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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back George and Rory with you. Let me

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Speaker 2: tell you a little bit about our guest. Jim willis

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Speaker 2: a hit theologian, historian, musician. Jim earned his bachelor's degree

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Speaker 2: from the Eastman School of Music and his master's degree

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Speaker 2: from andover Newton Theological School. He has been an ordained

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Speaker 2: minister for more than forty years, and while serving as

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Speaker 2: an adjunct college professor in the fields of comparative religion

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Speaker 2: and cross culture studies, he was the host of his

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Speaker 2: own program radio show, and upon the retirement, he was

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Speaker 2: determined to confront the essential mystical reality that has inspired

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Speaker 2: humankind since the very beginning of time and started writing

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Speaker 2: incredible books, including Ancient Gods, Supernatural Gods, Lost Civilizations, and

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Speaker 2: his latest book, Near Death Experiences. Jim, welcome back to

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Speaker 2: the program.

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Speaker 3: Good to talk to you again. George. It's been a while.

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Speaker 3: Last time I was on the show, I guess you

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Speaker 3: were on vacation and I had a chance to meet

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Speaker 3: Ian and I was so sorry to hear that he

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Speaker 3: just passed away or passed away recently. Yeah, he did.

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Speaker 2: We lost him in December of non alcoholic liver disease.

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Speaker 3: Jim. Oh no, he was waiting first chance to meet him,

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Speaker 3: and we had a We had a great time. I'm oh,

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Speaker 3: I'm so sorry to hear that.

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Speaker 2: Good guy. And he loved music. My gosh, he loved music.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, we had We had a lot of

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Speaker 3: chance to talk about music.

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Speaker 2: Speaking of music, what kind of music do you play?

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Speaker 3: Well, A little of everything. I was trained as a

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Speaker 3: symphony symphonic trombonist, but I got into conducting, especially conducting

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Speaker 3: choral music. But then I had a love for jazz

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Speaker 3: that couldn't go by. So for a while I was

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Speaker 3: conducting choirs and playing orchestras and doing jazz gigs on

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Speaker 3: the weekend, and a little of everything.

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Speaker 2: Now, how did you get interested in your death experiences?

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Speaker 2: This is an amazing work, by the.

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Speaker 3: Way, Well it was. It was quite a shock to me.

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Speaker 3: It basically three things happened, separated by about forty fifty years.

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Speaker 3: About fifty years ago, I was in my twenties, got

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Speaker 3: out of school, ready to take on the world. I

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Speaker 3: knew all the answers, I knew everything. I was going

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Speaker 3: to be the great expert on everything. And I walked

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Speaker 3: into a hospital room one time to see a parishioner

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Speaker 3: of mine who was a wonderful, wonderful old lady. I

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Speaker 3: call her Hannah in the book, and she was just

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Speaker 3: sharp as attack. And she was in the hospital room

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Speaker 3: and I was told by the nurses that she probably

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Speaker 3: wasn't going to come out, so I got into the

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Speaker 3: habit of stopping by seeing her in the hospital. But

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Speaker 3: when I did that, I heard I knew that she

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Speaker 3: liked the old hymns. So I got to started to

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Speaker 3: bring my guitar with me and singing some old hymns,

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Speaker 3: you know, in the Garden and the old Rugged Cross

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Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. And sometimes the other

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Speaker 3: nurses would stick their heads in the room and listen

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Speaker 3: her wheel patients, and it was awful lot of fun.

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Speaker 3: But one day I was in the hospital room with

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Speaker 3: just Hannah, and she asked me who I had brought

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Speaker 3: with her, and I with me, and I looked around.

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Speaker 3: I was the only one in the room and I said, well,

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Speaker 3: I'm the only one. I'm here by myself, and she says, oh,

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Speaker 3: they're out in the hallway. She said, I think they

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Speaker 3: liked the music. They usually don't come in through the

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Speaker 3: portal until you pass till you leave. And I said,

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Speaker 3: the portal. I looked out at the door. I didn't

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Speaker 3: know what she was talking about. She couldn't even see

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Speaker 3: the door from where she was. There was a curtain

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Speaker 3: hanging there, and there was the corner where the bathroom

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Speaker 3: jutted out, and I looked out, I mean, at the

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Speaker 3: foot of her bed, I could see out hallway and

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Speaker 3: I looked out there and no, there was nobody there.

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Speaker 3: But I didn't want to, you know, discourage her. I mean,

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Speaker 3: she was obviously confused, you know, telling me these people

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Speaker 3: come after, you know, when I'm there, and the music

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Speaker 3: seems to bring them. Well, I didn't want to disturb her,

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Speaker 3: so I didn't say anything. But on my way out,

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Speaker 3: I stopped by the nurse's station and I said, what's

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Speaker 3: Hannah talking about? People out outside the portal? And the

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Speaker 3: nurse said, oh, she's been talking like that the last

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Speaker 3: couple of days. She said, I think she's out of

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Speaker 3: her head. Probably won't be long, And sure enough, a

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Speaker 3: couple of days later, Hannah died, and my wife and

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Speaker 3: I sang in the garden at her funeral, and I

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Speaker 3: didn't think much more of it.

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Speaker 1: Well.

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Speaker 3: Then forty years went by until just a couple of

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Speaker 3: years ago, I got a call from another parishioner of

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Speaker 3: his mother was in the hospital and she was about

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Speaker 3: the same age Hannah was when she died. And his

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Speaker 3: mother was in the but she used to love to

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Speaker 3: listen to the old hymns too, And he went to

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Speaker 3: see her, which in what turned out for the last time,

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Speaker 3: and his mother said something strange him. She said, oh,

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Speaker 3: who did you bring with you? And he said, I

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Speaker 3: didn't bring anybody, mom, It's just me. And she said, oh, no,

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Speaker 3: there are people people with you outside the portal.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god.

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Speaker 3: Well she looked at me, I mean he looked at me,

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Speaker 3: and he said, I don't know what she was talking about,

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Speaker 3: But my mind went back fifty years to Hannah. And

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Speaker 3: I'm glad to say that even though when I was

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Speaker 3: visiting Hannah and I was a young minister, I thought

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Speaker 3: I had all the answers, and I thought I was

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Speaker 3: much too sophisticated for all this. But I'm glad to

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Speaker 3: know that over the next forty years, not only did

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Speaker 3: I realize I didn't know all the answers, I didn't

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Speaker 3: even know all the questions so I was much more

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Speaker 3: open to this. And in the meantime, I had heard,

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Speaker 3: I had heard the stories and talked to dozens of

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Speaker 3: people myself personally who had died and come back with

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Speaker 3: a story, and I was, Oh, God, forgive me. I

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Speaker 3: was all ready to use all of the normal stuff,

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Speaker 3: you know, the blood and the brain is shutting down,

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Speaker 3: or we're reliving our past memories and all this kind

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Speaker 3: of stuff. And I realized toward the end of my ministry,

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Speaker 3: and I retired sixteen years ago, so it was quite

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Speaker 3: some time. I realized that I had missed a tremendous

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Speaker 3: opportunity to really talk to all those people who claimed

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Speaker 3: that they saw people and claimed that they met with

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Speaker 3: loved ones and came back with stories. And so I

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Speaker 3: was much more open. When a good friend of mine,

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Speaker 3: who was an ex parishoner of mine, my name is Joe,

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Speaker 3: down in Florida, he was in the hospital. He actually

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Speaker 3: worked in the hospital U and he was he had

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Speaker 3: a very technical job. And when he was in the

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Speaker 3: hospital he had a heart attack. And if you're going

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Speaker 3: to have a heart attack, I guess the place to

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Speaker 3: have it is in the fully equipped hospital with you.

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Speaker 3: But when he told me when I went to visit him.

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Speaker 3: He said, I got a story to tell you if

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Speaker 3: I can find the courage. And I said, well, okay.

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Speaker 3: He said, you know, I'm going home tomorrow. Come on

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Speaker 3: over to the house. I have a cup of coffee

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Speaker 3: in the morning. And I said okay. So I went

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Speaker 3: over and the next morning I could tell you wanted

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Speaker 3: to talk, but I didn't know what it was. He

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Speaker 3: was hesitant, but he wanted to unburden himself. You know,

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Speaker 3: Joe is a just a great, great guy. He likes

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Speaker 3: to hunt and fish and get out, and he loves

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Speaker 3: his family, and he works in his church and all

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Speaker 3: this kind of it's just a really, you know, super guy.

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Speaker 3: And you wouldn't think that he would have any trouble

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Speaker 3: sharing his story. But when he shared the story of

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Speaker 3: his near death experience and what he saw when he died,

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Speaker 3: passed over and then came back, I put together Hannah's story,

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Speaker 3: in Eva's story, in Joe's story, and said, I got

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Speaker 3: to write a book. So it began. I began to

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Speaker 3: start remembering all the people that I had talked to

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Speaker 3: and then getting that up with oh, all the rest

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Speaker 3: of the information that I'd gathered over the years and

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Speaker 3: all the research I'd done and everything else, going up

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Speaker 3: to Monroe Institute, for instance, and studying out of body

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Speaker 3: experiences with Bill Buhm and other things like that. I

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Speaker 3: began to try to put it all together, and I

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Speaker 3: decided I wanted to write a book that wasn't just

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Speaker 3: fantastic stories, although the stories are fantastic enough to warrant

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Speaker 3: a book. I wanted to tell a story a look

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Speaker 3: about the history about this and how it seems as though,

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Speaker 3: possibly I'm hoping this is the case in our generation.

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Speaker 3: Maybe the doctors and the scientists and the people who

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Speaker 3: are often called metaphysical and everything else, maybe we're all

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Speaker 3: getting down in the same track and understanding that this

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Speaker 3: is not just some kind of a supernatural woo woo thing,

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Speaker 3: but a real bona fide leap forward in human existence.

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Speaker 3: And this seems to be happening on so many levels

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Speaker 3: that I'm just I'm almost encouraged. Now. It seems as

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Speaker 3: though science and religion and spirituality are coming together and

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Speaker 3: maybe we're beginning to share the same highway again. So

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Speaker 3: that was the that was the basis of the book.

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Speaker 2: Fantastic Job, And you open it with the preface of

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Speaker 2: our friend Raymond Moody, who's one of the best, isn't it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, he is. You talk about MDes without

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Speaker 3: talking about Raymond Moody. In nineteen seventy five when he

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Speaker 3: wrote Life After Life, he was the one that actually

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Speaker 3: coined the experience of the expression a near death experience.

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Speaker 3: And he's also done, he's doing a lot of research

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Speaker 3: even now into what he calls shared death experience. I've

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Speaker 3: had that experience too, being around a hospital bed when

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Speaker 3: somebody dies and three or four of us standing around

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Speaker 3: the bed and we all have the same experience of

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Speaker 3: feeling or seeing something happened somebody in the room, something

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Speaker 3: the spirit depart or the soul depart or whatever we

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Speaker 3: want to call it. It's a really moving experience. And

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Speaker 3: I'm just one of the good things about writing this book.

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Speaker 3: It was just wonderful to hear it, not only these stories,

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Speaker 3: but to hear how people are so their lives are changed.

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Speaker 3: Any of them don't want to say anything because they're

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Speaker 3: afraid of being ridiculed by friends and family. You know,

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Speaker 3: they're all poo poo it, you know, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 3: And so they actually hold on and they don't tell

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Speaker 3: the stories for a long period of time, and when

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Speaker 3: they do, you can tell the story. It's just as

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Speaker 3: vivid and new as it was when it happened. So

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Speaker 3: it was very encouraging to me, to tell you the

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Speaker 3: honest truth. I really it was a positive, positive book,

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Speaker 3: and I really enjoyed it.

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Speaker 2: Now we call these near death experiences, Jim, but aren't they,

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Speaker 2: in fact really death experiences for a split moment the

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Speaker 2: person actually dies.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the wonderful part about seeing this. We live

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Speaker 3: in a time now where a lot of these people

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Speaker 3: have these experiences and they're hooked up to machines in

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Speaker 3: the hospital. They can tell you exactly when the person died,

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Speaker 3: and they're flatlined by every definition science has a medicine.

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Speaker 3: These people have died. In some cases, they actually talk

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Speaker 3: about floating up to the top of the room and

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Speaker 3: seeing the doctor's work on them and seeing and hearing,

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Speaker 3: you know, they're not.

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Speaker 2: Hearing them talking sometimes even joking about the body.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's unbelievable to me that we're

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Speaker 3: not taking these more seriously. And I think maybe for

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Speaker 3: the first time in the last twenty years, certainly, I

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Speaker 3: think maybe medicine is starting to come around, and it's

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Speaker 3: it's amazing the number of doctors like Raymond Moody is

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Speaker 3: a you know, is an m D. And doctor Bruce Grayson,

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Speaker 3: who wrote the Classic Handbook of Near Death Experience a

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Speaker 3: legitimate field and they're really beginning to see but that

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Speaker 3: this is a real, bona fide scientific thing. Still though

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Speaker 3: there is a public perception out there. I think people

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Speaker 3: there are some people who just plane, don't want to believe,

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Speaker 3: and so they'll and when that happens, it's so easy.

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Speaker 3: Instead of attacking the facts, you attack somebody's personality. You know,

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Speaker 3: they don't want to believe, and so they'll just ridicule

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Speaker 3: the person or the doctor who does it. And it's

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Speaker 3: it's just a shame. I'm sure you see the same

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Speaker 3: thing when you're talking about alien encounters. There are people

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Speaker 3: who just plane, don't want to believe it, and so

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Speaker 3: they won't follow the facts. They just they just gather

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Speaker 3: the facts that substantiate their own belief which they've come

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Speaker 3: to beforehand. Well that's not science. I mean, I want

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Speaker 3: to throw the roof off this. I want to look

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Speaker 3: at the science of it and really really see what's

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Speaker 3: going on because if if this is real, and I'm

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Speaker 3: sure it is, it can change everything. It can change

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Speaker 3: the way we live, it can change the way we

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Speaker 3: live with each other, it can change the history of

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Speaker 3: the planet about how we're going to adapt as a species.

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Speaker 3: And it's almost as if we're coming to a place,

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Speaker 3: I think, where in a number of different fields where

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Speaker 3: we either have to make these tough decisions and follow

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Speaker 3: the facts and understand that we are not alone and

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Speaker 3: there's something much bigger than us going on, or we

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Speaker 3: could destroy ourselves, you know, who knows. I think it's

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Speaker 3: that important.

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Speaker 2: Mark in your introduction, you quote Apostle Mark talking about wine.

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Speaker 3: Tell me about that. Oh yeah, yeah, that was a

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Speaker 3: quote that I've always really liked. In the Gospel of Mark,

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Speaker 3: we're told that you can't put new wine in old wine.

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Speaker 3: You know, old wine skins are hard and dry and brittle,

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Speaker 3: and if you pour a new wine in there and

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Speaker 3: it starts to ferment, they just can't. They aren't pliable,

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Speaker 3: they don't go. Then they just break and they and

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Speaker 3: all the wine breaks out and they and that's what

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Speaker 3: it is. I think that the old containers, the old

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Speaker 3: wine skins, so to speak, of thought that we have

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Speaker 3: lived with maybe for too long, they simply won't handle

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Speaker 3: the new science of NDEs. We're going to have to

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Speaker 3: have new ways of thinking and new ways of of

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Speaker 3: of understanding, perhaps beginning to understand that maybe there's places

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Speaker 3: where where science can't go. Maybe science only works in

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Speaker 3: the material universe, and as soon as we leave that

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Speaker 3: material universe, uh, maybe there we need other kinds of

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Speaker 3: ways of of of knowing. And so I think, not

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Speaker 3: only are we're pouring a bunch of new yeastie working

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Speaker 3: wine of spirituality into this thing. I think we have

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Speaker 3: to have new containers for it so that we can

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Speaker 3: handle it and work with it.

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Speaker 2: You use a lot of metaphors in the book, don't you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, And it's funny because I didn't even know

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Speaker 3: I was doing it until it was all done, and

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Speaker 3: somebody pointed it out, and I said, oh, I didn't

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Speaker 3: realize that. For instance, the book is set up and

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Speaker 3: I had the idea that I wanted to bring together

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Speaker 3: a marriage, so to speak, between science and spirituality. I

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Speaker 3: remember the old thing, the old marriage advice for bride,

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Speaker 3: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. And

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Speaker 3: I chose that metaphor because I wanted to celebrate the

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Speaker 3: marriage of old metaphysics and old wisdom that people have

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Speaker 3: known about for thousands and thousands of years, and marry

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Speaker 3: that to new science that can now measure, for instance,

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Speaker 3: as you said, when actual people die, and all this

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Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And so I started with something old,

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Speaker 3: and I began to use a lot of the old

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Speaker 3: stories that have been around forever, the Apostle Paul's near

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Speaker 3: death experience, going back to the time of Plato and

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Speaker 3: Socrates and near death experiences there. But then I wanted

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Speaker 3: to transfer to the idea of something new, So I

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Speaker 3: went to new stories of death when people are hooked

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Speaker 3: up to modern equipment that actually says, yeah, they're dead,

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Speaker 3: no question about the equipment can measure that. But then

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Speaker 3: I went into something borrowed, and it began to occur

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Speaker 3: to me that really we need to cross polony in

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Speaker 3: academic studies. We need to cross disciplines. People are getting

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Speaker 3: to be such specialists in one area that they don't

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Speaker 3: know how to converse or compare with people in different fields,

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Speaker 3: and so we need to borrow from academic disciplines. We

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Speaker 3: need to take the field of medicine and has to

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Speaker 3: get into the field of religion and the field of spirituality,

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Speaker 3: and then it has to get into the field of

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Speaker 3: science such as Edgar Mitchell's Institute of no Edic Research

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Speaker 3: and that kind of thing. And then when a came

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Speaker 3: time to the last one, something I got as I

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Speaker 3: had something old, something new, and something borrowed. I needed

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Speaker 3: something blue. And it occurred to me how many times

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Speaker 3: I've heard people say this knowledge just came to me

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Speaker 3: right out of the blue, and visions that unexpected, you know,

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Speaker 3: right out of the blue. It just popped into my

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Speaker 3: and which seemed to be the way that people communicated

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Speaker 3: on the other side.

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