Speaker 1: Now really, really, really well and welcome to really know
Speaker 1: really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who respectfully ask
Speaker 1: you to please subscribe before we all pass on to
Speaker 1: the great beyond. And speaking of the great beyond, what
Speaker 1: happens when we die? What do we see or experience?
Speaker 1: Is it frightening or peaceful or joyful? Sebastian Younger is
Speaker 1: a noted combat reporter, a best selling author, and an
Speaker 1: Academy Award winning documentarian. Not long ago, a violent, undiagnosed
Speaker 1: aneurism brought Younger as close to death as anyone we know.
Speaker 1: His own doctors are baffled by his miraculous survival, and
Speaker 1: since returning from the ABYSS, he's now sharing that experience.
Speaker 2: We've all heard about.
Speaker 1: So called NDS, near death experiences where the clinically dead
Speaker 1: are miraculously resuscitated and return to life with eerily familiar
Speaker 1: stories of long dead relatives speaking to them, or a
Speaker 1: tunnel illuminated by a brilliant, welcoming light. Are these stories
Speaker 1: evidence of a great beyond or simply wild spasms of
Speaker 1: a dying brain. After his own experience, our guest launched
Speaker 1: an investigation and uncovered a possible third answer that expands
Speaker 1: our understanding of life, death, and the universe itself. Really, no, really,
Speaker 1: and now here's the beating heart and failing liver of
Speaker 1: our show, Jason and Peter.
Speaker 3: All Right, Peter, this is a this is a this
Speaker 3: is a unique episode of really no really, but this,
Speaker 3: By the way, what I love is you didn't have
Speaker 3: the balls to really hit the belle muffle. You're gonna
Speaker 3: see what what now? This is not to annoy you.
Speaker 3: This is thematic for what we're going to discuss today.
Speaker 3: And you tell me what the theme is. Ready, you
Speaker 3: get it?
Speaker 2: You get it? Yeah, it's just worst code. What could
Speaker 2: I be getting? Who the bell tolls?
Speaker 3: Because that bell one day will ring the final bell
Speaker 3: for you, for me, probably you first. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: just saying I'm looking at you. I'm looking at me.
Speaker 2: I think you're going first. What is it that.
Speaker 4: You're looking at me that you think I will go
Speaker 4: for first?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 2: First of all, you are a few years older than
Speaker 2: actively healthy. I don't smoke it. You know.
Speaker 3: The keyword in that sentence was relatively and not comparatively
Speaker 3: comparatively to me.
Speaker 2: I don't have There's nothing wrong with me. I have
Speaker 2: I have zero.
Speaker 3: Plaque, zero cardiac plaque. My liters clean, my kidneys are clean,
Speaker 3: my lungs are clean.
Speaker 4: Smash cut to George Costanzo was killed in a traffic
Speaker 4: accident today.
Speaker 3: Wow, anything you know that is the act of God.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, if God stays out of it.
Speaker 4: This episode is about that. This is about what happens
Speaker 4: when we die. Is there is there a God? Is
Speaker 4: there a greater source?
Speaker 2: Where do we go? Right?
Speaker 4: And you said to me, because I find guests for
Speaker 4: the show often, And you said.
Speaker 2: No, you're playing guests for the show exclusive. Okay, well no,
Speaker 2: because our team.
Speaker 3: I don't want anybody to think I'm lifting a finger
Speaker 3: for this, which is why I live longer.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: I don't aggravate over you said, I'd love to have
Speaker 4: somebody who died and came back. This is about as
Speaker 4: close as you can get. Sebastian Younger went, he's gonna
Speaker 4: tell his story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is a guy, this is a you
Speaker 3: know I I actually when you said his name, I went,
Speaker 3: the guy from Perfect Storm, the guy who wrote it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a he's a investigative journalist. He's been embedded in
Speaker 3: a lot of war zone. This guy who like lives
Speaker 3: it out and hangs it out there.
Speaker 2: A lot puts it out there. But he had an experience.
Speaker 4: We'll let him tell about it that he wrote about
Speaker 4: in his latest book about what happened and what he
Speaker 4: saw that people talk about the white light, they talk
Speaker 4: about a tunnel. People have talked about I saw a
Speaker 4: family member reach out for me. Yeah, his story that
Speaker 4: would make me not go. If my mother is there
Speaker 4: going sweight on, I'm not going. So she could be
Speaker 4: stealing silverware right in the afterlife. All right, Yeah, So
Speaker 4: we wanted to hear Sebastian's story because every you's fascinated.
Speaker 4: We're all going there, Like you said, yeah, what can
Speaker 4: we expect? What do you expect right to happen at
Speaker 4: that moment in time?
Speaker 2: There we go. You ready? Do you ever thought of
Speaker 2: where you're going? Of where I'm going. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: this at the end. The funny thing is wherever you're going,
Speaker 2: it's going to be this. You still talk to Jerry.
Speaker 2: I will say this.
Speaker 3: I am not a Christian person, and I once had
Speaker 3: a devout Christian telling me very lovingly, really, you're going
Speaker 3: to go to hell if you don't accept the truth
Speaker 3: and you don't accept them as sia, and you're going
Speaker 3: to go to Hell. You're going to go to Helen.
Speaker 3: I don't want you to go to Hell. And she
Speaker 3: went on for quite some time, and I said, let
Speaker 3: me ask a question.
Speaker 2: Are you going to Hell? She said no, No, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to Helen. I said, well then I'll be fine. Wow,
Speaker 2: And with that let's discuss.
Speaker 3: Yes, Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome journalist author uh.
Speaker 4: And a man with a unique experience, new number one
Speaker 4: New York Times best selling author which, like the Storm
Speaker 4: I didn't mean to pooh pooh a death en Belmont
Speaker 4: War Tribe freedom in his latest in My Time of Dying,
Speaker 4: how I came face to face with the idea of
Speaker 4: an afterlife.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Sebastian Younger.
Speaker 6: Nice to be here, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Nice that you're you're still with us in the flesh
Speaker 3: and spirit, because we know I mean, Peter has filled
Speaker 3: me in on this incredible story that you have. I
Speaker 3: know you, of course from your investigative journalism and literary work.
Speaker 3: But when Peter started to tell me your your story
Speaker 3: about this near death experience, my head started to spend.
Speaker 3: I got very excited and so I'm thrilled you're here
Speaker 3: to share it with us.
Speaker 4: And by the way, you you, I think in Guinness
Speaker 4: Rolbrook records had the closest near death you were, so
Speaker 4: I don't think any but he beat you when it
Speaker 4: comes to near death.
Speaker 6: So oh, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm sure they had people have, but I came as
Speaker 5: close as I'd never liked to.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I thank you. Really nice to be on, gentlemen.
Speaker 5: And yeah, my book is called In My Time of Dying,
Speaker 5: and it's about how I almost died and what I
Speaker 5: saw when I was dying. And I just start out
Speaker 5: by saying, I'm an atheist. I'm a rationalist. My father
Speaker 5: was a physicist and was an atheist until he died
Speaker 5: some years ago. And that's the proper context from what
Speaker 5: I'm about to tell you, which is that I you know,
Speaker 5: I was a war reporter for a long time. I
Speaker 5: had a number of close calls with bullets and bombs
Speaker 5: and things like.
Speaker 6: That, very close calls.
Speaker 5: I was blown up by an I E. E and Nefistan.
Speaker 5: I had a guy tell me that he was going
Speaker 5: to execute me and the Niger Delta. I wass By
Speaker 5: rebels and accused of being as pie. I had all
Speaker 5: kinds of stuff. But I got out of that amazing
Speaker 5: and terrifying life after my buddy Tim Heatherington was killed
Speaker 5: in Libya, covering the civil war in Libya. Of course,
Speaker 5: him and I made the documentary Werestrepo together about a
Speaker 5: remote combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan.
Speaker 6: He was killed a few years later, and I got
Speaker 6: out of the business.
Speaker 5: I got married, I had children, wonderful family, two little girls,
Speaker 5: and during COVID we left New York City, where we
Speaker 5: live in the tiny apartment. We left for a very
Speaker 5: house at a very secluded place in the woods in Massachusetts.
Speaker 5: It's so remote that there's no cell phone service. It's
Speaker 5: the end of a dead end dirt road. The landline
Speaker 5: doesn't work when it rains because the line shorted out.
Speaker 5: In other words, it's paradigm right. One day, I was
Speaker 5: talking to my wife and I felt this pain shoot
Speaker 5: from my abdomen. Not unbearable, but you know, really straightened. Yeah, like,
Speaker 5: oh what was that? And you know, I'm not a
Speaker 5: walking heart attack. I'm a really healthy, athletic guy, and
Speaker 5: I just never think in terms of medical crisis right like,
Speaker 5: It's just it's never crossed my mind. And I tried
Speaker 5: to stand up to work the pain out, and I
Speaker 5: almost fell over. I couldn't keep my feet. My blood
Speaker 5: pressure was plummeting. I mean, this is how casually we die.
Speaker 5: One moment, I'm talking to my wife. The next moment,
Speaker 5: I'm dying, without any preamble or precursor or anything. I
Speaker 5: had an undiagnosed aneurism in my pancreatic artery, and which
Speaker 5: is a low artery in your abdomen, and aneurisms are
Speaker 5: an unnatural sort of ballooning in the artery wall. It's
Speaker 5: not a product or author or anything like that. It's
Speaker 5: a sort of freak thing. And my aneurism chose that
Speaker 5: moment to rupture, and I started losing a pint of
Speaker 5: blood every maybe ten or fifteen minutes into my own abdomen.
Speaker 5: And you know, you can there's about ten pints of
Speaker 5: blood in the human body. You can lose maybe half
Speaker 5: of that before you die. Fortunately, I didn't know that.
Speaker 5: I had no idea I was dying. And we managed
Speaker 5: to call an ambulance and they got there, and it
Speaker 5: took about an hour and a half to get me
Speaker 5: to the hospital. And when I got there, I was
Speaker 5: I was in n stage hemorrhagic shock. I was convulsing.
Speaker 5: I was I was maybe ten minutes from dead. And
Speaker 5: suddenly there was a guy with a huge needle telling
Speaker 5: me he was going to put it through my neck
Speaker 5: into my jugular to transfuse me.
Speaker 6: And that was when I had my vision.
Speaker 4: Were you in pain at that point? And when you
Speaker 4: get stuck with a needle like that, does that hurt?
Speaker 4: Are you or are you lucid?
Speaker 2: That's your question, because did the needle hurt?
Speaker 4: Well, I just want to know what that moment, what
Speaker 4: he thought. Was he aware that he was there close?
Speaker 3: Yeh wow, Okay, yeah, sorry, Zebastian, tell him if the
Speaker 3: needle hurt.
Speaker 6: No, it's a good question, because the needle was.
Speaker 5: It was a big, intimidating needle and it was going
Speaker 5: into my neck and I didn't like the idea of
Speaker 5: it and I and I actually asked the doctor. I said,
Speaker 5: you mean, in case there's an emergency, and he said,
Speaker 5: this is the emergency right now. So I said, okay,
Speaker 5: you know, do what you gotta do whatever, Like, I
Speaker 5: don't know why I'm in you know, I'm in for
Speaker 5: belly pain. But if you feel like you need to
Speaker 5: stick a needle in my.
Speaker 6: Neck, go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And so they you know, they put some Lito cane
Speaker 5: on your neck, and so that actually didn't feel like anything.
Speaker 5: I was in tremendous pain because the blood in your
Speaker 5: abdomen against your organs UH is incredibly provocative to your organs.
Speaker 5: And I was really sort of an agony from that,
Speaker 5: and I was convulsing. I was deep in hypothermia from
Speaker 5: blood loss and sort of not of right mind. But
Speaker 5: I was conscious in conversing with the doctors, and I
Speaker 5: had no idea that I was dying, no idea what
Speaker 5: was going on. And as he started working on my neck,
Speaker 5: prepping my neck for the UH for the needle, all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, this black hole that sort of had
Speaker 5: infinity on the other side of it. It was like
Speaker 5: a very infinitely dark abyss and I was getting pulled
Speaker 5: in through this hole and I was terrified of it.
Speaker 5: I didn't know I was dying, but I was terrified
Speaker 5: of going into the hole. It was like I was
Speaker 5: a wounded coyote or something. I was all animal instincts,
Speaker 5: like don't go into the black pit, and as I
Speaker 5: started to panic.
Speaker 6: Suddenly I realized that my father, who'd been.
Speaker 5: Dead many years, my father was above me in this
Speaker 5: sort of energy form, right above me, and he was
Speaker 5: communicating with me. And he was communicating basically, it's okay,
Speaker 5: you don't have to fight it. You can come with me.
Speaker 5: I'll take care of you. And I was horrified. I mean,
Speaker 5: I didn't again, I didn't know I was dying. So
Speaker 5: the invitation to go with him was I was almost insulted.
Speaker 5: I was like, look, you're dead. I'm just like, what,
Speaker 5: the party's over here. I'm not going with you, Like, Dad,
Speaker 5: what are you doing here anyway? Like floating above me?
Speaker 6: Like? And I said to the doctrine, you're gonna hurry.
Speaker 6: You're losing me right now. I'm going. I don't know
Speaker 6: where I'm going, but I'm going.
Speaker 5: And and then that was when he got started. The
Speaker 5: blood started pushing blood into my jugular and they brought
Speaker 5: me back from the brink and kept me alive long
Speaker 5: enough for the next six hours, kept me alive long
Speaker 5: enough to save my life in the interventional radiology suite,
Speaker 5: where they managed to embolize the leak plug the leak
Speaker 5: by catheter.
Speaker 2: You're in this dialogue with your father.
Speaker 3: Now, In many of the near death stories that I've heard,
Speaker 3: that moment for the person going through it becomes quite
Speaker 3: blissful and accepting, and in fact, it's the opposite of
Speaker 3: what you're describing, where the dead entity is saying, it's
Speaker 3: not your time. Don't come with me yet, go back,
Speaker 3: go back. In your case, it sounded like you went, hey, daddy,
Speaker 3: leave me alone. I don't want to go with you
Speaker 3: right now. So A, to the extent that you've researched,
Speaker 3: it was your experience unusual.
Speaker 2: And B why do you think it?
Speaker 3: How did Why do you think you knew that you
Speaker 3: did not want to go at that point? Was it
Speaker 3: just the natural fear of death or was there something
Speaker 3: else in play?
Speaker 5: You know, I imagine death is a great consolation when you're
Speaker 5: very old, if you're in pain, if you're dying of cancer,
Speaker 5: in great pain, if you're in great psychic pain. You know,
Speaker 5: I imagine that death is a welcome finish line. That
Speaker 5: wasn't me right. I had a three year old daughter
Speaker 5: and a six month old daughter and my wife, and
Speaker 5: you know, I've loved my life. It took me a
Speaker 5: long time to get to this point of having this
Speaker 5: amazing family and I have no interest in going anywhere,
Speaker 5: and so, you know, I think that sort of partly
Speaker 5: plays anyway.
Speaker 6: But where I was, I was like, what do you?
Speaker 6: I mean really, I was.
Speaker 5: Just puzzled, like what are you doing here? Like I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm just in for belly paint, Like I'm not I'm
Speaker 5: not dying. I get get out of here, like there's
Speaker 5: been a huge misunderstanding. And of course I was the
Speaker 5: one didn't understand right, But I didn't know. I didn't
Speaker 5: know that.
Speaker 3: But so interesting about that to me is given your background,
Speaker 3: I would have thought, I mean, I know you had
Speaker 3: many things to live for your family, certainly, but given
Speaker 3: your background and how you threw yourself into such dangerous
Speaker 3: situations out of sure, I'm sure a curiosity and a
Speaker 3: job to do and needing to cover this and needing that,
Speaker 3: you would have found this a really interesting curious moment
Speaker 3: to go, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna go check it
Speaker 3: out of an unknown maybe I can report back on this,
Speaker 3: you know, It's just it was.
Speaker 2: I just find it interesting. I remember my sister.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to relate a quick story my sister
Speaker 3: died about seven years ago, just before her sixty fifth birth.
Speaker 2: That she had been chronically ill for a while.
Speaker 3: But she was having a fairly good period and literally
Speaker 3: she her system became septic, her gut ruptured internally, she
Speaker 3: was becoming septic, and she died within twenty four hours,
Speaker 3: but that she was an ICU intubated with everything going on.
Speaker 2: She actually wrote to her doctor on a pet.
Speaker 3: Am I dying, And he wrote, well, yeah, and she
Speaker 3: and I wasn't there. But my understanding was that she
Speaker 3: had to wrestle for about thirty minutes with the idea
Speaker 3: that because she was cognizant of the fact that there
Speaker 3: was nothing they could do, and that this was the
Speaker 3: direction she.
Speaker 2: Was going, and she had to take it all in.
Speaker 3: And I can't imagine that part of the transition, that
Speaker 3: part of the journey is just you know. That's why
Speaker 3: I note that moment for you of going Nope, I'm
Speaker 3: not interested in I'm not going here right now.
Speaker 5: I'm not going And you know, children are a game changer,
Speaker 5: you know, And I don't know how I would have
Speaker 5: reacted did had I not had children, I would have
Speaker 5: been a very sad person, and sad I think sad.
Speaker 5: People probably die more easily, except death more easily. And
Speaker 5: you know, so had I not.
Speaker 6: Met my wife and had a family, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 6: had I been sort of single in the world, or
Speaker 6: at least not a father, I might have welcomed. You know,
Speaker 6: I was like, Okay, that didn't work. I'm out of here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know were you.
Speaker 3: Were you conscious during this whole procedures as they were
Speaker 3: twisting this thing through consciously, see, I would have checked out.
Speaker 2: On we're going to punch a hole in you.
Speaker 3: And that's when I would have said, Hey, propofol is
Speaker 3: a great thing.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I have memories of the whole thing.
Speaker 5: They had me on a little bit of versid and
Speaker 5: a little bit of fentanyl, but I have memories from
Speaker 5: the whole thing, and I remember being in extraordinary pain.
Speaker 5: You know, when they put up when they when they
Speaker 5: inserted the catheter into my into my femeral again, they
Speaker 5: used LIGHTO ain't on your skin and the and they
Speaker 5: make a little cut and you know, arteries don't have nerves,
Speaker 5: and veins don't have nerves, and so well, you know,
Speaker 5: once they're inside the skin barrier, they can sort of
Speaker 5: do what they want and it doesn't feel like anything.
Speaker 3: All right, So let's go, let's go to the air
Speaker 3: the pit. Yes, so, yeah, So were you in dialogue
Speaker 3: with your father? And if so, was it actual verbal?
Speaker 3: Could the could the physicians hear you speaking?
Speaker 6: Well, there's you know, there's a lot of.
Speaker 3: Were you in dialogue with your father? And if so,
Speaker 3: was it actual verbal? Could the could the physicians hear
Speaker 3: you speaking?
Speaker 5: Well, there's you know, there's a lot of There are many, many,
Speaker 5: many accounts of dying people seeing the dad in the room, right,
Speaker 5: people in hospice, or people in hospice, people dying of cancer,
Speaker 5: things like that, and often they'll even speak with them.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Of course, no one sees the dead and no one
Speaker 5: hears anything said back. But it's an extremely common thing,
Speaker 5: and no one else really sees the dead except the dying.
Speaker 6: And I was dying, and of course no one else
Speaker 6: saw what I saw.
Speaker 5: I saw my father hovering above me in this sort
Speaker 5: of like energy form, and the communication, I wouldn't say
Speaker 5: it was verbal. Again, I sort of sensed him in
Speaker 5: a non visual way that was extremely real, right, it
Speaker 5: was as real as vision, except it wasn't vision quite
Speaker 5: it was a I don't need I don't think there's
Speaker 5: there's words in English for it. And likewise, the communication
Speaker 5: it was almost like we were telepathic with each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as an atheist, did you change your belief system
Speaker 4: as far as what may be on the other side
Speaker 4: or what have you gone with dad?
Speaker 2: What would have happened?
Speaker 5: Well, okay, so yeah, it's it's it's we're to sort
Speaker 5: of break down the vocabulary here a little bit. So
Speaker 5: atheism means that I don't believe in God. I don't
Speaker 5: claim to know there is none. Claiming to know there's
Speaker 5: no God is as absurd as claiming to know that
Speaker 5: there is a God. Right, I mean both are both
Speaker 5: are indefensible positions.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And and uh, I mean indefensible with data or evidence.
Speaker 6: And and so.
Speaker 5: But I do not myself believe in God because I've
Speaker 5: never felt his presence or have seen any evidence that
Speaker 5: there is one.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So, but that's different than a quote afterlife. So the
Speaker 5: idea that there's a post death continuation of the individual
Speaker 5: on some level, maybe even a sub atomic, sort of
Speaker 5: quantum level, that's entirely possible in a universe that has
Speaker 5: no God, no creator, in it.
Speaker 6: You could also have a creator God.
Speaker 5: I don't think there is one, but just logically speaking,
Speaker 5: you could have a creator. God created this universe and
Speaker 5: decided to create biological beings like salamanders and turtles and
Speaker 5: sharks and humans and mosquitos and everything else. And when
Speaker 5: they when these things die, they they they're biologically dead.
Speaker 5: They decompose, they're dead. There's no soul.
Speaker 6: That's it.
Speaker 5: There's no quote afterlife. So God, in an afterlife, you
Speaker 5: don't need one or the other. You could have both.
Speaker 5: You could have neither, or you have one or the other.
Speaker 5: They don't require neither requires the other. And and so
Speaker 5: you know what, I would say that my book In
Speaker 5: My Time of Dying is divided into two sections. It
Speaker 5: is divided into what and if? What is what happened
Speaker 5: to me?
Speaker 6: What if?
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 6: The if section is basically.
Speaker 5: What if there were some form of post death existence?
Speaker 6: How would that work?
Speaker 5: According to the science that we now understand? And I
Speaker 5: sort of run through the you know, NDEs near death
Speaker 5: experience are very very common. They're generally very very similar
Speaker 5: in form across societies.
Speaker 6: Between individuals.
Speaker 5: There are people dying, people who saw a dead person
Speaker 5: come to get them like my dad did. And it
Speaker 5: was a person who had just died, and the dying
Speaker 5: person didn't even know that they were dead, right, sort of, Joe,
Speaker 5: what are you doing here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: Like I thought you were in Florida with Merrit Like
Speaker 5: you know, you know what I mean. Like, so it
Speaker 5: actually is quite mysterious, and I'll just leave it at that.
Speaker 5: But they you know where I wound up was. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of reason to dismiss the ND experiences as
Speaker 5: basically hallucinations. That the the the sort of like spasms
Speaker 5: of a dying brain, right, except for one except for
Speaker 5: one thing, and that is that we know, say, if
Speaker 5: you give a room full of people LSD, they'll all halls.
Speaker 5: We know that you can stress the human brain. You
Speaker 5: give it to listen to jeds, we will see things right,
Speaker 5: but you a room full of people will not all
Speaker 5: see the same thing right. And what's very, very strange
Speaker 5: about the dying is that they see the dead and
Speaker 5: nearly nobody else does. And so that's the that's the
Speaker 5: only thing that got me to think, wait a second,
Speaker 5: do we really understand anything about reality, about consciousness, about time,
Speaker 5: about life, about death? And there are some very plausible theories.
Speaker 5: I mean by plausible, I mean worth discussing that consciousness,
Speaker 5: the consciousness is universal, that the universe is suffused with consciousness,
Speaker 5: that our individual consciousness is a small, small expression of
Speaker 5: that universal consciousness. And then when we die, we go
Speaker 5: back to the colossus, as it were, is a unity
Speaker 5: of all things. And you know, there is some very
Speaker 5: very serious people like or Enshrouding, or the physicists and
Speaker 5: other physicists who who are sort of ascribed to that idea,
Speaker 5: it's called panpsychism, described to that idea of a universally consciousness.
Speaker 5: So you know, again I don't assert anything because I
Speaker 5: can't prove anything, but it's a reasonable conversation.
Speaker 4: So I got to tell you what resonated with me
Speaker 4: in your story in a big way. Jason knows this.
Speaker 4: We were working our show together and I didn't know
Speaker 4: how sick I was, and I was getting sicker and
Speaker 4: sicker and sicker, and kept persevering, persevering and kind of
Speaker 4: denying it. And it got to the point where it
Speaker 4: was rushed emergency to the hospital. They had to do
Speaker 4: emergency surgery, cut me open at a stomach that was
Speaker 4: in the wrong place. It had kinked, and then they
Speaker 4: gave me a staff infection when they did the emergency surgery,
Speaker 4: and they told my wife, prepare for the worst, because
Speaker 4: we don't. He's not going to make So I wake
Speaker 4: up in intensive care and I'm in intensive care for
Speaker 4: a month and a half. And the part of the
Speaker 4: story that resonated your story, I get home from there,
Speaker 4: I make all kinds of deal. I want to get
Speaker 4: a boat, I want to do this, I want None.
Speaker 2: Of it happened.
Speaker 4: But all of the things I said, I was going
Speaker 4: to do as you said, you do a podcast, have
Speaker 4: all the thing. I'm sorry, and I'm start delivered for you.
Speaker 4: But as we got away from the event, of course
Speaker 4: a lot of that changed. But the thing that blew
Speaker 4: me away that you that had you experienced too. It's
Speaker 4: months after when I hear my wife talking to somebody.
Speaker 4: You said, yeah, he was in really bad shape the
Speaker 4: entire time, and I said yeah. Later, I said, what
Speaker 4: do you mean the entire time when I was in
Speaker 4: the hospital, it was that was I was okay. She
Speaker 4: said you were intensive care. I said yeah, but I
Speaker 4: was okay after the search. She said, no, they keep
Speaker 4: you in intensive care because they were worried the entire time.
Speaker 2: And I was. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
Speaker 4: And I know the same with you that wait a minute,
Speaker 4: this it was that I was, I really, I could
Speaker 4: have died that whole time. I thought I was out
Speaker 4: of the woods. I never thought that that was a thing.
Speaker 4: And I know that you felt the same. And I
Speaker 4: remember you saying to your wife, am I really? Am
Speaker 4: I really here? That you were really tormented about where
Speaker 4: you were after you got it right and how you
Speaker 4: got it wrong and what's yeah, what's real or not?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, well I'm sorry you went through that. And
Speaker 5: that's terrifying. And a month and a half in the
Speaker 5: ICU just sounds like the living hell. I did a
Speaker 5: week and it was like that was It's brutal. So
Speaker 5: my heart really goes out to you. That's a rough
Speaker 5: deal and you're very lucky. But I well, one of
Speaker 5: the things that was quite complicated for me. And again
Speaker 5: I'm a rationalist and an atheist and blah blah blah
Speaker 5: ah this stuff. Right the morning before I almost died,
Speaker 5: thirty six hours prior, in the sort of gray light
Speaker 5: of dawn, I was woken up by the most horrific
Speaker 5: dream I've ever had. And the dream was that I
Speaker 5: was hovering above my family and they were crying. They
Speaker 5: were grieving me, and I was trying to I was like,
Speaker 5: I'm right here. I was waving my arms.
Speaker 6: And shouting to them, and they couldn't hear me.
Speaker 5: And I was made to understand that I had died
Speaker 5: and that I was a spirit, I was a ghost,
Speaker 5: and that there was no way to ever go back, and.
Speaker 6: I was headed out and this is it. I was
Speaker 6: so endless by this that it woke me up.
Speaker 5: It's like, oh my god, thank god, that was a dream,
Speaker 5: because I really thought I was dead and I was
Speaker 5: in a state of sort of disbelief.
Speaker 6: No no, no, no, no, I don't want to go.
Speaker 6: I don't want to go, you know. Then I woke up.
Speaker 6: I was like, oh, thank God.
Speaker 5: And thirty six hours later that's exactly what happened. And
Speaker 5: then I got home after five days in the ICU
Speaker 5: and two days in the general floor, and I got
Speaker 5: home and I started to get this terrible feeling that
Speaker 5: maybe I had died, that maybe I had died in
Speaker 5: my sleep. And then my dream was actually my experience
Speaker 5: of leaving life. Wow, and this was all a dying
Speaker 5: hallucination that wasn't real and that eventually I'm out of
Speaker 5: here and my family are grieving somewhere and I don't
Speaker 5: know it and I can't reach them. And so it's
Speaker 5: called derealization, where when you lose faith in reality and
Speaker 5: in the objective certainty of reality and you doubt everything.
Speaker 5: And that's what happened to me. It's quite common. I
Speaker 5: didn't know that it's a it's a function of trauma.
Speaker 5: I was having a classic trauma reaction, but I didn't
Speaker 5: know it. And really I was in an epistemological crisis
Speaker 5: that made that drove me to a kind of madness
Speaker 5: and I and I at one point I went to
Speaker 5: my wife and I just said, tell me I'm really here, Like,
Speaker 5: just tell me. I made it that I'm here. And
Speaker 5: she said, yes, of course you're here, you know, and
Speaker 5: we love you. And in my mind, I thought, that's
Speaker 5: exactly what a hallucination would tell you, right, like, ah,
Speaker 5: keep the hallucination going.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6: But it took a long time, a couple of years
Speaker 6: to work through the anxiety and the derealization, the panic attacks,
Speaker 6: and eventually the depression, which at the last phase of this.
Speaker 6: It took a couple of years to work through all
Speaker 6: of that and sort of come out the other died
Speaker 6: relatively sane. One of the.
Speaker 5: Problems is I had a whole load of undealt with
Speaker 5: trauma for war reporting.
Speaker 6: So you know, when you know, if you've been.
Speaker 5: Dramatized and then you're traumatized again, you have to keep
Speaker 5: paying the whole debt all over again, and so you
Speaker 5: until you make good.
Speaker 6: On your the checks that you wrote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Sebastian, did you have you come out of this?
Speaker 3: I know you're you're probably no closer to having you know,
Speaker 3: anything definitive you'd stand on about.
Speaker 2: Daughter and afterlife.
Speaker 3: But do you feel your personal anxiety or believes or
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it about dying and death.
Speaker 3: Are are forever changed because of this or are you
Speaker 3: still sort of where you were?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm definitely still an atheist.
Speaker 5: And again it all it means is that I don't
Speaker 5: I don't believe in God, and I don't believe in
Speaker 5: God because I've never seen any evidence there's a God,
Speaker 5: and so you know, like, and I sort of leave
Speaker 5: it at that. So, but what did bring me some
Speaker 5: peace actually was my my daughter and you know, at
Speaker 5: age four or five or something, I think I explained
Speaker 5: to her that the world, our world is a spear,
Speaker 5: and that there's a sun, and there's night and day,
Speaker 5: you know whatever.
Speaker 6: I serve of.
Speaker 5: Explained the basics of our solo system to my daughter.
Speaker 5: And a few days later she came up to me
Speaker 5: and she said, Daddy, I know why there's night.
Speaker 6: Why She said, it's so that other people could have day.
Speaker 5: And I thought about that and I realized, Oh, and
Speaker 5: that's why we die, right, so other people can live.
Speaker 5: We can't all live forever. It will not work. Like
Speaker 5: in tropic terms, it won't work. In biological terms, it
Speaker 5: won't work. And ecological terms, it won't work. It will
Speaker 5: not work right. And it's our it's not only our
Speaker 5: our our obligation, but in some ways it's our honor
Speaker 5: and our privilege. The step aside so that our children
Speaker 5: can enjoy this beautiful world like we did. And if
Speaker 5: we don't step aside, they don't get to do that.
Speaker 5: No one gets to do that. And so when she
Speaker 5: put it, when when she put it like that in
Speaker 5: terms of night and day, and then I reframed it
Speaker 5: in terms of life and death I'm like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 5: doing it for them. This isn't a punishment, you know,
Speaker 5: this isn't something being done to me. I'm doing this
Speaker 5: for them because we all need to do that. It's
Speaker 5: the ultimate act of love for our children and for
Speaker 5: other people. And so that, you know, once I thought
Speaker 5: about it like that, I know it's not religion, but
Speaker 5: it gets me halfway there, and I'm pretty okay with it.
Speaker 3: I think that's beautiful and it has helped me to
Speaker 3: determine that I'm not doing that for my kids.
Speaker 2: You know, absolutely doing for me. I didn't get a
Speaker 2: birthday gift this year.
Speaker 3: So what is at the end of the day and
Speaker 3: at the end of your book, what is the for
Speaker 3: lack of a better word, conclusion that you'd like a
Speaker 3: reader or an audience to take away.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, the conclusion I come to is that
Speaker 5: it's a reasonable it's a reasonable idea to wonder if
Speaker 5: consciousness is not universal, and that we're part of that
Speaker 5: and when we die we rejoin that.
Speaker 6: Sort of colossus of consciousness that is the entire universe.
Speaker 5: Like, that's a reasonable that's a reasonable thought, right, And
Speaker 5: but in a more sort of human level, I recount
Speaker 5: a story. When my dad grew up in Europe, and
Speaker 5: he was very old school, and when I was a teenager,
Speaker 5: I was I was out in the woods a lot,
Speaker 5: I was backpacking a lot.
Speaker 6: I was in the wilderness a lot. And and and
Speaker 6: he had never he had never slept outside in his life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: He was an upper middle class European and uh so
Speaker 5: I took him backpacking in New Hampshire in the late fall,
Speaker 5: and halfway up this mountain in bad weather, he got hypothermia.
Speaker 6: And there was no way, there was no one out there.
Speaker 6: We're all alone. We couldn't get back to the road.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was a bad situation. And he was
Speaker 6: not making sense.
Speaker 5: And I made a fire and I got him warmed up,
Speaker 5: and I just watched over him as he fell asleep,
Speaker 5: and I made sure he was okay. I warmed up
Speaker 5: some spoop and I saved him. And I just sat
Speaker 5: there the way parents look out for their children when
Speaker 5: they go asleep. Our roles were reversed. It was as
Speaker 5: if I was the parent and he was the child.
Speaker 5: And I watched him go to sleep, made sure he
Speaker 5: was okay, and then I went to sleep, And I
Speaker 5: have this passage and at the end of the book,
Speaker 5: I'm like, whatever, whatever, religion, religion, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: What we owe each other. What we all owe each
Speaker 5: other is to look out for one another as we
Speaker 5: fall asleep. We do that for our children, and eventually
Speaker 5: our children will do that for us when we die,
Speaker 5: and their children and will sit over them and look
Speaker 5: out for them when our children die, hopefully in old age.
Speaker 5: And that's just what we owe each other. And that
Speaker 5: is the core of humanity. It's the core of what
Speaker 5: it means to be human and to be loving, which
Speaker 5: is essentially the same thing. And if you want to
Speaker 5: believe in God, also go for it, as long as
Speaker 5: you understand that that is your that is your duty
Speaker 5: to your child, and that that will become their duty
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 4: And so it goes to bashing your fascet. You're one
Speaker 4: of the most fascinating people. And the book, your books,
Speaker 4: the current one in my time of dying, how it
Speaker 4: came face to face with the idea of an afterlife.
Speaker 4: Sorry that you had to do the research for that, Yeah,
Speaker 4: sorry you had to go through that, but fascinating what
Speaker 4: you did to get the stuff you've done, the reporting
Speaker 4: you've done, the things that you've seen and, like you said,
Speaker 4: working through the PTSD. I hope you work through it,
Speaker 4: and I hope from here on in you have an
Speaker 4: enjoyable life. And I love seeing you laugh. It feels
Speaker 4: good to see you laugh and have a sense of you.
Speaker 6: Thank you. You guys are great. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: Well, I like to say, fascinating, fascinating, cool guy. Here's
Speaker 3: the thing I want to ask you, though, because as
Speaker 3: he said, he didn't you know, his heart didn't stop,
Speaker 3: he didn't go over. Now, my understanding is you were
Speaker 3: gone once or twice.
Speaker 2: In the early part. I think I think so.
Speaker 4: But you had a living experience. You didn't have a yeah.
Speaker 4: And again I was in denial. It wasn't denial. I
Speaker 4: had no idea. It never processed that I was in
Speaker 4: trouble the entire time I was in intensive care. It
Speaker 4: just didn't didn't compute. But now we know definitively what
Speaker 4: happens when you're dying. You see Sebastian Junger's.
Speaker 2: Dad, you do. That's it.
Speaker 4: Everybody company. My dad, I was holding it. He This
Speaker 4: was tough because my dad said he had stomach anser
Speaker 4: and he knew he was going, and he called me
Speaker 4: to come in because he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 4: stop everything and take morphines. I'm gonna be gone, but
Speaker 4: I want to say goodbye. So we're sitting in My
Speaker 4: brother and I were holding sands, and he was he
Speaker 4: was out. He was talking about going through old rooms
Speaker 4: and saying talking to he was talking to people. Uh huh, yeah,
Speaker 4: going through rooms and talking to people that he knew,
Speaker 4: which was insane to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dad was completely rational up through his last breath,
Speaker 3: calling the shots the whole way. Two days before he passed,
Speaker 3: he very rationally said, I've been I've been chatting with
Speaker 3: my mom. I've been chatting his dead mom. And he
Speaker 3: as casual as could be. And I said, you mean
Speaker 3: like in your imagination, dad? He said, no, she's she's
Speaker 3: gold here.
Speaker 2: And you know, uh.
Speaker 3: And I remember talk about the return to the to
Speaker 3: the cosmic consciousness. I remember being with my dad as
Speaker 3: he was taking his last breaths, and three breaths from
Speaker 3: the end, I'm looking at him, two breaths from the end,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at him. On his last breath. He inhaled,
Speaker 3: he exhaled, and I literally my mom said she saw
Speaker 3: me do this. My head turned and followed something up
Speaker 3: to the ceiling, as if as if I was tracking
Speaker 3: something him leaving, And that was really fascinating. I will
Speaker 3: tell you the one other thing that I can tell
Speaker 3: you from personal experience that would freak me out a
Speaker 3: little bit about this. The only out of body experience
Speaker 3: I've ever had, and I didn't think I was dying.
Speaker 3: I was on an acupuncture table and the guy had
Speaker 3: put a fair number of needles in me. And when
Speaker 3: they do that, they you kind of stay that way,
Speaker 3: You rest for about fifteen twenty minutes and let the
Speaker 3: whatever happening do its work. So he left the room
Speaker 3: and I'm lying there, never shut my eyes, wasn't falling asleep,
Speaker 3: I wasn't sleepy. But all of a sudden, what I
Speaker 3: saw was me on the table as if I was
Speaker 3: looking through my eyes for me, and I started floating away.
Speaker 2: From myself, and I freaked the hell out and.
Speaker 7: I went no, no, no, no, no, no no no no,
Speaker 7: and I and I forced myself back. You know, my
Speaker 7: my imagination, my dream state, whatever you want to be,
Speaker 7: my consciousness. I sort of scared myself into putting it
Speaker 7: back inside me, and then I made sure I was
Speaker 7: either talking out loud or moving something. The whole time
Speaker 7: I just did not want to lie still again. And
Speaker 7: it is the only place when I when I do
Speaker 7: get acupuncture, I continue to.
Speaker 3: Go, Okay, just move it, get the occupunct. It's very
Speaker 3: It's good for many things. But that that feeling of
Speaker 3: floating away from myself was not like, oh interesting here.
Speaker 4: It was like the only other time I had in
Speaker 4: your death experience was when they got a bill from
Speaker 4: the Biltmore for four days stay.
Speaker 2: I almost died right right right.
Speaker 3: A good thing you didn't because they charged for removal. Yes, David, Hello,
Speaker 3: I'll still left nger. You haven't left us yet.
Speaker 8: I am not hovering.
Speaker 9: I have no pins in me, hopefully the aneurysm isn't.
Speaker 2: What did we learn? What did did we miss anything?
Speaker 2: Did we learn anything? Where are you.
Speaker 9: Didn't answer the primary question what happens to you after death?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know how could I answer?
Speaker 4: I'm going then that's a pretty good question.
Speaker 2: Let you there you go.
Speaker 9: Well that actually got me thinking about what are some
Speaker 9: of the other things in life that you just can't know?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, all right, So what.
Speaker 8: Our hair looks like from the pack.
Speaker 9: I know, I know exactly what my.
Speaker 3: Hair looks like the big questions, and you have to
Speaker 3: pay a price for that answer.
Speaker 2: But I live together the Big Book of Questions.
Speaker 9: Okay, I'm going to get deep with you already started.
Speaker 8: Yeah, what your mother in law really thinks of you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure?
Speaker 3: Why do you have to limit to the mother in law?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what my wife thinks of you.
Speaker 2: I'm sure what anybody chasing thinks. From God.
Speaker 9: And Jason, you might remember this one. What is on
Speaker 9: that chart that the doctors are writing and scribbling while
Speaker 9: you're there in the hospital.
Speaker 8: Then yeah, yeah, we haven't come.
Speaker 2: To the journey. They always add a note. The nurse
Speaker 2: comes in, does all the it's too quick.
Speaker 8: Even if you look at the paper, you can't tell
Speaker 8: when they did it.
Speaker 2: Still not good? How did you sandwich? Maybe?
Speaker 8: Well that actually leads into the next one. What we
Speaker 8: smell like to other people?
Speaker 2: Oh, that is true.
Speaker 3: We never know what we smell like to other people,
Speaker 3: regardless of the money I'm plunking down on my shin
Speaker 3: on number five or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, David, thank you, and thank you everybody. What I'm
Speaker 4: glad is that we went from the depth of Sebastian younger.
Speaker 4: He really went deep and.
Speaker 2: So cosmic consciousness to my hair from the back. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's fantastic. What do I smell? Yeah, don't say we
Speaker 2: don't cover all the bases. I'm really nice, like a
Speaker 2: little bit like a lamb chop and some head.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: No, actually, you have a very pleasant thing. Most of
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 4: You're very pleasant, and you have no there's no negative
Speaker 4: or positive. You're kind of a neutral. I'm saying, no, no,
Speaker 4: there's no.
Speaker 2: You don't put it. In our thirty years, I've never gone. Boy,
Speaker 2: I can tell Jason, I gotta tell you.
Speaker 3: I walk around I have breath freshening around my mouth
Speaker 3: in my pocket all the time because I just I
Speaker 3: feel like I don't have a savory breath.
Speaker 2: That's what I think.
Speaker 4: I have a stick up one of those Christmas trees
Speaker 4: in my pants, so just in case that same.
Speaker 2: Oh, then Merry Christmas, Thank you, Merry Christmas to all
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 3: Two Christmas episode we mentioned every will make it pay
Speaker 3: death Christ died.
Speaker 2: He went somewhere. Maybe we do too. Every episode take
Speaker 2: care of.
Speaker 1: As enough episode of really no really, he comes to
Speaker 1: a close. I know you're wondering, what's the longest time
Speaker 1: someone has been declared clinically dead but come back to life. Well,
Speaker 1: I know you're dying to hear, but first let's thank
Speaker 1: our guest, Sebastian Younger. You can follow Sebastian on his
Speaker 1: website Sebastianyonger dot com. On x and Facebook, he is
Speaker 1: at Sebastian Younger. On Instagram, he is at Sebastian Younger Official,
Speaker 1: and be sure to read his fascinating account of his
Speaker 1: near death experience in.
Speaker 8: His book In My Time of Dying.
Speaker 1: Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little
Speaker 1: show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at
Speaker 1: Really No Really podcast, And of course you can share
Speaker 1: your thoughts and feedback with us online at reallynoreally dot com.
Speaker 1: If you have a really some amazing fact or story
Speaker 1: that boggles your mind, share it with us, and if
Speaker 1: we use it, we will send you a little gift.
Speaker 2: Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts.
Speaker 1: Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe
Speaker 1: button and take that bell updated when we release new
Speaker 1: videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday, so listen
Speaker 1: and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: And now the answer to the question.
Speaker 1: What's the longest time someone was clinically dead but came
Speaker 1: back to life? The phenomenon is called the Lazarus syndrome,
Speaker 1: in which there is a spontaneous return of cardiac activity
Speaker 1: after a patient has been pronounced to dead, and.
Speaker 8: There are plenty of examples of it.
Speaker 1: A sixty six year old man with an abdominal aneurysm
Speaker 1: endured seventeen minutes of chest compressions and defibrillation shocks, only
Speaker 1: to be declared dead ten minutes after the resuscitation effort
Speaker 1: ceased his pulse started back up. He was treated for
Speaker 1: the aneurism and fully recovered with no lasting physical or
Speaker 1: neurological problems. Walter Williams, seventy eight, from Lexington, Mississippi, was
Speaker 1: declared dead by the hospice worker overseeing his care, and
Speaker 1: after transfer to the funeral home, he was found to
Speaker 1: be moving, possibly resuscitated by a defibrillator implanted in his chest.
Speaker 2: The next day, he was well enough to be talking
Speaker 2: with family, but.
Speaker 8: Died fifteen days later.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on, but the winner is
Speaker 1: undoubtedly Velma Thomas, fifty nine years old from Nitro, West Virginia.
Speaker 1: After going into cardiac arrest in her home, doctors found
Speaker 1: that she was clinically brain dead, no brainwave activity whatsoever
Speaker 1: for hours. Doctors attempted to save her life by inducing
Speaker 1: hypothermia in order to lower her body temperature and stimulate
Speaker 1: the brain. Her son stated that her skin had already
Speaker 1: started hardening and her hands and toes were curling up
Speaker 1: in rigor mortis. She was taken off life support and
Speaker 1: funeral arrangements were in progress. However, ten minutes after being
Speaker 1: taken off life support, she revived and fully recovered. That's right,
Speaker 1: a full recovery after establishing an unbroken world record of
Speaker 1: being clinically dead for seventeen hours. Really No, Really, Really
Speaker 1: Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment
Speaker 4: On