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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: thought provoking shows from Coast to Coast. Now here's a

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Speaker 1: highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeart Radio and

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Speaker 1: welcome back Rupert Sheldrake with us and we are going

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Speaker 1: to take your calls next hour with Rupert. Rupert, I

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Speaker 1: just came back from a conference near Scott's Teler Arizona

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Speaker 1: that had to do with the afterlife discussions, and of

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Speaker 1: course you have looked at near death experiences. How does

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Speaker 1: this tie in with the work science and spiritual practices. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think the near death experiences are clearly for many

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Speaker 1: people who have them spiritual experiences. They feel they've died,

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Speaker 1: they feel they've gone through a kind of tunnel into

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Speaker 1: a realm of peace and joy, and then of course

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Speaker 1: they have to come back again. For many people who've

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Speaker 1: had these, it seems as if they lose the fear

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Speaker 1: of death, and many of them feel they've become better people. Uh. Well,

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Speaker 1: what's interesting about this are several things. First, there are

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Speaker 1: now more near death experiences than ever before UM. This

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Speaker 1: is a kind of golden age for near death experiences.

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Speaker 1: Because of medicine itself. There are many more people alive

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Speaker 1: today who would have died in the past thanks to

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Speaker 1: coronary resuscitation and modern medicine. So near death experiences are

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Speaker 1: commoner than ever before, and they've now been investigated scientifically

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Speaker 1: in a variety of ways. One of the objections of

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Speaker 1: skeptics and atheists is that UM these near death experiences

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Speaker 1: are just kind of hallucinations produced by dyeing brains UM.

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Speaker 1: But in UM studies carried out during the course of

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Speaker 1: operations where people's hearts are deliberately stopped and their brains

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Speaker 1: are monitored, some of them have near death experiences, which

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Speaker 1: happen when the brain is flatlined. There's no measurable activity

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Speaker 1: at all. Something is going on that's not just a

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Speaker 1: kind of disruptive activity of a disordered brain. UM. Now,

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Speaker 1: because by definition they're near death rather than death experiences, UM,

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Speaker 1: they don't necessarily tell us that much about the afterlife.

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Speaker 1: They may give a foretaste of the beginning of the afterlife.

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Speaker 1: I personally think they do. UM. But I think that

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Speaker 1: the bit that interests me most is the way that

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Speaker 1: they're related to rites of passage. In many traditional cultures,

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Speaker 1: people undergo trials by ordeal or rites of passage, where

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Speaker 1: they're brought to the very edge of death and then

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Speaker 1: come back again. Um. It's like dying to their old

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Speaker 1: role and being born to a new one. Vision quests

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Speaker 1: for Native American youth, going out into the wilderness fasting,

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Speaker 1: often in conditions of great danger, were one kind of

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Speaker 1: right of passage. But one of the things that fascinates me, UM,

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Speaker 1: and which I discussed in my book, is that a

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Speaker 1: central rite of passage in the Judeo Christian tradition is baptism,

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Speaker 1: and at the time of the New Testament, John the

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Speaker 1: Baptist was baptizing people on an industrial scale. They were

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Speaker 1: coming to the river Jordan's. He was holding them under

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Speaker 1: and their lives were being transformed. No, and he just

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Speaker 1: held him under just enough so he didn't drown them, right,

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Speaker 1: I think so? Yes, I think John Baptist was a drowner.

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Speaker 1: I think that he was holding them under just long

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Speaker 1: enough um to induce a near death experience by drowning.

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Speaker 1: Most people think that what he was doing was producing

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Speaker 1: a symbolic and rebirth by drowning. But you know, why

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Speaker 1: gave for something symbolic when you can have the real thing? Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, it just takes a couple of minutes longer um.

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Speaker 1: And of course he would have had to know what

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Speaker 1: he was doing. He might have lost a few um,

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Speaker 1: but the that was pre litigation. So I think that

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Speaker 1: the what was happening, I think was that people were

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Speaker 1: being held under and Jesus himself was held under and

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Speaker 1: it had a huge it was a huge turning point

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Speaker 1: in his life, the experience of this new spiritual illumination

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Speaker 1: that happened through baptism um. And what happened was that

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Speaker 1: then in the earlier church people started baptizing babies and

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Speaker 1: by sprinkling water on them um and this transformative power

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Speaker 1: was lost except at the Reformation. At one of them

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Speaker 1: what most radical groups at the Reformation, with the Anabaptists,

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Speaker 1: Ana means again, and they said, well, look at the Bible.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't say baptism sprinkling water on babies. It says

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Speaker 1: it's being fully immersed and your life's being changed. And

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Speaker 1: they be. In the sixteenth century in Europe, in particularly

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Speaker 1: in Germany, Holland and England, the Anabaptists started baptizing again

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Speaker 1: by totally immersion, and they gave rise, of course to

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Speaker 1: the Baptist churches in America and the Mennonites and other

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Speaker 1: groups that still have baptism by total immersion. And I

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Speaker 1: think it's particularly important and significant that these are precisely

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Speaker 1: the groups of people who talk about dying and being

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Speaker 1: born again and seeing the light. And I think that's

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Speaker 1: a literal experience for a lot of people who have

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Speaker 1: near death experiences, and baptism was a low tech, very

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Speaker 1: rapid way of inducing just that kind of transformative experience.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that the spiritual response by people is

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Speaker 1: physical or is it somehow tied to consciousness? But I

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Speaker 1: think it's both, because clearly our consciousness is tied to

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Speaker 1: the state of our physical body and as in a

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Speaker 1: near death experience. And I think that the you know,

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Speaker 1: everyone knows that the physical changes in the brain, like

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Speaker 1: brain injury can change consciousness. And and drugs, I mean alcohol,

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Speaker 1: psychoactive drugs. All these things change consciousness via physical changes.

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Speaker 1: And then fasting and other spiritual practice changes the functioning

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Speaker 1: of the body and has always been used as a

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Speaker 1: spiritual practice in many different traditions. So I don't think

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Speaker 1: it's either or George, and I think it's both, and

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Speaker 1: you know that both are involved. And many of these

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Speaker 1: spiritual practices do lead to changes in the body. Meditation itself,

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Speaker 1: for example, leads to change in the brain functioning. Different

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Speaker 1: regions of the brain become active, there's changes in the

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Speaker 1: heart rate, and the general physiological state of the body.

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Speaker 1: Without the brain, would you have consciousness? Well, that's of

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Speaker 1: course one of the biggest questions, isn't it. It's really

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Speaker 1: another way of saying, do we survive the death of

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Speaker 1: the body? And I personally think we do um, but

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Speaker 1: the I think it's rather hard to prove that. But

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons why a lot of materialistic scientists

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Speaker 1: think we don't is because they believe that memories are

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Speaker 1: stalled in the brain, and that when you die, obviously

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Speaker 1: your brain decays and the memories will be wiped out,

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Speaker 1: and any form of survival that we think about it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't make much sense without memory. UM. So, I myself

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Speaker 1: don't think memories are stalled in the brain. I think

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Speaker 1: the brain tunes into them. This is part of my

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Speaker 1: ideas about morphic resonance, which we've discussed on Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast before. Um. The I think that there's an influence

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Speaker 1: of the past that works through morphic resonance. Similar things

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Speaker 1: resonate with similar, similar, subsequent similar things, so all of

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Speaker 1: us tune into a kind of collective memory of other people. Um.

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Speaker 1: I think all species have a kind of collective memory,

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Speaker 1: and that's because we're similar to many members of our

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Speaker 1: species in the past. Now, if you if you ask

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Speaker 1: who am I most similar to in the past? Which

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Speaker 1: individual am I'm most similar to in the past, then

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Speaker 1: the answer is me. I'm more similar to me, Rupert,

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Speaker 1: and you're more similar to you, George, in the past

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Speaker 1: than to anyone else. And this most specific resonance acting

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Speaker 1: on us from the past is from our own past.

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Speaker 1: So I think our brains are more like radio receivers

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Speaker 1: that tune in two invisible influences, in this case, coming

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Speaker 1: across time, rather than recording devices that have it all

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Speaker 1: stored within them. I think I don't think our brains

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Speaker 1: are like video recorders. I think they're more like TV sets. Um.

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Speaker 1: They're tuning into influences coming across time. So if our

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Speaker 1: memories are not stored inside our brains, um, then the

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Speaker 1: memories could survive the death of the body in a

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Speaker 1: way that they couldn't if they are stored inside the brain. UM.

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Speaker 1: Of course, brain damage can lead to loss of memory,

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Speaker 1: as in Alzheimer's disease, or brain injuries or strokes, dementia

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Speaker 1: that does things like that and dementia. Yes, that doesn't

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Speaker 1: prove that they're in the brain, because if you damage

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Speaker 1: a TV set or a radio set, you can interfere

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Speaker 1: with its ability to produce sounds or, in the case

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Speaker 1: of a TV set, pictures. But that doesn't prove all

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Speaker 1: those sounds and pictures simply being produced inside the set.

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Speaker 1: There's an influence working upon it, an invisible influence coming

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Speaker 1: from outside. So um these are of course, this is

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Speaker 1: a controversial view, but the reason that many materialists and

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Speaker 1: atheists disbelieve in survival of bodily death is because they've

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Speaker 1: just taken for granted the assumption that memories are stalled

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Speaker 1: in the brain, and scientifically speaking, this is a very

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Speaker 1: questionable belief could be stored in the heart. Some people think,

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Speaker 1: I think they can be stalled. Well, I think my

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Speaker 1: view would be that they're not even stalled in the heart,

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Speaker 1: that the heart resonates with them. So when you have

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Speaker 1: heart transplants and people pick up memories from the heart

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Speaker 1: donor now dead, um, I think what's happening is that

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Speaker 1: heart's tuning them in to the memories of that people person,

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Speaker 1: rather than having them actually physically stalled in the heart. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's a similar kind of view that I hear

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Speaker 1: that you can interpret heart memories in a similar way

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Speaker 1: to regular memories through a kind of resonance. It is

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Speaker 1: amazing how it works, isn't it. It's totally amazing. What's

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Speaker 1: amazing is we understand so little about some of the

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Speaker 1: most obvious things. I mean, all of us take memory

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Speaker 1: for granted, or at least until we start losing it.

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Speaker 1: But most people do take memory for granted. We take

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Speaker 1: it for granted in animals they'll and cats obviously remember things,

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Speaker 1: and even goldfish remember things so um, but memory is

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Speaker 1: often taken for granted. But it's amazing that we just

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Speaker 1: don't know how it works, and it's an open question scientifically,

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Speaker 1: and as I as I say, my own view is

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Speaker 1: that it is not stalled in the brain but works

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Speaker 1: by a kind of resonance, and that does leave open

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Speaker 1: the whole question of survival of bodily death. Listen to

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Speaker 1: more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m.

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Speaker 1: Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com

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Speaker 1: for more