Dr. Gregory Shushan | Near Death Experience in Indigenous Religion, Afterlife Journeys, & Resurrection

00:04 The planet's puppet masters almost surely have a plan There clearly may be something there beyond the realm of man Until we've thoroughly tested every last closed chested view Find the more you think, you know unless you really do Where would we be without THC? We know they're lying to us, just don't know to what degree. Where would we be without THC? The highest side chat show. Greg Carlwood and company

00:58 Praise be to he, Hireside Chatters doing the thing from the sunshine state. I'm Greg Carlwood and while we might get distracted by the daily grind down in the nightly Netflix offerings if you do save some time to contemplate the bizarre experience of simply living a life you realize it really is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and paradoxically so ubiquitous as to be taken for granted. And while our modern, commercialized religions and hollow husks of deep ancient traditions offer almost nothing in the way of insight most of us do feel as if life is some sort of special circumstance important journey or meaningful personal adventure as part of a larger whole even if we never get much further into exploring those recurring nagging thoughts practically

01:45 But maybe a better approach to chipping away at understanding the unknown, life-death spirit beings the afterlife and whatever all this is would be to look at those lucky enough to live outside of our flashy shallow cultural bubble who largely live more embedded in natural environments and examining the experiences of those individuals who have stood at the door of The Threshold To The Other World. Well folks, coincidentally that is exactly what today's guest Dr. Gregory Shushan has done with his amazing book Near Death Experience in Indigenous Religions In it, he covers the spread from Native American cultures to a plethora of African tribes and the indigenous people of Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia and Australia. And extracts any and all stories myths and reports of near-death experiences in shamanic practices that often do have major implications for the collective thoughts and models for life death in the afterlife of the community from which they came

02:41 It is a masterwork, and it's not his only one. For the unfamiliar, Gregory Shushan is a PhD scholar and historian of religion as well as a leading authority on near-death experience in the afterlife across cultures and throughout history Dr. Shushan holds degrees in religious studies research methods for the humanities Egyptian archaeology and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology He is currently working towards his second PhD with a project on near-death experiences in classical antiquity. His other books include The Next World, Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife, Mind Dust and White Crows, The Cyclical Research of William James and the upcoming titles Near Death Experience in Ancient Civilizations, The Origins of the World's Afterlife Beliefs and the Historical Anthology of Near Death Experiences. Ambitious to say the least!

03:33 Well, here he is. A man who has dug in deep and found his niche the near-death experience analyzer shamanic practice parser and certified expert in the afterlife Dr. Gregory Shushan welcome to the higher side Thanks Greg that's quite an introduction but thank you I'm out of breath. I'm out of breath. I'd really went for it on that one And thank you for doing this when i learned about your book near death experience and indigenous religions i assumed i would like it just from the title because we talk about nds a lot but its usually contemporary western accounts that's nice to have, the confirmation that this is largely universal experience for some people.

04:14 And the bizarre details are really just fun to go over. But to kick this off, we should probably introduce people to what seems to be your overarching premise that NDEs and shamanic experiences are the original origin point for religions and afterlife beliefs? Which kind of seems obvious to me but I guess I would be in the minority there huh? Yeah for sure i would say it was possibly the ultimate origins for afterlife beliefs which people. What have these experiences and then they would elaborate in the retelling and try to make sense out of them and they were developed into these cultural narratives and myths and

04:54 Stories about the afterlife so that could have had an overall impact on religion per se and religious beliefs for say, i'd be hesitant to say categorically that they're the origins of religions around the world but i think it makes sense to me that they certainly contributed to formation of religions because When you think of what one of the most spiritual types of experience a person can have, literally is separating from your body. So having some kind of out-of-body experience which is obviously instrumental to near death experiences so just even that one very thing could be responsible for ideas about the soul being separate from the body and dualism and the idea that we survive death and there's a spiritual reality beyond this physical one

05:41 Yeah i agree with you and it seems kind of obvious because i think about someone like joseph smith in the whole mormon religion its usually some figure who has some mystical experience and then says they have some. Sacred knowledge of some kind to impart some new tablets or something and people like hey i don't have any contacts for what this life is maybe the skies right made people want answers so if someone's willing to give me answers a lot of times, gravitate towards that in there are some charlatans in the space but there are also. People who have genuine encounters with spirit beans or experiences in other realms and they come back

06:24 And they have insights to share and that's a real thing. And of course, I could see how major religions and whole corpuses of material would spiral out of some initial experience or a group of experiences for a small collection of people maybe a dozen or so experiences at all have some overlap it's like yeah maybe there's a there there Yeah that's a good point that aside from Near-death experiences specifically, pretty much every religious leader that I can think of throughout history had some kind of supernatural or paranormal event occur to them. Specifically in these, there are actual religions founded on the near death experiences of particular prophets or shamans or visionaries

07:14 where they come back from the other world and develop this kind of following. The ghost dance from Native American religions is one example, and then it wasn't just the belief that came back with a person who had these near-death experiences but then ritual practices and shamanic practices—the idea being that the original person who went to the other world who was either a shaman or they became a shaman by virtue of the experience, they would obtain different kinds of supernatural knowledge and abilities in the other world. So then the community itself would be able to replicate that but not dying. The idea was to develop this technology so anyone could access the afterlife without being compromised physically. They would do things like

08:01 Repetitive drumming to get into a trance state or dancing and singing to the state of exhaustion until it would collapse. And you know maybe these things might not in themselves bring about an afterlife she monica n d type experience but when you have that focus in your mind that's what you're going to do, is incubating the idea of another world journey, and then you collapse in exhaustion and your body's physically compromised. It makes sense that you could then reach that state not to mention drug use was also pretty common in a lot of these traditions. I have heard that!

08:37 It's just a great point because a lot of times these people come back with instructions for how to get back there for the other people in the tribe like you said rhythmic drumming or song and dance are they'll be told don't eat for six days and you'll see what i saw. And that makes it seem quite accurate because these are protocols let say that do actually say what their supposed to do they do what they're supposed to do so just by the nature of this weird idea hey let's all dance in a specific way and then something actually happens it's like well i guess i believe the rest of that guy story. What does this say about reality as a whole to you, that this is even a thing? That this mechanism exists and people all over the world at all time depths have a certain

09:29 amount of the members of their group that do have this experience now if they ignore them like we tend to do marginalized them. That's on us you know free well and all that we can do that but it seems like the universe itself the layers of reality they have this, Process of letting some people know and sometimes it is spontaneous sometimes it's like not even anything near death per se but just a. I sat down and had a random kundalini experience in my whole life changed, It's weird. I mean, what does it say about reality as a whole to you that this seems to happen for half a percent of some people whether they want it or not? It's like the universe needs us to kind of know that there is more out there. I mean in a sense that's a metaphysical problem beyond cultural and social kinda context of near-death experience that I try to limit my work too. I don't know...it could say

10:33 You know we have very similar ways of processing our physical reality and making sense of it. For example, a lot of these religious revitalization movements that are founded on NDEs which there are examples in lots from Native America some from Polynesia South America you know all over the world They tend to arise at times of crisis when people are in a kind of fearful social political environment. So there also lot happening now, you know, I would hesitate to call them religions but there's definitely organized spiritual movements that are centered on near-death experiences and often around the near death experience one particular individual

11:18 You go to a conference and you'll see these people treated almost like gurus, selling tons of books and all this stuff. It's sort of quasi-religion. It's spiritual but not religious religion founded on near death experience essentially. But what is interesting about it for me is they arise in these times of cultural crisis and social crisis where people are afraid of political crisis going on around the world or environmental crisis going on around the world So in effect, the near-death experience is almost mirroring and resolving that fear of death. There's this fear of global death and then this one person almost a Christlike figure dies and comes back to life as Christ did. And therefore kind of represents what's going on in society so people find it kinda easy to latch onto that death and rebirth symbolism

12:09 I mean, in a way that skirts your question but in the way it also explains the dynamics around it. I've heard the questions people ask you at the end of your presentations and I know you try to keep it pretty on-the-level and academic but It is just a strange thing that the ratio seems similar it's a small amount of people but it seems similar across all kinds of cultures which to me just lands more credibility to this should be taken seriously. And there are probably over a hundred and the stories and myths from the cultures you covered in most of them are,

12:44 are very weird with journeys to other worlds, encounters with ancestors or spirit beings. Sometimes they're given these insights or prophecies to bring back to the people it is really fun to read about and some of these stories do come from very obscure places and many are hundreds of years old There's almost a paradox in trying to find commonalities when they are so varied. But what do you consider the major themes that do recur across time and space when people have NDEs in indigenous cultures? I think even that is difficult, So I'll just backtrack a little bit just to give some context that, you know, when Raymond Moody wrote his book Life After Life in 1975 he coined the term near-death experience as most of your listeners probably know

13:33 Before that, obviously near-death experiences happened but it wasn't like this mainstream topic. Certainly not in any kind of research sense in any organized way and even at that point he recognized that there were some cross cultural examples and a few other people recognize as well as time went on. Kenneth Ring and Bruce Grayson but was it really till the sort of 90s that any headway started being made into looking at cross cultural NDEs And for the most part, and with a few exceptions of sociologists like James McLennan and Alan Kelly here. Really the goal was to

14:10 Try to understand just the question that you're asking what are the universal components of near-death experiences. Which right off the bat is so tricky because even in Raymond moody's book he said there are no two western examples that have all of the fifteen or so elements that he isolated so, you know leaving a body entering darkness coming out through tunnel meeting deceased relatives and all those kind things So there's not even a standard western model. So then to try and find the universal model that would apply to the rest of world is even more complicated. I almost see it as an obsession in near-death studies, they were so determined to find this universality of experience that they ignored the differences cross culturally which are actually

14:56 Not only require explanation just as much as similarities but actually really interesting to kind of understand on their own terms and the reason i say the question is complicated. Can you be any cases my initial response is going to be entering darkness coming out through light but then i remember that in a lot of the small scale societies indigenous cultures. They don't enter darkness they actually walk along the path to the afterlife and we know that it's not dark because they can see footprints in the sand on the road and they'll see other ghosts of other people who have just had NDEs passing in the opposite direction as they're going towards the underworld. So even entering darkness isn't necessarily super common, although there are descriptions of going into caves or even tree trunks like a hole into a tree trunk so these are all symbols of getting into the darkness phase but definitely there's light in The Other World. There's not necessarily beings of light but light itself is pretty common

15:56 a kind of idealized mirror image of Earth where everything is perfect, you know the happy hunting grounds kind of thing. Deceased relatives are extremely common I think that's one of the most defining features really because obviously the afterlife realm is where our ancestors and other spirit people that we know would be out-of-body experience is fairly common though I think in many cases it's almost like we can take it for granted We know these people aren't really describing a physical journey, and if we have a testimony of people within their community saying yes this person died. We saw their body there. We know it wasn't a bodily journey but the actual description of leaving the body and being separate from it and seeing the body lying there is... It happens but it's not universal by any means

16:48 Reaching some kind of border or barrier is obviously universal because otherwise the person wouldn't have come back. They'd still be there And then often some kind of evaluation of a person's earthly life, not a life review in the sense of the popular Western conception about where we experience every moment of our lives at once and we experience you know the emotions of everyone that we've interacted with. So we experienced the hurt of people we've heard or whatever that's pretty much absent in the cross-cultural accounts especially in small scale societies But there are so thematic similarities is one account in american account where. Hey guy walks into room during his n d and there's a sort of official sitting at a desk with white beard i guess he symbolizing that deity type character behind him on the wall as a picture of the person having been your death experience,

17:43 And on that picture, it somehow encapsulates his entire life and he can see all of his life events on that picture. So it's kind of an externalized life review but it's also assisted by this spiritual authority divine being sitting there so thematically it's similar to the general life review. I would say that If we kind of take a wider angle view and zoom out from our preconceptions about an NDE, and look at them as thematic then there are a lot more similarities. So passing from this realm to another realm

18:21 Without a body encountering supernatural beings and relatives, those things are all present. But as soon as we start talking about a tunnel or panoramic life review for a specific being of light Jesus or whoever that's when the kind of similarities start to break down Yeah i think if you say life review slash judgment that incorporates a lot more there something like that goes on and. In the presentation about the book that you've given you also include,

18:57 The fact that there's enough of them include this to say it's a commonality but being stopped and interrogated by an ancestor or spirit being asked who are you another questions that need to be answered to pass or u return the body. And that is just so weird its like, Who determines if it's an ancestor or just some random deity you encounter. It is just all so bizarre but that is a strange thing and that has found pretty cross culturally right, I can be included this interrogation process by someone as you walk along your road or whatever yeah absolutely in. I kind of hesitate to use the word interrogation because it sounds so harsh but

19:41 that really is kind of what it is. You're not going to be allowed to pass unless you answer these questions correctly, and what you mentioned about the identity—that's a really interesting one to me. That goes back to the ancient Egyptian pyramid text. This is a really common cross-cultural thing which the pyramid texts by the way are not near death experiences but they're descriptions of what it will be like in the afterlife and its instructions on what you're supposed to do when you get there in order to navigate all the perils and everything But one of those things is knowing your name and being able to confirm your identity basically. And that's a really common thing cross culturally which i think says alot about, you know maybe the in a sort of tibetan book of the dead sense

20:24 I'm dying consciously and dying with awareness if you die where you retain the sense of the experience that your going through an almost a kind of objective view of it. Going to be able to negotiate the other world easier than if you're just completely overwhelmed with the experience and don't die consciously but then there's also in egypt as well as india and other places Part of the answer of who are you is identifying yourself with the deity. In Egypt, it's not just a matter of saying your name but it's also recognizing that you're also the god Osiris in the afterlife and you're also the sun god Ray who's the actual sun-god deity. Both of them are there to evaluate you and judge you so

21:12 Part of that expression of your name and knowing your name is also knowing your identity as a divine being or, or being at one with the divine. Which is again pretty typical in India too. Yeah it just seems like such high stakes interview you know you really want to get it right I mean maybe you can play with it by being like actually do wanna go back because it seems like usually people are either sent back to their body or they're allowed to pass through But I don't know if there's really a third option of like, well your body is destroyed so you're not going back there but i guess we're gonna send you down into the pits of the inner earth because you didn't get the questions right but there's no body to send you back to. Sorry it's just gonna be this hellish reality which a lot of them... It's not heaven and hell but a lot of cultures do acknowledge multiple dimensions not necessarily just spirit world physical world but like

22:07 Nested realities and that there are some more positive ones up whatever means but down in the stack or beneath the earth in the underground are negative one that's pretty universal. Yeah just seems like a very important interview to get right and maybe something, we should think about in our time on the earth? How would we answer such questions, do we have the influence of some God on us that we should maybe acknowledge and call upon in that moment for help. For me, the message I've taken from a lot of those texts is not to call upon some external god for salvation or the Buddha or whatever it's more like this is up to me I need to realize that I'm the transcendent being here

22:53 So that realization is going to enable you to reach Nirvana or a positive afterlife, or a positive rebirth. Or whatever it is that presumably at that stage you can actually choose I should also say that as far as being sent back your body that's another interesting cross cultural difference in the west kind of new death experience we hear most about somebody told me no need to go back to life because you have your child take care of where you have This thing you need to fulfill your finish writing your book about the spiritual adventures in the afterlife or whatever it is, it's some kind of gold and its often personal individualistic kind of goal where is china india and some of the small scale societies the reason for being sent back is.

23:41 Basically an accounting error among the spirit beings in the afterlife so they got the wrong. Gregory shes on you know i die temporarily and get there and they're like looking at their ledger book, can they find out all this you know we wanted to guide lives in persia who has that same name so then i'd be sent back to my body and wake up when i tell everyone about my n d e but then the other person with my name who was supposed to go would then die permanently. So we've got the being sent back and we've got the return, and we've got you know the inciting incident for the near-death experience all kind of organized or determined by these otherworldly spirit beings but the reason for that return is completely different and completely cultural so... To me that's a good example of what the hell do we do with that basically? What does that mean

24:32 Yeah, that's my first thought when going over really any of this stuff. But I tend to think about NDEs in a basket of high strangeness experience you probably don't because you want us to academic but I put these in a basket of like all sorts of 40 and experiences fairy folklore aliens all the weird stuff that people experienced And i thought it was kind of interesting when you were looking to give us the commonalities your like well i would say this but then i can think immediately have examples that fall outside of that and that is so true with all these categories of high strangeness stuff, ufology being the most famous but there's so many people who want it to be aliens in a spaceship from another physical planet. So when they hear the stories their focused on those details

25:25 and sometimes they cut around the rest. But any conclusion we've ever discussed about that subject, it's like well maybe they're demons? Well if they're demons then why did this guy have the experience where guys in silver suits took him on to a craft and showed him a bunch of mechanical stuff? Do demons do that I don't know if that is in the Bible or people say they are non-physical multi dimensional beings than why did this one leave a burn mark on the earth Non physical things don't do that so there's always in many of these categories. Subjects of weird stuff theirs examples that fall outside of what we might consider the commonalities and had to me almost makes me wanna put it all under the umbrella of. Imagine or dream like experiences because only dreams

26:15 are so very like they're the only thing that's like well there all kind of the same cuz i happen while we sleep and. During certain phases and we forget them in a day fate as soon as you wake up those commonalities but, you couldn't say there is any comment on the content of one streams or the content of a lot of spirit encounters or alien encounters or near death afterlife glimpses, you know that sometimes are given a 10 coin to bring back. Sometimes your told about a dance and one example of quartz crystal is vomited up by a deity and shoved into his chest like only dreamlike experiences are this wild in this very yeah that's a great example and what's really interesting about that is

27:01 The quartz crystal being shoved into a chest happens in Native American society and in Australia. And there was no cultural interaction between those two, both in shamanic context. Oh and then eating something in the afterlife is a taboo on that. And if you eat something then it makes you stay there forever Yes just like the ferry folklore that's a major aspect of that whole corpus of materials largely about food joshua cutchin wrote a book called the trojan feast all about the mechanics, are the offerings and either food being made over here for the berries or the ferries trying to give people like a piece of bread and that mechanism of life.

27:44 You either intuitively know or you're told, I can't have this or I can't leave. If I eat this, I will be forced to stay here." That's another like ding-ding-ding huge very strange commonality. Yeah and the fact that happens in a not just near death experience or afterlife context but specifically in visiting the other world context what they call an Orpheus myth it happens in ancient Greece and it happened in Native American accounts that is truly bizarre especially because of that context. And I don't really have any way to explain that except in that particular case, I just kind of want to say it's probably rooted in dissimilarity and folklore and storytelling. I think some of this is due to that. The way we can unpack that and separate what is and what isn't, I think, is by the cross-cultural commonalities. For me, the distinction between near death experience and the other high strangeness stuff you mentioned

28:46 is the context and is this table at least thematic kind of structure to it so by contacts i just mean. You mentioned that you know they can happen in shamanic contact so they can happen if somebody sitting there spontaneously but for the most part what we see as a near death experience happens well somebody is temporarily clinically dead or they're perceived by the people in their community as being dead, they're considered dead. Their grave is being dug or whatever and then after a period of unconsciousness or apparent death then they come back to life and then they talk about these experiences so for one thing it's that temporary death context for another thing despite all my going on about the differences those thematic similarities are fairly stable I mean they're not universal but

29:37 You know, it is leaving the body going to another world and meeting deceased relatives and evaluating your life and all that other stuff. That's not all you can't transpose that onto alien abduction accounts or fairy accounts or whatever there are specifics to MDEs I think a good analogy is sleep paralysis because that also has a very specific context Which is the hypnagogic state, they call it between being awake and dreaming. And that can either happen as you're waking up or as your falling asleep. There's a famous painting of it by Fuseli where there's a demon sitting on somebody's chest and demonic horse in the background This was explored by David Hufford In a great book called The Terror That Comes in the Night

30:24 And he basically found that this experience happens all over the world, but it's given different meanings and interpretations. And part of the experiences is that you can't move and you can scream or call out or speak to anybody and you feel totally paralyzed so is called sleep paralysis But there's also a pressure on your chest and there are some kind of malevolent being in the room with you either sitting on your pressing you down holding you down something So he did a cross-cultural study of this and he found that, you know in Newfoundland it's called the old hag. In Japan it seemed as a certain kind of ghost but he was able to identify this phenomena around the world showing that this extraordinary experience leads to a particular type of supernatural belief

31:13 also showing how the particulars of it are interpreted in symbolic ways according to the culture, according to existing cultural concepts. But also in that case sleep paralysis is a kind of more or less understood neurophysiological psychological phenomenon if there's nothing supernatural or spiritual about it So to me that's interesting because it provides a validation for what he called the experiential source hypothesis. What I've been arguing with NDE is that they're foundations for afterlife beliefs, and he provided that in a totally materialistic sort of way without recourse to any kind of metaphysical or spiritual argument. If it can happen in that context then it can certainly happen in an NDE context

32:03 And then even parsing it down even more closely, just the out-of-body experience element to an NDE. There's a... I think he is an experimental psychologist Thomas Metzinger. He has argued about out of body experiences. He believes that they're just an illusion that they are basically and they call it an autoscopic phenomenon that your brain tricks you into seeing yourself outside of your body Your consciousness never leaves your body. It's almost like your brain projects a double of you across the room so you feel like you're outside of the body So that's how he sees it. He is totally materialistic, he doesn't buy any kind of veridical claims about OBEs or NDEs but he does say they're so real to the person having them and accepts that they are completely convincing that they would lead to beliefs in dualism and body being separate from spirit and afterlife and all these other kinds of things

32:58 Yeah i mean that is interesting sometimes to me it's like people will do some real mental gymnastics. To hold on to their world view of materialism rather than just admit maybe there's a lot of other things going on that you don't see from sleep paralysis and old hag visitations to the things that happen across the board with these people in your book we should actually, Talk about what qualifies that context of a near death experience because i think when a westerner first years that wanna listener podcast like this here's near death experience they think.

33:36 Well, somebody had a motorcycle crash and when they were in the air they had their life review and then they hit the pavement. And a being came to them and said you're going to make it or they went to the other world and then came back on the operating table with paddles and that's what jolted them back. And that qualifies as near death I actually think you could count psychedelic experiences that get you out of body as well in my own I was out of body, looked down at my body. Looked down at my friend shaking my body like hey dude you don't look right And I was able to be like, should I go back there or should I float on over here and see what's going on? And so I think stuff like that qualifies. Now did I take a substance that brings you to the threshold of death in a different way, an internal way as opposed to a car accident or motorcycle accident? I don't know but I think there are many mechanisms to cracking the door to the spirit world

34:32 open rather than just a near-death experience. But what we should say to people is in an indigenous context, they don't have hospitals where they're hitting you with the paddles and bringing you back To an indigenous culture sure there might be examples where someone's bit by poisonous snake lays in a fever bed for like four days and goes in and out of consciousness and comes back that I think what a lot of people think of as NDE like some We even back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness fever dreams in that but in your book a lot of these people are like dead dad, for a few days and many cases there's one that i had written down where the reason why this why he wasn't buried yet is because the snow was too deep.

35:20 Here it is, a late 19th century narrative. A man named Lebed died but could not be buried because the snow was too deep three days later his people found him singing his sacred song surrounded by howling wolves he awoke and described how he had left his body and had seen at lying dead a man came for him and he followed him into the woods until they arrived at a house a quote great shaman named now Lakumi told Lebed that he must return to Earth so that he may, quote, cure the sick of his tribe. Now, a lakumi then vomited a quartz crystal. Oh this is the same story! Vomited the quartz crystal up and then shoved it into his sternum and then this being took the breath from his spirit form you know if we think about a physical in a spirit form took the breath from his spirit form and blew it into the mouth of his physical body and then the surrounding wolves began licking the body and he basically came back

36:23 And so i guess people in the tribe saw this or this is a story handed down after a few generations but again that's a guy who in an indigenous context is thought to be dead and his lane outside for three days in the freezing cold because the snow was too deep to bury him and then he gets up. I mean that's a lot different than what happens in western accounts and i think that modern medicine and the hospital protocols and surgeries like, the things we have they have to play a role in either the disruption of this process perhaps or the lack of potency and memory of these experiences or the lack of them overall but

37:06 If you're in a tribe and someone you care about dies and is laying there on the ground for three days, then comes back. That's going to be a lot more impactful than someone who had a motorcycle accident and then was saved by the doctor in the hospital. Yeah I mean now most NDE accounts come from cardiac arrest wards that's where kind of most of the or at least most consistent resuscitation happens You know you mentioned earlier about parsing shamanism. I think that's where we do kind of need to parse the definitions of these experiences. There are near-death experiences where somebody is literally near to death and they go into a coma, and they have visionary experiences in the you know they might leave their body but their body doesn't actually physically die. And then there are accounts where the person is actually clinically dead which has probably has only been able to be you know actually physically measured in modern times so

38:06 With the indigenous accounts and earlier historical counts we can really make that determination we can only accept with the culture themselves believe in the person having and he believed. And then we have what i started calling shamanic near death experiences because, the more i've delved into this subject the more i think that they are accessing the same type of state or reality however you wanna put it but there done deliberately and the reason i would Make a distinction between them and different kinds of shamanic visionary experiences again because of the context they deliberately trying to go to the afterlife realm. And basically mimic near death experience through drug use or meditation or whatever technique actually use some cases like there's that fun people love africa they would actually

39:00 physically club themselves quote-unquote to death or they would say, you know burn themselves to death which obviously isn't possible. Clubbing to death I can see that could be a way of having an NDE and being brought back so sometimes some of these shamanic practices really did result in either a near-death or temporary death state others are just kind of safe ways of accessing the same type of experience And so again, this distinguishes them from the other phenomena like alien abduction or whatever because it's just a totally different context to begin with. Well here is the segue, a path in where it might be related as I've talked to people who do put alien encounters... A lot of times balls of light, orbs of light turn into ships and this and that they have real shape shifter quality to these experiences

39:54 And some people have suggested that we have these abduction experiences because we don't have a strong shamanic tradition, that because we don't A medicine man or someone in our community may be a communities too big but you know some people in it that we go to facilitate these interactions. That is basically forcing our hand and its coming for us and away because we are unprotected let's say, A lot of shamanic activity is protection of the tribe, keeping the spirit beings at bay and the demons away. I mean they do a lot of that through ritual they say we must do this to keep the demons away well if you stop doing it and you're a big western culture maybe you start getting dragged out of your bed at night by something strange yeah The inversion of that is in Australia I didn't really find any actual near-death experiences

40:56 I found shamanic experiences that were very much like and some of them involved going to the other world and my. Explanation for that is that i think they didn't need near death experiences in their culture which is not say they don't have them but interpreted the mission monica experiences rather than the other way around so somebody had a person just show up So we don't have these accounts of very personal individualistic accounts of a certain person being glorified because of their NDE and coming back and then being made a shaman. It's more like the shaman had a shamanic experience to the other world

41:34 Yeah i mean that again kind of like a shoehorn that into my point which is like if you have a culture with a strong shamanic tradition. These spontaneous experiences don't necessarily happen kinda when i started the whole thing talking about the universe has mechanisms to force us, to see through materialism to see that we are more than just our physical body And one of them is having a good shamanic tradition a good role in the society for that person if you don't have that then maybe people who've been dead for three days and snow start rising up. I'm telling you that hey there's an afterlife and if he still wanna take that for granted or take that seriously,

42:18 and you have a society that's highly medically technical where bodies just don't lay out like that, then maybe it reaches out in some other way or something else convinces you of this. But there are documentaries of cases where people had some kind of high strangeness experience that they would probably interpret as more something in the UFO realm and then became shamans, became dedicated to spreading the message of we're all connected We need more peace in the world it's a common thing i think anyone who reaches over to the other side there often given the same message which is. There's more life than what you see we're all connected there's a better place after death that u go potentially, i think those messages are pretty universal and its weird to see them spill out into

43:11 You follow the g and stuff i mean a lot of that used to be people who wanted to keep it in a physical contacts they'd say you're destroying the earth you gonna destroy yourself and their anti nuclear weapons like it got wrapped up in that context for. A long time but messages are somewhat similar there largely positive enlarge me about hey don't stress too much because there is something bigger than yourself that your part of this physical life is only part of what you will experience I mean, that raises the question for me of so does that mean that the aliens and people see in abduction experiences are just they're not aliens. They're just our own cultural projection on what other people say is a being of light or the Buddha or kachina or whatever according to their culture?

43:59 I think so because not a lot of other cultures have mass media like we do and so if you put something in films, and distribute it to millions of people who grew up on these films these ideas get embedded in a way that you can't really embed that idea and a lot of these cultures cuz they don't have that mechanism. of hollywood to do so i think it probably is some kind overlay at very well could be. But sometimes just seem so foreign that the gray archetype is really only one little subset that gets highlighted out of a wide range of really weird things people see and sometimes they turn from graze the beans of light, and what list river wrote about that is called them and its a bunch of accounts

44:43 That don't fit inside the normal box and of those accounts a lot of them are I saw my dead grandparents with a gray in an experience like there's a lot of overlap with seeing ancestors with grays. I know what to do at that. No, i don't either I didn't mean to take you into such weird territory. I didn't mean to be so obsessed with the Greys today! No, no that's fine. There was also just when you were talking about the messages from the other world about nuclear holocaust or whatever—just to kind of be devil's advocate about that—there were two studies done in the 80s one by Kenneth Ring who is a very prominent important and very respected near-death experience researcher and that was in America then one done by Margot Grey in the UK

45:30 And they were unbeknownst to each other basically totally independent of each other so they found that. Lots of new experiences are coming back with these prophecies saying you know the world is about to have a huge catastrophe sometimes it was environmental sometimes it's a it was nuclear or whatever, It's gonna be a huge catastrophe, and a huge portion of the population will be wiped out. But we will overcome and will come back bigger and better, and we'll enter a new golden age of enlightenment, and it'll be peace on earth, and it'll be this kind of renaissance for humankind." And this is going to happen sometime between 1988-1992. The most common date I think was 1992 like over and over they were both

46:20 Getting these messages and get totally independently in england america obviously this didn't come true so what's going on there that people are getting. Basically false prophecies in the afterlife and these are people who then went to start you know millennial culture anything like that, they're just normal people who had any reason came back and told people about them and the kinds of message got you know some people say it's a trickster spirit at work or whatever But to me that and this is the conclusion Kenneth Ring came to it was more of this kind of manifestation of the general theme of rebirth and fear and anxiety about the state of the planet in the state of what's going on in the world. And wanting to resolve that in a kind of metaphysical way so we feel like there's something better to come I think that makes more sense,

47:14 I can think of to explain those failed prophecies but the failed prophecies then also raise the whole question of like, so are these experiences just completely psychological and with a sociological cultural dimension to them? Yeah. I try to be open-minded but i don't want that to be true I want there to be an objective reality to these things. The flip side is the prophecies that do come true and there's a great Mormon example that i always like to bring up, There was a mormon in 1923 named Walter Monson And he died in a hospital in Utah and he left his body into the other world and it was this glorious place...and there he met his daughter who had died 10 years earlier or something

47:58 And she came to him and said, you know you need to go back to your body. I don't want to see you here yet first i want richard and richard was her little brother so monson's son who is also a child at that point after richard i want grandma and then after grandma it's mom's turn and then it will be your turn It's a big emotional thing and he's upset but he has no choice He has to go back to his body Richard is there waiting for him His Son And sure enough, Richard dies a few weeks later. Then his mother dies couple months later and then his wife dies after that and then finally it's Walter's turn the whole succession of the family's death was exactly the way his daughter in the afterlife had predicted. That's so strange! And that to me is like part of the dilemma and the endless fascination with NDEs is because you have all this

48:57 kind of ridiculous stuff, failed prophecies. Totally unbelievable things. There's one about a woman who saw a centaur with the head of Jesus riding through a Greek landscape, stuff like that and then you've got something that seems to be totally veridical like this account or the other out-of-body observations and things like that that other scholars have gone into a lot more than I have. Yeah! The accounts from the book and some of them that i wrote down do include prophetic stuff like this one where french missionary france while i miss your related the experience of a. Why not man who died in went to the other world,

49:43 There he met two english women who quote warned him that he should not yet go into the land of souls and then you should burn his robe upon is return to life in order to cure infectious disease and then they gave my prophecy that. French missionaries would carry out a genocide on the native peoples and, I mean, that comes up in several contexts with the Native Americans. And it's odd because the reason we have these stories is because missionaries and anthropologists and people who are kind of part of the problem were actually like trying to be like well let's actually have a conversation too and learn about your culture. Then what they've learned is like well the spirits told me that you guys are going to kill all of us

50:28 They're like, we're laying that message. It's very strange that we even have these messages because of the way that they had to be derived and you do touch on that in the book but it's also odd how many Native Americans see or describe Englishmen Frenchman in the other world like walking up to a desk and there was an English man who is like what's your name? Write it down and nope, nope, you're going back that kind of thing but that might speak to that collective anxiety or collective fear type of thing. You know, the colonizers were the nuclear weapons of their era? Yeah and the reason the missionaries were writing this information down and studying these people you know in anything like an anthropological way was basically to find ways into their souls in order to convert them so it's like if they have a myth

51:23 about a god with the child, we need to spin that and tell them that it's actually a myth about Jesus. That was partly the genius of Catholicism—that if I can call it that—it really did adapt and make itself contextually appropriate to different cultures. That was partly why Christianity has been so successful. You look at pictures of Virgin and Child in China, they're Chinese but from Native America's perspective Partly their near-death experiences enabled them to support their resistance against the colonizers, and especially the missionaries. A missionary would tell them your souls are going to burn in hell and a Native American would say well actually so-and-so went to the other world and he experienced it and didn't see people burning in hell so why should we believe you? And then the missionary would say Jesus taught this and this and the Native Americans would

52:18 Yeah, but this just happened a few weeks ago or a few months ago. Jesus was how many thousands? So they argued from a position of reason deriving from their own actual personal experiences which is actually a much more sophisticated and rational way of arguing than what the Christian missionaries were arguing from an entirely position of faith. They didn't have any evidence on their side, whereas Native Americans had the evidence of somebody who did the miraculous thing of dying and coming back to life. So not only did they have that miracle but they came back with prophecies and knowledge and wisdom and descriptions of the other world so that whole complex of the phenomena was a very powerful package

53:01 And it actually led to resistance to some of the colonizers, even to the extent that sometimes they were told you need to go back to your body and resist the colonizers for all your worth and fight them. Sometimes the opposite was true—they would be told in The Other World, You need to go back to your body and start adopting Western ways and start assimilating because otherwise it's going to be the end. So even those messages varied but it was all about survival of the tribe basically Mm-hmm and there's an interesting question there, and why those messages might have varied is it because it's something from the person psyche so they're getting a mirrored response to what maybe they're already thinking or are their spirit beings in the other world that have complete autonomy. And have different opinions than actually can look at the tea leaves and read them differently if you

53:58 If you go to different tarot card readers the art of terror might actually have some merit but. The interpretation is gonna play a big role in what you think about the accuracy and really what you do with the information, That could be a possibility what do you think what does that say to you that. The messages would be very not just in these accounts but and all the i mean i don't know many people who have digested as many experiences as you have, the message is are often conflicting or they don't match with history order sometimes there detrimental to the person it seems like almost. It's just weird they are really all over the map would you conclude that something

54:40 from inside the psyche or would you be more inclined to think that maybe there's just beans who have total autonomy and it's up to whoever you encounter when u r over there. Yeah i don't know if theres any way to answer that, i mean it makes sense to me that well there is no reason to believe that a being that you meet in the other world has universal knowledge and prophetic and clairvoyant wisdom. So they might just be giving advice based on their own opinion, like one might be thinking you know well I think they should fight back i think they have a real chance And then another one might be thinking now they need to assimilate so it could just be conflicting advice depending on an individual if you're still an individual in the other world that would make perfect sense You know it doesn't really fit in with the idea of

55:28 divinization or apotheosis and spiritual transcendence and ultimate wisdom with the universe in the divine in the other world, but maybe that's because that's not true. Right well I also just think about the idea of nested layers to reality and you might be on your way to the grand ultimate reunion with Oneness but on that path you might encounter spiritual dimensions of a lower form that are more like you know just the regular inhabitants of that world i mean there's obviously ancestors angels archangels deities we have hierarchy mapped out pretty much across the board at least an acknowledgement of some type of hierarchy and so yeah you could just be talking to some. Angel or spirit or ancestor who might be able to see

56:18 a picture of your near future and look at a war and be like, well you're either gonna burn at the stake or you can maybe just pretend to believe in Jesus. It's really your call! And people are going have different interpretations of what would be better for them? Like if I'm trying to help this person what would be better? To me it seems more real almost that things are so varied it feels like a real encounter with the real autonomous separate being because of that. I think that's kind of interesting, and I like to try to get into the mind of a spirit being and their spirit logic, and these give us little glimpses of it—these stories." You know just as far as the conflicting Native American device goes what would be interesting would be to go back and look at each of those accounts and do some real research into the historical events of the time

57:15 the condition of the tribe, the extent to which the Europeans had made incursions. What battles were coming up? Just try and determine if the advice that they were given turned out to be reasonable or not because it would have varied according to particular situations. That's something I didn't do in the book but I just presented the accounts as the way they were given and looked at the notion that the European invasion was not good for Native Americans But as far as looking at the conflicting accounts, the conflicting types of advice that were given it would be interesting to unpack each one of those on the historical contextual level.

57:56 Absolutely because you could find that it was the right advice for each individual or the wrong advice, but drilling down into. The actual lives are the tribes that these stories come from might yield something interesting for sure but one other thing i just wanted to bring up what's your mention the phone earlier and they are one of these cultures that do have A belief will just the whole thing you say the phone believe that souls of the deceased traveled over three rivers and up a mountain to the realm of the ancestors there they waited until burial rights on earth had been conducted at which point they would become fully integrated into the afterlife community. And that is something that sometimes freaks me out,

58:41 Which is the way we do funerals are the way funeral should be done you look at the egyptians and clearly they had a very robust metaphysical. Spiritual understanding of the other world or interest in the other world and then i have these bizarre, Mummification rituals and you start to think man am i gonna be screwed in the afterlife if i don't go through a process like that, no it's kinda high stakes am i gonna be cremated what happens to me on the astral plane of them fucking created i mean maybe i'm lost in purgatory forever. You just don't know maybe involving screws up what we know but there are a lot of stories in the book about people who come back

59:21 And they're given instructions for funeral rites or their testimony changes the funeral rights of the whole tribe. Or in the example of the Fon, you're in like a purgatory until your funeral is done. You would think that something... I don't want to say arbitrary, but seemingly arbitrary. A burial ritual on the physical plane? Why does that have anything to do with what happens to your spirit? What if you're struck by lightning in the woods and you just decay and get eaten by bears then what happens there is no funeral! You know, what if you're buried on Mount Everest and they never get your body back and you're just part of that Rainbow Ridge thing it's just kind of weird so when you take those stories in totality

1:00:05 interesting mechanisms between death, how a physical body is prepared and what happens to a spirit. I mean what do you think about some of that stuff? I guess in those cases it's the insurance that the body is not going to come back to life and that's actually something three days is something that occurs all over the world including in the Bible return from death after three days so widely seen that after three days it's not possible I wonder if in these cultures, it's only after burial or cremation or whatever that the person is definitely not going to come back. And that's what results in the transition to being fully incorporated into the afterlife community and interesting this is not totally relevant but its adjacent there are a lot of accounts well I don't know seven or eight or ten

1:00:59 making a specific point that the person who is outside their body during an NDE, that their body had started to decay and that they were nevertheless able to come back to it and reanimate it and come back to life. That's not something I've run across in any Western contemporary account of NDEs. And I'm not sure if come across at anywhere other than indigenous religions or maybe ancient China but it's very strange like and I think it's maybe Best understood as a way of saying here's proof that this person really was dead it's personal so totally dead but their body is started to decay therefore you can believe. The experience city brought back from the other world weather description of what it's like there for the profits your whatever kind of plot device to encourage us to believe that story

1:01:52 I think that's a great answer that i hadn't really thought of, it is more for the individual to be like okay you can go back so you must go forward. It's time to go forward maybe your waiting there thinking hey maybe wake up but no no not waking up gone so from that perspective doesn't matter if you're eaten by bear or cremated whatever takes to show spirit that there was no longer body that's what will be but a lot of those accounts are resurrecting People that have been slightly decayed i mean that's big in africa it's big and haiti i mean the whole idea of the zombie i believe the whole term comes from haitian culture. And that's a weird one i just wanna leave people with this cuz its related to what you just brought up but i haven't my notes,

1:02:35 An unusual Sol 2 narrative tells of a man named Mud Turtle who revived after being buried alive. Afterward, he often acted strangely at night making movements and exclamations as if he were in the middle of a lacrosse game It emerged that he had visited the Realm Of The Dead where night and day are reversed had played lacrosse with spirits there And was reliving the experience in his dreams Yes just while another great example and that's why people should check out this book if they have any interest in that cuz you'll just read a hundred straight accounts from all over the world and all over the

1:03:13 lesser known pockets of the world where we don't usually get stories from and I think that's an awesome thing. And as we're wrapping this up, i also just wanted to ask you about a couple of your other books and maybe just get the elevator pitch but mind dust in white crows the cyclical research of william james admittedly i know almost nothing about william james i'm sure i'm not alone why did you think this project was important okay so I'm just the editor of that, so i compiled most of William James's writings on psychical research. William James was basically the founder of American psychology in the 19th century and he's seen as a very important prominent figure in that he has books like The Varieties Of Religious Experience it's a classic in the field of not just psychology but philosophy religion kind of across the board

1:04:09 What a lot of people don't know especially in those fields of psychology philosophy whatever is that he was also one of the founders of the society for psychical research and it was very prominent. Psychical researcher in his day he's mostly known about field for experiments with the medium named this piper, There's a famous quote that he was very, very skeptical of William James. But he was gradually persuaded that something was going on and he kept kind of vacillating between the super-psi hypothesis – does she have recourse to all this information around the world? Is she telepathic in other words? You know there is really high level of telepathy or is she actually communicating with the dead

1:04:50 So he wrote in one of his books something along the lines of, it's not necessary to prove that all crows are white in order to prove that white crows can exist. All you need is just one white crow and Mrs Piper is my white crow." Basically she is who he saw as proof that something was going on. The book has his experiments with mediumship and lots of stuff about telepathy and things had never actually been published in book form before I found a lot stuff he had written on demonic possession, which he saw as a mediumistic type phenomenon. To me one of the things that was interesting about his writings in general is that a lot of things that were psychical research at the time are now just psychology. So like hypnotism, he treats as psychical research and phantom limb syndrome where amputees still feel their limbs even after it's gone

1:05:47 So those things were treated. I don't reproduce that much of it in this book because it's no longer psychokinetic research, but it is interesting in a kind of historical way. Yeah! That seems very cool and you're also re-releasing a rewritten and expanded version of your earlier book now called Near Death Experience In Ancient Civilizations The Origins Of The World's Afterlife Beliefs Do you see the same shape of NDEs in ancient civilizations as you do indigenous cultures like we talked about today? I would assume so because the further you go back, it's all kind of indigenous sort of living. But tell us a little bit about that book compared to this one we talked about today. That was my first book coming out of Egyptology studies

1:06:32 it originated with comparing ancient Egyptian and early Indian, so Vedic afterlife beliefs from the Rig Veda up through the Upanishads. So like pre-Hinduism essentially what we think of as Hinduism today and then eventually expanding it to ancient China, Aztec in Mayan Mesoamerica, ancient Mesopotamia...and did I say China? Yeah, ancient China! So sort of five world regions Now we actually have accounts of near-death experiences from three of these, possibly four depending on how we interpret it. There's no actual narrative of an NDE from Egypt but the approach was basically to look at the ancient religious texts in these civilizations and see the degree to which they corresponded to near-death experiences so the ironic thing is even though there are no NDEs from Ancient Egypt that's what kind of set me off was perceiving as I was reading the ancient Egyptian afterlife texts

1:07:36 They were including things like leaving the body, entering darkness going through dark passageways emerging into bright light. Having an evaluation of your earthly life done by a being of light in that case the sun god ray divinization feelings of union with the divine being one with Osiris, the god of death. So all these parallels to NDEs that's kind of what set me off and then as I started finding actual examples of NDEs and in other cultures it kind of became even more escalated so basically this version of the book

1:08:13 I was able to rewrite it with hindsight of my later research and kind of apply some of the things that i learned and discovered from my later research, to that earlier stuff. So the NDEs are a lot sort of brought forward more than The Afterlife. I guess the way to look at is the NDEs are the comparative thing rather than The Afterlife beliefs cross-culturally but they're still you know prominently there as well. Right on! I'm sure they make for a great one, two set because then you have both pieces of the puzzle. Yeah and I was able to kind of... it was very much an academic monograph at the time and i was very concerned knowing that it was a quote-unquote controversial subject for reasons that I won't go into and I think are ridiculous

1:09:02 I was very careful that i wanted to present it as a super academic monograph with lots of theory and method. So there was a chapter for example justifying the concept of observing similarities in cross-cultural accounts of myths. You're trying to walk the academics by the hand through the more taboo material, and this time you said screw it let's just dive into the deep end of the pool? Yeah exactly! I thought anything that's not going to be interesting to an average reader that's like a narrow disciplinary argument that people would not only not care about but think was insane. I just kind of cut stuff out right on well cool i look forward to getting into that when it comes out but

1:09:46 Man, from one Greg to another. This has been super enjoyable death in the afterlife are kind of the biggest mysteries we have I'm glad we have you on The Case anything else to add about other work or future plans or website links? The Patreon that kinda good stuff Yeah yeah I'm on Patreon it's patreon slash Gregory Shushan my website is the same gregoryshushan.com pretty easy to find on all the social media too And I'm currently actually doing a PhD project, which will eventually be a book on NDEs in ancient Greece and Rome. So uncovering lots of stuff about the experiential source hypothesis and how it relates to ancient mystery cults and different other cultural phenomena from that era

1:10:32 Very cool it really does seem like andy's and high strangeness experiences in encounters with the afterlife for entities from the other side spirits and what not it's pretty. Universal to the edges of the human experience no matter what time or what place you're looking at cuz clearly you have a lot of data come through Yeah. Bringing this into near-death studies and bringing it, hopefully, to the mainstream of religious studies and people realizing that this is a thing has been an uphill battle but I'm hoping that it will eventually sink in because just convincing people that there's an experience type that can be cross cultural, that people can base beliefs on has been met with a lot of hostility in the study religions so...

1:11:21 Well, it's hard to find a niche at all let alone one that is fun and important. So big cheers to you for finding your place in the world and for contributing to some pretty important stuff! I love it thanks for taking the time to talk to me and keep up the good work yeah it's been a great conversation thanks The power of Christ compels you guys! A deep dive into the indigenous NDE reports with a man who knows them about as well as anyone. I said Dr Gregory Shushan in the intro, but when he said his own name, he said... Shushan So i guess i put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable and i hate that getting names right is a very important basic sign of respect and starting off on the right foot

1:12:12 But I heard someone else introduce him that way and that's usually how i get the pronunciation of names because obviously you can't get that from reading someone's book. So, that was my bad but his work is top-notch! The book I read really was just a rapid fire collection of stories all we have from the missionaries and anthropologists that reached these people all cobbled together in a single book It's awesome. I'm really glad that I have this on my weird stuff bookshelf and it was a pleasure to talk to him first hand We talked about after the interview that maybe we should've laid out more of the stories but, i think we got into most of my top picks with the weirdest details And to me its about finding the shape of this phenomenon overall

1:13:03 But the more interviews we do like this, the more it is clear to me that everyone should explore altered states while they're alive and have at least some sense of what it's like to be out-of-body. Just so at least one aspect of the post death experience isn't completely disorienting It's weird though because we don't really talk about these things I can't even think of the last time i actually had a deep conversation about death or any sort of afterlife experience with a good friend. But, I think we could all benefit from a little strategy...I was gonna bring up the tricked by light work but the further I got into the book I was really just surprised how few people report any sort of tunnel of light at all

1:13:52 Usually, they were just walking along in a natural setting. But after they died you do have a lot of different forms of what we might just call an ascension and moving upward but this idea that you're just in a black void and then you see a tunnel of white light calling you like spiritual bug zapper didn't really come up all that much maybe it's a Western thing I was really happy that he does fold shamanism into his work and didn't have too narrow of a focus on specifically NDEs because yeah it is all connected in my mind. As he would agree, shamanism is a directed intentional triggering of getting one's spirit over to that place...that same place we go when we die A place that is often as random

1:14:50 And buried in its appearance as to be quite dreamlike and the good doctor is impressively credentialed and has been looking at this stuff for just many many years, do a degree that most people don't look at anything but if i was to be so presumptuous asked to have a critique or any kind of advice for the good doctor. It would be that he should dive into some of the best sources and collections of entity encounters. Because they are also not what they seem on the surface and i need to be looked at under a shamanic umbrella, and getting past what the general perception of you follow g might be and go to the first hand accounts we've had so many guests talk about

1:15:43 The greater association with the shamanic umbrella and what's known as you follow gordon beats that drum. Daniel rex and put them in a shamanic dreaming context yes but again all circling right around the same things joshua cutchin went from writing books about the food offerings of fairies and similarities to aliens n, ended up riding the ecology of souls hmm You know think about it but i'm sure that with all of doctor. Show shans robust knowledge of nde accounts and shamanic journey if he read a book like whitley streber's them or the ecology of souls, where you have examples of these beans we call the grace actually referencing obscure deities to the experience are insane hey this name is important

1:16:36 Or they might be present with a person's deceased loved ones right alongside. And if he got into more of those accounts, it would click for him I have no doubt Though the work he has planned seems incredibly ambitious as it is So who knows when he might even get such time but A major commonality between NDEs and the big-eyed skinny humanoid entity encounters would be those life-altering effects like transitioning into some sort of modern healer or living the path of true stewardship and kindness, realizing the impact of your actions and seeing yourself in a new light as an important piece of a bigger whole. Some people are visited by The Greys and end up becoming shamans! We covered that documentary about such a case but the name escapes me...

1:17:33 And another commonality would be that a lot of people do have that reunion with the ultimate oneness phase of their grey encounter. Like something that comes after the encounter but before they come to and that should be looked at obviously you guys know these things we've been down these roads many times it came up in the interview more than I had planned, thats where my head goes But it wasn't long before I was like, enough already. Let it go and just do a better job presenting his work as he presents it but I really enjoyed it as I said few people are as knowledgeable about anything As he is about NDEs around the world and throughout time

1:18:16 And that's just awesome. The second hour was a lot of fun, he opened up about his own Entheogen use and I asked him about his thoughts on John Michael Allegro work and we got deeper into the mechanisms of shamanism Lotsa good stuff! If you liked the first hour, OF COURSE YOU WOULD LIKE THE REST OF THE CONVERSATION Signup for PLUS right there in your show notes $8 bucks per month for 5 shows a month But I thought this was a nice topic for us and something people wouldn't expect, and a cool off-the radar knowledge base to explore. So that's that but let's see what the Plus Members thought of the last episode with David Barnhiser Conformity Colleges Education Infiltration & Weaponized Compassion

1:19:04 I really had no idea about this one because it's one of those subjects that definitely has a political connotation to it. There are a lot of baked in assumptions and pretty obvious insinuations even when you're trying to remain neutral, plus its subject thats talked about alot in the wider podcasting culture But it seems like the plus people did not mind at all. 4.8, man I feel like i'm constantly saying the same numbers no matter the subject and it's a beautiful thing! I think we've only had one show that ranked below a four since I started this at the beginning of the year and only a handful below 4.7 that top shelf threshold

1:19:54 Which really couldn't be better. Because topic-wise, we can be all over the map sometimes and to see so many people just willing to take the ride wherever it goes is amazing! It emboldens me to try to push it even more and I know this next episode coming up pushes it about as far as we ever have in terms of being highly taboo and offensive even to a lot of this audience And it's not just taboo and offensive for the sake of it. I think he makes a really interesting set of points about a really controversial set of positions, one in particular. I don't want to overhype it but it's pretty good and it's out there! Finally the meetup calendar where are THC listeners getting together in April? Well

1:20:47 April 12th, they're getting together at Rock Rest Lounge in Golden Colorado. April 13th Clark Park in Philadelphia Pennsylvania 420 we got the monkey puzzle in London can't miss out on that and that's really it only three left for April I felt like April was a lot more full but I think there were a couple eclipse meetups and then a couple in the first week of April but you know It is what it is Go to highersidemeetups.com to get more details on any of the events or add yourself to the guest list and, or make an event of your own free easy and hopefully fun and useful but that's a wrap check out Dr. Shushan's work if you want more thanks for listening thanks even more if you are a plus member and I'll see ya next time! I've done my part Your move shamanism suppressors death journey deniers and those ignorant of the afterlife process

1:21:44 Your fucking moon. Oh no, you see The world isn't random It's attached to puppet strings Control over the thing The nine-to-five is trying to steal ya Now don't that job seem silly? Hello Can you hear me Or should I play back

1:22:20 I'm some spying agency Wish we were younger and free I'll be thankful when it's all exposed The vast conspiracy There is such a difference between me now And the damn brothers Hollow from the highest high Calling out a thousand cries

1:22:59 They'll tell you the story of everything that's been done And they'll call out deception for the web that's been spun Hello from the higher side The earth is hollow They'll tell you about something That no one else will Have you heard? Have you heard about the real since the wrong? Oh no, they're cartoons It's so typical of me to talk about this stuff I'm sorry That's good and well Did you ever hear the argument that nothing really happens it's no secret

1:24:10 And that the best is plumb It's doubling your time Hollow from the higher side They're calling out a thousand crimes They'll tell you something The elite have done and they'll call out deception On the web that's been spun Hollow from the higher

1:24:49 Challenging your path And I'll tell you something That the battle's begun But we can't fight it Without the minds where each one Has a war Hello from the higher side They're calling out our cries

1:25:48 have done and they'll call the deception of the web that's been spun from the higher self challenging your paradigm. And I'll tell you, hey! That the battle has begun but we can't fight it with violence The mind where it's won, that's the