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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
Exploring Near-Death Experiences: Insights Through Hypnosis and Spiritual Integration
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Can hypnosis unlock the mysteries of near-death experiences? On this captivating Woo-Woo Wednesday episode, we share our personal journeys and the incredible consistency in NDE accounts. Through the lens of hypnosis, we examine how these profound events can transform lives and how science often grapples with this compelling evidence. We also delve into the pioneering work of Michael Newton, who used hypnotic trance to explore the life between lives, shedding light on the existence beyond our physical realm. Thanks to platforms like YouTube, more people are open to sharing their stories, and we highlight this growing trend.
Join us as we discuss the unique integration process for those who have experienced NDEs, likening it to multiple visits to an ever-familiar yet always unique landmark like the Eiffel Tower. You'll hear about the universal yet highly personalized nature of NDEs, especially the life review, where individuals relive their life events and feel the emotions of those they impacted. We also touch on the therapeutic power of hypnosis and meditation in fostering spiritual awakenings and a newfound fearlessness towards death. Through personal anecdotes and client stories, we offer insights and encouragement for anyone curious about spiritual journeys and self-discovery.
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Thank you. Almost daily community podcast about the mind and how you might change it in the most simple and helpful ways. Every day we sit staring at the lake and sipping our coffee, having a chat about hypnosis and how to make those meaningful adjustments to our state of mind, because nothing is more important than your state of mind. Okay, we're on the line.
Speaker 1:Good morning. It's raining like crazy.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Got a leftover hurricane out there. Yeah, we're the place of the leftover hurricanes. We really are Hurricanes. Kick the living crap out of Florida. Yeah, and then they creep up as big, nasty rainstorms. So it's been raining all night. It's gonna rain all day, lots of rain.
Speaker 2:It's amazing how much water the sky can hold so today we're going a little off the beaten path with hypnosis, but not really in a sense, because hypnosis helps people that have gone through this, but we're talking about near-death experiences and DEs. We're going all out woo-woo here. Welcome to Woo-Woo Wednesday. I think we've started something. Yeah, so near-death experiences I got into. I can't even believe it's been almost 10 years. 10 years ago when I got into that Through my own weird experiences, through reading, random Interest and I don't know. 10 years ago there was a lot of information on it, but not in the same way of consuming it. Now there was, I don't know. I'd put the YouTube videos of them maybe at in between 50 to 100 and I went through all of them and I read websites on them and all this stuff. I don't know why I did that. Now I know, looking back, why I did that. I was sort of setting myself up to work with near-death experiencers.
Speaker 1:And you have and.
Speaker 2:I have A lot, a lot, so, um, now, the way of consuming them is through YouTube. It's people are coming out of the woodwork, which is good. They feel safe too, and they're sharing their experiences. So what is a near-death experience?
Speaker 1:You asking me, I've never had one. You know my story. Yeah, I, like you, for decades, was fascinated with this topic. I was fascinated for two reasons. The first reason is because of the incredible consistency in the accounts. The accounts were and there's been books written on this that the accounts of what happens when people go into what is a clinically dead state and then somehow, in some way, at some point, sometimes as much as hours later, the body reanimates. They come back into the body and the body is there and then they tell this story that is very consistent with the story told by others who have gone through the same experience. And the consistency was the first thing. And for me, the second thing was I've always thought of myself as a scientific method believer.
Speaker 1:I'm a real believer in consistently in the same terms, examining things over and over and over, looking for consistencies, looking for the relationship between variables, controlling for variables so that you can isolate phenomena. It was one of the areas I spent a lot energy in when I went to university. I really, really enjoyed it and one of my big conclusions was that there's nothing more unscientific in the world than to ignore evidence. That evidence, even when it can't be explained, should not be dismissed, and there was just mountains of evidence for this stuff. There were thousands of accounts and these people, many of them, come forward with their account and they're not the least bit happy about it. They're not. They're not like wanting to tell anybody. They the only reason they come forward is because so many other people have come forward. They don't want to tell anybody. The only reason they come forward is because so many other people have come forward they don't want to tell their families, they don't want to engage the thought.
Speaker 1:It's really upsetting. I mean we have suddenly sparked and that we evolved, that over millions of years we went from you know single piece of living crap to these complex beings that we are and that there's just nothing else. We're pretty much just an accident of chemistry and that programming is really really strong in many of us. And there are those who take advantage of it and create belief systems around it. And I'm not being critical of that, I'm just being observing.
Speaker 1:And, all in all, what happens then is that we don't want to be predisposed to think that we're more than this body in this lifetime struggling on this hard planet, and that society, as we have accumulated it, amassed, it created. It is the way things must be. It is the way things must be, and so when you talk about ideas that challenge, that, people just quickly, quickly, just reject them. Just, I don't even want to talk about it. There are going to be people who are going to see this podcast title and they're just, this is one of the ones they're not going to listen to. And there are going to be people who are going to see this podcast title and they're going to be all over it. This will be the first one they want to listen to, but for me near-death experiences.
Speaker 1:When I first started reading about them I think there was. I was geez I'm talking about 40 years ago there was. I was geez I'm talking about 40 years ago when I first discovered them and saw the first psychology journals writing about them and brought that to a professor for a topic for an essay and was just told, nope, nope, not going there, that's not real evidence. Nope, not going there, that's not real evidence. And I looked because I was very scientific minded and the evidence is huge and the consistency in the reports is huge. And then, of course, I came across Michael Newton's work, which was all about the life between lives. Came across Michael Newton's work, which was all about the life between lives, and he would take people into hypnotic trance, take them from a death experience from a past life and into the life between lives, and he would examine it and report it. And he was also like this really scientific guy. He was a psychiatrist and he thought, although there was some therapeutic value in past lives and things like that, he didn't personally believe in any of that. And discovering that through hypnosis and examining that which now there's a number of hypnotists who specialize in doing that in doing that the evidence just piled up and piled up, and piled up with all of that. You know, I met a guy. I was thinking about near-death experiences, talking with Hillary about it, and I got on a plane because I was flying out to Kelowna to visit my son who was in a play at the Kelowna Theater and I told him I'd come out if he got himself into a play. And so I'm on a plane that's going a small plane going from Calgary to Kelowna and I get on the plane. I thought I was early but apparently I was one of the last ones on the plane. There was only one seat left and it was beside this nice guy. His name was Jeremy and I sat down. I just considered that you know fortuity. And I sat down and I smiled and nodded and he was reading a book by a Buddhist monk that I had read and I said what do you think of that book? And he said to me well, you know, I think it's interesting in these areas, but I have a peculiar way of looking at things and I said, oh really, why is that? He said well, because I died. And then he proceeded to tell me his near-death experience and where that has led him and what he's doing now, and in fact, you can find Jeremy on Vimeo. He's got a video on Vimeo anyway.
Speaker 1:I know I've sort of dominated, but but this is this is my experience with near-death experiences. I haven't had one. There was a time in my life I wanted one and I got the privilege of meeting somebody who had one, randomly, out of nowhere. I consider it a whole lot more than random. I'm not much of a believer in things called coincidence. Things happen at the same time absolutely coincidence, but I don't think there's any real randomness to it. Anyway, with all of that said, you work with people who have had near-death experiences. Why don't you talk about?
Speaker 2:that, um, so mainly, you know, I, I was with you a long time ago, um, thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I could have this experience, you know. But after learning and working with them, it's no small feat coming back. It's hard, it is emotional. Some people head right down into depression, and we'll get to that in a moment. Why? But? And there's also this interesting thing that happens where it feels like you've got sort of one foot into the body and one foot out of the body.
Speaker 2:Some people have what would be the word sporadic out-of-body experiences after that, where it's almost like they're not tethered to the body properly, if that makes any sense. Near-death experiencers. We work on sort of the integration of, let's say, the soul to the body, really feeling into the body, being part of this existence again. And we, if they want, we, go through their near-death experience again, not the death part, but the actual experience and help them to once again integrate the experience into their mind, into their life, into their life. It's not me sitting there giving them a new experience or additions to their experience. It's me sitting there basically saying and what's happening next and what's going on there, and what's what's happening now and what's there?
Speaker 2:so that their mind can bring them naturally through their own experience. So it's very, you know, methodical, is that the word Right? And I found it interesting, like you said, I think you said this in the beginning of the podcast is said I think you said this in the beginning of the podcast is um near death experiences. Not everyone remembers them, or, you know, we don't even know if they had them. Uh, but the ones that come back, they're all different. No one has the same exact experience, but there are those fundamental characteristics that run through them. Not everyone has those characteristics, but they're sort of all over the place in the different accounts but they seem to be the same.
Speaker 1:Now I just you know, I anticipate resistance in people's minds, and so I think about the Eiffel Tower. I've been to the Eiffel Tower probably a dozen times. The Eiffel Tower is a really interesting place and it's not what people think it is, and it is a whole lot more than what people anticipate. And I have never been able to experience it the exact same way any two times. And if I asked anybody, had they been to the Eiffel Tower? I could tell who has and I can tell who hasn't by listening to the way they talk about it. They'll never. None of them will tell me the same story.
Speaker 1:Right, there's like really probably four metro stations you could take and then walk to the Eiffel Tower from there. There's no Eiffel Tower metro station. There is a whole bunch of ways. You can view the Eiffel Tower from both sides of the river and you can be right underneath it and have a completely different experience of it than if you were literally in the park that's right beside it or the big expanse of green space that's on the other side of it. So it's one of those things where I think we need to be open-minded that people can visit the same place, have very, very similar experiences, experiences of it and talk about it differently. And so if we assume that everybody that's talking about having been to the Eiffel Tower is telling the truth and you can tell that they're telling the truth because you know the words they'll use are very, very similar, but the experience they have of it is always unique, it's always individual.
Speaker 1:So I use an analogy like that and say when I get stories about near-death experiences from all over the place, different people, different sources, books, videos. There's these enormous commonalities that are really. I don't think it's reasonable to think that people can replicate them in such personalized, detailed ways and be the same and, at the same time, be unique, be different, just a way to think about it. I just think that the evidence of this stuff is everywhere and we keep pushing it away, and part of the reason why we will get clients that want to go through this again because they can't process it all, because there's so much to it, is just the way they're treated by others, right, the way they're treated by others, right. The way they're treated by others who have this predisposition Never been to the Eiffel Tower, but, positive, nobody else was either.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know some of those fundamental characteristics, um, that, again, not everybody has, but there's a sprinkling of all of them in all of all of them, if that makes sense. Um, so, things that come up, one of the major things that comes up, probably the most, maybe I would say to you know, based on the accounts is a life review. This really struck me when I heard about this the first time, way back when. And so a life review is watched by you as your soul, let's say. Sometimes guides are around you, sometimes there's nobody around you, and you are watching your life from the very moment you're born until the moment you passed.
Speaker 2:Now, something to note here you're watching it, but you are also experiencing it. I know that's hard to wrap your mind around. I'm still grappling with that concept. So you're experiencing it from the moment you're born all the way until the moment of death. Not only are you experiencing it, you are experiencing the emotions of the people that you interacted with along the way.
Speaker 2:That you interacted with along the way, and, on top of that, not only are you experiencing their emotions, but you're experiencing, let's call it, the ripple effect that happens outward from the people that are experiencing those emotions. So if they go home just say you treated somebody, let's go with the nice stuff. You treated somebody nice, you held open the door for somebody. They felt good that you did that. You feel that. You feel that from their perspective it's like you're in that soul's body type thing. So you're feeling that and then they go home because they're feeling nice and you know the wind or the door was held open for them. They go home and they're nice to you know their kids or something. You're gonna feel that and you're gonna feel it ripple out from there, those emotions, those nice, good emotions. And it works the other way around. But I'm not going to go down that road in this one.
Speaker 1:It's wild that that is one of our primary focuses, right, that we should be aware of. If this experience of past life review and I always think of the book Brave New World and the feelies where they would go to the movies but they would feel it as if they were in it I think of that kind of concept. But the significance of having to experience the result of all of your actions, all of your choices, the way you interact with others right, it really makes me think about two things. The first thing is that we really are just here to learn. We're just really here to understand our impact, really understand how things work, and also just how incredibly integrated all of our experiences are Right, how each one of us, with everything we do, is impacting others, and that matters, yeah, with everything we do is impacting others and that matters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think that's why it was the biggest thing that stood out to me throughout the reviews Sorry, throughout the accounts. The life review and it's not like one person says that this happens, this ripple effect, this, seeing it from different vantage points, that is across the board when somebody talks about it. Yeah, it's amazing to me. Yeah there's an author Jeffrey Long who wrote a book.
Speaker 1:What was the?
Speaker 2:name of that book again. Uh, evidence of the afterlife. Evidence of the afterlife right, we've got a copy.
Speaker 1:I've read it a couple of times. Um, he takes I think 600 detailed near-death experience accounts or maybe more than that, maybe 800. And he correlates all of their explanations and descriptions and then takes these primary characteristics, these very common experiences or events that take place within the near-death experience, and then he lists them and he actually provides a chart right and life review is in like 86% I'm pulling a number, I'm sorry that it's not accurate. You can read the book. It's like 86% of all near-death experiences accounts. But there are other phenomena that take place in these accounts and he reduces them. But part of his thesis is that when you take all these accounts, the events, when you basically itemize and accumulate and aggregate all these accounts, it's like the lowest common experience is still happening over 50% of the time, with these people having near-death experiences. And he chose people who had never, read about near-death experiences before they died.
Speaker 1:Right, that was part of his control group, anyway. Again, I'm I'm a real science lover and I'm a real believer that the most unscientific thing you can do is ignore evidence. You know, when I was a kid, I got a huge debate with a professor at U of T. We were looking at points on a graph. We were talking about the analysis of data and we were looking at points on the graph and points on the graph that were anomalous, that didn't fit that beautiful, smooth curve that we were trying to force into this graph of points, outliers, outliers.
Speaker 1:We were looking at those points and the professor's conclusion was well, you should just ignore those points. And I, I just couldn't believe that. The professor said that and I said I would think those are the points you focus on. Those are the ones that are going to tell you the most about that, the confounding. They're the ones that are going to be the greatest insight into what kinds of things interfere with that point falling on the line.
Speaker 1:And it was interesting because, essentially, what it boiled down to is that professor was focused completely on proof of a theory, proving a theory, and I thought proving a theory by ignoring data points is the most ridiculous idea I had ever heard. And I thought that, more importantly, more importantly, our process was not to prove a theory, our process was to understand how variables interact. That's why we were here and that's when I learned about linear regression. I just fell in love with the topic. I thought there's nothing we can't figure out with linear regression. Understand what the confounding factor is and then control for that confounding factor and then see how that point moves towards the line. Oh my God, isn't that enormous discovery, isn't that powerful learning?
Speaker 1:And this professor was adamant no, this is not what we're here to do. What we're here to do is to prove a theory. We're trying to use data to show us a relationship and if you have anomalous data points, throw them out. And yeah, I got nearly kicked out of the course because even after class I went to the professor and said what is this? I don't understand. And the professor just said well, maybe you don't belong in university and I just all right, I'm out of here. You know, I'm just gonna. I'm just. The forces that cause us to stick to convention, I think are numerous. Yeah, anyway, I just wanted to say that because I think that there's there's huge data out there that proves these things. What do you find is therapeutic about helping somebody go through their NDE experience a second or third time?
Speaker 2:It puts them in touch with that loving light again. Not always to the point of how they felt it in the experience, but they feel. How do I describe it? I hate to use the integration word over and over again, but they feel integrated into their mind, into their body. Once again, it can help them understand things that came up that they've been grappling with.
Speaker 2:Um, also, what I've noticed and this is even hard for me to wrap my mind around, still, but, and probably forever, but, uh, a near-death experience, because there's no concept of time.
Speaker 2:When you are the experiencer experiencing it, everything seems to be happening at once. So, you will find, experiencers take years to unpack this information because the human mind wants it to be linear, right, because the human mind wants it to be linear right. So oftentimes, if not all, really, when we go through that experience, there comes to be a linear fashion to it, right, their mind puts it in a linear fashion for them, and that can be use the word therapeutic, I guess, because they're able to unpack it a little easier. What else? What else? Yeah, it's just someone going through that again is connected to the light more right, like I said, and I guess, to jump off that point the light is. I would say, besides the life review, the light is probably maybecers call love, because there is really no other word for it. That's another thing that they they experience is it is so hard, using the human languages to recount this experience for people to talk about it.
Speaker 2:There are no words for it. Um, and whether or not you're in, uh, the void, which is a a dark place, but very loving and safe, and you don't feel scared there, right? Um, or the light, there is that, that oneness, that connection. And when they say love, they don't mean, like you know, oh, I love my kids, or I love my husband, or I love my wife or my friends or whatever's. It's an all-encompassing feeling that's almost so overwhelming that a lot of people talk about that. They just they feel like they're gonna burst because they're just so overwhelmed with it. It's kind of like a hug from the universe, right?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah, I think ecstatic experiences is not very common and I think that if you've had an ecstatic experience or something that approaches that, you can understand, I think, a little bit about what they describe. If you haven't had an ecstatic experience, I encourage you to pursue one, and they can be achieved really simply in terms of meditation. Or we have people you know, I have people in my chair. You know it's amazing how, when they become aware of love in a way that they had never ever thought of it or experienced it before, it's amazing how they shift, how they change, how they think of things differently. Yeah, this is the, the world.
Speaker 1:Probably, you know, one of the main reasons why I've always been so drawn to things like mindfulness and drawn to hypnosis when I first discovered it, and why I've pursued it so deeply, is that we are really programmed to just think of ourselves as a body struggling through a difficult world, and there's a whole lot more to us than that and there are ways of discovering that, ways of pursuing that. There's all kinds of information out there to expand your understanding of who and what you are, and you know I'll speak for me, I'll let you speak for you. It's such a joy to watch people come into our office with really hard, rigid thoughts and really closed minds, discover about themselves really powerful things and then, as a result, are on this curious, creative pursuit of understanding more and learning more about who they are, and it's just a joy to be able to assist with that yeah, yeah, I've had a number of clients go through this, this, this feeling of being connected to the universe, connected to source, whatever that is for them, right?
Speaker 2:Some people come in and they are very much connected to, in their mind, their spirituality, let's call it is the universe. Some are the Source, some are guides. Some have universe, some are the source, some are guides, some have angels, some are Jesus and whoever or whatever is there for them. That's sort of where they go, where we go. There's no pushback with that or trying to make them experience something different, right, and and it's just beautiful.
Speaker 2:I've seen, I've seen many of the clients that I work with find that connection and, of course, there's lots of tears. One gentleman that I worked with was just brought to incredible tears and still to this day. He just randomly showed up one day Like a client was walking out and he was coming up to the door Good timing. But he just wanted to give me a hug again because he wasn't scared of death any longer. And that's just beautiful, right, that that could happen. And that wasn't an NDE-er, that wasn't somebody I was working with specific for NDEs. We were just doing our hypnosis sessions just to feel better, just to feel confident, just to let go of past stuff. So yeah, it's an incredible.
Speaker 1:It's just incredible where the mind can go, where the, where the you know soul can go yeah, if you're, if you're interested in this stuff, if you're on a spiritual journey, if you are exploring and wondering where to start, it would truly be our pleasure to just talk with you, to share what we know with you, to point you in directions of things like books or videos. I mean, youtube is the modern library. Not all of it is screened by, not all of it is screened by experts, but there's a lot of good stuff out there and if you think that hypnosis might assist you in understanding yourself a little more, that's why we're here, that's why we love what we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think if I was listening to this, I'd have a lot more questions about what's going on over there. Um, so, uh, you know, think of this as maybe a part one. Um, and then, because there's, lots of stuff to talk about. All right, we'll see you later.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that maybe it helped even a little. If you have any questions, we would love you to send them along in an email to info at somhypnosiscom. Thank you for being part of the State of Mind community and for more information about hypnosis and the various online or in-person services we provide. Please visit our website, wwwpsalmhypnosiscom. While you are there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey, meeting with Hillary or Les, to learn more about what hypnosis is and how you might use it to make your life what you want it to be? Bye for now. Talk to you tomorrow.
