifestyle and said, if there is a God, I'll worry about it when I get there. I'm not even thinking about this. And this guy had an NDE. He woke up the next day when he came back into his body, goes into work and says, I quit. I'm not, I'm not a C-level executive anymore. And he told me, he said, I won't do, I won't trade anything for money anymore. It's like, I can't do it. Um, he, he get— he does— he's got all the clairs now, so he's basically— he's a medium, he's a psychic, um, and he will work with people, but, you know, for donations. Um, but he said, I don't— I don't— money is nothing to me at this point. That is a massive change. It doesn't happen because of a hallucination.

Yeah, yeah, I know. And also, the life reviews seem to happen in such different ways for different people. It's that thing where the near-death experience can be It's like it's tailored perfectly for that person. And some people get distressing near-death experiences, and others, they're kind of neutral. And I wonder if the spirit guides, or whoever's in control of this, is looking down, seeing this person, and thinking, man, we need to have a talk with them. These things aren't going right. And so this near-death experience happens, and They think, what is the perfect thing for this person? And so they construct it. It's almost like the theater of the near-death experience. Yeah, almost like it's not the afterlife, it's a space outside of that, somewhere else maybe for some of them. And I talked to this woman, Nancy Rines. In her near-death experience, she was in this incredible landscape with mountains and forests and she was walking through this field with a woman she said was one of her spirit team, and she looked behind her and the whole landscape was just dissolving away into a mist. And the spirit team member said to her, yeah, we created this whole environment just for you right now for this experience, because that's just what she needed.

Yeah, yeah. I think, like I said, the, the NDE, it is so rich. And it is, it is tailored because everybody's is different. I think people get what they want. And you mentioned disturbing NDEs, and I'm sure you've spoken with some people who've had some.

Yeah, Howard Storm. Yeah, there's another lady, I think he's— I don't want to get her name wrong, so I won't say her name. I think that distressing near-death experiences happen more often than it appears. I think people don't want to talk about it when they have those ones. It's almost a thing. I think they have an experience where they go to hell.

Yes.

So you don't want to tell people about it. They look at you and think, you went to hell? What are you done in your life that you're going to hell? But it doesn't seem like they're awful people. Howard Storm was— I think he described himself to me as an aggressive atheist.

Yes. Yeah.

And he was so changed, wasn't he? He became a pastor.

Yeah, I've actually— I've met him. I haven't interviewed him for the podcast, but I've met him because he lives— I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he's in Northern Kentucky, so we're really close to each other. And he's like the most gentle, nicest guy that you would ever meet. And this experience happened, I don't know, 40 or 50 years ago. It's quite a while ago. But he does. He says, I was an aggressive atheist. But then— and I have interviewed Dr. Rajiv Parti. I don't know if you've spoken with him. But he was, he was an atheistic materialist. And he had a distressing NDE. The thing about the distressing NDEs, though, is people come back and they're always better for it. So, and I remember hearing a woman one time, she said, oh, I was in— I know that hell was— I was falling. And I knew I was gonna fall forever. I was in this black, total blackness. And I remember thinking I was listening to, I was like, Well, obviously you didn't fall forever because you're here. So it is— I believe it's just theater. It's, it's to get people's attention.

Yeah, yeah. And with Howard Storm and this other lady I talked to, they had a weird way of getting out of the distressing part of it, right?

Right.

Because Howard Storm started saying the Lord's Prayer when he was in this really nasty place. But he said to me, because he's an atheist, he didn't know any prayers. Yeah, I just heard this message telling him to pray, and he started quoting a TV commercial, then doing Shakespeare, and then suddenly he remembered the Lord's Prayer. But with, uh, this other woman, she was in this, uh, this kind of snowscape. The snow was 2 or 3 feet deep, and she was trudging along with these other people, and these demons were there. And they went into this house, and it was, you know, so horrible. It's like hell. There's demons. And they were really nasty. And she said to one of the demons, 'Why are you being so nasty?' And he said, 'It's Christmas Day on Earth. We're always nastier when it's Christmas Day.' And she started singing A Christmas Carol, and the demon got really angry, was shouting at her, but he noticed he was backing off. And then she carried on singing A Christmas Carol over and over, and then suddenly she was lifted out of that space into the light, right? So I've always remembered that. Look, Howard Storm said a prayer, she sung A Christmas Carol. If I ever have a distressing experience, I know what to do.

Yeah, it seems to me, for my, my studies of it, it's, it's like as soon as you realize— it's kind of like when you're having a nightmare and you realize, oh, this is a nightmare, I can control it, and you just, you just will yourself out of it. Or in these cases, a lot of times people will ask for help, and then when they ask for help, then they're, then they're taken out of it.

Yeah, yeah. And I talked to somebody who'd written a book about distressing near-death experiences. Sorry, I can't give you their name. I've done so many episodes.

Yeah, I understand.

They, they said that not one of the people they talked to didn't escape to the light. They all got out of the distressing place.

Exactly. And they've all left the distressing place while they were still in the near-death experience. So they, they've always Yeah, that's, that's been— and I've, I've actually sought out people that have had distressing experiences, and that's been— I've found that to be the case in everyone that I've, that I've looked at or talked to. So there is, there is this element. And I interviewed PMA Atwater, and she's talked to, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people have NDEs probably. And she's— I remember she said she was giving a lecture, I think she said one time, and one person stood up and said, they had a heavenly near-death experience and said it was the worst thing that ever happened to them because they came back, they felt like they were rejected from heaven, they felt like an outcast, a lot of stuff that in these— some NDEers experience, just feeling disoriented being back in this world. And then another person stood up and had a hellish experience and said it was the best thing that ever happened to them, because it taught them, it showed them that they were on the wrong path. And now they were determined to live a different life.

Yeah, yeah. And there's a, a thing with coma, particularly over COVID. This was found— lots of people were put into a coma induced, and they came out afterwards talking about these terrible experiences they had. They also talked about near-death experiences. Well, there's one of the guys in my book, uh, was through that. And also there's some people who talk about living another life on another Earth. And they say it's just as real as this life right here, right now, except this other Earth is slightly different, and this might be slightly more advanced technology. And the— it's like the McDonald's sign is all a different color to have it. It's just little differences. Yes. And I think some of these descriptions I've heard of the coma patients talking about, they say their nightmares, hyper-realistic but I've heard them talk about them. They sound a bit like distressing near-death experiences to me, and I'm wondering if that's what they're getting.

Yeah, well, I, I, again, I think it's, it's kind of like, you know, we get what we're supposed to get when we have the, the NDE. I don't, I don't believe they're, they're accidental. Um, so I believe that they happen, you know, again, for a reason. It's kind of maybe a, a wake-up call that we've, we've kind of plugged in and said, if I get to this point and I haven't figured this out yet, um, let's have, let's have this, this wake-up call.

Yeah, I kick up the pants, so to speak, a spiritual kick. And it's, it's like, I, I think sometimes, like, the guides or whoever's looking down and somebody dies, they go, look, look, he's dead! Quick, grab him, let's give him a near-death experience. Yeah, there's other people I talk to who think that the near-death experience was— they planned that for their life before they were born. That would hit them at some time during their life. And, and it is so personal. I talked to one lady, she coincidentally was just— lives 2 miles from me, and her near-death experience was going back to her grandfather's grandparents' apartment by the seaside. And it was back as the way it was in the 1970s, and they were the age they were in the 1970s. And it wasn't like she was dreaming, she was there. They— the grandparents— oh yeah, we're dead, this is the afterlife, this is where we like to be sometimes, and we brought you here. And they talked about what they do in the afterlife. And one of them said he greets spirits that have— people who've just died— and he greets them and brings them into the afterlife as a kind of, um, like a receptionist. Yeah, just saying, yeah, you can relax, everything's all right. The way he described it was to do with like these white flames coming out of the distance, and as they got closer, you could see the people inside the flames. And some of them were with like their mother or father or somebody who died before them who'd gone to collect them.

Hmm.

It just gets so rich the more you get into it, and more complicated the more you learn about near-death experiences.

Yeah, so we, we've talked about— so we've said that they're, they're unique. And for people that aren't familiar with near-death experiences, help people understand what are some of the common themes that we have come across, or that you've come across.

Yeah, so we hear about the tunnel of light, don't we? And that a lot of people have some kind of tunnel experience, but it's not everybody. It's not a hard huge percentage of people have a near-death experience. And I've had people describe the tunnel to me as being huge. Other people— I've said it's been tiny. Other people have said to me they've seen other people going up the tunnel or people going back down the tunnel. And for one guy, his tunnel was an aircraft fuselage, like on an airplane. All the seats are gone and you could see the airplane going off into the distance.

Oh wow.

There's all these— all the windows, and there's this incredible light coming through the windows because the interior's got no lighting.

Oh wow.

And there girl, she said she was in a tunnel that was made out of transparent bricks, and all the light was coming through the transparent bricks, but the floor of the tunnel was so uneven she had to crawl to get along the tunnel because it was so bad. So this idea that perhaps people see a ton of light when they die because it's to do with oxygen deprivation and they're getting tunnel vision and their vision's shutting down, it's, it's just nonsense when it comes to that tunnel. And I talked to Dr. Bruce Greyson— name dropping here— he said to me that he's talked to people who've had that tunnel vision experience just before they died, and then they had the tunnel of light experience afterwards. Right. But we've talked about the life review— that shows up a lot. Everybody has the life review. And meeting deceased loved ones and spirit guides— that comes up a lot. There's also the barrier, isn't there? Yeah, it can be different for different people. I had one guy describe it to me as like a bubblegum bubble, but somebody else, it was a white picket fence, or it just feels like a force field. And whoever's with them says, no, it's— you can't come past it. If you come past this barrier, then you're not getting back. You can't go back to Earth. And there's a lady in my book who wanted to come back and the spirit guide with her said, it's too late, your body's dead, you can't go back.

Hmm.

And she got really annoyed with him, and she was saying, no, I have to go back. He says that basically, he said, it's above my pay grade, I can't make the decision. And she said, well, talk to somebody who can. And she said he looked up and these beams of light came out of his eyes going up into the sky, and then he came back, said, okay, They've said it's all right, you can, you can go back to your body, but be prepared, it's not going to be good. The first 18 months is going to be really bad. And she came back down. This is part of her veridical stuff, is she was in the room watching her body have a grand mal seizure, and there was a nurse there and her husband, and she could talk to them about this after the fact, and they could confirm And the spirit guide was with her and said, this is when you would have died, this would have killed you, but now you're going to continue after this.

Wow. Yeah, that, that's the thing. They are, um, as I said, they're so rich. There's— each one is so, so interesting, but there are these common themes. But like you said, the tunnel of light is a common theme, but it's not like 75% of people have an NDE have the tunnel. It's actually— it's, it's a smaller percentage. Um, so it's, it's the, um, but each person comes back and says, okay, this is, this is what I needed, you know, to, to continue my journey, is the way I see it. So I know you do— you're, as a profession, you do past life regressions, right? So how does that tie into your work with, uh, you know, interviewing people that have had NDEs?

Well, it's just a thing. My podcast is looking for evidence of an afterlife. So I'll talk to, uh, mediums, people who have near-death experiences, shared death experiences, children with past life memories, people who research that kind of stuff, and people who facilitate past life regressions. And I'm talking to somebody later today, interviewing them about their book. It's all about the psychomantium. Oh yeah, you know what that is? And she was involved in a, a study of how the psychomantium can help with grief.

Yeah, tell people what the psychomantium is for people that aren't familiar.

Yeah, it's, it's Raymond Moody put it together. He heard about something in ancient Greece where people would be with this, um, highly polished stone that there was a reflection in it, and they'd sit in the dark, and it was said that they could commune with the dead. So he built his own kind of thing, and that was called the necromantium, I think. But he called his one the psychomantium. So basically you sit in a chair in a completely dark room with very, very dim light, and you have a big mirror in front of you, but the mirror is angled so you can't see your own reflection. And you just kind of stay in there in this kind of sensory deprivation room, and then things start springing up on the mirror— colors and shapes. And occasionally people see their deceased loved ones in the mirror. And, and, uh, I was reading the books today. This woman said she saw Jesus, and she was really disappointed because she wanted to see her father. And it's like, oh man, Jesus shows up.

Yeah.

So that's the psychomantium. It's just that sensory deprivation with this, this mirror and just relaxing and opening your mind. It's almost like getting in a meditative state. Yeah, that kind of state. And so with, uh, near-death experiences as well, there's, there's hints of reincarnation. Some of them I've talked to have said, oh yeah, I knew all about my past lives during the near-death experience. And there was one lady I talked to said she could see all these people in the distance in this field during the near-death experience, wearing all clothes from different eras. Some look like from the future, some didn't even look human. And she realized that these were all her lives, and she could sense a part of her soul in all of them. So we're doing the past life regression. I feel it, it kind of connects up. Reincarnation connects with near-death experiences, and also of course the children with past life memories, which can be really powerful evidence. Yes, that mediumship, they can talk about reincarnation. So it's just one of these different lines of evidence which go to show that there is an afterlife.

Yeah, and you know, reincarnation is really interesting because I was raised in the Christian tradition, and a lot of Christians have been taught to believe that reincarnation is, is, is not real, that we as Christians don't believe in it, even though it was part of early Christianity and was actually taken out of the, of the Bible, about the teachings, purposely by the people that wanted to control us and say, no, you only have one life and, and we control it. But when you start to study this stuff, like you said, mediumship, it comes up with near-death experiences, it comes up just like matter of fact. It's like, it's not like, it's not even a question. Um, so I, I, for me, once you start to really get into this, it's kind of hard not to say that there is something to it, whether they're simultaneous or past or whatever. We do live multiple lives.

Oh yeah, I know. I've been taken through past life regressions a number of times, and I've had my own little verifications. Like, there was— in one of the past life regressions, I saw this location, this park, and it stood out quite a lot because it was really sharp angles. The last place you put a park if you're a town planner. But 2 years later, I was in a part of North London I'd never been to before, and there was the park. Exactly as I'd seen it in the past life regression. And the houses around it were exactly the same as I'd seen. But I've had one of my clients sent me a picture of an oil painting, a portrait, and say, that's, that's who I was in the past life. I tracked this person down. So these things come up with past life regression, these kind of verifications. And there's a detective, Robert Snow, and He did his research in the '90s. He had a past life regression. He thought it was all nonsense, but in the end he found what he called 28 proofs that that life was real. Oh wow. Yeah, that he'd seen. And that, that, that's, uh, he's got a great book out. And, um, it's with the children with past life memories as well, that, that can be so much detail, and you really have to research to find out if they're correct or not.

Yeah, yeah. Um, and there have been— well, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of, uh, Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson, uh, with Children with Past Lives Memories. And they've well documented many cases. And I read a book called The Boy Who Knew Too Much. Um, and just that one book, I think that was the boy who thought he— who says he was Lou Gehrig in a past life. And it was— it's really, it's really fascinating to, to again, where it might seem like we're jumping all over the place, but there's a common theme here, that, that we are not just a consciousness in these bodies, that our consciousness does survive after we leave here, our consciousness is not, you know, localized. So those are the, those are the messages I think we're trying to get across to people. And there was something else I wanted to go back to on the vertical part of the NDEs, not so much the physical, but Have you talked to people who have come back with like abilities that they didn't have before? Like they can play music or they can paint or stuff like that?

Yeah, the David Ditchfield.

Yeah, I've talked to him.

Yeah, because he came back and he wrote a symphony that was performed, and he does all these paintings, and he didn't do that beforehand. I think he was— played guitar in a punk band for a little while, but And there's other people we hear about who come back and just play the piano, and they hadn't had lessons with it before. So I haven't talked to a lot of people like this, but I know that they're out there and that these things happen. And it's also— it's like the children, a 3-year-old playing the piano like they've been playing for 10 years. Where does that come from? Yeah, that's something that might be coming through as well.

Yeah, exactly. And it's really interesting. I listen to all these podcasts, you know, we're trying to explain this these things. And again, it's funny to hear the materialists kind of scramble. Like, how do you explain a child that's 3 years old that can play piano like a— man, like a prodigy? Well, maybe there's some part of the brain. It's like, so you're saying there's a part of the brain that knows how to play the piano that's locked for the rest of us? How is that? How did that happen? How did that evolve? So it's really interesting that some people do seem to carry over abilities from lifetime to lifetime. Or when they do come, when they leave their bodies and they come back, then suddenly you have these abilities that they had no, you know, no inkling of before, um, or the ability to predict the future even.

Yeah. And also injuries, as children have birthmarks and birth deformities which relate exactly to an injury in the past life.

Yeah.

There was a guy, a kid, this is one of Ian Stevenson's cases, He was talking about being a teacher, and the teacher was shot on the way— on the way to school to teach. And it turns out this teacher was a bit of a scoundrel, cheating on his wife and doing some dodgy deals with dodgy people, and he was murdered. And this boy had a bullet hole, like a birthmark exactly where the bullet entered, and a birthmark exactly where the bullet left the brain. In exactly the right place. But he knew so much about that guy's life that to say the birthmarks are just a coincidence just seems too much.

Yeah, and it's interesting because in these cases people might say, well, they had the birthmark and then they— it's the other way around. It's like they'll, they'll describe a past life, they'll identify the person that had the past life, and then they'll discover the child has, you know, the birthmark. Um, so it's, it's, it's— that's another one of the things about— it's fascinating. So, uh, Simon, I'm curious, you know, with your book, have you had any skeptics reach out to you and say, yeah, I— or I also maybe even cynics, people who said I don't believe any of this stuff at all, and they've read your book and said, you know what, I think I might believe this?

I haven't had that, but then I haven't sent it out to people like that. It's, it's almost a thing as I don't engage with real skeptics and materialists. I'm not interested in their opinion, and my mind's made up, which might be a bad thing because that's what they'll say to me. Don't bother me with the facts, my mind's made up.

Well, yeah, you know, I don't think it's our job to convince other people. I 100% agree with you on that. I was just curious about that. But, you know, I think it's really funny, like, like the guy I interviewed yesterday had the NDE. He was a total materialist before, and I asked him about his relationships. He said, well, I've lost All of my friends, 99.9% of my friends are gone because I only hung out with people who believe like me, who would laugh at people like me. Um, Evan Alexander was a total materialist before he had his experience. So for some people, it's got to happen to them for them to be convinced.

Yeah, yeah. And that's up to them. It's, it's a thing where I started the podcast because I was learning about all this stuff and I wanted to spread this information more. I thought more people should hear about all these things and what they show. But at the same time, you can't be forcing someone to sit down and listen to you. They, they have their own path to live, and they can believe what they want to believe.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, and, and they'll find out someday, right? We'll, we'll all, we'll all find out someday. Um, so I love what you're, you're doing, and As, as we're wrapping up, I, I noticed I was saying before we got started that you're also into UFOs. And I know a lot of times I, I used to, when we had local IANDS meetings, I would go to the IANDS meetings and there are a lot of people that are, that understand NDEs are also in the UFOs. So what's the tie-in between the two?

Well, it's interesting because I've taken people into past lives and I don't control which past life they see.

Right?

And they might go to one in another planet.

Hmm.

There's some kind of tie-in there. Also, there's people who complain to aliens. They say, I'm being abducted, and I say to them, you've got no right to do this. And the aliens reply, but you agreed to this before you were born.

Hmm.

And there's somebody who said that they were like— they were in their diaper. They remember being that small, and they're in the playpen. These three gray aliens are standing there looking down on him. And he said they had just come to make sure my soul had properly meshed with my body. So, you know, you see all this coming together eventually when you really start getting into it. You find these crossovers and how the aliens have been heard to refer to humans as containers or vessels. And it's like, we're interested in your physicality for some reason, which we're not sure what it is. But it's almost like they don't care about you, the individual, like Simon or Brian. They care about your soul. And so this human life, it's just a temporary thing. The— yeah, yeah, all right, shut up, we need to do our experiments or whatever. So it does show up as a crossover. And also, people who claim to be abducted by aliens have the same after-effects as people who have near-death experiences.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

Yeah, they're becoming psychic, or maybe having some form of poltergeist activity in the house. Your watches won't work on them. So there's, there's something going on there. And even though we've been researching for decades, there's still more to look into. But I'm writing a book about alien abduction at the moment because I'm so fascinated by it.

Yeah, well, I, I really, um, it's really cool to talk to someone that understands, uh, the, the breadth of this and how it all ties together. Because I do believe it does all tie together to give us a real model of what a human is, what a human being is. We— I believe that our biology— and I look to movies like Avatar, I think does a really good job of showing, you know, the idea that a consciousness can be put into a body. That's, that's, I think that's what we are. Our bodies are basically avatars. And we inhabit it for a while, and then we go back to where we came from. And then we inhabit other avatars as well. And our consciousness is not just local, it's just this is the perspective we have while we're connected to this brain.

Yeah, yeah. You reminded me of something somebody said to me, this lady in her near-death experience. She said in the film Avatar, when they're in the forest at night and everything's glowing, she said that that's the closest thing she's seen to her experience when she was in this field, and the, the plants were alive and the trees were alive, and it was all this connection that she said what she saw in Avatar really reminded her of that, all this luminosity. So that, that was interesting. And there was something else now, but I've forgotten what it was.

Well, um, yeah, again, I was just talking about this, this— I think it helps us put together a model of, of what a human being is and what our consciousness is, and it's, it's so much greater than the materialists tell us that it is. So I, again, I love your work. And of all the bodies of work, I think if I were going to present one thing to a skeptic, and if they said you could only give me one thing, it would be NDEs, and particularly verified NDEs. So I will definitely be recommending your book to people. And I can think— I'm thinking of one person right now who I've known for a very, very long time, who's very, you know, like prove it to me kind of person. And I think this is the kind of thing where people can say, okay, well, yeah, I don't have a way to explain that.

Yeah, yeah, I hope so. I hope they, they get it. I, I've been told, um, that it can be quite an impact, this book. And I'm not saying, hey, I'm great, I'm a great writer. It's these people's experiences and talking about the life review and the pain that they had in their lives. One guy told me he had to stop reading and put the book down because it was impacting him so much. And so there's, there's so much to it, learning about near-death experiences. It's not just an academic kind of logical thing you're studying. There's so much emotion there.

It's not, you know, um, Ken Ring calls it the benign virus because, uh, I remember, you know, there's certain things that just open up your eyes and you, and you, you look up from the page and you suddenly see the world a whole different way. And I think your book could be one of those things because, as I said, it will, it will change your view of the world when you realize that what I'm seeing with my eyes is not, not all there is. And I love the fact that we're living in an age where all this stuff is out there. There's a podcast I'm recommending everybody right now, The Telepathy Tapes, which is, you know, it's blowing up, which I'm so thrilled about because it's mainstreaming some of these ideas of consciousness being non-local.

Yeah, Kai Dickens has been a guest on my podcast.

Oh, has she?

Yeah, yeah, it's great to talk to her because that's just amazing what's coming up there. Because it's not just telepathy, is it? They talk about deceased people being around and other realities and other realms, which is pretty much what shows up in near-death experiences.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, people might feel like we're bouncing all over the place, but it's all the same thing. It's all the same thing. The consciousness is not local. The consciousness does not, does not start when you're, when you're born. It does not end when you, when you, when your body dies. And all these things are just pieces of that puzzle of what, what they're, what it is. So, um, thank you so much for being here today. Remind people the name of your book, and if people can reach out to you, how can people find you?

Yeah, the book is Verified Near-Death Experiences: Proof of an Afterlife. Um, my website is pastlifehypnosis.co.uk, and my podcasts are Our Paranormal Afterlife and Alien UFO Podcast, and I've done over 900 episodes, so you'd probably be able to find it somewhere. I've tried to get it on every podcast app.

Yeah, well, congratulations on 900 episodes. I know what a feat that is. I'm I'm almost half of what you, what you've got. So that's, that's great. Simon, thanks for being here today. Enjoy your rest of your afternoon.

Thanks a lot. It's been great.

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