0:04

If the ten percent have your

0:06

podcast Dan Harris. Hello!

0:20

Everybody how we doing. When I

0:22

heard that Sebastian younger. The

0:24

bestselling author and award winning. An intensely

0:27

skeptical combat reporter. When I heard that

0:29

this dude had decided to write a

0:31

book about whether there's an afterlife. I

0:34

was like yes please let's get that guy on

0:36

the show. He has a wild

0:38

story which you're going to hear him tell. In.

0:40

Full. But the T Ldr

0:42

is. he had a pancreatic aneurism that

0:45

almost killed him back in June of

0:47

Twenty Twenty, and as he lay dying.

0:50

He he says he felt his late

0:52

father's presence. Speaking words of

0:54

comfort to him. He. Did

0:56

ultimately survive, although he did also

0:58

nearly die. And. The

1:01

experience prompted him as a journalist

1:03

and a self described stone Cold

1:05

atheists. To. Investigate near death

1:07

experiences in order to and these are

1:09

his words. Com. His soul.

1:12

He's. Written a whole new book about it. It's

1:14

called in my Time of Dying How I came

1:16

face to face with the idea of an afterlife.

1:19

This comes on the heels of a

1:21

whole series of huge hit books including

1:23

The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in

1:25

Belmont, War Tribe, and Freedom. This

1:27

is a rangy, fascinating and sometimes

1:30

are fun conversation about life, death,

1:32

consciousness, multi vs or and love.

1:34

We. Talk about what the science says

1:36

about the surprisingly common experiences. Of

1:39

people who come back after having nearly died.

1:41

The. Bizarre and contradictory mysteries of quantum physics

1:44

and what they might be able to tell

1:46

us about the universe. What happens

1:48

when we die in the possibility of

1:50

a universal consciousness? And we

1:52

talk about where he sebastian net

1:54

it out on all of this

1:57

after years of investigating. Sebastian.

2:00

Younger. Right after this. But

2:02

first them. B S P As you've heard me

2:04

say before, The hardest part. A. Personal

2:06

growth, self improvement, spiritual development, whatever you

2:09

wanna call it. The hardest part? Is.

2:12

Forgetting. You. Listen to a Gray Park

2:14

as you read agree book you go to great talk whatever

2:16

it is. And. The message is

2:18

electrifying. But. Then. He.

2:20

Gets sucked back into your daily routines,

2:22

your habitual patterns, and you forget. So

2:25

this. Is. The problem. For.

2:27

Which I have designed. My new newsletter

2:29

which we just started a few months

2:31

ago, were just really hitting our stride,

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2:37

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2:39

I give you two of the top

2:41

Take a ways from the podcast this

2:43

week that it's relief for both me

2:46

and for you take to get these

2:48

messages into our molecules. I'm just kind

2:50

of main lining the practical aspects of

2:52

of the episodes from the week and

2:54

listening it out for you. And then

2:56

I'll list three. Cultural recommendations, books,

2:58

movies, Tv shows that I'm into

3:00

right now. You can sign up.

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It's free. it's at danharris.com as many

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Meanwhile, over on the Ten Percent Happier

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plans. Sebastian

4:36

Younger, welcome to the show. Thank

4:38

you very much. This new book

4:40

is fascinating and I think you know where I'm

4:42

going to start. I'd love to get you to

4:45

tell your story of

4:47

almost dying. And let me just say at the jump, I'm

4:49

glad you didn't. Thank you. Almost

4:51

everyone else is as well. I appreciate

4:53

it. Yeah, I mean, I had

4:56

been a war reporter for a long

4:58

time, years, decades in my life

5:00

and had come very close to dying a

5:02

couple of times that I know of for

5:04

sure. And I finally got out of that

5:06

business and had a

5:09

family. And when I almost died for

5:12

medical reasons a few years ago, I

5:14

had two young children. I came to fatherhood late.

5:16

My entire life was a domestic

5:18

one and a precious one to me.

5:21

And I'm in good health, right? So I don't, I never

5:24

thought about my health because I was

5:26

been an athlete my whole life. And

5:29

one day in mid-sentence while

5:31

talking to my wife in

5:34

a cabin in the woods that we own

5:36

in Massachusetts, I felt this pain

5:38

shoot through my abdomen. And it

5:40

was sort of unlike anything I'd

5:42

ever experienced. And I said, wow, that's strange.

5:44

I've never felt anything like this. And I stood

5:46

up to try to walk it off. I thought

5:48

it was a cramp or something and I couldn't

5:51

stand up. And I didn't know

5:53

it, but my blood pressure was plummeting. I

5:56

Had a ruptured aneurysm. I had an

5:58

undiagnosed aneurysm in my abdomen. Then let's

6:00

say. A ballooning in a in a

6:02

weak spot in of and an artery. And

6:05

it was a structural problem. You know wasn't

6:07

my clogged arteries or something. It was a

6:09

completely structural problem, was a freak thing is

6:11

extremely rare. Or and it's a

6:14

killer is a widow maker. I were right at that

6:16

moment I was looking at maybe a thirty percent chance

6:18

of living. And. That's if you get

6:20

to the hospital fast and I didn't It took me of an

6:22

hour and a half. My wife had to drag me out of

6:24

the woods and so we got to us. Who

6:26

could get a so either cellphone. Signal.

6:30

And called the ambulance and by the time I

6:32

got to the. He. are I was

6:34

conscious for my blood pressure was sixty over

6:36

forty and I was. On the

6:38

way out. Or they barely say. There's.

6:42

So much more detail, but it was a

6:44

there's an expression that's coming to mind from

6:46

my. Longtime. Meditation teacher Joseph

6:48

Goldstein and it's not going to sounds

6:51

impressive. But. The more I've. Thought

6:54

it over over over the years and more it

6:56

comes to mind frequently for me. And

6:58

expression is anything can happen at any

7:00

time. Yes, That's.

7:03

Exactly right and. The

7:05

psychological reality of that. Is.

7:07

Twofold, Icing. On

7:10

the one hand, It could

7:12

make you. Sort. Of. Hyper

7:15

appreciative, Of every moment. Because.

7:18

You're only here. Sort.

7:20

Of if you religious by the grace of God

7:22

or. By. Random circumstance. I

7:24

mean every every moment of existence

7:26

is a told the extraordinary take.

7:29

Or. It can make you unbelievably paranoid like

7:31

okay, I'm alive at this moment, but I

7:34

might be a might be dead by dinner,

7:36

you know? For. Reasons I couldn't possibly

7:38

project. And you know, I felt like I

7:40

didn't know that this wouldn't happen to me

7:42

again. And so I I. Instead.

7:44

Of being sort of shown the glory of

7:46

existence for a while I just became very

7:49

paranoid. I felt like I was carrying around

7:51

alive hand grenades and the maybe another and

7:53

years and could form. That would kill

7:55

me and you know of had I been on a. In.

7:57

a traffic jam or on an airplane or on a

7:59

camping I would have died. I got to

8:01

the hospital barely, barely in time, and I can

8:04

go through what they did to save me. It's

8:06

really interesting. But as a sort

8:08

of existential matter as a human being, it

8:11

made me so aware of how lucky we

8:13

all are to have even a moment of

8:15

this, that it almost incapacitated

8:17

me. I eventually climbed out of that, but it

8:19

took a while. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Well, let's

8:21

go back to the trauma bay for a second where

8:24

they're treating you. I think you

8:26

described yourself up

8:29

until that moment and maybe still as

8:31

an atheist, but you had an

8:33

experience that is hard to

8:35

explain, although you're gonna try to explain it now, I think.

8:38

Dr. Richard C. at

8:44

all. My father was a physicist. And

8:46

not only am I an atheist, but I'm

8:48

not sort of mystical either, right? I don't—there's

8:50

no woo-woo in me. I would

8:52

say I'm anti-mystic. I mean,

8:55

I just like, eschew all

8:57

that stuff, and still do, by the way.

8:59

But sometimes things challenge

9:01

our beliefs. And I

9:04

started to feel better during the ambulance ride. I

9:06

had no idea I was dying, but apparently I

9:08

was going into something called compensatory shock. So

9:10

I was losing a unit of blood,

9:12

a pint of blood, into my own

9:15

abdomen every 10 or 15

9:17

minutes, right? Like, I

9:19

was gushing blood. It was as

9:21

if I'd been stabbed in the abdomen, except

9:23

that instead of blood leaving

9:25

my body onto the floor, it stayed

9:27

in my abdomen. So

9:29

your body goes into compensatory shock to

9:32

try to slow down the catastrophe, and

9:34

it just clamps off access to your limbs,

9:38

to your digestive system. Everything sort of stops, and

9:40

it keeps the blood pooled where it's needed most.

9:42

But your body can only do that for so

9:44

long. And my body

9:47

failed. The compensatory shock ended as

9:49

soon as we got to the ER. And

9:51

suddenly I went off a cliff. And I

9:53

remember it happening, and I had no idea

9:55

I was dying. But I knew

9:57

something very, very bad was

9:59

happening. And the doctors were all seemed

10:01

very concerned. I was like, why is everyone

10:03

so, I just have belly pain. Like why

10:05

is everyone so worried about me

10:07

right now? I didn't understand it. And the

10:10

doctor told me, he said,

10:12

we need to put a large gauge needle straight into

10:14

your jugular. And that's like,

10:16

oh, that sounds like fun. Like why? Why

10:19

do you need to do that? And he said, in case there's an

10:21

emergency. And he said, no, this is the

10:23

emergency right now. Do I have permission? I was like,

10:25

yeah, okay. So we started working

10:27

on my neck to get a large

10:29

gauge needle into my jugular. And

10:33

while he was doing that, my blood pressure

10:35

was 60 over 40, which is the last

10:37

step before you're dead. I mean, I

10:39

was right at the end. And

10:41

I'm lying in the trauma bay. And

10:44

as he's working on me to get the needle in to

10:47

transfuse me, this black pit opens

10:50

up underneath me. And

10:52

again, I don't know I'm dying, but

10:54

I feel myself getting pulled into this pit.

10:57

And I start to panic because I know

10:59

if you go into the infinitely deep,

11:02

dark pit, you're not coming out, right? Just some

11:04

animal knowledge, some sort of animal knowledge. Like don't

11:06

go in there because you are not coming out

11:08

if you do. And I started to

11:10

panic. And as I started to

11:12

panic, my dead father appeared

11:15

above me and above

11:17

me and slightly to my left. And

11:20

basically he was like, don't

11:22

fight it. It's okay. You can

11:24

come with me. I'll take care of you. He

11:26

wasn't speaking exactly. He was communicating. And it

11:28

wasn't like he was hanging up there suspended

11:30

by theatrical wires. He was there

11:33

in some sort of energy essence. I mean, very,

11:35

very hard to explain in coherent terms, but

11:37

his presence was there and he was communicating with me. It's

11:40

okay. Don't fight it. I'll take care

11:42

of you. I was horrified.

11:44

I was like, go with you.

11:46

You're dead. I'm not going with you.

11:48

I'm alive. I'm staying here. We

11:50

got nothing to talk about dad. And I love my father, right? I

11:53

like, we got nothing. I'm not going with you. I

11:56

was absolutely horrified. And I said to the doctor,

11:58

because I'm so conscious at this point. I said

12:00

to the doctor, you got to hurry. I'm leaving right

12:02

now. I'm going. And

12:04

then my memory is spotty after

12:06

that. But basically they got the needle in

12:09

and they started transfusing me and they, I

12:11

needed 10 units of blood. It's a huge

12:13

amount. That's basically all the blood in the human body.

12:16

Over the next 12 hours or so, I

12:18

needed a full 10 units. Then

12:20

they rushed me into the interventional

12:22

radiology suite where they fix the kinds

12:24

of things that I have. The

12:27

last ditch, if they can't find

12:29

the bleed, the ruptured artery, is

12:32

they open you up and they just start digging

12:34

around in your abdomen trying to find the bleeding

12:36

artery. At that point, your odds of surviving are

12:38

pretty poor. What they prefer

12:40

to do is go in

12:43

by catheter. And a catheter is a

12:46

flexible rubber or wire line

12:48

that they can insert into your

12:50

vein system into an artery or

12:52

vein. They can go anywhere in your body and

12:55

they go through your groin and that's where they

12:57

enter. Then they go, they loop all the way

12:59

up and they have a little camera on it.

13:02

They can put all these tools at the end

13:04

of the catheter and they were looking for the

13:07

rupture. They couldn't find it and they couldn't find it.

13:09

They finally found it in the artery

13:12

that feeds the pancreas.

13:15

Then they found it but they couldn't get

13:17

the catheter all the way there. What

13:19

they wanted to do was embolize the bleed, which

13:21

means that they would leave a little

13:23

something that looks like a pipe cleaner. They

13:26

leave it in the artery and it collects blood

13:28

and the blood clots and that plugs

13:31

the artery and then scar tissue forms around

13:33

the clot. Then it's plugged forever

13:36

and you're good. You've stopped bleeding.

13:38

They were trying to do that and it took

13:41

them about six hours.

13:43

I'm in and out of consciousness. I'm not

13:45

sedated because my vital signs were too low

13:47

to be put under. I started

13:50

having these occasionally

13:52

really terrifying visions. I mean, again, I didn't know I

13:54

was dying until

13:56

finally the nurse said, Mr. Younger, try to

13:59

keep your... Try to keep your eyes open

14:02

she was holding my hand she tried to try to keep

14:04

your eyes open and i said why do you want me

14:06

to keep my eyes open. She said

14:08

so we know you're still with us i was

14:11

like oh. What was it

14:13

that kind of situation you had no

14:15

idea and i was in incredible pain when

14:18

blood comes into contact with your organs. It's

14:21

called an insult your organs particular kidneys

14:23

and it's extremely painful so i was

14:25

in agino sort of like kidney stone

14:27

level agony. I

14:29

couldn't really help me much and

14:32

then in the middle of all this no i

14:34

like around midnight. They kept

14:36

trying and trying to get the catheter

14:38

to the bleed to embolize and save

14:41

me. At one point i

14:43

saw one of the doctors or look up and shrug

14:46

basically like we've tried everything it's not

14:48

working there's nothing more we can do

14:50

i caught him. I caught

14:52

that look between the doctors and

14:54

i just thought. Oh

14:57

my god like are you kidding you

14:59

guys don't have this like. What's

15:02

happening right now and i realize that that moment i

15:04

may not make it i was

15:06

so messed up. Medically

15:09

that that was a sort of abstract

15:11

was terrifying but it was also kind

15:13

of abstract. What if for

15:15

the first time i realize what the stakes

15:17

were mistakes were my life and i might

15:19

not make it home to my family and

15:22

then the other doctor said. I

15:24

know why don't we try going to his

15:27

left wrist instead of his growing to his

15:29

left wrist maybe that will allow another access

15:31

angle. Allow access to

15:33

the spot and the first

15:35

doctor said i like the way you think. And

15:38

then that's what they did and the next thing the

15:40

final thing they would have tried is a

15:42

emergency laparotomy and the surgery bay they would

15:44

have opened me up and just started. Searching

15:47

for the bleed as fast as possible

15:49

to embolize it Before I bled

15:51

out. And you know it's sort of a race

15:53

to the finish line at that point. And the

15:55

other prognosis: The odds. Once they open you up,

15:57

the odds are, as I said, a pretty poor.

16:00

Very well. My dad made it. So.

16:03

This is several hours of.

16:06

Unbelievable. Paying you said used

16:08

the word agony. not sedated, Going.

16:11

In and out of Consciousness. Is

16:14

am I? Am I right by my describing this? Correct with yup,

16:16

Yeah. Apparently there they be Were able to give me

16:18

a little bit of fun though, but. Not

16:21

enough fat. Because. I was. I

16:23

was in agony. I kept telling the doctors my

16:25

bad, my back hurts so much doctor's. Job.

16:28

Is to just ignore you right? I mean, they got. It

16:30

had a good things to do a completely ignore you

16:32

and I couldn't believe they were ignoring me because I

16:34

was in so much pain and how they hold you

16:37

still. Where I was holding myself still am I was

16:39

on the I was a dogs on the. The.

16:42

Table. You know he was a

16:44

deep pain like kidney stones, but it wasn't. I.

16:46

Wasn't thrashing around you know? and I mean I don't

16:48

know how that worked. And in the problem with that

16:51

like with kidney stones the pub with their pain is

16:53

I didn't know how long it would last. If.

16:55

Someone said, you're gonna be an incredible paid for an

16:57

hour. You. Just gotta grit your teeth

16:59

dealing. We can all make it an hour because

17:01

we know there's the finish line right? But

17:04

if someone says you're going to be in a lot of

17:06

pain, For. An indefinite amount of time and

17:08

will just you know and it adds that would drive

17:10

you and that would drive you mad, right? When.

17:12

We go back to your dad for a second. There's so

17:14

much great writing in the book, and as I'll probably make

17:16

a habit of what I'm about to do, which is. Reading.

17:19

You back to you and than getting you to talk

17:21

about it a little with them. Here's

17:24

a quote. He appeared when I needed

17:27

him most. He was quite possibly his greatest

17:29

act of love toward me. He was a

17:31

distracted and distant father, a germophobia who hesitated

17:33

to pick up his own children and could

17:35

disappear into his thoughts for hours at a

17:37

time. And yet here he was, It's

17:39

okay. You know have to fight it. I'll take care of you.

17:42

You. Can come with me. Jesus,

17:44

the riff on that for low but. Yeah.

17:47

So. My. Father A

17:49

you I realized later. He

17:51

who's probably a i think he probably had spectrum

17:53

disorder. He was a physicist. Adds

17:55

a lot of how hot of. Fill.

17:58

out of physicists or or God

18:00

bless them, but they're sort of challenged in the human realm in

18:02

a way that I think is sort of

18:04

understood to be spectrum disorder now. And

18:06

my father was definitely that way. And he

18:09

just had a very hard time understanding and

18:11

emotionally connecting to human beings, including his children.

18:14

And he was a lovely man. He's brilliant. And

18:17

I learned a lot from him, and I love him very, very much.

18:21

But he was hard to connect to. You know, I

18:23

just realized later, like, after

18:25

this happened, he showed

18:27

up for me. You know, and it

18:29

wasn't clear that he was showing up for a

18:31

lot of my childhood. I mean, he was there

18:33

physically, but his mind was out there as

18:36

many physicists and mathematicians as they are.

18:39

And there he was. Like

18:41

when I really, really needed him, he was

18:43

above me. And you know, it's

18:46

still, for me, an open question. Is

18:48

this just a hallucination? Like it's just

18:50

these neurochemicals kicking in, producing a comforting

18:52

vision. Is there something real here

18:55

going on that we just don't understand how death

18:57

works? And you know, like, that's

18:59

what one of the inquiries in the

19:01

book, and obviously, I don't, none of us have

19:03

the answer to that. But I just will

19:06

say on a personal level that

19:08

that experience with him, after I

19:10

got through the trauma of the whole thing, I

19:12

realized, wow, like, he

19:15

came. Like I needed him, and he

19:17

came. And he came to take care of me. And

19:20

it was an extremely, extremely

19:22

powerful thing for me. And

19:26

in some ways, saved the whole experience from being just

19:28

pure trauma. So

19:31

you mentioned you kind of brought me

19:33

to where I was going to go next. I think

19:37

for a quote unquote normal person, a

19:39

civilian, and I use that term facetiously,

19:42

this would have just been a thing that happened, but

19:44

you're a journalist. And so it

19:46

sets you off on this exploration

19:49

of, you know, how do I explain as

19:51

an atheist and a journalist what I

19:54

experienced beyond the pure medical explanation of why

19:56

you got sick in the first place? And

19:58

so I'm just curious what What did

20:00

you learn about what science has

20:02

to say or not say about

20:05

these experiences? Yeah,

20:07

so my journey into

20:09

that weird realm began the

20:11

next day in the ICU. So I

20:14

woke up in the ICU in the morning and

20:16

there was a nurse there, middle-aged woman,

20:19

pretty heavy Boston accent. This happened on

20:21

Cape Cod at the

20:24

hospital in Hyannis. And she said, oh, good

20:26

morning, Mr. Younger. You almost died last

20:28

night. Congratulations, you're

20:30

still alive. You made it. No one can

20:32

believe you made it. And

20:36

indeed, the stats for what I

20:38

had are pretty grim. So I

20:40

didn't know that, of course. And I

20:43

was absolutely shocked that I'd almost died. I had

20:45

no idea. And

20:47

then I remembered my

20:50

father and it all came back to me. And

20:52

she walked out of the room and I sat there

20:55

thinking about just in shock that I'd

20:57

almost died. And I have these two young children and

20:59

I was just sort of like, oh

21:01

my God, I almost left them fatherless. I

21:03

mean, I was just wrecked by this information.

21:06

And my father was, and I saw my father,

21:08

I couldn't believe it. And

21:10

then this nurse came back about

21:13

an hour later and said, Mr. Younger, how are you doing? Sebastian,

21:15

how are you doing? And

21:17

I lied. I was doing terribly. I mean, my body,

21:21

this is very, very hard on your body what I went

21:23

through. And I was throwing up blood and that was a

21:25

mess. And I lied.

21:28

I said, well, I'm okay. But

21:30

what you told me was really terrifying.

21:32

Like I had no idea. I almost died.

21:35

And she said, instead of thinking about

21:38

it as something scary, try thinking about

21:40

it as something sacred. And

21:43

then she walked out of the room again. So I

21:45

having nothing else to do. I sat there with tubes

21:47

coming out of me, thinking about

21:49

her wisdom. And, you know,

21:51

what I came to was this, that I'd been

21:53

allowed to go to the very edge of

21:56

existence. I've been allowed to go to the edge

21:58

and look over the edge. at what's

22:00

waiting for all of us. But instead of

22:02

having to go, instead

22:04

of having to leave life,

22:08

leave this planet, I was

22:10

allowed to come back. So what

22:12

did I learn? I've been a frontline reporter for

22:14

a long time. I go to these places of

22:16

death and annihilation and

22:18

desolation and I come back and I write about what

22:21

I learned, what people might need to know about this

22:23

place. So this was just another

22:25

version of a trip to the frontline, the

22:27

ultimate frontline. So I came back and I

22:30

recovered quickly. I'm otherwise

22:32

pretty healthy and so I was out of the ICU

22:34

in five days and home in a week and boom,

22:36

suddenly I'm back at

22:38

home as if nothing had happened. And

22:41

the thing about what I had is that if

22:43

you survive, it's not like a heart attack where

22:45

there's these issues to deal with later that produce

22:47

the problem. If you have a

22:50

ruptured aneurysm and you survive, there's no issues. I mean,

22:52

you're just like you're done, you're good. You're as good

22:54

as if it had never happened. So

22:56

I got home and

22:58

I started to... I

23:00

got very, very paranoid that maybe I...

23:02

This is going to sound crazy

23:04

but I started

23:06

to worry that I actually didn't make it and

23:09

I was a ghost and I was looking at

23:11

my family and that I actually

23:13

wasn't there and that I didn't know I was dead.

23:16

And I started to get into this crazy

23:18

circular thing like, how do you

23:20

know that you're not dead? And

23:23

you can say to your wife, which I

23:25

did, honey, just tell me I'm really here.

23:28

Just tell me that

23:30

I didn't die, that I'm here and of course she said, honey,

23:35

you're here, you're fine, we're all

23:37

good. But in my mind,

23:39

I'm like, that's exactly what a hallucination would say

23:42

in a situation like that. And

23:44

you can drive yourself crazy, which I promptly

23:47

did. And so my sort of

23:49

investigation into all

23:52

this began not so much as a

23:55

journalistic enterprise but as

23:57

an attempt to sort of like

23:59

calm them. my soul, calm my mind

24:01

because I got into

24:03

a very, very strange, crazy place. And I

24:06

thought if I read about this, maybe it'll

24:09

sort of comfort reassure me. Information

24:13

is reassuring, right? So information's

24:15

always helpful. So it turned

24:17

out that what happened to me

24:19

is very, very common. And

24:23

20, 25% of

24:25

people that have a heart attack and die and

24:27

are brought back or survive or almost die,

24:30

something like a quarter of them have visions very much

24:32

like what I had often and they often see the

24:35

debt. And they're often, this didn't happen

24:37

to me because I actually never medically died. My heart

24:39

never stopped. But often

24:41

when someone's heart stops, their memory of that

24:43

is that they're actually on the ceiling looking down

24:46

at the doctors trying to save this

24:49

person who they don't even realize is

24:51

them. And they're like, oh my God,

24:53

that's me. I'm not

24:55

up here. That's me. So

24:57

the subjective experience of dying in

25:00

retrospect is extremely confusing. And

25:03

the point of view of the dead person

25:05

does not stay within the body. It's very

25:07

mysterious, right? So as I'm

25:09

doing my research and I'm sort

25:11

of rooting for the afterlife, right? Because at this

25:14

point I'm terrified. And I'm like, oh,

25:16

maybe. And keep in mind,

25:18

I'm an atheist, right? So I don't have God to turn to.

25:21

And people ask me later,

25:23

like, well, after your experience, did you now,

25:26

do you believe in God? And I'm like,

25:28

look, I didn't see God. I saw my dad. Like,

25:30

I mean, it's possible

25:32

that there's some kind of after existence

25:35

and there's still no God, right? It's also

25:37

possible that there's a God, but

25:40

God created completely biological beings,

25:42

us. And when we die,

25:45

that's it. And there's no nothing afterwards. Like, both

25:47

are possible. So a quote,

25:49

afterlife and God are not one

25:52

and the same thing and they don't require each other. Right.

25:55

At any rate, I'm redoing my research

25:58

and I'm sorry, I can feel myself. rooting

26:00

for an afterlife and i'm like oh yeah i

26:03

got read some case where someone was someone

26:05

was dying and then they. That

26:07

they know that the other very often my

26:10

mother did this my father did this as

26:12

well it's very very common and hospice that

26:15

the dying will see the dead in their room

26:18

in the hours before they die. They

26:20

will be talking to dead people who have

26:23

ever there to receive that right and no one else

26:25

can see these people. It's very

26:27

very common and i'm going in

26:29

in in several cases. The

26:32

dying person is talking to someone

26:34

who died very recently and they don't know

26:36

that in other words they're talking to someone.

26:39

Who they didn't know it just died like

26:41

how do they know that right and so

26:43

there's some there's some seriously mysterious questions about

26:45

how the hell does this work like what

26:47

happens in the threshold of death. Exactly

26:50

that seems to give the dying

26:53

a kind of universal knowledge. So

26:55

anyway i'm reading this stuff and i'm getting

26:58

starting to be comforted by the by the.

27:01

I do have an afterlife and then you read

27:03

the counterpoints by the by the rational people by

27:05

the doctors. No by the scientists

27:08

like what we can explain all of this

27:10

through neuro chemistry. Do you

27:13

know epileptic seizures and in the temporal

27:15

low like they have all of these

27:17

medical explanations for all the fun all

27:19

the phenomena. All the

27:21

near death phenomena and and and they say

27:24

in there and this is worth taking

27:26

seriously considering because it's tested

27:29

and true virtually. Virtually

27:31

all of the near death experiences that

27:33

people experience can be reproduced in other

27:35

ways through low blood oxygen epilepsy

27:38

and dodge and dm t and can i

27:40

mean in the body. All these

27:42

things right so so you and so

27:44

here's the argument my father was a

27:46

supreme rationalist my mother was sort of

27:48

a mistake she was an artist she

27:50

loved the believe in energy and past

27:52

lives and all that stuff. And

27:55

then there's my dad was a physicist and he like

27:57

come on ellen ellen was my mother's name is a

27:59

come on. that's ridiculous, that makes no sense. So

28:01

what I was seeing in the literature was

28:04

an argument that I heard played

28:06

out my entire childhood between my

28:08

rationalist father and my sort of

28:10

like romantic and mystical

28:13

mother. And now I'm

28:16

reading this argument that frankly society

28:18

has been having for hundreds, thousands

28:20

of years. And

28:22

you know, basically the conclusion

28:24

I came to was that a

28:27

lot of this, everything about what

28:29

I, all these visions that

28:31

people have can be explained through

28:33

neurochemistry, can be explained rationally, except

28:37

for one thing. And

28:40

it's basically this, if you give a

28:42

room full of people LSD, you

28:44

know that they will all have hallucinations.

28:48

One hundred percent of them will have hallucinations because

28:50

that's what LSD does in the human brain. But

28:53

they will not all have the same

28:55

hallucination, right? They will not all see

28:57

a waterfall or whatever, right? When

29:00

people die, the hallucination

29:03

that they have, not

29:07

every time, but an enormous fraction

29:09

of the time is that they

29:11

see the dead. The

29:13

dead come for them. Even

29:15

people that they don't know are dead, right?

29:18

And we know this from survivors accounts. And

29:21

that one fact, like why is it

29:23

that only the dying see the dead?

29:27

The doctors, the families, the relatives, no

29:29

one else sees like Aunt Maude up

29:31

in the ceiling, right? When my

29:33

mother died, as she

29:36

was dying, she looked up and

29:39

she scowled and she

29:41

said, what's he doing here? She

29:45

was furious about it and she had an estranged

29:47

brother named George. And I just took a guess.

29:49

I said, Mom, that's Uncle George

29:51

and he's come a very, very long way to see you

29:53

and you have to be nice to him. And

29:56

she scowled and she said, we'll see about that, right?

30:00

in, one of the theories is that the

30:02

dying sort of hallucinate the dead

30:04

as a way to self-comfort, self-soothe because they

30:06

know they're dying. But that doesn't

30:08

quite work either, right? Because a lot of people

30:11

who are dying don't know they're dying, right?

30:13

And a lot of people see the dead

30:16

like me and are not very happy to

30:18

see the dead. It's not a comforting vision.

30:20

It's horrifying, right? So that

30:22

opens up, the book is divided into two

30:25

sections. What and if?

30:27

The what part is what happened to me? The

30:30

if part is what

30:35

if there were something that we

30:37

don't understand that happens after we

30:39

die that doesn't conform to

30:41

our understanding of reality

30:44

of the atomic

30:47

worlds, of the macroscopic

30:49

world? What if there's

30:52

some reality we don't understand? And I liken

30:54

it to this. I say we might have

30:56

the same understanding of reality that

30:59

a dog has of a television screen. And

31:03

that's where I go

31:05

into the realm of my father.

31:07

He was a physicist. And there

31:09

are some ideas,

31:12

some conversations about

31:14

a post-death reality that are in

31:17

the realm of quantum physics, which

31:19

is an infinitely mysterious

31:21

realm that's not understood by scientists.

31:25

It's understood well enough to know that

31:27

there is a completely contradictory mystery going

31:29

on at the quantum level. It

31:32

totally contradicts what we understand about the macroscopic level

31:34

that we live in. And

31:36

that I sort of finished the book with.

31:39

That may be where the answers

31:42

lie about these post-death experiences that

31:44

we just don't understand. Coming

31:50

up, Sebastian Younger talks about the

31:52

fundamental mysteries of quantum physics that

31:54

even troubled Albert Einstein. The question

31:56

of whether consciousness is part of

31:58

the physical makeup. of the universe,

32:00

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32:03

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get started. What

35:03

way would the quantum realm hold the

35:05

answers to these mysteries? Well,

35:08

there's, I mean, I'm going to try

35:10

to explain this briefly and simply because

35:12

it is quantum physics, and no one

35:15

lasts very long in a conversation about quantum

35:17

physics. So, there are,

35:20

as I understand it, there

35:22

are a couple of fundamental mysteries,

35:24

contradictions in the quantum

35:26

world that thoroughly

35:28

spooked people like

35:31

Schreuniger and Einstein who sort of discovered

35:33

them and didn't understand them. And

35:36

one is known as

35:38

the double slit experiment. So if

35:41

you shoot photons, which

35:43

are subatomic particles, if

35:46

you shoot photons at a

35:48

pair of slits, if

35:52

you don't observe the photon while

35:54

it's heading towards the slits, it

35:58

will pass through both at the same time. time,

36:00

and we know that because of the signature on the

36:02

strike plate on the other side. So

36:04

one particle will go through two slits

36:06

at the same time. In

36:08

the macroscopic world, you cannot walk through

36:11

two doorways at the same time.

36:13

We all know that, right? At the

36:15

quantum level, a particle can.

36:18

It has been described as a statistical

36:20

smear where it's all things, it's

36:24

all possible outcomes until it's

36:26

observed by a

36:28

conscious entity, humans. At

36:30

which point it has to pick a slit, and

36:32

it can only go through one. And that's

36:35

the sort of mystery of the double slit

36:37

experiment. And then it

36:39

gets weirder because they

36:41

found that particles can be

36:44

what are called entangled. And

36:47

that means that entangled

36:49

particles can be separated by

36:52

a foot, by a mile, or by

36:54

the entire universe. And

36:56

they act simultaneously in

36:58

identical ways. And if you

37:01

subject one entangled particle to

37:03

a force, the other one reacts

37:05

simultaneously, which

37:07

means that some kind of quantum information is

37:09

traveling faster than the speed of light. The

37:11

speed of light is fast, but it's not

37:13

instantaneous. It makes no

37:16

sense at all. And then finally, they've

37:18

done something called delayed choice

37:20

quantum erasure. Well, they take entangled

37:23

particles, and they send one through

37:25

a double slit while

37:27

watching it. And it has to pick one and

37:29

another through a double slit. I'm not watching it.

37:32

And then it picks both slits. But

37:35

because they're entangled, they have to do the same thing.

37:37

And what happens with the results is

37:39

that somehow time goes backwards, as it were. And

37:43

the results are rectified to be identical

37:46

in a way that is not understandable

37:48

by humans. And

37:50

they don't know how this works or why it works.

37:52

So that is my civilian

37:55

attempt to explain quantum physics. I'm

37:57

sure I absolutely slaughtered it, if

37:59

any physicists. are listening. But

38:02

that's the sort of essence of this

38:05

mystery. And so what scientists have done

38:07

with this information is present

38:09

a theory where consciousness

38:12

becomes part of the physical manifestation of

38:14

the universe. What they know is that

38:17

when you observe something, that

38:19

the quantum world, instead of being a

38:23

statistical smear of all possibilities,

38:25

it becomes one thing. And

38:28

that it's possible that when consciousness

38:30

arose in the universe, it

38:33

might have been us, it might have

38:35

not been us. Who knows? But when

38:37

consciousness arose in the universe, it forced

38:39

the universe to become

38:41

one thing instead of all things.

38:45

And that poses the

38:47

question of is consciousness a

38:50

part of the physical manifestation

38:52

of the universe like gravity? Without

38:55

gravity, there is no

38:57

universe. It doesn't cohere. It doesn't work

38:59

in physical terms. And it's possible that

39:02

without consciousness, the same thing would

39:04

happen. We would not have the universe that

39:06

we have. And I mean,

39:08

it gets really, really out there. But

39:11

there's a theory called biocentrism, where

39:15

the entire universe is a consciousness. And

39:18

there's no way to prove or disprove this. And

39:20

so biocentrism is sort of like treated

39:23

very skeptically by sort of straight-ahead physicists,

39:25

because you can't test for it. But

39:28

it may be that testing for a universal

39:30

consciousness requires the

39:33

consciousness testing itself, which may be a

39:35

logical impossibility. So you get

39:37

tangled up. It's sort of like an existential

39:40

game of twister. And then finally, you can't put

39:42

your arm around behind your back and you're stuck.

39:45

So that's sort of where we're at. But

39:47

that might provide some answers to, when

39:50

you die, you enter a sort of quantum-level

39:53

existence, and which intersects

39:55

with the macroscopic existence that we

39:57

live in, in ways that we

39:59

just... just don't understand. That

40:02

was the best explication

40:05

of quantum physics I've ever heard on this show or

40:07

perhaps anywhere. And maybe it's because you have no idea

40:09

what you're talking about, but it definitely

40:12

landed for me in ways that previous attempts

40:14

did not. Thank you. Let me just go

40:16

back to the sharp end of

40:18

the stick there, which is what

40:20

does all of that have to do with

40:24

all these questions about what happens after we

40:26

die. I might make

40:28

myself an object of ridicule by saying this,

40:30

but is there something like

40:32

about the multiverse at work here

40:35

that somehow consciousness comes into play

40:37

in the universe and that forces

40:41

everything to become one thing, therefore

40:43

there may be lots of one

40:45

things with different consciousnesses and those

40:47

are realms of existence where other

40:49

versions of us are living and

40:51

perhaps dead people too? Yeah, I

40:53

mean this is in the realm of like

40:56

you can't test for it. So it doesn't

40:58

sort of mean anything, but there's

41:00

no reason not to discuss it, right? So yeah,

41:03

the multiverse as I understand it is

41:05

that, I mean the one thing there's plenty of

41:07

in the universe is space-time and

41:10

it's basically unbounded. So you could

41:13

have an almost infinite number of

41:15

universes that include every single possibility

41:17

at the quantum and atomic level,

41:20

macroscopic level, including you

41:22

did or didn't order the chicken sandwich yesterday.

41:24

You know, I mean, there's no space problem.

41:26

I mean, there's no sort of like storage

41:29

problem in space, right? It's an infinity.

41:31

So you're not going to run out

41:33

of space for all of these permutations

41:36

of reality to happen. And so

41:38

yes, it does have something to do with

41:40

the multiverse. The way I

41:42

understand it, it's very tricky talking

41:45

to physicists about physics because they're

41:47

explaining it to you in physicist

41:50

terms, which as an

41:52

ordinary human, you're not going to understand. And

41:54

what I had to do, the

41:57

reason that our conversation might be a little

41:59

easier. on both of us is that I'm

42:01

not a physicist and I tried to understand

42:03

these concepts in sort

42:06

of quote civilian terms. I

42:09

tracked down an old colleague of my father's, again

42:11

trying to find sort of solace and clarity in

42:13

all this and I told him, I said, two

42:15

of these guys actually had lunch with them and

42:18

I explained to them what happened and I said, what

42:21

are the odds of my father

42:23

just appearing above me? I

42:25

just figured that that was an unanswerable question. I

42:27

was trying to be like, I

42:30

don't know, a little funny maybe. I was like, what

42:32

are the odds of dad appearing like above me in

42:34

this trauma bay? And the

42:36

thing about physicists is they're completely literal, right?

42:38

So one of them sort of like looked up

42:40

at the corner and he was like, what

42:42

are the odds? And he actually gave me a

42:44

number. I was like, what? Like 10 to

42:47

the minus 60? Like

42:49

how did you get that number? And he said, well,

42:52

it's the same as the odds of all the oxygen

42:54

molecules in the room randomly

42:57

collecting in one

42:59

little corner of the room and asphyxiating

43:01

us. There's some odds of that happening.

43:03

They're just incredibly small and

43:06

those are the odds of your dad appearing.

43:08

So I was like, okay, so you guys really, it's just,

43:12

it's all numbers, huh? It's just, is that the

43:14

world? It's just all numbers. And it was sort

43:16

of an extraordinary like glimpse

43:19

into the mind

43:21

of a

43:23

mathematician or of a physicist. And

43:25

so they're looking at the universe like this and they, you

43:28

know, basically in an

43:30

infinity of times, all things happen

43:34

because it's infinity. And

43:36

all things inevitably might

43:38

include the universe

43:41

coming into existence. You know,

43:43

it may just be that simple. Like you

43:45

give me an infinity of time, eventually every

43:48

single thing will happen, including one

43:51

unimaginably huge thing, which is the

43:53

universe coming into existence, going

43:55

from a plank length, which is the smallest

43:59

subatomic. possible, going

44:01

from a Planck length to

44:04

a universe hundreds, thousands, millions

44:06

of light years wide in

44:09

an amount of time too

44:12

small to measure. That's

44:14

what happened when the universe was created. And it

44:16

may simply be a function of an

44:18

infinity of time allowing for every

44:21

single possible thing eventually

44:23

will occur. So

44:26

it seems like the punchline, the conclusion

44:28

you landed on is that it

44:31

is unlikely there's an afterlife, but

44:34

it's unlikely there's a universe in the

44:36

first place. So who the fuck knows? Yeah,

44:38

exactly. Like, I mean, you just sort of think

44:40

about what are we doing here? My

44:43

father hovering above me is the least

44:45

of it. The universe existing is inconceivably

44:47

unlikely. And I don't have the numbers in my

44:49

head. They're in my book and my

44:52

memory is not that good. But they are

44:54

the chance of the universe existing

44:56

as it does. There's

45:00

like, I think, 30 or 40 values

45:03

in physics that have to be exactly

45:05

what they are. You know,

45:07

the attractive force between an atom

45:09

and electron and the force of gravity and

45:11

all these are sort of arcane things have

45:13

to be exactly the values they are to

45:16

allow for this universe to exist. And

45:21

that those odds are going from

45:23

memory. They're

45:26

the odds of finding one grain of sand,

45:28

the one grain of sand you're looking for

45:30

in all

45:32

the grains of sand on Earth the

45:35

first time. It's

45:37

those odds except

45:40

millions and millions of times

45:43

less likely than that. All

45:47

right? That's what the

45:49

odds are of you, me,

45:52

and this entire

45:54

thing existing at all. Okay?

45:58

So in that context... my

46:00

father appearing above me in a

46:03

form that the human brain doesn't

46:05

or can't understand after

46:07

he died. It's

46:10

conceivable because the

46:13

universe is almost inconceivable. It's

46:16

just like it pales in comparison

46:19

to any of this.

46:22

So will that comfort people

46:24

on their deathbed? Probably not, but

46:26

it did make me... I'll

46:29

say this and I remain an atheist, but

46:32

it did make me think

46:34

that... I mean

46:37

in my research, a lot of these physicists

46:39

believed in a sort of universal consciousness. They

46:42

believed in

46:44

a transition at death that actually

46:46

was strangely similar to the kind

46:48

of visions found

46:51

in religious enlightenment, sometimes

46:53

in dreams, in the shamanic experience.

46:55

There's a sort of similarity

46:57

in all these transcendent experiences

47:01

and they are sort of echoed by some

47:03

of the opinions of these physicists like Schrodinger,

47:07

for example. So it made

47:09

me... the comfort it sort of gave me

47:11

was that it's possible that when we die,

47:14

instead of it being an ending

47:17

of something, of our individuality,

47:21

it's an infinite expansion of our individuality.

47:23

In other words, we are joining something

47:25

more than we're leaving something. And

47:29

that idea, total

47:31

conjecture, no way to prove it

47:33

or even test for it, obviously.

47:36

But it was something that some

47:38

extremely smart people who

47:40

were themselves the pioneers of quantum

47:43

physics eventually came to as a

47:45

conclusion about reality in the universe.

47:48

If that's comfort for you, I'm glad of

47:50

it. As close as I can get myself

47:52

to a reassuring vision of what happens. I

47:55

have not thought about this deeply, so what

47:57

I'm about to say could

47:59

be really... You know, it almost guaranteed

48:01

to be cultish and awkward

48:03

and ungainly and embarrassing. But

48:07

on the level of our atoms, we

48:10

are definitely inextricably

48:12

a part of the universe and

48:14

we will return to

48:17

dust and ashes, etc., etc. And

48:19

on the level of our consciousness, I mean, who

48:21

knows, but consciousness is

48:24

nature too. And

48:26

so we are going to

48:28

return to something greater. We are actually

48:30

right now part of something greater. Whether

48:33

there's another realm where my dead grandfather lives,

48:35

I have no idea, but interconnection

48:37

seems non-negotiable. Well,

48:40

here's the thing about consciousness and that, you

48:42

know, that itself is a very hard

48:45

thing to arrive at a

48:47

firm conclusion about. It's hard to even

48:49

define what consciousness is. But

48:52

I mean, the people who study consciousness argue

48:54

endlessly about what actually it is.

48:58

One definition is the ability to imagine

49:00

yourself in the future. That's

49:02

one of many definitions. So

49:05

our understanding of consciousness is

49:07

that it's a product of

49:10

the brain, which is a

49:12

physical, a biological reality. And if you destroy

49:14

the brain, you

49:16

destroy consciousness. Presumably.

49:19

The problem though is

49:22

that that consciousness, right,

49:24

that's a product of the biological

49:27

brain and

49:29

our vision and our

49:31

senses. When this brain

49:34

observes quantum phenomena,

49:36

it changes them simply

49:39

by knowing what's

49:42

happening. And

49:44

it creates, the brain creates

49:47

the physical world that

49:49

it inhabits, right? So

49:52

it gets very, very circular because the brain

49:55

is made out of physical stuff, right?

49:57

It's made out of cells. But

50:01

the physical reality at

50:04

the quantum level seems to be created by

50:07

consciousness observing it. So

50:10

consciousness is creating the physical

50:13

reality that then becomes

50:15

the stuff that the brain is made out

50:18

of that is observing and

50:20

creating the physical reality. So I

50:23

mean how many times do you want to go around

50:25

that circle? So we

50:27

don't know, does reality come

50:29

from consciousness or does consciousness

50:31

bring from physical reality?

50:34

It's sort of both and that's where

50:36

the enduring mystery is. And

50:39

so you're right, like yeah consciousness seems

50:42

to float, sort of float around apart

50:44

from our physical reality except that if you put a

50:46

bullet through your head you're provably

50:48

no longer conscious. Your EEG goes

50:50

to zero, flat lines, there are

50:52

no detectable thoughts going on in

50:54

your damaged brain but

50:57

then what do you do with the fact that

51:00

consciousness is required for reality to take the

51:02

form that it takes? Including

51:04

to create the bullet that went through your brain that

51:07

destroyed your brain. So

51:09

that's what I mean by our understanding

51:11

of reality might be as simplistic and

51:13

as flawed as a dog's understanding of

51:15

a television set. Like we

51:17

just may have no idea or

51:20

not be neurologically

51:23

capable of having an idea

51:25

of the larger framework around this TV

51:27

set that seems to be so fascinating.

51:30

I guess when I was spewing

51:32

words out of my mouth hole a few

51:34

minutes ago what I was getting at wasn't

51:37

necessarily the nature of reality per se but

51:39

your idea of comfort. And

51:42

I find it comforting to know

51:44

whether consciousness requires a

51:46

brain or whether it's non-local

51:48

or whatever the term of art is. It's

51:51

still a natural phenomenon, it has to be right.

51:54

And so everything I'm experiencing,

51:57

every body part I think

51:59

I own. It's all part of

52:01

nature and it's all going back into nature

52:04

when I die. And I guess what I'm

52:06

getting at is you don't have to believe

52:08

in anything metaphysical, esoteric, unprovable, etc., etc. to

52:12

derive some comfort from that. Yeah,

52:15

right. And I think where people get hung up

52:17

or where I get hung up is, oh, you

52:20

mean there's an afterlife where I will

52:23

continue to think as me for eternity. And

52:25

I'm going to get to see my dead

52:28

friend and it's just going to be a big

52:30

party with everybody, right? Isn't that

52:32

there? You know, that there's the afterlife

52:34

includes an individual identity that continues

52:37

on for eternity. That's

52:39

a simplistic idea of the afterlife and I know that's

52:41

not what you're talking about. But I

52:44

think that's where people get sort of sidetracked because they

52:46

want something comforting where, okay, I'm going to die, but

52:48

I get to keep going, right?

52:50

Like that's not just because I shed my body

52:52

doesn't mean that this is over. But

52:55

when you talk about the soul, and I'm

52:57

using the soul as the clumsy substitute for

53:00

whatever it really is, and I'm not, again,

53:02

I'm not religious, but, you know, bear with

53:04

me. You know, you would really have to

53:06

be talking about something that doesn't have a

53:09

conscious individual identity. You

53:12

would really have to be talking about

53:14

a manifestation of a some kind of

53:16

universal consciousness that manifests as

53:18

what you perceive to be yourself as

53:21

an individual. And then when you die,

53:23

it goes back into

53:25

the universal consciousness that all

53:28

of the universe is composed

53:30

of or affected by, determined by, created

53:32

by. On that

53:34

level, it's sort of conceivable in physical terms,

53:37

but not the, oh, great, now I get

53:39

to just go on without my body and

53:41

it'll be so nice to see grandma. Like

53:44

that's probably not what's on

53:46

the menu. But isn't

53:48

that that unitive experience, isn't

53:50

that, and I'm not, I'm

53:52

talking not now about the, I, Dan,

53:55

you, Sebastian, get to go on in

53:57

our current conscious form. form

54:00

in some other realm, the

54:02

idea that we are woven

54:04

into some universal whole, which again is

54:06

not mystical, it's just obvious,

54:08

we get molecular experience of that if

54:11

we get the right dose of psilocybin.

54:13

And many, it seems to be the

54:16

core of all mystical experiences,

54:18

exogenous molecules or not. And so

54:20

I think it is properly understood,

54:22

comforting. People come out of those

54:24

experiences, at least at first there's

54:26

some terror, and then for some

54:28

people and then eventually it's

54:31

deeply comforting. It is,

54:33

I mean that's one of the interesting things about

54:35

it. I didn't die,

54:37

my heart didn't stop. And I was terrified and

54:39

I was horrified that my father was there. I

54:41

had my heart stopped. I might

54:43

have thrown myself into his arms, like oh my god it's so good

54:45

to see. I mean I don't know what

54:49

I was deprived of, the part that I got

54:51

was the scary part. And it might have changed

54:53

had the doctors failed in their attempts and had

54:55

I actually died. So

54:57

I interviewed a guy, a former forest firefighter

55:00

in Montana who was a guy in his

55:02

early 70s, I think fit, obviously

55:05

very fit guy, he was out hunting with his son

55:08

in the mountains of Montana. And he

55:10

had, suddenly he got the same thing I had, abdominal

55:13

hemorrhage. And he's

55:15

trying to get him to safety,

55:18

his son dislocated his shoulder.

55:20

So the two of them are very, very compromised

55:22

and he had a slower bleed than I did,

55:24

but he, they had to spend the

55:26

night by campfire in the wilderness, sub

55:29

freezing temperatures. And

55:31

then his son left on foot to try to

55:33

get help and left the father there. And

55:35

the father was lying in this field and

55:38

realizing my son's going to survive,

55:40

but I'm not. And he

55:42

started to have these visions. And

55:44

the visions were, the mountains started

55:46

rippling and he

55:49

could see all of these animals and the souls

55:51

of animals. And he realized, oh,

55:53

the animals are going to die. I'm going to die.

55:55

We're all part of the same thing. We're all part

55:57

of the mountains. of

56:00

the world, part of the universe, and it was

56:02

an incredibly comforting thing. And of course, he did

56:04

survive, and we wouldn't know this, help got to

56:06

him in time, and they saved his

56:08

life. But that's sort of like what would otherwise

56:10

seem like a drug trip, right? Like, oh my

56:13

God, we're all, you know, I was

56:15

lying in the field and I

56:17

became one with the animals. I

56:19

mean, that just sounds like someone who's taking a hit of

56:21

LSD, except that that is a very, very common vision

56:24

or illusion, as you will, that people have

56:26

when they're dying. And it's

56:28

extremely comforting. Now, because it's comforting

56:30

doesn't mean that that's what's actually going to happen to

56:33

us. But it is comforting.

56:35

And you know, there's nothing good about human

56:37

suffering or any sort of suffering. And if

56:39

people's suffering can be alleviated

56:41

by a hallucination, I'm

56:44

good with that, so much the better. And the

56:46

truth is, it may not even be a

56:48

hallucination. It may actually be a glimpse at

56:51

a form of reality that we can't understand,

56:53

but that we are all headed towards. Who

56:55

knows? Well, that leads me to

56:57

my question, which is for you, on a

56:59

molecular level, forget what you've learned. What

57:02

do you suspect? Well,

57:06

okay, I'll say this. I've

57:09

learned to say, because of this,

57:11

I've learned to say, I don't

57:14

know, we don't know. Like

57:16

I started out as an atheist thinking, come

57:18

on, you died, that's it, enjoy

57:20

life while you have it. Like an

57:22

eternity of consciousness kind of sounds like hell. Like

57:25

I couldn't even get through math class in high

57:27

school, right? Like 50 minutes of math class, you're

57:29

going to give me an eternity of consciousness? Like

57:31

thank you, no. So part of this sort of

57:33

cynical part of me was like, all

57:35

right, I'm good with it. And now, because of

57:37

my experience, I think, well, I

57:40

don't know. Like I just don't know.

57:42

I no longer have certainty. If

57:44

I had to guess, I say I

57:46

can easily imagine a reality, a quantum

57:50

reality where consciousness is

57:52

so determinative of

57:54

physical reality that

57:56

we as living creatures, conscious

57:58

living creatures Are part

58:02

of that and return to it in a

58:04

way that we don't have true awareness and

58:06

consciousness of but that we get

58:08

subsumed back into the fabric

58:11

of consciousness. In the universe

58:13

that determines the nature of the universe and

58:16

that we re re re join that and

58:18

i have some comfort

58:20

in saying that intellectual comfort in saying

58:22

that because. Some of the

58:25

smartest people i've ever heard

58:28

of which are these physicists. Starting

58:31

in the sort of nineteen teens nineteen

58:33

twenties who pioneered all this work including

58:35

Einstein pioneered all this work in quantum

58:37

physics. That was more

58:39

or and shorter. More

58:42

that was more or less where they

58:44

sort of landed about reality and i'm

58:46

like. I will

58:48

go with those guys like that like that's

58:50

not a bad bet but again the sort

58:52

of individual survival i really sort of reject

58:55

and even on the sort of lots. Logical

58:57

level of something

59:00

called entropy which is the increase in

59:02

disorder in the universe and. The

59:05

laws of entropy mean that all the

59:07

energy that stored in the universe from

59:09

the big bag. It's a

59:11

huge battery eventually it runs down

59:13

and runs down to absolute zero

59:16

and it will take. I

59:19

can't remember the number but it will take

59:21

many many tens of billions of years and

59:23

eventually the universe will have.

59:26

Absolutely no molecular. Atomic

59:29

movement at all absolutely no

59:31

heat no time no nothing

59:33

right that's what happens when

59:35

you deprive the environment of

59:37

all traces of energy and heat. Add

59:41

the idea that i sold could survive. In

59:44

a maximum entropy environment when the universe

59:46

itself can survive like we're not gonna

59:48

survive anything the universe doesn't in the

59:50

universe will die we know that for

59:52

a fact so. Show at

59:54

the end of the day like our souls

59:56

are whatever souls are tied to the universe

59:58

and that that. headed off a cliff

1:00:00

eventually. So I don't know, is that

1:00:03

dismal or is that comforting?

1:00:05

I don't know. Coming

1:00:09

up Sebastian talks about where he

1:00:11

nets out after all of

1:00:13

this investigation, why he believes the

1:00:16

flip side of terror, his reverence,

1:00:19

and why he says when it comes to

1:00:21

living his daily life, traffic

1:00:23

jam is better than nothing so enjoy

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the bet you would make is

1:02:43

that there's some unfathomable soup

1:02:45

of consciousness out there that we will

1:02:47

return to, and in this form, we're

1:02:50

just like a ladle, one little ladle

1:02:52

full of that soup that we're in

1:02:54

this our incarnation right

1:02:56

now on Earth. And that

1:02:58

bet that you're saying you would make, that

1:03:00

doesn't comport neatly with the vision of your

1:03:03

dad. So maybe your suspicion

1:03:05

is that the vision of your dad was

1:03:07

a useful hallucination? Well,

1:03:10

yes, it could have been a useful hallucination, although again,

1:03:13

I didn't know I was dying, and I was not

1:03:15

at all happy to see him. But

1:03:18

the quantum information associated

1:03:20

with my dead father, whatever

1:03:22

even that even means, the

1:03:25

idea that as you die and you transition

1:03:30

to a non-physical consciousness, if that

1:03:32

indeed is what happens, that

1:03:34

there starts to be some interchange between the

1:03:37

two at this moment of transition, I mean,

1:03:40

conceivably. I

1:03:42

just don't think we're smart enough to actually

1:03:44

answer a question like yours in

1:03:47

precise terms. I should

1:03:49

also add, and this is another very,

1:03:51

very mysterious, the

1:03:53

other very mysterious and troubling part of

1:03:55

my experience. So

1:03:58

like I said, I've been an athlete. my whole

1:04:00

life. My heart rate is 60 beats a

1:04:02

minute. My blood pressure is whatever. I have

1:04:05

no reason to worry about my health and I've been that way

1:04:07

my whole life. I never had to think

1:04:09

about my body in concerned

1:04:12

terms. About six months

1:04:14

before this happened, I started to get this odd

1:04:16

pain in my abdomen. Apparently,

1:04:19

when aneurysms get to

1:04:21

a certain size, they're asymptomatic but sometimes

1:04:23

they can be painful, particularly

1:04:25

if they're near the pancreas, which

1:04:27

mine was, which was super rare. What I had is

1:04:30

really, really rare. I

1:04:32

started to get this sort of

1:04:34

pain and so it was bearable.

1:04:36

Of course, because it was bearable, I ignored

1:04:38

it and I just thought nothing that's bearable

1:04:40

can kill you. If you can bear it,

1:04:42

then it's not a danger,

1:04:45

which is completely false, utterly completely

1:04:47

false. For

1:04:49

six months off and on, I had this strange

1:04:52

pain that was debilitating for a few minutes at

1:04:54

a time and it would lift. 36

1:04:57

hours before I almost died, I

1:04:59

had a dream of

1:05:02

a sort that I've never had before. I have never

1:05:04

even heard of anyone having. I

1:05:07

had a dream that I was dead and

1:05:11

I was above my family, floating

1:05:14

exactly like my father had

1:05:17

floated above me two days later, 36 hours later in

1:05:19

the trauma bay. I was above my

1:05:21

family and they were grieving

1:05:25

my two little girls and my wife and they were

1:05:27

grieving me. I

1:05:31

was like, hey, I'm here. I'm fine. I'm right

1:05:33

here. Look, and they

1:05:35

couldn't hear me and they couldn't

1:05:37

see me. I was made to

1:05:39

understand, not their

1:05:42

words. I can't

1:05:44

even explain how I was made to understand this, but I

1:05:46

was made to understand that I died, that

1:05:49

there was no going back. This was

1:05:51

irrevocable and

1:05:54

that I died out of sort

1:05:56

of carelessness and then I hadn't

1:05:58

taken. life

1:06:00

seriously. I hadn't taken things seriously

1:06:03

and as a result I died and now it was

1:06:05

too late to go back and

1:06:07

I was just annihilated

1:06:10

with remorse. I mean I was

1:06:12

just devastated. I like, ah,

1:06:15

I want to go back. I went

1:06:17

and I was getting pulled away from

1:06:19

them and I was getting sent into

1:06:21

a huge, huge circle

1:06:24

through the universe that

1:06:26

I would never return

1:06:28

from. In this moment

1:06:30

of incredible anguish, I woke

1:06:33

up and

1:06:36

my wife and I co-sleep with our children and

1:06:38

so at that point my little girl Aisha was to

1:06:40

happen to be right next to me on this. We

1:06:42

have a pad on the floor. I'll just sleep on

1:06:44

it like we're camping or something. I

1:06:47

woke up next to my daughter and

1:06:50

oh thank God that was just a dream. Here

1:06:53

I am. I'm okay. I

1:06:55

put my arm around her and

1:06:57

sort of touched my wife. I

1:06:59

was like, oh thank God. I

1:07:01

have no explanation for how I knew that

1:07:03

I was going to die. Absolutely

1:07:06

none. That dream became a source

1:07:08

of paranoia because I

1:07:11

started to think maybe I did die.

1:07:13

Maybe my dream was actually that I

1:07:15

did die. This

1:07:17

right now is a hallucination. A trip

1:07:19

to the hospital, coming out of

1:07:21

the ICU, everything right up until now is

1:07:25

a hallucination. The hallucination of a

1:07:27

dying man and I can't

1:07:29

tell the difference. Frankly, there's no

1:07:31

answer to that. I mean there's no empirical answer like,

1:07:34

no, no, we can prove otherwise. That's

1:07:36

actually not true and it could have happened. Almost

1:07:39

dying is very traumatic. It was way, way

1:07:41

more traumatic than anything I've experienced in combat.

1:07:44

Way more traumatic. I just sort of worked

1:07:47

my poor brain into

1:07:49

a pretzel thinking about this stuff. This

1:07:53

is an unusual interview for this show because

1:07:57

normally this shows intensely practical.

1:08:00

We do some biographical stuff

1:08:02

and some theoretical stuff sometimes,

1:08:04

but generally speaking, the emphasis is

1:08:06

on the practical. And now with

1:08:08

very little time remaining in

1:08:11

this interview, I'm going to try to turn

1:08:13

us there because you do talk about sort

1:08:16

of what we can learn from your

1:08:18

experience and operationalize in our daily lives.

1:08:20

And just off the top of my

1:08:22

head, I think some of

1:08:24

those lessons would be, you know,

1:08:27

gratitude, awe, which

1:08:30

is linked to gratitude, I think, and love.

1:08:33

Let me read one more passage from the

1:08:35

book back to you and then maybe you can,

1:08:37

I'll stop talking and you can say whatever you

1:08:39

want to say. You're referring in this

1:08:41

passage to a camping trip that you remember taking

1:08:43

with your dad. I'm

1:08:46

now much older than he was that night and I

1:08:48

finally understand how much my father must have trusted me

1:08:50

on that trip, how much he must have loved me.

1:08:53

We're all on the side of a mountain shocked

1:08:55

by how fast it's gotten dark. The only question

1:08:57

is whether we're with the people we love

1:08:59

or not. There is no other

1:09:01

thing, no belief or religion or faith. There

1:09:03

is just that, just the knowledge that when

1:09:05

we finally close our eyes, someone will be

1:09:08

there to watch over us as

1:09:10

we head into that great soaring night. Yeah.

1:09:13

So that's referring to something that happened

1:09:15

when I was about 16. I, you know, I

1:09:17

went into the woods a lot when I was a

1:09:19

kid, I went camping a lot. My father was a

1:09:21

European-born physicist and had never slept

1:09:23

outside. And when I was 16, I was like, we're

1:09:26

doing it, dad, we're going camping. And I took

1:09:28

off into the White Mountains in the fall and

1:09:32

in New Hampshire and, you know, we were way

1:09:34

up and all alone, it started to get dark

1:09:36

and he got hypothermia. He got very, very cold.

1:09:40

And I was 16. We had no way of getting out

1:09:42

of there. And I was like, I got to make this work. And so

1:09:44

I put him in a sleeping bag and got a fire started and

1:09:46

got some warm soup in a woman, sort of brought him back.

1:09:48

But for a while, it was like

1:09:50

I was the parent, like I was the father

1:09:52

and he was the child. And then as he

1:09:54

warmed up, as he sort of came back to

1:09:57

health, he resumed being

1:09:59

my father. And I

1:10:01

went back to being his sixteen year old kid.

1:10:04

But for a little while I was looking out

1:10:06

for him and then of course if

1:10:08

you're a parent, you watch your

1:10:10

children fall asleep all the time. And one of

1:10:12

the things, I mean they know you're there and

1:10:14

that's one of the reasons they can relax enough

1:10:16

to go to sleep. Like there's this profound comfort.

1:10:19

And then there I was on the trauma bay

1:10:22

doing my own version of going to sleep. And

1:10:25

then there was my father looking out for me.

1:10:27

And that's just, this is the baton that

1:10:30

human beings, generations of human beings hand

1:10:33

off to each other as

1:10:35

we go around the track in life. It's like I will

1:10:37

take care of you and you need me most and I'm

1:10:40

going to be taken care of and we just keep doing

1:10:42

that. And you know that is

1:10:44

salvation. Whether

1:10:47

we are just biological beings and we

1:10:49

end utterly and completely when we die

1:10:51

and it's a completely physical universe, it

1:10:54

has no transcendent meaning whatsoever and then

1:10:56

it's going to flare out like a Roman candle

1:10:59

and go dead and dark in 30 billion year

1:11:01

or if there's something more, something

1:11:03

we're connected to, something completely

1:11:05

transformative that happens when

1:11:08

we, whatever it is, the fact

1:11:10

that we take care of each

1:11:12

other when we need each other most, that

1:11:15

is what saves us psychologically

1:11:18

and physically. It's

1:11:20

what makes life worth living. And

1:11:23

it may frankly be the most

1:11:25

essential component of existence. So

1:11:27

do not miss out on it. Do

1:11:29

not miss out on the moment. Like

1:11:31

right now, all you, you don't get the past and

1:11:34

you don't, sure as hell don't get the future. You

1:11:36

get right now and it's all you're ever going to get. Do

1:11:40

not spend it on your phone, right?

1:11:42

Do not spend it watching TV. Be

1:11:44

here. Right now, that's

1:11:47

life. When I realized

1:11:49

having almost died, that is the only

1:11:51

way to live that honors this extraordinary

1:11:53

freak show that is the universe. Do

1:11:57

you think your behavior has changed subsequently?

1:12:00

Yeah i'm way more you know whatever i mean

1:12:02

i'm totally i don't have a i don't have

1:12:04

a smartphone on purpose i have a phone so

1:12:06

that keeps me off of that damn thing we

1:12:08

don't want to television i've done a lot. I

1:12:11

never have so we don't we don't know

1:12:14

those distractions are not in our lives anyway

1:12:16

but it's a you know it's a sort

1:12:18

of practice like okay be here now like

1:12:20

what's happening right now maybe it sucks. Maybe

1:12:22

like i don't like this very much but

1:12:24

it's actually better than not existing at all

1:12:26

here i am with my child like what

1:12:28

do you think life for asshole like come

1:12:30

on wake up like you're getting all of

1:12:32

it right now. Right it doesn't

1:12:34

matter if you're in a traffic jam right

1:12:36

like traffic jam better than nothing so enjoy

1:12:39

the traffic jam and so you can get

1:12:41

to that and there is a real vision

1:12:44

and and wisdom and

1:12:47

comfort. In experiencing traffic

1:12:49

jams like that a thousand percent

1:12:51

i mean a thousand percent. I

1:12:53

just think i'm gonna again in our

1:12:55

remaining time read read back to you some some of the

1:12:57

passages i liked in this one i think picks up on

1:13:00

what you just said. You write

1:13:02

about how the flip side of terror is

1:13:04

reverence if you're not sufficiently reverent you're not

1:13:06

sufficiently terrified and vice versa my appreciation for

1:13:08

the current moment rose to such levels and

1:13:11

now you're speaking about. The aftermath

1:13:13

of your near death experience rose

1:13:16

to such levels that it could be almost paralyzing

1:13:18

there was virtually no activity that couldn't come

1:13:20

grinding to a halt. Because i

1:13:22

realized all over again how unlikely the

1:13:24

whole thing was why wasn't everyone crying

1:13:27

all the time over this i thought

1:13:29

have you seen the trees really seen

1:13:31

them with the clouds. Or

1:13:33

the way water droplets form digital patterns on

1:13:35

the porch screen after it rains. Religious

1:13:38

people understand life is a miracle but you don't

1:13:40

need to submit out to god to be rendered

1:13:42

almost mute with wonder just stand on

1:13:44

the street corner and look around for a while. Yeah

1:13:47

i mean. Exactly

1:13:49

i don't know i went what to add to that

1:13:51

like i see that if you can go through life

1:13:53

even doing that once in a while. You

1:13:56

you you know you're gonna be living life in a

1:13:58

slightly different way than you were before and. And,

1:14:01

you know, look, when you're young, there's this sort

1:14:03

of like, the Russian tumult

1:14:05

of life and the heartaches and this

1:14:07

and that, you know, of course, you get caught up in

1:14:10

these transitory experiences. And

1:14:13

then, you know, I think as you get older,

1:14:15

you may slow down a bit, but really ultimately

1:14:17

at any age, if you can just stop and

1:14:19

engage with the kind of awe that

1:14:22

you were allowed to exist, like,

1:14:24

if you can just do that, it makes

1:14:26

almost everything okay. And

1:14:29

with the exception, I think, and

1:14:31

of course, I don't have this by experience, thank

1:14:33

God. But in my imagination, the

1:14:37

only thing that I think might be

1:14:39

impervious to that is the death of

1:14:41

a child. Like, if something

1:14:45

happened to one of my children, I don't

1:14:49

think I could apply any of this. I

1:14:51

think there'd be absolutely nothing for me. And

1:14:54

I've sort of, I didn't put this in the book, but in

1:14:56

my thoughts, I'm like, I finally, having always

1:14:58

derided the, you know, the idea of heaven and all

1:15:00

that stuff, like, oh, come on, that's so lame, you

1:15:02

know, that, that, that. Now

1:15:04

that I have children, I understand where

1:15:06

that idea comes from. Some

1:15:09

bad happened to someone's kid, and they have a

1:15:12

desperate need to believe that that

1:15:14

child went someplace good. And

1:15:17

I completely get that. And I, for one,

1:15:19

I'm not going to repudiate it, because

1:15:21

I think it's just too badly needed. So.

1:15:25

final question for me, what about

1:15:28

the value of contemplating our

1:15:30

mortality? Do you have a

1:15:32

view on that after everything you've been

1:15:34

experienced and now written? Of

1:15:36

course, like, the, our mortality is

1:15:39

the most defining thing about us. Like

1:15:41

if we, if we never

1:15:43

died, if we were eternal, our lives would

1:15:45

have no meaning, because there'd be no choices, there'd

1:15:48

be no limitations, all things could happen eventually, in

1:15:50

an eternity of time, the whole thing becomes meaningless.

1:15:52

The fact that we die is what makes us,

1:15:54

us, what makes life sacred and important. And

1:15:57

so if you don't think about that once in a while, you're kind

1:15:59

of missing. and out on

1:16:01

something essential about yourself and about

1:16:04

reality. But it can, you

1:16:06

know, it can be paralyzing. I mean, I, you know, I

1:16:08

got to the point where I was sort of paralyzed by

1:16:10

it. And, and I don't know

1:16:12

if there's a diagnosis for that kind of

1:16:14

psychological trouble there should be because I

1:16:17

really struggled for a while. And, you know,

1:16:19

I think the trick is to find a

1:16:21

balance where you're properly appreciative

1:16:24

of your existence and not

1:16:27

so mesmerized by it that you can't function. And, you know,

1:16:29

I think there's a lot of evolutionary

1:16:31

history has gone into, you know, as our

1:16:33

brains developed from chimpanzees,

1:16:35

we departed from chimpanzees six million years

1:16:37

ago. Our brains got more and more

1:16:40

complex and we have a real understanding

1:16:42

of ourselves as individuals, which allows

1:16:44

us to speak, allows us to think into

1:16:46

the future, allows it makes us super adaptive

1:16:48

as a species. The only problem is when

1:16:51

you understand that you're an individual, you inevitably

1:16:53

understand that you're going to die and then

1:16:55

that's this crushing weight that can destroy you

1:16:57

psychologically. So humans have figured out this way

1:16:59

of sort of like not thinking

1:17:01

about it too much so that they have

1:17:03

the benefits of individuality without, you

1:17:05

know, having this sort of existential hammer

1:17:08

come down on their head. And the

1:17:10

trick for all of us, I think is to

1:17:12

sort of navigate between those two poles. So

1:17:15

you're not going through life oblivious and you're not

1:17:17

going through life paralyzed. I think religion

1:17:19

is one of the things that helps people with that. I

1:17:21

just chose, chose not to use religion

1:17:23

as a way to get there. Well,

1:17:26

we're pretty much out of time. So let

1:17:29

me ask you the two questions I habitually pose

1:17:31

to people at this juncture. One is, is there

1:17:33

somewhere you wanted to go in this interview that

1:17:36

we didn't end up going? No,

1:17:39

it was wonderful. It was wonderful. Thank you. I,

1:17:41

it's, um, I know I'm good. Second

1:17:44

is, um, could you just remind everybody of the name of

1:17:46

your book and anything else you've put out into the world

1:17:48

that you want to direct them to? Sure.

1:17:52

Um, so the name of my book is In

1:17:54

My Time of Dying. And

1:17:56

the subtitle is how I came face to

1:17:58

face with the idea. of

1:18:01

an afterlife. And I have

1:18:03

many other books out there starting with The Perfect

1:18:05

Storm. My last book was called Freedom, about

1:18:08

how freedom works and why

1:18:10

it is so precious in the

1:18:12

human experience. This was

1:18:14

an extremely interesting and enjoyable interview. I really

1:18:17

appreciate your time. Thank you. I

1:18:19

really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thanks again to Sebastian. It's

1:18:26

great to have him on the show. Thanks to everybody

1:18:28

who works out there. It's been

1:18:30

so hard to make this show a

1:18:32

reality. Our producers are Lauren Smith and

1:18:34

Tara Anderson. And we get additional production

1:18:36

support from Colin Lester Fleming, Isabelle Hibbard,

1:18:38

Carolyn Keenan and Juan Bo Wu. Marissa

1:18:40

Schneiderman is our senior producer. Kevin O'Connell

1:18:42

is our director of audio and post-production.

1:18:45

E.J. Cashmere is our managing producer and

1:18:47

Nick Thorburn of the band, Islands, wrote

1:18:49

our theme. If

1:18:58

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